He had surrendered to his thirst. What weakness! He had not thrown
himself over, then. What folly! One splash of water on his face had been
enough. He was contemptible; and lying collapsed, in a sort of tormented
apathy, at the mouth of the cave, I despised and envied his good
fortune. It could not save him from death, but at least he drank. I
understood this when I heard his voice, a voice altogether altered--a
firm, greedy voice saying, “More,” breathlessly. And then he drank
again. He was drinking. He was drinking up there in the light of the
fire, in a circle of mortal enemies, under Manuel’s gloating eyes.
Drinking! O happiness! O delight! What a miserable wretch! I clawed the
stone convulsively; I think I would have rushed out for my share if I
had not heard Manuel’s cruel and caressing voice:
“How now? You do not want to throw yourself over, my Castro?”
“I have drunk,” he said gloomily.
I think they must have given him something to eat then. In my mind there
are many blanks in the vision of that scene, a vision built upon a few
words reaching me, suddenly, with great intervals of silence between, as
though I had been coming to myself out of a dead faint now and then.
A ferocious hum of many voices would rise sometimes impatiently, the
scrambling of feet near the edge; or, in a sinister and expectant
stillness, Manuel the artist would be speaking to his “beloved victim
Castro” in a gentle and insinuating voice that seemed to tremble
slightly with eagerness. Had he eaten and drunk enough? They had kept
their promises, he said. They would keep them all. The water had been
cool--and presently he, Manuel-del-Popolo, would accompany with his
guitar and his voice the last moments of his victim. Bursts of laughter
punctuated his banter. Ah! that Manuel, that Manuel! Some actually swore
in admiration. But was Castro really at his ease? Was it not good to eat
and drink? Had he quite returned to life? But, _Caramba, amigos_, what
neglect! The _caballero_ who has honoured us must smoke. They shouted
in high glee: “Yes. Smoke, Castro. Let him smoke.” I suppose he did; and
Manuel expounded to him how pleasant life was in which one could eat,
and drink, and smoke. His words tortured me. Castro remained mute--from
disdain, from despair, perhaps. Afterwards they carried him along clear
of the cornice, and I understood they formed a half-circle round him,
drawing their knives. Manuel, screeching in a high falsetto, ordered the
bonds of his feet to be cut. I advanced my head out as far as I dared;
their voices reached me deadened; I could only see the profound shadow
of the ravine, a patch of dark clear sky opulent with stars, and the
play of the firelight on the opposite side. The shadow of a pair of
monumental feet, and the lower edge of a cloak, spread amply like a
skirt, stood out in it, intensely black and motionless, right in front
of the cave. Now and then, elbowed in the surge round Castro, the guitar
emitted a deep and hollow resonance. He was tumultuously ordered to
stand up and, I imagine, he was being pricked with the points of
their knives till he did get on his feet. “Jump!” they roared all
together--and Manuel began to finger the strings, lifting up his voice
between the gusts of savage hilarity, mingled with cries of death. He
exhorted his followers to close on the traitor inch by inch, presenting
their knives.
“He runs here and there, the blood trickling from his limbs--but in
vain, this is the appointed time for the leap....”
It was an improvisation; they stamped their feet to the slow measure;
they shouted in chorus the one word “Leap!” raising a ferocious roar;
and between whiles the song of voice and strings came to me from a
distance, softened and lingering in a voluptuous and pitiless cadence
that wrung my heart, and seemed to eat up the remnants of my strength.
But what could I have done, even if I had had the strength of a giant,
and a most fearless resolution? I should have been shot dead before I
had crawled halfway up the ledge. A piercing shriek covered the guitar,
the song, and the wild merriment.
Then everything seemed to stop--even my own painful breathing. Again
Castro shrieked like a madman:
“Señorita--your gold. Señorita! Hear me! Help!”
Then all was still.
“Hear the dead calling to the dead,” sneered Manuel.
An awestruck sort of hum proceeded from the Spaniards. Was the senorita
alive? In the cave? Or where?
“Her nod would have saved thee, Castro,” said Manuel slowly. I got up. I
heard Castro stammer wildly:
“She shall fill both your hands with gold. Do you hear, hombres? I,
Castro, tell you--each man--both hands------”
He had done it. The last hope was gone now. And all that there remained
for me to do was to leap over or give myself up, and end this horrible
business.
“She was a creature born to command the moon and the stars,” Manuel
mused aloud in a vibrating tone, and suddenly smote the strings with
emphatic violence. She could even stay his vengeance. But was it
possible! No, no. It could not be--and yet....
“Thou art alive yet, Castro,” he cried. “Thou hast eaten and drunk; life
is good--is it not, old man?--and the leap is high.”
He thundered “Silence!” to still the excited murmurs of his band. If she
lived Castro should live, too--he, Manuel, said so; but he threatened
him with horrible tortures, with two days of slow dying, if he dared to
deceive. Let him, then, speak the truth quickly.
“Speak, ‘viejo’. Where is she?”
And at the opening, fifty yards away, I was tempted to call out, as
though I had loved Castro well enough to save him from the shame and
remorse of a plain betrayal. That the moment of it had come I could have
no doubt. And it was I myself, perhaps, who could not face the certitude
of his downfall. If my throat had not been so compressed, so dry with
thirst and choked with emotion, I believe I should have cried out and
brought them away from that miserable man with a rush. Since we were
lost, he at least should be saved from this. I suffered from his
spasmodic, agonized laugh away there, with twenty knives aimed at his
breast and the eighty-foot drop of the precipice at his back. Why did he
hesitate?
I was to learn, then, that the ultimate value of life to all of us is
based on the means of self-deception. Morally he had his back against
the wall, he could not hope to deceive himself; and after Manuel had
cried again at him, “Where are they?” in a really terrible tone, I heard
his answer:
“At the bottom of the sea.”
He had his own courage after all--if only the courage not to believe in
Manuel’s promises. And he must have been weary of his life--weary enough
not to pay that price. And yet he had gone to the very verge,
calling upon Seraphina as if she could hear him. Madness of fear, no
doubt--succeeded by an awakening, a heroic reaction. And yet sometimes
it seems to me as if the whole scene, with his wild cries for help, had
been the outcome of a supreme exercise of cunning. For, indeed, he could
not have invented anything better to bring the conviction of our death
to the most sceptical of those ruffians. All I heard after his words had
been a great shout, followed by a sudden and unbroken silence. It seemed
to last a very long time. He had thrown himself over! It is like the
blank space of a swoon to me, and yet it must have been real enough,
because, huddled up just inside the sill, with my head reposing wearily
on the stone, I watched three moving flames of lighted branches carried
by men follow each other closely in a swaying descent along the path on
the other side of the ravine. They passed on downwards, flickering out
of view. Then, after a time, a voice below, to the left of the cave,
ascended with a hooting and mournful effect from the depths.
“Manuel! Manuel! We have found him!... _Es muerte!_”
And from above Manuel’s shout rolled, augmented, between the rocks.
“_Bueno!_ Turn his face up--for the birds!”
They continued calling to each other for a good while. The men below
declared their intention of going on to the sea shore; and Manuel
shouted to them not to forget to send him up a good rope early in the
morning. Apparently, the schooner had been refloated some time before;
many of the _Lugareños_ were to sleep on board. They purposed to set
sail early next day.
This revived me, and I spent the night between Seraphina’s couch and the
mouth of the cave, keeping tight hold of my reason that seemed to lose
itself in this hope, in this darkness, in this torment. I touched her
cheek, it was hot--while her forehead felt to my fingers as cold as
ice. I had no more voice, but I tried to force out some harsh whispers
through my throat. They sounded horrible to my own ears, and she
endeavoured to soothe me by murmuring my name feebly. I believe she
thought me delirious. I tried to pray for my strength to last till I
could carry her out of that cave to the side of the brook--then let
death come. “Live, live,” I whispered into her ear, and would hear a
sigh so faint, so feeble, that it swayed all my soul with pity and fear,
“Yes, Juan.”... And I would go away to watch for the dawn from the mouth
of the cave, and curse the stars that would not fade.
Manuel’s voice always steadied me. A languor had come over them above,
as if their passion had been exhausted; as if their hearts had been
saddened by an unbridled debauch. There was, however, their everlasting
quarrelling. Several of them, I understood, left the camp for the
schooner, but avoiding the road by the ravine as if Castro’s dead body
down there had made it impassable. And the talk went on late into the
night. There was some superstitious fear attached to the cave--a legend
of men who had gone in and had never come back any more. All they knew
of it was the region of twilight; formerly, when they used the shelter
of the cavern, no one, it seems, ever ventured outside the circle of
the fire. Manuel disdained their fears. Had he not been such a profound
politico, a man of stratagems, there would have been a necessity to go
down and see.... They all protested.
Who was going down? Not they.... Their craven cowardice was amazing.
He begged them to keep themselves quiet. They had him for _Capataz_
now. A man of intelligence. Had he not enticed Castro out? He had never
believed there was any one else in there. He sighed. Otherwise Castro
would have tried to save his life by confessing. There had been nothing
to confess. But he had the means of making sure. A voice suggested that
the _Inglez_ might have withdrawn himself into the depths. These English
were not afraid of demons, being devils themselves; and this one was
fiendishly reckless. But Manuel observed, contemptuously, that a man
trapped like this would remain near the opening. Hope would keep him
there till he died--unless he rushed out like Castro-Manuel laughed,
but in a mournful tone: and, listening to the craven talk of their
doubts and fears, it seemed to me that if I could appear at one bound
amongst them, they would scatter like chaff before my glance It seemed
intolerable to wait; more than human strength could bear. Would the day
never come? A drowsiness stole upon their voices.
Manuel kept watch. He fed the fire, and his incomplete shadow, projected
across the chasm, would pass and return, obscuring the glow that fell on
the rock. His footsteps seemed to measure the interminable duration of
the night. Sometimes he would stop short and talk to himself in low,
exalted mutters. A big bright star rested on the brow of the rock
opposite, shining straight into my eyes. It sank, as if it had plunged
into the stone. At last. Another came to look into the cavern. I watched
the gradual coming of a gray sheen from the side of Seraphina’s couch.
This was the day, the last day of pain, or else of life. Its ghostly
edge invaded slowly the darkness of the cave towards its appointed
limit, creeping slowly, as colourless as spilt water on the floor. I
pressed my lips silently upon her cheek. Her eyes were open. It seemed
to me she had a smile fainter than her sighs. She was very brave, but
her smile did not go beyond her lips. Not a feature of her face moved.
I could have opened my veins for her without hesitation, if it had not
been a forbidden sacrifice.
Would they go? I asked myself. Through Castro’s heroism or through his
weakness, perhaps through both the heroism and the weakness of that man,
they must be satisfied. They must be. I could not doubt it; I could not
believe it. Everything seemed improbable; everything seemed possible. If
they descended I would, I thought, have the strength to carry her off,
away into the darkness. If there was any truth in what I had overheard
them saying, that the depths of the cavern concealed an abyss, we would
cast ourselves into it.
The feeble, consenting pressure of her hand horrified me. They would
not come down. They were afraid of that place, I whispered to her--and
I thought to myself that such cowardice was incredible. Our fate was
sealed. And yet from what I had heard....
We watched the daylight growing in the opening; at any moment it might
have been obscured by their figures. The tormenting incertitudes of that
hour were cruel enough to overcome, almost, the sensations of thirst,
of hunger, to engender a restlessness that had the effect of renewed
vigour. They were like a nightmare; but that nightmare seemed to clear
my mind of its feverish hallucinations. I was more collected, then, than
I had been for the last forty-eight hours of our imprisonment. But I
could not remain there, waiting. It was absolutely necessary that I
should watch at the entrance for the moment of their departure.
The morning was serenely cool and, in its stillness, their talk filled
with clear-cut words the calm air of the ravine. A party--I could not
tell how many--had already come up from the schooner in a great state
of excitement. They feared that their presence had, in some way, become
known to the peons of the _hacienda_. There was much abuse of a man
called Carneiro, who, the day before, had fired an incautious shot at
a fat cow on one of the inland _savannas_. They cursed him. Last
night, before the moon rose, those on board the schooner had heard the
whinnying of a horse. Somebody had ridden down to the water’s edge in
the darkness and, after waiting a while, had galloped back the way he
came. The prints of hoofs on the beach showed that.
They feared these horsemen greatly. A vengeance was owing for the man
Manuel had killed; and I could guess they talked with their faces over
their shoulders. “And what about finding out whether the _Inglez_ was
there, dead or alive?” asked some.
I was sure, now, that they would not come down in a body. It would
expose them to the danger of being caught in the cavern by the peons.
There was no time for a thorough search, they argued.
For the first time that morning I heard Manuel’s voice, “Stand aside.”
He came down to the very brink.
“If the _Inglez_ is down there, and if he is alive, he is listening to
us now.”
He was as certain as though he had been able to see me. He added:
“But there’s no one.”
“Go and look, Manuel,” they cried.
He said something in a tone of contempt. The Voices above my head sank
into busy murmurs.
“Give me the rope here,” he said aloud.
I had a feeling of some inconceivable danger nearing me; and in my state
of weakness I began to tremble, backing away from the orifice. I had no
strength in my limbs. I had no weapons. How could I fight? I would
use my teeth. With a light knocking against the rock above the arch,
Williams’ flask, tied by its green cord to the end of a thick rope,
descended slowly, and hung motionless before the entrance.
It had been freshly filled with water; it was dripping wet outside, and
the silver top, struck by the sunbeams, dazzled my eyes.
This was the danger--this bait. And it seems to me that if I had had
the slightest inkling of what was coming, I should have rushed at it
instantly. But it took me some time to understand--to take in the idea
that this was water, there, within reach of my hand. With a great effort
I resisted the madness that incited me to hurl myself upon the flask. I
hung back with all my power. A convulsive spasm contracted my throat. I
turned about and fled out of the passage.
I ran to Seraphina. “Put out your hand to me,” I panted in the darkness.
“I need your help.”
I felt it resting lightly on my bowed head. She did not even ask me what
I meant; as if the greatness of her soul was omniscient. There was, in
that silence, a supreme unselfishness, the unquestioning devotion of a
woman.
“Patience, patience,” I kept on muttering. I was losing confidence in
myself. If only I had been free to dash my head against the rock. I had
the courage for that, yet. But this was a situation from which there was
no issue in death.
“We are saved,” I murmured distractedly.
“Patience,” she breathed out. Her hand slipped languidly off my head.
And I began to creep away from her side. I am here to tell the truth. I
began to creep away towards the flask. I did not confess this to myself;
but I know now. There was a devilish power in it. I have learned
the nature of feelings in a man whom Satan beguiles into selling his
soul--the horror of an irresistible and fatal longing for a supreme
felicity. And in a drink of water for me, then, there was a greater
promise than in universal knowledge, in unbounded power, in unlimited
wealth, in imperishable youth. What could have been these seductions to
a drink? No soul had thirsted after things unlawful as my parched throat
thirsted for water. No devil had ever tempted a man with such a bribe of
perdition.
I suffered from the lucidity of my feelings. I saw, with indignation, my
own wretched self being angled for like a fish. And with all that, in
my forlorn state, I remained prudent. I did not rush out blindly. No. I
approached the inner end of the passage, as though I had been stalking
a wild creature, slowly, from the side. I crept along the wall of
the cavern, and protruded my head far enough to look at the fiendish
temptation.
There it was, a small dark object suspended in the light, with the
yellow rock across the ravine for a background. The silver top shivered
the sunbeams brilliantly. I had half hopes they had taken it away by
this time. When I drew my head back I lost sight of it, but all my being
went out to it with an almost pitiful longing. I remembered Castro for
the first time in many hours. Was I nothing better than Castro? He had
been angled for with salted meat. I shuddered. A darkness fell into
the passage. I put down my uplifted foot without advancing. The
unexpectedness of that shadow saved me, I believe. Manuel had descended
the cornice.
He was alone. Standing before the outer opening, he darkened the
passage, through which his talk to the people above came loudly into
my ears. They could see now if he were not a worthy _Capataz_. If the
_Inglez_ was in there he was a corpse. And yet, of these living hearts
above, of these _valientes_ of Rio Medio, there was not one who would go
alone to look upon a dead body. He had contrived an infallible test, and
yet they would not believe him. Well, his valiance should prove it; his
valiance, afraid neither of light nor of darkness.
I could not hear the answers he got from up there; but the vague sounds
that reached me carried the usual commingling of derision and applause,
the resentment of their jeers at the admiration he knew how to extort by
the display of his talents.
They must kill the cattle, these _caballeros_. He scolded ironically. Of
course. They must feed on meat like lions; but their souls were like the
souls of hens born on dunghills. And behold! there was he, Manuel, not
afraid of shadows.
He was coming in, there could be no doubt. Out there in the full light,
he could not possibly have detected that rapid appearance of my head
darted forward and withdrawn at once; but I had a view of his arm
putting aside the swinging flask, of his leg raised to step over the
high sill. I saw him, and I ran noiselessly away from the opening.
I had the time to charge Seraphina not to move, on our lives--on the
wretched remnant of our lives--when his black shape stood in the frame
of the opening, edged with a thread of light following the contour of
his hat, of his shoulders, of his whole body down to his feet--whence a
long shadow fell upon the pool of twilight on the floor.
What had made him come down? Vanity? The exacting demands of his
leadership? Fear of O’Brien? The _Juez_ would expect to hear something
definite, and his band pretended not to believe in the stratagem of the
bottle. I think that, for his part, from his knowledge of human nature,
he never doubted its efficacy. He could not guess how very little, only,
he was wrong. How very little! And yet he seemed rooted in incertitude
on the threshold. His head turned from side to side. I could not make
out his face as he stood, but the slightest of his movements did not
escape me. He stepped aside, letting in all the fullness of the light.
Would he have the courage to explore at least the immediate
neighbourhood of the opening? Who could tell his complex motives? Who
could tell his purpose or his fears? He had killed a man in there once.
But, then, he had not been alone. If he were only showing off before
his unruly band, he need not stir a step further. He did not advance.
He leaned his shoulders against the rock just clear of the opening. One
half of him was lighted plainly; his long profile, part of his raven
locks, one listless hand, his crossed legs, the buckle of one shoe.
“Nobody,” he pronounced slowly, in a dead whisper.
While I looked at him, the profound _politico_, the artist, the
everlastingly questioned _Capataz_, the man of talent and ability, he
thought himself alone, and allowed his head to drop on his breast, as if
saddened by the vanity of human ambition. Then, lifting it with a jerk,
he listened with one ear turned to the passage; afterwards he peered
into the cavern. Two long strides, over the cold heap of ashes, brought
him to the stone seat.
It was very plain to me from his starting movements and attitudes, that
he shared his uneasy attention between the inside and the outside of the
cave. He sat down, but seemed ready to jump up; and I saw him turn his
eyes upwards to the dark vault, as if on the alert for a noise from
above. I am inclined to think he was expecting to hear the galloping
hoofs of the peons’ horses every moment. I think he did. The words “I
am safer here than they above,” were perfectly audible to me in the
mumbling he kept up nervously. He wished to hear the sound of his own
voice, as a timid person whistles and talks on a lonely road at
night. Only the year before he had killed a man in that cavern, under
circumstances that were, I believe, revolting even to the honour of
these bandits. He sat there between the shadow of his murder and the
reality of the vengeance. I asked myself what could be the outcome of a
struggle with him. He was armed; he was not weakened by hunger; but he
stood between us and the water. My thirst would give me strength; the
desire to end Seraphina’s sufferings would make me invincible. On the
other hand, it was dangerous to interfere. I could not tell whether they
would not try to find out what became of him. It was safest to let him
go. It was extremely improbable that they would sail without him.
I am not conscious of having stirred a limb; neither had Seraphina
moved, I am ready to swear; but plainly something, some sort of sound,
startled him. He bounded out of his seated immobility, and in one leap
had his shoulders against the rock standing at bay before the darkness,
with his knife in his hand. I wonder he did not surprise me into an
exclamation. I was as startled as himself. His teeth and the whites of
his eyes gleamed straight at me from afar; he hissed with fear; for an
instant I was firmly convinced he had seen me. All this took place so
quickly that I had no time to make one movement towards receiving his
attack, when I saw him make a great sign of the cross in the air with
the point of his dagger.
He sheathed it slowly, and sidled along the few feet to the entrance,
his shoulders rubbing the wall. He blocked out the light, and in a
moment had backed out of sight.
Before he got to the further end I was already, at the inner, creeping
after him. I had started at once, as if his disappearance had removed a
spell, as though he had drawn me after him by an invisible bond. Raising
myself on my forearms I saw him, from his knees up, standing outside the
sill, with his back to the precipice and his face turned up.
“There is nobody in there,” he shouted.
I sank down and wriggled forward on my stomach, raising myself on my
elbows, now and then, to look. Manuel was looking upwards conversing
with the people above, and holding Williams’ flask in both his hands. He
never once glanced into the passage; he seemed to be trying to undo the
cord knotted to the end of the thick rope, which hung in a long bight
before him. The flask captured my eyes, my thought, my energy. I would
tear it away from him directly. There was in me, then, neither fear nor
intelligence; only the desire of possessing myself of the thing; but an
instinctive caution prevented my rushing out violently. I proceeded with
an animal-like stealthiness, with which cool reason had nothing to do.
He had some difficulty with the knot, and evidently did not wish to cut
the green silk cord. How well I remember his fumbling fingers. He sat
down sideways on the sill, with his legs outside, of course, his face
and hands turned to the light, very absorbed in his endeavour. They
shouted to him from above.
“I come at once,” he cried to them, without lifting his head.
I had crept up almost near enough to grab the flask. It never occurred
to me that by flinging myself on him, I could have pushed him off
the sill. My only idea was to get hold. He did not exist for me. The
leather-covered bottle was the only real thing in the world. I was
completely insane. I heard a faint detonation, and Manuel got up quickly
from the sill. The flask was out of my reach.
There were more popping sounds of shots fired, away on the plain. The
peons were attacking an outpost of the _Lugareños_. A deep voice cried,
“They are driving them in.” Then several together yelled:
“Come away, Manuel. Come away. _Por Dios...._”
Stretched at full length in the passage, and sustaining myself on my
trembling arms, I gazed up at him. He stood very rigid, holding the
flask in both hands. Several muskets were discharged together just
above, and in the noise of the reports I remember a voice crying
urgently over the edge, “Manuel! Manuel!” The shadow of irresolution
passed over his features. He hesitated whether to run up the ledge or
bolt into the cave. He shouted something. He was not answered, but the
yelling and the firing ceased suddenly, as if the _Lugareños_ had given
up and taken to their heels. I became aware of a sort of increasing
throbbing sound that seemed to come from behind me, out of the cave;
then, as Manuel lifted his foot hastily to step over the sill, I jumped
up deliriously, and with outstretched hands lurched forward at the flask
in his fingers.