We reached La Guayra, and from thence Caracas, safely enough, in spite
of the country just then passing through the acute stage of one of its
periodical revolutions that had supervened on the top of an earthquake;
which convulsions of nature and society are characteristic features of
Venezuela, like as the chief products of its fertile soil are cocoa and
"patriots," the latter being almost as great an article of export as the
former, especially after a political crisis, and consisting of all sorts
and conditions of men who, whether born subjects or alien intriguers,
are all desirous of serving their natural or adopted mother country for
a consideration!
Colonel Vereker was largely interested in an extensive gold mine in the
interior, where he put me as his overseer.
This was not an unwise measure for his own sake, apart from any motive
he had in advancing my welfare--his real reason for appointing me to the
post; for, with the exception of the captain of the mine, a Frenchman,
the majority of those employed were half-caste Spaniards and Portuguese,
all of whom studied their several individual pockets rather than the
interest of their employer, while the main body of workers were peons
and mezites, bastard mulattoes, with a large intermixture of negro
blood, who valued their own lives as little as they did the lives of
those, with whom they had to deal.
I had plenty of work to do here, looking after all these scoundrels,
having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent
wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible
to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto
Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the
treasure chest of the exiled.
However, by adopting the old Latin maxim, _Suaviter in modo, fortiter in
re_, treating all without hauteur, which some of the insolent half-caste
Spanish creoles affected, and yet keeping my revolver ready, with "my
powder dry," so as to be prepared for any emergency, I managed to get
along very well with the mixed lot I was set over, winning golden
opinions from every one but a few of the worst characters.
It sounds as if I were boasting, but this is something for a young
Englishman to be able to say in a country which, though it is the
veritable El Dorado of poor Drake's dreams, and has possibly a future of
wealth and prosperity before it when it comes under the rule of the
Anglo-Saxon race--whether of ourselves, or of our cousins in Yankee land
it does not much matter, for we are all of the same race and
enterprising spirit--can be better described in respect of its present
condition by a shorter and far more expressive word.
Amongst my other duties I had charge of all the colonel's voluminous
correspondence, he having a mortal hatred to all letter writing in any
shape or form, and in addition to my good patron's business
communications, was entrusted with the task of despatching a lengthy
epistle every other mail--they went fortnightly from La Guayra to
France--informing Miss Elsie of our doings, the colonel himself adding
the briefest of postscripts to his _pequina nina_, as he invariably
termed her and always enclosing some remembrance for his little
daughter, to show that his love exceeded any epistolary proof of the
same, as well as a more substantial token of a handsome cheque for her
maintenance and education, forwarded to the care of the mother superior
of the convent.
Of all my manifold duties this was the pleasantest I had to perform,
being as grateful as water poured on the parched soil of my exile
amongst an alien people, antagonistic to me in everything, and with whom
I had to shape a steady course, and preserve a "stiff weather helm," as
sailors say, to avoid open rupture and assassination, the Venezuelese
"sticking at nothing," especially when that "nothing" happened to be one
whom, for some sufficient reason to their minds, they deemed an enemy
and they chanced to be behind his back--and as I told you before, I
steered clear of many enemies, but I could never learn to trust them as
a people.
Yes, my happiest hours at San Felipe were spent in writing to little
Elsie, who answered my own letters, as well as those I despatched on
behalf of the colonel, with unvarying punctuality, holding to the
promise she spontaneously gave in England when we parted on her going to
school, at which time she had no idea of my ever accompanying her father
to South America.
Similarly, the saddest task that could have been laid on my shoulders
fell to my lot five years later, when the mysterious attraction by which
I had been drawn towards her as a boy had grown into the most absorbing
affection--a love that filled my heart.
And I had to write and tell her--I, who would cheerfully have laid down
my life to save her a pang--to tell her of her dear father's death.
This occurred just as poor Colonel Vereker had arranged for my returning
with him to the capital of the State, where another revolution--the
sixth, I believe, since I had been in the country--had broken out, with
the object, as the object of all these explosions of the mob invariably
was, to depose the reigning party in power, and put the leaders of "the
popular movement" for the time being, in the power of the deposed
authorities.
The colonel, who had a good deal staked on the issue of the struggle,
took up arms on the side of the cause he esteemed just--that to which
the most respectable of the inhabitants to a man adhered--as he had
taken up arms before for the party of law and order, amongst whom he was
looked up to, not only as a skilled soldier and tactician, but a
stalwart partisan, his very name being a tower of strength.
Alas! though, no opportunity was afforded him now to display his valour
on the battlefield and lead his hosts to victory; for while we were _en
route_ for Caracas, a dastardly hound of a creole, whose blood was a
mixture of the beast elements--part Spaniard, part Portuguese, part
negro--well, this treacherous brute assassinated Colonel Vereker in the
most cowardly fashion.