The waters of the Gulf were tepid in the warmth of the tropical night.
A huge moon looked down upon me as I swam toward the palm-fringed
beach; and looking back I saw the rigging of the vessel sharply cut
against its bright face. There was no sound! The sea-ripples kissed
the brown sands silently, as if afraid; faint breezes laden with odors
of saffron and cinnamon and drowsy flowers came over the water;--the
stars seemed vaster than in other nights;--the fires of the Southern
Cross burned steadily without one diamond-twinkle;--I paused a moment
in terror;--for it seemed I could hear the night breathe--in long,
weird sighs. The fancy passed as quickly as it came. The ship's bells
struck the first hour of the morning. I stood again on the shore where
I had played as a child, and saw through the palms the pale houses of
the quaint city beyond, whence I had fled with blood upon my hands
twenty-seven long years before.
Was it a witch-night, that the city slumbered so deep a sleep and the
sereno slept at his post as I passed? I know not, but it was well
for him that he slept! I passed noiselessly as the Shadow of Death
through the ancient gates, and through the shadows flung down by the
projecting balconies, and along the side of the plaza unilluminated by
the gaze of the tropical moon, and where the towers of the cathedral
made goblin shapes of darkness on the pavement; and along narrow ways
where the star-sprinkled blue of heaven above seemed but a ribbon
of azure, jagged and gashed along its edges by sharp projections of
balconies; and beyond again into the white moonshine, where orange
trees filled the warm air with a perfume as that of a nuptial chamber;
and beyond, yet farther, where ancient cypresses with roots and
branches gnarled and twisted as by the tortures of a thousand years of
agony, bowed weirdly over the Place of Tombs.
Gigantic spiders spun their webs under the moon between the walls of
the tombs;--vipers glided over my feet;--the vampire hovered above
under the stars; and fireflies like corpse-lights circled about the
resting-places of the dead. Great vines embraced the marbles green with
fungus-growths;--the ivy buried its lizard feet in the stones;--lianas
had woven a veil, thick as that of Isis, across the epitaphs carven
above the graves. But I found HER tomb! I would have reached it, as I
had sworn, even in the teeth of Death and Hell!
I tore asunder the venomous plants which clung to the marble like
reptiles;--but the blood poured from my hands upon her name;--and I
could not find one unreddened spot to kiss. And I heard the blood from
my fingers dripping with a thick, dead sound, as of molten lead, upon
the leaves of the uptorn plants at my feet.
And the dead years rose from their graves of mist and stood around
me! I saw the moss-green terrace where I received her first kiss that
filled my veins with madness;--the marble urns with their carved
bas-reliefs of naked dancing boys;--the dead fountain choked with
water-lilies;--the monstrous flowers that opened their hearts to
the moon. And SHE!--the sinuous outlines of that body of Corinthian
bronze unconcealed by the feathery lightness of the white robe she
wore;--the Creole eyes;--the pouting and passionate mouth;--and that
cruel, sphinx-smile, that smile of Egypt, eternally pitiless, eternally
mystical--the smile she wore when I flung myself like a worm before
her to kiss her feet, and vainly shrieked to her to trample upon me,
to spit upon me! And after my fierce moment of vengeance, the smile
of Egypt still remained upon her dark face, as though moulded in
everlasting bronze.
There was no rustle among the lianas, no stir among the dead
leaves; yet SHE stood again before me! My heart seemed to cease its
beatings;--a chill as of those nights in which I had sailed Antarctic
seas passed over me! Robed in white as in the buried years, with lights
like fireflies in her hair, and the same dark, elfish smile! And
suddenly the chill passed away with a fierce cataclysm of the blood, as
though each of its cells were heated by volcanic fire;--for the strange
words of the Hebrew canticle came to me like a far echo--