The light grew ever stronger behind the hurrying clouds, but the deep
places in the forest held their shadows still. Tall cypress-trees reared
their heads amid the hollows and spread their branches like a wide
canopy over our heads; huge live-oaks crowned the hummocks; and here and
there great laurels lifted their pyramids of glossy, dark-green foliage.
Our passage was frequently obstructed by fallen logs, mossed over with
the growth of years; and tangles of vine, tough-stemmed and supple,
flung themselves from tree to tree across our path, resisting our
advance. All through the forest's higher corridors howled the riotous
wind; but along the tunneled ways we traveled it was scarce perceptible
at times.
In spite of my fatigue I felt a greater strength rising within me. We
had come so far without pursuit! I began to hope as I had never done
before; for was not my dear love free, and my face also set toward
friends?
As I mused thus we reached a higher level, and, through a rent in the
stormy sky a shaft of morning sunlight glanced across my shoulder and
plunged forward into the woods beyond. I looked back, startled, and for
a brief moment saw the sun's golden disc; then a black cloud effaced it
from the sky.
"Padre!" I cried, "we are travelling westward!"
"Yes," he said calmly.
"Westward!" I exclaimed again. "Westward--and inland! when the English
settlement lies to the north of us, upon the coast!"
He bowed again in silent acquiescence. Then my indignation broke forth,
and without stopping for further question I accused him bitterly of
breach of trust.
"Did you not promise Doña Orosia to deliver me to my friends?" I cried.
"What cause have you to doubt my good faith?" he asked, turning his
sombre eyes toward me, but still speaking in the same calm tones. "Had I
a ship at San Augustin in which we could set sail? Or could such a ship
have left the harbour unperceived? Not even a canoe could have been
obtained there without danger of discovery. We have a long journey
before us,--could we set out upon it unprovisioned?"
I hung my head, ashamed, of my doubts. Once it was not my nature to be
suspicious; but so much of trouble had come to me of late that I began
to fear I would never again feel the same confidence in my fellow
creatures, the same implicit trust in Heaven that I had held two years
ago. I had never been a stranger to trouble; but, as a child, I knew it
only as a formless cloud that cast its shadow sometimes on my path,
dimming the sunlight for a moment and hushing the song upon my lips.
Even when my mother died I was too young for more than a child's
grief--an April shower of tears; and although my earliest maidenhood was
often lonely, I had made me my own happiness with bright imaginings, and
prayed God to bring them to pass. So I awaited my future always with a
smile and never doubted that it would be fair. All that had gone by.
Trouble had shown its face to me, and I knew it for something terrible
and strong, ready to leap at my throat and crush life out of me. What
wonder, then, that I walked fearfully from hour to hour?
Padre Felipe spoke again after a time. "The woods are thinning," he
said. "A few more steps and we shall come out on the shores of the San
Juan, near to a small village of the Yemassees, in which there are many
whose eyes have been opened to the truth. There we shall find shelter
from the storm, and means to pursue our journey when the clouds are
past. Let us hasten; the bearers with the litter are far ahead."
He gave me his arm once more, and ere many minutes were past, we came in
sight of the bold stream of the San Juan and the crowded huts of an
Indian village.
The settlement did not appear to be near so large as that at Santa
Catalina, nor did the buildings seem of as great size and
commodiousness. The most imposing edifice I took to be the mission
chapel, for before it was the great cross mounted aloft. It was circular
in shape, with mud walls, and a thatched roof rising to an apex. There
was a door in the side, of heavy planks battened strongly together; but
I could perceive no windows, only a few very small square apertures,
close under the eaves, for light and air.
The clouds were beginning to spill great drops upon our heads, so we
quickened our steps into a run. The litter and its bearers had paused
beside the door of the chapel, and from the neighbouring huts several
Indians emerged and advanced to meet us. A young woman with a little
copper-coloured babe strapped to her back, its tiny head just visible
over her shoulder, peered at us from the low doorway of her mud-walled
dwelling, but meeting my eyes, drew back hastily out of sight.
I was very weary, and Barbara, who had dismounted from the litter,
seemed unable to stand. The padre was holding converse with those of his
dark-skinned flock who had approached; so we two women crouched down
under the chapel eaves and gazed around us at the wind-tossed,
rain-blurred scene.
Before us was a thick grove of trees; to the left we could catch
glimpses of the river, gray and angry like the sky, and all along its
banks the huddled dwellings of the poor barbarians, whose ideals of
architecture were no whit better than those of the wasp,--not near so
complex as those of the ant and the bee.
Suddenly, while we waited there forlorn, my thoughts flew back to an
English home, with its ivied walls, its turreted roof, its long façade
of warm red brick. I saw green slopes, broad terraces, a generous
portal, and a spacious hall; I thought of a room with an ample chimney
set round with painted tiles, and I pictured myself kneeling upon the
bearskin rug before a blazing fire, with my head upon my mother's knee
and her fingers toying with my hair. For that moment I forgot even my
dear love, and I would have given all the world just to be a little
child at home.
The padre turned to us at last and motioned us to follow him. He led us
to the rear of the chapel, where, plastered against the wall, was a
semicircular excrescence,--a tiny cell, with a narrow door hewn from a
single plank and fastened with a heavy padlock. Drawing forth a key from
his belt he unlocked this and bade us enter. We did so, and he closed
the door behind us.
Within, the hard earth floor was slightly raised and covered with mats
of woven palmetto-leaves. A narrow chink in the wall admitted a faint
ray of light, enabling us to perceive dimly the few objects which the
room contained. Apparently it was Padre Felipe's sleeping apartment and
the chapel vestry combined in one. There was a curtained doorway that
gave access to the chapel itself; pushing aside the hangings, we could
see the dim interior, empty except for the high altar set with tall
candles, and a carven crucifix upon the wall.
As I caught sight of these emblems of a Christian faith I bethought me
of the bloody sacrifices that had been offered to a pitiful God in the
name of orthodoxy, and I wondered whether heretics like us would not be
safer out in the wild woods and the driving storm--aye, even at the
mercy of infidel barbarians; but suddenly I remembered the solid silver
service which was to be the gift of Doña Orosia to this little new
mission, and I took courage.
The rain was now pouring in torrents from the thatched roof, and the
wind, which blew from the northeast, dashed it back against the mud
walls of our refuge. I turned to Barbara and gave voice to an anxiety
that for some time, had been growing within me.
"Dear dame," I said, "think you this storm is worse at sea?"
"Aye, my lamb,'tis from an ugly quarter; but the _Carolina_ has
weathered harder blows, and haply she has found good anchorage in some
safe harbour."
I tried to think the same; nevertheless, in the long hours that we sat
there, listening to the heavy gusts and beating rain, my heart went
faint at the possibility of this new danger to my beloved.
It must have been past noon when the padre came to us again. He brought
food with him freshly cooked,--meat and fish, and broth of parched
corn-flour, not unpleasant to the taste.
"The wind is abating," he declared, "and the clouds are breaking away.
When the rain ceases we may venture to pursue our journey."
I begged to know how he purposed to convey us, for neither Barbara nor
I could go afoot much longer.
Then he laid his plans before us. This wide river, the San Juan, flowing
by the settlement, continues northward for many miles and then curves
eastward and empties itself into the sea. We were to start in two swift
canoes--piraguas, he styled them--and, keeping at first under the lee of
the shore, follow the river to its mouth, then proceed up the coast
along the safe passage afforded by an outlying chain of islands. It
would be a journey of about ten days to the Indian settlement at Santa
Helena; the Indians there, he explained, were allies of our English
friends and would doubtless aid us to rejoin them.
I asked if we must pass by Santa Catalina; and he said 'twas on our way,
but no one there would hinder us while we were under his protection.
"Unless," he added, "the Governor of San Augustin sends out a ship to
intercept us there, or anywhere upon the way; in which case there will
be naught for me to do but give you up to him."
Upon that I was in a fever to be gone; for I felt that the day could not
pass by without Melinza's discovering my flight, and I would endure any
hardship rather than risk his intercepting us.