The next day we were early at work. Nuflo had already gathered, dried,
and conveyed to a place of concealment the greater portion of his garden
produce. He was determined to leave nothing to be taken by any wandering
party of savages that might call at the house during our absence. He had
no fear of a visit from his neighbours; they would not know, he said,
that he and Rima were out of the wood. A few large earthen pots, filled
with shelled maize, beans, and sun-dried strips of pumpkin, still
remained to be disposed of. Taking up one of these vessels and asking
me to follow with another, he started off through the wood. We went a
distance of five or six hundred yards, then made our way down a very
steep incline, close to the border of the forest on the western side.
Arrived at the bottom, we followed the bank a little further, and I then
found myself once more at the foot of the precipice over which I had
desperately thrown myself on the stormy evening after the snake had
bitten me. Nuflo, stealing silently and softly before me through the
bushes, had observed a caution and secrecy in approaching this spot
resembling that of a wise old hen when she visits her hidden nest to lay
an egg. And here was his nest, his most secret treasure-house, which he
had probably not revealed even to me without a sharp inward conflict,
notwithstanding that our fates were now linked together. The lower
portion of the bank was of rock; and in it, about ten or twelve feet
above the ground, but easily reached from below, there was a natural
cavity large enough to contain all his portable property. Here, besides
the food-stuff, he had already stored a quantity of dried tobacco leaf,
his rude weapons, cooking utensils, ropes, mats, and other objects. Two
or three more journeys were made for the remaining pots, after which
we adjusted a slab of sandstone to the opening, which was fortunately
narrow, plastered up the crevices with clay, and covered them over with
moss to hide all traces of our work.
Towards evening, after we had refreshed ourselves with a long siesta,
Nuflo brought out from some other hiding-place two sacks; one weighing
about twenty pounds and containing smoke-dried meat, also grease and gum
for lighting-purposes, and a few other small objects. This was his load;
the other sack, which was smaller and contained parched corn and raw
beans, was for me to carry.
The old man, cautious in all his movements, always acting as if
surrounded by invisible spies, delayed setting out until an hour after
dark. Then, skirting the forest on its west side, we left Ytaioa on our
right hand, and after travelling over rough, difficult ground, with only
the stars to light us, we saw the waning moon rise not long before dawn.
Our course had been a north-easterly one at first; now it was due east,
with broad, dry savannahs and patches of open forest as far as we could
see before us. It was weary walking on that first night, and weary
waiting on the first day when we sat in the shade during the long, hot
hours, persecuted by small stinging flies; but the days and nights that
succeeded were far worse, when the weather became bad with intense heat
and frequent heavy falls of rain. The one compensation I had looked for,
which would have outweighed all the extreme discomforts we suffered,
was denied me. Rima was no more to me or with me now than she had been
during those wild days in her native woods, when every bush and bole and
tangled creeper or fern frond had joined in a conspiracy to keep her
out of my sight. It is true that at intervals in the daytime she was
visible, sometimes within speaking distance, so that I could address
a few words to her, but there was no companionship, and we were fellow
travellers only like birds flying independently in the same direction,
not so widely separated but that they can occasionally hear and see each
other. The pilgrim in the desert is sometimes attended by a bird, and
the bird, with its freer motions, will often leave him a league behind
and seem lost to him, but only to return and show its form again; for
it has never lost sight nor recollection of the traveller toiling slowly
over the surface. Rima kept us company in some such wild erratic way as
that. A word, a sign from Nuflo was enough for her to know the direction
to take--the distant forest or still more distant mountain near which we
should have to pass. She would hasten on and be lost to our sight, and
when there was a forest in the way she would explore it, resting in the
shade and finding her own food; but invariably she was before us at each
resting- or camping-place.
Indian villages were seen during the journey, but only to be avoided;
and in like manner, if we caught sight of Indians travelling or camping
at a distance, we would alter our course, or conceal ourselves to escape
observation. Only on one occasion, two days after setting out, were we
compelled to speak with strangers. We were going round a hill, and all
at once came face to face with three persons travelling in an opposite
direction--two men and a woman, and, by a strange fatality, Rima at that
moment happened to be with us. We stood for some time talking to these
people, who were evidently surprised at our appearance, and wished
to learn who we were; but Nuflo, who spoke their language like one of
themselves, was too cunning to give any true answer. They, on their
side, told us that they had been to visit a relative at Chani, the name
of a river three days ahead of us, and were now returning to their own
village at Baila-baila, two days beyond Parahuari. After parting from
them Nuflo was much troubled in his mind for the rest of that day. These
people, he said, would probably rest at some Parahuari village,
where they would be sure to give a description of us, and so it might
eventually come to the knowledge of our unneighbourly neighbour Runi
that we had left Ytaioa.
Other incidents of our long and wearisome journey need not be related.
Sitting under some shady tree during the sultry hours, with Rima only
too far out of earshot, or by the nightly fire, the old man told me
little by little and with much digression, chiefly on sacred subjects,
the strange story of the girl’s origin.
About seventeen years back--Nuflo had no sure method to compute time
by--when he was already verging on old age, he was one of a company
of nine men, living a kind of roving life in the very part of Guayana
through which we were now travelling; the others, much younger than
himself, were all equally offenders against the laws of Venezuela,
and fugitives from justice. Nuflo was the leader of this gang, for it
happened that he had passed a great portion of his life outside the pale
of civilization, and could talk the Indian language, and knew this part
of Guayana intimately. But according to his own account he was not in
harmony with them. They were bold, desperate men, whose evil appetites
had so far only been whetted by the crimes they had committed; while he,
with passions worn out, recalling his many bad acts, and with a vivid
conviction of the truth of all he had been taught in early life--for
Nuflo was nothing if not religious--was now grown timid and desirous
only of making his peace with Heaven. This difference of disposition
made him morose and quarrelsome with his companions; and they would, he
said, have murdered him without remorse if he had not been so useful to
them. Their favourite plan was to hang about the neighbourhood of some
small isolated settlement, keeping a watch on it, and, when most of the
male inhabitants were absent, to swoop down on it and work their will.
Now, shortly after one of these raids it happened that a woman they had
carried off, becoming a burden to them, was flung into a river to the
alligators; but when being dragged down to the waterside she cast up
her eyes, and in a loud voice cried to God to execute vengeance on
her murderers. Nuflo affirmed that he took no part in this black deed;
nevertheless, the woman’s dying appeal to Heaven preyed on his mind;
he feared that it might have won a hearing, and the “person” eventually
commissioned to execute vengeance--after the usual days, of course might
act on the principle of the old proverb: Tell me whom you are with, and
I will tell you what you are--and punish the innocent (himself to
wit) along with the guilty. But while thus anxious about his spiritual
interests, he was not yet prepared to break with his companions. He
thought it best to temporize, and succeeded in persuading them that it
would be unsafe to attack another Christian settlement for some time to
come; that in the interval they might find some pleasure, if no great
credit, by turning their attention to the Indians. The infidels, he
said, were God’s natural enemies and fair game to the Christian. To
make a long story short, Nuflo’s Christian band, after some successful
adventures, met with a reverse which reduced their number from nine
to five. Flying from their enemies, they sought safety at Riolama, an
uninhabited place, where they found it possible to exist for some weeks
on game, which was abundant, and wild fruits.
One day at noon, while ascending a mountain at the southern extremity
of the Riolama range in order to get a view of the country beyond the
summit, Nuflo and his companions discovered a cave; and finding it
dry, without animal occupants, and with a level floor, they at once
determined to make it their dwelling-place for a season. Wood for firing
and water were to be had close by; they were also well provided with
smoked flesh of a tapir they had slaughtered a day or two before, so
that they could afford to rest for a time in so comfortable a shelter.
At a short distance from the cave they made a fire on the rock to toast
some slices of meat for their dinner; and while thus engaged all at once
one of the men uttered a cry of astonishment, and casting up his eyes
Nuflo beheld, standing near and regarding them with surprise and fear
in-her wide-open eyes, a woman of a most wonderful appearance. The one
slight garment she had on was silky and white as the snow on the summit
of some great mountain, but of the snow when the sinking sun touches and
gives it some delicate changing colour which is like fire. Her dark
hair was like a cloud from which her face looked out, and her head was
surrounded by an aureole like that of a saint in a picture, only more
beautiful. For, said Nuflo, a picture is a picture, and the other was
a reality, which is finer. Seeing her he fell on his knees and crossed
himself; and all the time her eyes, full of amazement and shining with
such a strange splendour that he could not meet them, were fixed on him
and not on the others; and he felt that she had come to save his soul,
in danger of perdition owing to his companionship with men who were at
war with God and wholly bad.
But at this moment his comrades, recovering from their astonishment,
sprang to their feet, and the heavenly woman vanished. Just behind where
she had stood, and not twelve yards from them, there was a huge chasm in
the mountain, its jagged precipitous sides clothed with thorny bushes;
the men now cried out that she had made her escape that way, and down
after her they rushed, pell-mell.
Nuflo cried out after them that they had seen a saint and that some
horrible thing would befall them if they allowed any evil thought to
enter their hearts; but they scoffed at his words, and were soon far
down out of hearing, while he, trembling with fear, remained praying
to the woman that had appeared to them and had looked with such strange
eyes at him, not to punish him for the sins of the others.
Before long the men returned, disappointed and sullen, for they had
failed in their search for the woman; and perhaps Nuflo’s warning words
had made them give up the chase too soon. At all events, they seemed ill
at ease, and made up their minds to abandon the cave; in a short time
they left the place to camp that night at a considerable distance from
the mountain. But they were not satisfied: they had now recovered from
their fear, but not from the excitement of an evil passion; and finally,
after comparing notes, they came to the conclusion that they had missed
a great prize through Nuflo’s cowardice; and when he reproved them they
blasphemed all the saints in the calendar and even threatened him with
violence. Fearing to remain longer in the company of such godless men,
he only waited until they slept, then rose up cautiously, helped himself
to most of the provisions, and made his escape, devoutly hoping that
after losing their guide they would all speedily perish.
Finding himself alone now and master of his own actions, Nuflo was in
terrible distress, for while his heart was in the utmost fear, it yet
urged him imperiously to go back to the mountain, to seek again for that
sacred being who had appeared to him and had been driven away by his
brutal companions. If he obeyed that inner voice, he would be saved;
if he resisted it, then there would be no hope for him, and along
with those who had cast the woman to the alligators he would be lost
eternally. Finally, on the following day, he went back, although not
without fear and trembling, and sat down on a stone just where he had
sat toasting his tapir meat on the previous day. But he waited in vain,
and at length that voice within him, which he had so far obeyed, began
urging him to descend into the valley-like chasm down which the woman
had escaped from his comrades, and to seek for her there. Accordingly
he rose and began cautiously and slowly climbing down over the broken
jagged rocks and through a dense mass of thorny bushes and creepers. At
the bottom of the chasm a clear, swift stream of water rushed with foam
and noise along its rocky bed; but before reaching it, and when it was
still twenty yards lower down, he was startled by hearing a low
moan among the bushes, and looking about for the cause, he found the
wonderful woman--his saviour, as he expressed it. She was not now
standing nor able to stand, but half reclining among the rough stones,
one foot, which she had sprained in that headlong flight down the ragged
slope, wedged immovably between the rocks; and in this painful position
she had remained a prisoner since noon on the previous day. She now
gazed on her visitor in silent consternation; while he, casting himself
prostrate on the ground, implored her forgiveness and begged to know
her will. But she made no reply; and at length, finding that she was
powerless to move, he concluded that, though a saint and one of the
beings that men worship, she was also flesh and liable to accidents
while sojourning on earth; and perhaps, he thought, that accident which
had befallen her had been specially designed by the powers above to
prove him. With great labour, and not without causing her much pain, he
succeeded in extricating her from her position; and then finding that
the injured foot was half crushed and blue and swollen, he took her
up in his arms and carried her to the stream. There, making a cup of a
broad green leaf, he offered her water, which she drank eagerly; and
he also laved her injured foot in the cold stream and bandaged it with
fresh aquatic leaves; finally he made her a soft bed of moss and dry
grass and placed her on it. That night he spent keeping watch over
her, at intervals applying fresh wet leaves to her foot as the old ones
became dry and wilted from the heat of the inflammation.
The effect of all he did was that the terror with which she regarded him
gradually wore off; and next day, when she seemed to be recovering her
strength, he proposed by signs to remove her to the cave higher up,
where she would be sheltered in case of rain. She appeared to understand
him, and allowed herself to be taken up in his arms and carried with
much labour to the top of the chasm. In the cave he made her a second
couch, and tended her assiduously. He made a fire on the floor and kept
it burning night and day, and supplied her with water to drink and fresh
leaves for her foot. There was little more that he could do. From the
choicest and fattest bits of toasted tapir flesh he offered her she
turned away with disgust. A little cassava bread soaked in water she
would take, but seemed not to like it. After a time, fearing that she
would starve, he took to hunting after wild fruits, edible bulbs and
gums, and on these small things she subsisted during the whole time of
their sojourn together in the desert.
The woman, although lamed for life, was now so far recovered as to be
able to limp about without assistance, and she spent a portion of each
day out among the rocks and trees on the mountains. Nuflo at first
feared that she would now leave him, but before long he became convinced
that she had no such intentions. And yet she was profoundly unhappy.
He was accustomed to see her seated on a rock, as if brooding over some
secret grief, her head bowed, and great tears falling from half-closed
eyes.
From the first he had conceived the idea that she was in the way of
becoming a mother at no distant date--an idea which seemed to accord
badly with the suppositions as to the nature of this heavenly being
he was privileged to minister to and so win salvation; but he was now
convinced of its truth, and he imagined that in her condition he had
discovered the cause of that sorrow and anxiety which preyed continually
on her. By means of that dumb language of signs which enabled them to
converse together a little, he made it known to her that at a great
distance from the mountains there existed a place where there were
beings like herself, women, and mothers of children, who would comfort
and tenderly care for her. When she had understood, she seemed pleased
and willing to accompany him to that distant place; and so it came to
pass that they left their rocky shelter and the mountains of Riolama far
behind. But for several days, as they slowly journeyed over the plain,
she would pause at intervals in her limping walk to gaze back on those
blue summits, shedding abundant tears.
Fortunately the village Voa, on the river of the same name, which was
the nearest Christian settlement to Riolama, whither his course was
directed, was well known to him; he had lived there in former years,
and, what was of great advantage, the inhabitants were ignorant of
his worst crimes, or, to put it in his own subtle way, of the crimes
committed by the men he had acted with. Great was the astonishment and
curiosity of the people of Voa when, after many weeks’ travelling, Nuflo
arrived at last with his companion. But he was not going to tell the
truth, nor even the least particle of the truth, to a gaping crowd of
inferior persons. For these, ingenious lies; only to the priest he told
the whole story, dwelling minutely on all he had done to rescue and
protect her; all of which was approved by the holy man, whose first act
was to baptize the woman for fear that she was not a Christian. Let it
be said to Nuflo’s credit that he objected to this ceremony, arguing
that she could not be a saint, with an aureole in token of her
sainthood, yet stand in need of being baptized by a priest. A priest--he
added, with a little chuckle of malicious pleasure--who was often seen
drunk, who cheated at cards, and was sometimes suspected of putting
poison on his fighting-cock’s spur to make sure of the victory!
Doubtless the priest had his faults; but he was not without humanity,
and for the whole seven years of that unhappy stranger’s sojourn at Voa
he did everything in his power to make her existence tolerable. Some
weeks after arriving she gave birth to a female child, and then the
priest insisted on naming it Riolama, in order, he said, to keep in
remembrance the strange story of the mother’s discovery at that place.
Rima’s mother could not be taught to speak either Spanish or Indian; and
when she found that the mysterious and melodious sounds that fell from
her own lips were understood by none, she ceased to utter them, and
thereafter preserved an unbroken silence among the people she lived
with. But from the presence of others she shrank, as if in disgust or
fear, excepting only Nuflo and the priest, whose kindly intentions she
appeared to understand and appreciate. So far her life in the village
was silent and sorrowful. With her child it was different; and every day
that was not wet, taking the little thing by the hand, she would limp
painfully out into the forest, and there, sitting on the ground, the two
would commune with each other by the hour in their wonderful language.
At length she began to grow perceptibly paler and feebler week by week,
day by day, until she could no longer go out into the wood, but sat or
reclined, panting for breath in the dull hot room, waiting for death
to release her. At the same time little Rima, who had always appeared
frail, as if from sympathy, now began to fade and look more shadowy,
so that it was expected she would not long survive her parent. To the
mother death came slowly, but at last it seemed so near that Nuflo and
the priest were together at her side waiting to see the end. It was then
that little Rima, who had learnt from infancy to speak in Spanish, rose
from the couch where her mother had been whispering to her, and began
with some difficulty to express what was in the dying woman’s mind. Her
child, she had said, could not continue to live in that hot wet place,
but if taken away to a distance where there were mountains and a cooler
air she would survive and grow strong again.
Hearing this, old Nuflo declared that the child should not perish; that
he himself would take her away to Parahuari, a distant place where there
were mountains and dry plains and open woods; that he would watch over
her and care for her there as he had cared for her mother at Riolama.
When the substance of this speech had been made known by Rima to the
dying woman, she suddenly rose up from her couch, which she had not
risen from for many days, and stood erect on the floor, her wasted face
shining with joy. Then Nuflo knew that God’s angels had come for her,
and put out his arms to save her from falling; and even while he held
her that sudden glory went out from her face, now of a dead white like
burnt-out ashes; and murmuring something soft and melodious, her spirit
passed away.
Once more Nuflo became a wanderer, now with the fragile-looking little
Rima for companion, the sacred child who had inherited the position
of his intercessor from a sacred mother. The priest, who had probably
become infected with Nuflo’s superstitions, did not allow them to leave
Voa empty-handed, but gave the old man as much calico as would serve
to buy hospitality and whatsoever he might require from the Indians for
many a day to come.
At Parahuari, where they arrived safely at last, they lived for some
little time at one of the villages. But the child had an instinctive
aversion to all savages, or possibly the feeling was derived from her
mother, for it had shown itself early at Voa, where she had refused to
learn their language; and this eventually led Nuflo to go away and live
apart from them, in the forest by Ytaioa, where he made himself a
house and garden. The Indians, however, continued friendly with him and
visited him with frequency. But when Rima grew up, developing into that
mysterious woodland girl I found her, they became suspicious, and in
the end regarded her with dangerously hostile feeling. She, poor child,
detested them because they were incessantly at war with the wild animals
she loved, her companions; and having no fear of them, for she did not
know that they had it in their minds to turn their little poisonous
arrows against herself, she was constantly in the woods frustrating
them; and the animals, in league with her, seemed to understand her
note of warning and hid themselves or took to flight at the approach of
danger. At length their hatred and fear grew to such a degree that they
determined to make away with her, and one day, having matured a plan,
they went to the wood and spread themselves two and two about it. The
couples did not keep together, but moved about or remained concealed at
a distance of forty or fifty yards apart, lest she should be missed.
Two of the savages, armed with blow-pipes, were near the border of the
forest on the side nearest to the village, and one of them, observing a
motion in the foliage of a tree, ran swiftly and cautiously towards it
to try and catch a glimpse of the enemy. And he did see her no doubt, as
she was there watching both him and his companions, and blew an arrow at
her, but even while in the act of blowing it he was himself struck by
a dart that buried itself deep in his flesh just over the heart. He
ran some distance with the fatal barbed point in his flesh and met his
comrade, who had mistaken him for the girl and shot him. The wounded man
threw himself down to die, and dying related that he had fired at the
girl sitting up in a tree and that she had caught the arrow in her hand
only to hurl it instantly back with such force and precision that it
pierced his flesh just over the heart. He had seen it all with his own
eyes, and his friend who had accidentally slain him believed his story
and repeated it to the others. Rima had seen one Indian shoot the other,
and when she told her grandfather he explained to her that it was an
accident, but he guessed why the arrow had been fired.
From that day the Indians hunted no more in the wood; and at length one
day Nuflo, meeting an Indian who did not know him and with whom he had
some talk, heard the strange story of the arrow, and that the mysterious
girl who could not be shot was the offspring of an old man and a Didi
who had become enamoured of him; that, growing tired of her consort, the
Didi had returned to her river, leaving her half-human child to play her
malicious pranks in the wood.
This, then, was Nuflo’s story, told not in Nuflo’s manner, which was
infinitely prolix; and think not that it failed to move me--that I
failed to bless him for what he had done, in spite of his selfish
motives.