THE PORCH OF THE MORNING
By afternoon the island of Yaque was an accomplished fact of
distinguishable parts. There it lay, a thing of rock and green, like
the islands of its sister latitudes before which the passing ships
of all the world are wont to cast anchor. But having once cast
anchor before Yaque the ships of all the world would have had great
difficulty in landing anybody.
Sheer and almost smoothly hewn from the utmost coast of the island
rose to a height of several hundred feet one scarcely deviating wall
of rock; and this apparently impregnable wall extended in either
direction as far as the sight could reach. Above the natural rampart
the land sloped upward still in steep declivities, but cut by
tortuous gorges, and afar inland rose the mountain upon whose summit
the light had been descried. There the glass revealed white towers
and columns rising from a mass of brilliant tropical green, and now
smitten by the late sun; but save these towers and columns not a
sign of life or habitation was discernible. No smoke arose, no
wharf or dock broke the serene outline of the black wall lapped by
the warm sea; and there was no sound save that of strong torrents
afar off. Lonely, inscrutable, the great mass stood, slightly
shelved here and there to harbour rank and blossomy growths of green
and presenting a rugged beauty of outline, but apparently as
uninhabitable as the land of the North Silences.
Consternation and amazement sat upon the faces of the owner of _The
Aloha_ and his guests as they realized the character of the
remarkable island. St. George and Amory had counted upon an
adventure calling for all diplomacy, but neither had expected the
delight of hazard that this strange, fairy-like place seemed about
to present. Each felt his blood stirring and singing in his veins at
the joy of the possibilities that lay folded before them.
"We shall be obliged to land upon the east coast then, Jarvo?"
observed St. George; "but how long will it take us to sail round the
island?"
"Very long," Jarvo responded, "but no, adôn, we land on this coast."
"How is that possible?" St. George asked.
"Well, hi--you," said Little Cawthorne, "I'm a goat, but I'm no
mountain goat. See the little Swiss kid skipping from peak to peak
and from crag to crag--"
"Do we scale the wall?" inquired St. George, "or is there a passage
in the rock?"
Bennietod hugged himself in uncontrollable ecstasy.
"Hully Gee, a submarine passage, in under de sea, like Jules Werne,"
he said in a delight that was almost awe.
"There is a way over the rock," said Jarvo, "partly hewn, partly
natural, and this is known to the islanders alone. That way we must
take. It is marked by a White Blade blazoned on the rock over the
entrance of the submarines. The way is cunningly concealed--hardly
will the glass reveal it, adôn."
Barnay shook his head.
"You've a bad time comin' with the home-sickness," he prophesied,
tucking his beard far down in his collar until he looked, for
Barnay, smooth-shaven. "I've sailed the sou' Atlantic up an' down
fer a matther av four hundhred years, more or less, an' I niver as
much as seed hide _nor_ hair av the place before this prisint. There
ain't map or chart that iver dhrawed breath that shows ut, new or
old. Ut's been lifted out o' ground to be afther swallowin' us in--a
sweet dose will be the lot av us, mesilf with as foine a gir-rl av
school age as iver you'll see in anny counthry."
"Ah yes, Barnay," said St. George soothingly--but he would have
tried now to soothe a man in the embrace of a sea-serpent in just
the same absent-minded way, Amory thought indulgently.
The sun was lowering and birds of evening were beginning to brood
over the painted water when _The Aloha_ cast anchor. In the late
light the rugged sides of the island had an air of almost sinister
expectancy. There was a great silence in their windless shelter
broken only by the boom and charge of the breakers and the gulls and
choughs circling overhead, winging and dipping along the water and
returning with discordant cries to their crannies in the black rock.
Before the yacht, blazoned on a dark, water-polished stratum of the
volcanic stone, was the White Blade which Jarvo told them marked the
subterranean entrance to the mysterious island.
St. George and his companions and Barnay, Jarvo and Akko were on
deck. Rollo, whose soul did not disdain to be valet to a steam
yacht, was tranquilly mending a canvas cushion.
"The adôn will wait until sunrise to go ashore?" asked Jarvo.
"_Sunrise_!" cried St. George. "Heaven on earth, no. We'll go now."
There was no need to ask the others. Whatever might be toward, they
were eager to be about, though Rollo ventured to St. George a
deprecatory: "You know, sir, one can't be too careful, sir."
"Will you prefer to stay aboard?" St. George put it quietly.
"Oh, no, sir," said Rollo with a grieved face, "one should meet
danger with a light heart, sir," and went below to pack the
oil-skins.
"Hear me now," said Barnay in extreme disfavour. "It's I that am to
lay hereabouts and wait for you, sorr? Lord be good to me, an' fwhat
if she lays here tin year', and you somewheres fillin' the eyes av
the aygles with your brains blowed out, neat?" he demanded
misanthropically. "Fwhat if she lays here on that gin'ral theory
till she's rotted up, sorr?"
"Ah well now, Barnay," said St. George grimly, "you couldn't have an
easier career."
Little Cawthorne, from leaning on the rail staring out at the
island, suddenly pulled himself up and addressed St. George.
"Here we are," he complained, "here has been me coming through the
watery deep all the way from Broadway, with an octopus clinging to
each arm and a dolphin on my back, and you don't even ask how I
stood the trip. And do you realize that it's sheer madness for the
five of us to land on that island together?"
"What do you mean?" asked St. George.
The little man shook his grey curls.
"What if it's as Barnay says?" he put it. "What if they should bag
us all--who'll take back the glad news to the harbour? Lord, you
can't tell what you're about walking into. You don't even know the
specific gravity of the island," he suggested earnestly. "How do
you know but your own weight will flatten you out the minute you
step ashore?"
St. George laughed. "He thinks he is reading the fiction page," he
observed indulgently. "Still, I fancy there is good sense on the
page, for once. We don't know anything about anything. I suppose we
really ought not to put all five eggs in one basket. But, by Jove--"
He looked over at Amory with troubled eyes.
"As host of this picnic," he said, "I dare say I ought to stay
aboard and let you fellows--but I'm hanged if I will."
Little Cawthorne reflected, frowning; and you could as well have
expected a bird to frown as Little Cawthorne. It was rather the name
of his expression than a description of it.
"Suppose," he said, "that Bennietod and I sit rocking here in this
bay--if it is a bay--while you two rest your chins on the top of
that ledge of rock up there, and look over. And about to-morrow or
day after we two will venture up behind you, or you could send one
of the men back--"
"My thunder," said Bennietod wistfully, "ain't I goin' to get to
climb in de pantry window at de palace--nor fire out of a
loophole--"
"Bennietod an' I couldn't talk to a prince anyway," said Little
Cawthorne; "we'd get our language twisted something dizzy, and
probably tell him 'yes, ma'am.'"
St. George's eyes softened as he looked at the little man. He knew
well enough what it cost him to make the suggestion, which the good
sense of them all must approve. Not only did Little Cawthorne always
sacrifice himself, which is merely good breeding, but he made
opportunities to do so, which is both well-bred and virtuous. When
Rollo came up with the oil-skins they told him what had been
decided, and Rollo, the faithful, the expressionless, dropped his
eyelids, but he could not banish from his voice the wistfulness that
he might have been one to stay behind.
"Sometimes it _is_ best for a person to change his mind, sir," was
his sole comment.
Presently the little green dory drew away from _The Aloha_, and they
left her lying as much at her ease as if the phantom island before
her were in every school-boy's geography, with a scale of miles and
a list of the principal exports attached.
"If we had diving dresses, adôn," Jarvo suggested, "we might have
gone down through the sluice and entered by the lagoon where the
submarines pass."
"Jove," said Amory, trying to row and adjust his pince-nez at the
same time, "Chillingworth will never forgive us for missing that."
"You couldn't have done it," shouted Little Cawthorne derisively,
from the deck of the yacht, "you didn't wear your rubbers. If
anybody sticks a knife in you send up a r-r-r-ocket!"
The landing, effected with the utmost caution, was upon a flat
stone already a few inches submerged by the rising tide. Looking up
at the jagged, beetling world above them their task appeared
hopeless enough. But Jarvo found footing in an instant, and St.
George and Amory pressed closely behind him, Rollo and little Akko
silently bringing up the rear and carrying the oil-skins. Slowly and
cautiously as they made their way it was but a few minutes until the
three standing on the deck, and Barnay open-mouthed in the dory, saw
the sinuous line of the five bodies twist up the tortuous course
considerably above the blazoned emblem of the White Blade.
In truth, with Jarvo to set light foot where no foot seemed ever
before to have been set, with Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebble
and to take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, the ascent,
perilous as it was, proved to be no such superhuman feat as from
below it had appeared. But it seemed interminable. Even when the sea
lay far beneath them and the faces of the watchers on the deck of
_The Aloha_ were no longer distinguishable, the grim wall continued
to stretch upward, melting into the sky's late blue.
The afterglow laid a fair path along the water, and the warm dusk
came swiftly out of the east. At snail's pace, now with heads bent
to knees, now standing erect to draw themselves up by the arms or to
leap a wicked-looking crevice, the four took their way up the black
side of the rock. Birds of the cliffs, disturbed from long rest,
wheeled and screamed about them, almost brushing their faces with
long, fearless wings. There was an occasional shelf where, with
backs against the wall spotted with crystals of feldspar, they
waited to breathe, hardly looking down from the dizzy ledge. Great
slabs of obsidian were piled about them between stretches of
calcareous stone, and the soil which was like beds of old lava
covered by thin layers of limestone, was everywhere pierced by sharp
shoulders of stone lying in savage disarray. Gradually rock-slides
and rock-edges yielded a less insecure footing on the upper reaches,
but the chasms widened and water dripping from lateral crevasses
made the vague trail slippery and the occasional earth sodden and
treacherous. For a quarter of a mile their way lay over a kind of
porous gravel into which their feet sank, and beyond at the summit
of a ridge Jarvo halted and threw back to them a summary warning to
prepare for "a long leap." A sharp angle of rock, jutting out, had
been split down the middle by some ancient force--very likely a
Paleozoic butterfly had brushed it with its wing--and the edges had
been worn away in a treacherous slope to the very lip of the
crumbling promontory. From this edge to the edge of the opposite
abutment there was a gap of wicked width, and between was a sheer
drop into space wherefrom rose the sound of tumbling waters. When
Jarvo had taken the leap, easily and gracefully, alighting on the
other side like the greyhound that he resembled, and the others,
following, had cleared the edge by as safe a margin as if the abyss
were a minor field-day event, St. George and Amory looked back with
sudden wonder over the path by which they had come.
"I feel as if I weighed about ninety pounds," said St. George; "am I
fading away or anything?"
Amory stood still.
"I was thinking the same thing," he said. "By Jove--do you
suppose--what if Little Cawthorne hit the other end of the
nail, as usual? Suppose the specific gravity--suppose there is
something--suppose it doesn't hold good in this dimension that
a body--by Jove," said Amory, "wouldn't that be the deuce?"
St. George looked at Jarvo, bounding up the stony way as easily as
if he were bounding down.
"Ah well now," he said, "you know on the moon an ordinary man would
weigh only twenty-six or seven pounds. Why not here? We aren't held
down by any map!"
They laughed at the pleasant enormity of the idea and were hurrying
on when Akko, behind them, broke his settled silence.
"In America," he said, "a man feels like a mountain. Here he feels
like a man."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded St. George uneasily. But Akko
said no more, and St. George and Amory, with a disquieting idea that
each was laughing at the other, let the matter drop.
From there on the way was easier, leveling occasionally, frequently
swelling to gentle ridges, and at last winding up a steep trail that
was not difficult to keep in spite of the fast falling night. And at
length Jarvo, rounding a huge hummock where converging ridges met,
scrambled over the last of these and threw himself on the ground.
"Now," he said simply.
The two men stood beside him and looked down. It seemed to St.
George that they looked not at all upon a prospect but upon the
sudden memory of a place about which he might have dreamed often and
often and, waking, had not been able to remember, though its
familiarity had continued insistently to beat at his heart; or that
in what was spread before him lay the satisfaction of Burne-Jones'
wistful definition of a picture: "... a beautiful, romantic dream of
something that never was, never will be, in a light better than any
light that ever shone, in a land no one can define or remember, only
desire..." yet it was to St. George as if he had reached no strange
land, no alien conditions; but rather that he had come home. It was
like a home-coming in which nothing is changed, none of the little
improvements has been made which we resent because no one has
thought to tell us of them; but where everything is even more as one
remembers than one knew that one remembered.
[Illustration]
At his feet lay a pleasant valley filled with the purple of deep
twilight. Far below a lagoon caught the late light and spread it in
a pattern among hidden green. In the midst of the valley towered the
mountain whose summit, royally crowned by shining towers, had been
visible from the open sea. At its feet, glittering in the abundant
light shed upon its white wall and dome and pinnacle, stood Med, the
King's City--but its light was not the light of the day, for that
was gone; nor of the moon, not risen; and no false lights vexed the
dark. Yet he was looking into a cup of light, as clear as the light
in a gazing-crystal and of a quality as wholly at variance with
reality. The rocky coast of Yaque was literally a massive, natural
wall; and girt by it lay the heart of the island, fertile and
populous and clothed in mystery. This new face which Nature turned
to him was a glorified face, and some way _it meant what he meant_.
St. George was off for a few steps, trampling impatiently over the
coarse grass of the bank. Somewhere in that dim valley--was she
there, was she there? Was she in trouble, did she need him, did she
think of him? St. George went through the ancient, delicious list
as conscientiously as if he were the first lover, and she were the
first princess, and this were the first ascent of Yaque that the
world had ever known. For by some way of miracle, the mystery of the
island was suddenly to him the very mystery of his love, and the two
so filled his heart that he could not have told of which he was
thinking. That which had lain, shadowy and delicious, in his soul
these many days--not so very many, either, if one counts the
suns--was become not only a thing of his soul but a thing of the
outside world, almost of the visible world, something that had
existed for ever and which he had just found out; and here, wrapped
in nameless light, lay its perfect expression. When a shaft of
silver smote the long grass at his feet, and the edge of the moon
rose above the mountain, St. George turned with a poignant
exultation--did a mere victory over half a continent ever make a man
feel like that?--and strode back to the others.
"Come on," he called ringingly in a voice that did everything but
confess in words that something heavenly sweet was in the man's
mind, "let's be off!"
Amory was carefully lighting his pipe.
"I feel sort of tense," he explained, "as if the whole place would
explode if I threw down my match. What do you think of it?"
St. George did not answer.
"It's a place where all the lines lead up," he was saying to
himself, "as they do in a cathedral."
The four went the fragrant way that led to the heart of the island.
First the path followed the high bank the branches of whose tropical
undergrowth brushed their faces with brief gift of perfume. On the
other side was a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow and
delicacies of borrowed light in little pools. Everywhere, everywhere
was a chorus of slight voices, from bark and air and secret moss,
singing no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true song of the
gladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, indescribably harmonious. It
came to St. George that this was the way the woods at night would
always sound if, somehow, one were able to hear the sweetness that
poured itself out. Even that familiar sense in the night-woods that
something is about to happen was deliciously present with him; and
though Amory went on quietly enough, St. George swam down that green
way, much as one dreams of floating along a street, above-heads.
The path curved, and went hesitatingly down many terraces. Here,
from the dimness of the marge of the island, they gradually emerged
into the beginnings of the faint light. It was not like entering
upon dawn, or upon the moonlight. It was by no means like going to
meet the lights of a city. It was literally "a light better than
any light that ever shone," and it wrapped them round first like a
veil and then like a mantle. Dimly, as if released from the
censer-smoke of a magician's lamp, boughs and glades, lines and
curves were set free of the dark; and St. George and Amory could see
about them. Yet it did not occur to either to distrust the
phenomenon, or to regard it as unnatural or the fruit of any
unnatural law. It was somehow quite as convincing to them as is his
first sight of electric light to the boy of the countryside, and no
more to be regarded as witchcraft.
St. George was silent. It was as if he were on the threshold of
Far-Away, within the Porch of the Morning of some day divine. The
place was so poignantly like the garden of a picture that one has
seen as a child, and remembered as a place past all speech
beautiful, and yet failed ever to realize in after years, or to make
any one remember, or, save fleetingly in dreams to see once more,
since the picture-book is never, never chanced upon again. Sometimes
he had dreamed of a great sunny plain, with armies marching;
sometimes he had awakened at hearing the chimes, and fancied
sleepily that it was infinite music; sometimes, in the country in
the early morning, he had had an unreasonable, unaccountable moment
of perfect happiness: and now the fugitive element of them all
seemed to have been crystallized and made his own in that floating
walk down the wooded terraces of this unknown world. And yet he
could not have told whether the element was contained in that
beauty, or in his thought of Olivia.
At last they emerged upon a narrow, grassy terrace where white steps
mounted to a wide parapet. Jarvo ran up the steps and turned:
"Behold Med, adôn," he said modestly, as if he had at that moment
stirred it up in a sauce-pan and baked it before their astonished
eyes.
They were standing at the top of an immense flight of steps
extending as far to right and left as they could see, and leading
down by easy stages and wide landings to the white-paved city
itself. The clear light flooded the scene--lucid, vivid,
many-peopled. Far as the eye could see, broad streets extended,
lined with structures rivaling in splendour and beauty those
unforgotten "topless towers." Temples, palaces, and public buildings
rose, storey upon storey, built of hewn stones of great size; and
noble arches faced an open square before a temple of colossal
masonry crowning an eminence in the centre of the city. Directly in
line with this eminence rose the mountain upon whose summit stood
the far-seen pillars where burned the solitary light.
If an enchanted city had risen from the waves because some one had
chanced to speak the right word, it could have been no more
bewildering; and yet the look of this city was so substantial, so
adapted to all commonplace needs, so essentially the scene of
every-day activity and purpose, that dozens of towns of petty
European principalities seem far less actual and practicable homes
of men. Busy citizens hurrying, the bark of a dog, the mere tone of
a temple bell spoke the ordinary occupations of all the world; and
upon the chief street the moon looked down as tranquilly as if the
causeway were a continuation of Fifth Avenue.
But it was as if the spirit of adventure in St. George had suddenly
turned and questioned him, saying:
"What of Olivia?"
For Olivia gone to a far-away island to find her father was subject
of sufficient anxiety; but Olivia in the power of a pretender who
might have at command such undreamed resources was more than cool
reason could comprehend. That was the principal impression that Med,
the King's City, made upon St. George.
"To the right, adôn," Jarvo was saying, "where the walls are
highest--that is the palace of the prince, the Palace of the
Litany."
"And the king's palace?" St. George asked eagerly.
Jarvo lifted his face to the solitary summit light upon the
mountain.
"But how does one ascend?" cried St. George.
"By permission of Prince Tabnit," replied Jarvo, "one is borne up
by six imperial carriers, trained in the service from birth. One
attempting the ascent alone would be dashed in pieces."
"No municipal line of airships?" ventured Amory in slow
astonishment.
Jarvo did not quite get this.
"The airships, adôn," he said, "belong to the imperial household and
are kept at the summit of Mount Khalak."
"A trust," comprehended Amory; "an absolute monarchy is a bit of a
trust, anyhow. Of course, it's sometimes an outraged trust..." he
murmured on.
"The adôn," said Jarvo humbly, "will understand that we, I and Akko,
have borne great risk. It is necessary that we make our peace with
all speed, if that may be. The very walls are the ears of Prince
Tabnit, and it is better to be behind those walls. May the gods
permit the possible."
"Do you mean to say," asked St. George, "that we too would better
look out the prince at once?"
"The adôn is wise," said Jarvo simply, "but nothing is hid from
Prince Tabnit."
St. George considered. In this mysterious place, whose ways were as
unknown to him and to his companions as was the etiquette of the
court of the moon, clearly diplomacy was the better part of valour.
It was wiser to seek out Prince Tabnit, if he had really arrived on
the island, than to be upon the defensive.
"Ah, very well," he said briefly, "we will visit the prince."
"Farewell, adôn," said Jarvo, bowing low, "may the gods permit the
possible."
"Of course you will communicate with us to-morrow," suggested St.
George, "so that if we wish to send Rollo down to the yacht--"
"The gods will permit the possible, adôn," Jarvo repeated gently.
There was a flash of Akko's white teeth and the two little men were
gone.
St. George and Amory turned to the descending of the wide white
steps. Such immense, impossible white steps and such a curious place
for these two to find themselves, alone, with a valet. Struck by the
same thought they looked at each other and nodded, laughing a
little.
"Alone in the distance," said Amory, emptying his pipe, "and not a
cab to be seen."
Rollo thrust forward his lean, shadowed face.
"Shall I look about for a 'ansom, sir?" he inquired with perfect
gravity.
St. George hardly heard.
"It's like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of white paper," he
said whimsically, "and making any figure you want to make."
Before they reached the bottom of the steps they divined, issuing
from an isolated, temple-seeming building below, a train of
sober-liveried attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo and
Akko. These defiled leisurely toward the strangers and lined up
irregularly at the foot of the steps.
"Enter Trouble," said Amory happily.
They found themselves confronting, in the midst of the attendants,
an olive man with no angles, whose face, in spite of its health and
even wealth of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the
_papier-mâché_ man in the down-town window should have had a sudden
serious thought just before his _papier-mâché_ incarnation.
"Permit me," said the man in perfect English and without bowing, "to
bring to you the greeting of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and his
welcome to Yaque. I am Cassyrus, an officer of the government. At
the command of his Highness I am come to conduct you to the palace."
"The prince is most kind," said St. George, and added eagerly: "He
is returned, then?"
"Assuredly. Three days ago," was the reply.
"And the king--is he returned?" asked St. George.
The man shook his head, and his very anxiety seemed important.
"His Majesty, the King," he affirmed, "is still most lamentably
absent from his throne and his people."
"And his daughter?" demanded St. George then, who could not
possibly have waited an instant longer to put that question.
"The daughter of his Majesty, the King," said Cassyrus, looking
still more as if he were having his portrait painted, "will in three
days be recognized publicly as Princess of Yaque."
St. George's heart gave a great bound. Thank Heaven, she was here,
and safe. His hope and confidence soared heavenward. And by some
miracle she was to take her place as the people of Yaque had
petitioned. But what was the meaning of that news of the prince's
treachery which Jarvo and Akko had come bearing? The prince had
faithfully fulfilled his mission and had conducted the daughter of
the King of Yaque safely to her father's country. What did it all
mean?
St. George hardly noted the majestic square through which they
were passing. Impressions of great buildings, dim white and misty
grey and bathed in light, bewilderingly succeeded one another;
but, as in the days which followed the news of his inheritance, he
found himself now in a temper of unsurprise, in that mental
atmosphere--properly the normal--which regards all miracle as
natural law. He even omitted to note what was of passing
strangeness: that neither the retinue of the minister nor the
others upon the streets cast more than casual glances at their
unusual visitors. But when the great gates of the palace were
readied his attention was challenged and held, for though mere
marvels may become the air one breathes, beauty will never cease
to amaze, and the vista revealed was of almost disconcerting
beauty.
Avenues of brightness, arches of green, glimpses of airy columns, of
boundless lawns set with high, pyramidal shrines, great places of
quiet and straight line, alleys whose shadow taught the necessity of
mystery, the sound of water--the pure, positive element of it
all--and everywhere, above, below and far, that delicate, labyrinth
light, diffused from no visible source. It was as if some strange
compound had changed the character of the dark itself, transmuting
it to a subtle essence more exquisite than light, inhabiting it with
wonders. And high above their heads where this translucence seemed
to mix with the upper air and to fuse with moonbeams, sprang almost
joyously the pale domes and cornices of the palace, sending out
floating streamers and pennons of colours nameless and unknown.
"Jupiter," said the human Amory in awe, "what a picture for the
first page of the supplement."
St. George hardly heard him. The picture held so perfectly the
elusive charm of the Question--the Question which profoundly
underlies all things. It was like a triumphant burst of music which
yet ends on a high note, with imperfect close, hinting passionately
at some triumph still loftier.
From either side of the wall of the palace yard came glittering a
detachment of the Royal Golden Guard, clad in uniforms of unrelieved
cloth-of-gold. These halted, saluted, wheeled, and between their
shining ranks St. George and Amory footed quietly on, followed by
Rollo carrying the yellow oil-skins. To St. George there was relief
in the motion, relief in the vastness, and almost a boy's delight in
the pastime of living the hour.
Yet Royal Golden Guard, majestic avenues, and towered palace with
its strange banners floating in strange light, held for him but one
reality. And when they had mounted the steps of the mighty entrance,
and the sound of unrecognized music reached him--a very myth of
music, elusive, vagrant, fugued--and the palace doors swung open to
receive them, he could have shouted aloud on the brilliant
threshold:
"He says she is here in Yaque."