THE QUENCHING OF QUIPAI.
The cottage at Alta Vista had expanded little by little into a long,
single storied flat-roofed house, shaded by palm-trees and set in a fair
garden, which looked all the brighter from its contrast with the brown and
herbless hill-sides that uprose around it.
In the after part of the day on which I discovered the theft, Angela and
myself were sitting under the veranda, which fronted the house and
commanded a view of the great reservoir, the oasis and the ocean. She was
reading aloud a favorite chapter in "Don Quixote," one of the few books we
possessed. I was smoking.
Angela read well; her pronunciation of Spanish was faultless, and I always
took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of
Cervantes. Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could
not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds
of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza. Not that the loss gave
me serious concern. A few stones more or less made no great difference,
and I should probably never turn to account those I had. But the incident
revived suspicions as to the good faith of the two castaways, which had
been long floating vaguely in my mind. From the first I had rather doubted
the account they gave of themselves. And Kidd! I had never much liked him;
he had a hard inscrutable face, and unless I greatly misjudged him was
capable of bolder enterprises than petty larceny. He was just the man to
steal secretly away and return with a horde of unscrupulous
treasure-seekers, for he knew now that there were diamonds in the
neighborhood, and he must have heard that we had found gold and silver
ornaments and vessels in the old cemetery--
"_Dios mio!_ What is that?" exclaimed Angela, dropping her book and
springing to her feet, an example which I instantly followed, for the
earth was moving under us, and there fell on our ears, for the first time,
the dread sound of subterranean thunder.
"An earthquake!"
But the alarm was only momentary. In less time than it takes to tell the
trembling ceased and the thunder died away.
"Only a slight shock, after all," I said, "and I hope we shall have no
more. However, it is just as well to be prepared. I will have the mules
got out of the stable; and if there is anything inside you particularly
want you had better fetch it. I will join you in the garden presently."
As I passed through the house I saw Kidd coming out of the room where I
kept my specimens.
"What are you doing there?" I asked him, sharply.
"I went for a tool I left there" (holding up a chisel). "Did you feel the
shock?"
"Yes, and there may be another. Tell Maximiliano to get the mules out."
"If he has been after the diamonds," I thought, "he must know that I have
taken them away. I had better make sure of them." And with that I stepped
into my room, put on my quilted jacket, and armed myself with a small
hatchet and a broad-bladed, highly tempered knife, given to me by the
abbé, which served both as a dagger and a _machete_.
When I had seen the mules safely tethered, and warned the servants and
others to run into the open if there should be another shock, I returned
to Angela, who had resumed her seat in the veranda.
"Equipped for the mountains! Where away now, _caro mio_?" she said,
regarding me with some surprise.
"Nowhere. At any rate, I have no present intention of running away. I have
put on my jacket because of these diamonds, and brought my hatchet and
hunting-knife because, if the house collapses, I should not be able to get
them at the very time they would be the most required."
"If the house collapses! You think, then, we are going to have a bad
earthquake?"
"It is possible. This is an earthquake country; there has been nothing
more serious than a slight trembling since long before the abbé died; and
I have a feeling that something more serious is about to happen.
Underground thunder is always an ominous symptom.--Ah! There it is again.
Run into the garden. I will bring the chairs and wraps."
The house being timber built and one storied, I had little fear that it
would collapse; but anything may happen in an earthquake, and in the
garden we were safe from anything short of the ground on which we stood
actually gaping or slipping bodily down the mountain-side.
The second shock was followed by a third, more violent than either of its
predecessors. The earth trembled and heaved so that we could scarcely
stand. The underground thunder became louder and continuous and, what was
even more appalling, we could distinctly see the mountain-tops move and
shake, as if they were going to fall and overwhelm us.
But even this shock passed off without doing any material mischief, and I
was beginning to think the worst was over when one of the servants drew my
attention to the great reservoir. It smoked and though there was no wind
the water was white with foam and running over the banks.
This went on several minutes, and then the water, as if yielding to some
irresistible force, left the sides, and there shot out of it a gigantic
jet nearly as thick as the crater was wide and hundreds of feet high. It
broke in the form of a rose and fell in a fine spray, which the setting
sun hued with all the colors of the rainbow.
It was the most splendid sight I had ever seen and the most
portentous--for I knew that the crater had become active, and remembering
how long it had taken to fill I feared the worst.
The jet went on rising and falling for nearly an hour, but as the mass of
the water returned to the crater, very little going over the sides, no
great harm was done.
"Thank Heaven for the respite!" exclaimed Angela, who had been clinging to
me all the time, trembling yet courageous. "Don't you think the danger is
now past, my Nigel?"
"For us, it may be. But if the crater has really become active. I fear
that our poor people at San Cristobal will be in very great danger
indeed."
"No! God alone--Hearken!"
A muffled peal of thunder which seemed to come from the very bowels of the
earth, followed by a detonation like the discharge of an army's artillery,
and the sides of the crater opened, and with a wild roar the pent-up
torrent burst forth, and leaping into the lake, rolled, a mighty avalanche
of water, toward the doomed oasis.
We looked at each other in speechless dismay. Nothing could resist that
terrible flood; it would sweep everything before it, for, though its
violence might be lessened before it reached the sea, only the few who
happened to be near the coast could escape destruction.
Nobody spoke; the roar of the cataract deafened us, the awfulness of the
catastrophe made us dumb. We were as if stunned, and I was conscious of
nothing save a sickening sense of helplessness and despair.
For an hour we stood watching the outpouring of the water. In that hour
Quipai was destroyed and its people perished.
As the blood-red sun sank into the bosom of the broad Pacific, a great
cloud of smoke and steam, mingled with stones and ashes, was puffed out of
the crater and a stream of fiery lava, bursting from the breach in the
side of the mountain, followed in the wake of the water.
The uproar was terrific; explosion succeeded explosion; great stones
hurled through the air and fell back into the crater with a din like
discharges of musketry, and whenever there came a lull we could hear the
hissing of the water as it met the lava.
We remained in the garden the night through. Nobody thought of going
indoors; but after a while we became so weary with watching and
overwrought with excitement that, despite the danger and the noise we
could not keep our eyes open. Before the southern cross began to bend we
were all asleep, Angela and I wrapped in our cobijas, the others on the
turf and under the trees.
When I opened my eyes the sun was rising majestically above the
Cordillera, but its rays had not yet reached the ocean. I rose and looked
around. The crater was still smoking, and a mist hung over the oasis, but
the lava had ceased to flow, and not a zephyr moved the air, not a tremor
stirred the earth. Only the blackened throat of the volcano and the
ghastly rent in its side were there to remind us of the havoc that had
been wrought and the ruin of Quipai.
I roused the people and bade them prepare breakfast, for though thousands
may perish in a night, the survivors must eat on the morrow. The house,
albeit considerably shaken, was still intact, but several of the doors
were so tightly jammed that I had to break them open with my hatchet.
When breakfast was ready I woke Angela.
"Is it real, or have I been dreaming?" she asked, with a shudder, looking
wildly round.
"It is only too real," I said, pointing to the smoking crater.
"_Misericordia!_ what shall we do?"
"First of all, we must go down to the oasis and see whether any of the
people are left alive."
"You are right. When we have done what we can for the others it will be
time enough to think about ourselves."
"Are there any others?" I thought, for I greatly doubted whether we should
find any alive, except, perhaps, Yawl and the three or four men who were
helping him. But I kept my misgivings to myself, and after breakfast we
set off. Angela and myself were mounted, and I assigned a mule to Kidd.
The man might be useful, and, circumstanced as we were, it would have been
bad policy to give him the cold shoulder. We also took with us provisions,
clothing, and a tent, for I was by no means sure that we should find
either food or shelter on the oasis.
As we passed the volcano I looked into the crater. Nearly level with the
breach made by the water was a great mass of seething lava, which I
regarded as a sure sign that another eruption might take place at any
moment. The valley lake had disappeared; banks, trees, soil, dwellings,
all were gone, leaving only bare rocks and burning lava. Of San Cristobal
there was not a vestige; the oasis had been converted into a damp and
steaming gully, void of vegetation and animal life. But, as I had
anticipated, the force of the flood was spent before it reached the coast.
Much of the water had overflowed into the desert and been absorbed by the
sand, and the little that remained was now sinking into the earth and
being evaporated by the sun.
For hours Angela and I rode on in silence; our distress was too deep for
words.
"Quipai is gone," she murmured at length, shuddering and looking at me
with tear-filled eyes.
"Yes, gone and forever. As entirely as if it had never been. It is worse
than the carnage of a great battle. These poor people! Nature is more
cruel than man."
"But surely! will you not try to restore the oasis and re-create Quipai?"
"To do that, _cara mia_, would require another Abbé Balthazar and sixty
years of life. And to what end? Sooner or later our work would be
destroyed as his has been, even if we were allowed to begin it. The
volcano may be active for ages. We must go."
"Whither?"
"Back to the world, that in new scenes and occupation we may perchance
forget this crowning calamity."
"It is something to have been happy so long."
"It is much; it is almost everything. Whatever the future may have in
store for us, darling, nothing can deprive us of the sunny memories of the
past, and the happiness we have enjoyed at Quipai."
"True, and if this misfortune were not so terrible--But God knows best. It
ill becomes me, who never knew sorrow before, to repine.--Yes, let us go.
But how?"
"By sea. I fear you would never survive the hazards and hardships of a
journey over the Cordillera, and dearly as I love you--because I love
you--I would rather have you die than be captured by Indians and made the
wife of some savage cacique. Yes, we must go by sea, in the sloop built by
these two castaways. Yet, even in that there will be a serious risk; for
if they suspect I have the diamonds in my possession--and I am afraid the
suspicion is inevitable--they will probably--"
"What?"
"Try to murder us."
"Murder us! For the diamonds?"
"Yes, my Angela, for the diamonds. In the world which you have never seen
men commit horrible crimes for insignificant gains, and I have here in my
pocket the value of a king's ransom. Even the average man could hardly
withstand so great a temptation, and all we know of these sailors is that
one of them is a thief."
"What will you do then?"
"First of all, I must find a safer hiding-place for our wealth than my
pockets; and we must be ever on our guard. The voyage will not be long,
and we shall be three against two."
"Three! You will take Ramon, then?"
"Certainly--if he will go with us."
"Of course he will. Ramon would follow you to the world's end. And the
other sailor--Yawl--may have been drowned in the flood."
"I don't think so. The flood did not go much farther than this, and Yawl
was busy with his boat. But we shall soon know; the cliffs are in sight."