THE GOOD HERMIT OF LA POPA
The cloth bound round his tousled head, the torn shirt that bared his
chest, the pongee trousers soiled with sweat and dust, the strips of
canvas wrapped about his feet, made this wounded fugitive the image of a
buccaneer as he sat waiting in the round watch-tower with the machete
across his knees. It was not long before the temper of savage defiance
yielded to exhaustion. Oblivion enfolded his senses and he relaxed in a
stupor that was a counterfeit of sleep. The scowling visage took on the
gentler aspect, boyish and engaging, that was familiar to his shipmates.
It was an interlude.
He did not stir when the stone barracks inside the city wall were
agitated by some loud excitement. There was confused shouting, orders
bandied to and fro, the shrill _alerte_ of a bugle, squads of soldiers
pattering at the double-quick. All this indicated that the hapless
privates, Francisco and Manuel, had found an audience.
The hue-and-cry passed by the broad ramp that led to the top of the
wall. It was perhaps assumed that the mad _Americano_ would spread havoc
in the city streets or break for the harbor to hide in some boat and
escape by sea. It was the first duty of the soldiers to protect the
people of Cartagena. Therefore they scattered to warn and search, ready
to shoot on sight.
Meanwhile the hunted man’s respite was unbroken. When, at length, he
lifted his head and hastily caught up the machete to resume his sullen
vigil, the prison area had resumed its wonted quietude. There were no
sounds to suggest an alarm. The sun had passed the meridian by an hour
or so, as Richard Cary discovered through a slitted window. He was
surprised that his hiding-place had not been discovered. He could hope
for no such good fortune as concealing himself in the watch-tower until
nightfall. And how would that aid him? He was trapped. Death clamored
for him in the city. It was certain to overtake him in the swamps and
jungle if he should succeed in stealing away. The sea was also
impossible. He could never reach it.
The effort of rising to his feet left him all spent and trembling. He
could not have walked a score of yards in the deadly heat of the sun.
The muscles of his back were so stiffened and inflamed that he was bent
like an old man knotted with rheumatism. His head was even more
troublesome. After the lull, it was aflame again. One moment he was able
to think, the next he was lost in a welter of phantasms. He closed his
eyes because the light hurt them. He would hear the Colombian soldiers
when they came near the watch-tower.
A little while, however, and the aching brightness of the sky was
tempered by clouds that gathered swiftly. They grew black as they rolled
toward the zenith, with a flickering play of lightning. The distant
mutter of thunder swelled in rolling detonations. At first the rain came
in a flurry of drops. Richard Cary mistook the sound for the pit-pat-pat
of the hurrying feet of Colombian soldiers. With a groan he lurched out
of the watch-tower to finish the thing in the open.
The tropical rain came down like a flood, as though the clouds spilled a
solid deluge of water. A whistling squall swept it in sheets. Between
the parapets was a gushing river which spouted through the embrasures
and rushed down the ramp. It was a torrential downpour unknown to
northern climes.
To Richard Cary it was the saving grace of heaven. It beat against him,
cooling his parched skin, refreshing him like an elixir. It quenched the
fires that had so grievously tormented him. He felt the strength revive
in his weary body. He forgot the stiffness, the hurts, the hopelessness
of a man in the last ditch. He scooped up the rain in his cupped hand
and lapped it like a dog.
The blessed rain did more than this. It offered a chance of extricating
himself from the immediate perils besetting him. The squall drove the
rain in sheets, obscuring the buildings of the city, veiling the harbor.
He gripped the machete blade between his teeth and threw a leg over the
outer parapet. It was a thirty-foot drop to the bottom, which was a
shallow depression where the moat had been. The stones had been
cunningly cut and fitted to build a wall with a smooth facing, but the
tooth of time had gnawed deep crevices in which grass had taken root.
Richard Cary’s fingers found rough corners to cling to, and lodgment for
his toes. Cautiously groping, he let himself down from one stone to
another. It was not a vastly difficult feat, easier than those other
Devon seamen of long ago had found it to scale these same walls with
ladders. When giddiness halted him, he fastened himself to the stones
like a great bat and waited for the spell to pass.
Finally he let go and dropped to the ground. It had been a wrenching
ordeal, but when the pain was unendurable he had the machete to bite on.
The space outside the wall, which was a populous open-air market and
resort for idlers, had been suddenly deserted. The terrific rain had
driven every last soul to shelter. The fugitive made a limping détour to
reach a strip of beach beyond the quay. Fishermen with their baskets,
the vendors of green stuffs, the carts and the burros, had scampered to
find dry places.
It was a homing instinct, this endeavor to escape to salt water. There
was no plan. In fact there was no clear expectation of getting anywhere.
It was enough, for the moment, to be outside the walls of Cartagena. Far
better risk drowning than be riddled with bullets by the comrades of
Francisco and Manuel.
Between the driving sheets of rain he caught glimpses of the yellow
beach. Two or three dugout canoes were drawn up. One of them had a
lading of green bananas. The fugitive plodded toward them and no man
came to hinder him. The rain was all about him like a misty curtain. He
stumbled in the soft sand above high-water mark and fell against the
gunwale of an empty canoe. It was a small craft, but heavy. To push it
into the water seemed a task altogether beyond him. However, he set his
shoulder against the blunt bow and dug his feet into the sand.
Gashed and harried and fevered, it was the inherited bulldog strain in
“Big Dick” Cary that sufficed for this final struggle on the sands of
Cartagena. The canoe moved, an inch at a time, to the harder surface of
the tide-washed beach. Then it slid faster until the surf kicked up by
the squall was splashing against it. The stern floated.
Cary stood up and looked out at the foaming, rain-swept lagoon. He could
not drive the canoe ahead against the wind, but he remembered a wooded
point not far away and a lee beyond it. This he might fetch on a
slanting course with the ebbing tide to help.
A last dogged thrust and the canoe floated in the surf. He tumbled over
the side and fell face downward in the tepid rainwater that washed over
the bottom boards. Righting himself, he caught up a short paddle and
swung the bow away from the beach. He crouched amidships and did little
more than steer, with a few strokes now and then to hold the course and
avoid drifting broadside on. These motions were done mechanically, like
an automaton. The canoe safely skirted the shore where it curved an arm
out into the lagoon. Behind it was calmer water, a rippling surface on
which the canoe floated lazily.
The paddle was idle. The fugitive sat with folded arms, indifferent to
the whims of destiny. The tide pulled at the sluggish canoe and it
slowly moved abreast of the shore. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had
flooded down. The clouds broke and dissolved in ragged fragments until
the sky was an inverted bowl of flawless blue. The sun poured its
breathless radiance upon a lush landscape that steamed as it dried.
To Richard Cary this was an affliction. An hour of sun would be the
finishing stroke. He had not even a straw hat to shield his head. It
didn’t very much matter what happened to him. He was beyond caring, but
it was peculiarly unpleasant to be grilled alive. He made shift to steer
the canoe inshore until it grounded. Just beyond the belt of marsh he
saw a densely verdured knoll marked by one tall palm. He filled the
baling can with the rainwater in the canoe and carried it with him. The
machete served to chop a few bushes and so make room for him to crawl
into the thicket and lie down.
In spite of the heat a fit of shivering seized him, the chill that
presaged a recurrence of fever. Mosquitoes swarmed to plague him. The
afternoon waned and he had not moved from this lair in the thicket. Not
until sunset did he go crashing through the brushwood and hold fast to
the palm tree while he stupidly glared this way and that, imagining
ambushed foes.
Behind this bit of low land was a hill that soared abruptly to a height
of several hundred feet. Its crest was stark and rugged, with a sheer
cliff that dropped toward the sea. It stood alone, this bold and
frowning hill, and was a famous landmark from many miles offshore. La
Popa, mariners had always called it because of the resemblance to the
castellated poop of a galleon. What made it even more prominent was the
massive convent whose walls were like a fortress, a structure which, at
a distance, looked as if it had never been despoiled and forsaken. Both
Drake and De Pontis the Frenchman had held it for ransom.
It had become a mere shell, a noble relic of the religious zeal of
another age. At one end nestled the chapel and this had been preserved,
still used for the infrequent advocation to Our Lady of La Popa by
priests and pious pilgrims of Cartagena. From the city a rough path led
up the sloping ridge of the hill, a path trodden by many generations of
nuns and worshipers.
La Popa! The huge white convent looming on the summit of the cliff! A
place for a man to hide and scan the Caribbean for sight of a ship.
There Drake had posted his sentries to guard against surprise by
galleons coming from the north or south. A long, hard climb up the hill,
through the jungle at the base, and then a circuit to get clear of the
cliff where the defenders had rolled rocks down upon the heads of
certain English seamen. It might be done, however, if a man could find
the path. A full moon rising early and the convent gleaming above to set
his bearings by!
Soon after dawn of the following morning, the caretaker of the Chapel of
Our Lady of La Popa came pottering out of a hut built in a corner of the
roofless convent. His errand was to tether his two goats on the herbage
of the slope. He was a spare man, lame in one leg and feeling the burden
of years. Having lived much by himself in this lonely retreat, he had
formed the habit of talking to himself in the unkempt gray beard. By way
of variety he often talked to the goats whom he fondly addressed by
name.
Having tethered them while the air was still cool, this kindly Palacio
untied a rusty tin cup from his belt and milked Mercedes who was a
docile animal. The cup of warm milk and a _tortilla_ of coarse meal was
a breakfast that sufficed him. While munching the sooty _tortilla_ he
gazed about him from under shaggy brows and, as always at this time of
day, admired the roseate splendor of Cartagena and its everlasting
walls. There was nothing in all the world to compare with it, reflected
this elderly recluse. The browsing Mercedes waggled her tufted chin in
agreement.
Presently Palacio picked up his cane and wandered along the slope to
inspect his garden patch of beans and peppers. It was a continual
skirmish to save the beans from the forays of the other goat, Lolita,
who was a young creature of feminine caprices and often possessed of a
devil. Palacio’s rebukes, even the threat of making goat’s-meat of her,
left Lolita’s heart untouched.
In the grass beside the garden patch, Palacio was startled to perceive a
large object which had not been there before. Cautiously he backed away
and leaned on his stick while he scrutinized the phenomenon. It was a
man asleep or dead, a man of prodigious bulk and brawn whose clothing
was no more than dirty tatters. His skin was criss-crossed with
scratches and smeared with dried blood. A stranger to Palacio, and a man
so strange to this part of the world that he might have dropped from the
skies!
Timidly the caretaker approached the body in the grass and knelt to
touch its cheek. The flesh was warm, even hot and angry. Gaining
courage, he tugged at the man and rolled him over to discover any
serious injuries. He found a knife wound in the back and a lump on the
head as big as a tangerine. If the man had climbed the hill of La Popa,
it was a miracle. Where had he come from? It was the divine influence of
Our Lady, whose shrine was in the chapel, that he should be found alive
in this place.
“What a thing to stumble on when I lead my goats out in the morning!”
said Palacio, both hands in his beard. “Never has a wonder like this
happened to me. I am at the end of my poor wits. If I go down to
Cartagena to find a doctor, it is slow walking for me with my lame leg
on the rough path—and this enormous man may die in the grass. Soon the
sun will be too hot to leave him without a roof over his head.”
In his agitation Palacio limped to and fro. Could he roll this man over
and over like a sack of coffee, as far as the threshold of the convent?
Then perhaps he might drag him into the hut. It could do him no more
damage. As it was, he looked as if he had fallen off the cliff. In spite
of his lameness, Palacio was tough and sinewy. When in his prime he had
been a laborer on the quay, carrying heavy freight on his back.
The goats had cropped the grass until it was a green sward. Palacio
grunted and began to roll the man like a cask. A groan dismayed him.
This would not do. It was more merciful to try to drag the body a little
way at a time, like a burro hitched to an ox-cart. Nobly Palacio hauled
and panted until he had progressed as far as the stake that tethered
Mercedes. She trotted over to nuzzle him. It was an expression of
sympathy. He felt much encouraged. Lolita, the jade, was waiting to rear
on her hind legs and butt her master behind the knees.
“Horned offspring of perdition,” he told her, “do not add to my
troubles. Poor Palacio is almost breaking himself in two for the sake of
love and charity. Butt me again and the dust shall fly from your
speckled hide.”
A back-breaking task it was, but Palacio managed to drag his burden to
the hole in the convent wall where a door had been. A bed of straw and a
blanket on the floor of his hut was all the comfort he could contrive
for the unbidden guest. So fatigued that his legs were like two sticks,
the anxious Palacio mixed a little warm goat’s-milk and rum in the tin
cup and forced it between the man’s lips. It seemed to trickle down his
throat. Then he dosed him with a bitter draught from a bottle, a
tincture of quinine and herbs which had assuaged his own spells of
fever.
With a singular deftness, Palacio washed the patient and tore up a clean
shirt to bandage him. That wound in the back was alarming, so livid and
inflamed, but it might heal if kept cleansed and dressed.
“A man like this is very hard to kill,” he said aloud. “To look at him
you would say he had already suffered several deaths. The air is cool
and healthy up here on La Popa, and there is the sweet presence of Our
Lady. I will light a candle at her shrine and a fresh one as soon as
that is burned down, poor man though I am. The life of this enormous
stranger with the hair like gold belongs to me. It is a gift of God.”
It was a battered, useless gift, the wreckage of Richard Cary. Hard to
kill, though, as Palacio had concluded. In his favor were youth,
extraordinary vitality, and clean blood untainted by dissipation.
Illness was unknown to him. Through two long days and nights the devoted
Palacio watched and nursed him, nodding off at intervals. That bitter
brew in the bottle was holding the fever in check, and the diet of
goat’s-milk and onion broth was efficacious.
The patient babbled while delirious. Palacio understood almost nothing
of what he said, but one inference was beyond doubt. The sick man’s
voice, the message of his eyes, the restless movements of his hands were
easily interpreted. He was afraid of discovery. Enemies were in pursuit
of him. It was an issue of life and death. Palacio referred the problem
to the responsive Mercedes while milking her.
“What is to be done, little comfort of mine? This man is innocent of
crime. You have seen him for yourself. He has won my trust and
affection, and he is my guest. Not many visitors come to La Popa from
the city. It is an old story to them. But the American tourists from the
fruit boats will come early some morning to see the convent. The men
will sit on the rocks and say, ‘_Zowie! damn-fine-view_,’ and the women
will poke their noses everywhere. Our guest will make curiosity and be
chattered about in Cartagena and down at the ships. He wishes to be
hidden away until his health is restored. What do you advise, most
intelligent of little goats?”
The most intelligent Mercedes tossed her head and ambled in the
direction of the convent wall, as far as her tether permitted. Then she
pawed the grass with a sharp hoof. Palacio eyed her gravely. She was
trying to assist him. He pondered the matter, twisting his beard tight.
Blockhead that he was! To have to be instructed by a goat! She was
showing him what to do. He hurried into the hut for a lantern. Into the
convent cellar he clambered and then crept into an opening where the
stones had been dislodged.
It was the entrance of the ancient tunnel which was said to have led to
the foot of the hill and so beneath the walls of Cartagena as a secret
passage to be used in time of siege. Such was the tradition. It was
possible, however, to explore only a short distance from La Popa because
rocks and dirt had filled the tunnel.
“Two or three days more,” said Palacio, “and I can move my guest into
this chamber where only God himself will find him. Visitors can be told
that the tunnel has caved in since the last heavy rain.”
This was partly the truth. A hole had appeared in the gullied surface of
the hill, but it was a dozen yards away from the convent wall and hidden
by a clump of small trees. It let the light into the tunnel, and the air
drew through it by day and night. Palacio courteously thanked Mercedes
for stamping her hoof directly over the underground passage. She had
handsomely solved the problem.
He spared no pains to make the secret chamber habitable for his guest.
In the chapel was found a disused table and a carved oak chair big
enough to hold an archbishop. There was also a strip of carpet and two
brass candlesticks. Palacio fashioned a bed of limber poles bound with
rawhide thongs, and stretched a piece of old canvas across the frame.
During the labor of love, what of Richard Cary? The stormy stress of
mind and body was past. The whirling tumult of emotions, the repeated
shocks of perils and escapes, were no more tangible than dreams. Indeed,
they seemed to belong with his dreams of the Cartagena of the galleons
and the _conquistadores_. He was in a haven of lucid tranquillity,
unvexed by the past, with no thought of the future. Physical weakness
constrained him, but Nature was eager to heal and restore, and he felt
no great discomfort. It was a state of apathy that brought the anodyne
of contentment.
It amused him to listen to the droning monologues of Palacio as he
pottered about the hut. They exchanged a few phrases in English and
Spanish and became amazingly well acquainted thereby. Between them was
the fondness of a father and son. The goats walked in to pay their
respects, Mercedes the well-mannered lady at a bedside, Lolita rudely
foraging for provender and chewing stray garments until Palacio thumped
her with a broken stool.
It was a memorable moment when the guest was helped to lift himself from
the pallet of straw. He swayed against the straining Palacio, their arms
across each other’s shoulders. In this manner they staggered into the
cellar by arduous stages and thence to the chamber inside the tunnel
entrance. The guest expected his weight to crush the spare Palacio, but
it was do or die. The achievement made them hilarious. Palacio uncorked
a treasured bottle of red wine. Later he knelt at the shrine of Nuestra
Señora de La Popa and humbly offered thanks for the recovery of his dear
friend and guest.
In the underground room the hours passed without impatience. Light
filtered through the gullied opening in the roof. The air was never
sultry. A roving armadillo tumbled through the hole and consented to
stay a while, lured by bits of food. It curled up in its scaly armor and
slept under a bench. Its serene attitude toward life was worthy of
imitation.
“But I can’t stay here curled up in _my_ shell,” said Señor Cary to the
placid armadillo. “For one thing, I am imposing on Palacio’s good nature
with no way of repaying him. And the old codger is pretty well worn out.
As soon as my legs will hold me up, I must work out some plan of
campaign or other. But why fret about it now? _Mañana!_”
With a steady mind he returned to the situation day after day. To try to
smuggle himself aboard a Fruit Company’s steamer was one possibility. It
was thrashed out and dismissed. Ignorant that Colonel Fajardo had ceased
to be the _Comandante_ of the Port or anything else, he pictured him as
venomously vigilant to watch and search every vessel leaving Cartagena.
Without friends or money it was out of the question to try to reach some
other port by land. The delta of the Magdalena was one vast wilderness
of swamp and water-courses.
He was still ensnared, but no longer a frenzied fugitive without a
refuge, and he possessed the unquenchable optimism of a strong and
competent young man.
Very often his thoughts dwelt with Teresa Fernandez. Her kisses were
dearly remembered, her voice echoed in his heart, and the gay fortitude
with which she met the buffets of life appealed to his chivalry. She was
a woman worth loving forever and a day.
A fortnight more, and the _Tarragona_ would be steaming across the
Caribbean, on another southern voyage, to pick up her landfall for
Cartagena, sighting the abrupt and lofty hill of La Popa from many miles
at sea. Now that his strength was flowing back, Richard Cary could not
remain buried like a mole. Inaction would soon become both irksome and
cowardly. One thing was certain. He swore to find Teresa Fernandez,
returning in the _Tarragona_, and to hold her in his arms.
There was only one hope of attaining this desire, of making the resolve
more than an empty boast. Teresa’s uncle, that “funny old guy” Señor
Ramon Bazán, had shown a liking for him during that brief visit in the
moonlit _patio_. “A delicious hit,” Teresa had called it. This might
mean nothing at all. A man in his dotage, tricky and whimsical, had been
the impression left by the shriveled uncle with the little brown monkey
perched upon his shoulder.
What his relations might be with the officials of Cartagena was
impossible to surmise. He had been a person of consequence in earlier
years, a figure in the political affairs of Colombia. This much Teresa
had conveyed in the remark that he had once been sent to Washington by
the Government at Bogotá. Would he feel inclined to protect an American
refugee whom the authorities were hunting like a dangerous animal? What
of the obligations of the hospitality which he had so warmly proffered?
A rope of sand, as likely as not. Spanish courtesy in its finest flower
had been displayed by the lowly Palacio, but with Señor Ramon Bazán it
was a very different situation. Doubtless he knew what Richard Cary had
done and why he was branded as a criminal condemned to execution.
Ah, well, what else was life than a gamble on the turn of a card? A
proper man ought not to hesitate whenever the stake was worth the
hazard. Teresa Fernandez would risk as much for him, of this Richard
Cary felt convinced. She was that kind of a woman. Win or lose, he would
try to meet her in the house of Uncle Ramon Bazán while the _Tarragona_
was in port.
There was only one way to put the hazard to the touch. This was to send
Palacio into Cartagena with a note to the bizarre old gentleman. It
meant revealing the hiding-place on the hill of La Popa and inviting
capture. The message would have to be an appeal to find some ingenious
plan of smuggling the fugitive through the city streets. He was not yet
strong enough even to walk down the rocky path to the foot of the hill.
“A rotten poor bet,” said the guest of the good Palacio, “but show me
another one. And if I can get into Cartagena, I can get out again. By
God, I’m going to kiss my girl.”