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Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest

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Title: Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest

Author: W. H. Hudson


        
Release date: June 1, 1997 [eBook #942]
                Most recently updated: December 23, 2016

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger


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Produced by Dianne Bean





GREEN MANSIONS

A Romance of the Tropical Forest

by W. H. Hudson




FOREWORD

I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that he
cannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of one who would
not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him who
wrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all those other books which
have meant so much to me. For of all living authors--now that Tolstoi
has gone I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love his
writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the
rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature
of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be
explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have
a favourite hunting-ground, which, in his good will--or perhaps merely
in his egoism--he would wish others to share with him.

The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: We
are, as worlds, rather common tramping-ground for our readers,
rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are too
superficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression; in fact--like guide
or dragoman--we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them the
spirit, of the land.

Now, Hudson, whether in a pure romance like this Green Mansions, or in
that romantic piece of realism The Purple Land, or in books like Idle
Days in Patagonia, Afoot in England, The Land’s End, Adventures
among Birds, A Shepherd’s Life, and all his other nomadic records of
communings with men, birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift of
disclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision.
Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural
world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going
there.

He is of course a distinguished naturalist, probably the most acute,
broad-minded, and understanding observer of Nature living. And this, in
an age of specialism, which loves to put men into pigeonholes and label
them, has been a misfortune to the reading public, who seeing the label
Naturalist, pass on, and take down the nearest novel. Hudson has indeed
the gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction of
his value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more to
be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called
New York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to all
his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty an
intimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attraction
lie in his spirit and philosophy. We feel from his writings that he
is nearer to Nature than other men, and yet more truly civilized. The
competitive, towny culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingness
with which we are so busy coating ourselves simply will not stick to
him. A passage in his Hampshire Days describes him better than I
can: “The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the
animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I am
in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and
the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the
tempests and my passions are one. I feel the ‘strangeness’ only with
regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in
conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them.... In such moments we
sometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead,
who were not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life in
towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain.” This unspoiled
unity with Nature pervades all his writings; they are remote from the
fret and dust and pettiness of town life; they are large, direct, free.
It is not quite simplicity, for the mind of this writer is subtle and
fastidious, sensitive to each motion of natural and human life; but his
sensitiveness is somehow different from, almost inimical to, that of us
others, who sit indoors and dip our pens in shades of feeling. Hudson’s
fancy is akin to the flight of the birds that are his special loves--it
never seems to have entered a house, but since birth to have been
roaming the air, in rain and sun, or visiting the trees and the grass.
I not only disbelieve utterly, but intensely dislike, the doctrine of
metempsychosis, which, if I understand it aright, seems the negation of
the creative impulse, an apotheosis of staleness--nothing quite new in
the world, never anything quite new--not even the soul of a baby; and
so I am not prepared to entertain the whim that a bird was one of his
remote incarnations; still, in sweep of wing, quickness of eye, and
natural sweet strength of song he is not unlike a super-bird--which is
a horrid image. And that reminds me: This, after all, is a foreword to
Green Mansions--the romance of the bird-girl Rima--a story actual yet
fantastic, which immortalizes, I think, as passionate a love of all
beautiful things as ever was in the heart of man. Somewhere Hudson says:
“The sense of the beautiful is God’s best gift to the human soul.” So
it is: and to pass that gift on to others, in such measure as herein
is expressed, must surely have been happiness to him who wrote Green
Mansions. In form and spirit the book is unique, a simple romantic
narrative transmuted by sheer glow of beauty into a prose poem. Without
ever departing from its quality of a tale, it symbolizes the yearning
of the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this
life--that impossible perfection which we must all learn to see fall
from its high tree and be consumed in the flames, as was Rima the
bird-girl, but whose fine white ashes we gather that they may be mingled
at last with our own, when we too have been refined by the fire of
death’s resignation. The book is soaked through and through with a
strange beauty. I will not go on singing its praises, or trying to make
it understood, because I have other words to say of its author.

Do we realize how far our town life and culture have got away from
things that really matter; how instead of making civilization our
handmaid to freedom we have set her heel on our necks, and under it bite
dust all the time? Hudson, whether he knows it or not, is now the chief
standard-bearer of another faith. Thus he spake in The Purple Land: “Ah,
yes, we are all vainly seeking after happiness in the wrong way. It
was with us once and ours, but we despised it, for it was only the old
common happiness which Nature gives to all her children, and we went
away from it in search of another grander kind of happiness which some
dreamer--Bacon or another--assured us we should find. We had only to
conquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, then
the Earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We are
still marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad
we are getting! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished,
though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced march
to watch the labours of some pale mechanician, seeking after perpetual
motion, and indulge in a little, dry, cackling laugh at his expense.”
 And again: “For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or
steals shamefaced to hide itself in dim churches flourishes greatly,
filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast
hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?

   “Out of his heart God shall not pass
    His image stamped is on every grass.”

All Hudson’s books breathe this spirit of revolt against our new
enslavement by towns and machinery, and are true oases in an age so
dreadfully resigned to the “pale mechanician.”

But Hudson is not, as Tolstoi was, a conscious prophet; his spirit is
freer, more willful, whimsical--almost perverse--and far more steeped in
love of beauty. If you called him a prophet he would stamp his foot
at you--as he will at me if he reads these words; but his voice is
prophetic, for all that, crying in a wilderness, out of which, at the
call, will spring up roses here and there, and the sweet-smelling grass.
I would that every man, woman, and child in England were made to read
him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a
tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he
is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As
a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has
few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable
freedom from any thought of after-benefit--even from the desire that we
should read him. He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love
of the thing seen, and the emotion felt; the smell of the lamp has not
touched a single page that he ever wrote. That alone is a marvel to us
who know that to write well, even to write clearly, is a wound business,
long to learn, hard to learn, and no gift of the angels. Style should
not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not
master. To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacle
to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by
juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotion
or gratification--this is the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has
pre-eminently this double quality. From almost any page of his books an
example might be taken. Here is one no better than a thousand others, a
description of two little girls on a beach: “They were dressed in black
frocks and scarlet blouses, which set off their beautiful small dark
faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and their loose hair
was a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about their heads and necks
composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining like
spun glass--hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever tame its
beautiful wildness. And in spirit they were what they seemed: such a
wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit, with such grace and fleetness, one
does not look for in human beings, but only in birds or in some small
bird-like volatile mammal--a squirrel or a spider-monkey of the tropical
forest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes; the swiftest,
wildest, loveliest, most airy, and most vocal of small beauties.” Or
this, as the quintessence of a sly remark: “After that Mantel got on to
his horse and rode away. It was black and rainy, but he had never needed
moon or lantern to find what he sought by night, whether his own
house, or a fat cow--also his own, perhaps.” So one might go on quoting
felicity for ever from this writer. He seems to touch every string with
fresh and uninked fingers; and the secret of his power lies, I suspect,
in the fact that his words: “Life being more than all else to me. . .”
 are so utterly true.

I do not descant on his love for simple folk and simple things, his
championship of the weak, and the revolt against the cagings and
cruelties of life, whether to men or birds or beasts, that springs out
of him as if against his will; because, having spoken of him as one with
a vital philosophy or faith, I don’t wish to draw red herrings across
the main trail of his worth to the world. His work is a vision of
natural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetened
by the sun and the wind and the rain, and by fellowship with all the
other forms of life--the truest vision now being given to us, who are
more in want of it than any generation has ever been. A very great
writer; and--to my thinking--the most valuable our age possesses.

JOHN GALSWORTHY

September 1915 Manaton: Devon




GREEN MANSIONS




PROLOGUE

It is a cause of very great regret to me that this task has taken so
much longer a time than I had expected for its completion. It is
now many months--over a year, in fact--since I wrote to Georgetown
announcing my intention of publishing, IN A VERY FEW MONTHS, the whole
truth about Mr. Abel. Hardly less could have been looked for from his
nearest friend, and I had hoped that the discussion in the newspapers
would have ceased, at all events, until the appearance of the promised
book. It has not been so; and at this distance from Guiana I was not
aware of how much conjectural matter was being printed week by week in
the local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr.
Abel’s friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never
been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished
only with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its surface
ornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding through it all
the figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of seven short words which
no one could understand or rightly interpret; and finally the disposal
of the mysterious ashes--that was all there was relating to an untold
chapter in a man’s life for imagination to work on. Let us hope that
now, at last, the romance-weaving will come to an end. It was, however,
but natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; not
only because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man, which
all recognized and which won all hearts, but also because of that hidden
chapter--that sojourn in the desert, about which he preserved silence.
It was felt in a vague way by his intimates that he had met with unusual
experiences which had profoundly affected him and changed the course of
his life. To me alone was the truth known, and I must now tell, briefly
as possible, how my great friendship and close intimacy with him came
about.

When, in 1887, I arrived in Georgetown to take up an appointment in a
public office, I found Mr. Abel an old resident there, a man of means
and a favourite in society. Yet he was an alien, a Venezuelan, one
of that turbulent people on our border whom the colonists have always
looked on as their natural enemies. The story told to me was that about
twelve years before that time he had arrived at Georgetown from some
remote district in the interior; that he had journeyed alone on foot
across half the continent to the coast, and had first appeared among
them, a young stranger, penniless, in rags, wasted almost to a skeleton
by fever and misery of all kinds, his face blackened by long exposure
to sun and wind. Friendless, with but little English, it was a hard
struggle for him to live; but he managed somehow, and eventually letters
from Caracas informed him that a considerable property of which he had
been deprived was once more his own, and he was also invited to return
to his country to take his part in the government of the Republic. But
Mr. Abel, though young, had already outlived political passions and
aspirations, and, apparently, even the love of his country; at all
events, he elected to stay where he was--his enemies, he would say
smilingly, were his best friends--and one of the first uses he made of
his fortune was to buy that house in Main Street which was afterwards
like a home to me.

I must state here that my friend’s full name was Abel Guevez de
Argensola, but in his early days in Georgetown he was called by his
Christian name only, and later he wished to be known simply as “Mr.
Abel.”

I had no sooner made his acquaintance than I ceased to wonder at the
esteem and even affection with which he, a Venezuelan, was regarded in
this British colony. All knew and liked him, and the reason of it was
the personal charm of the man, his kindly disposition, his manner with
women, which pleased them and excited no man’s jealousy--not even
the old hot-tempered planter’s, with a very young and pretty and
light-headed wife--his love of little children, of all wild creatures,
of nature, and of whatsoever was furthest removed from the common
material interests and concerns of a purely commercial community.
The things which excited other men--politics, sport, and the price of
crystals--were outside of his thoughts; and when men had done with
them for a season, when like the tempest they had “blown their fill” in
office and club-room and house and wanted a change, it was a relief to
turn to Mr. Abel and get him to discourse of his world--the world of
nature and of the spirit.

It was, all felt, a good thing to have a Mr. Abel in Georgetown. That
it was indeed good for me I quickly discovered. I had certainly
not expected to meet in such a place with any person to share my
tastes--that love of poetry which has been the chief passion and delight
of my life; but such a one I had found in Mr. Abel. It surprised me
that he, suckled on the literature of Spain, and a reader of only ten or
twelve years of English literature, possessed a knowledge of our modern
poetry as intimate as my own, and a love of it equally great. This
feeling brought us together and made us two--the nervous olive-skinned
Hispano-American of the tropics and the phlegmatic blue-eyed Saxon of
the cold north--one in spirit and more than brothers. Many were the
daylight hours we spent together and “tired the sun with talking”; many,
past counting, the precious evenings in that restful house of his where
I was an almost daily guest. I had not looked for such happiness; nor,
he often said, had he. A result of this intimacy was that the vague idea
concerning his hidden past, that some unusual experience had profoundly
affected him and perhaps changed the whole course of his life, did not
diminish, but, on the contrary, became accentuated, and was often in
my mind. The change in him was almost painful to witness whenever our
wandering talk touched on the subject of the aborigines, and of the
knowledge he had acquired of their character and languages when
living or travelling among them; all that made his conversation most
engaging--the lively, curious mind, the wit, the gaiety of spirit
tinged with a tender melancholy--appeared to fade out of it; even the
expression of his face would change, becoming hard and set, and he would
deal you out facts in a dry mechanical way as if reading them in a book.
It grieved me to note this, but I dropped no hint of such a feeling, and
would never have spoken about it but for a quarrel which came at last to
make the one brief solitary break in that close friendship of years.
I got into a bad state of health, and Abel was not only much concerned
about it, but annoyed, as if I had not treated him well by being ill,
and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did not
take this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at the
office, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him.
He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of
my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quite
meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by his
reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, even
in fun, in such a way. Yes, he said, getting serious, he had the best
right--that of our friendship. He would be no true friend if he kept his
peace about such a matter. Then, in my haste, I retorted that to me the
friendship between us did not seem so perfect and complete as it did to
him. One condition of friendship is that the partners in it should be
known to each other. He had had my whole life and mind open to him, to
read it as in a book. HIS life was a closed and clasped volume to me.

His face darkened, and after a few moments’ silent reflection he got up
and left me with a cold good-bye, and without that hand-grasp which had
been customary between us.

After his departure I had the feeling that a great loss, a great
calamity, had befallen me, but I was still smarting at his too candid
criticism, all the more because in my heart I acknowledged its truth.
And that night, lying awake, I repented of the cruel retort I had made,
and resolved to ask his forgiveness and leave it to him to determine
the question of our future relations. But he was beforehand with me, and
with the morning came a letter begging my forgiveness and asking me to
go that evening to dine with him.

We were alone, and during dinner and afterwards, when we sat smoking and
sipping black coffee in the veranda, we were unusually quiet, even to
gravity, which caused the two white-clad servants that waited on us--the
brown-faced subtle-eyed old Hindu butler and an almost blue-black young
Guiana Negro--to direct many furtive glances at their master’s face.
They were accustomed to see him in a more genial mood when he had a
friend to dine. To me the change in his manner was not surprising: from
the moment of seeing him I had divined that he had determined to open
the shut and clasped volume of which I had spoken--that the time had now
come for him to speak.



CHAPTER I

Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am
not sorry that it happened. I deserved your reproach: a hundred times
I have wished to tell you the whole story of my travels and adventures
among the savages, and one of the reasons which prevented me was the
fear that it would have an unfortunate effect on our friendship. That
was precious, and I desired above everything to keep it. But I must
think no more about that now. I must think only of how I am to tell you
my story. I will begin at a time when I was twenty-three. It was early
in life to be in the thick of politics, and in trouble to the extent of
having to fly my country to save my liberty, perhaps my life.

Every nation, someone remarks, has the government it deserves, and
Venezuela certainly has the one it deserves and that suits it best. We
call it a republic, not only because it is not one, but also because a
thing must have a name; and to have a good name, or a fine name, is
very convenient--especially when you want to borrow money. If the
Venezuelans, thinly distributed over an area of half a million square
miles, mostly illiterate peasants, half-breeds, and indigenes, were
educated, intelligent men, zealous only for the public weal, it would
be possible for them to have a real republic. They have instead
a government by cliques, tempered by revolution; and a very good
government it is, in harmony with the physical conditions of the country
and the national temperament. Now, it happens that the educated men,
representing your higher classes, are so few that there are not many
persons unconnected by ties of blood or marriage with prominent members
of the political groups to which they belong. By this you will see how
easy and almost inevitable it is that we should become accustomed to
look on conspiracy and revolt against the regnant party--the men of
another clique--as only in the natural order of things. In the event
of failure such outbreaks are punished, but they are not regarded as
immoral. On the contrary, men of the highest intelligence and virtue
among us are seen taking a leading part in these adventures. Whether
such a condition of things is intrinsically wrong or not, or would be
wrong in some circumstances and is not wrong, because inevitable, in
others, I cannot pretend to decide; and all this tiresome profusion
is only to enable you to understand how I--a young man of unblemished
character, not a soldier by profession, not ambitious of political
distinction, wealthy for that country, popular in society, a lover of
social pleasures, of books, of nature actuated, as I believed, by the
highest motives, allowed myself to be drawn very readily by friends and
relations into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the moment,
with the object of replacing it by more worthy men--ourselves, to wit.

Our adventure failed because the authorities got wind of the affair
and matters were precipitated. Our leaders at the moment happened to be
scattered over the country--some were abroad; and a few hotheaded men
of the party, who were in Caracas just then and probably feared arrest,
struck a rash blow: the President was attacked in the street and
wounded. But the attackers were seized, and some of them shot on the
following day. When the news reached me I was at a distance from the
capital, staying with a friend on an estate he owned on the River
Quebrada Honda, in the State of Guarico, some fifteen to twenty miles
from the town of Zaraza. My friend, an officer in the army, was a leader
in the conspiracy; and as I was the only son of a man who had been
greatly hated by the Minister of War, it became necessary for us both
to fly for our lives. In the circumstances we could not look to be
pardoned, even on the score of youth.

Our first decision was to escape to the sea-coast; but as the risk of a
journey to La Guayra, or any other port of embarkation on the north
side of the country, seemed too great, we made our way in a contrary
direction to the Orinoco, and downstream to Angostura. Now, when we had
reached this comparatively safe breathing-place--safe, at all events,
for the moment--I changed my mind about leaving or attempting to leave
the country. Since boyhood I had taken a very peculiar interest in that
vast and almost unexplored territory we possess south of the Orinoco,
with its countless unmapped rivers and trackless forests; and in
its savage inhabitants, with their ancient customs and character,
unadulterated by contact with Europeans. To visit this primitive
wilderness had been a cherished dream; and I had to some extent even
prepared myself for such an adventure by mastering more than one of the
Indian dialects of the northern states of Venezuela. And now, finding
myself on the south side of our great river, with unlimited time at
my disposal, I determined to gratify this wish. My companion took his
departure towards the coast, while I set about making preparations and
hunting up information from those who had travelled in the interior to
trade with the savages. I decided eventually to go back upstream and
penetrate to the interior in the western part of Guayana, and the
Amazonian territory bordering on Colombia and Brazil, and to return to
Angostura in about six months’ time. I had no fear of being arrested
in the semi-independent and in most part savage region, as the Guayana
authorities concerned themselves little enough about the political
upheavals at Caracas.

The first five or six months I spent in Guayana, after leaving the city
of refuge, were eventful enough to satisfy a moderately adventurous
spirit. A complaisant government employee at Angostura had provided
me with a passport, in which it was set down (for few to read) that my
object in visiting the interior was to collect information concerning
the native tribes, the vegetable products of the country, and other
knowledge which would be of advantage to the Republic; and the
authorities were requested to afford me protection and assist me in my
pursuits. I ascended the Orinoco, making occasional expeditions to the
small Christian settlements in the neighbourhood of the right bank, also
to the Indian villages; and travelling in this way, seeing and learning
much, in about three months I reached the River Metal. During this
period I amused myself by keeping a journal, a record of personal
adventures, impressions of the country and people, both semi-civilized
and savage; and as my journal grew, I began to think that on my return
at some future time to Caracas, it might prove useful and interesting to
the public, and also procure me fame; which thought proved pleasurable
and a great incentive, so that I began to observe things more narrowly
and to study expression. But the book was not to be.

From the mouth of the Meta I journeyed on, intending to visit the
settlement of Atahapo, where the great River Guaviare, with other
rivers, empties itself into the Orinoco. But I was not destined to reach
it, for at the small settlement of Manapuri I fell ill of a low fever;
and here ended the first half-year of my wanderings, about which no more
need be told.

A more miserable place than Manapuri for a man to be ill of a low fever
in could not well be imagined. The settlement, composed of mean hovels,
with a few large structures of mud, or plastered wattle, thatched
with palm leaves, was surrounded by water, marsh, and forest, the
breeding-place of myriads of croaking frogs and of clouds of mosquitoes;
even to one in perfect health existence in such a place would have
been a burden. The inhabitants mustered about eighty or ninety, mostly
Indians of that degenerate class frequently to be met with in small
trading outposts. The savages of Guayana are great drinkers, but not
drunkards in our sense, since their fermented liquors contain so
little alcohol that inordinate quantities must be swallowed to produce
intoxication; in the settlements they prefer the white man’s more potent
poisons, with the result that in a small place like Manapuri one can see
enacted, as on a stage, the last act in the great American tragedy. To
be succeeded, doubtless, by other and possibly greater tragedies. My
thoughts at that period of suffering were pessimistic in the extreme.
Sometimes, when the almost continuous rain held up for half a day, I
would manage to creep out a short distance; but I was almost past making
any exertion, scarcely caring to live, and taking absolutely no interest
in the news from Caracas, which reached me at long intervals. At the end
of two months, feeling a slight improvement in my health, and with it a
returning interest in life and its affairs, it occurred to me to get
out my diary and write a brief account of my sojourn at Manapuri. I had
placed it for safety in a small deal box, lent to me for the purpose
by a Venezuelan trader, an old resident at the settlement, by name
Pantaleon--called by all Don Panta--one who openly kept half a dozen
Indian wives in his house, and was noted for his dishonesty and greed,
but who had proved himself a good friend to me. The box was in a corner
of the wretched palm-thatched hovel I inhabited; but on taking it out I
discovered that for several weeks the rain had been dripping on it, and
that the manuscript was reduced to a sodden pulp. I flung it upon the
floor with a curse and threw myself back on my bed with a groan.

In that desponding state I was found by my friend Panta, who was
constant in his visits at all hours; and when in answer to his anxious
inquiries I pointed to the pulpy mass on the mud floor, he turned it
over with his foot, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, kicked it out,
remarking that he had mistaken the object for some unknown reptile that
had crawled in out of the rain. He affected to be astonished that I
should regret its loss. It was all a true narrative, he exclaimed; if
I wished to write a book for the stay-at-homes to read, I could easily
invent a thousand lies far more entertaining than any real experiences.
He had come to me, he said, to propose something. He had lived twenty
years at that place, and had got accustomed to the climate, but it would
not do for me to remain any longer if I wished to live. I must go away
at once to a different country--to the mountains, where it was open and
dry. “And if you want quinine when you are there,” he concluded, “smell
the wind when it blows from the south-west, and you will inhale it into
your system, fresh from the forest.” When I remarked despondingly that
in my condition it would be impossible to quit Manapuri, he went on to
say that a small party of Indians was now in the settlement; that they
had come, not only to trade, but to visit one of their own tribe, who
was his wife, purchased some years ago from her father. “And the money
she cost me I have never regretted to this day,” said he, “for she is a
good wife not jealous,” he added, with a curse on all the others. These
Indians came all the way from the Queneveta mountains, and were of the
Maquiritari tribe. He, Panta, and, better still, his good wife would
interest them on my behalf, and for a suitable reward they would take me
by slow, easy stages to their own country, where I would be treated well
and recover my health.

This proposal, after I had considered it well, produced so good an
effect on me that I not only gave a glad consent, but, on the following
day, I was able to get about and begin the preparations for my journey
with some spirit.

In about eight days I bade good-bye to my generous friend Panta, whom I
regarded, after having seen much of him, as a kind of savage beast that
had sprung on me, not to rend, but to rescue from death; for we
know that even cruel savage brutes and evil men have at times sweet,
beneficent impulses, during which they act in a way contrary to their
natures, like passive agents of some higher power. It was a continual
pain to travel in my weak condition, and the patience of my Indians
was severely taxed; but they did not forsake me; and at last the entire
distance, which I conjectured to be about sixty-five leagues, was
accomplished; and at the end I was actually stronger and better in
every way than at the start. From this time my progress towards complete
recovery was rapid. The air, with or without any medicinal virtue blown
from the cinchona trees in the far-off Andean forest, was tonic; and
when I took my walks on the hillside above the Indian village, or later
when able to climb to the summits, the world as seen from those
wild Queneveta mountains had a largeness and varied glory of scenery
peculiarly refreshing and delightful to the soul.

With the Maquiritari tribe I passed some weeks, and the sweet sensations
of returning health made me happy for a time; but such sensations seldom
outlast convalescence. I was no sooner well again than I began to feel
a restless spirit stirring in me. The monotony of savage life in this
place became intolerable. After my long listless period the reaction had
come, and I wished only for action, adventure--no matter how dangerous;
and for new scenes, new faces, new dialects. In the end I conceived the
idea of going on to the Casiquiare river, where I would find a few small
settlements, and perhaps obtain help from the authorities there which
would enable me to reach the Rio Negro. For it was now in my mind to
follow that river to the Amazons, and so down to Para and the Atlantic
coast.

Leaving the Queneveta range, I started with two of the Indians as guides
and travelling companions; but their journey ended only half-way to the
river I wished to reach; and they left me with some friendly savages
living on the Chunapay, a tributary of the Cunucumana, which flows to
the Orinoco. Here I had no choice but to wait until an opportunity of
attaching myself to some party of travelling Indians going south-west
should arrive; for by this time I had expended the whole of my small
capital in ornaments and calico brought from Manapuri, so that I could
no longer purchase any man’s service. And perhaps it will be as well
to state at this point just what I possessed. For some time I had worn
nothing but sandals to protect my feet; my garments consisted of a
single suit, and one flannel shirt, which I washed frequently, going
shirtless while it was drying. Fortunately I had an excellent blue cloth
cloak, durable and handsome, given to me by a friend at Angostura, whose
prophecy on presenting it, that it would outlast ME, very nearly came
true. It served as a covering by night, and to keep a man warm and
comfortable when travelling in cold and wet weather no better garment
was ever made. I had a revolver and metal cartridge-box in my broad
leather belt, also a good hunting-knife with strong buckhorn handle and
a heavy blade about nine inches long. In the pocket of my cloak I had a
pretty silver tinder-box, and a match-box--to be mentioned again in this
narrative--and one or two other trifling objects; these I was determined
to keep until they could be kept no longer.

During the tedious interval of waiting on the Chunapay I was told a
flattering tale by the village Indians, which eventually caused me
to abandon the proposed journey to the Rio Negro. These Indians wore
necklets, like nearly all the Guayana savages; but one, I observed,
possessed a necklet unlike that of the others, which greatly aroused my
curiosity. It was made of thirteen gold plates, irregular in form, about
as broad as a man’s thumb-nail, and linked together with fibres. I was
allowed to examine it, and had no doubt that the pieces were of pure
gold, beaten flat by the savages. When questioned about it, they said
it was originally obtained from the Indians of Parahuari, and Parahuari,
they further said, was a mountainous country west of the Orinoco. Every
man and woman in that place, they assured me, had such a necklet. This
report inflamed my mind to such a degree that I could not rest by night
or day for dreaming golden dreams, and considering how to get to that
rich district, unknown to civilized men. The Indians gravely shook their
heads when I tried to persuade them to take me. They were far enough
from the Orinoco, and Parahuari was ten, perhaps fifteen, days’ journey
further on--a country unknown to them, where they had no relations.

In spite of difficulties and delays, however, and not without pain and
some perilous adventures, I succeeded at last in reaching the upper
Orinoco, and, eventually, in crossing to the other side. With my life
in my hand I struggled on westward through an unknown difficult country,
from Indian village to village, where at any moment I might have been
murdered with impunity for the sake of my few belongings. It is hard for
me to speak a good word for the Guayana savages; but I must now say this
of them, that they not only did me no harm when I was at their mercy
during this long journey, but they gave me shelter in their villages,
and fed me when I was hungry, and helped me on my way when I could make
no return. You must not, however, run away with the idea that there is
any sweetness in their disposition, any humane or benevolent instincts
such as are found among the civilized nations: far from it. I regard
them now, and, fortunately for me, I regarded them then, when, as I have
said, I was at their mercy, as beasts of prey, plus a cunning or low
kind of intelligence vastly greater than that of the brute; and, for
only morality, that respect for the rights of other members of the same
family, or tribe, without which even the rudest communities cannot hold
together. How, then, could I do this thing, and dwell and travel freely,
without receiving harm, among tribes that have no peace with and no
kindly feelings towards the stranger, in a district where the white
man is rarely or never seen? Because I knew them so well. Without that
knowledge, always available, and an extreme facility in acquiring new
dialects, which had increased by practice until it was almost like
intuition, I should have fared badly after leaving the Maquiritari
tribe. As it was, I had two or three very narrow escapes.

To return from this digression. I looked at last on the famous Parahuari
mountains, which, I was greatly surprised to find, were after all
nothing but hills, and not very high ones. This, however, did not
impress me. The very fact that Parahuari possessed no imposing feature
in its scenery seemed rather to prove that it must be rich in gold: how
else could its name and the fame of its treasures be familiar to people
dwelling so far away as the Cunucumana?

But there was no gold. I searched through the whole range, which was
about seven leagues long, and visited the villages, where I talked much
with the Indians, interrogating them, and they had no necklets of
gold, nor gold in any form; nor had they ever heard of its presence in
Parahuari or in any other place known to them.

The very last village where I spoke on the subject of my quest, albeit
now without hope, was about a league from the western extremity of the
range, in the midst of a high broken country of forest and savannah and
many swift streams; near one of these, called the Curicay, the village
stood, among low scattered trees--a large building, in which all the
people, numbering eighteen, passed most of their time when not hunting,
with two smaller buildings attached to it. The head, or chief, Runi by
name, was about fifty years old, a taciturn, finely formed, and somewhat
dignified savage, who was either of a sullen disposition or not well
pleased at the intrusion of a white man. And for a time I made no
attempt to conciliate him. What profit was there in it at all? Even
that light mask, which I had worn so long and with such good effect,
incommoded me now: I would cast it aside and be myself--silent and
sullen as my barbarous host. If any malignant purpose was taking form
in his mind, let it, and let him do his worst; for when failure first
stares a man in the face, it has so dark and repellent a look that not
anything that can be added can make him more miserable; nor has he any
apprehension. For weeks I had been searching with eager, feverish
eyes in every village, in every rocky crevice, in every noisy mountain
streamlet, for the glittering yellow dust I had travelled so far to
find. And now all my beautiful dreams--all the pleasure and power to
be--had vanished like a mere mirage on the savannah at noon.

It was a day of despair which I spent in this place, sitting all day
indoors, for it was raining hard, immersed in my own gloomy thoughts,
pretending to doze in my seat, and out of the narrow slits of my
half-closed eyes seeing the others, also sitting or moving about, like
shadows or people in a dream; and I cared nothing about them, and wished
not to seem friendly, even for the sake of the food they might offer me
by and by.

Towards evening the rain ceased; and rising up I went out a short
distance to the neighbouring stream, where I sat on a stone and, casting
off my sandals, laved my bruised feet in the cool running water. The
western half of the sky was blue again with that tender lucid blue
seen after rain, but the leaves still glittered with water, and the wet
trunks looked almost black under the green foliage. The rare loveliness
of the scene touched and lightened my heart. Away back in the east
the hills of Parahuari, with the level sun full on them, loomed with a
strange glory against the grey rainy clouds drawing off on that side,
and their new mystic beauty almost made me forget how these same hills
had wearied, and hurt, and mocked me. On that side, also to the north
and south, there was open forest, but to the west a different prospect
met the eye. Beyond the stream and the strip of verdure that fringed it,
and the few scattered dwarf trees growing near its banks, spread a brown
savannah sloping upwards to a long, low, rocky ridge, beyond which rose
a great solitary hill, or rather mountain, conical in form, and clothed
in forest almost to the summit. This was the mountain Ytaioa, the chief
landmark in that district. As the sun went down over the ridge, beyond
the savannah, the whole western sky changed to a delicate rose colour
that had the appearance of rose-coloured smoke blown there by some far
off-wind, and left suspended--a thin, brilliant veil showing through it
the distant sky beyond, blue and ethereal. Flocks of birds, a kind of
troupial, were flying past me overhead, flock succeeding flock, on their
way to their roosting-place, uttering as they flew a clear, bell-like
chirp; and there was something ethereal too in those drops of melodious
sound, which fell into my heart like raindrops falling into a pool to
mix their fresh heavenly water with the water of earth.

Doubtless into the turbid tarn of my heart some sacred drops had
fallen--from the passing birds, from that crimson disk which had now
dropped below the horizon, the darkening hills, the rose and blue of
infinite heaven, from the whole visible circle; and I felt purified
and had a strange sense and apprehension of a secret innocence and
spirituality in nature--a prescience of some bourn, incalculably distant
perhaps, to which we are all moving; of a time when the heavenly rain
shall have washed us clean from all spot and blemish. This unexpected
peace which I had found now seemed to me of infinitely greater value
than that yellow metal I had missed finding, with all its possibilities.
My wish now was to rest for a season at this spot, so remote and lovely
and peaceful, where I had experienced such unusual feelings and such a
blessed disillusionment.

This was the end of my second period in Guayana: the first had been
filled with that dream of a book to win me fame in my country, perhaps
even in Europe; the second, from the time of leaving the Queneveta
mountains, with the dream of boundless wealth--the old dream of gold
in this region that has drawn so many minds since the days of Francisco
Pizarro. But to remain I must propitiate Runi, sitting silent with
gloomy brows over there indoors; and he did not appear to me like one
that might be won with words, however flattering. It was clear to
me that the time had come to part with my one remaining valuable
trinket--the tinder-box of chased silver.

I returned to the house and, going in, seated myself on a log by the
fire, just opposite to my grim host, who was smoking and appeared not
to have moved since I left him. I made myself a cigarette, then drew out
the tinder-box, with its flint and steel attached to it by means of
two small silver chains. His eyes brightened a little as they curiously
watched my movements, and he pointed without speaking to the glowing
coals of fire at my feet. I shook my head, and striking the steel, sent
out a brilliant spray of sparks, then blew on the tinder and lit my
cigarette.

This done, instead of returning the box to my pocket I passed the chain
through the buttonhole of my cloak and let it dangle on my breast as
an ornament. When the cigarette was smoked, I cleared my throat in the
orthodox manner and fixed my eyes on Runi, who, on his part, made a
slight movement to indicate that he was ready to listen to what I had to
say.

My speech was long, lasting at least half an hour, delivered in
a profound silence; it was chiefly occupied with an account of my
wanderings in Guayana; and being little more than a catalogue of names
of all the places I had visited, and the tribes and chief or head men
with whom I had come in contact, I was able to speak continuously, and
so to hide my ignorance of a dialect which was still new to me.
The Guayana savage judges a man for his staying powers. To stand as
motionless as a bronze statue for one or two hours watching for a
bird; to sit or lie still for half a day; to endure pain, not seldom
self-inflicted, without wincing; and when delivering a speech to pour
it out in a copious stream, without pausing to take breath or hesitating
over a word--to be able to do all this is to prove yourself a man, an
equal, one to be respected and even made a friend of. What I really
wished to say to him was put in a few words at the conclusion of my
well-nigh meaningless oration. Everywhere, I said, I had been the
Indian’s friend, and I wished to be his friend, to live with him at
Parahuari, even as I had lived with other chiefs and heads of villages
and families; to be looked on by him, as these others had looked on me,
not as a stranger or a white man, but as a friend, a brother, an Indian.

I ceased speaking, and there was a slight murmurous sound in the room,
as of wind long pent up in many lungs suddenly exhaled; while Runi,
still unmoved, emitted a low grunt. Then I rose, and detaching the
silver ornament from my cloak, presented it to him. He accepted it; not
very graciously, as a stranger to these people might have imagined; but
I was satisfied, feeling sure that I had made a favourable impression.
After a little he handed the box to the person sitting next to him, who
examined it and passed it on to a third, and in this way it went round
and came back once more to Runi. Then he called for a drink. There
happened to be a store of casserie in the house; probably the women had
been busy for some days past in making it, little thinking that it was
destined to be prematurely consumed. A large jarful was produced; Runi
politely quaffed the first cup; I followed; then the others; and the
women drank also, a woman taking about one cupful to a man’s three.
Runi and I, however, drank the most, for we had our positions as the two
principal personages there to maintain. Tongues were loosened now; for
the alcohol, small as the quantity contained in this mild liquor is, had
begun to tell on our brains. I had not their pottle-shaped stomach, made
to hold unlimited quantities of meat and drink; but I was determined on
this most important occasion not to deserve my host’s contempt--to be
compared, perhaps, to the small bird that delicately picks up six drops
of water in its bill and is satisfied. I would measure my strength
against his, and if necessary drink myself into a state of
insensibility.

At last I was scarcely able to stand on my legs. But even the seasoned
old savage was affected by this time. In vino veritas, said the
ancients; and the principle holds good where there is no vinum, but only
mild casserie. Runi now informed me that he had once known a white man,
that he was a bad man, which had caused him to say that all white men
were bad; even as David, still more sweepingly, had proclaimed that all
men were liars. Now he found that it was not so, that I was a good man.
His friendliness increased with intoxication. He presented me with a
curious little tinder-box, made from the conical tail of an armadillo,
hollowed out, and provided with a wooden stopper--this to be used in
place of the box I had deprived myself of. He also furnished me with a
grass hammock, and had it hung up there and then, so that I could lie
down when inclined. There was nothing he would not do for me. And at
last, when many more cups had been emptied, and a third or fourth jar
brought out, he began to unburthen his heart of its dark and dangerous
secrets. He shed tears--for the “man without a tear” dwells not in the
woods of Guayana: tears for those who had been treacherously slain long
years ago; for his father, who had been killed by Tripica, the father
of Managa, who was still above ground. But let him and all his people
beware of Runi. He had spilt their blood before, he had fed the fox and
vulture with their flesh, and would never rest while Managa lived with
his people at Uritay--the five hills of Uritay, which were two days’
journey from Parahuari. While thus talking of his old enemy he lashed
himself into a kind of frenzy, smiting his chest and gnashing his teeth;
and finally seizing a spear, he buried its point deep into the clay
floor, only to wrench it out and strike it into the earth again and
again, to show how he would serve Managa, and any one of Managa’s people
he might meet with--man, woman, or child. Then he staggered out from the
door to flourish his spear; and looking to the north-west, he shouted
aloud to Managa to come and slay his people and burn down his house, as
he had so often threatened to do.

“Let him come! Let Managa come!” I cried, staggering out after him. “I
am your friend, your brother; I have no spear and no arrows, but I have
this--this!” And here I drew out and flourished my revolver. “Where is
Managa?” I continued. “Where are the hills of Uritay?” He pointed to
a star low down in the south-west. “Then,” I shouted, “let this bullet
find Managa, sitting by the fire among his people, and let him fall and
pour out his blood on the ground!” And with that I discharged my pistol
in the direction he had pointed to. A scream of terror burst out from
the women and children, while Runi at my side, in an access of fierce
delight and admiration, turned and embraced me. It was the first and
last embrace I ever suffered from a naked male savage, and although
this did not seem a time for fastidious feelings, to be hugged to his
sweltering body was an unpleasant experience.

More cups of casserie followed this outburst; and at last, unable to
keep it up any longer, I staggered to my hammock; but being unable to
get into it, Runi, overflowing with kindness, came to my assistance,
whereupon we fell and rolled together on the floor. Finally I was raised
by the others and tumbled into my swinging bed, and fell at once into a
deep, dreamless sleep, from which I did not awake until after sunrise on
the following morning.



CHAPTER II

It is fortunate that casserie is manufactured by an extremely slow,
laborious process, since the women, who are the drink-makers, in the
first place have to reduce the material (cassava bread) to a pulp by
means of their own molars, after which it is watered down and put away
in troughs to ferment. Great is the diligence of these willing slaves;
but, work how they will, they can only satisfy their lords’ love of
a big drink at long intervals. Such a function as that at which I had
assisted is therefore the result of much patient mastication and silent
fermentation--the delicate flower of a plant that has been a long time
growing.

Having now established myself as one of the family, at the cost of some
disagreeable sensations and a pang or two of self-disgust, I resolved
to let nothing further trouble me at Parahuari, but to live the
easy, careless life of the idle man, joining in hunting and fishing
expeditions when in the mood; at other times enjoying existence in my
own way, apart from my fellows, conversing with wild nature in that
solitary place. Besides Runi, there were, in our little community, two
oldish men, his cousins I believe, who had wives and grown-up
children. Another family consisted of Piake, Runi’s nephew, his brother
Kua-ko--about whom there will be much to say--and a sister Oalava. Piake
had a wife and two children; Kua-ko was unmarried and about nineteen or
twenty years old; Oalava was the youngest of the three. Last of all,
who should perhaps have been first, was Runi’s mother, called Cla-cla,
probably in imitation of the cry of some bird, for in these latitudes a
person is rarely, perhaps never, called by his or her real name, which
is a secret jealously preserved, even from near relations. I believe
that Cla-cla herself was the only living being who knew the name her
parents had bestowed on her at birth. She was a very old woman, spare
in figure, brown as old sun-baked leather, her face written over with
innumerable wrinkles, and her long coarse hair perfectly white; yet she
was exceedingly active, and seemed to do more work than any other woman
in the community; more than that, when the day’s toil was over and
nothing remained for the others to do, then Cla-cla’s night work would
begin; and this was to talk all the others, or at all events all the
men, to sleep. She was like a self-regulating machine, and punctually
every evening, when the door was closed, and the night fire made up, and
every man in his hammock, she would set herself going, telling the most
interminable stories, until the last listener was fast asleep; later
in the night, if any man woke with a snort or grunt, off she would go
again, taking up the thread of the tale where she had dropped it.

Old Cla-cla amused me very much, by night and day, and I seldom tired of
watching her owlish countenance as she sat by the fire, never allowing
it to sink low for want of fuel; always studying the pot when it was on
to simmer, and at the same time attending to the movements of the others
about her, ready at a moment’s notice to give assistance or to dart out
on a stray chicken or refractory child.

So much did she amuse me, although without intending it, that I
thought it would be only fair, in my turn, to do something for her
entertainment. I was engaged one day in shaping a wooden foil with my
knife, whistling and singing snatches of old melodies at my work,
when all at once I caught sight of the ancient dame looking greatly
delighted, chuckling internally, nodding her head, and keeping time
with her hands. Evidently she was able to appreciate a style of music
superior to that of the aboriginals, and forthwith I abandoned my foils
for the time and set about the manufacture of a guitar, which cost
me much labour and brought out more ingenuity than I had ever thought
myself capable of. To reduce the wood to the right thinness, then to
bend and fasten it with wooden pegs and with gums, to add the arm,
frets, keys, and finally the catgut strings--those of another kind being
out of the question--kept me busy for some days. When completed it was
a rude instrument, scarcely tunable; nevertheless when I smote the
strings, playing lively music, or accompanied myself in singing, I found
that it was a great success, and so was as much pleased with my own
performance as if I had had the most perfect guitar ever made in old
Spain. I also skipped about the floor, strum-strumming at the same time,
instructing them in the most lively dances of the whites, in which the
feet must be as nimble as the player’s fingers. It is true that these
exhibitions were always witnessed by the adults with a profound gravity,
which would have disheartened a stranger to their ways. They were a set
of hollow bronze statues that looked at me, but I knew that the living
animals inside of them were tickled at my singing, strumming, and
pirouetting. Cla-cla was, however, an exception, and encouraged me not
infrequently by emitting a sound, half cackle and half screech, by
way of laughter; for she had come to her second childhood, or, at all
events, had dropped the stolid mask which the young Guayana savage, in
imitation of his elders, adjusts to his face at about the age of twelve,
to wear it thereafter all his life long, or only to drop it occasionally
when very drunk. The youngsters also openly manifested their pleasure,
although, as a rule, they try to restrain their feelings in the presence
of grown-up people, and with them I became a great favourite.

By and by I returned to my foil-making, and gave them fencing lessons,
and sometimes invited two or three of the biggest boys to attack me
simultaneously, just to show how easily I could disarm and kill them.
This practice excited some interest in Kua-ko, who had a little more of
curiosity and geniality and less of the put-on dignity of the others,
and with him I became most intimate. Fencing with Kua-ko was highly
amusing: no sooner was he in position, foil in hand, than all my
instructions were thrown to the winds, and he would charge and attack me
in his own barbarous manner, with the result that I would send his foil
spinning a dozen yards away, while he, struck motionless, would gaze
after it in open-mouthed astonishment.

Three weeks had passed by not unpleasantly when, one morning, I took
it into my head to walk by myself across that somewhat sterile savannah
west of the village and stream, which ended, as I have said, in a long,
low, stony ridge. From the village there was nothing to attract the
eye in that direction; but I wished to get a better view of that great
solitary hill or mountain of Ytaioa, and of the cloud-like summits
beyond it in the distance. From the stream the ground rose in a gradual
slope, and the highest part of the ridge for which I made was about
two miles from the starting-point--a parched brown plain, with nothing
growing on it but scattered tussocks of sere hair-like grass.

When I reached the top and could see the country beyond, I was agreeably
disappointed at the discovery that the sterile ground extended only
about a mile and a quarter on the further side, and was succeeded by a
forest--a very inviting patch of woodland covering five or six square
miles, occupying a kind of oblong basin, extending from the foot of
Ytaioa on the north to a low range of rocky hills on the south. From the
wooded basin long narrow strips of forest ran out in various directions
like the arms of an octopus, one pair embracing the slopes of Ytaioa,
another much broader belt extending along a valley which cut through the
ridge of hills on the south side at right angles and was lost to sight
beyond; far away in the west and south and north distant mountains
appeared, not in regular ranges, but in groups or singly, or looking
like blue banked-up clouds on the horizon.

Glad at having discovered the existence of this forest so near home, and
wondering why my Indian friends had never taken me to it nor ever went
out on that side, I set forth with a light heart to explore it for
myself, regretting only that I was without a proper weapon for procuring
game. The walk from the ridge over the savannah was easy, as the barren,
stony ground sloped downwards the whole way. The outer part of the wood
on my side was very open, composed in most part of dwarf trees that grow
on stony soil, and scattered thorny bushes bearing a yellow pea-shaped
blossom. Presently I came to thicker wood, where the trees were much
taller and in greater variety; and after this came another sterile
strip, like that on the edge of the wood where stone cropped out from
the ground and nothing grew except the yellow-flowered thorn bushes.
Passing this sterile ribbon, which seemed to extend to a considerable
distance north and south, and was fifty to a hundred yards wide, the
forest again became dense and the trees large, with much undergrowth in
places obstructing the view and making progress difficult.

I spent several hours in this wild paradise, which was so much more
delightful than the extensive gloomier forests I had so often penetrated
in Guayana; for here, if the trees did not attain to such majestic
proportions, the variety of vegetable forms was even greater; as far
as I went it was nowhere dark under the trees, and the number of lovely
parasites everywhere illustrated the kindly influence of light and air.
Even where the trees were largest the sunshine penetrated, subdued by
the foliage to exquisite greenish-golden tints, filling the wide lower
spaces with tender half-lights, and faint blue-and-gray shadows. Lying
on my back and gazing up, I felt reluctant to rise and renew my ramble.
For what a roof was that above my head! Roof I call it, just as the
poets in their poverty sometimes describe the infinite ethereal sky by
that word; but it was no more roof-like and hindering to the soaring
spirit than the higher clouds that float in changing forms and tints,
and like the foliage chasten the intolerable noonday beams. How far
above me seemed that leafy cloudland into which I gazed! Nature, we
know, first taught the architect to produce by long colonnades the
illusion of distance; but the light-excluding roof prevents him from
getting the same effect above. Here Nature is unapproachable with her
green, airy canopy, a sun-impregnated cloud--cloud above cloud; and
though the highest may be unreached by the eye, the beams yet filter
through, illuming the wide spaces beneath--chamber succeeded by chamber,
each with its own special lights and shadows. Far above me, but not
nearly so far as it seemed, the tender gloom of one such chamber or
space is traversed now by a golden shaft of light falling through some
break in the upper foliage, giving a strange glory to everything it
touches--projecting leaves, and beard-like tuft of moss, and snaky
bush-rope. And in the most open part of that most open space, suspended
on nothing to the eye, the shaft reveals a tangle of shining silver
threads--the web of some large tree-spider. These seemingly distant yet
distinctly visible threads serve to remind me that the human artist is
only able to get his horizontal distance by a monotonous reduplication
of pillar and arch, placed at regular intervals, and that the least
departure from this order would destroy the effect. But Nature produces
her effects at random, and seems only to increase the beautiful illusion
by that infinite variety of decoration in which she revels, binding tree
to tree in a tangle of anaconda-like lianas, and dwindling down from
these huge cables to airy webs and hair-like fibres that vibrate to the
wind of the passing insect’s wing.

Thus in idleness, with such thoughts for company, I spent my time, glad
that no human being, savage or civilized, was with me. It was better to
be alone to listen to the monkeys that chattered without offending; to
watch them occupied with the unserious business of their lives. With
that luxuriant tropical nature, its green clouds and illusive aerial
spaces, full of mystery, they harmonized well in language, appearance,
and motions--mountebank angels, living their fantastic lives far above
earth in a half-way heaven of their own.

I saw more monkeys on that morning than I usually saw in the course of
a week’s rambling. And other animals were seen; I particularly remember
two accouries I startled, that after rushing away a few yards stopped
and stood peering back at me as if not knowing whether to regard me as
friend or enemy. Birds, too, were strangely abundant; and altogether
this struck me as being the richest hunting-ground I had seen, and it
astonished me to think that the Indians of the village did not appear to
visit it.

On my return in the afternoon I gave an enthusiastic account of my day’s
ramble, speaking not of the things that had moved my soul, but only of
those which move the Guayana Indian’s soul--the animal food he craves,
and which, one would imagine, Nature would prefer him to do without, so
hard he finds it to wrest a sufficiency from her. To my surprise they
shook their heads and looked troubled at what I said; and finally my
host informed me that the wood I had been in was a dangerous place; that
if they went there to hunt, a great injury would be done to them; and he
finished by advising me not to visit it again.

I began to understand from their looks and the old man’s vague words
that their fear of the wood was superstitious. If dangerous creatures
had existed there--tigers, or camoodis, or solitary murderous
savages--they would have said so; but when I pressed them with questions
they could only repeat that “something bad” existed in the place, that
animals were abundant there because no Indian who valued his life dared
venture into it. I replied that unless they gave me some more definite
information I should certainly go again and put myself in the way of the
danger they feared.

My reckless courage, as they considered it, surprised them; but they had
already begun to find out that their superstitions had no effect on me,
that I listened to them as to stories invented to amuse a child, and for
the moment they made no further attempt to dissuade me.

Next day I returned to the forest of evil report, which had now a
new and even greater charm--the fascination of the unknown and the
mysterious; still, the warning I had received made me distrustful and
cautious at first, for I could not help thinking about it. When we
consider how much of their life is passed in the woods, which become
as familiar to them as the streets of our native town to us, it seems
almost incredible that these savages have a superstitious fear of all
forests, fearing them as much, even in the bright light of day, as a
nervous child with memory filled with ghost-stories fears a dark room.
But, like the child in the dark room, they fear the forest only when
alone in it, and for this reason always hunt in couples or parties.
What, then, prevented them from visiting this particular wood, which
offered so tempting a harvest? The question troubled me not a little; at
the same time I was ashamed of the feeling, and fought against it; and
in the end I made my way to the same sequestered spot where I had rested
so long on my previous visit.

In this place I witnessed a new thing and had a strange experience.
Sitting on the ground in the shade of a large tree, I began to hear a
confused noise as of a coming tempest of wind mixed with shrill calls
and cries. Nearer and nearer it came, and at last a multitude of birds
of many kinds, but mostly small, appeared in sight swarming through the
trees, some running on the trunks and larger branches, others flitting
through the foliage, and many keeping on the wing, now hovering and
now darting this way or that. They were all busily searching for and
pursuing the insects, moving on at the same time, and in a very few
minutes they had finished examining the trees near me and were gone; but
not satisfied with what I had witnessed, I jumped up and rushed after
the flock to keep it in sight. All my caution and all recollection of
what the Indians had said was now forgot, so great was my interest in
this bird-army; but as they moved on without pause, they quickly left me
behind, and presently my career was stopped by an impenetrable tangle of
bushes, vines, and roots of large trees extending like huge cables
along the ground. In the midst of this leafy labyrinth I sat down on a
projecting root to cool my blood before attempting to make my way back
to my former position. After that tempest of motion and confused noises
the silence of the forest seemed very profound; but before I had
been resting many moments it was broken by a low strain of exquisite
bird-melody, wonderfully pure and expressive, unlike any musical sound I
had ever heard before. It seemed to issue from a thick cluster of broad
leaves of a creeper only a few yards from where I sat. With my eyes
fixed on this green hiding-place I waited with suspended breath for its
repetition, wondering whether any civilized being had ever listened to
such a strain before. Surely not, I thought, else the fame of so divine
a melody would long ago have been noised abroad. I thought of the
rialejo, the celebrated organbird or flute-bird, and of the various ways
in which hearers are affected by it. To some its warbling is like the
sound of a beautiful mysterious instrument, while to others it seems
like the singing of a blithe-hearted child with a highly melodious
voice. I had often heard and listened with delight to the singing of the
rialejo in the Guayana forests, but this song, or musical phrase, was
utterly unlike it in character. It was pure, more expressive, softer--so
low that at a distance of forty yards I could hardly have heard it.
But its greatest charm was its resemblance to the human voice--a voice
purified and brightened to something almost angelic. Imagine, then, my
impatience as I sat there straining my sense, my deep disappointment
when it was not repeated! I rose at length very reluctantly and slowly
began making my way back; but when I had progressed about thirty yards,
again the sweet voice sounded just behind me, and turning quickly, I
stood still and waited. The same voice, but not the same song--not
the same phrase; the notes were different, more varied and rapidly
enunciated, as if the singer had been more excited. The blood rushed to
my heart as I listened; my nerves tingled with a strange new delight,
the rapture produced by such music heightened by a sense of mystery.
Before many moments I heard it again, not rapid now, but a soft
warbling, lower than at first, infinitely sweet and tender, sinking to
lisping sounds that soon ceased to be audible; the whole having lasted
as long as it would take me to repeat a sentence of a dozen words. This
seemed the singer’s farewell to me, for I waited and listened in vain to
hear it repeated; and after getting back to the starting-point I sat for
upwards of an hour, still hoping to hear it once more!

The weltering sun at length compelled me to quit the wood, but not
before I had resolved to return the next morning and seek for the spot
where I had met with so enchanting an experience. After crossing the
sterile belt I have mentioned within the wood, and just before I came to
the open outer edge where the stunted trees and bushes die away on the
border of the savannah, what was my delight and astonishment at hearing
the mysterious melody once more! It seemed to issue from a clump of
bushes close by; but by this time I had come to the conclusion
that there was a ventriloquism in this woodland voice which made it
impossible for me to determine its exact direction. Of one thing I was,
however, now quite convinced, and that was that the singer had been
following me all the time. Again and again as I stood there listening it
sounded, now so faint and apparently far off as to be scarcely audible;
then all at once it would ring out bright and clear within a few yards
of me, as if the shy little thing had suddenly grown bold; but, far or
near, the vocalist remained invisible, and at length the tantalizing
melody ceased altogether.



CHAPTER III

I was not disappointed on my next visit to the forest, nor on several
succeeding visits; and this seemed to show that if I was right in
believing that these strange, melodious utterances proceeded from one
individual, then the bird or being, although still refusing to show
itself, was always on the watch for my appearance and followed me
wherever I went. This thought only served to increase my curiosity; I
was constantly pondering over the subject, and at last concluded that it
would be best to induce one of the Indians to go with me to the wood on
the chance of his being able to explain the mystery.

One of the treasures I had managed to preserve in my sojourn with these
children of nature, who were always anxious to become possessors of my
belongings, was a small prettily fashioned metal match-box, opening
with a spring. Remembering that Kua-ko, among others, had looked at this
trifle with covetous eyes--the covetous way in which they all looked at
it had given it a fictitious value in my own--I tried to bribe him with
the offer of it to accompany me to my favourite haunt. The brave young
hunter refused again and again; but on each occasion he offered to
perform some other service or to give me something in exchange for the
box. At last I told him that I would give it to the first person who
should accompany me, and fearing that someone would be found valiant
enough to win the prize, he at length plucked up a spirit, and on the
next day, seeing me going out for a walk, he all at once offered to go
with me. He cunningly tried to get the box before starting--his cunning,
poor youth, was not very deep! I told him that the forest we were about
to visit abounded with plants and birds unlike any I had seen elsewhere,
that I wished to learn their names and everything about them, and
that when I had got the required information the box would be his--not
sooner. Finally we started, he, as usual, armed with his zabatana, with
which, I imagined, he would procure more game than usually fell to his
little poisoned arrows. When we reached the wood I could see that he was
ill at ease: nothing would persuade him to go into the deeper parts;
and even where it was very open and light he was constantly gazing
into bushes and shadowy places, as if expecting to see some frightful
creature lying in wait for him. This behaviour might have had a
disquieting effect on me had I not been thoroughly convinced that his
fears were purely superstitious and that there could be no dangerous
animal in a spot I was accustomed to walk in every day. My plan was
to ramble about with an unconcerned air, occasionally pointing out an
uncommon tree or shrub or vine, or calling his attention to a distant
bird-cry and asking the bird’s name, in the hope that the mysterious
voice would make itself heard and that he would be able to give me some
explanation of it. But for upwards of two hours we moved about, hearing
nothing except the usual bird voices, and during all that time he never
stirred a yard from my side nor made an attempt to capture anything. At
length we sat down under a tree, in an open spot close to the border of
the wood. He sat down very reluctantly, and seemed more troubled in
his mind than ever, keeping his eyes continually roving about, while he
listened intently to every sound. The sounds were not few, owing to the
abundance of animal and especially of bird life in this favoured spot.
I began to question my companion as to some of the cries we heard. There
were notes and cries familiar to me as the crowing of the cock--parrot
screams and yelping of toucans, the distant wailing calls of maam and
duraquara; and shrill laughter-like notes of the large tree-climber as
it passed from tree to tree; the quick whistle of cotingas; and strange
throbbing and thrilling sounds, as of pygmies beating on metallic drums,
of the skulking pitta-thrushes; and with these mingled other notes
less well known. One came from the treetops, where it was perpetually
wandering amid the foliage a low note, repeated at intervals of a few
seconds, so thin and mournful and full of mystery that I half expected
to hear that it proceeded from the restless ghost of some dead bird.
But no; he only said it was uttered by a “little bird”--too little
presumably to have a name. From the foliage of a neighbouring tree came
a few tinkling chirps, as of a small mandolin, two or three strings of
which had been carelessly struck by the player. He said that it came
from a small green frog that lived in trees; and in this way my rude
Indian--vexed perhaps at being asked such trivial questions--brushed
away the pretty fantasies my mind had woven in the woodland solitude.
For I often listened to this tinkling music, and it had suggested the
idea that the place was frequented by a tribe of fairy-like troubadour
monkeys, and that if I could only be quick-sighted enough I might one
day be able to detect the minstrel sitting, in a green tunic perhaps,
cross-legged on some high, swaying bough, carelessly touching his
mandolin, suspended from his neck by a yellow ribbon.

By and by a bird came with low, swift flight, its great tail spread open
fan-wise, and perched itself on an exposed bough not thirty yards from
us. It was all of a chestnut-red colour, long-bodied, in size like a big
pigeon. Its actions showed that its curiosity had been greatly excited,
for it jerked from side to side, eyeing us first with one eye, then the
other, while its long tail rose and fell in a measured way.

“Look, Kua-ko,” I said in a whisper, “there is a bird for you to kill.”

But he only shook his head, still watchful.

“Give me the blow-pipe, then,” I said, with a laugh, putting out my hand
to take it. But he refused to let me take it, knowing that it would only
be an arrow wasted if I attempted to shoot anything.

As I persisted in telling him to kill the bird, he at last bent his lips
near me and said in a half-whisper, as if fearful of being overheard: “I
can kill nothing here. If I shot at the bird, the daughter of the Didi
would catch the dart in her hand and throw it back and hit me here,”
 touching his breast just over his heart.

I laughed again, saying to myself, with some amusement, that Kua-ko was
not such a bad companion after all--that he was not without imagination.
But in spite of my laughter his words roused my interest and suggested
the idea that the voice I was curious about had been heard by the
Indians and was as great a mystery to them as to me; since, not being
like that of any creature known to them, it would be attributed by their
superstitious minds to one of the numerous demons or semi-human monsters
inhabiting every forest, stream, and mountain; and fear of it would
drive them from the wood. In this case, judging from my companion’s
words, they had varied the form of the superstition somewhat, inventing
a daughter of a water-spirit to be afraid of. My thought was that if
their keen, practiced eyes had never been able to see this flitting
woodland creature with a musical soul, it was not likely that I would
succeed in my quest.

I began to question him, but he now appeared less inclined to talk and
more frightened than ever, and each time I attempted to speak he imposed
silence, with a quick gesture of alarm, while he continued to stare
about him with dilated eyes. All at once he sprang to his feet as
if overcome with terror and started running at full speed. His fear
infected me, and, springing up, I followed as fast as I could, but he
was far ahead of me, running for dear life; and before I had gone forty
yards my feet were caught in a creeper trailing along the surface, and I
measured my length on the ground. The sudden, violent shock almost took
away my senses for a moment, but when I jumped up and stared round to
see no unspeakable monster--Curupita or other--rushing on to slay and
devour me there and then, I began to feel ashamed of my cowardice; and
in the end I turned and walked back to the spot I had just quitted and
sat down once more. I even tried to hum a tune, just to prove to myself
that I had completely recovered from the panic caught from the miserable
Indian; but it is never possible in such cases to get back one’s
serenity immediately, and a vague suspicion continued to trouble me for
a time. After sitting there for half an hour or so, listening to distant
bird-sounds, I began to recover my old confidence, and even to feel
inclined to penetrate further into the wood. All at once, making me
almost jump, so sudden it was, so much nearer and louder than I had
ever heard it before, the mysterious melody began. Unmistakably it was
uttered by the same being heard on former occasions; but today it was
different in character. The utterance was far more rapid, with fewer
silent intervals, and it had none of the usual tenderness in it, nor
ever once sunk to that low, whisper-like talking which had seemed to me
as if the spirit of the wind had breathed its low sighs in syllables
and speech. Now it was not only loud, rapid, and continuous, but, while
still musical, there was an incisiveness in it, a sharp ring as of
resentment, which made it strike painfully on the sense.

The impression of an intelligent unhuman being addressing me in anger
took so firm a hold on my mind that the old fear returned, and, rising,
I began to walk rapidly away, intending to escape from the wood. The
voice continued violently rating me, as it seemed to my mind, moving
with me, which caused me to accelerate my steps; and very soon I would
have broken into a run, when its character began to change again. There
were pauses now, intervals of silence, long or short, and after each one
the voice came to my ear with a more subdued and dulcet sound--more of
that melting, flute-like quality it had possessed at other times; and
this softness of tone, coupled with the talking-like form of utterance,
gave me the idea of a being no longer incensed, addressing me now in a
peaceable spirit, reasoning away my unworthy tremors, and imploring me
to remain with it in the wood. Strange as this voice without a body was,
and always productive of a slightly uncomfortable feeling on account of
its mystery, it seemed impossible to doubt that it came to me now in
a spirit of pure friendliness; and when I had recovered my composure I
found a new delight in listening to it--all the greater because of the
fear so lately experienced, and of its seeming intelligence. For the
third time I reseated myself on the same spot, and at intervals the
voice talked to me there for some time and, to my fancy, expressed
satisfaction and pleasure at my presence. But later, without losing its
friendly tone, it changed again. It seemed to move away and to be thrown
back from a considerable distance; and, at long intervals, it would
approach me again with a new sound, which I began to interpret as of
command, or entreaty. Was it, I asked myself, inviting me to follow? And
if I obeyed, to what delightful discoveries or frightful dangers might
it lead? My curiosity together with the belief that the being--I called
it being, not bird, now--was friendly to me, overcame all timidity, and
I rose and walked at random towards the interior of the wood. Very soon
I had no doubt left that the being had desired me to follow; for there
was now a new note of gladness in its voice, and it continued near me
as I walked, at intervals approaching me so closely as to set me staring
into the surrounding shadowy places like poor scared Kua-ko.

On this occasion, too, I began to have a new fancy, for fancy or
illusion I was determined to regard it, that some swift-footed being was
treading the ground near me; that I occasionally caught the faint rustle
of a light footstep, and detected a motion in leaves and fronds and
thread-like stems of creepers hanging near the surface, as if some
passing body had touched and made them tremble; and once or twice that
I even had a glimpse of a grey, misty object moving at no great distance
in the deeper shadows.

Led by this wandering tricksy being, I came to a spot where the trees
were very large and the damp dark ground almost free from undergrowth;
and here the voice ceased to be heard. After patiently waiting and
listening for some time, I began to look about me with a slight feeling
of apprehension. It was still about two hours before sunset; only
in this place the shade of the vast trees made a perpetual twilight:
moreover, it was strangely silent here, the few bird-cries that reached
me coming from a long distance. I had flattered myself that the voice
had become to some extent intelligible to me: its outburst of anger
caused no doubt by my cowardly flight after the Indian; then its
recovered friendliness, which had induced me to return; and finally its
desire to be followed. Now that it had led me to this place of shadow
and profound silence and had ceased to speak and to lead, I could not
help thinking that this was my goal, that I had been brought to this
spot with a purpose, that in this wild and solitary retreat some
tremendous adventure was about to befall me.

As the silence continued unbroken, there was time to dwell on this
thought. I gazed before me and listened intently, scarcely breathing,
until the suspense became painful--too painful at last, and I turned and
took a step with the idea of going back to the border of the wood, when
close by, clear as a silver bell, sounded the voice once more, but only
for a moment--two or three syllables in response to my movement, then it
was silent again.

Once more I was standing still, as if in obedience to a command, in the
same state of suspense; and whether the change was real or only imagined
I know not, but the silence every minute grew more profound and the
gloom deeper. Imaginary terrors began to assail me. Ancient fables of
men allured by beautiful forms and melodious voices to destruction all
at once acquired a fearful significance. I recalled some of the Indian
beliefs, especially that of the mis-shapen, man-devouring monster who is
said to beguile his victims into the dark forest by mimicking the human
voice--the voice sometimes of a woman in distress--or by singing some
strange and beautiful melody. I grew almost afraid to look round lest I
should catch sight of him stealing towards me on his huge feet with toes
pointing backwards, his mouth snarling horribly to display his great
green fangs. It was distressing to have such fancies in this wild,
solitary spot--hateful to feel their power over me when I knew that they
were nothing but fancies and creations of the savage mind. But if these
supernatural beings had no existence, there were other monsters, only
too real, in these woods which it would be dreadful to encounter alone
and unarmed, since against such adversaries a revolver would be as
ineffectual as a popgun. Some huge camoodi, able to crush my bones like
brittle twigs in its constricting coils, might lurk in these shadows,
and approach me stealthily, unseen in its dark colour on the dark
ground. Or some jaguar or black tiger might steal towards me, masked by
a bush or tree-trunk, to spring upon me unawares. Or, worse still,
this way might suddenly come a pack of those swift-footed, unspeakably
terrible hunting-leopards, from which every living thing in the forest
flies with shrieks of consternation or else falls paralysed in their
path to be instantly torn to pieces and devoured.

A slight rustling sound in the foliage above me made me start and
cast up my eyes. High up, where a pale gleam of tempered sunlight fell
through the leaves, a grotesque human-like face, black as ebony and
adorned with a great red beard, appeared staring down upon me. In
another moment it was gone. It was only a large araguato, or howling
monkey, but I was so unnerved that I could not get rid of the idea that
it was something more than a monkey. Once more I moved, and again, the
instant I moved my foot, clear, and keen, and imperative, sounded the
voice! It was no longer possible to doubt its meaning. It commanded me
to stand still--to wait--to watch--to listen! Had it cried “Listen! Do
not move!” I could not have understood it better. Trying as the suspense
was, I now felt powerless to escape. Something very terrible, I felt
convinced, was about to happen, either to destroy or to release me from
the spell that held me.

And while I stood thus rooted to the ground, the sweat standing in large
drops on my forehead, all at once close to me sounded a cry, fine and
clear at first, and rising at the end to a shriek so loud, piercing, and
unearthly in character that the blood seemed to freeze in my veins,
and a despairing cry to heaven escaped my lips; then, before that long
shriek expired, a mighty chorus of thunderous voices burst forth around
me; and in this awful tempest of sound I trembled like a leaf; and the
leaves on the trees were agitated as if by a high wind, and the earth
itself seemed to shake beneath my feet. Indescribably horrible were my
sensations at that moment; I was deafened, and would possibly have been
maddened had I not, as by a miracle, chanced to see a large araguato
on a branch overhead, roaring with open mouth and inflated throat and
chest.

It was simply a concert of howling monkeys that had so terrified me! But
my extreme fear was not strange in the circumstances; since everything
that had led up to the display--the gloom and silence, the period of
suspense, and my heated imagination--had raised my mind to the highest
degree of excitement and expectancy. I had rightly conjectured, no
doubt, that my unseen guide had led me to that spot for a purpose;
and the purpose had been to set me in the midst of a congregation of
araguatos to enable me for the first time fully to appreciate their
unparalleled vocal powers. I had always heard them at a distance; here
they were gathered in scores, possibly hundreds--the whole araguato
population of the forest, I should think--close to me; and it may give
some faint conception of the tremendous power and awful character of
the sound thus produced by their combined voices when I say that this
animal--miscalled “howler” in English--would outroar the mightiest lion
that ever woke the echoes of an African wilderness.

This roaring concert, which lasted three or four minutes, having ended,
I lingered a few minutes longer on the spot, and not hearing the voice
again, went back to the edge of the wood, and then started on my way
back to the village.



CHAPTER IV

Perhaps I was not capable of thinking quite coherently on what had just
happened until I was once more fairly outside of the forest shadows--out
in that clear open daylight, where things seem what they are, and
imagination, like a juggler detected and laughed at, hastily takes
itself out of the way. As I walked homewards I paused midway on the
barren ridge to gaze back on the scene I had left, and then the recent
adventure began to take a semi-ludicrous aspect in my mind. All that
circumstance of preparation, that mysterious prelude to something
unheard of, unimaginable, surpassing all fables ancient and modern, and
all tragedies--to end at last in a concert of howling monkeys! Certainly
the concert was very grand--indeed, one of the most astounding in
nature---but still--I sat down on a stone and laughed freely.

The sun was sinking behind the forest, its broad red disk still showing
through the topmost leaves, and the higher part of the foliage was of
a luminous green, like green flame, throwing off flakes of quivering,
fiery light, but lower down the trees were in profound shadow.

I felt very light-hearted while I gazed on this scene, for how pleasant
it was just now to think of the strange experience I had passed
through--to think that I had come safely out of it, that no human
eye had witnessed my weakness, and that the mystery existed still to
fascinate me! For, ludicrous as the denouement now looked, the cause of
all, the voice itself, was a thing to marvel at more than ever. That it
proceeded from an intelligent being I was firmly convinced; and although
too materialistic in my way of thinking to admit for a moment that it
was a supernatural being, I still felt that there was something more
than I had at first imagined in Kua-ko’s speech about a daughter of the
Didi. That the Indians knew a great deal about the mysterious voice, and
had held it in great fear, seemed evident. But they were savages, with
ways that were not mine; and however friendly they might be towards one
of a superior race, there was always in their relations with him a
low cunning, prompted partly by suspicion, underlying their words and
actions. For the white man to put himself mentally on their level is
not more impossible than for these aborigines to be perfectly open, as
children are, towards the white. Whatever subject the stranger within
their gates exhibits an interest in, that they will be reticent about;
and their reticence, which conceals itself under easily invented lies
or an affected stupidity, invariably increases with his desire for
information. It was plain to them that some very unusual interest took
me to the wood; consequently I could not expect that they would tell
me anything they might know to enlighten me about the matter; and I
concluded that Kua-ko’s words about the daughter of the Didi, and what
she would do if he blew an arrow at a bird, had accidentally escaped
him in a moment of excitement. Nothing, therefore, was to be gained
by questioning them, or, at all events, by telling them how much
the subject attracted me. And I had nothing to fear; my independent
investigations had made this much clear to me; the voice might proceed
from a very frolicsome and tricksy creature, full of wild fantastic
humours, but nothing worse. It was friendly to me, I felt sure; at the
same time it might not be friendly towards the Indians; for, on that
day, it had made itself heard only after my companion had taken flight;
and it had then seemed incensed against me, possibly because the savage
had been in my company.

That was the result of my reflections on the day’s events when I
returned to my entertainer’s roof and sat down among my friends to
refresh myself with stewed fowl and fish from the household pot, into
which a hospitable woman invited me with a gesture to dip my fingers.

Kua-ko was lying in his hammock, smoking, I think--certainly not
reading. When I entered he lifted his head and stared at me, probably
surprised to see me alive, unharmed, and in a placid temper. I laughed
at the look, and, somewhat disconcerted, he dropped his head down again.
After a minute or two I took the metal match-box and tossed it on to
his breast. He clutched it and, starting up, stared at me in the utmost
astonishment. He could scarcely believe his good fortune; for he had
failed to carry out his part of the compact and had resigned himself to
the loss of the coveted prize. Jumping down to the floor, he held up the
box triumphantly, his joy overcoming the habitual stolid look; while all
the others gathered about him, each trying to get the box into his own
hands to admire it again, notwithstanding that they had all seen it a
dozen times before. But it was Kua-ko’s now and not the stranger’s, and
therefore more nearly their own than formerly, and must look different,
more beautiful, with a brighter polish on the metal. And that wonderful
enamelled cock on the lid--figured in Paris probably, but just like a
cock in Guayana, the pet bird which they no more think of killing and
eating than we do our purring pussies and lemon-coloured canaries--must
now look more strikingly valiant and cock-like than ever, with its
crimson comb and wattles, burnished red hackles, and dark green arching
tail-plumes. But Kua-ko, while willing enough to have it admired and
praised, would not let it out of his hands, and told them pompously that
it was not theirs for them to handle, but his--Kua-ko’s--for all time;
that he had won it by accompanying me--valorous man that he was!--to
that evil wood into which they--timid, inferior creatures that they
were!--would never have ventured to set foot. I am not translating his
words, but that was what he gave them to understand pretty plainly, to
my great amusement.

After the excitement was over, Runi, who had maintained a dignified
calm, made some roundabout remarks, apparently with the object of
eliciting an account of what I had seen and heard in the forest of
evil fame. I replied carelessly that I had seen a great many birds and
monkeys--monkeys so tame that I might have procured one if I had had
a blow-pipe, in spite of my never having practiced shooting with that
weapon.

It interested them to hear about the abundance and tameness of the
monkeys, although it was scarcely news; but how tame they must have been
when I, the stranger not to the manner born--not naked, brown-skinned,
lynx-eyed, and noiseless as an owl in his movements--had yet been able
to look closely at them! Runi only remarked, apropos of what I had told
him, that they could not go there to hunt; then he asked me if I feared
nothing.

“Nothing,” I replied carelessly. “The things you fear hurt not the white
man and are no more than this to me,” saying which I took up a little
white wood-ash in my hand and blew it away with my breath. “And against
other enemies I have this,” I added, touching my revolver. A brave
speech, just after that araguato episode; but I did not make it without
blushing--mentally.

He shook his head, and said it was a poor weapon against some enemies;
also--truly enough--that it would procure no birds and monkeys for the
stew-pot.

Next morning my friend Kua-ko, taking his zabatana, invited me to go out
with him, and I consented with some misgivings, thinking he had overcome
his superstitious fears and, inflamed by my account of the abundance
of game in the forest, intended going there with me. The previous day’s
experience had made me think that it would be better in the future to
go there alone. But I was giving the poor youth more credit than he
deserved: it was far from his intention to face the terrible unknown
again. We went in a different direction, and tramped for hours through
woods where birds were scarce and only of the smaller kinds. Then my
guide surprised me a second time by offering to teach me to use the
zabatana. This, then, was to be my reward for giving him the box! I
readily consented, and with the long weapon, awkward to carry, in my
hand, and imitating the noiseless movements and cautious, watchful
manner of my companion, I tried to imagine myself a simple Guayana
savage, with no knowledge of that artificial social state to which I had
been born, dependent on my skill and little roll of poison-darts for
a livelihood. By an effort of the will I emptied myself of my life
experience and knowledge--or as much of it as possible--and thought
only of the generations of my dead imaginary progenitors, who had ranged
these woods back to the dim forgotten years before Columbus; and if the
pleasure I had in the fancy was childish, it made the day pass quickly
enough. Kua-ko was constantly at my elbow to assist and give advice; and
many an arrow I blew from the long tube, and hit no bird. Heaven knows
what I hit, for the arrows flew away on their wide and wild career to
be seen no more, except a few which my keen-eyed comrade marked to their
destination and managed to recover. The result of our day’s hunting was
a couple of birds, which Kua-ko, not I, shot, and a small opossum his
sharp eyes detected high up a tree lying coiled up on an old nest, over
the side of which the animal had incautiously allowed his snaky tail
to dangle. The number of darts I wasted must have been a rather serious
loss to him, but he did not seem troubled at it, and made no remark.

Next day, to my surprise, he volunteered to give me a second lesson, and
we went out again. On this occasion he had provided himself with a
large bundle of darts, but--wise man!--they were not poisoned, and it
therefore mattered little whether they were wasted or not. I believe
that on this day I made some little progress; at all events, my teacher
remarked that before long I would be able to hit a bird. This made me
smile and answer that if he could place me within twenty yards of a bird
not smaller than a small man I might manage to touch it with an arrow.

This speech had a very unexpected and remarkable effect. He stopped
short in his walk, stared at me wildly, then grinned, and finally burst
into a roar of laughter, which was no bad imitation of the howling
monkey’s performance, and smote his naked thighs with tremendous energy.
At length recovering himself, he asked whether a small woman was not
the same as a small man, and being answered in the affirmative, went off
into a second extravagant roar of laughter.

Thinking it was easy to tickle him while he continued in this mood, I
began making any number of feeble jokes--feeble, but quite as good as
the one which had provoked such outrageous merriment--for it amused
me to see him acting in this unusual way. But they all failed of their
effect--there was no hitting the bull’s-eye a second time; he would only
stare vacantly at me, then grunt like a peccary--not appreciatively--and
walk on. Still, at intervals he would go back to what I had said about
hitting a very big bird, and roar again, as if this wonderful joke was
not easily exhausted.

Again on the third day we were out together practicing at the
birds--frightening if not killing them; but before noon, finding that it
was his intention to go to a distant spot where he expected to meet
with larger game, I left him and returned to the village. The blow-pipe
practice had lost its novelty, and I did not care to go on all day
and every day with it; more than that, I was anxious after so long an
interval to pay a visit to my wood, as I began to call it, in the hope
of hearing that mysterious melody which I had grown to love and to miss
when even a single day passed without it.



CHAPTER V

After making a hasty meal at the house, I started, full of pleasing
anticipations, for the wood; for how pleasant a place it was to be in!
What a wild beauty and fragrance and melodiousness it possessed above
all forests, because of that mystery that drew me to it! And it was
mine, truly and absolutely--as much mine as any portion of earth’s
surface could belong to any man--mine with all its products: the
precious woods and fruits and fragrant gums that would never be
trafficked away; its wild animals that man would never persecute; nor
would any jealous savage dispute my ownership or pretend that it was
part of his hunting-ground. As I crossed the savannah I played with this
fancy; but when I reached the ridgy eminence, to look down once more on
my new domain, the fancy changed to a feeling so keen that it pierced to
my heart and was like pain in its intensity, causing tears to rush to
my eyes. And caring not in that solitude to disguise my feelings from
myself, and from the wide heaven that looked down and saw me--for this
is the sweetest thing that solitude has for us, that we are free in it,
and no convention holds us--I dropped on my knees and kissed the stony
ground, then casting up my eyes, thanked the Author of my being for
the gift of that wild forest, those green mansions where I had found so
great a happiness!

Elated with this strain of feeling, I reached the wood not long after
noon; but no melodious voice gave me familiar and expected welcome; nor
did my invisible companion make itself heard at all on that day, or, at
all events, not in its usual bird-like warbling language. But on this
day I met with a curious little adventure and heard something very
extraordinary, very mysterious, which I could not avoid connecting in my
mind with the unseen warbler that so often followed me in my rambles.

It was an exceedingly bright day, without cloud, but windy, and finding
myself in a rather open part of the wood, near its border, where the
breeze could be felt, I sat down to rest on the lower part of a large
branch, which was half broken, but still remained attached to the trunk
of the tree, while resting its terminal twigs on the ground. Just before
me, where I sat, grew a low, wide-spreading plant, covered with broad,
round, polished leaves; and the roundness, stiffness, and perfectly
horizontal position of the upper leaves made them look like a collection
of small platforms or round table-tops placed nearly on a level. Through
the leaves, to the height of a foot or more above them, a slender dead
stem protruded, and from a twig at its summit depended a broken spider’s
web. A minute dead leaf had become attached to one of the loose threads
and threw its small but distinct shadow on the platform leaves below;
and as it trembled and swayed in the current of air, the black spot
trembled with it or flew swiftly over the bright green surfaces, and was
seldom at rest. Now, as I sat looking down on the leaves and the small
dancing shadow, scarcely thinking of what I was looking at, I noticed a
small spider, with a flat body and short legs, creep cautiously out on
to the upper surface of a leaf. Its pale red colour barred with velvet
black first drew my attention to it, for it was beautiful to the eye;
and presently I discovered that this was no web-spinning, sedentary
spider, but a wandering hunter, that captured its prey, like a cat, by
stealing on it concealed and making a rush or spring at the last. The
moving shadow had attracted it and, as the sequel showed, was mistaken
for a fly running about over the leaves and flitting from leaf to leaf.
Now began a series of wonderful manoeuvres on the spider’s part, with
the object of circumventing the imaginary fly, which seemed specially
designed to meet this special case; for certainly no insect had ever
before behaved in quite so erratic a manner. Each time the shadow flew
past, the spider ran swiftly in the same direction, hiding itself under
the leaves, always trying to get near without alarming its prey; and
then the shadow would go round and round in a small circle, and some new
strategic move on the part of the hunter would be called forth. I became
deeply interested in this curious scene; I began to wish that the shadow
would remain quiet for a moment or two, so as to give the hunter a
chance. And at last I had my wish: the shadow was almost motionless, and
the spider moving towards it, yet seeming not to move, and as it
crept closer I fancied that I could almost see the little striped body
quivering with excitement. Then came the final scene: swift and straight
as an arrow the hunter shot himself on to the fly-like shadow, then
wiggled round and round, evidently trying to take hold of his prey with
fangs and claws; and finding nothing under him, he raised the fore
part of his body vertically, as if to stare about him in search of the
delusive fly; but the action may have simply expressed astonishment. At
this moment I was just on the point of giving free and loud vent to the
laughter which I had been holding in when, just behind me, as if from
some person who had been watching the scene over my shoulder and was as
much amused as myself at its termination, sounded a clear trill of merry
laughter. I started up and looked hastily around, but no living creature
was there. The mass of loose foliage I stared into was agitated, as if
from a body having just pushed through it. In a moment the leaves and
fronds were motionless again; still, I could not be sure that a slight
gust of wind had not shaken them. But I was so convinced that I had
heard close to me a real human laugh, or sound of some living creature
that exactly simulated a laugh, that I carefully searched the ground
about me, expecting to find a being of some kind. But I found nothing,
and going back to my seat on the hanging branch, I remained seated for
a considerable time, at first only listening, then pondering on the
mystery of that sweet trill of laughter; and finally I began to wonder
whether I, like the spider that chased the shadow, had been deluded, and
had seemed to hear a sound that was not a sound.

On the following day I was in the wood again, and after a two or three
hours’ ramble, during which I heard nothing, thinking it useless to
haunt the known spots any longer, I turned southwards and penetrated
into a denser part of the forest, where the undergrowth made progress
difficult. I was not afraid of losing myself; the sun above and my sense
of direction, which was always good, would enable me to return to the
starting-point.

In this direction I had been pushing resolutely on for over half an
hour, finding it no easy matter to make my way without constantly
deviating to this side or that from the course I wished to keep, when I
came to a much more open spot. The trees were smaller and scantier here,
owing to the rocky nature of the ground, which sloped rather rapidly
down; but it was moist and overgrown with mosses, ferns, creepers, and
low shrubs, all of the liveliest green. I could not see many yards ahead
owing to the bushes and tall fern fronds; but presently I began to hear
a low, continuous sound, which, when I had advanced twenty or thirty
yards further, I made out to be the gurgling of running water; and at
the same moment I made the discovery that my throat was parched and my
palms tingling with heat. I hurried on, promising myself a cool draught,
when all at once, above the soft dashing and gurgling of the water, I
caught yet another sound--a low, warbling note, or succession of
notes, which might have been emitted by a bird. But it startled me
nevertheless--bird-like warbling sounds had come to mean so much to
me--and pausing, I listened intently. It was not repeated, and finally,
treading with the utmost caution so as not to alarm the mysterious
vocalist, I crept on until, coming to a greenheart with a quantity of
feathery foliage of a shrub growing about its roots, I saw that just
beyond the tree the ground was more open still, letting in the sunlight
from above, and that the channel of the stream I sought was in this open
space, about twenty yards from me, although the water was still hidden
from sight. Something else was there, which I did see; instantly my
cautious advance was arrested. I stood gazing with concentrated vision,
scarcely daring to breathe lest I should scare it away.

It was a human being--a girl form, reclining on the moss among the ferns
and herbage, near the roots of a small tree. One arm was doubled
behind her neck for her head to rest upon, while the other arm was held
extended before her, the hand raised towards a small brown bird perched
on a pendulous twig just beyond its reach. She appeared to be playing
with the bird, possibly amusing herself by trying to entice it on to
her hand; and the hand appeared to tempt it greatly, for it persistently
hopped up and down, turning rapidly about this way and that, flirting
its wings and tail, and always appearing just on the point of dropping
on to her finger. From my position it was impossible to see her
distinctly, yet I dared not move. I could make out that she was small,
not above four feet six or seven inches in height, in figure slim, with
delicately shaped little hands and feet. Her feet were bare, and her
only garment was a slight chemise-shaped dress reaching below her knees,
of a whitish-gray colour, with a faint lustre as of a silky material.
Her hair was very wonderful; it was loose and abundant, and seemed
wavy or curly, falling in a cloud on her shoulders and arms. Dark it
appeared, but the precise tint was indeterminable, as was that of her
skin, which looked neither brown nor white. All together, near to me as
she actually was, there was a kind of mistiness in the figure which made
it appear somewhat vague and distant, and a greenish grey seemed the
prevailing colour. This tint I presently attributed to the effect of
the sunlight falling on her through the green foliage; for once, for a
moment, she raised herself to reach her finger nearer to the bird, and
then a gleam of unsubdued sunlight fell on her hair and arm, and the arm
at that moment appeared of a pearly whiteness, and the hair, just
where the light touched it, had a strange lustre and play of iridescent
colour.

I had not been watching her more than three seconds before the bird,
with a sharp, creaking little chirp, flew up and away in sudden alarm;
at the same moment she turned and saw me through the light leafy screen.
But although catching sight of me thus suddenly, she did not exhibit
alarm like the bird; only her eyes, wide open, with a surprised look
in them, remained immovably fixed on my face. And then slowly,
imperceptibly--for I did not notice the actual movement, so gradual and
smooth it was, like the motion of a cloud of mist which changes its
form and place, yet to the eye seems not to have moved--she rose to her
knees, to her feet, retired, and with face still towards me, and eyes
fixed on mine, finally disappeared, going as if she had melted away into
the verdure. The leafage was there occupying the precise spot where she
had been a moment before--the feathery foliage of an acacia shrub, and
stems and broad, arrow-shaped leaves of an aquatic plant, and slim,
drooping fern fronds, and they were motionless and seemed not to have
been touched by something passing through them. She had gone, yet I
continued still, bent almost double, gazing fixedly at the spot where
I had last seen her, my mind in a strange condition, possessed by
sensations which were keenly felt and yet contradictory. So vivid was
the image left on my brain that she still seemed to be actually before
my eyes; and she was not there, nor had been, for it was a dream, an
illusion, and no such being existed, or could exist, in this gross
world; and at the same time I knew that she had been there--that
imagination was powerless to conjure up a form so exquisite.

With the mental image I had to be satisfied, for although I remained for
some hours at that spot, I saw her no more, nor did I hear any familiar
melodious sound. For I was now convinced that in this wild solitary girl
I had at length discovered the mysterious warbler that so often followed
me in the wood. At length, seeing that it was growing late, I took a
drink from the stream and slowly and reluctantly made my way out of the
forest and went home.

Early next day I was back in the wood full of delightful anticipations,
and had no sooner got well among the trees than a soft, warbling sound
reached my ears; it was like that heard on the previous day just before
catching sight of the girl among the ferns. So soon! thought I, elated,
and with cautious steps I proceeded to explore the ground, hoping again
to catch her unawares. But I saw nothing; and only after beginning to
doubt that I had heard anything unusual, and had sat down to rest on
a rock, the sound was repeated, soft and low as before, very near and
distinct. Nothing more was heard at this spot, but an hour later, in
another place, the same mysterious note sounded near me. During my
remaining time in the forest I was served many times in the same way,
and still nothing was seen, nor was there any change in the voice.

Only when the day was near its end did I give up my quest, feeling very
keenly disappointed. It then struck me that the cause of the elusive
creature’s behaviour was that she had been piqued at my discovery of her
in one of her most secret hiding-places in the heart of the wood, and
that it had pleased her to pay me out in this manner.

On the next day there was no change; she was there again, evidently
following me, but always invisible, and varied not from that one mocking
note of yesterday, which seemed to challenge me to find her a second
time. In the end I was vexed, and resolved to be even with her by not
visiting the wood for some time. A display of indifference on my part
would, I hoped, result in making her less coy in the future.

Next day, firm in my new resolution, I accompanied Kua-ko and two others
to a distant spot where they expected that the ripening fruit on a
cashew tree would attract a large number of birds. The fruit, however,
proved still green, so that we gathered none and killed few birds.
Returning together, Kua-ko kept at my side, and by and by, falling
behind our companions, he complimented me on my good shooting, although,
as usual, I had only wasted the arrows I had blown.

“Soon you will be able to hit,” he said; “hit a bird as big as a small
woman”; and he laughed once more immoderately at the old joke. At last,
growing confidential, he said that I would soon possess a zabatana of my
own, with arrows in plenty. He was going to make the arrows himself,
and his uncle Otawinki, who had a straight eye, would make the tube. I
treated it all as a joke, but he solemnly assured me that he meant it.

Next morning he asked me if I was going to the forest of evil fame, and
when I replied in the negative, seemed surprised and, very much to my
surprise, evidently disappointed. He even tried to persuade me to go,
where before I had been earnestly recommended not to go, until, finding
that I would not, he took me with him to hunt in the woods. By and by he
returned to the same subject: he could not understand why I would not go
to that wood, and asked me if I had begun to grow afraid.

“No, not afraid,” I replied; “but I know the place well, and am getting
tired of it.” I had seen everything in it--birds and beasts--and had
heard all its strange noises.

“Yes, heard,” he said, nodding his head knowingly; “but you have seen
nothing strange; your eyes are not good enough yet.”

I laughed contemptuously and answered that I had seen everything strange
the wood contained, including a strange young girl; and I went on to
describe her appearance, and finished by asking if he thought a white
man was frightened at the sight of a young girl.

What I said astonished him; then he seemed greatly pleased, and, growing
still more confidential and generous than on the previous day, he said
that I would soon be a most important personage among them, and greatly
distinguish myself. He did not like it when I laughed at all this, and
went on with great seriousness to speak of the unmade blowpipe that
would be mine--speaking of it as if it had been something very great,
equal to the gift of a large tract of land, or the governorship of a
province, north of the Orinoco. And by and by he spoke of something else
more wonderful even than the promise of a blow-pipe, with arrows galore,
and this was that young sister of his, whose name was Oalava, a maid of
about sixteen, shy and silent and mild-eyed, rather lean and dirty; not
ugly, nor yet prepossessing. And this copper-coloured little drab of the
wilderness he proposed to bestow in marriage on me! Anxious to pump him,
I managed to control my muscles and asked him what authority he--a
young nobody, who had not yet risen to the dignity of buying a wife
for himself--could have to dispose of a sister in this offhand way?
He replied that there would be no difficulty: that Runi would give his
consent, as would also Otawinki, Piake, and other relations; and last,
and LEAST, according to the matrimonial customs of these latitudes,
Oalava herself would be ready to bestow her person--queyou, worn
figleaf-wise, necklace of accouri teeth, and all--on so worthy a suitor
as myself. Finally, to make the prospect still more inviting, he added
that it would not be necessary for me to subject myself to any voluntary
tortures to prove myself a man and fitted to enter into the purgatorial
state of matrimony. He was a great deal too considerate, I said, and,
with all the gravity I could command, asked him what kind of torture he
would recommend. For me--so valorous a person--“no torture,” he answered
magnanimously. But he--Kua-ko--had made up his mind as to the form of
torture he meant to inflict some day on his own person. He would prepare
a large sack and into it put fire-ants--“As many as that!” he exclaimed
triumphantly, stooping and filling his two hands with loose sand. He
would put them in the sack, and then get into it himself naked, and
tie it tightly round his neck, so as to show to all spectators that
the hellish pain of innumerable venomous stings in his flesh could be
endured without a groan and with an unmoved countenance. The poor youth
had not an original mind, since this was one of the commonest forms
of self-torture among the Guayana tribes. But the sudden wonderful
animation with which he spoke of it, the fiendish joy that illumined his
usually stolid countenance, sent a sudden disgust and horror through me.
But what a strange inverted kind of fiendishness is this, which delights
at the anticipation of torture inflicted on oneself and not on an enemy!
And towards others these savages are mild and peaceable! No, I could not
believe in their mildness; that was only on the surface, when nothing
occurred to rouse their savage, cruel instincts. I could have laughed at
the whole matter, but the exulting look on my companion’s face had made
me sick of the subject, and I wished not to talk any more about it.

But he would talk still--this fellow whose words, as a rule, I had to
take out of his mouth with a fork, as we say; and still on the same
subject, he said that not one person in the village would expect to
see me torture myself; that after what I would do for them all--after
delivering them from a great evil--nothing further would be expected of
me.

I asked him to explain his meaning; for it now began to appear plain
that in everything he had said he had been leading up to some very
important matter. It would, of course, have been a great mistake to
suppose that my savage was offering me a blow-pipe and a marketable
virgin sister from purely disinterested motives.

In reply he went back to that still unforgotten joke about my being able
eventually to hit a bird as big as a small woman with an arrow. Out of
it all came, when he went on to ask me if that mysterious girl I had
seen in the wood was not of a size to suit me as a target when I had got
my hand in with a little more practice. That was the great work I was
asked to do for them--that shy, mysterious girl with the melodious
wild-bird voice was the evil being I was asked to slay with poisoned
arrows! This was why he now wished me to go often to the wood, to become
more and more familiar with her haunts and habits, to overcome all
shyness and suspicion in her; and at the proper moment, when it would be
impossible to miss my mark, to plant the fatal arrow! The disgust he had
inspired in me before, when gloating over anticipated tortures, was a
weak and transient feeling to what I now experienced. I turned on him in
a sudden transport of rage, and in a moment would have shattered on his
head the blow-pipe I was carrying in my hand, but his astonished look as
he turned to face me made me pause and prevented me from committing
so fatal an indiscretion. I could only grind my teeth and struggle to
overcome an almost overpowering hatred and wrath. Finally I flung the
tube down and bade him take it, telling him that I would not touch it
again if he offered me all the sisters of all the savages in Guayana for
wives.

He continued gazing at me mute with astonishment, and prudence suggested
that it would be best to conceal as far as possible the violent
animosity I had conceived against him. I asked him somewhat scornfully
if he believed that I should ever be able to hit anything--bird or human
being--with an arrow. “No,” I almost shouted, so as to give vent to my
feelings in some way, and drawing my revolver, “this is the white man’s
weapon; but he kills men with it--men who attempt to kill or injure
him--but neither with this nor any other weapon does he murder innocent
young girls treacherously.” After that we went on in silence for some
time; at length he said that the being I had seen in the wood and was
not afraid of was no innocent young girl, but a daughter of the Didi, an
evil being; and that so long as she continued to inhabit the wood they
could not go there to hunt, and even in other woods they constantly went
in fear of meeting her. Too much disgusted to talk with him, I went on
in silence; and when we reached the stream near the village, I threw off
my clothes and plunged into the water to cool my anger before going in
to the others.



CHAPTER VI

Thinking about the forest girl while lying awake that night, I came to
the conclusion that I had made it sufficiently plain to her how little
her capricious behaviour had been relished, and had therefore no need
to punish myself more by keeping any longer out of my beloved green
mansions. Accordingly, next day, after the heavy rain that fell during
the morning hours had ceased, I set forth about noon to visit the wood.
Overhead the sky was clear again; but there was no motion in the heavy
sultry atmosphere, while dark blue masses of banked-up clouds on the
western horizon threatened a fresh downpour later in the day. My mind
was, however, now too greatly excited at the prospect of a possible
encounter with the forest nymph to allow me to pay any heed to these
ominous signs.

I had passed through the first strip of wood and was in the succeeding
stony sterile space when a gleam of brilliant colour close by on the
ground caught my sight. It was a snake lying on the bare earth; had I
kept on without noticing it, I should most probably have trodden upon
or dangerously near it. Viewing it closely, I found that it was a coral
snake, famed as much for its beauty and singularity as for its deadly
character. It was about three feet long, and very slim; its ground
colour a brilliant vermilion, with broad jet-black rings at equal
distances round its body, each black ring or band divided by a narrow
yellow strip in the middle. The symmetrical pattern and vividly
contrasted colours would have given it the appearance of an artificial
snake made by some fanciful artist, but for the gleam of life in its
bright coils. Its fixed eyes, too, were living gems, and from the point
of its dangerous arrowy head the glistening tongue flickered ceaselessly
as I stood a few yards away regarding it.

“I admire you greatly, Sir Serpent,” I said, or thought, “but it is
dangerous, say the military authorities, to leave an enemy or possible
enemy in the rear; the person who does such a thing must be either a bad
strategist or a genius, and I am neither.”

Retreating a few paces, I found and picked up a stone about as big as
a man’s hand and hurled it at the dangerous-looking head with the
intention of crushing it; but the stone hit upon the rocky ground a
little on one side of the mark and, being soft, flew into a hundred
small fragments. This roused the creature’s anger, and in a moment with
raised head he was gliding swiftly towards me. Again I retreated, not
so slowly on this occasion; and finding another stone, I raised and
was about to launch it when a sharp, ringing cry issued from the bushes
growing near, and, quickly following the sound, forth stepped the forest
girl; no longer elusive and shy, vaguely seen in the shadowy wood, but
boldly challenging attention, exposed to the full power of the meridian
sun, which made her appear luminous and rich in colour beyond example.
Seeing her thus, all those emotions of fear and abhorrence invariably
excited in us by the sight of an active venomous serpent in our path
vanished instantly from my mind: I could now only feel astonishment
and admiration at the brilliant being as she advanced with swift, easy,
undulating motion towards me; or rather towards the serpent, which was
now between us, moving more and more slowly as she came nearer. The
cause of this sudden wonderful boldness, so unlike her former habit, was
unmistakable. She had been watching my approach from some hiding-place
among the bushes, ready no doubt to lead me a dance through the wood
with her mocking voice, as on previous occasions, when my attack on the
serpent caused that outburst of wrath. The torrent of ringing and to
me inarticulate sounds in that unknown tongue, her rapid gestures, and,
above all, her wide-open sparkling eyes and face aflame with colour made
it impossible to mistake the nature of her feeling.

In casting about for some term or figure of speech in which to describe
the impression produced on me at that moment, I think of waspish, and,
better still, avispada--literally the same word in Spanish, not having
precisely the same meaning nor ever applied contemptuously--only to
reject both after a moment’s reflection. Yet I go back to the image of
an irritated wasp as perhaps offering the best illustration; of some
large tropical wasp advancing angrily towards me, as I have witnessed a
hundred times, not exactly flying, but moving rapidly, half running and
half flying, over the ground, with loud and angry buzz, the glistening
wings open and agitated; beautiful beyond most animated creatures in
its sharp but graceful lines, polished surface, and varied brilliant
colouring, and that wrathfulness that fits it so well and seems to give
it additional lustre.

Wonder-struck at the sight of her strange beauty and passion, I forgot
the advancing snake until she came to a stop at about five yards from
me; then to my horror I saw that it was beside her naked feet. Although
no longer advancing, the head was still raised high as if to strike;
but presently the spirit of anger appeared to die out of it; the lifted
head, oscillating a little from side to side, sunk down lower and lower
to rest finally on the girl’s bare instep; and lying there motionless,
the deadly thing had the appearance of a gaily coloured silken garter
just dropped from her leg. It was plain to see that she had no fear of
it, that she was one of those exceptional persons, to be found, it is
said, in all countries, who possess some magnetic quality which has a
soothing effect on even the most venomous and irritable reptiles.

Following the direction of my eyes, she too glanced down, but did not
move her foot; then she made her voice heard again, still loud and
sharp, but the anger was not now so pronounced.

“Do not fear, I shall not harm it,” I said in the Indian tongue.

She took no notice of my speech and continued speaking with increasing
resentment.

I shook my head, replying that her language was unknown to me. Then by
means of signs I tried to make her understand that the creature was safe
from further molestation. She pointed indignantly at the stone in my
hand, which I had forgotten all about. At once I threw it from me, and
instantly there was a change; the resentment had vanished, and a tender
radiance lit her face like a smile.

I advanced a little nearer, addressing her once more in the Indian
tongue; but my speech was evidently unintelligible to her, as she stood
now glancing at the snake lying at her feet, now at me. Again I had
recourse to signs and gestures; pointing to the snake, then to the stone
I had cast away, I endeavoured to convey to her that in the future I
would for her sake be a friend to all venomous reptiles, and that I
wished her to have the same kindly feelings towards me as towards these
creatures. Whether or not she understood me, she showed no disposition
to go into hiding again, and continued silently regarding me with a look
that seemed to express pleasure at finding herself at last thus suddenly
brought face to face with me. Flattered at this, I gradually drew nearer
until at the last I was standing at her side, gazing down with the
utmost delight into that face which so greatly surpassed in loveliness
all human faces I had ever seen or imagined.

And yet to you, my friend, it probably will not seem that she was
so beautiful, since I have, alas! only the words we all use to paint
commoner, coarser things, and no means to represent all the exquisite
details, all the delicate lights, and shades, and swift changes of
colour and expression. Moreover, is it not a fact that the strange or
unheard of can never appear beautiful in a mere description, because
that which is most novel in it attracts too much attention and is given
undue prominence in the picture, and we miss that which would have taken
away the effect of strangeness--the perfect balance of the parts and
harmony of the whole? For instance, the blue eyes of the northerner
would, when first described to the black-eyed inhabitants of warm
regions, seem unbeautiful and a monstrosity, because they would vividly
see with the mental vision that unheard-of blueness, but not in the
same vivid way the accompanying flesh and hair tints with which it
harmonizes.

Think, then, less of the picture as I have to paint it in words than of
the feeling its original inspired in me when, looking closely for the
first time on that rare loveliness, trembling with delight, I mentally
cried: “Oh, why has Nature, maker of so many types and of innumerable
individuals of each, given to the world but one being like this?”

Scarcely had the thought formed itself in my mind before I dismissed it
as utterly incredible. No, this exquisite being was without doubt one
of a distinct race which had existed in this little-known corner of the
continent for thousands of generations, albeit now perhaps reduced to a
small and dwindling remnant.

Her figure and features were singularly delicate, but it was her colour
that struck me most, which indeed made her differ from all other human
beings. The colour of the skin would be almost impossible to describe,
so greatly did it vary with every change of mood--and the moods were
many and transient--and with the angle on which the sunlight touched it,
and the degree of light.

Beneath the trees, at a distance, it had seemed a somewhat dim white
or pale grey; near in the strong sunshine it was not white, but
alabastrian, semi-pellucid, showing an underlying rose colour; and
at any point where the rays fell direct this colour was bright and
luminous, as we see in our fingers when held before a strong firelight.
But that part of her skin that remained in shadow appeared of a dimmer
white, and the underlying colour varied from dim, rosy purple to dim
blue. With the skin the colour of the eyes harmonized perfectly. At
first, when lit with anger, they had appeared flame-like; now the iris
was of a peculiar soft or dim and tender red, a shade sometimes seen
in flowers. But only when looked closely at could this delicate hue be
discerned, the pupils being large, as in some grey eyes, and the long,
dark, shading lashes at a short distance made the whole eye appear dark.
Think not, then, of the red flower, exposed to the light and sun in
conjunction with the vivid green of the foliage; think only of such
a hue in the half-hidden iris, brilliant and moist with the eye’s
moisture, deep with the eye’s depth, glorified by the outward look of
a bright, beautiful soul. Most variable of all in colour was the hair,
this being due to its extreme fineness and glossiness, and to its
elasticity, which made it lie fleecy and loose on head, shoulders, and
back; a cloud with a brightness on its surface made by the freer outer
hairs, a fit setting and crown for a countenance of such rare changeful
loveliness. In the shade, viewed closely, the general colour appeared a
slate, deepening in places to purple; but even in the shade the nimbus
of free flossy hairs half veiled the darker tints with a downy pallor;
and at a distance of a few yards it gave the whole hair a vague, misty
appearance. In the sunlight the colour varied more, looking now dark,
sometimes intensely black, now of a light uncertain hue, with a play of
iridescent colour on the loose surface, as we see on the glossed plumage
of some birds; and at a short distance, with the sun shining full on her
head, it sometimes looked white as a noonday cloud. So changeful was it
and ethereal in appearance with its cloud colours that all other human
hair, even of the most beautiful golden shades, pale or red, seemed
heavy and dull and dead-looking by comparison.

But more than form and colour and that enchanting variability was the
look of intelligence, which at the same time seemed complementary to and
one with the all-seeing, all-hearing alertness appearing in her face;
the alertness one remarks in a wild creature, even when in repose and
fearing nothing; but seldom in man, never perhaps in intellectual or
studious man. She was a wild, solitary girl of the woods, and did not
understand the language of the country in which I had addressed her.
What inner or mind life could such a one have more than that of any wild
animal existing in the same conditions? Yet looking at her face it
was not possible to doubt its intelligence. This union in her of two
opposite qualities, which, with us, cannot or do not exist together,
although so novel, yet struck me as the girl’s principal charm. Why had
Nature not done this before--why in all others does the brightness of
the mind dim that beautiful physical brightness which the wild animals
have? But enough for me that that which no man had ever looked for or
hoped to find existed here; that through that unfamiliar lustre of the
wild life shone the spiritualizing light of mind that made us kin.

These thoughts passed swiftly through my brain as I stood feasting my
sight on her bright, piquant face; while she on her part gazed back
into my eyes, not only with fearless curiosity, but with a look of
recognition and pleasure at the encounter so unmistakably friendly that,
encouraged by it, I took her arm in my hand, moving at the same time a
little nearer to her. At that moment a swift, startled expression came
into her eyes; she glanced down and up again into my face; her lips
trembled and slightly parted as she murmured some sorrowful sounds in a
tone so low as to be only just audible.

Thinking she had become alarmed and was on the point of escaping out of
my hands, and fearing, above all things, to lose sight of her again so
soon, I slipped my arm around her slender body to detain her, moving
one foot at the same time to balance myself; and at that moment I felt
a slight blow and a sharp burning sensation shoot into my leg, so sudden
and intense that I dropped my arm, at the same time uttering a cry of
pain, and recoiled one or two paces from her. But she stirred not when
I released her; her eyes followed my movements; then she glanced down at
her feet. I followed her look, and figure to yourself my horror when I
saw there the serpent I had so completely forgotten, and which even that
sting of sharp pain had not brought back to remembrance! There it lay,
a coil of its own thrown round one of her ankles, and its head, raised
nearly a foot high, swaying slowly from side to side, while the swift
forked tongue flickered continuously. Then--only then--I knew what had
happened, and at the same time I understood the reason of that sudden
look of alarm in her face, the murmuring sounds she had uttered, and the
downward startled glance. Her fears had been solely for my safety, and
she had warned me! Too late! too late! In moving I had trodden on or
touched the serpent with my foot, and it had bitten me just above the
ankle. In a few moments I began to realize the horror of my position.
“Must I die! must I die! Oh, my God, is there nothing that can save me?”
 I cried in my heart.

She was still standing motionless in the same place: her eyes wandered
back from me to the snake; gradually its swaying head was lowered again,
and the coil unwound from her ankle; then it began to move away, slowly
at first, and with the head a little raised, then faster, and in the end
it glided out of sight. Gone!--but it had left its venom in my blood--O
cursed reptile!

Back from watching its retreat, my eyes returned to her face, now
strangely clouded with trouble; her eyes dropped before mine, while the
palms of her hands were pressed together, and the fingers clasped and
unclasped alternately. How different she seemed now; the brilliant face
grown so pallid and vague-looking! But not only because this tragic end
to our meeting had pierced her with pain: that cloud in the west had
grown up and now covered half the sky with vast lurid masses of vapour,
blotting out the sun, and a great gloom had fallen on the earth.

That sudden twilight and a long roll of approaching thunder,
reverberating from the hills, increased my anguish and desperation.
Death at that moment looked unutterably terrible. The remembrance of all
that made life dear pierced me to the core--all that nature was to me,
all the pleasures of sense and intellect, the hopes I had cherished--all
was revealed to me as by a flash of lightning. Bitterest of all was the
thought that I must now bid everlasting farewell to this beautiful being
I had found in the solitude--this lustrous daughter of the Didi--just
when I had won her from her shyness--that I must go away into the cursed
blackness of death and never know the mystery of her life! It was
that which utterly unnerved me, and made my legs tremble under me, and
brought great drops of sweat to my forehead, until I thought that the
venom was already doing its swift, fatal work in my veins.

With uncertain steps I moved to a stone a yard or two away and sat down
upon it. As I did so the hope came to me that this girl, so intimate
with nature, might know of some antidote to save me. Touching my leg,
and using other signs, I addressed her again in the Indian language.

“The snake has bitten me,” I said. “What shall I do? Is there no leaf,
no root you know that would save me from death? Help me! help me!” I
cried in despair.

My signs she probably understood if not my words, but she made no reply;
and still she remained standing motionless, twisting and untwisting her
fingers, and regarding me with a look of ineffable grief and compassion.

Alas! It was vain to appeal to her: she knew what had happened, and what
the result would most likely be, and pitied, but was powerless to help
me. Then it occurred to me that if I could reach the Indian village
before the venom overpowered me something might be done to save me. Oh,
why had I tarried so long, losing so many precious minutes! Large drops
of rain were falling now, and the gloom was deeper, and the thunder
almost continuous. With a cry of anguish I started to my feet and
was about to rush away towards the village when a dazzling flash of
lightning made me pause for a moment. When it vanished I turned a last
look on the girl, and her face was deathly pale, and her hair looked
blacker than night; and as she looked she stretched out her arms towards
me and uttered a low, wailing cry. “Good-bye for ever!” I murmured, and
turning once more from her, rushed away like one crazed into the wood.
But in my confusion I had probably taken the wrong direction, for
instead of coming out in a few minutes into the open border of the
forest, and on to the savannah, I found myself every moment getting
deeper among the trees. I stood still, perplexed, but could not shake
off the conviction that I had started in the right direction. Eventually
I resolved to keep on for a hundred yards or so and then, if no opening
appeared, to turn back and retrace my steps. But this was no easy
matter. I soon became entangled in a dense undergrowth, which so
confused me that at last I confessed despairingly to myself that for
the first time in this wood I was hopelessly lost. And in what terrible
circumstances! At intervals a flash of lightning would throw a vivid
blue glare down into the interior of the wood and only serve to show
that I had lost myself in a place where even at noon in cloudless
weather progress would be most difficult; and now the light would only
last a moment, to be followed by thick gloom; and I could only tear
blindly on, bruising and lacerating my flesh at every step, falling
again and again, only to struggle up and on again, now high above the
surface, climbing over prostrate trees and branches, now plunged to my
middle in a pool or torrent of water.

Hopeless--utterly hopeless seemed all my mad efforts; and at each pause,
when I would stand exhausted, gasping for breath, my throbbing heart
almost suffocating me, a dull, continuous, teasing pain in my bitten leg
served to remind me that I had but a little time left to exist--that by
delaying at first I had allowed my only chance of salvation to slip by.

How long a time I spent fighting my way through this dense black wood I
know not; perhaps two or three hours, only to me the hours seemed like
years of prolonged agony. At last, all at once, I found that I was free
of the close undergrowth and walking on level ground; but it was darker
here darker than the darkest night; and at length, when the lightning
came and flared down through the dense roof of foliage overhead, I
discovered that I was in a spot that had a strange look, where the trees
were very large and grew wide apart, and with no undergrowth to impede
progress beneath them. Here, recovering breath, I began to run, and
after a while found that I had left the large trees behind me, and was
now in a more open place, with small trees and bushes; and this made me
hope for a while that I had at last reached the border of the forest.
But the hope proved vain; once more I had to force my way through dense
undergrowth, and finally emerged on to a slope where it was open, and
I could once more see for some distance around me by such light as
came through the thick pall of clouds. Trudging on to the summit of
the slope, I saw that there was open savannah country beyond, and for a
moment rejoiced that I had got free from the forest. A few steps more,
and I was standing on the very edge of a bank, a precipice not less than
fifty feet deep. I had never seen that bank before, and therefore knew
that I could not be on the right side of the forest. But now my only
hope was to get completely away from the trees and then to look for the
village, and I began following the bank in search of a descent. No break
occurred, and presently I was stopped by a dense thicket of bushes. I
was about to retrace my steps when I noticed that a tall slender tree
growing at the foot of the precipice, its green top not more than
a couple of yards below my feet, seemed to offer a means of escape.
Nerving myself with the thought that if I got crushed by the fall I
should probably escape a lingering and far more painful death, I dropped
into the cloud of foliage beneath me and clutched desperately at the
twigs as I fell. For a moment I felt myself sustained; but branch after
branch gave way beneath my weight, and then I only remember, very dimly,
a swift flight through the air before losing consciousness.



CHAPTER VII

With the return of consciousness, I at first had a vague impression that
I was lying somewhere, injured, and incapable of motion; that it was
night, and necessary for me to keep my eyes fast shut to prevent them
from being blinded by almost continuous vivid flashes of lightning.
Injured, and sore all over, but warm and dry--surely dry; nor was it
lightning that dazzled, but firelight. I began to notice things little
by little. The fire was burning on a clay floor a few feet from where I
was lying. Before it, on a log of wood, sat or crouched a human figure.
An old man, with chin on breast and hands clasped before his drawn-up
knees; only a small portion of his forehead and nose visible to me. An
Indian I took him to be, from his coarse, lank, grey hair and dark brown
skin. I was in a large hut, falling at the sides to within two feet of
the floor; but there were no hammocks in it, nor bows and spears, and
no skins, not even under me, for I was lying on straw mats. I could hear
the storm still raging outside; the rush and splash of rain, and, at
intervals, the distant growl of thunder. There was wind, too; I listened
to it sobbing in the trees, and occasionally a puff found its way in,
and blew up the white ashes at the old man’s feet, and shook the yellow
flames like a flag. I remembered now how the storm began, the wild girl,
the snake-bite, my violent efforts to find a way out of the woods, and,
finally, that leap from the bank where recollection ended. That I had
not been killed by the venomous tooth, nor the subsequent fearful fall,
seemed like a miracle to me. And in that wild, solitary place, lying
insensible, in that awful storm and darkness, I had been found by a
fellow creature--a savage, doubtless, but a good Samaritan all the
same--who had rescued me from death! I was bruised all over and did not
attempt to move, fearing the pain it would give me; and I had a racking
headache; but these seemed trifling discomforts after such adventures
and such perils. I felt that I had recovered or was recovering from
that venomous bite; that I would live and not die--live to return to my
country; and the thought filled my heart to overflowing, and tears of
gratitude and happiness rose to my eyes.

At such times a man experiences benevolent feelings, and would willingly
bestow some of that overplus of happiness on his fellows to lighten
other hearts; and this old man before me, who was probably the
instrument of my salvation, began greatly to excite my interest and
compassion. For he seemed so poor in his old age and rags, so solitary
and dejected as he sat there with knees drawn up, his great, brown, bare
feet looking almost black by contrast with the white wood-ashes about
them! What could I do for him? What could I say to cheer his spirits
in that Indian language, which has few or no words to express kindly
feelings? Unable to think of anything better to say, I at length
suddenly cried aloud: “Smoke, old man! Why do you not smoke? It is good
to smoke.”

He gave a mighty start and, turning, fixed his eyes on me. Then I saw
that he was not a pure Indian, for although as brown as old leather,
he wore a beard and moustache. A curious face had this old man, which
looked as if youth and age had made it a battling-ground. His forehead
was smooth except for two parallel lines in the middle running its
entire length, dividing it in zones; his arched eyebrows were black as
ink, and his small black eyes were bright and cunning, like the eyes of
some wild carnivorous animal. In this part of his face youth had held
its own, especially in the eyes, which looked young and lively.
But lower down age had conquered, scribbling his skin all over with
wrinkles, while moustache and beard were white as thistledown. “Aha, the
dead man is alive again!” he exclaimed, with a chuckling laugh. This
in the Indian tongue; then in Spanish he added: “But speak to me in the
language you know best, senor; for if you are not a Venezuelan call me
an owl.”

“And you, old man?” said I.

“Ah, I was right! Why sir what I am is plainly written on my face.
Surely you do not take me for a pagan! I might be a black man from
Africa, or an Englishman, but an Indian--that, no! But a minute ago you
had the goodness to invite me to smoke. How, sir, can a poor man smoke
who is without tobacco?”

“Without tobacco--in Guayana!”

“Can you believe it? But, sir, do not blame me; if the beast that
came one night and destroyed my plants when ripe for cutting had taken
pumpkins and sweet potatoes instead, it would have been better for him,
if curses have any effect. And the plant grows slowly, sir--it is not an
evil weed to come to maturity in a single day. And as for other leaves
in the forest, I smoke them, yes; but there is no comfort to the lungs
in such smoke.”

“My tobacco-pouch was full,” I said. “You will find it in my coat, if I
did not lose it.”

“The saints forbid!” he exclaimed. “Grandchild--Rima, have you got a
tobacco-pouch with the other things? Give it to me.”

Then I first noticed that another person was in the hut, a slim young
girl, who had been seated against the wall on the other side of the
fire, partially hid by the shadows. She had my leather belt, with
the revolver in its case, and my hunting-knife attached, and the few
articles I had had in my pockets, on her lap. Taking up the pouch, she
handed it to him, and he clutched it with a strange eagerness.

“I will give it back presently, Rima,” he said. “Let me first smoke a
cigarette--and then another.”

It seemed probable from this that the good old man had already been
casting covetous eyes on my property, and that his granddaughter had
taken care of it for me. But how the silent, demure girl had kept it
from him was a puzzle, so intensely did he seem now to enjoy it, drawing
the smoke vigorously into his lungs and, after keeping it ten or fifteen
seconds there, letting it fly out again from mouth and nose in blue jets
and clouds. His face softened visibly, he became more and more genial
and loquacious, and asked me how I came to be in that solitary place. I
told him that I was staying with the Indian Runi, his neighbour.

“But, senor,” he said, “if it is not an impertinence, how is it that a
young man of so distinguished an appearance as yourself, a Venezuelan,
should be residing with these children of the devil?”

“You love not your neighbours, then?”

“I know them, sir--how should I love them?” He was rolling up his second
or third cigarette by this time, and I could not help noticing that he
took a great deal more tobacco than he required in his fingers, and
that the surplus on each occasion was conveyed to some secret receptacle
among his rags. “Love them, sir! They are infidels, and therefore the
good Christian must only hate them. They are thieves--they will steal
from you before your very face, so devoid are they of all shame. And
also murderers; gladly would they burn this poor thatch above my head,
and kill me and my poor grandchild, who shares this solitary life with
me, if they had the courage. But they are all arrant cowards, and fear
to approach me--fear even to come into this wood. You would laugh to
hear what they are afraid of--a child would laugh to hear it!”

“What do they fear?” I said, for his words had excited my interest in a
great degree.

“Why, sir, would you believe it? They fear this child--my granddaughter,
seated there before you. A poor innocent girl of seventeen summers, a
Christian who knows her Catechism, and would not harm the smallest thing
that God has made--no, not a fly, which is not regarded on account of
its smallness. Why, sir, it is due to her tender heart that you are
safely sheltered here, instead of being left out of doors in this
tempestuous night.”

“To her--to this girl?” I returned in astonishment. “Explain, old man,
for I do not know how I was saved.”

“Today, senor, through your own heedlessness you were bitten by a
venomous snake.”

“Yes, that is true, although I do not know how it came to your
knowledge. But why am I not a dead man, then--have you done something to
save me from the effects of the poison?”

“Nothing. What could I do so long after you were bitten? When a man is
bitten by a snake in a solitary place he is in God’s hands. He will live
or die as God wills. There is nothing to be done. But surely, sir, you
remember that my poor grandchild was with you in the wood when the snake
bit you?”

“A girl was there--a strange girl I have seen and heard before when I
have walked in the forest. But not this girl--surely not this girl!”

“No other,” said he, carefully rolling up another cigarette.

“It is not possible!” I returned.

“Ill would you have fared, sir, had she not been there. For after being
bitten, you rushed away into the thickest part of the wood, and went
about in a circle like a demented person for Heaven knows how long. But
she never left you; she was always close to you--you might have touched
her with your hand. And at last some good angel who was watching you,
in order to stop your career, made you mad altogether and caused you to
jump over a precipice and lose your senses. And you were no sooner on
the ground than she was with you--ask me not how she got down! And when
she had propped you up against the bank, she came for me. Fortunately
the spot where you had fallen is near--not five hundred yards from the
door. And I, on my part, was willing to assist her in saving you; for I
knew it was no Indian that had fallen, since she loves not that breed,
and they come not here. It was not an easy task, for you weigh, senor;
but between us we brought you in.”

While he spoke, the girl continued sitting in the same listless attitude
as when I first observed her, with eyes cast down and hands folded in
her lap. Recalling that brilliant being in the wood that had protected
the serpent from me and calmed its rage, I found it hard to believe his
words, and still felt a little incredulous.

“Rima--that is your name, is it not?” I said. “Will you come here and
stand before me, and let me look closely at you?”

“Si, senor.” she meekly answered; and removing the things from her lap,
she stood up; then, passing behind the old man, came and stood before
me, her eyes still bent on the ground--a picture of humility.

She had the figure of the forest girl, but wore now a scanty faded
cotton garment, while the loose cloud of hair was confined in two plaits
and hung down her back. The face also showed the same delicate lines,
but of the brilliant animation and variable colour and expression there
appeared no trace. Gazing at her countenance as she stood there silent,
shy, and spiritless before me, the image of her brighter self came
vividly to my mind and I could not recover from the astonishment I felt
at such a contrast.

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance
among the flowers--a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with
every change of position--how in turning it catches the sunshine on its
burnished neck and gorges plumes--green and gold and flame-coloured, the
beams changing to visible flakes as they fall, dissolving into nothing,
to be succeeded by others and yet others? In its exquisite form,
its changeful splendour, its swift motions and intervals of aerial
suspension, it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to
mock all description. And have you seen this same fairy-like creature
suddenly perch itself on a twig, in the shade, its misty wings and
fan-like tail folded, the iridescent glory vanished, looking like some
common dull-plumaged little bird sitting listless in a cage? Just so
great was the difference in the girl as I had seen her in the forest and
as she now appeared under the smoky roof in the firelight.

After watching her for some moments, I spoke: “Rima, there must be a
good deal of strength in that frame of yours, which looks so delicate;
will you raise me up a little?”

She went down on one knee and, placing her arms round me, assisted me to
a sitting posture.

“Thank you, Rima--oh, misery!” I groaned. “Is there a bone left unbroken
in my poor body?”

“Nothing broken,” cried the old man, clouds of smoke flying out with his
words. “I have examined you well--legs, arms, ribs. For this is how
it was, senor. A thorny bush into which you fell saved you from being
flattened on the stony ground. But you are bruised, sir, black with
bruises; and there are more scratches of thorns on your skin than
letters on a written page.”

“A long thorn might have entered my brain,” I said, “from the way it
pains. Feel my forehead, Rima; is it very hot and dry?”

She did as I asked, touching me lightly with her little cool hand. “No,
senor, not hot, but warm and moist,” she said.

“Thank Heaven for that!” I said. “Poor girl! And you followed me through
the wood in all that terrible storm! Ah, if I could lift my bruised arm
I would take your hand to kiss it in gratitude for so great a service. I
owe you my life, sweet Rima--what shall I do to repay so great a debt?”

The old man chuckled as if amused, but the girl lifted not her eyes nor
spoke.

“Tell me, sweet child,” I said, “for I cannot realize it yet; was
it really you that saved the serpent’s life when I would have killed
it--did you stand by me in the wood with the serpent lying at your
feet?”

“Yes, senor,” came her gentle answer.

“And it was you I saw in the wood one day, lying on the ground playing
with a small bird?”

“Yes, senor.”

“And it was you that followed me so often among the trees, calling to
me, yet always hiding so that I could never see you?”

“Yes, senor.”

“Oh, this is wonderful!” I exclaimed; whereat the old man chuckled
again.

“But tell me this, my sweet girl,” I continued. “You never addressed me
in Spanish; what strange musical language was it you spoke to me in?”

She shot a timid glance at my face and looked troubled at the question,
but made no reply.

“Senor,” said the old man, “that is a question which you must excuse my
child from answering. Not, sir, from want of will, for she is docile and
obedient, though I say it, but there is no answer beyond what I can tell
you. And this is, sir, that all creatures, whether man or bird, have the
voice that God has given them; and in some the voice is musical and in
others not so.”

“Very well, old man,” said I to myself; “there let the matter rest for
the present. But if I am destined to live and not die, I shall not long
remain satisfied with your too simple explanation.”

“Rima,” I said, “you must be fatigued; it is thoughtless of me to keep
you standing here so long.”

Her face brightened a little, and bending down, she replied in a low
voice: “I am not fatigued, sir. Let me get you something to eat now.”

She moved quickly away to the fire, and presently returned with an
earthenware dish of roasted pumpkin and sweet potatoes and, kneeling at
my side, fed me deftly with a small wooden spoon. I did not feel grieved
at the absence of meat and the stinging condiments the Indians love, nor
did I even remark that there was no salt in the vegetables, so much
was I taken up with watching her beautiful delicate face while she
ministered to me. The exquisite fragrance of her breath was more to me
than the most delicious viands could have been; and it was a delight
each time she raised the spoon to my mouth to catch a momentary glimpse
of her eyes, which now looked dark as wine when we lift the glass to see
the ruby gleam of light within the purple. But she never for a moment
laid aside the silent, meek, constrained manner; and when I remembered
her bursting out in her brilliant wrath on me, pouring forth that
torrent of stinging invective in her mysterious language, I was lost
in wonder and admiration at the change in her, and at her double
personality. Having satisfied my wants, she moved quietly away
and, raising a straw mat, disappeared behind it into her own
sleeping-apartment, which was divided off by a partition from the room I
was in.

The old man’s sleeping-place was a wooden cot or stand on the opposite
side of the room, but he was in no hurry to sleep, and after Rima had
left us, put a fresh log on the blaze and lit another cigarette. Heaven
knows how many he had smoked by this time. He became very talkative and
called to his side his two dogs, which I had not noticed in the room
before, for me to see. It amused me to hear their names--Susio and
Goloso: Dirty and Greedy. They were surly-looking brutes, with rough
yellow hair, and did not win my heart, but according to his account they
possessed all the usual canine virtues; and he was still holding forth
on the subject when I fell asleep.



CHAPTER VIII

When morning came I was too stiff and sore to move, and not until the
following day was I able to creep out to sit in the shade of the trees.
My old host, whose name was Nuflo, went off with his dogs, leaving
the girl to attend to my wants. Two or three times during the day she
appeared to serve me with food and drink, but she continued silent and
constrained in manner as on the first evening of seeing her in the hut.

Late in the afternoon old Nuflo returned, but did not say where he had
been; and shortly afterwards Rima reappeared, demure as usual, in her
faded cotton dress, her cloud of hair confined in two long plaits.
My curiosity was more excited than ever, and I resolved to get to
the bottom of the mystery of her life. The girl had not shown herself
responsive, but now that Nuflo was back I was treated to as much talk as
I cared to hear. He talked of many things, only omitting those which
I desired to hear about; but his pet subject appeared to be the
divine government of the world--“God’s politics”--and its manifest
imperfections, or, in other words, the manifold abuses which from time
to time had been allowed to creep into it. The old man was pious, but
like many of his class in my country, he permitted himself to indulge in
very free criticisms of the powers above, from the King of Heaven down
to the smallest saint whose name figures in the calendar.

“These things, senor,” he said, “are not properly managed. Consider my
position. Here am I compelled for my sins to inhabit this wilderness
with my poor granddaughter--”

“She is not your granddaughter!” I suddenly interrupted, thinking to
surprise him into an admission.

But he took his time to answer. “Senor, we are never sure of anything in
this world. Not absolutely sure. Thus, it may come to pass that you will
one day marry, and that your wife will in due time present you with
a son--one that will inherit your fortune and transmit your name
to posterity. And yet, sir, in this world, you will never know to a
certainty that he is your son.”

“Proceed with what you were saying,” I returned, with some dignity.

“Here we are,” he continued, “compelled to inhabit this land and do not
meet with proper protection from the infidel. Now, sir, this is a crying
evil, and it is only becoming in one who has the true faith, and is a
loyal subject of the All-Powerful, to point out with due humility that
He is growing very remiss in His affairs, and is losing a good deal of
His prestige. And what, senor, is at the bottom of it? Favoritism. We
know that the Supreme cannot Himself be everywhere, attending to each
little trick-track that arises in the world--matters altogether beneath
His notice; and that He must, like the President of Venezuela or the
Emperor of Brazil, appoint men--angels if you like--to conduct His
affairs and watch over each district. And it is manifest that for this
country of Guayana the proper person has not been appointed. Every
evil is done and there is no remedy, and the Christian has no more
consideration shown him than the infidel. Now, senor, in a town near the
Orinoco I once saw on a church the archangel Michael, made of stone, and
twice as tall as a man, with one foot on a monster shaped like a cayman,
but with bat’s wings, and a head and neck like a serpent. Into this
monster he was thrusting his spear. That is the kind of person that
should be sent to rule these latitudes--a person of firmness and
resolution, with strength in his wrist. And yet it is probable that this
very man--this St. Michael--is hanging about the palace, twirling his
thumbs, waiting for an appointment, while other weaker men, and--Heaven
forgive me for saying it--not above a bribe, perhaps, are sent out to
rule over this province.”

On this string he would harp by the hour; it was a lofty subject on
which he had pondered much in his solitary life, and he was glad of an
opportunity of ventilating his grievance and expounding his views. At
first it was a pure pleasure to hear Spanish again, and the old man,
albeit ignorant of letters, spoke well; but this, I may say, is a common
thing in our country, where the peasant’s quickness of intelligence and
poetic feeling often compensate for want of instruction. His views also
amused me, although they were not novel. But after a while I grew tired
of listening, yet I listened still, agreeing with him, and leading him
on to let him have his fill of talk, always hoping that he would come at
last to speak of personal matters and give me an account of his history
and of Rima’s origin. But the hope proved vain; not a word to enlighten
me would he drop, however cunningly I tempted him.

“So be it,” thought I; “but if you are cunning, old man, I shall be
cunning too--and patient; for all things come to him who waits.”

He was in no hurry to get rid of me. On the contrary, he more than
hinted that I would be safer under his roof than with the Indians, at
the same time apologizing for not giving me meat to eat.

“But why do you not have meat? Never have I seen animals so abundant and
tame as in this wood.” Before he could reply Rima, with a jug of water
from the spring in her hand, came in; glancing at me, he lifted his
finger to signify that such a subject must not be discussed in her
presence; but as soon as she quitted the room he returned to it.

“Senor,” he said, “have you forgotten your adventure with the snake?
Know, then, that my grandchild would not live with me for one day longer
if I were to lift my hand against any living creature. For us, senor,
every day is fast-day--only without the fish. We have maize, pumpkin,
cassava, potatoes, and these suffice. And even of these cultivated
fruits of the earth she eats but little in the house, preferring certain
wild berries and gums, which are more to her taste, and which she picks
here and there in her rambles in the wood. And I, sir, loving her as I
do, whatever my inclination may be, shed no blood and eat no flesh.”

I looked at him with an incredulous smile.

“And your dogs, old man?”

“My dogs? Sir, they would not pause or turn aside if a coatimundi
crossed their path--an animal with a strong odour. As a man is, so is
his dog. Have you not seen dogs eating grass, sir, even in Venezuela,
where these sentiments do not prevail? And when there is no meat--when
meat is forbidden--these sagacious animals accustom themselves to a
vegetable diet.”

I could not very well tell the old man that he was lying to me--that
would have been bad policy--and so I passed it off. “I have no doubt
that you are right,” I said. “I have heard that there are dogs in China
that eat no meat, but are themselves eaten by their owners after being
fattened on rice. I should not care to dine on one of your animals, old
man.”

He looked at them critically and replied: “Certainly they are lean.”

“I was thinking less of their leanness than of their smell,” I returned.
“Their odour when they approach me is not flowery, but resembles that
of other dogs which feed on flesh, and have offended my too sensitive
nostrils even in the drawing-rooms of Caracas. It is not like the
fragrance of cattle when they return from the pasture.”

“Every animal,” he replied, “gives out that odour which is peculiar to
its kind”; an incontrovertible fact which left me nothing to say.

When I had sufficiently recovered the suppleness of my limbs to walk
with ease, I went for a ramble in the wood, in the hope that Rima would
accompany me, and that out among the trees she would cast aside that
artificial constraint and shyness which was her manner in the house.

It fell out just as I had expected; she accompanied me in the sense of
being always near me, or within earshot, and her manner was now free and
unconstrained as I could wish; but little or nothing was gained by the
change. She was once more the tantalizing, elusive, mysterious creature
I had first known through her wandering, melodious voice. The only
difference was that the musical, inarticulate sounds were now less often
heard, and that she was no longer afraid to show herself to me. This for
a short time was enough to make me happy, since no lovelier being was
ever looked upon, nor one whose loveliness was less likely to lose its
charm through being often seen.

But to keep her near me or always in sight was, I found, impossible: she
would be free as the wind, free as the butterfly, going and coming at
her wayward will, and losing herself from sight a dozen times every
hour. To induce her to walk soberly at my side or sit down and enter
into conversation with me seemed about as impracticable as to tame
the fiery-hearted little humming-bird that flashes into sight, remains
suspended motionless for a few seconds before your face, then, quick as
lightning, vanishes again.

At length, feeling convinced that she was most happy when she had me out
following her in the wood, that in spite of her bird-like wildness she
had a tender, human heart, which was easily moved, I determined to try
to draw her closer by means of a little innocent stratagem. Going out in
the morning, after calling her several times to no purpose, I began to
assume a downcast manner, as if suffering pain or depressed with grief;
and at last, finding a convenient exposed root under a tree, on a spot
where the ground was dry and strewn with loose yellow sand, I sat down
and refused to go any further. For she always wanted to lead me on and
on, and whenever I paused she would return to show herself, or to chide
or encourage me in her mysterious language. All her pretty little arts
were now practiced in vain: with cheek resting on my hand, I still sat.

So my eyes fixed on that patch of yellow sand at my feet, watching how
the small particles glinted like diamond dust when the sunlight touched
them. A full hour passed in this way, during which I encouraged myself
by saying mentally: “This is a contest between us, and the most patient
and the strongest of will, which should be the man, must conquer. And if
I win on this occasion, it will be easier for me in the future--easier
to discover those things which I am resolved to know, and the girl must
reveal to me, since the old man has proved impracticable.”

Meanwhile she came and went and came again; and at last, finding that I
was not to be moved, she approached and stood near me. Her face, when I
glanced at it, had a somewhat troubled look--both troubled and curious.

“Come here, Rima,” I said, “and stay with me for a little while--I
cannot follow you now.”

She took one or two hesitating steps, then stood still again; and at
length, slowly and reluctantly, advanced to within a yard of me. Then
I rose from my seat on the root, so as to catch her face better, and
placed my hand against the rough bark of the tree.

“Rima,” I said, speaking in a low, caressing tone, “will you stay with
me here a little while and talk to me, not in your language, but in
mine, so that I may understand? Will you listen when I speak to you, and
answer me?”

Her lips moved, but made no sound. She seemed strangely disquieted, and
shook back her loose hair, and with her small toes moved the sparkling
sand at her feet, and once or twice her eyes glanced shyly at my face.

“Rima, you have not answered me,” I persisted. “Will you not say yes?”

“Yes.”

“Where does your grandfather spend his day when he goes out with his
dogs?”

She shook her head slightly, but would not speak.

“Have you no mother, Rima? Do you remember your mother?”

“My mother! My mother!” she exclaimed in a low voice, but with a sudden,
wonderful animation. Bending a little nearer, she continued: “Oh, she is
dead! Her body is in the earth and turned to dust. Like that,” and she
moved the loose sand with her foot. “Her soul is up there, where the
stars and the angels are, grandfather says. But what is that to me? I
am here--am I not? I talk to her just the same. Everything I see I point
out, and tell her everything. In the daytime--in the woods, when we are
together. And at night when I lie down I cross my arms on my breast--so,
and say: ‘Mother, mother, now you are in my arms; let us go to sleep
together.’ Sometimes I say: ‘Oh, why will you never answer me when I
speak and speak?’ Mother--mother--mother!”

At the end her voice suddenly rose to a mournful cry, then sunk, and at
the last repetition of the word died to a low whisper.

“Ah, poor Rima! she is dead and cannot speak to you--cannot hear you!
Talk to me, Rima; I am living and can answer.”

But now the cloud, which had suddenly lifted from her heart, letting me
see for a moment into its mysterious depths--its fancies so childlike
and feelings so intense--had fallen again; and my words brought no
response, except a return of that troubled look to her face.

“Silent still?” I said. “Talk to me, then, of your mother, Rima. Do you
know that you will see her again some day?”

“Yes, when I die. That is what the priest said.”

“The priest?”

“Yes, at Voa--do you know? Mother died there when I was small--it is so
far away! And there are thirteen houses by the side of the river--just
here; and on this side--trees, trees.”

This was important, I thought, and would lead to the very knowledge I
wished for; so I pressed her to tell me more about the settlement she
had named, and of which I had never heard.

“Everything have I told you,” she returned, surprised that I did not
know that she had exhausted the subject in those half-dozen words she
had spoken.

Obliged to shift my ground, I said at a venture: “Tell me, what do
you ask of the Virgin Mother when you kneel before her picture? Your
grandfather told me that you had a picture in your little room.”

“You know!” flashed out her answer, with something like resentment.

“It is all there in there,” waving her hand towards the hut. “Out here
in the wood it is all gone--like this,” and stooping quickly, she raised
a little yellow sand on her palm, then let it run away through her
fingers.

Thus she illustrated how all the matters she had been taught slipped
from her mind when she was out of doors, out of sight of the picture.
After an interval she added: “Only mother is here--always with me.”

“Ah, poor Rima!” I said; “alone without a mother, and only your old
grandfather! He is old--what will you do when he dies and flies away to
the starry country where your mother is?”

She looked inquiringly at me, then made answer in a low voice: “You are
here.”

“But when I go away?”

She was silent; and not wishing to dwell on a subject that seemed to
pain her, I continued: “Yes, I am here now, but you will not stay with
me and talk freely! Will it always be the same if I remain with you?
Why are you always so silent in the house, so cold with your old
grandfather? So different--so full of life, like a bird, when you are
alone in the woods? Rima, speak to me! Am I no more to you than your old
grandfather? Do you not like me to talk to you?”

She appeared strangely disturbed at my words. “Oh, you are not like
him,” she suddenly replied. “Sitting all day on a log by the fire--all
day, all day; Goloso and Susio lying beside him--sleep, sleep. Oh, when
I saw you in the wood I followed you, and talked and talked; still no
answer. Why will you not come when I call? To me!” Then, mocking my
voice: “Rima, Rima! Come here! Do this! Say that! Rima! Rima! It is
nothing, nothing--it is not you,” pointing to my mouth, and then, as if
fearing that her meaning had not been made clear, suddenly touching my
lips with her finger. “Why do you not answer me?--speak to me--speak to
me, like this!” And turning a little more towards me, and glancing at me
with eyes that had all at once changed, losing their clouded expression
for one of exquisite tenderness, from her lips came a succession of
those mysterious sounds which had first attracted me to her, swift
and low and bird-like, yet with something so much higher and more
soul-penetrating than any bird-music. Ah, what feeling and fancies, what
quaint turns of expression, unfamiliar to my mind, were contained in
those sweet, wasted symbols! I could never know--never come to her
when she called, or respond to her spirit. To me they would always
be inarticulate sounds, affecting me like a tender spiritual music--a
language without words, suggesting more than words to the soul.

The mysterious speech died down to a lisping sound, like the faint note
of some small bird falling from a cloud of foliage on the topmost bough
of a tree; and at the same time that new light passed from her eyes, and
she half averted her face in a disappointed way.

“Rima,” I said at length, a new thought coming to my aid, “it is true
that I am not here,” touching my lips as she had done, “and that
my words are nothing. But look into my eyes, and you will see me
there--all, all that is in my heart.”

“Oh, I know what I should see there!” she returned quickly.

“What would you see--tell me?”

“There is a little black ball in the middle of your eye; I should see
myself in it no bigger than that,” and she marked off about an eighth of
her little fingernail. “There is a pool in the wood, and I look down and
see myself there. That is better. Just as large as I am--not small
and black like a small, small fly.” And after saying this a little
disdainfully, she moved away from my side and out into the sunshine; and
then, half turning towards me, and glancing first at my face and then
upwards, she raised her hand to call my attention to something there.

Far up, high as the tops of the tallest trees, a great blue-winged
butterfly was passing across the open space with loitering flight. In a
few moments it was gone over the trees; then she turned once more to
me with a little rippling sound of laughter--the first I had heard from
her, and called: “Come, come!”

I was glad enough to go with her then; and for the next two hours we
rambled together in the wood; that is, together in her way, for though
always near she contrived to keep out of my sight most of the time. She
was evidently now in a gay, frolicsome temper; again and again, when I
looked closely into some wide-spreading bush, or peered behind a tree,
when her calling voice had sounded, her rippling laughter would come to
me from some other spot. At length, somewhere about the centre of the
wood, she led me to an immense mora tree, growing almost isolated,
covering with its shade a large space of ground entirely free from
undergrowth. At this spot she all at once vanished from my side; and
after listening and watching some time in vain, I sat down beside the
giant trunk to wait for her. Very soon I heard a low, warbling sound
which seemed quite near.

“Rima! Rima!” I called, and instantly my call was repeated like an echo.
Again and again I called, and still the words flew back to me, and I
could not decide whether it was an echo or not. Then I gave up calling;
and presently the low, warbling sound was repeated, and I knew that Rima
was somewhere near me.

“Rima, where are you?” I called.

“Rima, where are you?” came the answer.

“You are behind the tree.”

“You are behind the tree.”

“I shall catch you, Rima.” And this time, instead of repeating my words,
she answered: “Oh no.”

I jumped up and ran round the tree, feeling sure that I should find her.
It was about thirty-five or forty feet in circumference; and after going
round two or three times, I turned and ran the other way, but failing to
catch a glimpse of her I at last sat down again.

“Rima, Rima!” sounded the mocking voice as soon as I had sat down.
“Where are you, Rima? I shall catch you, Rima! Have you caught Rima?”

“No, I have not caught her. There is no Rima now. She has faded away
like a rainbow--like a drop of dew in the sun. I have lost her; I shall
go to sleep.” And stretching myself out at full length under the tree,
I remained quiet for two or three minutes. Then a slight rustling
sound was heard, and I looked eagerly round for her. But the sound
was overhead and caused by a great avalanche of leaves which began to
descend on me from that vast leafy canopy above.

“Ah, little spider-monkey--little green tree-snake--you are there!”
 But there was no seeing her in that immense aerial palace hung with dim
drapery of green and copper-coloured leaves. But how had she got there?
Up the stupendous trunk even a monkey could not have climbed, and there
were no lianas dropping to earth from the wide horizontal branches that
I could see; but by and by, looking further away, I perceived that on
one side the longest lower branches reached and mingled with the shorter
boughs of the neighbouring trees. While gazing up I heard her low,
rippling laugh, and then caught sight of her as she ran along an exposed
horizontal branch, erect on her feet; and my heart stood still with
terror, for she was fifty to sixty feet above the ground. In another
moment she vanished from sight in a cloud of foliage, and I saw no more
of her for about ten minutes, when all at once she appeared at my side
once more, having come round the trunk of the mora. Her face had a
bright, pleased expression, and showed no trace of fatigue or agitation.

I caught her hand in mine. It was a delicate, shapely little hand, soft
as velvet, and warm--a real human hand; only now when I held it did she
seem altogether like a human being and not a mocking spirit of the wood,
a daughter of the Didi.

“Do you like me to hold your hand, Rima?”

“Yes,” she replied, with indifference.

“Is it I?”

“Yes.” This time as if it was small satisfaction to make acquaintance
with this purely physical part of me.

Having her so close gave me an opportunity of examining that light
sheeny garment she wore always in the woods. It felt soft and satiny to
the touch, and there was no seam nor hem in it that I could see, but it
was all in one piece, like the cocoon of the caterpillar. While I was
feeling it on her shoulder and looking narrowly at it, she glanced at me
with a mocking laugh in her eyes.

“Is it silk?” I asked. Then, as she remained silent, I continued: “Where
did you get this dress, Rima? Did you make it yourself? Tell me.”

She answered not in words, but in response to my question a new look
came into her face; no longer restless and full of change in her
expression, she was now as immovable as an alabaster statue; not a
silken hair on her head trembled; her eyes were wide open, gazing
fixedly before her; and when I looked into them they seemed to see and
yet not to see me. They were like the clear, brilliant eyes of a bird,
which reflect as in a miraculous mirror all the visible world but do not
return our look and seem to see us merely as one of the thousand small
details that make up the whole picture. Suddenly she darted out her
hand like a flash, making me start at the unexpected motion, and quickly
withdrawing it, held up a finger before me. From its tip a minute
gossamer spider, about twice the bigness of a pin’s head, appeared
suspended from a fine, scarcely visible line three or four inches long.

“Look!” she exclaimed, with a bright glance at my face.

The small spider she had captured, anxious to be free, was falling,
falling earthward, but could not reach the surface. Leaning her shoulder
a little forward, she placed the finger-tip against it, but lightly,
scarcely touching, and moving continuously, with a motion rapid as that
of a fluttering moth’s wing; while the spider, still paying out his
line, remained suspended, rising and falling slightly at nearly the same
distance from the ground. After a few moments she cried: “Drop down,
little spider.” Her finger’s motion ceased, and the minute captive fell,
to lose itself on the shaded ground.

“Do you not see?” she said to me, pointing to her shoulder. Just where
the finger-tip had touched the garment a round shining spot appeared,
looking like a silver coin on the cloth; but on touching it with my
finger it seemed part of the original fabric, only whiter and more shiny
on the grey ground, on account of the freshness of the web of which it
had just been made.

And so all this curious and pretty performance, which seemed instinctive
in its spontaneous quickness and dexterity, was merely intended to show
me how she made her garments out of the fine floating lines of small
gossamer spiders!

Before I could express my surprise and admiration she cried again, with
startling suddenness: “Look!”

A minute shadowy form darted by, appearing like a dim line traced across
the deep glossy more foliage, then on the lighter green foliage further
away. She waved her hand in imitation of its swift, curving flight;
then, dropping it, exclaimed: “Gone--oh, little thing!”

“What was it?” I asked, for it might have been a bird, a bird-like moth,
or a bee.

“Did you not see? And you asked me to look into your eyes!”

“Ah, little squirrel Sakawinki, you remind me of that!” I said, passing
my arm round her waist and drawing her a little closer. “Look into my
eyes now and see if I am blind, and if there is nothing in them except
an image of Rima like a small, small fly.”

She shook her head and laughed a little mockingly, but made no effort to
escape from my arm.

“Would you like me always to do what you wish, Rima--to follow you in
the woods when you say ‘Come’--to chase you round the tree to catch you,
and lie down for you to throw leaves on me, and to be glad when you are
glad?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then let us make a compact. I shall do everything to please you, and
you must promise to do everything to please me.”

“Tell me.”

“Little things, Rima--none so hard as chasing you round a tree. Only to
have you stand or sit by me and talk will make me happy. And to begin
you must call me by my name--Abel.”

“Is that your name? Oh, not your real name! Abel, Abel--what is that? It
says nothing. I have called you by so many names--twenty, thirty--and no
answer.”

“Have you? But, dearest girl, every person has a name, one name he is
called by. Your name, for instance, is Rima, is it not?”

“Rima! only Rima--to you? In the morning, in the evening... now in this
place and in a little while where know I? ... in the night when you wake
and it is dark, dark, and you see me all the same. Only Rima--oh, how
strange!”

“What else, sweet girl? Your grandfather Nuflo calls you Rima.”

“Nuflo?” She spoke as if putting a question to herself. “Is that an
old man with two dogs that lives somewhere in the wood?” And then, with
sudden petulance: “And you ask me to talk to you!”

“Oh, Rima, what can I say to you? Listen--”

“No, no,” she exclaimed, quickly turning and putting her fingers on my
mouth to stop my speech, while a sudden merry look shone in her eyes.
“You shall listen when I speak, and do all I say. And tell me what to
do to please you with your eyes--let me look in your eyes that are not
blind.”

She turned her face more towards me and with head a little thrown back
and inclined to one side, gazing now full into my eyes as I had wished
her to do. After a few moments she glanced away to the distant trees.
But I could see into those divine orbs, and knew that she was
not looking at any particular object. All the ever-varying
expressions--inquisitive, petulant, troubled, shy, frolicsome had now
vanished from the still face, and the look was inward and full of a
strange, exquisite light, as if some new happiness or hope had touched
her spirit.

Sinking my voice to a whisper, I said: “Tell me what you have seen in my
eyes, Rima?”

She murmured in reply something melodious and inarticulate, then glanced
at my face in a questioning way; but only for a moment, then her sweet
eyes were again veiled under those drooping lashes.

“Listen, Rima,” I said. “Was that a humming-bird we saw a little while
ago? You are like that, now dark, a shadow in the shadow, seen for
an instant, and then--gone, oh, little thing! And now in the sunshine
standing still, how beautiful!--a thousand times more beautiful than
the humming-bird. Listen, Rima, you are like all beautiful things in the
wood--flower, and bird, and butterfly, and green leaf, and frond, and
little silky-haired monkey high up in the trees. When I look at you I
see them all--all and more, a thousand times, for I see Rima herself.
And when I listen to Rima’s voice, talking in a language I cannot
understand, I hear the wind whispering in the leaves, the gurgling
running water, the bee among the flowers, the organ-bird singing far,
far away in the shadows of the trees. I hear them all, and more, for
I hear Rima. Do you understand me now? Is it I speaking to you--have I
answered you--have I come to you?”

She glanced at me again, her lips trembling, her eyes now clouded with
some secret trouble. “Yes,” she replied in a whisper, and then: “No, it
is not you,” and after a moment, doubtfully: “Is it you?”

But she did not wait to be answered: in a moment she was gone round the
more; nor would she return again for all my calling.



CHAPTER IX

That afternoon with Rima in the forest under the mora tree had proved so
delightful that I was eager for more rambles and talks with her, but the
variable little witch had a great surprise in store for me. All her wild
natural gaiety had unaccountably gone out of her: when I walked in
the shade she was there, but no longer as the blithe, fantastic being,
bright as an angel, innocent and affectionate as a child, tricksy as a
monkey, that had played at hide-and-seek with me. She was now my shy,
silent attendant, only occasionally visible, and appearing then like
the mysterious maid I had found reclining among the ferns who had melted
away mist-like from sight as I gazed. When I called she would not now
answer as formerly, but in response would appear in sight as if to
assure me that I had not been forsaken; and after a few moments her grey
shadowy form would once more vanish among the trees. The hope that as
her confidence increased and she grew accustomed to talk with me she
would be brought to reveal the story of her life had to be abandoned, at
all events for the present. I must, after all, get my information from
Nuflo, or rest in ignorance. The old man was out for the greater part
of each day with his dogs, and from these expeditions he brought back
nothing that I could see but a few nuts and fruits, some thin bark for
his cigarettes, and an occasional handful of haima gum to perfume the
hut of an evening. After I had wasted three days in vainly trying to
overcome the girl’s now inexplicable shyness, I resolved to give for
a while my undivided attention to her grandfather to discover, if
possible, where he went and how he spent his time.

My new game of hide-and-seek with Nuflo instead of with Rima began
on the following morning. He was cunning; so was I. Going out and
concealing myself among the bushes, I began to watch the hut. That I
could elude Rima’s keener eyes I doubted; but that did not trouble me.
She was not in harmony with the old man, and would do nothing to defeat
my plan. I had not been long in my hiding-place before he came out,
followed by his two dogs, and going to some distance from the door,
he sat down on a log. For some minutes he smoked, then rose, and after
looking cautiously round slipped away among the trees. I saw that he was
going off in the direction of the low range of rocky hills south of the
forest. I knew that the forest did not extend far in that direction, and
thinking that I should be able to catch a sight of him on its borders,
I left the bushes and ran through the trees as fast as I could to get
ahead of him. Coming to where the wood was very open, I found that a
barren plain beyond it, a quarter of a mile wide, separated it from the
range of hills; thinking that the old man might cross this open space,
I climbed into a tree to watch. After some time he appeared, walking
rapidly among the trees, the dogs at his heels, but not going towards
the open plain; he had, it seemed, after arriving at the edge of the
wood, changed his direction and was going west, still keeping in the
shelter of the trees. When he had been gone about five minutes, I
dropped to the ground and started in pursuit; once more I caught sight
of him through the trees, and I kept him in sight for about twenty
minutes longer; then he came to a broad strip of dense wood which
extended into and through the range of hills, and here I quickly lost
him. Hoping still to overtake him, I pushed on, but after struggling
through the underwood for some distance, and finding the forest growing
more difficult as I progressed, I at last gave him up. Turning eastward,
I got out of the wood to find myself at the foot of a steep rough hill,
one of the range which the wooded valley cut through at right angles. It
struck me that it would be a good plan to climb the hill to get a view
of the forest belt in which I had lost the old man; and after walking a
short distance I found a spot which allowed of an ascent. The summit of
the hill was about three hundred feet above the surrounding level and
did not take me long to reach; it commanded a fair view, and I now saw
that the belt of wood beneath me extended right through the range, and
on the south side opened out into an extensive forest. “If that is your
destination,” thought I, “old fox, your secrets are safe from me.”

It was still early in the day, and a slight breeze tempered the air and
made it cool and pleasant on the hilltop after my exertions. My scramble
through the wood had fatigued me somewhat, and resolving to spend some
hours on that spot, I looked round for a comfortable resting-place. I
soon found a shady spot on the west side of an upright block of stone
where I could recline at ease on a bed of lichen. Here, with shoulders
resting against the rock, I sat thinking of Rima, alone in her wood
today, with just a tinge of bitterness in my thoughts which made me hope
that she would miss me as much as I missed her; and in the end I fell
asleep.

When I woke, it was past noon, and the sun was shining directly on me.
Standing up to gaze once more on the prospect, I noticed a small wreath
of white smoke issuing from a spot about the middle of the forest belt
beneath me, and I instantly divined that Nuflo had made a fire at that
place, and I resolved to surprise him in his retreat. When I got down
to the base of the hill the smoke could no longer be seen, but I had
studied the spot well from above, and had singled out a large clump of
trees on the edge of the belt as a starting-point; and after a search of
half an hour I succeeded in finding the old man’s hiding-place. First I
saw smoke again through an opening in the trees, then a small rude hut
of sticks and palm leaves. Approaching cautiously, I peered through a
crack and discovered old Nuflo engaged in smoking some meat over a fire,
and at the same time grilling some bones on the coals. He had captured
a coatimundi, an animal somewhat large

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