CHAPTER XX.
“The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet itWith lusty sinews; throwing it asideAnd stemming it with hearts of controversy.”Julius Cæsar.
“The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet itWith lusty sinews; throwing it asideAnd stemming it with hearts of controversy.”Julius Cæsar.
“The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet itWith lusty sinews; throwing it asideAnd stemming it with hearts of controversy.”Julius Cæsar.
“The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews; throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.”
Julius Cæsar.
On jumping into the sea, Appadocca swam dexterously after the pitcher, which he had thrown before him; then resting one hand upon it, and moving the other easily through the water, he paused a moment to gaze at the large ship that was now looming in the darkness, and was rapidly leaving him far behind.
The vessel continued her course. It was evident no one on board of her had seen his escape. He was left alone on the sea. He now began to swim in the direction in which long habit had taught him the coast of Venezuela was situated. As he progressed through the water he pushed the pitcher before him. Now and then he paused, and rested as before, with one hand onthe pitcher, while he lightly floated himself with the other. Hours passed, and every succeeding one found the indefatigable Appadocca buffetting the waves with a heart of resolution, and an eye of determination. The thick darkness of the night was fast passing away, the gray dawn of morning was appearing, and the dark mountains of Venezuela began to rise to the view with that cheating delusion which mountains at that early hour of the morning present, and by their apparent nearness, one moment seduce the weary oarsman into the grateful belief that he is fast approaching the end of his irksome labour, only to irritate him the next by their constant and still greater recession.
The swimming fugitive felt encouragement and support from these two happy circumstances. More and more vigorously he stretched out his arms. Only three miles now seemed to separate him from the land. The currents and the sweep of the waves were in his favour.
On, on he pushed his befriending pitcher, and swam and rested alternately. The desperate hazard which he had incurred in throwing himself overboard in a boiling sea in a part where all the sharks of the neighbouring waters assemble to feed upon the refuse that is borne down by the gulf-current, seemed about to terminatehappily and prosperously, and the act which at first may have borne the appearance of a voluntary seeking of death on his part, was about to result in deliverance and safety.
Perhaps even the seared, stoical heart of the cynical Appadocca, under these happy forebodings, throbbed a little more highly than usual.
But the grounds on which pleasure and hope are built, are too often sandy: our highest subjects of joy and congratulation are, alas! too liable to be converted, in the imperceptible space of a second, into those of misery and woe. So it proved with Emmanuel Appadocca.
When, as we have remarked, these prospects dawned in reality upon him, his strokes were made with more vigour; he became, consequently, the sooner tired, and was obliged to pause for rest more frequently.
After one of these intervals, after having “screwed up his courage to the sticking point,” he gave his pitcher a push before him. The vessel floated to a considerable distance in front, then suddenly melted to pieces and sank for ever.
The soft clay of which it was made was dissolved by the water, and could no longer hold together.
If Appadocca had, a moment before, permitted hiscynicism to incline beyond its medium point towards joy, so now he could not prevent it from verging to an equal distance on the opposite side. He had, but a few minutes ago, been induced to hope that he should be able to reach the land. Prospects of once more heading his faithful followers warmed his heart; and the prospect, too, of still being able to execute his design upon the man whose heart was too bad to open to repentance and justice from the lessons of his victim-judge, and from the perils out of which only the sheerest hazard had delivered him: but now, with the assisting pitcher his hopes also sank. It was now next to impossible that he could reach the shore; for although like the pedestrian who, with certain intervals of rest, may walk the whole globe, he could swim a considerably greater distance than seven miles—the distance which now intervened between him and the land—by now and then holding to something which could assist him in floating until he had rested, still it was impossible now for him to accomplish, much fatigued as he already was, at the utmost more than a mile; and the shore was still three miles away. Despair, utter despair would have seized a mind that was more susceptible of ungovernable influences, but Appadocca made up his mind not to be drowned, and continued to swim. He had not swum to any great distance,when he began to experience the want of his pitcher; his limbs began to feel exhaustion, he muttered something to himself, and went on still; his limbs became more tired; sensibility began to diminish; his arms grew stiffer and stiffer; on, on, still he went; his features manifested exhaustion, his respiration grew shorter and shorter; already nature could bear no more; his eyeballs glared like those of one in the last agony of drowning; his strokes became weaker and still weaker; already he swam more heavily; his chest sank deeper and deeper into the water; the mountains before him began to wheel, and pass, and vanish like clouds floating over a mist; his vision was indistinct, and nature drooped, exhausted with one long breathing; he was sinking, sinking, sinking ... when ... something met his feet, and Appadocca stood on a sunken rock with the water to his chin.
Surprised to a certain extent by such an unexpected occurrence, he at once remained where he was, fearful less the first step he would take should lead him again into the danger which he had, at least temporarily, escaped.
He stood there for a considerable time; but although the position was one, which, on the point of drowning, might be very advantageous, still it ceased to be so when the immediate danger had passed; and now, onthe contrary, presented another peril; for Appadocca was now exposed, in his motionless state, to become the prey of the very first hungry shark that might happen to swim in that direction, and what was still worse, he felt that the sea was every moment rising higher and higher. It was therefore clear that he could not stay much longer where he was. He began to resolve, but before he could determine on any definite resolution, a large wave broke over him; for mere safety, he was again obliged to swim. He had not gone far, when in spite of his strong will, his limbs would not move. Thus with his resolution still strong, and his volition still active, Appadocca, nevertheless, found himself rapidly sinking.
“Oh! destiny,” he bubbled out, as the water now almost choked him, “is there such a thing as destiny?” He was sinking, sinking, sinking, when something, something again met his feet.
Appadocca quickly planted his nerveless feet as firmly as he could, upon the support which it would appear that destiny, which he had well nigh invoked for the last time, had again placed under them. He concluded at once, that he had fortunately alighted on a layer of rocks, which ran far out to sea, and of which the one that first received him, was about the beginning. Toascertain the correctness of his judgment he ventured, after he had rested a little, to put one foot forward, it rested also on the rock; the other, it rested too.
Appadocca now waded along towards the shore, swimming now and then, when a larger chasm than usual intervened. As he approached the land, however, the rocks began to sink lower and lower, until at last he was left without a footing. There was yet a considerable distance between where he was, and the shore, and in his condition, the prospect of being saved, even after the succession of unexpected auxiliary accidents was but slight and precarious. Nevertheless, he was obliged to hazard all; so he began to swim again. His arms after the rest they had had, were more powerful. On—on, he went—closer, and closer—he drew to the land; still the distance was immense to a well-nigh exhausted man. His strength began again to fail; but a few strokes Appadocca, and you are on land. His strength diminished more and more, shadows again began to flit across his vision, his senses reeled; he was sinking, no befriending rock now met his feet; he disappeared.... In a moment he rose again, in the second stage of drowning, with his features locked in despairing agony. As he came to the surface the rolling volume of a sweeping billow met him, carried him roughly to the shore,and threw him high and dry on the white sandy beach, that was glimmering under the scorching rays of a fiery sun.
The tide ebbed away and left Appadocca on that which was now dry land. Nature was overwhelmed, and he seemed scarcely strong enough to rally from the swoon. There he lay, far from human succour, with the land rising perpendicularly from the beach, for a great distance away along the shore, and thus shutting out to those who might inhabit that part of the country, any immediate view of the sea, or the shore below. The fugitive might, have lain in this state until nature, by an effort scarcely to be expected in his condition, might have suddenly revived, or what was the more probable, life might have quietly departed from the miserable man, had not the same fortune which seemed all along to befriend him, again interposed to foster still the spark of life which now scarcely lived in him.
A wild bull, maddened with fury, came bounding over the heights. The animal was so headlong in its race, that rushing to the ridge of the precipitous highlands, ere it could abate its speed, it was borne away by its own impetus over the ledge, and with a tremendous bound, it rolled dead at the foot of the still insensible Appadocca.
In a few moments two horsemen appeared above, andreining up their horses carefully at the edge, looked down on the late object of their chase. They were children of the Savannahs—the Bedouins of South America. They were two Llaneros, their lassos were coiled in wide circles round one arm, while with the other, they clutched a short spear and the powerful reins with which they governed their still unbroken horses. They looked carefully at the now motionless animal, which but a second before careered so proudly over the plain, and was so formidable to them, shrugged their shoulders, and were turning their horses’ heads to return, when the attention of one of them, seemed attracted by an object at the foot of which the body of the dead bull lay.
“Es un hombre—’Tis a man,” both of them said, with great excitement. “’Tis a man, go you and look at him, Juancito.”
One dismounted, and, leaving his horse in charge of the other, scrambled down the rocks to the beach. He examined the body and cried out to his companion above, that life was still in it.
“Esta un hombre de cualidad, he is a great man,” he added.
Moved by their spirit of native hospitality, and partly influenced by the not unselfish motive of saving the life of a great man, the two Llaneros began to devise themeans of getting Appadocca on the dry land above, and of conveying him to the house of the Ranchero, whose oxen they tended. But it was next to impossible to carry him up those rocks on which only the most steady-footed could manage to move; besides, it was necessary for one to remain above to hold the horses which, unguarded and unrestrained, would have obeyed their strong instinct and scampered off to their native wilds.
In this difficulty the natural recourse of the Llaneros was to their lassos. But those could scarcely be used, as the projections of the rocks would have shattered in a thousand pieces the person whom they designed to save, if they undertook to hoist him up along their rugged surface. They, therefore, had to think of some other expedient: but no other occurred to them, and they were obliged to recur to their lassos, in the use of which they were so long and perfectly practiced. They thought, however, in conjunction with the resolution of adopting this expedient, of removing Appadocca to another part of the beach, from which the rocks did not rise so roughly. This was easily done, and having fastened their lassos together, they secured one end to Appadocca, and the other to one of the horses; one of the Llaneros spurred the animal forward, while theother remained at the edge to guide the rope as much as it was in his power to do.
By this means the still insensible Appadocca, was brought safely on the table land. After the violent shaking he had received, he seemed to come to himself a little; he opened his eyes, but it was only for a moment. He was no longer insensible, but he was totally prostrated, and sank again into an inactive condition. He was then placed on the saddle before one of the Llaneros, and they rode off towards the house, whose roof could be barely discerned from amidst the clustering branches of the trees by which it was surrounded.
The Llaneros soon alighted at the door, where they were met by the Ranchero, and the insensible stranger was carried in.
Like all the houses of the Ranchas of South America, this was an extensive wooden building, built of only one storey—a necessary measure against the ravages of the frequent earthquakes which shake so terribly those tropical regions.
The large and shady fronds of the beautiful palms that decorate the level and grassy Savannahs, were cleverly sewn together to form a covering, which was as effectual in excluding the dews and rains, as it wasin itself romantic. No ceiling concealed the beams and rafters which supported this primitive roof; but from the exigences of the climate, and probably from the unwillingness to raise highly finished structures in the wilds, where the inhabitant scarcely ever saw the face of any one beside those of the Llaneros who tended his numerous and half-wild herds, the space between the low flooring and the roof was entirely unoccupied. The apartments were extensive, and as airy as such a climate required. Windows opened in all directions, and the winds of heaven swept freely through every crevice of the house. The furniture seemed to be as simple and as primitive as the building that contained it. A few heavy chairs, made of the hides of the oxen, that formed the wealth of the Ranchero, were placed about, here and there, more for the service of the few individuals who occupied the place, than for the accommodation of visitors or strangers, both of whom were exceedingly rare, if ever seen in those solitary wilds. Indian hammocks hung in several places, and moved to and fro, before the power of the wind that blew into the apartment; and on supports from the walls, rested beautiful Spanish saddles, whose bows and stirrups of massive silver, attracted immediate attention. Around the house stood some magnificent trees, under the shadyboughs of which, herds of oxen, which were partially reclaimed from the wild state in which they had been bred, now quietly chewed their cud, not without, however, casting from time to time, a wistful look on the strong pallisades that fenced them in. Wild looking undressed horses, restively cropped the short grass that grew around the house, and now and then tugged with evident impatience, the tethers of cowskin, that restrained their liberty.
Away, at a short distance from the inhabited house itself, stood also pens for cattle, and apparently a slaughter-house, on whose roof the large heavy vultures of South America, pressed and fought and nibbled each other for a footing, while around it were strewed a thousand horns, the spoils of the fierce natives of the plains, that had fallen there under the Picador’s knife. To complete the peculiarity of the scene a few half naked and fierce looking individuals, loitered here and there, carelessly smoking their cigars; or leaned against the fences, and criticised the ruminating oxen within, as objects among which their entire life had been spent, and with such apparent skill and earnestness, as to leave one to fancy that the world contained nothing that deserved so much interest in their estimation as the animals which formed the tissue of their associations,and of their fathers’ before them. The horses that were tied in their rude accoutrements, to the posts of the fences, and the huge spurs of solid silver, which were tightly thonged to the naked heels of those men, showed that they belonged entirely to the plains, and were probably there, only for the purpose of receiving the orders of the master.
“Feliciana,” cried the Ranchero, as Appadocca was carried into the large chamber that formed, what in Europe, would be called the with-drawing room—“Feliciana ben aca,—Feliciana, come hither.”
At this call, a beautiful young lady appeared, and started back as she beheld the pallid, wasted, and haggard, but still beautiful face of Appadocca, while, at the same time, the low interjection of “Jesu!” escaped her lips.
“Que se haga todo necessario por ese infeliz,” “Let every thing be done for this unhappy man,” said the Ranchero, who even in the half barbarous life that he led, did not entirely lose the distinguishing politeness of his people.