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cabin spyglass was thrust through the mizzen-rigging from the high platform
of the poop, whereupon a human figure was plainly seen upon the inland
rock, eagerly waving towards us what seemed to be the handkerchief.

Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the glass, he lustily ran
forward, ordering the anchor to be dropped again, hands to stand by a boat,
and lower away.

In a half-hour's time the swift boat returned. It went with six and came
with seven; and the seventh was a woman.

It is not with artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw in
crayons, for this woman was a most touching sight, and crayons, tracing
softly melancholy lines, would best depict the mournful image of the
dark-damasked Chola widow.

Her story was soon told, and though given in her own strange language was
as quickly understood, for our captain, from long trading on the Chilean
coast, was well versed in the Spanish. A Chola, or half-breed Indian woman,
of Payta in Peru, three years gone by, with her young new-wedded husband
Felipe, of pure Castilian blood, and her one only Indian brother, Truxill,
Hunilla had taken passage on the main in a French whaler, commanded by a
joyous man, which vessel, bound to the cruising grounds beyond the
Enchanted Isles, proposed passing close by their vicinity. The object of
the little party was to procure tortoise oil, a fluid which for its great
purity and delicacy is held in high estimation wherever known, and it is
well known all along this part of the Pacific coast. With a chest of
clothes, tools, cooking utensils, a rude apparatus for trying out the oil,
some casks of biscuit, and other things, not omitting two favorite dogs, of
which faithful animal all the Cholos are very fond, Hunilla and her
companions were safely landed at their chosen place; the Frenchman,
according to the contract made ere sailing, engaged to take them off upon
returning from a four months' cruise in the westward seas, which interval
the three adventurers deemed quite sufficient for their purposes.

On the isle's lone beach they paid him in silver for their passage out, the
stranger having declined to carry them at all except upon that condition;
though willing to take every means to insure the due fulfillment of his
promise. Felipe had striven hard to have this payment put off to the period
of the ship's return. But in vain. Still they thought they had, in another
way, ample pledge of the good faith of the Frenchman. It was arranged that
the expenses of the passage home should not be payable in silver, but in
tortoises -- one hundred tortoises ready captured to the returning
captain's hand. These the Cholos meant to secure after their own work was
done, against the probable time of the Frenchman's coming back, and no
doubt in prospect already felt, that in those hundred tortoises -- now
somewhere ranging the isle's interior -- they possessed one hundred
hostages. Enough: the vessel sailed; the gazing three on shore answered the
loud glee of the singing crew; and, ere evening, the French craft was hull
down in the distant sea, its masts three faintest lines which quickly faded
from Hunilla's eye.

The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths,
but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth
but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstable skies, or
contrary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and sudden death in
solitary waves -- whatever was the cause, the blithe stranger never was
seen again.

Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere due
time never disturbed the Cholos' busy mind, now all intent upon the
toilsome matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom coming
like the thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the little party
were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No more they sought to gaze
with feverish fear, or still more feverish hope, beyond the present's
horizon line, but into the furthest future their own silent spirits sailed.
By persevering labor beneath that burning sun, Felipe and Truxill had
brought down to their hut many scores of tortoises, and tried out the oil,
when, elated with their good success, and to reward themselves for such
hard work, they, too hastily, made a catamaran, or Indian raft, much used
on the Spanish main, and merrily started on a fishing trip, just without a
long reef with many jagged gaps, running parallel with the shore, about
half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of
joyfulness (for though they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they
seemed singing all the time) forced in deep water against that iron bar,
the ill-made catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces, when, dashed by
broad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth of the
reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla's eyes.

Before Hunilla's eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passed before
her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on a rude bower
among the withered thickets crowning a lofty cliff, a little back from the
beach. The thickets were so disposed that in looking upon the sea at large
she peered out from among the branches as from the lattice of a high
balcony. But upon the day we speak of here, the better to watch the
adventure of those two hearts she loved, Hunilla had withdrawn the branches
to one side, and held them so. They formed an oval frame, through which the
bluely boundless sea rolled like a painted one. And there the invisible
painter painted to her view the wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once
level logs slantingly upheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling
arms undistinguishable among them, and then all subsided into
smooth-flowing creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck, while,
first and last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture,
a dream of the eye, such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.

So instant was the scene, so trancelike its mild pictorial effect, so
distant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that Hunilla
gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to sit thus
dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all that otherwise might be
done. With half a mile of sea between, how could her two enchanted arms aid
those four fated ones? The distance long, the time one sand. After the
lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay the thunderbolt? Felipe's body
was washed ashore, but Truxill's never came, only his gay, braided hat of
golden straw -- that same sunflower thing he waved to her, pushing from the
strand -- and now, to the last gallant, it still saluted her. But Felipe's
body floated to the marge, with one arm encirclingly outstretched.
Lockjawed in grim death, the lover-husband softly clasped his bride, true
to her even in death's dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps his faith,
wilt thou be faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break
faith who never plighted it.

It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely widow.
In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over, simply
recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as you might,
from her mere words little would you have weened that Hunilla was herself
the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she defraud us of our tears. All
hearts bled that grief could be so brave.

She but showed us her soul's lid, and the strange ciphers thereon engraved;
all within, with pride's timidity, was withheld. Yet was there one
exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, she said in

testdata/encantadas.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

No wonder that, as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship and
were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her soul that
at length she desperately said, "Not yet, not yet; my foolish heart runs on
too fast." So she forced patience for some further weeks. But to those whom
earth's sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long it
was since the ship had sailed, and then, with the same precision, how long
a space remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What present day or
month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in which Hunilla
was entirely lost.

And now follows --

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows not
whether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy to
certain things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon
such. If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how,
then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will
hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
But in all things man sows upon the wind, which bloweth just there whither
it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know. Often ill comes from the
good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla --

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden lizard
ere she devour. More terrible to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally
with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair
with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this catlike thing,
sporting with the heart of him who reads, for if he feel not he reads in
vain.

-- "The ship sails this day, today," at last said Hunilla to herself; "this
gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad. In loose
ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will but wait.
Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aid me! Thou
wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary weeks -- all to be
dragged over -- to buy the certainty of today, I freely give ye, though I
tear ye from me!"

As mariners, tossed in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boat
out of the remnants of their vessel's wreck, and launch it in the selfsame
waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of treachery
invoking trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee, not in the
laureled victor, but in this vanquished one.

Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one -- no metaphor; a real Eastern
reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and found upon
the beach, its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by sandpaper, its
golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea and land, upper and nether
stone, the unvarnished substance was filed bare, and wore another polish
now, one with itself, the polish of its agony. Circular lines at intervals
cut all round this surface, divided it into six panels of unequal length.
In the first were scored the days, each tenth one marked by a longer and
deeper notch; the second was scored for the number of seafowl eggs for
sustenance, picked out from the rocky nests; the third, how many fish had
been caught from the shore; the fourth, how many small tortoises found
inland; the fifth, how many days of sun; the sixth, of clouds; which last,
of the two, was the greater one. Long night of busy numbering, misery's
mathematics, to weary her too-wakeful soul to sleep; yet sleep for that was
none.

The panel of the days was deeply worn -- the long tenth notches half
effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widow
had traced her finger over the bamboo -- dull flute, which, played on, gave
no sound -- as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten tortoises
creeping through the woods.

After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; that last
one was the faintest, as the first the deepest.

"There were more days," said our captain; "Many, many more; why did you not
go on and notch them, too, Hunilla?"

"Senor, ask me not."

"And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?"

"Nay, senor; -- but --"

"You do not speak; but what, Hunilla?"

"Ask me not, senor."

"You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed on -- was
that it, Hunilla?"

"Senor, be it as you say."

Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not, trust the weakness of
her tongue. Then when our captain asked whether any whaleboats had --

But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to quote,
and call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here remain untold.
Those two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, let them abide
between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may be libelous to speak
some truths.

Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days anchored
nigh the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered us till just
upon the point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and far a spot, this
needs explaining ere the sequel come.

The place where the French captain had landed the little party was on the
further and opposite end of the isle. There too it was that they had
afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude desert the
spot where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearest of the
twain now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked him not,
and he of husbands the most faithful during life.

Now, high broken land rises between the opposite extremities of the isle. A
ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neither is the isle
so small but a considerable company might wander for days through the
wilderness of one side and never be seen, or their halloos heard, by any
stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who naturally
associated the possible coming of ships with her own part of the isle,
might to the end have remained quite ignorant of the presence of our
vessel, were it not for a mysterious presentiment, borne to her, so our
mariners averred, by this isle's enchanted air. Nor did the widow's answer

testdata/encantadas.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional birds'-nests climbs and
other wanderings; so that, through long habituation, they offered not to
follow when that morning she crossed the land, and her own soul was then
too full of other things to heed their lingering behind. Yet, all along she
had so clung to them that, besides what moisture they lapped up at early
daybreak from the small scoop holes among the adjacent rocks, she had
shared the dew of her calabash among them; never laying by any considerable
store against those prolonged and utter droughts which, in some disastrous
seasons, warp these isles.

Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would like
transported to the ship -- her chest, the oil, not omitting the live
tortoises which she intended for a grateful present to our captain -- we
immediately set to work, catrying them to the boat down the long, sloping
stair of deeply shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus employed, I
looked and Hunilla had disappeared.

It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something different
mingled with it which prompted me to drop my tortoise and once more gaze
slowly around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla's hands. A narrow
pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it through many
mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeply chambered there.

The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like that
unverdured heap found at the bottom of an hourglass run out. At its head
stood the cross of withered sticks, the dry, peeled bark still fraying from
it, its transverse limb tied up with rope and forlornly adroop in the
silent air.

Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave, her dark head bowed, and lost
in her long, loosened Indian hair, her hands extended to the cross-foot
with a little brass crucifix clasped between -- a crucifix worn
featureless, like an ancient graven knocker long plied in vain. She did not
see me, and I made no noise, but slid aside and left the spot.

A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us. I
looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which seemed
strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and
an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride's height in vain
abased to proneness on the rack; nature's pride subduing nature's torture.

Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowly
descended towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures in her
arms: "Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!" and, fondling them, inquired how many
could we take on board.

The mate commanded the boat's crew -- not a hard-hearted man, but his way
of life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simple
utility was his leading motive.

"We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds are
unreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take those you
have, Hunilla, but no more."

She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, who stood
ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity of their race,
the dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very instant of being
deserted upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat were high; its prow
-- presented inland -- was lifted; so, owing to the water, which they
seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well leap into the little
craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow, as it had been some
farmer's door shutting them out from shelter in a winter storm. A clamorous
agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they all but spoke.

"Push off! Give way!" cried the mate. The boat gave one heavy drag and
lurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel, and
sped. The dogs ran howling along the water's marge, now pausing to gaze at
the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but mysteriously
withheld themselves, and again ran howling along the beach. Had they been
human beings, hardly would they have more vividly inspired the sense of
desolation. The oars were plied as confederate feathers of two wings. No
one spoke. I looked back upon the beach, and then upon Hunilla, but her
face was set in a stern dusky calm. The dogs crouching in her lap vainly
licked her rigid hands. She never looked behind her, but sat motionless
till we turned a promontory of the coast and lost all sights and sounds
astern. She seemed as one who, having experienced the sharpest of mortal
pangs, was henceforth content to have all lesser heartstrings riven, one by
one. To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary that pain in other beings, though
by love and sympathy made her own, was unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of
yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of earthy yearning, frozen by the
frost which falleth from the sky.

The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by calms and baffling
winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there to recruit the
ship. Payta was not very distant. Our captain sold the tortoise oil to a
Tombez merchant, and adding to the silver a contribution from all hands,
gave it to our silent passenger, who knew not what the mariners had done.

The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, riding upon
a small gray ass; and before her on the ass's shoulders, she eyed the
jointed workings of the beast's armorial cross.
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Sketch Ninth
                     Hood's Isle and the Hermit Oberlus

"That darkesome glen they enter, where they find
That cursed man low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind;
His griesly lockes long grouen and unbound,
Disordered hong about his shoulders round,
And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne
Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound;
His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
Were shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine.
His garments nought but many ragged clouts,
With thornes together pind and patched reads,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts."

Southeast of Crossman's Isle lies Hood's Isle, or McCain's Beclouded lsle,
and upon its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide strand of dark
pounded black lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus's Landing. It might
fitly have been styled Charon's.

It received its name from a wild white creature who spent many years here,
in the person of a European bringing into this savage region qualities more
diabolical than are to be found among any of the surrounding cannibals.

About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-named island, then,
as now, a solitude. He built himself a den of lava and clinkers, about a
mile from the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a vale, or
expanded gulch, containing here and there among the rocks about two acres

testdata/encantadas.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

except on terms of misanthropic independence or mercantile craftiness, and
even such encounters being comparatively but rare -- all this must have
gradually nourished in him a vast idea of his own importance, together with
a pure animal sort of scorn for all the rest of the universe.

The unfortunate Creole who enjoyed his brief term of royalty at Charles's
Isle was perhaps in some degree influenced by not unworthy motives, such as
prompt other adventurous spirits to lead colonists into distant regions and
assume political pre-eminence over them. His summary execution of many of
his Peruvians is quite pardonable, considering the desperate characters he
had to deal with, while his offering canine battle to the banded rebels
seems under the circumstances altogether just. But for this King Oberlus
and what shortly follows, no shade of palliation can be given. He acted out
of mere delight in tyranny and cruelty, by virtue of a quality in him
inherited from Sycorax his mother. Armed now with that shocking
blunderbuss, strong in the thought of being master of that horrid isle, he
panted for a chance to prove his potency upon the first specimen of
humanity which should fall unbefriended into his hands.

Nor was he long without it. One day he spied a boat upon the beach, with
one man, a Negro, standing by it. Some distance off was a ship, and Oberlus
immediately knew how matters stood. The vessel had put in for wood, and the
boat's crew had gone into the thickets for it. From a convenient spot he
kept watch of the boat, till presently a straggling company appeared loaded
with billets. Throwing these on the beach, they again went into the
thickets, while the Negro proceeded to load the boat.

Oberlus now makes all haste and accosts the Negro, who, aghast at seeing
any living being inhabiting such a solitude, and especially so horrific a
one, immediately falls into a panic, not at all lessened by the ursine
suavity of Oberlus, who begs the favor of assisting him in his labors. The
Negro stands with several billets on his shoulder, in act of shouldering
others, and Oberlus, with a short cord concealed in his bosom, kindly
proceeds to lift those other billets to their place. In so doing, he
persists in keeping behind the Negro, who, rightly suspicious of this, in
vain dodges about to gain the front of Oberlus; but Oberlus dodges also,
till at last, weary of this bootless attempt at treachery, or fearful of
being surprised by the remainder of the party, Oberlus runs off a little
space to a bush, and, fetching his blunderbuss, savagely commands the Negro
to desist work and follow him. He refuses. Whereupon, presenting his piece,
Oberlus snaps at him. Luckily the blunderbuss misses fire, but by this
time, frightened out of his wits, the Negro, upon a second intrepid
summons, drops his billets, surrenders at discretion, and follows on. By a
narrow defile familiar to him, Oberlus speedily removes out of sight of the
water.

On their way up the mountains, he exultingly informs the Negro that
henceforth he is to work for him and be his slave, and that his treatment
would entirely depend on his future conduct. But Oberlus, deceived by the
first impulsive cowardice of the black, in an evil moment slackens his
vigilance. Passing through a narrow way, and perceiving his leader quite
off his guard, the Negro, powerful fellow, suddenly grasps him in his arms,
throws him down, wrests his musketoon from him, ties his hands with the
monster's own cord, shoulders him, and returns with him down to the boat.
When the rest of the party arrive, Oberlus is carried on board the ship.
This proved an Englishman, and a smuggler, a sort of craft not apt to be
overcharitable. Oberlus is severely whipped, then handcuffed, taken ashore,
and compelled to make known his habitation and produce his property. His
potatoes, pumpkins, and tortoises, with a pile of dollars he had hoarded
from his mercantile operations, were secured on the spot. But while the too
vindictive smugglers were busy destroying his hut and garden, Oberlus makes
his escape into the mountains, and conceals himself there in impenetrable
recesses, only known to himself, till the ship sails, when he ventures
back, and by means of an old file which he sticks into a tree, contrives to
free himself from his handcuffs.

Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and extinct
volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now meditates a
signal revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes. Vessels still
touch the Landing at times, and by-and-by Oberlus is enabled to supply them
with some vegetables.

Warned by his former failure in kidnaping strangers, he now pursues a quite
different plan. When seamen come ashore, he makes up to them like a
free-and-easy comrade, invites them to his hut, and with whatever
affability his redhaired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink his
liquor and be merry. But his guests need little pressing, and so, soon as
rendered insensible, are tied hand and foot, and, pitched among the
clinkers, are there concealed till the ship departs, when, finding
themselves entirely dependent upon Oberlus, alarmed at his changed
demeanor, his savage threats, and above all, that shocking blunderbuss,
they willingly enlist under him, becoming his humble slaves, and Oberlus
the most incredible of tyrants. So much so that two or three perish beneath
his initiating process. He sets the remainder -- four of them -- to
breaking the caked soil, transporting upon their backs loads of loamy
earth, scooped up in moist clefts among the mountains; keeps them on the
roughest fare; presents his piece at the slightest hint of insurrection;
and in all respects converts them into reptiles at his feet -- plebeian
garter snakes to this Lord Anaconda.

At last Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal with four rusty cutlasses
and an added supply of powder and ball intended for his blunderbuss.
Remitting in good part the labor of his slaves, he now approves himself a
man, or rather devil, of great abilities in the way of cajoling or coercing
others into acquiescence with his own ulterior designs, however at first
abhorrent to them. But indeed, prepared for almost any eventual evil by
their previous lawless life, as a sort of ranging cowboys of the sea, which
had dissolved within them the whole moral man so that they were ready to
concrete in the first offered mold of baseness now; rotted down from
manhood by their hopeless misery on the isle, wonted to cringe in all
things to their lord, himself the worst of slaves, these wretches were now
become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an
inferior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals and makes murderers of
them, out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravos.

Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artificial claws and fangs, tied
on like false spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat, Oberlus, tsar of
the isle, gaffles his four subjects; that is, with intent of glory, puts
four rusty cutlasses into their hands. Like any other autocrat, he had a
noble army now.

It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue. Arms in the hands
of trodden slaves? how indiscreet of Emperor Oberlus! Nay, they had but
cutlasses -- sad old scythes enough -- he a blunderbuss, which by its blind
scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers, and other scoria would
annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot. Besides, at
first he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid sunset, for a
time, he might have been seen wending his way among the riven mountains,
there to secrete himself till dawn in some sulphurous pitfall,
undiscoverable to his gang; but finding this at last too troublesome, he
now each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the cutlasses, and