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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson
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+Green Mansions
+A Romance of the Tropical Forest
+
+by W. H. Hudson
+
+June, 1997  [Etext #942]
+[Date last updated: May 22, 2005]
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson
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+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 by W. H. Hudson
+
+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 at ear" 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 greet 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 larger than a tame tom-cat, with a
+long snout and long ringed tail; one of the dogs was gnawing at
+the animal's head, and the tail and the feet were also lying on
+the floor, among the old bones and rubbish that littered it. 
+Stealing round, I suddenly presented myself at the opening to his
+den, when the dogs rose up with a growl and Nuflo instantly
+leaped to his feet, knife in hand.
+
+"Aha, old man," I cried, with a laugh, "I have found you at one
+of your vegetarian repasts; and your grass-eating dogs as well!"
+
+He was disconcerted and suspicious, but when I explained that I
+had seen a smoke while on the hills, where I had gone to search
+for a curious blue flower which grew in such places, and had made
+my way to it to discover the cause, he recovered confidence and
+invited me to join him at his dinner of roast meat.
+
+I was hungry by this time and not sorry to get animal food once
+more; nevertheless, I ate this meat with some disgust, as it had
+a rank taste and smell, and it was also unpleasant to have those
+evil-looking dogs savagely gnawing at the animal's head and feet
+at the same time.
+
+"You see," said the old hypocrite, wiping the grease from his
+moustache, "this is what I am compelled to do in order to avoid
+giving offence.  My granddaughter is a strange being, sir, as you
+have perhaps observed--"
+
+"That reminds me," I interrupted, "that I wish you to relate her
+history to me.  She is, as you say, strange, and has speech and
+faculties unlike ours, which shows that she comes of a different
+race."
+
+"No, no, her faculties are not different from ours.  They are
+sharper, that is all.  It pleases the All-Powerful to give more
+to some than to others.  Not all the fingers on the hand are
+alike. You will find a man who will take up a guitar and make it
+speak, while I--"
+
+"All that I understand," I broke in again.  "But her origin, her
+history--that is what I wish to hear."
+
+"And that, sir, is precisely what I am about to relate.  Poor
+child, she was left on my hands by her sainted mother--my
+daughter, sir--who perished young.  Now, her birthplace, where
+she was taught letters and the Catechism by the priest, was in an
+unhealthy situation.  It was hot and wet--always wet--a place
+suited to frogs rather than to human beings.  At length, thinking
+that it would suit the child better--for she was pale and
+weakly--to live in a drier atmosphere among mountains, I brought
+her to this district.  For this, senor, and for all I have done
+for her, I look for no reward here, but to that place where my
+daughter has got her foot; not, sir, on the threshold, as you
+might think, but well inside.  For, after all, it is to the
+authorities above, in spite of some blots which we see in their
+administration, that we must look for justice.  Frankly, sir,
+this is the whole story of my granddaughter's origin."
+
+"Ah, yes," I returned, "your story explains why she can call a
+wild bird to her hand, and touch a venomous serpent with her bare
+foot and receive no harm."
+
+"Doubtless you are right," said the old dissembler.  "Living
+alone in the wood, she had only God's creatures to play and make
+friends with; and wild animals, I have heard it said, know those
+who are friendly towards them."
+
+"You treat her friends badly," said I, kicking the long tail of
+the coatimundi away with my foot, and regretting that I had
+joined in his repast.
+
+"Senor, you must consider that we are only what Heaven made us.
+When all this was formed," he continued, opening his arms wide to
+indicate the entire creation, "the Person who concerned Himself
+with this matter gave seeds and fruitless and nectar of flowers
+for the sustentation of His small birds.  But we have not their
+delicate appetites.  The more robust stomach which he gave to man
+cries out for meat.  Do you understand?  But of all this, friend,
+not one word to Rima!"
+
+I laughed scornfully.  "Do you think me such a child, old man, as
+to believe that Rima, that little sprite, does not know that you
+are an eater of flesh?  Rima, who is everywhere in the wood,
+seeing all things, even if I lift my hand against a serpent, she
+herself unseen."
+
+"But, sir, if you will pardon my presumption, you are saying too
+much.  She does not come here, and therefore cannot see that I
+eat meat.  In all that wood where she flourishes and sings, where
+she is in her house and garden, and mistress of the creatures,
+even of the small butterfly with painted wings, there, sir, I
+hunt no animal.  Nor will my dogs chase any animal there.  That
+is what I meant when I said that if an animal should stumble
+against their legs, they would lift up their noses and pass on
+without seeing it.  For in that wood there is one law, the law
+that Rima imposes, and outside of it a different law."
+
+"I am glad that you have told me this," I replied.  "The thought
+that Rima might be near, and, unseen herself, look in upon us
+feeding with the dogs and, like dogs, on flesh, was one which
+greatly troubled my mind."
+
+He glanced at me in his usual quick, cunning way.
+
+"Ah, senor, you have that feeling too--after so short a time with
+us!  Consider, then, what it must be for me, unable to nourish
+myself on gums and fruitlets, and that little sweetness made by
+wasps out of flowers, when I am compelled to go far away and eat
+secretly to avoid giving offence."
+
+It was hard, no doubt, but I did not pity him; secretly I could
+only feel anger against him for refusing to enlighten me, while
+making such a presence of openness; and I also felt disgusted
+with myself for having joined him in his rank repast.  But
+dissimulation was necessary, and so, after conversing a little
+more on indifferent topics, and thanking him for his hospitality,
+I left him alone to go on with his smoky task.
+
+On my way back to the lodge, fearing that some taint of Nuflo's
+evil-smelling den and dinner might still cling to me, I turned
+aside to where a streamlet in the wood widened and formed a deep
+pool, to take a plunge in the water.  After drying myself in the
+air, and thoroughly ventilating my garments by shaking and
+beating them, I found an open, shady spot in the wood and threw
+myself on the grass to wait for evening before returning to the
+house.  By that time the sweet, warm air would have purified me.
+Besides, I did not consider that I had sufficiently punished Rima
+for her treatment of me.  She would be anxious for my safety,
+perhaps even looking for me everywhere in the wood.  It was not
+much to make her suffer one day after she had made me miserable
+for three; and perhaps when she discovered that I could exist
+without her society she would begin to treat me less
+capriciously.
+
+So ran my thoughts as I rested on the warm ground, gazing up into
+the foliage, green as young grass in the lower, shady parts, and
+above luminous with the bright sunlight, and full of the
+murmuring sounds of insect life.  My every action, word, thought,
+had my feeling for Rima as a motive.  Why, I began to ask myself,
+was Rima so much to me?  It was easy to answer that question:
+Because nothing so exquisite had ever been created.  All the
+separate and fragmentary beauty and melody and graceful motion
+found scattered throughout nature were concentrated and
+harmoniously combined in her.  How various, how luminous, how
+divine she was!  A being for the mind to marvel at, to admire
+continually, finding some new grace and charm every hour, every
+moment, to add to the old.  And there was, besides, the
+fascinating mystery surrounding her origin to arouse and keep my
+interest in her continually active.
+
+That was the easy answer I returned to the question I had asked
+myself.  But I knew that there was another answer--a reason more
+powerful than the first.  And I could no longer thrust it back,
+or hide its shining face with the dull, leaden mask of mere
+intellectual curiosity.  BECAUSE I LOVED HER; loved her as I had
+never loved before, never could love any other being, with a
+passion which had caught something of her own brilliance and
+intensity, making a former passion look dim and commonplace in
+comparison--a feeling known to everyone, something old and worn
+out, a weariness even to think of.
+
+From these reflections I was roused by the plaintive
+three-syllable call of an evening bird--a nightjar common in
+these woods; and was surprised to find that the sun had set, and
+the woods already shadowed with the twilight.  I started up and
+began hurriedly walking homewards, thinking of Rima, and was
+consumed with impatience to see her; and as I drew near to the
+house, walking along a narrow path which I knew, I suddenly met
+her face to face.  Doubtless she had heard my approach, and
+instead of shrinking out of the path and allowing me to pass on
+without seeing her, as she would have done on the previous day,
+she had sprung forward to meet me.  I was struck with wonder at
+the change in her as she came with a swift, easy motion, like a
+flying bird, her hands outstretched as if to clasp mine, her lips
+parted in a radiant, welcoming smile, her eyes sparkling with
+joy.
+
+I started forward to meet her, but had no sooner touched her
+hands than her countenance changed, and she shrunk back
+trembling, as if the touch had chilled her warm blood; and moving
+some feet away, she stood with downcast eyes, pale and sorrowful
+as she had seemed yesterday.  In vain I implored her to tell me
+the cause of this change and of the trouble she evidently felt;
+her lips trembled as if with speech, but she made no reply, and
+only shrunk further away when I attempted to approach her; and at
+length, moving aside from the path, she was lost to sight in the
+dusky leafage.
+
+I went on alone, and sat outside for some time, until old Nuflo
+returned from his hunting; and only after he had gone in and had
+made the fire burn up did Rima make her appearance, silent and
+constrained as ever.  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+On the following day Rima continued in the same inexplicable
+humour; and feeling my defeat keenly, I determined once more to
+try the effect of absence on her, and to remain away on this
+occasion for a longer period.  Like old Nuflo, I was secret in
+going forth next morning, waiting until the girl was out of the
+way, then slipping off among the bushes into the deeper wood; and
+finally quitting its shelter, I set out across the savannah
+towards my old quarters.  Great was my surprise on arriving at
+the village to find no person there.  At first I imagined that my
+disappearance in the forest of evil fame had caused them to
+abandon their home in a panic; but on looking round I concluded
+that my friends had only gone on one of their periodical visits
+to some neighbouring village.  For when these Indians visit their
+neighbours they do it in a very thorough manner; they all go,
+taking with them their entire stock of provisions, their cooking
+utensils, weapons, hammocks, and even their pet animals.
+Fortunately in this case they had not taken quite everything; my
+hammock was there, also one small pot, some cassava bread, purple
+potatoes, and a few ears of maize.  I concluded that these had
+been left for me in the event of my return; also that they had
+not been gone very many hours, since a log of wood buried under
+the ashes of the hearth was still alight.  Now, as their absences
+from home usually last many days, it was plain that I would have
+the big naked barn-like house to myself for as long as I thought
+proper to remain, with little food to eat; but the prospect did
+not disturb me, and I resolved to amuse myself with music.  In
+vain I hunted for my guitar; the Indians had taken it to delight
+their friends by twanging its strings.  At odd moments during the
+last day or two I had been composing a simple melody in my brain,
+fitting it to ancient words; and now, without an instrument to
+assist me, I began softly singing to myself:
+
+    Muy mas clara que la luna
+    Sola una 
+    en el mundo vos nacistes.
+
+After music I made up the fire and parched an ear of maize for my
+dinner, and while laboriously crunching the dry hard grain I
+thanked Heaven for having bestowed on me such good molars.
+Finally I slung my hammock in its old corner, and placing myself
+in it in my favourite oblique position, my hands clasped behind
+my head, one knee cocked up, the other leg dangling down, I
+resigned myself to idle thought.  I felt very happy.  How
+strange, thought I, with a little self-flattery, that I,
+accustomed to the agreeable society of intelligent men and
+charming women, and of books, should find such perfect
+contentment here!  But I congratulated myself too soon.  The
+profound silence began at length to oppress me.  It was not like
+the forest, where one has wild birds for company, where their
+cries, albeit inarticulate, have a meaning and give a charm to
+solitude.  Even the sight and whispered sounds of green leaves
+and rushes trembling in the wind have for us something of
+intelligence and sympathy; but I could not commune with mud walls
+and an earthen pot.  Feeling my loneliness too acutely, I began
+to regret that I had left Rima, then to feel remorse at the
+secrecy I had practiced.  Even now while I inclined idly in my
+hammock, she would be roaming the forest in search of me,
+listening for my footsteps, fearing perhaps that I had met with
+some accident where there was no person to succour me.  It was
+painful to think of her in this way, of the pain I had doubtless
+given her by stealing off without a word of warning.  Springing
+to the floor, I flung out of the house and went down to the
+stream.  It was better there, for now the greatest heat of the
+day was over, and the weltering sun began to look large and red
+and rayless through the afternoon haze.
+
+I seated myself on a stone within a yard or two of the limpid
+water; and now the sight of nature and the warm, vital air and
+sunshine infected my spirit and made it possible for me to face
+the position calmly, even hopefully.  The position was this: for
+some days the idea had been present in my mind, and was now fixed
+there, that this desert was to be my permanent home.  The thought
+of going back to Caracas, that little Paris in America, with its
+Old World vices, its idle political passions, its empty round of
+gaieties, was unendurable.  I was changed, and this change--so
+great, so complete--was proof that the old artificial life had
+not been and could not be the real one, in harmony with my deeper
+and truer nature.  I deceived myself, you will say, as I have
+often myself said.  I had and I had not.  It is too long a
+question to discuss here; but just then I felt that I had quitted
+the hot, tainted atmosphere of the ballroom, that the morning air
+of heaven refreshed and elevated me and was sweet to breathe.
+Friends and relations I had who were dear to me; but I could
+forget them, even as I could forget the splendid dreams which had
+been mine.  And the woman I had loved, and who perhaps loved me
+in return--I could forget her too.  A daughter of civilization
+and of that artificial life, she could never experience such
+feelings as these and return to nature as I was doing.  For
+women, though within narrow limits more plastic than men, are yet
+without that larger adaptiveness which can take us back to the
+sources of life, which they have left eternally behind.  Better,
+far better for both of us that she should wait through the long,
+slow months, growing sick at heart with hope deferred; that,
+seeing me no more, she should weep my loss, and be healed at last
+by time, and find love and happiness again in the old way, in the
+old place.
+
+And while I thus sat thinking, sadly enough, but not
+despondingly, of past and present and future, all at once on the
+warm, still air came the resonant, far-reaching KLING-KLANG of
+the campanero from some leafy summit half a league away.
+KLING-KLANG fell the sound again, and often again, at intervals,
+affecting me strangely at that moment, so bell-like, so like the
+great wide-travelling sounds associated in our minds with
+Christian worship.  And yet so unlike.  A bell, yet not made of
+gross metal dug out of earth, but of an ethereal, sublimer
+material that floats impalpable and invisible in space--a vital
+bell suspended on nothing, giving out sounds in harmony with the
+vastness of blue heaven, the unsullied purity of nature, the
+glory of the sun, and conveying a mystic, a higher message to the
+soul than the sounds that surge from tower and belfry.
+
+O mystic bell-bird of the heavenly race of the swallow and dove,
+the quetzal and the nightingale!  When the brutish savage and the
+brutish white man that slay thee, one for food, the other for the
+benefit of science, shall have passed away, live still, live to
+tell thy message to the blameless spiritualized race that shall
+come after us to possess the earth, not for a thousand years, but
+for ever; for how much shall thy voice be our clarified
+successors when even to my dull, unpurged soul thou canst speak
+such high things and bring it a sense of an impersonal,
+all-compromising One who is in me and I in Him, flesh of His
+flesh and soul of His soul.
+
+The sounds ceased, but I was still in that exalted mood and, like
+a person in a trance, staring fixedly before me into the open
+wood of scattered dwarf trees on the other side of the stream,
+when suddenly on the field of vision appeared a grotesque human
+figure moving towards me.  I started violently, astonished and a
+little alarmed, but in a very few moments I recognized the
+ancient Cla-cla, coming home with a large bundle of dry sticks on
+her shoulders, bent almost double under the burden, and still
+ignorant of my presence.  Slowly she came down to the stream,
+then cautiously made her way over the line of stepping-stones by
+which it was crossed; and only when within ten yards did the old
+creature catch sight of me sitting silent and motionless in her
+path.  With a sharp cry of amazement and terror she straightened
+herself up, the bundle of sticks dropping to the ground, and
+turned to run from me.  That, at all events, seemed her
+intention, for her body was thrown forward, and her head and arms
+working like those of a person going at full speed, but her legs
+seemed paralysed and her feet remained planted on the same spot. 
+I burst out laughing; whereat she twisted her neck until her
+wrinkled, brown old face appeared over her shoulder staring at
+me.  This made me laugh again, whereupon she straightened herself
+up once more and turned round to have a good look at me.
+
+"Come, Cla-cla," I cried; "can you not see that I am a living man
+and no spirit?  I thought no one had remained behind to keep me
+company and give me food.  Why are you not with the others?"
+
+"Ah, why!"  she returned tragically.  And then deliberately
+turning from me and assuming a most unladylike attitude, she
+slapped herself vigorously on the small of the back, exclaiming:
+"Because of my pain here!"
+
+As she continued in that position with her back towards me for
+some time, I laughed once more and begged her to explain.
+
+Slowly she turned round and advanced cautiously towards me,
+staring at me all the time.  Finally, still eyeing me
+suspiciously, she related that the others had all gone on a visit
+to a distant village, she starting with them; that after going
+some distance a pain had attacked her in her hind quarters, so
+sudden and acute that it had instantly brought her to a full
+stop; and to illustrate how full the stop was she allowed herself
+to go down, very unnecessarily, with a flop to the ground.  But
+she no sooner touched the ground than up she started to her feet
+again, with an alarmed look on her owlish face, as if she had sat
+down on a stinging-nettle.
+
+"We thought you were dead," she remarked, still thinking that I
+might be a ghost after all.
+
+"No, still alive," I said.  "And so because you came to the
+ground with your pain, they left you behind!  Well, never mind,
+Cla-cla, we are two now and must try to be happy together."
+
+By this time she had recovered from her fear and began to feel
+highly pleased at my return, only lamenting that she had no meat
+to give me.  She was anxious to hear my adventures, and the
+reason of my long absence.  I had no wish to gratify her
+curiosity, with the truth at all events, knowing very well that
+with regard to the daughter of the Didi her feelings were as
+purely savage and malignant as those of Kua-ko.  But it was
+necessary to say something, and, fortifying myself with the good
+old Spanish notion that lies told to the heathen are not
+recorded, I related that a venomous serpent had bitten me; after
+which a terrible thunderstorm had surprised me in the forest, and
+night coming on prevented my escape from it; then, next day,
+remembering that he who is bitten by a serpent dies, and not
+wishing to distress my friends with the sight of my dissolution,
+I elected to remain, sitting there in the wood, amusing myself by
+singing songs and smoking cigarettes; and after several days and
+nights had gone by, finding that I was not going to die after
+all, and beginning to feel hungry, I got up and came back.
+
+Old Cla-cla looked very serious, shaking and nodding her head a
+great deal, muttering to herself; finally she gave it as her
+opinion that nothing ever would or could kill me; but whether my
+story had been believed or not she only knew.
+
+I spent an amusing evening with my old savage hostess.  She had
+thrown off her ailments and, pleased at having a companion in her
+dreary solitude, she was good-tempered and talkative, and much
+more inclined to laugh than when the others were present, when
+she was on her dignity.
+
+We sat by the fire, cooking such food as we had, and talked and
+smoked; then I sang her songs in Spanish with that melody of my
+own--
+
+    Muy mas clara que la luna;
+
+and she rewarded me by emitting a barbarous chant in a shrill,
+screechy voice; and finally, starting up, I danced for her
+benefit polka, mazurka, and valse, whistling and singing to my
+motions.
+
+More than once during the evening she tried to introduce serious
+subjects, telling me that I must always live with them, learn to
+shoot the birds and catch the fishes, and have a wife; and then
+she would speak of her granddaughter Oalava, whose virtues it was
+proper to mention, but whose physical charms needed no
+description since they had never been concealed.  Each time she
+got on this topic I cut her short, vowing that if I ever married
+she only should be my wife.  She informed me that she was old and
+past her fruitful period; that not much longer would she make
+cassava bread, and blow the fire to a flame with her wheezy old
+bellows, and talk the men to sleep at night.  But I stuck to it
+that she was young and beautiful, that our descendants would be
+more numerous than the birds in the forest.  I went out to some
+bushes close by, where I had noticed a passion plant in bloom,
+and gathering a few splendid scarlet blossoms with their stems
+and leaves, I brought them in and wove them into a garland for
+the old dame's head; then I pulled her up, in spite of screams
+and struggles, and waltzed her wildly to the other end of the
+room and back again to her seat beside the fire.  And as she sat
+there, panting and grinning with laughter, I knelt before her
+and, with suitable passionate gestures, declaimed again the old
+delicate lines sung by Mena before Columbus sailed the seas:
+
+    Muy mas clara que la luna
+    Sola una      
+    en el mundo vos nacistes
+    tan gentil, que no vecistes
+    ni tavistes
+    competedora ninguna
+    Desdi ninez en la cuna
+    cobrastes fama, beldad, con tanta graciosidad,
+    que vos doto la fortuna.
+
+Thinking of another all the time!  O poor old Cla-cla, knowing
+not what the jingle meant nor the secret of my wild happiness,
+now when I recall you sitting there, your old grey owlish head
+crowned with scarlet passion flowers, flushed with firelight,
+against the background of smoke-blackened walls and rafters, how
+the old undying sorrow comes back to me!
+
+Thus our evening was spent, merrily enough; then we made up the
+fire with hard wood that would last all night, and went to our
+hammocks, but wakeful still.  The old dame, glad and proud to be
+on duty once more, religiously went to work to talk me to sleep;
+but although I called out at intervals to encourage her to go on,
+I did not attempt to follow the ancient tales she told, which she
+had imbibed in childhood from other white-headed grandmothers
+long, long turned to dust.  My own brain was busy thinking,
+thinking, thinking now of the woman I had once loved, far away in
+Venezuela, waiting and weeping and sick with hope deferred; now
+of Rima, wakeful and listening to the mysterious nightsounds of
+the forest--listening, listening for my returning footsteps.
+
+Next morning I began to waver in my resolution to remain absent
+from Rima for some days; and before evening my passion, which I
+had now ceased to struggle against, coupled with the thought that
+I had acted unkindly in leaving her, that she would be a prey to
+anxiety, overcame me, and I was ready to return.  The old woman,
+who had been suspiciously watching my movements, rushed out after
+me as I left the house, crying out that a storm was brewing, that
+it was too late to go far, and night would be full of danger.  I
+waved my hand in good-bye, laughingly reminding her that I was
+proof against all perils.  Little she cared what evil might
+befall me, I thought; but she loved not to be alone; even for
+her, low down as she was intellectually, the solitary earthen pot
+had no "mind stuff" in it, and could not be sent to sleep at
+night with the legends of long ago.
+
+By the time I reached the ridge, I had discovered that she had
+prophesied truly, for now an ominous change had come over nature.
+A dull grey vapour had overspread the entire western half of the
+heavens; down, beyond the forest, the sky looked black as ink,
+and behind this blackness the sun had vanished.  It was too late
+to go back now; I had been too long absent from Rima, and could
+only hope to reach Nuflo's lodge, wet or dry, before night closed
+round me in the forest.
+
+For some moments I stood still on the ridge, struck by the
+somewhat weird aspect of the shadowed scene before me--the long
+strip of dull uniform green, with here and there a slender palm
+lifting its feathery crown above the other trees, standing
+motionless, in strange relief against the advancing blackness.
+Then I set out once more at a run, taking advantage of the
+downward slope to get well on my way before the tempest should
+burst.  As I approached the wood, there came a flash of
+lightning, pale, but covering the whole visible sky, followed
+after a long interval by a distant roll of thunder, which lasted
+several seconds and ended with a succession of deep throbs.  It
+was as if Nature herself, in supreme anguish and abandonment, had
+cast herself prone on the earth, and her great heart had throbbed
+audibly, shaking the world with its beats.  No more thunder
+followed, but the rain was coming down heavily now in huge drops
+that fell straight through the gloomy, windless air.  In half a
+minute I was drenched to the skin; but for a short time the rain
+seemed an advantage, as the brightness of the falling water
+lessened the gloom, turning the air from dark to lighter grey.
+This subdued rain-light did not last long: I had not been twenty
+minutes in the wood before a second and greater darkness fell on
+the earth, accompanied by an even more copious downpour of water.
+The sun had evidently gone down, and the whole sky was now
+covered with one thick cloud.  Becoming more nervous as the gloom
+increased, I bent my steps more to the south, so as to keep near
+the border and more open part of the wood.  Probably I had
+already grown confused before deviating and turned the wrong way,
+for instead of finding the forest easier, it grew closer and more
+difficult as I advanced.  Before many minutes the darkness so
+increased that I could no longer distinguish objects more than
+five feet from my eyes.  Groping blindly along, I became
+entangled in a dense undergrowth, and after struggling and
+stumbling along for some distance in vain endeavours to get
+through it, I came to a stand at last in sheer despair.  All
+sense of direction was now lost: I was entombed in thick
+blackness--blackness of night and cloud and rain and of dripping
+foliage and network of branches bound with bush ropes and
+creepers in a wild tangle.  I had struggled into a hollow, or
+hole, as it were, in the midst of that mass of vegetation, where
+I could stand upright and turn round and round without touching
+anything; but when I put out my hands they came into contact with
+vines and bushes.  To move from that spot seemed folly; yet how
+dreadful to remain there standing on the sodden earth, chilled
+with rain, in that awful blackness in which the only luminous
+thing one could look to see would be the eyes, shining with their
+own internal light, of some savage beast of prey!  Yet the
+danger, the intense physical discomfort, and the anguish of
+looking forward to a whole night spent in that situation stung my
+heart less than the thought of Rima's anxiety and of the pain I
+had carelessly given by secretly leaving her.
+
+It was then, with that pang in my heart, that I was startled by
+hearing, close by, one of her own low, warbled expressions. 
+There could be no mistake; if the forest had been full of the
+sounds of animal life and songs of melodious birds, her voice
+would have been instantly distinguished from all others.  How
+mysterious, how infinitely tender it sounded in that awful
+blackness!--so musical and exquisitely modulated, so sorrowful,
+yet piercing my heart with a sudden, unutterable joy.
+
+"Rima!  Rima!"  I cried.  "Speak again.  Is it you?  Come to me
+here."
+
+Again that low, warbling sound, or series of sounds, seemingly
+from a distance of a few yards.  I was not disturbed at her not
+replying in Spanish: she had always spoken it somewhat
+reluctantly, and only when at my side; but when calling to me
+from some distance she would return instinctively to her own
+mysterious language, and call to me as bird calls to bird.  I
+knew that she was inviting me to follow her, but I refused to
+move.
+
+"Rima," I cried again, "come to me here, for I know not where to
+step, and cannot move until you are at my side and I can feel
+your hand."
+
+There came no response, and after some moments, becoming alarmed,
+I called to her again.
+
+Then close by me, in a low, trembling voice, she returned: "I am
+here."
+
+I put out my hand and touched something soft and wet; it was her
+breast, and moving my hand higher up, I felt her hair, hanging
+now and streaming with water.  She was trembling, and I thought
+the rain had chilled her.
+
+"Rima--poor child!  How wet you are!  How strange to meet you in
+such a place!  Tell me, dear Rima, how did you find me?"
+
+"I was waiting--watching--all day.  I saw you coming across the
+savannah, and followed at a distance through the wood."
+
+"And I had treated you so unkindly!  Ah, my guardian angel, my
+light in the darkness, how I hate myself for giving you pain!
+Tell me, sweet, did you wish me to come back and live with you
+again?"  She made no reply.  Then, running my fingers down her
+arm, I took her hand in mine.  It was hot, like the hand of one
+in a fever.  I raised it to my lips and then attempted to draw
+her to me, but she slipped down and out of my arms to my feet.  I
+felt her there, on her knees, with head bowed low.  Stooping and
+putting my arm round her body, I drew her up and held her against
+my breast, and felt her heart throbbing wildly.  With many
+endearing words I begged her to speak to me; but her only reply
+was: "Come--come," as she slipped again out of my arms and,
+holding my hand in hers, guided me through the bushes.
+
+Before long we came to an open path or glade, where the darkness
+was not profound; and releasing my hand, she began walking
+rapidly before me, always keeping at such a distance as just
+enabled me to distinguish her grey, shadowy figure, and with
+frequent doublings to follow the natural paths and openings which
+she knew so well.  In this way we kept on nearly to the end,
+without exchanging a word, and hearing no sound except the
+continuous rush of rain, which to our accustomed ears had ceased
+to have the effect of sound, and the various gurgling noises of
+innumerable runners.  All at once, as we came to a more open
+place, a strip of bright firelight appeared before us, shining
+from the half-open door of Nuflo's lodge.  She turned round as
+much as to say: "Now you know where you are," then hurried on,
+leaving me to follow as best I could.  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+There was a welcome change in the weather when I rose early next
+morning; the sky was without cloud and had that purity in its
+colour and look of infinite distance seen only when the
+atmosphere is free from vapour.  The sun had not yet risen, but
+old Nuflo was already among the ashes, on his hands and knees,
+blowing the embers he had uncovered to a flame. Then Rima appeared
+only to pass through the room with quick light tread to go out of
+the door without a word or even a glance at my face.  The old
+man, after watching at the door for a few minutes, turned and
+began eagerly questioning me about my adventures on the previous
+evening.  In reply I related to him how the girl had found me in
+the forest lost and unable to extricate myself from the tangled
+undergrowth.
+
+He rubbed his hands on his knees and chuckled.  "Happy for you,
+senor," he said, "that my granddaughter regards you with such
+friendly eyes, otherwise you might have perished before morning.
+Once she was at your side, no light, whether of sun or moon or
+lantern, was needed, nor that small instrument which is said to
+guide a man aright in the desert, even in the darkest night--let
+him that can believe such a thing!"
+
+"Yes, happy for me," I returned.  "I am filled with remorse that
+it was all through my fault that the poor child was exposed to
+such weather."
+
+"O senor," he cried airily, "let not that distress you!  Rain and
+wind and hot suns, from which we seek shelter, do not harm her.
+She takes no cold, and no fever, with or without ague."
+
+After some further conversation I left him to steal away
+unobserved on his own account, and set out for a ramble in the
+hope of encountering Rima and winning her to talk to me.
+
+My quest did not succeed: not a glimpse of her delicate shadowy
+form did I catch among the trees; and not one note from her
+melodious lips came to gladden me.  At noon I returned to the
+house, where I found food placed ready for me, and knew that she
+had come there during my absence and had not been forgetful of my
+wants.  "Shall I thank you for this?"  I said.  "I ask you for
+heavenly nectar for the sustentation of the higher winged nature
+in me, and you give me a boiled sweet potato, toasted strips of
+sun-dried pumpkins, and a handful of parched maize!  Rima!  Rima!
+my woodland fairy, my sweet saviour, why do you yet fear me?  Is
+it that love struggles in you with repugnance?  Can you discern
+with clear spiritual eyes the grosser elements in me, and hate
+them; or has some false imagination made me appear all dark and
+evil, but too late for your peace, after the sweet sickness of
+love has infected you?"
+
+But she was not there to answer me, and so after a time I went
+forth again and seated myself listlessly on the root of an old
+tree not far from the house.  I had sat there a full hour when
+all at once Rima appeared at my side.  Bending forward, she
+touched my hand, but without glancing at my face; "Come with me,"
+she said, and turning, moved swiftly towards the northern
+extremity of the forest.  She seemed to take it for granted that
+I would follow, never casting a look behind nor pausing in her
+rapid walk; but I was only too glad to obey and, starting up, was
+quickly after her.  She led me by easy ways, familiar to her,
+with many doublings to escape the undergrowth, never speaking or
+pausing until we came out from the thick forest, and I found
+myself for the first time at the foot of the great hill or
+mountain Ytaioa. Glancing back for a few moments, she waved a
+hand towards the summit, and then at once began the ascent.  Here
+too it seemed all familiar ground to her.  From below, the sides
+had presented an exceedingly rugged appearance--a wild confusion
+of huge jagged rocks, mixed with a tangled vegetation of trees,
+bushes, and vines; but following her in all her doublings, it
+became easy enough, although it fatigued me greatly owing to our
+rapid pace. The hill was conical, but I found that it had a flat
+top--an oblong or pear-shaped area, almost level, of a soft,
+crumbly sandstone, with a few blocks and boulders of a harder
+stone scattered about--and no vegetation, except the grey
+mountain lichen and a few sere-looking dwarf shrubs.
+
+Here Rima, at a distance of a few yards from me, remained
+standing still for some minutes, as if to give me time to recover
+my breath; and I was right glad to sit down on a stone to rest.
+Finally she walked slowly to the centre of the level area, which
+was about two acres in extent; rising, I followed her and,
+climbing on to a huge block of stone, began gazing at the wide
+prospect spread out before me.  The day was windless and bright,
+with only a few white clouds floating at a great height above and
+casting travelling shadows over that wild, broken country, where
+forest, marsh, and savannah were only distinguishable by their
+different colours, like the greys and greens and yellows on a
+map.  At a great distance the circle of the horizon was broken
+here and there by mountains, but the hills in our neighbourhood
+were all beneath our feet.
+
+After gazing all round for some minutes, I jumped down from my
+stand and, leaning against the stone, stood watching the girl,
+waiting for her to speak.  I felt convinced that she had
+something of the very highest importance (to herself) to
+communicate, and that only the pressing need of a confidant, not
+Nuflo, had overcome her shyness of me; and I determined to let
+her take her own time to say it in her own way.  For a while she
+continued silent, her face averted, but her little movements and
+the way she clasped and unclasped her fingers showed that she was
+anxious and her mind working.  Suddenly, half turning to me, she
+began speaking eagerly and rapidly.
+
+"Do you see," she said, waving her hand to indicate the whole
+circuit of earth, "how large it is?  Look!"  pointing now to
+mountains in the west.  "Those are the Vahanas--one, two,
+three--the highest--I can tell you their names--Vahana-Chara,
+Chumi, Aranoa.  Do you see that water?  It is a river, called
+Guaypero. From the hills it comes down, Inaruna is their name,
+and you can see them there in the south--far, far."  And in this
+way she went on pointing out and naming all the mountains and
+rivers within sight.  Then she suddenly dropped her hands to her
+sides and continued: "That is all.  Because we can see no
+further.  But the world is larger than that!  Other mountains,
+other rivers.  Have I not told you of Voa, on the River Voa,
+where I was born, where mother died, where the priest taught me,
+years, years ago?  All that you cannot see, it is so far away--so
+far."
+
+I did not laugh at her simplicity, nor did I smile or feel any
+inclination to smile.  On the contrary, I only experienced a
+sympathy so keen that it was like pain while watching her clouded
+face, so changeful in its expression, yet in all changes so
+wistful.  I could not yet form any idea as to what she wished to
+communicate or to discover, but seeing that she paused for a
+reply, I answered: "The world is so large, Rima, that we can only
+see a very small portion of it from any one spot.  Look at this,"
+and with a stick I had used to aid me in my ascent I traced a
+circle six or seven inches in circumference on the soft stone,
+and in its centre placed a small pebble.  "This represents the
+mountain we are standing on," I continued, touching the pebble;
+"and this line encircling it encloses all of the earth we can see
+from the mountain-top.  Do you understand?--the line I have
+traced is the blue line of the horizon beyond which we cannot
+see.  And outside of this little circle is all the flat top of
+Ytaioa representing the world.  Consider, then, how small a
+portion of the world we can see from this spot!"
+
+"And do you know it all?"  she returned excitedly.  "All the
+world?"  waving her hand to indicate the little stone plain. 
+"All the mountains, and rivers, and forests--all the people in
+the world?"
+
+"That would be impossible, Rima; consider how large it is."
+
+"That does not matter.  Come, let us go together--we two and
+grandfather--and see all the world; all the mountains and
+forests, and know all the people."
+
+"You do not know what you are saying, Rima.  You might as well
+say: 'Come, let us go to the sun and find out everything in it.'"
+
+"It is you who do not know what you are saying," she retorted,
+with brightening eyes which for a moment glanced full into mine.
+"We have no wings like birds to fly to the sun.  Am I not able to
+walk on the earth, and run?  Can I not swim?  Can I not climb
+every mountain?"
+
+"No, you cannot.  You imagine that all the earth is like this
+little portion you see.  But it is not all the same.  There are
+great rivers which you cannot cross by swimming; mountains you
+cannot climb; forests you cannot penetrate--dark, and inhabited
+by dangerous beasts, and so vast that all this space your eyes
+look on is a mere speck of earth in comparison."
+
+She listened excitedly.  "Oh, do you know all that?"  she cried,
+with a strangely brightening look; and then half turning from me,
+she added, with sudden petulance: "Yet only a minute ago you knew
+nothing of the world--because it is so large!  Is anything to be
+gained by speaking to one who says such contrary things?"
+
+I explained that I had not contradicted myself, that she had not
+rightly interpreted my words.  I knew, I said, something about
+the principal features of the different countries of the world,
+as, for instance, the largest mountain ranges, and rivers, and
+the cities.  Also something, but very little, about the tribes of
+savage men.  She heard me with impatience, which made me speak
+rapidly, in very general terms; and to simplify the matter I made
+the world stand for the continent we were in.  It seemed idle to
+go beyond that, and her eagerness would not have allowed it.
+
+"Tell me all you know," she said the moment I ceased speaking.
+"What is there--and there--and there?"  pointing in various
+directions.  "Rivers and forests--they are nothing to me.  The
+villages, the tribes, the people everywhere; tell me, for I must
+know it all."
+
+"It would take long to tell, Rima."
+
+"Because you are so slow.  Look how high the sun is!  Speak,
+speak! What is there?"  pointing to the north.
+
+"All that country," I said, waving my hands from east to west,
+"is Guayana; and so large is it that you could go in this
+direction, or in this, travelling for months, without seeing the
+end of Guayana.  Still it would be Guayana; rivers, rivers,
+rivers, with forests between, and other forests and rivers
+beyond.  And savage people, nations and tribes--Guahibo,
+Aguaricoto, Ayano, Maco, Piaroa, Quiriquiripo, Tuparito--shall I
+name a hundred more?  It would be useless, Rima; they are all
+savages, and live widely scattered in the forests, hunting with
+bow and arrow and the zabatana.  Consider, then, how large
+Guayana is!"
+
+"Guayana--Guayana!  Do I not know all this is Guayana?  But
+beyond, and beyond, and beyond?  Is there no end to Guayana?"
+
+"Yes; there northwards it ends at the Orinoco, a mighty river,
+coming from mighty mountains, compared with which Ytaioa is like
+a stone on the ground on which we have sat down to rest.  You
+must know that guayana is only a portion, a half, of our country,
+Venezuela.  Look," I continued, putting my hand round my shoulder
+to touch the middle of my back, "there is a groove running down
+my spine dividing my body into equal parts.  Thus does the great
+Orinoco divide Venezuela, and on one side of it is all Guayana;
+and on the other side the countries or provinces of Cumana,
+Maturm, Barcelona, Bolivar, Guarico, Apure, and many others."  I
+then gave a rapid description of the northern half of the
+country, with its vast llanos covered with herds in one part, its
+plantations of coffee, rice, and sugar-cane in another, and its
+chief towns; last of all Caracas, the gay and opulent little
+Paris in America.
+
+This seemed to weary her; but the moment I ceased speaking, and
+before I could well moisten my dry lips, she demanded to know
+what came after Caracas--after all Venezuela.
+
+"The ocean--water, water, water," I replied.
+
+"There are no people there--in the water; only fishes," she
+remarked; then suddenly continued: "Why are you silent--is
+Venezuela, then, all the world?"
+
+The task I had set myself to perform seemed only at its
+commencement yet.  Thinking how to proceed with it, my eyes roved
+over the level area we were standing on, and it struck me that
+this little irregular plain, broad at one end and almost pointed
+at the other, roughly resembled the South American continent in
+its form.
+
+"Look, Rima," I began, "here we are on this small pebble--Ytaioa;
+and this line round it shuts us in--we cannot see beyond.  Now
+let us imagine that we can see beyond--that we can see the whole
+flat mountaintop; and that, you know, is the whole world.  Now
+listen while I tell you of all the countries, and principal
+mountains, and rivers, and cities of the world."
+
+The plan I had now fixed on involved a great deal of walking
+about and some hard work in moving and setting up stones and
+tracing boundary and other lines; but it gave me pleasure, for
+Rima was close by all the time, following me from place to place,
+listening to all I said in silence but with keen interest.  At
+the broad end of the level summit I marked out Venezuela, showing
+by means of a long line how the Orinoco divided it, and also
+marking several of the greater streams flowing into it.  I also
+marked the sites of Caracas and other large towns with stones;
+and rejoiced that we are not like the Europeans, great
+city-builders, for the stones proved heavy to lift.  Then
+followed Colombia and Ecuador on the west; and, successively,
+Bolivia, Peru, Chile, ending at last in the south with Patagonia,
+a cold arid land, bleak and desolate.  I marked the littoral
+cities as we progressed on that side, where earth ends and the
+Pacific Ocean begins, and infinitude.
+
+Then, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I described the
+Cordilleras to her--that world-long, stupendous chain; its sea of
+Titicaca, and wintry, desolate Paramo, where lie the ruins of
+Tiahuanaco, older than Thebes.  I mentioned its principal
+cities--those small inflamed or festering pimples that attract
+much attention from appearing on such a body.  Quito, called--not
+in irony, but by its own people--the Splendid and the
+Magnificent; so high above the earth as to appear but a little
+way removed from heaven--"de Quito al cielo," as the saying is. 
+But of its sublime history, its kings and conquerors, Haymar
+Capac the Mighty, and Huascar, and Atahualpa the Unhappy, not one
+word. Many words--how inadequate!--of the summits, white with
+everlasting snows, above it--above this navel of the world, above
+the earth, the ocean, the darkening tempest, the condor's flight.
+Flame-breathing Cotopaxi, whose wrathful mutterings are audible
+two hundred leagues away, and Chimborazo, Antisana, Sarata,
+Illimani, Aconcagua--names of mountains that affect us like the
+names of gods, implacable Pachacamac and Viracocha, whose
+everlasting granite thrones they are.  At the last I showed her
+Cuzco, the city of the sun, and the highest dwelling-place of men
+on earth.
+
+I was carried away by so sublime a theme; and remembering that I
+had no critical hearer, I gave free reins to fancy, forgetting
+for the moment that some undiscovered thought or feeling had
+prompted her questions.  And while I spoke of the mountains, she
+hung on my words, following me closely in my walk, her
+countenance brilliant, her frame quivering with excitement.
+
+There yet remained to be described all that unimaginable space
+east of the Andes; the rivers--what rivers!--the green plains
+that are like the sea--the illimitable waste of water where there
+is no land--and the forest region.  The very thought of the
+Amazonian forest made my spirit droop.  If I could have snatched
+her up and placed her on the dome of Chimborazo she would have
+looked on an area of ten thousand square miles of earth, so vast
+is the horizon at that elevation.  And possibly her imagination
+would have been able to clothe it all with an unbroken forest.
+Yet how small a portion this would be of the stupendous whole--of
+a forest region equal in extent to the whole of Europe!  All
+loveliness, all grace, all majesty are there; but we cannot see,
+cannot conceive--come away!  From this vast stage, to be occupied
+in the distant future by millions and myriads of beings, like us
+of upright form, the nations that will be born when all the
+existing dominant races on the globe and the civilizations they
+represent have perished as utterly as those who sculptured the
+stones of old Tiahuanaco--from this theatre of palms prepared for
+a drama unlike any which the Immortals have yet witnessed--I
+hurried away; and then slowly conducted her along the Atlantic
+coast, listening to the thunder of its great waves, and pausing
+at intervals to survey some maritime city.
+
+Never probably since old Father Noah divided the earth among his
+sons had so grand a geographical discourse been delivered; and
+having finished, I sat down, exhausted with my efforts, and
+mopped my brow, but glad that my huge task was over, and
+satisfied that I had convinced her of the futility of her wish to
+see the world for herself.
+
+Her excitement had passed away by now.  She was standing a little
+apart from me, her eyes cast down and thoughtful.  At length she
+approached me and said, waving her hand all round: "What is
+beyond the mountains over there, beyond the cities on that
+side--beyond the world?"
+
+"Water, only water.  Did I not tell you?"  I returned stoutly;
+for I had, of course, sunk the Isthmus of Panama beneath the sea. 
+
+
+"Water!  All round?"  she persisted.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Water, and no beyond?  Only water--always water?"
+
+I could no longer adhere to so gross a lie.  She was too
+intelligent, and I loved her too much.  Standing up, I pointed to
+distant mountains and isolated peaks.
+
+"Look at those peaks," I said.  "It is like that with the
+world--this world we are standing on.  Beyond that great water
+that flows all round the world, but far away, so far that it
+would take months in a big boat to reach them, there are islands,
+some small, others as large as this world.  But, Rima, they are
+so far away, so impossible to reach, that it is useless to speak
+or to think of them.  They are to us like the sun and moon and
+stars, to which we cannot fly.  And now sit down and rest by my
+side, for you know everything."
+
+She glanced at me with troubled eyes.
+
+"Nothing do I know--nothing have you told me.  Did I not say that
+mountains and rivers and forests are nothing?  Tell me about all
+the people in the world.  Look!  there is Cuzco over there, a
+city like no other in the world--did you not tell me so?  Of the
+people nothing.  Are they also different from all others in the
+world?"
+
+"I will tell you that if you will first answer me one question,
+Rima."
+
+She drew a little nearer, curious to hear, but was silent.
+
+"Promise that you will answer me," I persisted, and as she
+continued silent, I added: "Shall I not ask you, then?"
+
+"Say," she murmured.
+
+"Why do you wish to know about the people of Cuzco?"
+
+She flashed a look at me, then averted her face.  For some
+moments she stood hesitating; then, coming closer, touched me on
+the shoulder and said softly: "Turn away, do not look at me."
+
+I obeyed, and bending so close that I felt her warm breath on my
+neck, she whispered: "Are the people in Cuzco like me?  Would
+they understand me--the things you cannot understand?  Do you
+know?"
+
+Her tremulous voice betrayed her agitation, and her words, I
+imagined, revealed the motive of her action in bringing me to the
+summit of Ytaioa, and of her desire to visit and know all the
+various peoples inhabiting the world.  She had begun to realize,
+after knowing me, her isolation and unlikeness to others, and at
+the same time to dream that all human beings might not be unlike
+her and unable to understand her mysterious speech and to enter
+into her thoughts and feelings.
+
+"I can answer that question, Rima," I said.  "Ah, no, poor child,
+there are none there like you--not one, not one.  Of all
+there--priests, soldiers, merchants, workmen, white, black, red,
+and mixed; men and women, old and young, rich and poor, ugly and
+beautiful--not one would understand the sweet language you
+speak."
+
+She said nothing, and glancing round, I discovered that she was
+walking away, her fingers clasped before her, her eyes cast down,
+and looking profoundly dejected.  Jumping up, I hurried after
+her.  "Listen!"  I said, coming to her side.  "Do you know that
+there are others in the world like you who would understand your
+speech?"
+
+"Oh, do I not!  Yes--mother told me.  I was young when you died,
+but, O mother, why did you not tell me more?"
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Oh, do you not think that I would go to them if I knew--that I
+would ask?"
+
+"Does Nuflo know?"
+
+She shook her head, walking dejectedly along.
+
+"But have you asked him?"  I persisted.
+
+"Have I not!  Not once--not a hundred times."
+
+Suddenly she paused.  "Look," she said, "now we are standing in
+Guayana again.  And over there in Brazil, and up there towards
+the Cordilleras, it is unknown.  And there are people there. 
+Come, let us go and seek for my mother's people in that place. 
+With grandfather, but not the dogs; they would frighten the
+animals and betray us by barking to cruel men who would slay us
+with poisoned arrows."
+
+"O Rima, can you not understand?  It is too far.  And your
+grandfather, poor old man, would die of weariness and hunger and
+old age in some strange forest."
+
+"Would he die--old grandfather?  Then we could cover him up with
+palm leaves in the forest and leave him.  It would not be
+grandfather; only his body that must turn to dust.  He would be
+away--away where the stars are.  We should not die, but go on,
+and on, and on."
+
+To continue the discussion seemed hopeless.  I was silent,
+thinking of what I had heard--that there were others like her
+somewhere in that vast green world, so much of it imperfectly
+known, so many districts never yet explored by white men.  True,
+it was strange that no report of such a race had reached the ears
+of any traveller; yet here was Rima herself at my side, a living
+proof that such a race did exist.  Nuflo probably knew more than
+he would say; I had failed, as we have seen, to win the secret
+from him by fair means, and could not have recourse to foul--the
+rack and thumbscrew--to wring it from him.  To the Indians she
+was only an object of superstitious fear--a daughter of the
+Didi--and to them nothing of her origin was known.  And she, poor
+girl, had only a vague remembrance of a few words heard in
+childhood from her mother, and probably not rightly understood.
+
+While these thoughts had been passing through my mind, Rima had
+been standing silent by, waiting, perhaps, for an answer to her
+last words.  Then stooping, she picked up a small pebble and
+tossed it three or four yards away.
+
+"Do you see where it fell?"  she cried, turning towards me. 
+"That is on the border of Guayana--is it not?  Let us go there
+first."
+
+"Rima, how you distress me!  We cannot go there.  It is all a
+savage wilderness, almost unknown to men--a blank on the map--"
+
+"The map?--speak no word that I do not understand."
+
+In a very few words I explained my meaning; even fewer would have
+sufficed, so quick was her apprehension.
+
+"If it is a blank," she returned quickly, "then you know of
+nothing to stop us--no river we cannot swim, and no great
+mountains like those where Quito is."
+
+"But I happen to know, Rima, for it has been related to me by old
+Indians, that of all places that is the most difficult of access.
+There is a river there, and although it is not on the map, it
+would prove more impassable to us than the mighty Orinoco and
+Amazon.  It has vast malarious swamps on its borders, overgrown
+with dense forest, teeming with savage and venomous animals, so
+that even the Indians dare not venture near it.  And even before
+the river is reached, there is a range of precipitous mountains
+called by the same name--just there where your pebble fell--the
+mountains of Riolama--"
+
+Hardly had the name fallen from my lips before a change swift as
+lightning came over her countenance; all doubt, anxiety,
+petulance, hope, and despondence, and these in ever-varying
+degrees, chasing each other like shadows, had vanished, and she
+was instinct and burning with some new powerful emotion which had
+flashed into her soul.
+
+"Riolama!  Riolama!"  she repeated so rapidly and in a tone so
+sharp that it tingled in the brain.  "That is the place I am
+seeking!  There was my mother found--there are her people and
+mine!  Therefore was I called Riolama--that is my name!"
+
+"Rima!"  I returned, astonished at her words.
+
+"No, no, no--Riolama.  When I was a child, and the priest
+baptized me, he named me Riolama--the place where my mother was
+found.  But it was long to say, and they called me Rima."
+
+Suddenly she became still and then cried in a ringing voice:
+
+"And he knew it all along--that old man--he knew that Riolama was
+near--only there where the pebble fell--that we could go there!"
+
+While speaking she turned towards her home, pointing with raised
+hand.  Her whole appearance now reminded me of that first meeting
+with her when the serpent bit me; the soft red of her irides
+shone like fire, her delicate skin seemed to glow with an intense
+rose colour, and her frame trembled with her agitation, so that
+her loose cloud of hair was in motion as if blown through by the
+wind.
+
+"Traitor!  Traitor!"  she cried, still  looking homewards and
+using quick, passionate gestures.  "It was all known to you, and
+you deceived me all these years; even to me, Rima, you lied with
+your lips!  Oh, horrible!  Was there ever such a scandal known in
+Guayana?  Come, follow me, let us go at once to Riolama."  And
+without so much as casting a glance behind to see whether I
+followed or no, she hurried away, and in a couple of minutes
+disappeared from sight over the edge of the flat summit.  "Rima! 
+Rima!  Come back and listen to me!  Oh, you are mad!  Come back! 
+Come back!"
+
+But she would not return or pause and listen; and looking after
+her, I saw her bounding down the rocky slope like some wild,
+agile creature possessed of padded hoofs and an infallible
+instinct; and before many minutes she vanished from sight among
+crabs and trees lower down.
+
+"Nuflo, old man," said I, looking out towards his lodge, "are
+there no shooting pains in those old bones of yours to warn you
+in time of the tempest about to burst on your head?"
+
+Then I sat down to think.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+To follow impetuous, bird-like Rima in her descent of the hill
+would have been impossible, nor had I any desire to be a witness
+of old Nuflo's discomfiture at the finish.  It was better to
+leave them to settle their quarrel themselves, while I occupied
+myself in turning over these fresh facts in my mind to find out
+how they fitted into the speculative structure I had been
+building during the last two or three weeks.  But it soon struck
+me that it was getting late, that the sun would be gone in a
+couple of hours; and at once I began the descent.  It was not
+accomplished without some bruises and a good many scratches. 
+After a cold draught, obtained by putting my lips to a black rock
+from which the water was trickling, I set out on my walk home,
+keeping near the western border of the forest for fear of losing
+myself.  I had covered about half the distance from the foot of
+the hill to Nuflo's lodge when the sun went down.  Away on my
+left the evening uproar of the howling monkeys burst out, and
+after three or four minutes ceased; the after silence was pierced
+at intervals by screams of birds going to roost among the trees
+in the distance, and by many minor sounds close at hand, of small
+bird, frog, and insect.  The western sky was now like
+amber-coloured flame, and against that immeasurably distant
+luminous background the near branches and clustered foliage
+looked black; but on my left hand the vegetation still appeared
+of a uniform dusky green. In a little while night would drown all
+colour, and there would be no light but that of the wandering
+lantern-fly, always unwelcome to the belated walker in a lonely
+place, since, like the ignis fatuus, it is confusing to the sight
+and sense of direction.
+
+With increasing anxiety I hastened on, when all at once a low
+growl issuing from the bushes some yards ahead of me brought me
+to a stop.  In a moment the dogs, Susio and Goloso, rushed out
+from some hiding place furiously barking; but they quickly
+recognized me and slunk back again.  Relieved from fear, I walked
+on for a short distance; then it struck me that the old man must
+be about somewhere, as the dogs scarcely ever stirred from his
+side.  Turning back, I went to the spot where they had appeared
+to me; and there, after a while, I caught sight of a dim, yellow
+form as one of the brutes rose up to look at me.  He had been
+lying on the ground by the side of a wide-spreading bush, dead
+and dry, but overgrown by a creeping plant which had completely
+covered its broad, flat top like a piece of tapestry thrown over
+a table, its slender terminal stems and leaves hanging over the
+edge like a deep fringe.  But the fringe did not reach to the
+ground and under the bush, in its dark interior.  I caught sight
+of the other dog; and after gazing in for some time, I also
+discovered a black, recumbent form, which I took to be Nuflo.
+
+"What are you doing there, old man?"  I cried.  "Where is
+Rima--have you not seen her?  Come out."
+
+Then he stirred himself, slowly creeping out on all fours; and
+finally, getting free of the dead twigs and leaves, he stood up
+and faced me.  He had a strange, wild look, his white beard all
+disordered, moss and dead leaves clinging to it, his eyes staring
+like an owl's, while his mouth opened and shut, the teeth
+striking together audibly, like an angry peccary's.  After
+silently glaring at me in this mad way for some moments, he burst
+out: "Cursed be the day when I first saw you, man of Caracas!
+Cursed be the serpent that bit you and had not sufficient power
+in its venom to kill!  Ha!  you come from Ytaioa, where you
+talked with Rima?  And you have now returned to the tiger's den
+to mock that dangerous animal with the loss of its whelp.  Fool,
+if you did not wish the dogs to feed on your flesh, it would have
+been better if you had taken your evening walk in some other
+direction."
+
+These raging words did not have the effect of alarming me in the
+least, nor even of astonishing me very much, albeit up till now
+the old man had always shown himself suave and respectful.  His
+attack did not seem quite spontaneous.  In spite of the wildness
+of his manner and the violence of his speech, he appeared to be
+acting a part which he had rehearsed beforehand.  I was only
+angry, and stepping forward, I dealt him a very sharp rap with my
+knuckles on his chest.  "Moderate your language, old man," I
+said; "remember that you are addressing a superior."
+
+"What do you say to me?"  he screamed in a shrill, broken voice,
+accompanying his words with emphatic gestures.  "Do you think you
+are on the pavement of Caracas?  Here are no police to protect
+you--here we are alone in the desert where names and titles are
+nothing, standing man to man."
+
+"An old man to a young one," I returned.  "And in virtue of my
+youth I am your superior.  Do you wish me to take you by the
+throat and shake your insolence out of you?"
+
+"What, do you threaten me with violence?"  he exclaimed, throwing
+himself into a hostile attitude.  "You, the man I saved, and
+sheltered, and fed, and treated like a son!  Destroyer of my
+peace, have you not injured me enough?  You have stolen my
+grandchild's heart from me; with a thousand inventions you have
+driven her mad!  My child, my angel, Rima, my saviour!  With your
+lying tongue you have changed her into a demon to persecute me!
+And you are not satisfied, but must finish your evil work by
+inflicting blows on my worn body!  All, all is lost to me!  Take
+my life if you wish it, for now it is worth nothing and I desire
+not to keep it!"  And here he threw himself on his knees and,
+tearing open his old, ragged mantle, presented his naked breast
+to me. "Shoot!  Shoot!"  he screeched.  "And if you have no
+weapon take my knife and plunge it into this sad heart, and let
+me die!"  And drawing his knife from its sheath, he flung it down
+at my feet.
+
+All this performance only served to increase my anger and
+contempt; but before I could make any reply I caught sight of a
+shadowy object at some distance moving towards us--something grey
+and formless, gliding swift and noiseless, like some great
+low-flying owl among the trees.  It was Rima, and hardly had I
+seen her before she was with us, facing old Nuflo, her whole
+frame quivering with passion, her wide-open eyes appearing
+luminous in that dim light.
+
+"You are here!"  she cried in that quick, ringing tone that was
+almost painful to the sense.  "You thought to escape me!  To hide
+yourself from my eyes in the wood!  Miserable!  Do you not know
+that I have need of you--that I have not finished with you yet?
+Do you, then, wish to be scourged to Riolama with thorny
+twigs--to be dragged thither by the beard?"
+
+He had been staring open-mouthed at her, still on his knees, and
+holding his mantle open with his skinny hands.  "Rima!  Rima! 
+have mercy on me!"  he cried out piteously.  "I cannot go to
+Riolama, it is so far--so far.  And I am old and should meet my
+death.  Oh, Rima, child of the woman I saved from death, have you
+no compassion?  I shall die, I shall die!"
+
+"Shall you die?  Not until you have shown me the way to Riolama.
+And when I have seen Riolama with my eyes, then you may die, and
+I shall be glad at your death; and the children and the
+grandchildren and cousins and friends of all the animals you have
+slain and fed on shall know that you are dead and be glad at your
+death.  For you have deceived me with lies all these years even
+me--and are not fit to live!  Come now to Riolama; rise
+instantly, I command you!"
+
+Instead of rising he suddenly put out his hand and snatched up
+the knife from the ground.  "Do you then wish me to die?"  he
+cried.  "Shall you be glad at my death?  Behold, then I shall
+slay myself before your eyes.  By my own hand, Rima, I am now
+about to perish, striking the knife into my heart!"
+
+While speaking he waved the knife in a tragic manner over his
+head, but I made no movement; I was convinced that he had no
+intention of taking his own life--that he was still acting. 
+Rima, incapable of understanding such a thing, took it
+differently.
+
+"Oh, you are going to kill yourself."  she cried.  "Oh, wicked
+man, wait until you know what will happen to you after death. 
+All shall now be told to my mother.  Hear my words, then kill
+yourself."
+
+She also now dropped on to her knees and, lifting her clasped
+hands and fixing her resentful sparkling eyes on the dim blue
+patch of heaven visible beyond the treetops, began to speak
+rapidly in clear, vibrating tones.  She was praying to her mother
+in heaven; and while Nuflo listened absorbed, his mouth open, his
+eyes fixed on her, the hand that clutched the knife dropped to
+his side.  I also heard with the greatest wonder and admiration.
+For she had been shy and reticent with me, and now, as if
+oblivious of my presence, she was telling aloud the secrets of
+her inmost heart.
+
+"O mother, mother, listen to me, to Rima, your beloved child!"
+she began.  "All these years I have been wickedly deceived by
+grandfather--Nuflo--the old man that found you.  Often have I
+spoken to him of Riolama, where you once were, and your people
+are, and he denied all knowledge of such a place.  Sometimes he
+said that it was at an immense distance, in a great wilderness
+full of serpents larger than the trunks of great trees, and of
+evil spirits and savage men, slayers of all strangers.  At other
+times he affirmed that no such place existed; that it was a tale
+told by the Indians; such false things did he say to me--to Rima,
+your child.  O mother, can you believe such wickedness?
+
+"Then a stranger, a white man from Venezuela, came into our
+woods: this is the man that was bitten by a serpent, and his name
+is Abel; only I do not call him by that name, but by other names
+which I have told you.  But perhaps you did not listen, or did
+not hear, for I spoke softly and not as now, on my knees,
+solemnly. For I must tell you, O mother, that after you died the
+priest at Voa told me repeatedly that when I prayed, whether to
+you or to any of the saints, or to the Mother of Heaven, I must
+speak as he had taught me if I wished to be heard and understood. 
+And that was most strange, since you had taught me differently;
+but you were living then, at Voa, and now that you are in heaven,
+perhaps you know better.  Therefore listen to me now, O mother,
+and let nothing I say escape you.
+
+"When this white man had been for some days with us, a strange
+thing happened to me, which made me different, so that I was no
+longer Rima, although Rima still--so strange was this thing; and
+I often went to the pool to look at myself and see the change in
+me, but nothing different could I see.  In the first place it
+came from his eyes passing into mine, and filling me just as the
+lightning fills a cloud at sunset: afterwards it was no longer
+from his eyes only, but it came into me whenever I saw him, even
+at a distance, when I heard his voice, and most of all when he
+touched me with his hand.  When he is out of my sight I cannot
+rest until I see him again; and when I see him, then I am glad,
+yet in such fear and trouble that I hide myself from him.  O
+mother, it could not be told; for once when he caught me in his
+arms and compelled me to speak of it, he did not understand; yet
+there was need to tell it; then it came to me that only to our
+people could it be told, for they would understand, and reply to
+me, and tell me what to do in such a case.
+
+"And now, O mother, this is what happened next.  I went to
+grandfather and first begged and then commanded him to take me to
+Riolama; but he would not obey, nor give attention to what I
+said, but whenever I spoke to him of it he rose up and hurried
+from me; and when I followed he flung back a confused and angry
+reply, saying in the same breath that it was so long since he had
+been to Riolama that he had forgotten where it was, and that no
+such place existed.  And which of his words were true and which
+false I knew not; so that it would have been better if he had
+returned no answer at all; and there was no help to be got from
+him.  And having thus failed, and there being no other person to
+speak to except this stranger, I determined to go to him, and in
+his company seek through the whole world for my people.  This
+will surprise you, O mother, because of that fear which came on
+me in his presence, causing me to hide from his sight; but my
+wish was so great that for a time it overcame my fear; so that I
+went to him as he sat alone in the wood, sad because he could not
+see me, and spoke to him, and led him to the summit of Ytaioa to
+show me all the countries of the world from the summit.  And you
+must also know that I tremble in his presence, not because I fear
+him as I fear Indians and cruel men; for he has no evil in him,
+and is beautiful to look at, and his words are gentle, and his
+desire is to be always with me, so that he differs from all other
+men I have seen, just as I differ from all women, except from you
+only, O sweet mother.
+
+"On the mountain-top he marked out and named all the countries of
+the world, the great mountains, the rivers, the plains, the
+forests, the cities; and told me also of the peoples, whites and
+savages, but of our people nothing.  And beyond where the world
+ends there is water, water, water.  And when he spoke of that
+unknown part on the borders of Guayana, on the side of the
+Cordilleras, he named the mountains of Riolama, and in that way I
+first found out where my people are.  I then left him on Ytaioa,
+he refusing to follow me, and ran to grandfather and taxed him
+with his falsehoods; and he, finding I knew all, escaped from me
+into the woods, where I have now found him once more, talking
+with the stranger.  And now, O mother, seeing himself caught and
+unable to escape a second time, he has taken up a knife to kill
+himself, so as not to take me to Riolama; and he is only waiting
+until I finish speaking to you, for I wish him to know what will
+happen to him after death.  Therefore, O mother, listen well and
+do what I tell you.  When he has killed himself, and has come
+into that place where you are, see that he does not escape the
+punishment he merits.  Watch well for his coming, for he is full
+of cunning and deceit, and will endeavor to hide himself from
+your eyes.  When you have recognized him--an old man, brown as an
+Indian, with a white beard--point him out to the angels, and say:
+'This is Nuflo, the bad man that lied to Rima.' Let them take him
+and singe his wings with fire, so that he may not escape by
+flying; and afterwards thrust him into some dark cavern under a
+mountain, and place a great stone that a hundred men could not
+remove over its mouth, and leave him there alone and in the dark
+for ever!"
+
+Having ended, she rose quickly from her knees, and at the same
+moment Nuflo, dropping the knife, cast himself prostrate at her
+feet.
+
+"Rima--my child, my child, not that!"  he cried out in a voice
+that was broken with terror.  He tried to take hold of her feet
+with his hands, but she shrank from him with aversion; still he
+kept on crawling after her like a disabled lizard, abjectly
+imploring her to forgive him, reminding her that he had saved
+from death the woman whose enmity had now been enlisted against
+him, and declaring that he would do anything she commanded him,
+and gladly perish in her service.
+
+It was a pitiable sight, and moving quickly to her side I touched
+her on the shoulder and asked her to forgive him.
+
+The response came quickly enough.  Turning to him once more, she
+said: "I forgive you, grandfather.  And now get up and take me to
+Riolama."
+
+He rose, but only to his knees.  "But you have not told her!"  he
+said, recovering his natural voice, although still anxious, and
+jerking a thumb over his shoulder.  "Consider, my child, that I
+am old and shall doubtless perish on the way.  What would become
+of my soul in such a case?  For now you have told her everything,
+and it will not be forgotten."
+
+She regarded him in silence for a few moments; then, moving a
+little way apart, dropped on to her knees again, and with raised
+hands and eyes fixed on the blue space above, already sprinkled
+with stars, prayed again.
+
+"O mother, listen to me, for I have something fresh to say to
+you.  Grandfather has not killed himself, but has asked my
+forgiveness and has promised to obey me.  O mother, I have
+forgiven him, and he will now take me to Riolama, to our people.
+Therefore, O mother, if he dies on the way to Riolama let nothing
+be done against him, but remember only that I forgave him at the
+last; and when he comes into that place where you are, let him be
+well received, for that is the wish of Rima, your child."
+
+As soon as this second petition was ended she was up again and
+engaged in an animated discussion with him, urging him to take
+her without further delay to Riolama; while he, now recovered
+from his fear, urged that so important an undertaking required a
+great deal of thought and preparation; that the journey would
+occupy about twenty days, and unless he set out well provided
+with food he would starve before accomplishing half the distance,
+and his death would leave her worse off than before.  He
+concluded by affirming that he could not start in less time than
+seven or eight days.
+
+For a while I listened with keen interest to this dispute, and at
+length interposed once more on the old man's side.  The poor girl
+in her petition had unwittingly revealed to me the power I
+possessed, and it was a pleasing experience to exercise it.
+Touching her shoulder again, I assured her that seven or eight
+days was only a reasonable time in which to prepare for so long a
+journey.  She instantly yielded, and after one glance at my face,
+she moved swiftly away into the darker shadows, leaving me alone
+with the old man.
+
+As we returned together through the now profoundly dark wood, I
+explained to him how the subject of Riolama had first come up
+during my conversation with Rima, and he then apologized for the
+violent language he had used to me.  This personal question
+disposed of, he spoke of the pilgrimage before him, and informed
+me in confidence that he intended preparing a quantity of
+smoke-dried meat and packing it in a bag, with a layer of cassava
+bread, dried pumpkin slips, and such innocent trifles to conceal
+it from Rima's keen sight and delicate nostrils.  Finally he made
+a long rambling statement which, I vainly imagined, was intended
+to lead up to an account of Rima's origin, with something about
+her people at Riolama; but it led to nothing except an expression
+of opinion that the girl was afflicted with a maggot in the
+brain, but that as she had interest with the powers above,
+especially with her mother, who was now a very important person
+among the celestials, it was good policy to submit to her wishes.
+Turning to me, doubtless to wink (only I missed the sign owing to
+the darkness), he added that it was a fine thing to have a friend
+at court.  With a little gratulatory chuckle he went on to say
+that for others it was necessary to obey all the ordinances of
+the Church, to contribute to its support, hear mass, confess from
+time to time, and receive absolution; consequently those who went
+out into the wilderness, where there were no churches and no
+priests to absolve them, did so at the risk of losing their
+souls.  But with him it was different: he expected in the end to
+escape the fires of purgatory and go directly in all his
+uncleanness to heaven--a thing, he remarked, which happened to
+very few; and he, Nuflo, was no saint, and had first become a
+dweller in the desert, as a very young man, in order to escape
+the penalty of his misdeeds.
+
+I could not resist the temptation of remarking here that to an
+unregenerate man the celestial country might turn out a somewhat
+uncongenial place for a residence.  He replied airily that he had
+considered the point and had no fear about the future; that he
+was old, and from all he had observed of the methods of
+government followed by those who ruled over earthly affairs from
+the sky, he had formed a clear idea of that place, and believed
+that even among so many glorified beings he would be able to meet
+with those who would prove companionable enough and would think
+no worse of him on account of his little blemishes.
+
+How he had first got this idea into his brain about Rima's
+ability to make things smooth for him after death I cannot say;
+probably it was the effect of the girl's powerful personality and
+vivid faith acting on an ignorant and extremely superstitious
+mind.  While she was making that petition to her mother in
+heaven, it did not seem in the least ridiculous to me: I had felt
+no inclination to smile, even when hearing all that about the old
+man's wings being singed to prevent his escape by flying.  Her
+rapt look; the intense conviction that vibrated in her ringing,
+passionate tones; the brilliant scorn with which she, a hater of
+bloodshed, one so tender towards all living things, even the
+meanest, bade him kill himself, and only hear first how her
+vengeance would pursue his deceitful soul into other worlds; the
+clearness with which she had related the facts of the case,
+disclosing the inmost secrets of her heart--all this had had a
+strange, convincing effect on me.  Listening to her I was no
+longer the enlightened, the creedless man.  She herself was so
+near to the supernatural that it seemed brought near me;
+indefinable feelings, which had been latent in me, stirred into
+life, and following the direction of her divine, lustrous eyes,
+fixed on the blue sky above, I seemed to see there another being
+like herself, a Rima glorified, leaning her pale, spiritual face
+to catch the winged words uttered by her child on earth.  And
+even now, while hearing the old man's talk, showing as it did a
+mind darkened with such gross delusions, I was not yet altogether
+free from the strange effect of that prayer.  Doubtless it was a
+delusion; her mother was not really there above listening to the
+girl's voice.  Still, in some mysterious way, Rima had become to
+me, even as to superstitious old Nuflo, a being apart and sacred,
+and this feeling seemed to mix with my passion, to purify and
+exalt it and make it infinitely sweet and precious.
+
+After we had been silent for some time, I said: "Old man, the
+result of the grand discussion you have had with Rima is that you
+have agreed to take her to Riolama, but about my accompanying you
+not one word has been spoken by either of you."
+
+He stopped short to stare at me, and although it was too dark to
+see his face, I felt his astonishment.  "Senor!"  he exclaimed,
+"we cannot go without you.  Have you not heard my granddaughter's
+words--that it is only because of you that she is about to
+undertake this crazy journey?  If you are not with us in this
+thing, then, senor, here we must remain.  But what will Rima say
+to that?"
+
+"Very well, I will go, but only on one condition."
+
+"What is it?"  he asked, with a sudden change of tone, which
+warned me that he was becoming cautious again.
+
+"That you tell me the whole story of Rima's origin, and how you
+came to be now living with her in this solitary place, and who
+these people are she wishes to visit at Riolama."
+
+"Ah, senor, it is a long story, and sad.  But you shall hear it
+all.  You must hear it, senor, since you are now one of us; and
+when I am no longer here to protect her, then she will be yours.
+And although you will never be able to do more than old Nuflo for
+her, perhaps she will be better pleased; and you, senor, better
+able to exist innocently by her side, without eating flesh, since
+you will always have that rare flower to delight you.  But the
+story would take long to tell.  You shall hear it all as we
+journey to Riolama.  What else will there be to talk about when
+we are walking that long distance, and when we sit at night by
+the fire?"
+
+"No, no, old man, I am not to be put off in that way.  I must
+hear it before I start."
+
+But he was determined to reserve the narrative until the journey,
+and after some further argument I yielded the point.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+That evening by the fire old Nuflo, lately so miserable, now
+happy in his delusions, was more than usually gay and loquacious.
+He was like a child who by timely submission has escaped a
+threatened severe punishment.  But his lightness of heart was
+exceeded by mine; and, with the exception of one other yet to
+come, that evening now shines in memory as the happiest my life
+has known.  For Rima's sweet secret was known to me; and her very
+ignorance of the meaning of the feeling she experienced, which
+caused her to fly from me as from an enemy, only served to make
+the thought of it more purely delightful.
+
+On this occasion she did not steal away like a timid mouse to her
+own apartment, as her custom was, but remained to give that one
+evening a special grace, seated well away from the fire in that
+same shadowy corner where I had first seen her indoors, when I
+had marvelled at her altered appearance.  From that corner she
+could see my face, with the firelight full upon it, she herself
+in shadow, her eyes veiled by their drooping lashes.  Sitting
+there, the vivid consciousness of my happiness was like draughts
+of strong, delicious wine, and its effect was like wine,
+imparting such freedom to fancy, such fluency, that again and
+again old Nuflo applauded, crying out that I was a poet, and
+begging me to put it all into rhyme.  I could not do that to
+please him, never having acquired the art of improvisation--that
+idle trick of making words jingle which men of Nuflo's class in
+my country so greatly admire; yet it seemed to me on that evening
+that my feelings could be adequately expressed only in that
+sublimated language used by the finest minds in their inspired
+moments; and, accordingly, I fell to reciting.  But not from any
+modern, nor from the poets of the last century, nor even from the
+greater seventeenth century.  I kept to the more ancient romances
+and ballads, the sweet old verse that, whether glad or sorrowful,
+seems always natural and spontaneous as the song of a bird, and
+so simple that even a child can understand it.
+
+It was late that night before all the romances I remembered or
+cared to recite were exhausted, and not until then did Rima come
+out of her shaded corner and steal silently away to her
+sleeping-place.
+
+Although I had resolved to go with them, and had set Nuflo's mind
+at rest on the point, I was bent on getting the request from
+Rima's own lips; and the next morning the opportunity of seeing
+her alone presented itself, after old Nuflo had sneaked off with
+his dogs.  From the moment of his departure I kept a close watch
+on the house, as one watches a bush in which a bird one wishes to
+see has concealed itself, and out of which it may dart at any
+moment and escape unseen.
+
+At length she came forth, and seeing me in the way, would have
+slipped back into hiding; for, in spite of her boldness on the
+previous day, she now seemed shyer than ever when I spoke to her.
+
+"Rima," I said, "do you remember where we first talked together
+under a tree one morning, when you spoke of your mother, telling
+me that she was dead?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am going now to that spot to wait for you.  I must speak to
+you again in that place about this journey to Riolama."  As she
+kept silent, I added: "Will you promise to come to me there?"
+
+She shook her head, turning half away.
+
+"Have you forgotten our compact, Rima?"
+
+"No," she returned; and then, suddenly coming near, spoke in a
+low tone: "I will go there to please you, and you must also do as
+I tell you."
+
+"What do you wish, Rima?"
+
+She came nearer still.  "Listen!  You must not look into my eyes,
+you must not touch me with your hands."
+
+"Sweet Rima, I must hold your hand when I speak with you."
+
+"No, no, no," she murmured, shrinking from me; and finding that
+it must be as she wished, I reluctantly agreed.
+
+Before I had waited long, she appeared at the trysting-place, and
+stood before me, as on a former occasion, on that same spot of
+clean yellow sand, clasping and unclasping her fingers, troubled
+in mind even then.  Only now her trouble was different and
+greater, making her shyer and more reticent.
+
+"Rima, your grandfather is going to take you to Riolama.  Do you
+wish me to go with you?"
+
+"Oh, do you not know that?"  she returned, with a swift glance at
+my face.
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Her eyes wandered away restlessly.  "On Ytaioa you told me a
+hundred things which I did not know," she replied in a vague way,
+wishing, perhaps, to imply that with so great a knowledge of
+geography it was strange I did not know everything, even her most
+secret thoughts.
+
+"Tell me, why must you go to Riolama?"
+
+"You have heard.  To speak to my people."
+
+"What will you say to them?  Tell me."
+
+"What you do not understand.  How tell you?"
+
+"I understand you when you speak in Spanish."
+
+"Oh, that is not speaking."
+
+"Last night you spoke to your mother in Spanish.  Did you not
+tell her everything?"
+
+"Oh no--not then.  When I tell her everything I speak in another
+way, in a low voice--not on my knees and praying.  At night, and
+in the woods, and when I am alone I tell her.  But perhaps she
+does not hear me; she is not here, but up there--so far!  She
+never answers, but when I speak to my people they will answer
+me."
+
+Then she turned away as if there was nothing more to be said.
+
+"Is this all I am to hear from you, Rima--these few words?"  I
+exclaimed.  "So much did you say to your grandfather, so much to
+your dead mother, but to me you say so little!"
+
+She turned again, and with eyes cast down replied:
+
+"He deceived me--I had to tell him that, and then to pray to
+mother.  But to you that do not understand, what can I say?  Only
+that you are not like him and all those that I knew at Voa.  It
+is so different--and the same.  You are you, and I am I; why is
+it--do you know?"
+
+"No; yes--I know, but cannot tell you.  And if you find your
+people, what will you do--leave me to go to them?  Must I go all
+the way to Riolama only to lose you?"
+
+"Where I am, there you must be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Do I not see it there?"  she returned, with a quick gesture to
+indicate that it appeared in my face.
+
+"Your sight is keen, Rima--keen as a bird's.  Mine is not so
+keen. Let me look once more into those beautiful wild eyes, then
+perhaps I shall see in them as much as you see in mine."
+
+"Oh no, no, not that!"  she murmured in distress, drawing away
+from me; then with a sudden flash of brilliant colour cried:
+
+"Have you forgotten the compact--the promise you made me?"
+
+Her words made me ashamed, and I could not reply.  But the shame
+was as nothing in strength compared to the impulse I felt to
+clasp her beautiful body in my arms and cover her face with
+kisses.  Sick with desire, I turned away and, sitting on a root
+of the tree, covered my face with my hands.
+
+She came nearer: I could see her shadow through my fingers; then
+her face and wistful, compassionate eyes.
+
+"Forgive me, dear Rima," I said, dropping my hands again.  "I
+have tried so hard to please you in everything!  Touch my face
+with your hand--only that, and I will go to Riolama with you, and
+obey you in all things."
+
+For a while she hesitated, then stepped quickly aside so that I
+could not see her; but I knew that she had not left me, that she
+was standing just behind me.  And after waiting a moment longer I
+felt her fingers touching my skin, softly, trembling over my
+cheek as if a soft-winged moth had fluttered against it; then the
+slight aerial touch was gone, and she, too, moth-like, had
+vanished from my side.
+
+Left alone in the wood, I was not happy.  That fluttering,
+flattering touch of her finger-tips had been to me like spoken
+language, and more eloquent than language, yet the sweet
+assurance it conveyed had not given perfect satisfaction; and
+when I asked myself why the gladness of the previous evening had
+forsaken me--why I was infected with this new sadness when
+everything promised well for me, I found that it was because my
+passion had greatly increased during the last few hours; even
+during sleep it had been growing, and could no longer be fed by
+merely dwelling in thought on the charms, moral and physical, of
+its object, and by dreams of future fruition.
+
+I concluded that it would be best for Rima's sake as well as my
+own to spend a few of the days before setting out on our journey
+with my Indian friends, who would be troubled at my long absence;
+and, accordingly, next morning I bade good-bye to the old man,
+promising to return in three or four days, and then started
+without seeing Rima, who had quitted the house before her usual
+time.  After getting free of the woods, on casting back my eyes I
+caught sight of the girl standing under an isolated tree watching
+me with that vague, misty, greenish appearance she so frequently
+had when seen in the light shade at a short distance.
+
+"Rima!"  I cried, hurrying back to speak to her, but when I
+reached the spot she had vanished; and after waiting some time,
+seeing and hearing nothing to indicate that she was near me, I
+resumed my walk, half thinking that my imagination had deceived
+me.
+
+I found my Indian friends home again, and was not surprised to
+observe a distinct change in their manner towards me.  I had
+expected as much; and considering that they must have known very
+well where and in whose company I had been spending my time, it
+was not strange.  Coming across the savannah that morning I had
+first begun to think seriously of the risk I was running.  But
+this thought only served to prepare me for a new condition of
+things; for now to go back and appear before Rima, and thus prove
+myself to be a person not only capable of forgetting a promise
+occasionally, but also of a weak, vacillating mind, was not to be
+thought of for a moment.
+
+I was received--not welcomed--quietly enough; not a question, not
+a word, concerning my long absence fell from anyone; it was as if
+a stranger had appeared among them, one about whom they knew
+nothing and consequently regarded with suspicion, if not actual
+hostility.  I affected not to notice the change, and dipped my
+hand uninvited in the pot to satisfy my hunger, and smoked and
+dozed away the sultry hours in my hammock.  Then I got my guitar
+and spent the rest of the day over it, tuning it, touching the
+strings so softly with my finger-tips that to a person four yards
+off the sound must have seemed like the murmur or buzz of an
+insect's wings; and to this scarcely audible accompaniment I
+murmured in an equally low tone a new song.
+
+In the evening, when all were gathered under the roof and I had
+eaten again, I took up the instrument once more, furtively
+watched by all those half-closed animal eyes, and swept the
+strings loudly, and sang aloud.  I sang an old simple Spanish
+melody, to which I had put words in their own language--a
+language with no words not in everyday use, in which it is so
+difficult to express feelings out of and above the common.  What
+I had been constructing and practicing all the afternoon sotto
+voce was a kind of ballad, an extremely simple tale of a poor
+Indian living alone with his young family in a season of dearth;
+how day after day he ranged the voiceless woods, to return each
+evening with nothing but a few withered sour berries in his hand,
+to find his lean, large-eyed wife still nursing the fire that
+cooked nothing, and his children crying for food, showing their
+bones more plainly through their skins every day; and how,
+without anything miraculous, anything wonderful, happening, that
+barrenness passed from earth, and the garden once more yielded
+them pumpkin and maize, and manioc, the wild fruits ripened, and
+the birds returned, filling the forest with their cries; and so
+their long hunger was satisfied, and the children grew sleek, and
+played and laughed in the sunshine; and the wife, no longer
+brooding over the empty pot, wove a hammock of silk grass,
+decorated with blue-and-scarlet feathers of the macaw; and in
+that new hammock the Indian rested long from his labours, smoking
+endless cigars.
+
+When I at last concluded with a loud note of joy, a long,
+involuntary suspiration in the darkening room told me that I had
+been listened to with profound interest; and, although no word
+was spoken, though I was still a stranger and under a cloud, it
+was plain that the experiment had succeeded, and that for the
+present the danger was averted.
+
+I went to my hammock and slept, but without undressing.  Next
+morning I missed my revolver and found that the holster
+containing it had been detached from the belt.  My knife had not
+been taken, possibly because it was under me in the hammock while
+I slept.  In answer to my inquiries I was informed that Runi had
+BORROWED my weapon to take it with him to the forest, where he
+had gone to hunt, and that he would return it to me in the
+evening.  I affected to take it in good part, although feeling
+secretly ill at ease.  Later in the day I came to the conclusion
+that Runi had had it in his mind to murder me, that I had
+softened him by singing that Indian story, and that by taking
+possession of the revolver he showed that he now only meant to
+keep me a prisoner.  Subsequent events confirmed me in this
+suspicion.  On his return he explained that he had gone out to
+seek for game in the woods; and, going without a companion, he
+had taken my revolver to preserve him from dangers--meaning those
+of a supernatural kind; and that he had had the misfortune to
+drop it among the bushes while in pursuit of some animal.  I
+answered hotly that he had not treated me like a friend; that if
+he had asked me for the weapon it would have been lent to him;
+that as he had taken it without permission he must pay me for it.
+After some pondering he said that when he took it I was sleeping
+soundly; also, that it would not be lost; he would take me to the
+place where he had dropped it, when we could search together for
+it.
+
+He was in appearance more friendly towards me now, even asking me
+to repeat my last evening's song, and so we had that performance
+all over again to everybody's satisfaction.  But when morning
+came he was not inclined to go to the woods: there was food
+enough in the house, and the pistol would not be hurt by lying
+where it had fallen a day longer.  Next day the same excuse;
+still I disguised my impatience and suspicion of him and waited,
+singing the ballad for the third time that evening.  Then I was
+conducted to a wood about a league and a half away and we hunted
+for the lost pistol among the bushes, I with little hope of
+finding it, while he attended to the bird voices and frequently
+asked me to stand or lie still when a chance of something
+offered.
+
+The result of that wasted day was a determination on my part to
+escape from Runi as soon as possible, although at the risk of
+making a deadly enemy of him and of being compelled to go on that
+long journey to Riolama with no better weapon than a
+hunting-knife.  I had noticed, while appearing not to do so, that
+outside of the house I was followed or watched by one or other of
+the Indians, so that great circumspection was needed.  On the
+following day I attacked my host once more about the revolver,
+telling him with well-acted indignation that if not found it must
+be paid for.  I went so far as to give a list of the articles I
+should require, including a bow and arrows, zabatana, two spears,
+and other things which I need not specify, to set me up for life
+as a wild man in the woods of Guayana.  I was going to add a
+wife, but as I had already been offered one it did not appear to
+be necessary.  He seemed a little taken aback at the value I set
+upon my weapon, and promised to go and look for it again.  Then I
+begged that Kua-ko, in whose sharpness of sight I had great
+faith, might accompany us.  He consented, and named the next day
+but one for the expedition.  Very well, thought I, tomorrow their
+suspicion will be less, and my opportunity will come; then taking
+up my rude instrument, I gave them an old Spanish song:
+
+    Desde aquel doloroso momento;
+
+but this kind of music had lost its charm for them, and I was
+asked to give them the ballad they understood so well, in which
+their interest seemed to increase with every repetition.  In
+spite of anxiety it amused me to see old Cla-cla regarding me
+fixedly with owlish eyes and lips moving.  My tale had no
+wonderful things in it, like hers of the olden time, which she
+told only to send her hearers to sleep.  Perhaps she had
+discovered by now that it was the strange honey of melody which
+made the coarse, common cassava bread of everyday life in my
+story so pleasant to the palate.  I was quite prepared to receive
+a proposal to give her music and singing lessons, and to bequeath
+a guitar to her in my last will and testament.  For, in spite of
+her hoary hair and million wrinkles, she, more than any other
+savage I had met with, seemed to have taken a draught from Ponce
+de Leon's undiscovered fountain of eternal youth.  Poor old
+witch!
+
+The following day was the sixth of my absence from Rima, and one
+of intense anxiety to me, a feeling which I endeavoured to hide
+by playing with the children, fighting our old comic stick
+fights, and by strumming noisily on the guitar.  In the
+afternoon, when it was hottest, and all the men who happened to
+be indoors were lying in their hammocks, I asked Kua-ko to go
+with me to the stream to bathe.  He refused--I had counted on
+that--and earnestly advised me not to bathe in the pool I was
+accustomed to, as some little caribe fishes had made their
+appearance there and would be sure to attack me.  I laughed at
+his idle tale and, taking up my cloak, swung out of the door,
+whistling a lively air.  He knew that I always threw my cloak
+over my head and shoulders as a protection from the sun and
+stinging flies when coming out of the water, and so his suspicion
+was not aroused, and I was not followed.  The pool was about ten
+minutes' walk from the house; I arrived at it with palpitating
+heart, and going round to its end, where the stream was shallow,
+sat down to rest for a few moments and take a few sips of cool
+water dipped up in my palm.  Presently I rose, crossed the
+stream, and began running, keeping among the low trees near the
+bank until a dry gully, which extended for some distance across
+the savannah, was reached.  By following its course the distance
+to be covered would be considerably increased, but the shorter
+way would have exposed me to sight and made it more dangerous.  I
+had put forth too much speed at first, and in a short time my
+exertions, and the hot sun, together with my intense excitement,
+overcame me.  I dared not hope that my flight had not been
+observed; I imagined that the Indians, unencumbered by any heavy
+weight, were already close behind me, and ready to launch their
+deadly spears at my back.  With a sob of rage and despair I fell
+prostrate on my face in the dry bed of the stream, and for two or
+three minutes remained thus exhausted and unmanned, my heart
+throbbing so violently that my whole frame was shaken.  If my
+enemies had come on me then disposed to kill me, I could not have
+lifted a hand in defence of my life.  But minutes passed and they
+came not.  I rose and went on, at a fast walk now, and when the
+sheltering streamed ended, I stooped among the sere dwarfed
+shrubs scattered about here and there on its southern side; and
+now creeping and now running, with an occasional pause to rest
+and look back, I at last reached the dividing ridge at its
+southern extremity.  The rest of the way was over comparatively
+easy ground, inclining downwards; and with that glad green forest
+now full in sight, and hope growing stronger every minute in my
+breast, my knees ceased to tremble, and I ran on again, scarcely
+pausing until I had touched and lost myself in the welcome
+shadows.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Ah, that return to the forest where Rima dwelt, after so anxious
+day, when the declining sun shone hotly still, and the green
+woodland shadows were so grateful!  The coolness, the sense of
+security, allayed the fever and excitement I had suffered on the
+open savannah; I walked leisurely, pausing often to listen to
+some bird voice or to admire some rare insect or parasitic flower
+shining star-like in the shade.  There was a strangely delightful
+sensation in me.  I likened myself to a child that, startled at
+something it had seen while out playing in the sun, flies to its
+mother to feel her caressing hand on its cheek and forget its
+tremors.  And describing what I felt in that way, I was a little
+ashamed and laughed at myself; nevertheless the feeling was very
+sweet.  At that moment Mother and Nature seemed one and the same
+thing.  As I kept to the more open part of the wood, on its
+southernmost border, the red flame of the sinking sun was seen at
+intervals through the deep humid green of the higher foliage. 
+How every object it touched took from it a new wonderful glory! 
+At one spot, high up where the foliage was scanty, and slender
+bush ropes and moss depended like broken cordage from a dead
+limb--just there, bathing itself in that glory-giving light, I
+noticed a fluttering bird, and stood still to watch its antics. 
+Now it would cling, head downwards, to the slender twigs, wings
+and tail open; then, righting itself, it would flit from waving
+line to line, dropping lower and lower; and anon soar upwards a
+distance of twenty feet and alight to recommence the flitting and
+swaying and dropping towards the earth.  It was one of those
+birds that have a polished plumage, and as it moved this way and
+that, flirting its feathers, they caught the beams and shone at
+moments like glass or burnished metal.  Suddenly another bird of
+the same kind dropped down to it as if from the sky, straight and
+swift as a falling stone; and the first bird sprang up to meet
+the comer, and after rapidly wheeling round each other for a
+moment, they fled away in company, screaming shrilly through the
+wood, and were instantly lost to sight, while their jubilant
+cries came back fainter and fainter at each repetition.
+
+I envied them not their wings: at that moment earth did not seem
+fixed and solid beneath me, nor I bound by gravity to it.  The
+faint, floating clouds, the blue infinite heaven itself, seemed
+not more ethereal and free than I, or the ground I walked on. 
+The low, stony hills on my right hand, of which I caught
+occasional glimpses through the trees, looking now blue and
+delicate in the level rays, were no more than the billowy
+projections on the moving cloud of earth: the trees of unnumbered
+kinds--great more, cecropia, and greenheart, bush and fern and
+suspended lianas, and tall palms balancing their feathery foliage
+on slender stems--all was but a fantastic mist embroidery
+covering the surface of that floating cloud on which my feet were
+set, and which floated with me near the sun.
+
+The red evening flame had vanished from the summits of the trees,
+the sun was setting, the woods in shadow, when I got to the end
+of my walk.  I did not approach the house on the side of the
+door, yet by some means those within became aware of my presence,
+for out they came in a great hurry, Rima leading the way, Nuflo
+behind her, waving his arms and shouting.  But as I drew near,
+the girl dropped behind and stood motionless regarding me, her
+face pallid and showing strong excitement.  I could scarcely
+remove my eyes from her eloquent countenance: I seemed to read in
+it relief and gladness mingled with surprise and something like
+vexation.  She was piqued perhaps that I had taken her by
+surprise, that after much watching for me in the wood I had come
+through it undetected when she was indoors.
+
+"Happy the eyes that see you!"  shouted the old man, laughing
+boisterously. 
+
+"Happy are mine that look on Rima again," I answered.  "I have
+been long absent."
+
+"Long--you may say so," returned Nuflo.  "We had given you up. 
+We said that, alarmed at the thought of the journey to Riolama,
+you had abandoned us."
+
+"WE said!"  exclaimed Rima, her pallid face suddenly flushing. 
+"I spoke differently."
+
+"Yes, I know--I know!"  he said airily, waving his hand.  "You
+said that he was in danger, that he was kept against his will
+from coming.  He is present now--let him speak."
+
+"She was right," I said.  "Ah, Nuflo, old man, you have lived
+long, and got much experience, but not insight--not that inner
+vision that sees further than the eyes."
+
+"No, not that--I know what you mean," he answered.  Then, tossing
+his hand towards the sky, he added: "The knowledge you speak of
+comes from there."
+
+The girl had been listening with keen interest, glancing from one
+to the other.  "What!" she spoke suddenly, as if unable to keep
+silence, "do you think, grandfather, that SHE tells me--when
+there is danger--when the rain will cease--when the wind will
+blow--everything?  Do I not ask and listen, lying awake at night?
+She is always silent, like the stars."
+
+Then, pointing to me with her finger, she finished:
+
+"HE knows so many things!  Who tells them to HIM?"
+
+"But distinguish, Rima.  You do not distinguish the great from
+the little," he answered loftily.  "WE know a thousand things,
+but they are things that any man with a forehead can learn.  The
+knowledge that comes from the blue is not like that--it is more
+important and miraculous.  Is it not so, senor?"  he ended,
+appealing to me.
+
+"Is it, then, left for me to decide?"  said I, addressing the
+girl.
+
+But though her face was towards me, she refused to meet my look
+and was silent.  Silent, but not satisfied: she doubted still,
+and had perhaps caught something in my tone that strengthened her
+doubt.
+
+Old Nuflo understood the expression.  "Look at me, Rima," he
+said, drawing himself up.  "I am old, and he is young--do I not
+know best?  I have spoken and have decided it."
+
+Still that unconvinced expression, and her face turned expectant
+to me.
+
+"Am I to decide?"  I repeated.
+
+"Who, then?"  she said at last, her voice scarcely more than a
+murmur; yet there was reproach in the tone, as if she had made a
+long speech and I had tyrannously driven her to it.
+
+"Thus, then, I decide," said I.  "To each of us, as to every kind
+of animal, even to small birds and insects, and to every kind of
+plant, there is given something peculiar--a fragrance, a melody,
+a special instinct, an art, a knowledge, which no other has.  And
+to Rima has been given this quickness of mind and power to divine
+distant things; it is hers, just as swiftness and grace and
+changeful, brilliant colour are the hummingbird's; therefore she
+need not that anyone dwelling in the blue should instruct her."
+
+The old man frowned and shook his head; while she, after one
+swift, shy glance at my face, and with something like a smile
+flitting over her delicate lips, turned and re-entered the house.
+
+I felt convinced from that parting look that she had understood
+me, that my words had in some sort given her relief; for, strong
+as was her faith in the supernatural, she appeared as ready to
+escape from it, when a way of escape offered, as from the limp
+cotton gown and constrained manner worn in the house.  The
+religion and cotton dress were evidently remains of her early
+training at the settlement of Voa.
+
+Old Nuflo, strange to say, had proved better than his word.
+Instead of inventing new causes for delay, as I had imagined
+would be the case, he now informed me that his preparations for
+the journey were all but complete, that he had only waited for my
+return to set out.
+
+Rima soon left us in her customary way, and then, talking by the
+fire, I gave an account of my detention by the Indians and of the
+loss of my revolver, which I thought very serious.
+
+"You seem to think little of it," I said, observing that he took
+it very coolly.  "Yet I know not how I shall defend myself in
+case of an attack."
+
+"I have no fear of an attack," he answered.  "It seems to me the
+same thing whether you have a revolver or many revolvers and
+carbines and swords, or no revolver--no weapon at all.  And for a
+very simple reason.  While Rima is with us, so long as we are on
+her business, we are protected from above.  The angels, senor,
+will watch over us by day and night.  What need of weapons, then,
+except to procure food?"
+
+"Why should not the angels provide us with food also?"  said I.
+
+"No, no, that is a different thing," he returned.  "That is a
+small and low thing, a necessity common to all creatures, which
+all know how to meet.  You would not expect an angel to drive
+away a cloud of mosquitoes, or to remove a bush-tick from your
+person. No, sir, you may talk of natural gifts, and try to make
+Rima believe that she is what she is, and knows what she knows,
+because, like a humming-bird or some plants with a peculiar
+fragrance, she has been made so.  It is wrong, senor, and, pardon
+me for saying it, it ill becomes you to put such fables into her
+head."
+
+I answered, with a smile: "She herself seems to doubt what you
+believe."
+
+"But, senor, what can you expect from an ignorant girl like Rima?
+She knows nothing, or very little, and will not listen to reason.
+If she would only remain quietly indoors, with her hair braided,
+and pray and read her Catechism, instead of running about after
+flowers and birds and butterflies and such unsubstantial things,
+it would be better for both of us."
+
+"In what way, old man?"
+
+"Why, it is plain that if she would cultivate the acquaintance of
+the people that surround her--I mean those that come to her from
+her sainted mother--and are ready to do her bidding in
+everything, she could make it more safe for us in this place. 
+For example, there is Runi and his people; why should they remain
+living so near us as to be a constant danger when a pestilence of
+small-pox or some other fever might easily be sent to kill them
+off?"
+
+"And have you ever suggested such a thing to your grandchild?"
+
+He looked surprised and grieved at the question.  "Yes, many
+times, senor," he said.  "I should have been a poor Christian had
+I not mentioned it.  But when I speak of it she gives me a look
+and is gone, and I see no more of her all day, and when I see her
+she refuses even to answer me--so perverse, so foolish is she in
+her ignorance; for, as you can see for yourself, she has no more
+sense or concern about what is most important than some little
+painted fly that flits about all day long without any object."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The next day we were early at work.  Nuflo had already gathered,
+dried, and conveyed to a place of concealment the greater portion
+of his garden produce.  He was determined to leave nothing to be
+taken by any wandering party of savages that might call at the
+house during our absence.  He had no fear of a visit from his
+neighbours; they would not know, he said, that he and Rima were
+out of the wood.  A few large earthen pots, filled with shelled
+maize, beans, and sun-dried strips of pumpkin, still remained to
+be disposed of.  Taking up one of these vessels and asking me to
+follow with another, he started off through the wood.  We went a
+distance of five or six hundred yards, then made our way down a
+very steep incline, close to the border of the forest on the
+western side.  Arrived at the bottom, we followed the bank a
+little further, and I then found myself once more at the foot of
+the precipice over which I had desperately thrown myself on the
+stormy evening after the snake had bitten me.  Nuflo, stealing
+silently and softly before me through the bushes, had observed a
+caution and secrecy in approaching this spot resembling that of a
+wise old hen when she visits her hidden nest to lay an egg.  And
+here was his nest, his most secret treasure-house, which he had
+probably not revealed even to me without a sharp inward conflict,
+notwithstanding that our fates were now linked together.  The
+lower portion of the bank was of rock; and in it, about ten or
+twelve feet above the ground, but easily reached from below,
+there was a natural cavity large enough to contain all his
+portable property.  Here, besides the food-stuff, he had already
+stored a quantity of dried tobacco leaf, his rude weapons,
+cooking utensils, ropes, mats, and other objects.  Two or three
+more journeys were made for the remaining pots, after which we
+adjusted a slab of sandstone to the opening, which was
+fortunately narrow, plastered up the crevices with clay, and
+covered them over with moss to hide all traces of our work.
+
+Towards evening, after we had refreshed ourselves with a long
+siesta, Nuflo brought out from some other hiding-place two sacks;
+one weighing about twenty pounds and containing smoke-dried meat,
+also grease and gum for lighting-purposes, and a few other small
+objects.  This was his load; the other sack, which was smaller
+and contained parched corn and raw beans, was for me to carry.
+
+The old man, cautious in all his movements, always acting as if
+surrounded by invisible spies, delayed setting out until an hour
+after dark.  Then, skirting the forest on its west side, we left
+Ytaioa on our right hand, and after travelling over rough,
+difficult ground, with only the stars to light us, we saw the
+waning moon rise not long before dawn.  Our course had been a
+north-easterly one at first; now it was due east, with broad, dry
+savannahs and patches of open forest as far as we could see
+before us.  It was weary walking on that first night, and weary
+waiting on the first day when we sat in the shade during the
+long, hot hours, persecuted by small stinging flies; but the days
+and nights that succeeded were far worse, when the weather became
+bad with intense heat and frequent heavy falls of rain.  The one
+compensation I had looked for, which would have outweighed all
+the extreme discomforts we suffered, was denied me.  Rima was no
+more to me or with me now than she had been during those wild
+days in her native woods, when every bush and bole and tangled
+creeper or fern frond had joined in a conspiracy to keep her out
+of my sight.  It is true that at intervals in the daytime she was
+visible, sometimes within speaking distance, so that I could
+address a few words to her, but there was no companionship, and
+we were fellow travellers only like birds flying independently in
+the same direction, not so widely separated but that they can
+occasionally hear and see each other. The pilgrim in the desert
+is sometimes attended by a bird, and the bird, with its freer
+motions, will often leave him a league behind and seem lost to
+him, but only to return and show its form again; for it has never
+lost sight nor recollection of the traveller toiling slowly over
+the surface.  Rima kept us company in some such wild erratic way
+as that.  A word, a sign from Nuflo was enough for her to know
+the direction to take--the distant forest or still more distant
+mountain near which we should have to pass.  She would hasten on
+and be lost to our sight, and when there was a forest in the way
+she would explore it, resting in the shade and finding her own
+food; but invariably she was before us at each resting- or
+camping-place.
+
+Indian villages were seen during the journey, but only to be
+avoided; and in like manner, if we caught sight of Indians
+travelling or camping at a distance, we would alter our course,
+or conceal ourselves to escape observation.  Only on one
+occasion, two days after setting out, were we compelled to speak
+with strangers.  We were going round a hill, and all at once came
+face to face with three persons travelling in an opposite
+direction--two men and a woman, and, by a strange fatality, Rima
+at that moment happened to be with us.  We stood for some time
+talking to these people, who were evidently surprised at our
+appearance, and wished to learn who we were; but Nuflo, who spoke
+their language like one of themselves, was too cunning to give
+any true answer. They, on their side, told us that they had been
+to visit a relative at Chani, the name of a river three days
+ahead of us, and were now returning to their own village at
+Baila-baila, two days beyond Parahuari.  After parting from them
+Nuflo was much troubled in his mind for the rest of that day. 
+These people, he said, would probably rest at some Parahuari
+village, where they would be sure to give a description of us,
+and so it might eventually come to the knowledge of our
+unneighbourly neighbour Runi that we had left Ytaioa.
+
+Other incidents of our long and wearisome journey need not be
+related.  Sitting under some shady tree during the sultry hours,
+with Rima only too far out of earshot, or by the nightly fire,
+the old man told me little by little and with much digression,
+chiefly on sacred subjects, the strange story of the girl's
+origin.
+
+About seventeen years back--Nuflo had no sure method to compute
+time by--when he was already verging on old age, he was one of a
+company of nine men, living a kind of roving life in the very
+part of Guayana through which we were now travelling; the others,
+much younger than himself, were all equally offenders against the
+laws of Venezuela, and fugitives from justice.  Nuflo was the
+leader of this gang, for it happened that he had passed a great
+portion of his life outside the pale of civilization, and could
+talk the Indian language, and knew this part of Guayana
+intimately.  But according to his own account he was not in
+harmony with them.  They were bold, desperate men, whose evil
+appetites had so far only been whetted by the crimes they had
+committed; while he, with passions worn out, recalling his many
+bad acts, and with a vivid conviction of the truth of all he had
+been taught in early life--for Nuflo was nothing if not
+religious--was now grown timid and desirous only of making his
+peace with Heaven.  This difference of disposition made him
+morose and quarrelsome with his companions; and they would, he
+said, have murdered him without remorse if he had not been so
+useful to them.  Their favourite plan was to hang about the
+neighbourhood of some small isolated settlement, keeping a watch
+on it, and, when most of the male inhabitants were absent, to
+swoop down on it and work their will.  Now, shortly after one of
+these raids it happened that a woman they had carried off,
+becoming a burden to them, was flung into a river to the
+alligators; but when being dragged down to the waterside she cast
+up her eyes, and in a loud voice cried to God to execute
+vengeance on her murderers.  Nuflo affirmed that he took no part
+in this black deed; nevertheless, the woman's dying appeal to
+Heaven preyed on his mind; he feared that it might have won a
+hearing, and the "person" eventually commissioned to execute
+vengeance--after the usual days, of course might act on the
+principle of the old proverb: Tell me whom you are with, and I
+will tell you what you are--and punish the innocent (himself to
+wit) along with the guilty.  But while thus anxious about his
+spiritual interests, he was not yet prepared to break with his
+companions.  He thought it best to temporize, and succeeded in
+persuading them that it would be unsafe to attack another
+Christian settlement for some time to come; that in the interval
+they might find some pleasure, if no great credit, by turning
+their attention to the Indians.  The infidels, he said, were
+God's natural enemies and fair game to the Christian.  To make a
+long story short, Nuflo's Christian band, after some successful
+adventures, met with a reverse which reduced their number from
+nine to five.  Flying from their enemies, they sought safety at
+Riolama, an uninhabited place, where they found it possible to
+exist for some weeks on game, which was abundant, and wild
+fruits.
+
+One day at noon, while ascending a mountain at the southern
+extremity of the Riolama range in order to get a view of the
+country beyond the summit, Nuflo and his companions discovered a
+cave; and finding it dry, without animal occupants, and with a
+level floor, they at once determined to make it their
+dwelling-place for a season.  Wood for firing and water were to
+be had close by; they were also well provided with smoked flesh
+of a tapir they had slaughtered a day or two before, so that they
+could afford to rest for a time in so comfortable a shelter.  At
+a short distance from the cave they made a fire on the rock to
+toast some slices of meat for their dinner; and while thus
+engaged all at once one of the men uttered a cry of astonishment,
+and casting up his eyes Nuflo beheld, standing near and regarding
+them with surprise and fear in-her wide-open eyes, a woman of a
+most wonderful appearance.  The one slight garment she had on was
+silky and white as the snow on the summit of some great mountain,
+but of the snow when the sinking sun touches and gives it some
+delicate changing colour which is like fire.  Her dark hair was
+like a cloud from which her face looked out, and her head was
+surrounded by an aureole like that of a saint in a picture, only
+more beautiful.  For, said Nuflo, a picture is a picture, and the
+other was a reality, which is finer.  Seeing her he fell on his
+knees and crossed himself; and all the time her eyes, full of
+amazement and shining with such a strange splendour that he could
+not meet them, were fixed on him and not on the others; and he
+felt that she had come to save his soul, in danger of perdition
+owing to his companionship with men who were at war with God and
+wholly bad.
+
+But at this moment his comrades, recovering from their
+astonishment, sprang to their feet, and the heavenly woman
+vanished.  Just behind where she had stood, and not twelve yards
+from them, there was a huge chasm in the mountain, its jagged
+precipitous sides clothed with thorny bushes; the men now cried
+out that she had made her escape that way, and down after her
+they rushed, pell-mell.
+
+Nuflo cried out after them that they had seen a saint and that
+some horrible thing would befall them if they allowed any evil
+thought to enter their hearts; but they scoffed at his words, and
+were soon far down out of hearing, while he, trembling with fear,
+remained praying to the woman that had appeared to them and had
+looked with such strange eyes at him, not to punish him for the
+sins of the others.
+
+Before long the men returned, disappointed and sullen, for they
+had failed in their search for the woman; and perhaps Nuflo's
+warning words had made them give up the chase too soon.  At all
+events, they seemed ill at ease, and made up their minds to
+abandon the cave; in a short time they left the place to camp
+that night at a considerable distance from the mountain.  But
+they were not satisfied: they had now recovered from their fear,
+but not from the excitement of an evil passion; and finally,
+after comparing notes, they came to the conclusion that they had
+missed a great prize through Nuflo's cowardice; and when he
+reproved them they blasphemed all the saints in the calendar and
+even threatened him with violence.  Fearing to remain longer in
+the company of such godless men, he only waited until they slept,
+then rose up cautiously, helped himself to most of the
+provisions, and made his escape, devoutly hoping that after
+losing their guide they would all speedily perish.
+
+Finding himself alone now and master of his own actions, Nuflo
+was in terrible distress, for while his heart was in the utmost
+fear, it yet urged him imperiously to go back to the mountain, to
+seek again for that sacred  being who had appeared to him and had
+been driven away by his brutal companions.  If he obeyed that
+inner voice, he would be saved; if he resisted it, then there
+would be no hope for him, and along with those who had cast the
+woman to the alligators he would be lost eternally.  Finally, on
+the following day, he went back, although not without fear and
+trembling, and sat down on a stone just where he had sat toasting
+his tapir meat on the previous day.  But he waited in vain, and
+at length that voice within him, which he had so far obeyed,
+began urging him to descend into the valley-like chasm down which
+the woman had escaped from his comrades, and to seek for her
+there.  Accordingly he rose and began cautiously and slowly
+climbing down over the broken jagged rocks and through a dense
+mass of thorny bushes and creepers.  At the bottom of the chasm a
+clear, swift stream of water rushed with foam and noise along its
+rocky bed; but before reaching it, and when it was still twenty
+yards lower down, he was startled by hearing a low moan among the
+bushes, and looking about for the cause, he found the wonderful
+woman--his saviour, as he expressed it.  She was not now standing
+nor able to stand, but half reclining among the rough stones, one
+foot, which she had sprained in that headlong flight down the
+ragged slope, wedged immovably between the rocks; and in this
+painful position she had remained a prisoner since noon on the
+previous day.  She now gazed on her visitor in silent
+consternation; while he, casting himself prostrate on the ground,
+implored her forgiveness and begged to know her will.  But she
+made no reply; and at length, finding that she was powerless to
+move, he concluded that, though a saint and one of the beings
+that men worship, she was also flesh and liable to accidents
+while sojourning on earth; and perhaps, he thought, that accident
+which had befallen her had been specially designed by the powers
+above to prove him.  With great labour, and not without causing
+her much pain, he succeeded in extricating her from her position;
+and then finding that the injured foot was half crushed and blue
+and swollen, he took her up in his arms and carried her to the
+stream.  There, making a cup of a broad green leaf, he offered
+her water, which she drank eagerly; and he also laved her injured
+foot in the cold stream and bandaged it with fresh aquatic
+leaves; finally he made her a soft bed of moss and dry grass and
+placed her on it.  That night he spent keeping watch over her, at
+intervals applying fresh wet leaves to her foot as the old ones
+became dry and wilted from the heat of the inflammation.
+
+The effect of all he did was that the terror with which she
+regarded him gradually wore off; and next day, when she seemed to
+be recovering her strength, he proposed by signs to remove her to
+the cave higher up, where she would be sheltered in case of rain.
+She appeared to understand him, and allowed herself to be taken
+up in his arms and carried with much labour to the top of the
+chasm.  In the cave he made her a second couch, and tended her
+assiduously.  He made a fire on the floor and kept it burning
+night and day, and supplied her with water to drink and fresh
+leaves for her foot.  There was little more that he could do. 
+From the choicest and fattest bits of toasted tapir flesh he
+offered her she turned away with disgust.  A little cassava bread
+soaked in water she would take, but seemed not to like it.  After
+a time, fearing that she would starve, he took to hunting after
+wild fruits, edible bulbs and gums, and on these small things she
+subsisted during the whole time of their sojourn together in the
+desert.
+
+The woman, although lamed for life, was now so far recovered as
+to be able to limp about without assistance, and she spent a
+portion of each day out among the rocks and trees on the
+mountains.  Nuflo at first feared that she would now leave him,
+but before long he became convinced that she had no such
+intentions.  And yet she was profoundly unhappy.  He was
+accustomed to see her seated on a rock, as if brooding over some
+secret grief, her head bowed, and great tears falling from
+half-closed eyes.
+
+From the first he had conceived the idea that she was in the way
+of becoming a mother at no distant date--an idea which seemed to
+accord badly with the suppositions as to the nature of this
+heavenly being he was privileged to minister to and so win
+salvation; but he was now convinced of its truth, and he imagined
+that in her condition he had discovered the cause of that sorrow
+and anxiety which preyed continually on her.  By means of that
+dumb language of signs which enabled them to converse together a
+little, he made it known to her that at a great distance from the
+mountains there existed a place where there were beings like
+herself, women, and mothers of children, who would comfort and
+tenderly care for her.  When she had understood, she seemed
+pleased and willing to accompany him to that distant place; and
+so it came to pass that they left their rocky shelter and the
+mountains of Riolama far behind.  But for several days, as they
+slowly journeyed over the plain, she would pause at intervals in
+her limping walk to gaze back on those blue summits, shedding
+abundant tears.
+
+Fortunately the village Voa, on the river of the same name, which
+was the nearest Christian settlement to Riolama, whither his
+course was directed, was well known to him; he had lived there in
+former years, and, what was of great advantage, the inhabitants
+were ignorant of his worst crimes, or, to put it in his own
+subtle way, of the crimes committed by the men he had acted with.
+Great was the astonishment and curiosity of the people of Voa
+when, after many weeks' travelling, Nuflo arrived at last with
+his companion.  But he was not going to tell the truth, nor even
+the least particle of the truth, to a gaping crowd of inferior
+persons.  For these, ingenious lies; only to the priest he told
+the whole story, dwelling minutely on all he had done to rescue
+and protect her; all of which was approved by the holy man, whose
+first act was to baptize the woman for fear that she was not a
+Christian.  Let it be said to Nuflo's credit that he objected to
+this ceremony, arguing that she could not be a saint, with an
+aureole in token of her sainthood, yet stand in need of being
+baptized by a priest.  A priest--he added, with a little chuckle
+of malicious pleasure--who was often seen drunk, who cheated at
+cards, and was sometimes suspected of putting poison on his
+fighting-cock's spur to make sure of the victory!  Doubtless the
+priest had his faults; but he was not without humanity, and for
+the whole seven years of that unhappy stranger's sojourn at Voa
+he did everything in his power to make her existence tolerable.
+Some weeks after arriving she gave birth to a female child, and
+then the priest insisted on naming it Riolama, in order, he said,
+to keep in remembrance the strange story of the mother's
+discovery at that place.
+
+Rima's mother could not be taught to speak either Spanish or
+Indian; and when she found that the mysterious and melodious
+sounds that fell from her own lips were understood by none, she
+ceased to utter them, and thereafter preserved an unbroken
+silence among the people she lived with.  But from the presence
+of others she shrank, as if in disgust or fear, excepting only
+Nuflo and the priest, whose kindly intentions she appeared to
+understand and appreciate.  So far her life in the village was
+silent and sorrowful.  With her child it was different; and every
+day that was not wet, taking the little thing by the hand, she
+would limp painfully out into the forest, and there, sitting on
+the ground, the two would commune with each other by the hour in
+their wonderful language.
+
+At length she began to grow perceptibly paler and feebler week by
+week, day by day, until she could no longer go out into the wood,
+but sat or reclined, panting for breath in the dull hot room,
+waiting for death to release her.  At the same time little Rima,
+who had always appeared frail, as if from sympathy, now began to
+fade and look more shadowy, so that it was expected she would not
+long survive her parent.  To the mother death came slowly, but at
+last it seemed so near that Nuflo and the priest were together at
+her side waiting to see the end.  It was then that little Rima,
+who had learnt from infancy to speak in Spanish, rose from the
+couch where her mother had been whispering to her, and began with
+some difficulty to express what was in the dying woman's mind.
+Her child, she had said, could not continue to live in that hot
+wet place, but if taken away to a distance where there were
+mountains and a cooler air she would survive and grow strong
+again.
+
+Hearing this, old Nuflo declared that the child should not
+perish; that he himself would take her away to Parahuari, a
+distant place where there were mountains and dry plains and open
+woods; that he would watch over her and care for her there as he
+had cared for her mother at Riolama.
+
+When the substance of this speech had been made known by Rima to
+the dying woman, she suddenly rose up from her couch, which she
+had not risen from for many days, and stood erect on the floor,
+her wasted face shining with joy.  Then Nuflo knew that God's
+angels had come for her, and put out his arms to save her from
+falling; and even while he held her that sudden glory went out
+from her face, now of a dead white like burnt-out ashes; and
+murmuring something soft and melodious, her spirit passed away.
+
+Once more Nuflo became a wanderer, now with the fragile-looking
+little Rima for companion, the sacred child who had inherited the
+position of his intercessor from a sacred mother.  The priest,
+who had probably become infected with Nuflo's superstitions, did
+not allow them to leave Voa empty-handed, but gave the old man as
+much calico as would serve to buy hospitality and whatsoever he
+might require from the Indians for many a day to come.
+
+At Parahuari, where they arrived safely at last, they lived for
+some little time at one of the villages.  But the child had an
+instinctive aversion to all savages, or possibly the feeling was
+derived from her mother, for it had shown itself early at Voa,
+where she had refused to learn their language; and this
+eventually led Nuflo to go away and live apart from them, in the
+forest by Ytaioa, where he made himself a house and garden.  The
+Indians, however, continued friendly with him and visited him
+with frequency.  But when Rima grew up, developing into that
+mysterious woodland girl I found her, they became suspicious, and
+in the end regarded her with dangerously hostile feeling.  She,
+poor child, detested them because they were incessantly at war
+with the wild animals she loved, her companions; and having no
+fear of them, for she did not know that they had it in their
+minds to turn their little poisonous arrows against herself, she
+was constantly in the woods frustrating them; and the animals, in
+league with her, seemed to understand her note of warning and hid
+themselves or took to flight at the approach of danger.  At
+length their hatred and fear grew to such a degree that they
+determined to make away with her, and one day, having matured a
+plan, they went to the wood and spread themselves two and two
+about it.  The couples did not keep together, but moved about or
+remained concealed at a distance of forty or fifty yards apart,
+lest she should be missed.  Two of the savages, armed with
+blow-pipes, were near the border of the forest on the side
+nearest to the village, and one of them, observing a motion in
+the foliage of a tree, ran swiftly and cautiously towards it to
+try and catch a glimpse of the enemy.  And he did see her no
+doubt, as she was there watching both him and his companions, and
+blew an arrow at her, but even while in the act of blowing it he
+was himself struck by a dart that buried itself deep in his flesh
+just over the heart.  He ran some distance with the fatal barbed
+point in his flesh and met his comrade, who had mistaken him for
+the girl and shot him.  The wounded man threw himself down to
+die, and dying related that he had fired at the girl sitting up
+in a tree and that she had caught the arrow in her hand only to
+hurl it instantly back with such force and precision that it
+pierced his flesh just over the heart.  He had seen it all with
+his own eyes, and his friend who had accidentally slain him
+believed his story and repeated it to the others.  Rima had seen
+one Indian shoot the other, and when she told her grandfather he
+explained to her that it was an accident, but he guessed why the
+arrow had been fired.
+
+From that day the Indians hunted no more in the wood; and at
+length one day Nuflo, meeting an Indian who did not know him and
+with whom he had some talk, heard the strange story of the arrow,
+and that the mysterious girl who could not be shot was the
+offspring of an old man and a Didi who had become enamoured of
+him; that, growing tired of her consort, the Didi had returned to
+her river, leaving her half-human child to play her malicious
+pranks in the wood.
+
+This, then, was Nuflo's story, told not in Nuflo's manner, which
+was infinitely prolix; and think not that it failed to move
+me--that I failed to bless him for what he had done, in spite of
+his selfish motives.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+We were eighteen days travelling to Riolama, on the last two
+making little progress, on account of continuous rain, which made
+us miserable beyond description.  Fortunately the dogs had found,
+and Nuflo had succeeded in killing, a great ant-eater, so that we
+were well supplied with excellent, strength-giving flesh.  We
+were among the Riolama mountains at last, and Rima kept with us,
+apparently expecting great things.  I expected nothing, for
+reasons to be stated by and by.  My belief was that the only
+important thing that could happen to us would be starvation.
+
+The afternoon of the last day was spent in skirting the foot of a
+very long mountain, crowned at its southern extremity with a
+huge, rocky mass resembling the head of a stone sphinx above its
+long, couchant body, and at its highest part about a thousand
+feet above the surrounding level.  It was late in the day,
+raining fast again, yet the old man still toiled on, contrary to
+his usual practice, which was to spend the last daylight hours in
+gathering firewood and in constructing a shelter.  At length,
+when we were nearly under the peak, he began to ascend.  The rise
+in this place was gentle, and the vegetation, chiefly composed of
+dwarf thorn trees rooted in the clefts of the rock, scarcely
+impeded our progress; yet Nuflo moved obliquely, as if he found
+the ascent difficult, pausing frequently to take breath and look
+round him.  Then we came to a deep, ravine-like cleft in the side
+of the mountain, which became deeper and narrower above us, but
+below it broadened out to a valley; its steep sides as we looked
+down were clothed with dense, thorny vegetation, and from the
+bottom rose to our ears the dull sound of a hidden torrent. 
+Along the border of this ravine Nuflo began toiling upwards, and
+finally brought us out upon a stony plateau on the mountain-side. 
+Here he paused and, turning and regarding us with a look as of
+satisfied malice in his eyes, remarked that we were at our
+journey's end, and he trusted the sight of that barren
+mountain-side would compensate us for all the discomforts we had
+suffered during the last eighteen days.
+
+I heard him with indifference.  I had already recognized the
+place from his own exact description of it, and I now saw all
+that I had looked to see--a big, barren hill.  But Rima, what had
+she expected that her face wore that blank look of surprise and
+pain? "Is this the place where mother appeared to you?"  she
+suddenly cried.  "The very place--this!  This!"  Then she added:
+"The cave where you tended her--where is it?"
+
+"Over there," he said, pointing across the plateau, which was
+partially overgrown with dwarf trees and bushes, and ended at a
+wall of rock, almost vertical and about forty feet high.
+
+Going to this precipice, we saw no cave until Nuflo had cut away
+two or three tangled bushes, revealing an opening behind, about
+half as high and twice as wide as the door of an ordinary
+dwelling-house.
+
+The next thing was to make a torch, and aided by its light we
+groped our way in and explored the interior.  The cave, we found,
+was about fifty feet long, narrowing to a mere hole at the
+extremity; but the anterior portion formed an oblong chamber,
+very lofty, with a dry floor.  Leaving our torch burning, we set
+to work cutting bushes to supply ourselves with wood enough to
+last us all night.  Nuflo, poor old man, loved a big fire dearly;
+a big fire and fat meat to eat (the ranker its flavour, the
+better he liked it) were to him the greatest blessings that man
+could wish for.  In me also the prospect of a cheerful blaze put
+a new heart, and I worked with a will in the rain, which
+increased in the end to a blinding downpour.
+
+By the time I dragged my last load in, Nuflo had got his fire
+well alight, and was heaping on wood in a most lavish way.  "No
+fear of burning our house down tonight," he remarked, with a
+chuckle--the first sound of that description he had emitted for a
+long time.
+
+After we had satisfied our hunger, and had smoked one or two
+cigarettes, the unaccustomed warmth, and dryness, and the
+firelight affected us with drowsiness, and I had probably been
+nodding for some time; but starting at last and opening my eyes,
+I missed Rima.  The old man appeared to be asleep, although still
+in a sitting posture close to the fire.  I rose and hurried out,
+drawing my cloak close around me to protect me from the rain; but
+what was my surprise on emerging from the cave to feel a dry,
+bracing wind in my face and to see the desert spread out for
+leagues before me in the brilliant white light of a full moon!
+The rain had apparently long ceased, and only a few thin white
+clouds appeared moving swiftly over the wide blue expanse of
+heaven.  It was a welcome change, but the shock of surprise and
+pleasure was instantly succeeded by the maddening fear that Rima
+was lost to me.  She was nowhere in sight beneath, and running to
+the end of the little plateau to get free of the thorn trees, I
+turned my eyes towards the summit, and there, at some distance
+above me, caught sight of her standing motionless and gazing
+upwards.  I quickly made my way to her side, calling to her as I
+approached; but she only half turned to cast a look at me and did
+not reply.
+
+"Rima," I said, "why have you come here?  Are you actually
+thinking of climbing the mountain at this hour of the night?"
+"Yes--why not?"  she returned, moving one or two steps from me.
+
+"Rima--sweet Rima, will you listen to me?"
+
+"Now?  Oh, no--why do you ask that?  Did I not listen to you in
+the wood before we started, and you also promised to do what I
+wished?  See, the rain is over and the moon shines brightly.  Why
+should I wait?  Perhaps from the summit I shall see my people's
+country.  Are we not near it now?"
+
+"Oh, Rima, what do you expect to see?  Listen--you must listen,
+for I know best.  From that summit you would see nothing but a
+vast dim desert, mountain and forest, mountain and forest, where
+you might wander for years, or until you perished of hunger or
+fever, or were slain by some beast of prey or by savage men; but
+oh, Rima, never, never, never would you find your people, for
+they exist not.  You have seen the false water of the mirage on
+the savannah, when the sun shines bright and hot; and if one were
+to follow it one would at last fall down and perish, with never a
+cool drop to moisten one's parched lips.  And your hope,
+Rima--this hope to find your people which has brought you all the
+way to Riolama--is a mirage, a delusion, which will lead to
+destruction if you will not abandon it."
+
+She turned to face me with flashing eyes.  "You know best!"  she
+exclaimed.  "You know best and tell me that!  Never until this
+moment have you spoken falsely.  Oh, why have you said such
+things to me--named after this place, Riolama?  Am I also like
+that false water you speak of--no divine Rima, no sweet Rima?  My
+mother, had she no mother, no mother's mother?  I remember her,
+at Voa, before she died, and this hand seems real--like yours;
+you have asked to hold it.  But it is not he that speaks to
+me--not one that showed me the whole world on Ytaioa.  Ah, you
+have wrapped yourself in a stolen cloak, only you have left your
+old grey beard behind!  Go back to the cave and look for it, and
+leave me to seek my people alone!"
+
+Once more, as on that day in the forest when she prevented me
+from killing the serpent, and as on the occasion of her meeting
+with Nuflo after we had been together on Ytaioa, she appeared
+transformed and instinct with intense resentment--a beautiful
+human wasp, and every word a sting.
+
+"Rima," I cried, "you are cruelly unjust to say such words to me.
+If you know that I have never deceived you before, give me a
+little credit now.  You are no delusion--no mirage, but Rima,
+like no other being on earth.  So perfectly truthful and pure I
+cannot be, but rather than mislead you with falsehoods I would
+drop down and die on this rock, and lose you and the sweet light
+that shines on us for ever."
+
+As she listened to my words, spoken with passion, she grew pale
+and clasped her hands.  "What have I said?  What have I said?" 
+She spoke in a low voice charged with pain, and all at once she
+came nearer, and with a low, sobbing cry sank down at my feet,
+uttering, as on the occasion of finding me lost at night in the
+forest near her home, tender, sorrowful expressions in her own
+mysterious language.  But before I could take her in my arms she
+rose again quickly to her feet and moved away a little space from
+me.
+
+"Oh no, no, it cannot be that you know best!"  she began again.
+"But I know that you have never sought to deceive me.  And now,
+because I falsely accused you, I cannot go there without
+you"--pointing to the summit--"but must stand still and listen to
+all you have to say."
+
+"You know, Rima, that your grandfather has now told me your
+history--how he found your mother at this place, and took her to
+Voa, where you were born; but of your mother's people he knows
+nothing, and therefore he can now take you no further."
+
+"Ah, you think that!  He says that now; but he deceived me all
+these years, and if he lied to me in the past, can he not still
+lie, affirming that he knows nothing of my people, even as he
+affirmed that he knew not Riolama?"
+
+"He tells lies and he tells truth, Rima, and one can be
+distinguished from the other.  He spoke truthfully at last, and
+brought us to this place, beyond which he cannot lead you."
+
+"You are right; I must go alone."
+
+"Not so, Rima, for where you go, there we must go; only you will
+lead and we follow, believing only that our quest will end in
+disappointment, if not in death."
+
+"Believe that and yet follow!  Oh no!  Why did he consent to lead
+me so far for nothing?"
+
+"Do you forget that you compelled him?  You know what he
+believes; and he is old and looks with fear at death, remembering
+his evil deeds, and is convinced that only through your
+intercession and your mother's he can escape from perdition. 
+Consider, Rima, he could not refuse, to make you more angry and
+so deprive himself of his only hope."
+
+My words seemed to trouble her, but very soon she spoke again
+with renewed animation.  "If my people exist, why must it be
+disappointment and perhaps death?  He does not know; but she came
+to him here--did she not?  The others are not here, but perhaps
+not far off.  Come, let us go to the summit together to see from
+it the desert beneath us--mountain and forest, mountain and
+forest.  Somewhere there!  You said that I had knowledge of
+distant things.  And shall I not know which mountain--which
+forest?"
+
+"Alas!  no, Rima; there is a limit to your far-seeing; and even
+if that faculty were as great as you imagine, it would avail you
+nothing, for there is no mountain, no forest, in whose shadow
+your people dwell."
+
+For a while she was silent, but her eyes and clasping fingers
+were restless and showed her agitation.  She seemed to be
+searching in the depths of her mind for some argument to oppose
+to my assertions.  Then in a low, almost despondent voice, with
+something of reproach in it, she said: "Have we come so far to go
+back again?  You were not Nuflo to need my intercession, yet you
+came too."
+
+"Where you are, there I must be--you have said it yourself.
+Besides, when we started I had some hope of finding your people.
+Now I know better, having heard Nuflo's story.  Now I know that
+your hope is a vain one."
+
+"Why?  Why?  Was she not found here--mother?  Where, then, are
+the others?"
+
+"Yes, she was found here, alone.  You must remember all the
+things she spoke to you before she died.  Did she ever speak to
+you of her people--speak of them as if they existed, and would be
+glad to receive you among them some day?"
+
+"No.  Why did she not speak of that?  Do you know--can you tell
+me?"
+
+"I can guess the reason, Rima.  It is very sad--so sad that it is
+hard to tell it.  When Nuflo tended her in the cave and was ready
+to worship her and do everything she wished, and conversed with
+her by signs, she showed no wish to return to her people.  And
+when he offered her, in a way she understood, to take her to a
+distant place, where she would be among strange beings, among
+others like Nuflo, she readily consented, and painfully performed
+that long journey to Voa.  Would you, Rima, have acted
+thus--would you have gone so far away from your beloved people,
+never to return, never to hear of them or speak to them again? 
+Oh no, you could not; nor would she if her people had been in
+existence.  But she knew that she had survived them, that some
+great calamity had fallen upon and destroyed them.  They were few
+in number, perhaps, and surrounded on every side by hostile
+tribes, and had no weapons, and made no war.  They had been
+preserved because they inhabited a place apart, some deep valley
+perhaps, guarded on all sides by lofty mountains and impenetrable
+forests and marshes; but at last the cruel savages broke into
+this retreat and hunted them down, destroying all except a few
+fugitives, who escaped singly like your mother, and fled away to
+hide in some distant solitude."
+
+The anxious expression on her face deepened as she listened to
+one of anguish and despair; and then, almost before I concluded,
+she suddenly lifted her hands to her head, uttering a low,
+sobbing cry, and would have fallen on the rock had I not caught
+her quickly in my arms.  Once more in my arms--against my breast,
+her proper place!  But now all that bright life seemed gone out
+of her; her head fell on my shoulder, and there was no motion in
+her except at intervals a slight shudder in her frame accompanied
+by a low, gasping sob.  In a little while the sobs ceased, the
+eyes were closed, the face still and deathly white, and with a
+terrible anxiety in my heart I carried her down to the cave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+As I re-entered the cave with my burden Nuflo sat up and stared
+at me with a frightened look in his eyes.  Throwing my cloak
+down, I placed the girl on it and briefly related what had
+happened.
+
+He drew near to examine her; then placed his hand on her heart.
+"Dead!--she is dead!"  he exclaimed.
+
+My own anxiety changed to an irrational anger at his words.  "Old
+fool!  She has only fainted," I returned.  "Get me some water,
+quick."
+
+But the water failed to restore her, and my anxiety deepened as I
+gazed on that white, still face.  Oh, why had I told her that sad
+tragedy I had imagined with so little preparation?  Alas!  I had
+succeeded too well in my purpose, killing her vain hope and her
+at the same moment.
+
+The old man, still bending over her, spoke again.  "No, I will
+not believe that she is dead yet; but, sir, if not dead, then she
+is dying."
+
+I could have struck him down for his words.  "She will die in my
+arms, then," I exclaimed, thrusting him roughly aside, and
+lifting her up with the cloak beneath her.
+
+And while I held her thus, her head resting on my arm, and gazed
+with unutterable anguish into her strangely white face, insanely
+praying to Heaven to restore her to me, Nuflo fell on his knees
+before her, and with bowed head, and hands clasped in
+supplication, began to speak.
+
+"Rima!  Grandchild!"  he prayed, his quivering voice betraying
+his agitation.  "Do not die just yet: you must not die--not
+wholly die--until you have heard what I have to say to you.  I do
+not ask you to answer in words--you are past that, and I am not
+unreasonable.  Only, when I finish, make some sign--a sigh, a
+movement of the eyelid, a twitch of the lips, even in the small
+corners of the mouth; nothing more than that, just to show that
+you have heard, and I shall be satisfied.  Remember all the years
+that I have been your protector, and this long journey that I
+have taken on your account; also all that I did for your sainted
+mother before she died at Voa, to become one of the most
+important of those who surround the Queen of Heaven, and who,
+when they wish for any favour, have only to say half a word to
+get it.  And do not cast in oblivion that at the last I obeyed
+your wish and brought you safely to Riolama.  It is true that in
+some small things I deceived you; but that must not weigh with
+you, because it is a small matter and not worthy of mention when
+you consider the claims I have on you.  In your hands, Rima, I
+leave everything, relying on the promise you made me, and on my
+services.  Only one word of caution remains to be added.  Do not
+let the magnificence of the place you are now about to enter, the
+new sights and colours, and the noise of shouting, and musical
+instruments and blowing of trumpets, put these things out of your
+head.  Nor must you begin to think meanly of yourself and be
+abashed when you find yourself surrounded by saints and angels;
+for you are not less than they, although it may not seem so at
+first when you see them in their bright clothes, which, they say,
+shine like the sun.  I cannot ask you to tie a string round your
+finger; I can only trust to your memory, which was always good,
+even about the smallest things; and when you are asked, as no
+doubt you will be, to express a wish, remember before everything
+to speak of your grandfather, and his claims on you, also on your
+angelic mother, to whom you will present my humble remembrances."
+
+During this petition, which in other circumstances would have
+moved me to laughter but now only irritated me, a subtle change
+seemed to come to the apparently lifeless girl to make me hope.
+The small hand in mine felt not so icy cold, and though no
+faintest colour had come to the face, its pallor had lost
+something of its deathly waxen appearance; and now the compressed
+lips had relaxed a little and seemed ready to part.  I laid my
+finger-tips on her heart and felt, or imagined that I felt, a
+faint fluttering; and at last I became convinced that her heart
+was really beating.
+
+I turned my eyes on the old man, still bending forward, intently
+watching for the sign he had asked her to make.  My anger and
+disgust at his gross earthy egoism had vanished.  "Let us thank
+God, old man," I said, the tears of joy half choking my
+utterance.  "She lives--she is recovering from her fit."
+
+He drew back, and on his knees, with bowed head, murmured a
+prayer of thanks to Heaven.
+
+Together we continued watching her face for half an hour longer,
+I still holding her in my arms, which could never grow weary of
+that sweet burden, waiting for other, surer signs of returning
+life; and she seemed now like one that had fallen into a
+profound, death-like sleep which must end in death.  Yet when I
+remembered her face as it had looked an hour ago, I was confirmed
+in the belief that the progress to recovery, so strangely slow,
+was yet sure.  So slow, so gradual was this passing from death to
+life that we had hardly ceased to fear when we noticed that the
+lips were parted, or almost parted, that they were no longer
+white, and that under her pale, transparent skin a faint,
+bluish-rosy colour was now visible.  And at length, seeing that
+all danger was past and recovery so slow, old Nuflo withdrew once
+more to the fireside and, stretching himself out on the sandy
+floor, soon fell into a deep sleep.
+
+If he had not been lying there before me in the strong light of
+the glowing embers and dancing flames, I could not have felt more
+alone with Rima--alone amid those remote mountains, in that
+secret cavern, with lights and shadows dancing on its grey vault.
+In that profound silence and solitude the mysterious loveliness
+of the still face I continued to gaze on, its appearance of life
+without consciousness, produced a strange feeling in me, hard,
+perhaps impossible, to describe.
+
+Once, when clambering among the rough rocks, overgrown with
+forest, among the Queneveta mountains, I came on a single white
+flower which was new to me, which I have never seen since.  After
+I had looked long at it, and passed on, the image of that perfect
+flower remained so persistently in my mind that on the following
+day I went again, in the hope of seeing it still untouched by
+decay.  There was no change; and on this occasion I spent a much
+longer time looking at it, admiring the marvellous beauty of its
+form, which seemed so greatly to exceed that of all other
+flowers.  It had thick petals, and at first gave me the idea of
+an artificial flower, cut by a divinely inspired artist from some
+unknown precious stone, of the size of a large orange and whiter
+than milk, and yet, in spite of its opacity, with a crystalline
+lustre on the surface.  Next day I went again, scarcely hoping to
+find it still unwithered; it was fresh as if only just opened;
+and after that I went often, sometimes at intervals of several
+days, and still no faintest sign of any change, the clear,
+exquisite lines still undimmed, the purity and lustre as I had
+first seen it.  Why, I often asked, does not this mystic forest
+flower fade and perish like others?  That first impression of its
+artificial appearance had soon left me; it was, indeed, a flower,
+and, like other flowers, had life and growth, only with that
+transcendent beauty it had a different kind of life. 
+Unconscious, but higher; perhaps immortal.  Thus it would
+continue to bloom when I had looked my last on it; wind and rain
+and sunlight would never stain, never tinge, its sacred purity;
+the savage Indian, though he sees little to admire in a flower,
+yet seeing this one would veil his face and turn back; even the
+browsing beast crashing his way through the forest, struck with
+its strange glory, would swerve aside and pass on without harming
+it. Afterwards I heard from some Indians to whom I described it
+that the flower I had discovered was called Hata; also that they
+had a superstition concerning it--a strange belief.  They said
+that only one Hata flower existed in the world; that it bloomed
+in one spot for the space of a moon; that on the disappearance of
+the moon in the sky the Hata disappeared from its place, only to
+reappear blooming in some other spot, sometimes in some distant
+forest.  And they also said that whosoever discovered the Hata
+flower in the forest would overcome all his enemies and obtain
+all his desires, and finally outlive other men by many years. 
+But, as I have said, all this I heard afterwards, and my
+half-superstitious feeling for the flower had grown up
+independently in my own mind.  A feeling like that was in me
+while I gazed on the face that had no motion, no consciousness in
+it, and yet had life, a life of so high a kind as to match with
+its pure, surpassing loveliness.  I could almost believe that,
+like the forest flower, in this state and aspect it would endure
+for ever; endure and perhaps give of its own immortality to
+everything around it--to me, holding her in my arms and gazing
+fixedly on the pale face framed in its cloud of dark, silken
+hair; to the leaping flames that threw changing lights on the dim
+stony wall of rock; to old Nuflo and his two yellow dogs
+stretched out on the floor in eternal, unawakening sleep.
+
+This feeling took such firm possession of my mind that it kept me
+for a time as motionless as the form I held in my arms.  I was
+only released from its power by noting still further changes in
+the face I watched, a more distinct advance towards conscious
+life.  The faint colour, which had scarcely been more than a
+suspicion of colour, had deepened perceptibly; the lids were
+lifted so as to show a gleam of the crystal orbs beneath; the
+lips, too, were slightly parted.
+
+And, at last, bending lower down to feel her breath, the beauty
+and sweetness of those lips could no longer be resisted, and I
+touched them with mine.  Having once tasted their sweetness and
+fragrance, it was impossible to keep from touching them again and
+again.  She was not conscious--how could she be and not shrink
+from my caress?  Yet there was a suspicion in my mind, and
+drawing back I gazed into her face once more.  A strange new
+radiance had overspread it.  Or was this only an illusive colour
+thrown on her skin by the red firelight?  I shaded her face with
+my open hand, and saw that her pallor had really gone, that the
+rosy flame on her cheeks was part of her life.  Her lustrous
+eyes, half open, were gazing into mine.  Oh, surely consciousness
+had returned to her!  Had she been sensible of those stolen
+kisses?  Would she now shrink from another caress?  Trembling, I
+bent down and touched her lips again, lightly, but lingeringly,
+and then again, and when I drew back and looked at her face the
+rosy flame was brighter, and the eyes, more open still, were
+looking into mine.  And gazing with those open, conscious eyes,
+it seemed to me that at last, at last, the shadow that had rested
+between us had vanished, that we were united in perfect love and
+confidence, and that speech was superfluous.  And when I spoke,
+it was not without doubt and hesitation: our bliss in those
+silent moments had been so complete, what could speaking do but
+make it less!
+
+"My love, my life, my sweet Rima, I know that you will understand
+me now as you did not before, on that dark night--do you remember
+it, Rima?--when I held you clasped to my breast in the wood.  How
+it pierced my heart with pain to speak plainly to you as I did on
+the mountain tonight--to kill the hope that had sustained and
+brought you so far from home!  But now that anguish is over; the
+shadow has gone out of those beautiful eyes that are looking at
+me.  It is because loving me, knowing now what love is, knowing,
+too, how much I love you, that you no longer need to speak to any
+other living being of such things?  To tell it, to show it, to me
+is now enough--is it not so, Rima?  How strange it seemed, at
+first, when you shrank in fear from me!  But, afterwards, when
+you prayed aloud to your mother, opening all the secrets of your
+heart, I understood it.  In that lonely, isolated life in the
+wood you had heard nothing of love, of its power over the heart,
+its infinite sweetness; when it came to you at last it was a new,
+inexplicable thing, and filled you with misgivings and tumultuous
+thoughts, so that you feared it and hid yourself from its cause.
+Such tremors would be felt if it had always been night, with no
+light except that of the stars and the pale moon, as we saw it a
+little while ago on the mountain; and, at last, day dawned, and a
+strange, unheard-of rose and purple flame kindled in the eastern
+sky, foretelling the coming sun.  It would seem beautiful beyond
+anything that night had shown to you, yet you would tremble and
+your heart beat fast at that strange sight; you would wish to fly
+to those who might be able to tell you its meaning, and whether
+the sweet things it prophesied would ever really come.  That is
+why you wished to find your people, and came to Riolama to seek
+them; and when you knew--when I cruelly told you--that they would
+never be found, then you imagined that that strange feeling in
+your heart must remain a secret for ever, and you could not
+endure the thought of your loneliness.  If you had not fainted so
+quickly, then I should have told you what I must tell you now. 
+They are lost, Rima--your people--but I am with you, and know
+what you feel, even if you have no words to tell it.  But what
+need of words?  It shines in your eyes, it burns like a flame in
+your face; I can feel it in your hands.  Do you not also see it
+in my face--all that I feel for you, the love that makes me
+happy?  For this is love, Rima, the flower and the melody of
+life, the sweetest thing, the sweet miracle that makes our two
+souls one."
+
+Still resting in my arms, as if glad to rest there, still gazing
+into my face, it was clear to me that she understood my every
+word.  And then, with no trace of doubt or fear left, I stooped
+again, until my lips were on hers; and when I drew back once
+more, hardly knowing which bliss was greatest--kissing her
+delicate mouth or gazing into her face--she all at once put her
+arms about my neck and drew herself up until she sat on my knee.
+
+"Abel--shall I call you Abel now--and always?"  she spoke, still
+with her arms round my neck.  "Ah, why did you let me come to
+Riolama?  I would come!  I made him come--old grandfather,
+sleeping there: he does not count, but you--you!  After you had
+heard my story, and knew that it was all for nothing!  And all I
+wished to know was there--in you.  Oh, how sweet it is!  But a
+little while ago, what pain!  When I stood on the mountain when
+you talked to me, and I knew that you knew best, and tried and
+tried not to know.  At last I could try no more; they were all
+dead like mother; I had chased the false water on the savannah. 
+'Oh, let me die too,' I said, for I could not bear the pain.  And
+afterwards, here in the cave, I was like one asleep, and when I
+woke I did not really wake.  It was like morning with the light
+teasing me to open my eyes and look at it.  Not yet, dear light;
+a little while longer, it is so sweet to lie still.  But it would
+not leave me, and stayed teasing me still, like a small shining
+green fly; until, because it teased me so, I opened my lids just
+a little. It was not morning, but the firelight, and I was in
+your arms, not in my little bed.  Your eyes looking, looking into
+mine.  But I could see yours better.  I remembered everything
+then, how you once asked me to look into your eyes.  I remembered
+so many things--oh, so many!"
+
+"How many things did you remember, Rima?"
+
+"Listen, Abel, do you ever lie on the dry moss and look straight
+up into a tree and count a thousand leaves?"
+
+"No, sweetest, that could not be done, it is so many to count. 
+Do you know how many a thousand are?"
+
+"Oh, do I not!  When a humming-bird flies close to my face and
+stops still in the air, humming like a bee, and then is gone, in
+that short time I can count a hundred small round bright feathers
+on its throat.  That is only a hundred; a thousand are more, ten
+times.  Looking up I count a thousand leaves; then stop counting,
+because there are thousands more behind the first, and thousands
+more, crowded together so that I cannot count them.  Lying in
+your arms, looking up into your face, it was like that; I could
+not count the things I remembered.  In the wood, when you were
+there, and before; and long, long ago at Voa, when I was a child
+with mother."
+
+"Tell me some of the things you remembered, Rima."
+
+"Yes, one--only one now.  When I was a child at Voa mother was
+very lame--you know that.  Whenever we went out, away from the
+houses, into the forest, walking slowly, slowly, she would sit
+under a tree while I ran about playing.  And every time I came
+back to her I would find her so pale, so sad, crying--crying.
+That was when I would hide and come softly back so that she would
+not hear me coming.  'Oh, mother, why are you crying?  Does your
+lame foot hurt you?' And one day she took me in her arms and told
+me truly why she cried."
+
+She ceased speaking, but looked at me with a strange new light
+coming into her eyes.
+
+"Why did she cry, my love?"
+
+"Oh, Abel, can you understand--now--at last!"  And putting her
+lips close to my ear, she began to murmur soft, melodious sounds
+that told me nothing.  Then drawing back her head, she looked
+again at me, her eyes glistening with tears, her lips half parted
+with a smile, tender and wistful.
+
+Ah, poor child!  in spite of all that had been said, all that had
+happened, she had returned to the old delusion that I must
+understand her speech.  I could only return her look, sorrowfully
+and in silence.
+
+Her face became clouded with disappointment, then she spoke again
+with something of pleading in her tone.  "Look, we are not now
+apart, I hiding in the wood, you seeking, but together, saying
+the same things.  In your language--yours and now mine.  But
+before you came I knew nothing, nothing, for there was only
+grandfather to talk to.  A few words each day, the same words. 
+If yours is mine, mine must be yours.  Oh, do you not know that
+mine is better?"
+
+"Yes, better; but alas!  Rima, I can never hope to understand
+your sweet speech, much less to speak it.  The bird that only
+chirps and twitters can never sing like the organ-bird."
+
+Crying, she hid her face against my neck, murmuring sadly between
+her sobs: "Never--never!"
+
+How strange it seemed, in that moment of joy, such a passion of
+tears, such despondent words!
+
+For some minutes I preserved a sorrowful silence, realizing for
+the first time, so far as it was possible to realize such a
+thing, what my inability to understand her secret language meant
+to her--that finer language in which alone her swift thoughts and
+vivid emotions could be expressed.  Easily and well as she seemed
+able to declare herself in my tongue, I could well imagine that
+to her it would seem like the merest stammering.  As she had said
+to me once when I asked her to speak in Spanish, "That is not
+speaking."  And so long as she could not commune with me in that
+better language, which reflected her mind, there would not be
+that perfect union of soul she so passionately desired.
+
+By and by, as she grew calmer, I sought to say something that
+would be consoling to both of us.  "Sweetest Rima," I spoke, "it
+is so sad that I can never hope to talk with you in your way; but
+a greater love than this that is ours we could never feel, and
+love will make us happy, unutterably happy, in spite of that one
+sadness.  And perhaps, after a while, you will be able to say all
+you wish in my language, which is also yours, as you said some
+time ago.  When we are back again in the beloved wood, and talk
+once more under that tree where we first talked, and under the
+old mora, where you hid yourself and threw down leaves on me, and
+where you caught the little spider to show me how you made
+yourself a dress, you shall speak to me in your own sweet tongue,
+and then try to say the same things in mine....  And in the end,
+perhaps, you will find that it is not so impossible as you
+think."
+
+She looked at me, smiling again through her tears, and shook her
+head a little.
+
+"Remember what I have heard, that before your mother died you
+were able to tell Nuflo and the priest what her wish was.  Can
+you not, in the same way, tell me why she cried?"
+
+"I can tell you, but it will not be telling you."
+
+"I understand.  You can tell the bare facts.  I can imagine
+something more, and the rest I must lose.  Tell me, Rima."
+
+Her face became troubled; she glanced away and let her eyes
+wander round the dim, firelit cavern; then they returned to mine
+once more.
+
+"Look," she said, "grandfather lying asleep by the fire.  So far
+away from us--oh, so far!  But if we were to go out from the
+cave, and on and on to the great mountains where the city of the
+sun is, and stood there at last in the midst of great crowds of
+people, all looking at us, talking to us, it would be just the
+same.  They would be like the trees and rocks and animals--so
+far! Not with us nor we with them.  But we are everywhere alone
+together, apart--we two.  It is love; I know it now, but I did
+not know it before because I had forgotten what she told me.  Do
+you think I can tell you what she said when I asked her why she
+cried?  Oh no!  Only this, she and another were like one, always,
+apart from the others.  Then something came--something came!  O
+Abel, was that the something you told me about on the mountain?
+And the other was lost for ever, and she was alone in the forests
+and mountains of the world.  Oh, why do we cry for what is lost?
+Why do we not quickly forget it and feel glad again?  Now only do
+I know what you felt, O sweet mother, when you sat still and
+cried, while I ran about and played and laughed!  O poor mother!
+Oh, what pain!"  And hiding her face against my neck, she sobbed
+once more.
+
+To my eyes also love and sympathy brought the tears; but in a
+little while the fond, comforting words I spoke and my caresses
+recalled her from that sad past to the present; then, lying back
+as at first, her head resting on my folded cloak, her body partly
+supported by my encircling arm and partly by the rock we were
+leaning against, her half-closed eyes turned to mine expressed a
+tender assured happiness--the chastened gladness of sunshine
+after rain; a soft delicious languor that was partly passionate
+with the passion etherealized.
+
+"Tell me, Rima," I said, bending down to her, "in all those
+troubled days with me in the woods had you no happy moments?  Did
+not something in your heart tell you that it was sweet to love,
+even before you knew what love meant?"
+
+"Yes; and once--O Abel, do you remember that night, after
+returning from Ytaioa, when you sat so late talking by the
+fire--I in the shadow, never stirring, listening, listening; you
+by the fire with the light on your face, saying so many strange
+things? I was happy then--oh, how happy!  It was black night and
+raining, and I a plant growing in the dark, feeling the sweet
+raindrops falling, falling on my leaves.  Oh, it will be morning
+by and by and the sun will shine on my wet leaves; and that made
+me glad till I trembled with happiness.  Then suddenly the
+lightning would come, so bright, and I would tremble with fear,
+and wish that it would be dark again.  That was when you looked
+at me sitting in the shadow, and I could not take my eyes away
+quickly and could not meet yours, so that I trembled with fear."
+
+"And now there is no fear--no shadow; now you are perfectly
+happy?"
+
+"Oh, so happy!  If the way back to the wood was longer, ten
+times, and if the great mountains, white with snow on their tops,
+were between, and the great dark forest, and rivers wider than
+Orinoco, still I would go alone without fear, because you would
+come after me, to join me in the wood, to be with me at last and
+always."
+
+"But I should not let you go alone, Rima--your lonely days are
+over now."
+
+She opened her eyes wider and looked earnestly into my face.  "I
+must go back alone, Abel," she said.  "Before day comes I must
+leave you.  Rest here, with grandfather, for a few days and
+nights, then follow me."
+
+I heard her with astonishment.  "It must not be, Rima," I cried.
+"What, let you leave me--now you are mine--to go all that
+distance, through all that wild country where you might lose
+yourself and perish alone?  Oh, do not think of it!"
+
+She listened, regarding me with some slight trouble in her eyes,
+but smiling a little at the same time.  Her small hand moved up
+my arm and caressed my cheek; then she drew my face down to hers
+until our lips met.  But when I looked at her eyes again, I saw
+that she had not consented to my wish.  "Do I not know all the
+way now," she spoke, "all the mountains, rivers, forests--how
+should I lose myself?  And I must return quickly, not step by
+step, walking--resting, resting--walking, stopping to cook and
+eat, stopping to gather firewood, to make a shelter--so many
+things! Oh, I shall be back in half the time; and I have so much
+to do."
+
+"What can you have to do, love?--everything can be done when we
+are in the wood together."
+
+A bright smile with a touch of mockery in it flitted over her
+face as she replied: "Oh, must I tell you that there are things
+you cannot do?  Look, Abel," and she touched the slight garment
+she wore, thinner now than at first, and dulled by long exposure
+to sun and wind and rain.
+
+I could not command her, and seemed powerless to persuade her;
+but I had not done yet, and proceeded to use every argument I
+could find to bring her round to my view; and when I finished she
+put her arms around my neck and drew herself up once more.  "O
+Abel, how happy I shall be!"  she said, taking no notice of all I
+had said.  "Think of me alone, days and days, in the wood,
+waiting for you, working all the time; saying: 'Come quickly,
+Abel; come slow, Abel.  O Abel, how long you are! Oh, do not come
+until my work is finished!' And when it is finished and you
+arrive you shall find me, but not at once.  First you will seek
+for me in the house, then in the wood, calling: 'Rima!  Rima!'
+And she will be there, listening, hid in the trees, wishing to be
+in your arms, wishing for your lips--oh, so glad, yet fearing to
+show herself. Do you know why?  He told you--did he not?--that
+when he first saw her she was standing before him all in white--a
+dress that was like snow on the mountain-tops when the sun is
+setting and gives it rose and purple colour.  I shall be like
+that, hidden among the trees, saying: 'Am I different--not like
+Rima?  Will he know me--will he love me just the same?' Oh, do I
+not know that you will be glad, and love me, and call me
+beautiful?  Listen!  Listen!"  she suddenly exclaimed, lifting
+her face.
+
+Among the bushes not far from the cave's mouth a small bird had
+broken out in song, a clear, tender melody soon taken up by other
+birds further away.
+
+"It will soon be morning," she said, and then clasped her arms
+about me once more and held me in a long, passionate embrace;
+then slipping away from my arms and with one swift glance at the
+sleeping old man, passed out of the cave.
+
+For a few moments I remained sitting, not yet realizing that she
+had left me, so suddenly and swiftly had she passed from my arms
+and my sight; then, recovering my faculties, I started up and
+rushed out in hopes of overtaking her.
+
+It was not yet dawn, but there was still some light from the full
+moon, now somewhere behind the mountains.  Running to the verge
+of the bushgrown plateau, I explored the rocky slope beneath
+without seeing her form, and then called: "Rima!  Rima!"
+
+A soft, warbling sound, uttered by no bird, came up from the
+shadowy bushes far below; and in that direction I ran on; then
+pausing, called again.  The sweet sound was repeated once more,
+but much lower down now, and so faintly that I scarcely heard it.
+And when I went on further and called again and again, there was
+no reply, and I knew that she had indeed gone on that long
+journey alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+When Nuflo at length opened his eyes he found me sitting alone
+and despondent by the fire, just returned from my vain chase.  I
+had been caught in a heavy mist on the mountain-side, and was wet
+through as well as weighed down by fatigue and drowsiness,
+consequent upon the previous day's laborious march and my
+night-long vigil; yet I dared not think of rest.  She had gone
+from me, and I could not have prevented it; yet the thought that
+I had allowed her to slip out of my arms, to go away alone on
+that long, perilous journey, was as intolerable as if I had
+consented to it.
+
+Nuflo was at first startled to hear of her sudden departure; but
+he laughed at my fears, affirming that after having once been
+over the ground she could not lose herself; that she would be in
+no danger from the Indians, as she would invariably see them at a
+distance and avoid them, and that wild beasts, serpents, and
+other evil creatures would do her no harm.  The small amount of
+food she required to sustain life could be found anywhere;
+furthermore, her journey would not be interrupted by bad weather,
+since rain and heat had no effect on her.  In the end he seemed
+pleased that she had left us, saying that with Rima in the wood
+the house and cultivated patch and hidden provisions and
+implements would be safe, for no Indian would venture to come
+where she was.  His confidence reassured me, and casting myself
+down on the sandy floor of the cave, I fell into a deep slumber,
+which lasted until evening; then I only woke to share a meal with
+the old man, and sleep again until the following day.
+
+Nuflo was not ready to start yet; he was enamoured of the
+unaccustomed comforts of a dry sleeping-place and a fire blown
+about by no wind and into which fell no hissing raindrops.  Not
+for two days more would he consent to set out on the return
+journey, and if he could have persuaded me our stay at Riolama
+would have lasted a week.
+
+We had fine weather at starting; but before long it clouded, and
+then for upwards of a fortnight we had it wet and stormy, which
+so hindered us that it took us twenty-three days to accomplish
+the return journey, whereas the journey out had only taken
+eighteen.  The adventures we met with and the pains we suffered
+during this long march need not be related.  The rain made us
+miserable, but we suffered more from hunger than from any other
+cause, and on more than one occasion were reduced to the verge of
+starvation.  Twice we were driven to beg for food at Indian
+villages, and as we had nothing to give in exchange for it, we
+got very little.  It is possible to buy hospitality from the
+savage without fish-hooks, nails, and calico; but on this
+occasion I found myself without that impalpable medium of
+exchange which had been so great a help to me on my first journey
+to Parahuari.  Now I was weak and miserable and without cunning.
+It is true that we could have exchanged the two dogs for cassava
+bread and corn, but we should then have been worse off than ever.
+And in the end the dogs saved us by an occasional capture--an
+armadillo surprised in the open and seized before it could bury
+itself in the soil, or an iguana, opossum, or labba, traced by
+means of their keen sense of smell to its hiding-place.  Then
+Nuflo would rejoice and feast, rewarding them with the skin,
+bones, and entrails.  But at length one of the dogs fell lame,
+and Nuflo, who was very hungry, made its lameness an excuse for
+dispatching it, which he did apparently without compunction,
+notwithstanding that the poor brute had served him well in its
+way.  He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable
+pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with
+him.  We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals
+to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher.  "But
+what does it matter?"  I argued with myself.  "All flesh, clean
+and unclean, should be, and is, equally abhorrent to me, and
+killing animals a kind of murder.  But now I find myself
+constrained to do this evil thing that good may come.  Only to
+live I take it now--this hateful strength-giver that will enable
+me to reach Rima, and the purer, better life that is to be."
+
+During all that time, when we toiled onwards league after league
+in silence, or sat silent by the nightly fire, I thought of many
+things; but the past, with which I had definitely broken, was
+little in my mind.  Rima was still the source and centre of all
+my thoughts; from her they rose, and to her returned.  Thinking,
+hoping, dreaming, sustained me in those dark days and nights of
+pain and privation.  Imagination was the bread that gave me
+strength, the wine that exhilarated.  What sustained old Nuflo's
+mind I know not.  Probably it was like a chrysalis, dormant,
+independent of sustenance; the bright-winged image to be called
+at some future time to life by a great shouting of angelic hosts
+and noises of musical instruments slept secure, coffined in that
+dull, gross nature.
+
+The old beloved wood once more!  Never did his native village in
+some mountain valley seem more beautiful to the Switzer,
+returning, war-worn, from long voluntary exile, than did that
+blue cloud on the horizon--the forest where Rima dwelt, my bride,
+my beautiful--and towering over it the dark cone of Ytaioa, now
+seem to my hungry eyes!  How near at last--how near!  And yet the
+two or three intervening leagues to be traversed so slowly, step
+by step--how vast the distance seemed!  Even at far Riolama, when
+I set out on my return, I scarcely seemed so far from my love.
+This maddening impatience told on my strength, which was small,
+and hindered me.  I could not run nor even walk fast; old Nuflo,
+slow, and sober, with no flame consuming his heart, was more than
+my equal in the end, and to keep up with him was all I could do.
+At the finish he became silent and cautious, first entering the
+belt of trees leading away through the low range of hills at the
+southern extremity of the wood.  For a mile or upwards we trudged
+on in the shade; then I began to recognize familiar ground, the
+old trees under which I had walked or sat, and knew that a
+hundred yards further on there would be a first glimpse of the
+palm-leaf thatch.  Then all weakness forsook me; with a low cry
+of passionate longing and joy I rushed on ahead; but I strained
+my eyes in vain for a sight of that sweet shelter; no patch of
+pale yellow colour appeared amidst the universal verdure of
+bushes, creepers, and trees--trees beyond trees, trees towering
+above trees.
+
+For some moments I could not realize it.  No, I had surely made a
+mistake, the house had not stood on that spot; it would appear in
+sight a little further on.  I took a few uncertain steps onwards,
+and then again stood still, my brain reeling, my heart swelling
+nigh to bursting with anguish.  I was still standing motionless,
+with hand pressed to my breast, when Nuflo overtook me.  "Where
+is it--the house?"  I stammered, pointing with my hand.  All his
+stolidity seemed gone now; he was trembling too, his lips
+silently moving.  At length he spoke: "They have come--the
+children of hell have been here, and have destroyed everything!"
+
+"Rima!  What has become of Rima?"  I cried; but without replying
+he walked on, and I followed.
+
+The house, we soon found, had been burnt down.  Not a stick
+remained.  Where it had stood a heap of black ashes covered the
+ground--nothing more.  But on looking round we could discover no
+sign of human beings having recently visited the spot.  A rank
+growth of grass and herbage now covered the once clear space
+surrounding the site of the dwelling, and the ash-heap looked as
+if it had been lying there for a month at least.  As to what had
+become of Rima the old man could say no word.  He sat down on the
+ground overwhelmed at the calamity: Runi's people had been there,
+he could not doubt it, and they would come again, and he could
+only look for death at their hands.  The thought that Rima had
+perished, that she was lost, was unendurable.  It could not be! 
+No doubt the Indians tract come and destroyed the house during
+our absence; but she had returned, and they had gone away again
+to come no more.  She would be somewhere in the forest, perhaps
+not far off, impatiently waiting our return.  The old man stared
+at me while I spoke; he appeared to be in a kind of stupor, and
+made no reply: and at last, leaving him still sitting on the
+ground, I went into the wood to look for Rima.
+
+As I walked there, occasionally stopping to peer into some
+shadowy glade or opening, and to listen, I was tempted again and
+again to call the name of her I sought aloud; and still the fear
+that by so doing I might bring some hidden danger on myself,
+perhaps on her, made me silent.  A strange melancholy rested on
+the forest, a quietude seldom broken by a distant bird's cry.
+How, I asked myself, should I ever find her in that wide forest
+while I moved about in that silent, cautious way?  My only hope
+was that she would find me.  It occurred to me that the most
+likely place to seek her would be some of the old haunts known to
+us both, where we had talked together.  I thought first of the
+mora tree, where she had hidden herself from me, and thither I
+directed my steps.  About this tree, and within its shade, I
+lingered for upwards of an hour; and, finally, casting my eyes up
+into the great dim cloud of green and purple leaves, I softly
+called: "Rima, Rima, if you have seen me, and have concealed
+yourself from me in your hiding-place, in mercy answer me--in
+mercy come down to me now!"  But Rima answered not, nor threw
+down any red glowing leaves to mock me: only the wind, high up,
+whispered something low and sorrowful in the foliage; and
+turning, I wandered away at random into the deeper shadows.
+
+By and by I was startled by the long, piercing cry of a wildfowl,
+sounding strangely loud in the silence; and no sooner was the air
+still again than it struck me that no bird had uttered that cry.
+The Indian is a good mimic of animal voices, but practice had
+made me able to distinguish the true from the false bird-note.
+For a minute or so I stood still, at a loss what to do, then
+moved on again with greater caution, scarcely breathing,
+straining my sight to pierce the shadowy depths.  All at once I
+gave a great start, for directly before me, on the projecting
+root in the deeper shade of a tree, sat a dark, motionless human
+form.  I stood still, watching it for some time, not yet knowing
+that it had seen me, when all doubts were put to flight by the
+form rising and deliberately advancing--a naked Indian with a
+zabatana in his hand.  As he came up out of the deeper shade I
+recognized Piake, the surly elder brother of my friend Kua-ko.
+
+It was a great shock to meet him in the wood, but I had no time
+to reflect just then.  I only remembered that I had deeply
+offended him and his people, that they probably looked on me as
+an enemy, and would think little of taking my life.  It was too
+late to attempt to escape by flight; I was spent with my long
+journey and the many privations I had suffered, while he stood
+there in his full strength with a deadly weapon in his hand.
+
+Nothing was left but to put a bold face on, greet him in a
+friendly way, and invent some plausible story to account for my
+action in secretly leaving the village.
+
+He was now standing still, silently regarding me, and glancing
+round I saw that he was not alone: at a distance of about forty
+yards on my right hand two other dusky forms appeared watching me
+from the deep shade.
+
+"Piake!"  I cried, advancing three or four steps.
+
+"You have returned," he answered, but without moving.  "Where
+from?"
+
+"Riolama."
+
+He shook his head, then asked where it was.
+
+"Twenty days towards the setting sun," I said.  As he remained
+silent I added: "I heard that I could find gold in the mountains
+there.  An old man told me, and we went to look for gold."
+
+"What did you find?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+And so our conversation appeared to be at an end.  But after a
+few moments my intense desire to discover whether the savages
+knew aught of Rima or not made me hazard a question.
+
+"Do you live here in the forest now?"  I asked.
+
+He shook his head, and after a while said: "We come to kill
+animals."
+
+"You are like me now," I returned quickly; "you fear nothing."
+
+He looked distrustfully at me, then came a little nearer and
+said: "You are very brave.  I should not have gone twenty days'
+journey with no weapons and only an old man for companion.  What
+weapons did you have?"
+
+I saw that he feared me and wished to make sure that I had it not
+in my power to do him some injury.  "No weapon except my knife,"
+I replied, with assumed carelessness.  With that I raised my
+cloak so as to let him see for himself, turning my body round
+before him.  "Have you found my pistol?"  I added.
+
+He shook his head; but he appeared less suspicious now and came
+close up to me.  "How do you get food?  Where are you going?"  he
+asked.
+
+I answered boldly: "Food!  I am nearly starving.  I am going to
+the village to see if the women have got any meat in the pot, and
+to tell Runi all I have done since I left him."
+
+He looked at me keenly, a little surprised at my confidence
+perhaps, then said that he was also going back and would
+accompany me One of the other men now advanced, blow-pipe in
+hand, to join us, and, leaving the wood, we started to walk
+across the savannah.
+
+It was hateful to have to recross that savannah again, to leave
+the woodland shadows where I had hoped to find Rima; but I was
+powerless: I was a prisoner once more, the lost captive recovered
+and not yet pardoned, probably never to be pardoned.  Only by
+means of my own cunning could I be saved, and Nuflo, poor old
+man, must take his chance.
+
+Again and again as we tramped over the barren ground, and when we
+climbed the ridge, I was compelled to stand still to recover
+breath, explaining to Piake that I had been travelling day and
+night, with no meat during the last three days, so that I was
+exhausted.  This was an exaggeration, but it was necessary to
+account in some way for the faintness I experienced during our
+walk, caused less by fatigue and want of food than by anguish of
+mind.
+
+At intervals I talked to him, asking after all the other members
+of the community by name.  At last, thinking only of Rima, I
+asked him if any other person or persons besides his people came
+to the wood now or lived there.
+
+He said no.  "Once," I said, "there was a daughter of the Didi, a
+girl you all feared: is she there now?"
+
+He looked at me with suspicion and then shook his head.  I dared
+not press him with more questions; but after an interval he said
+plainly: "She is not there now."
+
+And I was forced to believe him; for had Rima been in the wood
+they would not have been there.  She was not there, this much I
+had discovered.  Had she, then, lost her way, or perished on that
+long journey from Riolama?  Or had she returned only to fall into
+the hands of her cruel enemies?  My heart was heavy in me; but if
+these devils in human shape knew more than they had told me, I
+must, I said, hide my anxiety and wait patiently to find it out,
+should they spare my life.  And if they spared me and had not
+spared that other sacred life interwoven with mine, the time
+would come when they would find, too late, that they had taken to
+their bosom a worse devil than themselves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+My arrival at the village created some excitement; but I was
+plainly no longer regarded as a friend or one of the family. 
+Runi was absent, and I looked forward to his return with no
+little apprehension; he would doubtless decide my fate.  Kua-ko
+was also away.  The others sat or stood about the great room,
+staring at me in silence.  I took no notice, but merely asked for
+food, then for my hammock, which I hung up in the old place, and
+lying down I fell into a doze.  Runi made his appearance at dusk. 
+I rose and greeted him, but he spoke no word and, until he went
+to his hammock, sat in sullen silence, ignoring my presence.
+
+On the following day the crisis came.  We were once more gathered
+in the room--all but Kua-ko and another of the men, who had not
+yet returned from some expedition--and for the space of half an
+hour not a word was spoken by anyone.  Something was expected;
+even the children were strangely still, and whenever one of the
+pet birds strayed in at the open door, uttering a little
+plaintive note, it was chased out again, but without a sound.  At
+length Runi straightened himself on his seat and fixed his eyes
+on me; then cleared his throat and began a long harangue,
+delivered in the loud, monotonous singsong which I knew so well
+and which meant that the occasion was an important one.  And as
+is usual in such efforts, the same thought and expressions were
+used again and again, and yet again, with dull, angry insistence. 
+The orator of Guayana to be impressive must be long, however
+little he may have to say.  Strange as it may seem, I listened
+critically to him, not without a feeling of scorn at his lower
+intelligence. But I was easier in my mind now.  From the very
+fact of his addressing such a speech to me I was convinced that
+he wished not to take my life, and would not do so if I could
+clear myself of the suspicion of treachery.
+
+I was a white man, he said, they were Indians; nevertheless they
+had treated me well.  They had fed me and sheltered me.  They had
+done a great deal for me: they had taught me the use of the
+zabatana, and had promised to make one for me, asking for nothing
+in return.  They had also promised me a wife.  How had I treated
+them?  I had deserted them, going away secretly to a distance,
+leaving them in doubt as to my intentions.  How could they tell
+why I had gone, and where?  They had an enemy.  Managa was his
+name; he and his people hated them; I knew that he wished them
+evil; I knew where to find him, for they had told me.  That was
+what they thought when I suddenly left them.  Now I returned to
+them, saying that I had been to Riolama.  He knew where Riolama
+was, although he had never been there: it was so far.  Why did I
+go to Riolama?  It was a bad place.  There were Indians there, a
+few; but they were not good Indians like those of Parahuari, and
+would kill a white man.  HAD I gone there?  Why had I gone there?
+
+He finished at last, and it was my turn to speak, but he had
+given me plenty of time, and my reply was ready.  "I have heard
+you," I said.  "Your words are good words.  They are the words of
+a friend.  'I am the white man's friend,' you say; 'is he my
+friend? He went away secretly, saying no word; why did he go
+without speaking to his friend who had treated him well?  Has he
+been to my enemy Managa?  Perhaps he is a friend of my enemy? 
+Where has he been?' I must now answer these things, saying true
+words to my friend.  You are an Indian, I am a white man.  You do
+not know all the white man's thoughts.  These are the things I
+wish to tell you.  In the white man's country are two kinds of
+men.  There are the rich men, who have all that a man can
+desire--houses made of stone, full of fine things, fine clothes,
+fine weapons, fine ornaments; and they have horses, cattle,
+sheep, dogs--everything they desire.  Because they have gold, for
+with gold the white man buys everything.  The other kind of white
+men are the poor, who have no gold and cannot buy or have
+anything: they must work hard for the rich man for the little
+food he gives them, and a rag to cover their nakedness; and if he
+gives them shelter they have it; if not they must lie down in the
+rain out of doors.  In my own country, a hundred days from here,
+I was the son of a great chief, who had much gold, and when he
+died it was all mine, and I was rich.  But I had an enemy, one
+worse than Managa, for he was rich and had many people.  And in a
+war his people overcame mine, and he took my gold, and all I
+possessed, making me poor.  The Indian kills his enemy, but the
+white man takes his gold, and that is worse than death.  Then I
+said: 'I have been a rich man and now I am poor, and must work
+like a dog for some rich man, for the sake of the little food he
+will throw me at the end of each day.  No, I cannot do it!  I
+will go away and live with the Indians, so that those who have
+seen me a rich man shall never see me working like a dog for a
+master, and cry out and mock at me.  For the Indians are not like
+white men: they have no gold; they are not rich and poor; all are
+alike.  One roof covers them from the rain and sun. All have
+weapons which they make; all kill birds in the forest and catch
+fish in the rivers; and the women cook the meat and all eat from
+one pot.  And with the Indians I will be an Indian, and hunt in
+the forest and eat with them and drink with them.' Then I left my
+country and came here, and lived with you, Runi, and was well
+treated.  And now, why did I go away?  This I have now to tell
+you.  After I had been here a certain time I went over there to
+the forest.  You wished me not to go, because of an evil thing, a
+daughter of the Didi, that lived there; but I feared nothing and
+went.  There I met an old man, who talked to me in the white
+man's language.  He had travelled and seen much, and told me one
+strange thing.  On a mountain at Riolama he told me that he had
+seen a great lump of gold, as much as a man could carry.  And
+when I heard this I said: 'With the gold I could return to my
+country, and buy weapons for myself and all my people and go to
+war with my enemy and deprive him of all his possessions and
+serve him as he served me.' I asked the old man to take me to
+Riolama; and when he had consented I went away from here without
+saying a word, so as not to be prevented.  It is far to Riolama,
+and I had no weapons; but I feared nothing.  I said: 'If I must
+fight I must fight, and if I must be killed I must be killed.'
+But when I got to Riolama I found no gold.  There was only a
+yellow stone which the old man had mistaken for gold.  It was
+yellow, like gold, but it would buy nothing.  Therefore I came
+back to Parahuari again, to my friend; and if he is angry with me
+still because I went away without informing him, let him say: 'Go
+and seek elsewhere for a new friend, for I am your friend no
+longer.'"
+
+I concluded thus boldly because I did not wish him to know that I
+had suspected him of harbouring any sinister designs, or that I
+looked on our quarrel as a very serious one.  When I had finished
+speaking he emitted a sound which expressed neither approval nor
+disapproval, but only the fact that he had heard me.  But I was
+satisfied.  His expression had undergone a favourable change; it
+was less grim.  After a while he remarked, with a peculiar
+twitching of the mouth which might have developed into a smile:
+"The white man will do much to get gold.  You walked twenty days
+to see a yellow stone that would buy nothing."  It was fortunate
+that he took this view of the case, which was flattering to his
+Indian nature, and perhaps touched his sense of the ludicrous. 
+At all events, he said nothing to discredit my story, to which
+they had all listened with profound interest.
+
+From that time it seemed to be tacitly agreed to let bygones be
+bygones; and I could see that as the dangerous feeling that had
+threatened my life diminished, the old pleasure they had once
+found in my company returned.  But my feelings towards them did
+not change, nor could they while that black and terrible
+suspicion concerning Rima was in my heart.  I talked again freely
+with them, as if there had been no break in the old friendly
+relations.  If they watched me furtively whenever I went out of
+doors, I affected not to see it.  I set to work to repair my rude
+guitar, which had been broken in my absence, and studied to show
+them a cheerful countenance.  But when alone, or in my hammock,
+hidden from their eyes, free to look into my own heart, then I
+was conscious that something new and strange had come into my
+life; that a new nature, black and implacable, had taken the
+place of the old.  And sometimes it was hard to conceal this fury
+that burnt in me; sometimes I felt an impulse to spring like a
+tiger on one of the Indians, to hold him fast by the throat until
+the secret I wished to learn was forced from his lips, then to
+dash his brains out against the stone.  But they were many, and
+there was no choice but to be cautious and patient if I wished to
+outwit them with a cunning superior to their own.
+
+Three days after my arrival at the village, Kua-ko returned with
+his companion.  I greeted him with affected warmth, but was
+really pleased that he was back, believing that if the Indians
+knew anything of Rima he among them all would be most likely to
+tell it.
+
+Kua-ko appeared to have brought some important news, which he
+discussed with Runi and the others; and on the following day I
+noticed that preparations for an expedition were in progress.
+Spears and bows and arrows were got ready, but not blow-pipes,
+and I knew by this that the expedition would not be a hunting
+one.  Having discovered so much, also that only four men were
+going out, I called Kua-ko aside and begged him to let me go with
+them.  He seemed pleased at the proposal, and at once repeated it
+to Runi, who considered for a little and then consented.
+
+By and by he said, touching his bow: "You cannot fight with our
+weapons; what will you do if we meet an enemy?"
+
+I smiled and returned that I would not run away.  All I wished to
+show him was that his enemies were my enemies, that I was ready
+to fight for my friend.
+
+He was pleased at my words, and said no more and gave me no
+weapons.  Next morning, however, when we set out before daylight,
+I made the discovery that he was carrying my revolver fastened to
+his waist.  He had concealed it carefully under the one simple
+garment he wore, but it bulged slightly, and so the secret was
+betrayed.  I had never believed that he had lost it, and I was
+convinced that he took it now with the object of putting it into
+my hands at the last moment in case of meeting with an enemy.
+
+From the village we travelled in a north-westerly direction, and
+before noon camped in a grove of dwarf trees, where we remained
+until the sun was low, then continued our walk through a rather
+barren country.  At night we camped again beside a small stream,
+only a few inches deep, and after a meal of smoked meat and
+parched maize prepared to sleep till dawn on the next day.
+
+Sitting by the fire I resolved to make a first attempt to
+discover from Kua-ko anything concerning Rima which might be
+known to him.  Instead of lying down when the others did, I
+remained seated, my guardian also sitting--no doubt waiting for
+me to lie down first.  Presently I moved nearer to him and began
+a conversation in a low voice, anxious not to rouse the attention
+of the other men.
+
+"Once you said that Oalava would be given to me for a wife," I
+began.  "Some day I shall want a wife."
+
+He nodded approval, and remarked sententiously that the desire to
+possess a wife was common to all men.
+
+"What has been left to me?"  I said despondingly and spreading
+out my hands.  "My pistol gone, and did I not give Runi the
+tinder-box, and the little box with a cock painted on it to you?
+I had no return--not even the blow-pipe.  How, then, can I get me
+a wife?"
+
+He, like the others--dull-witted savage that he was--had come to
+the belief that I was incapable of the cunning and duplicity they
+practiced.  I could not see a green parrot sitting silent and
+motionless amidst the green foliage as they could; I had not
+their preternatural keenness of sight; and, in like manner, to
+deceive with lies and false seeming was their faculty and not
+mine.  He fell readily into the trap.  My return to practical
+subjects pleased him.  He bade me hope that Oalava might yet be
+mine in spite of my poverty.  It was not always necessary to have
+things to get a wife: to be able to maintain her was enough; some
+day I would be like one of themselves, able to kill animals and
+catch fish.  Besides, did not Runi wish to keep me with them for
+other reasons?  But he could not keep me wifeless.  I could do
+much: I could sing and make music; I was brave and feared
+nothing; I could teach the children to fight.
+
+He did not say, however, that I could teach anything to one of
+his years and attainments.
+
+I protested that he gave me too much praise, that they were just
+as brave.  Did they not show a courage equal to mine by going
+every day to hunt in that wood which was inhabited by the
+daughter of the Didi?
+
+I came to this subject with fear and trembling, but he took it
+quietly.  He shook his head, and then all at once began to tell
+me how they first came to go there to hunt.  He said that a few
+days after I had secretly disappeared, two men and a woman,
+returning home from a distant place where they had been on a
+visit to a relation, stopped at the village.  These travellers
+related that two days' journey from Ytaioa they had met three
+persons travelling in an opposite direction: an old man with a
+white beard, followed by two yellow dogs, a young man in a big
+cloak, and a strange-looking girl.  Thus it came to be known that
+I had left the wood with the old man and the daughter of the
+Didi.  It was great news to them, for they did not believe that
+we had any intention of returning, and at once they began to hunt
+in the wood, and went there every day, killing birds, monkeys,
+and other animals in numbers.
+
+His words had begun to excite me greatly, but I studied to appear
+calm and only slightly interested, so as to draw him on to say
+more.
+
+"Then we returned," I said at last.  "But only two of us, and not
+together.  I left the old man on the road, and SHE left us in
+Riolama.  She went away from us into the mountains--who knows
+whither!"
+
+"But she came back!"  he returned, with a gleam of devilish
+satisfaction in his eyes that made the blood run cold in my
+veins.
+
+It was hard to dissemble still, to tempt him to say something
+that would madden me!  "No, no," I answered, after considering
+his words.  "She feared to return; she went away to hide herself
+in the great mountains beyond Riolama.  She could not come back."
+
+"But she came back!"  he persisted, with that triumphant gleam in
+his eyes once more.  Under my cloak my hand had clutched my
+knife-handle, but I strove hard against the fierce, almost
+maddening impulse to pluck it out and bury it, quick as
+lightning, in his accursed throat.
+
+He continued: "Seven days before you returned we saw her in the
+wood.  We were always expecting, watching, always afraid; and
+when hunting we were three and four together.  On that day I and
+three others saw her.  It was in an open place, where the trees
+are big and wide apart.  We started up and chased her when she
+ran from us, but feared to shoot.  And in one moment she climbed
+up into a small tree, then, like a monkey, passed from its
+highest branches into a big tree.  We could not see her there,
+but she was there in the big tree, for there was no other tree
+near--no way of escape. Three of us sat down to watch, and the
+other went back to the village.  He was long gone; we were just
+going to leave the tree, fearing that she would do us some
+injury, when he came back, and with him all the others, men,
+women, and children.  They brought axes and knives.  Then Runi
+said: 'Let no one shoot an arrow into the tree thinking to hit
+her, for the arrow would be caught in her hand and thrown back at
+him.  We must burn her in the tree; there is no way to kill her
+except by fire.' Then we went round and round looking up, but
+could see nothing; and someone said: 'She has escaped, flying
+like a bird from the tree'; but Runi answered that fire would
+show.  So we cut down the small tree and lopped the branches off
+and heaped them round the big trunk. Then, at a distance, we cut
+down ten more small trees, and afterwards, further away, ten
+more, and then others, and piled them all round, tree after tree,
+until the pile reached as far from the trunk as that," and here
+he pointed to a bush forty to fifty yards from where we sat.
+
+The feeling with which I had listened to this recital had become
+intolerable.  The sweat ran from me in streams; I shivered like a
+person in a fit of ague, and clenched my teeth together to
+prevent them from rattling.  "I must drink," I said, cutting him
+short and rising to my feet.  He also rose, but did not follow
+me, when, with uncertain steps, I made my way to the waterside,
+which was ten or twelve yards away.  Lying prostrate on my chest,
+I took a long draught of clear cold water, and held my face for a
+few moments in the current.  It sent a chill through me, drying
+my wet skin, and bracing me for the concluding part of the
+hideous narrative.  Slowly I stepped back to the fireside and sat
+down again, while he resumed his old place at my side.
+
+"You burnt the tree down," I said.  "Finish telling me now and
+let me sleep--my eyes are heavy."
+
+"Yes.  While the men cut and brought trees, the women and
+children gathered dry stuff in the forest and brought it in their
+arms and piled it round.  Then they set fire to it on all sides,
+laughing and shouting: 'Burn, burn, daughter of the Didi!' At
+length all the lower branches of the big tree were on fire, and
+the trunk was on fire, but above it was still green, and we could
+see nothing.  But the flames went up higher and higher with a
+great noise; and at last from the top of the tree, out of the
+green leaves, came a great cry, like the cry of a bird: 'Abel! 
+Abel!' and then looking we saw something fall; through leaves and
+smoke and flame it fell like a great white bird killed with an
+arrow and falling to the earth, and fell into the flames beneath. 
+And it was the daughter of the Didi, and she was burnt to ashes
+like a moth in the flames of a fire, and no one has ever heard or
+seen her since."
+
+It was well for me that he spoke rapidly, and finished quickly.
+Even before he had quite concluded I drew my cloak round my face
+and stretched myself out.  And I suppose that he at once followed
+my example, but I had grown blind and deaf to outward things just
+then.  My heart no longer throbbed violently; it fluttered and
+seemed to grow feebler and feebler in its action: I remember that
+there was a dull, rushing sound in my ears, that I gasped for
+breath, that my life seemed ebbing away.  After these horrible
+sensations had passed, I remained quiet for about half an hour;
+and during this time the picture of that last act in the hateful
+tragedy grew more and more distinct and vivid in my mind, until I
+seemed to be actually gazing on it, until my ears were filled
+with the hissing and crackling of the fire, the exultant shouts
+of the savages, and above all the last piercing cry of "Abel!
+Abel!"  from the cloud of burning foliage.  I could not endure it
+longer, and rose at last to my feet.  I glanced at Kua-ko lying
+two or three yards away, and he, like the others, was, or
+appeared to be, in a deep sleep; he was lying on his back, and
+his dark firelit face looked as still and unconscious as a face
+of stone.  Now was my chance to escape--if to escape was my wish.
+Yes; for I now possessed the coveted knowledge, and nothing more
+was to be gained by keeping with my deadly enemies.  And now,
+most fortunately for me, they had brought me far on the road to
+that place of the five hills where Managa lived--Managa, whose
+name had been often in my mind since my return to Parahuari. 
+Glancing away from Kua-ko's still stone-like face.  I caught
+sight of that pale solitary star which Runi had pointed out to me
+low down in the north-western sky when I had asked him where his
+enemy lived. In that direction we had been travelling since
+leaving the village; surely if I walked all night, by tomorrow I
+could reach Managa's hunting-ground, and be safe and think over
+what I had heard and on what I had to do.
+
+I moved softly away a few steps, then thinking that it would be
+well to take a spear in my hand, I turned back, and was surprised
+and startled to notice that Kua-ko had moved in the interval.  He
+had turned over on his side, and his face was now towards me. 
+His eyes appeared closed, but he might be only feigning sleep,
+and I dared not go back to pick up the spear.  After a moment's
+hesitation I moved on again, and after a second glance back and
+seeing that he did not stir, I waded cautiously across the
+stream, walked softly twenty or thirty yards, and then began to
+run.  At intervals I paused to listen for a moment; and presently
+I heard a pattering sound as of footsteps coming swiftly after
+me.  I instantly concluded that Kua-ko had been awake all the
+time watching my movements, and that he was now following me.  I
+now put forth my whole speed, and while thus running could
+distinguish no sound.  That he would miss me, for it was very
+dark, although with a starry sky above, was my only hope; for
+with no weapon except my knife my chances would be small indeed
+should he overtake me.  Besides, he had no doubt roused the
+others before starting, and they would be close behind.  There
+were no bushes in that place to hide myself in and let them pass
+me; and presently, to make matters worse, the character of the
+soil changed, and I was running over level clayey ground, so
+white with a salt efflorescence that a dark object moving on it
+would show conspicuously at a distance.  Here I paused to look
+back and listen, when distinctly came the sound of footsteps, and
+the next moment I made out the vague form of an Indian advancing
+at a rapid rate of speed and with his uplifted spear in his hand. 
+In the brief pause I had made he had advanced almost to within
+hurling distance of me, and turning, I sped on again, throwing
+off my cloak to ease my flight.  The next time I looked back he
+was still in sight, but not so near; he had stopped to pick up my
+cloak, which would be his now, and this had given me a slight
+advantage.  I fled on, and had continued running for a distance
+perhaps of fifty yards when an object rushed past me, tearing
+through the flesh of my left arm close to the shoulder on its
+way; and not knowing that I was not badly wounded nor how near my
+pursuer might be, I turned in desperation to meet him, and saw
+him not above twenty-five yards away, running towards me with
+something bright in his hand.  It was Kua-ko, and after wounding
+me with his spear he was about to finish me with his knife.  O
+fortunate young savage, after such a victory, and with that noble
+blue cloth cloak for trophy and covering, what fame and happiness
+will be yours!  A change swift as lightning had come over me, a
+sudden exultation.  I was wounded, but my right hand was sound
+and clutched a knife as good as his, and we were on an equality. 
+I waited for him calmly.  All weakness, grief, despair had
+vanished, all feelings except a terrible raging desire to spill
+his accursed blood; and my brain was clear and my nerves like
+steel, and I remembered with something like laughter our old
+amusing encounters with rapiers of wood.  Ah, that was only
+making believe and childish play; this was reality.  Could any
+white man, deprived of his treacherous, far-killing weapon, meet
+the resolute savage, face to face and foot to foot, and equal him
+with the old primitive weapons?  Poor youth, this delusion will
+cost you dear!  It was scarcely an equal contest when he hurled
+himself against me, with only his savage strength and courage to
+match my skill; in a few moments he was lying at my feet, pouring
+out his life blood on that white thirsty plain.  From his
+prostrate form I turned, the wet, red knife in my hand, to meet
+the others, still thinking that they were on the track and close
+at hand.  Why had he stooped to pick up the cloak if they were
+not following--if he had not been afraid of losing it?  I turned
+only to receive their spears, to die with my face to them; nor
+was the thought of death terrible to me; I could die calmly now
+after killing my first assailant. But had I indeed killed him?  I
+asked, hearing a sound like a groan escape from his lips. 
+Quickly stooping, I once more drove my weapon to the hilt in his
+prostrate form, and when he exhaled a deep sigh, and his frame
+quivered, and the blood spurted afresh, I experienced a feeling
+of savage joy.  And still no sound of hurrying footsteps came to
+my listening ears and no  vague forms appeared in the darkness. 
+I concluded that he had either left them sleeping or that they
+had not followed in the right direction.  Taking up the cloak, I
+was about to walk on, when I noticed the spear he had thrown at
+me lying where it had fallen some yards away, and picking that up
+also, I went on once more, still keeping the guiding star before
+me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+That good fight had been to me like a draught of wine, and made
+me for a while oblivious of my loss and of the pain from my
+wound.  But the glow and feeling of exultation did not last: the
+lacerated flesh smarted; I was weak from loss of blood, and
+oppressed with sensations of fatigue.  If my foes had appeared on
+the scene they would have made an easy conquest of me; but they
+came not, and I continued to walk on, slowly and painfully,
+pausing often to rest.
+
+At last, recovering somewhat from my faint condition, and losing
+all fear of being overtaken, my sorrow revived in full force, and
+thought returned to madden me.
+
+Alas!  this bright being, like no other in its divine brightness,
+so long in the making, now no more than a dead leaf, a little
+dust, lost and forgotten for ever--oh, pitiless!  Oh, cruel!
+
+But I knew it all before--this law of nature and of necessity,
+against which all revolt is idle: often had the remembrance of it
+filled me with ineffable melancholy; only now it seemed cruel
+beyond all cruelty.
+
+Not nature the instrument, not the keen sword that cuts into the
+bleeding tissues, but the hand that wields it--the unseen unknown
+something, or person, that manifests itself in the horrible
+workings of nature.
+
+"Did you know, beloved, at the last, in that intolerable heat, in
+that moment of supreme anguish, that he is unlistening, unhelpful
+as the stars, that you cried not to him?  To me was your cry; but
+your poor, frail fellow creature was not there to save, or,
+failing that, to cast himself into the flames and perish with
+you, hating God."
+
+Thus, in my insufferable pain, I spoke aloud; alone in that
+solitary place, a bleeding fugitive in the dark night, looking up
+at the stars I cursed the Author of my being and called on Him to
+take back the abhorred gift of life.
+
+Yet, according to my philosophy, how vain it was!  All my
+bitterness and hatred and defiance were as empty, as ineffectual,
+as utterly futile, as are the supplications of the meek
+worshipper, and no more than the whisper of a leaf, the light
+whirr of an insect's wing.  Whether I loved Him who was over all,
+as when I thanked Him on my knees for guiding me to where I had
+heard so sweet and mysterious a melody, or hated and defied Him
+as now, it all came from Him--love and hate, good and evil.
+
+But I know--I knew then--that in one thing my philosophy was
+false, that it was not the whole truth; that though my cries did
+not touch nor come near Him they would yet hurt me; and, just as
+a prisoner maddened at his unjust fate beats against the stone
+walls of his cell until he falls back bruised and bleeding to the
+floor, so did I wilfully bruise my own soul, and knew that those
+wounds I gave myself would not heal.  
+
+Of that night, the beginning of the blackest period of my life, I
+shall say no more; and over subsequent events I shall pass
+quickly.
+
+Morning found me at a distance of many miles from the scene of my
+duel with the Indian, in a broken, hilly country, varied with
+savannah and open forest.  I was well-nigh spent with my long
+march, and felt that unless food was obtained before many hours
+my situation would be indeed desperate.  With labour I managed to
+climb to the summit of a hill about three hundred feet high in
+order to survey the surrounding country, and found that it was
+one of a group of five, and conjectured that these were the five
+hills of Uritay and that I was in the neighbourhood of Managa's
+village.  Coming down I proceeded to the next hill, which was
+higher; and before reaching it came to a stream in a narrow
+valley dividing the hills, and proceeding along its banks in
+search of a crossing-place, I came full in sight of the
+settlement sought for.  As I approached, people were seen moving
+hurriedly about; and by the time I arrived, walking slowly and
+painfully, seven or eight men were standing before the village'
+some with spears in their hands, the women and children behind
+them, all staring curiously at me.  Drawing near I cried out in a
+somewhat feeble voice that I was seeking for Managa; whereupon a
+gray-haired man stepped forth, spear in hand, and replied that he
+was Managa, and demanded to know why I sought him.  I told him a
+part of my story--enough to show that I had a deadly feud with
+Runi, that I had escaped from him after killing one of his
+people.
+
+I was taken in and supplied with food; my wound was examined and
+dressed; and then I was permitted to lie down and sleep, while
+Managa, with half a dozen of his people, hurriedly started to
+visit the scene of my fight with Kua-ko, not only to verify my
+story, but partly with the hope of meeting Runi.  I did not see
+him again until the next morning, when he informed me that he had
+found the spot where I had been overtaken, that the dead man had
+been discovered by the others and carried back towards Parahuari.
+He had followed the trace for some distance, and he was satisfied
+that Runi had come thus far in the first place only with the
+intention of spying on him.
+
+My arrival, and the strange tidings I had brought, had thrown the
+village into a great commotion; it was evident that from that
+time Managa lived in constant apprehension of a sudden attack
+from his old enemy.  This gave me great satisfaction; it was my
+study to keep the feeling alive, and, more than that, to drop
+continual hints of his enemy's secret murderous purpose, until he
+was wrought up to a kind of frenzy of mingled fear and rage.  And
+being of a suspicious and somewhat truculent temper, he one day
+all at once turned on me as the immediate cause of his miserable
+state, suspecting perhaps that I only wished to make an
+instrument of him.  But I was strangely bold and careless of
+danger then, and only mocked at his rage, telling him proudly
+that I feared him not; that Runi, his mortal enemy and mine,
+feared not him but me; that Runi knew perfectly well where I had
+taken refuge and would not venture to make his meditated attack
+while I remained in his village, but would wait for my departure.
+"Kill me, Managa," I cried, smiting my chest as I stood facing
+him.  "Kill me, and the result will be that he will come upon you
+unawares and murder you all, as he has resolved to do sooner or
+later."
+
+After that speech he glared at me in silence, then flung down the
+spear he had snatched up in his sudden rage and stalked out of
+the house and into the wood; but before long he was back again,
+seated in his old place, brooding on my words with a face black
+as night.
+
+It is painful to recall that secret dark chapter of my life--that
+period of moral insanity.  But I wish not to be a hypocrite,
+conscious or unconscious, to delude myself or another with this
+plea of insanity.  My mind was very clear just then; past and
+present were clear to me; the future clearest of all: I could
+measure the extent of my action and speculate on its future
+effect, and my sense of right or wrong--of individual
+responsibility--was more vivid than at any other period of my
+life.  Can I even say that I was blinded by passion?  Driven,
+perhaps, but certainly not blinded.  For no reaction, or
+submission, had followed on that furious revolt against the
+unknown being, personal or not, that is behind nature, in whose
+existence I believed.  I was still in revolt: I would hate Him,
+and show my hatred by being like Him, as He appears to us
+reflected in that mirror of Nature.  Had He given me good
+gifts--the sense of right and wrong and sweet humanity?  The
+beautiful sacred flower He had caused to grow in me I would crush
+ruthlessly; its beauty and fragrance and grace would be dead for
+ever; there was nothing evil, nothing cruel and contrary to my
+nature, that I would not be guilty of, glorying in my guilt. 
+This was not the temper of a few days: I remained for close upon
+two months at Managa's village, never repenting nor desisting in
+my efforts to induce the Indians to join me in that most
+barbarous adventure on which my heart was set.
+
+I succeeded in the end; it would have been strange if I had not.
+The horrible details need not be given.  Managa did not wait for
+his enemy, but fell on him unexpectedly, an hour after nightfall
+in his own village.  If I had really been insane during those two
+months, if some cloud had been on me, some demoniacal force
+dragging me on, the cloud and insanity vanished and the
+constraint was over in one moment, when that hellish enterprise
+was completed.  It was the sight of an old woman, lying where she
+had been struck down, the fire of the blazing house lighting her
+wide-open glassy eyes and white hair dabbled in blood, which
+suddenly, as by a miracle, wrought this change in my brain.  For
+they were all dead at last, old and young, all who had lighted
+the fire round that great green tree in which Rima had taken
+refuge, who had danced round the blaze, shouting: "Burn!  burn!"
+
+At the moment my glance fell on that prostrate form I paused and
+stood still, trembling like a person struck with a sudden pang in
+the heart, who thinks that his last moment has come to him
+unawares.  After a while I slunk away out of the great circle of
+firelight into the thick darkness beyond.  Instinctively I turned
+towards the forests across the savannah--my forest again; and
+fled away from the noise and the sight of flames, never pausing
+until I found myself within the black shadow of the trees.  Into
+the deeper blackness of the interior I dared not venture; on the
+border I paused to ask myself what I did there alone in the
+night-time.  Sitting down, I covered my face with my hands as if
+to hide it more effectually than it could be hidden by night and
+the forest shadows.  What horrible thing, what calamity that
+frightened my soul to think of, had fallen on me?  The revulsion
+of feeling, the unspeakable horror, the remorse, was more than I
+could bear.  I started up with a cry of anguish, and would have
+slain myself to escape at that moment; but Nature is not always
+and utterly cruel, and on this occasion she came to my aid.
+Consciousness forsook me, and I lived not again until the light
+of early morning was in the east; then found myself lying on the
+wet herbage--wet with rain that had lately fallen.  My physical
+misery was now so great that it prevented me from dwelling on the
+scenes witnessed on the previous evening.  Nature was again
+merciful in this.  I only remembered that it was necessary to
+hide myself, in case the Indians should be still in the
+neighbourhood and pay the wood a visit.  Slowly and painfully I
+crept away into the forest, and there sat for several hours,
+scarcely thinking at all, in a half-stupefied condition.  At noon
+the sun shone out and dried the wood.  I felt no hunger, only a
+vague sense of bodily misery, and with it the fear that if I left
+my hiding-place I might meet some human creature face to face. 
+This fear prevented me from stirring until the twilight came,
+when I crept forth and made my way to the border of the forest,
+to spend the night there.  Whether sleep visited me during the
+dark hours or not I cannot say: day and night my condition seemed
+the same; I experienced only a dull sensation of utter misery
+which seemed in spirit and flesh alike, an inability to think
+clearly, or for more than a few moments consecutively, about
+anything.  Scenes in which I had been principal actor came and
+went, as in a dream when the will slumbers: now with devilish
+ingenuity and persistence I was working on Managa's mind; now
+standing motionless in the forest listening for that sweet,
+mysterious melody; now staring aghast at old Cla-cla's wide-open
+glassy eyes and white hair dabbled in blood; then suddenly, in
+the cave at Riolama, I was fondly watching the slow return of
+life and colour to Rima's still face.
+
+When morning came again, I felt so weak that a vague fear of
+sinking down and dying of hunger at last roused me and sent me
+forth in quest of food.  I moved slowly and my eyes were dim to
+see, but I knew so well where to seek for small morsels--small
+edible roots and leaf-stalks, berries, and drops of congealed
+gum--that it would have been strange in that rich forest if I had
+not been able to discover something to stay my famine.  It was
+little, but it sufficed for the day.  Once more Nature was
+merciful to me; for that diligent seeking among the concealing
+leaves left no interval for thought; every chance morsel gave a
+momentary pleasure, and as I prolonged my search my steps grew
+firmer, the dimness passed from my eyes.  I was more forgetful of
+self, more eager, and like a wild animal with no thought or
+feeling beyond its immediate wants.  Fatigued at the end, I fell
+asleep as soon as darkness brought my busy rambles to a close,
+and did not wake until another morning dawned.
+
+My hunger was extreme now.  The wailing notes of a pair of small
+birds, persistently flitting round me, or perched with gaping
+bills and wings trembling with agitation, served to remind me
+that it was now breeding-time; also that Rima had taught me to
+find a small bird's nest.  She found them only to delight her
+eyes with the sight; but they would be food for me; the crystal
+and yellow fluid in the gem-like, white or blue or red-speckled
+shells would help to keep me alive.  All day I hunted, listening
+to every note and cry, watching the motions of every winged
+thing, and found, besides gums and fruits, over a score of nests
+containing eggs, mostly of small birds, and although the labour
+was great and the scratches many, I was well satisfied with the
+result.
+
+A few days later I found a supply of Haima gum, and eagerly began
+picking it from the tree; not that it could be used, but the
+thought of the brilliant light it gave was so strong in my mind
+that mechanically I gathered it all.  The possession of this gum,
+when night closed round me again, produced in me an intense
+longing for artificial light and warmth.  The darkness was harder
+than ever to endure.  I envied the fireflies their natural
+lights, and ran about in the dusk to capture a few and hold them
+in the hollow of my two hands, for the sake of their cold, fitful
+flashes.  On the following day I wasted two or three hours trying
+to get fire in the primitive method with dry wood, but failed,
+and lost much time, and suffered more than ever from hunger in
+consequence.  Yet there was fire in everything; even when I
+struck at hard wood with my knife, sparks were emitted.  If I
+could only arrest those wonderful heat- and light-giving sparks! 
+And all at once, as if I had just lighted upon some new,
+wonderful truth, it occurred to me that with my steel
+hunting-knife and a piece of flint fire could be obtained. 
+Immediately I set about preparing tinder with dry moss, rotten
+wood, and wild cotton; and in a short time I had the wished fire,
+and heaped wood dry and green on it to make it large.  I nursed
+it well, and spent the night beside it; and it also served to
+roast some huge white grubs which I had found in the rotten wood
+of a prostrate trunk.  The sight of these great grubs had
+formerly disgusted me; but they tasted good to me now, and stayed
+my hunger, and that was all I looked for in my wild forest food.
+
+For a long time an undefined feeling prevented me from going near
+the site of Nuflo's burnt lodge.  I went there at last; and the
+first thing I did was to go all round the fatal spot, cautiously
+peering into the rank herbage, as if I feared a lurking serpent;
+and at length, at some distance from the blackened heap, I
+discovered a human skeleton, and knew it to be Nuflo's.  In his
+day he had been a great armadillo-hunter, and these quaint
+carrion-eaters had no doubt revenged themselves by devouring his
+flesh when they found him dead--killed by the savages.
+
+Having once returned to this spot of many memories, I could not
+quit it again; while my wild woodland life lasted, here must I
+have my lair, and being here I could not leave that mournful
+skeleton above ground.  With labour I excavated a pit to bury it,
+careful not to cut or injure a broad-leafed creeper that had
+begun to spread itself over the spot; and after refilling the
+hole I drew the long, trailing stems over the mound.
+
+"Sleep well, old man," said I, when my work was done; and these
+few words, implying neither censure nor praise, was all the
+burial service that old Nuflo had from me.
+
+I then visited the spot where the old man, assisted by me, had
+concealed his provisions before starting for Riolama, and was
+pleased to find that it had not been discovered by the Indians.
+Besides the store of tobacco leaf, maize, pumpkin, potatoes, and
+cassava bread, and the cooking utensils, I found among other
+things a chopper--a great acquisition, since with it I would be
+able to cut down small palms and bamboos to make myself a hut.
+
+The possession of a supply of food left me time for many things:
+time in the first place to make my own conditions; doubtless
+after them there would be further progression on the old
+lines--luxuries added to necessaries; a healthful, fruitful life
+of thought and action combined; and at last a peaceful,
+contemplative old age.
+
+I cleared away ashes and rubbish, and marked out the very spot
+where Rima's separate bower had been for my habitation, which I
+intended to make small.  In five days it was finished; then,
+after lighting a fire, I stretched myself out in my dry bed of
+moss and leaves with a feeling that was almost triumphant.  Let
+the rain now fall in torrents, putting out the firefly's lamp;
+let the wind and thunder roar their loudest, and the lightnings
+smite the earth with intolerable light, frightening the poor
+monkeys in their wet, leafy habitations, little would I heed it
+all on my dry bed, under my dry, palm-leaf thatch, with glorious
+fire to keep me company and protect me from my ancient enemy,
+Darkness.
+
+From that first sleep under shelter I woke refreshed, and was not
+driven by the cruel spur of hunger into the wet forest.  The
+wished time had come of rest from labour, of leisure for thought.
+Resting here, just where she had rested, night by night clasping
+a visionary mother in her arms, whispering tenderest words in a
+visionary ear, I too now clasped her in my arms--a visionary
+Rima.  How different the nights had seemed when I was without
+shelter, before I had rediscovered fire!  How had I endured it?
+That strange ghostly gloom of the woods at night-time full of
+innumerable strange shapes; still and dark, yet with something
+seen at times moving amidst them, dark and vague and strange
+also--an owl, perhaps, or bat, or great winged moth, or nightjar.
+Nor had I any choice then but to listen to the night-sounds of
+the forest; and they were various as the day-sounds, and for
+every day-sound, from the faintest lisping and softest trill to
+the deep boomings and piercing cries, there was an analogue;
+always with something mysterious, unreal in its tone, something
+proper to the night.  They were ghostly sounds, uttered by the
+ghosts of dead animals; they were a hundred different things by
+turns, but always with a meaning in them, which I vainly strove
+to catch--something to be interpreted only by a sleeping faculty
+in us, lightly sleeping, and now, now on the very point of
+awaking!
+
+Now the gloom and the mystery were shut out; now I had that which
+stood in the place of pleasure to me, and was more than pleasure.
+It was a mournful rapture to lie awake now, wishing not for sleep
+and oblivion, hating the thought of daylight that would come at
+last to drown and scare away my vision.  To be with Rima
+again--my lost Rima recovered--mine, mine at last!  No longer the
+old vexing doubt now--"You are you, and I am I--why is it?"--the
+question asked when our souls were near together, like two
+raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer:
+for now they had touched and were not two, but one inseparable
+drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by
+time, nor shattered by death's blow, nor resolved by any alchemy.
+
+I had other company besides this unfailing vision and the bright
+dancing fire that talked to me in its fantastic fire language. 
+It was my custom to secure the door well on retiring; grief had
+perhaps chilled my blood, for I suffered less from heat than from
+cold at this period, and the fire seemed grateful all night long;
+I was also anxious to exclude all small winged and creeping
+night-wanderers.  But to exclude them entirely proved impossible:
+through a dozen invisible chinks they would find their way to me;
+also some entered by day to lie concealed until after nightfall.
+A monstrous hairy hermit spider found an asylum in a dusky corner
+of the hut, under the thatch, and day after day he was there, all
+day long, sitting close and motionless; but at dark he invariably
+disappeared--who knows on what murderous errand!  His hue was a
+deep dead-leaf yellow, with a black and grey pattern, borrowed
+from some wild cat; and so large was he that his great outspread
+hairy legs, radiating from the flat disk of his body, would have
+covered a man's open hand.  It was easy to see him in my small
+interior; often in the night-time my eyes would stray to his
+corner, never to encounter that strange hairy figure; but
+daylight failed not to bring him.  He troubled me; but now, for
+Rima's sake, I could slay no living thing except from motives of
+hunger.  I had it in my mind to injure him--to strike off one of
+his legs, which would not be missed much, as they were many--so
+as to make him go away and return no more to so inhospitable a
+place.  But courage failed me.  He might come stealthily back at
+night to plunge his long, crooked farces into my throat,
+poisoning my blood with fever and delirium and black death.  So I
+left him alone, and glanced furtively and fearfully at him,
+hoping that he had not divined any thoughts; thus we lived on
+unsocially together.  More companionable, but still in an
+uncomfortable way, were the large crawling, running
+insects--crickets, beetles, and others.  They were shapely and
+black and polished, and ran about here and there on the floor,
+just like intelligent little horseless carriages; then they would
+pause with their immovable eyes fixed on me, seeing or in some
+mysterious way divining my presence; their pliant horns waving up
+and down, like delicate instruments used to test the air.
+Centipedes and millipedes in dozens came too, and were not
+welcome.  I feared not their venom, but it was a weariness to see
+them; for they seemed no living things, but the vertebrae of
+snakes and eels and long slim fishes, dead and desiccated, made
+to move mechanically over walls and floor by means of some
+jugglery of nature.  I grew skilful at picking them up with a
+pair of pliant green twigs, to thrust them into the outer
+darkness.
+
+One night a moth fluttered in and alighted on my hand as I sat by
+the fire, causing me to hold my breath as I gazed on it.  Its
+fore-wings were pale grey, with shadings dark and light written
+all over in finest characters with some twilight mystery or
+legend; but the round under-wings were clear amber-yellow, veined
+like a leaf with red and purple veins; a thing of such exquisite
+chaste beauty that the sight of it gave me a sudden shock of
+pleasure.  Very soon it flew up, circling about, and finally
+lighted on the palm-leaf thatch directly over the fire.  The
+heat, I thought, would soon drive it from the spot; and, rising,
+I opened the door, so that it might find its way out again into
+its own cool, dark, flowery world.  And standing by the open door
+I turned and addressed it: "O night-wanderer of the pale,
+beautiful wings, go forth, and should you by chance meet her
+somewhere in the shadowy depths, revisiting her old haunts, be my
+messenger--" Thus much had I spoken when the frail thing loosened
+its hold to fall without a flutter, straight and swift, into the
+white blaze beneath.  I sprang forward with a shriek and stood
+staring into the fire, my whole frame trembling with a sudden
+terrible emotion.  Even thus had Rima fallen--fallen from the
+great height--into the flames that instantly consumed her
+beautiful flesh and bright spirit!  O cruel Nature!
+
+A moth that perished in the flame; an indistinct faint sound; a
+dream in the night; the semblance of a shadowy form moving
+mist-like in the twilight gloom of the forest, would suddenly
+bring back a vivid memory, the old anguish, to break for a while
+the calm of that period.  It was calm then after the storm.
+Nevertheless, my health deteriorated.  I ate little and slept
+little and grew thin and weak.  When I looked down on the dark,
+glassy forest pool, where Rima would look no more to see herself
+so much better than in the small mirror of her lover's pupil, it
+showed me a gaunt, ragged man with a tangled mass of black hair
+falling over his shoulders, the bones of his face showing through
+the dead-looking, sun-parched skin, the sunken eyes with a gleam
+in them that was like insanity.
+
+To see this reflection had a strangely disturbing effect on me. 
+A torturing voice would whisper in my ear: "Yes, you are
+evidently going mad.  By and by you will rush howling through the
+forest, only to drop down at last and die; and no person will
+ever find and bury your bones.  Old Nuflo was more fortunate in
+that he perished first."
+
+"A lying voice!"  I retorted in sudden anger.  "My faculties were
+never keener than now.  Not a fruit can ripen but I find it.  If
+a small bird darts by with a feather or straw in its bill I mark
+its flight, and it will be a lucky bird if I do not find its nest
+in the end.  Could a savage born in the forest do more?  He would
+starve where I find food!"
+
+"Ay, yes, there is nothing wonderful in that," answered the
+voice.  "The stranger from a cold country suffers less from the
+heat, when days are hottest, than the Indian who knows no other
+climate.  But mark the result!  The stranger dies, while the
+Indian, sweating and gasping for breath, survives.  In like
+manner the low-minded savage, cut off from all human fellowship,
+keeps his faculties to the end, while your finer brain proves
+your ruin."
+
+I cut from a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black
+as whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I
+had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb,
+and combed out my long, tangled hair to improve my appearance.
+
+"It is not the tangled condition of your hair," persisted the
+voice, "but your eyes, so wild and strange in their expression,
+that show the approach of madness.  Make your locks as smooth as
+you like, and add a garland of those scarlet, star-shaped
+blossoms hanging from the bush behind you--crown yourself as you
+crowned old Cla-cla--but the crazed look will remain just the
+same."
+
+And being no longer able to reply, rage and desperation drove me
+to an act which only seemed to prove that the hateful voice had
+prophesied truly.  Taking up a stone, I hurled it down on the
+water to shatter the image I saw there, as if it had been no
+faithful reflection of myself, but a travesty, cunningly made of
+enamelled clay or some other material, and put there by some
+malicious enemy to mock me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Many days had passed since the hut was made--how many may not be
+known, since I notched no stick and knotted no cord--yet never in
+my rambles in the wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where
+the fire had done its work.  Nor had I looked for it.  On the
+contrary, my wish was never to see it, and the fear of coming
+accidentally upon it made me keep to the old familiar paths.  But
+at length, one night, without thinking of Rima's fearful end, it
+all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whose blood I
+had shed on the white savannah might have only been practicing
+his natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story.  If
+that were so--if he had been prepared with a fictitious account
+of her death to meet my questions--then Rima might still exist:
+lost, perhaps, wandering in some distant place, exposed to perils
+day and night, and unable to find her way back, but living still!
+Living!  her heart on fire with the hope of reunion with me,
+cautiously threading her way through the undergrowth of
+immeasurable forests; spying out the distant villages and hiding
+herself from the sight of all men, as she knew so well how to
+hide; studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize
+some familiar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the
+old wood once more!  Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she
+might be somewhere in the wood--somewhere near me; but after so
+long an absence full of apprehension, waiting in concealment for
+what tomorrow's light might show.
+
+I started up and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then
+set the door open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood.
+But Rima had done more; going out into the black forest in the
+pitiless storm, she had found and led me home.  Could I do less! 
+I was quickly out in the shadows of the wood.  Surely it was more
+than a mere hope that made my heart beat so wildly!  How could a
+sensation so strangely sudden, so irresistible in its power,
+possess me unless she were living and near?  Can it be, can it be
+that we shall meet again?  To look again into your divine
+eyes--to hold you again in my arms at last!  I so changed--so
+different! But the old love remains; and of all that has happened
+in your absence I shall tell you nothing--not one word; all shall
+be forgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse!  Nothing
+shall ever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for
+he is dead now--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have
+decently buried his poor old sinful bones.  We alone together in
+the wood--OUR wood now!  The sweet old days again; for I know
+that you would not have it different, nor would I.
+
+Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that
+would soon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the
+forest echo with my calls.  "Rima!  Rima!"  I called again and
+again, and waited for some response; and heard only the familiar
+night-sounds--voices of insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog,
+and a low murmur in the topmost foliage, moved by some light
+breath of wind unfelt below.  I was drenched with dew, bruised
+and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks and thorns
+and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually the
+excitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready
+to drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length I
+crept back to my hut, to cast myself on my grass bed and sink
+into a dull, miserable, desponding stupor.
+
+But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to
+search the forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire
+Kua-ko had described to me existed, it would still be possible to
+believe that he had lied to me, and that Rima lived.  I searched
+all day and found nothing; but the area was large, and to search
+it thoroughly would require several days.
+
+On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never
+again would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had
+indeed been a vain one.  There could be no mistake: just such an
+open place as the Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant
+trees standing apart; while one tree stood killed and blackened
+by fire, surrounded by a huge heap, sixty or seventy yards
+across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks and ashes.  Here and
+there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and the
+omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their
+pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks.  I looked long
+at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less
+than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top
+about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth.  What a distance
+to fall, through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot
+dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight into that sea of
+flame below!  How cruel imagination was to turn that desolate
+ash-heap, in spite of feathery foliage and embroidery of
+creepers, into roaring leaping flames again--to bring those dead
+savages back, men, women, and children--even the little ones I
+had played with--to set them yelling around me: "Burn!  burn!" 
+Oh, no, this damnable spot must not be her last resting-place! 
+If the fire had not utterly consumed her, bones as well as sweet
+tender flesh, shrivelling her like a frail white-winged moth into
+the finest white ashes, mixed inseparably with the ashes of stems
+and leaves innumerable, then whatever remained of her must be
+conveyed elsewhere to be with me, to mingle with my ashes at
+last.
+
+Having resolved to sift and examine the entire heap, I at once
+set about my task.  If she had climbed into the central highest
+branch, and had fallen straight, then she would have dropped into
+the flames not far from the roots; and so to begin I made a path
+to the trunk, and when darkness overtook me I had worked all
+round the tree, in a width of three to four yards, without
+discovering any remains.  At noon on the following day I found
+the skeleton, or, at all events, the larger bones, rendered so
+fragile by the fierce heat they had been subjected to, that they
+fell to pieces when handled.  But I was careful--how careful!--to
+save these last sacred relics, all that was now left of
+Rima!--kissing each white fragment as I lifted it, and gathering
+them all in my old frayed cloak, spread out to receive them.  And
+when I had recovered them all, even to the smallest, I took my
+treasure home.
+
+Another storm had shaken my soul, and had been succeeded by a
+second calm, which was more complete and promised to be more
+enduring than the first.  But it was no lethargic calm; my brain
+was more active than ever; and by and by it found a work for my
+hands to do, of such a character as to distinguish me from all
+other forest hermits, fugitives from their fellows, in that
+savage land.  The calcined bones I had rescued were kept in one
+of the big, rudely shaped, half-burnt earthen jars which Nuflo
+had used for storing grain and other food-stuff.  It was of a
+wood-ash colour; and after I had given up my search for the
+peculiar fine clay he had used in its manufacture--for it had
+been in my mind to make a more shapely funeral urn myself--I set
+to work to ornament its surface.  A portion of each day was given
+to this artistic labour; and when the surface was covered with a
+pattern of thorny stems, and a trailing creeper with curving leaf
+and twining tendril, and pendent bud and blossom, I gave it
+colour. Purples and black only were used, obtained from the
+juices of some deeply coloured berries; and when a tint, or
+shade, or line failed to satisfy me I erased it, to do it again;
+and this so often that I never completed my work.  I might, in
+the proudly modest spirit of the old sculptors, have inscribed on
+the vase the words: Abel was doing this.  For was not my ideal
+beautiful like theirs, and the best that my art could do only an
+imperfect copy--a rude sketch?  A serpent was represented wound
+round the lower portion of the jar, dull-hued, with a chain of
+irregular black spots or blotches extending along its body; and
+if any person had curiously examined these spots he would have
+discovered that every other one was a rudely shaped letter, and
+that the letters, by being properly divided, made the following
+words:
+
+Sin vos y siu dios y mi.
+
+Words that to some might seem wild, even insane in their
+extravagance, sung by some ancient forgotten poet; or possibly
+the motto of some love-sick knight-errant, whose passion was
+consumed to ashes long centuries ago.  But not wild nor insane to
+me, dwelling alone on a vast stony plain in everlasting twilight,
+where there was no motion, nor any sound; but all things, even
+trees, ferns, and grasses, were stone.  And in that place I had
+sat for many a thousand years, drawn up and motionless, with
+stony fingers clasped round my legs, and forehead resting on my
+knees; and there would I sit, unmoving, immovable, for many a
+thousand years to come--I, no longer I, in a universe where she
+was not, and God was not.
+
+The days went by, and to others grouped themselves into weeks and
+months; to me they were only days--not Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
+but nameless.  They were so many and their sum so great that all
+my previous life, all the years I had existed before this
+solitary time, now looked like a small island immeasurably far
+away, scarcely discernible, in the midst of that endless desolate
+waste of nameless days.
+
+My stock of provisions had been so long consumed that I had
+forgotten the flavour of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple
+and sweet potatoes.  For Nuflo's cultivated patch had been
+destroyed by the savages--not a stem, not a root had they left:
+and I, like the sorrowful man that broods on his sorrow and the
+artist who thinks only of his art, had been improvident and had
+consumed the seed without putting a portion into the ground. 
+Only wild food, and too little of that, found with much seeking
+and got with many hurts.  Birds screamed at and scolded me;
+branches bruised and thorns scratched me; and still worse were
+the angry clouds of waspish things no bigger than flies. 
+Buzz--buzz!  Sting--sting!  A serpent's tooth has failed to kill
+me; little do I care for your small drops of fiery venom so that
+I get at the spoil--grubs and honey.  My white bread and purple
+wine!  Once my soul hungered after knowledge; I took delight in
+fine thoughts finely expressed; I sought them carefully in
+printed books: now only this vile bodily hunger, this eager
+seeking for grubs and honey, and ignoble war with little things!
+
+A bad hunter I proved after larger game.  Bird and beast despised
+my snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent,
+so many daylight hours to make.  Once, seeing a troop of monkeys
+high up in the tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long
+time, thinking how royally I should feast if by some strange
+unheard-of accident one were to fall disabled to the ground and
+be at my mercy.  But nothing impossible happened, and I had no
+meat.  What meat did I ever have except an occasional fledgling,
+killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small tree-frog detected,
+in spite of its green colour, among the foliage?  I would roast
+the little green minstrel on the coals.  Why not?  Why should he
+live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no
+appreciative ear to listen?  Once I had a different and strange
+kind of meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish.  I found
+a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself
+with a long stick, I roused him from his siesta and slew him
+without mercy.  Rima was not there to pluck the rage from my
+heart and save his evil life. No coral snake this, with slim,
+tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant colour; but
+thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black; also a
+broad, flat, murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blue
+eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and
+make it sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone,
+waiting for the sharp, inevitable stroke--so swift at last, so
+long in coming.  "O abominable flat head, with icy-cold,
+humanlike, fiend-like eyes, I shall cut you off and throw you
+away!"  And away I flung it, far enough in all conscience: yet I
+walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere, somewhere down
+on the black, wet soil where it had fallen, through all that
+dense, thorny tangle and millions of screening leaves, the white,
+lidless, living eyes were following me still, and would always be
+following me in all my goings and comings and windings about in
+the forest.  And what wonder?  For were we not alone together in
+this dreadful solitude, I and the serpent, eaters of the dust,
+singled out and cursed above all cattle?  HE would not have
+bitten me, and I--faithless cannibal!--had murdered him.  That
+cursed fancy would live on, worming itself into every crevice of
+my mind; the severed head would grow and grow in the night-time
+to something monstrous at last, the hellish white lidless eyes
+increasing to the size of two full moons.  "Murderer!  murderer!" 
+they would say; "first a murderer of your own fellow
+creatures--that was a small crime; but God, our enemy, had made
+them in His image, and He cursed you; and we two were together,
+alone and apart--you and I, murderer!  you and I, murderer!"
+
+I tried to escape the tyrannous fancy by thinking of other things
+and by making light of it.  "The starved, bloodless brain," I
+said, "has strange thoughts."  I fell to studying the dark,
+thick, blunt body in my hands; I noticed that the livid, rudely
+blotched, scaly surface showed in some lights a lovely play of
+prismatic colours.  And growing poetical, I said: "When the wild
+west wind broke up the rainbow on the flying grey cloud and
+scattered it over the earth, a fragment doubtless fell on this
+reptile to give it that tender celestial tint.  For thus it is
+Nature loves all her children, and gives to each some beauty,
+little or much; only to me, her hated stepchild, she gives no
+beauty, no grace.  But stay, am I not wronging her?  Did not
+Rima, beautiful above all things, love me well?  said she not
+that I was beautiful?"
+
+"Ah, yes, that was long ago," spoke the voice that mocked me by
+the pool when I combed out my tangled hair.  "Long ago, when the
+soul that looked from your eyes was not the accursed thing it is
+now.  Now Rima would start at the sight of them; now she would
+fly in terror from their insane expression."
+
+"O spiteful voice, must you spoil even such appetite as I have
+for this fork-tongued spotty food?  You by day and Rima by
+night--what shall I do--what shall I do?"
+
+For it had now come to this, that the end of each day brought not
+sleep and dreams, but waking visions.  Night by night, from my
+dry grass bed I beheld Nuflo sitting in his old doubled-up
+posture, his big brown feet close to the white ashes--sitting
+silent and miserable.  I pitied him; I owed him hospitality; but
+it seemed intolerable that he should be there.  It was better to
+shut my eyes; for then Rima's arms would be round my neck; the
+silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowery breath mixing
+with my breath.  What a luminous face was hers!  Even with
+closeshut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin
+showing the radiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual
+and passionate, dark as purple wine under their dark lashes. 
+Then my eyes would open wide.  No Rima in my arms!  But over
+there, a little way back from the fire, just beyond where old
+Nuflo had sat brooding a few minutes ago, Rima would be standing,
+still and pale and unspeakably sad.  Why does she come to me from
+the outside darkness to stand there talking to me, yet never once
+lifting her mournful eyes to mine?  "Do not believe it, Abel; no,
+that was only a phantom of your brain, the What-I-was that you
+remember so well.  For do you not see that when I come she fades
+away and is nothing?  Not that--do not ask it.  I know that I
+once refused to look into your eyes, and afterwards, in the cave
+at Riolama, I looked long and was happy--unspeakably happy!  But
+now--oh, you do not know what you ask; you do not know the sorrow
+that has come into mine; that if you once beheld it, for very
+sorrow you would die.  And you must live.  But I will wait
+patiently, and we shall be together in the end, and see each
+other without disguise.  Nothing shall divide us.  Only wish not
+for it soon; think not that death will ease your pain, and seek
+it not. Austerities?  Good works?  Prayers?  They are not seen;
+they are not heard, they are less-than nothing, and there is no
+intercession. I did not know it then, but you knew it.  Your life
+was your own; you are not saved nor judged!  acquit
+yourself--undo that which you have done, which Heaven cannot
+undo--and Heaven will say no word nor will I.  You cannot, Abel,
+you cannot.  That which you have done is done, and yours must be
+the penalty and the sorrow--yours and mine--yours and mine--yours
+and mine."
+
+This, too, was a phantom, a Rima of the mind, one of the shapes
+the ever-changing black vapours of remorse and insanity would
+take; and all her mournful sentences were woven out of my own
+brain.  I was not so crazed as not to know it; only a phantom, an
+illusion, yet more real than reality--real as my crime and vain
+remorse and death to come.  It was, indeed, Rima returned to tell
+me that I that loved her had been more cruel to her than her
+cruellest enemies; for they had but tortured and destroyed her
+body with fire, while I had cast this shadow on her soul--this
+sorrow transcending all sorrows, darker than death, immitigable,
+eternal.
+
+If I could only have faded gradually, painlessly, growing feebler
+in body and dimmer in my senses each day, to sink at last into
+sleep!  But it could not be.  Still the fever in my brain, the
+mocking voice by day, the phantoms by night; and at last I became
+convinced that unless I quitted the forest before long, death
+would come to me in some terrible shape.  But in the feeble
+condition I was now in, and without any provisions, to escape
+from the neighbourhood of Parahuari was impossible, seeing that
+it was necessary at starting to avoid the villages where the
+Indians were of the same tribe as Runi, who would recognize me as
+the white man who was once his guest and afterwards his
+implacable enemy.  I must wait, and in spite of a weakened body
+and a mind diseased, struggle still to wrest a scanty subsistence
+from wild nature.
+
+One day I discovered an old prostrate tree, buried under a thick
+growth of creeper and fern, the wood of which was nearly or quite
+rotten, as I proved by thrusting my knife to the heft in it.  No
+doubt it would contain grubs--those huge, white wood-borers which
+now formed an important item in my diet.  On the following day I
+returned to the spot with a chopper and a bundle of wedges to
+split the trunk up, but had scarcely commenced operations when an
+animal, startled at my blows, rushed or rather wriggled from its
+hiding-place under the dead wood at a distance of a few yards
+from me.  It was a robust, round-headed, short-legged creature,
+about as big as a good-sized cat, and clothed in a thick,
+greenish-brown fur.  The ground all about was covered with
+creepers, binding the ferns, bushes, and old dead branches
+together; and in this confused tangle the animal scrambled and
+tore with a great show of energy, but really made very little
+progress; and all at once it flashed into my mind that it was a
+sloth--a common animal, but rarely seen on the ground--with no
+tree near to take refuge in.  The shock of joy this discovery
+produced was great enough to unnerve me, and for some moments I
+stood trembling, hardly able to breathe; then recovering I
+hastened after it, and stunned it with a blow from my chopper on
+its round head.
+
+"Poor sloth!"  I said as I stood over it.  "Poor old lazy-bones!
+Did Rima ever find you fast asleep in a tree, hugging a branch as
+if you loved it, and with her little hand pat your round,
+human-like head; and laugh mockingly at the astonishment in your
+drowsy, waking eyes; and scold you tenderly for wearing your
+nails so long, and for being so ugly?  Lazybones, your death is
+revenged!  Oh, to be out of this wood--away from this sacred
+place--to be anywhere where killing is not murder!"
+
+Then it came into my mind that I was now in possession of the
+supply of food which would enable me to quit the wood.  A noble
+capture!  As much to me as if a stray, migratory mule had rambled
+into the wood and found me, and I him.  Now I would be my own
+mule, patient, and long-suffering, and far-going, with naked feet
+hardened to hoofs, and a pack of provender on my back to make me
+independent of the dry, bitter grass on the sunburnt savannahs.
+
+Part of that night and the next morning was spent in curing the
+flesh over a smoky fire of green wood and in manufacturing a
+rough sack to store it in, for I had resolved to set out on my
+journey.  How safely to convey Rima's treasured ashes was a
+subject of much thought and anxiety.  The clay vessel on which I
+had expended so much loving, sorrowful labour had to be left,
+being too large and heavy to carry; eventually I put the
+fragments into a light sack; and in order to avert suspicion from
+the people I would meet on the way, above the ashes I packed a
+layer of roots and bulbs.  These I would say contained medicinal
+properties, known to the white doctors, to whom I would sell them
+on my arrival at a Christian settlement, and with the money buy
+myself clothes to start life afresh.
+
+On the morrow I would bid a last farewell to that forest of many
+memories.  And my journey would be eastwards, over a wild savage
+land of mountains, rivers, and forests, where every dozen miles
+would be like a hundred of Europe; but a land inhabited by tribes
+not unfriendly to the stranger.  And perhaps it would be my good
+fortune to meet with Indians travelling east who would know the
+easiest routes; and from time to time some compassionate voyager
+would let me share his wood-skin, and many leagues would be got
+over without weariness, until some great river, flowing through
+British or Dutch Guiana, would be reached; and so on, and on, by
+slow or swift stages, with little to eat perhaps, with much
+labour and pain, in hot sun and in storm, to the Atlantic at
+last, and towns inhabited by Christian men.
+
+In the evening of that day, after completing my preparations, I
+supped on the remaining portions of the sloth, not suitable for
+preservation, roasting bits of fat on the coals and boiling the
+head and bones into a broth; and after swallowing the liquid I
+crunched the bones and sucked the marrow, feeding like some
+hungry carnivorous animal.
+
+Glancing at the fragments scattered on the floor, I remembered
+old Nuflo, and how I had surprised him at his feast of rank
+coatimundi in his secret retreat.  "Nuflo, old neighbour," said
+I, "how quiet you are under your green coverlet, spangled just
+now with yellow flowers!  It is no sham sleep, old man, I know. 
+If any suspicion of these curious doings, this feast of flesh on
+a spot once sacred, could flit like a small moth into your mouldy
+hollow skull you would soon thrust out your old nose to sniff the
+savour of roasting fat once more."
+
+There was in me at that moment an inclination to laughter; it
+came to nothing, but affected me strangely, like an impulse I had
+not experienced since boyhood--familiar, yet novel.  After the
+good-night to my neighbour, I tumbled into my straw and slept
+soundly, animal-like.  No fancies and phantoms that night: the
+lidless, white, implacable eyes of the serpent's severed head
+were turned to dust at last; no sudden dream-glare lighted up old
+Cla-cla's wrinkled dead face and white, blood-dabbled locks; old
+Nuflo stayed beneath his green coverlet; nor did my mournful
+spirit-bride come to me to make my heart faint at the thought of
+immortality.
+
+But when morning dawned again, it was bitter to rise up and go
+away for ever from that spot where I had often talked with
+Rima--the true and the visionary.  The sky was cloudless and the
+forest wet as if rain had fallen; it was only a heavy dew, and it
+made the foliage look pale and hoary in the early light.  And the
+light grew, and a whispering wind sprung as I walked through the
+wood; and the fast-evaporating moisture was like a bloom on the
+feathery fronds and grass and rank herbage; but on the higher
+foliage it was like a faint iridescent mist--a glory above the
+trees.  The everlasting beauty and freshness of nature was over
+all again, as I had so often seen it with joy and adoration
+before grief and dreadful passions had dimmed my vision.  And now
+as I walked, murmuring my last farewell, my eyes grew dim again
+with the tears that gathered to them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Before that well-nigh hopeless journey to the coast was half over
+I became ill--so ill that anyone who had looked on me might well
+have imagined that I had come to the end of my pilgrimage.  That
+was what I feared.  For days I remained sunk in the deepest
+despondence; then, in a happy moment, I remembered how, after
+being bitten by the serpent, when death had seemed near and
+inevitable, I had madly rushed away through the forest in search
+of help, and wandered lost for hours in the storm and darkness,
+and in the end escaped death, probably by means of these frantic
+exertions.  The recollection served to inspire me with a new
+desperate courage.  Bidding good-bye to the Indian village where
+the fever had smitten me, I set out once more on that apparently
+hopeless adventure.  Hopeless, indeed, it seemed to one in my
+weak condition.  My legs trembled under me when I walked, while
+hot sun and pelting rain were like flame and stinging ice to my
+morbidly sensitive skin.  
+
+For many days my sufferings were excessive, so that I often
+wished myself back in that milder purgatory of the forest, from
+which I had been so anxious to escape.  When I try to retrace my
+route on the map, there occurs a break here--a space on the chart
+where names of rivers and mountains call up no image to my mind,
+although, in a few cases, they were names I seem to have heard in
+a troubled dream.  The impressions of nature received during that
+sick period are blurred, or else so coloured and exaggerated by
+perpetual torturing anxiety, mixed with half-delirious
+night-fancies, that I can only think of that country as an
+earthly inferno, where I fought against every imaginable
+obstacle, alternately sweating and freezing, toiling as no man
+ever toiled before.  Hot and cold, cold and hot, and no medium.
+Crystal waters; green shadows under coverture of broad, moist
+leaves; and night with dewy fanning winds--these chilled but did
+not refresh me; a region in which there was no sweet and pleasant
+thing; where even the ita palm and mountain glory and airy
+epiphyte starring the woodland twilight with pendent blossoms had
+lost all grace and beauty; where all brilliant colours in earth
+and heaven were like the unmitigated sun that blinded my sight
+and burnt my brain.  Doubtless I met with help from the natives,
+otherwise I do not see how I could have continued my journey; yet
+in my dim mental picture of that period I see myself incessantly
+dogged by hostile savages.  They flit like ghosts through the
+dark forest; they surround me and cut off all retreat, until I
+burst through them, escaping out of their very hands, to fly over
+some wide, naked savannah, hearing their shrill, pursuing yells
+behind me, and feeling the sting of their poisoned arrows in my
+flesh.
+
+This I set down to the workings of remorse in a disordered mind
+and to clouds of venomous insects perpetually shrilling in my
+ears and stabbing me with their small, fiery needles.
+
+Not only was I pursued by phantom savages and pierced by phantom
+arrows, but the creations of the Indian imagination had now
+become as real to me as anything in nature.  I was persecuted by
+that superhuman man-eating monster supposed to be the guardian of
+the forest.  In dark, silent places he is lying in wait for me:
+hearing my slow, uncertain footsteps he starts up suddenly in my
+path, outyelling the bearded aguaratos in the trees; and I stand
+paralysed, my blood curdled in my veins.  His huge, hairy arms
+are round me; his foul, hot breath is on my skin; he will tear my
+liver out with his great green teeth to satisfy his raging
+hunger.  Ah, no, he cannot harm me!  For every ravening beast,
+every cold-blooded, venomous thing, and even the frightful
+Curupita, half brute and half devil, that shared the forest with
+her, loved and worshipped Rima, and that mournful burden I
+carried, her ashes, was a talisman to save me. He has left me,
+the semi-human monster, uttering such wild, lamentable cries as
+he hurries away into the deeper, darker woods that horror changes
+to grief, and I, too, lament Rima for the first time: a memory of
+all the mystic, unimaginable grace and loveliness and joy that
+had vanished smites on my heart with such sudden, intense pain
+that I cast myself prone on the earth and weep tears that are
+like drops of blood.
+
+Where in the rude savage heart of Guiana was this region where
+the natural obstacles and pain and hunger and thirst and
+everlasting weariness were terrible enough without the imaginary
+monsters and legions of phantoms that peopled it, I cannot say.
+Nor can I conjecture how far I strayed north or south from my
+course.  I only know that marshes that were like Sloughs of
+Despond, and barren and wet savannahs, were crossed; and forests
+that seemed infinite in extent and never to be got through; and
+scores of rivers that boiled round the sharp rocks, threatening
+to submerge or dash in pieces the frail bark canoe--black and
+frightful to look on as rivers in hell; and nameless mountain
+after mountain to be toiled round or toiled over.  I may have
+seen Roraima during that mentally clouded period.  I vaguely
+remember a far-extending gigantic wall of stone that seemed to
+bar all further progress--a rocky precipice rising to a
+stupendous height, seen by moonlight, with a huge sinuous rope of
+white mist suspended from its summit; as if the guardian camoodi
+of the mountain had been a league-long spectral serpent which was
+now dropping its coils from the mighty stone table to frighten
+away the rash intruder.
+
+That spectral moonlight camoodi was one of many serpent fancies
+that troubled me.  There was another, surpassing them all, which
+attended me many days.  When the sun grew hot overhead and the
+way was over open savannah country, I would see something moving
+on the ground at my side and always keeping abreast of me.  A
+small snake, one or two feet long.  No, not a small snake, but a
+sinuous mark in the pattern on a huge serpent's head, five or six
+yards long, always moving deliberately at my side.  If a cloud
+came over the sun, or a fresh breeze sprang up, gradually the
+outline of that awful head would fade and the well-defined
+pattern would resolve itself into the motlings on the earth.  But
+if the sun grew more and more hot and dazzling as the day
+progressed, then the tremendous ophidian head would become
+increasingly real to my sight, with glistening scales and
+symmetrical markings; and I would walk carefully not to stumble
+against or touch it; and when I cast my eyes behind me I could
+see no end to its great coils extending across the savannah. 
+Even looking back from the summit of a high hill I could see it
+stretching leagues and leagues away through forests and rivers,
+across wide plains, valleys and mountains, to lose itself at last
+in the infinite blue distance.
+
+How or when this monster left me--washed away by cold rains
+perhaps--I do not know.  Probably it only transformed itself into
+some new shape, its long coils perhaps changing into those
+endless processions and multitudes of pale-faced people I seem to
+remember having encountered.  In my devious wanderings I must
+have reached the shores of the undiscovered great White Lake, and
+passed through the long shining streets of Manoa, the mysterious
+city in the wilderness.  I see myself there, the wide
+thoroughfare filled from end to end with people gaily dressed as
+if for some high festival, all drawing aside to let the wretched
+pilgrim pass, staring at his fever- and famine-wasted figure, in
+its strange rags, with its strange burden.
+
+A new Ahasuerus, cursed by inexpiable crime, yet sustained by a
+great purpose.
+
+But Ahasuerus prayed ever for death to come to him and ran to
+meet it, while I fought against it with all my little strength.
+Only at intervals, when the shadows seemed to lift and give me
+relief, would I pray to Death to spare me yet a little longer;
+but when the shadows darkened again and hope seemed almost
+quenched in utter gloom, then I would curse it and defy its
+power.  Through it all I clung to the belief that my will would
+conquer, that it would enable me to keep off the great enemy from
+my worn and suffering body until the wished goal was reached;
+then only would I cease to fight and let death have its way.
+There would have been comfort in this belief had it not been for
+that fevered imagination which corrupted everything that touched
+me and gave it some new hateful character.  For soon enough this
+conviction that the will would triumph grew to something
+monstrous, a parent of monstrous fancies.  Worst of all, when I
+felt no actual pain, but only unutterable weariness of body and
+soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knew not whether I
+trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I was
+already dead, so far as the body was concerned--had perhaps been
+dead for days--that only the unconquerable will survived to
+compel the dead flesh to do its work.
+
+Whether it really was will--more potent than the bark of barks
+and wiser than the physicians--or merely the vis medicatrix with
+which nature helps our weakness even when the will is suspended,
+that saved me I cannot say; but it is certain that I gradually
+recovered health, physical and mental, and finally reached the
+coast comparatively well, although my mind was still in a gloomy,
+desponding state when I first walked the streets of Georgetown,
+in rags, half-starved and penniless.
+
+But even when well, long after the discovery that my flesh was
+not only alive, but that it was of an exceedingly tough quality,
+the idea born during the darkest period of my pilgrimage, that
+die I must, persisted in my mind.  I had lived through that which
+would have killed most men--lived only to accomplish the one
+remaining purpose of my life.  Now it was accomplished; the
+sacred ashes brought so far, with such infinite labour, through
+so many and such great perils, were safe and would mix with mine
+at last. There was nothing more in life to make me love it or
+keep me prisoner in its weary chains.  This prospect of near
+death faded in time; love of life returned, and the earth had
+recovered its everlasting freshness and beauty; only that feeling
+about Rima's ashes did not fade or change, and is as strong now
+as it was then.  Say that it is morbid--call it superstition if
+you like; but there it is, the most powerful motive I have known,
+always in all things to be taken into account--a philosophy of
+life to be made to fit it.  Or take it as a symbol, since that
+may come to be one with the thing symbolized.  In those darkest
+days in the forest I had her as a visitor--a Rima of the mind,
+whose words when she spoke reflected my despair.  Yet even then I
+was not entirely without hope.  Heaven itself, she said, could
+not undo that which I had done; and she also said that if I
+forgave myself, Heaven would say no word, nor would she.  That is
+my philosophy still: prayers, austerities, good works--they avail
+nothing, and there is no intercession, and outside of the soul
+there is no forgiveness in heaven or earth for sin.  Nevertheless
+there is a way, which every soul can find out for itself--even
+the most rebellious, the most darkened with crime and tormented
+by remorse.  In that way I have walked; and, self-forgiven and
+self-absolved, I know that if she were to return once more and
+appear to me--even here where her ashes are--I know that her
+divine eyes would no longer refuse to look into mine, since the
+sorrow which seemed eternal and would have slain me to see would
+not now be in them.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson
+
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