L

The sun of the 25th of July was setting in the misty horizon of the sea, filling the western sky with gleaming ruby and gold. The level rays pursued the blue waves, that ran as fugitives to hide beneath the dark forests on the coast. The Emilia López on board of which I had come from Panama, anchored in the Bay of Buenaventura. To those who saw her from the shore the beautiful schooner must have seemed like a handsome peasant-girl, in holiday attire, running hastily through the meadows to gather flowers for her adornment at the evening merrymaking.

Leaning against the rail, I gazed upon those mountains the very sight of which revived such sweet hopes. Seventeen months before, gliding by them, as I was borne on by the swift current of the Dagua, my heart had said goodbye to each one of them, and their voiceless solitude had harmonized with my sorrow.

Shaking in the breeze, I held in my hand a letter from María which I had received in Panama, and which I read again in the fading twilight.

“The news of your return has been enough to give me new strength. I am counting the days now, as everyone that passes brings nearer the time of my seeing you again.

“The morning has been lovely today⁠—lovely as those which you have not forgotten. I had Emma lead me out into the garden. I went to its most beloved spots. Beneath those trees, surrounded by all those flowers, seeing the brook flow by, I felt almost well. If this is so already, how much better shall I not be when I can walk about with you!

“I have just hung some of our roses and lilies on the picture of the Virgin. I thought she looked at me more sweetly than usual, and that she was going to smile.

“But they want us to go to the city, as they say the doctors can treat me better there. I need no other medicine than having you with me forever. I wish to wait for you here, and not to leave all this which you loved. It seems as if you had left it in my care, and that you would not love me so much anywhere else. I shall beg papa to delay our journey, and meanwhile you will come. Goodbye.”

The last lines were almost illegible.

The customhouse boat, which had left the beach as soon as the schooner let go her anchor, was now alongside.

“Lorenzo!” I exclaimed, recognizing a dear friend in the fine mulato who was standing up between the collector and the chief of the customs guard.

“Here I come,” he answered.

Rushing up the ladder, he caught me in his arms.

“Let us not cry,” he said, wiping his eyes, and forcing himself to smile; “they are watching us, and these sailors have hearts of stone.”

Already he had told me, in a few words, what I was so anxious to know: María was better when he left home. Although he had been waiting for me two weeks in Buenaventura, no letters had come for me except the ones he had brought. The reason was that the family was looking for me at any minute.

Lorenzo was not a slave. A faithful companion of my father, during the time of his frequent business journeys, he was loved by the whole family, and enjoyed in our home the rights of an overseer and the privileges of a friend. In his face and figure, his strength and openness of character were revealed. Tall and strong, his forehead was broad, and his temples well filled out. His eyes were fine, and shaded by curling black eyebrows. His nose was straight and flexible, his teeth beautiful, his beard heavy, and his smile friendly.

As soon as the collector’s inspection of the vessel was ended, which he hastened on my account, my baggage was put in the boat, and I jumped in to go back with it. As we drew near the shore, the horizon had already become obscured. Smooth, dark waves passed silently by, rocking our boat and then disappearing in the darkness. Countless fireflies flitted about above the murmurous darkness of the woods on the shore.

The collector was a citizen of doubtful age, fat and rosy. He was a friend of my father’s. As soon as we landed he took me to his own house, and personally established me in the room which he had made ready for me. After hanging up a large scented hammock of palm-fibre, he went out, saying, “I am going to arrange for the passing of your baggage, and to give some still more important orders to the cook, for I do not suppose the storerooms and pantries of the Emilia could have been very heavily freighted, she danced about on the waves so lightly today.”

Although the collector was the father of a fine and interesting family in the interior of Cauca, he resolved not to bring his children to the port when he took his present office. There were a thousand reasons for this, and he told them all to me. I found them conclusive. The people on the coast, he said, seemed to him to be getting more and more light-minded, gossipy, and lazy. Still, he could not have found this so very bad, since a stay of a few months on the coast had pretty thoroughly infected the collector himself with that same laziness.

After a quarter of an hour, which I employed in changing my clothes, the collector came back to look for me. He had already put off his official uniform, and wore trousers and jacket of unexceptionable whiteness. His coat and cravat had entered upon a new period of obscurity and neglect.

“You will rest here a couple of days before continuing your journey,” he said, filling two glasses with brandy, which he poured from a costly flask.

“But I do not need to rest, and I cannot,” I remarked.

“Take some brandy. It is an excellent Martell. Or do you prefer something else?”

“I thought that Lorenzo had boatmen and canoes all ready for an early start tomorrow.”

“We’ll see about it. Well, will you have some gin or whiskey?”

“Whatever you like.”

“Your health, then,” he said, pledging me.

After emptying the glass at a single swallow, he winked both eyes, and asked, “Isn’t that a superior article?”

Then he added, smacking his lips, “It’s easy to see that you have been sampling the oldest in England.”

“There are thirsty mortals everywhere. Well, I can make an early start?”

“That was all my joke,” he replied, seating himself carelessly in the hammock, and wiping the sweat from his throat and forehead with a large India silk handkerchief. “Thirst everywhere, eh? Well, water and that are the only doctors we apply to here, except a viper’s bite.”

“Let us talk seriously. What is that you call your joke?”

“My proposal that you should rest, man. Do you suppose your father has delayed ordering me to have everything ready for your departure? It’s nearly two weeks since Lorenzo came, and a week since the boatmen were ready, and the canoe roofed over. The fact is, I ought not to have been so prompt, and then I might have got you to let me coddle you for two days.”

“How much I thank you for your promptness!”

He laughed boisterously, swinging the hammock to give himself air. At last he said, “Ingrate!”

“No, it is not that. You know that I cannot, that I should not, delay a single hour more than is absolutely necessary. It is imperative that I get home very quickly.”

“Yes, yes; that is true. It would be selfishness on my part,” he said, quite seriously now.

“What do you know about it?”

“The disease which one of the young ladies has⁠ ⁠… but you must have received the letters I forwarded to you at Panama.”

“Yes, thanks, just as I went on board.”

“Do they not say that she is better?”

“They do.”

“And Lorenzo?”

“He says the same.”

We were both silent for a moment, and then the collector sat up in the hammock, and called, “Marcos! the dinner!”

A servant entered at once to announce that dinner was served.

“Come,” said my host, rising, “I’m hungry. If you had taken the brandy you would have a fine appetite. Say,” he added, addressing a servant as we entered the dining-room, “if anyone comes to look for us, tell him that we are not in the house. You must go to bed early,” he remarked to me, pointing me to the seat at the head of the table, “in order to get off early in the morning.”

He and Lorenzo placed themselves on either side of me.

“The deuce!” exclaimed the collector, when the light of the fine table-lamp fell upon my face; “what a fuzz of a beard you have brought back! If you were not so swarthy, I could swear that you couldn’t so much as say ‘good day’ in Spanish. It seems as if I were seeing your father when he was twenty⁠—though I think you are taller than he. But for that sedateness, which I suppose you have inherited from your mother, I could believe that I was with your father when he first landed in Quibdó! Don’t it seem so to you, Lorenzo?”

“Precisely,” replied he.

“If you could have seen,” continued my host, addressing Lorenzo, “the excitement of our little Englishman when I told him that he would have to stay two days with me. He was so vexed that he said my brandy would burn up I don’t know what. I declare I was afraid he would quarrel with me. Let’s see if you think the same of this wine, and if we can make you smile. How is it?” he added, after I had tasted the wine.

“It is very good.”

“I was trembling for fear you would make a face over it, for it is the very best I could get for you to take with you on the river.”

The collector’s jollity did not flag an instant for two hours. He allowed me to go to bed at nine, promising to be up at four in the morning to go with me to the landing. As he said good night, he added: “I hope you will not have to complain of the rats in the morning, as you did before. That bad night they gave you has cost them dear. Since then, it has been war to the death between them and me.”