LI

My good friend knocked at my door at four. I had been waiting for him an hour, all ready to set out. He, Lorenzo, and I took coffee while the boatmen were carrying my luggage to the canoes, and soon after we were all on the beach.

The moon, at the full, was already sinking in the west. As it shone out below the clouds which had been concealing it, it bathed the distant forests, the mangrove-trees on the shores, and the smooth and quiet sea in a flush of tremulous light.

“Well, when shall I see you again?” asked the collector, as he gave me a parting embrace.

“Perhaps I shall be back very soon,” I replied.

“You mean to go back to Europe, then?”

“Perhaps.”

That cheerful man seemed suddenly to grow melancholy. As our canoe pushed off from the shore, he shouted, “A very prosperous journey!”

Then he called to the two boatmen, “Cortico! Laurean! take good care of him for me; take as good care of him as if he belonged to me.”

“Yes, master,” replied the two negroes together.

We were about two hundred yards from the beach, but I thought I could distinguish the collector’s white bulk, motionless, in the spot where he had taken leave of me. The yellowish gleam of the moon, sometimes hidden, always funereal, lighted us until after we had entered the mouth of the Dagua.

I stood at the door of the rude cabin, above which arched a roof made of reeds and broad leaves thatched together. Lorenzo arranged a sort of bed for me upon some boards in that floating grotto, and sat at my feet with his head upon his knees, apparently taking a nap. Cortico (or, rather, Gregorio, as he had been baptized) was rowing near us, muttering, at intervals, a dancing tune. The athletic body of Laurean was sketched, like the profile of a giant, against the last flush of the vanishing moon.

Almost inaudible were the monotonous and hoarse cries of the toads in the mangrove-trees on the shores, and the subdued rush of the current. Nothing else broke in upon that solemn silence which pervades the wilderness in its last sleep⁠—a sleep always as deep as man’s in the last hours of the night.

“Try a swallow, Cortico, and then you will sing that mournful song better,” I said to the dwarfish boatman.

“What do you say, my master? Does that seem mournful to you?”

Lorenzo poured out of his painted horn a large amount of spirits into the mate which the boatman offered him. Cortico went on, “The night dew must have made me hoarse.” Then he called out to his companion, “Compa’e Laurean, the white one wants you to clear your chest and sing him a jolly little dancing song.”

“Do as you like,” responded the one addressed, in a hoarse, resounding voice; “it’s another sort of dance that’s going to begin in the dark. Hadn’t you seen it?”

“By the same sign, Seño’.”

Laurean sampled the brandy like an expert, muttering, “No discount on that!”

“What is that about the dance in the dark?” I asked him.

For reply, he took his place and struck up the first of the following couplets, Cortico replying with the second, and so on to the end of the wild and emotional song:

“Now the moon from us is sinking⁠—
Row on, row on.
Of what’s my lonely negress thinking?
Weep on, weep on.
Thy sable night now covers me,
Saint John, Saint John;
Thy night is no more black than she,
No more, no more.
I see the distant lightnings shine
On sea, on shore;
No brighter than those eyes of mine⁠—
Take oar, take oar.”

That chant harmonized dolorously with the nature about us; its deep and plaintive tones were repeated by the slow echoes of those immense forests.

“No more of the dance,” I said to the negroes, taking advantage of the last pause.

“Does your honor think it was badly sung?” asked Gregorio, who was the more talkative one.

“No, my friend; but it’s very sad.”

“That jig?”

“Whatever it is.”

“Praised be God! I tell you that when they sing me a fine jig, and I dance it with that dear little Mariugenia⁠—believe what I say, your honor⁠—the very angels in heaven beat time with their feet and want to dance it, too.”

“Shut your beak and open your eye, compa’e,” said Laurean. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Do you think I am deaf?”

“Very well, then.”

“We’ll see it, Seño’.”

The current of the river began to struggle with our boat. The creaking of the oars in the rowlocks could now be heard. Several times Gregorio gave a stroke with his oar on the side of the canoe, to indicate that we must change shores and cross the stream. Little by little the darkness became deeper. From the direction of the sea the roll of distant thunder reached us. The boatmen were silent. A sound like the echoing flight of a hurricane through the forests could be beard. Great drops of rain began to fall.

I lay down on the bed which Lorenzo had spread out for me. He was going to have a light, but Gregorio, seeing him strike a match, said, “Don’t light the candle, boss, for it will dazzle me, and make snakes come aboard.”

The rain beat fiercely on the roof of the cabin. All that darkness and quiet was pleasant to me, after the forced intercourse and pretended friendships with all sorts of people during my journey. The sweetest memories, and the gloomiest forebodings, strove for the possession of my heart to encourage or sadden it. Five days more would be enough to bring me where I could hold her in my arms again, to give back to her that life of which my absence had robbed her. My voice, my caresses, my eyes, which had been able to move her so powerfully, would they not be able to win her back from grief and death? My memory ran over what she said in her last letter: “The news of your return has been enough to give me new strength.⁠ ⁠… I cannot die and leave you alone forever.”

Before my imagination rose my father’s house in the midst of its green hills, shaded by the aged willows, garlanded with roses, lighted up by the splendor of the rising sun. María’s garments rustled near me. It was the breeze of the Zabaletas that stirred my hair. I was breathing the perfumes of María’s flowers. The wilderness, with its odors and its whispers, was an accomplice in the delicious illusion.

The canoe came to a stop on a beach of the left bank.

“What is it?” I asked Lorenzo.

“We are at Arenal.”

“Holloa! A guard! Smugglers are passing!” shouted Cortico.

“Halt!” answered a man, who must have been in ambush, as his voice came from very near the bank.

Both the boatmen burst into an uproarious laugh, and Gregorio said, before he was fairly through it: “Blessed Saint Paul! This Christian was going to bite me. Chief Anselmo, you’ll be killed by rheumatism, putting yourself in a swamp like that. Who told you that I was going up, Seño’?”

“Rogue,” replied the guard, “the witches. Let’s see what you are carrying.”

“It’s a passenger boat.”

Lorenzo had lighted the candle, and the chief entered the cabin, giving, as he passed, a resounding clap upon the negro smuggler’s back, in token of affection. After giving me a frank but respectful salute, he set about examining our safe-conduct, while Laurean and Gregorio, in their breech-clouts, stood, smiling, at the entrance to the cabin.

The first shout of Gregorio had aroused the whole post. Two more guards, with sleepy faces, and armed with carbines, as was also the one who had watched, hidden under the bushes, arrived in time for a farewell drink. Lorenzo’s great horn held enough for all.

The rain had ceased, and the dawn was coming on. Amid goodbyes and cutting jokes, exchanged between my boatmen and the guards, and set off with something more than horselaughs, we continued our journey.

Our progress became increasingly difficult. It was almost ten when we reached Calle-larga. There was a hut on the left bank, built, as are all along the river, on thick piles of lignum vitae⁠—a wood, as is well known, that hardens under the action of water. In this way the occupants are free from floods, and on less familiar terms with vipers, whose number and variety are the terror and affliction of travelers.

Lorenzo went with the boatmen to prepare our breakfast in the tiny house. Meanwhile, I stayed in the canoe and made ready to take a bath in the transparent waters of the river. But I had not reckoned with the mosquitoes, although their poisonous bites are enough to make one remember them. They tortured me at will, making my bath lose the half of its Oriental luxury. The color and other conditions of skin possessed by the negroes are undoubtedly their defence against these hungry and persistent enemies. I noticed afterwards that my boatmen did not seem aware of their existence.

Lorenzo brought my breakfast to the canoe. Gregorio helped him. The fellow set up to be an excellent cook, and promised me a savory dish for the next day.

We were due at San Cipriano in the afternoon, and the boatmen did not need to be urged to go on, as the collector’s good wine was doing its work with them.

The sun did not belie its summer reputation.

When the shores would permit of it, Lorenzo and I walked short distances along the banks⁠—or “beached” it, as they call it. We did this partly to rest ourselves, and partly to lighten the canoe in perilous stretches of the river. At such times, however, the fear of running upon a guascama, or of having a black chouta dart upon us, made us walk through the brush more with our eyes than our feet.

It was needless to ask if Laurean and Gregorio were amateur doctors, for there is scarcely a boatman that is not, and that does not carry with him fangs of many kinds of vipers, and antidotes for their bites. But this is hardly enough to calm a traveller, as it is well known that these remedies are without effect, and that one who has been bitten dies after a few hours, sweating blood, and in fearful agony.

We arrived at San Cipriano. On the right bank, and in the angle formed by the river that gives its name to the place, and the Dagua, was the house, raised on piles in the midst of a leafy banana orchard. We had not yet leaped out on the shore when Gregorio shouted: “ ’ña’ Rufina! Here I come!”

Immediately afterwards he added, “Where did you catch this old girl?”

“Good afternoon, ’ño’ Gregorio,” replied a young negress, coming out to the corridor.

“You must take me in, for I’ve got something nice.”

“Yes, Seño’. Come on up, then.”

“Where’s our brother?”

“At Junta.”

“Uncle Bibiano with him?”

“No, he’s alone, ’ño’ Gregorio.”

Laurean said good afternoon to the mistress of the house, and then relapsed into his usual silence.

While the boatmen and Lorenzo were getting the things out of the canoe, I was looking at the thing which Gregorio had called the “old girl.” It was a snake as thick as a stout arm, about three yards long, with a corrugated back of the color of dried leaves with black spots. The belly looked like a marble mosaic. The head was enormous, and the mouth was as broad as the whole head; in it showed fangs like a cat’s claws. She was fastened by the neck to one of the piles of the landing, and her tail was in the water.

“Saint Paul!” exclaimed Lorenzo, as he saw what I was gazing at, “what a monster!”

Rufina, who had come down to greet me, remarked with laughter that they had sometimes killed larger ones.

“Where did they find this one?” I asked.

“On the shore, my master, there in the chípero,” said she, pointing to a leafy tree about thirty yards away.

“When?”

“Early in the morning, when my brother was going away, he found her hanging on that tree, and he brought her in so as to get the antidote. Her mate was not there, but I saw him this morning, and my brother will catch him tomorrow.”

Bibiano, the father of the young negress, who was a boatman more than fifty years old, already laid aside by rheumatism, came out to welcome me, hat in hand, and leaning upon a thick cane. His pantaloons were of yellow baize, and he wore a blue striped shirt outside them.

My hammock was soon slung. Lying in it, I looked at the distant, untrodden mountains, lighted up by the last light of the afternoon, and watched the waters of the Dagua flow by, blue, green, and gold, under the sun’s touch.

The boatmen, with their trousers now on, gossiped with Rufina. Lorenzo brought in some of his provisions to go with the stew which Bibiano’s daughter was making ready for us, and then lay down quietly in the darkest corner of the room.

It was almost night when we heard cries on the river. Lorenzo ran down hurriedly. He soon came back saying that it was the mail-boat going up, and that he had been told my luggage was behind at Mondomo.

Soon the night surrounded us with all its American splendor. Why is it that nights in Cauca, in London, on the high seas, were never so majestically melancholy as that one?

At eight we were all settled for sleep. Lorenzo arranged everything for me with an almost maternal care, and then went to lie down in his own hammock.

“Little father,” called out Rufina from her room, speaking to Bibiano, who was sleeping with us in the main room⁠—“little father, just hear warty-back singing out on the river!”

In fact one could hear in that direction something like the clucking of an enormous hen.

“Tell ’ño’ Laurean,” went on the girl, “to go by there carefully in the morning.”

“Do you hear that, man?” asked Bibiano.

“Yes, Seño’,” replied Laurean. It was fitting that Rufina’s voice should have awakened him, since he was, as I afterwards learned, her sweetheart.

“What is this great thing flying here?” I asked Bibiano, almost imagining that it must be a winged snake.

“A bat, little master,” he answered; “but you need not be afraid of its biting you while you are sleeping in the hammock.”

These bats are veritable vampires, which will bleed a man in a very short time if they can get at his nose or fingertips. It is also a fact that one asleep in a hammock escapes their attack.