XXXIX.
José’s Words.
Without a word of lamentation, without a tear or sigh, José heard all. He fully comprehended the patre’s situation, and his own. He believed that he must soon close the eyes of his father and his friend; and that duty done, that he must linger on in his frightful prison alone, until Death, the deliverer, should come to him also. It never occurred to him that, after all, he might live to see those distant alien shores towards which his enemies were bearing him. No Child of the Sun, he told himself, could live on for dreary months and months without his Father’s smile, deprived of light and air and liberty.
Fitful longings for these common but most precious boons came and went, troubling with passing storms the deep and bitter waters of anguish that filled his soul like a flood. Often would he start from dreams of the glittering ice-crowned heights of the Andes, as he used to see them from Cerro Blanco; or of the cool interior of Yupanqui’s house, with some melody of his native land, breathed by the lips of Coyllur, still sounding in his ear. Often, again, the great green leaves of the tropical forest would droop over his head; he would touch them, pluck them, feel their moist coolness, watch the sunbeams flicker amongst them, see some bright bird with radiant plumage flit through their overhanging branches, and be wakened by its song, or by the murmuring sound of running waters.
Thus brought back to his misery, he would rise from his place without moan or murmur, trim the lamp, give Fray Fernando food or water, or do for him, most tenderly, any other little office that love and watchful care suggested; but, except to answer his questions, and that briefly, he scarcely ever spoke.
At last a circumstance occurred that partially broke down this mournful stoicism. The position of the prisoners in the dark damp hold was necessarily one of great misery; but they were not treated with intentional inhumanity by those who had the charge of them. Their food was sufficient, though coarse; and if their allowance of water was scanty, so also was that of the ship’s company, and José contrived that the privation should be little felt by the patre. As time wore on, the soldiers whose duty it was to guard them and supply them with necessaries became gradually more friendly and communicative. A belief was gaining ground amongst them that the captives, though prisoners of the Holy Office, were not heretics, but political offenders of some kind; for it was well known that such were occasionally apprehended and punished by the Inquisition. The pious deportment and devout language of Fray Fernando favoured this supposition; but still more the presence of José, since it was inconceivable that an Indian could be a heretic.
Moreover, the soldiers of the Trionfo were sorely in want of interest and occupation during the long voyage, which at best must occupy many months. They were all “señores y caballeros,” who would not, to save the ship from sinking, haul a rope or climb a mast. Except in the improbable event of an enemy appearing in sight, these two hundred and fifty hale and active fighting-men had literally nothing to do save to burnish their armour, to play cards with each other, to quarrel with the Flemish gunners, or to tyrannize over the mariners, who were treated like slaves, and “made to toil and moil for all the rest.” Those therefore who attended the prisoners were very willing to vary the monotony of their lives by exchanging a few words with persons who, for many reasons, excited their curiosity.
Fray Fernando and José soon learned that the señor commandante was at deadly feud with the captain of the ship, an officer who in an English vessel would have been simply called the sailing-master. The soldiers, of course, took part with their commander; and to the surprise of Fray Fernando, who had been told that the ship was an excellent one, railed continually, and “in good set terms,” against the unfortunate Trionfo, with all her appurtenances and appointments.
“Is she not a swift sailer?” inquired the captive, naturally anxious to encourage conversation.
“Oh yes. Swift enough, to be sure; everything sacrificed to speed, and to the stowage of her merchandize. See her decks! All for space: not an inch of shelter or vantage-ground where a man could cover his head from an enemy’s fire. Not too sea-worthy either, for all the gallant show she makes. Well we are with the Plate fleet, or we would not sight a hostile flag for ten thousand ‘pieces of eight.’ Worse luck! If on the contrary the ship were what she ought, and the captain anything but ‘a hen,’ with low wretches of mariners without honour or valour, no sight would be more welcome—not even the shores of old Spain.”
Fray Fernando remarked afterwards to José,—“The galleon may be a fine ship for all that. It is evident that the soldiers take their cue from their commander. He must be, as I think, a man of strong though rather peculiar character. I doubt that he is much beloved. His men all fear him, evidently. I should not be surprised to find that some of them hate him.”
“They never mention his name,” said José languidly. “Who is he?”
“What! Do you not know? He is the Viceroy’s nephew, Don Francisco Solis de Toledo.”
José uttered a piteous cry, as one surprised by sharp, uncontrollable anguish.
“What is it, my son José?” Fray Fernando questioned tenderly. But José could not speak. After that one involuntary cry he could only lock his lips with stern resolve. Had he allowed a word, a moan, or even a sigh to escape them, there would have ensued a passion of weeping, to shame his manhood, and—far worse—to alarm and distress the patre beyond description.
The last time Don Francisco Solis and Don José Viracocha met face to face was at the door of Doña Beatriz Coya’s stately mansion in Cuzco. That day, as they exchanged formal salutations, José, strong in the favour of Coyllur, felt his proud triumph over his Castilian rival, and scorned him in his heart. Where was now that old happy, hopeful time? Where was that sweet face—those dark eyes, from which his soul had drunk enchantment? Where were the dreams that filled his heart,—of great deeds to be done for his people, and deliverance to be won for them, perhaps by his arm?
Gone from him, and for ever. He lay in that dismal hold, a captive, with Death already in his heart. The Spaniards had the dominion over the land of his fathers. Don Francisco Solis had the beautiful bride that should have been his; and, as if that were not enough, it seemed he had even the key of his rival’s dungeon—a thought that added the last drop to José’s overflowing cup of bitterness.
What had he left him now to show that the past was not all a dream? Only this. He still wore about his person, carefully wrapped in a morsel of parchment, the withered passion-flower. He took it out, and held it near the lamp; a poor, crushed, faded thing, meet emblem of his own crushed hopes and faded life.
“What is that you have there?” Fray Fernando questioned.
José allowed him to take it in his hand. “It has a story?” said the monk. “Tell me, my son, if you will. We are all the world to each other now.”
“The story of one I loved—and lost,” José murmured, in a voice like the ghost of his natural one. “It was Don Francisco Solis who robbed me, making my life desolate. As, every day, his people rob mine. And,” he added yet more sorrowfully, “Christ, the King, does not help us!”
“José, José, come near to me.”
José came near. The monk raised himself, drew his arm tenderly round him, and held him to his heart. “Oh, my son,” he asked very gently, “can you not trust Him still?”
“Still,—even still,—I hold the Saviour. At least, I hope He holds me. But the King—”
“Is strong to save us yet,” said Fray Fernando.
“To save us?—It may be. But what are we two, down here in the hold, with only two lives to lose? It is my people I think of—my people! For them my heart is heavy as stone, cold as ice of the Antis. Day and night, patre, I see visions and dream dreams. Faces look upon me—dark faces, growing ghastly in dungeons like this—agonized faces—faces of the tortured and famine-stricken, of the women and little children who weep in secret places, and there is none to pity them.”
“None—upon earth,” Fray Fernando interposed. “But, you know—”
“I know nothing. I try to believe, even yet, that He cares,” said José, whose heart was sickening now with the sorest of all doubts. “Ay, patre,” he went on more earnestly, “He said, ‘I have compassion on the multitude.’ In those happy days at Callao, when I came to know Him first, I put my finger on that word, I knelt down and pleaded it with Him—for my people. And I believed surely that He would do them right at last. It was so well with me that I never doubted it would be well with all I loved. But in those dreary weeks, shut up in that hateful Santa Casa, hope faded from me day by day. Not hope for myself. Still, when He calls, I can give my soul up to Him without fear. But my people—my people! Who shall show me any light or hope for them? Must wrong and cruelty go on for ever and ever—none to help, none to save?”
Fray Fernando’s heart went up in an agony of earnest prayer for his beloved son, in this hour of sore and bitter need. At last he said, “But where you trust your own soul, José, you can surely trust all else that your heart holds dear?”
“I suppose so,” José murmured. “At least I ought. But all is dark—dark. Wrong triumphs always. Nothing seems to come right.”
Fray Fernando had reached the place of sunshine, far up on the mountain summit, very near the sky. But José was still in the Puna, the land of mist and rain, where no sunbeams pierce the thick dark veil of clouds.
“José,” said the monk once again, “I pray you, do not think of men. Think of Christ. Look to Him.”
“Patre,” José answered, with infinite sadness in his voice, “speak no more to me. God knows you are dearer than my life—dear as my own soul. But even you cannot help me now. I sit beside you, your hand in mine; but I am alone. My ear hears your voice; but my heart hears nothing. Nothing—except the wail and dash of waters, and the voice of those who cry, as from a sinking ship. Who cry to a King—a King!—far away in the distant heavens. And He is silent.”
Soon that happened which made José’s allusion to a sinking ship seem like an awful prophecy.
The terrors of a storm at sea, always great, were multiplied sevenfold to the unhappy captives who lay in darkness and the shadow of death. Vainly did they try to guess, from the wild, discordant sounds that met their ears, mingling in tumultuous confusion, what might be the fate in store for them—what horror, of all the horrors that threatened, would be the first to lay its spectral grasp upon them, and claim them for its own.
The storm raged on; the timbers strained, and the waters surged around the floating prison, which rocked and shook with their violence. The captives began to fear—and not without reason—that they would force an entrance, and drown them as they lay in the dark, clasped in each other’s arms. For now their lamp had expired, and no one brought them oil. Nor food; an omission that soon added another terror to those that oppressed them already. What if, in the general confusion, they should be forgotten and left to starve? Better let the waters find them where they lay; better sink with the sinking ship.
Fray Fernando called on God. Even in this dark hour his faith did not fail. Sorely tried indeed it was, by Nature’s shrinking from a terrible death that had no glory in it, and must be faced in darkness and loneliness. Still, he could take comfort; and even give it to his companion in distress. “God is with us, José,” he murmured. “He stilleth the raging of the waves. And all His ways lead us safely to the Golden City. Fear nothing.”
But for José, Fray Fernando would have died, over and over again. He held him in his arms, or, weak as he was, he would have been dashed against the wet planks bound with iron that formed the sides of their prison, by the lurchings of the tempest-tossed ship. He covered him with his own garments from the damp, death-like chill, as unlike the healthful natural cold of the outside air, as the noisome hold was unlike the breezy height of Cerro Blanco. And from time to time he fed him with the morsels of food that still remained to them, dipped in the one precious cup of water to which at last they were reduced. If, meanwhile, he himself felt hunger, thirst, cold, terror, at least he made no sign. And to the patre’s inquiries he always answered—far more cheerfully than he had spoken before the storm—that he was well, and that he needed nothing.
After this agony had lasted for what seemed to both of them a long lifetime, but those who could see the face of day would have reckoned about three times four-and-twenty hours, Fray Fernando suddenly raised himself, and exclaimed, “José, do you hear those cries? The ship is settling—we are going down! Let us commend our souls to God!”
A dreamy languor had been stealing over José for some time past, despite his utmost efforts. Rousing himself with difficulty, he answered, “I do not think it. I think the storm is passing.”
“Hush! Listen!”—There were confused noises,—shouts—the clanking of chains—uneasy tremblings and swayings of the ship; then—at last—the shock of a strange stillness after tumultuous motion. “We have come to land,” said José.
“‘So He bringeth them to the haven where they would be,’” Fray Fernando murmured, sinking back.
To José the words came faintly, as if from a great distance. He tried to fix his attention, fancying that the patre still continued speaking—failed—tried again—could hear nothing except a bewildering murmur as of many waters—then lapsed into utter unconsciousness.