It was night—glorious tropical night—surely “not made for slumber.” There was no moon, but her place was well supplied by the soft radiance of large luminous stars—Argo in the zenith, the Southern Cross near the horizon, while, far away towards the north, “the stars of the Great Bear shone with almost fearful magnitude.”⁠[55] Nor was the deep that lieth under less marvellous for glory and for beauty than the sky that stretched above. Beneath the vessel’s keel burned a sheet of living fire, kindled by mysterious phosphoric lights. Jets of flame—blue, and red, and purple—flashed out here and there; while a shoal of dolphins, sporting about the ship, cut the waves in long circling lines, that gleamed and sparkled with prismatic hues.

Two, perhaps three, were enjoying this sight from the deck of the Sea Snake. Fray Fernando and Walter Grey sat together, now talking in low quiet words, now silent, but always in true communion each with the other. A little further off José stood, leaning against a mast, either wrapped in his own thoughts or sharing those of his friends.

The strength of all three had been sorely wasted by previous sufferings; but quiet of mind, fresh sea air, and unbounded care and kindness from every one on board the English ship, were gradually restoring them. Even Fray Fernando, whose recovery had at first been looked on as more than doubtful, both by others and by himself, was now improving day by day. A little while ago José,—who, as ever, waited upon him with the most devoted love,—said to him, his dark face glowing with thankful joy, “I knew it, patre, from the very hour they rescued us; you will not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” Only his limbs, enfeebled and well-nigh crippled by long confinement, had not yet regained, if ever they would regain, their former strength and activity. Two or three turns up and down the deck were still abundant exercise for him.

And now Walter Grey was pouring into his sympathizing ear a detailed description of the quiet English home, “among the rose-hung lanes of Kent,” that would, he hoped, be his home also. He was confident that his mother and Fray Fernando would thoroughly understand and admire each other. He could talk and think of that mother now, not indeed without deep penitence for his wrong-doing, but without the aching remorseful pain, the great shadow of doubt and dread, which had lain on his heart so long. He thanked God for keeping alive her hope for him throughout those sad years. For he knew that, with her, hope meant prayer; and he believed that, but for the prayers which, like unseen angels, kept guard about him, he would not now be sitting on the deck of the Sea Snake a free and thankful man, but dead long ago in his despair and anguish.

Something of this he even ventured to hint to Fray Fernando; for in starlight much may be spoken that the glare of day would frighten into silence.

“Yes,” Fray Fernando answered, after a thoughtful pause, “I do rejoice, Walter, at the prospect of seeing your happy English home. If a measure of strength is given back to me—and I begin to think God means to give it—He will find work for His servant, with whom He hath ever dealt so graciously, beneath the stars of the northern hemisphere, as well as under the Southern Cross—and for my José too.”

“Ah! as to that,” said Walter, in a lighter tone, but very heartily, “Don José Viracocha Inca will be a great hero amongst us. We shall never keep such a wonder in our quiet home. The Queen and the Court will rob us of him all too quickly.”

At that moment the captain’s loud, cheerful voice was heard from the fore-deck, “Cousin Walter, I want you here.”

Walter rose, saying to Fray Fernando, “I will come back as soon as I can.”

When he was gone, José came slowly forward and stood before the monk.

“Patre,” he said, and his voice was low and sorrowful,—“patre, listen to me.”

“My son, what is it?” Fray Fernando questioned, startled by his tone.

“My father, be patient with me. I have that to say which wrings my heart.” Here he paused; then, suddenly pointing to the luminous waters, he exclaimed, “Look there, patre!” A sportive dolphin had described a larger circle than usual; it burned for a moment, a diamond ring of flashing foam, then faded quickly away. “Viracocha is but the foam of the sea. He comes and goes like that.”

“I do not understand you, José. What are you talking of?” asked the bewildered Fray Fernando.

“My father, if Christ the King were now to call your son and servant to His home, instead of yours, would you not give him up?”

Fray Fernando trembled and grew very pale. “What mean these strange words?” he faltered. “Are you ill?”

“No, patre.”

“I know well you have suffered, and far more than you would ever acknowledge. But surely life is coming back to you, as it is to me. Is it not so? Speak to me, José—my son José!” There was anguish in his tone.

“Yes, patre, life is coming back to me; and with life, a message from my King. Patre, patre,—I know not how to tell that message. Yet, woe is me if I withhold it—if I fail to obey!”

“A message! What message, José?”

“‘Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.’”

Fray Fernando started—shuddered, as if an arrow on an errand of death had suddenly pierced his heart.

“José, you may be deceived—mistaken,” he said hurriedly. “When first did you feel or fancy this?”

“Patre, when I lay in the dark hold of the Trionfo, He stooped from His golden throne, looked with pitying eye upon my great anguish for my people, and gave me rest and peace. Even with that peace came that message first. But I only smiled in my heart, and said to Him, ‘Inca, thou knowest all. I would speak for Thee if I could, but Thou art calling me instead to die for Thee.’ But when He took us both out of the horrible pit, gave me the dying charge of Don Francisco Solis to deliver, and then restored you to life, I heard his voice again.—Patre, it is just this way with me. In my sore hunger and thirst He reached me, with His own right hand, golden fruit from the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. I ate, and thirst and hunger passed away. I was satisfied. But within the golden fruit the seed lies hid; and he who eats the fruit must needs plant the seed. That charge is laid upon him.”

“And you would leave me, José?” The words were quiet, but depths of tenderness,—of anguish,—of entreaty, lay veiled beneath them.

José’s dusky countenance grew pale, and his steadfast lip trembled. Unconsciously he wrung his hands together in the bitter pain of his heart. “Had the King asked my life,” he said with deep emotion, “it were given readily. Now, He asks more. But He cannot ask too much—not too much!” After a pause he added, in a more natural voice, “Still, I have no right to make my burnt-offering of that which belongs to another man. Nor would He accept such. Wherefore, patre, if you—you who bought me, you who own me—if you forbid me to do this thing, I yield, and I go with you to England.”

Fray Fernando’s heart leaped to his lips. The dreaded separation averted, José his—his altogether, his for ever—all for one word! And yet, sorely as he longed to do it, he could not speak that word. He dared not.

At last he said, evasively, “I scarcely understand yet what it is you purpose.”

“Patre, in a few days the Sea Snake must put in at a place on the coast of the mainland known to the captain, to take in water for the long voyage. Thence I can make my way back to my own country and my own people, and give them the message that burns on my heart and on my lip—the message of love from their King and mine.”

“And travel first many hundred leagues through unknown lands, filled with barbarous tribes? José! José! you will never reach Peru alive.”

“Haply yes; haply no. Alike in either case it is well with me.”

“And then,” Fray Fernando continued with anxious haste, “even suppose you do, there are the priests and friars. You will be hunted down as a heretic.”

José smiled, and pointed to the waves beneath them. “The white men know as little what we talk and think among ourselves as we know the thoughts of God’s innocent creatures down yonder,” he said. “Once with my people, I am safe. But for you, patre—” His voice faltered, died away.

After a long pause he resumed, stretching out his right hand,—“Yet, if you are willing to send me forth on this service, and bid me God-speed,—take this hand of mine in yours.”

There was a struggle in Fray Fernando’s heart. Not long if measured by time,—not five minutes’ work, perhaps. Yet he was years older when it ended. He took the thin brown hand in his and pressed it. “God’s will be done in thee and me,” he said firmly.

“Amen,” José murmured, and turned to go. But turning back, he added, the trembling of his voice kept under by an iron will, “Patre, I think that on the happy shores of the good land beyond the sea, God will make His promise true to you, who have left all for His sake—‘an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands.’”

Far away on the other side of the world, in a region José never knew, stands a wild mountain famed in song. Near its summit is a lonely rock, consecrated by a strange legend. It is said that he who dares to sleep upon it will be found at daybreak with life extinct;—with reason fled for ever;—or else endowed with the matchless gift of song, heir to the poet’s immortal crown. There are lonely places of conflict to which souls are sometimes led, not unlike the rock of Cader Idris. Sore is the peril of madness—of despair, which means death; but if God answers His servant from the secret place of thunder, and with His own right hand upholds and delivers him, he will come down from that mountain with face transfigured, and lips baptized with living fire. It is to such God gives His messages. And those messages they must needs deliver, or die.

Days and nights glided by, noiselessly and all too swiftly,—until at last there came a day unlike any before or after. A day “much to be remembered,” marked evermore in Fray Fernando’s calendar, though not with white.

All through its sultry hours the sun blazed down upon the grimy hull of the Sea Snake, lying moored in a quiet bay. Dense woods of lofty smooth-stemmed palms with fan like feathery crowns, and luxuriant thick-leaved ceibas, met the pebbly beach, and fringed the bay on either side; while the one bold headland of granite that formed its southern extremity stood out into the sea, bare and bleak, save for a solitary cluster of graceful cocoa-palms that crowned its summit. Already it is late in the afternoon. The last water-cask has been rolled on board; the last loiterer has come back from the woods with his spoil of cocoa-nuts and bananas. The wind is favourable; the sails are set; soon the shores of the New World will glimmer and fade away beneath the eyes that watch them from the deck of the Sea Snake. If it were only on this fair earth that watching loving eyes must look their last!

Every one on board, from the captain to the cabin-boy, has wrung the brown hand of José, and prayed God to speed him on his way. And more than one manly eye has glistened through unaccustomed tears at his earnest, simple words of grateful farewell. Walter Grey he has embraced, with a fervent “God be with thee, true friend.”

And now, as he stands for the last time on the deck of the English ship, all see him—but he sees only one.

Yet once more he turns to Fray Fernando, kneels at his feet—“My father, bless thy son.”

Fray Fernando raises him, folds him in his arms—“God’s best blessings rest on thee, now and ever—my son—my son!” Heart beats against heart, lip burns against lip, in one long passionate embrace. But the end must be. “We shall meet—yet,” Fray Fernando murmurs.

“When they come from the East and from the West to the feast of the great King,” José answered. Then the white-robed figure descended the ship’s side, entered the little boat, and was rowed on shore. There were others besides Fray Fernando who could not see for tears how it disappeared into the forest.

But by-and-by, as the ship sailed leisurely along under the headland, José Viracocha was seen once more. Beneath the tall graceful palms, the feathery fringes of their great leaves quivering in the evening breeze, and the crimson-tinted clouds of sunset glowing over them, he stood, a statue of bronze, his dark hair floating loose as he waved his scarlet cap in parting salutation.

“Child of the Sun—Child of Light! God guard and keep thee, until one day He set us both in His light together!” Fray Fernando prayed weeping.

But the sun set; the ship sailed on; the cocoa-palms, the rocky headland, the forest-clad shore faded into distance, and were seen no more. And with them passed away the Foam of the Sea. Never more, except in dreams, did those dark wistful eyes look into Fray Fernando’s, or that beloved voice breathe any song or legend from the “lengua del Inca” into his listening ear. Never more on earth.