Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Rover of the Andes: A Tale of Adventure on South America
Chapter Eighteen.
Pedro becomes communicative; Manuela vocal; Lawrence preposterous; Quashy and Tiger violent—The Whole ending in a Grand Catastrophe
“Senhor Armstrong,” said Pedro, the evening after that on which the capture of turtles took place, “I have received some bad news—at least unsatisfactory news—which will necessitate a change in our style of travelling, and a more rapid progress towards our journey’s end.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Lawrence answered, “for, to my mind, our style of travelling is very agreeable, and the rate quite fast enough, especially for one who has no definite purpose in view.”
“That may be so, senhor,” returned Pedro, with a grim smile, “but as I have something of a definite purpose in view, the case is different.”
“True, Pedro,—true. I do not object to any change in your plans; I merely comment on the very pleasant time we are having, and shall be ready to act as you desire; so, you see, I am as I promised to be—an obedient follower. But where got you this news from? I have seen no one arrive in the camp since we came. What may the nature of the news be, if I may venture to ask of one who is so—so very reticent?”
The guide pondered some time before replying to these questions. Then, with the air of one who has made up his mind on an uncertain point, said—
“I had no intention of rousing your curiosity by needless secrecy. I have not very many or very profound secrets. Only, in a disturbed country it behoves a man to hold his tongue in regard to his affairs. But I feel that you are a friend, Senhor Armstrong, who may be trusted; not that I have much to trust to you,—and yet, my doings are so mixed up with the affairs of other people that to some extent I am tongue-tied. I may tell you, however, that I am a secret agent of the government, to which I have volunteered my services solely because I love peace and hate war, and am desirous of doing all I can to promote the first and abate the last. The idea may appear to you Quixotic, but—”
“Pardon me, Senhor Pedro,” interrupted Lawrence, promptly. “I think you the reverse of Quixotic. I honour you for your sentiments, and sympathise with you most heartily. Do I not remember that it is written, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ and also, ‘Scatter thou the people that delight in war?’”
“Yes, I have gathered from your conversation that such are your sentiments, but do not misunderstand me. I am not of those who would have peace at any price. I believe in the right of self-defence. I recognise the right of oppressed nations to rise up and draw the sword in order to free themselves from tyrants; in short, I believe that there are some things that are worse even than war; but while I concede so much, I hold that most of the wars recorded in history have been undertaken without just cause, many of them without any real or obvious cause at all, too many of them with a distinctly bad cause. Even in the present day, and among Christian nations, there is far too little tendency to appeal to arbitration, which is the only legitimate way for reasonable men to settle any dispute or quarrel. Does your sympathy go with me thus far?”
Lawrence, with a glow of enthusiasm on his face, extended his hand, and, grasping that of his companion, shook it warmly.
“I go with you in every word, Pedro. You are a man after my own heart; and I say, God prosper you in your good work wherever you go!”
Manuela, who was standing near at the time, looked up at the enthusiastic youth quickly. Her knowledge of English must have been improving, despite the badness of her pronunciation, for she seemed to understand the conversation, and to regard Lawrence with profound interest.
The youth was so carried away with his feelings, however, that he did not observe the girl’s look or expression.
“That is well,” Pedro said, with a pleased look, as he returned his friend’s grasp; “but I fear you won’t find many of our way of thinking in this unhappy country. You are aware, no doubt, that it is frequently—I might almost say every three or four years—disturbed by factious quarrels which too often end in riot and bloodshed, though these are not often on so large a scale as to be styled civil war. Well, there is a party of peace-lovers even here, who do their best to bring about a better state of things, and a more settled and powerful government. Some of the men of influence at Buenos Ayres, and some even of the military men, are of this party. I am, as I have said, their secret agent—secret, because if I were to attempt the thing openly, or as a government agent, I should be treated with ridicule by some, or be murdered perhaps by others, in either of which cases my influence would be gone. Of course, as you have seen, I run considerable risk in travelling through the land on my mission, for I have been several times taken for a spy, but I don’t object to run risk, the cause being a good one.
“As to the news, which I have received by mere chance from a passing Indian, it is another outbreak in the San Juan district which makes a change in the disposition of troops necessary; and as I have particular business with one of the officers, I must change my route and make for Buenos Ayres as straight as possible. That is all the mystery about it; so you see, as I said, it is not very profound.”
“It is very interesting, however,” returned Lawrence, “and you may depend on my falling in with your plans, whatever they are.”
“Well, then,” returned the guide, “the first part of my plan is simple enough—merely to start off to-morrow by the first peep of day. Will you go, therefore, and tell Quashy to get ready, while I have a talk with Manuela?”
We do not intend to inflict on the reader the whole of the conversation that took place in the Indian tongue between the little brown maiden and the guide. A small portion of it will suffice.
“I repeat, Manuela,” said the latter, in a remonstrative tone, “that you are not wise.”
“My kind protector forgets,” replied the girl, with a modest look, “that I have never set up any claim to wisdom.”
“But what will your father say?”
“I really cannot guess what he will say,” she answered, with one of her prettiest little smiles.
“But you may be quite sure that the thing is impossible. Consider the immense difference between you, and, forgive me, Manuela, but I think it is not fair.”
“Now my protector forgets himself,” returned the maiden, drawing herself up and bestowing a look on the guide which was quite worthy of an Inca princess—supposing Lawrence to have been right in his conjecture on that point!
“Well, well, please yourself, Manuela,” returned Pedro, with a laugh, in which exasperation slightly mingled, “but do me the justice to tell your father when you meet that I fairly remonstrated with and warned you. After all, nothing would please me better,—if it should ever come about.”
He turned on his heel and went off, with a mingling of expressions on his handsome face, to look after the canoe and make preparations for an early start in the morning.
Canoe travelling appears to be rather slow work while it is going on, even when descending the current of a river. Each point of land seems to be reached and passed so gradually; every vista of the river seems so extensive, and the trees on shore drop so leisurely astern, that when you think of the hundreds of miles which lie in advance, you are apt to feel as if the journey or voyage would never come to an end. But when you forget the present and reflect on the past, when you think how many hundreds of miles now lie behind, although it seems but yesterday that you set out on the journey, then you realise the fact that the “power of littles,” of steady, daily unremitting perseverance, has had too little weight with you in your estimates, and that, just as fast as your starting-point recedes from you, exactly so fast does your goal approach, although those misleading factors, your feelings, may have induced you to think otherwise.
Five days after the occurrence of the events on what we may style Turtle-beach, Lawrence found himself wondering at what appeared to be the far-off-ness of the spot, considering the slowness of the hourly progress, yet at the same time wondering if they should ever traverse the nine hundred or a thousand miles that yet intervened between him and Buenos Ayres.
To do Lawrence Armstrong justice, however, he was by no means impatient. He was quite satisfied that things should go as slowly as they pleased, for was he not travelling through the most interesting of countries, in which the flora and the fauna and the geological features furnished abundant—ay, superabundant—food for the satisfaction of his scientific appetite, while his companions were of the pleasantest character? Pedro, since the opening up of his heart to him, had laid aside much—though not all—of his reserve, and shown himself to be a man of extensive information and profound thought.
Spotted Tiger was a splendid specimen, physically and mentally, of the sons of the soil, in the contemplation of whom he could expend whatever smattering he possessed of ethnological science. Then Quashy—was not that negro the very soul and embodiment of courage, fidelity, and good-humour, the changes of whose April face alone might have furnished rich material for the study of a physiognomist or a Rembrandt.
And as for Manuela—we cannot analyse his thoughts about her. It is probable that he could not have expounded them himself. Take the following sample of them, as overheard by us one day when he had strayed into the wild woods alone, and was seated on the roots of a mighty tree, pencil in hand, attempting unsuccessfully to make a sketch.
“I do believe,” he murmured, with a gesture of impatience—for he had drawn a small convolvulus, hanging from a tree, with such disregard for the rules of linear perspective that it was the proportionate size of an omnibus—“I do believe that that girl has come between me and my wits. Of course it is not love. That is quite out of the question. A white man could not fall in love with a black woman.”
Yes, he did the poor girl the injustice, in his perplexed indignation with himself, to call her black, although it must have been obvious to the most careless observer that she was only reddish-brown, or, to speak more correctly, brownish-red.
“I can’t understand it,” he continued to murmur in that low, slow, absent far-away tone and manner characteristic of artists when at work. “No doubt her nose is Grecian, and her mouth small, as well as exquisitely formed, her chin full and rounded, her teeth faultless, her eyes gorgeous, and her whole contour perfect, but—but—she’s black—at least,” (correcting himself with a touch of compunction), “she’s brown. No; I see what it is—it’s—(well that’s more like a balloon than a water-lily)—yes, it must be that I am in love with her spirit. That’s it! I’ve said so before, and—and—I say it again.”
He drew back his head at this point, and looked critically—even sternly—at the sketch. There was room both for criticism and indignation, for the display, in so small a compass, of bad drawing, vile composition, ridiculous chiaro-oscuro, and impossible perspective, could only have been justified by the supposition that his intellect had been warped through the heart, in consequence of an unheard of perplexity connected therewith.
“Yes,” he continued, resuming his work with the air of an invincible man, “there is something distinctly and exasperatingly wrong here. I am in love with her spirit, and not with her person! Is it possible that the human race, descending from Adam and Eve, should have reached the nineteenth century without such a case ever having been heard of before, and that I—I should be the first wretched example—or—or victim! It is like loving the jewel without caring for the cas— no, that’s a bad simile, for one could throw away a casket and keep the jewel, which could not conveniently be done in this case. I wonder what it is that makes the rules of perspective so difficult, and the practice so im—”
His meditations were checked at this point by a sound so sweet that his heart almost stood still, his pencil remained suspended over the sketch, and the half-formed word remained in the half-opened mouth. It was as if an angel had come to earth, and were warbling the airs of paradise.
Peeping through the bushes, Lawrence saw that it was Manuela! She was sauntering along pensively, humming as she went. He sat still, amazed and silent. From what cause we know not, but the Indian girl had not until that day opened her mouth in song. The youth’s surprise was increased when she came near enough to let him hear that the words were Spanish; but suddenly remembering that English girls sometimes learned Italian songs by rote, like parrots, his surprise partly abated—why should not an Indian girl learn Spanish songs by rote?
Manuela passed close to the tree behind which our hero sat. On observing him she stopped, and blushed intensely red. Evidently she had thought herself quite alone, and experienced the usual dislike of humanity to being caught in the act of singing to itself!
In a burst of great enthusiasm Lawrence sprang up, overturned his drawing materials, seized the girl’s hand, and dropped it again as if it had burnt him, as he exclaimed—
“I wish—oh! I wish, Manuela, that I were your brother!”
The lightning flash is said to be quick, and we suppose, relatively speaking, it is so, but we are quite sure that lightning cannot hold a candle to thought in this respect. Lawrence, as the reader has doubtless observed, was not a man of much more than average intelligence, or action of mind, yet between the first “wish” and the word “brother,” he had perceived and condemned the impropriety of exhibiting strong feeling in thus grasping Manuela’s hand; the unmanliness of doing or saying anything to her that had the remotest approach to love-making while in circumstances where the poor girl could not get out of his way, however much she might wish to do so, and the meanness, not to say absurdity, of showing anything like a lover’s affection for a spirit which could only make itself known through the medium of a brown visage. Hence Lawrence, who was the soul of honour and gallantry, got out of the dilemma by suddenly conceiving and expressing the above intense wish to be Manuela’s brother!
It did not occur to him that the gratification of his wish might have involved war-paint and feathers, a semi-nude body, a wild unlettered life, and a predilection for raw meat and murder. No, rapid though thought is, it did not convey these ideas to his mind. His one desire—after the first unguarded “exclamation” and impulsive grasp of the hand, was to escape from his false position without committing himself, and without giving pain or annoyance to the unprotected girl. And his success was in proportion to his boldness, for Manuela burst into a hearty laugh, and said—
“Why you wants be my brudder?”
“Brother, Manuela, not brudder,” replied Lawrence, joining in the laugh, and much relieved in mind. “The word is spelt with t-h, not with two d’s. The reason is that I should then have the right to order you to sit at my feet and sing me these pretty songs whenever I liked. And I fear I should be a very tyrannical brother to you, for I would make you sing all day.”
“What—is—t’rannical?” asked the girl, whose tendency to laugh was evidently not yet quite subdued.
“Hallo! hi! Quashy!” came the guide’s strong voice at that moment, ringing through the arches of the forest, and preventing the explanation, that might have been, of “t’rannical.”
But Quashy replied not. It was the end of the noontide siesta. While Lawrence, as we have seen, had taken to sketching and Manuela to singing, the negro had gone off on his own account, and Pedro was now anxious to have his assistance in getting ready to start.
As Lawrence hurriedly collected his pencils the Indian girl stood admiring his work—poor ignorant thing! Just then there arose in the forest a sound which filled them both with mingled surprise and alarm.
It was a peculiar, dull sound, almost indescribable, but something like what one might expect to hear from a hundred spades or pickaxes working together in the depths of the forest. After a minute or two it ceased, and profound silence reigned. Dead silence in critical circumstances is even more alarming than definite noise, for then the imagination is allowed full play, and only those who have got the imagination powerfully developed know of what wild and terrifying vagaries it is capable!
Lawrence and Manuela looked at each other. The former had often before admired the gorgeous black orbs of the latter, but he had not till then thought them to be so very large.
Suddenly the earth trembled under their feet; it seemed as if a volcano were heaving underground. The memory of San Ambrosio rushed upon them, and they too trembled—at least the girl did. At the same time a shout arose which seemed to them not unfamiliar. The noise increased to something like the galloping of a distant squadron of cavalry.
“Let me lift you into this tree,” said Lawrence, quickly.
Manuela did not object. He lifted her by the waist with his two large hands as if she had been a little child, and placed her on a branch that happened to be just within his reach. Scarcely had he done so when a host, a very army, of American wild-hogs, or peccaries, burst from the bushes like a tornado and bore down on them. They were so near that there was no time for Lawrence to climb up beside Manuela. He could only seize the branch with both hands and draw up his long legs. The living torrent passed under him in a few seconds, and thus—thanks to his gymnastic training at school—he escaped being ripped up in all directions by the creatures’ tusks.
It was these same tusks digging round trees for the purpose of grubbing up roots that had produced the strange sounds, and it was the shouts of Quashy and Tiger in pursuit that had awakened the echoes of the forest.
On the heels of the large animals came galloping and squealing a herd of little ones, and close upon these followed the two hunters just named—panting, war-whooping, and cheering. Several of the little pigs were speared; some were even caught by the tail, and a goodly supply of meat was obtained for at least that day and the next. But before noon of that next day an event of a very different and much more serious nature occurred.
It was early morning at the time. They were traversing a wide sheet of water, both banks of which were high, richly-wooded, and all aglow with convolvuli and other flowers, and innumerable rope-like creepers, the graceful festoons and hanging tendrils of which gave inexpressible softness to the scene. In the middle of the lake-like expanse were numerous mud-flats, partly covered with tropical reeds and rushes of gigantic size.
The course our voyagers had to pursue made it necessary to keep close under the right bank, which was unusually steep and high. They were all silent, for the hour and the slumbering elements induced quiescence. A severe thunderstorm accompanied by heavy rains had broken over that district two days before, and Lawrence observed that deep watercourses had been ploughed among the trees and bushes in several places, but every other trace of the elemental war had vanished, and the quiet of early morning seemed to him sweet beyond expression, inducing his earnest spirit to wish that the mystery of sin had never been permitted, and that it were still possible for man to walk humbly with his God in a world of peacefulness as real as that of inanimate nature around him.
When the sun arose, a legion of living creatures came out from wood and swamp and reedy isle to welcome him. Flamingoes, otters, herons white and grey, and even jaguars, then began to set about their daily work of fishing for breakfast. Rugged alligators, like animated trunks of fallen trees, crawled in slimy beds or ploughed up the sands of the shore in deep furrows, while birds of gorgeous plumage and graceful—sometimes clumsy—form audibly, if not always visibly, united to chant their morning hymn.
Such were the sights on which our travellers’ eyes rested, with a sort of quiet delight, when Pedro broke the silence in a low voice.
“You’d better keep a little farther out into the stream,” he said to Tiger.
The Indian silently obeyed.
It was well that he did so promptly, for, in less than a minute, and without the slightest premonition, the immense bank above them slid with a terrific rumbling noise into the river. The enormous mass of sand and vegetable detritus thus detached could not have been much, if at all, less than half a mile in extent. It came surging and hurling down—trees and roots and rocks and mud intermingling in a chaos of grand confusion, the great cable-like creepers twining like snakes in agony, and snapping as if they were mere strands of packthread; timber crashing; rock grinding, sometimes bursting like cannon shots, and the whole plunging into the water and raising a great wave that swept the alligators from the mud-flats, and swallowed up the reeds and rushes, sending herons, kingfishers, and flamingoes screaming into the air, and dashing high into the jungle on the opposite shore.
As we have said, the canoe got out of reach of the terrible avalanche just in time, but it could not escape the wave. The Indian, however, was prepared for that. It was not the first time he had seen such a catastrophe. Turning the bow of the canoe instantly towards the falling bank, he thus met the wave, as it were, in the teeth, and rode safely over it.
If he had been less alive to the danger, or less prompt to meet it, or if he had under-estimated it, and allowed the wave to catch them on the side of the canoe, the adventures of our five friends had that day come to an abrupt close, and, what is probably of greater consequence to the reader, this faithful record would never have been written!
