Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

by Charles Kingsley

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE BANKS OF THE META

  "My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods!"

  TENNYSON'S Ulysses.

  Nearly three years are past and gone since that little band had kneltat evensong beneath the giant tree of Guayra--years of seeming blank,through which they are to be tracked only by scattered notes andmis-spelt names. Through untrodden hills and forests, over a space ofsome eight hundred miles in length by four hundred in breadth, they hadbeen seeking for the Golden City, and they had sought in vain. They hadsought it along the wooded banks of the Orinoco, and beyond the roaringfoam-world of Maypures, and on the upper waters of the mighty Amazon.They had gone up the streams even into Peru itself, and had trodden thecinchona groves of Loxa, ignorant, as all the world was then, of theirhealing virtues. They had seen the virgin snows of Chimborazo toweringwhite above the thundercloud, and the giant cone of Cotopaxi blackeningin its sullen wrath, before the fiery streams rolled down its sides.Foiled in their search at the back of the Andes, they had turnedeastward once more, and plunged from the alpine cliffs into "the greenand misty ocean of the Montana." Slowly and painfully they had workedtheir way northward again, along the eastern foot of the inlandCordillera, and now they were bivouacking, as it seems, upon one of themany feeders of the Meta, which flow down from the Suma Paz into theforest-covered plains. There they sat, their watch-fires glitteringon the stream, beneath the shadow of enormous trees, Amyas and Cary,Brimblecombe, Yeo, and the Indian lad, who has followed them in alltheir wanderings, alive and well: but as far as ever from Manoa, andits fairy lake, and golden palaces, and all the wonders of the Indian'stale. Again and again in their wanderings they had heard faint rumors ofits existence, and started off in some fresh direction, to meet only afresh disappointment, and hope deferred, which maketh sick the heart.

  There they sit at last--four-and-forty men out of the eighty-four wholeft the tree of Guayra:--where are the rest?

  "Their bones are scatter'd far and wide, By mount, by stream, and sea."

  Drew, the master, lies on the banks of the Rio Negro, and five bravefellows by him, slain in fight by the poisoned arrows of the Indians, ina vain attempt to penetrate the mountain-gorges of the Parima. Two morelie amid the valleys of the Andes, frozen to death by the fierce slatyhail which sweeps down from the condor's eyrie; four more were drownedat one of the rapids of the Orinoco; five or six more wounded men areleft behind at another rapid among friendly Indians, to be recoveredwhen they can be: perhaps never. Fever, snakes, jaguars, alligators,cannibal fish, electric eels, have thinned their ranks month by month,and of their march through the primeval wilderness no track remains,except those lonely graves.

  And there the survivors sit, beside the silent stream, beneath thetropic moon; sun-dried and lean, but strong and bold as ever, with thequiet fire of English courage burning undimmed in every eye, and thegenial smile of English mirth fresh on every lip; making a jest ofdanger and a sport of toil, as cheerily as when they sailed over the barof Bideford, in days which seem to belong to some antenatal life. Theirbeards have grown down upon their breasts; their long hair is knottedon their heads, like women's, to keep off the burning sunshine; theirleggings are of the skin of the delicate Guazu-puti deer; their shirtsare patched with Indian cotton web; the spoils of jaguar, puma, and apehang from their shoulders. Their ammunition is long since spent, theirmuskets, spoilt by the perpetual vapor-bath of the steaming woods, areleft behind as useless in a cave by some cataract of the Orinoco: buttheir swords are bright and terrible as ever; and they carry bows ofa strength which no Indian arm can bend, and arrows pointed with theremnants of their armor; many of them, too, are armed with the pocunaor blowgun of the Indians--more deadly, because more silent, than thefirearms which they have left behind them. So they have wandered, and sothey will wander still, the lords of the forest and its beasts; terribleto all hostile Indians, but kindly, just, and generous to all who willdeal faithfully with them; and many a smooth-chinned Carib andAture, Solimo and Guahiba, recounts with wonder and admiration therighteousness of the bearded heroes, who proclaimed themselves thedeadly foes of the faithless and murderous Spaniard, and spoke to themof the great and good queen beyond the seas, who would send her warriorsto deliver and avenge the oppressed Indian.

  The men are sleeping among the trees, some on the ground, and some ingrass-hammocks slung between the stems. All is silent, save the heavyplunge of the tapir in the river, as he tears up the water-weeds forhis night's repast. Sometimes, indeed, the jaguar, as he climbs from onetree-top to another after his prey, wakens the monkeys clustered on theboughs, and they again arouse the birds, and ten minutes of unearthlyroars, howls, shrieks, and cacklings make the forest ring as if allpandemonium had broke loose; but that soon dies away again; and, evenwhile it lasts, it is too common a matter to awaken the sleepers,much less to interrupt the council of war which is going on besidethe watch-fire, between the three adventurers and the faithful Yeo. Ahundred times have they held such a council, and in vain; and, for aughtthey know, this one will be as fruitless as those which have gone beforeit. Nevertheless, it is a more solemn one than usual; for the two yearsduring which they had agreed to search for Manoa are long past, and somenew place must be determined on, unless they intend to spend the rest oftheir lives in that green wilderness.

  "Well," says Will Cary, taking his cigar out of his mouth, "at least wehave got something out of those last Indians. It is a comfort to have apuff at tobacco once more, after three weeks' fasting."

  "For me," said Jack Brimblecombe, "Heaven forgive me! but when I get themagical leaf between my teeth again, I feel tempted to sit as still as achimney, and smoke till my dying day, without stirring hand or foot."

  "Then I shall forbid you tobacco, Master Parson," said Amyas; "for wemust be up and away again to-morrow. We have been idling here threemortal days, and nothing done."

  "Shall we ever do anything? I think the gold of Manoa is like the goldwhich lies where the rainbow touches the ground, always a field beyondyou."

  Amyas was silent awhile, and so were the rest. There was no denying thattheir hopes were all but gone. In the immense circuit which they hadmade, they had met with nothing but disappointment.

  "There is but one more chance," said he at length, "and that is, themountains to the east of the Orinoco, where we failed the first time.The Incas may have moved on to them when they escaped."

  "Why not?" said Cary; "they would so put all the forests, beside theLlanos and half-a-dozen great rivers, between them and those dogs ofSpaniards."

  "Shall we try it once more?" said Amyas. "This river ought to runinto the Orinoco; and once there, we are again at the very foot of themountains. What say you, Yeo?"

  "I cannot but mind, your worship, that when we came up the Orinoco,the Indians told us terrible stories of those mountains, how far theystretched, and how difficult they were to cross, by reason of the cliffsaloft, and the thick forests in the valleys. And have we not lost fivegood men there already?"

  "What care we? No forests can be thicker than those we have boredthrough already; why, if one had had but a tail, like a monkey, foran extra warp, one might have gone a hundred miles on end along thetree-tops, and found it far pleasanter walking than tripping in withes,and being eaten up with creeping things, from morn till night."

  "But remember, too," said Jack, "how they told us to beware of theAmazons."

  "What, Jack, afraid of a parcel of women?"

  "Why not?" said Jack, "I wouldn't run from a man, as you know; but awoman--it's not natural, like. They must be witches or devils. See howthe Caribs feared them. And there were men there without necks, and withtheir eyes in their breasts, they said. Now how could a Christian tacklesuch customers as them?"

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sp; "He couldn't cut off their heads, that's certain; but, I suppose, a pokein the ribs will do as much for them as for their neighbors."

  "Well," said Jack, "if I fight, let me fight honest flesh and blood,that's all, and none of these outlandish monsters. How do you know butthat they are invulnerable by art-magic?"

  "How do you know that they are? And as for the Amazons," said Cary,"woman's woman, all the world over. I'll bet that you may wheedle themround with a compliment or two, just as if they were so many burghers'wives. Pity I have not a court-suit and a Spanish hat. I would havetaken an orange in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, gone allalone to them as ambassador, and been in a week as great with QueenBlackfacealinda as ever Raleigh is at Whitehall."

  "Gentlemen!" said Yeo, "where you go, I go; and not only I, but everyman of us, I doubt not; but we have lost now half our company, and spentour ammunition, so we are no better men, were it not for our swords,than these naked heathens round us. Now it was, as you all know, by thewonder and noise of their ordnance (let alone their horses, which is abreak-neck beast I put no faith in) that both Cortez and Pizarro, thoseimps of Satan, made their golden conquests, with which if we could haveastounded the people of Manoa--"

  "Having first found the said people," laughed Amyas. "It is like theold fable. Every craftsman thinks his own trade the one pillar of thecommonweal."

  "Well! your worship," quoth Yeo, "it may be that being a gunner Ioverprize guns. But it don't need slate and pencil to do this sum--Areforty men without shot as good as eighty with?"

  "Thou art right, old fellow, right enough, and I was only jesting forvery sorrow, and must needs laugh about it lest I weep about it. Ourchance is over, I believe, though I dare not confess as much to themen."

  "Sir," said Yeo, "I have a feeling on me that the Lord's hand is againstus in this matter. Whether He means to keep this wealth for worthier menthan us, or whether it is His will to hide this great city in the secretplace of His presence from the strife of tongues, and so to spare themfrom sinful man's covetousness, and England from that sin and luxurywhich I have seen gold beget among the Spaniards, I know not, sir; forwho knoweth the counsels of the Lord? But I have long had a voice withinwhich saith, 'Salvation Yeo, thou shalt never behold the Golden Citywhich is on earth, where heathens worship sun and moon and the hosts ofheaven; be content, therefore, to see that Golden City which is above,where is neither sun nor moon, but the Lord God and the Lamb are thelight thereof."

  There was a simple majesty about old Yeo when he broke forth inutterances like these, which made his comrades, and even Amyas and Cary,look on him as Mussulmans look on madmen, as possessed of mysteriousknowledge and flashes of inspiration; and Brimblecombe, whose pious soullooked up to the old hero with a reverence which had overcome all hisChurchman's prejudices against Anabaptists, answered gently,--

  "Amen! amen! my masters all: and it has been on my mind, too, this longtime, that there is a providence against our going east; for see howthis two years past, whenever we have pushed eastward, we have falleninto trouble, and lost good men; and whenever we went Westward-ho, wehave prospered; and do prosper to this day."

  "And what is more, gentlemen," said Yeo, "if, as Scripture says, dreamsare from the Lord, I verily believe mine last night came from Him; foras I lay by the fire, sirs, I heard my little maid's voice calling ofme, as plain as ever I heard in my life; and the very same words, sirs,which she learned from me and my good comrade William Penberthy to say,'Westward-ho! jolly mariners all!' a bit of an ungodly song, my masters,which we sang in our wild days; but she stood and called it as plain asever mortal ears heard, and called again till I answered, 'Coming! mymaid, coming!' and after that the dear chuck called no more--God grant Ifind her yet!--and so I woke."

  Cary had long since given up laughing at Yeo about the "little maid;"and Amyas answered,--

  "So let it be, Yeo, if the rest agree: but what shall we do to thewestward?"

  "Do?" said Cary; "there's plenty to do; for there's plenty of gold,and plenty of Spaniards, too, they say, on the other side of thesemountains: so that our swords will not rust for lack of adventures, mygay knights-errant all."

  So they chatted on; and before night was half through a plan wasmatured, desperate enough--but what cared those brave hearts for that?They would cross the Cordillera to Santa Fe de Bogota, of the wealthwhereof both Yeo and Amyas had often heard in the Pacific: try to seizeeither the town or some convoy of gold going from it; make for thenearest river (there was said to be a large one which ran northwardthence), build canoes, and try to reach the Northern Sea once more; andthen, if Heaven prospered them, they might seize a Spanish ship, andmake their way home to England, not, indeed, with the wealth of Manoa,but with a fair booty of Spanish gold. This was their new dream. It wasa wild one: but hardly more wild than the one which Drake had fulfilled,and not as wild as the one which Oxenham might have fulfilled, but forhis own fatal folly.

  Amyas sat watching late that night, sad of heart. To give up thecherished dream of years was hard; to face his mother, harder still: butit must be done, for the men's sake. So the new plan was proposed nextday, and accepted joyfully. They would go up to the mountains and restawhile; if possible, bring up the wounded whom they had left behind; andthen, try a new venture, with new hopes, perhaps new dangers; they wereinured to the latter.

  They started next morning cheerfully enough, and for three hours or morepaddled easily up the glassy and windless reaches, between two greenflower-bespangled walls of forest, gay with innumerable birds andinsects; while down from the branches which overhung the stream longtrailers hung to the water's edge, and seemed admiring in the clearmirror the images of their own gorgeous flowers. River, trees, flowers,birds, insects,--it was all a fairy-land: but it was a colossal one; andyet the voyagers took little note of it. It was now to them an everydayoccurrence, to see trees full two hundred feet high one mass of yellowor purple blossom to the highest twigs, and every branch and stem onehanging garden of crimson and orange orchids or vanillas. Common to themwere all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks herrobes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest.Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, morestrange and bright than ever opium-eater dreamed. The long processionsof monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree-tops, and proclaimedtheir wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt, and howl, hadceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and therustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear; and when a brilliantgreen and rose-colored fish, flat-bodied like a bream, flab-finned likea salmon, and saw-toothed like a shark, leapt clean on board of thecanoe to escape the rush of the huge alligator (whose loathsome snout,ere he could stop, actually rattled against the canoe within a foot ofJack Brimblecombe's hand), Jack, instead of turning pale, as he had doneat the sharks upon a certain memorable occasion, coolly picked up thefish, and said, "He's four pound weight! If you can catch 'pirai' forus like that, old fellow, just keep in our wake, and we'll give you thecleanings for wages."

  Yes. The mind of man is not so "infinite," in the vulgar sense of thatword, as people fancy; and however greedy the appetite for wonder maybe, while it remains unsatisfied in everyday European life, it is aseasily satiated as any other appetite, and then leaves the senses ofits possessor as dull as those of a city gourmand after a lord mayor'sfeast. Only the highest minds--our Humboldts, and Bonplands, andSchomburgks (and they only when quickened to an almost unhealthyactivity by civilization)--can go on long appreciating where Nature isinsatiable, imperious, maddening, in her demands on our admiration. Thevery power of observing wears out under the rush of ever new objects;and the dizzy spectator is fain at last to shut the eyes of his soul,and take refuge (as West Indian Spaniards do) in tobacco and stupidity.The man, too, who has not only eyes but utterance,--what shall he dowhere all words fail him? Superlatives are but inarticulate, after all,and give no pictures even of size any more than do numbers of feet andyards: and yet what else
can we do, but heap superlative on superlative,and cry, "Wonderful, wonderful!" and after that, "wonderful, past allwhooping"? What Humboldt's self cannot paint, we will not try to daub.The voyagers were in a South American forest, readers. Fill up themeaning of those words, each as your knowledge enables you, for I cannotdo it for you.

  Certainly those adventurers could not. The absence of any attempt atword-painting, even of admiration at the glorious things which they saw,is most remarkable in all early voyagers, both Spanish and English. Theonly two exceptions which I recollect are Columbus--(but then all wasnew, and he was bound to tell what he had seen)--and Raleigh; the twomost gifted men, perhaps, with the exception of Humboldt, who ever setfoot in tropical America; but even they dare nothing but a few feeblehints in passing. Their souls had been dazzled and stunned by a greatglory. Coming out of our European Nature into that tropic one, they hadfelt like Plato's men, bred in the twilight cavern, and then suddenlyturned round to the broad blaze of day; they had seen things awful andunspeakable: why talk of them, except to say with the Turks, "God isgreat!"

  So it was with these men. Among the higher-hearted of them, the grandeurand the glory around had attuned their spirits to itself, and kept up inthem a lofty, heroical, reverent frame of mind; but they knew as littleabout the trees and animals in an "artistic" or "critical" pointof view, as in a scientific one. This tree the Indians called oneunpronounceable name, and it made good bows; that, some other name, andit made good canoes; of that, you could eat the fruit; that produced thecaoutchouc gum, useful for a hundred matters; that was what the Indians(and they likewise) used to poison their arrows with; from the ashes ofthose palm-nuts you could make good salt; that tree, again, was full ofgood milk if you bored the stem: they drank it, and gave God thanks, andwere not astonished. God was great: but that they had discovered longbefore they came into the tropics. Noble old child-hearted heroes, withjust romance and superstition enough about them to keep them from thatprurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm, which is simply, one oftenfears, a product of our scepticism! We do not trust enough in God, we donot really believe His power enough, to be ready, as they were, as everyone ought to be on a God-made earth, for anything and everything beingpossible; and then, when a wonder is discovered, we go into ecstasiesand shrieks over it, and take to ourselves credit for being susceptibleof so lofty a feeling, true index, forsooth, of a refined and cultivatedmind.

  They paddled onward hour after hour, sheltering themselves as best theycould under the shadow of the southern bank, while on their right handthe full sun-glare lay upon the enormous wall of mimosas, figs, andlaurels, which formed the northern forest, broken by the slender shaftsof bamboo tufts, and decked with a thousand gaudy parasites; bank uponbank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where its outlinecut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be distinguished by theeye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues quivering in the ascendingstreams of azure mist, until they seemed to melt and mingle with thevery heavens.

  And as the sun rose higher and higher, a great stillness fell upon theforest. The jaguars and the monkeys had hidden themselves in the darkestdepths of the woods. The birds' notes died out one by one; the verybutterflies ceased their flitting over the tree-tops, and slept withoutspread wings upon the glossy leaves, undistinguishable from theflowers around them. Now and then a colibri whirred downward towardthe water, hummed for a moment around some pendent flower, and thenthe living gem was lost in the deep blackness of the inner wood, amongtree-trunks as huge and dark as the pillars of some Hindoo shrine; ora parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhanging bough; or athirsty monkey slid lazily down a liana to the surface of the stream,dipped up the water in his tiny hand, and started chattering back, ashis eyes met those of some foul alligator peering upward through theclear depths below. In shaded nooks beneath the boughs, the capybaras,rabbits as large as sheep, went paddling sleepily round and round,thrusting up their unwieldy heads among the blooms of the bluewater-lilies; while black and purple water-hens ran up and down upon therafts of floating leaves. The shining snout of a freshwater dolphin roseslowly to the surface; a jet of spray whirred up; a rainbow hung uponit for a moment; and the black snout sank lazily again. Here and there,too, upon some shallow pebbly shore, scarlet flamingoes stood dreamingknee-deep, on one leg; crested cranes pranced up and down, admiringtheir own finery; and ibises and egrets dipped their bills under waterin search of prey: but before noon even those had slipped away, andthere reigned a stillness which might be heard--such a stillness (tocompare small things with great) as broods beneath the rich shadows ofAmyas's own Devon woods, or among the lonely sweeps of Exmoor, when theheather is in flower--a stillness in which, as Humboldt says, "If beyondthe silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled,continuous hum of insects, which crowd the air close to the earth; aconfused swarming murmur which hangs round every bush, in the crackedbark of trees, in the soil undermined by lizards, millepedes, andbees; a voice proclaiming to us that all Nature breathes, that under athousand different forms life swarms in the gaping and dusty earth, asmuch as in the bosom of the waters, and the air which breathes around."

  At last a soft and distant murmur, increasing gradually to a heavy roar,announced that they were nearing some cataract; till turning a point,where the deep alluvial soil rose into a low cliff fringed with delicateferns, they came full in sight of a scene at which all paused: not withastonishment, but with something very like disgust.

  "Rapids again!" grumbled one. "I thought we had had enough of them onthe Orinoco."

  "We shall have to get out, and draw the canoes overland, I suppose.Three hours will be lost, and in the very hottest of the day, too."

  "There's worse behind; don't you see the spray behind the palms?"

  "Stop grumbling, my masters, and don't cry out before you are hurt.Paddle right up to the largest of those islands, and let us look aboutus."

  In front of them was a snow-white bar of raging foam, some ten feethigh, along which were ranged three or four islands of black rock. Eachwas crested with a knot of lofty palms, whose green tops stood out clearagainst the bright sky, while the lower half of their stems loomed hazythrough a luminous veil of rainbowed mist. The banks right and leftof the fall were so densely fringed with a low hedge of shrubs, thatlanding seemed all but impossible; and their Indian guide, suddenlylooking round him and whispering, bade them beware of savages; andpointed to a canoe which lay swinging in the eddies under the largestisland, moored apparently to the root of some tree.

  "Silence all!" cried Amyas, "and paddle up thither and seize the canoe.If there be an Indian on the island, we will have speech of him: butmind and treat him friendly; and on your lives, neither strike norshoot, even if he offers to fight."

  So, choosing a line of smooth backwater just in the wake of the island,they drove their canoes up by main force, and fastened them safelyby the side of the Indian's, while Amyas, always the foremost, sprangboldly on shore, whispering to the Indian boy to follow him.

  Once on the island, Amyas felt sure enough, that if its wild tenant hadnot seen them approach, he certainly had not heard them, so deafeningwas the noise which filled his brain, and seemed to make the very leavesupon the bushes quiver, and the solid stone beneath his feet to reel andring. For two hundred yards and more above the fall nothing met his eyebut one white waste of raging foam, with here and there a transversedyke of rock, which hurled columns of spray and surges of beaded waterhigh into the air,--strangely contrasting with the still and silentcliffs of green leaves which walled the river right and left, and morestrangely still with the knots of enormous palms upon the islets, whichreared their polished shafts a hundred feet into the air, straight andupright as masts, while their broad plumes and golden-clustered fruitslept in the sunshine far aloft, the image of the stateliest repose amidthe wildest wrath of Nature.

  He looked round anxiously for the expected Indian; but he was nowhere tobe seen; and, in the meanwhile, as he stept cautiously along the i
sland,which was some fifty yards in length and breadth, his senses, accustomedas they were to such sights, could not help dwelling on the exquisitebeauty of the scene; on the garden of gay flowers, of every imaginableform and hue, which fringed every boulder at his feet, peeping out amiddelicate fern-fans and luxuriant cushions of moss; on the chequeredshade of the palms, and the cool air, which wafted down from thecataracts above the scents of a thousand flowers. Gradually his earbecame accustomed to the roar, and, above its mighty undertone, he couldhear the whisper of the wind among the shrubs, and the hum of myriadinsects; while the rock manakin, with its saffron plumage, flittedbefore him from stone to stone, calling cheerily, and seeming to leadhim on. Suddenly, scrambling over the rocky flower-beds to the otherside of the isle, he came upon a little shady beach, which, beneath abank of stone some six feet high, fringed the edge of a perfectly stilland glassy bay. Ten yards farther, the cataract fell sheer in thunder:but a high fern-fringed rock turned its force away from that quiet nook.In it the water swung slowly round and round in glassy dark-green rings,among which dimpled a hundred gaudy fish, waiting for every fly and wormwhich spun and quivered on the eddy. Here, if anywhere, was the place tofind the owner of the canoe. He leapt down upon the pebbles; and as hedid so, a figure rose from behind a neighboring rock, and met him faceto face.

  It was an Indian girl; and yet, when he looked again,--was it an Indiangirl? Amyas had seen hundreds of those delicate dark-skinned daughtersof the forest, but never such a one as this. Her stature was taller,her limbs were fuller and more rounded; her complexion, though tanned bylight, was fairer by far than his own sunburnt face; her hair, crownedwith a garland of white flowers, was not lank, and straight, and black,like an Indian's, but of a rich, glossy brown, and curling richly andcrisply from her very temples to her knees. Her forehead, though low,was upright and ample; her nose was straight and small; her lips, thelips of a European; her whole face of the highest and richest type ofSpanish beauty; a collar of gold mingled with green beads hung round herneck, and golden bracelets were on her wrists. All the strange and dimlegends of white Indians, and of nations of a higher race than Carib, orArrowak, or Solimo, which Amyas had ever heard, rose up in his memory.She must be the daughter of some great cacique, perhaps of the lostIncas themselves--why not? And full of simple wonder, he gazed uponthat fairy vision, while she, unabashed in her free innocence, gazedfearlessly in return, as Eve might have done in Paradise, upon themighty stature, and the strange garments, and above all, on the bushybeard and flowing yellow locks of the Englishman.

  He spoke first, in some Indian tongue, gently and smilingly, and madea half-step forward; but quick as light she caught up from the ground abow, and held it fiercely toward him, fitted with the long arrow,with which, as he could see, she had been striking fish, for a line oftwisted grass hung from its barbed head. Amyas stopped, laid down hisown bow and sword, and made another step in advance, smiling still,and making all Indian signs of amity: but the arrow was still pointedstraight at his breast, and he knew the mettle and strength of theforest nymphs well enough to stand still and call for the Indian boy;too proud to retreat, but in the uncomfortable expectation of feelingevery moment the shaft quivering between his ribs.

  The boy, who had been peering from above, leaped down to them in amoment; and began, as the safest method, grovelling on his nose upon thepebbles, while he tried two or three dialects; one of which at last sheseemed to understand, and answered in a tone of evident suspicion andanger.

  "What does she say?"

  "That you are a Spaniard and a robber, because you have a beard."

  "Tell her that we are no Spaniards, but that we hate them; and are comeacross the great waters to help the Indians to kill them."

  The boy translated his speech. The nymph answered by a contemptuousshake of the head.

  "Tell her, that if she will send her tribe to us, we will do them noharm. We are going over the mountains to fight the Spaniards, and wewant them to show us the way."

  The boy had no sooner spoken, than, nimble as a deer, the nymph hadsprung up the rocks, and darted between the palm-stems to her canoe.Suddenly she caught sight of the English boat, and stopped with a cry offear and rage.

  "Let her pass!" shouted Amyas, who had followed her close. "Push yourboat off, and let her pass. Boy, tell her to go on; they will not comenear her."

  But she hesitated still, and with arrow drawn to the head, faced firston the boat's crew, and then on Amyas, till the Englishmen had shovedoff full twenty yards.

  Then, leaping into her tiny piragua, she darted into the wildest whirlof the eddies, shooting along with vigorous strokes, while the Englishtrembled as they saw the frail bark spinning and leaping amid themuzzles of the alligators, and the huge dog-toothed trout: but with theswiftness of an arrow she reached the northern bank, drove her canoeamong the bushes, and leaping from it, darted through some narrowopening in the bush, and vanished like a dream.

  "What fair virago have you unearthed?" cried Cary, as they toiled upagain to the landing-place.

  "Beshrew me," quoth Jack, "but we are in the very land of the nymphs,and I shall expect to see Diana herself next, with the moon on herforehead."

  "Take care, then, where you wander hereabouts, Sir John: lest you end asActaeon did, by turning into a stag, and being eaten by a jaguar."

  "Actaeon was eaten by his own hounds, Mr. Cary, so the parallel don'thold. But surely she was a very wonder of beauty!"

  Why was it that Amyas did not like this harmless talk? There had comeover him the strangest new feeling; as if that fair vision was hisproperty, and the men had no right to talk about her, no right to haveeven seen her. And he spoke quite surlily as he said--

  "You may leave the women to themselves, my masters; you'll have to dealwith the men ere long: so get your canoes up on the rock, and keep goodwatch."

  "Hillo!" shouted one in a few minutes, "here's fresh fish enough to feedus all round. I suppose that young cat-a-mountain left it behind herin her hurry. I wish she had left her golden chains and ouches into thebargain."

  "Well," said another, "we'll take it as fair payment, for having madeus drop down the current again to let her ladyship pass."

  "Leave that fish alone," said Amyas; "it is none of yours."

  "Why, sir!" quoth the finder in a tone of sulky deprecation.

  "If we are to make good friends with the heathens, we had better notbegin by stealing their goods. There are plenty more fish in the river;go and catch them, and let the Indians have their own."

  The men were accustomed enough to strict and stern justice in theirdealings with the savages: but they could not help looking slyly ateach other, and hinting, when out of sight, that the captain seemed in amighty fuss about his new acquaintance.

  However, they were expert by this time in all the Indian's fishingmethods; and so abundant was the animal life which swarmed around everyrock, that in an hour fish enough lay on the beach to feed them all;whose forms and colors, names and families, I must leave the reader toguess from the wondrous pages of Sir Richard Schomburgk, for I know toolittle of them to speak without the fear of making mistakes.

  A full hour passed before they saw anything more of their Indianneighbors; and then from under the bushes shot out a canoe, on which alleyes were fixed in expectation.

  Amyas, who expected to find there some remnant of a higher race, wasdisappointed enough at seeing on board only the usual half-dozen oflow-browed, dirty Orsons, painted red with arnotto: but a gray-headedelder at the stern seemed, by his feathers and gold ornaments, to besome man of note in the little woodland community.

  The canoe came close up to the island; Amyas saw that they were unarmed,and, laying down his weapons, advanced alone to the bank, making allsigns of amity. They were returned with interest by the old man, andAmyas's next care was to bring forward the fish which the fair nymphhad left behind, and, through the medium of the Indian lad, to give thecacique (for so he seemed to be) to understand that he wished to renderevery
one his own. This offer was received, as Amyas expected, withgreat applause, and the canoe came alongside; but the crew still seemedafraid to land. Amyas bade his men throw the fish one by one into theboat; and then proclaimed by the boy's mouth, as was his custom with allIndians, that he and his were enemies of the Spaniards, and on theirway to make war against them,--and that all which they desired was apeaceable and safe passage through the dominions of the mighty potentateand renowned warrior whom they beheld before them; for Amyas arguedrightly enough, that even if the old fellow aft was not the cacique, hewould be none the less pleased at being mistaken for him.

  Whereon the ancient worthy, rising in the canoe, pointed to heaven,earth, and the things under, and commenced a long sermon, in tone,manner, and articulation, very like one of those which the greatblack-bearded apes were in the habit of preaching every evening whenthey could get together a congregation of little monkeys to listen, tothe great scandal of Jack, who would have it that some evil spirit setthem on to mimic him; which sermon, being partly interpreted by theIndian lad, seemed to signify, that the valor and justice of the whitemen had already reached the ears of the speaker, and that he was sent towelcome them into those regions by the Daughter of the Sun.

  "The Daughter of the Sun!" quoth Amyas; "then we have found the lostIncas after all."

  "We have found something," said Cary; "I only hope it may not be amare's nest, like many another of our finding."

  "Or an adder's," said Yeo. "We must beware of treachery."

  "We must beware of no such thing," said Amyas, pretty sharply. "Have Inot told you fifty times, that if they see that we trust them, they willtrust us, and if they see that we suspect them, they will suspect us?And when two parties are watching to see who strikes the first blow,they are sure to come to fisticuffs from mere dirty fear of each other."

  Amyas spoke truth; for almost every atrocity against savages which hadbeen committed by the Spaniards, and which was in later and worse timescommitted by the English, was wont to be excused in that same base fearof treachery. Amyas's plan, like that of Drake, and Cook, and allgreat English voyagers, had been all along to inspire at once aweand confidence, by a frank and fearless carriage; and he was notdisappointed here. He bade the men step boldly into their canoes, andfollow the old Indian whither he would. The simple children of theforest bowed themselves reverently before the mighty strangers, and thenled them smilingly across the stream, and through a narrow passage inthe covert, to a hidden lagoon, on the banks of which stood, not Manoa,but a tiny Indian village.