John Masefield

“ As he turned towards Anselmo, he heard the sergeants of the Meruel Reds calling the roll at the siding.
“Those fellows are here for no good,” he thought. “I’ll get along to Don Manuel before I am stopped.”
The sun strode up out of the sea to give to the country a beauty, unspeakable to one who had been for a week in the gloom of the forest. To the joy of the light was added a beauty of overwhelming blossom, so great that the soul of the earth seemed to be exulting in the sun.
“I shall reach Don Manuel after all,” he said. “I shall be actually with him when we save Carlotta from the prison. ”

“ That dry, feathery touch was real: that smell of mint and turpentine from the crushed fronds was real. The red-hearts in the glow of the sun were real; so were those little green wrynecks questing their bark for food. On the ground was the broken yellow fungus, and beyond it lay the two brass rifle-shells, with ants examining them. A little gust of wind came down the forest, the sari-sari bowed to it and glistened and dappled, like the grass under the wind on Blowbury. A buck of the forest, delicate and proud, appeared, wide-eyed as a hare, noble as a Persian prince ”

“ He had often heard his father speak of the Santa Barbara landscape, now he saw it in its sweep, with the mountains near at his left, Gaspar thrusting out in front of them, above a rolling plain over which the wind exulted. Santa Barbara made a smudge against the paleness of the lower sky far behind him to his right. In front was this infinity of swaying sage, which ran on into grass for hours and hours of going. The forest lay dark to the left, all over the foothills of the Sierras; but one could not look at the darkness with all that light to choose. ”

“ Hi thought. “He has scared the cat, or let in a draught upon him. I’ll be out of this.”
The office window seemed to be the exit most likely to bring him out beside his horse: he slipped into the office and closed the door behind him. Then he listened, with a beating heart, for some swift, stealthy footstep in the corridor or outside the window. “Perhaps,” he thought, “I shan’t hear any footsteps, only the brute’s hand on the latch. He’s a spy and a Red, that devil. Listen.”
In that silence, the beating of the clock clanged like the tolling of a bell. ”

“ As he turned out of his hammock, he saw that it was almost dawn: the young men were mustering to a hunt. One of them began to make a melancholy noise upon a flute, to which the others answered by tapping upon their blow-pipes. Women were already at work at the cassava presses or at splitting away the twigs from the branches brought for firing. The young men moved off into the forest: the young women in a group moved off to bathe: the babies, dogs, pigeons and parrots came all to life at once: none but the grown men remained in their hammocks, even they were smoking. ”

“ In between, in the arc of the bay, were the lights of the city and of the ships at anchor. The city itself was little more than a smudge against a darkness. Far beyond the city, in a line like an army, were the high Sierras of the Three Kings. Their peaks rose up out of the clouds like mountains in another world. As they were now catching the dawn they seemed made of jewels. Mount Gaspar was golden. Mount Baltazar was like a bubble of blood, and Mount Melchior a blue and evil finger glistening. As Hi watched, amazed by the beauty of the scene, colour began to come upon the bay. ”

“ Rosa whispered.
Colour was all over the eastern heaven and touching the upper roofs and spires.
“Hi,” Rosa said, when they had gone a little distance, “we shall never be able to do it. I am seen to be a woman and there is a patrol in the streets stopping people.”
“Where?”
“There in front.”
About a hundred yards in front of them there was an interruption in the flow of people. They could see the gleam of helmets beyond the blackness of the crowd, which grew greater as men and women flocked up to it. Plainly the police or troops were examining all who were going that way. ”

“ It was a good enough life for a man, to ride that expanse on a horse worthy of such going. The horse felt the stir of that freedom. Hi felt him kindle beneath him into the tireless stride of the horse of the savannah. As he went, his hoofs drummed up myriads of glittering green beetles which whirled about them and flew with them, sometimes settling on horse or man, then whirling on again, now with shrillness, now with droning, till the noise they made was the ride itself set to music. ”

“ It had once been an Italian garden, but time, poverty and the sea winds had helped to bring it to ruin. Marble busts of poets and nymphs were fallen, or overgrown with trailers. The great red clay or terra-cotta urns had been split by the roots of their flowers, so that they looked like fountains of flowers falling under the living glitter of the humming birds. The shingle of the walk, though marked with wheels and horse-hoofs, was almost overgrown with a thick green-leaved trailer, full of minute blue flowers. ”

“ Soon he drew clear of a patch of scrub into sight of the great south road from Santa Barbara to Meruel. It went straight from the city across his path through a copse or woodland half a mile in front of him. On the road, coming from the city towards this wood, were four ox-waggons each with teams of eight oxen. He could see the slow, stately lurch of each swaying ox and hear the songs and cries of the negro teamsters. They were going with heavy loads. The whips cracked like rifle shots; the soft tenor voices adjured the oxen to pull in the names of countless saints. ”

“ There’ll be no kind white man to give you chow; don’t think it. If a snake doesn’t do you, a tiger will. Or if a woods Indian finds you, he’ll eat you: to say nothing of the fever. Come on out of it, like a sensible kid and turn-to at the temple. . . .
“If you think I’m not offering you enough, you’ve only to say the word. I’ll go you an honest half, share and share alike, in all we find: I can’t say squarer. I wouldn’t do it for many people; but I like you, because you’ve got guts, and so I tell you straight.” ”

“ The patch was perhaps three hundred yards across and of an intense glittering greenness. “Soft going,” Hi muttered; “this is bog.”
The horse knew something about earth of that greenness. He would have none of it. Hi dismounted to look at it; it looked like bottomless bog leading to deep water, with bog on the further side. In the midst of the green expanse there was a sort of bubbling wriggle of small snakes. Sometimes a red turtle crawled out of a pool, wallowed along the mud and sank into another. “Here’s a lively place,” Hi thought. ”

“ As he slept, Hi became aware that Dudley Wigmore was in the hut, sitting on a box, waiting for him to wake. He could see him distinctly; a sad-looking man, of the middle build, fair-haired, blue-eyed, gentle and thoughtful, yet with a clench of resolution, in mouth and chin, which made the face memorable.
“I’m an ethnologist,” Wigmore was saying. “You want to escape from here without fail. This is Murder Poblacion.”
“Is it?” Hi answered. “By George, did that tick murder you? Wait a minute: I’ll be awake in a minute: then, I’ll ask you something.” ”

“ Some birds in those tree-tops right over where the danger had been now woke all together with ejaculations and the clapping of wings, which spread from tree to tree, till all the forest was awake. High, shrill cacklings and screamings, full of good spirits and energy rang aloud all over the wood. With a clattering of the quills of wing-feathers, some big birds shook themselves loose from sleep. After a time, flocks of little birds passed overhead with thin, sweet cries. The false dawn, which had made the sky warm with colour, died away into dimness ”

“ Forasmuch as I, Don Lopez de Meruel, King, Emperor and Dictator of Santa Barbara, am convinced of my divinity and of my oneness with God. Know all men, that henceforth, throughout this my heaven of Santa Barbara, I assume the style and name of God, with the titles of Thrice Holy, Thrice Blessed, Thrice Glorious.
“What do you make of that?” he said, “for a beginning?”
“The man is mad,” Rosa said.
“It is blasphemy unspeakable,” Donna Emilia said. “I tremble lest fire descend on us.”
“This is nothing to what follows,” Don Inocencio said. “I will read on. The rest is incredibly much worse. ”

“ As I landed in the late afternoon, I was the only person there, except a few anglers fishing for snappers. I could see what used to be the Piranhas’ house, so leaving the pier, I walked up to it. It is now the house of enclosed nuns in which Rosa lives. They are contemplatives, so there was no seeing Rosa: none of us will ever see her again, I suppose. I am too active to take to the monkish way of life myself; but I have seen monks and nuns out here, from time to time, who have made me see something of what they see. When you once see the beauty of holiness, no other beauty seems living. ”

“ In another hour, the heavens descended on him, so that while water streamed from heaven and forest, the air was a greyness of melting and moving cloud. All the forest was alive with the rushings, the laughters and the forebodings of rain falling or being shaken: sometimes it came at him like the footsteps of enemies, sometimes like lamentings, anon with a crackle as though a pack were afoot. “The horse would take me out of this,” he thought, “but he would take me straight back to the estancia, so that I should have to start again. ”

“ The tops of the southern hills brightened till they seemed to spout flames into the sky. These flames soon changed into streamers of cirrus, less fiery than copper-coloured, with rose half-way up the heavens. “It is just as though the sky were feeling bilious,” he thought. With this change in the heavens, a change came into the air and into the horse; all the delight of the going went; the beetles gave up their play. Presently the copper-colour darkened along the hilltops to something like the smoke of a burning. ”

“ I am a woman and meddle little with politics, but very much with religion, which is a force that your Mr. Weycocks do not admit to exist. He and his friends, Highworth, are rousing up in this country something which they cannot understand, the very depths of the soul of this people. But come, Highworth, take this flower. Give me your arm. Open that door for me. This is the chapel of the Piranhas ”

“ As the ravine and pool made a wide open space, all the hillside in front of him was in such light that he could see, for the first time, what colour can be. The timber grew to great heights beyond the pool, but all the timber down the glade was heaped and piled with a pouring fire of creeper in blossom. A white flowered creeper had piled itself like snow even to the tops of the green-hearts, and fell thence in streamers and banners. ”

“ All were almost naked; all shone as though the life in them made them radiant. All were of a rich red-golden colour like new pennies. Even the smallest of them looked a match for two strong Europeans. Even the most benign of them looked like the devil he was and the cannibal he could be. All wore gold, ivory or copper placques, shaped like new moons, which hung from their noses and covered their mouths. They looked curiously like the lids of letter-boxes.
“See those fellows, Mr. Ridden?” said the captain on the bridge. “They’re Pitubas from up-country and they’re cannibals to a man. ”

“ After the shots, listening intently as he was, he thought that he heard the sound of many horses going together at a fast trot. Some such noise there was, it rang out, died down, clopped and clinked and then clattered. “Of course, it can’t be Don Manuel,” he said, coming to himself. “But it may be the Whites driving away the Reds. Anyhow, people are there: the forest ends. It may even be Anselmo. Come on, horse, here’s the world again. ”

“ He slopped on slowly for another hundred yards, leading the horse. The reeds grew thicker as he proceeded. They were hard in the leaf like cactus and tough in the stem like bamboo. He had to back into them, dragging the horse, who came unwillingly; sometimes he could not break through, but had to edge round a clump. It was hot work paddling backward thus. After the first hundred yards the water began to deepen. Birds which had never before seen a man moved away at his coming; a deep, intense droning of insects sounded about him: insects got into his eyes and seemed to like being there. ”

“ He wondered much into what kind of country he had come, for he could see so little, except the faces of rocks all streaming, then mist, then folds of hill, from which streamers of rain came out and passed. Presently he came to trees which had hard leaves that clacked: his teeth clacked in sympathy. Not long after this, he came to a bridge, not over but in a torrent; and here he had to blindfold his horse to get him across. On the other side of the bridge, at a little distance above the waters, was a stone with an inscription in Latin:
Pray for the souls
Of Espinar, Gamarro, Velarde. ”

“ What engines interest you most?”
“No particular engine,” he said, “but more the nature of engines. I’m always thinking of all sorts of little engines which everybody could have. For instance, a little engine to sweep the floor of a room, or dust walls, or clean big glass panes like the windows of shops. Then, I expect you’ll think it very silly, but don’t you think one could have a little engine on a boat?”
“Oh, the engine on a boat,” Rosa said. “Hi is a lovely character, Carlotta. He would die for me or for you at a moment’s notice; but the engine on a boat is his mad streak. ”