Part 32 (1/2)
”Where is she?”
”The elder sorceress, or the younger?”
”The younger--the--”
”The Senora de Soto? Ah, poor thing! One could be sorry for her, were she not a heretic” And the man eyed Eustace keenly, and then quietly added, ”She is at present with the notary; to the benefit of her soul, I trust--”
Eustace half stopped, shuddering He could hardly collect hiasp out an ”A carelessly to a door as they went down the corridor ”We can listen a moment, if you like; but don't betray h that the fellow is probably on the watch to betray hins of compunction; at least to report faithfully to his superiors the slightest expression of sympathy with a heretic; but a horrible curiosity prevails over fear, and he pauses close to the fatal door His face is all of a fla, his heart bursting through his ribs, as he supports hi his convulsed face as well as he can from his companion
A man's voice is plainly audible within; low, but distinct The notary is trying that old charge of witchcraft, which the Inquisitors, whether to justify themselves to their own consciences, or to whiten their villainy soainst their victims And then Eustace's heart sinks within hination and agony-- ”Witchcraft against Don Guzman? What need of that, oh God! what need?”
”You deny it then, senora? we are sorry for you; but--”
A confused choking ht
”She has confessed!” whispered Eustace; ”saints, I thank you!--she--”
A hich rings through Eustace's ears, and brain, and heart! He would have torn at the door to open it; but his companion forces him away Another, and another wail, while the wretched ainst those piercing cries, which follow hih the dreadful vaults
He escaped into the fragrant open air, and the golden tropic ht have served as a model for Eden; but man's hell followed into God's heaven, and still those wails seeh his ears
”Oh, rinding teeth; ”and I have brought her to this! I have had to bring her to it! What else could I? Who dare blame me? And yet what devilish sin can I have committed, that requires to be punished thus? Was there no one to be found buther to repentance!”
”It may, indeed; for she is delicate, and cannot endure ht to knoell as I, senor, the merciful disposition of the Holy Office”
”I know it, I know it,” interrupted poor Eustace, tre now for himself ”All in love--all in love--A paternal chastisement--”
”And the proofs of heresy are patent, beside the strong suspicion of enchantment, and the known character of the elder sorceress You yourself, you must remember, senor, told us that she had been a notorious witch in England, before the senora brought her hither as her attendant”
”Of course she was; of course Yes; there was no other course open And though the flesh may be weak, sir, in my case, yet none can have proved better to the Holy Office hoilling is the spirit!”
And so Eustace departed; and ere another sun had set, he had gone to the principal of the Jesuits; told him his whole heart, or as much of it, poor wretch, as he dare tell to himself; and entreated to be allowed to finish his novitiate, and enter the order, on the understanding that he was to be sent at once back to Europe, or anywhere else; ”Otherwise,” as he said frankly, ”he should go mad, even if he were not h, went to the Holy Office, and settled all with the Inquisitors, recounting to them, to set him above all suspicion, Eustace's past valiant services to the Church His testiena for Noht, and sailed the next week I know not whither
I say, I know not whither Eustace Leigh vanishes henceforth froes He may have ended as General of his Order Hethe souls” (including, of course, the bodies) of Indians; he land, and been the very Ballard as hanged and quartered three years afterwards for his share in Babington's villainous conspiracy: I know not This book is a history of men,--of men's virtues and sins, victories and defeats; and Eustace is a oes only where it is sent, and does good or evil indifferently as it is bid; which, by an act ofit; without a will, a conscience, a responsibility (as it fancies), to God or man, but only to ”The Society” In a word, Eustace, as he says himself, is ”dead” Twice dead, I fear Let the dead bury their dead We have no h
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BANKS OF THE META
”My ht withere the end, So men that strove with Gods!”
TENNYSON'S Ulysses
Nearly three years are past and gone since that little band had knelt at evensong beneath the giant tree of Guayra--years of seeh which they are to be tracked only by scattered notes and h untrodden hills and forests, over a space of soth by four hundred in breadth, they had been seeking for the Golden City, and they had sought in vain They had sought it along the wooded banks of the Orinoco, and beyond the roaring foahty Aone up the strearoves of Loxa, ignorant, as all the world was then, of their healing virtues They had seen the virgin snows of Chiiant cone of Cotopaxi blackening in its sullen wrath, before the fiery streams rolled down its sides Foiled in their search at the back of the Andes, they had turned eastward once reen and misty ocean of the Montana” Slowly and painfully they had worked their way northward again, along the eastern foot of the inland Cordillera, and now they were bivouacking, as it seems, upon one of the many feeders of the Meta, which flon from the Suma Paz into the forest-covered plains There they sat, their watch-fires glittering on the stream, beneath the shadow of enormous trees, Amyas and Cary, Brimblecombe, Yeo, and the Indian lad, who has followed thes, alive and well: but as far as ever froolden palaces, and all the wonders of the Indian's tale Again and again in their wanderings they had heard faint rumors of its existence, and started off in some fresh direction, to meet only a fresh disappointment, and hope deferred, which maketh sick the heart
There they sit at last--four-and-forty hty-four who left the tree of Guayra:--where are the rest?
”Their bones are scatter'd far and wide, By mount, by stream, and sea”
Drew, the ro, and five brave fellows by hiht by the poisoned arrows of the Indians, in a vain attees of the Parima Two more lie amid the valleys of the Andes, frozen to death by the fierce slaty hail which sweeps down from the condor's eyrie; four more were drowned at one of the rapids of the Orinoco; five or sixfriendly Indians, to be recovered when they can be: perhaps never Fever, snakes, jaguars, alligators, cannibal fish, electric eels, have thinned their ranks h the priraves
And there the survivors sit, beside the silent strea and bold as ever, with the quiet fire of English courage burning undilish er and a sport of toil, as cheerily as when they sailed over the bar of Bideford, in days which seeron upon their breasts; their long hair is knotted on their heads, like wos are of the skin of the delicate Guazu-puti deer; their shi+rts are patched with Indian cotton web; the spoils of jaguar, pu fro since spent, theirwoods, are left behind as useless in a cave by soht and terrible as ever; and they carry bows of a strength which no Indian arm can bend, and arrows pointed with the remnants of their arun of the Indians--more deadly, because more silent, than the firearms which they have left behind them So they have wandered, and so they ander still, the lords of the forest and its beasts; terrible to all hostile Indians, but kindly, just, and generous to all ill deal faithfully with them; and many a smooth-chinned Carib and Ature, Solihteousness of the bearded heroes, who proclaimed themselves the deadly foes of the faithless and ood queen beyond the seas, ould send her warriors to deliver and avenge the oppressed Indian
The round, and so between the stee of the tapir in the river, as he tears up the water- weeds for his night's repast Souar, as he climbs from one tree-top to another after his prey, wakens the ain arouse the birds, and ten sas if all pandeain; and, even while it lasts, it is too common a matter to awaken the sleepers,on beside the watch-fire, between the three adventurers and the faithful Yeo A hundred tiht they know, this one will be as fruitless as those which have gone before it Nevertheless, it is awhich they had agreed to search for Manoa are long past, and some new place must be determined on, unless they intend to spend the rest of their lives in that green wilderness
”Well,” says Will Cary, taking his cigar out of hisout of those last Indians It is a comfort to have a puff at tobacco once ”
”For et the ain, I feel te day, without stirring hand or foot”
”Then I shall forbid you tobacco, Master Parson,” said Aain to- here threedone”
”Shall we ever do anything? I think the gold of Manoa is like the gold which lies where the rainbow touches the ground, always a field beyond you”
Amyas was silent awhile, and so were the rest There was no denying that their hopes were all but gone In the i but disappointth, ”and that is, the mountains 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 the Llanos and half-a-dozen great rivers, between thes of Spaniards”
”Shall we try it once ht to run into the Orinoco; and once there, we are again at the very foot of the mountains What say you, Yeo?”
”I cannot but mind, your worshi+p, that e came up the Orinoco, the Indians told us terrible stories of those mountains, how far they stretched, and how difficult they were to cross, by reason of the cliffs aloft, and the thick forests in the valleys And have we not lost five good men there already?”
”What care we? No forests can be thicker than those we have bored through already; why, if one had had but a tail, like a one a hundredthe tree-tops, and found it far pleasanter walking than tripping in withes, and being eaten up with creeping things, froht”
”But remember, too,” said Jack, ”how they told us to beware of the Amazons”
”What, Jack, afraid of a parcel of women?”
”Why not?” said Jack, ”I wouldn't run from a man, as you know; but a woman--it's not natural, like They must be witches or devils See how the Caribs feared them And there were men there without necks, and with their eyes in their breasts, they said No could a Christian tackle such customers as them?”
”He couldn't cut off their heads, that's certain; but, I suppose, a poke in the ribs will do as hbors”
”Well,” said Jack, ”if I fight, let ht honest flesh and blood, that's all, and none of these outlandish monsters How do you know but that they are invulnerable by art-ic?”