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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaspar Ruiz, by Joseph Conrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Gaspar Ruiz
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8736]
+Posting Date: June 18, 2009
+Last Updated: September 9, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASPAR RUIZ ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Orford
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GASPAR RUIZ
+
+
+By Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A Revolutionary war raises many strange characters out of the obscurity
+which is the common lot of humble lives in an undisturbed state of
+society.
+
+Certain individualities grow into fame through their vices and their
+virtues, or simply by their actions, which may have a temporary
+importance; and then they become forgotten. The names of a few leaders
+alone survive the end of armed strife and are further preserved in
+history; so that, vanishing from men’s active memories, they still exist
+in books.
+
+The name of General Santierra attained that cold, paper-and-ink
+immortality. He was a South American of good family, and the books
+published in his lifetime numbered him amongst the liberators of that
+continent from the oppressive rule of Spain.
+
+That long contest, waged for independence on one side and for dominion
+on the other, developed, in the course of years and the vicissitudes of
+changing fortune, the fierceness and inhumanity of a struggle for
+life. All feelings of pity and compassion disappeared in the growth of
+political hatred. And, as is usual in war, the mass of the people,
+who had the least to gain by the issue, suffered most in their obscure
+persons and their humble fortunes.
+
+General Santierra began his service as lieutenant in the patriot army
+raised and commanded by the famous San Martin, afterwards conqueror of
+Lima and liberator of Peru. A great battle had just been fought on the
+banks of the river Bio-Bio. Amongst the prisoners made upon the routed
+Royalist troops there was a soldier called Gaspar Ruiz. His
+powerful build and his big head rendered him remarkable amongst his
+fellow-captives. The personality of the man was unmistakable. Some
+months before, he had been missed from the ranks of Republican troops
+after one of the many skirmishes which preceded the great battle. And
+now, having been captured arms in hand amongst Royalists, he could
+expect no other fate but to be shot as a deserter.
+
+Gaspar Ruiz, however, was not a deserter; his mind was hardly active
+enough to take a discriminating view of the advantages or perils
+of treachery. Why should he change sides? He had really been made a
+prisoner, had suffered ill-usage and many privations. Neither side
+showed tenderness to its adversaries. There came a day when he was
+ordered, together with some other captured rebels, to march in the front
+rank of the Royal troops. A musket, had been thrust into his hands.
+He had taken it. He had marched. He did not want to be killed with
+circumstances of peculiar atrocity for refusing to march. He did not
+understand heroism, but it was his intention to throw his musket away at
+the first opportunity. Meantime he had gone on loading and firing, from
+fear of having his brains blown out, at the first sign of unwillingness,
+by some non-commissioned officer of the King of Spain. He tried to set
+forth these elementary considerations before the sergeant of the
+guard set over him and some twenty other such deserters, who had been
+condemned summarily to be shot.
+
+It was in the quadrangle of the fort at the back of the batteries which
+command the road-stead of Valparaiso. The officer who had identified him
+had gone on without listening to his protestations. His doom was sealed;
+his hands were tied very tightly together behind his back; his body was
+sore all over from the many blows with sticks and butts of muskets which
+had hurried him along on the painful road from the place of his capture
+to the gate of the fort. This was the only kind of systematic attention
+the prisoners had received from their escort during a four days’ journey
+across a scantily watered tract of country. At the crossings of rare
+streams they were permitted to quench their thirst by lapping hurriedly
+like dogs. In the evening a few scraps of meat were thrown amongst
+them as they dropped down dead-beat upon the stony ground of the
+halting-place.
+
+As he stood in the courtyard of the castle in the early morning, after
+having been driven hard all night, Gaspar Ruiz’s throat was parched, and
+his tongue felt very large and dry in his mouth.
+
+And Gaspar Ruiz, besides being very thirsty, was stirred by a feeling
+of sluggish anger, which he could not very well express, as though the
+vigour of his spirit were by no means equal to the strength of his body.
+
+The other prisoners in the batch of the condemned hung their heads,
+looking obstinately on the ground. But Gaspar Ruiz kept on repeating:
+“What should I desert for to the Royalists? Why should I desert? Tell
+me, Estaban!”
+
+He addressed himself to the sergeant, who happened to belong to the same
+part of the country as himself. But the sergeant, after shrugging his
+meagre shoulders once, paid no further attention to the deep murmuring
+voice at his back. It was indeed strange that Gaspar Ruiz should desert.
+His people were in too humble a station to feel much the disadvantages
+of any form of government. There was no reason why Gaspar Ruiz should
+wish to uphold in his own person the rule of the King of Spain. Neither
+had he been anxious to exert himself for its subversion. He had joined
+the side of Independence in an extremely reasonable and natural manner.
+A band of patriots appeared one morning early, surrounding his father’s
+ranche, spearing the watch-dogs and hamstringing a fat cow all in the
+twinkling of an eye, to the cries of “Viva La Libertad!” Their officer
+discoursed of Liberty with enthusiasm and eloquence after a long and
+refreshing sleep. When they left in the evening, taking with them some
+of Ruiz, the father’s, best horses to replace their own lamed animals,
+Gaspar Ruiz went away with them, having been invited pressingly to do so
+by the eloquent officer.
+
+Shortly afterwards a detachment of Royalist troops, coming to pacify the
+district, burnt the ranche, carried off the remaining horses and
+cattle, and having thus deprived the old people of all their worldly
+possessions, left them sitting under a bush in the enjoyment of the
+inestimable boon of life.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GASPAR Ruiz, condemned to death as a deserter, was not thinking either
+of his native place or of his parents, to whom he had been a good son on
+account of the mildness of his character and the great strength of his
+limbs. The practical advantage of this last was made still more
+valuable to his father by his obedient disposition. Gaspar Ruiz had an
+acquiescent soul.
+
+But it was stirred now to a sort of dim revolt by his dislike to die the
+death of a traitor. He was not a traitor. He said again to the sergeant:
+“You know I did not desert, Estaban. You know I remained behind amongst
+the trees with three others to keep the enemy back while the detachment
+was running away!”
+
+Lieutenant Santierra, little more than a boy at the time, and unused as
+yet to the sanguinary imbecilities of a state of war, had lingered
+near by, as if fascinated by the sight of these men who were to be shot
+presently--“for an example”--as the Commandante had said.
+
+The sergeant, without deigning to look at the prisoner, addressed
+himself to the young officer with a superior smile.
+
+“Ten men would not have been enough to make him a prisoner, mi teniente.
+Moreover, the other three rejoined the detachment after dark. Why should
+he, unwounded and the strongest of them all, have failed to do so?”
+
+“My strength is as nothing against a mounted man with a lasso,” Gaspar
+Ruiz protested eagerly. “He dragged me behind his horse for half a
+mile.”
+
+At this excellent reason the sergeant only laughed contemptuously. The
+young officer hurried away after the Commandante.
+
+Presently the adjutant of the castle came by. He was a truculent,
+raw-boned man in a ragged uniform. His spluttering voice issued out of a
+flat, yellow face. The sergeant learned from him that the condemned men
+would not be shot till sunset. He begged then to know what he was to do
+with them meantime.
+
+The adjutant looked savagely round the courtyard, and, pointing to the
+door of a small dungeon-like guard-room, receiving light and air through
+one heavily-barred window, said: “Drive the scoundrels in there.”
+
+The sergeant, tightening his grip upon the stick he carried in virtue
+of his rank, executed this order with alacrity and zeal. He hit Gaspar
+Ruiz, whose movements were slow, over his head and shoulders. Gaspar
+Ruiz stood still for a moment under the shower of blows, biting his
+lip thoughtfully as if absorbed by a perplexing mental process--then
+followed the others without haste. The door was locked, and the adjutant
+carried off the key.
+
+By noon the heat of that low vaulted place crammed to suffocation had
+become unbearable. The prisoners crowded towards the window, begging
+their guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained lying in
+indolent attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall, while
+the sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette, and
+raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar Ruiz
+had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His capacious
+chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting with its
+chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support the
+other faces crowding up for breath. From moaned entreaties they had
+passed to desperate cries, and the tumultuous howling of those thirsty
+men obliged a young officer who was just then crossing the courtyard to
+shout in order to make himself heard.
+
+“Why don’t you give some water to these prisoners!”
+
+The sergeant, with an air of surprised innocence, excused himself by the
+remark that all those men were condemned to die in a very few hours.
+
+Lieutenant Santierra stamped his foot. “They are condemned to death, not
+to torture,” he shouted. “Give them some water at once.”
+
+Impressed by this appearance of anger, the soldiers bestirred
+themselves, and the sentry, snatching up his musket, stood to attention.
+
+But when a couple of buckets were found and filled from the well, it was
+discovered that they could not be passed through the bars, which were
+set too close. At the prospect of quenching their thirst, the shrieks of
+those trampled down in the struggle to get near the opening became very
+heartrending. But when the soldiers who had lifted the buckets towards
+the window put them to the ground again helplessly, the yell of
+disappointment was still more terrible.
+
+The soldiers of the army of Independence were not equipped with
+canteens. A small tin cup was found, but its approach to the opening
+caused such a commotion, such yells of rage and’ pain in the vague
+mass of limbs behind the straining faces at the window, that Lieutenant
+Santierra cried out hurriedly, “No, no--you must open the door,
+sergeant.”
+
+The sergeant, shrugging his shoulders, explained that he had no right
+to open the door even if he had had the key. But he had not the key.
+The adjutant of the garrison kept the key. Those men were giving much
+unnecessary trouble, since they had to die at sunset in any case.
+Why they had not been shot at once early in the morning he could not
+understand.
+
+Lieutenant Santierra kept his back studiously to the window. It was
+at his earnest solicitations that the Commandante had delayed the
+execution. This favour had been granted to him in consideration of
+his distinguished family and of his father’s high position amongst the
+chiefs of the Republican party. Lieutenant Santierra believed that the
+General commanding would visit the fort some time in the afternoon,
+and he ingenuously hoped that his naive intercession would induce
+that severe man to pardon some, at least, of those criminals. In the
+revulsion of his feeling his interference stood revealed now as guilty
+and futile meddling. It appeared to him obvious that the general would
+never even consent to listen to his petition. He could never save those
+men, and he had only made himself responsible for the sufferings added
+to the cruelty of their fate.
+
+“Then go at once and get the key from the adjutant,” said Lieutenant
+Santierra.
+
+The sergeant shook his head with a sort of bashful smile, while his eyes
+glanced sideways at Gaspar Ruiz’s face, motionless and silent, staring
+through the bars at the bottom of a heap of other haggard, distorted,
+yelling faces.
+
+His worship the adjutant de Plaza, the sergeant murmured, was having his
+siesta; and supposing that he, the sergeant, would be allowed access to
+him, the only result he expected would be to have his soul flogged out
+of his body for presuming to disturb his worship’s repose. He made a
+deprecatory movement with his hands, and stood stock-still, looking down
+modestly upon his brown toes.
+
+Lieutenant Santierra glared with indignation, but hesitated. His
+handsome oval face, as smooth as a girl’s, flushed with the shame of
+his perplexity. Its nature humiliated his spirit. His hairless upper lip
+trembled; he seemed on the point of either bursting into a fit of rage
+or into tears of dismay.
+
+Fifty years later, General Santierra, the venerable relic of
+revolutionary times, was well able to remember the feelings of the
+young lieutenant. Since he had given up riding altogether, and found
+it difficult to walk beyond the limits of his garden, the general’s
+greatest delight, was to entertain in his house the officers of the
+foreign men-of-war visiting the harbour. For Englishmen he had a
+preference, as for old companions in arms. English naval men of all
+ranks accepted his hospitality with curiosity, because he had known Lord
+Cochrane and had taken part, on board the patriot squadron commanded
+by that marvellous seaman, in the cutting-out and blockading operations
+before Callao--an episode of unalloyed glory in the wars of Independence
+and of endless honour in the fighting tradition of Englishmen. He was a
+fair linguist, this ancient survivor of the Liberating armies. A trick
+of smoothing his long white beard whenever he was short of a word in
+French or English imparted an air of leisurely dignity to the tone of
+his reminiscences.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+“YES, my friends,” he used to say to his guests, “what would you have?
+A youth of seventeen summers, without worldly experience, and owing
+my rank only to the glorious patriotism of my father, may God rest his
+soul, I suffered immense humiliation, not so much from the disobedience
+of That subordinate, who, alter all, was responsible for those
+prisoners; but I suffered because, like the boy I was, I myself dreaded
+going to the adjutant for the key. I had felt, before, his rough and
+cutting tongue. Being quite a common fellow, with no merit except his
+savage valour, he made me feel his contempt and dislike from the
+first day I joined my battalion in garrison at the fort. It was only
+a fortnight before! I would have confronted him sword in hand, but I
+shrank from the mocking brutality of his sneers.
+
+“I don’t remember having been so miserable in my life before or since.
+The torment of my sensibility was so great that I wished the sergeant to
+fall dead at my feet, and the stupid soldiers who stared at me to
+turn into corpses; and even those wretches for whom my entreaties had
+procured a reprieve I wished dead also, because I could not face them
+without shame. A mephitic heat like a whiff of air from hell came out
+of that dark place in which they were confined. Those at the window who
+heard what was going on jeered at me in very desperation; one of these
+fellows, gone mad no doubt, kept on urging me volubly to order the
+soldiers to fire through the window. His insane loquacity made my heart
+turn faint. And my feet were like lead. There was no higher officer to
+whom I could appeal. I had not even the firmness of spirit to simply go
+away.
+
+“Benumbed by my remorse, I stood with my back to the window. You must
+not suppose that all this lasted a long time. How long could it have
+been? A minute? If you measured by mental suffering it was like a
+hundred years; a longer time than all my life has been since. No,
+certainly, it was not so much as a minute. The hoarse screaming of those
+miserable wretches died out in their dry throats, and then suddenly a
+voice spoke, a deep voice muttering calmly. It called upon me to turn
+round.
+
+“That voice, senores, proceeded from the head of Gaspar Ruiz. Of his
+body I could see nothing. Some of his fellow-captives had clambered upon
+his back. He was holding them up. His eyes blinked without looking at
+me. That and the moving of his lips was all he seemed able to manage in
+his overloaded state. And when I turned round, this head, that seemed
+more than human size resting on its chin under a multitude of other
+heads, asked me whether I really desired to quench the thirst of the
+captives.
+
+“I said, ‘Yes, yes!’ eagerly, and came up quite close to the window. I
+was like a child, and did not know what would happen. I was anxious to
+be comforted in my helplessness and remorse.
+
+“‘Have you the authority, senor teniente, to release my wrists from
+their bonds?’ Gaspar Ruiz’s head asked me.
+
+“His features expressed no anxiety, no hope; his heavy eyelids blinked
+upon his eyes that looked past me straight into the courtyard.
+
+“As if in an ugly dream, I spoke, stammering: ‘What do you mean? And how
+can I reach the bonds on your wrists?’
+
+“‘I will try what I can do,’ he said; and then that large staring
+head moved at last, and all the wild faces piled up in that window
+disappeared, tumbling down. He had shaken his load off with one
+movement, so strong he was.
+
+“And he had not only shaken it off, but he got free of the crush and
+vanished from my sight. For a moment there was no one at all to be seen
+at the window. He had swung about, butting and shouldering, clearing
+a space for himself in the only way he could do it with his hands tied
+behind his back.
+
+“Finally, backing to the opening, he pushed out to me between the bars
+his wrists, lashed with many turns of rope. His hands, very swollen,
+with knotted veins, looked enormous and unwieldy. I saw his bent back.
+It was very broad. His voice was like the muttering of a bull.
+
+“Cut, senor teniente! Cut!’
+
+“I drew my sword, my new unblunted sword that had seen no service as
+yet, and severed the many turns of the hide rope. I did this without
+knowing the why and the wherefore of my action, but as it were compelled
+by my faith in that man. The sergeant made as if to cry out, but
+astonishment deprived him of his voice, and he remained standing with
+his mouth open as if overtaken by sudden imbecility.
+
+“I sheathed my sword and faced the soldiers. An air of awestruck
+expectation had replaced their usual listless apathy. I heard the voice
+of Gaspar Ruiz shouting inside, but the words I could not make out
+plainly. I suppose that to see him with his arms free augmented the
+influence of his strength: I mean by this, the spiritual influence that
+with ignorant people attaches to an exceptional degree of bodily vigour.
+In fact, he was no more to be feared than before, on account of the
+numbness of his arms and hands, which lasted for some time.
+
+“The sergeant had recovered his power of speech. ‘By all the saints!’
+he cried, ‘we shall have to get a cavalry man with a lasso to secure him
+again, if he is to be led to the place of execution. Nothing less than a
+good enlazador on a good horse can subdue him. Your worship was pleased
+to perform a very mad thing.’
+
+“I had nothing to say. I was surprised myself, and I felt a childish
+curiosity to see what would happen. But the sergeant was thinking of
+the difficulty of controlling Gaspar Ruiz when the time for making an
+example would come.
+
+“‘Or perhaps,’ the sergeant pursued vexedly, ‘we shall be obliged to
+shoot him down as he dashes out when the door is opened.’ He was going
+to give further vent to his anxieties as to the proper carrying out
+of the sentence; but he interrupted himself with a sudden exclamation,
+snatched a musket from a soldier, and stood watchful with his eyes fixed
+on the window.’”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+“GASPAR RUIZ had clambered up on the sill, and sat down there with his
+feet against the thickness of the wall and his knees slightly bent.
+The window was not quite broad enough for the length of his legs. It
+appeared to my crestfallen perception that he meant to keep the window
+all to himself. He seemed to be taking up a comfortable position. Nobody
+inside dared to approach him now he could strike with his hands.
+
+“‘Por Dios!’ I heard the sergeant muttering at my elbow, ‘I shall shoot
+him through the head now, and get rid of that trouble. He is a condemned
+man.’
+
+“At that I looked at him angrily. ‘The general has not confirmed the
+sentence,’ I said--though I knew well in my heart that these were but
+vain words. The sentence required no confirmation. ‘You have no right to
+shoot him unless he tries to escape,’ I added firmly.
+
+“‘But sangre de Dios!’ the sergeant yelled out, bringing his musket up
+to the shoulder, ‘he is escaping now. Look!’
+
+“But I, as if that Gaspar Ruiz had cast a spell upon me, struck the
+musket upward, and the bullet flew over the roofs somewhere. The
+sergeant dashed his arm to the ground and stared. He might have
+commanded the soldiers to fire, but he did not. And if he had he would
+not have been obeyed, I think, just then.
+
+“With his feet against the thickness of the wall, and his hairy hands
+grasping the iron bar, Gaspar sat still. It was an attitude. Nothing
+happened for a time. And suddenly it dawned upon us that he was
+straightening his bowed back and contracting his arms. His lips were
+twisted into a snarl. Next thing we perceived was that the bar of forged
+iron was being bent slowly by the mightiness of his pull. The sun
+was beating full upon his cramped, unquivering figure. A shower of
+sweat-drops burst out of his forehead. Watching the bar grow crooked, I
+saw a little blood ooze from under his finger-nails. Then he let go.
+For a moment he remained all huddled up, with a hanging head, looking
+drowsily into the upturned palms of his mighty hands. Indeed he seemed
+to have dozed off. Suddenly he flung himself backwards on the sill, and
+setting the soles of his bare feet against the other middle bar, he bent
+that one too, but in the opposite direction from the first.
+
+“Such was his strength, which in this case relieved my painful feelings.
+And the man seemed to have done nothing. Except for the change of
+position in order to use his feet, which made us all start by its
+swiftness, my recollection is that of immobility. But he had bent the
+bars wide apart. And now he could get out if he liked; but he dropped
+his legs inwards; and looking over his shoulder beckoned to the
+soldiers. ‘Hand up the water,’ he said. ‘I will give them all a drink.’
+
+“He was obeyed. For a moment I expected man and bucket to disappear,
+overwhelmed by the rush of eagerness; I thought they would pull him down
+with their teeth. There was a rush, but holding the bucket on his lap he
+repulsed the assault of those wretches by the mere swinging of his feet.
+They flew backwards at every kick, yelling with pain; and the soldiers
+laughed, gazing at the window.
+
+“They all laughed, holding their sides, except the sergeant, who was
+gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break
+out--which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of
+that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When
+sufficiently tamed by the strength of Gaspar Ruiz, they came up one by
+one, stretching their necks and presenting their lips to the edge of the
+bucket which the strong man tilted towards them from his knees with an
+extraordinary air of charity, gentleness and compassion. That benevolent
+appearance was of course the effect of his care in not spilling the
+water and of his attitude as he sat on the sill; for, if a man lingered
+with his lips glued to the rim of the bucket after Gaspar Ruiz had said
+‘You have had enough,’ there would be no tenderness or mercy in the
+shove of the foot which would send him groaning and doubled up far
+into the interior of the prison, where he would knock down two or three
+others before he fell himself. They came up to him again and again;
+it looked as if they meant to drink the well dry before going to their
+death; but the soldiers were so amused by Gaspar Ruiz’s systematic
+proceedings that they carried the water up to the window cheerfully.
+
+“When the adjutant came out after his siesta there was some trouble over
+this affair, I can assure you. And the worst of it, that the general
+whom we expected never came to the castle that day.”
+
+The guests of General Santierra unanimously expressed their regret that
+the man of such strength and patience had not been saved.
+
+“He was not saved by my interference,” said the General. “The prisoners
+were led to execution half an hour before sunset. Gaspar Ruiz, contrary
+to the sergeant’s apprehensions, gave no trouble. There was no necessity
+to get a cavalry man with a lasso in order to subdue him, as if he were
+a wild bull of the campo. I believe he marched out with his arms free
+amongst the others who were bound. I did not see. I was not there. I had
+been put under arrest for interfering with the prisoner’s guard. About
+dusk, sitting dismally in my quarters, I heard three volleys fired, and
+thought that I should never hear of Gaspar Ruiz again. He fell with the
+others. But we were to hear of him nevertheless, though the sergeant
+boasted that, as he lay on his face expiring or dead in the heap of the
+slain, he had slashed his neck with a sword. He had done this, he said,
+to make sure of ridding the world of a dangerous traitor.
+
+“I confess to you, senores, that I thought of that strong man with a
+sort of gratitude, and with some admiration. He had used his strength
+honourably. There dwelt, then, in his soul no fierceness corresponding
+to the vigour of his body.”
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+GASPAR RUIZ, who could with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of the
+prison, was led out with others to summary execution. “Every bullet has
+its billet,” runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in
+the concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is
+found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convinced
+by the shock.
+
+What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs are
+art--cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they
+happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, “Half a
+loaf is better than no bread,” or “A miss is as good as a mile.” Some
+proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out
+of the naive heart of the great Russian people, “Man discharges the
+piece, but God carries the bullet,” is piously atrocious, and at bitter
+variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would
+indeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the
+innocent and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the
+heart of a father.
+
+Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love.
+He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the ancient
+negress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour of cinders,
+and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some bullets from those
+muskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically destined for
+the heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One, however,
+carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of flesh
+from his shoulder.
+
+A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery
+stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his
+glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen
+the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of
+killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,
+were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs
+of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them
+had fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their
+heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the
+burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him a
+little, and he counted himself a dead man already.
+
+He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead
+man. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him.
+“I am not dead apparently,” he thought to himself, when he heard the
+execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was then
+that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remained
+lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodies
+collapsed crosswise upon his back.
+
+By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley into the slightly
+stirring heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almost
+immediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts of
+the young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy peaks
+of the Cordillera remained luminous and crimson for a long time. The
+soldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.
+
+The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himself
+along the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for any
+stir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of his
+blade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of the
+bodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitable
+intention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerful
+muscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighbours
+and shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.
+
+He was lying face down. The sergeant recognised him by his stature, and
+being himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at the
+prostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that particular
+soldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long gash across
+the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making sure of that
+strong man’s death, as if a powerful physique were more able to resist
+the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar Ruiz had been
+shot through in many places. Then he passed on, and shortly afterwards
+marched off with, his men, leaving the bodies to the care of crows and
+vultures.
+
+Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that his
+head was cut off at a blow; and when darkness came, shaking off the
+dead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain on
+his hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast, at
+a shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered on
+light-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clear
+night. A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. He
+stumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There
+was not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the
+inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood,
+had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. In
+his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to him
+part of a hallucination belonging to the weird dreamlike feeling of his
+unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleys
+fired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow.
+“Open the door!” he cried. “Open in the name of God!”
+
+An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: “Come in, come in. This
+house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it.”
+
+“For the love of God,” Gaspar Ruiz murmured.
+
+“Does not all the land belong to you patriots?” the voice on the other
+side of the door screamed on. “Are you not a patriot?”
+
+Gaspar Ruiz did not know. “I am a wounded man,” he said apathetically.
+
+All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
+and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
+careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
+seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His
+indifference as to his fate was genuine.
+
+The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the door
+at which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl,
+steadying herself with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold.
+Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyes
+were very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her white
+cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head with
+long grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously clasped
+hands under the chin.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+“I KNEW those people by sight,” General Santierra would tell his guests
+at the dining-table. “I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz found
+shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property, ruined by
+the revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money, everything
+he had in the world had been confiscated by proclamation, for he was
+a bitter foe of our independence. From a position of great dignity and
+influence on the Viceroy’s Council he became of less importance than his
+own negro slaves made free by our glorious revolution. He had not even
+the means to flee the country, as other Spaniards had managed to do. It
+may be that, wandering ruined and houseless, and burdened with nothing
+but his life, which was left to him by the clemency of the Provisional
+Government, he had simply walked under that broken roof of old tiles. It
+was a lonely spot. There did not seem to be even a dog belonging to
+the place. But though the roof had holes, as if a cannonball or two had
+dropped through it, the wooden shutters were thick and tight-closed all
+the time.
+
+“My way took me frequently along the path in front of that miserable
+rancho. I rode from the fort to the town almost every evening, to sigh
+at the window of a lady I was in love with, then. When one is young,
+you understand.... She was a good patriot, you may be sure. Caballeros,
+credit me or not, political feeling ran so high in those days that I
+do not believe I could have been fascinated by the charms of a woman of
+Royalist opinions....”
+
+Murmurs of amused incredulity all round the table interrupted the
+General; and while they lasted he stroked his white beard gravely.
+
+“Senores,” he protested, “a Royalist was a monster to our overwrought
+feelings. I am telling you this in order not to be suspected of the
+slightest tenderness towards that old Royalist’s daughter. Moreover,
+as you know, my affections were engaged elsewhere. But I could not help
+noticing her on rare occasions when with the front door open she stood
+in the porch.
+
+“You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be. His
+political misfortunes, his total downfall and ruin, had disordered his
+mind. To show his contempt for what we patriots could do, he affected to
+laugh at his imprisonment, at the confiscation of his lands, the
+burning of his houses, and the misery to which he and his womenfolk were
+reduced. This habit of laughing had grown upon him, so that he would
+begin to laugh and shout directly he caught sight of any stranger. That
+was the form of his madness.
+
+“I, of course, disregarded the noise of that madman with that feeling of
+superiority the success of our cause inspired in us Americans. I suppose
+I really despised him because he was an old Castilian, a Spaniard born,
+and a Royalist. Those were certainly no reasons to scorn a man; but for
+centuries Spaniards born had shown their contempt of us Americans, men
+as well descended as themselves, simply because we were what they
+called colonists. We had been kept in abasement and made to feel our
+inferiority in social intercourse. And now it was our turn. It was sale
+for us patriots to display the same sentiments; and I being a young
+patriot, son of a patriot, despised that old Spaniard, and despising
+him I naturally disregarded his abuse, though it was annoying to my
+feelings. Others perhaps would not have been so forbearing.
+
+“He would begin with a great yell--‘I see a patriot. Another of them!’
+long before I came abreast of the house. The tone of his senseless
+revilings, mingled with bursts of laughter, was sometimes piercingly
+shrill and sometimes grave. It was all very mad; but I felt it incumbent
+upon my dignity to check my horse to a walk without even glancing
+towards the house, as if that man’s abusive clamour in the porch were
+less than the barking of a cur. I rode by, preserving an expression of
+haughty indifference on my face.
+
+“It was no doubt very dignified; but I should have done better if I
+had kept my eyes open. A military man in war time should never consider
+himself off duty; and especially so if the war is a revolutionary war,
+when the enemy is not at the door, but within your very house. At such
+times the heat of passionate convictions, passing into hatred, removes
+the restraints of honour and humanity from many men and of delicacy and
+fear from some women. These last, when once they throw off the timidity
+and reserve of their sex, become by the vivacity of their intelligence
+and the violence of their merciless resentment more dangerous than so
+many armed giants.”
+
+The General’s voice rose, but his big hand stroked his white beard twice
+with an effect of venerable calmness. “Si, senores! Women are ready to
+rise to the heights of devotion unattainable by us men, or to sink into
+the depths of abasement which amazes our masculine prejudices. I am
+speaking now of exceptional women, you understand...”
+
+Here one of the guests observed that he had never met a woman yet who
+was not capable of turning out quite exceptional under circumstances
+that would engage her feelings strongly. “That sort of superiority in
+recklessness they have over us,” he concluded, “makes of them the more
+interesting half of mankind.”
+
+The General, who bore the interruption with gravity, nodded courteous
+assent. “Si. Si. Under circumstances.... Precisely. They can do an
+infinite deal of mischief sometimes in quite unexpected ways. For who
+could have imagined that a young girl, daughter of a ruined Royalist
+whose life itself was held only by the contempt of his enemies, would
+have had the power to bring death and devastation upon two flourishing
+provinces and cause serious anxiety to the leaders of the revolution
+in the very hour of its success!” He paused to let the wonder of it
+penetrate our minds.
+
+“Death and devastation,” somebody murmured in surprise: “how shocking!”
+
+The old General gave a glance in the direction of the murmur and went
+on. “Yes. That is, war--calamity. But the means by which she obtained
+the power to work this havoc on our southern frontier seem to me, who
+have seen her and spoken to her, still more shocking. That particular
+thing left on my mind a dreadful amazement which the further experience
+of life, of more than fifty years, has done nothing to diminish.” He
+looked round as if to make sure of our attention, and, in a changed
+voice: “I am, as you know, a republican, son of a Liberator,” he
+declared. “My incomparable mother, God rest her soul, was a Frenchwoman,
+the daughter of an ardent republican. As a boy I fought for liberty;
+I’ve always believed in the equality of men; and as to their
+brotherhood, that, to my mind, is even more certain. Look at the fierce
+animosity they display in their differences. And what in the world do
+you know that is more bitterly fierce than brothers’ quarrels?”
+
+All absence of cynicism checked an inclination to smile at this view of
+human brotherhood. On the contrary, there was in the tone the melancholy
+natural to a man profoundly humane at heart who from duty, from
+conviction and from necessity, had played his part in scenes of ruthless
+violence.
+
+The General had seen much of fratricidal strife. “Certainly. There is no
+doubt of their brotherhood,” he insisted. “All men are brothers, and
+as such know almost too much of each other. But “--and here in the
+old patriarchal head, white as silver, the black eyes humorously
+twinkled--“if we are all brothers, all the women are not our sisters.”
+
+One of the younger guests was heard murmuring his satisfaction at the
+fact. But the General continued, with deliberate earnestness: “They are
+so different! The tale of a king who took a beggar-maid for a partner of
+his throne may be pretty enough as we men look upon ourselves and upon
+love. But that a young girl, famous for her haughty beauty and, only
+a short time before, the admired of all at the balls in the Viceroy’s
+palace, should take by the hand a guasso, a common peasant, is
+intolerable to our sentiment of women and their love. It is madness.
+Nevertheless it happened. But it must be said that in her case it was
+the madness of hate--not of love.”
+
+After presenting this excuse in a spirit of chivalrous justice, the
+General remained silent for a time. “I rode past the house every day
+almost,” he began again, “and this was what was going on within. But how
+it was going on no mind of man can conceive. Her desperation must
+have been extreme, and Gaspar Ruiz was a docile fellow. He had been an
+obedient soldier. His strength was like an enormous stone lying on the
+ground, ready to be hurled this way that by the hand that picks it up.
+
+“It is clear that he would tell his story to the people who gave him
+the shelter he needed. And he needed assistance badly. His wound was not
+dangerous, but his life was forfeited. The old Royalist being wrapped up
+in his laughing madness, the two women arranged a hiding-place for the
+wounded man in one of the huts amongst the fruit trees at the back of
+the house. That hovel, an abundance of clear water while the fever was
+on him, and some words of pity were all they could give. I suppose
+he had a share of what food there was. And it would be but little; a
+handful of roasted corn, perhaps a dish of beans, or a piece of bread
+with a few figs. To such misery were those proud and once wealthy people
+reduced.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+GENERAL SANTIERRA was right in his surmise. Such was the exact nature of
+the assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, received
+from the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door--of their
+miserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruled
+the madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment of her mother.
+
+She had asked the strange man on the door-step, “Who wounded you?”
+
+“The soldiers, senora,” Gaspar Ruiz had answered, in a faint voice.
+
+“Patriots?”
+
+“Si.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Deserter,” he gasped, leaning against the wall under the scrutiny of
+her black eyes. “I was left for dead over there.”
+
+She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds, lost
+in the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of maize
+straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.
+
+“No one will look for you here,” she said, looking down at him. “Nobody
+comes near us. We too have been left for dead--here.”
+
+He stirred uneasily on his heap of dirty straw, and the pain in his neck
+made him groan deliriously.
+
+“I shall show Estaban some day that I am alive yet,” he mumbled.
+
+He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain went
+by. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connected
+with the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for Gaspar
+Ruiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had even
+been taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village. He
+waited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark hut and
+disappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He discovered
+that, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by closing his
+eyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And this discovered
+faculty charmed the long solitary hours of his convalescence. Later,
+when he began to regain his strength, he would creep at dusk from his
+hut to the house and sit on the step of the garden door.
+
+In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to
+himself with short abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a stool,
+the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbare
+clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta,
+stood leaning against the lintel of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with his
+elbows propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked to
+the two women in an undertone.
+
+The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a
+marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this in
+his simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could give
+them news of people they knew. He described their appearance; and when
+he related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the two
+women lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their secret
+hopes.
+
+He had no feeling either way. But he felt a great devotion for that
+young girl. In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, he
+boasted a little of his bodily strength. He had nothing else to boast
+of. Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great a
+deference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in camp
+and in battle.
+
+“I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere, senorita.
+I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and write.”
+
+Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to time;
+the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and Gaspar
+Ruiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter of these
+people.
+
+He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also with
+that feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had contemplated
+in churches the inanimate and powerful statues of the saints, whose
+protection is invoked in dangers and difficulties. His difficulty was
+very great.
+
+He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever. He knew also
+very well that before he had gone half a day’s journey in any direction,
+he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols scouring the
+country, and brought into one or another of the camps where the patriot
+army destined for the liberation of Peru was collected. There he
+would in the end be recognised as Gaspar Ruiz--the deserter to the
+Royalists--and no doubt shot very effectually this time. There did not
+seem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere.
+And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom and
+resentment as black as night.
+
+They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier.
+And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of his
+docility and his strength. But now there was no use for either. They had
+taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier--not a
+good soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his explanations. What
+injustice it was! What injustice!
+
+And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and
+recapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silent
+girl in the doorway, “Si, senorita,” he would say with a deep sigh,
+“injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me
+and to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it.”
+
+One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she
+condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no life
+worthless which held the possibility of revenge.
+
+She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in the
+gentle, as if dreamy sound, with a consciousness of peculiar delight, of
+something warming his breast like a draught of generous wine.
+
+“True, senorita,” he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: “there is
+Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all.”
+
+The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing
+mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All was
+still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the
+wild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of Doña
+Erminia look down at him.
+
+“Ala! The sergeant,” she muttered disdainfully.
+
+“Why! He has wounded me with his sword,” he protested, bewildered by the
+contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.
+
+She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be understood
+was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of unexpressed
+things.
+
+“What else did you expect me to do?” he cried, as if suddenly driven to
+despair. “Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army at my
+back?--miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at last.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+“SENORES,” related the General to his guests, “though my thoughts were
+of love then, and therefore enchanting, the sight of that house always
+affected me disagreeably, especially in the moonlight, when its close
+shutters and its air of lonely neglect appeared sinister. Still I went
+on using the bridle-path by the ravine, because it was a short cut.
+The mad Royalist howled and laughed at me every evening to his complete
+satisfaction; but after a time, as if wearied with my indifference, he
+ceased to appear in the porch. How they persuaded him to leave off I do
+not know. However, with Gaspar Ruiz in the house there would have been
+no difficulty in restraining him by force. It was part of their policy
+in there to avoid anything which could provoke me. At least, so I
+suppose.
+
+“Notwithstanding my infatuation with the brightest pair of eyes in
+Chile, I noticed the absence of the old man after a week or so. A few
+more days passed. I began to think that perhaps these Royalists had gone
+away somewhere else. But one evening, as I was hastening towards the
+city, I saw again somebody in the porch. It was not the madman; it was
+the girl. She stood holding on to one of the wooden columns, tall and
+white-faced, her big eyes sunk deep with privation and sorrow. I looked
+hard at her, and she met my stare with a strange, inquisitive look.
+Then, as I turned my head after riding past, she seemed to gather
+courage for the act, and absolutely beckoned me back.
+
+“I obeyed, senores, almost without thinking, so great was my
+astonishment. It was greater still when I heard what she had to say. She
+began by thanking me for my forbearance of her father’s infirmity,
+so that I felt ashamed of myself. I had meant to show disdain, not
+forbearance! Every word must have burnt her lips, but she never departed
+from a gentle and melancholy dignity which filled me with respect
+against my will. Senores, we are no match for women. But I could hardly
+believe my ears when she began her tale. Providence, she concluded,
+seemed to have preserved the life of that wronged soldier, who now
+trusted to my honour as a caballero and to my compassion for his
+sufferings.
+
+“‘Wronged man,’ I observed coldly. ‘Well, I think so too: and you have
+been harbouring an enemy of your cause.’
+
+“‘He was a poor Christian crying for help at our door in the name of
+God, senor,’ she answered simply.
+
+“I began to admire her. ‘Where is he now?’ I asked stiffly.
+
+“But she would not answer that question. With extreme cunning, and an
+almost fiendish delicacy, she managed to remind me of my failure in
+saving the lives of the prisoners in the guard-room, without wounding
+my pride. She knew, of course, the whole story. Gaspar Ruiz, she said,
+entreated me to procure for him a safe-conduce from General San
+Martin himself. He had an important communication to make to the
+Commander-in-Chief.
+
+“Por Dios, senores, she made me swallow all that, pretending to be only
+the mouthpiece of that poor man. Overcome by injustice, he expected to
+find, she said, as much generosity in me as had been shown to him by the
+Royalist family which had given him a refuge.
+
+“Hal It was well and nobly said to a youngster like me. I thought her
+great. Alas! she was only implacable.
+
+“In the end I rode away very enthusiastic about the business, without
+demanding even to see Gaspar Ruiz, who I was confident was in the house.
+
+“But on calm reflection I began to see some difficulties which I had not
+confidence enough in myself to encounter. It was not easy to approach
+a commander-in-chief with such a story. I feared failure. At last I
+thought it better to lay the matter before my general-of-division,
+Robles, a friend of my family, who had appointed me his aide-de-camp
+lately.
+
+“He took it out of my hands at once without any ceremony.
+
+“‘In the house! of course he is in the house,’ he said contemptuously.
+‘You ought to have gone sword in hand inside and demanded his surrender,
+instead of chatting with a Royalist girl in the porch. Those people
+should have been hunted out of that long ago. Who knows how many spies
+they have harboured right in the very midst of our camps? A safe-conduct
+from the Commander-in-Chief! The audacity of the fellow! Ha! ha! Now
+we shall catch him to-night, and then we shall find out, without any
+safe-conduct, what he has got to say, that is so very important. Ha! ha!
+ha!’
+
+“General Robles, peace to his soul, was a short, thick man, with round,
+staring eyes, fierce and jovial. Seeing my distress he added:
+
+“‘Come, come, chico. I promise you his life if he does not resist. And
+that is not likely. We are not going to break up a good soldier if it
+can be helped. I tell you what! I am curious to see your strong man.
+Nothing but a general will do for the picaro--well, he shall have a
+general to talk to. Ha! ha! I shall go myself to the catching, and you
+are coming with me, of course.’
+
+“And it was done that same night. Early in the evening the house and the
+orchard were surrounded quietly. Later on the general and I left a ball
+we were attending in town and rode out at an easy gallop. At some little
+distance from the house we pulled up. A mounted orderly held our horses.
+A low whistle warned the men watching all along the ravine, and we
+walked up to the porch softly. The barricaded house in the moonlight
+seemed empty.
+
+“The general knocked at the door. After a time a woman’s voice within
+asked who was there. My chief nudged me hard. I gasped.
+
+“’ It is I, Lieutenant Santierra,’ I stammered out, as if choked. ‘Open
+the door.’
+
+“It came open slowly. The girl, holding a thin taper in her hand, seeing
+another man with me, began to back away before us slowly, shading the
+light with her hand. Her impassive white face looked ghostly. I followed
+behind General Robles. Her eyes were fixed on mine. I made a gesture of
+helplessness behind my chief’s back, trying at the same time to give a
+reassuring expression to my face. Neither of us three uttered a sound.
+
+“We found ourselves in a room with bare floor and walls. There was a
+rough table and a couple of stools in it, nothing else whatever. An old
+woman with her grey hair hanging loose wrung her hands when we appeared.
+A peal of loud laughter resounded through the empty house, very amazing
+and weird. At this the old woman tried to get past us.
+
+“‘Nobody to leave the room,’ said General Robles to me.
+
+“I swung the door to, heard the latch click, and the laughter became
+faint in our ears.
+
+“Before another word could be spoken in that room I was amazed by
+hearing the sound of distant thunder.
+
+“I had carried in with me into the house a vivid impression of a
+beautiful, clear, moonlight night, without a speck of cloud in the sky.
+I could not believe my ears. Sent early abroad for my education, I was
+not familiar with the most dreaded natural phenomenon of my native land.
+I saw, with inexpressible astonishment, a look of terror in my chief’s
+eyes. Suddenly I felt giddy! The general staggered against me heavily;
+the girl seemed to reel in the middle of the room, the taper fell out of
+her hand and the light went out; a shrill cry of Misericordia! from the
+old woman pierced my ears. In the pitchy darkness I heard the plaster
+off the walls falling on The floor. It is a mercy there was no ceiling.
+Holding on to the latch of the door, I heard the grinding of the
+roof-tiles cease above my head. The shock was over.
+
+“‘Out of the house! The door! Fly, Santierra, fly!’ howled the general.
+You know, senores, in our country the bravest are not ashamed of the
+fear an earthquake strikes into all the senses of man. One never gets
+used to it.
+
+“Repeated experience only augments the mastery of that nameless terror.
+
+“It was my first earthquake, and I was the calmest of them all. I
+understood that the crash outside was caused by the porch, with its
+wooden pillars and tiled roof projection, falling down. The next
+shock would destroy the house, maybe. That rumble as of thunder was
+approaching again. The general was rushing round the room, to find the
+door, perhaps. He made a noise as though he were trying to climb the
+walls, and I heard him distinctly invoke the names of several saints.
+‘Out, out, Santierra!’ he yelled.
+
+“The girl’s voice was the only one I did not hear.
+
+“‘General,’ I cried, ‘I cannot move the door. We must be locked in.’
+
+“I did not recognise his voice in the shout of malediction and despair
+he let out. Senores I know many men in my country, especially in the
+provinces most subject to earthquakes, who will neither eat, sleep,
+pray, nor even sit down to cards with closed doors. The danger is not
+in the loss of time, but in this--that the movement of the walls may
+prevent a door being opened at all. This was what had happened to us. We
+were trapped, and we had no help to expect from anybody. There is no man
+in my country who will go into a house when the earth trembles. There
+never was--except one: Gaspar Ruiz.
+
+“He had come out of whatever hole he had been hiding in outside, and
+had clambered over the timbers of the destroyed porch. Above the awful
+subterranean groan of coming destruction I heard a mighty voice shouting
+the word ‘Erminia!’ with the lungs of a giant. An earthquake is a great
+leveller of distinctions. I collected all my resolution against the
+terror of the scene. ‘She is here,’ I shouted back. A roar as of a
+furious wild beast answered me--while my head swam, my heart sank, and
+the sweat of anguish streamed like rain off my brow.
+
+“He had the strength to pick up one of the heavy posts of the porch.
+Holding it under his armpit like a lance, but with both hands, he
+charged madly the rocking house with the force of a battering-ram,
+bursting open the door and rushing in, headlong, over our prostrate
+bodies. I and the general, picking ourselves up, bolted out together,
+without looking round once till we got across the road. Then, clinging
+to each other, we beheld the house change suddenly into a heap of
+formless rubbish behind the back of a man, who staggered towards us
+bearing the form of a woman clasped in his arms. Her long black hair
+hung nearly to his feet. He laid her down reverently on the heaving
+earth, and the moonlight shone on her closed eyes.
+
+“senores, we mounted with difficulty. Our horses, getting up, plunged
+madly, held by the soldiers who had come running from all sides. Nobody
+thought of catching Gaspar Ruiz then. The eyes of men and animals shone
+with wild fear. My general approached Gaspar Ruiz, who stood motionless
+as a statue above the girl. He let himself be shaken by the shoulder
+without detaching his eyes from her face.
+
+“‘Que guape!’ shouted the general in his ear. ‘You are the bravest man
+living. You have saved my life. I am General Robles. Come to my quarters
+to-morrow, if God gives us the grace to see another day.’
+
+“He never stirred--as if deaf, without feeling, insensible.
+
+“We rode away for the town, full of our relations, of our friends, of
+whose fate we hardly dared to think. The soldiers ran by the side of
+our horses. Everything was forgotten in the immensity of the catastrophe
+overtaking a whole country.”
+
+Gaspar Ruiz saw the girl open her eyes. The raising of her eyelids
+seemed to recall him from a trance. They were alone; the cries of terror
+and distress from homeless people filled the plains of the coast, remote
+and immense, coming like a whisper into their loneliness.
+
+She rose swiftly to her feet, darting fearful glances on all sides.
+“What is it?” she cried out low, and peering into his face. “Where am
+I?”
+
+He bowed his head sadly, without a word.
+
+“... Who are you?”
+
+He knelt down slowly before her, and touched the hem of her coarse black
+baize skirt. “Your slave,” he said.
+
+She caught sight then of the heap of rubbish that had been the house,
+all misty in the cloud of dust. “Ah!” she cried, pressing her hand to
+her forehead.
+
+“I carried you out from there,” he whispered at her feet.
+
+“And they?” she asked in a great sob.
+
+He rose, and taking her by the arms, led her gently towards the
+shapeless ruin half overwhelmed by a land-slide. “Come and listen,” he
+said.
+
+The serene moon saw them clambering over that heap of stones, joists and
+tiles, which was a grave. They pressed their ears to the interstices,
+listening for the sound of a groan, for a sigh of pain.
+
+At last he said, “They died swiftly. You are alone.”
+
+She sat down on a piece of broken timber and put one arm across her
+face. He waited--then, approaching his lips to her ear, “Let us go,” he
+whispered.
+
+“Never--never from here,” she cried out, flinging her arms above her
+head.
+
+He stooped over her, and her raised arms fell upon his shoulders. He
+lifted her up, steadied himself and began to walk, looking straight
+before him.
+
+“What are you doing?” she asked feebly.
+
+“I am escaping from my enemies,” he said, never once glancing at his
+light burden.
+
+“With me?” she sighed helplessly.
+
+“Never without you,” he said. “You are my strength.”
+
+He pressed her close to him. His face was grave and his footsteps
+steady. The conflagrations bursting out in the ruins of destroyed
+villages dotted the plain with red fires; and the sounds of distant
+lamentations, the cries of “Misericordia! Misericordia!” made a desolate
+murmur in his ears. He walked on, solemn and collected, as if carrying
+something holy, fragile and precious.
+
+The earth rocked at times under his feet.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+WITH movements of mechanical care and an air of abstraction old General
+Santierra lighted a long and thick cigar.
+
+“It was a good many hours before we could send a party back to the
+ravine,” he said to his guests. “We had found one-third of the town laid
+low, the rest shaken up; and the inhabitants, rich and poor, reduced to
+the same state of distraction by the universal disaster. The affected
+cheerfulness of some contrasted with the despair of others. In the
+general confusion a number of reckless thieves, without fear of God or
+man, became a danger to those who from the downfall of their homes had
+managed to save some valuables. Crying ‘Misericordia’ louder than any at
+every tremor, and beating their breasts with one hand, these scoundrels
+robbed the poor victims with the other, not even stopping short of
+murder.
+
+“General Robles’ division was occupied entirely in guarding the
+destroyed quarters of the town from the depredations of these inhuman
+monsters. Taken up with my duties of orderly officer, it was only in the
+morning that I could assure myself of the safety of my own family.
+
+“My mother and my sisters had escaped with their lives from that
+ball-room, where I had left them early in the evening. I remember those
+two beautiful young women--God rest their souls--as if I saw them this
+moment, in the garden of our destroyed house, pale but active, assisting
+some of our poor neighbours, in their soiled ball-dresses and with the
+dust of fallen walls on their hair. As to my mother, she had a stoical
+soul in her frail body. Half-covered by a costly shawl, she was lying
+on a rustic seat by the side of an ornamental basin whose fountain had
+ceased to play for ever on that night.
+
+“I had hardly had time to embrace them all with transports of joy, when
+my chief, coming along, dispatched me to the ravine with a few soldiers,
+to bring in my strong man, as he called him, and that pale girl.
+
+“But there was no one for us to bring in. A land-slide had covered the
+ruins of the house; and it was like a large mound of earth with only the
+ends of some timbers visible here and there--nothing more.
+
+“Thus were the tribulations of the old Royalist couple ended. An
+enormous and unconsecrated grave had swallowed them up alive, in their
+unhappy obstinacy against the will of a people to be free. And their
+daughter was gone.
+
+“That Gaspar Ruiz had carried her off I understood very well. But as
+the case was not foreseen, I had no instructions to pursue them. And
+certainly I had no desire to do so. I had grown mistrustful of my
+interference. It had never been successful, and had not even appeared
+creditable. He was gone. Well, let him go. And he had carried off the
+Royalist girl! Nothing better. Vaya con Dios. This was not the time
+to bother about a deserter who, justly or unjustly, ought to have been
+dead, and a girl for whom it would have been better to have never been
+born.
+
+“So I marched my men back to the town.
+
+“After a few days, order having been re-established, all the principal
+families, including my own, left for Santiago. We had a fine house
+there. At the same time the division of Robles was moved to new
+cantonments near the capital. This change suited very well the state of
+my domestic and amorous feelings.
+
+“One night, rather late, I was called to my chief. I found General
+Robles in his quarters, at ease, with his uniform off, drinking neat
+brandy out of a tumbler--as a precaution, he used to say, against the
+sleeplessness induced by the bites of mosquitoes. He was a good soldier,
+and he taught me the art and practice of war.
+
+“No doubt God has been merciful to his soul; for his motives were never
+other than patriotic, if his character was irascible. As to the use
+of mosquito nets, he considered it effeminate, shameful--unworthy of a
+soldier.
+
+“I noticed at the first glance that his face, already very red, wore an
+expression of high good-humour.
+
+“‘Aha! senor teniente,’ he cried loudly, as I saluted at the door.
+‘Behold! Your strong man has turned up again.’
+
+“He extended to me a folded letter, which I saw was superscribed ‘To the
+Commander-in-Chief of the Republican Armies.’
+
+“‘This,’ General Robles went on in his loud voice, ‘was thrust by a boy
+into the hand of a sentry at the Quartel General, while the fellow stood
+there thinking of his girl, no doubt--for before he could gather his
+wits together, the boy had disappeared amongst the market people, and he
+protests he could not recognise him to save his life.’
+
+“My chief told me further that the soldier had given the letter to the
+sergeant of the guard, and that ultimately it had reached the hands of
+our generalissimo. His Excellency had deigned to take cognisance of it
+with his own eyes. After that he had referred the matter in confidence
+to General Robles.
+
+“The letter, senores, I cannot now recollect textually. I saw the
+signature of Gaspar Ruiz. He was an audacious fellow. He had snatched a
+soul for himself out of a cataclysm, remember. And now it was that
+soul which had dictated the terms of his letter. Its tone was very
+independent. I remember it struck me at the time as noble--dignified. It
+was, no doubt, her letter. Now I shudder at the depth of its duplicity.
+Gaspar Ruiz was made to complain of the injustice of which he had been
+a victim. He invoked his previous record of fidelity and courage. Having
+been saved from death by the miraculous interposition of Providence, he
+could think of nothing but of retrieving his character. This, he wrote,
+he could not hope to do in the ranks as a discredited soldier still
+under suspicion. He had the means to give a striking proof of his
+fidelity. And he ended by proposing to the General-in-Chief a meeting at
+midnight in the middle of the Plaza before the Moneta. The signal would
+be to strike fire with flint and steel three times, which was not too
+conspicuous and yet distinctive enough for recognition.
+
+“San Martin, the great Liberator, loved men of audacity and courage.
+Besides, he was just and compassionate. I told him as much of the man’s
+story as I knew, and was ordered to accompany him on the appointed
+night. The signals were duly exchanged. It was midnight, and the whole
+town was dark and silent. Their two cloaked figures came together in
+the centre of the vast Plaza, and, keeping discreetly at a distance,
+I listened for an hour or more to the murmur of their voices. Then the
+general motioned me to approach; and as I did so I heard San Martin,
+who was courteous to gentle and simple alike, offer Gaspar Ruiz the
+hospitality of the headquarters for the night. But the soldier refused,
+saying that he would not be worthy of that honour till he had done
+something.
+
+“‘You cannot have a common deserter for your guest, Excellency,’ he
+protested with a low laugh, and stepping backwards, merged slowly into
+the night.
+
+“The Commander-in-Chief observed to me, as we turned away: ‘He had
+somebody with him, our friend Ruiz. I saw two figures for a moment. It
+was an unobtrusive companion.’
+
+“I too had observed another figure join the vanishing form of Gaspar
+Ruiz. It had the appearance of a short fellow in a poncho and a big
+hat. And I wondered stupidly who it could be he had dared take into
+his confidence. I might have guessed it could be no one but that fatal
+girl--alas!
+
+“Where he kept her concealed I do not know. He had--it was known
+afterwards--an uncle, his mother’s brother, a small shopkeeper in
+Santiago. Perhaps it was there that she found a roof and food. Whatever
+she found, it was poor enough to exasperate her pride and keep up her
+anger and hate. It is certain she did not accompany him on the feat
+he undertook to accomplish first of all. It was nothing less than the
+destruction of a store of war material collected secretly by the Spanish
+authorities in the south, in a town called Linares. Gaspar Ruiz was
+entrusted with a small party only, but they proved themselves worthy of
+San Martin’s confidence. The season was not propitious. They had to swim
+swollen rivers. They seemed, however, to have galloped night and day,
+outriding the news of their foray, and holding straight for the town, a
+hundred miles into the enemy’s country, till at break of day they rode
+into it sword in hand, surprising the little garrison. It fled without
+making a stand, leaving most of its officers in Gaspar Ruiz’ hands.
+
+“A great explosion of gunpowder ended the conflagration of the magazines
+the raiders had set on fire without loss of time. In less than six
+hours they were riding away at the same mad speed, without the loss of a
+single man. Good as they were, such an exploit is not performed without
+a still better leadership.
+
+“I was dining at the headquarters when Gas-par Ruiz himself brought the
+news of his success. And it was a great blow to the Royalist troops. For
+a proof he displayed to us the garrison’s flag. He took it from under
+his poncho and flung it on the table. The man was transfigured; there
+was something exulting and menacing in the expression of his face. He
+stood behind General San Martin’s chair and looked proudly at us all.
+He had a round blue cap edged with silver braid on his head, and we all
+could see a large white scar on the nape of his sunburnt neck.
+
+“Somebody asked him what he had done with the captured Spanish officers.
+
+“He shrugged his shoulders scornfully. ‘What a question to ask! In
+a partisan war you do not burden yourself with prisoners. I let them
+go--and here are their sword-knots.’
+
+“He flung a bunch of them on the table upon the flag. Then General
+Robles, whom I was attending there, spoke up in his loud, thick voice:
+‘You did! Then, my brave friend, you do not know yet how a war like ours
+ought to be conducted. You should have done--this.’ And he passed the
+edge of his hand across his own throat.
+
+“Alas, senores! It was only too true that on both sides this contest, in
+its nature so heroic, was stained by ferocity. The murmurs that arose
+at General Robles’ words were by no means unanimous in tone. But the
+generous and brave San Martin praised the humane action, and pointed
+out to Ruiz a place on his right hand. Then rising with a full glass
+he proposed a toast: ‘Caballeros and comrades-in-arms, let us drink the
+health of Captain Gaspar Ruiz.’ And when we had emptied our glasses:
+‘I intend,’ the Commander-in-Chief continued, ‘to entrust him with the
+guardianship of our southern frontier, while we go afar to liberate our
+brethren in Peru. He whom the enemy could not stop from striking a blow
+at his very heart will know how to protect the peaceful populations we
+leave behind us to pursue our sacred task.’ And he embraced the silent
+Gaspar Ruiz by his side.
+
+“Later on, when we all rose from table, I approached the latest officer
+of the army with my congratulations. ‘And, Captain Ruiz,’ I added,
+‘perhaps you do not mind telling a man who has always believed in the
+uprightness of your character, what became of Doña Erminia on that
+night?’
+
+“At this friendly question his aspect changed. He looked at me from
+under his eyebrows with the heavy, dull glance of a guasso--of a
+peasant.
+
+“Senor teniente,’ he said thickly, and as if very much cast down, ‘do
+not ask me about the senorita, for I prefer not to think about her at
+all when I am amongst you.’
+
+“He looked, with a frown, all about the room, full of smoking and
+talking officers. Of course I did not insist.
+
+“These, senores, were the last words I was to hear him utter for a long,
+long time. The very next day we embarked for our arduous expedition to
+Peru, and we only heard of Gaspar Ruiz’ doings in the midst of battles
+of our own. He had been appointed military guardian of our southern
+province. He raised a partida. But his leniency to the conquered foe
+displeased the Civil Governor, who was a formal, uneasy man, full of
+suspicions. He forwarded reports against Gaspar Ruiz to the Supreme
+Government; one of them being that he had married publicly, with great
+pomp, a woman of Royalist tendencies. Quarrels were sure to arise
+between these two men of very different character. At last the Civil
+Governor began to complain of his inactivity, and to hint at treachery,
+which, he wrote, would be not surprising in a man of such antecedents.
+Gaspar Ruiz heard of it. His rage flamed up, and the woman ever by his
+side knew how to feed it with perfidious words. I do not know
+whether really the Supreme Government ever did--as he complained
+afterwards--send orders for his arrest. It seems certain that the
+Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar Ruiz
+discovered the fact.
+
+“One evening, when the Governor was giving a tertullia Gaspar Ruiz,
+followed by six men he could trust, appeared riding through the town to
+the door of the Government House, and entered the sala armed, his hat on
+his head. As the Governor, displeased, advanced to meet him, he seized
+the wretched man round the body, carried him off from the midst of the
+appalled guests, as though he were a child, and flung him down the outer
+steps into the street. An angry hug from Gaspar Ruiz was enough to crush
+the life out of a giant; but in addition Gaspar Ruiz’ horsemen fired
+their pistols at the body of the Governor as it lay motionless at the
+bottom of the stairs.”
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+“AFTER this--as he called it--act of justice, Ruiz crossed the Rio
+Blanco, followed by the greater part of his band, and entrenched himself
+upon a hill A company of regular troops sent out foolishly against him
+was surrounded, and destroyed almost to a man. Other expeditions, though
+better organised, were equally unsuccessful.
+
+“It was during these sanguinary skirmishes that his wife first began to
+appear on horseback at his right hand. Rendered proud and self-confident
+by his successes, Ruiz no longer charged at the head of his partida, but
+presumptuously, like a general directing the movements of an army,
+he remained in the rear, well mounted and motionless on an eminence,
+sending out his orders. She was seen repeatedly at his side, and for
+a long time was mistaken for a man. There was much talk then of a
+mysterious white-faced chief, to whom the defeats of our troops were
+ascribed. She rode like an Indian woman, astride, wearing a broad-rimmed
+man’s hat and a dark poncho. Afterwards, in the day of their greatest
+prosperity, this poncho was embroidered in gold, and she wore then,
+also, the sword of poor Don Antonio de Leyva. This veteran Chilean
+officer, having the misfortune to be surrounded with his small force,
+and running short of ammunition, found his death at the hands of the
+Arauco Indians, the allies and auxiliaries of Gaspar Ruiz. This was the
+fatal affair long remembered afterwards as the ‘Massacre of the Island.’
+The sword of the unhappy officer was presented to her by Peneleo, the
+Araucanian chief; for these Indians, struck by her aspect, the deathly
+pallor of her face, which no exposure to the weather seemed to affect,
+and her calm indifference under fire, looked upon her as a supernatural
+being, or at least as a witch. By this superstition the prestige and
+authority of Gaspar Ruiz amongst these ignorant people were greatly
+augmented. She must have savoured her vengeance to the full on that day
+when she buckled on the sword of Don Antonio de Leyva. It never left her
+side, unless she put on her woman’s clothes--not that she would or
+could ever use it, but she loved to feel it beating upon her thigh as
+a perpetual reminder and symbol of the dishonour to the arms of the
+Republic. She was insatiable. Moreover, on the path she had led Gaspar
+Ruiz upon, there is no stopping. Escaped prisoners--and they were not
+many--used to relate how with a few whispered words she could change the
+expression of his face and revive his flagging animosity. They told how
+after every skirmish, after every raid, after every successful action,
+he would ride up to her and look into her face. Its haughty-calm was
+never relaxed. Her embrace, senores, must have been as cold as the
+embrace of a statue. He tried to melt her icy heart in a stream of warm
+blood. Some English naval officers who visited him at that time noticed
+the strange character of his infatuation.”
+
+At the movement of surprise and curiosity in his audience General
+Santierra paused for a moment.
+
+“Yes--English naval officers,” he repeated. “Ruiz had consented to
+receive them to arrange for the liberation of some prisoners of your
+nationality. In the territory upon which he ranged, from sea coast to
+the Cordillera, there was a bay where the ships of that time, after
+rounding Gape Horn, used to resort for wood and water. There, decoying
+the crew on shore, he captured first the whaling brig Hersalia, and
+afterwards made himself master by surprise of two more ships, one
+English and one American.
+
+“It was rumoured at the time that he dreamed of setting up a navy of his
+own. But that, of course, was impossible. Still, manning the brig with
+part of her own crew, and putting an officer and a good many men of his
+own on board, he sent her off to the Spanish Governor of the island of
+Chiloe with a report of his exploits, and a demand for assistance in the
+war against the rebels. The Governor could not do much for him; but he
+sent in return two light field-pieces, a letter of compliments, with a
+colonel’s commission in the royal forces, and a great Spanish flag. This
+standard with much ceremony was hoisted over his house in the heart of
+the Arauco country. Surely on that day she may have smiled on her guasso
+husband with a less haughty reserve.
+
+“The senior officer of the English squadron on our coast made
+representations to our Government as to these captures. But Gaspar Ruiz
+refused to treat with us. Then an English frigate proceeded to the bay,
+and her captain, doctor, and two lieutenants travelled inland under a
+safe conduct. They were well received, and spent three days as guests
+of the partisan chief. A sort of military, barbaric state was kept up
+at the residence. It was furnished with the loot of frontier towns. When
+first admitted to the principal sala, they saw his wife lying down (she
+was not in good health then), with Gaspar Ruiz sitting at the foot of
+the couch. His-hat was lying on the floor, and his hands reposed on the
+hilt of his sword.
+
+“During that first conversation he never removed his big hands from
+the sword-hilt, except once, to arrange the coverings about her, with
+gentle, careful touches. They noticed that when ever she spoke he would
+fix his eyes upon her in a kind of expectant, breathless attention, and
+seemingly forget the existence of the world and his own existence
+too. In the course of the farewell banquet, at which she was present
+reclining on her couch, he burst forth into complaints of the treatment
+he had received. After General San Martin’s departure he had been
+beset by spies, slandered by civil officials, his services ignored, his
+liberty and even his life threatened by the Chilian Government. He got
+up from the table, thundered execrations pacing the room wildly, then
+sat down on the couch at his wife’s feet, his breast heaving, his eyes
+fixed on the floor. She reclined on her back, her head on the cushions,
+her eyes nearly closed.
+
+“‘And now I am an honoured Spanish officer,’ he added in a calm voice.
+
+“The captain of the English frigate then took the opportunity to inform
+him gently that Lima had fallen, and that by the terms of a convention
+the Spaniards were withdrawing from the whole continent.
+
+“Gaspar Ruiz raised his head, and without hesitation, speaking with
+suppressed vehemence, declared, that if not a single Spanish soldier
+were left in the whole of South America he would persist in carrying on
+the contest against Chile to the last drop of blood. When he finished
+that mad tirade his wife’s long white hand was raised, and she just
+caressed his knee with the tips of her fingers for a fraction of a
+second.
+
+“For the rest of the officers’ stay, which did not extend for more than
+half an hour after the banquet, that ferocious chieftain of a desperate
+partida overflowed with amiability and kindness. He had been hospitable
+before, but now it seemed as though he could not do enough for the
+comfort and safety of his visitors’ journey back to their ship.
+
+“Nothing, I have been told, could have presented a greater contrast to
+his late violence or the habitual taciturn reserve of his manner. Like a
+man elated beyond measure by an unexpected happiness, he overflowed with
+good-will, amiability, and attentions. He embraced the officers like
+brothers, almost with tears in his eyes. The released prisoners were
+presented each with a piece of gold. At the last moment, suddenly, he
+declared he could do no less than restore to the masters of the merchant
+vessels all their private property. This unexpected generosity caused
+some delay in the departure of the party, and their first march was very
+short.
+
+“Late in the evening Gaspar Ruiz rode up with an escort, to their camp
+fires, bringing along with him a mule loaded with cases of wine. He had
+come, he said, to drink a stirrup cup with his English friends, whom he
+would never see again. He was mellow and joyous in his temper. He told
+stories of his own exploits, laughed like a boy, borrowed a guitar
+from the Englishmen’s chief muleteer, and sitting cross-legged on his
+superfine poncho spread before the glow of the embers, sang a guasso
+love-song in a tender voice. Then his head dropped on his breast, his
+hands fell to the ground; the guitar rolled off his knees--and a great
+hush fell over the camp after the love-song of the implacable partisan
+who had made so many of our people weep for destroyed homes and for
+loves cut short.
+
+“Before anybody could make a sound he sprang up from the ground and
+called for his horse. ‘Adios, my friends!’ he cried, ‘Go with God.
+I love you. And tell them well in Santiago that between Gaspar Ruiz,
+colonel of the King of Spain, and the republican carrion-crows of Chile
+there is war to the last breath--war! war! war!’
+
+“With a great yell of ‘War! war! war!’ which his escort took up, they
+rode away, and the sound of hoofs and of voices died out in the distance
+between the slopes of the hills.
+
+“The two young English officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. How
+do you say that?--tile loose--eh? But the doctor, an observant Scotsman
+with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it
+was a very curious case of possession. I met him many years afterwards,
+but he remembered the experience very well. He told me too that in
+his opinion that woman did not lead Gaspar Ruiz into the practice of
+sanguinary treachery by direct persuasion, but by the subtle way of
+awakening and keeping alive in his simple mind a burning sense of an
+irreparable wrong. Maybe, maybe. But I would say that she poured half
+of her vengeful soul into the strong clay of that man, as you may pour
+intoxication, madness, poison into an empty cup.
+
+“If he wanted war he got it in earnest when our victorious army began to
+return from Peru. Systematic operations were planned against this blot
+on the honour and prosperity of our hardly-won independence. General
+Robles commanded, with his well-known ruthless severity. Savage
+reprisals were exercised on both sides, and no quarter was given in the
+field. Having won my promotion in the Peru campaign, I was a captain on
+the staff.
+
+“Gaspar Ruiz found himself hard pressed; at the same time we heard by
+means of a fugitive priest who had been carried off from his village
+presbytery, and galloped eighty miles into the hills to perform the
+christening ceremony, that a daughter was born to them. To celebrate the
+event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear away
+at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to cut
+off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from
+rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes;
+but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect
+than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my
+strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign, I
+am afraid that we young officers became reckless and apt to take undue
+risks on service.
+
+“Nevertheless, slowly, inch by inch as it were, our columns were closing
+upon Gaspar Ruiz, though he had managed to raise all the Araucanian
+nation of wild Indians against us. Then a year or more later our
+Government became aware through its agents and spies that he had
+actually entered into alliance with Carreras, the so-called dictator of
+the so-called republic of Mendoza, on the other side of the mountains.
+Whether Gaspar Ruiz had a deep political intention, or whether he wished
+only to secure a safe retreat for his wife and child while he pursued
+remorselessly against us his war of surprises and massacres, I cannot
+tell. The alliance, however, was a fact. Defeated in his attempt to
+check our advance from the sea, he retreated with his usual swiftness,
+and preparing for another hard and hazardous tussle began by sending his
+wife with the little girl across the Pequena range of mountains, on the
+frontier of Mendoza.”
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+“Now Carreras, under the guise of politics and liberalism, was a
+scoundrel of the deepest dye, and the unhappy state of Mendoza was the
+prey of thieves, robbers, traitors and murderers, who formed his party.
+He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or
+conscience. Tie aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have
+made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became
+aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose
+better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to
+deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who had
+trusted to his honour, and that this offer was accepted.
+
+“While on her way to Mendoza over the Pequena pass she was betrayed by
+her escort of Carreras’ men, and given up to the officer in command of
+a Chilian fort on the upland at the foot of the main Cordillera range.
+This atrocious transaction might have cost me dear, for as a matter of
+fact I was a prisoner in Gaspar Ruiz’ camp when he received the news. I
+had been captured during a reconnaissance, my escort of a few troopers
+being speared by the Indians of his bodyguard. I was saved from the same
+fate because he recognised my features just in time. No doubt my friends
+thought I was dead, and I would not have given much for my life at any
+time. But the strong man treated me very well, because, he said, I had
+always believed in his innocence and had tried to serve him when he was
+a victim of injustice.
+
+“‘And now,’ was his speech to me, ‘you shall see that I always speak the
+truth. You are safe.’
+
+“I did not think I was very safe when I was called up to go to him one
+night. He paced up and down like a wild beast, exclaiming, ‘Betrayed!
+Betrayed!’
+
+“He walked up to me clenching his fists. ‘I could cut your throat.’
+
+“‘Will that give your wife back to you?’ I said as quietly as I could.
+
+“‘And the child!’ he yelled out, as if mad. He fell into a chair and
+laughed in a frightful, boisterous manner. ‘Oh, no, you are safe.’
+
+“I assured him that his wife’s life was safe too; but I did not say what
+I was convinced of--that he would never see her again. He wanted war to
+the death, and the war could only end with his death.
+
+“He gave me a strange, inexplicable look, and sat muttering blankly. ‘In
+their hands. In their hands.’
+
+“I kept as still as a mouse before a cat. Suddenly he jumped up. ‘What
+am I doing here?’ he cried; and opening the door, he yelled out orders
+to saddle and mount. ‘What is it?’ he stammered, coming up to me. ‘The
+Pequena fort; a fort of palisades! Nothing. I would get her back if she
+were hidden in the very heart of the mountain.’ He amazed me by adding,
+with an effort: ‘I carried her off in my two arms while the earth
+trembled. And the child at least is mine. She at least is mine!’
+
+“Those were bizarre words; but I had no time for wonder.
+
+“‘You shall go with me;’ he said violently. ‘I may want to parley, and
+any other messenger from Ruiz, the outlaw, would have his throat cut.’
+
+“This was true enough. Between him and the rest of incensed mankind
+there could be no communication, according to the customs of honour-able
+warfare.
+
+“In less than half an hour we were in the saddle, flying wildly through
+the night. He had only an escort of twenty men at his quarters, but
+would not wait for more. He sent, however, messengers to Peneleo, the
+Indian chief then ranging in the foothills, directing him to bring
+his warriors to the uplands and meet him at the lake called the Eye of
+Water, near whose shores the frontier fort of Pequena was built.
+
+“We crossed the lowlands with that untired rapidity of movement which
+had made Gaspar Ruiz’ raids so famous. We followed the lower valleys
+up to their precipitous heads. The ride was not without its dangers.
+A cornice road on a perpendicular wall of basalt wound itself around a
+buttressing rock, and at last we emerged from the gloom of a deep gorge
+upon the upland of Peeña.
+
+“It was a plain of green wiry grass and thin flowering bushes; but high
+above our heads patches of snow hung in the folds and crevices of the
+great walls of rock. The little lake was as round as a staring eye. The
+garrison of the fort were just driving in their small herd of cattle
+when we appeared. Then the great wooden gates swung to, and that
+four-square enclosure of broad blackened stakes pointed at the top
+and barely hiding the grass roofs of the huts inside, seemed deserted,
+empty, without a single soul.
+
+“But when summoned to surrender, by a man who at Gaspar Ruiz’ order rode
+fearlessly forward, those inside answered by a volley which rolled him
+and his horse over. I heard Ruiz by my side grind his teeth. ‘It does
+not matter,’ he said. ‘Now you go.’
+
+“Torn and faded as its rags were, the vestiges of my uniform were
+recognised, and I was allowed to approach within speaking distance; and
+then I had to wait, because a voice clamouring through a loophole with
+joy and astonishment would not allow me to place a word. It was the
+voice of Major Pajol, an old friend. He, like my other comrades, had
+thought me killed a long time ago.
+
+“‘Put spurs to your horse, man!’ he yelled, in the greatest excitement;
+‘we will swing the gate open for you.’
+
+“I let the reins fall out of my hand and shook my head. ‘I am on my
+honour,’ I cried.
+
+“‘To him!’ he shouted, with infinite disgust.’
+
+“‘He promises you your life.’
+
+“‘Our life is our own. And do you, Santierra, advise us to surrender to
+that rastrero?’
+
+“‘No!’ I shouted. ‘But he wants his wife and child, and he can cut you
+off from water.’
+
+“‘Then she would be the first to suffer. You may tell him that. Look
+here--this is all nonsense: we shall dash out and capture you.
+
+“‘You shall not catch me alive,’ I said firmly.
+
+“‘Imbecile!’
+
+“‘For God’s sake,’ I continued hastily, ‘do not open the gate.’ And I
+pointed at the multitude of Peneleo’s Indians who covered the shores of
+the lake.
+
+“I had never seen so many of these savages together. Their lances
+seemed as numerous as stalks of grass. Their hoarse voices made a vast,
+inarticulate sound like the murmur of the sea.
+
+“My friend Pajol was swearing to himself. ‘Well, then--go to the devil!’
+he shouted, exasperated. But as I swung round he repented, for I heard
+him say hurriedly, ‘Shoot the fool’s horse before he gets away.
+
+“He had good marksmen. Two shots rang out, and in the very act
+of turning my horse staggered, fell and lay still as if struck by
+lightning. I had my feet out of the stirrups and rolled clear of him;
+but I did not attempt to rise. Neither dared they rush out to drag me
+in.
+
+“The masses of Indians had begun to move upon the fort. They rode up
+in squadrons, trailing their long chusos; then dismounted out of
+musket-shot, and, throwing off their fur mantles, advanced naked to the
+attack, stamping their feet and shouting in cadence. A sheet of flame
+ran three times along the face of the fort without checking their steady
+march. They crowded right up to the very stakes, flourishing their broad
+knives. But this palisade was not fastened together with hide lashings
+in the usual way, but with long iron nails, which they could not cut.
+Dismayed at the failure of their usual method of forcing an entrance,
+the heathen, who had marched so steadily against the musketry fire,
+broke and fled under the volleys of the besieged.
+
+“Directly they had passed me on their advance I got up and rejoined
+Gaspar Ruiz on a low ridge which jutted out upon the plain. The musketry
+of his own men had covered the attack, but now at a sign from him a
+trumpet sounded the ‘Cease fire.’ Together we looked in silence at the
+hopeless rout of the savages.
+
+“‘It must be a siege, then,’ he muttered. And I detected him wringing
+his hands stealthily.
+
+“But what sort of siege could it be? Without any need for me to repeat
+my friend Pajol’s message, he dared not cut the water off from the
+besieged. They had plenty of meat. And, indeed, if they had been short,
+he would have been too anxious to send food into the stockade had he
+been able. But, as a matter of fact, it was we on the plain who were
+beginning to feel the pinch of hunger.
+
+“Peneleo, the Indian chief, sat by our fire folded in his ample mantle
+of guanaco skins. He was an athletic savage, with an enormous square
+shock head of hair resembling a straw beehive in shape and size,
+and with grave, surly, much-lined features. In his broken Spanish he
+repeated, growling like a bad-tempered wild beast, that if an opening
+ever so small were made in the stockade his men would march in and get
+the senora--not otherwise.
+
+“Gaspar Ruiz, sitting opposite him, kept his eyes fixed on the fort
+night and day as it were, in awful silence and immobility. Meantime, by
+runners from the lowlands that arrived nearly every day, we heard of the
+defeat of one of his lieutenants in the Maipu valley. Scouts sent afar
+brought news of a column of infantry advancing through distant passes to
+the relief of the fort. They were slow, but we could trace their toilful
+progress up the lower valleys. I wondered why Ruiz did not march to
+attack and destroy this threatening force, in some wild gorge fit for an
+ambuscade, in accordance with his genius for guerrilla warfare. But his
+genius seemed to have abandoned him to his despair.
+
+“It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight
+of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to
+pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge,
+indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands
+clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees,
+gazing--gazing--gazing.
+
+“And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as
+himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the
+desultory fire directed at the loopholes.
+
+“One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude,
+spoke to me unexpectedly ‘I have sent for a gun,’ he said. ‘I shall have
+time to get her back and retreat before your Robles manages to crawl up
+here.’
+
+“He had sent for a gun to the plains.
+
+“It was long in coming, but at last it came. It was a seven-pounder
+field-gun. Dismounted and lashed crosswise to two long poles, it had
+been carried up the narrow paths between two mules with ease. His wild
+cry of exultation at daybreak when he saw the gun escort emerge from the
+valley rings in my ears now.
+
+“But, senores, I have no words to depict his amazement, his fury, his
+despair and distraction, when he heard that the animal loaded with the
+gun-carriage had, during the last night march, somehow or other tumbled
+down a precipice. He broke into menaces of death and torture against the
+escort. I kept out of his way all that day, lying behind some bushes,
+and wondering what he would do now. Retreat was left for him; but he
+could not retreat.
+
+“I saw below me his artillerist Jorge, an old Spanish soldier, building
+up a sort of structure with heaped-up saddles. The gun, ready-loaded was
+lifted on to that, but in the act of firing the whole thing collapsed
+and the shot flew high above the stockade.
+
+“Nothing more was attempted. One of the ammunition mules had been lost
+too, and they had no more than six shots to fire; amply enough to batter
+down the gate, providing the gun was well laid. This was impossible
+without it being properly mounted. There was no time nor means to
+construct a carriage. Already every moment I expected to hear Robles’
+bugle-calls echo amongst the crags.
+
+“Peneleo, wandering about uneasily, draped in his skins, sat down for a
+moment near me growling his usual tale.
+
+“‘Make an entrada--a hole. If make a hole, bueno. If not make a hole,
+them vamos--we must go away.’
+
+“After sunset I observed with surprise the Indians making preparations
+as if for another assault. Their lines stood ranged in the shadows
+mountains. On the plain in front of the fort gate I saw a group of men
+swaying about in the same place.
+
+“I walked down the ridge disregarded. The moonlight in the clear air of
+the uplands was as bright as day, but the intense shadows confused my
+sight, and I could not make out what they were doing. I heard voice
+Jorge, artillerist, say in a queer, doubtful tone, ‘It is loaded,
+senores.’
+
+“Then another voice in that group pronounced firmly the words, ‘Bring
+the riata here.’ It was the voice of Gaspar Ruiz.
+
+“A silence fell, in which the popping shots of the besieged garrison
+rang out sharply. They too had observed the group. But the distance
+was too great, and in the spatter of spent musket-balls cutting up the
+ground, the group opened, closed, swayed, giving me a glimpse of busy
+stooping figures in its midst. I drew nearer, doubting whether this was
+a weird vision, a suggestive and insensate dream.
+
+“A strangely stifled voice commanded, ‘Haul the hitches tighter.’
+
+“‘Si, senor,’ several other voices answered in tones of awed alacrity.
+
+“Then the stifled voice said: ‘Like this. I must be free to breathe.’
+
+“Then there was a concerned noise of many men together. ‘Help him up,
+hombres. Steady! Under the other arm.’
+
+“That deadened voice, ordered: ‘Bueno! Stand away from me, men.’
+
+“I pushed my way through the recoiling circle, and heard once more that
+same oppressed voice saying earnestly: ‘Forget that I am a living man,
+Jorge. Forget me altogether, and think of what you have to do.’
+
+“‘Be without fear, senor. You are nothing to me but a gun carriage, and
+I shall not waste a shot.’
+
+“I heard the spluttering of a port-fire, and smelt the saltpetre of the
+match. I saw suddenly before me a nondescript shape on all fours like
+a beast, but with a man’s head drooping below a tubular projection over
+the nape of the neck, and the gleam of a rounded mass of bronze on its
+back.
+
+“In front of a silent semicircle of men it squatted alone with Jorge
+behind it and a trumpeter motionless, his trumpet in his hand, by its
+side.
+
+“Jorge, bent double, muttered, port-fire in hand: ‘An inch to the left,
+senor. Too much. So. Now, if you let yourself down a little by letting
+your elbows bend, I will...’
+
+“He leaped aside, lowering his port-fire, and a burst of flame darted
+out of the muzzle of the gun lashed on the man’s back.
+
+“Then Gaspar Ruiz lowered himself slowly. ‘Good shot?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Full on, senor.’
+
+“‘Then load again.’
+
+“He lay there before me on his breast under the darkly glittering bronze
+of his monstrous burden, such as no love or strength of man had ever
+had to bear in the lamentable history of the world. His arms were spread
+out, and he resembled a prostrate penitent on the moonlit ground.
+
+“Again I saw him raised to his hands and knees, and the men stand away
+from him, and old Jorge stoop, glancing along the gun.
+
+“‘Left a little. Right an inch. Por Dios, senor, stop this trembling.
+Where is your strength?’
+
+“The old gunner’s voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and
+quick as lightning brought the spark to the touch-hole.
+
+“‘Excellent!’ he cried tearfully; but Gaspar Ruiz lay for a long time
+silent, flattened on the ground.
+
+“‘I am tired,’ he murmured at last. ‘Will another shot do it?’
+
+“‘Without doubt,’ said Jorge, bending down to his ear.
+
+“‘Then--load,’ I heard him utter distinctly. ‘Trumpeter!’
+
+“‘I am here, senor, ready for your word.’
+
+“‘Blow a blast at this word that shall be heard from one end of Chile to
+the other,’ he said, in an extraordinarily strong voice. ‘And you others
+stand ready to cut this accursed riata, for then will be the time for
+me to lead you in your rush. Now raise me up, and, you, Jorge--be quick
+with your aim.’
+
+“The rattle of musketry from the fort nearly drowned his voice. The
+palisade was wreathed in smoke and flame.
+
+“‘Exert your force forward against the recoil, mi amo,’ said the old
+gunner shakily. ‘Dig your fingers into the ground. So. Now!’
+
+“A cry of exultation escaped him after the shot. The trumpeter raised
+his trumpet nearly to his lips, and waited. But no word came from the
+prostrate man. I fell on one knee, and heard all he had to say then.
+
+“‘Something broken,’ he whispered, lifting his head a little, and
+turning his eyes towards me in his hopelessly crushed attitude.
+
+“‘The gate hangs only by the splinters,’ yelled Jorge.
+
+“Gaspar Ruiz tried to speak, but his voice died out in his throat, and I
+helped to roll the gun off his broken back. He was insensible.
+
+“I kept my lips shut, of course. The signal for the Indians to attack
+was never given. Instead, the bugle-calls of the relieving force, for
+which my ears had thirsted so long, burst out, terrifying like the call
+of the Last Day to our surprised enemies.
+
+“A tornado, senores, a real hurricane of stampeded men, wild horses,
+mounted Indians, swept over me as I cowered on the ground by the side
+of Gaspar Ruiz, still stretched out on his face in the shape of a
+cross. Peneleo, galloping for life, jabbed at me with his long chuso in
+passing--for the sake of old acquaintance, I suppose. How I escaped the
+flying lead is more difficult to explain. Venturing to rise on my knees
+too soon, some soldiers of the 17th Taltal regiment, in their hurry to
+get at something alive, nearly bayonetted me on the spot. They looked
+very disappointed too when some officers galloping up drove them away
+with the flat of their swords.
+
+“It was General Robles with his staff. He wanted badly to make some
+prisoners. He, too, seemed disappointed for a moment. ‘What? Is it you?’
+he cried. But he dismounted at once to embrace me, for he was an old
+friend of my family. I pointed to the body at our feet, and said only
+these two words:
+
+“‘Gaspar Ruiz.’
+
+“He threw his arms up in astonishment.
+
+“‘Aha! Your strong man! Always to the last with your strong man. No
+matter. He saved our lives when the earth trembled enough to make the
+bravest faint with fear. I was frightened out of my wits. But he--no!
+Que guape! Where’s the hero who got the best of him? Ha! ha! ha! What
+killed him, chico?’
+
+“‘His own strength general,’ I answered.”
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+“BUT Gaspar Ruiz breathed yet. I had him carried in his poncho under the
+shelter of some bushes on the very ridge from which he had been gazing
+so fixedly at the fort while unseen death was hovering already over his
+head.
+
+“Our troops had bivouacked round the fort. Towards daybreak I was not
+surprised to hear that I was designated to command the escort of a
+prisoner who was to be sent down at once to Santiago. Of course the
+prisoner was Gaspar Ruiz’ wife.
+
+“‘I have named you out of regard for your feelings,’ General Robles
+remarked. ‘Though the woman really ought to be shot for all the harm she
+has done to the Republic.’
+
+“And as I made a movement of shocked protest, he continued:
+
+“‘Now he is as well as dead, she is of no importance. Nobody will know
+what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.’ He shrugged his
+shoulders. ‘I suppose he must have buried large quantities of his loot
+in places that she alone knows of.’
+
+“At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and
+carrying her child on her arm.
+
+“I walked to meet her.
+
+“‘Is he living yet?’ she asked, confronting me with that white,
+impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way.
+
+“I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word. His
+eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name with a
+great effort.
+
+“‘Erminia!’
+
+“She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with
+her big eyes, looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous,
+thin voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise
+behind the black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk,
+incomprehensible and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man
+and the kneeling woman, remained silent, looking into each other’s eyes,
+listening to the frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The child laid
+its head against its mother’s breast and was still.
+
+“‘It was for you,’ he began. ‘Forgive.’ His voice failed him. Presently
+I heard a mutter, and caught the pitiful words: ‘Not strong enough.’
+
+“She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile,
+and in a humble tone, ‘Forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘Leaving you...’
+
+“She bent down, dry-eyed, and in a steady voice: ‘On all the earth I
+have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,’ she said.
+
+“His head made a movement. His eyes revived. ‘At last! ‘he sighed out.
+Then, anxiously, ‘But is this true... is this true?’
+
+“‘As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,’ she
+answered him passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to raise
+his head, but it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was already
+dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds floated
+very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to its
+mother’s breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep.
+
+“The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away
+without shedding a tear.
+
+“For travelling we had arranged for her a side-saddle very much like a
+chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first day
+she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment turning her
+eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her knees. At our first
+camp I saw her during the night walking about, rocking the child in
+her arms and gazing down at it by the light of the moon. After we had
+started on our second day’s march she asked me how soon we should come
+to the first village of the inhabited country.
+
+“I said we should be there about noon.
+
+“‘And will there be women there?’ she inquired.
+
+“I told her that it was a large village. ‘There will be men and women
+there, senora,’ I said, ‘whose hearts shall be made glad by the news
+that all the unrest and war is over now.’
+
+“‘Yes, it is all over now,’ she repeated. Then, after a time: ‘senor
+officer, what will your Government do with me?’
+
+“‘I do not know, senora,’ I said. ‘They will treat you well, no doubt.
+We republicans are not savages, and take no vengeance on women.’
+
+“She gave me a look at the word ‘republicans’ which I imagined full of
+undying hate. But an hour or so afterwards, as we drew up to let the
+baggage mules go first along a narrow path skirting a precipice, she
+looked at me with such a white, troubled face that I felt a great pity
+for her.
+
+“‘Senor officer,’ she said, ‘I am weak, I tremble. It is an insensate
+fear.’ And indeed her lips did tremble, while she tried to smile
+glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so dangerous
+after all. ‘I am afraid I shall drop the child. Gaspar saved your life,
+you remember.... Take her from me.’
+
+“I took the child out of her extended arms. ‘Shut your eyes, senora, and
+trust to your mule,’ I recommended.
+
+“She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted thin face she looked
+deathlike. At a turn of the path, where a great crag of purple porphyry
+closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes. I rode just
+behind her holding the little girl with my right arm. ‘The child is all
+right,’ I cried encouragingly.
+
+“‘Yes,’ she answered faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw her
+stand up on the footrest, staring horribly, and throw herself forward
+into the chasm on our right.
+
+“I cannot describe to you the sudden and abject fear that came over me
+at that dreadful sight. It was a dread of the abyss, the dread of the
+crags which seemed to nod upon me. My head swam. I pressed the child to
+my side and sat my horse as still as a statue. I was speechless and cold
+all over. Her mule staggered, sidling close to the rock, and then went
+on. My horse only pricked up his ears with a slight snort. My heart
+stood still, and from the depths of the precipice the stones rattling in
+the bed of the furious stream made me almost insane with their sound.
+
+“Next moment we were round the turn and on a broad and grassy slope. And
+then I yelled. My men came running back to me in great alarm. It seems
+that at first I did nothing but shout, ‘She has given the child into my
+hands! She has given the child into my hands!’ The escort thought I had
+gone mad.”
+
+General Santierra ceased and got up from the table. “And that is all,
+senores,” he concluded, with a courteous glance at his rising guests.
+
+“But what became of the child, General?” we asked.
+
+“Ah, the child, the child.”
+
+He walked to one of the windows opening on his beautiful garden, the
+refuge of his old days. Its fame was great in the land. Keeping us back
+with a raised arm, he called out, “Erminia, Erminia!” and waited. Then
+his cautioning arm dropped, and we crowded to the windows.
+
+From a clump of trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered
+with flowers. We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and
+observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt. She
+looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her, stopped, frowned,
+smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing boisterously,
+and drawing the black lace on her head so as to partly conceal her
+haughty profile, passed out of our sight, walking with stiff dignity.
+
+“You have beheld the guardian angel of the old man--and her to whom
+you owe all that is seemly and comfortable in my hospitality. Somehow,
+senores, though the flame of love has been kindled early in my breast, I
+have never married. And because of that perhaps the sparks of the sacred
+fire are not yet extinct here.” He struck his broad chest. “Still alive,
+still alive,” he said, with serio-comic emphasis. “But I shall not marry
+now. She is General Santierra’s adopted daughter and heiress.”
+
+One of our fellow-guests, a young naval officer, described her
+afterwards as a “short, stout, old girl of forty or thereabouts.” We had
+all noticed that her hair was turning grey, and that she had very fine
+black eyes.
+
+“And,” General Santierra continued, “neither would she ever hear of
+marrying any one. A real calamity! Good, patient, devoted to the old
+man. A simple soul. But I would not advise any of you to ask for her
+hand, for if she took yours into hers it would be only to crush your
+bones. Ah! she does not jest on that subject. And she is the own
+daughter of her father, the strong man who perished through his own
+strength: the strength of his body, of his simplicity--of his love!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaspar Ruiz, by Joseph Conrad
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