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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaspar Ruiz, by Joseph Conrad
+#29 in our series by Joseph Conrad
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+Title: Gaspar Ruiz
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8736]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 6, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE 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
+Doņa 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 Doņa 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 Peeņa.
+
+"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
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASPAR RUIZ ***
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