ODTAA: A novel

by John Masefield

X

Hi may have slept for half an hour, when he was wakened by the tinkle of his bombilla falling on the floor. He roused up as a big, elderly rogue-bull of a man, with bloodshot eyes and a heavy ruminating mouth, which seemed to be chewing the cud of fifty different plans, came in, to take charge of the gathering. Plainly all there looked up to him as a leader. A flock of talkers surged up to him with a gabble of explanation and persuasion: some of it very hot, Hi thought.

Presently, Hi found this man staring at him, though as yet without comprehension. His eyes were fixed on Hi while his lower lip moved in and out under the strain of thought. After a time, his bull-like brain began to notice that Hi was a stranger in the camp: he turned to a man, indicated Hi by a jerk of the head, and asked, “Who is that?” Then, turning to Hi, whom of course he knew to be English, he jerked with his head, saying, “Come here, you. What are you?”

Anton explained as Hi came forward; Hi heard the words “caballero ingles”: then Anton, after asking his name, introduced him to Don Pablo something of Meruel. Hi was refreshed by his sleep and eager to be doing. He made up his mind that as these were Whites he would tell his tale, so he did. He said that he was going on urgent White business to Don Manuel at Encinitas; he asked for a horse that he might proceed.

When he had said his say, he knew that he had said something wrong. “I believe they are Reds, after all,” he thought. “Now I’ve put my foot in it.” Anton drew him aside a moment and explained: “All the Whites here are anti-clerical, they hate Don Manuel like poison. You have said, ‘I take nice Luteran message to the Pope.’ ” Anton seemed to think it very funny, but Hi was appalled. “I’ve done for myself now,” he thought, “they’ll probably jail me for a week.”

“Business with Don Manuel at Encinitas?” Don Pablo repeated. “And what business?”

“To tell him that the Reds have put Señorita de Leyva into prison.”

This was news to the assembly, but on the whole pleasant news: the de Leyvas were blamed for most of the troubles which had fallen on the Whites.

“At least,” Don Pablo said, “you cannot reach Don Manuel from here.”

“I don’t want to,” Hi said. “I want to reach Anselmo from here, and from there go on to Don Manuel.”

“Very pretty,” Don Pablo said. “There are telegraphs in Anselmo. You could warn Santa Barbara of all that has been said here.”

“No, sir,” Hi said, “unfortunately, I know no Spanish, and have not understood what has been said here: besides, I am not a spy.”

“You are the first to mention the word,” Don Pablo answered. “You are here, we are here, the trouble exists, the telegraph exists, Santa Barbara exists. I consider the situation.”

“Yes, sir,” Hi said, “but I have been only four nights in this land, I know nothing of your politics.”

“How comes it then,” Don Pablo interrupted, “that you go at all upon this errand? Why are you sent? Who sent you?”

“I must not tell you that, sir,” Hi answered, “but I was sent because the need was great, and because an Englishman will not be suspected by the Reds.”

“Very true,” Don Pablo answered, “but he may be suspected by the Whites. See you,” he added, turning to address the assembly in Spanish, “this boy may justly be suspected by us, when he comes from we know not where and says that he wishes to reach Anselmo.”

As most of those there were like water, ready to flow in any direction opened to it, as long as it were downhill, this turned the company against Hi. They agreed that he might justly be suspected. Why should he be there, they asked, if he wished to reach Anselmo? This was now war; Anselmo was a place of the Reds undoubtedly; this was an English boy; that he should be sent on a message was a farce. Undoubtedly he was a spy or might be used as a spy. Hi did not know their words, but their meanings were plain.

“You may be this or you may be that,” Don Pablo said, in English, “but you cannot go to Anselmo.”

“But, sir, I must go.”

“What say you?”

“Sir, I must go.”

Don Pablo pretended to be deaf, he held one of his ears with his hand, so as to catch the sound: the company tittered.

“What say you?”

“Sir, I must go to Anselmo.”

“Ah,” Don Pablo said with a smile, turning to the men, “He says that he must go to Anselmo. Must go; this very important English word. No, sir,” he said, turning to Hi, “you may go to your Reds in Carpinteria, or you may go home to your English in England; no one shall stop you; it is a healthy walk, for you English are accustomed to walk; but you shall not go to Anselmo. You shall not go to Anselmo, because it is a special place, which I am determined that you shall not see.”

His face, as he spoke, became gorged with blood like the wattles of a turkey cock. Having settled Hi, as he judged, he turned to the assembled men and made them a long harangue in Spanish. Long afterwards Hi learned that the purpose of the meeting was to keep the Pituba raiders out of that part of Meruel. The men there were Whites, but anti-clerical and, on the whole, in favour of Lopez, because he was a Meruel man. Pablo’s purpose, at that moment, was to get the party to ride to a well-known ranch to get from it the reinforcement of its company.

All there seemed pleased at his suggestion, except those whose mansion had been burned in Ribote. These retired in a group in some indignation when the others left the room. Hi was left alone in the great room, save for the broad, good-humoured maid, who was gathering up the bombillas. She was a friendly soul; she made remarks in Spanish to Hi, so that he might feel at ease.

“Many bombillas.”

“Si,” Hi answered.

“Better many guests than many locusts.”

This was beyond Hi, who grinned. After a little time, she added, with a sigh:

“There are more guests than lovers.”

Hi did not know what she said, but he answered, in English, “Such is life.”

After some twenty minutes of talking outside the house the assembled men mounted their horses, which had been kicking and snapping at each other, from anger at the cold, through all the hours of the discussion. Even when they had mounted they made no effort to start. They continued to discuss till it was broad daylight, when they all set off together.

Anton entered with his sister. He came up to Hi to apologise for Don Pablo.

“It is absurd,” he said, “that that man should have stopped your going to Anselmo. There is no reason why you shouldn’t go to Anselmo. Of course you may go there.”

“I have no horse,” Hi said. “Would you lend me a horse so that I could go there?”

“Do you know the way?” the girl asked.

“No.”

“It must be forty kilometres and a difficult way except through Ribote.”

“I could find it,” Hi said.

The brother and sister looked at each other with some hesitation. Hi was afraid that they were wondering whether to trust a tramp, who came at midnight, with neither collar nor tie, from God knows where.

“I am sorry to say,” he said, “that I have got no money with me, but Mr. Winter, of Quezon, beyond Santa Barbara, knows me, and Señora Piranha and her daughter know me.”

“Rosa Piranha?” the girl said. “You know her?”

“Very well. Do you?”

“We were at the convent together,” the girl said. “Of course we will lend you a horse. What is your name?”

“Ridden. Will you tell me yours?”

“We are Ribotes,” she said. “But what makes us consider is, the road to Anselmo. It is no road, my brother says.”

“It is a bad road,” Anton said.

“I don’t mind how bad it is as long as it is a road,” he said. “And I’ll not let your horse down or give him a sore back or anything; I swear I won’t. And I don’t know how to thank you for saying you will lend me one. The point is, getting him back to you. I’m going to the Elenas, the horse-breeders, of Anselmo; I am sure they would send him back or I would bring him back myself, if you would not mind waiting a few days.”

“Bring him back yourself,” Anton said.

“Yes, yes,” the girl said.

“The horse will be all right,” Anton said, “but how about the rider? First you must have food.”

They gave him sausage, bread, coffee and figs. Then they filled saddle-bags with these things and with corn for him to take with him. Anton brought him a silk scarf.

“You will want this for your neck,” he said. “There will be ticks or mosquitoes in the forest.”

No doubt they would have given him money, had they not feared to hurt his feelings.

“I don’t know how to thank you two,” he said. “You have been most frightfully kind.”

“The least we could do,” Anton said, “after nearly murdering you in the dark, as I did.”

They brought him out to the stables, where they saddled a horse for him.

“He will take you to Anselmo all right,” Anton said. “The question is, will you be able to find your way there?”

“I will try,” Hi said.

“Not so easy,” Anton said. “Look there.”

From where he stood Hi could see nothing but great swathes of rolling forest, amid a mist that was lifting and falling as though it were alive.

“You see that it is not easy,” Anton said, “even when you get out of the forest.”

“I think I’ll find it all right,” Hi said. “I’m good at finding my way.”

Anton pursed up his lips and shook his head. “I hope,” he said, “I hope. You got good remembrance?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then I tell you all the way.”

“Right. I’ll remember.”

“It is difficult,” Anton said. “You follow this track here for three kilometres, through the scrub. Then you come to a place very big as a saucer; big, big. Then north-west across it to a hole, snap, cut off, like so, in the hills, a long way, fifteen kilometres. Out there you will see peones who ride. One will show you. You must not go so, no; but so, because, so, there is no ground; all is gone. But this not for twenty kilometres. Till then, you look for the place big as a pan, very big; and the hill that has like so; high, yet so, snap, see; no, more like so.”

This was not clear as a course should be, but his gestures made it clearer. Anton knew the dangers of losing a trail; he turned to his sister for an English rendering of what he wished to explain. Unfortunately she had not seen the place which he strove to describe, nor was her English much better than his, but she added a few words.

“After this track,” she said, “there is a . . . very big.”

“A lake?” Hi suggested.

“A what?”

“A water?”

“No, no, no; very big dry.”

“I understand. A dry valley?”

“Si, si. Then you cross this; oh, it is long. Then you look a way out. There is a hole in the hill, like so.”

“A pass?” Hi said. “A gap? A way to go through?”

“Si, si.”

“But,” Anton said, “you must not go to this side, right side, because no ground; go to left side. Ask peones.”

“Will there be peones?”

“Always peones.”

“And if I cannot find a peon to ask?” Hi said.

“Bad, bad,” Anton said. “A difficult way. Not for some kilometres. But keep north through the path through the forest; see?”

“Anselmo is north from the pass,” the girl said.

“I’ll find it,” Hi said.

“Si, si, you will find it. It is narrow road in the forest; but to the left. Then you get out of the forest you will see.”

Hi was well used to finding his way on the downs; he had plenty of confidence in himself. “I’ll find it,” he repeated. “But one thing more; if any people stop me, may I say that I come from you?”

“They will see that you come from us.”

“How?”

“The brand,” Anton said, pointing to two wavy marks, one above the other, on the horse’s quarter.

“Thank you again,” Hi said, “for all that you have done for me.”

“Good luck,” the girl said.

“Come tell us how you got on,” Anton said.

“I will, indeed, if I may. Thank you.”

His horse was one of the rather small, sturdy, savannah ranch horses, bred in the uplands from the descendants of the conquerors’ mares by the stallions imported from England. He was dark, wise and full of go.

“Will he buck?” Hi asked.

“If you meet a tiger.”

“If a pig, he kick; so you know,” the girl said.

“Right. Thanks. Good-bye.”

“Con Dios.”

The horse was as eager to be gone as Hi to go. He sailed sideways down the avenue. Just as he turned into the thicket, Hi looked back to wave to his friends; they waved back to him. In two seconds more they were out of sight; he was riding through forest that was all dropping dew and trailing mist.

“I am really off at last,” he thought. “Twenty-four hours late in starting and twice as far from Anselmo as I was.”

The mist strayed itself out into clearness and the tops of the trees began to glitter as the sun rose higher. Little birds came flying just in front of him, as though to show their speed. Their cries, as they flew, sounded as though each bird were calling to “go it.” “I’ll go it fast enough,” he said.

For a long time he heard no other noise than the cries of these birds and the drumming of the feet of the horse. As he went on, he caught another noise, which at first he thought must be the wind in the tree-tops. Then, as it grew louder, he recognised it as the noise of water. He came round a curve upon a scene so beautiful that it made him pull up.

He came unexpectedly upon a ravine or gash in the hill. Close to him, on his left side, the hill, which had always been steep, changed suddenly to crag, over which a brook was falling in white, delaying mists, for some seven hundred feet. At the foot of the fall some long distant collapse had made an undercliff, nearly flat, across which the water loitered in a broad shallow rock basin, till it reached another fall. What he had been hearing was the noise of the falls.

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

All the crags, as well as the rocks of the pool, were of a pale blue colour, like lapis lazuli. Mists from the falling water made rainbows all down the cliff. White birds cruised among the rainbows and changed colour in them.

He saw all this in a few seconds of admiration. Then he saw that the broad shallow pool was peopled by a priesthood, in rosy mantles, moving with an exquisite peace along the water. The leading priest rose into the air silently and gracefully; the others followed, till all the flight were moving away, more like flowers or thoughts or dreams than birds. He watched them till their effortless wings drooped them to some lower pool out of sight. “Those are the rosy ibises,” he thought.

“Damned pretty birds,” his father had said, “only you don’t often get a shot at them.”

He rode through the pool to the rising trail beyond; soon he was in the gloom again, winding up into the hills among forest. “I must be near the big dry pan or valley,” he thought. “I hope I haven’t gone wrong.”

Almost as he uttered the thought the thickets thinned to an undergrowth in blossom noisy with bees. A few yards more brought him out to the “very big dry” of the savannah, which was unlike anything ever seen by him.

His first thought was that it was the crater of a volcano or the bed of a lake, perhaps twenty miles long by seven broad. It may well have been both, in turn. Now it was an expanse of grass ringed by hills. Some eagles were cruising over it; their majesty suited the vastness of the expanse. The emptiness and the freedom of the vastness made Hi catch his breath. He was the king of that space; there was nothing there but wind and grass, with clumps of tussock-grass standing out here and there.

He did not take it all in at once; then he thought, “I was to meet peones here, who will set me on my way. I see no peones.”

A searching of the distance showed him, far off, some specks, some white, some dark. “Those are the herds,” he thought. “And the peones are with them. How those white cattle shine in the sun. But they are all miles away from here. There is none near me.

“But what was it that they said I was to look for? I was to go ‘north-west across it to a hole, snap, so,’ ten miles away. Well, let’s have a look. That will be north-west, roughly. And there, by George, is a sort of snap in the hills, as though they were cut or broken. That is the pass he means; that is my way. So let us forward for there. But what a place, what a land, what a life.”

It was a good enough life for a man, to ride that expanse on a horse worthy of such going. The horse felt the stir of that freedom. Hi felt him kindle beneath him into the tireless stride of the horse of the savannah. As he went, his hoofs drummed up myriads of glittering green beetles which whirled about them and flew with them, sometimes settling on horse or man, then whirling on again, now with shrillness, now with droning, till the noise they made was the ride itself set to music. “I shall save her,” he sang to the music, “I shall save Carlotta. And she will marry her man, of course, but all the same I shall have done that; and we shall be friends of a special sort all our lives. It will be something that nobody else will have.”

He kept headed for the pass, but his eyes roved the land for a peon. Soon he was startled by the light on the distance to his left; he had seen nothing like it. All the things in that southern distance became so distinct that he felt that he was looking at them through a telescope. At the same time, the calls of the peones, the beating of their horses’ hoofs, and the movings of the cattle came to him from across the miles of the savannah. “It is odd that things should be so clear,” he thought. “I should say it means rain.” The tops of the southern hills brightened till they seemed to spout flames into the sky. These flames soon changed into streamers of cirrus, less fiery than copper-coloured, with rose half-way up the heavens. “It is just as though the sky were feeling bilious,” he thought. With this change in the heavens, a change came into the air and into the horse; all the delight of the going went; the beetles gave up their play. Presently the copper-colour darkened along the hilltops to something like the smoke of a burning.

“It’s going to be a storm,” Hi thought. “I’d be just as well in the cover of the pass before it breaks. Come up, horse.”

The horse made it clear that he was uneasy about something, or was in some way feeling Hi’s uneasiness. He had become nervy and on edge in a way which Hi could not explain. He himself felt nervy, but the restlessness of his horse frightened him. “I believe he smells some wild beast or snakes,” Hi thought; but he could see neither; there seemed to be no creatures on that llano save some beasts like tailless rats and a few birds which piped and fled. The edge of the clouds tattered out into rags which soon laid hold of the sun so that all the joy died from the scene.

“We’re in for a storm and a half,” Hi thought, “one of those electrical storms my father was always gassing about.” He took a look to his left, where now the darkness had blotted out the line of the hills, then he took a look to his right, where the hills stood in a glow which made them look like hills in hell. Straight ahead was the gash or pass by which he was to descend. He could see no cattle nor peones there. “Perhaps they are in the pass,” he thought, “in some ranch or corral there. But I hope they are, for then I may find some shelter.”

The air had long since lost its zest. It was flat yet heavy, though both Hi and the horse were sweating, there was a feeling of death being present, which suggested cold; all kinds of evil seemed about to happen. Waifs and strays of thought came into Hi’s mind and went out of it; he felt that he could not concentrate upon any one of them. A few drops of rain splashed down, like florins and half-crowns, with a rattle on the tough grass.

He had made an effort to be in the pass before the storm broke. He reached it in time but, being there, he found it grim enough. It was a gash, between two cliffs of rotten rock, which curved round into a grimmer gash, all black with a grove of vast trees. “Better under the trees than in the open,” he thought, so he turned towards the cover. The noise of the hoofs upon the stones made echoes like the smacking of nails into a coffin. “That’s got you, that’s got you,” the smacking seemed to say, “that’s got you.” He stopped the horse, so that the echoes might stop. Looking back at the crater over which he had ridden, he found that he could see little save a greyness out of which came a sighing. All the place seemed to moan at him with a moan of despair, that sounded like, “Oh, it’s got us at last.” Out of the greyness a coldness came suddenly from the icefields on the mountain. Then the great grassy expanse disappeared from view. The storm, sweeping up, shut out the world. “Very little more,” he thought, “and I should have been caught in the open.” Suddenly streaks of greyness ran like men along the ground and struck flashes with their feet. “By George, it’s rain,” he said; “it’s all rain. This is rain indeed.”

On the instant, the greyness sighed into a hissing, hissed into a rushing, and rushed into a roaring. It sucked up all the last of the savannah, surged over the mouth of the pass, beat Hi breathless and engulfed him, in a roaring of pouring, as though a river were falling. Hi felt that he was freezing and that everything else had turned to water: he was in water and under water, the air he breathed was water: the earth his horse stood on was running water. Thunder sounded not far off: he could not see the lightning, but remembered his father’s stories of iron outcrops in the rocks near the Meruel border, which seemed to “attract” any lightning there might be. He did not know whether iron outcrops could “attract” lightning; probably it was one of his father’s insane theories, but it might be the fact, in which case he was near the Meruel border, and might be standing on the magazine waiting for the spark. The thought of trying to push on, through the rain, did not enter his head: he could not see twenty yards in any direction.

The violence of the rain lasted for some two hours, after which it relented to a downpour not worse than that of steady rain in England. When once it had relented thus, it steadied, as though it would never cease: it was this steadiness which daunted Hi. “It’s raining like an eight-day clock,” Hi thought. “It might keep on at this pace for days.” He sought to the thickest cover that he could find and hoped for the best. In another hour, the heavens descended on him, so that while water streamed from heaven and forest, the air was a greyness of melting and moving cloud. All the forest was alive with the rushings, the laughters and the forebodings of rain falling or being shaken: sometimes it came at him like the footsteps of enemies, sometimes like lamentings, anon with a crackle as though a pack were afoot. “The horse would take me out of this,” he thought, “but he would take me straight back to the estancia, so that I should have to start again. I’d better wait here. After all, if it rains like this it must rain itself out before long: no clouds could stand it. I wonder where all the cloud can come from. As soon as this mist or cloud or fog goes, I’ll push on.”

Having made his plan, he stuck to it: the cloud seemed to do the same; it did not go: it even increased till the earth seemed melting and the air liquid. “Golly,” Hi thought, “this cloud isn’t going to go. I may be here for days.” He reckoned that he had been there already for some hours. “I must find some browsing for the horse.”

This the horse found without going far from where they were: he led the way to some shrubs, which he ate with relish. “I hope he knows what is good for him,” Hi thought, “for I don’t.”

He secured the horse from straying: then he sought about for a shelter from this never-ceasing drip: there was no shelter in sight. “Probably there isn’t one anywhere,” he thought, shuddering. “I shall be here for the day and night, and goodness knows how much longer besides.”

He had come back to his horse, partly from fear of losing him, partly for his company, when the greyness dimmed to a greater density, so that he could not see his outstretched hand. In this dimness an eternity passed. The rain continued unabated. He contrived to tend the horse, and to give him some of the corn which Anton had provided; later, when he had watered him, he contrived to tether him securely near the bushes where he could browse. After this he himself ate, very sparingly, of the food which Anton had given. When he had supped, it was dark: the night had fallen. Hi made himself a nest of unease in the edible bush, which smelt like his mother’s tooth-powder. Lying on a mess of trampled boughs, which kept him off the mud, he crouched himself into a ball till something like warmth came into him; then he even slept a little, in starts and nightmares, from which he would leap up, terrified that the horse had gone.

This was his second night upon the road to fetch Don Manuel. At about the time when he lay down upon his boughs Ezekiel Rust, dead beat, pulled up somewhere in sight of the lights of San Jacinto city, at the other end of the Central Province. Out there in the barrens, the old man was comforting his horse, before lying down in the sage with a rope round him to keep off the snakes. He had had such a ride as he had never dreamed of; but being soft to the saddle, after some years in a town, he could go no further without a rest.