The settlement did not appear to be near so large as that at Santa Catalina, nor did the buildings seem of as great size and commodiousness. The most imposing edifice I took to be the mission chapel, for before it was the great cross mounted aloft. It was circular in shape, with mud walls, and a thatched roof rising to an apex. There was a door in the side, of heavy planks battened strongly together; but I could perceive no windows, only a few very small square apertures, close under the eaves, for light and air.
The clouds were beginning to spill great drops upon our heads, so we quickened our steps into a run. The litter and its bearers had paused beside the door of the chapel, and from the neighbouring huts several Indians emerged and advanced to meet us. A young woman with a little copper-coloured babe strapped to her back, its tiny head just visible over her shoulder, peered at us from the low doorway of her mud-walled dwelling, but meeting my eyes, drew back hastily out of sight.
I was very weary, and Barbara, who had dismounted from the litter, seemed unable to stand. The padre was holding converse with those of his dark-skinned flock who had approached; so we two women crouched down under the chapel eaves and gazed around us at the wind-tossed, rain-blurred scene.
Before us was a thick grove of trees; to the left we could catch glimpses of the river, gray and angry like the sky, and all along its banks the huddled dwellings of the poor barbarians, whose ideals of architecture were no whit better than those of the wasp,—not near so complex as those of the ant and the bee.
Suddenly, while we waited there forlorn, my thoughts flew back to an English home, with its ivied walls, its turreted roof, its long façade of warm red brick. I saw green slopes, broad terraces, a generous portal, and a spacious hall; I thought of a room with an ample chimney set round with painted tiles, and I pictured myself kneeling upon the bearskin rug before a blazing fire, with my head upon my mother's knee and her fingers toying with my hair. For that moment I forgot even my dear love, and I would have given all the world just to be a little child at home.
The padre turned to us at last and motioned us to follow him. He led us to the rear of the chapel, where, plastered against the wall, was a semicircular excrescence,—a tiny cell, with a narrow door hewn from a single plank and fastened with a heavy padlock. Drawing forth a key from his belt he unlocked this and bade us enter. We did so, and he closed the door behind us.
Within, the hard earth floor was slightly raised and covered with mats of woven palmetto-leaves. A narrow chink in the wall admitted a faint ray of light, enabling us to perceive dimly the few objects which the room contained. Apparently it was Padre Felipe's sleeping apartment and the chapel vestry combined in one. There was a curtained doorway that gave access to the chapel itself; pushing aside the hangings, we could see the dim interior, empty except for the high altar set with tall candles, and a carven crucifix upon the wall.
As I caught sight of these emblems of a Christian faith I bethought me of the bloody sacrifices that had been offered to a pitiful God in the name of orthodoxy, and I wondered whether heretics like us would not be safer out in the wild woods and the driving storm—aye, even at the mercy of infidel barbarians; but suddenly I remembered the solid silver service which was to be the gift of Doña Orosia to this little new mission, and I took courage.
The rain was now pouring in torrents from the thatched roof, and the wind, which blew from the northeast, dashed it back against the mud walls of our refuge. I turned to Barbara and gave voice to an anxiety that for some time, had been growing within me.
"Dear dame," I said, "think you this storm is worse at sea?"