At last, all raining as it was, I sat down. How far we might still be from the top I could not see; but be it far or be it near, nature required rest. I threw myself on the ground, and the mild voice not unwillingly crouched down close to me. "Now we can both have the shawl," said he, and he put it over our joint shoulders; that is, he put the shawl on mine while the fringe hung over his own. In half a minute we were both asleep, almost in each other's arms.
Men when they sleep thus on a mountain-side in the rain do not usually sleep long. Forty winks is generally acknowledged. Our nap may have amounted to eighty each, but I doubt whether it was more. We started together, rubbed our eyes, jumped to our feet, and prepared ourselves for work. But, alas! where was the lava?
My impression is that in my sleep I must have kicked the stones and sent them rolling. At any rate, they were gone. Dark and wet as it was, we both went down a yard or two, but it was in vain; nothing could be seen of them. The mild voice handed me the shawl, preparing to descend in their search; but this was too much. "You will only lose yourself," said I, laying hold of him, "and I shall have to look for your bones. Besides, I want my breakfast! We will get other specimens above."
"And perhaps they will be just as good," said he, cheerfully, when he found that he would not be allowed to have his way.
"Every bit," said I. And so we trudged on, and at last reached our mules. From this point men see, or think that they see, the two oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific—and this sight to many is one of the main objects of the ascent. We saw neither the one ocean nor the other.
We got back to the potrero about three, and found our German friends just sitting down to dinner. The architect was seated on his bed on one side of the table arranging the viands, while the doctor on the other scooped out the brains of a strange bird with a penknife. The latter operation he performed with a view of stuffing, not himself, but the animal. They pressed us to dine with them before we started, and we did so, though I must confess that the doctor's occupation rather set me against my food. "If it be not done at once," said he, apologizing, "it can't he done well;" and he scraped, and scraped, and wiped his knife against the edge of the little table on which the dishes were placed. What had become of the doctor's wife I do not know, but she was not at the potrero when we dined there.
It was evening when we got into Cartago, and very tired we were. My mind, however, was made up to go on to San José that night, and ultimately I did so; but before starting, I was bound to repeat my visit to the English lady with whom my mild friend lived. Mrs. X—— was, and I suppose is, the only Englishwoman living in Cartago, and with that sudden intimacy which springs up with more than tropical celerity in such places, she told me the singular history of her married life.
The reader would not care that I should repeat it at length, for it would make this chapter too long. Her husband had been engaged in mining operations, and she had come out to Guatemala with him in search of gold. From thence, after a period of partial success, he was enticed away into Costa Rica. Some speculation there, in which he or his partners were concerned, promised better than that other one in Guatemala, and he went, leaving his young wife and children behind him. Of course he was to return very soon, and of course he did not return at all. Mrs. X—— was left with her children searching for gold herself. "Every evening," she said, "I saw the earth washed myself, and took up with me to the house the gold that was found." What an occupation for a young Englishwoman, the mother of three children! At this time she spoke no Spanish, and had no one with her who spoke English.
And then tidings came from her husband that he could not come to her, and she made up her mind to go to him. She had no money, the gold-washing having failed; her children were without shoes to their feet; she had no female companion; she had no attendant but one native man; and yet, starting from the middle of Guatemala, she made her way to the coast, and thence by ship to Costa Rica.
After that her husband became engaged in what, in those countries, is called "transit." Now "transit" means the privilege of making money by transporting Americans of the United States over the isthmus to and from California, and in most hands has led to fraud, filibustering, ruin, and destruction. Mr. X——, like many others, was taken in, and according to his widow's account, the matter ended in a deputation being sent, from New York I think, to murder him. He was struck with a life-preserver in the streets of San José, never fully recovered from the blow, and then died.