When at last, after thirty hours of exhaustive battle and mortal alarm, our doors were once more thrown open, the scene of desolation was beyond all powers of description. The boundless fields of waving cane, that delighted our eyes only two days before, had entirely disappeared; beaten flat down by the wind, the rapidly descending waters rushed completely over them. The sugar-house was wholly unroofed; and for days broad strips of the metal, bent as though Vulcan’s hammer had beaten them into a thousand fantastic shapes, were brought from the fields hundreds of yards away. Rock fences had been dashed to pieces and the fragments strewed over the fields. The proud army of majestic palms, that had for so many decades stood guard of our entrance, lost twenty of its bravest veterans. The grand old bell, whose ringing peals so often summoned help in the hour of danger, and whose gentle, solemn toll always brought to my tired heart memories of peaceful Sabbath days, lay shattered on the ground, its silvery tongue silenced forever!
Desolation was everywhere supreme. When the waters subsided (they ran off into low places and partly filled creeks with surprising rapidity), the negroes sallied forth from their long confinement. The first move was to count all hands at the barracoons. Many had had wonderful escapes, and it was a great satisfaction to ascertain that only one, a Chinese, was missing. While the rushing waters were still several feet deep, messengers on horseback were dispatched to search for him. He was found extended upon a fragment of fence that surrounded the cattle-pen, insensible, and in that condition brought to the house, hanging in front of one of the riders. After rolling the poor, water-logged fellow again and again on a bench, and rubbing him with dry mustard, some evidence of life appeared. At the first signs of vitality copious draughts of brandy were administered, and he soon entirely recovered. The half-drowned cattle, that huddled together with the impulse of brute instinct, began to hold up their beaten and weary heads. The horses, that crowded into the sugar-house when it was under bare poles, with the intuition that taught them they were safer there than in the open field, escaped without serious injury. Basket after basket of drowned and half-drowned fowls were brought to the house; many of them had even their feathers wrenched out by the wind. The birds that had flown, in gay plumage and joyous note, from tree to tree only a short time before, were gone; hushed was the busy call of the Guinea fowl; silent was the whistle of the quail—the angry winds had whirled them away. A few buzzards, whose vitality is so proverbial—it is even averred that a bullet can not kill one—were to be seen perched, day after day, in a most dejected and melancholy attitude, on the remnants of fences and posts, with scarcely a tail-or wing-feather left, naked and shivering, too helpless and disheartened to hop down; to attempt to fly would have been suicidal.
A walk through the house revealed broken and wrenched railings, battered windows, and a court-yard strewed with stone and cement plowed out of the roof by relentless winds. Everything was wet—each shoe floated in its particular puddle, all our garments dripped, and every chair-seat was soaked. Water ran in small streams over the floors; the very beds were saturated; the occupancy of each little dry spot had to be contested with ants, lizards, and scorpions that invaded the premises by myriads.
I wondered, on first seeing Desengaño, why people in a mild, soft climate should build a house solid as a castle, with walls three feet thick; and I wondered, after that temporal, that any one dared to live in a house less substantial and with less protection than massive walls and a stone roof afford.
Long before securing any degree of comfort, we had to help our neighbors, particularly the guajiros, who had a sitio between us and the village. Panchito and Manuel waded through the submerged roads to tell that their houses were entirely blown away. The places were washed and smoothed over all fresh and clean to begin again: four holes and four uprights and some cross-poles, with a covering of green palm-branches, made each as complete as it was before. We furnished men and means to tide them over their losses. In the beginning of the temporal, or rather when it threatened, they sought refuge in the caves of the mountain-side, and a merciful Providence saved their lives from destruction.
Under the warm rays of the sun the cane soon lifted crooked and bent stalks, with their few remaining leaves whipped into shreds, and nature slowly recovered from the fearful shock.
It was hard work to get the sugar-house in order to take off the crop, greatly diminished though it was. Weeks passed before we were again even moderately comfortable in the house. By and by the water-logged trunks, the contents of drawers, and the soaked shoes, after long exposure to the sun, dried, but the musty odor of mold never seemed to depart from them. All the creeping things of the earth, and the flying things that live in dark places, came upon us like a plague. Ants and curious little split-tailed bugs swarmed by thousands, and the floor was often marked with the black streak of the one battalion, or the glittering yellow line of the other. Centipedes started from under every pillow, and big-bodied spiders, with long, hairy legs, ran from among the damp books, while the mosquitoes, that were always with us, became more voracious and tormenting than ever. Cunning little lizards, the least objectionable of all our reptile visitors, darted about with their pretty emerald coats and shining black eyes, and the glorious cucullos, with blazing lanterns on their heads, flew in and out the open windows, when the shades of night revealed the brilliancy of their tiny lamps.
CHAPTER XXXII.
DULLNESS—ISOLATION—WEARINESS—CUBA, FAREWELL!
A Cuban life is intolerably monotonous to one who has always known activity and enterprise. In the cities there are amusements and distractions, though of a very insipid and languid nature, but in the country the dullness is oppressive. We wearied of the eternal soft, mild air; the never-varying green of the landscape; the perpetual equable temperature that made the thinnest linen comfortable—the seasons only varied by dry and wet—the dry very dry and dusty, and the wet—very wet and muddy. The country roads are so narrow that the constant travel with loaded ox-teams all winter cuts them into deep ruts, and the summer rain soon makes them well-nigh impassable. A climate like this palls upon one who has been accustomed to the variations of the temperate zone. Unchanging verdure is like the everlasting, simpering smile on a pretty woman’s face—so constant as to become meaningless and insipid.
We wearied of the senseless platitudes of our few visitors, and of the foreign tongue, that, with all its smoothly flowing euphony, could never be to our ears as sweet as the voices of our fatherland. In our isolation, every new book, magazine article, or newspaper topic, started a discussion that enlivened the table at meals from one steamer-day to the next; and even a quaint advertisement was commented upon, giving food for thought and speech other than the details of the plantation, that were becoming so tiresome and threadbare.