“Not to be a cinnamon peeler!” exclaimed Marana, who thought she saw a desperation in her husband’s countenance, such as a man might wear who was about to lose caste. It was now a disputed point which caste ought to rank highest,—the fishermen or the cinnamon-peelers; but Marana, as in duty bound, as a fisherman’s daughter, regarded the cinnamon-peelers as upstarts. “You, a fisherman, will not mix with the cinnamon-peelers?”
Rayo explained no more of his purpose in going among the cinnamon gardens than that it was not to mix with the peelers. But he gloomily hinted that perhaps Marana ought not to go,—would she not there be out of the limit of her father’s charms? Might not the hag Amoottra——
“Touch me with leprosy? No,” said Marana, producing the precious shell from a corner of her mantle. “My father needs not draw out his spell at home while I carry this with me. I have shown it to you, Rayo, but you will not sell it? If we live among the cocoa-nuts, we shall not want the money. You will not take it from me to part with it?”
Rayo let her deposit it in her mantle, and then she was ready to go. Every thing that she possessed was now on her person. Her father was certain, from the nature of his profession, of being well taken care of; and, if not, her husband’s claims upon her would have been paramount. Leaving the Charmer to discover by his spells why and whither they were gone, and old Gomgode to catch fish for himself and his daughter, the young folks stole away towards the richer country to the south. They knew that there was little danger of pursuit. There was no lack of divers to supply Rayo’s place. Nobody supposed they would actually starve; and, as for living poorly, it was what thousands had done before them, thousands were doing now, and thousands would do after them. Gomgode supposed Rayo would preserve caste. The charmer trusted his daughter not to expose herself rashly to the hag’s wrath, as she knew the consequences. Perhaps Father Anthony missed and mourned them most; but he had a firm faith that Rayo would prove an honester man in the jungle, or among the paddy-fields, than on a haunted sea.
Chapter III.
MORNING IN THE JUNGLE.
During the time of the cinnamon harvest, it was the custom of Mr. Carr, the agent of the East India Company for the management of their cinnamon contract, to ride every morning through one department or another of the Marandahn, or great cinnamon garden near Columbo. The beauty of the ride might afford sufficient temptation at any season of the year. The blue lake of Colombo, whether gleaming in the sunrise, or darkening in the storms of the monsoon, never lost its charms. The mountain range in the distance was an object for the eye to rest lovingly upon, whether clearly outlined against the glowing sky, or dressed in soft clouds, from which Adam’s Peak alone stood aloft, like a dark island in the waters that are above the firmament.
Whether the laurel-like cinnamon wore its early foliage of red or its later of green, or its white blossom that made the landscape dazzling with beauty and voluptuous with fragrance; whether the talipot upreared its noble crest of straw-coloured blossoms above its green canopy, or presented its clustering fruit; whether the cocoa-nut tree bowed before the gusts of autumn, or stood in dark, majestic clumps above the verdure of a less lofty growth, the groves and gardens were a paradise to the eye of the Europeans.
The reaches of road, and the green paths which might be detected here and there amidst the vast plantation, the rice grounds and patches of meadow land interspersed, and the lowly roof peeping out occasionally from beneath the palms, gave hints of the presence of man and civilization; while the temple, with its oriental dome supported on slender pillars, jutting out at the extreme end of a promontory into the blue waters of the lake, or perched on some point of the piled rocks in the background, carried back the thoughts to old days of barbarian superstition. In all this there was so much pleasure as to make a ride in the Marandahn a tempting pleasure at all times and seasons; though Mr. Carr’s interest was at its height during the cinnamon harvest.
As he was about to mount his horse one morning, the sound of argument, not to say dispute, reached him from within.
“My dear child,” Mrs. Carr was saying, “Roomseree and Pellikee shall give you an airing nearer home, so that you will not be killed with the heat. Do not think of going with papa this morning.”