They said, “Look well; who are the people bound to the pillars?”
He looked with all his strength into the thickness of the smoke. It was agony to him not to be able to see clearly, but he said, “One is Juanita de la Torre and the other is myself, and we are being choked by the smoke.”
They said, “It is not the smoke, it is something coming from the brazier.”
Then from the brazier the little tongues of flame, writhing among the carib leaves, changed to red snakes which were arms and hands that came twining about the throats of the two bound figures. The fire in the brazier glowed into the likeness of a human soul with the face of Father Garsinton, who laughed and said, “I crush you lesser spirits as a sacrifice to my master.”
Then all became dim with carib smoke choking and stupefying, but the words, “I crush you lesser spirits” were repeated many times, while the house, the honey-cup, and the Spanish man and woman faded and disappeared.
* * * * *
Soon after this he climbed a spine of rock, expecting to find on the further side a dip of snow with a higher spine beyond it. To his amazement, there was no such dip nor spine; but the slope of the mountain falling below him into a different world. On this ocean side of the Sierra there was no desert. Instead of a chaos of rock blasted by the sun to rottenness, there were heaves of hill flinging their waters to the forests. Forests covered the valleys like a fleece. In places where there was no forest Sard could see little white houses. The smoke of a train ran like a caterpillar along the valley beneath the foothills. Beyond the foothills was a dark mass, like a bar of metal, yet not like a bar of metal, because it seemed to be alive, it gave Sard the thought that it trembled: it was the sea.
Far away, on the brink of this darkness, was a smudge or cloud in which some chimneys stood like stalks. The smoke merged into the air so that a tiny golden dome glittered: it was the cathedral in San Agostino. Almost at once, quite clearly, though faintly, in some chance channel of upper air or freak of sound, the chimes from the dome reached Sard. It was a familiar Spanish chime to which Sard always put the words of the poet:
“Gloria in las alturas,
Cantad in vuestra jaula, criaturas.”