At last, allowing for a margin of error in his guesses at tenses and other variants of root words, he completed a translation, and this is what he had written:
“I, Domenico Garcia, artist and musician in the city of Lisbon, am justly punished for my sins. Being desperate and needy, I joined in an attack on the Santo Espirito, homeward–bound from the Indies, and helped in the slaying of all the ship’s company. We attacked her when she left Lisbon on the voyage to Oporto, but a great gale from the northeast drove us far out to sea, and then the wind veered to the northwest, and cast us miserably ashore on the African desert. We abode there many days, and saw no means of succor, so we buried most of our ill–gotten gains in that unknown place and turned our faces to the north, thinking to find a Portuguese settlement in the land of the Moors. We died one by one, some from hunger, some from fever, some from the ravages of wild beasts. Six out of fifty–four men reached the town of Rabat in the train of a Moorish merchant. There we were sold as slaves. Three were dead within a month. We who were left, Tommaso Rodriguez, Manoel of Serpa and myself, were sent as presents over the caravan road to that cruel tyrant the black king of Benin. Rodriguez went mad, and was flayed alive for refusing to worship a heathen god. This message is written on his skin. Manoel of Serpa was drowned in the river which these monsters term ‘Mother of Waters,’ while I, though my life is preserved by reason of my skill in carving, am utterly bereft of hope in this world while filled with fear of God’s justice in the next. Christian, you who read these words, for which I have devised a cunning receptacle that may long survive me, if you would help an erring brother to regain salvation, go yourself, or send some trusty person, to the above–named town of Rabat. I hid there a great ruby which I took from a golden pyx found on board the Santo Espirito. It lies in the Hassan Tower, the tomb of an infidel buried outside the walls. A causeway leads to the door, which is three cubits from the ground, and my ruby is in a deep crack between the center stones of the sill of the third window on the left. I placed it there for safety, thinking that perchance I might escape and secure it again. Friend, I am many marches from Rabat but few from death. Find that gem of great price, and cause masses to be said for my soul in the Cathedral of the Patriarch at Lisbon. Inscribed by me, the unhappy Domenico Garcia, in the year 1634, to pleasure that loathly barbarian, M’Wanga, King of Benin, who holds that writing on a white man’s skin is most potent magic against fever, even while I, the alchemist, am yielding to its ravages.”
The violet–tinted gloom that marks the close of a fine summer’s day in London was filling the room with its shadows when Warden had written the last words of a fair copy. He lit a cigar, placed an easy chair so that he might sit with his back to the window, and was about to analyze the queer document which had fallen into his hands in such an extraordinary manner when he noticed that the face on the gourd, though tilted on the table exactly in the same fashion as on the counter of the luggage–room at Waterloo, appeared to be watching him. Now, no man of strong nervous power likes to feel startled, and that the stealthy menace in those evil eyes was startling he did not attempt to deny. He had not noticed previously that—no matter what the angle—so long as the eyes were visible they seemed to look fixedly at the beholder. Thinking that the waning light was deceptive, he sprang up and built some books into a V–shaped support that enabled him to set the scowling face in many positions. The varying tests all had the same result. The snake–like glance followed him everywhere. The very orbs appeared to turn in the head. In the deepening twilight they seemed to gleam with a dull fire, and Warden was absolutely forced to reason himself out of the expectation that soon those brutal lips would open and overwhelm him with threats.
“Confound you!” he muttered, scarce knowing whether to laugh or fly into a rage at the foolish fancy that led him to address a carven mask, “if you looked that way at poor Domenico Garcia it is not surprising that he should use his comrade’s skin as vellum. You black beauty! Are there any of your breed left in Nigeria, I wonder?”
The stealthy menace of those evil eyes was startling
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It demanded almost an effort to sink into the chair and disregard the sinister object glaring at him from the table. He picked up the sheet of note–paper containing the translation and set his mind to its proper understanding. While intent on the intricacies of cases and genders—difficulties intensified by the use of archaic phrases and the Arabic script—he had given but passing thought to the general drift of the words. True, the reference to a river named “Mother of Waters” was amazing, because that was the native name for the Benuë, while a search through the encyclopedia showed that the seaport town of Rabat, in Morocco, was famous for its ruined monuments. But now, pondering each sentence, he became alive to their tremendous significance. Their very simplicity was the best witness to the underlying tragedy. A man who dismissed the massacre on board the Santo Espirito with the curt statement that he “helped in the slaying of all the ship’s company,” was not likely to use unnecessary adjectives. “Six out of fifty–four” was also a summary magnificent in its brevity. Garcia reached the sheer apex of the direct narrative style when he said that he and Rodriguez, and Manoel of Serpa, were sent as presents to the King of Benin “over the caravan route.” Those four words covered a journey of 2500 miles across mountains, deserts, and jungle–covered swamps, where road there was none, and towns, even the most wretched communities of savages, were hundreds of miles apart. The track probably led through Bel Abbas, Taudeni, and Timbuctu, traversing the very heart of the Sahara, a region so forbidding and inhospitable that even to–day it remains one of the secret places of the world.