"There he goes with his mock sentimentality again," cried the sweet girl, laughing.
We rode on, the ground becoming more rugged and rocky at every step, but perfectly clear of underwood—the dry grey limestone rocks increasing and shooting up all round us, like pinnacles, or Druidical monuments: but still immense trees found nourishment enough in the black mould amongst the fissures, dry as they appeared to be, and the shade continued as deep as ever; while, as the afternoon wore on, the musquittoes increased most disagreeably.
"Look at these two guanas chasing each other up that tree," shouted Listado; "what horrid ugly things they are. I declare that large one is three feet long from stem to stern, as friend Benjie there would have said." As we all stopped to look at the hideous lizard, it seemed to think, on the principle of fair play, that it might take a squint at us, and accordingly came to a stand-still on a branch, about three fathoms above where the negro stood with little Dicky on his back.
"What ugly beast," quoth the little fellow, as he lay back and looked up at it—a musket shot at this instant was fired close to us from the wood—the sharp report shattering from tree to rock, until it rattled to rest in tiny echoes in the distance. At first we all started, and then peered anxiously about us, but we could only see a thin white puff of smoke rise and blow off through a small break or vista in the forest, and smell the gunpowder—we could perceive no one. I looked up, the guana had been wounded, as it was now clinging to the branch with its two hind feet and its long tail, and fiercely biting and tearing its side with its fore claws, as it hung with its head downwards, and swung and struggled about in agony. I made sure this was the spot where the bullet had struck it, and just as the negro who had fired, a sort of gamekeeper of Mr Hudson's, appeared at the top of the path, the dragon-looking lizard dropped right down on poor little Dicky Phantom, as he sat lashed into his chair, unable to escape. Here was the devil to pay with a vengeance. The child shrieked, as the abominable reptile twined and twisted about him, with its snake-like tail, and formidable claws, and threatening him with its crocodile looking snout. I saw it bite him on the arm—this was the signal for the women to scream, and Listado to swear, and for me to seize the creature by the tail, and endeavour to drag him away—but I was terrified to use force, lest I should lacerate poor Dicky—while the negro, who carried the child, became frantic with fright, and jumped and yelled amongst the trees, like an ourang-outang bitten by a rattlesnake. The guana still kept his hold of the child, however, making a chattering noise between its teeth, like that of a small monkey, when Listado came up to me—"Stop, Brail, give me"—and he twitched the animal away with a jerk, and the sleeve of Dicky's frock in its teeth; but it instantly fastened on his own leg, and if the black game-keeper had not, with more presence of mind than any one of us possessed, come up, and forcibly choked the creature off with his bare hands, although he thereby got several severe scratches, he might have been seriously injured. However, it turned out that the damage was not very serious after all, little Dicky having been more frightened than hurt, as the guana's teeth had fastened in his clothes, and not in his flesh, so we all soon got into sailing condition again, and proceeded on our way.
Suddenly, the road abutted on a high white wall, the trees growing close up to it, without any previous indications of cleared ground or habitation. This was the back part of Mr Hudson's house, which stood on the very edge of the forest we had come through. It was a large stone edifice of two stories, plastered and white-washed, built in the shape of a square, with a court in the centre, and galleries on both floors all round the inside, after the pattern of the houses of the nobility in Old Spain, especially in the Moorish towns. We alighted at a large arched gateway, and having given our horses to two black servants that were in attendance, entered the court, where the taste of the American ladies shone conspicuous.
In the centre there was a deep basin, hewn roughly, I should rather say ruggedly, out of the solid rock, and filled with the purest and most limpid water. Several large plantain suckers grew on the edge of it, in artificial excavations in the stone, to the height of twenty feet, so that their tops were on a level with the piazza above; and a fountain or jet of water was forced up from the centre of the pool, in a whizzing shower, amongst their broad and jagged leaves, whereon the large drops of moisture rolled about with every motion, like silver balls on green velvet. Beneath the proverbially cool shade of these plantain suckers, a glorious living mosaic of most beautiful flowers, interspersed with myrtle and other evergreens, filled the parterre, which was divided into small lozenges by tiny hedges of young box and lime bushes; while the double jessamine absolutely covered the pillars of the piazza, as I have seen ivy clinging round the columns of a ruined temple, scattering its white leaves like snow-flakes at every gush of the breeze; yet all these glorious plants and flowers grew out of the scanty earth that filled the crevices of the rock, seemingly depending more on the element of water than on the soil. Every thing in the centre of the small square appeared so natural, so devoid of that art, largely employed, yet skilfully masked, that I never would have tired gloating on it.
"Now, Master Hudson," quoth Listado, "you have made two" [pronouncing it tew] "small mistakes here. First, you have the trees too near the house, which brings the plague of musquittoes upon you; secondly, this fountain, how pretty soever to look at, must make the domicile confoundedly damp, and all your capital New York cheeses prematurely mouldy. I declare," feeling his chin, "I am growing mouldy myself, or half of my beard has been left unreaped by that villanous razor of Brail's there, that I scraped with this morning—shaving I could not call it."
"Come, come," said I, "the fountain is beautiful, and don't blame the razor until you have a better of your own."
"It is, indeed, beautiful," said Mrs Hudson; "but, alas! that such a paradise should not be fenced against the demon of yellow fever!"
The supply of water to the basin of the said fountain, by the way, which came from the neighbouring hill; wras so ample, that it forced the jet from a crater-like aperture in the bottom, without the aid of pipe or tube of any kind, full six feet above the surface in a solid cone, or cube, of two feet in diameter; and the spray some eight feet higher. No one who has lived in such a climate, and witnessed such a scene, can ever forget the delicious rushing, and splashing, and sparkling of the water, and the rustling, or rather pattering, of the plantain leaves, and of the bushes, as the breeze stirred them.