“No gibes regarding the docken,” promptly chimed in Bang; “it is a highly respectable vegetable, let me tell you, and useful on occasion, which is more.”
The noise in the room ceased, and presently Campana joined us. “We must proceed,” said he, “it will never do for you to deliver the jewels now, Mr Cringle; she is too much excited already, even from seeing me.”
But it was more easy to determine on proceeding than to put it in execution, for a heavy cloud, that had been overhanging the small valley the whole morning, had by this time spread out and covered the entire face of nature like a sable pall; the birds of the air flew low, and seemed perfectly gorged with the superabundance of flies, which were thickly betaking themselves for shelter under the evergreen leaves of the bushes. All the winged creation, great and small, were fast hastening to the cover of the leaves and branches of the trees. The cattle were speeding to the hollows under the impending rocks; negroes, men, women, and children, were hurrying with their hoes on their shoulders past the windows to their huts. Several large bloodhounds had ventured into the hall, and were crouching with a low whine at our feet. The huge carrion crows were the only living things which seemed to brave the approaching chubasco, and were soaring high up in the heavens, appearing to touch the black agitated fringe of the lowering thunderclouds. All other kinds of winged creatures, parrots, and pigeons, and cranes, had vanished by this time under the thickest trees, and into the deepest coverts, and the wild-ducks were shooting past in long lines, piercing the thick air with outstretched neck and clanging wing.
Suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the waterfall increased, and grew rough and loud, and the undefinable rushing noise that precedes a heavy fall of rain in the tropics, the voice of the wilderness, moaned through the high woods, until at length the clouds sank upon the valley in boiling mists, rolling halfway down the surrounding hills; and the water of the stream, whose scanty rill but an instant before hissed over the precipice, in a small transparent ribbon of clear glass-green, sprinkled with white foam, and then threaded its way round the large rocks in its capacious channel, like a silver eel twisting through a dry desert, now changed in a moment to a dark turgid chocolate colour; and even as we stood and looked, lo! a column of water from the mountains pitched in thunder over the face of the precipice, making the earth tremble, and driving up from the rugged face of the everlasting rocks in smoke, and forcing the air into eddies and sudden blasts which tossed the branches of the trees that overhung it, as they were dimly seen through clouds of drizzle, as if they had been shaken by a tempest, although there was not a breath stirring elsewhere out of heaven; while little wavering spiral wreaths of mist rose up thick from the surface of the boiling pool at the bottom of the cataract, like miniature water spouts, until they were dispersed by the agitation of the air above.
At length the swollen torrent rolled roaring down the narrow valley, filling the whole water-course, about fifty yards wide, and advancing with a solid front a fathom high—a fathom deep does not convey the idea like a stream of lava, or as one may conceive of the Red Sea, when, at the stretching forth of the hand of the prophet of the Lord, its mighty waters rolled back and stood heaped up as a wall to the host of Israel. The channel of the stream, which but a minute before I could have leaped across, was the next instant filled, and utterly impassable.
“You can’t possibly move,” said Don Picador; “you can neither go on nor retreat; you must stay until the river subsides.” And the rain now began pattering in large drops, like scattering shots preceding an engagement, on the wooden shingles with which the house was roofed, gradually increasing to a loud rushing noise, which, as the rooms were not ceiled, prevented a word being heard.
Don Ricardo began to fret and fidget most awfully,—“Beginning of the seasons—why, we may not get away for a week and all the ships will be kept back in their loading.”
All this time, the poor sufferer’s tearing cough was heard in the lulls of the rain; but it gradually became less and less severe, and the lady of the house, and Senora Campana, and Don Picador’s daughter, at length slid into the room on tiptoe, leaving one of Don Ricardo’s nieces in the room with the sick person.
“She is asleep—hush.” The weather continued as bad as ever, and we passed a very comfortless forenoon of it, Picador, Campana, Bang, and myself, perambulating the large dark hall, while the ladies were clustered together in a corner with their work. At length the weather cleared, and I could get a glimpse of mine hostess and her fair daughter. The former was a very handsome woman, about forty; she was tall, and finely formed; her ample figure set off by the very simple, yet, to my taste, very elegant dress formerly described: it was neither more nor less than the plain black silk petticoat over a chemise, made full at the bosom, with a great quantity of lace frills; her dark glossy hair was gathered on the crown of her head in one long braid, twisted round and round, and rising up like a small turret. Over all she wore a loose shawl of yellow silk crape. But the daughter, I never shall forget her! Tall and full, and magnificently shaped—every motion was instinct with grace. Her beautiful black hair hung a yard down her back, long and glossy, in three distinct braids, while it was shaded, Madonna-like, off her high and commanding forehead; her eyebrows—to use little Reefy’s simile—looked as if cut out of a mouse’s skin; and her eyes themselves, large, dark, and soft, yet brilliant and sparkling at the same time, however contradictory this may, read; her nose was straight, and her cheeks firm and oval, and her mouth, her full lips, her ivory teeth, her neck and bosom, were perfect, the latter if any giving promise of too matronly a womanhood; but at the time I saw her, nothing could have been more beautiful; and, above all, there was an inexpressible charm in the clear transparent darkness of her colourless skin, into which you thought you could look; her shoulders, and the upper part of her arms, were peculiarly beautiful. Nothing is so exquisitely lovely as the upper part of a beautiful woman’s arm, and yet we have lived to see this admirable feature shrouded and lost in those abominable gigots.—Why won’t you, Master Kit North, lend a hand, and originate a crusade against those vile appendages? I will lead into action if you like—“Woe unto the women that sew pillows to all armholes,” Ezekiel, xiii. 18. May I venture on such a quotation in such a place?—She was extremely like her brother; and her fine face was overspread with the pale cast of thought a settled melancholy, like the shadow of a cloud in a calm day on a summer landscape, mantled over her fine features; and although she moved with the air of a princess, and was possessed of that natural politeness which far surpasses all artificial polish, yet the heaviness of her heart was apparent in every motion, as well as in all she said.
Many people labour under an unaccountable delusion, imagining, in their hallucination, that a Frenchwoman, for instance, or even an Englishwoman nay, some in their madness have been heard to say that a Scotchwoman has been known to walk. Egregious errors all! An Irishwoman of the true Milesian descent can walk a step or two sometimes, but all other women, fair or brown, short or tall, stout or thin, only stump, shuffle, jig, or amble—none but a Spaniard can walk.