Agueda raised her eyes and looked smiling towards the spot to which he nodded. There white and twisting spirals danced and swayed against that lurid background, and above the deep bay, which was hidden by the hills. They advanced, they retreated, they dipped like sprites from palm tuft to palm tuft. Sometimes they skipped gaily in couples, again one was left to follow three or four that had their heads close together, like schoolchildren telling secrets. It was all so human and everyday-like, that Agueda laughed gaily and gazed fascinated at the antics of these children of the storm. The long, ragged-edged split in the angry clouds disclosed a blood-red glow behind, which sent its glare down through the valley and across the woods, where it flecked the tree trunks. From Beltran's vantage point the palm shafts stood black as night against the glare. When he turned and looked behind him, unwilling to lose a single bit of this latest painting from the brush of nature, he found that she had dashed every tree trunk with one gorgeous splash of ruddy gold.
Agueda lifted her basket and carried it to the chimenea unaided. Beltran was so absorbed in the grand sight that he had forgotten to be kind. There was usually no thought of gallantry in what he did for the girl, but even the natural kindliness of his manner was in abeyance. Agueda set the basket behind the great stone wall. She remembered what he had said the last time they had sought shelter from the water. "It is ridiculous, that great chimney," he had said: "but even the absurd things of life have their uses." She remembered how she had crouched in her mother's arms the whole long day, but beyond a few drops there had been no cloud-burst, no flood that came higher than the top step of the veranda. They had descended at night dry and unharmed.
"It may be like the last one," she ventured to say. But her sentence was drowned. There came a rustling and swaying sound from afar, growing louder as it approached. Beltran noted the ruthless path which it indicated, and then, "there came a rushing, mighty wind from Heaven." It fell upon the tall lilies as if they were grass, bent them to the earth, and laid them prostrate. Some of them, denizens of the soil more tenacious of their hold than others, clung to Mother Earth with the grip of the inheritor of primogeniture. But the struggle was brief.
"I was certain that those I planted upside down would stand," said Beltran to Agueda. "I allowed twelve-inch holes, too." But there comes a time when precaution is proven of no avail. The massive stalks were torn from their holdings like so much straw, and laid low with their weaker brothers. As they began to fall in the near field, "It is upon us!" shouted Beltran. He seized Agueda's wrist and drew her behind the chimney. And there they cowered as the wind raved past them on either side, carrying heavy missiles on its strong wings. At this Beltran's face showed for the first time some uneasiness.
He was peering out from behind his stone bulwark.
"There goes Aranguez's casa," he said, regretfully. "I had no thought of that. I wish I had sent you to the rancho, child."
They crouched low behind the chimney. He clung to one of the staples mortared in the interstices of the stone-work, against just such a day as this, and braced his foot beneath the eaves. Again he peered cautiously out. A whistling, rustling sound had made him curious as to its source.
The river, which had been flowing tranquilly but a few minutes before, now threw upward white and pointed arms of foam, They reached to the branches, which threshed through open space, and swayed over to meet their supplication, then straightened a moment to bend again to north, to east, to west. The floods had fallen fiercely upon the defenceless bosom of the gentle Rio Frio, had beaten and lashed it and overcome it, so that it mingled perforce with its conqueror, while raising appealing arms for mercy. It grieved, it tossed, it wept, it wailed, but its invader shrieked gleefully as he hurried his helpless prize down through the savannas to that welcoming tyrant, the sea.
The water crept rapidly up toward the foundation of the casa. It washed underneath the high flooring. It lapped against the pilotijos. It carried underneath the house branches and twigs which it had brought down in its mad rush toward the lowlands. As it rose higher and higher, it wove the banana stalks and wisps of straw which it bore upon its bosom in and out between the trunks and stems of trees. With the skill of an old-time weaver, it interlaced them through the upright growth which edged the bank. One saw the vegetable fabric there for years after, unless the sun and rain had rotted it away, and another flood had replaced within the warp a fresher woof.