“I hope he forgets to come back, Ricardo,” said Teresa. “Now we can sit down by the oleander tree and I will show you the bell of the old galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario.”
They crossed the moonlit square of the patio. Cary saw a heavy framework of Spanish oak timbers, more durable than iron. From the cross-piece was suspended the massy bell whose elaborately chased surface was green with time and weather. By the flare of a match, Cary discovered a royal coat of arms in high relief and the blurred letters of an inscription, presumably the name of the galleon and of the port whence she had hailed.
Teresa Fernandez groped for the clapper and let it swing against the flaring rim. The bell responded with a note sonorous and musical. Lingeringly vibrant, the sound filled the patio. With more vigor Richard Cary swung the clapper. The voice of the galleon’s bell swelled in volume. The air fairly quivered and hummed. It was unlike any ship’s bell that Richard Cary had ever heard at sea or in port. And yet its timbre thrilled some responsive chord in the dim recesses of his soul. It was such a bell as had flung its mellow echoes against the walls of Cartagena, of Porto Bello, of Nombre de Dios when the tall galleons of the plate fleet had ridden to their hempen cables.
The sound of the bell had died to a murmur when Teresa spoke. The quality of her voice was attuned in harmony with it, or so it seemed to the listening Richard Cary.
“When I was a little girl,” said she, “I liked to come and play with the old bell. I had to stand up on my toes and push the clapper with my two hands. Dong! Dong! It sang songs to me. They made me feel like you say you do when you hear the wind in the palm trees, Ricardo. There is something about this bell—very queer, but just as true as true can be. You will not laugh, like the other Americanos. If anything very bad is going to happen to the one it belongs to, this bell of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario it strikes four times. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! Four bells, like on board a ship. When there is going to be death or some terrible bad luck! It has always been like that, ’way, ’way back to my ancestor Don Juan Diego Fernandez.”
Richard Cary nodded assent. It was not for him to find fault with a legend such as this. Teresa, encouraged by his sympathy, went on to say:
“Yes, it was heard the night before the two little English ships, the Bonaventure and the Rose of Plymouth, came sailing into Cartagena harbor. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! There was no Spanish sailor near at all on deck when it struck four bells. A hundred years ago there was a General Fernandez who fought with Bolivar in the revolution against Spain. His wife she sits right here in this patio and waits for news from her brave husband. One night it is very quiet and everybody is asleep. She is waked up. What does she hear? Not so loud, but very sad and clear. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! Four bells!
“This poor woman knows her husband must be dead in some battle for the flag of Bolivar. Pretty soon a soldier comes from the Magdalena with a message, but she has had her message already. Another time, my Ricardo, it was a Fernandez that got drowned in a ship. It went down in a hurricane off Martinique. The bell told his mother. Now I have told you enough gloomy stuff, Ricardo. Maybe that old bell will belong to me some day. I think I will throw it in the harbor. It is a Jonah.”