Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Cary stood up and looked out at the foaming, rain-swept lagoon. He could not drive the canoe ahead against the wind, but he remembered a wooded point not far away and a lee beyond it. This he might fetch on a slanting course with the ebbing tide to help.

A last dogged thrust and the canoe floated in the surf. He tumbled over the side and fell face downward in the tepid rainwater that washed over the bottom boards. Righting himself, he caught up a short paddle and swung the bow away from the beach. He crouched amidships and did little more than steer, with a few strokes now and then to hold the course and avoid drifting broadside on. These motions were done mechanically, like an automaton. The canoe safely skirted the shore where it curved an arm out into the lagoon. Behind it was calmer water, a rippling surface on which the canoe floated lazily.

The paddle was idle. The fugitive sat with folded arms, indifferent to the whims of destiny. The tide pulled at the sluggish canoe and it slowly moved abreast of the shore. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had flooded down. The clouds broke and dissolved in ragged fragments until the sky was an inverted bowl of flawless blue. The sun poured its breathless radiance upon a lush landscape that steamed as it dried.

To Richard Cary this was an affliction. An hour of sun would be the finishing stroke. He had not even a straw hat to shield his head. It didn’t very much matter what happened to him. He was beyond caring, but it was peculiarly unpleasant to be grilled alive. He made shift to steer the canoe inshore until it grounded. Just beyond the belt of marsh he saw a densely verdured knoll marked by one tall palm. He filled the baling can with the rainwater in the canoe and carried it with him. The machete served to chop a few bushes and so make room for him to crawl into the thicket and lie down.

In spite of the heat a fit of shivering seized him, the chill that presaged a recurrence of fever. Mosquitoes swarmed to plague him. The afternoon waned and he had not moved from this lair in the thicket. Not until sunset did he go crashing through the brushwood and hold fast to the palm tree while he stupidly glared this way and that, imagining ambushed foes.

Behind this bit of low land was a hill that soared abruptly to a height of several hundred feet. Its crest was stark and rugged, with a sheer cliff that dropped toward the sea. It stood alone, this bold and frowning hill, and was a famous landmark from many miles offshore. La Popa, mariners had always called it because of the resemblance to the castellated poop of a galleon. What made it even more prominent was the massive convent whose walls were like a fortress, a structure which, at a distance, looked as if it had never been despoiled and forsaken. Both Drake and De Pontis the Frenchman had held it for ransom.

It had become a mere shell, a noble relic of the religious zeal of another age. At one end nestled the chapel and this had been preserved, still used for the infrequent advocation to Our Lady of La Popa by priests and pious pilgrims of Cartagena. From the city a rough path led up the sloping ridge of the hill, a path trodden by many generations of nuns and worshipers.

La Popa! The huge white convent looming on the summit of the cliff! A place for a man to hide and scan the Caribbean for sight of a ship. There Drake had posted his sentries to guard against surprise by galleons coming from the north or south. A long, hard climb up the hill, through the jungle at the base, and then a circuit to get clear of the cliff where the defenders had rolled rocks down upon the heads of certain English seamen. It might be done, however, if a man could find the path. A full moon rising early and the convent gleaming above to set his bearings by!

Soon after dawn of the following morning, the caretaker of the Chapel of Our Lady of La Popa came pottering out of a hut built in a corner of the roofless convent. His errand was to tether his two goats on the herbage of the slope. He was a spare man, lame in one leg and feeling the burden of years. Having lived much by himself in this lonely retreat, he had formed the habit of talking to himself in the unkempt gray beard. By way of variety he often talked to the goats whom he fondly addressed by name.

Having tethered them while the air was still cool, this kindly Palacio untied a rusty tin cup from his belt and milked Mercedes who was a docile animal. The cup of warm milk and a tortilla of coarse meal was a breakfast that sufficed him. While munching the sooty tortilla he gazed about him from under shaggy brows and, as always at this time of day, admired the roseate splendor of Cartagena and its everlasting walls. There was nothing in all the world to compare with it, reflected this elderly recluse. The browsing Mercedes waggled her tufted chin in agreement.