The White Mice

by Richard Harding Davis

Roddy laughed scornfully. “Why, that is the first thing they tell you,” he cried; “the purser points them out from the ship, and tells you——”

“Tells you, yes,” cried Peter triumphantly, “but I saw them. As we left the harbor they were standing on the cliff—three women in white—looking toward Venezuela. They told me the father of the two girls is in prison here. He was——”

“Told you, yes,” mimicked Roddy, “told you he was in prison. I have seen him in prison. There is the prison.”

Roddy pointed at the flat, yellow fortress that rose above them. Behind the tiny promontory on which the fortress crouched was the town, separated from it by a stretch of water so narrow that a golf-player, using the quay of the custom-house for a tee, could have driven a ball against the prison wall.

Daily, from the town, Peter had looked across the narrow harbor toward the level stretch of limestone rock that led to the prison gates, and had seen the petty criminals, in chains, splash through the pools left by the falling tide, had watched each pick up a cask of fresh water, and, guarded by the barefooted, red-capped soldiers, drag his chains back to the prison. Now, only the boat’s-length from them, he saw the sheer face of the fortress, where it slipped to depths unknown into the sea. It impressed him most unpleasantly. It had the look less of a fortress than of a neglected tomb. Its front was broken by wind and waves, its surface, blotched and mildewed, white with crusted salt, hideous with an eruption of dead barnacles. As each wave lifted and retreated, leaving the porous wall dripping like a sponge, it disturbed countless crabs, rock scorpions and creeping, leech-like things that ran blindly into the holes in the limestone; and, at the water-line, the sea-weed, licking hungrily at the wall, rose and fell, the great arms twisting and coiling like the tentacles of many devilfish.

Distaste at what he saw, or the fever that at sunset drives wise Venezuelans behind closed shutters, caused Peter to shiver slightly.

For some moments, with grave faces and in silence, the two young men sat motionless, the mind of each trying to conceive what life must be behind those rusted bars and moss-grown walls.

“Somewhere, buried in there,” said Roddy, “is General Rojas, the Lion of Valencia, a man,” he added sententiously, “beloved by the people. He has held all the cabinet positions, and been ambassador in Europe, and Alvarez is more afraid of him than of any other man in Venezuela. And why? For the simple reason that he is good. When the people found out what a blackguard Alvarez is they begged Rojas to run for President against him, and Rojas promised that if, at the next election, the people still desired it, he would do as they wished. That night Alvarez hauled him out of bed and put him in there. He has been there two years. There are healthy prisons, but Alvarez put Rojas in this one, hoping it would kill him. He is afraid to murder him openly, because the people love him. When I first came here I went through the fortress with Vicenti, the prison doctor, on a sort of Seeing-Porto-Cabello trip. He pointed out Rojas to me through the bars, same as you would point out a monument to a dead man. Rojas was sitting at a table, writing, wrapped in a shawl. The cell was lit by a candle, and I give you my word, although it was blazing hot outside, the place was as damp as a refrigerator. When we raised our lanterns he stood up, and I got a good look at him. He is a thin, frail little man with white hair and big, sad eyes, with a terribly lonely look in them. At least I thought so; and I felt so ashamed at staring at him that I bowed and salaamed to him through the bars, and he gave me the most splendid bow, just as though he were still an ambassador and I a visiting prince. The doctor had studied medicine in New York, so probably he talked to me a little more freely than he should. He says he warned the commandant of the fortress that unless Rojas is moved to the upper tier of cells, above the water-line, he will die in six months. And the commandant told him not to meddle in affairs of state, that his orders from the President were that Rojas ‘must never again feel the heat of the sun.’”

Peter de Peyster exclaimed profanely. “Are there no men in this country?” he growled. “Why don’t his friends get him out?”

“They’d have to get themselves out first,” explained Roddy. “Alvarez made a clean sweep of it, even of his wife and his two daughters, the women you saw. He exiled them, and they went to Curaçao. They have plenty of money, and they could have lived in Paris or London. He has been minister in both places, and has many friends over there, but even though they cannot see him or communicate with him, they settled down in Curaçao so that they might be near him.