Within a few months he had gone back to his old life, leaving mother alone in a strange land until the time should come when I, having been born, could take up the task of being her protector and guardian.
And now I am being born. It is late in the afternoon of a still hot day and I, having just been ushered into the world by the aid of a fisherman’s wife, who also does duty as a midwife in that isolated place and who has now left to return again late at night—I, having been so born, am lying on the bed beside mother and thinking my first thoughts. In my own fancy I was, from the very first, a remarkable child and did not cry out as most newly born infants do, but lay buried in deep thought. In the little hut it is stifling hot, and flies and other winged insects of the warm South are buzzing in the air. Strange insects of gigantic size crawl over the walls and, from far-away somewhere, there comes the murmur of the sea. Mother is lying beside me, weak and wan.
We lie there for a long time and, young as I am, I realize that she is tired and discouraged about life. “Why has not life in America turned out as it always did in the novels and plays?” she is asking herself; but I, having at that time still retained all my young courage and freshness of outlook, am not discouraged.
There is a sound outside the cabin, the swishing sound of heavy feet dragged through the hot dry sands, and the low moaning sound of a woman crying.
Again a steamer, from foreign parts, has visited that lonely coast and again a boat has been lowered. In the boat is my fanciful father accompanied by four of his evil henchmen and accompanied also by another woman. She is young and fair, another virgin; but now, alas, father has become hardened on that subject!
The strange woman is terribly afraid but is at the same time in love with her captor (owing to the strange natures of women, this, you will understand, is entirely possible), and father has had the cruel impulse to bring the two women together. Perhaps he wants to see them suffer the pangs of jealousy.
But he will get no such pangs from mother. With her son beside her she lies silently waiting.
For what? That is the question that, try as he would, the son could not answer.
And so the two lie there in silence on the poor bed in the hut while that strange monster of a man drags another woman across the yellow sands and in at the door of the hut. What has happened is that he has gone back to his old wicked life and, with his comrade, has joined another revolutionary party in another South American republic, and this time the revolution has been successful and he and his partners have helped sack a South American city.
At the forefront of the invaders was my fanciful father and—whatever else may be said of him it can never be said that he lacked in courage—it was from him, in fact, that I got my own courage.