Martinez was by temperament a hunter, and was less interested in getting me to the Pacific coast than in following trails of wild beasts. He showed me a treesloth, hanging in the hammock of its own body high up among the branches; showed me a boa coiled like a cable and sleeping like a babe. That did not interest him. But the jaguar and the puma were ever in his thoughts. We came upon the footprints of a tiger, a grande gato, a perfect six spot in the mud. With bent back and staring eye Martinez was for following it—and he gave me his long knife. But I said "No."
"No carey?" he inquired, raising his brows. "No quiere?"
"No, Martinez; grande gato make nice meal you and me. Sabe, Martinez?" I made signs to him, pointing down my throat.
"Ah, you no carey?" he rejoined sadly, and set his face toward the sun. He threaded his way to an isolated hut surrounded by bog, where lived a bachelor acquaintance more ready to follow up the trail of the tiger. There we brewed coffee, and as I sat in the doorway sipping it I saw fly past like a flame the most beautiful bird I had seen in the jungle. The sportsmen missed it, but heavy as I was with clinging mud I started up to follow it. I was tired enough of tramping, wet to the waist, mud to the knees. I had fallen down several times. Armless Martinez had offered to carry me across one or two morasses and torrents and had actually raised me on his shoulders once, but I felt him waver under me and took my two hundred pounds down from his back. I was glad when we came once more upon a stretch of the Camino Real and could actually walk upon it. We stepped steadily upward, and I began to meditate climbing that "goodlie and high tree," for there were many such starting out of the marsh and the scrub and going straight to heaven. But then, suddenly and unexpectedly, coming out on the scarp of a commanding ridge, I saw the ocean. I did not need to climb a tree. From this ridge I also saw the Pacific, for the first time, far away, a blue triangle of water beyond the hills and the forests and the ridges. There was a wide and majestic view, and the great trees of the jungle made a framework on either hand like the extended plumage of an eagle.
To my one-eyed guide it meant nothing, and he could not understand why I paused in the way and called him back. But it was a great moment. A warm current ran through my veins and something seemed to lighten heavy boots. Wings came out from my heels and I stood on tiptoe and stared.
That phrase of Keats "a wild surmise" came very near to naming the feeling of rapture. The eyes of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the eyes of Francis Drake, the eyes of the one of the many! "It was all for this," I whispered.
Martinez restlessly waved his hooks and peered at me one-sidedly. "Grande Oceano," said he reflectively, as we resumed our tramp—and he led me to the sea. It was many hours, but they went easily, and we came out to the shore in the peace of late evening, and there in a little inn we drank blanco seco and toasted Vasco Nuñez de Balboa and Francis Drake, whom certainly the one-eyed man did not know. But I then counted out silver dollars for Martinez and paid him off. And he was pleased.
6
Balboa, it is said, knelt on the mountain alone, and then his comrades came and planted a cross. And the pious chronicler avers that Te Deum Laudamus and Te Dominum Confitemur were sung. The dog Leoncico barked for joy. Balboa in a loud voice claimed all that was visible for the King of Spain, and the lawyer whom they had brought along drew up a deed which was signed by sixty-seven Spaniards—all that was left of the original hundred and ninety.