They passed beneath the arches of an old gate that dated back to the time of the Spanish possession, and which still preserved the eagles and the shields of the Austrian dynasty. In the old moat, now converted into a garden, there was a group of tombs,—those of the English sailors who had died at Trafalgar. They walked along an avenue in which the trees alternated with heaps of old bombs and cone-shaped projectiles, reddened by rust. Further on, the large cannon craned their necks toward the gray cruisers of the military harbor and the extensive bay, over whose blue plain, tremulous with gold, glided the white dots of some sailing vessels.
On the broad esplanade of the Alameda, at the foot of the mountain covered with pines and cottages, were groups of youths running and kicking a restless ball around. At that hour, as at every hour of the day, the huge ball of the English national game sped through the air over paths, fields and garrison yards. A concert of shouts and kicks, civil as well as military, rose into the air, to the glory of strong and hygienic England.
They mounted a long stairway, afterwards seeking rest in a shady little square, near the monument to a British hero, the defender of Gibraltar, surrounded by mortars and cannon. Luna, gazing across the blue sea that could be viewed through the colonnade of trees, at last spoke of her own past.
Her childhood had been sad. Born in Rabat, where the Jew Benamor was engaged in the exportation of Moroccan cloths, her life had flowed on monotonously, without any emotion other than that of fear. The Europeans of this African port were common folk, who had come thither to make their fortune. The Moors hated the Jews. The rich Hebrew families had to hold themselves apart, nourishing themselves socially upon their own substance, ever on the defensive in a country that lacked laws. The young Jewish maidens were given an excellent education, which they acquired with the facility of their race in adopting all progress. They astonished newcomers to Rabat with their hats and their clothes, similar to those of Paris and London; they played the piano; they spoke various languages, and yet, on certain nights of sleeplessness and terror, their parents dressed them in foul tatters and disguised them, staining their faces and their hands with moist ashes and lampblack, so that they might not appear to be Jewish daughters and should rather resemble slaves. There were nights in which an uprising of the Moors was feared, an invasion of the near-by Kabyles, excited in their fanaticism by the inroads of European culture. The Moroccans burned the houses of the Jews, plundered their treasures, fell like wild beasts upon the white women of the infidels, decapitating them with hellish sadism after subjecting them to atrocious outrages. Ah! Those childhood nights in which she dozed standing, dressed like a beggar girl, since the innocence of her tender age was of no avail as a protection!... Perhaps it was these frights that were responsible for her dangerous illness,—an illness that had brought her near to death, and to this circumstance she owed her name Luna.
"At my birth I was named Horabuena, and a younger sister of mine received the name Asibuena. After a period of terror and an invasion of the Moroccans in which our house was burned down and we thought we were all doomed to slaughter, my sister and I fell ill with fever. Asibuena died; happily, I was saved."
And she described to Luis, who listened to her under a spell of horror, the incidents of this exotic, abnormal life,—all the sufferings of her mother in the poor house where they had taken refuge. Aboab's daughter screamed with grief and tore her black hair before the bed where her daughter lay overcome by the stupor of fever. Her poor Horabuena was going to die.
"Ay, my daughter! My treasure Horabuena, my sparkling diamond, my nest of consolation!... No more will you eat the tender chicken! No more will you wear your neat slippers on Saturdays, nor will your mother smile with pride when the Rabbi beholds you so graceful and beautiful!..."
The poor woman paced about the room lighted by a shaded lamp. In the shadows she could detect the presence of the hated Huerco, the demon, with a Spanish name who comes at the appointed hour to bear off human creatures to the darkness of death. She must battle against the evil one, must deceive the Huerco, who was savage yet stupid, just as her forefathers had deceived him many a time:
She repressed her tears and sighs, calmed her voice, and stretching out upon the floor spoke softly, with a sweet accent, as if she were receiving an important visit:
"Huerco, what have you come for?... Are you looking for Horabuena? Horabuena is not here; she has gone forever. She who is here is named... Luna. Sweet Lunita, beautiful Lunita. Off with you, Huerco, begone! She whom you seek is not here."