Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (728 page)

“It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge, indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees, gazing — gazing — gazing.

“And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the desultory fire directed at the loopholes.

“One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude, spoke to me unexpectedly. ‘I have sent for a gun,’ he said. ‘I shall have time to get her back and retreat before your Robles manages to crawl up here.’

“He had sent for a gun to the plains.

“It was long in coming, but at last it came. It was a seven-pounder field gun. Dismounted and lashed crosswise to two long poles, it had been carried up the narrow paths between two mules with ease. His wild cry of exultation at daybreak when he saw the gun escort emerge from the valley rings in my ears now.

“But, senores, I have no words to depict his amazement, his fury, his despair and distraction, when he heard that the animal loaded with the gun-carriage had, during the last night march, somehow or other tumbled down a precipice. He broke into menaces of death and torture against the escort. I kept out of his way all that day, lying behind some bushes, and wondering what he would do now. Retreat was left for him, but he could not retreat.

“I saw below me his artillerist, Jorge, an old Spanish soldier, building up a sort of structure with heaped-up saddles. The gun, ready loaded, was lifted on to that, but in the act of firing the whole thing collapsed and the shot flew high above the stockade.

“Nothing more was attempted. One of the ammunition mules had been lost, too, and they had no more than six shots to fire; ample enough to batter down the gate providing the gun was well laid. This was impossible without it being properly mounted. There was no time nor means to construct a carriage. Already every moment I expected to hear Robles’ bugle-calls echo amongst the crags.

“Peneleo, wandering about uneasily, draped in his skins, sat down for a moment near me growling his usual tale.

“‘Make an entrada — a hole. If make a hole, bueno. If not make a hole, then vamos — we must go away.’

“After sunset I observed with surprise the Indians making preparations as if for another assault. Their lines stood ranged in the shadows of the mountains. On the plain in front of the fort gate I saw a group of men swaying about in the same place.

“I walked down the ridge disregarded. The moonlight in the clear air of the uplands was bright as day, but the intense shadows confused my sight, and I could not make out what they were doing. I heard the voice of Jorge, the artillerist, say in a queer, doubtful tone, ‘It is loaded, senor.’

“Then another voice in that group pronounced firmly the words, ‘Bring the riata here.’ It was the voice of Gaspar Ruiz.

“A silence fell, in which the popping shots of the besieged garrison rang out sharply. They, too, had observed the group. But the distance was too great and in the spatter of spent musket-balls cutting up the ground, the group opened, closed, swayed, giving me a glimpse of busy stooping figures in its midst. I drew nearer, doubting whether this was a weird vision, a suggestive and insensate dream.

“A strangely stifled voice commanded, ‘Haul the hitches tighter.’

“‘Si, senor,’ several other voices answered in tones of awed alacrity.

“Then the stifled voice said: ‘Like this. I must be free to breathe.’

“Then there was a concerned noise of many men together. ‘Help him up, hombres. Steady! Under the other arm.’

“That deadened voice ordered: ‘Bueno! Stand away from me, men.’

“I pushed my way through the recoiling circle, and heard once more that same oppressed voice saying earnestly: ‘Forget that I am a living man, Jorge. Forget me altogether, and think of what you have to do.’

“‘Be without fear, senor. You are nothing to me but a gun-carriage, and I shall not waste a shot.’

“I heard the spluttering of a port-fire, and smelt the saltpetre of the match. I saw suddenly before me a nondescript shape on all fours like a beast, but with a man’s head drooping below a tubular projection over the nape of the neck, and the gleam of a rounded mass of bronze on its back.

“In front of a silent semicircle of men it squatted alone, with Jorge behind it and a trumpeter motionless, his trumpet in his hand, by its side.

“Jorge, bent double, muttered, port-fire in hand: ‘An inch to the left, senor. Too much. So. Now, if you let yourself down a little by letting your elbows bend, I will . . .’

“He leaped aside, lowering his port-fire, and a burst of flame darted out of the muzzle of the gun lashed on the man’s back.

“Then Gaspar Ruiz lowered himself slowly. ‘Good shot?’ he asked.

“‘Full on, senor.’

“‘Then load again.’

“He lay there before me on his breast under the darkly glittering bronze of his monstrous burden, such as no love or strength of man had ever had to bear in the lamentable history of the world. His arms were spread out, and he resembled a prostrate penitent on the moonlit ground.

“Again I saw him raised to his hands and knees and the men stand away from him, and old Jorge stoop glancing along the gun.

“‘Left a little. Right an inch. Por Dios, senor, stop this trembling. Where is your strength?’

“The old gunner’s voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and quick as lightning brought the spark to the touch-hole.

“‘Excellent!’ he cried, tearfully; but Gaspar Ruiz lay for a long time silent, flattened on the ground.

“‘I am tired,’ he murmured at last. ‘Will another shot do it?’

“‘Without doubt,’ said Jorge, bending down to his ear.

“‘Then — load,’ I heard him utter distinctly. ‘Trumpeter!’

“‘I am here, senor, ready for your word.’

“‘Blow a blast at this word that shall be heard from one end of Chile to the other,’ he said, in an extraordinarily strong voice. ‘And you others stand ready to cut this accursed riata, for then will be the time for me to lead you in your rush. Now raise me up, and you, Jorge — be quick with your aim.’

“The rattle of musketry from the fort nearly drowned his voice. The palisade was wreathed in smoke and flame.

“‘Exert your force forward against the recoil, mi amo,’ said the old gunner, shakily. ‘Dig your fingers into the ground. So. Now!’

“A cry of exultation escaped him after the shot. The trumpeter raised his trumpet nearly to his lips and waited. But no word came from the prostrate man. I fell on one knee, and heard all he had to say then.

“‘Something broken,’ he whispered, lifting his head a little, and turning his eyes towards me in his hopelessly crushed attitude.

“‘The gate hangs only by the splinters,’ yelled Jorge.

“Gaspar Ruiz tried to speak, but his voice died out in his throat, and I helped to roll the gun off his broken back. He was insensible.

“I kept my lips shut, of course. The signal for the Indians to attack was never given. Instead, the bugle-calls of the relieving force for which my ears had thirsted so long, burst out, terrifying like the call of the Last Day to our surprised enemies.

“A tornado, senores, a real hurricane of stampeded men, wild horses, mounted Indians, swept over me as I cowered on the ground by the side of Gaspar Ruiz, still stretched out on his face in the shape of a cross. Peneleo, galloping for life, jabbed at me with his long chuso in passing — for the sake of old acquaintance, I suppose. How I escaped the flying lead is more difficult to explain. Venturing to rise on my knees too soon some soldiers of the 17th Taltal regiment, in their hurry to get at something alive, nearly bayoneted me on the spot. They looked very disappointed, too, when, some officers galloping up drove them away with the flat of their swords.

“It was General Robles with his staff. He wanted badly to make some prisoners. He, too, seemed disappointed for a moment. ‘What! Is it you?’ he cried. But he dismounted at once to embrace me, for he was an old friend of my family. I pointed to the body at our feet, and said only these two words:

“‘Gaspar Ruiz.’

“He threw his arms up in astonishment.

“‘Aha! Your strong man! Always to the last with your strong man. No matter. He saved our lives when the earth trembled enough to make the bravest faint with fear. I was frightened out of my wits. But he — no! Que guape! Where’s the hero who got the best of him? ha! ha! ha! What killed him, chico?’

“‘His own strength, General,’ I answered.”

XII

“But Gaspar Ruiz breathed yet. I had him carried in his poncho under the shelter of some bushes on the very ridge from which he had been gazing so fixedly at the fort while unseen death was hovering already over his head.

“Our troops had bivouacked round the fort. Towards daybreak I was not surprised to hear that I was designated to command the escort of a prisoner who was to be sent down at once to Santiago. Of course the prisoner was Gaspar Ruiz’ wife.

“‘I have named you out of regard for your feelings,’ General Robles remarked. ‘Though the woman really ought to be shot for all the harm she has done to the Republic.’

“And as I made a movement of shocked protest, he continued:

“‘Now he is as well as dead, she is of no importance. Nobody will know what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose he must have buried large quantities of his loot in places that she alone knows of.’

“At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and carrying her child on her arm.

“I walked to meet her.

“‘Is he living yet?’ she asked, confronting me with that white, impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way.

“I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word. His eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name with a great effort.

“‘Erminia!’

“She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with her big eyes looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous, thin voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise behind the black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk, incomprehensible and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man and the kneeling woman, remained silent, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The child laid its head against its mother’s breast and was still.

“‘It was for you,’ he began. ‘Forgive.’ His voice failed him. Presently I heard a mutter and caught the pitiful words: ‘Not strong enough.’

“She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile, and in a humble tone, ‘Forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘Leaving you . . .’

“She bent down, dry-eyed and in a steady voice: ‘On all the earth I have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,’ she said.

“His head made a movement. His eyes revived. ‘At last!’ he sighed out. Then, anxiously, ‘But is this true . . . is this true?’

“‘As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,’ she answered him, passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to raise his head, but it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was already dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds floated very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to its mother’s breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep.

“The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away without shedding a tear.

“For travelling we had arranged for her a sidesaddle very much like a chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first day she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment turning her eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her knees. At our first camp I saw her during the night walking about, rocking the child in her arms and gazing down at it by the light of the moon. After we had started on our second day’s march she asked me how soon we should come to the first village of the inhabited country.

“I said we should be there about noon.

“‘And will there be women there?’ she inquired.

“I told her that it was a large village. ‘There will be men and women there, senora,’ I said, ‘whose hearts shall be made glad by the news that all the unrest and war is over now.’

“‘Yes, it is all over now,’ she repeated. Then, after a time: ‘Senor officer, what will your Government do with me?’

“‘I do not know, senora,’ I said. ‘They will treat you well, no doubt. We republicans are not savages and take no vengeance on women.’

“She gave me a look at the word ‘republicans’ which I imagined full of undying hate. But an hour or so afterwards, as we drew up to let the baggage mules go first along a narrow path skirting a precipice, she looked at me with such a white, troubled face that I felt a great pity for her.

“‘Senor officer,’ she said, ‘I am weak, I tremble. It is an insensate fear.’ And indeed her lips did tremble while she tried to smile, glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so dangerous after all. ‘I am afraid I shall drop the child. Gaspar saved your life, you remember. . . . Take her from me.’

“I took the child out of her extended arms. ‘Shut your eyes, senora, and trust to your mule,’ I recommended.

“She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted, thin face she looked deathlike. At a turn of the path where a great crag of purple porphyry closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes. I rode just behind her holding the little girl with my right arm. ‘The child is all right,’ I cried encouragingly.

“‘Yes,’ she answered, faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw her stand up on the foot-rest, staring horribly, and throw herself forward into the chasm on our right.

“I cannot describe to you the sudden and abject fear that came over me at that dreadful sight. It was a dread of the abyss, the dread of the crags which seemed to nod upon me. My head swam. I pressed the child to my side and sat my horse as still as a statue. I was speechless and cold all over. Her mule staggered, sidling close to the rock, and then went on. My horse only pricked up his ears with a slight snort. My heart stood still, and from the depths of the precipice the stones rattling in the bed of the furious stream made me almost insane with their sound.