CHAPTER IX.

At daybreak, of the morning following our entry into Heraclea, the pr?tor and Correliana paid us a visit. After salutations of renewed welcome the pr?tor addressed us, in substance, as follows:—

“You are already partially aware of the means of communication which have been employed to advise us of your presence, and the deliverance of our daughters’ rescuers from their extreme peril! Through the same source we have been advised of your daily progress for our relief, now happily consummated. When the health of our families shall have ceased to tax your anxious care, we will then endeavor to make you sensible of our gratitude through the warmth of affectionate reciprocation. For the present we will ask you to assume the responsibility of your own entertainment, for we are utterly powerless for the fulfillment of that duty so inseparably imposed by our obligations. But with our energies restored we shall claim the gratification of reassuming the privileges of our natural charge. Until this sum total of our past indebtedness shall have been fulfilled, please accept the keys of our city in token of our submission to your direction?”

In reply to this tender, M. Hollydorf said, “We will accept the keys, but only in the light of a necessary facility to render our sympathetic aid more readily effectual, and will certainly feel more sincere gratification when your own, and the health of your associate citizens, will admit of their restoration. 101Until then we shall rely upon your advice for direction, for we have already learned to prize its transmitted agency beyond measure, as it exceeds the power of material recompense.” Then taking the pr?tor’s hands, he continued with glowing warmth and tearful emotions: “Indeed we feel assured, beyond the possibility of selfish reflection, that in preserving your people, we have acted as agents for the opening of a way through which the children of our race may exalt themselves above the gregarious instincts of animality. We have already realized premonitory emotions, which bespeak an assured glimpse of immortality, albeit our habits and customs intrude their practiced grossness to mar the beatific visions inspired from the influence of your exampled reflection.”

Here the tremulous cadences of a p?an hymn caused the pr?tor to beckon us beyond the threshold, and from thence we saw gathered in groups, before the portals of each door, the residents uniting in the choral anthem of thanksgiving to the Creator for blessings vouchsafed with deliverance. At its close, we were apprised that it was their morning and evening custom to offer grateful salutations of praise with the rising and declining sun. Then, in the fullness of their grateful joy, they left to engage in the nursing avocations of the day.

After their departure we engaged in preparation for our first hunting expedition; when nearly ready the mayorong appeared accompanied by three Indians whose bearing proclaimed them upland chiefs. With their introduction, he stated that they had visited him while he was attending the wounded of their tribe in the temple of the grove; and as they evinced kindly emotions while endeavoring to make him understand the chief object of their visit, he followed them to the margin of the wooded growth, and he there beheld a train of horses loaded with 102panniers containing a plentiful supply of grain, so much needed by the famishing Heracleans. “Unable to withhold the elation of joyful surprise I embraced them, and could not resist the pleasure of bringing them to receive your personal acknowledgments for their timely supply of food.” The pr?tor and tribunes, having been informed of the Betonges chiefs’ introduction into the city by the mayorong, with the supply of food they had brought as a voluntary peace offering, hastened first to the hospitium, and then to the quarters of the corps to give them a fitting reception. To the surprise of all, Correliana, who accompanied her father, addressed the chiefs in their own language, with expressions of such grateful warmth that the eyes of the savages became tremulous with tokens foreshadowing the impressions of a moisture as nourishing to unselfish sympathy as dew to plants. When these exotic emotions had subsided, the Indians in turn tersely expressed their regrets for the unmerited sufferings their tribes had caused from the remote acts committed by the old Heracleans, who paid the penalty of death for their oppressions.

Correliana, in explication of what appeared mysterious in her ready use of the Betongese idiom of the Quichua language, said that she had learned it from children taken from the Indian villages, and adopted as hostages to be educated with those of Heraclea. “You have been puzzled,” she continued, “with many mysterious passages since our first introduction, which have appeared more unaccountable to reasonable suggestion than this, still in due time they will be as readily solved.” After a lengthened conversation with the Indian deputation, Correliana proposed that the gates of the cinctus wall should thereafter be left open for the free ingress and egress of their Indian allies, in trustful confidence as leal as though mutual faith had been kept from the beginning.

Mr. Welson suggestingly asked, if the river Indians, 103or in more truthful expression, the reptile savages, would not avail themselves of this open invitation to wreak their poisonous vengeance? To which Correliana smilingly replied: “Our benefactors have informed me that the river Indians, when in dismayed flight from their repulse, met the old chief who had been retained as a prisoner on board of the Tortuga. Holding them in check while he described the power you had exercised over him, and one of your own kind, he urged that any further attempt against the city would result as in the battle they had just fought. His collar investment was, in their panic, a sufficient verification of authority, and although a victim to your sorceries they proclaimed him an embogator, or prophet itinerator of the tribes. His description of the effects you produced upon him, conjoined with the padre’s fears, has established your reputation as a magician capable of filling their bodies with tormenting scrouls, or demons; this increased their panic, causing the tribe to disperse in all haste to their swamp feudalities. We are fully assured from the Betongese recital,—and they are not altogether free from the fear you have inspired,—that your presence will prove ample security for their absence from the highland valleys, as well as a protection to the Tortuga on her downward passage. In pledge of their fidelity, the Betongese have volunteered an escort for the Kyronese remaining at the anchorage of the Tortuga.”

After the chiefs had partaken of food prepared by the Kyronese matrons, they were escorted without the cinctus gates, by all within the city able to walk. When the gate keepers, Jack and Bill, were notified that from thenceforward the gates were to be left unclosed, they fired a salvo of a single discharge, then limbering up the howitzer stowed it, with munitions, in the keep of the gate tower; but asked permission to retain their quarters, with the more than probable 104inducement of having their rations brought and dispensed by two Kyronese maidens, with whom they had been on “signal” terms from the day of their rescue.

Cleorita, after the Indians’ departure, expressed to Correliana the hope that her grandfather had not been by her judged over-presuming in caring for the wounded Indians, or bold in assuming the responsibility of introducing the Indian chiefs into the city? “For with truth, he says,”—she urged, “he would not have hazarded the venture, if he had not felt certain that they were trustworthy. Indeed we have seen many worse who have been grateful for kindness!”

“Say to your grandfather,” returned Correliana, “that we justly merit the punishment he has inflicted, and I feel more sincerely indebted to him for the last service than the first. I will own frankly in self-reprobation, with the belief that the self-reproof includes all except your own kindred, that my thoughts were altogether diverted from the possible sufferings of our wounded foes; and I will not pretend to assume even the merit of feeling sufficient solicitude to inquire whether any were injured.”

The mayorong, who, with Mr. Welson, had overheard this plea of his granddaughter in his behalf, and understood its import, said to Cleorita, “you have spoken according to my desire, but you must not forget that the members of the corps were fewer in numbers than ourselves, and were expected as the sponsors of the expedition to present themselves for the relief of the famished citizens, so we each acted the parts of our allotment.”

But Mr. Welson expostulated: “You need not attempt to say anything in our extenuation, for we turned a deaf ear to the groans of the wounded, and passed them with as much indifference as we left the severed serpent. Now that we have seen the effects 105of your unselfish sympathy, we cannot withhold from ourselves the fact that you are the real deliverer of Heraclea. You have merited and will receive the untutored homage of the Indians.”

“You forget,” replied Cleorita, prompted by her grandfather, “the eminent services of the most favored of the magicians, who has controlled the savage ‘instincts’ of the river Indians?” With Correliana’s asservation, that the Heracleans were so universally indebted to the united members of the corps, and its adjuncts, the personal distinction of preference was resolved into the grades of adaptation for the parts enacted, they separated, with mutual congratulations, to engage in the allotted avocations of the day.

In view of their peaceful prospects, enhanced with food bestowed by their late foes, the Heracleans recovered rapidly from the pestilential flux, so that in a few weeks they were able to enjoy the liberty of the open country, and enter upon the re?njoyment of the boon of self dependence. The households enlivened by their reappearance, assumed the renovated impression of a happy vitality breathing outward for the kindred invocation of reciprocal goodwill. Correliana, with renewed vivacity and mysterious facility, had conjured the ability for conducting her own correspondence with Captain Greenwood in English, also for ready communication with the members of the corps. Her Kyronese companions, Cleorita and Oviata, had with her revived a speaking impression of the language derived from their father.

On the morning of the 7th of October, after the journey had been prolonged far beyond the time set for its accomplishment, from the grateful desire of the valley Indians to honor the people of the mayorong, the Kyronese remainder arrived under the conduct of Abdul, his grandson, and padre Simon. Their reunion and reception was joyful in the extreme. The compendic ejaculation of the padre, in sanction of the 106corps’ expressions of happy satisfaction, will prove ample for the exposition of the prevailing impressions of renewed goodwill. “By my soul’s salvation,” he exclaimed, “I have by the same tokens come to a belike conclusion! For surely I would have as soon thought to see the lion and lamb lay down peaceably together, as to have been entertained as I have been by these same Indians. It was so unnatural, for you know the delegations from the tribes brought on to Washington are exhibited as specimens of wild beasts indigenous to the soil? But I can tell you, I never was treated more kindly in my life, bating I could not speak their language, nor they mine.”

Mr. Welson inquired, whether in the item schedule of good treatment they asked him to take something, or smoke a weed? The padre happily averred, with a blush, that he had neither tasted of spirit or tobacco since his departure from the Tortuga. In testimony of the improvement from his abstinence all bore witness.

“But,” asked Mr. Welson, “had you no fear of being bitten again?”

The padre smilingly expostulated, “I see that you have not left off all your bad habits, yet, notwithstanding the good example of the Heracleans! Why not let bygones be bygones? My own thoughts are a sufficient torment, without having my friends poke fun at my lameness.”

“It is from no ill intention that we keep the crutch in view, but rather to prevent the necessity of its future use,” suggested Mr. Welson. The padre closed the sally port of banter, by quoting the saw, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”