Chita-A Memory of Last Island [16]
a vibrant lifting up; a rush into light,--and again the volleying and the seething darkness. Once more,--and the fight is won! He feels the upcoming chill of deeper water,--sees before him the green quaking of unbroken swells,--and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the bar,--and beside him, almost within arm's reach, a great billiard-table swaying, and a dead woman clinging there, and ... the child.
A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ... How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is strong as death,--the desperate force of love! Not in vain; for the frail creature bound to the mother's corpse with a silken scarf has still the strength to cry out:--"Maman! maman!" But time is life now; and the tiny hands must be pulled away from the fair dead neck, and the scarf taken to bind the infant firmly to Feliu's broad shoulders,--quickly, roughly; for the ebb will not wait ...
And now Feliu has a burden; but his style of swimming has totally changed;--he rises from the water like a Triton, and his powerful arms seem to spin in circles, like the spokes of a flying wheel. For now is the wrestle indeed!--after each passing swell comes a prodigious pulling from beneath,--the sea clutching for its prey.
But the reef is gained, is passed;--the wild horses of the deep seem to know the swimmer who has learned to ride them so well. And still the brown arms spin in an ever-nearing mist of spray; and the outer sand-bar is not far off,--and there is shouting Mateo, leaping in the surf, swinging something about his head, as a vaquero swings his noose! ... Sough! splash!--it struggles in the trough beside Feliu, and the sinewy hand descends upon it. Tiene!--tira, Miguel! And their feet touch land again! ...
She is very cold, the child, and very still, with eyes closed.
--"Esta muerta, Feliu?" asks Mateo.
--"No!" the panting swimmer makes answer, emerging, while the waves reach whitely up the sand as in pursuit,--"no; vive! respira todavia!"
Behind him the deep lifts up its million hands, and thunders as in acclaim.
IV.
--"Madre de Dios!--mi sueno!" screamed Carmen, abandoning her preparations for the morning meal, as Feliu, nude, like a marine god, rushed in and held out to her a dripping and gasping baby-girl,--"Mother of God! my dream!" But there was no time then to tell of dreams; the child might die. In one instant Carmen's quick, deft hands had stripped the slender little body; and while Mateo and Feliu were finding dry clothing and stimulants, and Miguel telling how it all happened--quickly, passionately, with furious gesture,--the kind and vigorous woman exerted all her skill to revive the flickering life. Soon Feliu came to aid her, while his men set to work completing the interrupted preparation of the breakfast. Flannels were heated for the friction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmen administered by the spoonful, skilfully as any physician,--until, at last, the little creature opened her eyes and began to sob. Sobbing still, she was laid in Carmen's warm feather-bed, well swathed in woollen wrappings. The immediate danger, at least, was over; and Feliu smiled with pride and pleasure.
Then Carmen first ventured to relate her dream; and his face became grave again. Husband and wife gazed a moment into each other's eyes, feeling together the same strange thrill--that mysterious faint creeping, as of a wind passing, which is the awe of the Unknowable. Then they looked at the child, lying there, pink checked with the flush of the blood returning; and such a sudden tenderness touched them as they had known long years before, while together bending above the slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita.
--"Que ojos!" murmured Feliu, as he turned away,--feigning hunger ... (He was not hungry; but his sight had grown a little dim, as with a mist.) Que ojos! They were singular eyes, large, dark, and wonderfully fringed. The child's hair was yellow--it was the flash of it that had saved her; yet her eyes and brows were beautifully
A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ... How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is strong as death,--the desperate force of love! Not in vain; for the frail creature bound to the mother's corpse with a silken scarf has still the strength to cry out:--"Maman! maman!" But time is life now; and the tiny hands must be pulled away from the fair dead neck, and the scarf taken to bind the infant firmly to Feliu's broad shoulders,--quickly, roughly; for the ebb will not wait ...
And now Feliu has a burden; but his style of swimming has totally changed;--he rises from the water like a Triton, and his powerful arms seem to spin in circles, like the spokes of a flying wheel. For now is the wrestle indeed!--after each passing swell comes a prodigious pulling from beneath,--the sea clutching for its prey.
But the reef is gained, is passed;--the wild horses of the deep seem to know the swimmer who has learned to ride them so well. And still the brown arms spin in an ever-nearing mist of spray; and the outer sand-bar is not far off,--and there is shouting Mateo, leaping in the surf, swinging something about his head, as a vaquero swings his noose! ... Sough! splash!--it struggles in the trough beside Feliu, and the sinewy hand descends upon it. Tiene!--tira, Miguel! And their feet touch land again! ...
She is very cold, the child, and very still, with eyes closed.
--"Esta muerta, Feliu?" asks Mateo.
--"No!" the panting swimmer makes answer, emerging, while the waves reach whitely up the sand as in pursuit,--"no; vive! respira todavia!"
Behind him the deep lifts up its million hands, and thunders as in acclaim.
IV.
--"Madre de Dios!--mi sueno!" screamed Carmen, abandoning her preparations for the morning meal, as Feliu, nude, like a marine god, rushed in and held out to her a dripping and gasping baby-girl,--"Mother of God! my dream!" But there was no time then to tell of dreams; the child might die. In one instant Carmen's quick, deft hands had stripped the slender little body; and while Mateo and Feliu were finding dry clothing and stimulants, and Miguel telling how it all happened--quickly, passionately, with furious gesture,--the kind and vigorous woman exerted all her skill to revive the flickering life. Soon Feliu came to aid her, while his men set to work completing the interrupted preparation of the breakfast. Flannels were heated for the friction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmen administered by the spoonful, skilfully as any physician,--until, at last, the little creature opened her eyes and began to sob. Sobbing still, she was laid in Carmen's warm feather-bed, well swathed in woollen wrappings. The immediate danger, at least, was over; and Feliu smiled with pride and pleasure.
Then Carmen first ventured to relate her dream; and his face became grave again. Husband and wife gazed a moment into each other's eyes, feeling together the same strange thrill--that mysterious faint creeping, as of a wind passing, which is the awe of the Unknowable. Then they looked at the child, lying there, pink checked with the flush of the blood returning; and such a sudden tenderness touched them as they had known long years before, while together bending above the slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita.
--"Que ojos!" murmured Feliu, as he turned away,--feigning hunger ... (He was not hungry; but his sight had grown a little dim, as with a mist.) Que ojos! They were singular eyes, large, dark, and wonderfully fringed. The child's hair was yellow--it was the flash of it that had saved her; yet her eyes and brows were beautifully