Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate Part 3

Cuba has many shrines containing evidences of divine blessing, and some of these are of wide renown. When the image of our Lady of Charity was found in Nipe Bay it was delivered to the priests of Cobre, the centre of the copper-mining industry, and they erected a church above it. The statue is fifteen inches high, and is seemingly carved from gold. A splendid shrine has been made as a setting, and for years it has been the object of pilgrimages during the Lady's festival in September. Those who ask for special favors, such as the cure of lameness and blindness, ascend the long flight of steps before the statue on their knees. The figure was found in 1627 by two Indians and a Creole boy who were crossing the bay at dawn in a search for salt. It appeared to them as a white body rising from the water, but as they approached it revealed itself as the image of the Virgin, the holy child on her left arm, a golden cross in her right hand. The board on which it stood was inscribed, "I am the Virgin of Charity." After it had been shown in the fold at Verajagua and venerated by the mult.i.tude it was placed in a chapel, a number of priests leading the march with a pomp and joy of banners, while bells and guns signalized its progress. The Virgin was dissatisfied, however, with the lack of splendor in her shrine and with the site on which the chapel had been placed. She told her displeasure to a girl named Apolonia, while she burned pale lights on a hill above the mines, to mark the place on which she wished her church to be erected. Her request was heeded so soon as the needed funds could be collected. It was generally believed that the statue was given by Ojeda to a native chief who, afraid of the enmity of his people as a result of accepting a gift from a treacherous and hated race, or, more reasonably, afraid that the Spaniards would kill him for the sake of the gold that adorned it, set it afloat in the bay. A thief despoiled it of thirty thousand dollars' worth of jewels after the American occupation.

This ambulatory practice of sacred images is not uncommon, and a similar instance is recorded in Costa Rica, where in 1643 the state had been thrown into a panic by the devil, who lives in the volcano of Turrialba, when he is at home, and who generally was at home in those days, for he seized upon every wayfarer who ventured on the peak. General joy was therefore felt at the discovery of a Madonna by a peasant woman at Cartago. She carried it to her hut, but it was dissatisfied and ran away--twice--three times. The village priest then took it and put it under lock and key in his house. Again it ran away. It was carried to church in procession, and it ran away again. Then the priest laid a heavy a.s.sessment on his flock for silk and gold and emeralds with which to deck the image, and this concession having been made to a feminine fondness for appearance, the statue has remained patiently on its pedestal ever since. One of the treasures of the Church of Mercy, Havana, is a painting of the cross, with a woman seated on one arm of it, holding a child. Spanish soldiers and proud-looking Indians are gathered about the emblem. The origin of the picture is involved in doubt, but it was installed in recognition of an appearance vouchsafed by the Virgin to Columbus at Cerro de la Vega, in presence of the Indians. The natives, alarmed at this vision in the air, and a.s.sociating it--justly, as it fell out--with calamity, discharged their arrows at it, and were still more frightened when their darts pa.s.sed through the apparition without causing a flow of blood. This onslaught put the Spaniards into an instant rage, and, encouraged by the Virgin's smiles, they fell upon the heathen with sword and musketoon and stamped them out of existence.

Some of these supernatural appearances had so occult a purpose that it has never been fathomed. At Daiquiri, for example, where the American troops landed in the late war, a native reported to the wondering community that while walking through the wood he met a tall, s.h.a.ggy stranger, who looked as though he might have been one of the fisherman disciples, and who pointed to the earth with an imperious gesture. So soon as the Cuban had looked down the tall man melted into air. On the ground was the print of the face of Christ. A stone was placed on the spot to mark the miracle.

When the fiery Ojeda set out on his several voyages of discovery and adventure,--and no man ever had more excitement and tribulation,--he carried in his knapsack a small painting of the Virgin, the work of a Fleming of some artistic consequence. During his halts in the jungle it was his custom to affix this picture to a tree, say his prayers before it, receive spiritual a.s.surance of protection, then, grasping sword and buckler, to undertake the slaughter of the natives with fresh alacrity and cheer. So confident was he in his heavenly guard that he exposed himself recklessly in fight, and the Indians were fain to believe him deathless, until one of their arrows pierced his leg. If this injured his confidence it did not stint his courage. He ordered his surgeon to burn the leg with hot irons, threatening to hang him if he refused, for he fancied that the arrow was poisoned. When wrecked on the south coast of Cuba with seventy varlets, who had no concern for exploration and much for booty, he struck out bravely for the east end of the island, floundering through marshes and breaking his way through tangles of vegetation, the company living for several days on a few pounds of raw roots, moldy ca.s.sava, and cheese, and at last breaking down in despair. In thirty days they had crossed ninety miles of mora.s.s, and were too feeble to go farther. Ojeda set up his picture for the last time and besought the thirty-five cut-throats who survived to pray to it also, a.s.suring the Virgin that if she would only guide them through their peril this time he would make a chapel for her in the first village he might reach.

In answer to this prayer a path was disclosed that led them to dry ground, and they soon arrived at the hamlet of Cuebas, where the natives received them with every kindness, and went to the marsh to rescue such of the party as had been abandoned but were still alive. These rascals afterward reached Jamaica, where some were hanged for their various murders and sea-robberies, while others re-enlisted in various freebooting enterprises. Ojeda kept his promise. He explained to the chief at Cuebas the princ.i.p.al points in the Christian faith, built a little oratory in the village, and placed the picture above the altar, with orders that the Indians should always treat it with reverence. Though they did not comprehend the relation of the painting to the white man's religion, they saw from the demeanor of Ojeda and his friends that it was a thing of value and might avert hoodos. Therefore it was attired and cared for with as much a.s.siduity as if it had been consigned to a Spanish cathedral, and although the Indians had not been Christianized, they decorated the oratory, overhung its walls with sacrifices, while at stated intervals they sang and danced before it. When Father Las Casas tried to get this picture away from them, afterward, it was hidden in the forest until he had pa.s.sed on. Ojeda reformed, killed several of his a.s.sociates who had attempted his life, turned monk, and was buried under the door-stone of his monastery, that the populace might trample on his pride.

Tobacco

Tobacco suggests Cuba, or Cuba more than suggests tobacco. Havana cigars are the synonym for excellence, and it was on this island that the native American was first seen with a cigar in his mouth. It was not much like the cigars of our day, for it consisted of loose leaves folded in a corn-husk, as a cigarette is wrapped in paper. It amazed the Spaniards as much to see these dusky citizens eating fire and breathing smoke as it astonished the Filipinos when the Spaniards, having learned the trick, and having landed on their islands, proceeded to swallow flame and utter smoke in the same fas.h.i.+on,--a proceeding which convinced the people of the Philippines that the strangers were G.o.ds. The white adventurers never found the palace of Cubanacan, whose gates were gold and whose robes were stiff with gems, but they found the soothing and mischievous plant that was eventually to create more wealth for them than the spoil of half a dozen such palaces. The Cuban word for this plant was cohiba. The word tobago, which we have turned into tobacco, was applied to a curious pipe used by the Antilleans, which had a double or Y-shaped stem for inserting into the nostrils, the single stem being held over a heap of burning leaf. The island of Tobago was so named because its explorers thought its outline to resemble that of the pipe.

In one form or another the use of the weed was prevalent throughout the Americas. Montezuma had his pipe after dinner, and rinsed his mouth with perfume. For medicinal purposes snuff was taken through a tube of bamboo, and tobacco leaves were chewed. The practice of chewing also obtained to a slight extent among the natives as a stay against hunger, and they are said to have indulged it in long and exhaustive marches against an enemy. They would chew in battle, because in a fight at close range they tried to squirt the juice into the eyes of their foemen and blind them. The herb was taken internally as a tea for medicinal reasons, was used as a plaster, and was valued as a charm. Francisco Fernandez took it to Europe; Drake and Raleigh introduced it in England, and though its use was regarded as a sin, to be checked not merely by royal "counterblasts"

and by edicts like that of William the Testy, but by laws prescribing torture, exile, whipping, and even death, it was not long in reaching the uttermost parts of the earth.

Men of all races and conditions incline to the tradition of the Susquehannas, that the plant was the gift of a benevolent spirit. In their account this manitou had descended to eat meat, which they had offered to her in a time of famine. As she was about to go back to the skies she thanked them for their kindness, and bade them return to the spot in thirteen months. They did so, and found maize growing where her right hand had rested, beans at her left, and tobacco where she had been seated.

The Indians of Guiana say that tobacco was given by a sea-G.o.ddess to a man who was begging the G.o.ds to do something for him,--he didn't know exactly what; he would merely like to have somebody do something for him on general principles. As a divine gift, therefore, it was used in certain of the rites of the Indians, and the man who wished to go into a trance and see visions would starve for a couple of days, then drink tobacco water. He generally saw the visions,--if he lived. In some islands the priests inhaled the smoke of a burning powder and thereupon fell into a stupor or a frenzy in which they talked with the dead. Was this the smoke of tobacco, plus a little abandon, a little falsehood, a little enthusiasm? Its enemies in King James's time would have said that the smokers deserved not merely to talk with the dead, but to join them.

The Two Skeletons of Columbus

Following the return of the vanquished army of Spain to its home country was another solemn voyage, undertaken for the transfer of the bones of Christopher Columbus from the world he had discovered to the land that grudgingly, cautiously permitted him to discover it. Spain claimed all the benefits that arose from his knowledge, his bravery, his skill, his energy, and his enthusiasm, and rewarded his years of service with dismissal from office and confinement in chains as a prisoner, but now it repented, and wished to house his unwitting relics in state. Once before these bones had crossed the sea. After the death of the great navigator, in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506, his body remained in that city for seven years. Then it was taken to Seville and placed in Las Cuevas monastery with that of his son, Diego. In 1536 both bodies were exhumed and sent to Santo Domingo, or Hispaniola, an island that Columbus appeared to hold in a warmer liking than either of the equally picturesque, fertile, and friendly islands of Cuba, Porto Rico, or Jamaica. In the quaint old cathedral of Santo Domingo, built in 1514, the bodies of the great admiral, his son, and also his grandson, Louis, first Duke of Veragua, rested for more than a century without disturbance.

On the appearance of the English fleet, however, in 1655, the archbishop was so fearful of a raid on the church and the theft of the bodies that he ordered them to be hidden in the earth. During the years in which they remained so covered the exact burial-place of the admiral may have been forgotten, or, it may be, as several people allege, that the San Dominicans tricked the Spaniards when, in 1795, the latter gave their island to France and carried with them to Havana the supposed skeleton of Columbus. Bones of somebody they certainly did take, but it is no uncommon belief in the Antilles that the monks of Santo Domingo had hidden the precious ones and sent to the monks of Havana the bones of the son, Diego, albeit a monument was erected to the memory and virtues of the great Columbus in Havana cathedral.

In 1878 the old church in Santo Domingo was undergoing repair when the workmen came upon a leaden box containing the undoubted remains of the first Duke of Veragua. Breaking through the wall of the vault they found themselves in a larger one, and here was a box two feet long, enclosing a skull, bones, dust, jewelry, and a silver plate bearing the words "C. Colon," and on the end of the box, according to some witnesses, the letters "C. C. A.," meaning Christopher Columbus, Admiral (the English initials being the same as for the name and t.i.tle in Spanish). A more circ.u.mstantial account places the time of this rediscovery in 1867, and says that a musket-ball was the only object found in the little coffin, while the silver plate on the lid was thus inscribed, "Una pt. de los restos del Primar Alm. to Du Christobal Colon." The Santo Dominicans claim their right to the relics on the ground that in his life the Spanish misused the discoverer, though his grief was not deep enough to justify the ancient rumor of his electing to be buried with the chains in which he was carried back to Spain. Meantime Seville is to build a monument, and Santo Domingo is putting up another, each city claiming to have his only real skeleton.

Obeah Witches

From the earliest days of Spanish occupancy the Antilles have been the haunt of strange creatures. Mermen have sung in their waters, witches and wizards have perplexed their villages, spirits and fiends have dwelt among their woods. Everybody fears the jumbie, or evil spirit that walks the night; and the duppy, the rolling calf, the ghost of the murdered one; all pray that they may never meet the diablesse, the beautiful negress with glittering eyes, who pa.s.ses silently through fields where people are at work, and smiling on any one of them compels him to follow her,--where? He never returns. Anansi (grotesquely disguised sometimes as Aunt Nancy) is a hairy old man with claws, who outwits the lesser creatures, as Br'er Rabbit does. To him and his familiars are attributed all manner of queer tales, one of which, from Jamaica, may be quoted as an ill.u.s.tration:

Sarah Winyan, an orphan of ten, lived with her aunt, while her two brothers kept house by themselves a mile or two away. This aunt was an Obeah witch, the duppy, or devil ghost, that was her familiar, appearing as a great black dog that she called Tiger. Sarah stood between this old woman and a little property, and after finding that the child endured her abuse with more or less equanimity and was not likely to die, she told her that she was too poor to support her any longer, and she must go. Sarah sat on a stone before the house, wondering how she could make a living, and all the time sang mournfully. A racket as of some heavy creature plunging about in the bushes aroused her with a start and she scrambled into a tree. It was Tiger who had been making the disturbance. He told her to descend at once. If she would go with him peacefully, and would be his servant, all would be well, but if she refused he would gnaw the tree down and tear her into a thousand pieces. He showed his double row of teeth, like daggers, whereupon Sarah immediately descended. As she walked beside him to his lair she sang low, in the hope of being heard and rescued. It was well that she did so, for her brothers, who were hunting in the wood, recognized her voice and softly followed. Peering in at the cave where Tiger made his home, they saw him sleeping soundly with his head in Sarah's lap. Cautiously, slowly, she drew away, leaving a block of wood for his head to rest upon, and crept out of the cavern. Then the boys entered, and with their guns blew the head of the beast into bits, cut his body into four parts, buried them at the north, south, east and west edges of the wood; then killed the wicked aunt. And since that day dogs have been subject to men.

The evil eye is not uncommon in the Antilles. It blights the lives of children, and it is one of the worst of fates to be "overlooked" by an Obeah man possessing it. Higes, or witches, too, are seen, who take off their skins, and in that state of extra-nudity go about looking for children, whose blood they suck, like vampires. Lockjaw is caused by this loss of blood. There is a three-footed horse, also, that gallops about the country roads when it has come freshly out of h.e.l.l and is looking for victims it can eat. If it halts before a house, that stop means death to somebody within, and the peculiar sound made by its three hoofs tells what has pa.s.sed. It is not well to look, because the creature has an eye in the centre of its forehead that flashes fire. One who meets it is so fascinated by this blazing eye that he cannot look away. He stares and stares; presently paralysis creeps over him, and in a little while he falls dead. Sometimes a creature is seen riding on this horse,--a man with a blue face, like that of a corpse, and with that face turned toward the tail. Related, in tradition, to the horse was the king-snake of Carib myth, a frightful creature that wore a brilliant stone in its head, which it usually concealed with a lid, like that of the eye, but which it would uncover when it went to a river to drink, or played about the hills. Whoever looked on this dazzling stone would lose his sight on the instant.

The Obeah man has an hereditary power that comes to him in advanced age, and that, when at its strongest, enables him to send an evil spirit into any object he pleases. Not only do the people believe in him, but he has the fullest faith in himself. When he boils a witch broth of scorpions' blood, toads' heads, snake bellies, spider poison, and certain herbs picked by moonlight (an actual mixture used by Obeah witches),--boils it over a fire of dead men's bones, between midnight and dawn,--he has no more doubt of its power to harm than the physician doubts the power of his quinine and antipyrin for good.

A Cuban planter who suspected one of his older slaves of being an Obeah man determined to punish him if he were found guilty, and to suppress the diabolism attending the midnight meetings. Watching his chance, he followed his slaves into the wood, peeped through the crevices of the deserted hut which they had entered to perform their fantastic rites, saw their mad dance, when, stripped and decorated with beads, sh.e.l.ls, and feathers, they leaped about with torches in their hands; then saw his suspected slave enter through a back door, his black skin painted to represent a skeleton. The old man held up a fat toad, which, he said, was his familiar, and the company began to wors.h.i.+p it with grotesque and obscene ceremonies. Though he felt a thrill of disgust and even a dim sense of fear at the spectacle, the planter broke in at the door and confronted the Obeah man. Had he ordered the old fellow to do any given task about his house or grounds in the daytime, that order would have been obeyed. What was the planter's astonishment, therefore, when the slave calmly disregarded his command to return to quarters, and bade his master leave the place at once and cease to disturb the meeting, or prepare for a great misfortune. Enraged, and fearing lest this defiance might encourage the other slaves to mutiny, the master shot the old man dead. A few days later the planter's wife died while seated at the table. A week after his daughter died, a seeming victim of poison. All the latent superst.i.tion in his nature having been aroused, he sought out another Obeah man, to beg that he would intercede with the powers of darkness, but the wizard was stern. He told him that the slave he had killed was the most powerful master of spirits in the country, and that nothing could stay the revenges of fate. When the planter reached his home he found a letter there announcing the death of his only son in Paris.

The Matanzas Obeah Woman

On a hillock near Matanzas, with a ragged wood behind it, stood for many years an unkempt cottage. In our land we should hardly dignify it by such a name. We would call it, rather, a hovel. Some rotting timbers of it may still be left, for the black people who live thereabout keep away, especially at night, believing that the hillock is a resort of spirits. Yet not many of them remember the incident that put this unpleasant fame upon it, for--that was back in the slavery days. The brutal O'Donnell was governor-general then. He found Cuba in its usual state of sullen tranquillity, and no chance seemed to offer by which he could make a name for himself, so he magnified every village wrangle into an insurrection. It looked well in his reports when he set forth the skill and ease with which he had suppressed the uprisings, and, as he did not scruple to take life in punishment for slight offences, nor to retaliate on a community for the misconduct of a single member of it, he almost created the revolution that he described to his home government. The merest murmur, the merest shadow was enough to take him to the scene of an alleged outbreak, and he would cause slaves to be whipped until they were ready to confess anything.

A black boy in Matanzas, arrested on suspicion of inciting to rebellion, was condemned to seven hundred blows with the lash. At the end of the flogging, being still alive, he was shot, at O'Donnell's order. He would confess nothing, because he had nothing to confess. This boy had been brought up in a well-to-do Spanish family, and was the play-mate, the friend, of the son of that family, rather than his slave. The white boy begged for the life of his a.s.sociate, the family implored mercy, and asked for at least a trial, but the governor-general would not listen to them, and after the shooting the white boy became insane with shock and grief. Thus much of the legend is declared to be fact.

It was the mother of the black boy who lived in this cabin outside of the town. She had also been a slave until the Spanish family, giving up its plantation, moved into the city, sold the younger and stronger of their human properties, and set free the elderly and rheumatic, taking with them only a couple of servants and the boy, who went with his mother's consent, for she knew he would be cared for, and she could see him often, the relation between slave and owner, being more commonly affectionate than otherwise. At its best, slavery is morally benumbing to the enslaved, destructive of the finer feelings, and when the old woman learned of her son's death,--and such a death--she did not go mad, as his playfellow had done. She lamented loudly, she said many prayers, she accepted condolences with seeming grat.i.tude, but the tears had ceased to flow ere many weeks, and she was seen to smile when her old mistress, whose affliction was indeed the heavier, had called on her in her cabin, no doubt feeling as much in need of her servant's sympathy as the servant felt of the creature comforts she took to her.

Yet deep in Maumee Nina's nature a change had taken place. She did not know it herself for many months. Her loss had not affected her conduct or appearance greatly, yet her heart had hardened under it and she began to look upon the world with a different eye. She cared less for her friends, and went to church less often,--a suspicious circ.u.mstance, for when a negro failed to go to ma.s.s, and kept away from confession, it was surely because he had something mischievous to confess. The rumor got about that Maumee Nina had become an Obeah woman,--a voodoo worker, a witch. It is not unlikely that the accusation inspired her to live down to it. Not only were witches held in respect and fear, but she might be able, through evil arts, to plague the race that had worked her husband to death in the mines, and now had killed her only son. She kept still more at home, brooding, planning, yielding farther and farther to the evil suggestions that her repute as a voodoo priestess offered to her, yet keeping one place in her heart even warmer than before,--the place filled by her daughter, Juanita.

This girl of fifteen or sixteen was not black, like her mother. She was a handsome mulatto. In a country where relations are so easily established without marriage, and where marriage is so difficult and has so little force, the fatherhood of many children is in doubt. If Juanita knew her father's name she was not known to him. It mattered little. The old woman intended to bring her up as a lady,--that is, to qualify her for a place as waiting-maid in the house of some good family; so she made many sacrifices on her account, clothing her vividly, requiring less work of her than she should have done, and even, it was said, paying money to have reading taught to her, and that was an accomplishment, indeed.

Considering the pains and self-denials that the rearing of this child incurred, it was a trifle inconsistent that Maumee Nina should have opposed the friendly advances of gallants from the town. She was not of a cla.s.s that is wont to consider the etiquette of such attentions, nor would she have refused to give her daughter in marriage to any Cuban. It was that her feeling toward the Spaniards was deepening into hate, and it rejoiced her to learn that a revolution was really intended. By her native shrewdness she was able to do something for her people's cause. Whenever a young negro went to her to have his fortune told,--and from this art she began to realize a steady income,--she managed to hint at his future greatness as a military leader, his gains in the loot of Spanish camps, his prowess in bush-fighting when hostilities should really have begun.

In this way she really incited a number of the ambitious, the quarrelsome, and the greedy to enlist in the schemes for Cuba's liberation. Nanigo meetings were held in and near her house; there were wild dances and uncanny ceremonies, sacrificing of animals in the moonlight, baptisms of blood, weird chants and responses, and crime increased in the town. All this being reported to the military the guard lines were extended and a squadron was posted at a house not over a mile from Maumee Nina's, with Lieutenant Fernandez in command. Fernandez was a das.h.i.+ng fellow, with swarthy countenance, moustachios that bristled upward, close-trimmed hair and beard, a laughing, pleasure-loving eye, and he wore a trig uniform that set off his compact shape to advantage. Old Nina heard, though it was not true, probably, that he had carried out the order of O'Donnell for the shooting of her boy. Naturally he was the last man she could wish to see, and she made no secret of her dislike when, on returning to her home from a visit to Matanzas, she found this young officer seated on a chair before her door, twirling his moustache and gayly chatting with her daughter. She instantly ordered the girl to go indoors, and bade the lieutenant pack off about his business. Being an easy-going fellow, with no dislike for the people among whom the fortunes of his calling had cast him, and with a strong fondness for pretty maids, the young man deprecated the anger of the woman, but finding, after some persiflage, that it was of small use to try to make friends with her, he marched away toward his quarters, trolling a lively air and drumming with his fingers on his sword-hilt. On the next evening he was at Maumee Nina's again, and before the very nose of that indignant dame chaffed her daughter, whom he also chucked under the chin; and he gazed long and searchingly at a couple of low-browed, s.h.i.+fty-looking blacks who were talking with the old woman when he entered.

"Who are these fellows?" he demanded.

"What right have you, senor lieutenant, to question me about my guests, in my own house?" replied Nina. "It is enough that they were invited, and you were not."

The lieutenant glanced sharply at Juanita. She looked at the shabby fellows for an instant, smiled contemptuously, and gave her head a saucy fling. The officer's good-nature was restored in a moment. "Give me a calabash of water from that spring of yours, your grace, and I'll take myself off," said he. "But, mind, there are to be no more dances here,--no more voodoo practice."

Old Nina left the room grumbling to herself, while Fernandez talked with Juanita, quite disregarding the sour and silent pair of black men. As he glanced through a crack in the timbers of the house he saw the old woman raise a gourd of water, wave her hand above it three times, mutter, and shake her head. Then she drew from her pocket a tiny object and dropped it in the water, stirring it around and around, as if to dissolve it. There was a quiet smile on the lieutenant's face as he received the calabash from the old woman's hand.

"In the old days, senora," he said, "it was the way to sweeten the drink of a cavalier by getting the fairest lady of the house to sip from it before he drank. Senora Juanita, you will take a little from this sh.e.l.l, and I will then drink to your eyes."

Juanita had taken the calabash and had lifted it to her mouth, when Nina sprang forward and struck it to the floor. The lieutenant looked steadily into the face of the old woman. Her eyes, at first expressing fear, then anger, dropped under his gaze. "I thought so," he said, calmly, and left the house without a backward look or another word.

Late that night a subaltern, who had called on Fernandez to carry a report to headquarters, set off alone in the direction of the city. When half a mile on his way a man suddenly confronted him and asked him for a light. He promptly offered his cigar. Puffing fiercely the stranger created a glow, and in the shadow behind it he eagerly scanned the face of the soldier. He then returned the stump, saying, "Pa.s.s on, sir. You are not he I seek. Your cigar has saved your life." There was a click, as of a knife thrust into its sheath, and the stranger was gone.

Fernandez heard of this and drew an inference, but it did not deter him from another visit to the Obeah woman's house next evening. The old woman was away. Juanita was there alone. Truly, the girl was fair, her eye was merry, she had white teeth and a tempting lip; moreover, she appeared by no means indifferent to the young officer. In ten minutes they were talking pleasantly, confidently, and Fernandez held the maiden's hand.

The hours went by without any one there to take account of them. It was a fair and quiet night, except for the queer and persistent call of some insects that seemed always to be drawing nearer to the house. Faint now came the sound of the clock in Matanzas striking twelve. As if it were a signal to the dead, shadows appeared about the house of the Obeah woman, creeping, nodding, motioning, moving toward the door. One stood close beside it and struck it twice, loudly, with a metal implement that rang sharply; then it waited. Steps were heard inside,--the steps of a man in military boots: Fernandez. There was a swish of steel, too, like a sword whipped out of its scabbard, but almost at the instant when this was heard the door was opened. A blow, a faint cry, a fall, a hurry of steps in the gra.s.s; then a light. Fernandez held it. A long, agonized scream quavered through the darkness, and Maumee Nina, with blood on her hands, fell p.r.o.ne on the body of her daughter, her Juanita, lying there on the earth with a knife in her heart.