CHAPTER XIV.

Unde iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios merentur ?
Seneca,
" W^HEN I awoke, he was standing by my pallet. " Arise," said he, '* eat and drink, that thy strength may return unto thee." He pointed to a small table as he spoke, w^hich was covered with food of the plainest kind, and dressed w^ith the utmost simplicity. Yet he seemed to think an apology was necessary for the indulgence of this temperate fare. " I myself," said
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lie, " eat not the flesh of any animal, save on the new moons and the feasts, yet the days of the years of my life have been one hundred and seven ; sixty of which have been passed in the chamber where thou sawest me. Rarely do I ascend to the upper chamber of this house, save on occa- sions like this, or peradventure to pray, with my window open towards the east, for the turning away wrath from Jacob, and the turning again the captivity of Zion. Weil saith the ethnic leach,
, *' Aer exclusus confer! ad longevitatem."
" Such hath been my life, as I tell thee. The light of heaven hath been hidden from mine eyes, and the voice of man is as the voice of a stranger in mine ears, save those of some of mine own nation, who weep for the affliction of Israel ; yet the silver cord is not loosed, nor the golden bowl broken ; and though mine eye be waxing dim, my natural force is not abated." (As he spoke.
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my eyes hung in reverence on the hoary majesty of his patriarchal figure, and 1 felt as if I beheld an embodied representation of the old law in all its stern simplicity — the unbending grandeur, and primeval an- tiquity.) " Hast thou eaten, and art full ? Arise, then, and follow me."
" We descended to the vault, Avhere I found the lamp was always burning. And Adonijah, pointing to the parchments that lay on the table, said, " This is the matter wherein I need thy help; the collection and transcription whereof hath been the labour of more than half a life, prolonged beyond the bounds allotted to mortality ; but," pointing to his sunk and blood-shot eyes, " those that look out of the windows begin to be darkened, and I feel that I need help from the quick hand and clear eye of youth. Wherefore, it being certi- fied unto me by our brother, that thou wert a youth who couldst handle the pen of a scribe, and, moreover, wast in need of a city of refuge, and a strong wall of do-
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fence, against the laying-in-wait of thy brethren round about thee, I was will- ing that thou shouidst come under my roof, and eat of such things as I set before thee, and such as thy soul desireth, except- ing only the abominable things forbidden in the law of the prophet ; and shouidst, moreover, receive wages as an hired ser- vant."
" You will perhaps smile. Sir ; but even in my wretched situation, I felt a slight but painful flush tinge rny cheek, at the thought of a Christian, and a peer of Spain, becoming the amanuensis of a Jew for hire. Adonijah continued, " Then, when my task is completed, then will I be gathered to my fathers, trusting surely in the Hope of Israel, that mine eyes shall " behold the King in his beauty, — they shall see the land that is very far off." And peradven- ture," he added, in a voice that grief ren- dered solemn, mellow, and tremulous, " peradventure there shall I meet in bliss, those with whom I parted in w^oe — even
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thou, Zachariab, the son of my loins, and thou, Leah, the wife of my bosom ;" apo- strophizing two of the silent skeletons that stood near. " And in the presence of the God of our fathers, the redeemed of Zion shall meet — and meet as those who are to part no more for ever and ever." At these words, he closed his eyes, lifted up his hands, and appeared to be absorbed in mental prayer. Grief had perhaps sub- dued my prejudices — it had certainly sof- tened my heart — and at this moment I half believed that a Jew might find en- trance and adoption amid the family and fold of the blessed. This sentiment ope- rated on my human sympathies, and I in- quired, with unfeigned anxiety, after the fate of Solomon the Jew, whose misfortune in harbouring me had exposed him to the visit of the Inquisitors. " Be at peace," said Adonijah, waving his bony and wrin- kled hand, as if dismissing a subject below his present feelings, " our brother Solo- mon is in no peril of death ; neither shall
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his goods be taken for a spoil. If our ad- versaries are mighty in power, so are we mighty also to deal with them by our wealth or our wisdom. Thy flight they never can trace, thy existence on the face of the earth shall also be unknown to them, so thou wilt hearken to me, and heed my words."'
" I could not speak, but my expression of mute and imploring anxiety spoke for me. *' Thou didst use words," said Ado- nijah, " last night, w^hereof, though I re- member not all the purport, the sound yet maketh mine ears to tingle; even mine, which have not vibrated to such sounds for four times the space of thy youthful years. Thou saidst thou wert beset by a powder that tempted thee to renounce the Most High, w^hom Jew and Christian alike profess to worship; and that thou didst declare, that w^ere the fires kindled around thee, thou wouldst spit at the tempter, and trample on the offer, though thy foot press- ed the coal which the sons of Dominick
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were lighting beneath its naked sole." — " I did;' I cried, " I did— and I would— So help me God in mine extremity."
" Adonijah paused for a moment, as if considering whether this were a burst of passion, or a proof of mental energy. He seemed at last inclined to believe it the latter, though all men of far-advanced age are apt to distrust any marks of emotion as a demonstration rather of weakness than of sincerity. " Then," said he, after a long and solemn pause, " then thou shalt know the secret that hath been a burthen to the soul of Adonijah, even as his hopeless soli- tude is a burthen to the soul of him who traverseth the desert, none accompanying him with step, or cheering him with voice. From my youth upward, even until now, have I laboured, and behold the time of my deliverance is at hand ; yea, and shall be accomplished speedily.
"• In the days of my childhood, a ru- mour reached mine ears, even mine, of a being sent abroad on the earth to tempt
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Jew and Nazarene, and even the disciples of Mohammed, whose name is accursed in the mouth of our nation, with offers of de- liverance at their utmost need and extre- mity, so they would do that which my lips dare not utter, even though there be no ear to receive it but thine. Thou shud- derest — w^ell, then, thou art sincere, at least, in thy faith of errors. I listened to the tale, and mine ears received it, even as the soul of the thirsty drinketh in rivers of water, for my mind was full of the vain fantasies of the Gentile fables, and I long- ed, in the perverseness of my spirit, to see, yea, and to consort with, yea, and to deal with, the evil one in his strength. Like our fathers in the wilderness, I despised angel's food, and lusted after forbidden meats, even the meats of the Egyptian sorcerers. And my presumption was re- buked as thou seest: — childless, wifeless, friendless, at the last period of an existence prolonged beyond the bounds of nature, am I now left, and, save thee alone, with-
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out one to record its events. I will not trouble thee now with the tale of my eventful life, farther than to tell thee, that the skeletons thou tremblest to behold, were once clothed in flesh far fairer than thine. They are those of my wife and child, whose history thou must not now hear — but those of the two others thou must both hear and relate." And he pointed to the two other skeletons oppo- site, in their upright cases. " On my re- turn to my country, even Spain, if a Jew can be said to have a country, I set myself down on this seat, and, lighted by this lamp, I took in my hand the pen of a scribe, and vowed by a vow, that this lamp should not expire, nor this seat be forsaken, nor this vault untenanted, until that the record is written in a book, and sealed as with the king's signet. But, behold, I was traced by those who are keen of scent, and quick of pursuit, even the sons of Do- minick. And they seized me, and laid my feet fast in the bonds ; but my writ-
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ings they could not read, because they were traced in a character unknown to this idolatrous people. And behold, after a space they set me free, finding no cause of offence in me ; and they bade me de- part, and trouble them no more. Then vowed I a vow unto the God of Israel, who had delivered me from their thral- dom, that none but he who could read these characters should ever transcribe them. JNloreover, I prayed, and said, O Lord God of Israel ! who knowest that we are the sheep of thy fold, and our enemies as wolves round about us, and as lions who roar for their evening prey, grant, that a Nazarene escaped from their hands, and fleeing unto us, even as a bird chased from her nest, may put to shame the weapons of the mighty, and laugh them to scorn. Grant also. Lord God of Jacob, that he may be exposed to the snare of the enemy, even as those of whom I have written, and that he may spit at it with his mouth, and spurn at it with his feet, and trample on
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the ensnarer, even as they have trampled ; and then shall my soul, even mine, have peace at the last. Thus I prayed — and my prayer was heard, for behold, thou art here."
" As I heard these words, a horrid fore- boding, like a night-mare of the heart, hung heavily on me. 1 looked alternately at the withering speaker, and the hopeless task. To bear about that horrible secret inurned in my heart, was not that enough? but to be compelled to scatter its ashes a- broad, and to rake into the dust of others for the same purpose of unhallowed expo- sure, revolted me beyond feeling and ut- terance. As my eye fell listlessly on the manuscripts, 1 saw they contained only tJie Spanish language written in the Greek- characters-^-di mode of writing that, I easily conceived, must have been as unin- telligible to the officers of the Inquisition, as the Hieroglyphics of the Egyptian priests. Their ignorance, sheltered by their pride, and that still more strongly
VOL. in. D
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fortified by the impenetrable seeresy at- tached to their most minute proceedings, made them hesitate to entrust to any one the circumstance of their being in pos- session of manuscript which they could not decypher. So they returned the pa- pers to Adonijah, and, in his own language, " Behold, he abode in safety." But to me this was a task of horror unspeakable. I felt myself as an added link to the chain, the end of which, held by an invisible hand, was drawing me to perdition ; and I was now to become the recorder of my own condemnation.
*' As I turned over the leaves with a trembling hand, the towering form of A- donijah seemed dilated with preternatural emotion. " And what dost thou tremble at, child of the dust ?" he exclaimed, " if thou hast been tempted, so have they — if thou hast resisted, so have they — if they are at rest, so shalt thou be. There is not a pang of soul or body thou hast undergone, or
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canst undergo, that they have not suflFered before thy birth was dreamt of. Boy, thy hand trembles over pages it is un- worthy to touch, yet still I must employ thee, for I need thee. Miserable link of necessity, that binds together minds so un- congenial ! I would that the ocean were my ink, and the rock my page, and mine arm, even mine, the pen that should write there- on letters that should last like those on the written mountains for ever and ever — even the mount of Sinai, and those that still bear the record, " Israel hath passed the flood *." As he spoke, I again turned over the manuscripts. " Does thy hand tremble still?" said Adonijah ; "and dost
* Written mountains, i. e. rocks inscribed with characters recordative of some remarkable event, are well known to every oriental traveller. I think it is in the notes of Dr Coke, on the book of Exodus, that I have met with the circumstance alluded to a- bove. A rock near the Red Sea is said once to have bonie the inscription, " Israel hath passed the flood."
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thou still hesitate to record the story of those whose destiny a link, wondrous, in- visible, and indissoluble, has bound to thine. Behold, there are those near thee, who, though they have no longet a tongue^ speak to thee with that eloquence which is stronger than all the eloquence of living tongues. Behold, there are those around thee, whose mute and motionless arms of bone plead to thee as no arms of flesh ever pleaded. Behold, there are those who, be- ing speechless, yet speak — who, being dead, are yet alive — who, though in the abyss of eternity, are yet around thee, and call on thee, as with a mortal voice. Hear them ! — take the pen in thine hand, and write." I took the pen in my hand, but could not write a line. Adonijah, in a transport of ecstasy, snatching a skeleton from its re- ceptacle, placed it before me. '* Tell him thy story thyself, peradventure he will be- lieve thee, and record it." And support* ing the skeleton with one hand, he point- ed with the other, as bleached and bony
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as that of the dead, to the manuscript that lay before me.
" It was a night of storms in the world above us ; and, far below the surface of the earth as we were, the murmur of the winds, sighing through the passages, came on my ear like the voices of the departed, — like the pleadings of the dead. Invo- luntarily I fixed my eye on the manu- script I was to copy, and never withdrew till I had finished its extraordinary con* tents.
Calt ot tf^t $nirians.
" There is an idand in the Indian sea. not many leagues from the mouth of the Hoogly, which, from the peculiarity of its situation and internal circumstances^
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long remained unknown to Europeans, and unvisited by the natives of the conti- guous islands, except on remarkable occa- sions. It is surrounded by shallows that render the approach of any vessel of weight impracticable, and fortified by rocks that threatened danger to the slight canoes of the natives, but it was rendered still more formidable by the terrors with which superstition had invested it. There was a tradition that the first temple to the black goddess Seeva*, had been erected there ; and her hideous idol, with its collar of human sculls, forked tongues darting from its twenty serpent mouths, and seat- ed on a matted coil of adders, had there first recieved the bloody homage of the mutilated limbs and immolated infants of her worshippers.
" The temple had been overthrown, and* the island half depopulated, by an earth- quake, that agitated all the shores of In-
* Vide Maurice's Indian Antiquities.
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dia. It was rebuilt, however, by the zeal of the worshippers, who again began to re-visit the island, when a tiifaun of fury unparalleled even in those fierce latitudes, burst over the devoted spot. The pagoda was burnt to ashes by the lightning ; the inhabitants, their dwellings, and their plantations, swept away as with the besom of destruction, and not a trace of humani- ty, cultivation, or life, remained in the desolate isle. The devotees consulted their imagination for the cause of these calamities ; and, while seated under the shade of their cocoa-trees they told their long strings of coloured beads, they as- cribed it to the wrath of the goddess Seeva at the increasing popularity of the worship of Juggernaut. They asserted that her image had been seen ascending a- mid the blaze of lightning that consumed her shrine and blasted her worshippers as they clung to it for protection, and firmly believed she had withdrawn to some hap- pier isle, where she might enjoy iier feast
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of flesh, and draught of blood, unmolest- ed by the worship of a rival deity. So the island remained desolate, and without inhabitant for years.
" The crews of European vessels, assured by the natives that there was neither ani- mal, or vegetable, or water, to be found on its surface, forbore to visit ; and the In- dian of other isles, as he passed it in his canoe, threw a glance of melancholy fear at its desolation, and flung something over- board to propitiate the wrath of Seeva.
" The island, thus left to itself, became vigorously luxuriant, as some neglected children improve in health and strength, while pampered darlings die under exces- sive nurture. Flowers bloomed, and fo- liage thickened, without a hand to pluck, a step to trace, or a lip to taste them, when some Ifishermen, (who had been driven by a strong current toward the isle, and worked witli oar and sail in vain to avoid its dreadedf shore), after making ?
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thousand prayers to propitiate Seeva, were compelled to approach within an oar's length of it ; and, on their return in unex- pected safety, reported they had heard sounds so exquisite, that some other god- dess, milder than Seeva, must have fixed on that spot for her residence. The younger fishermen added to this account, that they had beheld a female figure of supernatural loveliness, glide and disap- pear amid the fohage which now luxu- riantly overshadowed the rocks ; and, in the spirit of Indian devotees, they hesi- tated not to call this delicious vision an in- carnated emanation of Vishnu, in a love- lier form than ever he had appeared be- fore,— at least far beyond that which he assumed, when he made one of his avatars in the figure of a tiger.
" The inhabitants of the islands, as super- stitious as they were imaginative, deified the vision of the isles after their manner. The old devotees, while invoking her, stuck close to the bloody rites of Seeva and Ha-
D 2
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ree, and muttered many a horrid vow over their beads, which they took care to ren- der effectual by striking sharp reeds into their arms, and tinging every bead with blood as they spoke. The young women rowed their light canoes as near as they dared to the haunted isle, making vows to Camdeo *, and sending their paper vessels, lit with wax, and filled with flowers, to- wards its coast, where they hoped their darling deity was about to fix his resi- dence. The young men also, at least those who were in love and fond of music, row- ed close to the island to solicit the god Krishnoo f to sanctify it by his presence; and not knowing what to offer to the deity, they sung their wild airs standing high on the prow of the canoe, and at last threw a figure of wax, with a kind of lyre in its hand, towards the shore of the de- solate isle.
* The Cupid of the Indian mythology, t The Indian ApoUo.
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For many a night these canoes miglit be seen glancing past each other over the darkened sea, Hke shooting stars of the deep, with their Hghted paper lanthorns, and their offerings of flowers and fruits, left by some trembling hand on the sands, or hung by a bolder one in baskets of cane on the rocks ; and still the simple islanders felt joy and devotion united in this " vo- luntary humility." It was observed, how- ever, that the worshippers departed with very different impressions of the object of their adoration. The women all clung to their oars in breathless admiration of the sweet sounds that issued from the isle ; and when that ceased they departed, murmuring over in their huts those " notes angelical," to which their own language furnished no ap- propriate sounds. The men rested long on their oars, to catch a glimpse of the form which, by the report of the fishermen, w^andered there ; and, when disappointed, they rowed home sadly.
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" Gradually the isle lost its bad cha- racter for terror ; and in spite of some old devotees, who told their blood-discoloured beads, and talked of Seeva and Haree, and even held burning splinters of wood to their scorched hands, and stuck sharp pieces of iron, which they had purchased or stolen from the crews of European ves- sels, in the most fleshy and sensitive parts of their bodies, — and, moreover, talked of suspending themselves from trees with the head downwards, till they were consumed by insects, or calcined by the sun, or ren- dered delirious by their position, — in spite of all this, which must have been very af- fecting, the young people went on their own way, — the girls offering their wreaths to Camdeo, and the youths invoking Krishnoo, till the devotees, in despair, vowed to visit this accursed island, which had set every body mad, and find out how the unknown deity was to be re- cognised and propitiated ; and whether
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flowers, and fruits, and love-vows, and the beatings of young hearts, were to be substituted for the orthodox and legiti- mate offering of nails grown into the hands till they appeared through their backs, and setoiis of ropes inserted into the sides, on which the religionist danced his dance of agony, till the ropes or his pa- tience failed. In a word, they were de- termined to find out what this deity was, who demanded no suffering from her wor- shippers,— and they fulfilled their resolu« tion in a manner worthy of their purpose. " One hundred and forty beings, crip- pled by the austerities of their rehgion, un- able to manage sail or oar, embarked in a canoe to reach what they called the accurs- ed isle. The natives, intoxicated with the belief of their sanctity, stripped them- selves naked, to push their boat through the surf, and then, making their salavis, implored them to use oars at least. The devotees, all too intent on their beads, and too well satisfied of their importance.
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in the eyes of their favourite deities, to ad- mit a doubt of their safety, set off in tri- umph,— and the consequence may be easily conjectured. The boat soon filled and sunk, and the crew perished without a single sigh of lamentation, except that they had not feasted the alligators in the sacred waters of the Ganges, or perished at least under the shadow of the domes of the holy city of Benares, in either of which cases their salvation must have been un- questionable.
" This circumstance, apparently so un- toward, operated favourably on the po- pularity of the new worship. The old system lost ground every day. Hands, instead of being scorched over the fire, were employed only in gathering flowers. Nails (with which it was the custom of the devotees to lard their persons) actually fell in price ; and a man might sit at his ease on his hams with as safe a conscience, and as fair a character, as if fourscore of them occupied the interval between. On
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the other hand, fruits were every day scattered on the shores of the favourite isle ; flowers, too, bhished on its rocks, in all the daz^zling luxuriance of colouring with which the Flora of the East delights to array herself There was that brilliant and superb lily, which, to this day, illus- trates the comparison between it and Solo- mon, who, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of them. There was the rose un- folding its " paradise of leaves," and the scarlet blossom of the bombex, which an English traveller has voluptuously describ- ed as banqueting the eye with " its mass of vegetable splendour" unparalleled. And the female votarists at last began to imi- tate some of " those sounds and sweet airs" that every breeze seemed to waft to their ears, with increasing strength of me- lody, as they floated in their canoes round this isle of enchantment.
" At length one circumstance occurred that put its sanctity of character, and that of its inmate, out of all doubt. A young
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Indian who had in vain offered to his be- loved the mystical bouquet, in which the arrangement of the flowers is made to ex- press love, rowed his canoe to the island, to learn his fate from its supposed inhabi- tant ; and as he rowed, composed a song, which expressed that his mistress despised him, as if he were a Paria, but that he would love her though he were descended from the head of Brahma ; — that her skin was more polished than the marble steps by w^hich you descend to the tank of a Rajah, and her eyes brighter than any whose glances were watched by presump- tuous strangers through the rents of the embroidered purdah * of a ^awaub ; — that she w^as loftier in his eyes than the black pagoda of Juggernaut, and more brilliant than the trident of the temple of Maha- deva, when it sparkled in the beams of the moon. And as both these objects were
* The curtain behind which women are conceaU ed.
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visible to his eyes from the shore, as he rowed on in the soft and glorious serenity of an Indian night, no wonder they found a place in his verse. Finally, he promised, that if she was propitious to his suit, he would build her a hut, raised four feet a- bove the ground to avoid the serpents ; — that her dweUing should be overshadowed by the boughs of the tamarind ; and that while she slept, he would drive the mus- quitoes from her Avith a fan, composed of the leaves of the first flowers which she ac- cepted as a testimony of his passion.
" It so happened, that the same night, the young female, whose reserve had been the result of any thing but indifference, attended by two of her companions, rowed her canoe to the same spot, with the view of discovering whether the vows of her lover were sincere. They arrived about the same time; and though it was now twilight, and the superstition of these timid beings gave a darker tinge to tho^
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shadows that surrounded them, they ven- tured to land ; and, bearing their baskets of flowers in trembling hands, advanced to hang them on the ruins of the pagoda, amid which it was presumed the new god- dess had fixed her abode. They proceed- ed, not without difficulty, through thickets of flowers that had sprung spontaneously in the uncultivated soil — not without fear that a tiger might spring on them at every step, till they recollected that those ani- mals chose generally the large jungles tor their retreat, and seldom harboured amid flowers. Still less was the alligator to be dreaded, amid the narrow streams that they could cross without tinging their an- cles wdth its pure water. The tamarind, the cocoa, and the palm-tree, shed their blossoms, and exhaled their odours, and waved their leaves, over the head of the trembling votarist as she approaclied the ruin of the pagoda. It had been a massive square building, erected amid
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rocks, that, by a caprice of nature not un- common in the Indian isles, occupied its centre, and appeared the consequence of some volcanic explosion. The earthquake that had overthrown it, had mingled the rocks and ruins together in a shapeless and deformed mass, which seemed to bear alike the traces of the impotence of art and na- ture, when prostrated by the power that has formed and can annihilate both. There were pillars, wrought with singular cha- racters, heaped amid stones that bore no impress but that of some fearful and vio- lent action of nature, that seemed to say. Mortals, write your lines with the chisel, 1 write my hieroglyphics in fire. There w^ere the disjointed piles of stones carved into the form of snakes, on which the hi- deous idol of Seeva had once been seated ; and close to them the rose was bursting through the earth which occupied the fis- sures of the rock, as if nature preached a milder theology, and deputed her darling
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flower as her missionary to her children. The idol itself had fallen, and lay in frag- ments. The horrid mouth was still visi- ble, into which human hearts had been for- merly inserted. But now, the beautiful peacocks, with their rain-bow trains and arched necks, were feeding their young a- mid the branches of the tamarind that overhung the blackened fragments. The young Indians advanced with diminished fear, for there was neither sight or sound to inspire the fear that attends the ap- proach to the presence of a spiritual being — all was calm, still, and dark. Yet their feet trod with involuntary lightness as they advanced to these ruins, which combined the devastations of nature with those of the human passions, perhaps more bloody and wild than the former. Near the ruins there had formerly been a tank, as is usual, near the pagodas, both for the purposes of refreshment and purification ; but the steps were now broken, and the water wa^
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stagnated. The young Indians, however, took up a few drops, invoked the " god- dess of the isle," and approached the only remaining arch. The exterior front of this building had been constructed of stone, but its interior had been hollowed out of the rock ; and its recesses resembled, in some degree, those in the island of Ele- phanta. There were monstrous figures carved in stone, some adhering to the rock, others detached from it, all frown- ing in their shapeless and gigantic hideous- ness, and giving to the eye of superstition the terrible representation of " gods of stone.''
" Two of the young votarists, who were distinguished for their courage, ad- vanced and performed a kind of wild dance before the ruins of the ancient gods, as they called them, and invok- ed (as they might) the new resident of the isle to be propitious to the vows of their companion, w^ho advanced to hang
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her wreath of flowers round the broken remains of an idol half-defaced and half- hidden among the fragments of stone, but clustered over with that rich vegetation which seems, in oriental countries, to an- nounce the eternal triumph of nature amid the ruins of art. Every year renews the rose, but what year shall see a pyramid re- built? As the young Indian hung her wreath on the shapeless stone, a voice murmured, " There is a withered flower there." — " Yes — yes — there is,'' answered the votarist, " and that withered flower is an emblem of my heart. I have cherished many roses, but suffered one to wither that was the sweetest to me of all the wreath. Wilt thou revive him for me, unknown goddess, and my wreath shall no longer be a dishonour to thy shrine ?" — " Wilt thou revive the rose by placing it in the warmth of thy bosom," said the young lover, ap- pearing from behind the fragments of rock and ruin that had sheltered him, and from
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which he had uttered his oracular re- ply, and listened with delight to the em- blematical but intelligible language of his beloved. " Wilt thou revive the rose?" he asked, in the triumph of love, as he clasped her to his bosom. The young In- dian, yielding at once to love and super- stition, seemed half-melting in his embrace, when, in a moment, she uttered a wild shriek, repelled him with all her strength, and crouched in an uncouth posture of fear, while she pointed with one quivering hand to a figure that appeared, at that mo- ment, in the perspective of that tumul- tuous and indefinite heap of stone. The lover, unalarmed by the shriek of his mis- tress, was advancing to catch her in his arms, when his eye fell on the object that had struck hers, and he sunk on his face to the earth, in mute adoration.
" The form was that of a female, but such as they had never before beheld, for her skin was perfectly white, (at least in
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tlreir eyes, who had never seen any but the dark-red tint of the natives of the Ben* galese islands). Her drapery (as well as they could see) consisted only of flowers, whose rich colours and fantastic grouping harmonized well with the peacock's feathers twined amongthem, and altogether com pos- ed a feathery fan of wild drapery, which, in truth, beseemed an "island goddess." Her long hair, of a colour they had never be- held before, pale auburn, flowed to her feet, and was fantastically entwined with the flowers and the feathers that formed her dress. On her head was a coronal of shells, of hue and lustre unknown except in the Indian seas — the purple and the green vied with the amethyst, and the emerald. On her white bare shoulder a loxia was perched, and round her neck was hung a string of their pearl — like eggs, so pure and pellucid, that the first sovereign in Europe might have exchanged her richest necklace of pearls
A TALE. 9f
for them. Her arms and feet were per- fectly bare, and her step had a goddess-like rapidity and lightness, that aifected the imagination of the Indians as much as the extraordinary colour of her skin and hair. The young lovers sunk in awe before this vision as it passed before their eyes. While they prostrated them- selves, a delicious sound trembled on their ears. The beautiful vision spoke to them^ but it was in a language they did not un- derstand ; and this confirming their belief that it was the language of the gods, they prostrated themselves to her again. At that moment, the loxia, springing from her shoulder, came fluttering towards them. " He is going to seek for fire- flies to light his cell *," said the Indians to each other; But the bird, who, with an intelligence
* From the fire-flies being so often found in the nest of the loxia, the Indians imagine he illuminates his nest with them. It is more likely they are the food of his young.
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peculiar to his species, understood and adopted the predilection of the fair being he belonged to, for the fresh flowers in which he saw her arrayed every day, dart- ed at the withered rose-bud in the wreath of the young Indian; and, striking his slender beak through it, laid it at her feet. The omen was interpreted auspi- ciously by the lovers, and, bending once more to the earth, they rowed back to their island, but no longer in separate canoes. The lover steered that of his mis- tress, while she sat beside him in silence ; and the young people who accompanied them chaunted verses in praise of the xicJiite to lovers.