- end_line
- 7128
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.027Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7065
- text
- eye.
The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with
oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on
fickle earth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out
unstable skies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or
shipwreck and sudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause,
the blithe stranger never was seen again.
Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere
due time never disturbed the Cholos’ busy mind, now all intent upon the
toilsome matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom
coming like the thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the
little party were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No more
they sought to gaze with feverish fear, or still more feverish hope,
beyond the present’s horizon line; but into the furthest future their
own silent spirits sailed. By persevering labor beneath that burning
sun, Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many scores of
tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success,
and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a
catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily
started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged
gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By
some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for though
they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at
the time) forced in deep water against that iron bar, the ill-made
catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when dashed by
broad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth of
the reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla’s eyes.
Before Hunilla’s eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passed
before her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on a
rude bower among the withered thickets, crowning a lofty cliff, a
little back from the beach. The thickets were so disposed, that in
looking upon the sea at large she peered out from among the branches as
from the lattice of a high balcony. But upon the day we speak of here,
the better to watch the adventure of those two hearts she loved,
Hunilla had withdrawn the branches to one side, and held them so. They
formed an oval frame, through which the bluely boundless sea rolled
like a painted one. And there, the invisible painter painted to her
view the wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs
slantingly upheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling arms
indistinguishable among them; and then all subsided into smooth-flowing
creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck; while first and
last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture; a
dream of the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.
So instant was the scene, so trance-like its mild pictorial effect, so
distant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that
Hunilla gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to
sit thus dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all that
otherwise might be done. With half a mile of sea between, how could her
two enchanted arms aid those four fated ones? The distance long, the
time one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay the
thunder-bolt? Felipe’s body was washed ashore, but Truxill’s never
came; only his gay, braided hat of golden straw—that same sunflower
thing he waved to her, pushing from the strand—and now, to the last
gallant, it still saluted her. But Felipe’s body floated to the marge,
with one arm encirclingly outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the
lover-husband softly clasped his bride, true to her even in death’s
dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt thou be
faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who
never plighted it.
- title
- Chunk 3