CHAPTER I

IVIZA

Febrer was contemplating his image, a transparent shadow of quivering contours on the changing waters, through which the bottom of the sea could be seen with milky spots of clean sand and dark blocks of stone broken from the mountain overgrown with a strange vegetation.

The seaweed floated backward and forward like waving green hair; fruits round as Indian figs hung in whitish clusters on the rocks; pearly flowers shone in the depths of the green waters, and among the mysterious growth star-fishes spread their colored points; sea-urchins formed balls like dark blots covered with spines; the hippocampi, those little "devil's horses," swam restlessly; and flashes of silver and purple, of tails and fins, passed swiftly among whirlpools and bubbles, dashing out of one cave to disappear into the mouth of another unfathomable mystery.

Jaime was leaning over a small boat, with its sail dropped. In one hand he held the volanti, a long line with several hooks, which almost reached the bottom of the sea.

It was nearly midday. The craft lay in the shade. In the rear extended the wide coast of Iviza with its broad sinuosities of projecting points and steep shores. Before him was the VedrÁ, an isolated rock, a superb landmark a thousand feet in height, which, standing solitary, seemed even higher. At his feet the shadow of the colossus imparted to the waters a dense and yet transparent color. Beyond its azure shadow seethed the Mediterranean, flashing with gold in the sunlight, while the coasts of Iviza, ruddy and lonely, seemed to irradiate fire.

Every pleasant day Jaime came to the narrow channel between the island and the VedrÁ to fish. In calm weather this was a river of blue water with submarine rocks which peeped their black heads above the surface. The giant allowed itself to be approached without losing its imposing appearance, harsh and inhospitable. When the wind blew fresh and strong, the half submerged heads were crowned with foam and roared ominously; mountains of water rushed roaring and foaming through this maritime throat, and the fishermen must hoist their sails and hurry away from the narrow pass, from this growling chaos of whirlpools and currents.

In the prow of the boat was old Uncle Ventolera, a seaman who had sailed on ships of many nations, who had been Jaime's companion since he arrived in Iviza. "I am almost eighty, seÑor," but he never let a day pass without going out to fish. Neither illness nor fear of bad weather prevented him. His face was tanned by the sun and the salt air, but it had few wrinkles. His rolled up trousers displayed spare legs with fresh and healthy skin. His blouse, open on the chest, showed a gray coating of hair of the same color as that on his head, which was covered by a black cap, a souvenir of his last trip to Liverpool, boasting a red tassel on the top, and a broad white and red plaid ribbon. His whiskers were white, and from his ears hung copper earrings.

When Jaime first made his acquaintance he expressed curiosity in regard to these decorations.

"When I was a lad I was a ship's boy on an English schooner," said Ventolera in his Ivizian dialect, singing the words in a sweet little voice. "The master was a very arrogant Maltese, with whiskers and earrings; and I said to myself, 'When I get to be a man I'm going to be like the padrone.' Although you see me like this, I used to be a great swell, and I used to like to imitate persons of importance."

When Jaime first went but fishing to the VedrÁ he forgot to watch the water and the line in his hand, while he stared at the colossus which stands high above the sea, broken off from the coast.

The rocks piled to a great height, wedged in one by another and mounting into space, compelled the spectator to throw back his head to see the pointed summit. The rocks at the water's edge were accessible. The sea swept over them, sinking in to the low arcades of submarine caves, a refuge of corsairs in former days, and now sometimes the depository of smugglers. One could leap at places from rock to rock among the sabinas and other wild plants along its base, but farther up the rock rose straight, smooth, inaccessible, with polished gray walls. At enormous heights were green-covered benches, and above these the cliff again rose vertically to its crest, sharp as a finger. A party of hunters had scaled a portion of this citadel, climbing along salient angles until they gained the lower benches. Beyond there no one had gone, according to Uncle Ventolera, except a certain friar exiled by the government as a Carlist agitator, who had built on the coast of Iviza the hermitage of the Cubells.

"He was a strong and daring man," continued the old sailor. "They say that he erected a cross on the summit, but the wind blew it down some time ago."

In the hollows of the great gray rock, shaded by the green sabinas and sea pines, Febrer saw points of color jumping about, something like red and white fleas, incessantly moving. They were the goats of the VedrÁ; goats abandoned for some years which had become wild, and which reproduced beyond the reach of man, having lost all domestic habit, springing up the mountain side with prodigious leaps as soon as a boat approached the cliff. On calm mornings their bleating, increased by the impressive silence, could be heard far out upon the sea.

One morning, Jaime, having brought his gun, took a couple of shots at a cluster of goats a long distance away, not expecting to hit them, but merely for the fun of seeing them leap away. The reports, magnified by the echo within the narrow defile, filled the air with the screaming and flapping of wings of hundreds of enormous old gulls that flew out of their haunts, frightened by the noise. The startled island had given forth its winged inhabitants. Other huge birds emerged and flew from the summit and disappeared like black specks toward the larger island. These were falcons which roosted in the VedrÁ and lived upon the doves of Iviza and Formentera.

The old sailor pointed out to Febrer certain window-like caves in the most sheer and inaccessible cliffs of the smaller island. Neither goat nor man could reach them. Uncle Ventolera knew what was hidden within those dark passages. They were beehives; beehives centuries and centuries old; natural retreats of bees that, crossing the straits between Iviza and the VedrÁ, took refuge in these inaccessible caves after having gleaned the flowery fields of the island. At certain times of the year he had seen glistening streams trickling down the cliff from these openings. It was honey melted by the sun at the entrance of the cavern.

Uncle Ventolera tugged at his line with a grunt of satisfaction.

"That makes eight!"

Hanging from a hook, flapping its tail and kicking, was a species of lobster of dark gray color. Others of its kind lay inert in a basket at the old man's side.

"Uncle Ventolera, aren't you going to sing the mass?"

"If you will allow me."

Jaime knew the old man's habits, his fondness for singing the canticles of high mass whenever he was in a joyous mood. Having given up long voyages, his pleasure consisted in singing on Sundays in the church in the town of San JosÉ, or in that of San Antonio, and indulging in the same diversion during all the happy moments of his life.

"In a minute," he said with a tone of superiority, as if he were going to treat his companion to the greatest of delights.

Placing one hand to his mouth he quickly extracted his teeth and put them in his girdle. His face collapsed into wrinkles around his sunken mouth, and he began to sing the phrases of the priest and the responses of the assistant. The childish and tremulous voice acquired a grave sonorousness as it resounded over the watery expanse and was reproduced by the echoes from the rocks. The goats on the VedrÁ responded from time to time with mild bleatings of surprise. Jaime smiled at the earnestness of the old man who, with eyes gazing aloft, pressed one hand against his heart, holding his fishline with the other. Thus they remained for some time, Febrer watching his line, on which he did not perceive the slightest movement. All the fish were taken by the old man. This put him in a bad humor, and he suddenly became annoyed at the singing.

"Enough; TÍo Ventolera, that's enough!"

"You liked it, didn't you?" said the old man with candor. "I know other things, too; I could tell you about Captain Riquer—a true story. My father saw it all."

Jaime made a gesture of protest. No, he did not wish to hear about Captain Riquer. He already knew the tale by heart. They had been going out fishing together for three months, and rarely did they get through the day without a relation of the event; but TÍo Ventolera, with his senile inconsequence, convinced of the importance of everything concerning himself, had already begun his story, and Jaime, his back turned to his companion, was leaning over the boat, gazing into the depths of the sea, to avoid hearing once again what he already knew so well.

Captain Antonio Riquer! A hero of Iviza, as great a mariner as BarcelÓ, who fought at Gibraltar and led the expedition against Algiers, but as BarcelÓ was a Majorcan and the other an Ivizan all the honors and decorations were bestowed upon the former. If there were such a thing as justice the sea ought to swallow the haughty island, the stepmother of Iviza. Suddenly the old man recollected that Febrer was a Majorcan and he was silent and confused.

"That is to say," he added, making excuses for himself, "there are good people everywhere. Your lordship is one of them; but, to come back to Captain Riquer——"

He was the master of a small three-masted vessel called a xebec, armed for privateering, the San Antonio, manned by Ivizans, engaged in constant strife with the galliots of the Algerian Moors and with the ships of England, the enemy of Spain. Riquer's name was known all over the Mediterranean. The event occurred in 1806. On Trinity Sunday, in the morning, a frigate carrying the British flag appeared off Iviza, tacking beyond the reach of the cannons of the castle. It was the Felicidad, the vessel of the Italian Miguel Novelli, dubbed "the Pope," a citizen of Gibraltar and a corsair in the service of England. He came in search of Riquer, to mock him in his very beard, sailing arrogantly in view of his city. The bells were rung furiously, drums were beat, and the citizens crowded upon the walls of Iviza and in the ward of "La Marina." The San Antonio was being careened on the beach, but Riquer with his men shoved her into the water. The small cannon of the xebec had been dismounted, but they hastily tied them with ropes. Every man from the ward of the Marina was eager to embark, but the captain chose only fifty men and heard mass with them in the church of San Telmo. While they were hoisting the sails, Riquer's father appeared. He was an old sailor, and, in spite of his son's opposition, he climbed into the boat.

The San Antonio took many hours and expert maneuvering to draw close to "the Pope's" ship. The poor xebec looked like an insect beside the great vessel manned by the wildest and most reckless crew ever gathered on the wharves of Gibraltar—Maltese, Englishmen, Romans, Venetians, Livornese, Sardinians, and Dalmatians. The first broadside from the ship's cannons kills five men on the deck of the xebec, among them the father of Riquer. He lifts up the old man's body, being bathed in his blood, and he runs to place it in the hold. "They have killed our father!" groan the brothers. "Let's get busy!" replies Riquer sternly. "Bring out the frascos! We must board her!"

The frascos, a terrible weapon of the Ivizan corsairs, fire-bottles, which, as they burst upon the enemy's decks, set it ablaze, begin to fall upon "the Pope's" vessel. The rigging begins to burn, the upper works shiver, and like demons Riquer and his men spring aboard among the flames, pistol in one hand, boarding axe in the other. The deck flows with blood, the corpses roll into the sea with broken heads. They find "the Pope" hiding, half dead with fear, in a locker in his cabin.

TÍo Ventolera laughed like a boy as he recalled this grotesque detail of Riquer's great victory. Then, when "the Pope" was brought a prisoner to the island, the people of the city and the peasants gathered in crowds, staring at him as if he were a rare wild beast. This was the pirate, the terror of the Mediterranean! And they had found him stuck between decks, shaking with fear of the Ivizans! He was sentenced to be strung up on the island of the hanged men, a small islet where now stands the lighthouse in the Strait of the Freus; but Godoy ordered him to be exchanged for some other Spaniards.

Ventolera's father had seen great events; he was a cabin-boy on Riquer's ship. Later he had been captured by the Algerians, being one of the last captives enslaved before the occupation of Algiers by the French. There he ran a terrible risk of death once upon a time when one out of every ten of the captives was killed in revenge for the assassination of a wicked Moor whose body was found crammed into a latrine. TÍo Ventolera remembered the stories his father used to tell of the days when Iviza produced corsairs, and when captured vessels were brought into port with captive Moors, both men and and women. The prisoners would be haled before the escribano de presas, the scrivener of the captives, as evidences of the victory, and he compelled them to swear "by Alaquivir, by the Prophet and his Koran, with hand and index-finger raised, his face turned toward the rising sun," while the fierce Ivizan corsairs, on dividing the booty, set aside a sum for the purchase of linen for binding up their wounds, and left another portion of the loot under pledge for celebration of daily mass by a priest every day while they were absent from the island.

TÍo Ventolera passed from Riquer to earlier valorous corsair commanders, but Jaime, annoyed by his chatter, ever displaying a desire to overwhelm the island of Majorca, its hostile neighbor, at last grew impatient.

"It's twelve o'clock, grandfather. Let's go in; the fish have quit biting."

The old man glanced at the sun, which had passed beyond the crest of the VedrÁ. It was not yet noon, but it lacked little. Then he looked at the sea; the seÑor was right; the fish would bite no longer, and he was satisfied with his day's work.

He tugged at the rope with his lean arms, hoisting the small triangular sail. The boat heeled over, pitched without making headway, and then began to cleave the water with a gentle ripple against her sides. They sailed out of the channel, leaving the VedrÁ behind, coasting along the island. Jaime held the tiller, while the old man, clasping the fish-basket between his knees, began counting and fingering the catch with avaricious delight.

They rounded a cape and a new stretch of coast appeared. On the summit of a mountain of red rocks, dotted here and there by dark masses of shrubbery, stood a broad yellow squat tower, with no opening on the side toward the sea except a window, a mere black hole of irregular contour. The outlines of a porthole in the battlement of the tower, that had formerly served for a small cannon, was outlined against the blue sky. On one side the promontory rose sheer above the sea, and on the other sloped landward, covered with green, with low and leafy groves, among which peeped the white dots of a diminutive village.

The boat headed straight for the tower, and when near it they turned her toward a nearby beach, the bow grating upon the gravel. The old man struck the sail and warped the boat near a rock along shore from which hung a chain. He fastened the boat to it, and then he and Jaime sprang out. He did not wish to beach the boat; he was thinking of going out again after dinner, a matter of putting out a trawl which he would take up again the next morning. Would the seÑor accompany him? Febrer made a negative gesture, and the old man left him until the following day when he would awaken him from the beach singing the introit, while the stars still shimmered in the sky. Daybreak must find them at the VedrÁ.

"Let us see how early you will come down from the tower!"

The fisherman turned toward the mainland, his fish-basket hanging on his arm.

"Give my regards to Margalida, TÍo Ventolera, and tell her to have my dinner brought over right away."

The sailor replied with a shrug of his shoulders without turning his face, and Jaime walked along the beach in the direction of the tower. His feet, shod in hempen sandals, crunched on the gravel at the edge of the wash from the surf. Among the azure pebbles were fragments of pottery; portions of earthen handles; concave pieces of bowls bearing vestiges of decoration, which had, perhaps, belonged to swelling urns; small, irregular spheres of gray clay in which one seemed to make out, despite the corrosion of the salt water, human features worn by the passing centuries. They were curious relics of days of storm; suggestions of the great secret of the sea, which had come to light after being hidden thousands of years; confused and legendary history returned by the restless waves to the shores of these islands, which had been the refuge in ancient times of Phoenicians and Carthaginians, of Arabs and Normans. TÍo Ventolera told of silver coins, thin as wafers, found by boys at play on the beach. His grandfather remembered the tradition of mysterious caves containing treasure, caves of the Saracens and Normans, which had been walled in with heavy blocks of stone, and long forgotten.

Jaime began to ascend the rocky slope leading to the tower. The tamarisk-shrubs stood erect like dwarf pines clothed in sharp and rustling foliage, which seemed to be nourished on the salt carried in the atmosphere, their roots embedded in the rock. The wind on stormy days, as it swept away the sand, left bare their multiple, entangled roots, black and slender serpents in which Febrer's feet were often caught. A sound of hurried flight and a crackling of leaves in the bushes answered to the echo of his footsteps, while a bunch of gray hair with a tail like a button scampered from bush to bush in blind haste. The startled rabbits roused dark emerald-colored lizards basking lazily in the sun.

Together with these sounds there floated to Jaime's ears a faint drumming, and the voice of a man intoning an Ivizan romance. He hesitated from time to time as if undecided, repeating the same verses over and over until he managed to pass on to new ones, uttering at the end of each strophe, according to the custom of the country, a strange screech like a peacock, a harsh and strident trill like that which accompanies the songs of the Arabs.

When Febrer gained the crest, he saw the musician sitting on a stone behind the tower, gazing at the sea.

It was a youth he had met several times at Can MallorquÍ, the house of his old renter, PÈp. Resting on his thigh was the Ivizan tambourine, a small drum painted blue, decorated with flowers and gilded branches. His left arm was resting on the instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a reflective attitude, with his thoughts concentrated on his improvisation, peeping between his fingers at the immense horizon on the sea.

He was called the Minstrel, as were all those in the island who sang original verses at dances and serenades. He was a tall young man, slender, and narrow shouldered, a youth not yet eighteen. As he sang he coughed, his slender neck swelled, and his face, of a transparent whiteness, flushed. His eyes were large, the eyes of a woman, prominent and rose-colored. He always wore gala costume; blue velvet trousers; the girdle, and the ribbon which served him as a cravat, were of a flaming red, and above this he wore a little feminine kerchief around his neck, with the embroidered point in front. Two roses were tucked behind his ears; his hair, lustrous with pomade, hung like a wavy fringe beneath a hat with a flowered band, which he wore thrust on the back of his head. Seeing these almost feminine adornments, the large eyes and the pale face, Febrer compared him to one of those anemic virgins who are idealized in modern art. But this virgin displayed a certain suggestive bulk protruding beneath his red belt. Undoubtedly it was one of the knives or pistols made by the ironworkers of the island; the inseparable companion of every Ivizan youth.

Seeing Jaime, the Minstrel arose, leaving the tambourine hanging from his left arm by a strap, while he touched the brim of his hat with his right hand, still holding his drumstick.

"Good-day to you!"

Febrer, who, like a good Majorcan, had believed in the ferocity of the Ivizans, admired their courteous manners when he met them on the roadways. They committed murder among themselves, always on account of love affairs, but the stranger was respected with the same traditional scruples that the Arab possesses for the man who seeks hospitality beneath his tent.

The Minstrel seemed ashamed that the Majorcan seÑor had surprised him near his house, on his own land. He had come because he liked to look at the sea from this height. He felt better in the shadow of the tower; no friend was near to disturb him, and he could freely compose the verses of a romance for the next dance in the town of San Antonio.

Jaime smiled at the Minstrel's timid excuses, suggesting that perhaps the verses were dedicated to some maiden. The boy inclined his head. "SÍ, seÑor."

"And who is she?"

"Flower of the Almond," said the poet.

"Flower of the Almond? A pretty name."

Encouraged by the seÑor's approbation, the youth continued talking. The "Flower of the Almond" was Margalida, the daughter of seÑor PÈp of Can MallorquÍ. The Minstrel himself had given her this name, seeing her as white and beautiful as the flowers which the almond tree puts forth when the frosts are done and the first warm breezes blowing in from the sea announce the spring. All the youths roundabout repeated it, and Margalida was known by no other name. He had a certain gift for thinking of pretty sobriquets. Those which he gave lasted forever.

Febrer listened to the boy's words with a smile. In what a strange creature had the muse taken refuge! He asked the youth if he worked, and the boy replied negatively. His parents did not wish him to do so; a doctor from the city had seen him in the market place one day and advised his family that he must avoid all fatigue; and he, pleased at such counsel, spent the working days in the country in the shade of a tree, listening to the songs of the birds, spying on the girls walking along the paths, and when some new verse rung in his head he sat down on the seashore to quietly work it out and fix it in his memory.

Jaime took leave of him, saying that he might continue his poetic occupation, but a few steps away he stopped, turning his head at not hearing the tambourine again. The troubador was going down the hill, fearful of annoying the seÑor with his music, and seeking another solitary retreat.

Febrer reached the tower. All that which from a distance seemed to belong to a lower story was massive foundation. The door was on a level with the elevated windows; thus the guards in early days could avoid being surprised by the pirates. For ingress and egress they made use of a ladder which they drew up after them at night. Jaime had ordered made a rude wooden ladder by which to reach his room, but he never drew it in. The tower, constructed of sandstone, was somewhat eroded on its exterior by the winds from the sea. Many stones had fallen from their places, and these hollows simulated steps for scaling the tower.

The hermit ascended to his habitation. It was a round room with no other opening than the door and the window, which almost seemed to be tunnels, so great was the thickness of the walls. These, on the inside, were carefully whitewashed with the gleaming lime of Iviza, giving a transparency and milky softness to all the buildings, and to the modest little country houses the appearance of elegant mansions. Only on the ceiling, broken by a skylight, which told of the ancient ladder-way leading to the flat-roof above, did there remain any trace of the soot of the fires which used to be lighted in former days.

Rough boards, crudely fastened to wooden cross-pieces, which served to reinforce them, were used for door, window-shutter, and ceiling trap-door. There was not a pane of glass in the tower. It was still summer, and Febrer, undecided, and, in truth, indifferent as to his future, put off the details of actually settling down until some other time.

This retreat seemed to him romantic and pleasing, in spite of its crudity. He detected in it the skilful hand of PÈp and the grace of Margalida. He noticed the whiteness of the walls, the neatness of three chairs and of the deal table, all scrubbed by the daughter of his former tenant. Fish nets were draped upon the walls like tapestry; beyond hung the gun and a bag of cartridges. Long, slender sea-shells with the brown translucency of the tortoise were arranged in the form of fans. They were the gift of TÍo Ventolera, as were two enormous periwinkles on the table, white, with erect points, and the interior of a moist rose-color, like feminine flesh. Near the window his mattress lay rolled up with his pillow and sheets—a rustic bed which Margalida or her mother made every afternoon.

Jaime slept there more peacefully than in his palace in Palma. When TÍo Ventolera failed to awaken him at dawn by singing mass down on the beach or by climbing up the hill to fling stones at the door of the tower, the hermit rested on his mattress until late in the morning, listening to the music of the sea, the great crooning mother; watching the mysterious light, a mixture of golden sun and blue waters filtering through the cracks and trembling on the white walls; hearing the gulls scream outside, as they passed before the windows in joyous flight, flinging swift shadows within the room.

At night he retired early and lay open-eyed in the diffused starry light, wakeful in the glint of the moon as it shimmered through the half-opened door. It was that half hour in which all the past appears supernatural; that forerunner of sleep, in which the remotest memories are revived. The sea roared, strident calls of the night birds broke the stillness, the gulls complained with a lament like tortured children. What were his friends doing now? What were they saying in the cafÉs of the Borne? Who might be in the Casino?

In the morning these recollections brought a sad smile to his lips. The returning day seemed to gladden his life. Had he ever been like others who rejoiced in existence in the city? Here was where one could really live.

He glanced over the interior of his round tower. It was a veritable salon, more agreeable to him than the house of his forefathers; this was all his own, free from the dread of co-ownership with money lenders and usurers. He even had handsome antiquities which no one could claim. Near the door was a pair of amphorÆ, drawn up by fishermen's nets—whitish earthern jars with pointed bases, indurated by the sea and capriciously decorated by Nature with garlands of adhering shells. In the center of the table, between the periwinkles, was another gift from TÍo Ventolera, a terra cotta female head with a strange round tiara crowning her braided hair. The grayish clay was dotted with little, hard spherical concretions formed while lying for centuries in the salt water. As Jaime gazed at this companion of his solitude his imagination pierced the harsh outer crust and he recognized the serenity of feature, the strangeness and mystery of the almond-shaped, Oriental eyes. It appeared to him as to no one else. His long hours of silent contemplation had brushed away the mask, the work of centuries.

"Look at her! She is my sweetheart," he had said one morning to Margalida while she was cleaning his room. "Isn't she beautiful? She must have been a princess of Tyre or of Ascalon, I am not sure which; but the thing of which I am sure is that she was destined for me, that she loved me four thousand years before I was born, and that she has come down through the ages to seek me. She owned ships, robes of purple and palaces with terraced gardens, but she abandoned all to hide in the sea, waiting dozens of centuries for a wave to bear her to this coast so that TÍo Ventolera might find her and bring her home to me. Why do you stare at me like that? You, poor child, cannot comprehend these things."

Margalida did, indeed, look at him in surprise. Imbued with her father's respect for this high-caste gentleman, she could only imagine him talking seriously. What things he must have seen in this world!

Now his words about this millenial sweetheart shook her credulity, causing her to smile nervously, while at the same time she looked with superstitious fear at the great lady of forgotten centuries who was nothing but a terra cotta head. How could Don Jaime talk like that? Everything about him was strange!

Whenever Febrer climbed up to the tower he sat down near the doorway and looked across the landscape. At the base of the hill spread recently ploughed fields, wooded areas belonging to Febrer which PÈp was clearing for cultivation. Then began the plantations of almonds, of a fresh green color, and the ancient and twisted olive trees, which lifted up their dark trunks with tufted branches bearing silver gray leaves. The house, Can MallorquÍ, was a sort of Moorish dwelling, a cluster of buildings, all as square as dice, dazzling white, and flat-roofed. New white buildings had been added as the family increased, and as its necessities were augmented. Each of the dice constituted one room, and, taken together, they formed a house, which resembled an Arabian village. From without no one could guess which were the living rooms and which the stables.

Beyond Can MallorquÍ lay the grove, and the high-banked terraces, separated by thick stone walls. The strong winds did not suffer the trees to grow tall, so they put out many luxuriant branches round about them, gaining in width what they lost in height. The branches of all the trees were upheld by numerous forked sticks. Some of the fig trees had hundreds of supports and spread out like an immense green tent ready to shelter sleeping giants. They were natural summer-houses in which nearly a whole tribe might be sheltered. The horizon in the background was shut out by pine-clad mountains, having here and there red, barren spots. Columns of smoke rose out of the dark foliage from the pits of the charcoal burners.

Febrer had now been on the island three months. His arrival had astonished PÈp Arabi, who was still busy telling his friends and relatives of his stupendous adventure, his unheard of daring, his recent voyage to Majorca with his children, his few hours in Palma, and his visit to the Palace of the Febrers, a place of enchantment, which held within its confines all the luxurious and regal splendor that existed in the world. Jaime's brusque declarations had astonished the peasant less.

"PÈp, I am ruined; you are rich compared to me. I have come to live in the tower; I don't know how long; perhaps forever."

He entered into the details of getting settled in his new quarters while PÈp smiled with an incredulous air. Ruined! All great gentlemen said the same thing, but what was left them in their misfortune was enough to enrich many poor men. They were like the vessels shipwrecked off Formentera, before the government established lighthouses. The people of Formentera, a lawless and God-forsaken crowd—they were natives of a smaller island—used to light bonfires to decoy the sailors, and when the ship was lost to them it was not lost to the islanders, for its spoils made many of them rich.

A Febrer poor? PÈp would not accept the money Febrer offered him. He was going to cultivate some of the seÑor's lands; they would settle accounts some other time. Since he was determined to live in the tower PÈp worked hard to make it habitable, besides ordering his children to carry the seÑor's dinner to him whenever he did not feel like coming down to the table.

These three months had been rustic isolation to Jaime. He did not write a letter, nor open a newspaper, nor read any book, except the half dozen volumes he had brought from Palma. The city of Iviza, as tranquil and dreamy as a town in the interior of the Peninsula, seemed to him a remote capital. Probably Majorca and the other great cities he had visited no longer existed. During the first month of his new life an extraordinary event disturbed his placid tranquillity. A letter came; an envelope bearing the mark of one of the cafÉs in the Borne and a few lines in large, crude script. It was Toni ClapÉs who had written. He wished him much joy in his new existence. In Palma everything was as usual. Pablo Vails did not write because he was angry with Febrer for going away without bidding him good-bye. Still he was a good friend, and he was busy disentangling Jaime's business affairs. He had a diabolical cleverness for that sort of thing—a Chueta, in fact! He would write more later.

Two months had gone by without the arrival of another letter. What did he care about news from a world to which he should never return? He did not know what destiny had in store for him; he did not even wish to think of it; hither he had come and here he would stay, with no other pleasures than hunting and fishing, enjoying an animal-like ease, having no other ideas or desires than those of primitive man.

He dwelt apart from Ivizan life, not mingling in their doings. He was a gentleman among peasants; a stranger! They treated him respectfully, but it was a frigid respect.

The traditional existence of these rude and somewhat ferocious people held for him that attraction which the extraordinary and the vigorous always exerts. The island, thrown upon its own resources, had been compelled century after century to face Norman pirates, Moorish sailors, galleys from Castile, ships from the Italian republics, Turkish, Tunisian, and Algerian vessels, and in more recent times, the English buccaneers. Formentera, uninhabited for centuries after having been a granary of the Romans, served as a treacherous anchorage for the hostile fleets. The churches were still veritable fortresses, with strong towers where the peasants took refuge on being warned by bonfires that enemies had landed. This hazardous life of perpetual danger and ceaseless struggle had produced a people habituated to the shedding of blood, to the defense of their rights, weapons in hand; the farmers and fishermen of the present day possessed the mentality of their ancestors, and kept up the same customs. There were no villages; there were houses scattered over many kilometers, with no other nucleus than the church and the dwellings of the curate and the alcalde. The only town was the capital, the one called in ancient documents the Royal Fortress of Iviza, with its adjacent suburb of La Marina.

When a youth arrived at puberty his father summoned him into the kitchen of the farmhouse in the presence of all the family.

"Now you are a man," he said solemnly, handing him a knife with a stout blade. The youthful paladin lost his filial shrinking. In future he would defend himself instead of seeking the protection of his family. Later, when he had saved some money he would complete his knightly trappings by purchasing a pocket-pistol with silver decorations, made by the ironworkers of the country, who had their forges set up in the forest.

Fortified by possession of these evidences of citizenship, which he never laid aside as long as he lived, he associated with other youths similarly armed and the life of a swain with its courtings opened before him; serenades with the accompaniment of signal calls; dances, excursions to parishes that were celebrating the feast of their patron saint, where they amused themselves slinging stones at a rooster with unerring aim, and above all the festeigs, the traditional courtships when seeking a bride, the most respectable of customs, which gave occasion for fights and murders.

There were no thieves on the island. Houses isolated in the heart of the country were often left with the key in the door during the absence of their owners. The men did not commit murder over questions of gain. Enjoyment of the soil was equitably divided, and the mildness of the climate and the frugality of the people made them generous and but mildly attached to material possessions. Love, only love, impelled men to kill each other. The rustic caballeros were impassioned in their predilections, and as fatal in their jealousy as heroes in novels. For the sake of a maiden with black eyes and brown hands they hunted and challenged each other in the darkness of night, with outcries of defiance; they sighted each other from afar with a howl before coming to blows. The modern pistol which fired but one shot seemed to them insufficient, and in addition to the cartridge they rammed in a handful of powder and balls. If the weapon did not burst in the hands of the aggressor, it was sure to make dust of the enemy.

The courtings lasted for months and even for years. A peasant-farmer who had a daughter of suitable age for betrothal would see the youths of the district and others from all over the island offer themselves, for every Ivizan deemed it his privilege to court her. The father of the girl would count the suitors—ten, fifteen, twenty, sometimes even thirty. Then he would calculate the amount of time that could be devoted to the affair before he would be overcome by sleep, and, taking into account the number of aspirants, he divided it into so many minutes for each.

At twilight they would gather from every direction for the courting, some in groups, humming to the accompaniment of clucking and a sort of whinnying, others alone, blowing on the bimbau, an instrument made of small sheets of iron, which buzzed like a hornet, serving to lull them into forgetfulness of the fatigue of the journey. They came from far away. Some walked three hours, and must travel as many back again, crossing from one end of the island to the other on the courting days which were Thursdays and Saturdays, for the sake of talking three minutes with a girl.

In the summer they sat in the pÒrchu, a kind of rural zaguÁn, or if it were winter they would go into the kitchen. The girl sat motionless on a stone bench. She had removed her straw hat with its long streamers that during the daytime gave her the air of an operetta shepherdess; she was dressed in gala attire, wearing the blue or green accordian-plaited skirt, which she kept during the remainder of the week compressed by cords, and hanging from the ceiling, in order to keep the plaiting intact. Under this she wore other and still other skirts; eight, ten or twelve petticoats, all the feminine clothing the house possessed, a solid funnel of wool and cotton that obliterated every sign of sex and made it impossible to image the existence of a fleshy reality beneath the bulk of cloth. Rows of filigree buttons glittered on the cuffs of her jacket; on her breast, crushed flat by a monastic corset which seemed made of iron, shone a triple chain of gold with its enormous links; from beneath the kerchief worn on the head hung her heavy braids tied with ribbons. On the bench, serving as a cushion for her voluminous body, made bulky by skirts, lay the abrigais, the feminine winter garment.

The suitors deliberated over the question of precedence in the courting, and one after another they took their places at the girl's side, talking to her the allotted number of minutes. If one of them, becoming too enthusiastic in conversation, forgot his companions and trespassed on their time, they reminded him by coughs, furious glances, and threatening words. If he persisted, the strongest of the band would grasp him by the arm and drag him away so that another might take his place. Sometimes when there were many suitors and time was at a premium, the girl would talk with two at once, trying to display no preference. Thus the courting continued until she manifested predilection for a youth, often without regard for her parents' choice. In this short springtime of her life the woman was queen. After marriage she cultivated the soil alongside her husband and was little better than a beast.

The rejected youths, if they felt no particular interest in the girls, would then retire, transferring their affections a few leagues farther on; but if they were really enamored, they would lurk about the house and the chosen one was forced to fight with his former rivals, achieving marriage only by a miracle after passing through a pathway strewn with knives and pistols.

The pistol was like a second tongue to the Ivizan; at the Sunday dances he would fire off shots to demonstrate his amorous enthusiasm. On leaving his sweetheart's house, to give her and her family a sign of his appreciation, he was accustomed to fire a shot as he crossed the threshold, then calling out, "Good-night!" If, on the contrary, he went away offended and wished to insult the family, he would invert this order, first calling out, "Good-night," and shooting his pistol afterwards; but he was obliged in that case to rush out at full speed, for the members of the household promptly replied to the declaration of war with answering shots, with clubs, and with rocks.

Jaime was living on the brink of this existence, burdened with its crude traditions, looking on from the outside at the Arabian customs which still prevailed in this lonely island. Spain, whose flag floated every Sunday over the few houses embraced within each parish, scarcely gave a thought to this bit of soil lost in the sea. Many countries of far-away Oceanica were in more frequent communication with the great centers of civilization than this island, in former times scourged by war and rapine, and now lying forsaken off the beaten track of ocean steamers, surrounded by a girdle of small, barren islets, reefs, and shallows.

In his new round of life Febrer felt the joy of one who occupies a comfortable seat from which he may witness an interesting spectacle. These farmers and fishermen, the warlike descendants of corsairs, were pleasant companions for him. He pretended to look upon them from afar, but gradually their customs were captivating him, drawing him into similar habits. He had no enemies, and yet, in strolling about the island when he did not have his gun upon his shoulder, he carried a revolver hidden in his belt, ready for an emergency.

In the early days of his life in the tower, as the exigencies of getting settled compelled him to go into the town, he dressed as in Majorca, but little by little he left off his cravat, his collar, his boots. For hunting he preferred the blouse and the velveteen trousers of the peasants. Fishing accustomed him to wearing hempen sandals for climbing rocks and for walking along the beach. A hat like that worn by the youths of the parish of San JosÉ covered his head.

PÈp's daughter, who was familiar with the island customs, admired the seÑor's hat with a kind of gratitude. The people of the different quarters, which formerly divided Iviza, were distinguished one from another by the style of wearing their head-dress and by the shape of the brim, almost imperceptible to any but a native of the island. Don Jaime wore his like the youths of San JosÉ, and unlike those worn by the inhabitants of other parishes. This was an honor for the parish of which she was a daughter.

Ingenuous and pretty Margalida! Febrer enjoyed talking with her, delighting in her surprise at his jests and at his tales of other lands.

She would be coming with his dinner any moment now. A slender column of smoke had been floating above the chimney of Can MallorquÍ for half an hour. He imagined PÈp's daughter flitting from place to place preparing his noonday meal, followed by the glances of her mother, a poor peasant woman, silent in her dullness, who did not venture to set her hand to anything pertaining to the seÑor.

Any moment he might see her appear beneath the shadow of the pÒrchu which gave entrance to the house, the dinner basket on her arm, her marvelously white face, which the sun slightly gilded with a faint tinge of old ivory, shaded by her straw hat with its long streamers.

Someone was stepping into the shelter of the portico, beginning to climb up to the tower. It was Margalida! No, it was her brother Pepet, Pepet who had been in Iviza for a month preparing to enter the Seminary, and whom the people had on this account given the sobriquet of Capallanet, the Little Chaplain.

CHAPTER II

ALMOND BLOSSOM

"Good day to you!"

Pepet spread a napkin over one end of the table and placed upon it two covered dishes and a bottle of wine which had the color and transparency of the ruby. Then he sat down on the floor, clasping his hands about his knees, and kept very still. His teeth shone like luminous ivory as a smile lighted his brown face. His mischievous eyes were fixed upon the seÑor with the expression of a happy, faithful dog.

"You have been in Iviza studying to become a priest, have you not?"

The boy nodded his head. Yes; his father had entrusted him to a professor in the Seminary. Did Don Jaime know where the Seminary was?

The young peasant spoke of it as a remote place of torture. There were no trees; no liberty; scarcely any air; it was impossible to live in that prison.

While listening to him Febrer recalled his visit to the elevated city, the Royal Fortress of Iviza, a dead town, separated from the district of Marina by a great wall, built in the time of Philip II, with its cracks now filled with waving green caper bushes. Headless Roman statues, set in three niches, decorated the gate, which opened from the city to the suburb. Beyond this the streets wound upward toward the hill occupied by the Cathedral and the fort; pavements of blue stone, along the center of which rushed a stream of filth; snowy faÇades half concealing beneath the whitewash escutcheons of the nobility and the outlines of ancient windows; the silence of a cemetery by the seashore, interrupted only by the distant murmur of the surf and the buzzing of flies above the stream. Now and then footsteps were heard along the pavement of the Moorish streets, and windows half opened with the eager curiosity aroused by some extraordinary event; a few soldiers climbing leisurely up to the castle on the hill; the canons coming down from the choir, the fronts of their cassocks shining with grease, their hats and mantles the color of a fly's wing, wretched prebendaries of a forgotten cathedral, too poor to support a bishop.

On one of these streets Febrer had seen the Seminary, a long structure with white walls, and windows grilled like a jail. The Little Chaplain, as he thought of it, grew serious, the ivory flash of his smile vanishing from his chocolate-colored face. What a month he had spent there! The professor was driving away the tedium of the vacation by teaching this young peasant, wishing to initiate him into the beauties of Latin letters with the aid of his eloquence and a strap. He wished to make a prodigy of him by the time he took up his classes again, and the blows grew more frequent. Besides this were the window grilles, which allowed glimpses of nothing but the opposite wall; the barrenness of the city, where not a green leaf was to be seen; the tiresome walks accompanying the priest through that port of dead waters that smelled of putrid mussels, and was entered by no other ships than a few sailing vessels that occasionally came for a cargo of salt. The day before a still more vigorous strapping had exhausted his patience. The idea of beating him! If it had not been a priest who had ventured it he would——! He had run away, returning on foot to Can MallorquÍ; but before leaving, he had taken revenge by tearing up several books which the maestro held in great esteem; he had upset the inkstand; and had written shameful inscriptions on the walls, with other pranks characteristic of a monkey at liberty.

The night had been one of storm in Can MallorquÍ. PÈp was blind with fury, and had used a club upon his back until Margalida and her mother had been compelled to interfere.

The boy's smile reappeared. He told with pride of the punishment he had taken from his father without uttering a cry. It was his father who was beating him, and a father could chastise because he loved his children; but should anyone else try to beat him, that person was doomed! As he said this he straightened himself with the belligerent air of a race accustomed to seeing blood flow and to administering justice with their own hands. PÈp talked of taking his son back to the Seminary, but the boy put no faith in this threat. He would not go, even if his father tried to fulfill his vow of binding him with ropes and taking him on the back of a donkey like a sack of wheat; rather than that he would run away to the mountains or to the rock of VedrÁ and live with the wild goats.

The master of Can MallorquÍ had planned the future of his children high-handedly, with the energy of a rustic who gives no thought to obstacles when he believes he is doing right. Margalida should marry a peasant-farmer, and the house and land should be his. Pepet should be a priest, which would represent social ascension for the family, honor and fortune for them all.

Jaime smiled as he listened to the boy's protests against his fate. There was no other center of learning on the island than the Seminary, and the peasants and shipowners who desired for their children a better fortune than their own, enrolled them there. The priests of Iviza! What an incongruous class! Many of them, while carrying on their studies, had taken part in the courtings, using knife and pistol. Descendants of corsairs and of soldiers, when they donned the cassock they still retained the arrogance and the rude virility of their forefathers. They were not lacking in piety, for their simplicity of mind did not permit of this, but neither were they devout and austere; they loved life with all its sweetness, and were attracted by danger with inherited enthusiasm. The island turned out hardy and venturesome priests. Those who remained in Spain became army chaplains. Others, more bold, no sooner had they sung their first mass than they embarked for South America, where certain republics boasting a large Catholic aristocracy were the Eldorado of Spanish priests who had no fear of the sea. They sent home generous sums of money to their families, and they bought houses and lands, praising God, who maintains his priests in greater ease in the new world than in the old. There were charitable seÑoras in Chile and Peru who gave a hundred pesos as a gratuity for a single mass. Such news made their relatives, gathered in the kitchen on winter nights, open their mouths in amazement. Despite such greatness, however, their most fervent desire was to return to the beloved isle, and after a few years they did so with the intention of ending their days on their own lands; but the demon of modern life had bitten deep into their hearts; they wearied of the monotonous insular existence, with its narrow limitations; they could not forget the new cities on the other continent, and finally they sold their property, or gave it to their family, and sailed away to return no more.

PÈp was indignant at the obstinacy of his son, who insisted upon remaining a peasant. He blustered about killing him, as if the boy were on the road to perdition. The son of his friend Treufoch had sent almost six thousand dollars home from America; another priest who lived in the interior among the Indians, in some very high mountains called the Andes, had bought a farm in Iviza that his father was now cultivating; and this rascal Pepet, who was more quick at letters than any of these, refused to follow such glorious examples! He ought to be killed!

The night before, during a moment of calm, while PÈp was resting in the kitchen with the weary arm and the sad mien of the father who has been wielding a heavy hand, the youth, rubbing his bruises, had proposed a compromise. He would become a priest; he would obey SeÑor PÈp; but he wanted to be a man for a while first, to go out serenading with the other boys of the parish, go to the Sunday dances, join in the courtings, have a sweetheart, and wear a knife in his belt. This last desire was greatest of all. If his father would only give him his grandfather's knife he would put up with anything.

"Grandfather's knife, father!" implored the boy. "Grandfather's knife!"

For his grandfather's knife he would become a priest, and even if necessary live in solitude, on the alms of the people, as did the hermits on the seashore in the sanctuary of Cubells. As he thought of the venerable weapon his eyes glowed with admiration, and he described it to Febrer. A jewel! It was an antique steel blade, keen and burnished. He could cut through a coin with it, and in his grandfather's hands——! His grandfather had been a man of renown, a famous man. Pepet had never seen him, but he talked of him with admiration, giving him a higher place in his esteem than that evoked by his mediocre father.

Then, spurred on by his desire, he ventured to implore Don Jaime's assistance. If only he would help him! If he should ask just once for the famous knife his father would immediately hand it to him.

"You shall have the knife, my boy. If your father won't give you that one, I'll buy one for you the next time I go to the city," said Febrer good-naturedly.

This filled the Little Chaplain with joy. It was necessary for him to go armed so that he could mingle with men. His house was soon to be visited by the bravest youths of the island. Margalida was now a woman, and the courting was going to begin. SeÑor PÈp had been besieged by the young gallants, who demanded that he set the day and the hour for the suitors.

"Margalida!" cried Febrer in surprise. "Margalida to have sweethearts!"

The spectacle he had witnessed in so many other houses on the island seemed to him an absurdity for Can MallorquÍ. He had not realized that PÈp's daughter was a woman. Could that child, that pretty, white doll, really care for men? He felt the strange sensation of the father who has loved many women in his youth, but who, later in life, judging by his own lack of susceptibility, cannot understand his daughter's fondness for men.

After a few moments of silence Margalida seemed changed in his eyes. Yes, she was a woman. The transformation pained him; he felt that he had lost something dear to him, but he resigned himself to reality.

"How many suitors are there?" he asked in a low voice.

Pepet waved one hand while at the same time he raised his eyes to the vaulted ceiling of the tower. How many? He was not sure yet; at least thirty. It was going to be such a courting as would make talk all over the island, despite the fact that many, although they devoured Margalida with their eyes, were afraid to join the courting, giving themselves up for conquered in advance. There were few like his sister on the island; trim, merry, and with a good slice of dowry, too, for SeÑor PÈp let it be known everywhere that he intended leaving Can MallorquÍ to his son-in-law when he died. And his son might burst with his cassock on his back over there on the other side of the ocean, without ever seeing any girls but Indian squaws! Futro!

However, his indignation soon passed. He became enthusiastic thinking about the young men who were to gather at his house twice a week to make love to Margalida. They were coming even from as far away as San Juan, the other end of the island, the region of valiant men, where one avoided going out of the house after dark, well knowing that every hillock held a pistol and every tree was a lurking place for a firearm. They were capable, every man of them, of waiting for satisfaction for an injury committed years before—the home of the terrible "wild beasts of San Juan." Then, too, various notables would come from the other sections of the island, and many of them must walk leagues to reach Can MallorquÍ.

The Little Chaplain rejoiced at the thought of the arrogant youths with whom he was to become acquainted. They would all treat him like a chum because he was the brother of the bride to be; but of all these future friendships the one which most flattered him was that of Pere, nicknamed Ferrer, on account of his trade as an ironworker, a man about thirty, much talked about in the parish of San JosÉ.

The boy looked upon him as a great artist. When he condescended to work he made the most beautiful pistols ever seen on the field of Iviza. Old barrels were sent to him from the Peninsula, and he mounted them to suit his fancy in stocks engraved with barbaric design, adding to the work ornate decorations of silver. A weapon of his make could be loaded to the muzzle without danger of bursting.

A still more important circumstance increased his respect for Ferrer. He declared in a low voice, with a tone of mystery and respect, "Ferrer is a vÈrro."

A vÈrro! Jaime was silent for a few moments, trying to coÖrdinate his recollection of island customs. An expressive gesture from the Little Chaplain assisted his memory. A vÈrro was a man whose valor was already demonstrated, one who has several proofs of the power of his hand, or the accuracy of his aim, rotting in the earth.

That his kindred might not seem beneath Ferrer, Pepet recalled his grandfather's prowess. He had also been a vÈrro, but the ancients knew how to do things better. The skill with which the grandfather settled his affairs was still remembered in San JosÉ; a stab with his famous knife, and his well-laid plans sufficed, for people were always found who were ready to swear they had seen him at the other end of the island at the very moment when his enemy lay writhing in mortal agony far away.

Ferrer was a less fortunate vÈrro. He had returned six months ago after having spent eight years in a prison on the Peninsula. He had been sentenced to fourteen, but he had received various exemptions. His reception was triumphal. A native of San JosÉ was returning from heroic exile! They must not fall behind the citizens of other parishes who received their vÈrros with great demonstrations, and on the day of the arrival of the steamer even the most distant relatives of Ferrer, who composed half the town, went down to the port of Iviza to meet him, and the other half went out of pure patriotism. Even the alcalde joined in the expedition, followed by his secretary, to retain the sympathy of his political partisans. The gentlemen of the city protested with indignation at these barbaric and immoral customs of the peasantry, while men, women, and children assaulted the steamer, each striving to be first to press the hero's hand.

Pepet described the vÈrro's reception on his return to San JosÉ. He had been a member of the party, with its long line of carts, horses, donkeys, and pedestrians, looking as if an entire people were emigrating. The procession halted at every tavern and inn along the way, and the great man was regaled with jugs of wine, tid-bits of roasted sausage and glasses of figola, a liquor made of native herbs. They admired his new suit, a suit suggesting the fine seÑor which had been made to his order on leaving the penitentiary; they inwardly marveled at his ease of manner, at the princely and condescending air with which he greeted his old friends. Many of them envied him. What wonderful things a man learns when he leaves the island! There is nothing like travel! The former ironworker overwhelmed them all with boasts of his adventures on his homeward voyage. For several weeks thereafter the evening gatherings in the tavern were most interesting. The words of the vÈrro were repeated from house to house throughout all the little homes scattered through the cuarton, every peasant finding some luster for his parish in these adventures of his fellow citizen.

The Ironworker never wearied of praising the beauty of the penal establishment in which he had spent eight years. He forgot the misery and hardship he had endured there; he looked back upon it with that love for the past which colors one's recollections.

He had been more fortunate than those poor wretches who are sent to the penitentiary on the plains of La Mancha, where the men have to carry up the water on their backs, suffering the torments of an Arctic cold. Neither had he been in the prisons of old Castile where snow whitens the courtyards and sifts in through the barred windows. He came from Valencia, from the penitentiary of Saint Michael of the Kings, "Niza," as it was nicknamed by the habitual pensioners of these establishments. He spoke with pride of this house, just as a wealthy student recalls the years he has spent in an English or German university. Tall palm trees shaded the courtyards, their crested tops waving above the tiled roofs; standing in the window-grilles one could see extensive orchards, with the triangular white pediments of the farmhouses, and farther out stretched the Mediterranean, an immense blue expanse, behind which lay his native rock, the beloved isle; perhaps the breeze, laden with the salt smell and with the fragrance of vegetation, which filtered like a benediction through the malodorous cells of the penitentiary, had first passed over it. What more could a man desire! Life there was sweet; one dined regularly, and always had a hot meal; everything was orderly, and a man had only to obey and allow himself to be led. One made advantageous friendships; one associated with people of note, whom he would never have met had he remained on the island, and the Ironworker told of his friends with pride. Some had possessed millions, and had ridden in luxurious carriages there in Madrid, an almost fantastic city whose name rung in the ears of the islanders like that of Bagdad to the poor Arab of the desert listening to the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights;" others had overrun half the world before misfortune shut them up in this enclosure. Surrounded by an absorbed circle, the vÈrro recounted the adventures of these associates in the lands of the negroes, or in countries where men were yellow, or green, and wore long womanish braids. In that ancient convent, as large as a town, dwelt the salt of the earth. Some of them had girded on swords and commanded men; others had been accustomed to handling papers bearing great seals and had interpreted the law. Even a priest had been a cell-companion of the Ironworker!

The vÈrro's admirers heard him with wide-open eyes and nostrils palpitating with emotion. What joy! To be a vÈrro, to have gained celebrity and respect by killing an enemy in the darkness of night, and, as a recompense, eight years in "Niza," a place of honor and delight. How they envied such good luck!

The Little Chaplain, who had listened to these tales, felt a great and enduring respect for the vÈrro. He described the particulars of his person with the detail of one enamored of a hero.

He was neither as tall nor as strong as the seÑor; he would scarcely come up to Don Jaime's ear, but he was agile, and nobody surpassed him in the dance: he could dance whole hours until he tired out every girl in the parish. From his long season at the prison he had returned with a pale and waxy complexion, the complexion of a cloistered nun; but now he was dark like everybody else, with his face bronzed and tanned by the sea air and the African sun of the island. He lived in the mountain, in a hut at the edge of the pine woods near the charcoal-makers, who supplied fuel for his forge. This he did not light every day. With his pretensions at being an artist, he worked only when he had to repair a fire-lock, to transform a flintlock into a rifle, or to make one of those silver decorated pistols which were the admiration of the Little Chaplain.

The boy hoped that this man would be his sister's choice; that the vÈrro, with his astonishing skill, would become a member of his family.

"Maybe Margalida will like him, and then Ferrer will give me one of his pistols. What do you think, Don Jaime?"

He plead the vÈrro's cause as if he were already a relative. The poor fellow lived so wretchedly, alone in his shop with no other companion than an old woman always dressed in the black garb of long-past mourning; one of her eyes was watery, the other was shut. She would blow the bellows while her nephew hammered the red-hot iron. Ever working around the fire, she grew more bony and thin each day; the hollows of her eyes seemed to be turning into liquid in her old face, which was wrinkled like a withered apple.

That gloomy, smoky den in the pine forest would be embellished by Margalida's presence. Its only decorations at present were a few small, colored rush baskets woven in the shape of checker-boards, adorned with silk pompons, a friendly token from the unfamed artists who whiled away the time in their retreat in "Niza." When his sister should live at the forge Pepet would go to see her, and he counted on acquiring through the munificence of his brother-in-law, a knife as famous as his grandfather's, that is, if SeÑor PÈp unjustly persevered in refusing him this glorious heritage.

The recollection of his father seemed to cloud the boy's hopes. He realized how difficult it would be for the master of Can MallorquÍ to accept the Ironworker as a son-in-law; the old man could say no ill of him; he acknowledged his fame as an honor to the town. The island not only had brave men in "the wild beasts of San Juan," but San JosÉ could also gloat over valiant youths who had undergone trying tests; Ferrer, however, was little skilled in agricultural affairs, and although all the Ivizans showed themselves equally predisposed to cultivating the soil, to casting a net into the sea, or to landing a cargo of smuggled goods, along with other little industries, skipping easily from one kind of work to another, he desired for his daughter a genuine farmer, one accustomed all his life to scrabbling the earth. His resolution was unbreakable. In his empty and inflexible brain, when an idea sprouted it became so firmly imbedded that no hurricane nor cataclysm could uproot it. Pepet should be a priest, and should travel over the world. Margalida he was keeping for some farmer who should add to the lands of Can MallorquÍ when he inherited them.

The Little Chaplain thought eagerly of him who might be the one favored by Margalida. It would be a struggle for them all, having at their head a man like the Ironworker. Even if his sister should incline toward another, the fortunate one would be compelled to settle accounts with Pere, the glorious desperado, and must put him out of the way. Great things were going to be seen. The courting of Margalida was already discussed in every house in the cuarton; her fame would spread throughout the whole island; and Pepet smiled with ferocious delight like a young savage on his way to a massacre.

He looked up to Margalida, acknowledging her as a greater authority than his father for the reason that his respect was not based on fear of blows. She it was who managed the house; everyone obeyed her. Even her mother walked in her footsteps like a serving woman, not venturing to do anything without consulting her. SeÑor PÈp hesitated before making a decision, scratching his forehead with a gesture of doubt and murmuring, "I must consult the girl about that." The Little Chaplain himself, who had inherited the paternal obstinacy, quickly yielded at his sister's slightest word, a gentle insinuation from her smiling lips uttered in her sweet voice.

"The things she knows, Don Jaime!" said the boy with admiration, and he enumerated her talents, dwelling with a certain respect on her skill in singing.

"Do you know the Minstrel, the sick boy, Don Jaime? He has trouble with his chest. He cannot work, and he spends his time lying in the shade thumping on a tambourine and mumbling verses. He's a white lamb, a chicken, with eyes and skin like a woman's, incapable of standing up before a brave man. He aspires to Margalida, too," but the Little Chaplain swore that he would smash the tambourine over his head before he would accept him as a brother-in-law. He would only claim as a relative of his a hero. Yet, as for making up songs and singing them interspersed with cries like the peacock's, there was no one to equal the Minstrel. One should be just, and Pepet recognized the youth's merit. He was a glory to the cuarton, almost to be compared with the valorous Ironworker. At the summer gatherings on the pÒrchu of the farmhouse, or at the Sunday dances, Margalida, blushing, urged on by her companions, would sometimes take a seat in the center of the circle, and, the tambourine on her knee, her eyes hidden behind a kerchief, would reply with a long romance of her own invention to the rhymes of the troubadour.

If, some Sunday, the Minstrel intoned a long harangue about the perfidy of woman and how dear her fondness for dress cost man, the following Sunday Margalida would reply with a romanza twice as long, criticizing the vanity and egoism of the men, while the crowd of girls chorused her verses with cluckings of enthusiasm, glorying in having an avenger in the girl of Can MallorquÍ.

"Pepet!... Pepet!..."

A feminine voice sounded in the distance like a crystal, breaking the dense silence of the early afternoon hours vibrant with heat and light. The voice grew stronger, as if approaching the tower.

Pepet changed from the position of a young animal at rest, freeing his legs from his encircling arms, and sprang to his feet. It was Margalida calling him. No doubt his father needed him for some task, and he had made a long visit.

Jaime grasped his arm.

"Wait, let her come," he said, smiling. "Pretend you don't hear her."

The Little Chaplain's lustrous teeth glistened in his bronzed face. The young imp was pleased at this innocent duplicity, and he took advantage of it by speaking to the seÑor with bold confidence.

"You will really ask SeÑor PÈp for it—for my grandfather's knife?"

"Yes, you shall have it," said Jaime. "Or if your father will not give it to you I will buy you the best one I can find in Iviza."

The boy rubbed his hands, his eyes glowing with savage joy.

"Having that will make a man of you," continued Febrer, "but you must not use it! Just a decoration, nothing else."

Eager to realize his desire at once, Pepet replied with energetic nodding of his head. Yes, a decoration, nothing else! Yet his eyes darkened with a cruel doubt. A decoration it might be, but if anyone should offend him while he had such a companion, what ought a man to do?

"Pepet!"

The crystal voice now rung out several times at the foot of the tower. Febrer waited for her coming, hoping to see Margalida's head, and then her figure, appear in the doorway; but he waited in vain; the voice grew more insistent, with pretty quavers of impatience.

Febrer peeped through the doorway and saw the girl standing at the foot of the stairs, in her full blue skirt and her straw hat with its streamers of flowered ribbons. The broad brim of her hat seemed to form an aureole around the rose-pale face in which trembled the dark drops of her eyes.

"Greeting, Almond Blossom!" called Febrer, smiling, but with hesitation in his voice.

Almond Blossom! As the girl heard this name on the seÑor's lips a flush of color momentarily overspread the soft whiteness of her face.

Had Don Jaime heard that name? But did such a gentleman interest himself in nonsense of that kind?

Now Febrer saw nothing but the crown and brim of Margalida's hat. She had lowered her head, and in her confusion stood fingering the corners of her apron, abashed, like a girl listening to the first words of love, and suddenly realizing the significance of life.

CHAPTER III

LOVE AND DANCING

The next Sunday morning Febrer took a trip to town. TÍo Ventolera could not go fishing with him, for he considered his presence at mass indispensable, that he might respond to the priest with his shrill voice.

Having nothing else to do, Jaime started for the pueblo, walking along the paths in the red earth which stained his white hempen sandals. It was one of the last days of summer. The snowy white farmhouses seemed to reflect the African sun like mirrors. Swarms of insects buzzed in the air. In the green shade of the spreading fig trees, low and round, like roofs of verdure resting on their circle of supports, figs opened by the heat, fell, flattening on the ground like enormous drops of purple sugar. Prickly pears raised their thorny, wall-like trunks on either side of the road, and among their dusty roots whisked flexible, little animals, with long emerald green tails, intoxicated by the sun.

Through the dark and twisted columns of the olive and almond trees groups of peasants, also on their way to town, could be seen in the distance, following other paths. The girls in their Sunday gowns walked in advance, wearing red or white kerchiefs and green skirts, their gold chains glittering in the sun; near them walked the suitors, a tenacious and hostile escort that disputed for every glance or word of preference, several of them laying siege to the girl at the same time. The procession was closed by the girls' parents, aged before their time by the hardships and cares of country life, poor beasts of the soil, submissive, resigned, black of skin, with their limbs as dry as vineshoots, and who, in the dullness of their minds, looked back upon their years of courting as a vague and remote springtime.

Febrer turned in the direction of the church when he reached the village, which consisted of six or eight houses with the alcalde's office, the school and the tavern, grouped about the temple of worship. This rose stately and imposing, the band of union of all the dwellings scattered through mountains and valleys for some kilometers roundabout.

Removing his hat to wipe the perspiration from his brow, Jaime took refuge beneath the arcade of a small cloister before the church. Here he experienced the sensation of well being as does the Arab when, after a journey across the burning sands, he takes asylum with the lonely hermit.

The snowy exterior of the whitewashed church with its cool arcade and its walled terraces crowned with nopals, reminded him of an African mosque. It had more resemblance to a fortress than a temple. Its roofs were concealed by the upper edge of the walls, a kind of redoubt over which fire-locks and catapults had frequently peered. The tower was a military turret still crowned with merlons. Its old bell had pealed forth with feverish clangor of alarm in other times.

This church, in which the peasants entered life with baptism and left it with the mass for the dead, had for centuries been their refuge in time of stress, their fortress of defense. When the atalayas on the coast announced with fires or smoke the approach of a Moorish vessel, families streamed to the temple from all the farmhouses in the parish; men carrying guns, women and children driving asses and goats or bearing on their backs all the fowls of their barnyards, their feet tied together like a bundle of faggots. The house of God was converted into a stable for the property of His followers. Off in one corner the priest prayed with the women, his prayers interrupted by screams of anguish and by crying children, while the fusileers on the roof explored the horizon until word came that the sea birds of prey had sailed away. Then normal existence began again, each family returning to its isolation, with the certainty of being compelled to repeat the agonizing journey within a few weeks.

Febrer continued standing under the arcade, watching the hurrying groups of peasants, spurred forward by the last stroke of the bell whirling in the tower-loft. The church was almost full. A dense effluvium of hot breath, perspiration, and coarse clothing floated out to Jaime through the half-open door. He felt a certain sympathy for these good people when he met them singly, but in a crowd they aroused aversion, and he kept away.

Every Sunday he came to the pueblo and stood in the doorway of the church. The loneliness of his tower on the coast made it necessary to see his fellow men. Besides, Sunday was, for him, a man without occupation, a monotonous, wearisome, interminable day. This day of rest for others was for him a torment. He could not go fishing for lack of a boatman, and the solitary fields, with their closed houses, the families being at mass or at the afternoon dance, gave him the painful impression of a stroll through a cemetery. He would spend the morning in San JosÉ, and one of his diversions consisted in standing under the arcade of the church watching the coming and going of the crowd, enjoying the cool shade of the cloister, while a few steps away the soil was burning in the sun. The branches of the trees writhed as if agonized by the heat and by the dust covering their leaves, and the hot air stifled one as it was drawn into the lungs.

Belated families began to arrive, passing Febrer with a glance of curiosity and a diffident greeting. Everyone in the cuarton knew him; they were kind folk, who, on seeing him out in the country opened their doors to him, but their affability went no further, for they could not get near to him. He was a "foreigner"; moreover a Majorcan! The fact of his being a gentleman aroused a vague distrust in the rustic people, who could not understand his living in the lonely tower.

Febrer remained solitary. He could hear the ringing of a little bell, the rustle of the crowd as the people knelt or struggled up to their feet, and a familiar voice, the voice of TÍo Ventolera, giving the responses in sing-song tones, with the harsh stridor of his toothless mouth. The people accepted the old man's officious interference without a smile, attributing it to senile aberration. They had been accustomed for years and years to hearing the Latin jargon of the old sailor, who from his pew supported the responses of the assistant in a loud voice. They attributed a certain sacred character to these vagaries, like the Orientals who see in dementia a sign of piety.

Jaime lighted a cigarette to help while away the time. Doves were cooing on the arches, breaking the long silences with their tender calls. Jaime had cast, one after another, three cigarette stubs on the ground near his feet before a long drawn out murmur came from within the church, as from a thousand suspended breaths which finally exhaled a sigh of satisfaction. Then a noise of footsteps, scraping of chairs, creaking of benches, dragging of feet, and the doorway was thronged by people, all trying to crowd out at once.

The faithful exchanged friendly greetings as if they saw one another for the first time as they met out in the sunshine beyond the dim light of the temple.

"BÒn dÍa! BÒn dÍa!"

The women came out in groups; the elder ones dressed in black, emitting a stale odor from their innumerable skirts and petticoats; the young ones erect in rigid corsets which crushed their breasts and obliterated the prominent curves of their hips, displaying with stately pride, above the motley hued handkerchiefs, gold chains and enormous crucifixes. There were brown faces and olive, with great eyes of dramatic expression; coppery virgins with glossy, oily hair divided by a part which their rough combing was ever widening.

The men stopped in the doorway to adjust upon their tonsured heads the kerchief worn in womanish fashion under their hats, below which fell long curls over their foreheads. It was a relic of the ancient haick, or Arabian hood, now worn only on extraordinary occasions.

Then the old men drew from their belts their rustic, home-made pipes, filling them with the tobacco of the pÒta, an acrid herb which was cultivated on the island. The young men strolled from the porch and adopted ferocious attitudes, their hands in their belts, and their heads held high, before the groups of women, among which were the beloved atlotas, the marriageable girls, who feigned indifference, but at the same time peeped at them out of the corners of their eyes.

Gradually the mass of people scattered.

"BÒn dÍa! BÒn dÍa!"

Many of them would not meet until the following Sunday. Along every path walked multi-colored groups; some dark, without any escort, moving slowly, as if dragging themselves along in the misery of old age; others energetic, with rustling skirts and fluttering kerchiefs, followed by a troop of boys, who shouted, whinnied like colts, and ran back and forth to attract the girls' attention.

Febrer saw a few black-clad figures leave the church, a somber group of shawled women, each affording a glimpse through the opening in the mantle of a nose reddened by the sun, and of one eye swimming in tears. They were covered by the abrigais, the winter shawl, the coarse wool wrap of ancient usage, the very sight of which on that sultry summer morning aroused sensations of torment and asphyxia. Then followed some hooded men, old peasants wearing the ceremonial cape, a gray garment of coarse wool, with broad sleeves and tight hood. The sleeves were loose and the hood was fastened under the chin, showing their brown, pirate-like faces.

They were relatives of a peasant who had died the week before. The large family, which dwelt in different parts of the cuarton, had gathered, according to custom, at the Sunday mass to honor the deceased, and when they saw one another they gave vent to their grief with African vehemence, as if the corpse still lay before their eyes. Tradition demanded that they cover themselves with the ceremonial garments, their winter dress serving to shut them up as it were in casques of mourning. They wept and perspired inside their wraps, and as each recognized a relative whom he had not seen for several days, his grief burst forth anew. Sighs of agony issued from within the heavy wrappings; the rude faces framed by the hood wrinkling and emitting howls like sick babies. They expressed their grief by melting into an incessant flood of mingled perspiration and tears. From every nose, the most visible part of these grief-struck phantoms, trembled drops which fell upon the folds of their heavy garments.

In the midst of the clamor of feminine voices, hoarse with pain, and the masculine lamentations sharpened by grief, a man began to speak with kindly authority, demanding calm. It was PÈp, of Can MallorquÍ, a far-off connection of the dead man. In this island where everyone was more or less united by ties of blood, the distant relationship, although it required that he participate in the mourning, did not oblige him to don the haik worn on solemn occasions. He was dressed in black, and covered with a light wool mantle and a round felt hat that gave him a certain ecclesiastic air. His wife and Margalida, who did not consider themselves related to this family, stood at a distance, as if their bright Sunday apparel set them apart from this show of affliction.

Good natured PÈp pretended to be angry at the extremes of despair which were growing more and more vehement. Enough, enough! Let everyone return to his house, and live many years commending the dead to God's mercy.

The weeping grew louder beneath the shawls and hoods. Adios! Adios! They clasped each other's hands, they kissed each other's lips, they twisted each other's arms, as if saying farewell never to meet again. Adios! Adios! They departed in groups, each taking a different direction, toward the pine-covered mountains, toward the distant white farmhouses half hidden among fig and almond trees, toward the red rocks along the shore, and it was an absurd and incongrouous spectacle to see these heavy perspiring images, these tireless mourners, marching slowly through the resplendent green fields.

The return to Can MallorquÍ was sad and silent. Pepet led the way, the bimbau between his lips buzzing like a gad-fly. From time to time he stopped to throw a stone at a bird or at a puffed-up black lizard darting among the opuntia cactus. Little impression did death make upon him! Margalida walked at her mother's side, silent, abstracted, her eyes opened very wide, beautiful bovine eyes, which looked in every direction reflecting not a single thought. She seemed to forget that behind her was Don Jaime, the seÑor, the revered guest of the tower.

PÈp, also abstracted, addressed an occasional word to Febrer, as if he felt need of one with whom to share his feelings.

"What an ugly thing is death, Don Jaime! Here we are, in a bit of land surrounded by the waters, unable to escape, unable to defend ourselves, awaiting the moment for the final weighing of the anchor."

The peasant's egoism rebelled at this injustice. It was all very well that over there on the mainland, where people are happy and enjoy life, Death should show himself; but here—here, too, in this far-away corner of the world, was there no limit, no exemption from the great meddler? It was useless to think of obstacles against Death's coming. The sea might be raging along the chain of islands and reefs lying between Iviza and Formentera; the narrow channels might be boiling caldrons, the rocks crowned with foam, and the rude men of the sea might acknowledge themselves vanquished and seek safety in the harbors, the passage might be closed against every living thing, the islands shut off from the rest of the world, but this signified nothing to the invincible mariner with the hairless head, to him who walks with fleshless legs, who rushes with gigantic strides over mountain and sea. No storm could detain him; no joy could make him forget; he was everywhere; he remembered everyone. The sun might shine, the fields might be in the fullness of their glory, the crops bountiful—they were deceptions to divert man in his tasks and to make these more endurable! Deceitful promises, like those made to children, so that they will submit to the torments of school! Nevertheless, one must allow himself to be deceived; the lie was good; one must not dwell upon this inevitable ill, this ultimate danger for which there was no remedy, and which saddened life, depriving the bread of its relish, the liquid of the grape of its merry sparkle, the white cheese of its succulency, the open fig of its sweetness, and the roasted sausage of its piquant strength, overshadowing and embittering all the good things that God has put on the island for the enjoyment of worthy people. "Ah, Don Jaime, what misery!"

Febrer dined at Can MallorquÍ to save PÈp's children the climb up to the tower. The meal was begun in gloom, as if the lamentations of the hooded creatures on the porch of the church still vibrated in their ears; but gradually around the little low table, crowned with its great bowl of rice, joy began to spread. The Little Chaplain talked of the afternoon dance, absolutely forgetting his life in the Seminary, and venturing to meet PÈp's eyes. Margalida recalled the Minstrel's glances and the Ironworker's arrogant mien when she had walked past the youths on her way to mass. Her mother sighed.

"Alas, seÑor! alas, seÑor!"

She never said more than this, accompanying her confused thoughts of joy or of sorrow with the same exclamation.

PÈp had made numerous attacks upon the wine-jug filled with the rosy juice of grapes from the very vines which spread a leafy screen before the porch. His melancholy face was flushed with a merry light. "To the Devil with Death and all fear of him!"

Should an honorable man spend his whole life trembling at thought of Death's approach? Let him present himself whenever he wished! Meanwhile, let a man live! And he manifested this desire to live by falling asleep on a bench, and by loud snoring, which did not avail to frighten away the flies and wasps whirling about his mouth.

Febrer returned to his tower. Margalida and her brother barely noticed the seÑor. They had left the table that they might more freely discuss the dance, with the light-heartedness of children who were disturbed by the presence of a serious person.

In the tower he threw himself upon his couch and tried to sleep. All alone! He reflected upon his isolation, surrounded by people who respected him, who, perhaps, even loved him, but at the same time felt in irresistible attraction for their simple pleasures which were insipid to him. What a torment these Sundays were! Where should he go? What could he do?

In his determination to while away the time, to seek relief from an existence wanting in immediate purpose, he at last fell asleep. He awoke late in the afternoon when the sun was beginning slowly to descend beyond the line of islands in a shower of pale gold which seemed to impart to the waters a deeper and intenser blue.

On going down to Can MallorquÍ he found the farmhouse closed. Nobody! His footsteps did not even arouse the dog that lived under the porch. The vigilant animal had also gone to the fiesta with the family.

"They've all gone to the dance," thought Febrer. "Suppose I go to the pueblo myself!"

He hesitated for awhile. What could he do there? He detested these diversions in which the presence of a stranger aroused animosity among the peasants. They preferred to remain by themselves. Should he, at his age, and with his austere appearance, that inspired only respect and chill, go and dance with an island maiden? He would have to keep near PÈp and the other men, breathing the odor of native tobacco, discussing the almond crop and the possibility of a frost, making an effort to bring his mind down to the level of these peasant farmers.

At last he decided to go. He dreaded solitude. Rather than spend the rest of the afternoon alone he preferred the dull, monotonous, conversation of the simple folk, a restful conversation, he said to himself, which did not compel him to think, and which left his mind in a state of sweet, animal calm.

Near San JosÉ he saw the Spanish flag floating over the roof of the alcalde's office, while the hollow beating of a drum, the bucolic quavering of a flute, and the snapping of castanets, reached his ears.

The dance took place in front of the church. The young people were formed into groups, standing near the musicians, who occupied low seats. The drummer, with his round instrument resting on one knee, beat the parchment with rhythmical strokes, while his companion blew on a long, wooden flute, carved with primitive designs. The Little Chaplain was flipping castanets as enormous as the shells brought in by TÍo Ventolera.

The girls, their arms about each other's waists, or leaning against their shoulders, glanced with modest hostility at the young men, who strutted through the center of the plaza, hands in belts, broad felt hats thrust back to show the curls hanging over their foreheads, embroidered kerchiefs or ribbon cravats around their necks, wearing sandals of immaculate whiteness, almost concealed by the bell of the velveteen trousers cut in the shape of an elephant's foot.

At one side of the plaza, seated on a hummock or on chairs from the nearby tavern, were the mothers and old women; matrons anemic and saddened in their relative youth by excessive procreation and the hardships of rural life, with eyes sunken in a blue circle that seemed to reveal internal disorders, wearing on their breasts the gold chains of their youthful days, their sleeves decorated with silver buttons. The old women, coppery and wrinkled, wearing dark dresses, sighed grievously at sight of the merriment among the young girls and boys.

After gazing for some time at these people who scarcely yielded him a glance, he placed himself beside PÈp in a circle of old peasants. They received the gentleman from the tower with respectful silence, and after puffing a few mouthfuls of smoke from pipes filled with native tobacco, they resumed their stupid conversation about the probable severity of the approaching winter and the prospects of the coming crop of almonds.

The drum continued beating, the flute shrilled, the enormous castanets clanked, but not a couple sprang into the center of the plaza. The swains seemed to confer with indecision, as if each were afraid to venture first. Besides, the unexpected presence of the Majorcan gentleman somewhat intimidated the bashful girls.

Jaime felt someone nudge his elbow. It was the Little Chaplain, who whispered mysteriously into his ear, at the same time pointing with a finger: "There's Pere the Ironworker, the famous vÈrro." He designated a youth of less than medium stature, but arrogant and ostentatious in his appearance. The young men were grouped around the hero. The Minstrel was talking animatedly with him, and he was listening with condescending gravity, spitting through his half-open lips, and admiring himself for the distance to which he sent the stream of saliva.

Suddenly the Little Chaplain sprang into the center of the plaza, flourishing his hat. What, were they going to spend the whole afternoon listening to the flute without dancing? He ran to the group of damsels and grasped the biggest one by the hands, dragging her after him: "You!" he called. This was invitation enough. The more rudely he slapped her arm the greater was the compliment.

The mischievous youth stood facing his partner, an arrogant and ugly girl with coarse hands, oily hair, and swarthy face, nearly a head taller than himself. Suddenly turning toward the musicians, the boy protested. He did not want to dance the "llarga"; he wanted to dance the "curta." The "long" and the "short" were the only two dances known on the island. Febrer had never been able to distinguish between them—a simple variation of rhythm, otherwise the music and the step seemed identical.

The girl, with one arm bent against her waist in the form of a handle, and the other hanging down, began to whirl slowly. She had nothing else to do; this was her entire dance. She lowered her eyes, curled her lips as if performing a vigorous task, and with a gesture of virtuous scorn, as if dancing against her will, she turned and turned, tracing great figure eights. It was the man who really did the dancing. This traditional reel, invented, doubtless, by the first settlers of the island, lusty pirates of the heroic age, illustrated the eternal history of the human race, the pursuing and hunting of the female. She whirled, cold and unfeeling, with the asexual hauteur of a rude virtue, fleeing from his springing and contortions, presenting her back to him with a gesture of scorn, while his fatiguing duty consisted in placing himself ever before her eyes, obstructing her path, coming out to meet her so that she should see and admire him. The dancer sprang and sprang, following no rule whatever, with no other restraint than the rhythm of the music, rebounding from the ground with tireless elasticity. Sometimes he would open his arms with a masterful gesture of domination, again he would fold them across his back, kicking his feet in the air.

It was a gymnastic exercise rather than a dance, the delirium of an acrobat, a phrenetic movement like the war dances of African tribes. The woman neither perspired nor flushed; she continued her turning, coldly, never accelerating her pace, while her companion, dizzy from his velocity, panted for breath with reddened face, at last retiring tremulous with fatigue. Every girl could dance with several men, exhausting them without effort. It was the triumph of feminine passiveness, laughing at the arrogant ostentation of the opposite sex, knowing that in the end she would witness his humiliation.

The appearance of the first couple drew out the others. In a moment the entire open space before the musicians was covered with heavy skirts, beneath whose rigid and multiple folds moved the small feet in white hempen sandals or yellow shoes. The broad bells of the pantaloons vibrated with the rapid movement of the springing or the energetic stamping which raised clouds of dust. Manly arms chose with gallant slap among the clustered maidens. "You!" And this monosyllable followed the tug of conquest, the blows which were equivalent to a momentary title of possession, all the extremes of a crude, ancestral predilection, of a gallantry inherited from remote forbears of the dark epoch when the club, the stone, and the hand-to-hand struggle were the first declaration of love.

Some youths who had allowed themselves to be preceded by others more bold in the choice of partners, stood near the musicians watching for a chance to succeed to their companions. When they saw a dancer red-faced and perspiring, making every effort to continue, they approached him, grasping him by the arm and flinging him aside, and calling, "Leave her to me!" And they took his place with no other explanation, springing and pursuing the girl with the ardor of fresh energy, while she did not seem to notice the change, for she continued her turning with lowered eyes and disdainful mien.

Jaime had not seen Margalida at first, as she was surrounded by her companions, but soon he recognized her among the dancers.

Beautiful Almond Blossom! Febrer thought her more lovely than ever as he compared her with her friends, brown and tanned by the sun and by toil. Her white skin, its flower-like delicacy, with the deep and brilliant eyes of a gentle little animal, her graceful figure, and even the softness of her hands, set her apart, as if she belonged to a different race from her dusky companions, seductive on account of their youth, lively, good-natured, but who seemed to be chopped out with an axe.

Looking at her, Jaime thought that in a different atmosphere she might have been an adorable creature. He divined in Almond Blossom countless delicate ways, of which she herself was unconscious. What a pity that she had been born in this island which she would never leave! And her beauty would be for some of those barbarians who admired her with a canine stare of eagerness! Perhaps she was destined for the Ironworker, that odious vÈrro, who seemed to patronize them all with his gloomy eyes!

When she married she would cultivate the soil like the other women; her flower-like whiteness would fade and turn yellow; her hands would become black and scaly; she would be like her mother and all the old peasant women, a female skeleton, bent and knaggy, like the trunk of an olive tree. These thoughts saddened Febrer, as a great injustice. How had the simple PÈp, who stood beside him, produced this offspring? What obscure combination of race had made it possible for Margalida to be born in Can MallorquÍ? Must this mysterious and perfumed flower of peasant stock fade as would the woodland buds growing beside her?

Suddenly something unusual distracted Febrer's mind from these thoughts. The flute, the tambourine, and the castanets continued playing, the dancers sprang, the girls turned, but a gleam of alarm shone in the eyes of all, an expression of defensive solidarity. The old men ceased their conversation, glancing in the direction of the women. "What is it? What is it?" The Little Chaplain ran about among the couples, whispering into the ears of the dancers. These dashed from the circle, their hands in their belts, and after disappearing for a few seconds returned immediately to take their places, while the girls continued turning.

PÈp smiled lightly as he guessed what had happened, and he whispered to the seÑor. "It is nothing; just what happens at every dance." There had been danger, and the boys had put their equipment in a safe place.

This "equipment" consisted of the pistols and knives which the boys carried as a testimony of citizenship. For an instant Febrer saw flash in the light stupendous and enormous weapons, marvelously concealed on those spare, thin bodies. The old women beckoned with their bony hands, eager to share the risk, the vehemence of an aggressive heroism shining in their eyes. "These accursed times of impiety in which decent people are molested when they were following ancient customs! Here! Here!" And grasping the deadly weapons they hid them beneath the circle made by their innumerable layers of petticoats and skirts. The young mothers settled themselves in their seats and broadened the angle of their bulky legs, as if to offer greater hiding space for the warlike implements. The women looked at each other with bellicose resolution. Let those evil souls dare to approach! They would suffer being torn to shreds before they would stir from their places.

Febrer saw something glittering down a roadway leading to the church. They were leather straps and guns, and above these the white brims of the three-cocked hats of a pair of civil guards.

The two defenders of the peace slowly approached, with a certain hesitation, convinced, no doubt, of having been seen in the distance and of arriving too late. Jaime was the only one who looked at them; the rest pretended not to see, holding their heads low or looking in a different direction. The musicians played more vehemently, but the couples began to retire. The girls deserted the young men and joined the group of women.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

To this greeting from the elder of the guards the drum replied by ceasing to beat and leaving the flute unaccompanied. This whined a few notes which seemed an ironic answer to the salutation.

A long silence fell. Some answered the greeting with a light "Tengui!" but they all pretended not to see, and glanced in another direction, as if the guards were not there.

The painful silence seemed to annoy the two soldiers.

"Vaya! Go on with your diversion. Don't stop on our account!"

He gave a sign to the musicians, and they, incapable of disobeying authority in anything, produced a music more brisk and diabolically gay than before; but they might as well be playing to the dead! Everyone stood silent and glowering, wondering how this unexpected visit would end.

The guards, accompanied by the beating of the drum, the musical capering of the flute, and the dry and strident laughter of the castanets, began moving about among the groups of young men, looking them over.

"You young gallant," said the leader with paternal authority, "hands up!"

The one designated obeyed tamely without the slightest intent of resistance, almost vain of this distinction. He knew his duty. The Ivizan was born to work, to live, and—to be searched. Noble inconveniences of being valorous, and of being held in a certain fear! Every youth seeing in the searching a testimony of his worth, raised his arms and thrust forward his abdomen, lending himself with satisfaction to the fumbling of the guards, while he glanced proudly toward the group of girls.

Febrer noticed that the two officers pretended to ignore the presence of the Ironworker. They acted as if they did not recognize him; they turned their backs, making visible display of paying no attention to him.

PÈp spoke to Febrer in a low voice, with an accent of admiration. Those men with the tricorne hats knew more than the devil himself; by not searching the vÈrro they almost offered him an insult; they showed that they had no fear of him; they set him apart from the rest, exempting him from an operation to which everyone else was compelled to submit. Whenever they met the vÈrro in the company of other young men, they searched those, without ever touching him. For this reason the boys, through fear of losing their weapons, finally avoided going out with the hero, and they shunned him as an attractor of danger.

The searching continued to the sound of music. The Little Chaplain followed the guards on their evolutions, always placing himself before the elder one, with his hands in his belt, looking at him fixedly, with an expression half threatening, half entreating. The man did not seem to see him; he looked for the others, but he continually stumbled against the youngster, who barred his way. The man with the three-cocked hat finally smiled under his fierce mustache, and called his comrade.

"You!" he said, pointing to the boy. "Search that vÈrro. He must be dangerous."

The Little Chaplain, forgiving the enemy's waggish tone, raised his arms as high as possible so that no one should fail to see his importance. The guard had moved away after giving him a tickling in the stomach, but the boy still maintained his position as a man to be feared. Then he rushed toward a group of girls to boast of the danger he had faced. Fortunately his grandfather's knife was at home, safely hidden away by his father. Had he borne it on his person they would have taken it from him.

The guards soon wearied of this fruitless search. The elder glanced maliciously toward the group of women, like a dog sniffing a trail. He knew well enough where the weapons were concealed, but let anyone venture to make the bronze matrons stir from their places! Hostility shone in the eyes of the ancient dames. They would have to be torn away by main force, and they were seÑoras!

"Gentlemen, good afternoon!"

They slung their guns over their shoulders, refusing the proffer of some youths who had run to a tavern to bring glasses. They were offered without fear or rancor; were they not all neighbors, living together on their little island? The guards, however, were firm in their refusal. "Thanks; it is against the rules." They strode away, perhaps to lie in ambush a short distance away and repeat the searching again at sunset when the party was broken up and the people returning to their lonely farmhouses.

After the danger had passed the instruments ceased playing. Febrer saw the Minstrel take the little drum and seat himself in the open space recently occupied by the dancers. The people crowded around him. The venerable matrons drew up their esparto-seated chairs in order to hear better. He was about to sing a romance of his own composition; a relaciÓn, accentuated, according to the custom of the country, by a quavering plaint, a cry of pain drawn out as long as the singer had air left in his lungs.

He beat the drum slowly to impart a gloomy solemnity to his monotonous song, dreamy and sad. "How can I sing for you, friends, when my heart is broken?" began the recitative; and then, in the midst of a general silence, came a strident trill, like the long continued lament of a dying bird.

The entire company gazed at the singer, not seeing in him the indolent, sickly youth, despicable on account of his uselessness for work. In their primitive minds stirred a vague something which impelled them to respect the words and complaints of the weakling. It was something extraordinary, which seemed to sweep, with rude beating of wings, over their simple souls.

The Minstrel's voice sobbed as it told of a woman insensible to his sighs, and as he compared her whiteness with the flower of the almond, they turned their eyes to Margalida, who remained impassive, with no sign of virginal flushing, being accustomed to this tribute of crude poesy which was a sort of prelude to gallantry.

The Minstrel continued his laments, reddening with the strain of the painful crowing which ended every strophe. His narrow chest heaved with the effort; two rosettes of sickly purple colored his cheeks; his slender neck dilated, the veins standing out in blue relief. In accordance with custom, he concealed part of his face under an embroidered kerchief, which he held with his arm resting on the drum. Febrer felt anxiety listening to this painful voice. It seemed to him that the singer's lungs would give way, that his throat would burst; but his hearers, accustomed to this barbaric singing, which was as exhausting as the dance, paid no attention to his fatigue, nor did they weary of his interminable narration.

A group of youths, moving away from the circle around the poet, seemed to be holding a consultation, and then they approached the older men. They were in search of SeÑor PÈp, of Can MallorquÍ, to discuss an important matter. They turned their backs scornfully upon the Minstrel, an unhappy creature, good for nothing but to dedicate verses to the girls.

The most venturesome of the group faced PÈp. They wished to speak of the "festeig" of Margalida; they reminded the father of his promise to sanction the courting of the girl.

The peasant-farmer looked at the group deliberately, as if counting their number.

"How many are you?"

The leader smiled. There were many more. They represented other young men who had remained to hear the song. There were youths from every district. Even from San Juan, at the opposite end of the island, youths were coming to court Margalida.

Despite the mock gesture of an intractable father, PÈp reddened and compressed his lips with ill-concealed satisfaction, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the friends sitting near him. What glory for Can MallorquÍ! Such a courtship had never been known before. Never had his companions seen their daughters so honored.

"Are there twenty of you?" he asked.

The youths did not reply immediately, being occupied in mental calculation, murmuring the names of friends. Twenty? More, many more! He might count on thirty.

The peasant persisted in his pretended indignation. Thirty! Maybe they thought he needed no rest, and that he was going to spend a whole night without sleep, witnessing their courting.

Then he grew calm, giving himself up to complicated mental calculations, while he repeated thoughtfully, with an expression of amazement, "Thirty! Thirty!"

In the end he gave his sanction. He would not give more than an hour and a half in one evening to the wooing. Since there were thirty, that made three minutes each; three minutes, counted, watch in hand, to talk to Margalida; not a minute more! Thursday and Saturday would be courting nights. When he had gone courting his wife the suitors were many less, and yet his father-in-law, a man who had never been seen to smile, did not concede more time than this. There must be much formality, understand! Let there be no rivalry nor fighting! The first one to break the agreement PÈp was man enough to beat out of the door with a club; and if it became necessary to use the gun, he would use it.

Good-natured PÈp, gratified at being able to assume unbounded ferocity at the expense of the respect due from his daughter's suitors, heaped bravado upon bravado, talking of killing anyone who should not keep to the agreement, while the youths listened with humble mien, but with an ironic grin under their noses.

The bargain was closed. Thursday next the first audience would be held at Can MallorquÍ. Febrer, who had heard the conversation, glanced at the vÈrro, who held himself aloof, as if his greatness prevented his condescending to wretched haggling over the arrangement.

When the boys moved away to join the circle, discussing in a low voice the order of precedence, the troubadour ceased his doleful music, crowing his last crow with a dolorous voice that seemed finally to rend his poor throat. He wiped away the perspiration, pressed his hands against his breast, his face becoming a dark purple, but the people had turned their backs and he was already forgotten.

The girls, with the solidarity of sex, surrounded Margalida with vehement gesticulations, pushing her, and urging her to sing a reply to what the troubadour had said about the perfidy of women.

"No! No!" replied Almond Blossom, struggling to rid herself of her companions.

So sincere was she in her resistance that at last the old women intervened, defending her. Let her alone! Margalida had come to enjoy herself, and not to entertain the others. Did they think it such an easy matter to suddenly compose a reply in verse?

The drummer had recovered the instrument from the Minstrel's hands and began to beat it. The flute seemed to be gargling the rapid notes before beginning the dreamy melody of an African rhythm. On with the dance!

The boys all began shouting at once with aggressive vehemence, addressing the musicians. Some demanded the "long" and others the "short"; they all felt themselves strong and imperious again. The deadly steel had come forth from beneath the women's petticoats and had returned to their belts, and contact with these companions imparted to each a new life, a recrudescence of their arrogance.

The musicians began to play what they pleased, the curious crowd made way, and again in the center of the plaza the white hempen sandals began to spring, the whorls of green and blue skirts began to turn stiffly, while the points of kerchiefs fluttered above heavy braids, or the flowers worn by the girls behind their ears shook like red tassels.

Jaime continued looking at the Ironworker with the irresistible attraction of antipathy. The vÈrro stood silent and as if abstracted among his admirers, who formed a circle around him. He seemed not to see the others, fixing his eyes on Margalida with a tense expression, as if he would conquer her with this stare which inspired fear in men. When the Little Chaplain, with the enthusiasm of youth, approached the vÈrro, he deigned to smile, seeing in the boy a future relative.

Even the boys who had ventured to discuss the wooing with SeÑor PÈp seemed intimidated by the Ironworker's presence. The girls came out to dance, led by the young men, but Margalida remained beside her mother, gazed at enviously by all, yet none of them dared approach to invite her.

The Majorcan felt the Camorrist tendencies of his early youth aroused in him. He loathed the vÈrro; he felt the terror inspired by the man as a personal offense. Was there no one to give a slap in the face to this coxcomb from the prison?

A youth approached Margalida, taking her by the hand. It was the Minstrel, still perspiring and tremulous after his exertion. He held himself erect, trying to give the lie to his weakness. The white Almond Blossom began to turn on her small feet and he sprang and sprang, pursuing her in her evolutions.

Poor boy! Jaime felt an impression of anguish, guessing the effort of the pitiful attempt to dominate the fatigue of the body. He breathed laboriously, his legs began to tremble, but in spite of this he smiled, gratified at his triumph. He gazed tenderly at Margalida, and if he turned away his eyes it was to look haughtily at his friends who responded with looks of pity.

In making a turn he almost fell; as he gave a great leap his knees bent. Everyone expected to see him fall to the ground; but he went on dancing, displaying his will-power, his determination to die rather than confess his weakness.

His eyes were closing with vertigo when he felt a touch on his shoulder, according to usage, requiring him to yield his partner.

It was the Ironworker, who flung himself into the dance for the first time that afternoon. His leaping was received with a murmur of applause. They all admired him, with that collective cowardice of a timid multitude.

The vÈrro, seeing himself applauded, increased his contortions, pursuing his partner, barring her way, surrounding her in the complicated net of his movements, while Margalida turned and turned with lowered gaze, avoiding the eyes of the dreaded gallant.

At times, the vÈrro, to display his vigor, with his bust thrown back and his arms behind him, sprang to a considerable height, as if the ground were elastic and his legs steel springs. This leaping made Jaime think, with a sensation of repugnance, of escapes from prison or of surreptitious assaults with a knife.

Time passed, but the man did not seem to tire. Some of the girls had sat down, in other cases the dancer had been substituted several times, but the vÈrro continued his violent dance, ever gloomy and disdainful, as if insensible to weariness.

Jaime himself recognized with a dash of envy the terrible vigor of the Ironworker. What an animal!

Suddenly the dancer was seen to feel for something in his belt, and reach downward with one hand, without ceasing his evolutions or his leaping. A cloud of smoke spread over the ground, and between its white film two rapid flashes were outlined pale and rosy in the sunlight, followed by two reports.

The women huddled together, screaming with sudden fright; the men stood undecided, but soon all were reassured, and burst into shouts of approbation and applause.

"Muy bien!" The vÈrro had fired off his pistol at his partner's feet; the supreme gallantry of a valiant man; the greatest homage a girl on the island could receive.

Margalida, a woman at heart, continued dancing, without having been greatly impressed, like a good Ivizan, by the explosion of the powder; giving the Ironworker a look of gratitude for the bravado which made him defy persecution from the civil guards who might still be near; then turning to her friends who were tremulous with envy at this homage.

Even PÈp himself, to the great indignation of Jaime, displayed pride over the two shots fired at his daughter's feet.

Febrer was the only one who did not seem enthusiastic over this gallant deed.

Accursed convict! Febrer was not sure of the motive of his fury, but it was something spontaneous. He meant to settle accounts with that peasant!

CHAPTER IV

THIRTY AND ONE WOOERS

Winter came. There were days when the sea would lash furiously against the chain of islands and cliffs between Iviza and Formentera that form a wall of rock cut by straits and channels. The deep blue waters, which usually flow tranquilly through these narrows, reflecting the sandy bottoms, would begin to whirl in livid eddies, dashing against the coasts and the projecting rocks, which would disappear and then emerge again in the white foam. Vessels would struggle valiantly against the swift undertow and the spectacular, roaring waters between the islands of Espalmador and Los Ahorcados, where lies the pathway of the great ships. Vessels from Iviza and Formentera must spread all their canvas, and sail under shelter of the barren islands. The sinuosities of this labyrinth of channels permit navigators from the archipelago of the PityusÆ to go from one island to another by different routes, according to the direction of the winds. While the sea rages on one side of the archipelago, on the other it may be still and safe, lying heavy like oil. In the straits the waves may swirl high in furious whirlpools, but with a mere turn of the wheel, a slight shifting of her course, the vessel may glide into the shelter of an island where she will ride in tranquil waters, paradisiacal, limpid, affording views of strange vegetation, where dart fishes sparkling with silver and flashing with carmine.

Usually day dawned with a gray sky and an ashen sea. The VedrÁ seemed more enormous, more imposing, lifting its conical needle in this stormy atmosphere. The sea rushed in cataracts through the caverns on its margin, roaring like the peals of gigantic cannons. The wild goats on their inaccessible heights sprang from one narrow footing to another, and only when thunder rolled through the gloomy heavens, and fiery serpents flashed down to drink in the immense pool of the sea, did the timid beasts flee with bleating of terror to seek refuge in the recesses covered by juniper.

On many stormy days Febrer went fishing with TÍo Ventolera. The old sailor was thoroughly familiar with his sea. On the mornings when Jaime remained in his couch watching the livid and diffuse light of a stormy day filter through the crevices, he had to arise hastily on hearing the voice of his companion who "sang the mass," accompanying the Latin jargon by pelting the tower with stones. Get up! It was a fine day for fishing. They would make a good catch. When Febrer gazed apprehensively at the threatening sea, the old man explained that they would find tranquil waters in the shelter around the VedrÁ.

Again, on radiant mornings, Febrer fruitlessly awaited the old man's call. Time dragged on. After the rosy tint of dawn the golden bars of sunlight stole through the cracks; but in vain the hours passed, he heard neither mass nor stone throwing. TÍo Ventolera remained invisible. Then, on opening his window, he looked out upon the clear sky, luminous with the gracious splendor of the winter sun, but the sea was restless, a gloomy blue, undulating, without foam and without noise under the impulse of a treacherous wind.

The winter rains covered the island as with a gray mantle, through which the indefinite contours of the nearby range were vaguely outlined. On the mountain tops the pine trees dropped tears from every filament, and the thick layer of humus was soaked like a sponge, expelling liquid beneath the footsteps. On the barren rocky heights along the coast, the rain gathered, forming tumultuous brooks, which leapt from cliff to cliff. The spreading fig trees trembled like enormous broken umbrellas, allowing the water to enter the broad spaces beneath their cupolas. The almond trees, denuded of their leaves, shook like black skeletons. The deep gulleys filled with bellowing waters that flowed uselessly toward the sea. The roads, paved with blue cobbles, between high, rocky banks, were converted into cataracts. The island, thirsty and dusty during a great part of the year, seemed to repel this exuberance of rain from all its pores, as a sick man repels the strong medicine administered too late. On these stormy days Febrer remained shut up in his tower. It was impossible to go to sea and impossible also to go out hunting in the island fields. The farmhouses were closed, their white cubes spotted by torrents of rain, devoid of any other sign of life than the thread of blue smoke escaping from the chimney tops.

Forced to inactivity, the lord of the Pirate's Tower began to read over again one of the few books he had acquired on his trips to the city, or he smoked pensively, recalling that past from which he had endeavored to run away. What was happening in Majorca? What were his friends saying?

Given over to this enforced idleness, lacking the distraction of physical exercise, he thought over his former life, which was daily growing more hazy and indistinct in his memory. It seemed to him like the life of another man; something which he had seen and been familiar with, but which belonged to the history of another. Really was that Jaime Febrer who had traveled all over Europe and had had his hours of vanity and triumph the same person who was now living in this tower by the sea, rustic, bearded, and almost savage, with the sandals and hat of a peasant, more accustomed to the moaning of the waves and the screaming of gulls than to contact with men?

Weeks before he had received a second letter from his friend Toni ClapÉs. This also was written from a cafÉ on the Borne, a few hastily scrawled lines to attest his regard. This rude but kind friend did not forget him; he did not even seem to be offended because his former letter had remained unanswered. He wrote about Captain Pablo. The captain was still angry with Febrer, nevertheless he was working diligently to disentangle his affairs. The smuggler had faith in Valls. He was the cleverest of Chuetas, and more generous than any of them. There was no doubt that he would save the remains of Jaime's fortune, and he would be able to spend the rest of his days in Majorca, tranquil and happy. Later he would hear from the captain himself. Valls preferred to keep quiet until matters were settled.

Febrer shrugged his shoulders. Bah! It was all over! But on gloomy winter days his spirit rebelled against existing like a solitary mollusk, shut up in his stone shell. Was he always going to live like this? Was it not folly to have hidden himself away in this corner while still having youth and courage to struggle with the world?

Yes, it was folly. The island and his romantic shelter were all very pretty for the first few months, when the sun shone, the trees were green, and the island customs exercised over his soul the charm of a bizarre novelty; but bad weather had come, the solitude was intolerable, and the life of the rustics was revealed to him in all the crudity of their barbarous passions. These peasants, dressed in blue velveteen, with their bright belts and gay cravats and their flowers behind their ears, had at first seemed to him picturesque figures, created only to serve as a decoration for the fields, choristers for a pastoral operetta, languid and tame; but he knew them better now; they were men like others, and barbarous men, barely grazed by contact with civilization, conserving all the sharp angles of their ancestral rudeness. Seen from a distance, for a short time, they attracted with the charm of novelty, but he had penetrated their customs, he was almost one of them, and it weighed upon him like falling into slavery—this inferior existence which seemed to be clashing every instant with ideas and prejudices of his past.

He ought to get away from this atmosphere; but where could he go? How could he escape? He was poor. His entire capital consisted of a few dozens of duros which he had brought from Majorca, a sum which he retained, thanks to PÈp, who was firm in his refusal to accept any remuneration whatever. Here he must remain, nailed to his tower as if it were a cross, without hope, without desire, seeking in cessation of thought a vegetative joy like that of the junipers and tamarisks growing between the cliffs on the promontory, or like that of the shell fish forever clinging to the submerged rocks.

After long reflection he resigned himself to his fate. He would not think, he would not desire. Besides, hope, which, never forsakes us, conceived in his mind the vague possibility of something extraordinary that would present itself in its own good time, to save him from this situation; but while it was on its way, how the loneliness bored him!

Margalida had not been to the tower for some time. She seemed to seek pretexts for not coming, and she even went out of her way to avoid meeting Febrer. She had changed; she seemed to have suddenly awakened to a new existence. The innocent and trustful smile of girlhood had changed to a gesture of reserve, like a woman who realizes the dangers of the road and travels with slow and cautious step.

Since the courting had begun, and young men came twice a week to solicit her hand, according to the traditional "festeig," she seemed to have taken heed of great and unknown dangers before unsuspected, and she remained at her mother's side, shunning every occasion of being left alone with a man, and blushing as soon as masculine eyes met her own.

This courting had nothing extraordinary about it, according to island customs, and yet it aroused in Febrer a dumb anger, as if he saw in it an offense and a spoliation. The invasion of Can MallorquÍ by the braggart and enamored young blades he took as an insult. He had looked upon the farmhouse as his home, but since these intruders had been cordially received he was going to take his leave.

Besides, he suffered in silence the chagrin of not being the only preoccupation of the family, as he had been at first. PÈp and his wife still looked up to him as their master; Margalida and her brother venerated him as a powerful lord who had come from far away because Iviza was the best place in the world; but in spite of this other thoughts seemed to be reflected in their eyes. The visit of so many youths and the change which this had wrought in their daily life, made them less solicitous in regard to Don Jaime. They were all worried about the future. Which one of the youths deserved in the end to be Margalida's husband?

During the long winter evenings Febrer, shut up in his tower, sat gazing at a little light shining forth in the valley below—the light of Can MallorquÍ. On the nights not devoted to the courting, the family would be alone, gathered around the fireplace, but, in spite of this, he remained fixed in his isolation. No, he would not go down. In his chagrin he even complained of the bad weather, as if he would make the winter cold responsible for this change which had gradually taken place in his relations with the peasant family.

He wistfully recalled those beautiful summer nights when they used to sit until the small hours watching the stars tremble in the dark sky beyond the black border of the portico. Febrer used to sit beneath the pergola with the family and Uncle Ventolera who came, drawn by the hope of some gift. They never let him go away without a slice of watermelon, which filled the old man's mouth with its sweet red juice, or a glass of perfumed figola, brewed from fragrant mountain herbs. Margalida, her eyes fixed on the mystery of the stars, would sing Ivizan romances in her girlish voice, more fresh and soft to the ear of Febrer than the breeze which filled the blue tumult of the night with rustling. PÈp would tell, with the air of a prodigious explorer, of his stupendous adventures on the mainland during the years when he had served the king as a soldier, in the remote and almost fantastic lands of Catalonia and Valencia.

The dog, lying at his feet, seemed to be listening to his master with mild, gentle eyes, in the depths of which a star was reflected. Suddenly he would spring up with nervous impulse, and giving a leap, would disappear in the darkness, accompanied by the sonorous murmur of crashing vegetation. PÈp would explain this stealthy flight. It was nothing more than some animal wandering in the darkness; a jack rabbit, a cotton-tail, which the beast had scented with the delicate nose of the hunting dog. Again he would rise to his feet slowly with growls of vigilant hostility. Somebody was passing near the farmhouse; a shadow, a man walking quickly, with the celerity of the Ivizans, accustomed to going rapidly from one side of the island to the other. If the shade spoke, they all answered his greeting. If he passed in silence they pretended not to see him, just as the dark traveler seemed to be unconscious of the existence of the farmhouse and of the persons seated under the pergola.

It was a very ancient custom in Iviza not to greet each other out in the country after nightfall. Shadows passed along the roads without a word, avoiding a meeting so as not to stumble against nor recognize each other. Each was bound on business of his own, to see his sweetheart, to consult the doctor, to kill an enemy at the other end of the island, to return on a run and be able to prove an alibi by saying that at the fatal hour he had been with friends. Every one who traveled at night had his reasons for passing unrecognized. One shadow feared another shadow. A "bÒna nit," or a request for a light for the cigarette, might be answered by a pistol shot.

Sometimes no one passed by the farmhouse, and yet, the dog, stretching out his neck, howled into the dark void. In the distance human howls seemed to answer him. They were prolonged and savage yells, which rent the mysterious silence like a war cry. "A-u-u-Ú!" And much farther away, weakened by distance, replied another fierce exclamation: "A-u-u-Ú!"

The peasant silenced his dog. There was nothing strange about these cries. They were the voices of youths howling in the darkness, guiding one another by their calls, perhaps that they might recognize each other and come together for a friendly purpose, or perhaps to fight, the cry being a challenging shout. It was not unlikely that after the howling a shot would ring out. Affairs of young bloods and of the night! They had no significance.

Then PÈp would continue the relation of his extraordinary journeys, while his wife, who heard these ever new marvels for the thousandth time, stared at him in amazement.

Uncle Ventolera, not to be outdone, narrated tales of pirates and of valorous mariners of Iviza, bearing them out with the testimony of his father, who had been cabin boy on Captain Riquer's xebec, and which assaulted the frigate Felicidad, captained by the formidable corsair "the Pope." Stirred by these heroic recollections, he hummed in his quavering old voice the ballad in which Ivizan sailors had celebrated the triumph, verses in Castilian, for greater solemnity, whose words TÍo Ventolera mispronounced.

The toothless old sailor continued singing the heroic deeds of long ago, as if they dated from yesterday, as if he had witnessed them himself, as if a flash from the atalaya announcing a disembarcation of enemies might suddenly flare across this land of combat, enveloped in darkness.

Again, his eyes glittering with avarice, he would tell of enormous sums which the Moors, the Romans, and other red mariners whom he called the Normans, had buried in caves along the coast. His ancestors knew much about all this. What a pity that they had died without saying a word! He related the true history of the cavern of Formentera, where the Normans had stored the product of their freebooting expeditions throughout Spain and Italy—golden images of saints, chalices, chains, jewels, precious stones and coins measured by the peck. A frightful dragon, trained doubtless by the red men, used to guard the deep, dark cavern, with the treasure beneath his belly. The rash soul who should slip down a rope into the cave would serve the beast for nourishment. The red mariners had died many centuries ago; the dragon was dead also; the treasure must still be on Formentera. Who could find it? The rustic audience trembled with emotion, never doubting the existence of such treasure because of the respect inspired in them by the age of the narrator.

Placid summer evenings those, which were no longer repeated for Febrer! He avoided going down to Can MallorquÍ after dark, fearful of disturbing by his presence the conversation of the family about Margalida's suitors.

On courting nights he experienced even greater uneasiness, and, without explaining to himself his motive, he stared longingly toward the farmhouse. The same light, the same appearance as ever—but he imagined that he could make out in the nocturnal silence, new sounds, the echo of songs, Margalida's voice. There would be the odious Ironworker, and that poor devil of a Minstrel, and the rude, barbarous youths, with their ridiculous dress. Gran Dios! How was it possible that these rustics had ever managed to interest him, after all that he had seen of the world?

The next day when the Little Chaplain would climb up to the tower to bring his dinner, Jaime would question him about the events of the previous evening.

Listening to the boy, Febrer pictured to himself the incidents of the courting. The family supped hurriedly at nightfall, so as to be ready for the ceremony. Margalida took down her gala skirt hanging from the ceiling in her room, and after donning it with the red and green kerchief crossed over her breast and a smaller one on her head, a long bow of ribbon at the end of her braid, she put on the gold chain her mother had turned over to her, and took her seat on the folded abragais on a kitchen chair. Her father smoked his pipe of tobacco de pÒta; her mother sat in a corner weaving rush baskets; the Little Chaplain peeped out of the door to the broad porch, on which the youthful suitors were silently gathering. Some there were who had been waiting for an hour, for they lived near; there were others who came dusty or spattered with mud, after walking two leagues. On rainy nights, in the shelter of the porch they shook out their cowled Arabian capes of coarse weave, an inheritance from their forefathers, or the feminine mantles in which they were wrapped, as garments of modern elegance.

After briefly deciding upon the order to be followed in their conversation with the girl, the troop of rivals started for the kitchen, as it was too cold on the porch in winter. A knock on the door.

"Come in, whoever you are!" shouted PÈp, as if ignorant of the presence of the suitors and expecting an unusual visitor.

They entered tamely, greeting the family: "BÒna nit! BÒna nit!" They took seats on a bench, like schoolboys, or they remained standing, all gazing at the girl. Near her was a vacant chair, or if this were lacking, the suitor squatted on the ground, Moorish fashion, talking to her in low tones for three minutes, enduring the hostile gaze of his adversaries. The slightest prolongation of this brief term provoked coughing, furious glances, remonstrances and threats in undertones. The youth would retire and another would take his place. The Little Chaplain laughed at these scenes, seeing in the hostile tenacity of the suitors a motive for pride. The courting of his sister was not going to be like that of other girls. The suitors seemed to Pepet to be rabid dogs who would not easily give up their prey. This wooing smelled to him of gunpowder, and he affirmed it with a smile of joy and satisfaction which disclosed the whiteness of his wolf-cub teeth in his dark oval face. None of the suitors seemed to gain advantage over the others. During the two months that the courting had lasted, Margalida had done nothing but listen, smile, and respond to them all with words which confused the youths. His sister's talent was very great. On Sundays when they went to mass, she walked ahead of her parents accompanied by all her suitors—a veritable army. Don Jaime had met them several times. Her friends, seeing her come with this queenly retinue, paled with envy. The suitors besieged her, endeavoring to extract some word, some sign of preference, but she replied with astonishing discretion, keeping them all on the same footing, avoiding fatal clashes which might suddenly arouse the aggressive youths, who were always heavily armed.

"And how about the Ironworker?" asked Don Jaime.

Accursed vÈrro! His name issued with difficulty from the seÑor's lips, but he had been thinking of him for some time.

The boy shook his head. The Ironworker was making no particular advance over his rivals, and the Little Chaplain did not seem to regret it keenly.

His admiration for the vÈrro had cooled somewhat. Love emboldens men, and none of the youths who pretended to Margalida's hand, now that they came face to face with him as a rival, stood in fear of him any longer, and they even ventured disrespect to his formidable person. One evening he had appeared with a guitar, intending to employ a large part of the time which belonged to the others in playing. When his turn came he placed himself near Margalida, tuned his instrument and began to intone songs of the mainland learned during his retirement at "Niza"; but before beginning he had taken from his girdle a double-barreled pistol, cocked it, and had laid it upon one of his thighs, ready to grasp it and to let fly a shot at the first man to interrupt him. Absolute silence and impassive glances! He sang as long as he wished, he put up his pistol with the air of a conqueror, but later, when they went out, in the darkness of the fields, when the youths dispersed with cries of ironic farewell, two well-aimed stones issuing from the shadows struck the braggart to the ground, and for several days he failed to come to the courting so as not to show his bandaged head. He had made no effort to find out who the aggressor was. The rivals were many, and, moreover, he had to take into account their fathers, uncles, and brothers, almost a fourth part of the island, quick to mix in a war of vengeance for the honor of the family.

"I think," said Pepet, "that the Ironworker is less valiant than they say; and what is your opinion about it, Don Jaime?"

When it was growing late, and Margalida had talked with each of her suitors, her father, who was dozing in a corner, would break into a loud yawn. The man of the fields seemed to divine the passing of time even when asleep. "Half past nine! Bedtime! BÒna nit!" And all the youths, after this hint, would leave the house, their footsteps and their whinnying swallowed up by darkness.

Pepet, as he spoke of these reunions, in which he rubbed elbows with brave men, wearers of deadly weapons, again bethought him of his grandfather's knife. When would Don Jaime speak to his father about this family treasure? Since he had put off asking he must not forget his promise to present him another knife. What could a man like himself do, lacking such a companion? Where could he present himself?

"Don't worry," said Febrer. "One of these days I'll go to town. You may count on the gift."

One morning Jaime started for Iviza, eager for a fresh experience, and to renew and vary his impressions in a less rural atmosphere. Iviza seemed to him now like a great city, even to him who had traveled over all Europe. The houses in a row, the red brick sidewalks, the balconies with Persian blinds, he admired them all with the simplicity of a savage from the interior of a desert who arrives at a trading station on the coast. He paused before the shops, examining the goods exposed with the same enjoyment with which he used to contemplate the luxurious display windows on the boulevards or on Regent Street.

The jewelry shop of a Chueta held his attention a long while. He admired the filigree buttons with a stone in the center, the hollow gold chains made for the peasant girls, who deemed these objects the most perfect and marvelous works created by the art of man. Suppose he should go in and buy a dozen of those buttons! What a surprise for the girl of Can MallorquÍ when he should present them to her for the decoration of her sleeves! Surely she would accept them from him, a grave gentleman upon whom she looked with filial respect. Detestable respect! That confounded gravity of his that hampered him like a crushing burden! But the scion of the Febrers, the descendant of opulent merchants and heroic navigators, was forced to resist, thinking of the money stowed away in his girdle. Probably he did not possess enough to make the purchase.

In another store he acquired a knife for Pepet, the largest and heaviest he could find, an absurd weapon, capable of making him forget the relic of his glorious grandfather.

At noon, Febrer, bored by objectless strolling through the ward of the Marina, and along the steep, narrow streets of the ancient Royal Fortress, entered a small inn, the only one in the city, situated near the port. There he met the customary patrons. In the vestibule a few youths dressed in peasant style, with military caps, soldiers of the garrison who served as orderlies; within the dining-room, subaltern officers of a batallion of light infantry, young lieutenants who were smoking with a bored mien and gazing through the windows at the immense blue expanse like prisoners of the sea. During the meal they lamented their bad luck at having their youth wasted by being chained to this rock. They spoke of Majorca as a place of joy; they recalled the provinces on the mainland, of which many of them were sons, as paradises to which they were eager to return. Women! It was a longing, a desire which made their voices quaver and brought a glow of madness into their eyes. The chaste Ivizan virtue, the exclusive islander, suspicious of foreigners, weighed upon them like the chain of an insufferable prison. There was no trifling with love here; no time was wasted; either hostile indifference or honest courting with a view to speedy marriage. Words and smiles led straight to matrimony; association with young girls was only possible for the purpose of the formation of a new household; and these lusty youths, gay, abounding in vitality, suffered a tantalizing torment discussing the most beautiful girls of the island, admiring them, yet living apart from them, in spite of moving in narrow limits which forced them to continual meetings. Their dearest hope was to get leave of absence, so that they might live a few days in Majorca or on the Peninsula, far from the cold-hearted and virtuous isle, which accepted the foreigner only as a husband.

Women! Those young bloods talked of nothing else, and seated at the long table, Febrer silently seconded their words and lamentations. Women! The irresistible tendency which binds us to them is the only thing that remains after the moral upheavals which change one's life; the only thing which remains standing among the ghosts of other illusions destroyed by the cataclysm. Febrer felt the same disgust as did the soldiers, the impression of being locked up in a prison of privations, surrounded by the sea as if it were a moat. Just now the island capital impressed him as a town of irresistible monotony, with its seÑoritas guarded in suspicious and monastic isolation. His mind reverted to the country as to a place of liberty, with its simple souled and natural women, restrained only by a defensive instinct like that of primitive females.

He left the city that same afternoon. Nothing remained of the optimism of a few hours before. The streets of the Marina were nauseating; an infectious odor escaped from the houses; in the arroyo buzzed swarms of insects, rising from the pools at the sound of the footsteps of a passerby. The recollection of the hills near his tower, perfumed by sylvan plants and by the salty odor of the sea, seemed to smile in his memory with idyllic sweetness.

A peasant's cart took him to the vicinity of San JosÉ, and after leaving it he started for the mountain, passing between the pine trees bent and twisted by the storms. The sky was overcast, the atmosphere warm and heavy. From time to time big drops fell, but before the clouds could settle into rain a gust of wind seemed to sweep them toward the horizon.

Near a charcoal burner's cabin Jaime saw two women walking rapidly among the pines. They were Margalida and her mother, coming from Cubells, a hermitage situated upon a hill on the coast, near a spring, which gave a vivid green to the abrupt cliffs, and nurtured oranges and palms in the shelter of the rocks.

Jaime overtook the two women, and next he saw Pepet spring out of the bushes where he had been walking outside the path, stone in hand, pursuing a bird whose cries had attracted his attention. They continued the journey to Can MallorquÍ together, and, without realizing how it happened Febrer found himself in advance, walking by Margalida's side, while PÈp's wife trudged along behind with slow step, leaning on her son's arm.

The mother was ill; an obscure illness, which caused the doctor on his rare visits, to shrug his shoulders, and which excited the ambition of the island healers. They had been to make a promise to the Virgin of Cubells, and had left on her altar two fluted candles purchased in the city.

While Margalida talked in a sad voice of the old woman's aches and pains, the egoism of vigorous youth spurred her on with nervous haste until her cheeks became suffused with color, and her eyes betrayed a certain impatience. This was courting day. They must reach Can MallorquÍ in time to prepare an early supper for the family before the suitors should arrive.

Febrer was admiring her with his serious eyes. He marveled now at the stupidity which had caused him to think of Margalida for all these months as a child, as an undeveloped creature, without realizing her graces. He remembered with scorn those seÑoritas of the city for whom the soldiers in the fonda sighed. Again he thought of the courting of Margalida with an annoyance resembling jealousy. Must this girl fall a prey to one of those dusky-faced barbarians who would subject her to slavery of the soil like a beast?

"Margalida!" he murmured, as if about to say something important. "Margalida!"

But he spoke no more. The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived him of speech; a timidity like that he had felt in his early youth when, far from the easy conquests on his estate in Majorca, he ventured to address himself to worldly-wise women on the Continent. Was it not an unworthy act for him to speak of love to this girl whom he had considered a child and who respected him as if he were her father?

"Margalida! Margalida!"

After these exclamations, which aroused the girl's curiosity, making her raise her eyes to fix them questioningly on his, he at last began to speak, asking her about the progress of the courting. Had she decided on anyone? Who was to be the lucky man? The Ironworker? the Minstrel?

She lowered her eyes again, in her confusion picking up a corner of her apron and raising it to her bosom. She did not know. She hesitated and lisped like a child in her bashfulness. She did not wish to marry—neither the Minstrel or the Ironworker, nor anybody. She had acquiesced in the courting because all girls did the same when they reached a certain age. Besides (here she flushed vividly), it gave her a kind of satisfaction to humiliate her friends, who were raging with envy on seeing the great number of her suitors. She was grateful to the youths who came from great distances to see her, but as for loving one of them—or marrying——

She had slackened her pace as she spoke. PÈp's wife and his son passed on unconsciously, and as the two were left alone in the path, they at last stopped, without realizing what they were doing.

"Margalida! Almond Blossom!"

To the devil with shyness! Febrer felt arrogant and masterful as in his better days. Why this fear? A peasant girl! A child!

He spoke with a firm accent, trying to fascinate her with the impassioned fixedness of her eyes, drawing near her, as if to caress her with the music of his words. And how about him? What did Margalida think of him? What if he should present himself to PÈp some day, telling him that he wished to marry his daughter?

"You!" exclaimed the girl. "You, Don Jaime!"

She raised her eyes fearlessly, laughing at the absurdity—the seÑor was accustomed to fooling her with his jests. Her father said that the Febrers were all as serious as judges, but ever in a good humor. He was jesting at her expense again, as he had done when he had told about his clay sweetheart up there in his tower who had been waiting for him a thousand years.

But when her glance met Febrer's, seeing his pale face, tense with emotion, she turned white also. He seemed a different man; she saw a Don Jaime she had never known before. Instinctively, impelled by fear, she took a step backward. She remained on the defensive, leaning against the slender trunk of a small tree, which grew beside the path, its tiny sickly colored leaves almost loosened by the autumn wind.

She could still smile—a forced smile, pretending to believe it one of the seÑor's jokes.

"No," replied Febrer with energy, "I am speaking seriously. Tell me, Margalida, Almond Blossom, what if I should become one of your lovers; and if I should come to the courting, what would you answer me?"

She shrunk back against the yielding tree trunk, making herself smaller, as if she would escape those ardent eyes. Her instinctive backward step shook the flexible tree and a shower of yellow leaves, like flakes of amber, fell roundabout her, clinging to her hair. Pale, her lips compressed and blue, she murmured words scarcely more audible than a gentle sigh. Her eyes, enlarged and deep, bore the agonized expression of the humble of spirit who think many things, but who find no words to express them. He, the heir of the Febrers, a gran seÑor, to marry a peasant girl? Was he crazy?

"No; I am not a great seÑor; I am an unfortunate creature. You are richer than I, who am living off your charity. Your father wishes your husband to be a man who shall cultivate his lands. Will you marry me, Margalida? Do you love me, Almond Blossom?"

With bowed head, avoiding a glance that seemed to burn her, she continued speaking without listening to him. Madness! It could not be true! The seÑor to say such things! He must be dreaming!

Suddenly she felt on one of her hands a light, caressing touch. She looked at him again. She saw an unfamiliar face that thrilled her. She experienced a sensation of grave danger—the nervous start which gives a warning. Her knees shook, they contracted as if she were about to faint with fear.

"Do you think me too old?" he murmured in a supplicating voice. "Can you never come to love me?"

The voice was sweet and caressing, but those eyes seemed to devour her! That pale face, like that of men who kill! She longed to speak, to protest at his last words. She had never thought of Don Jaime's age; he was something superior, like the saints, who grow in beauty with the years. But fear held her silent. She freed herself from the caressing hand, she felt moved by the prodigious rebound of her nerves, as if her life were in danger, and she fled from Febrer as if he were an assassin.

"Heaven help me!"

Murmuring this supplication she sprang away, and began to run with the agility of the country girl, disappearing round a turn in the path.

Jaime did not follow her. He stood motionless in the solitude of the pine forest, erect in the pathway, unconscious of his surroundings, like the hero of a legend subjected to an enchantment. Then he passed a hand over his face, as if awakening from a dream, collecting his thoughts. His audacious words stung him with remorse, Margalida's alarm, the terrified flight which had terminated the interview. How stupid of him! It was the result of his going to the city; the return to civilized life which, had upset his bachelor calm, arousing passions of long ago; the conversation of the young soldiers, who lived with their thoughts ever fixed on women. But no; he did not repent what he had done. It was important for Margalida to know what he had so often vaguely thought in the isolation of his tower.

He continued slowly along his way to avoid meeting the family from Can MallorquÍ. Margalida had joined her mother and brother. He saw them from a rise of ground, when they were journeying through the valley in the direction of the farmhouse.

Febrer changed his route, avoiding Can MallorquÍ. He directed his steps toward the Pirate's Tower, but when he gained it he passed on, not stopping until he reached the sea.

The rock-bound coast, which seemed to overhang the waters, was broken by their incessant lashing for century upon century. The waves, like furious blue bulls, charged, frothing with anger, against the rock, wearing deep caverns, which were prolonged upward in the form of vertical cracks. This age-long battle was destroying the coast, shattering its stony armor, scale by scale. Colossal wall-like fragments loosened. They first separated by forming an imperceptible crevice which grew and grew with the passing of centuries. The natural wall leaned for years and years above the waves, which beat furiously at its base, until it would lose its balance some stormy night and topple like the rampart of a besieged citadel, crumbling into blocks, peopling the sea with new reefs soon to be covered with slimy vegetation, while the winding passages would seethe with foam and sparkle with the metallic gleam of fish.

Febrer seated himself on the edge of a great projecting rock, a ledge loosened from the coast that inclined boldly over the reefs. His fatalism impelled him to sit there. Would that the inevitable catastrophe might take place at that moment, and that his body, dragged down by the collapsing rock, might disappear in the bottom of the sea, having for its sarcophagus this mass, equal to the pyramid of a Pharaoh! What had he to look forward to in life?

Before sinking out of sight the setting sun peeped through an opening of stormy sky lying between riven clouds. It was a gory sphere, a wafer of purple which lightened the immensity of the sea with a fiery glare. The dark masses closing in the horizon were fringed with scarlet. A restless triangle of flames spread over the dark green waters. The foam turned red and the coast looked for an instant like molten lava.

In the glow of this stormy light Jaime contemplated the fluctuation of the waters at his feet, hurling their boisterous swirls into the hollows of the rock, roaring and writhing, frothing with anger in the winding passages between the reefs. In the depths of this greenish mass, illuminated by the setting sun with transparencies of opal, he saw strange vegetation growing on the rocks, diminutive forests among whose clinging fronds moved animals of fantastic form, nervous and swift or torpid and sedentary, with hard carapaces, gray and pinkish, bristling with defenses, armed with tentacles, with lances and with horns, making war among themselves and persecuting the weaker creatures which passed like white exhalations, flashing like crystal in the rapidity of their flight.

Febrer felt belittled by the solitude. Faith in his human importance destroyed, he considered himself no bigger than one of those tiny creatures swarming about in the vegetation of the submarine abyss—perhaps even smaller. Those animals were armed for life, they could sustain themselves by their own strength, never knowing the discouragement, the humiliations and the sorrows which afflicted him. The grandeur of the sea, unconscious of man, cruel and implacable in its anger, overwhelmed Febrer, arousing in his memory an endless chain of ideas which were perhaps new, but which he accepted as vague reminiscences of a former existence, as something which he had thought before, he knew not where nor when.

A thrill of respect, of instinctive devotion, swept over him, making him forget the event of a short time before, submerging him in religious contemplation. The sea! He thought, he knew not why, of the most remote ancestors of humanity, of primitive man, miserable, scarcely emerged from original animalism, tormented and repelled on every side by a nature hostile in its exhuberance, as a young and vigorous body conquers or throws off the parasites which endeavor to live at the cost of its organism. On the shore of the sea, in the presence of the divine mystery, green and immense, man should experience his most restful moments. The earliest gods sprung from the bosom of the waters; contemplating the fluctuation of the waves, and soothed by their murmur, man should feel that within him is born something new and powerful—a soul. The sea! The mysterious organisms which people it also live, as do those of the land, subjected to the tyranny of fear, immovable in their primitive existence, repeating themselves throughout the centuries as if ever the same entity. There also do the dead command! The strong pursue the weak, and are in their turn devoured by others more powerful, as in the times of their remote progenitors, when the waters were yet warm from the formation of the globe—ever the same, repeating themselves throughout hundreds of millions of years. A monster of prehistoric ages who might return to swim in these waters would find on all sides, in the dark chasms, and along the coasts, the same life and the identical struggles as in his youth. The animal of combat with his green carapace, armed with curving claws and with forceps for torture, implacable warrior of the dark submarine caverns, has never united with the graceful fish, swift and weak, which trails its rose and silver tunic through the transparent waters. His destiny is to devour, to be strong, and, if he should find himself disarmed, his defenses broken, to give himself up to misfortune without protest and to perish. Death is preferable to abdicating one's primal rights, the noble fatality of birth. For the strong of the land or of the sea there is no satisfaction nor life outside one's own sphere; they are slaves of their own greatness; birth brings them misfortunes as well as honors, and it will ever be the same! The dead are the only ones who rule the living. The first beings who initiated a plan for living wrought with their acts the cage in which succeeding generations must be imprisoned.

The tranquil mollusks which he now saw in the depths of the waters, clinging to the rocks like dark buttons, seemed to him divine beings who guard the mystery of creation in their stupid quiet. He imagined them great and imposing like those monsters worshipped by savages for their impassivity, and in whose rigidity they believe they divine the majesty of the gods. Febrer recalled his jests of other times, on nights of feasting, seated before a plate of fresh oysters, in the fashionable Parisian restaurants. His elegant companions thought him mad as they listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life on the planet—one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of a first cousin who has failed to make a career for himself, of an unfortunate and absurd relative whom one leaves outside the door, feigning ignorance of his family name, denying him a welcome. The mollusk is the venerable grandfather, the chief of the house, the creator of the dynasty, the ancestor crowned with a nobility of millions of centuries. These thoughts came back to Febrer's mind now with the vividness of indisputable truths.

Humanity is faithful to its sources. Nobody denies the traditions of those venerable ancestors who seemed to be asleep in the immense catacomb of the sea. Man thinks himself free because he can move from one side of the planet to the other; because his organism is mounted upon two agile and articulate columns which permit of his springing over the ground by the mechanism of walking—but, it is an error! One more of many illusions which deceptively gladden our lives, making us bearers of its misery and its triviality! Febrer was convinced that we are all born shut in between two valves of prejudices, of scruple, and of pride, an inheritance from those who proceeded us, and although man stirs about, he never manages to tear himself from the same rock to which his predecessors clung and vegetated. Activity, incidents of life, independence of character, all are illusions, the vanity of the mollusk which dreams while adhering to the rock, and imagines he is swimming through all the seas on the globe, while his valves continue fastened to the stone!

All creatures are as those who have gone before, and as those yet to come. They change in shape, but the soul remains stationary and immutable like that of those rudimentary beings, eternal witnesses of the first palpitation of life on the planet, which seemed to be sleeping the heaviest of sleeps; and thus will it ever be. Vain are great efforts to free oneself from this fatal environment, from the heritage of fear, from the circle in which we are forced to move, until at last comes death. Then other animals like ourselves appear, and begin whirling around the same circle, imagining themselves free because ever before their footsteps they have new space in which to run.

"The dead command!" Jaime once more declared to himself. It seemed impossible that men do not realize this great truth; that they dwell in eternal night, believing that they make new things in the glow of illusions which rise daily, as rises the great deception of the sun to accompany us through the infinite, which is dark, but which seems to us blue and radiant with light.

When Febrer thought this, the sun had already set. The sea was almost black, the sky a leaden gray, and in the fog on the horizon the lightning quivered and flashed. Jaime felt on his face and on his hands the moist kiss of drops of rain. A storm was about to break which perhaps would last throughout the night. The lightning flashes were coming nearer, a distant crashing was heard, as if two hostile fleets were cannonading beyond the curtain of fog on the horizon, and approaching each other behind its screen. The sheet of quiet water, glossy as crystal between reefs and coast, began to tremble with the widening undulations of the raindrops.

In spite of this he did not stir. He remained seated on the rock, experiencing a fierce anger against fate, rebelling with all the strength of his nature at the tyranny of the past. Why should the dead command? Why should they darken the atmosphere with the dust of their souls, like powdered bone lodging in the brains of the living, imposing the old ideas?

Suddenly Febrer experienced an overwhelming impression, as if he beheld an extraordinary light, never before seen. His brain seemed to dilate, to expand like a mass of water bursting an encompassing vessel of stone. At that instant a lightning flash colored the sea with livid light, and a thunder clap burst above his head, its echoes rattling with awesome reverberation over the expanse of the sea, in the caverns, and over the hilltops along the shore.

No, the dead do not command! The dead do not rule! As if he were a different man, Jaime ridiculed his recent thoughts. Those rudimentary animals which he had seen among the rocks, and with them all creatures of the sea and of the earth, suffer the slavery of fear. The dead rule them because they do the same things which their ancestors did, the same things their descendants will do. But man is not the slave of fear; he is its collaborator and sometimes its master. Man is a progressive and reasoning being, and can change his condition to suit his desires. Man was a slave to his surroundings in former times, in remote ages, but when he conquered nature and exploited her, he burst the fatal bondage in which other created things still remain prisoners. What matters to him the fear in which he has been born? He can make himself over anew if he will.

Jaime could not continue his reflections. Rain was streaming over the brim of his hat, running down his back. Night had suddenly come. By the glare of the lightning he saw the glazed surface of the sea trembling with the beating of the rain.

Febrer made all haste toward his tower, but he was happy, eager to run, with the overflowing joy of one emerging from long imprisonment and who has not before him space enough for his repressed activity.

"I will do what I please!" he shouted, rejoicing at the sound of his own voice, which was lost in the clamor of the storm. "Neither dead nor living shall rule me! What do I care for my noble forefathers, for my moth-eaten prejudices, for all the Febrers?"

Suddenly he was enveloped in a carmine light, and a cannon-shot burst above his head, as if the coast had been rent asunder by the shock of an immense catastrophe.

"That must have struck near here," said Jaime, referring to the electric flash.

His mind occupied with the Febrers, he thought of his ancestor the knight commander Don Priamo. The explosion of thunder recalled to his mind the combats of the diabolical hero, the religious cavalier of the Cross, a mocker of God and of the devil who always followed his sovereign will, fighting on the side of his kindred, or living among the enemies of the Faith, according to his caprices or his affections.

No! Febrer did not repudiate him. He adored the valorous knight commander; he was his true forbear, the best of them all, the rebel, the demon of the family!

Jaime entered the tower and struck a light; he flung around his shoulders the Arabian haik of coarse weave that served him for his nocturnal excursions, and taking a book he tried to distract himself until Pepet should bring his supper.

The storm seemed to be centered on the island. The rain fell on the fields, converting them, into marshes; it rushed down the declivities of the roadways, overflowing like rivers; it soaked the mountains like great sponges through the porous soil of the pine forest and thickets. The flare of the lightning gave hasty glimpses, like visions in a dream, of the blackish sea, the fretting foam, and flooded fields, which seemed filled with fiery fish, the trees glistening beneath their watery mantles.

In the kitchen of Can MallorquÍ Margalida's suitors stood in a group, in damp, steaming clothing and muddy sandals. Tonight the courting lasted longer. PÈp, with a paternal air, had allowed the youths to remain after the time for the wooing had passed; he felt sorry for the poor boys who must walk home through the rain. He had been a suitor himself once upon a time. They might wait; perhaps the storm would soon pass; and if it did not they should stay and sleep wherever they could, in the kitchen, on the porch. "One wouldn't turn out a dog on such a night."

The youths, rejoicing in the event, which added more time to their courting, gazed at Margalida arrayed in her gala dress, seated in the center of the room, a vacant chair beside her. Each one had taken his turn at sitting upon it during the course of the evening, and now all looked at it eagerly, but lacked courage to occupy it again.

The Ironworker, wishing to outshine the others, was twanging a guitar, singing in low tones, accompanied by the rolling of the thunder. The Minstrel, sitting in a corner, was meditating new verses. Some boys hailed with mocking words the lightning flashes, which filtered through the cracks of the door, and the Little Chaplain smiled, sitting on the floor, his chin in his hands.

PÈp was dozing in a low chair, overcome by weariness, and his wife screamed with terror whenever a loud thunder clap shook the house, interjecting between her groans fragments of prayers, murmured in Castilian for greater efficacy: "Santa Barbara bendita, que en el cielo estas escrita——" Margalida, heedless of the glances of her suitors, seemed half dead with fright.

Suddenly there came two taps upon the door. The dog, who had scrambled to his feet scenting the presence of someone on the porch, stretched his neck, but instead of barking he wagged his tail in welcome.

Margalida and her mother glanced fearfully toward the door. Who could it be, at that time, on that night, in the solitude of Can MallorquÍ? Had anything happened to the seÑor?

Aroused by the knocking, PÈp sat up straight in his chair. "Come in, whoever you are!" He gave the invitation with the dignity of a Roman paterfamilias, absolute master of his house. The door was not locked.

It opened, giving passage to a gust of rain-laden wind, which made the candle flicker, and refreshed the dense atmosphere of the kitchen. The dark rectangle of the doorway was lighted by the splendor of a lightning flash, and all saw in it, against the livid sky, a kind of penitent, with half-concealed face, a hooded figure, dripping rain.

He entered with firm tread, with no word of greeting, followed by the dog sniffing at his legs with affectionate growls. He strode directly toward the vacant chair beside Margalida, the place reserved for the suitors.

As he took his seat he flung back his hood and fixed his eyes on the girl.

"Ah!" she gasped, turning pale, her eyes widening in surprise.

So great was her emotion, so violent, her impulse to draw away from him, that she nearly fell to the floor.