Justo Sierra was born January 26, 1848, at Campeche, the capital city of the State of the same name. The son of a man known in the world of letters, he early showed himself interested in literary pursuits. Determining to follow the career of law, he was licensed to practice at the age of twenty-three. Chosen a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he promptly gained a reputation as an orator. He became one of the justices of the Supreme Court. At present he is Sub-Secretary of Public Instruction and has been connected with all recent progress in Mexican education. For some years he was professor of general history in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School). Among his works are Cuentos romÁnticos (Romantic Tales), En Tierra Yankee (In Yankee Land), and MÉxico y su evoluciÓn social (Mexico and its Social Evolution). In style Sierra is poetical and highly fantastic, with a strain of humor rare in Mexicans. Our selection is a complete story from Cuentos romÁnticos.

THE STORY OF STAREI: A LEGEND OF YELLOW FEVER.

Examining a volume, pretentiously styled Album de Viaje (Album of Travel), which lay amid the sympathetic dust, which time accumulates in a box of long-forgotten papers, I encountered what my kind readers are about to see.

We were in the diligencia coming from Vera Cruz, a German youth, Wilhelm S.—with flaxen hair and great, expressionless, blue eyes,—and myself. We had not well gained the summit of the Chiquihuite, when the storm burst upon us. The coach halted, in order not to expose itself to the dangers of the descent over slopes now converted into rivers. I neared my face to the window, raising the heavy leather curtain, which the wind was beating against the window-frame; it looked like night. Above us, the tempest, with its thousand black wings, beat against space; its electric bellowings, rumbled from the hills to the sea, and the lightning, like a gleaming sword tearing open the bosom of the clouds, revealed to us, within, the livid entrails of the storm.

We were literally in the midst of a cataract, which, precipitating itself from the clouds, rebounded from the mountain summit, and rushed, with torrential fury, down the slopes.

“I am drenched in oceans of perspiration,” said my companion to me in French, “and I have an oven inside of me.”

“Go to sleep,” I replied, “and all this will pass,” and, joining example to counsel, I wrapped myself in my cloak and closed my eyes.

Two hours later the tempest had passed, drifting to the west, over the wooded heights. It was five in the evening and the declining sun was nearing the last low-lying patches of cloud. The light, penetrating through the exuberant vegetation, colored everything with a marvelous variety of hues, which melted into a glow of gold and emerald. To the east an infinite sheet of verdure extended itself, following all the folds and irregularities of the mountain mass, flecked here and there with the delicate and brilliant green of banana patches, and undulating over that stairway of giants, became blue with distance and broke like a sea against the broad strip of sand of the Vera Cruz coast. The road which we had followed in our ascent, wound like a serpent among trees, which scarcely distinguished their foliage masses amid the dense curtain of vines and creepers, passed over a lofty bridge, descended in broad curves to a little settlement of wooden buildings, and went, between dense and tangled patches of briers, to confound itself with the bit of railroad which led from the foot of the mountain to the port. At the bottom of the picture, there, where the sea was imagined, were rising superb cloud masses against whose blue-gray ground were defined the black and immovable streaks of stratus, seeming a flock of seabirds opening their enormous wings to the wind, which delayed its blowing.

The German slept as one much fatigued and from his panting bosom issued heavy sobs; he seemed afflicted with intense suffering; a suspicion crossed my mind; if he should——!

The branches of a neighboring tree projected, through an open window, into the diligencia, which was standing still, until the torrents should have spent something of their force. Upon a yellowed leaf trembled a raindrop, the last tear of the tempest. Preoccupied by the dismal fear which the condition of my companion caused me, I looked attentively at that bead of crystal liquid. This is what I saw:

The drop of water was the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by the immense curve of hot coast and cut off, on the east, by two low breakwaters, crusted with flowers and palms,—Florida and Yucatan, between which, in flight, extended a long string of seabirds, the Antilles, headed by the royal heron, Cuba, slave served by slaves.

In the midst of the Gulf, surmounted by a yellow crown, which gilded the sea around like an enormous sunflower which reflects itself in a flower of water, arose a barren island of the color of impure gold, where currents deposited the seaweeds like the wrappings which swathe Egyptian mummies. Above that rocky mass the sun gleamed like copper, the rapid moon passed veiled by livid vapors, and on days of tempest the storm-birds described wide circles around it, uttering direful croakings. A voice, infinitely sad, like the voice of the sea, sounded in that lost island; listen, it said to me.

The very year in which the sons of the sun arrived at the islands, there lived in Cuba a woman of thirteen years, named Starei (star). She was very beautiful; black were her eyes and intoxicatingly sweet like those of the Aztecs; her skin firm and golden as that of those who bathe in the MeschacebÉ; celestial her voice as that of the shkok, which sings its serenades in the zapote groves of MayapÁn; and her little feet were as graceful and fine as those of Antillean princesses, who pass their lives swinging in hammocks, which seem to be woven by fairies. When Starei appeared one morning on the strand, seated on the red shell of a sea-turtle, she seemed a living pearl and all adored her as a daughter of god, of Dimivan-caracol. The priestess of the tribe prayed all night near the sacred fire, in which smouldered leaves of the intoxicating tobacco, and at last heard the divine voice, which resounded within the heart of the great stone fetish, saying: “Kill her not; guard and protect her; she is the daughter of the Gulf and the Gulf was her cradle; God grant that she return there.”

Starei completed her thirteen years and the old and the young, prophets and warriors, caciques and slaves, abandoned their villages, temples, and hearths, to run after her on the seashore. All were crazy with love, but, if one of them approached her, the Gulf thundered hoarsely and the storm-bird flew screaming across the sky.

Starei sang like the Mexican zenzontl, and her song soothed like the seabreeze which kisses the palms in hot evenings, and in laughing she opened her red lips like the wings of the ipiri and her bosom rose and let fall in enticing folds, the fine web of cotton that covered it. Men on seeing her wept, kneeling, and women wept also, seeing their palm huts deserted and their beds of rushes chilled and untouched.

One stormy night, the divine Starei returned to the village, after one of her rambles on the shore, in which she passed hours watching the waves, as if waiting for something; those who followed her determined to heap high their dead and bury them; the aged who had died from weariness in the pursuit of the Gulf’s daughter, the youths who had thrown their hearts at her feet, the mothers who had died of grief and the wives who had died of despair.

It was a night of tempest; Hurakan, the god of the Antilles, reigned with unwitnessed fury. The priests spoke of a new deluge and of the legendary gourd in which were the ocean and the sea-monsters, which, one day, broke and inundated the earth, and, terrified, they ascended to the summit of their temple-pyramid and took refuge in the shadow of their gods of stone, which trembled on their pedestals. The people of the island, overwhelmed with terror, forgot Starei. All the night was passed in prayer and sacrifice; but at daybreak, they ran, infatuated, to where the song of the maiden called them.

Starei was on the shore, seated on the trunk of one of the thousands of palm trees, which the wind had uprooted and thrown upon the sand; upon her knees rested the head of a white man, who appeared to be a corpse. The beauty of that face was sweet and manly at once and the just appearing beard indicated the youthfulness of the man, whom Starei devoured with eyes bathed in tears.

“Whoever saves him,” she exclaimed, “shall be my husband, my life companion.”

“He is dead,” solemnly replied an aged priest.

“He lives,” cried a man, opening his way through the crowd.

The astonished Indians fell away from him; never had they seen so strange a being among them. He was tall and strong; his hair, the color of corn-silk, rose rigidly above his broad and bronzed forehead and dividing into two masses fell thick and straight upon his shoulders; his eyebrows were two delicate red lines, which joined at the root of his aquiline nose; his mouth, of the purple hue of Campeche wood, bent upward at the tips, in a sensual and cruel arch. The oval of his face, unbroken by even a trace of beard, did not so much attract attention as his eyes, of the color of two coins of purest gold, set in black circles. He was naked, but splendidly tattooed with red designs; from the gold chain that encircled his waist hung a skirt, deftly woven of the feathers of the huitzitl, the humming-bird of Anahuac.

That man, who, many believed, came from Hayti, approached that which seemed to be a corpse, without paying attention to the glance, of profound anger, of Starei. He laid one hand upon the icy brow of the white man, and, on placing the other to the heart, instantly withdrew it as if he had touched a glowing brand; rapidly he tore open the still-drenched shirt of linen, which covered the youth’s breast and seized an object that hung at the neck. This object Starei snatched from him. Was it a Talisman? When that singular man no longer had beneath his hand that, which had, doubtless, been to him a hindrance, he placed it upon the stilled heart of the shipwrecked stranger and said to the maiden, “Kiss him on the lips,” and had scarcely been obeyed when the supposed dead man recovered and, taking the piece of wood from Starei’s hand, knelt, placing it against his lips and bathing it in tears. It was a cross.

“Adieu, Starei,” said he of the eyes of gold; “yonder is the hut of Zekom (fever) among the palms; there is our nuptial couch; I await you because you have promised.”

The daughter of the Gulf could not restrain a cry of anger at hearing the words of the son of Heat; she approached the Christian, clasped his neck in her arms and covered his mouth and eyes with kisses. “No! no! leave me, thou loved of Satan,” cried the youth, trying to release himself from the beautiful being. Starei took him by the hand, led him to her hut, and said to him, in expressive pantomime, “Here we two will live.”

Then her companion replied in the language of those of Hayti, which was perfectly understood in Cuba:

“I cannot be thy husband; I will be thy brother.”

“Why not? Who are you?”

“I am from far, far beyond the sea. I come from Castile. With many others, I arrived, some months ago, at Hayti, and knowing that this, your isle, had not been visited by Christians, we desired to visit it, but were shipwrecked in the fearful tempest of last night and I was about to perish, when thy hand seized me amid the waves and brought me to the shore.”

“And why do you not wish to be my husband?”

“Because I am a priest and my god, who is the only god, orders his priests not to marry; he orders us to preach love. I come to preach it here, but not the love of the world,” added the Spaniard, sighing.

“This cannot be; it is not true,” replied the island woman, with vigor, “remain here with me in my hut, and we will be the rulers of the island and our children will be heirs of all.”

“I will be thy brother,” replied the missionary.

And the Indian woman left, weeping. In the way she met Zekom, who fixed his terrible yellow glance upon her.

“Comest to my hut, Starei?” he asked her.

“Never,” she answered firm and brave.

“We will be the rulers of all the islands of the seas and our children will be gods on earth, because we are children of the gods; the Gulf begot you in a pearlshell; the glowing Tropic begot me in a reef of gold and coral.”

Starei paused; she was upon the summit of a rock, from which the whole coast was visible.

“Look,” continued Zekom, “this will be our kingdom.” And before the fascinated eye of the daughter of the Gulf there was spread out a surprising panorama. In the midst of an emerald prairie, a cu or teocalli reared its high pyramid of gold, which shed its light around, even to the distant horizon. Over that gleaming plain were prostrated innumerable people with fear depicted on their faces. Genii, clad in marvelous garments, discharged upon these people, innumerable flaming arrows, the touch of which caused death. And upon the summit of the cu, she stood erect, as on a pedestal, more beautiful than the sun of springtime. The daughter of the Gulf remained long in silent ecstasy.

“Come, Starei,” murmured Zekom in her ear, “tomorrow I await thee in my hut.”

Starei departed thinking, dreaming. When the new day dawned, she saw the Spaniard, hidden in the forest, kneeling, with his eyes turned heavenward. At seeing him, the Indian maiden felt all her love rekindled; she threw herself, anew, upon him and clasping him within her arms, repeated:

“Love me; love me, man of the cold land. I will adore thy god, who cannot curse us because we fulfil his law, the law of life. Come to my nuptial hut; I will be thy slave; we will pray together and I will be as humble and as cowardly as thou; but love me as I love you.”

“I will be thy brother,” replied the missionary, pale with emotion.

“Cursed art thou!” said Starei, and fled.

The priest made a movement, as if to follow her, but restrained himself, casting one sublime glance of grief toward heaven.

Again, through all that night, the Gulf thundered frightfully. At break of day, Zekom and Starei issued from the nuptial hut, but as the maiden received the first rays of the sun in her languid eyes, they lost their luminous blackness like that of the night and turned yellow with the color of gold, like those of her lover. He cast a stone into the sea and instantly there appeared, in the west, a black pirogue, which neared the shore impelled by the hurricane, which filled its blood-red sails.

“Come to be my queen,” said Zekom to the daughter of the Gulf and they entered into the bark, which instantly gained the horizon.

Then the missionary appeared upon the shore, crying:

“Come, Starei, my sister, I love thee.”

The silhouette of the pirogue, like a black wing, was losing itself in the indistinct line where the sea joins the sky. Starei had joined herself in marriage to the devil.

And the voice which resounded, sad and melancholy, from the rock, continued—this is the centre of the domain of Starei; from here her eternal vengeance against the whites radiates. The missionary died soon after, of a strange disease, and his cold body turned horribly yellow, as if from it were reflected the eyes of gold of Zekom. Since then every year Starei weeps for him, disconsolate, and her tears evaporated by the tropic heat poison the atmosphere of the Gulf, and woe for the sons of the cold land.

The raindrop fell to the ground; the coach proceeded on its way, and I turned to glance at my friend; he was insensible; a livid, yellow hue was invading his skin and his eyes seemed to start from their orbits. “I die, I die, oh, my mother,” said the poor boy. I did not know what to do. I clasped him in my arms trying to sooth his sufferings, to give him courage. We reached Cordoba. The poor fevered patient said: “Look at her—the yellow woman.” “Who? Is it Starei?” I asked him. “Yes. It is she,” he answered.

It was necessary for me to leave him. On arriving at Mexico I read this paragraph in a Vera Cruz paper: “The young German, Wilhelm S., of the house of Watermayer & Co., who left this city in apparent health, has died of yellow fever at Cordoba, R. I. P.”