Chapter: That good fight had been to me like a draught of wine, and made me for
a while oblivious of my loss and of the pain from my wound. But the glow
and feeling of exultation did not last: the lacerated flesh smarted; I
was weak from loss of blood, and oppressed with sensations of fatigue.
If my foes had appeared on the scene they would have made an easy
conquest of me; but they came not, and I continued to walk on, slowly
and painfully, pausing often to rest.

At last, recovering somewhat from my faint condition, and losing all
fear of being overtaken, my sorrow revived in full force, and thought
returned to madden me.

Alas! this bright being, like no other in its divine brightness, so long
in the making, now no more than a dead leaf, a little dust, lost and
forgotten for ever--oh, pitiless! Oh, cruel!

But I knew it all before--this law of nature and of necessity, against
which all revolt is idle: often had the remembrance of it filled me with
ineffable melancholy; only now it seemed cruel beyond all cruelty.

Not nature the instrument, not the keen sword that cuts into the
bleeding tissues, but the hand that wields it--the unseen unknown
something, or person, that manifests itself in the horrible workings of
nature.

"Did you know, beloved, at the last, in that intolerable heat, in that
moment of supreme anguish, that he is unlistening, unhelpful as the
stars, that you cried not to him? To me was your cry; but your poor,
frail fellow creature was not there to save, or, failing that, to cast
himself into the flames and perish with you, hating God."

Thus, in my insufferable pain, I spoke aloud; alone in that solitary
place, a bleeding fugitive in the dark night, looking up at the stars
I cursed the Author of my being and called on Him to take back the
abhorred gift of life.

Yet, according to my philosophy, how vain it was! All my bitterness and
hatred and defiance were as empty, as ineffectual, as utterly futile,
as are the supplications of the meek worshipper, and no more than the
whisper of a leaf, the light whirr of an insect's wing. Whether I loved
Him who was over all, as when I thanked Him on my knees for guiding
me to where I had heard so sweet and mysterious a melody, or hated and
defied Him as now, it all came from Him--love and hate, good and evil.

But I know--I knew then--that in one thing my philosophy was false, that
it was not the whole truth; that though my cries did not touch nor come
near Him they would yet hurt me; and, just as a prisoner maddened at
his unjust fate beats against the stone walls of his cell until he falls
back bruised and bleeding to the floor, so did I wilfully bruise my own
soul, and knew that those wounds I gave myself would not heal.

Of that night, the beginning of the blackest period of my life, I shall
say no more; and over subsequent events I shall pass quickly.

Morning found me at a distance of many miles from the scene of my duel
with the Indian, in a broken, hilly country, varied with savannah and
open forest. I was well-nigh spent with my long march, and felt that
unless food was obtained before many hours my situation would be indeed
desperate. With labour I managed to climb to the summit of a hill about
three hundred feet high in order to survey the surrounding country, and
found that it was one of a group of five, and conjectured that these
were the five hills of Uritay and that I was in the neighbourhood of
Managa's village. Coming down I proceeded to the next hill, which was
higher; and before reaching it came to a stream in a narrow valley
dividing the hills, and proceeding along its banks in search of a
crossing-place, I came full in sight of the settlement sought for. As I
approached, people were seen moving hurriedly about; and by the time I
arrived, walking slowly and painfully, seven or eight men were standing
before the village' some with spears in their hands, the women and
children behind them, all staring curiously at me. Drawing near I cried
out in a somewhat feeble voice that I was seeking for Managa; whereupon
a gray-haired man stepped forth, spear in hand, and replied that he was
Managa, and demanded to know why I sought him. I told him a part of my
story--enough to show that I had a deadly feud with Runi, that I had
escaped from him after killing one of his people.

I was taken in and supplied with food; my wound was examined and
dressed; and then I was permitted to lie down and sleep, while Managa,
with half a dozen of his people, hurriedly started to visit the scene of
my fight with Kua-ko, not only to verify my story, but partly with the
hope of meeting Runi. I did not see him again until the next morning,
when he informed me that he had found the spot where I had been
overtaken, that the dead man had been discovered by the others and
carried back towards Parahuari. He had followed the trace for some
distance, and he was satisfied that Runi had come thus far in the first
place only with the intention of spying on him.

My arrival, and the strange tidings I had brought, had thrown the
village into a great commotion; it was evident that from that time
Managa lived in constant apprehension of a sudden attack from his old
enemy. This gave me great satisfaction; it was my study to keep the
feeling alive, and, more than that, to drop continual hints of his
enemy's secret murderous purpose, until he was wrought up to a kind of
frenzy of mingled fear and rage. And being of a suspicious and somewhat
truculent temper, he one day all at once turned on me as the immediate
cause of his miserable state, suspecting perhaps that I only wished
to make an instrument of him. But I was strangely bold and careless of
danger then, and only mocked at his rage, telling him proudly that I
feared him not; that Runi, his mortal enemy and mine, feared not him but
me; that Runi knew perfectly well where I had taken refuge and would not
venture to make his meditated attack while I remained in his village,
but would wait for my departure. "Kill me, Managa," I cried, smiting my
chest as I stood facing him. "Kill me, and the result will be that he
will come upon you unawares and murder you all, as he has resolved to do
sooner or later."

After that speech he glared at me in silence, then flung down the spear
he had snatched up in his sudden rage and stalked out of the house and
into the wood; but before long he was back again, seated in his old
place, brooding on my words with a face black as night.

It is painful to recall that secret dark chapter of my life--that
period of moral insanity. But I wish not to be a hypocrite, conscious or
unconscious, to delude myself or another with this plea of insanity. My
mind was very clear just then; past and present were clear to me; the
future clearest of all: I could measure the extent of my action and
speculate on its future effect, and my sense of right or wrong--of
individual responsibility--was more vivid than at any other period of my
life. Can I even say that I was blinded by passion? Driven, perhaps, but
certainly not blinded. For no reaction, or submission, had followed on
that furious revolt against the unknown being, personal or not, that is
behind nature, in whose existence I believed. I was still in revolt: I
would hate Him, and show my hatred by being like Him, as He appears to
us reflected in that mirror of Nature. Had He given me good gifts--the
sense of right and wrong and sweet humanity? The beautiful sacred flower
He had caused to grow in me I would crush ruthlessly; its beauty and
fragrance and grace would be dead for ever; there was nothing evil,
nothing cruel and contrary to my nature, that I would not be guilty of,
glorying in my guilt. This was not the temper of a few days: I remained
for close upon two months at Managa's village, never repenting nor
desisting in my efforts to induce the Indians to join me in that most
barbarous adventure on which my heart was set.

I succeeded in the end; it would have been strange if I had not. The
horrible details need not be given. Managa did not wait for his enemy,
but fell on him unexpectedly, an hour after nightfall in his own
village. If I had really been insane during those two months, if some
cloud had been on me, some demoniacal force dragging me on, the cloud
and insanity vanished and the constraint was over in one moment, when
that hellish enterprise was completed. It was the sight of an old woman,
lying where she had been struck down, the fire of the blazing house
lighting her wide-open glassy eyes and white hair dabbled in blood,
which suddenly, as by a miracle, wrought this change in my brain. For
they were all dead at last, old and young, all who had lighted the fire
round that great green tree in which Rima had taken refuge, who had
danced round the blaze, shouting: "Burn! burn!"

At the moment my glance fell on that prostrate form I paused and stood
still, trembling like a person struck with a sudden pang in the heart,
who thinks that his last moment has come to him unawares. After a
while I slunk away out of the great circle of firelight into the thick
darkness beyond. Instinctively I turned towards the forests across the
savannah--my forest again; and fled away from the noise and the sight
of flames, never pausing until I found myself within the black shadow
of the trees. Into the deeper blackness of the interior I dared not
venture; on the border I paused to ask myself what I did there alone in
the night-time. Sitting down, I covered my face with my hands as if to
hide it more effectually than it could be hidden by night and the forest
shadows. What horrible thing, what calamity that frightened my soul to
think of, had fallen on me? The revulsion of feeling, the unspeakable
horror, the remorse, was more than I could bear. I started up with a cry
of anguish, and would have slain myself to escape at that moment; but
Nature is not always and utterly cruel, and on this occasion she came to
my aid. Consciousness forsook me, and I lived not again until the light
of early morning was in the east; then found myself lying on the wet
herbage--wet with rain that had lately fallen. My physical misery was
now so great that it prevented me from dwelling on the scenes witnessed
on the previous evening. Nature was again merciful in this. I only
remembered that it was necessary to hide myself, in case the Indians
should be still in the neighbourhood and pay the wood a visit. Slowly
and painfully I crept away into the forest, and there sat for several
hours, scarcely thinking at all, in a half-stupefied condition. At noon
the sun shone out and dried the wood. I felt no hunger, only a
vague sense of bodily misery, and with it the fear that if I left my
hiding-place I might meet some human creature face to face. This fear
prevented me from stirring until the twilight came, when I crept forth
and made my way to the border of the forest, to spend the night there.
Whether sleep visited me during the dark hours or not I cannot say:
day and night my condition seemed the same; I experienced only a dull
sensation of utter misery which seemed in spirit and flesh alike,
an inability to think clearly, or for more than a few moments
consecutively, about anything. Scenes in which I had been principal
actor came and went, as in a dream when the will slumbers: now with
devilish ingenuity and persistence I was working on Managa's mind; now
standing motionless in the forest listening for that sweet, mysterious
melody; now staring aghast at old Cla-cla's wide-open glassy eyes and
white hair dabbled in blood; then suddenly, in the cave at Riolama, I
was fondly watching the slow return of life and colour to Rima's still
face.

When morning came again, I felt so weak that a vague fear of sinking
down and dying of hunger at last roused me and sent me forth in quest
of food. I moved slowly and my eyes were dim to see, but I knew so well
where to seek for small morsels--small edible roots and leaf-stalks,
berries, and drops of congealed gum--that it would have been strange in
that rich forest if I had not been able to discover something to stay my
famine. It was little, but it sufficed for the day. Once more Nature was
merciful to me; for that diligent seeking among the concealing leaves
left no interval for thought; every chance morsel gave a momentary
pleasure, and as I prolonged my search my steps grew firmer, the dimness
passed from my eyes. I was more forgetful of self, more eager, and like
a wild animal with no thought or feeling beyond its immediate wants.
Fatigued at the end, I fell asleep as soon as darkness brought my busy
rambles to a close, and did not wake until another morning dawned.

My hunger was extreme now. The wailing notes of a pair of small birds,
persistently flitting round me, or perched with gaping bills and
wings trembling with agitation, served to remind me that it was now
breeding-time; also that Rima had taught me to find a small bird's nest.
She found them only to delight her eyes with the sight; but they would
be food for me; the crystal and yellow fluid in the gem-like, white
or blue or red-speckled shells would help to keep me alive. All day I
hunted, listening to every note and cry, watching the motions of every
winged thing, and found, besides gums and fruits, over a score of nests
containing eggs, mostly of small birds, and although the labour was
great and the scratches many, I was well satisfied with the result.

A few days later I found a supply of Haima gum, and eagerly began
picking it from the tree; not that it could be used, but the thought of
the brilliant light it gave was so strong in my mind that mechanically I
gathered it all. The possession of this gum, when night closed round
me again, produced in me an intense longing for artificial light and
warmth. The darkness was harder than ever to endure. I envied the
fireflies their natural lights, and ran about in the dusk to capture a
few and hold them in the hollow of my two hands, for the sake of their
cold, fitful flashes. On the following day I wasted two or three hours
trying to get fire in the primitive method with dry wood, but failed,
and lost much time, and suffered more than ever from hunger in
consequence. Yet there was fire in everything; even when I struck at
hard wood with my knife, sparks were emitted. If I could only arrest
those wonderful heat- and light-giving sparks! And all at once, as if I
had just lighted upon some new, wonderful truth, it occurred to me that
with my steel hunting-knife and a piece of flint fire could be obtained.
Immediately I set about preparing tinder with dry moss, rotten wood, and
wild cotton; and in a short time I had the wished fire, and heaped wood
dry and green on it to make it large. I nursed it well, and spent the
night beside it; and it also served to roast some huge white grubs which
I had found in the rotten wood of a prostrate trunk. The sight of these
great grubs had formerly disgusted me; but they tasted good to me now,
and stayed my hunger, and that was all I looked for in my wild forest
food.

For a long time an undefined feeling prevented me from going near the
site of Nuflo's burnt lodge. I went there at last; and the first thing I
did was to go all round the fatal spot, cautiously peering into the
rank herbage, as if I feared a lurking serpent; and at length, at some
distance from the blackened heap, I discovered a human skeleton, and
knew it to be Nuflo's. In his day he had been a great armadillo-hunter,
and these quaint carrion-eaters had no doubt revenged themselves by
devouring his flesh when they found him dead--killed by the savages.

Having once returned to this spot of many memories, I could not quit it
again; while my wild woodland life lasted, here must I have my lair, and
being here I could not leave that mournful skeleton above ground. With
labour I excavated a pit to bury it, careful not to cut or injure a
broad-leafed creeper that had begun to spread itself over the spot; and
after refilling the hole I drew the long, trailing stems over the mound.

"Sleep well, old man," said I, when my work was done; and these few
words, implying neither censure nor praise, was all the burial service
that old Nuflo had from me.

I then visited the spot where the old man, assisted by me, had concealed
his provisions before starting for Riolama, and was pleased to find that
it had not been discovered by the Indians. Besides the store of tobacco
leaf, maize, pumpkin, potatoes, and cassava bread, and the cooking
utensils, I found among other things a chopper--a great acquisition,
since with it I would be able to cut down small palms and bamboos to
make myself a hut.

The possession of a supply of food left me time for many things: time
in the first place to make my own conditions; doubtless after them
there would be further progression on the old lines--luxuries added to
necessaries; a healthful, fruitful life of thought and action combined;
and at last a peaceful, contemplative old age.

I cleared away ashes and rubbish, and marked out the very spot where
Rima's separate bower had been for my habitation, which I intended to
make small. In five days it was finished; then, after lighting a fire,
I stretched myself out in my dry bed of moss and leaves with a feeling
that was almost triumphant. Let the rain now fall in torrents, putting
out the firefly's lamp; let the wind and thunder roar their loudest, and
the lightnings smite the earth with intolerable light, frightening the
poor monkeys in their wet, leafy habitations, little would I heed it
all on my dry bed, under my dry, palm-leaf thatch, with glorious fire to
keep me company and protect me from my ancient enemy, Darkness.

From that first sleep under shelter I woke refreshed, and was not driven
by the cruel spur of hunger into the wet forest. The wished time had
come of rest from labour, of leisure for thought. Resting here, just
where she had rested, night by night clasping a visionary mother in her
arms, whispering tenderest words in a visionary ear, I too now clasped
her in my arms--a visionary Rima. How different the nights had seemed
when I was without shelter, before I had rediscovered fire! How had I
endured it? That strange ghostly gloom of the woods at night-time full
of innumerable strange shapes; still and dark, yet with something seen
at times moving amidst them, dark and vague and strange also--an owl,
perhaps, or bat, or great winged moth, or nightjar. Nor had I any choice
then but to listen to the night-sounds of the forest; and they were
various as the day-sounds, and for every day-sound, from the faintest
lisping and softest trill to the deep boomings and piercing cries, there
was an analogue; always with something mysterious, unreal in its tone,
something proper to the night. They were ghostly sounds, uttered by the
ghosts of dead animals; they were a hundred different things by
turns, but always with a meaning in them, which I vainly strove to
catch--something to be interpreted only by a sleeping faculty in us,
lightly sleeping, and now, now on the very point of awaking!

Now the gloom and the mystery were shut out; now I had that which stood
in the place of pleasure to me, and was more than pleasure. It was a
mournful rapture to lie awake now, wishing not for sleep and oblivion,
hating the thought of daylight that would come at last to drown
and scare away my vision. To be with Rima again--my lost Rima
recovered--mine, mine at last! No longer the old vexing doubt now--"You
are you, and I am I--why is it?"--the question asked when our souls were
near together, like two raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly
nearer, ever nearer: for now they had touched and were not two, but one
inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by
time, nor shattered by death's blow, nor resolved by any alchemy.

I had other company besides this unfailing vision and the bright dancing
fire that talked to me in its fantastic fire language. It was my custom
to secure the door well on retiring; grief had perhaps chilled my blood,
for I suffered less from heat than from cold at this period, and the
fire seemed grateful all night long; I was also anxious to exclude all
small winged and creeping night-wanderers. But to exclude them entirely
proved impossible: through a dozen invisible chinks they would find
their way to me; also some entered by day to lie concealed until after
nightfall. A monstrous hairy hermit spider found an asylum in a dusky
corner of the hut, under the thatch, and day after day he was there,
all day long, sitting close and motionless; but at dark he invariably
disappeared--who knows on what murderous errand! His hue was a deep
dead-leaf yellow, with a black and grey pattern, borrowed from some wild
cat; and so large was he that his great outspread hairy legs, radiating
from the flat disk of his body, would have covered a man's open hand.
It was easy to see him in my small interior; often in the night-time my
eyes would stray to his corner, never to encounter that strange hairy
figure; but daylight failed not to bring him. He troubled me; but now,
for Rima's sake, I could slay no living thing except from motives of
hunger. I had it in my mind to injure him--to strike off one of his
legs, which would not be missed much, as they were many--so as to make
him go away and return no more to so inhospitable a place. But courage
failed me. He might come stealthily back at night to plunge his long,
crooked farces into my throat, poisoning my blood with fever and
delirium and black death. So I left him alone, and glanced furtively and
fearfully at him, hoping that he had not divined any thoughts; thus
we lived on unsocially together. More companionable, but still in an
uncomfortable way, were the large crawling, running insects--crickets,
beetles, and others. They were shapely and black and polished, and
ran about here and there on the floor, just like intelligent little
horseless carriages; then they would pause with their immovable eyes
fixed on me, seeing or in some mysterious way divining my presence;
their pliant horns waving up and down, like delicate instruments used to
test the air. Centipedes and millipedes in dozens came too, and were not
welcome. I feared not their venom, but it was a weariness to see them;
for they seemed no living things, but the vertebrae of snakes and eels
and long slim fishes, dead and desiccated, made to move mechanically
over walls and floor by means of some jugglery of nature. I grew skilful
at picking them up with a pair of pliant green twigs, to thrust them
into the outer darkness.

One night a moth fluttered in and alighted on my hand as I sat by the
fire, causing me to hold my breath as I gazed on it. Its fore-wings
were pale grey, with shadings dark and light written all over in
finest characters with some twilight mystery or legend; but the round
under-wings were clear amber-yellow, veined like a leaf with red and
purple veins; a thing of such exquisite chaste beauty that the sight of
it gave me a sudden shock of pleasure. Very soon it flew up, circling
about, and finally lighted on the palm-leaf thatch directly over the
fire. The heat, I thought, would soon drive it from the spot; and,
rising, I opened the door, so that it might find its way out again
into its own cool, dark, flowery world. And standing by the open door I
turned and addressed it: "O night-wanderer of the pale, beautiful wings,
go forth, and should you by chance meet her somewhere in the shadowy
depths, revisiting her old haunts, be my messenger--" Thus much had I
spoken when the frail thing loosened its hold to fall without a flutter,
straight and swift, into the white blaze beneath. I sprang forward with
a shriek and stood staring into the fire, my whole frame trembling with
a sudden terrible emotion. Even thus had Rima fallen--fallen from the
great height--into the flames that instantly consumed her beautiful
flesh and bright spirit! O cruel Nature!

A moth that perished in the flame; an indistinct faint sound; a dream
in the night; the semblance of a shadowy form moving mist-like in the
twilight gloom of the forest, would suddenly bring back a vivid memory,
the old anguish, to break for a while the calm of that period. It was
calm then after the storm. Nevertheless, my health deteriorated. I ate
little and slept little and grew thin and weak. When I looked down
on the dark, glassy forest pool, where Rima would look no more to see
herself so much better than in the small mirror of her lover's pupil, it
showed me a gaunt, ragged man with a tangled mass of black hair
falling over his shoulders, the bones of his face showing through the
dead-looking, sun-parched skin, the sunken eyes with a gleam in them
that was like insanity.

To see this reflection had a strangely disturbing effect on me. A
torturing voice would whisper in my ear: "Yes, you are evidently going
mad. By and by you will rush howling through the forest, only to drop
down at last and die; and no person will ever find and bury your bones.
Old Nuflo was more fortunate in that he perished first."

"A lying voice!" I retorted in sudden anger. "My faculties were never
keener than now. Not a fruit can ripen but I find it. If a small bird
darts by with a feather or straw in its bill I mark its flight, and
it will be a lucky bird if I do not find its nest in the end. Could a
savage born in the forest do more? He would starve where I find food!"

"Ay, yes, there is nothing wonderful in that," answered the voice. "The
stranger from a cold country suffers less from the heat, when days
are hottest, than the Indian who knows no other climate. But mark the
result! The stranger dies, while the Indian, sweating and gasping for
breath, survives. In like manner the low-minded savage, cut off from all
human fellowship, keeps his faculties to the end, while your finer brain
proves your ruin."

I cut from a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black as
whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I had burnt a
row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb, and combed out my
long, tangled hair to improve my appearance.

"It is not the tangled condition of your hair," persisted the voice,
"but your eyes, so wild and strange in their expression, that show the
approach of madness. Make your locks as smooth as you like, and add a
garland of those scarlet, star-shaped blossoms hanging from the bush
behind you--crown yourself as you crowned old Cla-cla--but the crazed
look will remain just the same."

And being no longer able to reply, rage and desperation drove me to an
act which only seemed to prove that the hateful voice had prophesied
truly. Taking up a stone, I hurled it down on the water to shatter the
image I saw there, as if it had been no faithful reflection of myself,
but a travesty, cunningly made of enamelled clay or some other material,
and put there by some malicious enemy to mock me.



Many days had passed since the hut was made--how many may not be known,
since I notched no stick and knotted no cord--yet never in my rambles in
the wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where the fire had done its
work. Nor had I looked for it. On the contrary, my wish was never to see
it, and the fear of coming accidentally upon it made me keep to the old
familiar paths. But at length, one night, without thinking of Rima's
fearful end, it all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whose
blood I had shed on the white savannah might have only been practicing
his natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story. If that were
so--if he had been prepared with a fictitious account of her death to
meet my questions--then Rima might still exist: lost, perhaps, wandering
in some distant place, exposed to perils day and night, and unable to
find her way back, but living still! Living! her heart on fire with
the hope of reunion with me, cautiously threading her way through the
undergrowth of immeasurable forests; spying out the distant villages
and hiding herself from the sight of all men, as she knew so well how
to hide; studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize some
familiar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the old wood once
more! Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she might be somewhere
in the wood--somewhere near me; but after so long an absence full of
apprehension, waiting in concealment for what tomorrow's light might
show.

I started up and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then set the
door open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood. But Rima had
done more; going out into the black forest in the pitiless storm, she
had found and led me home. Could I do less! I was quickly out in the
shadows of the wood. Surely it was more than a mere hope that made my
heart beat so wildly! How could a sensation so strangely sudden, so
irresistible in its power, possess me unless she were living and near?
Can it be, can it be that we shall meet again? To look again into your
divine eyes--to hold you again in my arms at last! I so changed--so
different! But the old love remains; and of all that has happened
in your absence I shall tell you nothing--not one word; all shall be
forgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing shall
ever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for he is dead
now--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have decently buried his
poor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood--OUR wood now! The
sweet old days again; for I know that you would not have it different,
nor would I.

Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that would
soon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the forest echo
with my calls. "Rima! Rima!" I called again and again, and waited for
some response; and heard only the familiar night-sounds--voices of
insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog, and a low murmur in the topmost
foliage, moved by some light breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenched
with dew, bruised and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks
and thorns and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually the
excitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready to
drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length I crept back to
my hut, to cast myself on my grass bed and sink into a dull, miserable,
desponding stupor.

But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to search
the forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire Kua-ko had
described to me existed, it would still be possible to believe that
he had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched all day and found
nothing; but the area was large, and to search it thoroughly would
require several days.

On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never again
would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had indeed been
a vain one. There could be no mistake: just such an open place as the
Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart;
while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a huge
heap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks
and ashes. Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the
ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw
their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at
the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty
feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred
and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning
leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow,
swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel imagination
was to turn that desolate ash-heap, in spite of feathery foliage and
embroidery of creepers, into roaring leaping flames again--to bring
those dead savages back, men, women, and children--even the little ones
I had played with--to set them yelling around me: "Burn! burn!" Oh, no,
this damnable spot must not be her last resting-place! If the fire
had not utterly consumed her, bones as well as sweet tender flesh,
shrivelling her like a frail white-winged moth into the finest white
ashes, mixed inseparably with the ashes of stems and leaves innumerable,
then whatever remained of her must be conveyed elsewhere to be with me,
to mingle with my ashes at last.

Having resolved to sift and examine the entire heap, I at once set about
my task. If she had climbed into the central highest branch, and had
fallen straight, then she would have dropped into the flames not far
from the roots; and so to begin I made a path to the trunk, and when
darkness overtook me I had worked all round the tree, in a width of
three to four yards, without discovering any remains. At noon on the
following day I found the skeleton, or, at all events, the larger bones,
rendered so fragile by the fierce heat they had been subjected to, that
they fell to pieces when handled. But I was careful--how careful!--to
save these last sacred relics, all that was now left of Rima!--kissing
each white fragment as I lifted it, and gathering them all in my old
frayed cloak, spread out to receive them. And when I had recovered them
all, even to the smallest, I took my treasure home.

Another storm had shaken my soul, and had been succeeded by a second
calm, which was more complete and promised to be more enduring than the
first. But it was no lethargic calm; my brain was more active than ever;
and by and by it found a work for my hands to do, of such a character
as to distinguish me from all other forest hermits, fugitives from their
fellows, in that savage land. The calcined bones I had rescued were kept
in one of the big, rudely shaped, half-burnt earthen jars which Nuflo
had used for storing grain and other food-stuff. It was of a wood-ash
colour; and after I had given up my search for the peculiar fine clay he
had used in its manufacture--for it had been in my mind to make a more
shapely funeral urn myself--I set to work to ornament its surface. A
portion of each day was given to this artistic labour; and when the
surface was covered with a pattern of thorny stems, and a trailing
creeper with curving leaf and twining tendril, and pendent bud and
blossom, I gave it colour. Purples and black only were used, obtained
from the juices of some deeply coloured berries; and when a tint, or
shade, or line failed to satisfy me I erased it, to do it again; and
this so often that I never completed my work. I might, in the proudly
modest spirit of the old sculptors, have inscribed on the vase the
words: Abel was doing this. For was not my ideal beautiful like theirs,
and the best that my art could do only an imperfect copy--a rude sketch?
A serpent was represented wound round the lower portion of the jar,
dull-hued, with a chain of irregular black spots or blotches extending
along its body; and if any person had curiously examined these spots he
would have discovered that every other one was a rudely shaped letter,
and that the letters, by being properly divided, made the following
words:

Sin vos y siu dios y mi.

Words that to some might seem wild, even insane in their extravagance,
sung by some ancient forgotten poet; or possibly the motto of some
love-sick knight-errant, whose passion was consumed to ashes long
centuries ago. But not wild nor insane to me, dwelling alone on a vast
stony plain in everlasting twilight, where there was no motion, nor any
sound; but all things, even trees, ferns, and grasses, were stone.
And in that place I had sat for many a thousand years, drawn up and
motionless, with stony fingers clasped round my legs, and forehead
resting on my knees; and there would I sit, unmoving, immovable, for
many a thousand years to come--I, no longer I, in a universe where she
was not, and God was not.

The days went by, and to others grouped themselves into weeks and
months; to me they were only days--not Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but
nameless. They were so many and their sum so great that all my previous
life, all the years I had existed before this solitary time, now looked
like a small island immeasurably far away, scarcely discernible, in the
midst of that endless desolate waste of nameless days.

My stock of provisions had been so long consumed that I had forgotten
the flavour of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple and sweet
potatoes. For Nuflo's cultivated patch had been destroyed by the
savages--not a stem, not a root had they left: and I, like the sorrowful
man that broods on his sorrow and the artist who thinks only of his art,
had been improvident and had consumed the seed without putting a portion
into the ground. Only wild food, and too little of that, found with
much seeking and got with many hurts. Birds screamed at and scolded me;
branches bruised and thorns scratched me; and still worse were the angry
clouds of waspish things no bigger than flies. Buzz--buzz! Sting--sting!
A serpent's tooth has failed to kill me; little do I care for your small
drops of fiery venom so that I get at the spoil--grubs and honey. My
white bread and purple wine! Once my soul hungered after knowledge; I
took delight in fine thoughts finely expressed; I sought them carefully
in printed books: now only this vile bodily hunger, this eager seeking
for grubs and honey, and ignoble war with little things!

A bad hunter I proved after larger game. Bird and beast despised my
snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent, so many
daylight hours to make. Once, seeing a troop of monkeys high up in the
tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long time, thinking how
royally I should feast if by some strange unheard-of accident one
were to fall disabled to the ground and be at my mercy. But nothing
impossible happened, and I had no meat. What meat did I ever have except
an occasional fledgling, killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small
tree-frog detected, in spite of its green colour, among the foliage? I
would roast the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why should
he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no
appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind of
meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiled
up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick,
I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy. Rima was not
there to pluck the rage from my heart and save his evil life. No coral
snake this, with slim, tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant
colour; but thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black;
also a broad, flat, murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blue
eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and make it
sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone, waiting for
the sharp, inevitable stroke--so swift at last, so long in coming. "O
abominable flat head, with icy-cold, humanlike, fiend-like eyes, I shall
cut you off and throw you away!" And away I flung it, far enough in
all conscience: yet I walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere,
somewhere down on the black, wet soil where it had fallen, through all
that dense, thorny tangle and millions of screening leaves, the white,
lidless, living eyes were following me still, and would always be
following me in all my goings and comings and windings about in the
forest. And what wonder? For were we not alone together in this dreadful
solitude, I and the serpent, eaters of the dust, singled out and
cursed above all cattle? HE would not have bitten me, and I--faithless
cannibal!--had murdered him. That cursed fancy would live on, worming
itself into every crevice of my mind; the severed head would grow and
grow in the night-time to something monstrous at last, the hellish
white lidless eyes increasing to the size of two full moons. "Murderer!
murderer!" they would say; "first a murderer of your own fellow
creatures--that was a small crime; but God, our enemy, had made them
in His image, and He cursed you; and we two were together, alone and
apart--you and I, murderer! you and I, murderer!"

I tried to escape the tyrannous fancy by thinking of other things and by
making light of it. "The starved, bloodless brain," I said, "has strange
thoughts." I fell to studying the dark, thick, blunt body in my hands;
I noticed that the livid, rudely blotched, scaly surface showed in some
lights a lovely play of prismatic colours. And growing poetical, I said:
"When the wild west wind broke up the rainbow on the flying grey cloud
and scattered it over the earth, a fragment doubtless fell on this
reptile to give it that tender celestial tint. For thus it is Nature
loves all her children, and gives to each some beauty, little or much;
only to me, her hated stepchild, she gives no beauty, no grace. But
stay, am I not wronging her? Did not Rima, beautiful above all things,
love me well? said she not that I was beautiful?"

"Ah, yes, that was long ago," spoke the voice that mocked me by the pool
when I combed out my tangled hair. "Long ago, when the soul that looked
from your eyes was not the accursed thing it is now. Now Rima would
start at the sight of them; now she would fly in terror from their
insane expression."

"O spiteful voice, must you spoil even such appetite as I have for this
fork-tongued spotty food? You by day and Rima by night--what shall I
do--what shall I do?"

For it had now come to this, that the end of each day brought not sleep
and dreams, but waking visions. Night by night, from my dry grass bed I
beheld Nuflo sitting in his old doubled-up posture, his big brown feet
close to the white ashes--sitting silent and miserable. I pitied him; I
owed him hospitality; but it seemed intolerable that he should be there.
It was better to shut my eyes; for then Rima's arms would be round my
neck; the silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowery breath
mixing with my breath. What a luminous face was hers! Even with
closeshut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin showing the
radiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual and passionate, dark
as purple wine under their dark lashes. Then my eyes would open wide. No
Rima in my arms! But over there, a little way back from the fire, just
beyond where old Nuflo had sat brooding a few minutes ago, Rima would
be standing, still and pale and unspeakably sad. Why does she come to me
from the outside darkness to stand there talking to me, yet never once
lifting her mournful eyes to mine? "Do not believe it, Abel; no, that
was only a phantom of your brain, the What-I-was that you remember so
well. For do you not see that when I come she fades away and is nothing?
Not that--do not ask it. I know that I once refused to look into your
eyes, and afterwards, in the cave at Riolama, I looked long and was
happy--unspeakably happy! But now--oh, you do not know what you ask; you
do not know the sorrow that has come into mine; that if you once beheld
it, for very sorrow you would die. And you must live. But I will wait
patiently, and we shall be together in the end, and see each other
without disguise. Nothing shall divide us. Only wish not for it soon;
think not that death will ease your pain, and seek it not. Austerities?
Good works? Prayers? They are not seen; they are not heard, they are
less-than nothing, and there is no intercession. I did not know it then,
but you knew it. Your life was your own; you are not saved nor judged!
acquit yourself--undo that which you have done, which Heaven cannot
undo--and Heaven will say no word nor will I. You cannot, Abel, you
cannot. That which you have done is done, and yours must be the penalty
and the sorrow--yours and mine--yours and mine--yours and mine."

This, too, was a phantom, a Rima of the mind, one of the shapes the
ever-changing black vapours of remorse and insanity would take; and
all her mournful sentences were woven out of my own brain. I was not
so crazed as not to know it; only a phantom, an illusion, yet more real
than reality--real as my crime and vain remorse and death to come. It
was, indeed, Rima returned to tell me that I that loved her had been
more cruel to her than her cruellest enemies; for they had but tortured
and destroyed her body with fire, while I had cast this shadow on
her soul--this sorrow transcending all sorrows, darker than death,
immitigable, eternal.

If I could only have faded gradually, painlessly, growing feebler in
body and dimmer in my senses each day, to sink at last into sleep! But
it could not be. Still the fever in my brain, the mocking voice by day,
the phantoms by night; and at last I became convinced that unless I
quitted the forest before long, death would come to me in some terrible
shape. But in the feeble condition I was now in, and without any
provisions, to escape from the neighbourhood of Parahuari was
impossible, seeing that it was necessary at starting to avoid the
villages where the Indians were of the same tribe as Runi, who would
recognize me as the white man who was once his guest and afterwards his
implacable enemy. I must wait, and in spite of a weakened body and a
mind diseased, struggle still to wrest a scanty subsistence from wild
nature.

One day I discovered an old prostrate tree, buried under a thick growth
of creeper and fern, the wood of which was nearly or quite rotten, as
I proved by thrusting my knife to the heft in it. No doubt it would
contain grubs--those huge, white wood-borers which now formed an
important item in my diet. On the following day I returned to the spot
with a chopper and a bundle of wedges to split the trunk up, but had
scarcely commenced operations when an animal, startled at my blows,
rushed or rather wriggled from its hiding-place under the dead wood at
a distance of a few yards from me. It was a robust, round-headed,
short-legged creature, about as big as a good-sized cat, and clothed
in a thick, greenish-brown fur. The ground all about was covered with
creepers, binding the ferns, bushes, and old dead branches together; and
in this confused tangle the animal scrambled and tore with a great show
of energy, but really made very little progress; and all at once it
flashed into my mind that it was a sloth--a common animal, but rarely
seen on the ground--with no tree near to take refuge in. The shock of
joy this discovery produced was great enough to unnerve me, and for some
moments I stood trembling, hardly able to breathe; then recovering I
hastened after it, and stunned it with a blow from my chopper on its
round head.

"Poor sloth!" I said as I stood over it. "Poor old lazy-bones! Did Rima
ever find you fast asleep in a tree, hugging a branch as if you loved
it, and with her little hand pat your round, human-like head; and laugh
mockingly at the astonishment in your drowsy, waking eyes; and scold
you tenderly for wearing your nails so long, and for being so ugly?
Lazybones, your death is revenged! Oh, to be out of this wood--away from
this sacred place--to be anywhere where killing is not murder!"

Then it came into my mind that I was now in possession of the supply of
food which would enable me to quit the wood. A noble capture! As much to
me as if a stray, migratory mule had rambled into the wood and found me,
and I him. Now I would be my own mule, patient, and long-suffering, and
far-going, with naked feet hardened to hoofs, and a pack of provender on
my back to make me independent of the dry, bitter grass on the sunburnt
savannahs.

Part of that night and the next morning was spent in curing the flesh
over a smoky fire of green wood and in manufacturing a rough sack to
store it in, for I had resolved to set out on my journey. How safely to
convey Rima's treasured ashes was a subject of much thought and anxiety.
The clay vessel on which I had expended so much loving, sorrowful labour
had to be left, being too large and heavy to carry; eventually I put the
fragments into a light sack; and in order to avert suspicion from the
people I would meet on the way, above the ashes I packed a layer of
roots and bulbs. These I would say contained medicinal properties,
known to the white doctors, to whom I would sell them on my arrival at
a Christian settlement, and with the money buy myself clothes to start
life afresh.

On the morrow I would bid a last farewell to that forest of many
memories. And my journey would be eastwards, over a wild savage land of
mountains, rivers, and forests, where every dozen miles would be like a
hundred of Europe; but a land inhabited by tribes not unfriendly to the
stranger. And perhaps it would be my good fortune to meet with Indians
travelling east who would know the easiest routes; and from time to time
some compassionate voyager would let me share his wood-skin, and many
leagues would be got over without weariness, until some great river,
flowing through British or Dutch Guiana, would be reached; and so on,
and on, by slow or swift stages, with little to eat perhaps, with much
labour and pain, in hot sun and in storm, to the Atlantic at last, and
towns inhabited by Christian men.

In the evening of that day, after completing my preparations, I supped
on the remaining portions of the sloth, not suitable for preservation,
roasting bits of fat on the coals and boiling the head and bones into a
broth; and after swallowing the liquid I crunched the bones and sucked
the marrow, feeding like some hungry carnivorous animal.

Glancing at the fragments scattered on the floor, I remembered old
Nuflo, and how I had surprised him at his feast of rank coatimundi in
his secret retreat. "Nuflo, old neighbour," said I, "how quiet you are
under your green coverlet, spangled just now with yellow flowers! It
is no sham sleep, old man, I know. If any suspicion of these curious
doings, this feast of flesh on a spot once sacred, could flit like a
small moth into your mouldy hollow skull you would soon thrust out your
old nose to sniff the savour of roasting fat once more."

There was in me at that moment an inclination to laughter; it came
to nothing, but affected me strangely, like an impulse I had not
experienced since boyhood--familiar, yet novel. After the good-night to
my neighbour, I tumbled into my straw and slept soundly, animal-like. No
fancies and phantoms that night: the lidless, white, implacable eyes
of the serpent's severed head were turned to dust at last; no sudden
dream-glare lighted up old Cla-cla's wrinkled dead face and white,
blood-dabbled locks; old Nuflo stayed beneath his green coverlet; nor
did my mournful spirit-bride come to me to make my heart faint at the
thought of immortality.

But when morning dawned again, it was bitter to rise up and go away for
ever from that spot where I had often talked with Rima--the true and
the visionary. The sky was cloudless and the forest wet as if rain had
fallen; it was only a heavy dew, and it made the foliage look pale and
hoary in the early light. And the light grew, and a whispering wind
sprung as I walked through the wood; and the fast-evaporating moisture
was like a bloom on the feathery fronds and grass and rank herbage; but
on the higher foliage it was like a faint iridescent mist--a glory above
the trees. The everlasting beauty and freshness of nature was over all
again, as I had so often seen it with joy and adoration before grief and
dreadful passions had dimmed my vision. And now as I walked, murmuring
my last farewell, my eyes grew dim again with the tears that gathered to
them.



Before that well-nigh hopeless journey to the coast was half over I
became ill--so ill that anyone who had looked on me might well have
imagined that I had come to the end of my pilgrimage. That was what I
feared. For days I remained sunk in the deepest despondence; then, in a
happy moment, I remembered how, after being bitten by the serpent, when
death had seemed near and inevitable, I had madly rushed away through
the forest in search of help, and wandered lost for hours in the storm
and darkness, and in the end escaped death, probably by means of these
frantic exertions. The recollection served to inspire me with a new
desperate courage. Bidding good-bye to the Indian village where the
fever had smitten me, I set out once more on that apparently hopeless
adventure. Hopeless, indeed, it seemed to one in my weak condition. My
legs trembled under me when I walked, while hot sun and pelting rain
were like flame and stinging ice to my morbidly sensitive skin.

For many days my sufferings were excessive, so that I often wished
myself back in that milder purgatory of the forest, from which I had
been so anxious to escape. When I try to retrace my route on the map,
there occurs a break here--a space on the chart where names of rivers
and mountains call up no image to my mind, although, in a few
cases, they were names I seem to have heard in a troubled dream. The
impressions of nature received during that sick period are blurred, or
else so coloured and exaggerated by perpetual torturing anxiety, mixed
with half-delirious night-fancies, that I can only think of that country
as an earthly inferno, where I fought against every imaginable obstacle,
alternately sweating and freezing, toiling as no man ever toiled before.
Hot and cold, cold and hot, and no medium. Crystal waters; green shadows
under coverture of broad, moist leaves; and night with dewy fanning
winds--these chilled but did not refresh me; a region in which there was
no sweet and pleasant thing; where even the ita palm and mountain glory
and airy epiphyte starring the woodland twilight with pendent blossoms
had lost all grace and beauty; where all brilliant colours in earth and
heaven were like the unmitigated sun that blinded my sight and burnt my
brain. Doubtless I met with help from the natives, otherwise I do not
see how I could have continued my journey; yet in my dim mental picture
of that period I see myself incessantly dogged by hostile savages. They
flit like ghosts through the dark forest; they surround me and cut off
all retreat, until I burst through them, escaping out of their very
hands, to fly over some wide, naked savannah, hearing their shrill,
pursuing yells behind me, and feeling the sting of their poisoned arrows
in my flesh.

This I set down to the workings of remorse in a disordered mind and to
clouds of venomous insects perpetually shrilling in my ears and stabbing
me with their small, fiery needles.

Not only was I pursued by phantom savages and pierced by phantom arrows,
but the creations of the Indian imagination had now become as real to
me as anything in nature. I was persecuted by that superhuman man-eating
monster supposed to be the guardian of the forest. In dark, silent
places he is lying in wait for me: hearing my slow, uncertain footsteps
he starts up suddenly in my path, outyelling the bearded aguaratos in
the trees; and I stand paralysed, my blood curdled in my veins. His
huge, hairy arms are round me; his foul, hot breath is on my skin; he
will tear my liver out with his great green teeth to satisfy his raging
hunger. Ah, no, he cannot harm me! For every ravening beast, every
cold-blooded, venomous thing, and even the frightful Curupita, half
brute and half devil, that shared the forest with her, loved and
worshipped Rima, and that mournful burden I carried, her ashes, was a
talisman to save me. He has left me, the semi-human monster, uttering
such wild, lamentable cries as he hurries away into the deeper, darker
woods that horror changes to grief, and I, too, lament Rima for
the first time: a memory of all the mystic, unimaginable grace and
loveliness and joy that had vanished smites on my heart with such
sudden, intense pain that I cast myself prone on the earth and weep
tears that are like drops of blood.

Where in the rude savage heart of Guiana was this region where the
natural obstacles and pain and hunger and thirst and everlasting
weariness were terrible enough without the imaginary monsters and
legions of phantoms that peopled it, I cannot say. Nor can I conjecture
how far I strayed north or south from my course. I only know that
marshes that were like Sloughs of Despond, and barren and wet savannahs,
were crossed; and forests that seemed infinite in extent and never to
be got through; and scores of rivers that boiled round the sharp rocks,
threatening to submerge or dash in pieces the frail bark canoe--black
and frightful to look on as rivers in hell; and nameless mountain after
mountain to be toiled round or toiled over. I may have seen Roraima
during that mentally clouded period. I vaguely remember a far-extending
gigantic wall of stone that seemed to bar all further progress--a rocky
precipice rising to a stupendous height, seen by moonlight, with a huge
sinuous rope of white mist suspended from its summit; as if the guardian
camoodi of the mountain had been a league-long spectral serpent which
was now dropping its coils from the mighty stone table to frighten away
the rash intruder.

That spectral moonlight camoodi was one of many serpent fancies that
troubled me. There was another, surpassing them all, which attended
me many days. When the sun grew hot overhead and the way was over open
savannah country, I would see something moving on the ground at my side
and always keeping abreast of me. A small snake, one or two feet long.
No, not a small snake, but a sinuous mark in the pattern on a huge
serpent's head, five or six yards long, always moving deliberately at
my side. If a cloud came over the sun, or a fresh breeze sprang up,
gradually the outline of that awful head would fade and the well-defined
pattern would resolve itself into the motlings on the earth. But if the
sun grew more and more hot and dazzling as the day progressed, then the
tremendous ophidian head would become increasingly real to my sight,
with glistening scales and symmetrical markings; and I would walk
carefully not to stumble against or touch it; and when I cast my eyes
behind me I could see no end to its great coils extending across the
savannah. Even looking back from the summit of a high hill I could
see it stretching leagues and leagues away through forests and rivers,
across wide plains, valleys and mountains, to lose itself at last in the
infinite blue distance.

How or when this monster left me--washed away by cold rains perhaps--I
do not know. Probably it only transformed itself into some new shape,
its long coils perhaps changing into those endless processions and
multitudes of pale-faced people I seem to remember having encountered.
In my devious wanderings I must have reached the shores of the
undiscovered great White Lake, and passed through the long shining
streets of Manoa, the mysterious city in the wilderness. I see myself
there, the wide thoroughfare filled from end to end with people gaily
dressed as if for some high festival, all drawing aside to let the
wretched pilgrim pass, staring at his fever- and famine-wasted figure,
in its strange rags, with its strange burden.

A new Ahasuerus, cursed by inexpiable crime, yet sustained by a great
purpose.

But Ahasuerus prayed ever for death to come to him and ran to meet
it, while I fought against it with all my little strength. Only at
intervals, when the shadows seemed to lift and give me relief, would
I pray to Death to spare me yet a little longer; but when the shadows
darkened again and hope seemed almost quenched in utter gloom, then I
would curse it and defy its power. Through it all I clung to the belief
that my will would conquer, that it would enable me to keep off the
great enemy from my worn and suffering body until the wished goal was
reached; then only would I cease to fight and let death have its way.
There would have been comfort in this belief had it not been for that
fevered imagination which corrupted everything that touched me and gave
it some new hateful character. For soon enough this conviction that the
will would triumph grew to something monstrous, a parent of monstrous
fancies. Worst of all, when I felt no actual pain, but only unutterable
weariness of body and soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knew
not whether I trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I was
already dead, so far as the body was concerned--had perhaps been dead
for days--that only the unconquerable will survived to compel the dead
flesh to do its work.

Whether it really was will--more potent than the bark of barks and wiser
than the physicians--or merely the vis medicatrix with which nature
helps our weakness even when the will is suspended, that saved me
I cannot say; but it is certain that I gradually recovered health,
physical and mental, and finally reached the coast comparatively well,
although my mind was still in a gloomy, desponding state when I first
walked the streets of Georgetown, in rags, half-starved and penniless.

But even when well, long after the discovery that my flesh was not only
alive, but that it was of an exceedingly tough quality, the idea born
during the darkest period of my pilgrimage, that die I must, persisted
in my mind. I had lived through that which would have killed most
men--lived only to accomplish the one remaining purpose of my life. Now
it was accomplished; the sacred ashes brought so far, with such infinite
labour, through so many and such great perils, were safe and would mix
with mine at last. There was nothing more in life to make me love it or
keep me prisoner in its weary chains. This prospect of near death
faded in time; love of life returned, and the earth had recovered its
everlasting freshness and beauty; only that feeling about Rima's ashes
did not fade or change, and is as strong now as it was then. Say that it
is morbid--call it superstition if you like; but there it is, the most
powerful motive I have known, always in all things to be taken into
account--a philosophy of life to be made to fit it. Or take it as a
symbol, since that may come to be one with the thing symbolized. In
those darkest days in the forest I had her as a visitor--a Rima of the
mind, whose words when she spoke reflected my despair. Yet even then I
was not entirely without hope. Heaven itself, she said, could not undo
that which I had done; and she also said that if I forgave myself,
Heaven would say no word, nor would she. That is my philosophy still:
prayers, austerities, good works--they avail nothing, and there is no
intercession, and outside of the soul there is no forgiveness in heaven
or earth for sin. Nevertheless there is a way, which every soul can find
out for itself--even the most rebellious, the most darkened with crime
and tormented by remorse. In that way I have walked; and, self-forgiven
and self-absolved, I know that if she were to return once more and
appear to me--even here where her ashes are--I know that her divine eyes
would no longer refuse to look into mine, since the sorrow which seemed
eternal and would have slain me to see would not now be in them.

 When Abel reaches Managa's village, he immediately starts to incite the chief to annihilate Runi's tribe. He is very successful in causing a massacre of the Parahuaris, but the sight of old Cla-cla, covered with blood, shocks Abel into a reaction of horror against the evil he has wrought in his revenge. Seeking isolation deep in the jungle, Abel undergoes many privations because he cannot trap enough animals for food and has difficulty in building an adequate fire to keep warm. Approaching Nuflo's hut almost compulsively, Abel is horrified to discover the skeleton of the old man, who has been murdered by the savages. After burying the remains of his dead companion, Abel recovers the cache of provisions which he and Nuflo hid before they set out for Riolama. These supplies save Abel from possible death, and he sets to work in a new mood. Erecting a shelter on the spot where Rima had lived, Abel rests and gradually recovers. He is, however, disturbed by the shocking memories of the past; in this solitude, Abel begins again to deteriorate in mind and body. He grows thin and weak because of the agonies of recent events. He begins to act irrationally, as when he hurls a stone into the water in order to destroy the reflection of himself. Abel endeavors to convince himself that Rima may be alive. He hopes that the Indians lied or that Rima survived in some miraculous way. Searching through the woodland for Rima, Abel of course has no luck; he then looks for the site of the fire. When he locates the place where all signs indicate that Rima perished exactly as the Indians related, Abel carefully gathers the bones of Rima. He takes them back to his shelter, where he spends many hours decorating a clay jar for them. On the urn, Abel inscribes the words: "Sin vos y sin dios y mi " Another crisis, however, overcomes Abel: He is unable to sleep because nightmares destroy the pleasure of the loving task that had comforted him during the daytime. Abel is in a dilemma: He reasons with himself that he will die if he does not leave the woodland, yet the thought of abandoning the place of his happiest days in life is unbearable. After catching a sloth, which reminds him of another incident with Rima, Abel has some meat which will feed him during the trip to a settlement. His mood is inclined to laughter for the first time in months, but in the cold light of morning he is sadly reflective as he bids farewell to Rima's homeland. He weeps upon setting out on the trail to civilization. After a difficult time in the jungle, beset by many natural obstacles and victimized by an overwrought imagination, Abel reaches the coast. But his full recovery is slow. When the sufferings of the body are forgotten, Abel must still live -- forever -- with the memory of Rima. He slowly tries to apply all his experiences to his life and to be worthy of Rima.

