A nativity play, with real cattle.
The whole audience had arrived an hour early, so as to see the entry of the cow. The children were just in time for this.
The room was in the upper part of a warehouse, which had been built, through some freak of vanity, in the English fashion, several stories high; and was provided with the usual large door opening onto nothingness, with a beam-and-tackle over it. Many the load of gold-dust and arrowroot which must have once been hoisted into it: now, like most of the others at Santa Lucia, it had long since ceased to be used.
But to-day a new rope had been rove through the block: and a broad belly-band put round the waist of the priest’s protesting old cow.
Margaret and Edward lingered timidly near the top of the stairs; but John, putting his head down and burrowing like a mole, was not content till he had reached the open doorway. There he stood looking out into the darkness: where he saw a slowly revolving cow treading the air a yard from the sill, while at each revolution a negro reached out to the utmost limit of balance, trying to catch her by the tail and draw her to shore.
John, in his excitement, leaned out too far. He lost his balance and fell clear to the ground, forty feet, right on his head.
José gave a cry of alarm, sprang onto the cow’s back, and was instantly lowered away — just as if the cinema had already been invented. He must have looked very comic. But what was going on inside him the while it is difficult to know. Such a responsibility does not often fall on an old sailor; and he would probably feel it all the more for that reason. As for the crowd beneath, they made no attempt to touch the body till José had completed his descent: they stood back and let him have a good look at it, and shake it, and so on. But the neck was quite plainly broken.
Margaret and Edward, however, had not any clear idea of what was going on, since they had not actually seen John fall. So they were rather annoyed when two of the schooner’s crew appeared and insisted on their coming back to bed at once. They wanted to know where John was: but even more they wanted to know where José was, and why they weren’t to be allowed to stay. However they obeyed, in the impossibility of asking questions, and started back to bed.
Just as they were about to go on board the schooner, they heard a huge report on their left, like a cannon. They turned; and looking past the quiet, silver town, with its palm-groves, to the hills behind, they saw a large ball of fire, traveling at a tremendous rate. It was quite close to the ground: and not very far off either — just beyond the Church. It left a wake of the most brilliant blue, green, and purple blobs of light. For a while it hovered: then it burst, and the air was shortly charged with a strong sulphurous smell.
They were all frightened, the sailors even more than the children, and hastened on board.
In the small hours, Edward suddenly called Emily in his sleep. She woke up: “What is it?”
“It’s rather cow-catching, isn’t it?” he asked anxiously, his eyes tight shut.
“What’s the matter?”
He did not answer, so she roused him — or thought she had.
“I only wanted to see if you were a real Cow-catching Zomfanelia,” he explained in a kind voice: and was immediately deep asleep again.
In the morning they might easily have thought the whole thing a dream — if John’s bed had not been so puzzlingly empty.
Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding, no one commented on his absence. No one questioned Margaret, and she offered no information. Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever mentioned by anybody: and if you had known the children intimately you would never have guessed from them that he had ever existed.
III
The children’s only enemy on board the schooner (which presently put to sea again, with them still on board) was the big white pig. (There was a little black fellow, too.)
He was a pig with no decision of mind. He could never choose a place to lie for himself; but was so ready to follow any one else’s opinion, that whatever position you took up he immediately recognized as the best, the only site: and came and routed you out of it. Seeing how rare shady patches of deck are in a calm, or dry patches in a stiff breeze, this was a most infernal nuisance. One is so defenseless against big pigs when lying on one’s back.
The little black one could be a nuisance also, it is true — but that was only from excess of friendliness. He hated to be left out of any party: nay more, he hated lying on inanimate matter if a living couch was to be found.
On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is possible to land a boat, if you pick your spot. About fifty yards through the bushes there are a couple of acres of open ground: cross this, and among some sharp coral rocks in the scrub on the far side are two wells, the northernmost the better of the two.
So, being becalmed off the Mangrove Keys one morning, Jonsen sent a boat on shore to get water.
The heat was extreme. The ropes hung like dead snakes, the sails as heavy as ill-sculptured drapery. The iron stanchion of the awning blistered any hand that touched it. Where the deck was unsheltered, the pitch boiled out of the seams. The children lay gasping together in the small shade, the little black pig squealing anxiously till he found a comfortable stomach to settle down on.
The big white pig had not found them yet.
From the silent shore came an occasional gunshot. The water-party were potting pigeons. The sea was like a smooth pampas of quicksilver: so steady you could not split shore from reflection, till the casual collision of a pelican broke the phantom. The crew were mending sails, under the awning, with infinite slowness: all except one negro, who straddled the bowsprit in his trousers, admiring his own grin in the mirror beneath. The sun lit an iridescent glimmer on his shoulders: in such a light even a negro could not be black.
Emily was missing John badly: but the little black pig snuffled in supreme content, his snout buried amicably in her armpit.
When the boatload returned, they had other game besides pigeons and gray land-crabs. They had stolen a goat from some lonely fisherman.
It was just as they came up over the side that the big white pig discovered the party under the awning, and prepared for the attack. But the goat at that moment bounded nimbly from the bulwarks: and without even stopping to look round, swallowed his chin and charged. He caught the old pig full in the ribs, knocking his wind out completely.
Then the battle began. The goat charged, the pig screamed and hustled. Each time the goat arrived at him the pig yelled as if he was killed; but each time the goat drew back the pig advanced towards him. The goat, his beard flying like a prophet’s, his eyes crimson and his scut as lively as a lamb’s at the teat, bounded in, bounded back into the bows for a fresh run: but at each charge his run grew shorter and shorter. The pig was hemming him in.
Suddenly the pig gave a frightful squeal, chiefly in surprise at his own temerity, and pounced. He had got the goat cornered against the windlass: and for a few flashing seconds bit and trampled.
It was a very chastened goat which was presently led off to his quarters: but the children were prepared to love him for ever, for the heroic bangs he had given the old tyrant.