The Dead Command

in search of Don Jaime, revealing in his manner as he entere

uld the girls say about her daughter? But Margalida gave little heed to the opinion of her friends. Something else seemed to worry her, something of which she said nothing, but which caused her to shed copious tears. Se?or Pèp, after

ind of the young savage, astute and sagacious, a s

instrel had made the rhymes, but the theme originated with the malicious man-slayer. He it was who had conceived the idea of insulting Don Jaime in the presence of all the suitors, rel

of indifference. What of that? He had already punished the insolent Minstrel, and as for the man-s

his head i

aught when wreaking vengeance. You must be on your guard now more than ever. You know what the jail-bird is, and he

the boy's mysterious

you speak

foot of the tower and shoot him as he passed. Suspicion would at once be directed against the Minstrel, in view of the quarrel at the farmhouse and his threats of vengeance. With this, a

sly, as if suddenly realizing

ful; he must lock the door of his tower and pay no attention to calls from outside after dark. Sure

tinued the Little Chaplain with the importance of a hardened man-slayer. "They hide in the bushes, with weapo

ight. By day the se?or co

ccompany you wh

his belt to convince himself that his knife had not disappeared, but h

some use to you. See how I warn you of danger! You must be on y

ns of shells. Very good; both barrels must be loaded with ball, and on top of this a good handful of lead slugs or coarse bird-sho

s. I sleep with my knife on my breast. What if an enemy should r

and battles between pirates, a stone vault suggestive of tragedies, th

m, could aim at him with the greatest facility, resting his arms on a branch or on a stone with no fear of missing him. It would be even worse to step outside the door and venture to go down. No matter how dark the night, the enemy could point his gun at a cluster of leaves, at a star on the horizon, at anything standing out conspicuously in the dusk near the stairwa

covery, he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the morta

d the room, red with excitement over his disco

ystery. This must be kept between them-not a word to anyone. It was a

in ambush, his eyes glued upon the stairway, he would descend by means of the window, at the rear of the tower, and, creeping cautiously around, he would hunt the hunter. What

as steps. He slowly made his way down, loose stones slipping beneath his feet, until he reached the ground, giving a sigh of satisfaction. Very good! The descent was easy; after a few more trials he would be able to get down as nimbly as the Little Chaplain. Pepet, wh

ssed of a warlike ferocity, of an aggressiveness which c

as beached, rose the voice of the old fisherman singing mass. Febrer looke

"Many thanks, Tío Ventolera!" The old fisherman insisted in his puny voice, which, wafted in on the wind, sounded like the plaintive crying of a child. The

hom to vent his displeasure. An injustice, Don Jaime! Pèp had been striding up and down the kitchen, while the women, with tearful eyes and cringing air, shrank away from his gaze. Everything that had happened he attributed to the weakness of his charac

it to be concentrated on the boy. Monday next he was going to take him back to the seminary. If he tried to resist, and if he should run away again, it would be better for him to embark as a cabin boy and forget that he had a father, for in case he returned home Pèp would bre

fense of skirts and petticoats which his weeping mother opposed to Pèp's fury; but now, up in the

ernity and filial respect seemed to the Little Chaplain at the moment the inventions of cowards, created only to crush and mortify brave-hearted men. Added to the blows, humiliating to his dignity as a man of mettle, the thought of being shut up in the Seminar

f his grief, smiled maliciously. No, not Margalida; anyone but her. Pèp was in no mood to consent to that. When the poor mother, to plead her son's cause, had timidly suggested that the boy was needed in the house to wait on the se?or, Pèp

ood peasant had doubtless hurled against him, forgetting all respect in hi

turn of knightly valor. Abandon his friend Don Jaime now that he was surrounded by dangers! Go and shut himself up in that house of gloom, among black-skirted gentlemen who spoke a strange

uch farther than the ends of the barrels, which seemed to point toward the mountain. That miserable Ironworker! That insufferable bully! Something h

dges from the barrels, cartridges loaded with small shot, suitable for the birds which crossed the island returning from Africa. He introduced two other cart

rrogant step down the stairway of the tower building

the door, as in the past. Surely he had been seen, but no one came out of the kitchen to greet h

blowing from the sea. As Febrer stopped for a moment and looked behind, he saw at his feet the buildings of Can Mallorquí, like white dice shaken from the great rocks by the sea. The Pirate's Tower stood like a fortress on its hill. His ascent had been swift, almost at full speed, as if he feared to arrive too late at some meeting-place with which he was unfamiliar. He continued on his way. Two wild doves rose from

afte

r soot-blackened faces. Evidently the lonely mountain dwellers had heard of the events of the evening before at Can Mallor

eaves caressed by the wind, he heard the faint ring of beaten iron. A slender c

t was a miserable little adobe hut of a single story, blackened by smoke and covered by a hip roof, which, in places, sunk in as if about to collapse. Beneath a shed gleam

his eyes on hearing the sound of steps in the interval between two blows. He stood motionless, wi

d not to understand. Not a word, not a greeting! The se?or walked on, but once outside the square he s

assurance. That bully could easily see that he had come to seek him in the solitude o

, he drew his tobacco box from his

rker, his back turned with careless confidence, as if ignorant of his presence and intent on nothing bu

ning his back, confident that the se?or of the tower was incapable of taking ad

tedly he was coming with a weapon, annoyed by this provocation of one who came to seek him in his own house. Perhaps he was going to shoot out of one of the miserable windows wh

le of the hostile weapon should appear, but he stood motionless and confused on seeing that it was a black skirt, terminated by naked feet in worn and tattered sandals, and

men, bulky with petticoats, focusing her single eye, inflamed by anger, on the intruder who came to provoke a good man in the midst of his work. She stared at Jaime with the fiery aggressiveness of the woman who, secure in the respect produced by sex, is more

broad daylight. The old woman was right in insulting him. It was not the Ironworker who was the bully; it w

h way to escape. At last he flung his gun across his shoulder, and, gazing aloft, as if pursuing a bir

o which a homicidal impulse had drawn him, ashamed of his fo

afte

brer felt something like hostile mockery of objectionable strangeness, as if he were of a different race

hed ground. In some fields he saw peasants at work; on a sloping bank he met several girls stooping over

e who feels repentant for an ev

afte

their faces with a gesture of annoyance so as not to see him; the three old men replied to his greet

estrain him. Jaime recognized him by the white kerchief under his hat. It was the Minstrel. The robust peasants easily overpowered the sickly boy, but, although he could not get away, he vented his fury by shaking his fist in the direction of the roadway, while threats and insults gurgled fr

count of the atmosphere of repulsion and hostility, growing steadily more apparent round about him. What had he done? Where had he t

tal protest. When he passed houses they seemed to become depopulated, their inhabitants concealing themselves in

d beneath his feet as if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In his desperation Febrer real

ty by disturbing his house and the peace of his family. The people had received him with a somewhat glacial courtesy, but tranquil and immutable, as if he were a foreign gran se?or, and he responded to this respect by striking the most unfortunate one among them, the one who, on account of his illness, was looked upon with a certain paternal benevolence by all the peasants in the district. Very well,

ncing nothing which resembled love. Other women dominated him then with the seduction of their artifices and refinements, but here, in his loneliness, seeing Margalida surrounded by the brown and rural prettiness of her c

mportance of the affection which had drawn him to Margalida. Then again perhaps it was not desire, but love, the fi

nal veneration, tolerated in silence this caprice of the gran se?or, but at any moment he might openly rebel against the man who had so disarranged his life. The island, which had accepted him courteously, seemed to rise up now against the foreigner who had

its arms of mystery in the most difficult moments of existence. Perhaps he would return to Majorca, to lead the life of a respectable beggar beside the friends who still remembered him; perhaps he would pass on to the Peninsula and go to Madrid in search of

sing Can Mallorquí, and on reaching the shore he walked along the beach where the last palpitation

elf on the wave-worn and almost detached cliff. There he had sat lost in thought one sto

s life. The white clouds floating on the horizon traced great shadows as they passed before the sun. One portion of the blue expanse was a glossy black, while beyond the floating mantle the luminous waters seemed to be se

ich forgotten ideas form in our minds with old places when we return to them, he began to think the same tho

ng truth? Clearly do the dark tyrants of our lives make themselves felt with all the overwhelming weight of their power. What had he done that this corner of the earth, his ultimate refuge, should look upon him as an alien? The innumerable generations of men whose dust and whose souls were m

the gull, the vagary of the extravagant friar which so amused the peasants. Thus had men willed in former times when they founded society and divided it into classes, and thus it must ever be. It is useless to rebel against the established order. The life of man is short, and it is not enough to contend with hundred

rted into a castle and afterward into a mart; enormous cities of millions of men are formed; then catastrophes come, the wars for bread which people lack, the protests of the dispossessed, the great massacres; then the cities are depopulated and are laid waste. Weeds invade the proud monuments; the metropoli gradually sink into the earth and sleep beneath hills for centuries and centuries. The untamed forest covers the capital of remote epochs; the savage hunter stalks over ground where in other times conquering chieftains were received with the pomp of demigods; sheep graze and the shepherd blows his reed above ruins which were tribunes of dead laws; men gr

een said hundreds of centuries before in different words; their passions are the same; their thoughts, which they consider original, are scintillations and reflections of other remote thoughts; and all ac

there be with sufficient strength to kill the monster which weighs upon humanity, as the eno

his knees and his forehead in his hands, lost in thought, his eyes app

e heights, although it might be as a proud mendicant. All descending paths he found barred. Farewell to happiness which might

o accompany him in his walks along the beach at Soller, they had often amused themselves by indulging their imagination in giving form and name to the cl

ose tufts of dark vapor floated in the mist. Febrer's imagination pictured in it two frightful, black holes; a dark triangle like that which the w

a spark of malignant life to the bony countenance of wafer-like pallor, to the gloom of her dark eye-sockets, to her terrifying grin. Yes, it was she! The mist clinging to the surface of the sea was as plaits and folds of a garment which concealed her enormous

rating the hideous figure, assuming other capricious forms, but as i

nd giving animal shapes to the rocks along the coast. In the distance a promontory resembled a lion crouching above the waves, glaring at Jaime with silent hostility. The rocks on a level with the water raised and lowered their black head

the waters, enlarged by a spasm of terror, the depressi

his departure. He would not say a word to anyone. He would wait until some mail steamer from Majorc

had lighted. His shadow, gigantically enlarged, and vacillating in the flickering light, moved about on the white walls, e

Febrer, who looked down the stairway. A man, wrapp

said shortly, ha

not wish to talk, and he, for his part, f

d-ni

utation, like a respectful but angry servant who only

ght up a rustic pipe, carved by a peasant from a branch of cherry, filled it with tobacco and began to smoke, foll

fix his mind upon it, but he co

ce, which fell from on high, and in which the slightest sounds seemed to acquire terrifying propo

of wind, a rustling like that of theatrical mobs concealed behind the wings. From the ceiling resounded at intervals the monotonous cric-cric of a wood-borer gnawing the beams

augment the mystery which surrounds them, stirred in his chair. Something extraordinary rent the air, dominating with its stridor the confused

lenge had sounded some distance away. They must be young bloods of the district who had chosen the vicinity of the

by reading, but after a few lines he sprang from his

rway, prolonged by the strong draft of a pair of bellows-like lungs. At the same instant the harsh noise of opening

revolver in his belt, warmed by contact with his body; he took two steps toward the door, but he stopped and shrugged his shoulders with a smile of

and picked up his book, m

is with you, you may catch cold in the night ai

t at the foot of the stairway now, but farther off, perhaps among the tamarisks which grew

rel, who had publicly sworn to kill him immediately. Night and cunning, which equalize the forces of enemies, might have giv

d his shoulders again. His unknown chal

e question! It was useles

wollen, reddened, the tendons vibrating with anger. The guttural cry gradually acquired the inflection and the significance

d hummed in his ears. He remembered that Can Mallorquí was not far away, and that perhaps Margalida stood trembling at her little

ompletely forgetting the plans of attack he had hastily conceived a few moments before. Anger transformed his ideas. In this sudden blindness of spirit he had but one thought, like a final splutter from

of a warm and silky animal. He groped in the dark toward the door and cautiously ope

house, and opposite stood the black hump of the mountains piercing the sky, in which flickered the stars. This vision lasted but an instant; he could see no more. Suddenly

g, violent shock, something abnormal, which seemed to touch him, and yet not touch him, the sensation

enemy was there-there! In the darkness he saw the point from which the flashes had emerged, and, reaching h

ashing branches, an almost imperceptible undulation in the bushes, filled him with savage joy. He had hi

sand, dust, and mortar. He felt along the wall just above his head and discovered two small, funnel-like holes, still

down and search among the tamarisks for him, to taunt him in his agony? Suddenly the shout was repeated, the savage howl, far, ver

n the distance answered. The howling of the man moved farther away, with incessant re