came
you? Where are you going with this woman?..."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Not a soul stirred in the one long street of the negro village. The
yellow crescent of the diminished moon swam low in the pearly light
of the dawn; and the bamboo walls of huts, thatched with palm leaves,
glistened here and there through the great leaves of bananas. All that
night we had been moving on and on, slowly crossing clear _savannas_,
in which nothing stirred beside ourselves but the escort of our own
shadows, or plunging through dense patches of forest of an obscurity
so impenetrable that the very forms of our rescuers became lost to us,
though we heard their low voices and felt their hands steadying us in
our saddles. Then our horses paced softly on the dust of a road, while
athwart an avenue of orange trees whose foliage seemed as black as coal,
the blind walls of the _hacienda_ shone dead white like a vision of
mists. A Brazilian aloe flowered by the side of the gate; we drooped in
our saddles; and the heavy knocks against the wooden portal seemed to
go on without cause, and stop without reason, like a sound heard in
a dream. We entered Seraphina's _hacienda_. The high walls inclosed a
square court deep as the yard of a prison, with flat-roofed buildings
all around. It rang with many voices suddenly. Every moment the daylight
increased; young negresses in loose gowns ran here and there, cackling
like chased hens, and a fat woman waddled out from under the shadow of a
veranda.

She was Seraphina's old nurse. She was scolding volubly, and suddenly
she shrieked, as though she had been stabbed. Then all was still for a
long time. Sitting high on the back of my patient mount, with my fingers
twisted in the mane, I saw in a throng of woolly heads and bright
garments Seraphina's pale face. An increasing murmur of sobs and
endearing names mounted up to me. Her hair hung down, her eyes seemed
immense; these people were carrying her off--and a man with a careworn,
bilious face and a straight, gray beard, neatly clipped on the edges,
stood at the head of my horse, blinking with astonishment.

The fat woman reappeared, rolling painfully along the veranda.

"Enrico! It is her lover! Oh! my treasure, my lamb, my precious child.
Do you hear, Enrico? Her lover! Oh! the poor darling of my heart."

She appeared to be giggling and weeping at the same time. The sky above
the yard brightened all at once, as if the sun had emerged with a leap
from