Works of Jules Verne/The Mutineers/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
FROM CUERNAVACA TO POPOCATEPETL
The temperature was cold and the country was devoid of vegetation. These inaccessible heights belonged to the icy zones, known as the cold territory. Already the fir trees of the foggy regions showed their withered outlines among the last oaks of these lofty elevations, and springs became more and more rare among the rugged rocks, consisting chiefly of porphyry and granite.
After six long hours the lieutenant and his companion began to drag themselves forward with difficulty, tearing their hands against rough masses of rock, and cutting their feet on the sharp stones in their path. At length fatigue compelled them to sit down. José occupied himself in preparing something to eat " What a cursed idea not to have taken the ordinary road!" he murmured.
They both, however, hoped to find at Aracopistla—a village completely shut in among the mountains—the means of transport to enable them to reach the end of their journey. But, after all, they might deceive themselves, and meet with the same want of accommodation and hospitality which they had encountered at Cuernavaca. They must, however, at all events, get there.
The road was fearfully parched and dry; on every side fathomless precipices were to be seen in the sides of the mountains, and rocks appeared ready to fall on the heads of the travelers. To regain the chief road it was necessary to cross a portion of these muontains at a height of five thousand four hundred feet, near a rock known by the Indians as the "smoking rock," for it still exhibited signs of recent volcanic action. Dark chasms yawned on every side.
Since the last journey of the seaman Jose some fresh outbreaks had completely changed the appearance of these solitudes, so that he could not recognize them ; thus he completely lost himself among the inaccessible cliffs. He stopped to listen to some rumbling sounds which came issuing forth here and there from the cliffs.
"I can do no more!" at length cried José, sinking to the ground with fatigue.
"Push on!" cried Martinez with feverish impatience.
Some claps of thunder reverberated amid the gorges of Popocatepetl. "Now may Satan take me, for I may count myself among the lost souls!"
"Rise up and push on," roughly exclaimed Martinez.
He compelled José to get up, and the sailor stumbled forward. "And not a human being to guide us," murmured José.
"So much the better," observed the lieutenant gruffly as he moved forward.
"You do not know, then, that every year a thousand murders are committed in Mexico, and how many in the environs nobody can calculate!" said José.
"So much the better," answered Martinez.
Large drops of rain began to fall on the rocks around them, brightened by the last fading light in the sky.
"The points we lately saw so clearly around us, where are they now?" asked the lieutenant.
"Mexico is on the left, Puebla on the right," replied José, "if we could see anything, but nothing can now be distinguished."
It became fearfully dark. "Before us should be the mountain of Icetacihualt, and in the ravine at its base a good road; but what if we should not reach it!" "Push on!" cried the lieutenant.
The thunder claps were now repeated with extreme violence among the mountains. The rain and the wind, which had hitherto been silent, increased the loudness of the echoes. José went swearing on at every step. Lieutenant Martinez, pale and silent, gazed with sinister looks at his companion, whom he regarded as an accomplice he would gladly get rid of.
Suddenly a flash of lightning illuminated the obscurity. The seaman and the lieutenant were on the edge of an abyss.
Martinez hurried up to José, and after the last clap of thunder he said to him, "José, I am afraid!"
"Do you dread the storm?"
"I do not dread the storm in the sky, José; but I fear the storm which agitates my breast!"
"Oh, you are still thinking of Don Orteva! Come on, lieutenant! you make me laugh," answered José. He, however, did not laugh, as Martinez surveyed him with his haggard eyes.
A terrible clap of thunder burst over them.
"Hold your tongue! hold your tongue!" cried Martinez, who appeared to be no longer master of himself.
"The night is a favorable one for preaching to me!" replied the seaman. "If you have any fear, lieutenant, shut up your eyes and your ears."
"It seems to me," cried Martinez, "that I see the captain Don Orteva with his head crushed there, there!"
A dark shadow, illuminated the next moment by a flash of lightning, arose within twenty feet of the lieutenant and his companion.
At the same instant José saw close to him Martinez, his countenance pale and distorted with passion, his hand grasping a dagger.
"What is there!" he cried out.
A flash of lightning environed them both.
"What! Kill me!" cried José. The next moment he fell, a corpse, and Martinez fled in the midst of the tempest, his bloody weapon in his hand.
A few moments afterwards two men hung over the dead body of the seaman, saying, "This is one of them!"
Martinez fled like a madman across the dark solitudes; his head uncovered, regardless of the rain, which came down in torrents.
THE UPRISING
Don Orteva, turned to the few men who remained near him, "Stand by me, my brave lads!" he cried. And advancing toward Martinez, "Seize that officer!" he exclaimed.
"Death to the commander!" replied Martinez. * * * *
The bullet from Don Orteva's pistol was lost in space. The captain crossed swords with the lieutenant, but, overwhelmed by numbers and severely wounded, he was borne to the deck.—Page 164.
"Kill! kill!" he shrieked out, stumbling over the slippery rocks.
Suddenly he heard a hoarse sound in the depths beneath his feet. He stopped, knowing that it was the roaring of a torrent.
It was the little river Ixtolucca, which rushed on five hundred feet below him. Some paces off, over the torrent, was thrown a bridge formed of ropes. It was secured on both sides by some piles driven into the rock. The bridge oscillated in the wind like a thread extended in space.
Clinging to the ropes, Martinez made his way across the bridge, and by a great effort he reached the opposite bank.
There, a shadow rose before him.
Martinez retreated, without saying a word, towards the bank he had just left.
There, another human form appeared.
Martinez fell upon his knees in the middle of the bridge, his hands clasped in despair.
"Martinez, I am Pablo!" said a voice.
"Martinez, I am Jacopo!" said another voice.
"You are a traitor! You shall die!"
"You are a murderer! You shall die!"
Two loud blows were heard, the piles which secured the ropes at the extremity of the bridge fell beneath the ax. A horrible shriek rent the air, and Martinez, his hands extended, was precipitated into the abyss.
A league higher up, the midshipman and the boatswain rejoined each other, after having passed by a ford the river Ixtolucca.
"I have avenged Don Orteva!" said Jacopo.
"And I," replied Pablo, "have avenged Spain!"
It was thus that the navy of the Mexican Confederation had its origin. The two Spanish ships, delivered up by the traitors, were taken possession of by the new Republic, and became the nucleus of that small fleet which fought unsuccessfully for Texas and California, against the fleet of the United States of America.
THE END.