We sat, for a few moments after the catastrophe, in silence. Then quoth I, ‘Let us pull back, there can be no danger now, and try whether there be any floating wreck with any poor wretch clinging to it.’
So we were soon, as nearly as we could judge, floating upon the exact spot where the ‘Saucy Susan’ foundered. It was Rumbold’s opinion, that the powder below the cabin had been so stowed, that the force of the explosion when it took fire was downwards and laterally, rather than upwards—and that the sides of the afterpart of the ship had been actually driven asunder. In such case, of course, the sea would pour like a whirlpool into her, and she would have gone down, as had actually been the case, as though she were a lump of lead. The mizen-mast, with a heap of scorched and blackened wreck floating about, was the sole memorial left of the ‘Saucy Susan;’ the mast in question having no doubt been broken by the force of the explosion, and so saved from going to the bottom with the ship. We rowed for hours and hours round the spot, returning often to the mast, as it lay all blackened and scorched, weltering in the sea, but no other piece of wreck could we see. Not a box, or cask, or spar, but seemed to have gone right down into the awful depths of the ocean. There was something curiously dreamlike in our situation. My mind seemed wavering and flickering as I thought of what had happened. Sometimes it would appear as though the debauch had taken[Pg 398] place years and years ago, so that I remembered it quite faintly. In another moment I would deem that the orgy was roaring around me still. Then I would see the livid faces and fiery hair of the drunkards so plainly that I pressed my aching eyes with my hands to shut out the vision; and anon I would deem that it must be all a nightmare, and that I was still keeping the dreary mid watch upon the deck of the ‘Saucy Susan.’ But, no; when under the pressure of such a thought, I started up, my feet would slip on the uneven planks in the boat’s bottom, and I would start to hear the plunges of the mizen-mast as it rolled and wallowed beside us in the sea.
And so the grey dawn came, and after it the sun, and we stood upon the seats of the boat, and gazed anxiously all round. The ocean was landless and shipless. The fresh morning breeze came merrily down, curling the black summit of the swells and flecking the sombre sea with white bars. The daylight, however, was a great relief, and we sat and talked of the terrible event of the night before, like two men telling each other sad dreams.
‘We could have done nothing to save them,’ said Rumbold; ‘nothing. Every man was mad drunk, except Nixon, and Jerry had him clutched as though he were squeezed in an iron vice. They both went down, I warrant you, grappling each other. Their bones are lying in the wreck now, with their arms round each other’s necks, hundreds of fathoms under the boat’s keel.’
I asked him what he thought of Nixon’s refusal to drink, which had been the real cause of the mate’s mad freak and its consequences, and Rumbold’s thoughts jumped with mine, when he said, that he nothing doubted that Nixon had determined, if he could, to fell him, and rob him of the pearls in the drunken riot. As he spoke this, I produced the shining morsels from the pouch. Rumbold looked sadly at them.
‘For these gauds,’ he said, ‘two poor ignorant Indians have very probably been sacrificed, and now a whole[Pg 399] ship’s company have gone to the bottom of the sea. True, they were villains almost every man, but the more need was there that they should not be hurried to their last account with all their unrepented sins crimson on their foreheads.’
After some more talk in this strain, we roused ourselves, and began to converse of our own situation, which was bad enough, not having a strip of canvas in the boat to make a sail, and what was much worse, being without a morsel of water or food. By the best calculation I could make, we were near the centre of the Caribbean Sea, about half-way between Jamaica and Curaçoa. The regular trade-wind, blowing nearly from the north-east, might drift us, if we went before it, aided by the gulf stream, to somewhere about Cape Gracias à Dios, the great headland, west of which the main-land trends away to form the Bay of Honduras. Rumbold agreed with me as to our probable situation, and we computed the nearest point at which we could hope to make land, if we did not succeed in stumbling upon some of the small bushy islands or keys which lie sprinkled nor-east of Cape Gracias—we computed, I say, the nearest land that we could make without sails to be about six hundred miles distant.
‘Well,’ said Rumbold, ‘we must try to get there, that is all; so let us set to work.’
Accordingly, in about two hours, we succeeded in setting, upon one of the oars, a sort of tattered sail only adapted for going before the wind, and patched out of our shirts, by tying the sleeves together. Then pointing the boat’s head about west-south-west, as near as we could judge by the sun, we set forth upon our almost hopeless voyage, rowing at the same time to help the boat on, and going about four knots an hour.
‘Four knots an hour,’ said Rumbold, ‘and six hundred miles to be sailed over; that gives one hundred and fifty hours or thereby, if the wind keeps as fair as now, and we row night and day. Now, one hundred and fifty hours make rather more than six days; add two days[Pg 400] more—that is a reasonable allowance for resting and times of calm—in all eight days. Can a man live eight days without food, and, in this climate, without water?’
‘No,’ says I, tossing aside my oar, and clapping—I confess it—my hands to my face; ‘no, we are fools to try it. Better to jump overboard at once among the sharks.’
‘Take up your oar, sir,’ says Rumbold, sternly; ‘God helps those who help themselves. Work, sir, work. There are many chances before us. Perhaps an English ship—at the worst, a Spanish ship; perhaps an island with rain-water in the crevices of the rocks, and turtle sleeping on the sandy beaches, and plenty of birds and eggs.’
The very words put new life into me, and we tugged away for a time as cheerily as, under our circumstances, might be. The wind blew so fresh that we feared it would blow our frail sail right before it. The following seas hove us, as it were, from one to the other, and we made better progress than we hoped for. But the heat of the sun, as the day wore on, was terrible, and we began to thirst. At night, by Rumbold’s advice, we washed our mouths with salt water, and afterwards, finding a pebble or two lying in the bottom of the boat, we sucked them to promote the flow of saliva, and keep our tongues cool. We tugged at the oars, but very faintly, until late in the night, and then we fell asleep over them.
The second day was the same as the first—cloudless and hot. We stripped, dipped our clothes in the sea, and then put them on dripping; as soon as the hot sun dried them we plunged the garments into the sea again. It assuaged our thirst a little, but our lips and tongues began to swell, and turn to a horrid blackness. In the afternoon we were hungry for a short space, and directly afterwards sick at stomach, particularly Rumbold, who at length slipped down into the bottom of the boat, where he lay moaning. That night we suffered intensely from the cold, and our skins being irritated by the salt water, every motion was painful to us.
[Pg 401]
The third day several sea-birds swam near us, regarding us curiously, just as the marrot had done me when I lay drowning, as I thought, upon the spars of the ‘Golden Grove,’ in the Bay of Biscay. The breeze blew very strong this day, with a heavy sea. Towards noon I, standing on the thafts, holding on by the oar, which was shipped for a mast, descried a sail at a great distance, but, losing it after a few moments, said nothing. Rumbold, who had been by far the stoutest hearted of the twain at starting, grew weak rapidly; and, as his strength left him, his spirits drooped. He was, indeed, an older man than I was, and perhaps naturally not of such a strong constitution. He only rowed a little this day, and towards nightfall sank into a sort of delirious state, and raved.
The fourth day I felt I was in a hot fever, and so weak I could scarce crawl. Rowing was now out of the question, and Rumbold and I lay staring at the sky, and at each other, in the stern sheets. We had suffered very little from hunger, but the thirst was terrible. The night before I had dreamed troubled visions of wells and cool clear pools, and, starting up, I had much ado to refrain from flinging myself in my agony into the sea. Towards the afternoon Rumbold said, with a sad smile—
‘Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, drank dissolved pearls. Pity we have not the means to make the beverage here?’
By sundown he was raving again.
The fifth day the morning breeze was long of coming, and we watched it, with longing eyes, ruffling the water astern. Rumbold lay silent, as if worn out; his eyes had a glassy, fixed look, and there were black rings under them. As the forenoon wore on, he pointed to the water around, and I saw the black fins of sharks moving along with the boat.
‘They know when death is coming,’ he said.
The sixth day Rumbold was alive, and that was all. He took my hand in both of his, and whispered hoarsely, ‘I have no wife—and no child—no one who will grieve—that is a great comfort at a time like this.’
[Pg 402]
Presently black clouds arose out of the sea to windward, and began to spread over the whole firmament. I pointed them out, and besought Rumbold to take heart. ‘Rain is coming,’ I said, ‘we will live to reach the land yet.’ He shook his head, and his eyes grew more and more fixed and glazed. ‘I told you—I made you my—legatee,’ he muttered, with great difficulty; ‘think sometimes of the Peralta who helped you from the Spaniards, or of the Rumbold who died with you in the boat at sea.’ All this time the black clouds became heavier, but still no rain fell. The air was like an oven, and the rude linen sail drooped motionless about the mast. I took Rumbold’s head on my lap; he was past speaking, but he looked up from time to time in my eyes. At length I felt his heart flutter, and presently the beating stopped. No change whatever took place upon his face, except that it assumed that thin pinched look to which men’s features shrink when death lays its hand upon them. He was dead—probably for some time before I was certain of it. When I knew that it was so, I laid the corpse gently down in the stern sheets. In half an hour the windows of Heaven were opened, and the rain poured down in bucketfuls. Oh, those blessed, blessed drops! I knelt, and with my mouth agape swallowed them. I wrung the dripping sail above my wet lips. I licked the water as it trinkled in large drops down the mast. I lapped it up as it accumulated in the little inequalities and hollows in the thafts of the boat. I had soon drunk my fill. The rain gave me fresh strength, fresh spirits, fresh soul. But as for Rumbold, the cool sweet water pattered upon his rigid face—the blessed rain drenched his hair, and great drops ran down his hollow cheeks—but it was of no avail. The manna fell not soon enough, and there lay the corpse, with its white wet face staring starkly up to the sky!
Towards night the rain-clouds broke up, and the sun came slanting in golden bursts down upon the leaden-coloured sea. The breeze also began to blow again—the well-drenched sail caught the first faint puffs of the wind, and we moved forward—the living and the dead, upon[Pg 403] our dreary path. It was very terrible, all that long night, to sit alone beside the corpse. The moon rose in all her glory, and the ocean gleamed like molten silver about me. The white sail showed before me like a pale phantom, and at my side lay the stark dead man, with his damp pallid skin glistening in the moonlight. A dozen times I made up my mind to fling the corpse overboard, but I saw those horrible triangular fins, how they glided all round the boat, and my heart failed me. At length, I stripped off Rumbold’s doublet and covered his face with the cloth.
The blackness of night faded at length—then came the grey dawn and the red bright sunrise—the seventh I had seen since the ‘Saucy Susan’ went down. I must have been in a half torpid state, for I lay listlessly, with my face turned to the east, waiting for the breeze to blow, and the morning was already becoming hot, when looking languidly to see if the sail was properly set, I bounded forwards from the stern-sheets, as though all the strength they ever possessed had suddenly come back to my muscles.
Land! yes—land! right ahead—not a mile from me—rocks, with the surf white upon them—sandy beaches glistening in the sun—knolls all green and bushy, and slopes carpeted with Bahama grass. Here and there a feathery palmetta tree rising from the underwood, and clouds of gulls and plovers, ducks and flamingos, pelicans and man-of-war birds, sporting or resting in the air, on the water, or the land. I was close to, as near as I could judge, a group of islets, the principal one being surrounded by many smaller,—some of them indeed mere rocks,—but rocks as I saw teeming with food, and brimming, as I did not doubt, in all their crevices, with fresh, sweet water, from last night’s rain.
My heart melted within me, and I sank into the bottom of the boat, and wept, and prayed, and gave thanks. Meantime, the sea-breeze coming on to blow fresh, drove the boat quickly before it, and I had enough to do—steering with an oar to avoid the coral reefs, and spits,[Pg 404] and banks of sand, between which I was hurried—and over which the sea went flashing in thunder. Several times the keel of the boat grazed the bottom, and we were swung round and round in the eddies and counter-currents—but still she bore me safely on, until we approached a fair sandy beach, on which the surf broke high. I could see no better landing-place, so let the boat drive, and tied myself, as well as I could, for I was more dead than alive, to an oar, that I might have a last chance of reaching the shore. In a minute or two the boat was in the broken water,—she rode over two or three fierce crests of tumbling seas very gallantly, but then a heavier breaker than common curling up astern of us, fell, as it were, down upon the boat, and I found myself faintly struggling in the white frothy water, which foamed, and buzzed, and roared in my ears, and down into which, at length, losing all sense and consciousness, I sank—a drowning man.
When I opened my eyes again, I knew not where I was, or what had happened to me. I lay in a sort of half-waking torpid state, being dimly conscious that I was stripped and in a bed, and that above me was a roof of wattled branches, and that dark figures of naked men—Indians as I deemed, were moving about me. Then I felt a cup put to my mouth, and some warm liquid, which seemed to revive and comfort me, and flow, as it were, through my poor wasted limbs, warming and refreshing them, was poured down my throat, my head being raised by some one behind me for the purpose. But all this might or might not be. For all I knew, it was a dream of delirium. I was too weak to speak, and even to think,—consciousness forsook me again, and I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
I returned again to sense and life. I was in a bed, a hammock, laid upon a cool mat. There was a roof of wattled branches above me, and there were Indians, two very old men, with grey hair and grey beards flowing down upon their swarthy breasts, sitting beside me. Furthermore, I saw that I was in a hut or cottage,[Pg 405] artfully contrived in a recess or split of rock; that part of the walls were formed of the natural living stone, and part of very neat and artificial wattle-work, quite wind and weather tight. The door seemed to open at the end of the passage, leading upwards from the chamber, which nestled, as it were, down between the rocks; and through this door, I saw bushes and long grass waving in the wind. The light in the hut was somewhat dim and grey, but I could see around me great numbers of fishing lines, and bows, and arrows; and, looking more closely, I saw in little cupboards, or niches, wrought out of the rock, stores of provisions, with drinking-cups made from cocoa-nuts and great shells, and rude clay-pots for cooking. But all the attention I could bestow was taken up upon my hosts. They were so like each other, that I supposed they were brothers; the same lank grey hair, the same brown or chestnut hue of the skin, the same rather flat noses, the same black eyes, so full of cheerfulness and kindness, and so completely the same expression of face, that I could positively see no difference betwixt their features. In all respects, save one, the ornaments they wore were also the same. Each had a sort of fillet of different-coloured pebbles, through which a string had been passed, placed round his head, and a similar adornment round his neck. Each also wore thin plates of gold dangling from his ears, but in the fillet of one of them was fastened a wing feather of the toucan; this was the mark by which I distinguished one from the other. Their dress was very simple. It consisted merely of a sort of bead-embroidered petticoat, or kilt, tied round the waist, and reaching nearly to the knee, and a sort of mantle of strange-looking fabric, very soft and fleecy, which, when they sat down in the hut or cave, they allowed to fall from their shoulders upon the floor.
While I gazed at these Indians, they conversed softly in a language which I had never heard, but which was very soft and melodious. At length, seeing my eyes open, and fixed upon them, both rose, and standing over[Pg 406] me, he who wore the toucan’s feather said, gravely, and in excellent Spanish—
‘Be of good cheer, stranger, for you are among friends.’ I was too weak to do aught but take their hands in mine, and try to press them to my breast. Presently the drink I had before taken was again administered to me, and one of the Indians going forth into the open air, returned with a savoury morsel of broiled fish.
‘Eat, stranger,’ he said, in most sonorous Spanish; ‘eat, and be refreshed.’
Thus these kind Indians fed me by degrees, and caused me to sleep with soothing and stilling draughts, I eating, drinking, and slumbering by turns; but all in moderation, so that at length I was enabled to sit up in the hammock, propped against a chest, and to falter forth my thanks, and ask how long I had been lying in that dreamy state? They told me, nigh three days. I asked, if they had found me upon the beach. They replied, the two often speaking together, in a low chanting tone of voice: ‘Yes, they had, flung there by the waves, and near me a broken boat.’ I think my eyes must have told them what I intended for the next question, because, before I had spoken it, the Indian who wore the feather said—
‘And also the body of a white man. We buried him beneath a palm-tree, when the moon was in the heavens and the air still. He sleeps well.’
Then the other took up the word—
‘Truly he sleeps well; but you have been preserved; for which thank the God of many names and many nations.’
This was towards dusk. When it grew dark the Indians lighted a torch of resinous wood, which burnt bright and clear, and sitting by it, with their cloaks or blankets wrapped round them, smoked gravely from long pipes made of reeds, and drank, but very moderately, the rich juice of the palm-tree—I meantime regarding them attentively, for I was still so weak that to speak was a painful effort. At last, after a long silence, the Indian with the feather, turning to me, said, solemnly—
[Pg 407]
‘I am called Buonahari, and my fathers were caciques.’
The other then said—
‘And I am called Behecheco. I am the brother of Buonahari, born but an hour after him. He is still a cacique, because our fathers were caciques, and he is the eldest of our race.’
The first Indian again interposed—
‘Our fathers were caciques of Guanhani, where first white men came. Now, there are none of our people there, and the island is called St. Salvador.’
The second Indian resumed—
‘When we die, the race of the caciques of Guanhani will be no more. We are the last; but still my brother Buonahari is a cacique, because the blood of our fathers is the blood of caciques.’
I here touched my head where Buonahari wore the feather. He seemed to understand the mute question, for he replied: ‘The feather of the toucan is the crown of a cacique. If I die first my brother Behecheco will take it from my head and wear it; when he dies no one will take it from his head; it will lie flat and rot, because the caciques of Guanhani are no more.’
At this point I became too far exhausted to listen to more, and the Indians bade me sleep again. When I wakened in the night they were still sitting beside the torch, singing, in their melodious language, a low, mournful chant, which presently sent me to the land of dreams again. The very next day, however, after a famous breakfast of fish and fowl, for now the Indians allowed me to eat as much as I would, and that the reader may conceive was not little, I managed to crawl out of the hut and sit in the shade of wavy bushes, stirred by the cool sea breeze. The abode was contrived, as I have said, deep in a ravine of rocks, half clothed with bushes and rustling grass, which were disposed partly, as I thought, by nature, and partly by art, so as artificially to hide the entrance to the cave—for it was rather that than anything else—from any except a very curious and a very keen investigator. But presently the Indians returning from fishing,[Pg 408] they having left me still in the hammock, they led me slowly and tenderly out of the ravine, and forth upon an open, breezy space, a sort of terrace, amid the cluster of rocks in which was their dwelling, and from which I could look down upon the greater part of the island, which seemed to be some four or five miles in circumference, uneven and rocky, with abundance of bays and creeks on the leeward side, formed by smaller islets and natural indentations in the coast of the greater. It was curious to observe, the trade wind blowing strong, the space of smooth glancing water left in the lee of the island, and tapering away towards the south-west. On the windward side, the sea broke high upon the rocks, and Behecheco informed me, that in stormy weather the salt spray flew over and over the island from beach to beach. Among the bushes and trees there fluttered and coo’d countless flocks of pigeons and other small birds of brilliant plumage; and down by the shore, the fowls which wade and swim dotted all the grey rocks, and glancing shingle beds, and fair beaches of hard dry sand.
I sat long enjoying the prospect, the Indians being gravely squatted beside me; then I asked if there were other inhabitants of the isle except themselves?
They replied, ‘No. None else.’
‘Did not privateers sometimes come there?’
‘Ships of white men of divers nations sometimes come,’ replied Behecheco; ‘but then we mostly hide closely in the cave. The sailors land, and seek for turtle, and perhaps pigeons. Then they go away again, and we come forth.’
I then prayed them to tell me how long they had lived in that solitude, and from what land they came? Buonahari replied a follows:—
‘Nigh two-score of years have passed away since we landed upon this island in a canoe. We fled here from Hispaniola, where we were slaves to the Spaniards. It was when we were slaves that we learned the tongue in which we now speak to you. Still we know that you are not a Spaniard, for your skin is too white, and your eyes[Pg 409] are blue. You are, perhaps, then, one of those nations which come from across the ocean, and make war on the Spaniards?’
Having assented to this conjecture, the Indian resumed thus:—
‘We were slaves in Hispaniola, my brother Behecheco and I. We dug in the mines for gold. Our father and mother were also slaves—they also dug in the mines for gold. Their father and mother were likewise slaves, and they likewise dug in the mines for gold. So it was with our family for five descents. We were slaves in Hispaniola. But when our father and mother died, I said to my brother, “We are strong. We know the ways of the mountains. We have found in the woods the plant, which, strewed upon the path of a flying man, causes the bloodhound to lose the scent. Let us be no longer slaves—let us flee.” As I said, so we did. We fled from the mines. The Spaniards pursued us, but the blood-hounds lost the scent, and we came to the sea. There we hollowed a tree into a great canoe, according as the traditions of our fathers had taught us—and in this canoe we put to sea, drifting before the wind. We had water, and meal, and cassava, and fruits, and in half a moon we saw this island and landed on it. Here we have continued to live, and here we will die.’
I was much interested in this account, for I conjectured that the Indians were descendants of the race of original inhabitants of the Leeward or Lucayas group, now called the Bahama Islands, which the Spaniards had first discovered, and from which they had, about fifteen years after the first voyage of Columbus, inveigled a great number of the inhabitants to make them slaves in Cuba and Hispaniola. This I say was my conjecture, and it was speedily verified.
‘I have said,’ continued Behecheco, ‘that the blood in our veins is the blood of ancient caciques—the caciques of Guanhani. Though we were slaves, we had that blood still. Our father told us so. His father told him. We speak the old language of Guanhani, for it was taught us[Pg 410] in our childhood. We worship the old gods of Guanhani, for we were instructed so to do in our childhood, and we could recount to you the beautiful things of Guanhani, the trees and the rocks, the rivers and the shores, the hills and the streams, the birds and the beasts, although we never saw them. Our father, who taught us, never saw them. His father, who taught him, never saw them. But ever from father to son, and mother to daughter, there flows the knowledge of what our race was once, and what land it ruled over. Now, alas! that knowledge is to perish, even as water sinks in dry sand.’
I thought, as the Indian spoke thus, that both the brothers experienced some kind of satisfaction in recounting to another the secret, which would otherwise die with them, and thus keeping it a little longer floating in the world. Presently, after their accustomed fashion of alternate speaking, Buonahari chimed in—
‘Our forefather, who came from Guanhani and Hispaniola, was the son of him who was cacique in Guanhani, when the white men landed upon it, and said, “Here is a New World.” Five years after he began to reign, there came many ships with white men. Our forefathers thought that the white men were gods come down from the sun, and they honoured them, and feared them. Then said the white men—“Would you see again your fathers and your mothers, who have died and gone to the happy valleys—to the land of Coyaba—to that land where are cool shades and delicious fruits—where the drought burns not up the ground—and the hurricane tears not up the trees? If you would go thither, come into our ships and we will sail with you to Coyaba, and we will also see your departed friends.” So our forefathers believed the white men, and went into their ships, and the white men did not take them to Coyaba, but to Hispaniola and to Cuba, and made them slaves to dig for gold in the mountains. Most of our forefathers died there, and gradually the nation wasted away—but our family did not come to an end, but went on, generation after generation, until we were begotten, and with us our family will die, and the[Pg 411] last of the race of Guanhani will be taken from the earth.’
Both the old men spoke as though they had already outlived all sorrow for their lot. Their words and gestures were grave and solemn, but not mournful, for their trust was, that when they died, they would at length go to Coyaba, and see again all their forefathers, those who had been slaves in Cuba and Hispaniola, and those who had borne rule in Guanhani.
In about a week’s time I was quite restored, and daily went a hunting and a fishing with my Indian hosts. I had told them my story, to which they listened eagerly, and I had assured them, that if, perchance, there should come to the island a ship manned by my countrymen, and which might carry me away, that I would reveal to none the secret of their habitation, but leave them undisturbed in their solitary abode. I made them lead me also to where Rumbold lay buried beneath the palm. It was a breezy, sunny spot, and upon the turf I piled a little heap, or cairn of stones, such as, in Scotland, where they are found heaped on dreary moors, and among lone hills, are said by the country-people to mark the grave of a hero. Weeks glided away thus. The old Indians were always the same—grave, courteous, and kind. They fished, and set snares for birds, when they wanted them for food, but killed none wantonly. They ever went together, and with the same slow, stately step. Their talk was almost always of Coyaba, and the friends who had gone before them, and who they would meet there. In short, their demeanour and their speech were those of men whose minds were set upon the things of the new world into which they were soon to enter. The space between them and death was short, and their eyes seemed to be able to look beyond it, and to care little for what was on this side of the dark river. Notwithstanding, however, I drew from them many traditionary accounts of their people before white men had visited them; and one night, in particular, I asked whether there had been handed down any remembrance of the first white men who landed[Pg 412] upon Guanhani—they being, indeed, no other than Columbus and his followers. To this question, Buonahari readily answered, that he had often heard from his father the full account of that event, as it had been handed down, and that, if I pleased, he would narrate it. Then, filling his cup with palm-wine, and trimming the torch, which cast a sparkling glow upon the rock-walls and wattled roof of the hut—the descendant of the caciques began the tale.