The Tiger-Slayer: A Tale of the Indian Desert

We are compelled at the outset, to confess that if the architect intrusted with its construction had shown himself more than sober in the distribution of the ornaments, he had built it perfectly to suit the trade of the various tenants destined in future to occupy it one after the other.

It was a clay-built hovel. The façade looked upon the Street de la Merced; the opposite side had an outlook of the sea, above which it projected for a certain distance upon posts.

This house was inhabited by an innkeeper. Contrary to the European buildings, which grow smaller the higher they rise from the ground, this house grew larger; so that the upper part was lofty and well lighted, while the shop and other ground floor rooms were confined and gloomy.

The present occupier had skilfully profited by this architectural arrangement to have a room made in the wall between the first and second floors, which was reached by a turning staircase, concealed in the masonry.

This room was so built that the slightest noise in the street distinctly reached the ears of persons in it, while stifling any they might make, however loud it might be.

The worthy landlord, occupier of this house, had naturally a rather mixed custom of people of every description – smugglers, rateros, rogues, and others, whose habits might bring them into unpleasant difficulties with the Chilean police; consequently, a whaleboat constantly fastened to a ring under a window opening on the sea, offered a provisional but secure shelter to the customers of the establishment whenever, by any accident, the agents of government evinced a desire to pay a domiciliary visit to his den.

This house was known – and probably is still known, unless an earthquake or a fire has caused this rookery to disappear from the face of the earth of Valparaiso – by the name of the Locanda del Sol.

On an iron plate suspended from a beam, and creaking with every breath of wind, there had been painted by a native artist a huge red face, surrounded by orange beams, possibly intended as an explanation of the sign to which I have alluded above.

Señor Benito Sarzuela master of the Locanda del Sol, was a tall, dry fellow with an angular face end crafty look; a mixture of the Araucano, Negro and Spaniard, whose morale responded perfectly to his physique; that is to say, he combined in himself the vices of the three races to which he belonged – red, black, and white – without possessing one single virtue of theirs, and that beneath the shadow of an avowed and almost honest trade he carried on clandestinely some twenty, the most innocent of which would have taken him to the presidios or galleys for life, had he been discovered.

Some two months after the events we described in a previous chapter, about eleven of the clock on a cold and misty night, Señor Benito Sarzuela was seated in melancholy mood within his bar, contemplating with mournful eye the deserted room of his establishment.

The wind blowing violently, caused the sign of the mesón to creak on its hinges with gloomy complaints, and the heavy black clouds coming from the south moved weightily athwart the sky, dropping at intervals heavy masses of rain on the ground loosened by previous storms.

"Come," the unhappy host muttered to himself with a piteous air, "there is another day which finishes as badly as the others. Sangre de Dios! For the last week I have had no luck. If it continues only a fortnight longer I shall be ruined a man."

In fact, through a singular accident, for about a month the Locanda del Sol had been completely shorn of its old brilliancy, and the landlord did not know any reason for its eclipse.

The sound of clanking glasses and cups was no longer heard in the room, usually affected by thirsty souls. Strange change in human things! Abundance had been too suddenly followed by the most perfect vacuum. It might be said that the plague reigned in this deserted house. The bottles remained methodically arranged on the shelves, and hardly two passers-by had come in during the past day to drink a glass of pisco, which they hastily paid for, so eager were they to quit this den, in spite of the becks, and nods, and wreathed smiles of the host, who tried in vain to keep them to talk of public affairs, and, above all, cheer his solitude.

After a few words we have heard him utter, the worthy Don Benito rose carelessly, and prepared, with many an oath, to close his establishment, so at any rate to save in candles, when suddenly an individual entered, then two, then ten, and at last such a number that the locandero gave up all attempts at counting them.

These men were all wrapped up in cloaks; their heads were covered by felt hats, whose broad brims, pulled down carefully over their eyes, rendered them perfectly unrecognisable.

The room was soon crowded with customers drinking and smoking, but not uttering a word.

The extraordinary thing was that, although all the tables were lined, such a religious silence prevailed among these strange bibbers that the noise of the rain pattering outside could be distinctly heard, as well as the footfall of the horses ridden by the serenos, which resounded hoarsely on the pebbles or in the muddy ponds that covered the ground.

The host, agreeably surprised by this sudden turn of fortune, had joyfully set to work serving his unexpected customers; but all at once a singular thing happened, which Señor Sarzuela was far from anticipating. Although the proverb say that you can never have enough of a good thing – and proverbs are the wisdom of nations – it happened that the affluence of people, who appeared to have made an appointment at his house, became so considerable, and assumed such gigantic proportions, that the landlord himself began to be terrified; for his hostelry, empty a moment previously, was now so crammed that he soon did not know where to put the new arrivals who continued to flock in. In fact the crowd, after filling the common room, had, like a rising tide, flowed over into the adjoining room, then it escaladed the stairs, and spread over the upper floors.

At the first stroke of eleven more than two hundred customers occupied the Locanda del Sol.

The locandero, with that craft which was one of the most salient points of his character, then comprehended that something extraordinary was about to happen, and that his house would be the scene.

At the thought a convulsive tremor seized upon him, his hair began to stand on end, and he sought in his brain for the means he must employ to get rid of these sinister and silent guests.

In his despair he rose with an air which he sought to render most resolute, and walked to the door as if for the purpose of closing his establishment. The customers, still silent as fish, did not make a sign of moving; on the contrary, they pretended they noticed nothing.

Don Benito felt his nervousness redoubled.

Suddenly the voice of a sereno singing in the distance furnished him with the pretext he vainly sought, by shouting as he passed the locanda, —

"Ave Maria purísima. Las onze han dado y llueve."[2 - I salute you, most pure Mary! Eleven has struck, and it rains.]

Although accompanied by modulations capable of making a dog weep, the sacramental cry of the sereno absolutely produced no impression on mine host's customers. The force of terror at length restoring him a slight degree of courage, Señor Sarzuela decided on directly addressing his obstinate customers. For this purpose he deliberately posted himself in the centre of the room, thrust his fist into his side, and raising his head, said in a voice which he tried in vain to render firm, but whose tremor he could not hide, —

"Señores caballeros, it is eleven o'clock. The police regulations forbid me keeping open longer. Have the goodness, I beg you, to withdraw without delay, so that I may close my establishment."

This harangue, from which he promised himself the greatest success, produced an effect exactly contrary to what he expected. The strangers vigorously smote the table with their glasses, shouting unanimously, —

"Drink!"

The landlord bounded back at this fearful disturbance.

"Still, caballeros," he ventured to remark, after a moment's hesitation, "the police regulations are severe. It is eleven, and – "

He could say no more: the noise recommenced with even greater intensity, and the customers shouted together, in a voice of thunder, "Drink!"

A reaction, easy to comprehend, then took place in the mind of mine host. Fancying that a personal attack was made on himself, persuaded that his interests were at stake, the coward disappeared to make room for the miser, threatened in what is dearest to him – his property.

"Ah," he shouted in feverish exasperation, "that is the game! Well, we will see if I am master in my own house. I will go and fetch the alcalde."

This threat of justice from the mouth of the worthy Sarzuela appeared so droll, that the customers broke out, with a unanimity that did them all credit, into a burst of Homeric laughter right under the poor fellow's nose. This was the coup de grâce. The host's anger was converted into raving madness, and he rushed headforemost at the door, under the laughter and inextinguishable shouts of his persecutors. But he had hardly crossed the threshold of his house ere a new arrival seized him unceremoniously by the arm and hurled him back roughly into the room, saying in a bantering voice, —

"What fly has stung you, my dear landlord? Are you mad to go out bareheaded in such weather, at the risk of catching a pleurisy?"

And then, while the locandero, terrified and confounded by this rude shock, tried to regain his balance and re-establish a little order in his ideas, the unknown, as coolly as if he were at home, had, with the help of some of the customers, to whom he made signs, shut the shutters and bolted the door with as much care as Sarzuela himself usually devoted to this delicate operation.

"There, now that is done," the stranger said, turning to the amazed host "suppose we have a chat, compadre? Ah, I suppose you do not recognise me?" he added, as he removed his hat and displayed a fine intelligent face, over which a mocking smile was at this moment playing.

"Oh, el Señor Don Gaëtano!" said Sarzuela, whom this meeting was far from pleasing, and who tried to conceal a horrible grimace.

"Silence!" the other said. "Come hither."

"With a gesture he drew the landlord into a corner of the room, and, leaning down to his ear, said in a low voice, —

"Are there any strangers in your house?"

"Look!" he said with a piteous glance, as he pointed to the still drinking customers, "that legion of demons invaded my house an hour back. They drink well, it is true; but there is something suspicious about them not at all encouraging to an honest man."

"The more reason that you should have nothing to fear. Besides, I am not alluding to them. I ask you if you have any strange lodgers? As for those men, you know them as well as I do, perhaps better."

"From top to bottom of my house I have no other persons than these caballeros, whom you say I know. It is very possible; but as ever since they have been here, thanks to the way in which they are muffled, it has been impossible for me to see the tip of a nose, I was utterly unable to recognise them."

"You are a donkey, my good friend. These men who bother you so greatly are all Dauph'yeers."

"Really!" the amazed host exclaimed: "then why do they hide their faces?"

"My faith, Master Sarzuela, I fancy it is probably because they do not wish to have them seen."

And laughing at the landlord, who was sadly out of countenance, the stranger made a sign. Two men rose, rushed on the poor fellow, and before he could even guess what they intended, he found himself so magnificently garroted that he could not even cross himself.