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STORIES BY
FOREIGN AUTHORS

POLISH, GREEK, BELGIAN,
HUNGARIAN

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER OF ASPINWALL
BY HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

THE PLAIN SISTER
BY DEMETRIOS BIKELAS

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS
BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK

SAINT NICHOLAS EVE
BY CAMILLE LEMONNIER

IN LOVE WITH THE CZARINA
BY MAURICE JOKAI



THE LIGHT-HOUSE KEEPER OF ASPINWALL

BY

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

From "Yanko the Musician and other Stories."
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin. Published by
Little, Brown & Co.

Copyright, 1893, by Little, Brown & Co.





CHAPTER I


On a time it happened that the light-house keeper in Aspinwall, not far
from Panama, disappeared without a trace. Since he disappeared during a
storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of
the small, rocky island on which the light-house stood, and was swept
out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was
not found next day in its rocky niche. The place of light-house keeper
had become vacant. It was necessary to fill this place at the earliest
moment possible, since the light-house had no small significance for the
local movement as well as for vessels going from New York to Panama.
Mosquito Bay abounds in sandbars and banks. Among these navigation, even
in the daytime, is difficult; but at night, especially with the fogs
which are so frequent on those waters warmed by the sun of the tropics,
it is nearly impossible. The only guide at that time for the numerous
vessels is the light-house.

The task of finding a new keeper fell to the United States consul living
in Panama, and this task was no small one: first, because it was
absolutely necessary to find the man within twelve hours; second, the
man must be unusually conscientious,--it was not possible, of course, to
take the first comer at random; finally, there was an utter lack of
candidates. Life on a tower is uncommonly difficult, and by no means
enticing to people of the South, who love idleness and the freedom of a
vagrant life. That light-house keeper is almost a prisoner. He cannot
leave his rocky island except on Sundays. A boat from Aspinwall brings
him provisions and water once a day, and returns immediately; on the
whole island, one acre in area, there is no inhabitant. The keeper lives
in the light-house; he keeps it in order. During the day he gives
signals by displaying flags of various colors to indicate changes of the
barometer; in the evening he lights the lantern. This would be no great
labor were it not that to reach the lantern at the summit of the tower
he must pass over more than four hundred steep and very high steps;
sometimes he must make this journey repeatedly during the day. In
general, it is the life of a monk, and indeed more than that,--the life
of a hermit. It was not wonderful, therefore, that Mr. Isaac
Falconbridge was in no small anxiety as to where he should find a
permanent successor to the recent keeper; and it is easy to understand
his joy when a successor announced himself most unexpectedly on that
very day. He was a man already old, seventy years or more, but fresh,
erect, with the movements and bearing of a soldier. His hair was
perfectly white, his face as dark as that of a Creole; but, judging from
his blue eyes, he did not belong to a people of the South. His face was
somewhat downcast and sad, but honest. At the first glance he pleased
Falconbridge. It remained only to examine him. Therefore the following
conversation began:

"Where are you from?"

"I am a Pole."

"Where have you worked up to this time?"

"In one place and another."

"A light-house keeper should like to stay in one place."

"I need rest."

"Have you served? Have you testimonials of honorable government
service?"

The old man drew from his bosom a piece of faded silk resembling a strip
of an old flag, unwound it, and said:

"Here are the testimonials. I received this cross in 1830. This second
one is Spanish from the Carlist War; the third is the French legion; the
fourth I received in Hungary. Afterward I fought in the States against
the South; there they do not give crosses."

Falconbridge took the paper and began to read.

"H'm! Skavinski? Is that your name? H'm! Two flags captured in a bayonet
attack. You were a gallant soldier."

"I am able to be a conscientious light-house keeper."

"It is necessary to ascend the tower a number of times daily. Have you
sound legs?"

"I crossed the plains on foot." (The immense steppes between the East
and California are called "the plains.")

"Do you know sea service?"

"I served three years on a whaler."

"You have tried various occupations."

"The only one I have not known is quiet."

"Why is that?"

The old man shrugged his shoulders. "Such is my fate."

"Still you seem to me too old for a light-house keeper."

"Sir," exclaimed the candidate suddenly in a voice of emotion, "I am
greatly wearied, knocked about. I have passed through much as you see.
This place is one of those which I have wished for most ardently. I am
old, I need rest. I need to say to myself, 'Here you will remain; this
is your port.' Ah, sir, this depends now on you alone. Another time
perhaps such a place will not offer itself. What luck that I was in
Panama! I entreat you--as God is dear to me, I am like a ship which if
it misses the harbor will be lost. If you wish to make an old man happy-
-I swear to you that I am honest, but--I have enough of wandering."

The blue eyes of the old man expressed such earnest entreaty that
Falconbridge, who had a good, simple heart, was touched.

"Well," said he, "I take you. You are light-house keeper."

The old man's face gleamed with inexpressible joy.

"I thank you."

"Can you go to the tower to-day?"

"I can."

"Then good-bye. Another word,--for any failure in service you will be
dismissed."

"All right."

That same evening, when the sun had descended on the other side of the
isthmus, and a day of sunshine was followed by a night without twilight,
the new keeper was in his place evidently, for the light-house was
casting its bright rays on the water as usual. The night was perfectly
calm, silent, genuinely tropical, filled with a transparent haze,
forming around the moon a great colored rainbow with soft, unbroken
edges; the sea was moving only because the tide raised it. Skavinski on
the balcony seemed from below like a small black point. He tried to
collect his thoughts and take in his new position; but his mind was too
much under pressure to move with regularity. He felt somewhat as a
hunted beast feels when at last it has found refuge from pursuit on some
inaccessible rock or in a cave. There had come to him, finally, an hour
of quiet; the feeling of safety filled his soul with a certain
unspeakable bliss. Now on that rock he can simply laugh at his previous
wanderings, his misfortunes and failures. He was in truth like a ship
whose masts, ropes, and sails had been broken and rent by a tempest, and
cast from the clouds to the bottom of the sea,--a ship on which the
tempest had hurled waves and spat foam, but which still wound its way to
the harbor. The pictures of that storm passed quickly through his mind
as he compared it with the calm future now beginning. A part of his
wonderful adventures he had related to Falconbridge; he had not
mentioned, however, thousands of other incidents. It had been his
misfortune that as often as he pitched his tent and fixed his fireplace
to settle down permanently, some wind tore out the stakes of his tent,
whirled away the fire, and bore him on toward destruction. Looking now
from the balcony of the tower at the illuminated waves, he remembered
everything through which he had passed. He had campaigned in the four
parts of the world, and in wandering had tried almost every occupation.
Labor-loving and honest, more than once had he earned money, and had
always lost it in spite of every prevision and the utmost caution. He
had been a gold-miner in Australia, a diamond-digger in Africa, a
rifleman in public service in the East Indies. He established a ranch in
California,--the drought ruined him; he tried trading with wild tribes
in the interior of Brazil,--his raft was wrecked on the Amazon; he
himself alone, weaponless, and nearly naked, wandered in the forest for
many weeks living on wild fruits, exposed every moment to death from the
jaws of wild beasts. He established a forge in Helena, Arkansas, and
that was burned in a great fire which consumed the whole town. Next he
fell into the hands of Indians in the Rocky Mountains, and only through
a miracle was he saved by Canadian trappers. Then he served as a sailor
on a vessel running between Bahia and Bordeaux, and as harpooner on a
whaling-ship; both vessels were wrecked. He had a cigar factory in
Havana, and was robbed by his partner while he himself was lying sick
with the vomito. At last he came to Aspinwall, and there was to be the
end of his failures,--for what could reach him on that rocky island?
Neither water nor fire nor men. But from men Skavinski had not suffered
much; he had met good men oftener than bad ones.

But it seemed to him that all the four elements were persecuting him.
Those who knew him said that he had no luck, and with that they
explained everything. He himself became somewhat of a monomaniac. He
believed that some mighty and vengeful hand was pursuing him everywhere,
on all lands and waters. He did not like, however, to speak of this;
only at times, when some one asked him whose hand that could be, he
pointed mysteriously to the Polar Star, and said, "It comes from that
place." In reality his failures were so continuous that they were
wonderful, and might easily drive a nail into the head, especially of
the man who had experienced them. But Skavinski had the patience of an
Indian, and that great calm power of resistance which comes from truth
of heart. In his time he had received in Hungary a number of bayonet-
thrusts because he would not grasp at a stirrup which was shown as means
of salvation to him, and cry for quarter. In like manner he did not bend
to misfortune. He crept up against the mountain as industriously as an
ant. Pushed down a hundred times, he began his journey calmly for the
hundred and first time. He was in his way a most peculiar original. This
old soldier, tempered, God knows in how many fires, hardened in
suffering, hammered and forged, had the heart of a child. In the time of
the epidemic in Cuba, the vomito attacked him because he had given to
the sick all his quinine, of which he had a considerable supply, and
left not a grain to himself.

There had been in him also this wonderful quality,--that after so many
disappointments he was ever full of confidence, and did not lose hope
that all would be well yet. In winter he grew lively, and predicted
great events. He waited for these events with impatience, and lived with
the thought of them whole summers. But the winters passed one after
another, and Skavinski lived only to this,--that they whitened his head.
At last he grew old, began to lose energy; his endurance was becoming
more and more like resignation, his former calmness was tending toward
supersensitiveness, and that tempered soldier was degenerating into a
man ready to shed tears for any cause. Besides this, from time to time
he was weighed down by a terrible homesickness which was roused by any
circumstance,--the sight of swallows, gray birds like sparrows, snow on
the mountains, or melancholy music like that heard on a time. Finally,
there was one idea which mastered him,--the idea of rest. It mastered
the old man thoroughly, and swallowed all other desires and hopes. This
ceaseless wanderer could not imagine anything more to be longed for,
anything more precious, than a quiet corner in which to rest, and wait
in silence for the end. Perhaps specially because some whim of fate had
so hurried him over all seas and lands that he could hardly catch his
breath, did he imagine that the highest human happiness was simply not
to wander. It is true that such modest happiness was his due; but he was
so accustomed to disappointments that he thought of rest as people in
general think of something which is beyond reach. He did not dare to
hope for it. Meanwhile, unexpectedly, in the course of twelve hours he
had gained a position which was as if chosen for him out of all the
world. We are not to wonder, then, that when he lighted his lantern in
the evening he became as it were dazed,--that he asked himself if that
was reality, and he did not dare to answer that it was. But at the same
time reality convinced him with incontrovertible proofs; hence hours one
after another passed while he was on the balcony. He gazed, and
convinced himself. It might seem that he was looking at the sea for the
first time in his life. The lens of the lantern cast into the darkness
an enormous triangle of light, beyond which the eye of the old man was
lost in the black distance completely, in the distance mysterious and
awful. But that distance seemed to run toward the light. The long waves
following one another rolled out from the darkness, and went bellowing
toward the base of the island; and then their foaming backs were
visible, shining rose-colored in the light of the lantern. The incoming
tide swelled more and more, and covered the sandy bars. The mysterious
speech of the ocean came with a fulness more powerful and louder, at one
time like the thunder of cannon, at another like the roar of great
forests, at another like the distant dull sound of the voices of people.
At moments it was quiet; then to the ears of the old man came some great
sigh, then a kind of sobbing, and again threatening outbursts. At last
the wind bore away the haze, but brought black, broken clouds, which hid
the moon. From the west it began to blow more and more; the waves sprang
with rage against the rock of the light-house, licking with foam the
foundation walls. In the distance a storm was beginning to bellow. On
the dark, disturbed expanse certain green lanterns gleamed from the
masts of ships. These green points rose high and then sank; now they
swayed to the right, and now to the left. Skavinski descended to his
room. The storm began to howl. Outside, people on those ships were
struggling with night, with darkness, with waves; but inside the tower
it was calm and still. Even the sounds of the storm hardly came through
the thick walls, and only the measured tick-tack of the clock lulled the
wearied old man to his slumber.




CHAPTER II.


Hours, days, and weeks began to pass. Sailors assert that sometimes when
the sea is greatly roused, something from out the midst of night and
darkness calls them by name. If the infinity of the sea may call out
thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from
another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more
he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him. But to hear
them quiet is needed. Besides old age loves to put itself aside as if
with a foreboding of the grave. The light-house had become for Skavinski
such a half grave. Nothing is more monotonous than life on a beacon-
tower. If young people consent to take up this service they leave it
after a time. Light-house keepers are generally men not young, gloomy,
and confined to themselves. If by chance one of them leaves his light-
house and goes among men, he walks in the midst of them like a person
roused from deep slumber. On the tower there is a lack of minute
impressions which in ordinary life teach men to adapt themselves to
everything. All that a light-house keeper comes in contact with is
gigantic, and devoid of definitely outlined forms. The sky is one whole,
the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is
in loneliness. That is a life in which thought is continual meditation,
and out of that meditation nothing rouses the keeper, not even his work.
Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form
the only variety. But Skavinski felt more happiness than ever in life
before. He rose with the dawn, took his breakfast, polished the lens,
and then sitting on the balcony gazed into the distance of the water;
and his eyes were never sated with the pictures which he saw before him.
On the enormous turquoise ground of the ocean were to be seen generally
flocks of swollen sails gleaming in the rays of the sun so brightly that
the eyes were blinking before the excess of light. Sometimes the ships,
favored by the so-called trade winds, went in an extended line one after
another, like a chain of sea-mews or albatrosses. The red casks
indicating the channel swayed on the light wave with gentle movement.
Among the sails appeared every afternoon gigantic grayish feather-like
plumes of smoke. That was a steamer from New York which brought
passengers and goods to Aspinwall, drawing behind it a frothy path of
foam. On the other side of the balcony Skavinski saw, as if on his palm,
Aspinwall and its busy harbor, and in it a forest of masts, boats, and
craft; a little farther, white houses and the towers of the town. From
the height of his tower the small houses were like the nests of sea-
mews, the boats were like beetles, and the people moved around like
small points on the white stone boulevard. From early morning a light
eastern breeze brought a confused hum of human life, above which
predominated the whistle of steamers. In the afternoon six o'clock came;
the movement in the harbor began to cease; the mews hid themselves in
the rents of the cliffs; the waves grew feeble and became in some sort
lazy; and then on the land, on the sea, and on the tower came a time of
stillness unbroken by anything. The yellow sands from which the waves
had fallen back glittered like golden stripes on the width of the
waters; the body of the tower was outlined definitely in blue. Floods of
sunbeams were poured from the sky on the water and the sands and the
cliff. At that time a certain lassitude full of sweetness seized the old
man. He felt that the rest which he was enjoying was excellent; and when
he thought that it would be continuous nothing was lacking to him.

Skavinski was intoxicated with his own happiness; and since a man adapts
himself easily to improved conditions, he gained faith and confidence by
degrees; for he thought that if men built houses for invalids, why
should not God gather up at last His own invalids? Time passed, and
confirmed him in this conviction. The old man grew accustomed to his
tower, to the lantern, to the rock, to the sand-bars, to solitude. He
grew accustomed also to the sea-mews which hatched in the crevices of
the rock, and in the evening held meetings on the roof of the light-
house. Skavinski threw to them generally the remnants of his food; and
soon they grew tame, and afterward, when he fed them, a real storm of
white wings encircled him, and the old man went among the birds like a
shepherd among sheep. When the tide ebbed he went to the low sand-banks,
on which he collected savory periwinkles and beautiful pearl shells of
the nautilus, which receding waves had left on the sand. In the night by
the moonlight and the tower he went to catch fish, which frequented the
windings of the cliff in myriads. At last he was in love with his rocks
and his treeless little island, grown over only with small thick plants
exuding sticky resin. The distant views repaid him for the poverty of
the island, however. During afternoon hours, when the air became very
clear he could see the whole isthmus covered with the richest
vegetation. It seemed to Skavinski at such times that he saw one
gigantic garden,--bunches of cocoa, and enormous musa, combined as it
were in luxurious tufted bouquets, right there behind the houses of
Aspinwall. Farther on, between Aspinwall and Panama, was a great forest
over which every morning and evening hung a reddish haze of
exhalations,--a real tropical forest with its feet in stagnant water,
interlaced with lianas and filled with the sound of one sea of gigantic
orchids, palms, milk-trees, iron-trees, gum-trees.

Through his field-glass the old man could see not only trees and the
broad leaves of bananas, but even legions of monkeys and great marabous
and flocks of parrots, rising at times like a rainbow cloud over the
forest. Skavinski knew such forests well, for after being wrecked on the
Amazon he had wandered whole weeks among similar arches and thickets. He
had seen how many dangers and deaths lie concealed under those wonderful
and smiling exteriors. During the nights which he had spent in them he
heard close at hand the sepulchral voices of howling monkeys and the
roaring of the jaguars; he saw gigantic serpents coiled like lianas on
trees; he knew those slumbering forest lakes full of torpedo-fish and
swarming with crocodiles; he knew under what a yoke man lives in those
unexplored wildernesses in which are single leaves that exceed a man's
size ten times,--wildernesses swarming with blood-drinking mosquitoes,
tree-leeches, and gigantic poisonous spiders. He had experienced that
forest life himself, had witnessed it, had passed through it; therefore
it gave him the greater enjoyment to look from his height and gaze on
those matos, admire their beauty, and be guarded from their
treacherousness. His tower preserved him from every evil. He left it
only for a few hours on Sunday. He put on then his blue keeper's coat
with silver buttons, and hung his crosses on his breast. His milk-white
head was raised with a certain pride when he heard at the door, while
entering the church, the Creoles say among themselves, "We have an
honorable light-house keeper and not a heretic, though he is a Yankee."
But he returned straightway after Mass to his island, and returned
happy, for he had still no faith in the mainland. On Sunday also he read
the Spanish newspaper which he brought in the town, or the New York
Herald, which he borrowed from Falconbridge; and he sought in it
European news eagerly. The poor old heart on that light-house tower, and
in another hemisphere, was beating yet for its birthplace. At times too,
when the boat brought his daily supplies and water to the island, he
went down from the tower to talk with Johnson, the guard. But after a
while he seemed to grow shy. He ceased to go to the town to read the
papers and to go down to talk politics with Johnson. Whole weeks passed
in this way, so that no one saw him and he saw no one. The only signs
that the old man was living were the disappearance of the provisions
left on shore, and the light of the lantern kindled every evening with
the same regularity with which the sun rose in the morning from the
waters of those regions. Evidently, the old man had become indifferent
to the world. Homesickness was not the cause, but just this,--that even
homesickness had passed into resignation. The whole world began now and
ended for Skavinski on his island. He had grown accustomed to the
thought that he would not leave the tower till his death, and he simply
forgot that there was anything else besides it. Moreover, he had become
a mystic; his mild blue eyes began to stare like the eyes of a child,
and were as if fixed on something at a distance. In presence of a
surrounding uncommonly simple and great, the old man was losing the
feeling of personality; he was ceasing to exist as an individual, was
becoming merged more and more in that which inclosed him. He did not
understand anything beyond his environment; he felt only unconsciously.
At last it seems to him that the heavens, the water, his rock, the
tower, the golden sand-banks, and the swollen sails, the sea-mews, the
ebb and flow of the tide,--all form a mighty unity, one enormous
mysterious soul; that he is sinking in that mystery, and feels that soul
which lives and lulls itself. He sinks and is rocked, forgets himself;
and in that narrowing of his own individual existence, in that half-
waking, half-sleeping, he has discovered a rest so great that it nearly
resembles half-death.




CHAPTER III.


But the awakening came.

On a certain day, when the boat brought water and a supply of
provisions, Skavinski came down an hour later from the tower, and saw
that besides the usual cargo there was an additional package. On the
outside of this package were postage stamps of the United States, and
the address: "Skavinski, Esq.," written on coarse canvas.

The old man, with aroused curiosity, cut the canvas, and saw books; he
took one in his hand, looked at it, and put it back; thereupon his hands
began to tremble greatly. He covered his eyes as if he did not believe
them; it seemed to him as if he were dreaming. The book was Polish,--
what did that mean? Who could have sent the book? Clearly, it did not
occur to him at the first moment that in the beginning of his light-
house career he had read in the Herald, borrowed from the consul, of the
formation of a Polish society in New York, and had sent at once to that
society half his month's salary, for which he had, moreover, no use on
the tower. The society had sent him the books with thanks. The books
came in the natural way; but at the first moment the old man could not
seize those thoughts. Polish books in Aspinwall, on his tower, amid his
solitude,--that was for him something uncommon, a certain breath from
past times, a kind of miracle. Now it seemed to him, as to those sailors
in the night, that something was calling him by name with a voice
greatly beloved and nearly forgotten. He sat for a while with closed
eyes, and was almost certain that, when he opened them, the dream would
be gone.

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