the great water-wheel was trundling as fast as ever the white impulse from the old stone aqueduct could kick it along. the wheel, indeed, grumbled at so much hard work; but the water only laughed and danced as the big iron jaws of the trapiche[24] chewed up the yellow culms of sugar cane and spat to one side the useless pith, while the sweet, dark sap crept sluggishly down the iron conduit toward the sugar-house. in front was a very mountain of cane brought from the fields by bullock carts; and half a dozen sinewy negroes were feeding it, an armful at a time, between the rolls of the mill. behind it others with wooden forks were spreading the crushed cane to dry for a day, after which it would be used as fuel to boil its own plundered juice. off beyond the sugar building gleamed the white moorish walls of the tile-roofed chapel and manor house, built three hundred years ago, when peru was the richest crown jewel[100] of spain. everywhere else stretched the great fields of cane—to the very foot of the sandhills of the encroaching desert, to the very rim of the blue pacific. what an immensity of sugar it all meant!
the same thought struck the grizzled administrador[25] this morning as he stood on a pier of the aqueduct—just where its stream pounced upon the lazy wheel—and swept the scene with those watchful old eyes. “of a truth,” he was saying to himself, “the world must be very large, as they say, and many must eat nothing else, for here we make every day forty thousand pounds of sugar, three hundred days of the year, and there are many other sugar haciendas in peru, though maybe none so big as villa. truly, i know not where it all goes. hola! always that fellow!” and, springing to the ground as lightly as a boy, in two bounds he was at the mill.
there four of the negro laborers were in sudden struggle with a newcomer from the quarters—a huge black fellow, whose brutish face was now distorted by drunken rage. he was naked to the waist, and his dark hide bulged with tremendous muscles, as he swayed his four grapplers to and fro, trying to free his right hand, which clasped[101] a heavy machete. this murderous combination of sword and cleaver, which lopped the stubborn cane at a blow, had found worse employment now, for a red stain ran down its broad blade, and on the ground lay a man clenching a stump of arm. old melito paused for no questions, but, plucking up a heavy bar of algarroba, smote so strongly upon the desperado’s woolly pate that the ironwood broke. the black giant reeled and fell, and one of the men wrenched away the machete and flung it into the pool below the wheel.
“he came very drunk, and only because roque brushed against him with an armful of cane he wanted to kill him,” said the men as they knotted their grimy handkerchiefs upon the wrists and ankles of the stunned black.
“you did well to hold him,” replied the admimistrador. “bring now the irons and we will put him in the calaboz till to-morrow. then he shall go to lima to the prison, for we can have no fighting here, nor men of trouble.”
a slender, big-eyed spanish boy coming out a few moments later from the great castle arch of the manor house saw four peons lugging away between them the long[102] bulk of the prisoner, and stopped to ask the trouble.
“ah! that bad coco. that he may never come back from lima,” said the young spaniard earnestly. “he is a terror to all, and now i fear he will kill don melito, for coco never forgets. i shall ask my father to see the prefect, that they keep him away. and the sugar?”
felipe never tired of following all the processes with a grave air, as if it all rested upon his small shoulders. a boy who never felt that he was “helping”—if such a very helpless boy ever existed—has lost one of the best things in all boyhood, and felipe could not have understood such a boy at all. he went on now and joined don melito, and the two stood together watching the vat with professional eyes while two negroes plied their plashing hoes. it was very hot work even to watch it, but a good administrador would never trust this to the laborers.
“now you watch it a little,” said don melito suddenly, with roguish gravity, looking at the boy’s preoccupied face. “as for me, i must see how are the pailas,” and he climbed the steps to the platform where the caldrons were hissing with their new supply of sap.
felipe, thus left alone with the heaviest responsibility he had ever borne, knit his smooth brows very hard and peered into the vat as if the fate of nations hung on his eyes. for the first time he began to doubt them. he wondered if it were not worked enough—if he had not better stop the hoes and get the molders to work. if only don melito would come back and decide for him!
but don melito was not here, and there were no signs of his coming. perhaps he was leaving felipe to find out the difference between knowing how some one else does a thing and how to do it one’s self. the boy fidgeted up and down and looked at the vat first from one end and then from the other, and grew more doubtful the more he looked.
“i don’t know, and i don’t know,” he cried to himself. “but sure it is that i must do something, for he left me in charge and perhaps is busy with other matters, thinking i would not let it be spoiled. put it in the molds!”
the men leaned their candied hoes against the wall. the molders began ladling their buckets full, and, in turn, filling the shallow molds. the color there darkened again as sudden crystallization set in; but felipe[104] felt a great load lifted off his shoulders. he was very sure now that it was a good color—not a hint of the hateful underdone black, but a soft, rich brown, shading to gold at the thin edges.
now he was free—the laborers could attend to the rest, as usual—and he would go and hunt for don melito. he ran up the steps and along the platform—and half way stopped short, as if he had run against a wall.
the rusty irons should never have been trusted with that giant’s strength! they might do for common men, but for coco—as soon as consciousness came back to him, and with it the old rage, he had snapped them, and, wrenching out the iron bars from the window of the calaboz, had come for his revenge. even now he was shaking his wrists, one still hooped with the iron band, before the old administrador’s face, and hissing: “you! you did me this! and now i will boil you!”
don melito stood still and gray as a stone, looking up into coco’s eyes. his hat was in his hand on account of the heat; but now he put it on as if scorning to stand uncovered before the fellow—put it steadily upon the curling gray hair that reached barely to the level of those great naked chest muscles.
“i did strike you down and ordered you to be ironed, coco,” he said quietly, “and i would do so again. now i am going to send you to lima. there is no place at villa for people like you.”
but coco leaped upon him like the black jaguar, and clutched him with those long, knotted arms. melito was sinewy and lithe as a cat, but he was no match for this huge foe. he fought for life, but coco with the equal desperation of hate. struggle as he would, he was borne back and back until his legs cringed from the glow of the paila. at this he made so wild a lunge that it bore them back a few feet; but it was only for a moment. inch by inch the negro urged him toward that bubbling roar which seemed to drown all other sounds. and even now, with a wild chuckle, the giant doubled him backward against the edge of the paila, with a black, resistless palm under his chin.
only an instant had felipe stopped, frozen, at sight of coco; in another he had sprung to the rail, shrieking to the men below: “juan! sancho! quico! come!” and then, rushing at the struggle, he flung himself as ferociously upon coco as coco had attacked don melito. but it seemed as if he were back in some dreadful dream. he hammered with futile fists upon that bare[106] and mighty back, and caught a fierce hold about one of those gnarled legs and tugged to trip it, and kicked it with crazy feet. but it was all with the nightmare sense that he was doing nothing by all his efforts. indeed, it is half doubtful if the infuriated coco knew at all of this attack in the rear. what to him were the peckings of a twelve-year-old boy?
would the men never come? felipe redoubled his kicks and blows, but with a sickening fear. don melito was weakening—already his head was thrust back over the steam of the paila. only for his arms locked about the giant’s waist, he would go in. and now coco’s huge hand came behind him and wrenched at the old man’s slender ones, tearing open finger by finger resistlessly. in another moment it would be too late to think.
aha, mr. coco! the boy sprang to the second paila and snatched the long-handled skimmer that leaned against it, and, dipping it full from the caldron, flung the molten sugar squarely upon coco’s back. howling, the negro whirled about, dropping the half-senseless administrador from him, and sprang at felipe. but the boy stood stiff and very white, holding the ladle back aloft. “this time in the eyes!” he cried,[107] hoarsely. “if you touch don melito again, or me, i will throw it in your face!”
even coco hesitated at this. he was not too drunk with rage to know what boiling sugar meant. plainly, this little fool had the advantage. he must be tricked—and then——. but just then a wan smile flitted across felipe’s face, and, as coco half turned his head to see what pleasing thing could be behind him, he got a glimpse of pancho, the horse-breaker, and something dark and wavy in the air. he ducked forward, but a rope settled upon his broad shoulders, tightening like iron, and he was jerked backward to the ground, and a dozen men were upon him.
coco made no more trouble on the hacienda of villa. at lima he found the prompt justice which sometimes happens in peru. don melito was in bed several days, for he had been roughly handled in body and in nerves. the first day on which he could sit up a little, felipe brought him a cake of chancaca.
“thank you,” said the old man, laying it on the coverlet. sugar was an old story to him.
“but you must taste this, my administrador, and see if it is all right.”
“it is good,” answered melito, munching submissively. and then, with a sudden light: “it is very good—as good as i could have made myself. quite right. and i think you sent it to the molds at just the right time!”
