CHAPTER XVII.

THE GREAT CRIME OF PEDRO BARRADAS.

In the cool night breeze, that swept through the Alameda de la Canada, Pedro had recovered consciousness, but he had no conception of how he came to be there, nor had he a recollection of anything that had occurred after he darted into the dressing-closet of Ignez. He could remember that an overpowering sleep fell upon him, and that was all.

During the day he was too unwell to visit the house of the Morenos; but he hoped to meet Donna Ignez, with the rest of her family, at the great festival in the Church of La Campagnia, when, doubtless, she would be able to explain all to him.

"You are sure that matters are all right with this girl?" asked Zuares, doubtfully, for he had seen a man lowering what he at first supposed to be his brother's dead body over the balcony.

"Right--of course. _Vamos!_ it is a clear case with her now."

"Clear case of what?"

"Of going into consumption, or into a convent, if she does not marry me," replied Pedro, who, however, was not without some unpleasant doubts himself, when remembering the unconcealed anger and vexation exhibited by Ignez last night; "but, Zuares, do you know that this old fellow----"

"Who?"

"Don Salvador de Moreno----

"Well?"

"Possesses one of the thirty-four gold mines in the Curacy of Colina, with one of the _laverados_ on the mountain of Giundo?"

"Is it a bath?" asked Zuares.

"No, you fool!" replied Pedro, angrily.

"'Whoso calleth his brother a fool----'"

"'Is in danger of hell-fire!' Bah! I learnt all that long ago at Orizaba."

"Well--and this _laverado_?"

"Is a place where the gold-dust is washed from the sand. Ignez shall be heiress of as many pistoles as would fill yonder brigantine to the beams."

"_Bueno!_ then we shall see what we shall see. I am beginning to tire of this kind of life, and long for salt-water again."

The night of the 8th December drew on, and Pedro, with his brother, were among the first who repaired to the Plazuela de la Campagnia. Long before the doors of the vast church were open, hundreds of splendid carriages, rolling from all quarters of the city, deposited ladies in rich summer dresses and ample crinolines--large beyond any that we see in Europe--at the high-arched portal, through which, and through every window of that lofty pile, there glared a marvellous blaze of light, for the edifice had been illuminated with a splendour never seen before. Consequently the excitement in Santiago was great, and great was the competition among the wealthy and well-born to procure admission.

It was the great festival of the Immaculate Conception, and more than 20,000 lights and lamps, of every brilliant colour, mostly camphine, garlanded the pillars, encircled the arches, lined the cornices, or were festooned across the great church, and so many coloured globes were used on this occasion, that the whole interior resembled a hall of dazzling fire. All was light and radiance--there could be no shadow anywhere.

The great altar was a veritable pyramid of light, amid which there shone a marvellous image of the Madonna, copied from Murillo's famous picture. Her eyes were turned to heaven, her hands were crossed upon her breast; her feet were placed upon a crescent moon, and clouds of snow-white gauze and muslin seemed to float around her.

Never had such a display been witnessed in this old church of the Jesuits (since the marriage of the Conde de Sierra Bella, whose palace yet stands in the great plaza), for old it was, when compared with other buildings in the city, having been founded in the early part of the seventeenth century.

From the floor the altar rose to the roof of the church, and as it did not reach from wall to wall, on each side were great reliquaries, closed by doors so richly gilded, that they shone like two vast plates of polished gold.

All on their knees before it knelt a congregation composed of 2,000 women (and a few hundred men), all richly attired, and many of them young, noble, and beautiful. It was a sight such as never before had been witnessed in Santiago.

Thanks to the favour of the Nuncio, Donna Ignez, with her cousin, Don Perez, and his sisters, Donna Erminia and the little Donna Paula, had procured places close to the glittering rail which surrounded the vast altar, and there they were speedily joined by Pedro, who left his brother among the valets in livery at the church porch, and who, utterly indifferent to, or oblivious of the long stare and steady frown bestowed upon him by Don Perez, presented his hand to Ignez, and--after he had devoutly crossed himself, and smote his breast sundry times--prepared to join in a whispered conversation, for the service had not yet commenced.

During the livelong day an idea that he was dead--that he had been suffocated in the closet--had haunted the mind of Ignez, who felt herself as if an accomplice in a great crime, and thus, when she found him kneeling beside her in church, she gave him her daintily-gloved little hand with a bright smile, that was full of real happiness; for though this man had so nearly destroyed her honour, she was most thankful to Heaven that he had not perished, as her fears predicted.

She felt no love for him now, but sincere gratitude to faithful cousin Perez, and returning love, too; but Pedro construed her smile in his own fashion, and believing that his fortunes were still in a fair way to prosper, he continued to whisper and kneel by her side, greatly to the rage of Perez, of whose agency in the episode of last night the bold impostor was yet completely ignorant.

Padre Ugarte was to preach, and Padre Eizagiuerro, the Apostolic Nuncio, the friend of Pope Pius IX., and founder of the American College at Rome, was next to address the people.

It had been said all over Santiago, some days before, that in the house of the Morenos, the Nuncio had expressed a regret that too probably the lighting up of the Campagnia Church would be inferior to the illuminations of the Romans.

"Rome!" exclaimed Ugarte; "in Colina we have four-and-thirty mines of gold; in Lampa three of silver; the mountains of Caren are full of gold, and gold laverados cover all the summit of Calen. Our devotees are rich, Senor Nuncio, and on that holy night I shall show you _such an illumination as the world has never seen_!"

Fearfully prophetic was the boast of Ugarte!

While the people were still absorbed in prayer, and many a bright eye, and many a young and beautiful face turned in wonder and pleasure to the countless lamps that covered all the church, and ere the choir had struck up, or the procession of ecclesiastics entered, Pedro saw his brother Zuares forcing a passage, without much ceremony, through the kneeling thousands, towards him. What did this portend?

Pedro first felt emotions of annoyance, then of alarm, for the face of Zuares, who beckoned to him, was pale with agitation. Pedro approached him by a few paces.

"We are lost! They have discovered everything!" said Zuares, in a breathless whisper.

"They--who?"

"In the porch of the church I heard our names mentioned, and so concealed myself behind a statue to listen."

"Well, well! Quick, quick!"

"There, now in close consultation about the best mode of seizing you as you leave the church, are Don Salvador de Moreno, Felipe Fernandez, the keeper of the Posada de Augustin, the mate of the brigantine, and that accursed Englishman, Hawkshaw. They have with them the alguazil-mayor, and four horse-police, with their carbines, and I heard them all whispering of sacrilege--robbery."

"What more?" hissed Pedro, through his clenched teeth.

"_Murder!_" whispered Zuares, with pallid lips.

The "trail of the serpent" was complete.

"The door is watched, you say?"

"And the church is surrounded by horse and foot alguazils," replied Zuares, in the same low, hurried whisper.

Pedro glanced hastily about him; there seemed to be no way of escape but by the porch, and that was guarded. Don Perez had seen Zuares approach, and his keen, stern eye was on the brothers. Already he was rising as if to leave the church; some plan for escape must be decided on, and quickly, as if the great fiend had whispered it, a diabolical thought occurred to Pedro Barradas.

He glanced towards the magnificent altar, on which, amid thousands of waxen and feather flowers, there burned several hundred lights. It was a transparent tabernacle, within which were innumerable jets of liquid gas, and it was composed entirely of woodwork with gilded pasteboard and draperies of muslin.

Pedro resolved to create an alarm, and attempt an escape while it lasted.

Just at that moment, when the Nuncio and Ugarte, preceded by boys bearing censers and tapers, were entering, just as the choir struck up, and while a solemn murmur pervaded the vast church, for the crescent moon beneath the feet of the Madonna suddenly flashed forth a silvery splendour, unseen by all, save Don Perez, who was retiring, Pedro threw a lighted cigar match among the draperies of the altar, and in a moment the light festoons and muslin clouds, the whole figure of the Madonna, and the altar, which was seventy feet in height, became a roaring pyramid of fire.

A wild cry from the kneeling congregation burst over the whole church, and the door instantly became blocked by fugitives, who fell, wedged over each other in a hopeless pile, the upper stifling those below, while the spread of the conflagration exceeded in its speed the fear of those who would have fled.

An effect was produced beyond what Pedro had anticipated. He hoped for a mere alarm, he produced a catastrophe beyond all parallel in ancient or modern times.

Maddened, however, by double terror, he was among the first who sought for safety. Trampling women and children under foot and endued with twice his natural strength and activity by sheer desperation, he contrived to reach the sill of a window, by climbing over a tomb, and dashing the lozenged frame to pieces, was preparing to throw himself headlong out, when his foot was seized from below.

He uttered an angry imprecation and looked down.

Donna Ignez and little Donna Paula both clung to him in the wildest terror.

"Save us, Don Pedro--save us, for the love of God!" cried they in despair, for the whole of that fated church was now covered with sheets of flame, its twenty thousand camphine lamps, as their cords and festoons gave way, adding to the terror by descending like a rain of fire, and setting aflame the hair and light summer dresses of those below--that struggling mass of horror-stricken people, who were all hopelessly wreathed and wedged together.

It was fire--fire--fire everywhere--above, below, around--a seething mass of flaming figures, wavering and scorching, a rising and descending sea of red flame, for the church of God had now become a living hell!

"Save me! save me!" gasped Ignez, choking in the heat, as her light summer dress caught fire.

"No use to save her now from fire, as I did from water. Perez, you don't require to swim here," cried the barbarian, as he thrust the shrieking girl and little Paula among the flames with his foot, and, springing into the street without, fled from Santiago.

The public papers have told us how, in less than a quarter of an hour, nearly all who were in that fatal church--that stupendous holocaust--to the number of nearly 3,000, perished; how a phalanx of death choked up the porch, and how, in many instances, tender hands and delicate arms were wrenched, yea, literally torn off, in attempts to drag forth the dying; how whole families were reduced to cinders, side by side, and all in the lapse of a few minutes.

They also told us "how the voice of lamentation was heard all over the land, and the bitter weeping of fathers, of husbands, and lovers for those who were the joy and brightness of their life, that refuses to be comforted because they are not. Hundreds of young girls, only yesterday radiant and beautiful, in the luxuriant bloom of the fresh and hopeful spring of life, to-day calcined, hideous corpses, horrible, loathsome to the sight, and impossible to be recognised! Within that quarter of an hour 2,000 souls had passed through the ordeal of fire to the judgment-seat of God!"

Old Don Salvador de Moreno made frenzied efforts to pierce through the pile of maddened and suffocating women, who hopelessly blocked up the door of the church, seeking to see, to save if he could, his daughter--his only child.

The screaming, the wringing of hands, the tearing of hair, and beating of faces, the invocations of the dying, and the roar of the advancing flames within and beyond, imparting to the church portal an appearance like to the entrance of a vast furnace, seared his heart and his eyeballs.

He saw not his daughter; but, amid this most unearthly blaze, he could distinguish Donna Erminia, and knew that Ignez could not be far off. He could see the tall, fair-skinned, proud, and beautiful Erminia, and little Paula, with her hair dishevelled, like many others near her, undergo a sudden and horrible transformation, as the lurid flame seized upon their skirts and tresses.

The sheet of scorching fire passed over them!

They became blackened, lean, shrunken, rigid, dead, sable statues, in contorted attitudes, and then crumbled away amid the furnace, for such had the church become.

Suddenly a figure rose for an instant amid the mass. It was Perez--Perez with Ignez in his arms, and as he rose her father saw them--his hair and her dress all ablaze; then both sank back into that red sea of fire, to rise no more!

The old man became senseless, and was borne out of the press by the alguazil-mayor and Cramply Hawkshaw.

The Chilian papers tell us that a horseman threw his lasso into the church where a hundred hands tried to catch it. This man was Felipe Fernandez, of Valparaiso, who by main strength dragged one woman out in flames.

Again he cast his lasso in, but the fire scorched the leather thong away.

Within the time we have stated--a brief quarter of an hour--the roof, the dome, and cupola, descended in flames, with a thundering crash upon the church below, and all was over!

There perished all the family of Moreno, and their remains were never recognised. So poor Perez, whom Ignez had taunted for not saving her when in the water, died by her side in that sea of flame!

* * * * *

The silence of the grave succeeded to the cries of despair that for a time had pierced the calm night air, and, as the flames smouldered and died away on the sloped strata of blackened corpses that lay beneath the fallen dome, those who looked fearfully through the windows could see, by the clear splendour of the tropical moon, those thousands of calcined dead, kneeling, standing, or lying all in their last contorted posture, as the wasting fire, or the agony of their awful end, had left them.

For the remainder of that night, no sounds were heard in Santiago but those of lamentation, and the solemn tolling of the church bells, as the archbishop summoned all to prayer for the souls that were gone.

Zuares was one of those men who effected an escape by the sacristy-door, before it was blocked up by fugitives, and meeting his brother on the road that led to the mountains, they heard the live-long night the tolling of the city bells in the distance.

Even they were overcome by dread and horror, as they continued their flight in silence and desperation, where they knew not and cared not, so that they left the city of Santiago as far behind them as possible.

For days after this they lurked unseen, unknown, and safely, in a great cane-brake, among the feathery bamboos--the _guádua_--some of which are ninety feet in height.

Ere long they reached the sea-coast, and shipped on board a short-handed brig that lay at the mouth of the Maypo river, laden with guano, and bound for Britain, and they gladly looked forward to face again even the nights of bitter snow and close-reefed foresails off Cape Horn.

This vessel they left, when paid off in the London Docks, and, to the misfortune of all concerned, were shipped on board the _Hermione_ by Captain Phillips, who could little foresee the mischief they had in store for him and his friends.