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We were as if stunned, and I was conscious of nothing save a sickening sense of helplessness and despair. For an hour we stood watching the outpouring of the water. In that hour Quipai was destroyed and its people perished.
He had neither enemies to fear, friends to please, nor government officers to propitiate. On the landward side Quipai was accessible only by difficult and little known mountain-passes which nobody without some strong motive would care to traverse, and passing ships might be trusted to give a wide berth to an iron-bound coast destitute alike of harbors and trade.
I became his pupil, and it was he who first kindled in my breast that love of science which for nearly three-score years I have lived only to gratify. Life was easy at Quipai, and we were free from care. On the other hand, we had so much to do that time sped swiftly, and though we were sometimes tired we were never weary.
It was not the first time that the idea of asking Angela to be my wife had entered my mind. I loved her from the moment I first set eyes on her, and my love has become a passion. But I had not been able to see my way. How could I ask a beautiful, gently nurtured girl to share the lot of a penniless wanderer, even if she could consent to leave Quipai, which I greatly doubted. But now!
This is a solemn moment for both of us, and I want to be sincere with you. You were sincere just now when you said Quipai would perish with me. And it will unless I can find a successor who will continue the work which I have begun.
"But surely! will you not try to restore the oasis and re-create Quipai?" "To do that, cara mia, would require another Abbé Balthazar and sixty years of life. And to what end? Sooner or later our work would be destroyed as his has been, even if we were allowed to begin it. The volcano may be active for ages. We must go." "Whither?"
"If Angela will be my wife," I said, "I will be your successor." "It is the answer I expected, Monsieur Nigel. I am content to let Angela be the arbiter of your fate and the fate of Quipai. She will be here presently. Put the question yourself. She knows nothing of this; but I have watched you both, and though my eyes are growing dim I am not blind." And with that the abbé left me to my thoughts.
If I could have stayed longer I might have made a still richer harvest; and I had an idea that there were more under than above ground. But I had stayed too long as it was. The mules were already suffering for want of water; all three perished before we reached Quipai, and the arriero and myself got home only just alive.
After long wanderings, and many hardships, Balthazar and two fellow priests accidentally discovered Quipai, at that time a mere collection of huts on the banks of a small stream which descended from the gorges of the Cordillera only to be lost in the sands of the desert.
But all around were remains which showed that Quipai had once been a place of importance and the seat of a large population ruined buildings of colossal dimensions, heaps of quarried stones, a cemetery rich in relics of silver and gold; and a great azequia, in many places still intact, had brought down water from the heart of the mountains for the irrigation of the rainless region of the coast.
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