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diff --git a/2545.txt b/2545.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9d9344 --- /dev/null +++ b/2545.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6109 @@ +Project Gutenberg's When God Laughs and Other Stories, by Jack London + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: When God Laughs and Other Stories + +Author: Jack London + +Posting Date: December 14, 2008 [EBook #2545] +Release Date: March, 2001 +Last updated: November 10, 2012 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN GOD LAUGHS AND OTHER STORIES *** + + + + +Produced by Les Bowler + + + + + +WHEN GOD LAUGHS, AND OTHER STORIES + +By Jack London + + +1911 Mills and Boon edition + + +Contents: + + When God Laughs + The Apostate + A Wicked Woman + Just Meat + Created He Them + The Chinago + Make Westing + Semper Idem + A Nose For The King + The "Francis Spaight" + A Curious Fragment + A Piece Of Steak + + + + +WHEN GOD LAUGHS (with compliments to Harry Cowell) + + "The gods, the gods are stronger; time + Falls down before them, all men's knees + Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb + Like incense toward them; yea, for these + Are gods, Felise." + +Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling +windows, looked upward at the beamed roof, and listened for a moment +to the savage roar of the south-easter as it caught the bungalow in +its bellowing jaws. Then he held his glass between him and the fire and +laughed for joy through the golden wine. + +"It is beautiful," he said. "It is sweetly sweet. It is a woman's wine, +and it was made for gray-robed saints to drink." + +"We grow it on our own warm hills," I said, with pardonable California +pride. "You rode up yesterday through the vines from which it was made." + +It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really +himself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his +blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, +sober, the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he +was prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday--not dull as other +men are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte +Carquinez was when he was really himself. + +From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear +friend and dearer comrade, was a sot. Far from it. He rarely erred. As +I have said, he was an artist. He knew when he had enough, and enough, +with him, was equilibrium--the equilibrium that is yours and mine when +we are sober. + +His was a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek. +Yet he was far from Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I +have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange +and ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry and +primitiveness of his features. His eyes, under massively arched brows, +were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while +before them was perpetually falling down a great black mop of hair +through which he gazed like a roguish satyr from a thicket. He +invariably wore a soft flannel shirt under his velvet-corduroy jacket, +and his necktie was red. This latter stood for the red flag (he had once +lived with the socialists of Paris), and it symbolized the blood and +brotherhood of man. Also, he had never been known to wear anything on +his head save a leather-banded sombrero. It was even rumoured that +he had been born with this particular piece of headgear. And in my +experience it was provocative of nothing short of sheer delight to see +that Mexican sombrero hailing a cab in Piccadilly or storm-tossed in the +crush for the New York Elevated. + +As I have said, Carquinez was made quick by wine--"as the clay was made +quick when God breathed the breath of life into it," was his way of +saying it. I confess that he was blasphemously intimate with God; and I +must add that there was no blasphemy in him. He was at all times honest, +and, because he was compounded of paradoxes, greatly misunderstood by +those who did not know him. He could be as elementally raw at times as a +screaming savage; and at other times as delicate as a maid, as subtle as +a Spaniard. And--well, was he not Aztec? Inca? Spaniard? + +And now I must ask pardon for the space I have given him. (He is my +friend, and I love him.) The house was shaking to the storm, as he drew +closer to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me, +and by the added lustre of his eye, and by the alertness of it, I knew +that at last he was pitched in his proper key. + +"And so you think you've won out against the gods?" he demanded. + +"Why the gods?" + +"Whose will but theirs has put satiety upon man?" he cried. + +"And whence the will in me to escape satiety?" I asked triumphantly. + +"Again the gods," he laughed. "It is their game we play. They deal and +shuffle all the cards... and take the stakes. Think not that you have +escaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vine-clad hills, +your sunsets and your sunrises, your homely fare and simple round of +living! + +"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have +surrendered. You have made terms with the enemy. You have made +confession that you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue. +You have nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in +you. You have run away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick. +You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your +cards under the table and run away to hide, here amongst your hills." + +He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely +interrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette. + +"But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have +tried it... and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To +pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your +wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease. +Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have escaped +satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is +another name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!" + +"But look at me!" I cried. + +Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags and +tatters of it. + +He looked me witheringly up and down. + +"You see no signs," I challenged. + +"Decay is insidious," he retorted. "You are rotten ripe." + +I laughed and forgave him for his very deviltry. But he refused to be +forgiven. + +"Do I not know?" he asked. "The gods always win. I have watched men play +for years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost." + +"Don't you ever make mistakes?" I asked. + +He blew many meditative rings of smoke before replying. + +"Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin +Fiske. You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet's soul, singing +his chant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel +Baird, whom also you must remember." + +"A warm saint," I said. + +"That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love; +and yet--how shall I say?--drenched through with holiness as your own +air here is with the perfume of flowers. Well, they married. They played +a hand with the gods--" + +"And they won, they gloriously won!" I broke in. + +Carquinez looked at me pityingly, and his voice was like a funeral bell. + +"They lost. They supremely, colossally lost." + +"But the world believes otherwise," I ventured coldly. + +"The world conjectures. The world sees only the face of things. But I +know. Has it ever entered your mind to wonder why she took the veil, +buried herself in that dolorous convent of the living dead?" + +"Because she loved him so, and when he died..." + +Speech was frozen on my lips by Carquinez's sneer. + +"A pat answer," he said, "machine-made like a piece of cotton-drill. The +world's judgment! And much the world knows about it. Like you, she fled +from life. She was beaten. She flung out the white flag of fatigue. And +no beleaguered city ever flew that flag in such bitterness and tears. + +"Now I shall tell you the whole tale, and you must believe me, for I +know. They had pondered the problem of satiety. They loved Love. They +knew to the uttermost farthing the value of Love. They loved him so +well that they were fain to keep him always, warm and a-thrill in their +hearts. They welcomed his coming; they feared to have him depart. + +"Love was desire, they held, a delicious pain. He was ever seeking +easement, and when he found that for which he sought, he died. Love +denied was Love alive; Love granted was Love deceased. Do you follow me? +They saw it was not the way of life to be hungry for what it has. To eat +and still be hungry--man has never accomplished that feat. The problem +of satiety. That is it. To have and to keep the sharp famine-edge of +appetite at the groaning board. This was their problem, for they loved +Love. Often did they discuss it, with all Love's sweet ardours brimming +in their eyes; his ruddy blood spraying their cheeks; his voice playing +in and out with their voices, now hiding as a tremolo in their throats, +and again shading a tone with that ineffable tenderness which he alone +can utter. + +"How do I know all this? I saw--much. More I learned from her diary. +This I found in it, from Fiona Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering +voice, that twilight-whisper, that breath so dewy-sweet, that +flame-winged lute-player whom none sees but for a moment, in a +rainbow-shimmer of joy, or a sudden lightning-flare of passion, this +exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at +least, not with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe +viol of public music, but as one wrought by ecstasy, dumbly eloquent +with desire.' + +"How to keep the flame-winged lute-player with his dumb eloquence of +desire? To feast him was to lose him. Their love for each other was a +great love. Their granaries were overflowing with plenitude; yet they +wanted to keep the sharp famine-edge of their love undulled. + +"Nor were they lean little fledglings theorizing on the threshold of +Love. They were robust and realized souls. They had loved before, +with others, in the days before they met; and in those days they had +throttled Love with caresses, and killed him with kisses, and buried him +in the pit of satiety. + +"They were not cold wraiths, this man and woman. They were warm human. +They had no Saxon soberness in their blood. The colour of it was +sunset-red. They glowed with it. Temperamentally theirs was the French +joy in the flesh. They were idealists, but their idealism was Gallic. +It was not tempered by the chill and sombre fluid that for the English +serves as blood. There was no stoicism about them. They were Americans, +descended out of the English, and yet the refraining and self-denying of +the English spirit-groping were not theirs. + +"They were all this that I have said, and they were made for joy, only +they achieved a concept. A curse on concepts! They played with logic, +and this was their logic.--But first let me tell you of a talk we had +one night. It was of Gautier's Madeline de Maupin. You remember the +maid? She kissed once, and once only, and kisses she would have no +more. Not that she found kisses were not sweet, but that she feared with +repetition they would cloy. Satiety again! She tried to play without +stakes against the gods. Now this is contrary to a rule of the game the +gods themselves have made. Only the rules are not posted over the table. +Mortals must play in order to learn the rules. + +"Well, to the logic. The man and the woman argued thus: Why kiss once +only? If to kiss once were wise, was it not wiser to kiss not at all? +Thus could they keep Love alive. Fasting, he would knock forever at +their hearts. + +"Perhaps it was out of their heredity that they achieved this unholy +concept. The breed will out and sometimes most fantastically. Thus +in them did cursed Albion array herself a scheming wanton, a bold, +cold-calculating, and artful hussy. After all, I do not know. But this +I know: it was out of their inordinate desire for joy that they forewent +joy. + +"As he said (I read it long afterward in one of his letters to her): +'To hold you in my arms, close, and yet not close. To yearn for you, and +never to have you, and so always to have you.' And she: 'For you to be +always just beyond my reach. To be ever attaining you, and yet never +attaining you, and for this to last forever, always fresh and new, and +always with the first flush upon us. + +"That is not the way they said it. On my lips their love-philosophy is +mangled. And who am I to delve into their soul-stuff? I am a frog, on +the dank edge of a great darkness, gazing goggle-eyed at the mystery and +wonder of their flaming souls. + +"And they were right, as far as they went. Everything is good... as long +as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses; they +run in span. + + "'And time could only tutor us to eke + Our rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.' + +"They got that from a sonnet of Alfred Austin's. It was called 'Love's +Wisdom.' It was the one kiss of Madeline de Maupin. How did it run? + + "'Kiss we and part; no further can we go; + And better death than we from high to low + Should dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.' + +"But they were wiser. They would not kiss and part. They would not +kiss at all, and thus they planned to stay at Love's topmost peak. They +married. You were in England at the time. And never was there such a +marriage. They kept their secret to themselves. I did not know, then. +Their rapture's warmth did not cool. Their love burned with increasing +brightness. Never was there anything like it. The time passed, the +months, the years, and ever the flame-winged lute-player grew more +resplendent. + +"Everybody marvelled. They became the wonderful lovers, and they were +greatly envied. Sometimes women pitied her because she was childless; it +is the form the envy of such creatures takes. + +"And I did not know their secret. I pondered and I marvelled. As first I +had expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love. Then +I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained. Then +I became curious. What was their secret? What were the magic fetters +with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? +What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and +Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed the fairy drink? + +"As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were love-mad. They +lived in an unending revel of Love. They made a pomp and ceremonial of +it. They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of Love. No, they +were not neurotics. They were sane and healthy, and they were artists. +But they had accomplished the impossible. They had achieved deathless +desire. + +"And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love. I +puzzled and wondered, and then one day--" + +Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, "Have you ever read, 'Love's +Waiting Time'?" + +I shook my head. + +"Page wrote it--Curtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that bit of +verse that gave me the clue. One day, in the window-seat near the big +piano--you remember how she could play? She used to laugh, sometimes, +and doubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music. She called +me a 'music-sot' once, a 'sound-debauchee.' What a voice he had! When +he sang I believed in immortality, my regard for the gods grew almost +patronizing and I devised ways and means whereby I surely could outwit +them and their tricks. + +"It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and +singing love-songs with a freshness virginal as new-born Love himself, +with a ripeness and wealth of ardour that young lovers can never know. +Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair. To +see them, all fire and flame and tenderness, at a trembling distance, +lavishing caresses of eye and voice with every action, through every +silence--their love driving them toward each other, and they withholding +like fluttering moths, each to the other a candle-flame, and revolving +each about the other in the mad gyrations of an amazing orbit-flight! +It seemed, in obedience to some great law of physics, more potent than +gravitation and more subtle, that they must corporeally melt each +into each there before my very eyes. Small wonder they were called the +wonderful lovers. + +"I have wandered. Now to the clue. One day in the window-seat I found +a book of verse. It opened of itself, betraying long habit, to 'Love's +Waiting Time.' The page was thumbed and limp with overhandling, and +there I read:-- + + "'So sweet it is to stand but just apart, + To know each other better, and to keep + The soft, delicious sense of two that touch... + + O love, not yet!... Sweet, let us keep our love + Wrapped round with sacred mystery awhile, + Waiting the secret of the coming years, + That come not yet, not yet... sometime... + not yet... + + Oh, yet a little while our love may grow! + When it has blossomed it will haply die. + Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep, + Bedded in dead denial yet some while... + Oh, yet a little while, a little while.' + +"I folded the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving +for a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse +had imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's +lightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the +forerunner of young life--young life that is imperative to be born! + +"I conned the lines over in my mind--'Not yet, sometime'--'O Love, not +yet'--'Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep.' And I laughed +aloud, ha, ha! I saw with white vision their blameless souls. They were +children. They did not understand. They played with Nature's fire and +bedded with a naked sword. They laughed at the gods. They would stop +the cosmic sap. They had invented a system, and brought it to the +gaming-table of life, and expected to win out. 'Beware!' I cried. 'The +gods are behind the table. They make new rules for every system that is +devised. You have no chance to win.' + +"But I did not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their +system was worthless and throw it away. They would be content with +whatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away. + +"I watched. I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and +still the famine-edge of their love grew the sharper. Never did they +dull it with a permitted love-clasp. They ground and whetted it on +self-denial, and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I +doubted. Did the gods sleep? I wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed +to myself. The man and the woman had made a miracle. They had outwitted +God. They had shamed the flesh, and blackened the face of the good Earth +Mother. They had played with her fire and not been burned. They were +immune. They were themselves gods, knowing good from evil and tasting +not. 'Was this the way gods came to be?' I asked myself. 'I am a frog,' +I said. 'But for my mud-lidded eyes I should have been blinded by the +brightness of this wonder I have witnessed. I have puffed myself up with +my wisdom and passed judgment upon gods.' + +"Yet even in this, my latest wisdom, I was wrong. They were not gods. +They were man and woman--soft clay that sighed and thrilled, shot +through with desire, thumbed with strange weaknesses which the gods have +not." + +Carquinez broke from his narrative to roll another cigarette and to +laugh harshly. It was not a pretty laugh; it was like the mockery of a +devil, and it rose over and rode the roar of the storm that came muffled +to our ears from the crashing outside world. + +"I am a frog," he said apologetically. "How were they to understand? +They were artists, not biologists. They knew the clay of the studio, but +they did not know the clay of which they themselves were made. But this +I will say--they played high. Never was there such a game before, and I +doubt me if there will ever be such a game again. + +"Never was lovers' ecstasy like theirs. They had not killed Love with +kisses. They had quickened him with denial. And by denial they drove him +on till he was all aburst with desire. And the flame-winged lute-player +fanned them with his warm wings till they were all but swooning. It was +the very delirium of Love, and it continued undiminished and increasing +through the weeks and months. + +"They longed and yearned, with all the fond pangs and sweet delicious +agonies, with an intensity never felt by lovers before nor since. + +"And then one day the drowsy gods ceased nodding. They aroused and +looked at the man and woman who had made a mock of them. And the man and +woman looked into each other's eyes one morning and knew that something +was gone. It was the flame-winged one. He had fled, silently, in the +night, from their anchorites' board. + +"They looked into each other's eyes and knew that they did not care. +Desire was dead. Do you understand? Desire was dead. And they had never +kissed. Not once had they kissed. Love was gone. They would never yearn +and burn again. For them there was nothing left--no more tremblings and +flutterings and delicious anguishes, no more throbbing and pulsing, and +sighing and song. Desire was dead. It had died in the night, on a couch +cold and unattended; nor had they witnessed its passing. They learned it +for the first time in each other's eyes. + +"The gods may not be kind, but they are often merciful. They had twirled +the little ivory ball and swept the stakes from the table. All that +remained was the man and woman gazing into each other's cold eyes. +And then he died. That was the mercy. Within the week Marvin Fiske was +dead--you remember the accident. And in her diary, written at this time, +I long afterward read Mitchell Kennerly's:-- + + "'There was not a single hour + We might have kissed and did not kiss.'" + +"Oh, the irony of it!" I cried out. + +And Carquinez, in the firelight a veritable Mephistopheles in velvet +jacket, fixed me with his black eyes. + +"And they won, you said? The world's judgment! I have told you, and I +know. They won as you are winning, here in your hills." + +"But you," I demanded hotly; "you with your orgies of sound and sense, +with your mad cities and madder frolics--bethink you that you win?" + +He shook his head slowly. "Because you with your sober bucolic regime, +lose, is no reason that I should win. We never win. Sometimes we think +we win. That is a little pleasantry of the gods." + + + + +THE APOSTATE + + "Now I wake me up to work; + I pray the Lord I may not shirk. + If I should die before the night, + I pray the Lord my work's all right. + Amen." + +"If you don't git up, Johnny, I won't give you a bite to eat!" + +The threat had no effect on the boy. He clung stubbornly to sleep, +fighting for its oblivion as the dreamer fights for his dream. The boy's +hands loosely clenched themselves, and he made feeble, spasmodic blows +at the air. These blows were intended for his mother, but she betrayed +practised familiarity in avoiding them as she shook him roughly by the +shoulder. + +"Lemme 'lone!" + +It was a cry that began, muffled, in the deeps of sleep, that swiftly +rushed upward, like a wail, into passionate belligerence, and that died +away and sank down into an inarticulate whine. It was a bestial cry, as +of a soul in torment, filled with infinite protest and pain. + +But she did not mind. She was a sad-eyed, tired-faced woman, and she had +grown used to this task, which she repeated every day of her life. She +got a grip on the bedclothes and tried to strip them down; but the boy, +ceasing his punching, clung to them desperately. In a huddle, at the +foot of the bed, he still remained covered. Then she tried dragging the +bedding to the floor. The boy opposed her. She braced herself. Hers +was the superior weight, and the boy and bedding gave, the former +instinctively following the latter in order to shelter against the chill +of the room that bit into his body. + +As he toppled on the edge of the bed it seemed that he must fall +head-first to the floor. But consciousness fluttered up in him. He +righted himself and for a moment perilously balanced. Then he struck the +floor on his feet. On the instant his mother seized him by the shoulders +and shook him. Again his fists struck out, this time with more force and +directness. At the same time his eyes opened. She released him. He was +awake. + +"All right," he mumbled. + +She caught up the lamp and hurried out, leaving him in darkness. + +"You'll be docked," she warned back to him. + +He did not mind the darkness. When he had got into his clothes, he went +out into the kitchen. His tread was very heavy for so thin and light a +boy. His legs dragged with their own weight, which seemed unreasonable +because they were such skinny legs. He drew a broken-bottomed chair to +the table. + +"Johnny," his mother called sharply. + +He arose as sharply from the chair, and, without a word, went to the +sink. It was a greasy, filthy sink. A smell came up from the outlet. He +took no notice of it. That a sink should smell was to him part of the +natural order, just as it was a part of the natural order that the soap +should be grimy with dish-water and hard to lather. Nor did he try very +hard to make it lather. Several splashes of the cold water from the +running faucet completed the function. He did not wash his teeth. For +that matter he had never seen a toothbrush, nor did he know that there +existed beings in the world who were guilty of so great a foolishness as +tooth washing. + +"You might wash yourself wunst a day without bein' told," his mother +complained. + +She was holding a broken lid on the pot as she poured two cups of +coffee. He made no remark, for this was a standing quarrel between them, +and the one thing upon which his mother was hard as adamant. "Wunst" a +day it was compulsory that he should wash his face. He dried himself on +a greasy towel, damp and dirty and ragged, that left his face covered +with shreds of lint. + +"I wish we didn't live so far away," she said, as he sat down. "I try +to do the best I can. You know that. But a dollar on the rent is such a +savin', an' we've more room here. You know that." + +He scarcely followed her. He had heard it all before, many times. The +range of her thought was limited, and she was ever harking back to the +hardship worked upon them by living so far from the mills. + +"A dollar means more grub," he remarked sententiously. "I'd sooner do +the walkin' an' git the grub." + +He ate hurriedly, half chewing the bread and washing the unmasticated +chunks down with coffee. The hot and muddy liquid went by the name of +coffee. Johnny thought it was coffee--and excellent coffee. That was one +of the few of life's illusions that remained to him. He had never drunk +real coffee in his life. + +In addition to the bread, there was a small piece of cold pork. His +mother refilled his cup with coffee. As he was finishing the bread, he +began to watch if more was forthcoming. She intercepted his questioning +glance. + +"Now, don't be hoggish, Johnny," was her comment. "You've had your +share. Your brothers an' sisters are smaller'n you." + +He did not answer the rebuke. He was not much of a talker. Also, he +ceased his hungry glancing for more. He was uncomplaining, with a +patience that was as terrible as the school in which it had been +learned. He finished his coffee, wiped his mouth on the back of his +hand, and started to rise. + +"Wait a second," she said hastily. "I guess the loaf kin stand you +another slice--a thin un." + +There was legerdemain in her actions. With all the seeming of cutting +a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread +box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had +deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he +took the bread shamelessly. He had a philosophy that his mother, because +of her chronic sickliness, was not much of an eater anyway. + +She saw that he was chewing the bread dry, and reached over and emptied +her coffee cup into his. + +"Don't set good somehow on my stomach this morning," she explained. + +A distant whistle, prolonged and shrieking, brought both of them to +their feet. She glanced at the tin alarm-clock on the shelf. The hands +stood at half-past five. The rest of the factory world was just arousing +from sleep. She drew a shawl about her shoulders, and on her head put a +dingy hat, shapeless and ancient. + +"We've got to run," she said, turning the wick of the lamp and blowing +down the chimney. + +They groped their way out and down the stairs. It was clear and cold, +and Johnny shivered at the first contact with the outside air. The stars +had not yet begun to pale in the sky, and the city lay in blackness. +Both Johnny and his mother shuffled their feet as they walked. There was +no ambition in the leg muscles to swing the feet clear of the ground. + +After fifteen silent minutes, his mother turned off to the right. + +"Don't be late," was her final warning from out of the dark that was +swallowing her up. + +He made no response, steadily keeping on his way. In the factory +quarter, doors were opening everywhere, and he was soon one of a +multitude that pressed onward through the dark. As he entered the +factory gate the whistle blew again. He glanced at the east. Across a +ragged sky-line of housetops a pale light was beginning to creep. This +much he saw of the day as he turned his back upon it and joined his work +gang. + +He took his place in one of many long rows of machines. Before him, +above a bin filled with small bobbins, were large bobbins revolving +rapidly. Upon these he wound the jute-twine of the small bobbins. The +work was simple. All that was required was celerity. The small bobbins +were emptied so rapidly, and there were so many large bobbins that did +the emptying, that there were no idle moments. + +He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left +hand for a brake, stopping the large bobbin and at the same time, with +thumb and forefinger, catching the flying end of twine. Also, at the +same time, with his right hand, he caught up the loose twine-end of +a small bobbin. These various acts with both hands were performed +simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a flash of his hands +as he looped the weaver's knot and released the bobbin. There was +nothing difficult about weaver's knots. He once boasted he could tie +them in his sleep. And for that matter, he sometimes did, toiling +centuries long in a single night at tying an endless succession of +weaver's knots. + +Some of the boys shirked, wasting time and machinery by not replacing +the small bobbins when they ran out. And there was an overseer to +prevent this. He caught Johnny's neighbour at the trick, and boxed his +ears. + +"Look at Johnny there--why ain't you like him?" the overseer wrathfully +demanded. + +Johnny's bobbins were running full blast, but he did not thrill at the +indirect praise. There had been a time... but that was long ago, very +long ago. His apathetic face was expressionless as he listened to +himself being held up as a shining example. He was the perfect worker. +He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a commonplace, and +besides it didn't seem to mean anything to him any more. From the +perfect worker he had evolved into the perfect machine. When his work +went wrong, it was with him as with the machine, due to faulty material. +It would have been as possible for a perfect nail-die to cut imperfect +nails as for him to make a mistake. + +And small wonder. There had never been a time when he had not been in +intimate relationship with machines. Machinery had almost been bred into +him, and at any rate he had been brought up on it. Twelve years before, +there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this +very mill. Johnny's mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the +floor in the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women +were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes +there was one more soul in the loom room than had entered by the doors. +It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the looms in his +ears, drawing with his first breath the warm, moist air that was thick +with flying lint. He had coughed that first day in order to rid his +lungs of the lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since. + +The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The boy's face was +convulsed with hatred for the overseer who kept a threatening eye on +him from a distance; but every bobbin was running full. The boy yelled +terrible oaths into the whirling bobbins before him; but the sound did +not carry half a dozen feet, the roaring of the room holding it in and +containing it like a wall. + +Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting things. +Besides, things grow monotonous by repetition, and this particular +happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to him as useless to +oppose the overseer as to defy the will of a machine. Machines were made +to go in certain ways and to perform certain tasks. It was the same with +the overseer. + +But at eleven o'clock there was excitement in the room. In an apparently +occult way the excitement instantly permeated everywhere. The one-legged +boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across the +floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of +sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of the mill was coming along, +accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched +shirt--a gentleman, in Johnny's classification of men, and also, "the +Inspector." + +He looked sharply at the boys as he passed along. Sometimes he stopped +and asked questions. When he did so, he was compelled to shout at the +top of his lungs, at which moments his face was ludicrously contorted +with the strain of making himself heard. His quick eye noted the empty +machine alongside of Johnny's, but he said nothing. Johnny also caught +his eye, and he stopped abruptly. He caught Johnny by the arm to draw +him back a step from the machine; but with an exclamation of surprise he +released the arm. + +"Pretty skinny," the superintendent laughed anxiously. + +"Pipe stems," was the answer. "Look at those legs. The boy's got the +rickets--incipient, but he's got them. If epilepsy doesn't get him in +the end, it will be because tuberculosis gets him first." + +Johnny listened, but did not understand. Furthermore he was not +interested in future ills. There was an immediate and more serious ill +that threatened him in the form of the inspector. + +"Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth," the inspector said, or +shouted, bending close to the boy's ear to make him hear. "How old are +you?" + +"Fourteen," Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs. +So loudly did he lie that it started him off in a dry, hacking cough +that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning. + +"Looks sixteen at least," said the superintendent. + +"Or sixty," snapped the inspector. + +"He's always looked that way." + +"How long?" asked the inspector, quickly. + +"For years. Never gets a bit older." + +"Or younger, I dare say. I suppose he's worked here all those years?" + +"Off and on--but that was before the new law was passed," the +superintendent hastened to add. + +"Machine idle?" the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine +beside Johnny's, in which the part-filled bobbins were flying like mad. + +"Looks that way." The superintendent motioned the overseer to him and +shouted in his ear and pointed at the machine. "Machine's idle," he +reported back to the inspector. + +They passed on, and Johnny returned to his work, relieved in that the +ill had been averted. But the one-legged boy was not so fortunate. The +sharp-eyed inspector haled him out at arms length from the bin truck. +His lips were quivering, and his face had all the expression of one upon +whom was fallen profound and irremediable disaster. The overseer looked +astounded, as though for the first time he had laid eyes on the boy, +while the superintendent's face expressed shock and displeasure. + +"I know him," the inspector said. "He's twelve years old. I've had him +discharged from three factories inside the year. This makes the fourth." + +He turned to the one-legged boy. "You promised me, word and honour, that +you'd go to school." + +The one-legged boy burst into tears. "Please, Mr. Inspector, two babies +died on us, and we're awful poor." + +"What makes you cough that way?" the inspector demanded, as though +charging him with crime. + +And as in denial of guilt, the one-legged boy replied: "It ain't +nothin'. I jes' caught a cold last week, Mr. Inspector, that's all." + +In the end the one-legged boy went out of the room with the inspector, +the latter accompanied by the anxious and protesting superintendent. +After that monotony settled down again. The long morning and the longer +afternoon wore away and the whistle blew for quitting time. Darkness had +already fallen when Johnny passed out through the factory gate. In the +interval the sun had made a golden ladder of the sky, flooded the world +with its gracious warmth, and dropped down and disappeared in the west +behind a ragged sky-line of housetops. + +Supper was the family meal of the day--the one meal at which Johnny +encountered his younger brothers and sisters. It partook of the +nature of an encounter, to him, for he was very old, while they were +distressingly young. He had no patience with their excessive and amazing +juvenility. He did not understand it. His own childhood was too far +behind him. He was like an old and irritable man, annoyed by the +turbulence of their young spirits that was to him arrant silliness. He +glowered silently over his food, finding compensation in the thought +that they would soon have to go to work. That would take the edge off +of them and make them sedate and dignified--like him. Thus it was, after +the fashion of the human, that Johnny made of himself a yardstick with +which to measure the universe. + +During the meal, his mother explained in various ways and with infinite +repetition that she was trying to do the best she could; so that it was +with relief, the scant meal ended, that Johnny shoved back his chair +and arose. He debated for a moment between bed and the front door, +and finally went out the latter. He did not go far. He sat down on the +stoop, his knees drawn up and his narrow shoulders drooping forward, his +elbows on his knees and the palms of his hands supporting his chin. + +As he sat there, he did no thinking. He was just resting. So far as his +mind was concerned, it was asleep. His brothers and sisters came out, +and with other children played noisily about him. An electric globe at +the corner lighted their frolics. He was peevish and irritable, that +they knew; but the spirit of adventure lured them into teasing him. They +joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in +his face weird and uncomplimentary doggerel. At first he snarled curses +at them--curses he had learned from the lips of various foremen. Finding +this futile, and remembering his dignity, he relapsed into dogged +silence. + +His brother Will, next to him in age, having just passed his tenth +birthday, was the ringleader. Johnny did not possess particularly kindly +feelings toward him. His life had early been embittered by continual +giving over and giving way to Will. He had a definite feeling that +Will was greatly in his debt and was ungrateful about it. In his own +playtime, far back in the dim past, he had been robbed of a large part +of that playtime by being compelled to take care of Will. Will was a +baby then, and then, as now, their mother had spent her days in the +mills. To Johnny had fallen the part of little father and little mother +as well. + +Will seemed to show the benefit of the giving over and the giving way. +He was well-built, fairly rugged, as tall as his elder brother and even +heavier. It was as though the life-blood of the one had been diverted +into the other's veins. And in spirits it was the same. Johnny was +jaded, worn out, without resilience, while his younger brother seemed +bursting and spilling over with exuberance. + +The mocking chant rose louder and louder. Will leaned closer as he +danced, thrusting out his tongue. Johnny's left arm shot out and caught +the other around the neck. At the same time he rapped his bony fist to +the other's nose. It was a pathetically bony fist, but that it was +sharp to hurt was evidenced by the squeal of pain it produced. The other +children were uttering frightened cries, while Johnny's sister, Jennie, +had dashed into the house. + +He thrust Will from him, kicked him savagely on the shins, then reached +for him and slammed him face downward in the dirt. Nor did he release +him till the face had been rubbed into the dirt several times. Then the +mother arrived, an anaemic whirlwind of solicitude and maternal wrath. + +"Why can't he leave me alone?" was Johnny's reply to her upbraiding. +"Can't he see I'm tired?" + +"I'm as big as you," Will raged in her arms, his face a mass of tears, +dirt, and blood. "I'm as big as you now, an' I'm goin' to git bigger. +Then I'll lick you--see if I don't." + +"You ought to be to work, seein' how big you are," Johnny snarled. +"That's what's the matter with you. You ought to be to work. An' it's up +to your ma to put you to work." + +"But he's too young," she protested. "He's only a little boy." + +"I was younger'n him when I started to work." + +Johnny's mouth was open, further to express the sense of unfairness that +he felt, but the mouth closed with a snap. He turned gloomily on his +heel and stalked into the house and to bed. The door of his room +was open to let in warmth from the kitchen. As he undressed in the +semi-darkness he could hear his mother talking with a neighbour woman +who had dropped in. His mother was crying, and her speech was punctuated +with spiritless sniffles. + +"I can't make out what's gittin' into Johnny," he could hear her say. +"He didn't used to be this way. He was a patient little angel. + +"An' he is a good boy," she hastened to defend. "He's worked faithful, +an' he did go to work too young. But it wasn't my fault. I do the best I +can, I'm sure." + +Prolonged sniffling from the kitchen, and Johnny murmured to himself as +his eyelids closed down, "You betcher life I've worked faithful." + +The next morning he was torn bodily by his mother from the grip of +sleep. Then came the meagre breakfast, the tramp through the dark, and +the pale glimpse of day across the housetops as he turned his back on +it and went in through the factory gate. It was another day, of all the +days, and all the days were alike. + +And yet there had been variety in his life--at the times he changed from +one job to another, or was taken sick. When he was six, he was little +mother and father to Will and the other children still younger. At seven +he went into the mills--winding bobbins. When he was eight, he got work +in another mill. His new job was marvellously easy. All he had to do was +to sit down with a little stick in his hand and guide a stream of cloth +that flowed past him. This stream of cloth came out of the maw of a +machine, passed over a hot roller, and went on its way elsewhere. But he +sat always in one place, beyond the reach of daylight, a gas-jet flaring +over him, himself part of the mechanism. + +He was very happy at that job, in spite of the moist heat, for he was +still young and in possession of dreams and illusions. And wonderful +dreams he dreamed as he watched the steaming cloth streaming endlessly +by. But there was no exercise about the work, no call upon his mind, +and he dreamed less and less, while his mind grew torpid and drowsy. +Nevertheless, he earned two dollars a week, and two dollars represented +the difference between acute starvation and chronic underfeeding. + +But when he was nine, he lost his job. Measles was the cause of it. +After he recovered, he got work in a glass factory. The pay was better, +and the work demanded skill. It was piecework, and the more skilful +he was, the bigger wages he earned. Here was incentive. And under this +incentive he developed into a remarkable worker. + +It was simple work, the tying of glass stoppers into small bottles. At +his waist he carried a bundle of twine. He held the bottles between his +knees so that he might work with both hands. Thus, in a sitting position +and bending over his own knees, his narrow shoulders grew humped and his +chest was contracted for ten hours each day. This was not good for the +lungs, but he tied three hundred dozen bottles a day. + +The superintendent was very proud of him, and brought visitors to look +at him. In ten hours three hundred dozen bottles passed through his +hands. This meant that he had attained machine-like perfection. All +waste movements were eliminated. Every motion of his thin arms, every +movement of a muscle in the thin fingers, was swift and accurate. He +worked at high tension, and the result was that he grew nervous. At +night his muscles twitched in his sleep, and in the daytime he could +not relax and rest. He remained keyed up and his muscles continued +to twitch. Also he grew sallow and his lint-cough grew worse. Then +pneumonia laid hold of the feeble lungs within the contracted chest, and +he lost his job in the glass-works. + +Now he had returned to the jute mills where he had first begun with +winding bobbins. But promotion was waiting for him. He was a good +worker. He would next go on the starcher, and later he would go into the +loom room. There was nothing after that except increased efficiency. + +The machinery ran faster than when he had first gone to work, and his +mind ran slower. He no longer dreamed at all, though his earlier years +had been full of dreaming. Once he had been in love. It was when he +first began guiding the cloth over the hot roller, and it was with the +daughter of the superintendent. She was much older than he, a young +woman, and he had seen her at a distance only a paltry half-dozen times. +But that made no difference. On the surface of the cloth stream that +poured past him, he pictured radiant futures wherein he performed +prodigies of toil, invented miraculous machines, won to the mastership +of the mills, and in the end took her in his arms and kissed her soberly +on the brow. + +But that was all in the long ago, before he had grown too old and tired +to love. Also, she had married and gone away, and his mind had gone to +sleep. Yet it had been a wonderful experience, and he used often to +look back upon it as other men and women look back upon the time they +believed in fairies. He had never believed in fairies nor Santa Claus; +but he had believed implicitly in the smiling future his imagination had +wrought into the steaming cloth stream. + +He had become a man very early in life. At seven, when he drew his first +wages, began his adolescence. A certain feeling of independence crept +up in him, and the relationship between him and his mother changed. +Somehow, as an earner and breadwinner, doing his own work in the world, +he was more like an equal with her. Manhood, full-blown manhood, had +come when he was eleven, at which time he had gone to work on the night +shift for six months. No child works on the night shift and remains a +child. + +There had been several great events in his life. One of these had been +when his mother bought some California prunes. Two others had been the +two times when she cooked custard. Those had been events. He remembered +them kindly. And at that time his mother had told him of a blissful dish +she would sometime make--"floating island," she had called it, "better +than custard." For years he had looked forward to the day when he would +sit down to the table with floating island before him, until at last he +had relegated the idea of it to the limbo of unattainable ideals. + +Once he found a silver quarter lying on the sidewalk. That, also, was +a great event in his life, withal a tragic one. He knew his duty on the +instant the silver flashed on his eyes, before even he had picked it up. +At home, as usual, there was not enough to eat, and home he should have +taken it as he did his wages every Saturday night. Right conduct in this +case was obvious; but he never had any spending of his money, and he was +suffering from candy hunger. He was ravenous for the sweets that only on +red-letter days he had ever tasted in his life. + +He did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew it was sin, and +deliberately he sinned when he went on a fifteen-cent candy debauch. +Ten cents he saved for a future orgy; but not being accustomed to the +carrying of money, he lost the ten cents. This occurred at the time when +he was suffering all the torments of conscience, and it was to him an +act of divine retribution. He had a frightened sense of the closeness +of an awful and wrathful God. God had seen, and God had been swift to +punish, denying him even the full wages of sin. + +In memory he always looked back upon that as the one great criminal deed +of his life, and at the recollection his conscience always awoke and +gave him another twinge. It was the one skeleton in his closet. Also, +being so made, and circumstanced, he looked back upon the deed with +regret. He was dissatisfied with the manner in which he had spent +the quarter. He could have invested it better, and, out of his later +knowledge of the quickness of God, he would have beaten God out by +spending the whole quarter at one fell swoop. In retrospect he spent the +quarter a thousand times, and each time to better advantage. + +There was one other memory of the past, dim and faded, but stamped into +his soul everlasting by the savage feet of his father. It was more like +a nightmare than a remembered vision of a concrete thing--more like the +race-memory of man that makes him fall in his sleep and that goes back +to his arboreal ancestry. + +This particular memory never came to Johnny in broad daylight when +he was wide awake. It came at night, in bed, at the moment that his +consciousness was sinking down and losing itself in sleep. It always +aroused him to frightened wakefulness, and for the moment, in the first +sickening start, it seemed to him that he lay crosswise on the foot of +the bed. In the bed were the vague forms of his father and mother. He +never saw what his father looked like. He had but one impression of his +father, and that was that he had savage and pitiless feet. + +His earlier memories lingered with him, but he had no late memories. +All days were alike. Yesterday or last year were the same as a thousand +years--or a minute. Nothing ever happened. There were no events to mark +the march of time. Time did not march. It stood always still. It was +only the whirling machines that moved, and they moved nowhere--in spite +of the fact that they moved faster. + +When he was fourteen, he went to work on the starcher. It was a colossal +event. Something had at last happened that could be remembered beyond +a night's sleep or a week's pay-day. It marked an era. It was a machine +Olympiad, a thing to date from. "When I went to work on the starcher," +or, "after," or "before I went to work on the starcher," were sentences +often on his lips. + +He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom room and +taking a loom. Here was an incentive again, for it was piece-work. And +he excelled, because the clay of him had been moulded by the mills +into the perfect machine. At the end of three months he was running two +looms, and, later, three and four. + +At the end of his second year at the looms he was turning out more yards +than any other weaver, and more than twice as much as some of the less +skilful ones. And at home things began to prosper as he approached the +full stature of his earning power. Not, however, that his increased +earnings were in excess of need. The children were growing up. They ate +more. And they were going to school, and school-books cost money. And +somehow, the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things. +Even the rent went up, though the house had fallen from bad to worse +disrepair. + +He had grown taller; but with his increased height he seemed leaner +than ever. Also, he was more nervous. With the nervousness increased his +peevishness and irritability. The children had learned by many bitter +lessons to fight shy of him. His mother respected him for his earning +power, but somehow her respect was tinctured with fear. + +There was no joyousness in life for him. The procession of the days he +never saw. The nights he slept away in twitching unconsciousness. +The rest of the time he worked, and his consciousness was machine +consciousness. Outside this his mind was a blank. He had no ideals, +and but one illusion; namely, that he drank excellent coffee. He was a +work-beast. He had no mental life whatever; yet deep down in the crypts +of his mind, unknown to him, were being weighed and sifted every hour of +his toil, every movement of his hands, every twitch of his muscles, and +preparations were making for a future course of action that would amaze +him and all his little world. + +It was in the late spring that he came home from work one night aware of +unusual tiredness. There was a keen expectancy in the air as he sat down +to the table, but he did not notice. He went through the meal in moody +silence, mechanically eating what was before him. The children um'd +and ah'd and made smacking noises with their mouths. But he was deaf to +them. + +"D'ye know what you're eatin'?" his mother demanded at last, +desperately. + +He looked vacantly at the dish before him, and vacantly at her. + +"Floatin' island," she announced triumphantly. + +"Oh," he said. + +"Floating island!" the children chorussed loudly. + +"Oh," he said. And after two or three mouthfuls, he added, "I guess I +ain't hungry to-night." + +He dropped the spoon, shoved back his chair, and arose wearily from the +table. + +"An' I guess I'll go to bed." + +His feet dragged more heavily than usual as he crossed the kitchen +floor. Undressing was a Titan's task, a monstrous futility, and he wept +weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a +rising, swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and +fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his wrist, while in the ends of +them was a remoteness of sensation vague and fuzzy like his brain. +The small of his back ached intolerably. All his bones ached. He ached +everywhere. And in his head began the shrieking, pounding, crashing, +roaring of a million looms. All space was filled with flying shuttles. +They darted in and out, intricately, amongst the stars. He worked a +thousand looms himself, and ever they speeded up, faster and faster, and +his brain unwound, faster and faster, and became the thread that fed the +thousand flying shuttles. + +He did not go to work next morning. He was too busy weaving colossally +on the thousand looms that ran inside his head. His mother went to work, +but first she sent for the doctor. It was a severe attack of la grippe, +he said. Jennie served as nurse and carried out his instructions. + +It was a very severe attack, and it was a week before Johnny dressed and +tottered feebly across the floor. Another week, the doctor said, and he +would be fit to return to work. The foreman of the loom room visited him +on Sunday afternoon, the first day of his convalescence. The best weaver +in the room, the foreman told his mother. His job would be held for him. +He could come back to work a week from Monday. + +"Why don't you thank 'im, Johnny?" his mother asked anxiously. + +"He's ben that sick he ain't himself yet," she explained apologetically +to the visitor. + +Johnny sat hunched up and gazing steadfastly at the floor. He sat in the +same position long after the foreman had gone. It was warm outdoors, +and he sat on the stoop in the afternoon. Sometimes his lips moved. He +seemed lost in endless calculations. + +Next morning, after the day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He +had pencil and paper this time with which to continue his calculations, +and he calculated painfully and amazingly. + +"What comes after millions?" he asked at noon, when Will came home from +school. "An' how d'ye work 'em?" + +That afternoon finished his task. Each day, but without paper and +pencil, he returned to the stoop. He was greatly absorbed in the one +tree that grew across the street. He studied it for hours at a time, and +was unusually interested when the wind swayed its branches and fluttered +its leaves. Throughout the week he seemed lost in a great communion +with himself. On Sunday, sitting on the stoop, he laughed aloud, several +times, to the perturbation of his mother, who had not heard him laugh +for years. + +Next morning, in the early darkness, she came to his bed to rouse him. +He had had his fill of sleep all the week, and awoke easily. He made no +struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped +it from him. He lay quietly, and spoke quietly. + +"It ain't no use, ma." + +"You'll be late," she said, under the impression that he was still +stupid with sleep. + +"I'm awake, ma, an' I tell you it ain't no use. You might as well lemme +alone. I ain't goin' to git up." + +"But you'll lose your job!" she cried. + +"I ain't goin' to git up," he repeated in a strange, passionless voice. + +She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness +beyond any sickness she had ever known. Fever and delirium she could +understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him +and sent Jennie for the doctor. + +When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he +awoke and allowed his pulse to be taken. + +"Nothing the matter with him," the doctor reported. "Badly debilitated, +that's all. Not much meat on his bones." + +"He's always been that way," his mother volunteered. + +"Now go 'way, ma, an' let me finish my snooze." + +Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled +over on his side and went to sleep. + +At ten o'clock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the +kitchen, where he found his mother with a frightened expression on her +face. + +"I'm goin' away, ma," he announced, "an' I jes' want to say good-bye." + +She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He +waited patiently. + +"I might a-known it," she was sobbing. + +"Where?" she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing +up at him with a stricken face in which there was little curiosity. + +"I don't know--anywhere." + +As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling +brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk just under his +eyelids, and he could see it whenever he wished. + +"An' your job?" she quavered. + +"I ain't never goin' to work again." + +"My God, Johnny!" she wailed, "don't say that!" + +What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child +deny God, was Johnny's mother shocked by his words. + +"What's got into you, anyway?" she demanded, with a lame attempt at +imperativeness. + +"Figures," he answered. "Jes' figures. I've ben doin' a lot of figurin' +this week, an' it's most surprisin'." + +"I don't see what that's got to do with it," she sniffled. + +Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at +the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability. + +"I'll show you," he said. "I'm plum' tired out. What makes me tired? +Moves. I've ben movin' ever since I was born. I'm tired of movin', an' I +ain't goin' to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glass-house? +I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten +different moves to each bottle. That's thirty-six thousan' moves a day. +Ten days, three hundred an' sixty thousan' moves. One month, one million +an' eighty thousan' moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan'"--he spoke with +the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist--"chuck out the eighty +thousan', that leaves a million moves a month--twelve million moves a +year. + +"At the looms I'm movin' twic'st as much. That makes twenty-five million +moves a year, an' it seems to me I've ben a movin' that way 'most a +million years. + +"Now this week I ain't moved at all. I ain't made one move in hours an' +hours. I tell you it was swell, jes' settin' there, hours an' hours, +an' doin' nothin'. I ain't never ben happy before. I never had any time. +I've ben movin' all the time. That ain't no way to be happy. An' I ain't +going to do it any more. I'm jes' goin' to set, an' set, an' rest, an' +rest, and then rest some more." + +"But what's goin' to come of Will an' the children?" she asked +despairingly. + +"That's it, 'Will an' the children,'" he repeated. + +But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother's +ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled. +Nothing mattered any more. Not even that. + +"I know, ma, what you've ben plannin' for Will--keepin' him in school to +make a book-keeper out of him. But it ain't no use, I've quit. He's got +to go to work." + +"An' after I have brung you up the way I have," she wept, starting to +cover her head with the apron and changing her mind. + +"You never brung me up," he answered with sad kindliness. "I brung +myself up, ma, an' I brung up Will. He's bigger'n me, an' heavier, an' +taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn't git enough to eat. When he +come along an' was a kid, I was workin' an' earnin' grub for him too. +But that's done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to +hell, I don't care which. I'm tired. I'm goin' now. Ain't you goin' to +say goodbye?" + +She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was +crying. He paused a moment in the doorway. + +"I'm sure I done the best I knew how," she was sobbing. + +He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan delight came +into his face at the sight of the lone tree. "Jes' ain't goin' to do +nothin'," he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning tone. He glanced +wistfully up at the sky, but the bright sun dazzled and blinded him. + +It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took him past +the jute-mill. The muffled roar of the loom room came to his ears, and +he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated no one, not even the +pounding, shrieking machines. There was no bitterness in him, nothing +but an inordinate hunger for rest. + +The houses and factories thinned out and the open spaces increased as +he approached the country. At last the city was behind him, and he was +walking down a leafy lane beside the railroad track. He did not walk +like a man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human. +It was a twisted and stunted and nameless piece of life that shambled +like a sickly ape, arms loose-hanging, stoop-shouldered, narrow-chested, +grotesque and terrible. + +He passed by a small railroad station and lay down in the grass under a +tree. All afternoon he lay there. Sometimes he dozed, with muscles that +twitched in his sleep. When awake, he lay without movement, watching the +birds or looking up at the sky through the branches of the tree above +him. Once or twice he laughed aloud, but without relevance to anything +he had seen or felt. + +After twilight had gone, in the first darkness of the night, a freight +train rumbled into the station. When the engine was switching cars on to +the side-track, Johnny crept along the side of the train. He pulled open +the side-door of an empty box-car and awkwardly and laboriously climbed +in. He closed the door. The engine whistled. Johnny was lying down, and +in the darkness he smiled. + + + + +A WICKED WOMAN + +It was because she had broken with Billy that Loretta had come visiting +to Santa Clara. Billy could not understand. His sister had reported that +he had walked the floor and cried all night. Loretta had not slept all +night either, while she had wept most of the night. Daisy knew this, +because it was in her arms that the weeping had been done. And Daisy's +husband, Captain Kitt, knew, too. The tears of Loretta, and the +comforting by Daisy, had lost him some sleep. + +Now Captain Kitt did not like to lose sleep. Neither did he want Loretta +to marry Billy--nor anybody else. It was Captain Kitt's belief that +Daisy needed the help of her younger sister in the household. But he +did not say this aloud. Instead, he always insisted that Loretta was too +young to think of marriage. So it was Captain Kitt's idea that Loretta +should be packed off on a visit to Mrs. Hemingway. There wouldn't be any +Billy there. + +Before Loretta had been at Santa Clara a week, she was convinced that +Captain Kitt's idea was a good one. In the first place, though Billy +wouldn't believe it, she did not want to marry Billy. And in the second +place, though Captain Kitt wouldn't believe it, she did not want to +leave Daisy. By the time Loretta had been at Santa Clara two weeks, she +was absolutely certain that she did not want to marry Billy. But she was +not so sure about not wanting to leave Daisy. Not that she loved Daisy +less, but that she--had doubts. + +The day of Loretta's arrival, a nebulous plan began shaping itself in +Mrs. Hemingway's brain. The second day she remarked to Jack Hemingway, +her husband, that Loretta was so innocent a young thing that were it not +for her sweet guilelessness she would be positively stupid. In proof +of which, Mrs. Hemingway told her husband several things that made him +chuckle. By the third day Mrs. Hemingway's plan had taken recognizable +form. Then it was that she composed a letter. On the envelope she wrote: +"Mr. Edward Bashford, Athenian Club, San Francisco." + +"Dear Ned," the letter began. She had once been violently loved by him +for three weeks in her pre-marital days. But she had covenanted herself +to Jack Hemingway, who had prior claims, and her heart as well; and Ned +Bashford had philosophically not broken his heart over it. He merely +added the experience to a large fund of similarly collected data out of +which he manufactured philosophy. Artistically and temperamentally he +was a Greek--a tired Greek. He was fond of quoting from Nietzsche, in +token that he, too, had passed through the long sickness that follows +upon the ardent search for truth; that he too had emerged, too +experienced, too shrewd, too profound, ever again to be afflicted by the +madness of youths in their love of truth. "'To worship appearance,'" he +often quoted; "'to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole +Olympus of appearance!'" This particular excerpt he always concluded +with, "'Those Greeks were superficial--OUT OF PROFUNDITY!'" + +He was a fairly young Greek, jaded and worn. Women were faithless and +unveracious, he held--at such times that he had relapses and descended +to pessimism from his wonted high philosophical calm. He did not believe +in the truth of women; but, faithful to his German master, he did +not strip from them the airy gauzes that veiled their untruth. He was +content to accept them as appearances and to make the best of it. He was +superficial--OUT OF PROFUNDITY. + +"Jack says to be sure to say to you, 'good swimming,'" Mrs. Hemingway +wrote in her letter; "and also 'to bring your fishing duds along.'" Mrs. +Hemingway wrote other things in the letter. She told him that at last +she was prepared to exhibit to him an absolutely true, unsullied, and +innocent woman. "A more guileless, immaculate bud of womanhood never +blushed on the planet," was one of the several ways in which she phrased +the inducement. And to her husband she said triumphantly, "If I don't +marry Ned off this time--" leaving unstated the terrible alternative +that she lacked either vocabulary to express or imagination to conceive. + +Contrary to all her forebodings, Loretta found that she was not unhappy +at Santa Clara. Truly, Billy wrote to her every day, but his letters +were less distressing than his presence. Also, the ordeal of being away +from Daisy was not so severe as she had expected. For the first time in +her life she was not lost in eclipse in the blaze of Daisy's brilliant +and mature personality. Under such favourable circumstances Loretta +came rapidly to the front, while Mrs. Hemingway modestly and shamelessly +retreated into the background. + +Loretta began to discover that she was not a pale orb shining by +reflection. Quite unconsciously she became a small centre of things. +When she was at the piano, there was some one to turn the pages for +her and to express preferences for certain songs. When she dropped her +handkerchief, there was some one to pick it up. And there was some one +to accompany her in ramblings and flower gatherings. Also, she learned +to cast flies in still pools and below savage riffles, and how not to +entangle silk lines and gut-leaders with the shrubbery. + +Jack Hemingway did not care to teach beginners, and fished much by +himself, or not at all, thus giving Ned Bashford ample time in which +to consider Loretta as an appearance. As such, she was all that his +philosophy demanded. Her blue eyes had the direct gaze of a boy, and +out of his profundity he delighted in them and forbore to shudder at the +duplicity his philosophy bade him to believe lurked in their depths. She +had the grace of a slender flower, the fragility of colour and line of +fine china, in all of which he pleasured greatly, without thought of the +Life Force palpitating beneath and in spite of Bernard Shaw--in whom he +believed. + +Loretta burgeoned. She swiftly developed personality. She discovered +a will of her own and wishes of her own that were not everlastingly +entwined with the will and the wishes of Daisy. She was petted by Jack +Hemingway, spoiled by Alice Hemingway, and devotedly attended by Ned +Bashford. They encouraged her whims and laughed at her follies, while +she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty +and delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her +ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This desire no longer prodded +her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of +Billy, the more certain she had been that she could not live away +from Daisy. The more she saw of Ned Bashford, the more she forgot her +pressing need of Daisy. + +Ned Bashford likewise did some forgetting. He confused superficiality +with profundity, and entangled appearance with reality until he +accounted them one. Loretta was different from other women. There was no +masquerade about her. She was real. He said as much to Mrs. Hemingway, +and more, who agreed with him and at the same time caught her husband's +eyelid drooping down for the moment in an unmistakable wink. + +It was at this time that Loretta received a letter from Billy that was +somewhat different from his others. In the main, like all his letters, +it was pathological. It was a long recital of symptoms and sufferings, +his nervousness, his sleeplessness, and the state of his heart. Then +followed reproaches, such as he had never made before. They were sharp +enough to make her weep, and true enough to put tragedy into her face. +This tragedy she carried down to the breakfast table. It made Jack and +Mrs. Hemingway speculative, and it worried Ned. They glanced to him for +explanation, but he shook his head. + +"I'll find out to-night," Mrs. Hemingway said to her husband. + +But Ned caught Loretta in the afternoon in the big living-room. She +tried to turn away. He caught her hands, and she faced him with wet +lashes and trembling lips. He looked at her, silently and kindly. The +lashes grew wetter. + +"There, there, don't cry, little one," he said soothingly. + +He put his arm protectingly around her shoulder. And to his shoulder, +like a tired child, she turned her face. He thrilled in ways unusual for +a Greek who has recovered from the long sickness. + +"Oh, Ned," she sobbed on his shoulder, "if you only knew how wicked I +am!" + +He smiled indulgently, and breathed in a great breath freighted with the +fragrance of her hair. He thought of his world-experience of women, and +drew another long breath. There seemed to emanate from her the perfect +sweetness of a child--"the aura of a white soul," was the way he phrased +it to himself. + +Then he noticed that her sobs were increasing. + +"What's the matter, little one?" he asked pettingly and almost +paternally. "Has Jack been bullying you? Or has your dearly beloved +sister failed to write?" + +She did not answer, and he felt that he really must kiss her hair, that +he could not be responsible if the situation continued much longer. + +"Tell me," he said gently, "and we'll see what I can do." + +"I can't. You will despise me.--Oh, Ned, I am so ashamed!" + +He laughed incredulously, and lightly touched her hair with his lips--so +lightly that she did not know. + +"Dear little one, let us forget all about it, whatever it is. I want to +tell you how I love--" + +She uttered a sharp cry that was all delight, and then moaned-- + +"Too late!" + +"Too late?" he echoed in surprise. + +"Oh, why did I? Why did I?" she was moaning. + +He was aware of a swift chill at his heart. + +"What?" he asked. + +"Oh, I... he... Billy. + +"I am such a wicked woman, Ned. I know you will never speak to me +again." + +"This--er--this Billy," he began haltingly. "He is your brother?" + +"No... he... I didn't know. I was so young. I could not help it. Oh, I +shall go mad! I shall go mad!" + +It was then that Loretta felt his shoulder and the encircling arm become +limp. He drew away from her gently, and gently he deposited her in a +big chair, where she buried her face and sobbed afresh. He twisted his +moustache fiercely, then drew up another chair and sat down. + +"I--I do not understand," he said. + +"I am so unhappy," she wailed. + +"Why unhappy?" + +"Because... he... he wants me to marry him." + +His face cleared on the instant, and he placed a hand soothingly on +hers. + +"That should not make any girl unhappy," he remarked sagely. "Because +you don't love him is no reason--of course, you don't love him?" + +Loretta shook her head and shoulders in a vigorous negative. + +"What?" + +Bashford wanted to make sure. + +"No," she asserted explosively. "I don't love Billy! I don't want to +love Billy!" + +"Because you don't love him," Bashford resumed with confidence, "is no +reason that you should be unhappy just because he has proposed to you." + +She sobbed again, and from the midst of her sobs she cried-- + +"That's the trouble. I wish I did love him. Oh, I wish I were dead!" + +"Now, my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles." His other +hand crossed over after its mate and rested on hers. "Women do it every +day. Because you have changed your mind or did not know your mind, +because you have--to use an unnecessarily harsh word--jilted a man--" + +"Jilted!" She had raised her head and was looking at him with +tear-dimmed eyes. "Oh, Ned, if that were all!" + +"All?" he asked in a hollow voice, while his hands slowly retreated from +hers. He was about to speak further, then remained silent. + +"But I don't want to marry him," Loretta broke forth protestingly. + +"Then I shouldn't," he counselled. + +"But I ought to marry him." + +"OUGHT to marry him?" + +She nodded. + +"That is a strong word." + +"I know it is," she acquiesced, while she strove to control her +trembling lips. Then she spoke more calmly. "I am a wicked woman, a +terribly wicked woman. No one knows how wicked I am--except Billy." + +There was a pause. Ned Bashford's face was grave, and he looked queerly +at Loretta. + +"He--Billy knows?" he asked finally. + +A reluctant nod and flaming cheeks was the reply. + +He debated with himself for a while, seeming, like a diver, to be +preparing himself for the plunge. + +"Tell me about it." He spoke very firmly. "You must tell me all of it." + +"And will you--ever--forgive me?" she asked in a faint, small voice. + +He hesitated, drew a long breath, and made the plunge. + +"Yes," he said desperately. "I'll forgive you. Go ahead." + +"There was no one to tell me," she began. "We were with each other so +much. I did not know anything of the world--then." + +She paused to meditate. Bashford was biting his lip impatiently. + +"If I had only known--" + +She paused again. + +"Yes, go on," he urged. + +"We were together almost every evening." + +"Billy?" he demanded, with a savageness that startled her. + +"Yes, of course, Billy. We were with each other so much... If I had only +known... There was no one to tell me... I was so young--" + +Her lips parted as though to speak further, and she regarded him +anxiously. + +"The scoundrel!" + +With the explosion Ned Bashford was on his feet, no longer a tired +Greek, but a violently angry young man. + +"Billy is not a scoundrel; he is a good man," Loretta defended, with a +firmness that surprised Bashford. + +"I suppose you'll be telling me next that it was all your fault," he +said sarcastically. + +She nodded. + +"What?" he shouted. + +"It was all my fault," she said steadily. "I should never have let him. +I was to blame." + +Bashford ceased from his pacing up and down, and when he spoke, his +voice was resigned. + +"All right," he said. "I don't blame you in the least, Loretta. And you +have been very honest. But Billy is right, and you are wrong. You must +get married." + +"To Billy?" she asked, in a dim, far-away voice. + +"Yes, to Billy. I'll see to it. Where does he live? I'll make him." + +"But I don't want to marry Billy!" she cried out in alarm. "Oh, Ned, you +won't do that?" + +"I shall," he answered sternly. "You must. And Billy must. Do you +understand?" + +Loretta buried her face in the cushioned chair back, and broke into a +passionate storm of sobs. + +All that Bashford could make out at first, as he listened, was: "But I +don't want to leave Daisy! I don't want to leave Daisy!" + +He paced grimly back and forth, then stopped curiously to listen. + +"How was I to know?--Boo--hoo," Loretta was crying. "He didn't tell me. +Nobody else ever kissed me. I never dreamed a kiss could be so +terrible... until, boo-hoo... until he wrote to me. I only got the +letter this morning." + +His face brightened. It seemed as though light was dawning on him. + +"Is that what you're crying about?" + +"N--no." + +His heart sank. + +"Then what are you crying about?" he asked in a hopeless voice. + +"Because you said I had to marry Billy. And I don't want to marry Billy. +I don't want to leave Daisy. I don't know what I want. I wish I were +dead." + +He nerved himself for another effort. + +"Now look here, Loretta, be sensible. What is this about kisses. You +haven't told me everything?" + +"I--I don't want to tell you everything." + +She looked at him beseechingly in the silence that fell. + +"Must I?" she quavered finally. + +"You must," he said imperatively. "You must tell me everything." + +"Well, then... must I?" + +"You must." + +"He... I... we..." she began flounderingly. Then blurted out, "I let +him, and he kissed me." + +"Go on," Bashford commanded desperately. + +"That's all," she answered. + +"All?" There was a vast incredulity in his voice. + +"All?" In her voice was an interrogation no less vast. + +"I mean--er--nothing worse?" He was overwhelmingly aware of his own +awkwardness. + +"Worse?" She was frankly puzzled. "As though there could be! Billy +said--" + +"When did he say it?" Bashford demanded abruptly. + +"In his letter I got this morning. Billy said that my... our... our +kisses were terrible if we didn't get married." + +Bashford's head was swimming. + +"What else did Billy say?" he asked. + +"He said that when a woman allowed a man to kiss her, she always married +him--that it was terrible if she didn't. It was the custom, he said; +and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and I don't like it. I know I'm +terrible," she added defiantly, "but I can't help it." + +Bashford absent-mindedly brought out a cigarette. + +"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, as he struck a match. + +Then he came to himself. + +"I beg your pardon," he cried, flinging away match and cigarette. "I +don't want to smoke. I didn't mean that at all. What I mean is--" + +He bent over Loretta, caught her hands in his, then sat on the arm of +the chair and softly put one arm around her. + +"Loretta, I am a fool. I mean it. And I mean something more. I want you +to be my wife." + +He waited anxiously in the pause that followed. + +"You might answer me," he urged. + +"I will... if--" + +"Yes, go on. If what?" + +"If I don't have to marry Billy." + +"You can't marry both of us," he almost shouted. + +"And it isn't the custom... what... what Billy said?" + +"No, it isn't the custom. Now, Loretta, will you marry me?" + +"Don't be angry with me," she pouted demurely. + +He gathered her into his arms and kissed her. + +"I wish it were the custom," she said in a faint voice, from the +midst of the embrace, "because then I'd have to marry you, Ned dear... +wouldn't I?" + + + + +JUST MEAT + +He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting +street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps +at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come. +He was a shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement +through the semi-darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in +the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in +the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to +have escaped him. + +In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried +to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a FEEL, of the +atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he +paused for a moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of +perception did he have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even +aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment +arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he +would have acted on the assumption that it contained children. He was +not aware of all that he knew about the neighbourhood. + +In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in +the footfalls that came up the cross street. Before he saw the walker, +he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came +into view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street. The man that +watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the +corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was +conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind +flitted the thought, "Wanted to know what time." In another house one +room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the +feel that it was a sick-room. + +He was especially interested in a house across the street in the middle +of the block. To this house he paid most attention. No matter what +way he looked, nor what way he walked, his looks and his steps always +returned to it. Except for an open window above the porch, there was +nothing unusual about the house. Nothing came in nor out. Nothing +happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and +disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his +consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the +state of the neighbourhood. + +Despite his feel of things, he was not confident. He was supremely +conscious of the precariousness of his situation. Though unperturbed by +the footfalls of the chance pedestrian, he was as keyed up and sensitive +and ready to be startled as any timorous deer. He was aware of +the possibility of other intelligences prowling about in the +darkness--intelligences similar to his own in movement, perception, and +divination. + +Far down the street he caught a glimpse of something that moved. And he +knew it was no late home-goer, but menace and danger. He whistled twice +to the house across the street, then faded away shadow-like to the +corner and around the corner. Here he paused and looked about him +carefully. Reassured, he peered back around the corner and studied the +object that moved and that was coming nearer. He had divined aright. It +was a policeman. + +The man went down the cross street to the next corner, from the shelter +of which he watched the corner he had just left. He saw the policeman +pass by, going straight on up the street. He paralleled the policeman's +course, and from the next corner again watched him go by; then he +returned the way he had come. He whistled once to the house across the +street, and after a time whistled once again. There was reassurance +in the whistle, just as there had been warning in the previous double +whistle. + +He saw a dark bulk outline itself on the roof of the porch and slowly +descend a pillar. Then it came down the steps, passed through the small +iron gate, and went down the sidewalk, taking on the form of a man. He +that watched kept on his own side of the street and moved on abreast +to the corner, where he crossed over and joined the other. He was quite +small alongside the man he accosted. + +"How'd you make out, Matt?" he asked. + +The other grunted indistinctly, and walked on in silence a few steps. + +"I reckon I landed the goods," he said. + +Jim chuckled in the darkness, and waited for further information. The +blocks passed by under their feet, and he grew impatient. + +"Well, how about them goods?" he asked. "What kind of a haul did you +make, anyway?" + +"I was too busy to figger it out, but it's fat. I can tell you that +much, Jim, it's fat. I don't dast to think how fat it is. Wait till we +get to the room." + +Jim looked at him keenly under the street lamp of the next crossing, +and saw that his face was a trifle grim and that he carried his left arm +peculiarly. + +"What's the matter with your arm?" he demanded. + +"The little cuss bit me. Hope I don't get hydrophoby. Folks gets +hydrophoby from manbite sometimes, don't they?" + +"Gave you fight, eh?" Jim asked encouragingly. + +The other grunted. + +"You're harder'n hell to get information from," Jim burst out irritably. +"Tell us about it. You ain't goin' to lose money just a-tellin' a guy." + +"I guess I choked him some," came the answer. Then, by way of +explanation, "He woke up on me." + +"You did it neat. I never heard a sound." + +"Jim," the other said with seriousness, "it's a hangin' matter. +I fixed 'm. I had to. He woke up on me. You an' me's got to do some +layin' low for a spell." + +Jim gave a low whistle of comprehension. + +"Did you hear me whistle?" he asked suddenly. + +"Sure. I was all done. I was just comin' out." + +"It was a bull. But he wasn't on a little bit. Went right by an' kept +a-paddin' the hoof out a sight. Then I come back an' gave you the +whistle. What made you take so long after that?" + +"I was waitin' to make sure," Matt explained. "I was mighty glad when +I heard you whistle again. It's hard work waitin'. I just sat there an' +thought an' thought... oh, all kinds of things. It's remarkable what +a fellow'll think about. And then there was a darn cat that kept movin' +around the house all' botherin' me with its noises." + +"An' it's fat!" Jim exclaimed irrelevantly and with joy. + +"I'm sure tellin' you, Jim, it's fat. I'm plum' anxious for another look +at 'em." + +Unconsciously the two men quickened their pace. Yet they did not relax +from their caution. Twice they changed their course in order to avoid +policemen, and they made very sure that they were not observed when they +dived into the dark hallway of a cheap rooming house down town. + +Not until they had gained their own room on the top floor, did they +scratch a match. While Jim lighted a lamp, Matt locked the door and +threw the bolts into place. As he turned, he noticed that his partner +was waiting expectantly. Matt smiled to himself at the other's +eagerness. + +"Them search-lights is all right," he said, drawing forth a small pocket +electric lamp and examining it. "But we got to get a new battery. It's +runnin' pretty weak. I thought once or twice it'd leave me in the dark. +Funny arrangements in that house. I near got lost. His room was on the +left, an' that fooled me some." + +"I told you it was on the left," Jim interrupted. + +"You told me it was on the right," Matt went on. "I guess I know what +you told me, an' there's the map you drew." + +Fumbling in his vest pocket, he drew out a folded slip of paper. As he +unfolded it, Jim bent over and looked. + +"I did make a mistake," he confessed. + +"You sure did. It got me guessin' some for a while." + +"But it don't matter now," Jim cried. "Let's see what you got." + +"It does matter," Matt retorted. "It matters a lot... to me. I've got +to run all the risk. I put my head in the trap while you stay on the +street. You got to get on to yourself an' be more careful. All right, +I'll show you." + +He dipped loosely into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of +small diamonds. He spilled them out in a blazing stream on the greasy +table. Jim let out a great oath. + +"That's nothing," Matt said with triumphant complacence. "I ain't begun +yet." + +From one pocket after another he continued bringing forth the spoil. +There were many diamonds wrapped in chamois skin that were larger than +those in the first handful. From one pocket he brought out a handful of +very small cut gems. + +"Sun dust," he remarked, as he spilled them on the table in a space by +themselves. + +Jim examined them. + +"Just the same, they retail for a couple of dollars each," he said. "Is +that all?" + +"Ain't it enough?" the other demanded in an aggrieved tone. + +"Sure it is," Jim answered with unqualified approval. "Better'n I +expected. I wouldn't take a cent less than ten thousan' for the bunch." + +"Ten thousan'," Matt sneered. "They're worth twic't that, an' I don't +know anything about joolery, either. Look at that big boy!" + +He picked it out from the sparkling heap and held it near to the lamp +with the air of an expert, weighing and judging. + +"Worth a thousan' all by its lonely," was Jim's quicker judgment. + +"A thousan' your grandmother," was Matt's scornful rejoinder. "You +couldn't buy it for three." + +"Wake me up! I'm dreamin'!" The sparkle of the gems was in Jim's eyes, +and he began sorting out the larger diamonds and examining them. "We're +rich men, Matt--we'll be regular swells." + +"It'll take years to get rid of 'em," was Matt's more practical thought. + +"But think how we'll live! Nothin' to do but spend the money an' go on +gettin' rid of em." + +Matt's eyes were beginning to sparkle, though sombrely, as his +phlegmatic nature woke up. + +"I told you I didn't dast think how fat it was," he murmured in a low +voice. + +"What a killin'! What a killin'!" was the other's more ecstatic +utterance. + +"I almost forgot," Matt said, thrusting his hand into his inside coat +pocket. + +A string of large pearls emerged from wrappings of tissue paper and +chamois skin. Jim scarcely glanced at them. + +"They're worth money," he said, and returned to the diamonds. + +A silence fell on the two men. Jim played with the gems, running them +through his fingers, sorting them into piles, and spreading them out +flat and wide. He was a slender, weazened man, nervous, irritable, +high-strung, and anaemic--a typical child of the gutter, with +unbeautiful twisted features, small-eyed, with face and mouth +perpetually and feverishly hungry, brutish in a cat-like way, stamped to +the core with degeneracy. + +Matt did not finger the diamonds. He sat with chin on hands and elbows +on table, blinking heavily at the blazing array. He was in every way a +contrast to the other. No city had bred him. He was heavy-muscled and +hairy, gorilla-like in strength and aspect. For him there was no unseen +world. His eyes were full and wide apart, and there seemed in them +a certain bold brotherliness. They inspired confidence. But a closer +inspection would have shown that his eyes were just a trifle too full, +just a shade too wide apart. He exceeded, spilled over the limits of +normality, and his features told lies about the man beneath. + +"The bunch is worth fifty thousan'," Jim remarked suddenly. + +"A hundred thousan'," Matt said. + +The silence returned and endured a long time, to be broken again by Jim. + +"What in hell was he doin' with 'em all at the house?--that's what +I want to know. I'd a-thought he'd kept 'em in the safe down at the +store." + +Matt had just been considering the vision of the throttled man as he had +last looked upon him in the dim light of the electric lantern; but he +did not start at the mention of him. + +"There's no tellin'," he answered. "He might a-ben gettin' ready to +chuck his pardner. He might a-pulled out in the mornin' for parts +unknown, if we hadn't happened along. I guess there's just as many +thieves among honest men as there is among thieves. You read about such +things in the papers, Jim. Pardners is always knifin' each other." + +A queer, nervous look came into the other's eyes. Matt did not betray +that he noted it, though he said-- + +"What was you thinkin' about, Jim?" + +Jim was a trifle awkward for the moment. + +"Nothin'," he answered. "Only I was thinkin' just how funny it was--all +them jools at his house. What made you ask?" + +"Nothin'. I was just wonderin', that was all." + +The silence settled down, broken by an occasional low and nervous giggle +on the part of Jim. He was overcome by the spread of gems. It was not +that he felt their beauty. He was unaware that they were beautiful in +themselves. But in them his swift imagination visioned the joys of life +they would buy, and all the desires and appetites of his diseased mind +and sickly flesh were tickled by the promise they extended. He builded +wondrous, orgy-haunted castles out of their brilliant fires, and was +appalled at what he builded. Then it was that he giggled. It was all +too impossible to be real. And yet there they blazed on the table before +him, fanning the flame of the lust of him, and he giggled again. + +"I guess we might as well count 'em," Matt said suddenly, tearing +himself away from his own visions. "You watch me an' see that +it's square, because you an' me has got to be on the square, Jim. +Understand?" + +Jim did not like this, and betrayed it in his eyes, while Matt did not +like what he saw in his partner's eyes. + +"Understand?" Matt repeated, almost menacingly. + +"Ain't we always ben square?" the other replied, on the defensive +because of the treachery already whispering in him. + +"It don't cost nothin', bein' square in hard times," Matt retorted. +"It's bein' square in prosperity that counts. When we ain't got nothin', +we can't help bein' square. We're prosperous now, an' we've got to be +business men--honest business men. Understand?" + +"That's the talk for me," Jim approved, but deep down in the meagre soul +of him,--and in spite of him,--wanton and lawless thoughts were stirring +like chained beasts. + +Matt stepped to the food shelf behind the two-burner kerosene cooking +stove. He emptied the tea from a paper bag, and from a second bag +emptied some red peppers. Returning to the table with the bags, he put +into them the two sizes of small diamonds. Then he counted the large +gems and wrapped them in their tissue paper and chamois skin. + +"Hundred an' forty-seven good-sized ones," was his inventory; "twenty +real big ones; two big boys and one whopper; an' a couple of fistfuls of +teeny ones an' dust." + +He looked at Jim. + +"Correct," was the response. + +He wrote the count out on a slip of memorandum paper, and made a copy of +it, giving one slip to his partner and retaining the other. + +"Just for reference," he said. + +Again he had recourse to the food shelf, where he emptied the sugar from +a large paper bag. Into this he thrust the diamonds, large and small, +wrapped it up in a bandanna handkerchief, and stowed it away under his +pillow. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes. + +"An' you think they're worth a hundred thousan'?" Jim asked, pausing and +looking up from the unlacing of his shoe. + +"Sure," was the answer. "I seen a dance-house girl down in Arizona once, +with some big sparklers on her. They wasn't real. She said if they was +she wouldn't be dancin'. Said they'd be worth all of fifty thousan', an' +she didn't have a dozen of 'em all told." + +"Who'd work for a livin'?" Jim triumphantly demanded. "Pick an' shovel +work!" he sneered. "Work like a dog all my life, an' save all my wages, +an' I wouldn't have half as much as we got tonight." + +"Dish washin's about your measure, an' you couldn't get more'n twenty a +month an' board. Your figgers is 'way off, but your point is well taken. +Let them that likes it, work. I rode range for thirty a month when I was +young an' foolish. Well, I'm older, an' I ain't ridin' range." + +He got into bed on one side. Jim put out the light and followed him in +on the other side. + +"How's your arm feel?" Jim queried amiably. + +Such concern was unusual, and Matt noted it, and replied-- + +"I guess there's no danger of hydrophoby. What made you ask?" + +Jim felt in himself a guilty stir, and under his breath he cursed the +other's way of asking disagreeable questions; but aloud he answered-- + +"Nothin', only you seemed scared of it at first. What are you goin' to +do with your share, Matt?" + +"Buy a cattle ranch in Arizona an' set down an' pay other men to ride +range for me. There's some several I'd like to see askin' a job from me, +damn them! An' now you shut your face, Jim. It'll be some time before I +buy that ranch. Just now I'm goin' to sleep." + +But Jim lay long awake, nervous and twitching, rolling about restlessly +and rolling himself wide awake every time he dozed. The diamonds still +blazed under his eyelids, and the fire of them hurt. Matt, in spite of +his heavy nature, slept lightly, like a wild animal alert in its sleep; +and Jim noticed, every time he moved, that his partner's body moved +sufficiently to show that it had received the impression and that it was +trembling on the verge of awakening. For that matter, Jim did not +know whether or not, frequently, the other was awake. Once, quietly, +betokening complete consciousness, Matt said to him: "Aw, go to sleep, +Jim. Don't worry about them jools. They'll keep." And Jim had thought +that at that particular moment Matt had been surely asleep. + +In the late morning Matt was awake with Jim's first movement, and +thereafter he awoke and dozed with him until midday, when they got up +together and began dressing. + +"I'm goin' out to get a paper an' some bread," Matt said. "You boil the +coffee." + +As Jim listened, unconsciously his gaze left Matt's face and roved +to the pillow, beneath which was the bundle wrapped in the bandanna +handkerchief. On the instant Matt's face became like a wild beast's. + +"Look here, Jim," he snarled. "You've got to play square. If you do me +dirt, I'll fix you. Understand? I'd eat you, Jim. You know that. I'd +bite right into your throat an' eat you like that much beefsteak." + +His sunburned skin was black with the surge of blood in it, and his +tobacco-stained teeth were exposed by the snarling lips. Jim shivered +and involuntarily cowered. There was death in the man he looked at. Only +the night before that black-faced man had killed another with his hands, +and it had not hurt his sleep. And in his own heart Jim was aware of +a sneaking guilt, of a train of thought that merited all that was +threatened. + +Matt passed out, leaving him still shivering. Then a hatred twisted his +own face, and he softly hurled savage curses at the door. He remembered +the jewels, and hastened to the bed, feeling under the pillow for the +bandanna bundle. He crushed it with his fingers to make certain that +it still contained the diamonds. Assured that Matt had not carried them +away, he looked toward the kerosene stove with a guilty start. Then he +hurriedly lighted it, filled the coffee-pot at the sink, and put it over +the flame. + +The coffee was boiling when Matt returned, and while the latter cut the +bread and put a slice of butter on the table, Jim poured out the coffee. +It was not until he sat down and had taken a few sips of the coffee, +that Matt pulled out the morning paper from his pocket. + +"We was way off," he said. "I told you I didn't dast figger out how fat +it was. Look at that." + +He pointed to the head-lines on the first page. + +"SWIFT NEMESIS ON BUJANNOFF'S TRACK," they read. "MURDERED IN HIS SLEEP +AFTER ROBBING HIS PARTNER." + +"There you have it!" Matt cried. "He robbed his partner--robbed him like +a dirty thief." + +"Half a million of jewels missin'," Jim read aloud. He put the paper +down and stared at Matt. + +"That's what I told you," the latter said. "What in hell do we know +about jools? Half a million!--an' the best I could figger it was a +hundred thousan'. Go on an' read the rest of it." + +They read on silently, their heads side by side, the untouched coffee +growing cold; and ever and anon one or the other burst forth with some +salient printed fact. + +"I'd like to seen Metzner's face when he opened the safe at the store +this mornin'," Jim gloated. + +"He hit the high places right away for Bujannoff's house," Matt +explained. "Go on an' read." + +"Was to have sailed last night at ten on the Sajoda for the South +Seas--steamship delayed by extra freight--" + +"That's why we caught 'm in bed," Matt interrupted. "It was just +luck--like pickin' a fifty-to-one winner." + +"Sajoda sailed at six this mornin'--" + +"He didn't catch her," Matt said. "I saw his alarm-clock was set at +five. That'd given 'm plenty of time... only I come along an' put the +kibosh on his time. Go on." + +"Adolph Metzner in despair--the famous Haythorne pearl +necklace--magnificently assorted pearls--valued by experts at from fifty +to seventy thousan' dollars." + +Jim broke off to swear vilely and solemnly, concluding with, "Those damn +oyster-eggs worth all that money!" + +He licked his lips and added, "They was beauties an' no mistake." + +"Big Brazilian gem," he read on. "Eighty thousan' dollars--many valuable +gems of the first water--several thousan' small diamonds well worth +forty thousan'." + +"What you don't know about jools is worth knowin'," Matt smiled +good-humouredly. + +"Theory of the sleuths," Jim read. "Thieves must have known--cleverly +kept watch on Bujannoff's actions--must have learned his plan and +trailed him to his house with the fruits of his robbery--" + +"Clever--hell!" Matt broke out. "That's the way reputations is made... +in the noospapers. How'd we know he was robbin' his pardner?" + +"Anyway, we've got the goods," Jim grinned. "Let's look at 'em again." + +He assured himself that the door was locked and bolted, while Matt +brought out the bundle in the bandanna and opened it on the table. + +"Ain't they beauties, though!" Jim exclaimed at sight of the pearls; and +for a time he had eyes only for them. "Accordin' to the experts, worth +from fifty to seventy thousan' dollars." + +"An' women like them things," Matt commented. "An' they'll do everything +to get 'em--sell themselves, commit murder, anything." + +"Just like you an' me." + +"Not on your life," Matt retorted. "I'll commit murder for 'em, but not +for their own sakes, but for sake of what they'll get me. That's the +difference. Women want the jools for themselves, an' I want the jools +for the women an' such things they'll get me." + +"Lucky that men an' women don't want the same things," Jim remarked. + +"That's what makes commerce," Matt agreed; "people wantin' different +things." + +In the middle of the afternoon Jim went out to buy food. While he was +gone, Matt cleared the table of the jewels, wrapping them up as before +and putting them under the pillow. Then he lighted the kerosene stove +and started to boil water for coffee. A few minutes later, Jim returned. + +"Most surprising," he remarked. "Streets, an' stores, an' people just +like they always was. Nothin' changed. An' me walking along through it +all a millionaire. Nobody looked at me an' guessed it." + +Matt grunted unsympathetically. He had little comprehension of the +lighter whims and fancies of his partner's imagination. + +"Did you get a porterhouse?" he demanded. + +"Sure, an' an inch thick. It's a peach. Look at it." + +He unwrapped the steak and held it up for the other's inspection. Then +he made the coffee and set the table, while Matt fried the steak. + +"Don't put on too much of them red peppers," Jim warned. "I ain't used +to your Mexican cookin'. You always season too hot." + +Matt grunted a laugh and went on with his cooking. Jim poured out the +coffee, but first, into the nicked china cup, he emptied a powder he had +carried in his vest pocket wrapped in a rice-paper. He had turned his +back for the moment on his partner, but he did not dare to glance around +at him. Matt placed a newspaper on the table, and on the newspaper +set the hot frying-pan. He cut the steak in half, and served Jim and +himself. + +"Eat her while she's hot," he counselled, and with knife and fork set +the example. + +"She's a dandy," was Jim's judgment, after his first mouthful. "But +I tell you one thing straight. I'm never goin' to visit you on that +Arizona ranch, so you needn't ask me." + +"What's the matter now?" Matt asked. + +"Hell's the matter," was the answer. "The Mexican cookin' on your +ranch'd be too much for me. If I've got hell a-comin' in the next life, +I'm not goin' to torment my insides in this one. Damned peppers!" + +He smiled, expelled his breath forcibly to cool his burning mouth, drank +some coffee, and went on eating the steak. + +"What do you think about the next life anyway, Matt?" he asked a little +later, while secretly he wondered why the other had not yet touched his +coffee. + +"Ain't no next life," Matt answered, pausing from the steak to take +his first sip of coffee. "Nor heaven nor hell, nor nothin'. You get all +that's comin' right here in this life." + +"An' afterward?" Jim queried out of his morbid curiosity, for he knew +that he looked upon a man that was soon to die. "An' afterward?" he +repeated. + +"Did you ever see a man two weeks dead?" the other asked. + +Jim shook his head. + +"Well, I have. He was like this beefsteak you an' me is eatin'. It was +once steer cavortin' over the landscape. But now it's just meat. +That's all, just meat. An' that's what you an' me an' all people come +to--meat." + +Matt gulped down the whole cup of coffee, and refilled the cup. + +"Are you scared to die?" he asked. + +Jim shook his head. "What's the use? I don't die anyway. I pass on an' +live again--" + +"To go stealin', an' lyin' an' snivellin' through another life, an' go +on that way forever an' ever an' ever?" Matt sneered. + +"Maybe I'll improve," Jim suggested hopefully. "Maybe stealin' won't be +necessary in the life to come." + +He ceased abruptly, and stared straight before him, a frightened +expression on his face. + +"What's the matter!" Matt demanded. + +"Nothin'. I was just wonderin'"--Jim returned to himself with an +effort--"about this dyin', that was all." + +But he could not shake off the fright that had startled him. It was +as if an unseen thing of gloom had passed him by, casting upon him +the intangible shadow of its presence. He was aware of a feeling of +foreboding. Something ominous was about to happen. Calamity hovered in +the air. He gazed fixedly across the table at the other man. He could +not understand. Was it that he had blundered and poisoned himself? No, +Matt had the nicked cup, and he had certainly put the poison in the +nicked cup. + +It was all his own imagination, was his next thought. It had played him +tricks before. Fool! Of course it was. Of course something was about to +happen, but it was about to happen to Matt. Had not Matt drunk the whole +cup of coffee? + +Jim brightened up and finished his steak, sopping bread in the gravy +when the meat was gone. + +"When I was a kid--" he began, but broke off abruptly. + +Again the unseen thing of gloom had fluttered, and his being was vibrant +with premonition of impending misfortune. He felt a disruptive influence +at work in the flesh of him, and in all his muscles there was a seeming +that they were about to begin to twitch. He sat back suddenly, and as +suddenly leaned forward with his elbows on the table. A tremor ran +dimly through the muscles of his body. It was like the first rustling +of leaves before the oncoming of wind. He clenched his teeth. It came +again, a spasmodic tensing of his muscles. He knew panic at the revolt +within his being. His muscles no longer recognized his mastery over +them. Again they spasmodically tensed, despite the will of him, for +he had willed that they should not tense. This was revolution within +himself, this was anarchy; and the terror of impotence rushed up in him +as his flesh gripped and seemed to seize him in a clutch, chills running +up and down his back and sweat starting on his brow. He glanced about +the room, and all the details of it smote him with a strange sense of +familiarity. It was as though he had just returned from a long journey. +He looked across the table at his partner. Matt was watching him and +smiling. An expression of horror spread over Jim's face. + +"My God, Matt!" he screamed. "You ain't doped me?" + +Matt smiled and continued to watch him. In the paroxysm that followed, +Jim did not become unconscious. His muscles tensed and twitched and +knotted, hurting him and crushing him in their savage grip. And in the +midst of it all, it came to him that Matt was acting queerly. He was +travelling the same road. The smile had gone from his face, and there +was on it an intent expression, as if he were listening to some inner +tale of himself and trying to divine the message. Matt got up and walked +across the room and back again, then sat down. + +"You did this, Jim," he said quietly. + +"But I didn't think you'd try to fix ME," Jim answered reproachfully. + +"Oh, I fixed you all right," Matt said, with teeth close together and +shivering body. "What did you give me?" + +"Strychnine." + +"Same as I gave you," Matt volunteered. "It's a hell of a mess, ain't +it?" + +"You're lyin', Matt," Jim pleaded. "You ain't doped me, have you?" + +"I sure did, Jim; an' I didn't overdose you, neither. I cooked it in as +neat as you please in your half the porterhouse.--Hold on! Where're you +goin'?" + +Jim had made a dash for the door, and was throwing back the bolts. Matt +sprang in between and shoved him away. + +"Drug store," Jim panted. "Drug store." + +"No you don't. You'll stay right here. There ain't goin' to be any +runnin' out an' makin' a poison play on the street--not with all them +jools reposin' under the pillow. Savve? Even if you didn't die, you'd +be in the hands of the police with a whole lot of explanations comin'. +Emetics is the stuff for poison. I'm just as bad bit as you, an' I'm +goin' to take a emetic. That's all they'd give you at a drug store, +anyway." + +He thrust Jim back into the middle of the room and shot the bolts into +place. As he went across the floor to the food shelf, he passed one hand +over his brow and flung off the beaded sweat. It spattered audibly on +the floor. Jim watched agonizedly as Matt got the mustard-can and a cup +and ran for the sink. He stirred a cupful of mustard and water and drank +it down. Jim had followed him and was reaching with trembling hands for +the empty cup. Again Matt shoved him away. As he mixed a second cupful, +he demanded-- + +"D'you think one cup'll do for me? You can wait till I'm done." + +Jim started to totter toward the door, but Matt checked him. + +"If you monkey with that door, I'll twist your neck. Savve? You can take +yours when I'm done. An' if it saves you, I'll twist your neck, anyway. +You ain't got no chance, nohow. I told you many times what you'd get if +you did me dirt." + +"But you did me dirt, too," Jim articulated with an effort. + +Matt was drinking the second cupful, and did not answer. The sweat had +got into Jim's eyes, and he could scarcely see his way to the table, +where he got a cup for himself. But Matt was mixing a third cupful, and, +as before, thrust him away. + +"I told you to wait till I was done," Matt growled. "Get outa my way." + +And Jim supported his twitching body by holding on to the sink, the +while he yearned toward the yellowish concoction that stood for life. It +was by sheer will that he stood and clung to the sink. His flesh strove +to double him up and bring him to the floor. Matt drank the third +cupful, and with difficulty managed to get to a chair and sit down. His +first paroxysm was passing. The spasms that afflicted him were dying +away. This good effect he ascribed to the mustard and water. He was +safe, at any rate. He wiped the sweat from his face, and, in the +interval of calm, found room for curiosity. He looked at his partner. + +A spasm had shaken the mustard can out of Jim's hands, and the contents +were spilled upon the floor. He stooped to scoop some of the mustard +into the cup, and the succeeding spasm doubled him upon the floor. Matt +smiled. + +"Stay with it," he encouraged. "It's the stuff all right. It's fixed me +up." + +Jim heard him and turned toward him a stricken face, twisted with +suffering and pleading. Spasm now followed spasm till he was in +convulsions, rolling on the floor and yellowing his face and hair in the +mustard. + +Matt laughed hoarsely at the sight, but the laugh broke midway. A tremor +had run through his body. A new paroxysm was beginning. He arose and +staggered across to the sink, where, with probing forefinger, he vainly +strove to assist the action of the emetic. In the end, he clung to +the sink as Jim had clung, filled with the horror of going down to the +floor. + +The other's paroxysm had passed, and he sat up, weak and fainting, too +weak to rise, his forehead dripping, his lips flecked with a foam made +yellow by the mustard in which he had rolled. He rubbed his eyes with +his knuckles, and groans that were like whines came from his throat. + +"What are you snifflin' about?" Matt demanded out of his agony. "All you +got to do is die. An' when you die you're dead." + +"I... ain't... snifflin'... it's... the... mustard... stingin'... my... +eyes," Jim panted with desperate slowness. + +It was his last successful attempt at speech. Thereafter he babbled +incoherently, pawing the air with shaking arms till a fresh convulsion +stretched him on the floor. + +Matt struggled back to the chair, and, doubled up on it, with his arms +clasped about his knees, he fought with his disintegrating flesh. He +came out of the convulsion cool and weak. He looked to see how it went +with the other, and saw him lying motionless. + +He tried to soliloquize, to be facetious, to have his last grim laugh at +life, but his lips made only incoherent sounds. The thought came to +him that the emetic had failed, and that nothing remained but the drug +store. He looked toward the door and drew himself to his feet. There he +saved himself from falling by clutching the chair. Another paroxysm had +begun. And in the midst of the paroxysm, with his body and all the parts +of it flying apart and writhing and twisting back again into knots, he +clung to the chair and shoved it before him across the floor. The last +shreds of his will were leaving him when he gained the door. He turned +the key and shot back one bolt. He fumbled for the second bolt, but +failed. Then he leaned his weight against the door and slid down gently +to the floor. + + + + +CREATED HE THEM + +She met him at the door. + +"I did not think you would be so early." + +"It is half past eight." He looked at his watch. "The train leaves at +9.12." + +He was very businesslike, until he saw her lips tremble as she abruptly +turned and led the way. + +"It'll be all right, little woman," he said soothingly. "Doctor +Bodineau's the man. He'll pull him through, you'll see." + +They entered the living-room. His glance quested apprehensively about, +then turned to her. + +"Where's Al?" + +She did not answer, but with a sudden impulse came close to him and +stood motionless. She was a slender, dark-eyed woman, in whose face +was stamped the strain and stress of living. But the fine lines and the +haunted look in the eyes were not the handiwork of mere worry. He knew +whose handiwork it was as he looked upon it, and she knew when she +consulted her mirror. + +"It's no use, Mary," he said. He put his hand on her shoulder. "We've +tried everything. It's a wretched business, I know, but what else can we +do? You've failed. Doctor Bodineau's all that's left." + +"If I had another chance..." she began falteringly. + +"We've threshed that all out," he answered harshly. "You've got to buck +up, now. You know what conclusion we arrived at. You know you haven't +the ghost of a hope in another chance." + +She shook her head. "I know it. But it is terrible, the thought of his +going away to fight it out alone." + +"He won't be alone. There's Doctor Bodineau. And besides, it's a +beautiful place." + +She remained silent. + +"It is the only thing," he said. + +"It is the only thing," she repeated mechanically. + +He looked at his watch. "Where's Al?" + +"I'll send him." + +When the door had closed behind her, he walked over to the window and +looked out, drumming absently with his knuckles on the pane. + +"Hello." + +He turned and responded to the greeting of the man who had just entered. +There was a perceptible drag to the man's feet as he walked across +toward the window and paused irresolutely halfway. + +"I've changed my mind, George," he announced hurriedly and nervously. +"I'm not going." + +He plucked at his sleeve, shuffled with his feet, dropped his eyes, and +with a strong effort raised them again to confront the other. + +George regarded him silently, his nostrils distending and his lean +fingers unconsciously crooking like an eagle's talons about to clutch. + +In line and feature, there was much of resemblance between the two men; +and yet, in the strongest resemblances there was a radical difference. +Theirs were the same black eyes, but those of the man at the window were +sharp and straight looking, while those of the man in the middle of the +room were cloudy and furtive. He could not face the other's gaze, and +continually and vainly struggled with himself to do so. The high cheek +bones with the hollows beneath were the same, yet the texture of the +hollows seemed different. The thin-lipped mouths were from the same +mould, but George's lips were firm and muscular, while Al's were soft +and loose--the lips of an ascetic turned voluptuary. There was also a +sag at the corners. His flesh hinted of grossness, especially so in the +eagle-like aquiline nose that must once have been like the other's, but +that had lost the austerity the other's still retained. + +Al fought for steadiness in the middle of the floor. The silence +bothered him. He had a feeling that he was about to begin swaying back +and forth. He moistened his lips with his tongue. + +"I'm going to stay," he said desperately. + +He dropped his eyes and plucked again at his sleeve. + +"And you are only twenty-six years old," George said at last. "You poor, +feeble old man." + +"Don't be so sure of that," Al retorted, with a flash of belligerence. + +"Do you remember when we swam that mile and a half across the channel?" + +"Well, and what of it?" A sullen expression was creeping across Al's +face. + +"And do you remember when we boxed in the barn after school?" + +"I could take all you gave me." + +"All I gave you!" George's voice rose momentarily to a higher pitch. +"You licked me four afternoons out of five. You were twice as strong as +I--three times as strong. And now I'd be afraid to land on you with a +sofa cushion; you'd crumple up like a last year's leaf. You'd die, you +poor, miserable old man." + +"You needn't abuse me just because I've changed my mind," the other +protested, the hint of a whine in his voice. + +His wife entered, and he looked appealingly to her; but the man at the +window strode suddenly up to him and burst out-- + +"You don't know your own mind for two successive minutes! You haven't +any mind, you spineless, crawling worm!" + +"You can't make me angry." Al smiled with cunning, and glanced +triumphantly at his wife. "You can't make me angry," he repeated, as +though the idea were thoroughly gratifying to him. "I know your game. +It's my stomach, I tell you. I can't help it. Before God, I can't! Isn't +it my stomach, Mary?" + +She glanced at George and spoke composedly, though she hid a trembling +hand in a fold of her skirt. + +"Isn't it time?" she asked softly. + +Her husband turned upon her savagely. "I'm not going to go!" he cried. +"That's just what I've been telling... him. And I tell you again, all of +you, I'm not going. You can't bully me." + +"Why, Al, dear, you said--" she began. + +"Never mind what I said!" he broke out. "I've said something else right +now, and you've heard it, and that settles it." + +He walked across the room and threw himself with emphasis into a Morris +chair. But the other man was swiftly upon him. The talon-like fingers +gripped his shoulders, jerked him to his feet, and held him there. + +"You've reached the limit, Al, and I want you to understand it. I've +tried to treat you like... like my brother, but hereafter I shall treat +you like the thing that you are. Do you understand?" + +The anger in his voice was cold. The blaze in his eyes was cold. It was +vastly more effective than any outburst, and Al cringed under it and +under the clutching hand that was bruising his shoulder muscles. + +"It is only because of me that you have this house, that you have the +food you eat. Your position? Any other man would have been shown the +door a year ago--two years ago. I have held you in it. Your salary has +been charity. It has been paid out of my pocket. Mary... her dresses... +that gown she has on is made over; she wears the discarded dresses of +her sisters, of my wife. Charity--do you understand? Your children--they +are wearing the discarded clothes of my children, of the children of my +neighbours who think the clothes went to some orphan asylum. And it is +an orphan asylum... or it soon will be." + +He emphasized each point with an unconscious tightening of his grip +on the shoulder. Al was squirming with the pain of it. The sweat was +starting out on his forehead. + +"Now listen well to me," his brother went on. "In three minutes you will +tell me that you are going with me. If you don't, Mary and the children +will be taken away from you--to-day. You needn't ever come to the +office. This house will be closed to you. And in six months I shall +have the pleasure of burying you. You have three minutes to make up your +mind." + +Al made a strangling movement, and reached up with weak fingers to the +clutching hand. + +"My heart... let me go... you'll be the death of me," he gasped. + +The hand thrust him down forcibly into the Morris chair and released +him. + +The clock on the mantle ticked loudly. George glanced at it, and +at Mary. She was leaning against the table, unable to conceal her +trembling. He became unpleasantly aware of the feeling of his brother's +fingers on his hand. Quite unconsciously he wiped the back of the hand +upon his coat. The clock ticked on in the silence. It seemed to George +that the room reverberated with his voice. He could hear himself still +speaking. + +"I'll go," came from the Morris chair. + +It was a weak and shaken voice, and it was a weak and shaken man that +pulled himself out of the Morris chair. He started toward the door. + +"Where are you going?" George demanded. + +"Suit case," came the response. "Mary'll send the trunk later. I'll be +back in a minute." + +The door closed after him. A moment later, struck with sudden suspicion, +George was opening the door. He glanced in. His brother stood at a +sideboard, in one hand a decanter, in the other hand, bottom up and to +his lips, a whisky glass. + +Across the glass Al saw that he was observed. It threw him into a panic. +Hastily he tried to refill the glass and get it to his lips; but glass +and decanter were sent smashing to the floor. He snarled. It was like +the sound of a wild beast. But the grip on his shoulder subdued and +frightened him. He was being propelled toward the door. + +"The suit case," he gasped. "It's there in that room. Let me get it." + +"Where's the key?" his brother asked, when he had brought it. + +"It isn't locked." + +The next moment the suit case was spread open, and George's hand was +searching the contents. From one side it brought out a bottle of whisky, +from the other side a flask. He snapped the case to. + +"Come on," he said. "If we miss one car, we miss that train." + +He went out into the hallway, leaving Al with his wife. It was like a +funeral, George thought, as he waited. + +His brother's overcoat caught on the knob of the front door and delayed +its closing long enough for Mary's first sob to come to their ears. +George's lips were very thin and compressed as he went down the steps. +In one hand he carried the suit case. With the other hand he held his +brother's arm. + +As they neared the corner, he heard the electric car a block away, +and urged his brother on. Al was breathing hard. His feet dragged and +shuffled, and he held back. + +"A hell of a brother YOU are," he panted. + +For reply, he received a vicious jerk on his arm. It reminded him of his +childhood when he was hurried along by some angry grown-up. And like a +child, he had to be helped up the car step. He sank down on an outside +seat, panting, sweating, overcome by the exertion. He followed George's +eyes as the latter looked him up and down. + +"A hell of a brother YOU are," was George's comment when he had finished +the inspection. + +Moisture welled into Al's eyes. + +"It's my stomach," he said with self-pity. + +"I don't wonder," was the retort. "Burnt out like the crater of a +volcano. Fervent heat isn't a circumstance." + +Thereafter they did not speak. When they arrived at the transfer point, +George came to himself with a start. He smiled. With fixed gaze that +did not see the houses that streamed across his field of vision, he had +himself been sunk deep in self-pity. He helped his brother from the car, +and looked up the intersecting street. The car they were to take was not +in sight. + +Al's eyes chanced upon the corner grocery and saloon across the way. +At once he became restless. His hands passed beyond his control, and he +yearned hungrily across the street to the door that swung open even as +he looked and let in a happy pilgrim. And in that instant he saw the +white-jacketed bartender against an array of glittering glass. Quite +unconsciously he started to cross the street. + +"Hold on." George's hand was on his arm. + +"I want some whisky," he answered. + +"You've already had some." + +"That was hours ago. Go on, George, let me have some. It's the last +day. Don't shut off on me until we get there--God knows it will be soon +enough." + +George glanced desperately up the street. The car was in sight. + +"There isn't time for a drink," he said. + +"I don't want a drink. I want a bottle." Al's voice became wheedling. +"Go on, George. It's the last, the very last." + +"No." The denial was as final as George's thin lips could make it. + +Al glanced at the approaching car. He sat down suddenly on the +curbstone. + +"What's the matter?" his brother asked, with momentary alarm. + +"Nothing. I want some whisky. It's my stomach." + +"Come on now, get up." + +George reached for him, but was anticipated, for his brother sprawled +flat on the pavement, oblivious to the dirt and to the curious glances +of the passers-by. The car was clanging its gong at the crossing, a +block away. + +"You'll miss it," Al grinned from the pavement. "And it will be your +fault." + +George's fists clenched tightly. + +"For two cents I'd give you a thrashing." + +"And miss the car," was the triumphant comment from the pavement. + +George looked at the car. It was halfway down the block. He looked at +his watch. He debated a second longer. + +"All right," he said. "I'll get it. But you get on that car. If you miss +it, I'll break the bottle over your head." + +He dashed across the street and into the saloon. The car came in and +stopped. There were no passengers to get off. Al dragged himself up the +steps and sat down. He smiled as the conductor rang the bell and the car +started. The swinging door of the saloon burst open. Clutching in +his hand the suit case and a pint bottle of whisky, George started in +pursuit. The conductor, his hand on the bell cord, waited to see if it +would be necessary to stop. It was not. George swung lightly aboard, sat +down beside his brother, and passed him the bottle. + +"You might have got a quart," Al said reproachfully. + +He extracted the cork with a pocket corkscrew, and elevated the bottle. + +"I'm sick... my stomach," he explained in apologetic tones to the +passenger who sat next to him. + +In the train they sat in the smoking-car. George felt that it was +imperative. Also, having successfully caught the train, his heart +softened. He felt more kindly toward his brother, and accused himself of +unnecessary harshness. He strove to atone by talking about their mother, +and sisters, and the little affairs and interests of the family. But Al +was morose, and devoted himself to the bottle. As the time passed, his +mouth hung looser and looser, while the rings under his eyes seemed to +puff out and all his facial muscles to relax. + +"It's my stomach," he said, once, when he finished the bottle and +dropped it under the seat; but the swift hardening of his brother's face +did not encourage further explanations. + +The conveyance that met them at the station had all the dignity and +luxuriousness of a private carriage. George's eyes were keen for the ear +marks of the institution to which they were going, but his apprehensions +were allayed from moment to moment. As they entered the wide gateway +and rolled on through the spacious grounds, he felt sure that the +institutional side of the place would not jar upon his brother. It was +more like a summer hotel, or, better yet, a country club. And as they +swept on through the spring sunshine, the songs of birds in his ears, +and in his nostrils the breath of flowers, George sighed for a week +of rest in such a place, and before his eyes loomed the arid vista of +summer in town and at the office. There was not room in his income for +his brother and himself. + +"Let us take a walk in the grounds," he suggested, after they had met +Doctor Bodineau and inspected the quarters assigned to Al. "The carriage +leaves for the station in half an hour, and we'll just have time." + +"It's beautiful," he remarked a moment later. Under his feet was +the velvet grass, the trees arched overhead, and he stood in mottled +sunshine. "I wish I could stay for a month." + +"I'll trade places with you," Al said quickly. + +George laughed it off, but he felt a sinking of the heart. + +"Look at that oak!" he cried. "And that woodpecker! Isn't he a beauty!" + +"I don't like it here," he heard his brother mutter. + +George's lips tightened in preparation for the struggle, but he said-- + +"I'm going to send Mary and the children off to the mountains. She needs +it, and so do they. And when you're in shape, I'll send you right on to +join them. Then you can take your summer vacation before you come back +to the office." + +"I'm not going to stay in this damned hole, for all you talk about it," +Al announced abruptly. + +"Yes you are, and you're going to get your health and strength back +again, so that the look of you will put the colour in Mary's cheeks +where it used to be." + +"I'm going back with you." Al's voice was firm. "I'm going to take the +same train back. It's about time for that carriage, I guess." + +"I haven't told you all my plans," George tried to go on, but Al cut him +off. + +"You might as well quit that. I don't want any of your soapy talking. +You treat me like a child. I'm not a child. My mind's made up, and I'll +show you how long it can stay made up. You needn't talk to me. I don't +care a rap for what you're going to say." + +A baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all +the world like a cornered rat, desperate and ready to fight. As George +looked at him he remembered back to their childhood, and it came to him +that at last was aroused in Al the same old stubborn strain that had +enabled him, as a child, to stand against all force and persuasion. + +George abandoned hope. He had lost. This creature was not human. The +last fine instinct of the human had fled. It was a brute, sluggish +and stolid, impossible to move--just the raw stuff of life, combative, +rebellious, and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt +in himself the rising up of a similar brute. He became suddenly aware +that his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew +the desire to kill. And his reason, turned traitor at last, counselled +that he should kill, that it was the only thing left for him to do. + +He was aroused by a servant calling to him through the trees that the +carriage was waiting. He answered. Then, looking straight before him, he +discovered his brother. He had forgotten it was his brother. It had been +only a thing the moment before. He began to talk, and as he talked the +way became clear to him. His reason had not turned traitor. The brute in +him had merely orientated his reason. + +"You are no earthly good, Al," he said. "You know that. You've made +Mary's life a hell. You are a curse to your children. And you have not +made life exactly a paradise for the rest of us." + +"There's no use your talking," Al interjected. "I'm not going to stay +here." + +"That's what I'm coming to," George continued. "You don't have to stay +here." (Al's face brightened, and he involuntarily made a movement, as +though about to start toward the carriage.) "On the other hand, it is +not necessary that you should return with me. There is another way." + +George's hand went to his hip pocket and appeared with a revolver. It +lay along his palm, the butt toward Al, and toward Al he extended it. At +the same time, with his head, he indicated the near-by thicket. + +"You can't bluff me," Al snarled. + +"It is not a bluff, Al. Look at me. I mean it. And if you don't do it +for yourself, I shall have to do it for you." + +They faced each other, the proffered revolver still extended. Al debated +for a moment, then his eyes blazed. With a quick movement he seized the +revolver. + +"My God! I'll do it," he said. "I'll show you what I've got in me." + +George felt suddenly sick. He turned away. He did not see his brother +enter the thicket, but he heard the passage of his body through the +leaves and branches. + +"Good-bye, Al," he called. + +"Good-bye," came from the thicket. + +George felt the sweat upon his forehead. He began mopping his face with +his handkerchief. He heard, as from a remote distance, the voice of +the servant again calling to him that the carriage was waiting. The +woodpecker dropped down through the mottled sunshine and lighted on the +trunk of a tree a dozen feet away. George felt that it was all a dream, +and yet through it all he felt supreme justification. It was the right +thing to do. It was the only thing. + +His whole body gave a spasmodic start, as though the revolver had been +fired. It was the voice of Al, close at his back. + +"Here's your gun," Al said. "I'll stay." + +The servant appeared among the trees, approaching rapidly and calling +anxiously. George put the weapon in his pocket and caught both his +brother's hands in his own. + +"God bless you, old man," he murmured; "and"--with a final squeeze of +the hands--"good luck!" + +"I'm coming," he called to the servant, and turned and ran through the +trees toward the carriage. + + + + +THE CHINAGO + + "The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs." + --Tahitian proverb. + +Ah Cho did not understand French. He sat in the crowded court room, very +weary and bored, listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now +one official and now another uttered. It was just so much gabble to Ah +Cho, and he marvelled at the stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long +to find out the murderer of Chung Ga, and who did not find him at all. +The five hundred coolies on the plantation knew that Ah San had done the +killing, and here was Ah San not even arrested. It was true that all +the coolies had agreed secretly not to testify against one another; but +then, it was so simple, the Frenchmen should have been able to discover +that Ah San was the man. They were very stupid, these Frenchmen. + +Ah Cho had done nothing of which to be afraid. He had had no hand in +the killing. It was true he had been present at it, and Schemmer, the +overseer on the plantation, had rushed into the barracks immediately +afterward and caught him there, along with four or five others; but what +of that? Chung Ga had been stabbed only twice. It stood to reason that +five or six men could not inflict two stab wounds. At the most, if a man +had struck but once, only two men could have done it. + +So it was that Ah Cho reasoned, when he, along with his four companions, +had lied and blocked and obfuscated in their statements to the court +concerning what had taken place. They had heard the sounds of the +killing, and, like Schemmer, they had run to the spot. They had got +there before Schemmer--that was all. True, Schemmer had testified that, +attracted by the sound of quarrelling as he chanced to pass by, he had +stood for at least five minutes outside; that then, when he entered, he +found the prisoners already inside; and that they had not entered just +before, because he had been standing by the one door to the barracks. +But what of that? Ah Cho and his four fellow-prisoners had testified +that Schemmer was mistaken. In the end they would be let go. They were +all confident of that. Five men could not have their heads cut off for +two stab wounds. Besides, no foreign devil had seen the killing. But +these Frenchmen were so stupid. In China, as Ah Cho well knew, the +magistrate would order all of them to the torture and learn the truth. +The truth was very easy to learn under torture. But these Frenchmen did +not torture--bigger fools they! Therefore they would never find out who +killed Chung Ga. + +But Ah Cho did not understand everything. The English Company that owned +the plantation had imported into Tahiti, at great expense, the five +hundred coolies. The stockholders were clamouring for dividends, and +the Company had not yet paid any; wherefore the Company did not want its +costly contract labourers to start the practice of killing one another. +Also, there were the French, eager and willing to impose upon the +Chinagos the virtues and excellences of French law. There was nothing +like setting an example once in a while; and, besides, of what use was +New Caledonia except to send men to live out their days in misery and +pain in payment of the penalty for being frail and human? + +Ah Cho did not understand all this. He sat in the court room and waited +for the baffled judgment that would set him and his comrades free to go +back to the plantation and work out the terms of their contracts. This +judgment would soon be rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close. He +could see that. There was no more testifying, no more gabble of tongues. +The French devils were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the +judgment. And as he waited he remembered back in his life to the time +when he had signed the contract and set sail in the ship for Tahiti. +Times had been hard in his sea-coast village, and when he indentured +himself to labour for five years in the South Seas at fifty cents +Mexican a day, he had thought himself fortunate. There were men in his +village who toiled a whole year for ten dollars Mexican, and there were +women who made nets all the year round for five dollars, while in the +houses of shopkeepers there were maidservants who received four dollars +for a year of service. And here he was to receive fifty cents a day; for +one day, only one day, he was to receive that princely sum! What if the +work were hard? At the end of the five years he would return home--that +was in the contract--and he would never have to work again. He would +be a rich man for life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children +growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he would have a +small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny +lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would +be a high wall all around so that his meditation and repose should be +undisturbed. + +Well, he had worked out three of those five years. He was already a +wealthy man (in his own country) through his earnings, and only two +years more intervened between the cotton plantation on Tahiti and the +meditation and repose that awaited him. But just now he was losing money +because of the unfortunate accident of being present at the killing of +Chung Ga. He had lain three weeks in prison, and for each day of those +three weeks he had lost fifty cents. But now judgment would soon be +given, and he would go back to work. + +Ah Cho was twenty-two years old. He was happy and good-natured, and it +was easy for him to smile. While his body was slim in the Asiatic way, +his face was rotund. It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a +gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual +among his countrymen. Nor did his looks belie him. He never caused +trouble, never took part in wrangling. He did not gamble. His soul was +not harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was +content with little things and simple pleasures. The hush and quiet in +the cool of the day after the blazing toil in the cotton field was +to him an infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a +solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles +of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery +splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the +lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of +wearisome days and of the heavy lash of Schemmer. + +Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute, a brutish brute. But he earned +his salary. He got the last particle of strength out of the five hundred +slaves; for slaves they were until their term of years was up. Schemmer +worked hard to extract the strength from those five hundred sweating +bodies and to transmute it into bales of fluffy cotton ready for export. +His dominant, iron-clad, primeval brutishness was what enabled him to +effect the transmutation. Also, he was assisted by a thick leather belt, +three inches wide and a yard in length, with which he always rode and +which, on occasion, could come down on the naked back of a stooping +coolie with a report like a pistol-shot. These reports were frequent +when Schemmer rode down the furrowed field. + +Once, at the beginning of the first year of contract labour, he had +killed a coolie with a single blow of his fist. He had not exactly +crushed the man's head like an egg-shell, but the blow had been +sufficient to addle what was inside, and, after being sick for a week, +the man had died. But the Chinese had not complained to the French +devils that ruled over Tahiti. It was their own look out. Schemmer was +their problem. They must avoid his wrath as they avoided the venom +of the centipedes that lurked in the grass or crept into the sleeping +quarters on rainy nights. The Chinagos--such they were called by +the indolent, brown-skinned island folk--saw to it that they did not +displease Schemmer too greatly. This was equivalent to rendering up to +him a full measure of efficient toil. That blow of Schemmer's fist had +been worth thousands of dollars to the Company, and no trouble ever came +of it to Schemmer. + +The French, with no instinct for colonization, futile in their childish +playgame of developing the resources of the island, were only too glad +to see the English Company succeed. What matter of Schemmer and his +redoubtable fist? The Chinago that died? Well, he was only a Chinago. +Besides, he died of sunstroke, as the doctor's certificate attested. +True, in all the history of Tahiti no one had ever died of sunstroke. +But it was that, precisely that, which made the death of this Chinago +unique. The doctor said as much in his report. He was very candid. +Dividends must be paid, or else one more failure would be added to the +long history of failure in Tahiti. + +There was no understanding these white devils. Ah Cho pondered their +inscrutableness as he sat in the court room waiting the judgment. There +was no telling what went on at the back of their minds. He had seen a +few of the white devils. They were all alike--the officers and sailors +on the ship, the French officials, the several white men on the +plantation, including Schemmer. Their minds all moved in mysterious ways +there was no getting at. They grew angry without apparent cause, and +their anger was always dangerous. They were like wild beasts at such +times. They worried about little things, and on occasion could out-toil +even a Chinago. They were not temperate as Chinagos were temperate; they +were gluttons, eating prodigiously and drinking more prodigiously. A +Chinago never knew when an act would please them or arouse a storm of +wrath. A Chinago could never tell. What pleased one time, the very next +time might provoke an outburst of anger. There was a curtain behind the +eyes of the white devils that screened the backs of their minds from the +Chinago's gaze. And then, on top of it all, was that terrible efficiency +of the white devils, that ability to do things, to make things go, to +work results, to bend to their wills all creeping, crawling things, +and the powers of the very elements themselves. Yes, the white men were +strange and wonderful, and they were devils. Look at Schemmer. + +Ah Cho wondered why the judgment was so long in forming. Not a man on +trial had laid hand on Chung Ga. Ah San alone had killed him. Ah San +had done it, bending Chung Ga's head back with one hand by a grip of his +queue, and with the other hand, from behind, reaching over and driving +the knife into his body. Twice had he driven it in. There in the court +room, with closed eyes, Ah Cho saw the killing acted over again--the +squabble, the vile words bandied back and forth, the filth and insult +flung upon venerable ancestors, the curses laid upon unbegotten +generations, the leap of Ah San, the grip on the queue of Chung Ga, the +knife that sank twice into his flesh, the bursting open of the door, the +irruption of Schemmer, the dash for the door, the escape of Ah San, the +flying belt of Schemmer that drove the rest into the corner, and the +firing of the revolver as a signal that brought help to Schemmer. Ah +Cho shivered as he lived it over. One blow of the belt had bruised his +cheek, taking off some of the skin. Schemmer had pointed to the bruises +when, on the witness-stand, he had identified Ah Cho. It was only just +now that the marks had become no longer visible. That had been a blow. +Half an inch nearer the centre and it would have taken out his eye. Then +Ah Cho forgot the whole happening in a vision he caught of the garden +of meditation and repose that would be his when he returned to his own +land. + +He sat with impassive face, while the magistrate rendered the judgment. +Likewise were the faces of his four companions impassive. And they +remained impassive when the interpreter explained that the five of them +had been found guilty of the murder of Chung Ga, and that Ah Chow +should have his head cut off, Ah Cho serve twenty years in prison in New +Caledonia, Wong Li twelve years, and Ah Tong ten years. There was no use +in getting excited about it. Even Ah Chow remained expressionless as +a mummy, though it was his head that was to be cut off. The magistrate +added a few words, and the interpreter explained that Ah Chow's face +having been most severely bruised by Schemmer's strap had made his +identification so positive that, since one man must die, he might as +well be that man. Also, the fact that Ah Cho's face likewise had been +severely bruised, conclusively proving his presence at the murder and +his undoubted participation, had merited him the twenty years of penal +servitude. And down to the ten years of Ah Tong, the proportioned reason +for each sentence was explained. Let the Chinagos take the lesson to +heart, the Court said finally, for they must learn that the law would be +fulfilled in Tahiti though the heavens fell. + +The five Chinagos were taken back to jail. They were not shocked +nor grieved. The sentences being unexpected was quite what they were +accustomed to in their dealings with the white devils. From them a +Chinago rarely expected more than the unexpected. The heavy punishment +for a crime they had not committed was no stranger than the countless +strange things that white devils did. In the weeks that followed, Ah Cho +often contemplated Ah Chow with mild curiosity. His head was to be cut +off by the guillotine that was being erected on the plantation. For him +there would be no declining years, no gardens of tranquillity. Ah Cho +philosophized and speculated about life and death. As for himself, he +was not perturbed. Twenty years were merely twenty years. By that much +was his garden removed from him--that was all. He was young, and the +patience of Asia was in his bones. He could wait those twenty years, and +by that time the heats of his blood would be assuaged and he would be +better fitted for that garden of calm delight. He thought of a name for +it; he would call it The Garden of the Morning Calm. He was made happy +all day by the thought, and he was inspired to devise a moral maxim on +the virtue of patience, which maxim proved a great comfort, especially +to Wong Li and Ah Tong. Ah Chow, however, did not care for the maxim. +His head was to be separated from his body in so short a time that he +had no need for patience to wait for that event. He smoked well, ate +well, slept well, and did not worry about the slow passage of time. + +Cruchot was a gendarme. He had seen twenty years of service in the +colonies, from Nigeria and Senegal to the South Seas, and those +twenty years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as +slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He +knew discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant +of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish +obedience which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked +bigger in his mind than God, except on Sundays when God's mouthpieces +had their say. God was usually very remote, while the sergeant was +ordinarily very close at hand. + +Cruchot it was who received the order from the Chief Justice to the +jailer commanding that functionary to deliver over to Cruchot the person +of Ah Chow. Now, it happened that the Chief Justice had given a dinner +the night before to the captain and officers of the French man-of-war. +His hand was shaking when he wrote out the order, and his eyes were +aching so dreadfully that he did not read over the order. It was only a +Chinago's life he was signing away, anyway. So he did not notice that he +had omitted the final letter in Ah Chow's name. The order read "Ah Cho," +and, when Cruchot presented the order, the jailer turned over to him the +person of Ah Cho. Cruchot took that person beside him on the seat of a +wagon, behind two mules, and drove away. + +Ah Cho was glad to be out in the sunshine. He sat beside the gendarme +and beamed. He beamed more ardently than ever when he noted the mules +headed south toward Atimaono. Undoubtedly Schemmer had sent for him to +be brought back. Schemmer wanted him to work. Very well, he would work +well. Schemmer would never have cause to complain. It was a hot day. +There had been a stoppage of the trades. The mules sweated, Cruchot +sweated, and Ah Cho sweated. But it was Ah Cho that bore the heat with +the least concern. He had toiled three years under that sun on the +plantation. He beamed and beamed with such genial good nature that even +Cruchot's heavy mind was stirred to wonderment. + +"You are very funny," he said at last. + +Ah Cho nodded and beamed more ardently. Unlike the magistrate, Cruchot +spoke to him in the Kanaka tongue, and this, like all Chinagos and all +foreign devils, Ah Cho understood. + +"You laugh too much," Cruchot chided. "One's heart should be full of +tears on a day like this." + +"I am glad to get out of the jail." + +"Is that all?" The gendarme shrugged his shoulders. + +"Is it not enough?" was the retort. + +"Then you are not glad to have your head cut off?" + +Ah Cho looked at him in abrupt perplexity, and said-- + +"Why, I am going back to Atimaono to work on the plantation for +Schemmer. Are you not taking me to Atimaono?" + +Cruchot stroked his long moustaches reflectively. "Well, well," he said +finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule, "so you don't know?" + +"Know what?" Ah Cho was beginning to feel a vague alarm. "Won't Schemmer +let me work for him any more?" + +"Not after to-day." Cruchot laughed heartily. It was a good joke. "You +see, you won't be able to work after to-day. A man with his head off +can't work, eh?" He poked the Chinago in the ribs, and chuckled. + +Ah Cho maintained silence while the mules trotted a hot mile. Then he +spoke: "Is Schemmer going to cut off my head?" + +Cruchot grinned as he nodded. + +"It is a mistake," said Ah Cho, gravely. "I am not the Chinago that +is to have his head cut off. I am Ah Cho. The honourable judge has +determined that I am to stop twenty years in New Caledonia." + +The gendarme laughed. It was a good joke, this funny Chinago trying to +cheat the guillotine. The mules trotted through a coconut grove and for +half a mile beside the sparkling sea before Ah Cho spoke again. + +"I tell you I am not Ah Chow. The honourable judge did not say that my +head was to go off." + +"Don't be afraid," said Cruchot, with the philanthropic intention of +making it easier for his prisoner. "It is not difficult to die that +way." He snapped his fingers. "It is quick--like that. It is not like +hanging on the end of a rope and kicking and making faces for five +minutes. It is like killing a chicken with a hatchet. You cut its head +off, that is all. And it is the same with a man. Pouf!--it is over. It +doesn't hurt. You don't even think it hurts. You don't think. Your head +is gone, so you cannot think. It is very good. That is the way I want to +die--quick, ah, quick. You are lucky to die that way. You might get the +leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a finger at a time, and now and again +a thumb, also the toes. I knew a man who was burned by hot water. It +took him two days to die. You could hear him yelling a kilometre away. +But you? Ah! so easy! Chck!--the knife cuts your neck like that. It is +finished. The knife may even tickle. Who can say? Nobody who died that +way ever came back to say." + +He considered this last an excruciating joke, and permitted himself +to be convulsed with laughter for half a minute. Part of his mirth was +assumed, but he considered it his humane duty to cheer up the Chinago. + +"But I tell you I am Ah Cho," the other persisted. "I don't want my head +cut off." + +Cruchot scowled. The Chinago was carrying the foolishness too far. + +"I am not Ah Chow--" Ah Cho began. + +"That will do," the gendarme interrupted. He puffed up his cheeks and +strove to appear fierce. + +"I tell you I am not--" Ah Cho began again. + +"Shut up!" bawled Cruchot. + +After that they rode along in silence. It was twenty miles from Papeete +to Atimaono, and over half the distance was covered by the time the +Chinago again ventured into speech. + +"I saw you in the court room, when the honourable judge sought after our +guilt," he began. "Very good. And do you remember that Ah Chow, whose +head is to be cut off--do you remember that he--Ah Chow--was a tall man? +Look at me." + +He stood up suddenly, and Cruchot saw that he was a short man. And just +as suddenly Cruchot caught a glimpse of a memory picture of Ah Chow, and +in that picture Ah Chow was tall. To the gendarme all Chinagos looked +alike. One face was like another. But between tallness and shortness he +could differentiate, and he knew that he had the wrong man beside him on +the seat. He pulled up the mules abruptly, so that the pole shot ahead +of them, elevating their collars. + +"You see, it was a mistake," said Ah Cho, smiling pleasantly. + +But Cruchot was thinking. Already he regretted that he had stopped the +wagon. He was unaware of the error of the Chief Justice, and he had +no way of working it out; but he did know that he had been given this +Chinago to take to Atimaono and that it was his duty to take him to +Atimaono. What if he was the wrong man and they cut his head off? It +was only a Chinago when all was said, and what was a Chinago, anyway? +Besides, it might not be a mistake. He did not know what went on in the +minds of his superiors. They knew their business best. Who was he to +do their thinking for them? Once, in the long ago, he had attempted to +think for them, and the sergeant had said: "Cruchot, you are a fool! The +quicker you know that, the better you will get on. You are not to think; +you are to obey and leave thinking to your betters." He smarted under +the recollection. Also, if he turned back to Papeete, he would delay the +execution at Atimaono, and if he were wrong in turning back, he would +get a reprimand from the sergeant who was waiting for the prisoner. And, +furthermore, he would get a reprimand at Papeete as well. + +He touched the mules with the whip and drove on. He looked at his watch. +He would be half an hour late as it was, and the sergeant was bound to +be angry. He put the mules into a faster trot. The more Ah Cho persisted +in explaining the mistake, the more stubborn Cruchot became. The +knowledge that he had the wrong man did not make his temper better. The +knowledge that it was through no mistake of his confirmed him in the +belief that the wrong he was doing was the right. And, rather than incur +the displeasure of the sergeant, he would willingly have assisted a +dozen wrong Chinagos to their doom. + +As for Ah Cho, after the gendarme had struck him over the head with the +butt of the whip and commanded him in a loud voice to shut up, there +remained nothing for him to do but to shut up. The long ride continued +in silence. Ah Cho pondered the strange ways of the foreign devils. +There was no explaining them. What they were doing with him was of a +piece with everything they did. First they found guilty five innocent +men, and next they cut off the head of the man that even they, in their +benighted ignorance, had deemed meritorious of no more than twenty +years' imprisonment. And there was nothing he could do. He could only +sit idly and take what these lords of life measured out to him. Once, he +got in a panic, and the sweat upon his body turned cold; but he fought +his way out of it. He endeavoured to resign himself to his fate by +remembering and repeating certain passages from the "Yin Chih Wen" ("The +Tract of the Quiet Way"); but, instead, he kept seeing his dream-garden +of meditation and repose. This bothered him, until he abandoned himself +to the dream and sat in his garden listening to the tinkling of the +windbells in the several trees. And lo! sitting thus, in the dream, +he was able to remember and repeat the passages from "The Tract of the +Quiet Way." + +So the time passed nicely until Atimaono was reached and the mules +trotted up to the foot of the scaffold, in the shade of which stood the +impatient sergeant. Ah Cho was hurried up the ladder of the scaffold. +Beneath him on one side he saw assembled all the coolies of the +plantation. Schemmer had decided that the event would be a good +object-lesson, and so he called in the coolies from the fields and +compelled them to be present. As they caught sight of Ah Cho they +gabbled among themselves in low voices. They saw the mistake; but they +kept it to themselves. The inexplicable white devils had doubtlessly +changed their minds. Instead of taking the life of one innocent man, +they were taking the life of another innocent man. Ah Chow or Ah +Cho--what did it matter which? They could never understand the white +dogs any more than could the white dogs understand them. Ah Cho was +going to have his head cut off, but they, when their two remaining years +of servitude were up, were going back to China. + +Schemmer had made the guillotine himself. He was a handy man, and though +he had never seen a guillotine, the French officials had explained the +principle to him. It was on his suggestion that they had ordered the +execution to take place at Atimaono instead of at Papeete. The scene +of the crime, Schemmer had argued, was the best possible place for the +punishment, and, in addition, it would have a salutary influence +upon the half-thousand Chinagos on the plantation. Schemmer had also +volunteered to act as executioner, and in that capacity he was now on +the scaffold, experimenting with the instrument he had made. A banana +tree, of the size and consistency of a man's neck, lay under the +guillotine. Ah Cho watched with fascinated eyes. The German, turning a +small crank, hoisted the blade to the top of the little derrick he had +rigged. A jerk on a stout piece of cord loosed the blade and it dropped +with a flash, neatly severing the banana trunk. + +"How does it work?" The sergeant, coming out on top the scaffold, had +asked the question. + +"Beautifully," was Schemmer's exultant answer. "Let me show you." + +Again he turned the crank that hoisted the blade, jerked the cord, and +sent the blade crashing down on the soft tree. But this time it went no +more than two-thirds of the way through. + +The sergeant scowled. "That will not serve," he said. + +Schemmer wiped the sweat from his forehead. "What it needs is more +weight," he announced. Walking up to the edge of the scaffold, he called +his orders to the blacksmith for a twenty-five-pound piece of iron. As +he stooped over to attach the iron to the broad top of the blade, Ah Cho +glanced at the sergeant and saw his opportunity. + +"The honourable judge said that Ah Chow was to have his head cut off," +he began. + +The sergeant nodded impatiently. He was thinking of the fifteen-mile +ride before him that afternoon, to the windward side of the island, and +of Berthe, the pretty half-caste daughter of Lafiere, the pearl-trader, +who was waiting for him at the end of it. + +"Well, I am not Ah Chow. I am Ah Cho. The honourable jailer has made a +mistake. Ah Chow is a tall man, and you see I am short." + +The sergeant looked at him hastily and saw the mistake. "Schemmer!" he +called, imperatively. "Come here." + +The German grunted, but remained bent over his task till the chunk +of iron was lashed to his satisfaction. "Is your Chinago ready?" he +demanded. + +"Look at him," was the answer. "Is he the Chinago?" + +Schemmer was surprised. He swore tersely for a few seconds, and looked +regretfully across at the thing he had made with his own hands and +which he was eager to see work. "Look here," he said finally, "we can't +postpone this affair. I've lost three hours' work already out of those +five hundred Chinagos. I can't afford to lose it all over again for the +right man. Let's put the performance through just the same. It is only a +Chinago." + +The sergeant remembered the long ride before him, and the pearl-trader's +daughter, and debated with himself. + +"They will blame it on Cruchot--if it is discovered," the German urged. +"But there's little chance of its being discovered. Ah Chow won't give +it away, at any rate." + +"The blame won't lie with Cruchot, anyway," the sergeant said. "It must +have been the jailer's mistake." + +"Then let's go on with it. They can't blame us. Who can tell one Chinago +from another? We can say that we merely carried out instructions with +the Chinago that was turned over to us. Besides, I really can't take all +those coolies a second time away from their labour." + +They spoke in French, and Ah Cho, who did not understand a word of it, +nevertheless knew that they were determining his destiny. He knew, +also, that the decision rested with the sergeant, and he hung upon that +official's lips. + +"All right," announced the sergeant. "Go ahead with it. He is only a +Chinago." + +"I'm going to try it once more, just to make sure." Schemmer moved the +banana trunk forward under the knife, which he had hoisted to the top of +the derrick. + +Ah Cho tried to remember maxims from "The Tract of the Quiet Way." "Live +in concord," came to him; but it was not applicable. He was not going to +live. He was about to die. No, that would not do. "Forgive malice"--yes, +but there was no malice to forgive. Schemmer and the rest were doing +this thing without malice. It was to them merely a piece of work that +had to be done, just as clearing the jungle, ditching the water, and +planting cotton were pieces of work that had to be done. Schemmer jerked +the cord, and Ah Cho forgot "The Tract of the Quiet Way." The knife shot +down with a thud, making a clean slice of the tree. + +"Beautiful!" exclaimed the sergeant, pausing in the act of lighting a +cigarette. "Beautiful, my friend." + +Schemmer was pleased at the praise. + +"Come on, Ah Chow," he said, in the Tahitian tongue. + +"But I am not Ah Chow--" Ah Cho began. + +"Shut up!" was the answer. "If you open your mouth again, I'll break +your head." + +The overseer threatened him with a clenched fist, and he remained +silent. What was the good of protesting? Those foreign devils always had +their way. He allowed himself to be lashed to the vertical board that +was the size of his body. Schemmer drew the buckles tight--so tight that +the straps cut into his flesh and hurt. But he did not complain. The +hurt would not last long. He felt the board tilting over in the air +toward the horizontal, and closed his eyes. And in that moment he caught +a last glimpse of his garden of meditation and repose. It seemed to him +that he sat in the garden. A cool wind was blowing, and the bells in +the several trees were tinkling softly. Also, birds were making sleepy +noises, and from beyond the high wall came the subdued sound of village +life. + +Then he was aware that the board had come to rest, and from muscular +pressures and tensions he knew that he was lying on his back. He opened +his eyes. Straight above him he saw the suspended knife blazing in the +sunshine. He saw the weight which had been added, and noted that one +of Schemmer's knots had slipped. Then he heard the sergeant's voice in +sharp command. Ah Cho closed his eyes hastily. He did not want to see +that knife descend. But he felt it--for one great fleeting instant. And +in that instant he remembered Cruchot and what Cruchot had said. But +Cruchot was wrong. The knife did not tickle. That much he knew before he +ceased to know. + + + + +MAKE WESTING + + Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! + --Sailing directions for Cape Horn. + +For seven weeks the Mary Rogers had been between 50 degrees south in the +Atlantic and 50 degrees south in the Pacific, which meant that for seven +weeks she had been struggling to round Cape Horn. For seven weeks +she had been either in dirt, or close to dirt, save once, and then, +following upon six days of excessive dirt, which she had ridden out +under the shelter of the redoubtable Terra del Fuego coast, she had +almost gone ashore during a heavy swell in the dead calm that had +suddenly fallen. For seven weeks she had wrestled with the Cape Horn +graybeards, and in return been buffeted and smashed by them. She was a +wooden ship, and her ceaseless straining had opened her seams, so that +twice a day the watch took its turn at the pumps. + +The Mary Rogers was strained, the crew was strained, and big Dan Cullen, +master, was likewise strained. Perhaps he was strained most of all, for +upon him rested the responsibility of that titanic struggle. He slept +most of the time in his clothes, though he rarely slept. He haunted the +deck at night, a great, burly, robust ghost, black with the sunburn +of thirty years of sea and hairy as an orang-outang. He, in turn, was +haunted by one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn: +Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! It was an obsession. He +thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending +such bitter weather. + +Make westing! He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with the +iron Cape bearing east-by-north, or north-north-east, a score of miles +away. And each time the eternal west wind smote him back and he made +easting. He fought gale after gale, south to 64 degrees, inside the +antarctic drift-ice, and pledged his immortal soul to the Powers of +Darkness for a bit of westing, for a slant to take him around. And he +made easting. In despair, he had tried to make the passage through the +Straits of Le Maire. Halfway through, the wind hauled to the north'ard +of north-west, the glass dropped to 28.88, and he turned and ran before +a gale of cyclonic fury, missing, by a hair's-breadth, piling up the +Mary Rogers on the black-toothed rocks. Twice he had made west to the +Diego Ramirez Rocks, one of the times saved between two snow-squalls by +sighting the gravestones of ships a quarter of a mile dead ahead. + +Blow! Captain Dan Cullen instanced all his thirty years at sea to prove +that never had it blown so before. The Mary Rogers was hove to at the +time he gave the evidence, and, to clinch it, inside half an hour the +Mary Rogers was hove down to the hatches. Her new maintopsail and brand +new spencer were blown away like tissue paper; and five sails, furled +and fast under double gaskets, were blown loose and stripped from the +yards. And before morning the Mary Rogers was hove down twice again, and +holes were knocked in her bulwarks to ease her decks from the weight of +ocean that pressed her down. + +On an average of once a week Captain Dan Cullen caught glimpses of the +sun. Once, for ten minutes, the sun shone at midday, and ten minutes +afterward a new gale was piping up, both watches were shortening sail, +and all was buried in the obscurity of a driving snow-squall. For +a fortnight, once, Captain Dan Cullen was without a meridian or a +chronometer sight. Rarely did he know his position within half of a +degree, except when in sight of land; for sun and stars remained hidden +behind the sky, and it was so gloomy that even at the best the horizons +were poor for accurate observations. A gray gloom shrouded the world. +The clouds were gray; the great driving seas were leaden gray; the +smoking crests were a gray churning; even the occasional albatrosses +were gray, while the snow-flurries were not white, but gray, under the +sombre pall of the heavens. + +Life on board the Mary Rogers was gray--gray and gloomy. The faces +of the sailors were blue-gray; they were afflicted with sea-cuts and +sea-boils, and suffered exquisitely. They were shadows of men. For seven +weeks, in the forecastle or on deck, they had not known what it was to +be dry. They had forgotten what it was to sleep out a watch, and all +watches it was, "All hands on deck!" They caught snatches of agonized +sleep, and they slept in their oilskins ready for the everlasting call. +So weak and worn were they that it took both watches to do the work of +one. That was why both watches were on deck so much of the time. And no +shadow of a man could shirk duty. Nothing less than a broken leg could +enable a man to knock off work; and there were two such, who had been +mauled and pulped by the seas that broke aboard. + +One other man who was the shadow of a man was George Dorety. He was the +only passenger on board, a friend of the firm, and he had elected to +make the voyage for his health. But seven weeks of Cape Horn had not +bettered his health. He gasped and panted in his bunk through the long, +heaving nights; and when on deck he was so bundled up for warmth that he +resembled a peripatetic old-clothes shop. At midday, eating at the cabin +table in a gloom so deep that the swinging sea-lamps burned always, he +looked as blue-gray as the sickest, saddest man for'ard. Nor did gazing +across the table at Captain Dan Cullen have any cheering effect upon +him. Captain Cullen chewed and scowled and kept silent. The scowls +were for God, and with every chew he reiterated the sole thought of his +existence, which was make westing. He was a big, hairy brute, and the +sight of him was not stimulating to the other's appetite. He looked +upon George Dorety as a Jonah, and told him so, once each meal, savagely +transferring the scowl from God to the passenger and back again. + +Nor did the mate prove a first aid to a languid appetite. Joshua +Higgins by name, a seaman by profession and pull, but a pot-wolloper +by capacity, he was a loose-jointed, sniffling creature, heartless and +selfish and cowardly, without a soul, in fear of his life of Dan Cullen, +and a bully over the sailors, who knew that behind the mate was Captain +Cullen, the law-giver and compeller, the driver and the destroyer, the +incarnation of a dozen bucko mates. In that wild weather at the southern +end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His grimy face usually +robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate. +Ordinarily this lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain +Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was filled with +making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory +thereto. Whether the mate's face was clean or dirty had no bearing +upon westing. Later on, when 50 degrees south in the Pacific had been +reached, Joshua Higgins would wash his face very abruptly. In the +meantime, at the cabin table, where gray twilight alternated with +lamplight while the lamps were being filled, George Dorety sat between +the two men, one a tiger and the other a hyena, and wondered why God had +made them. The second mate, Matthew Turner, was a true sailor and a man, +but George Dorety did not have the solace of his company, for he ate by +himself, solitary, when they had finished. + +On Saturday morning, July 24, George Dorety awoke to a feeling of life +and headlong movement. On deck he found the Mary Rogers running off +before a howling south-easter. Nothing was set but the lower topsails +and the foresail. It was all she could stand, yet she was making +fourteen knots, as Mr. Turner shouted in Dorety's ear when he came on +deck. And it was all westing. She was going around the Horn at last... +if the wind held. Mr. Turner looked happy. The end of the struggle was +in sight. But Captain Cullen did not look happy. He scowled at Dorety +in passing. Captain Cullen did not want God to know that he was pleased +with that wind. He had a conception of a malicious God, and believed +in his secret soul that if God knew it was a desirable wind, God would +promptly efface it and send a snorter from the west. So he walked softly +before God, smothering his joy down under scowls and muttered curses, +and, so, fooling God, for God was the only thing in the universe of +which Dan Cullen was afraid. + +All Saturday and Saturday night the Mary Rogers raced her westing. +Persistently she logged her fourteen knots, so that by Sunday morning +she had covered three hundred and fifty miles. If the wind held, she +would make around. If it failed, and the snorter came from anywhere +between south-west and north, back the Mary Rogers would be hurled and +be no better off than she had been seven weeks before. And on Sunday +morning the wind was failing. The big sea was going down and running +smooth. Both watches were on deck setting sail after sail as fast as the +ship could stand it. And now Captain Cullen went around brazenly before +God, smoking a big cigar, smiling jubilantly, as if the failing wind +delighted him, while down underneath he was raging against God for +taking the life out of the blessed wind. Make westing! So he would, if +God would only leave him alone. Secretly, he pledged himself anew to +the Powers of Darkness, if they would let him make westing. He pledged +himself so easily because he did not believe in the Powers of Darkness. +He really believed only in God, though he did not know it. And in his +inverted theology God was really the Prince of Darkness. Captain Cullen +was a devil-worshipper, but he called the devil by another name, that +was all. + +At midday, after calling eight bells, Captain Cullen ordered the royals +on. The men went aloft faster than they had gone in weeks. Not alone +were they nimble because of the westing, but a benignant sun was shining +down and limbering their stiff bodies. George Dorety stood aft, near +Captain Cullen, less bundled in clothes than usual, soaking in the +grateful warmth as he watched the scene. Swiftly and abruptly the +incident occurred. There was a cry from the foreroyal-yard of "Man +overboard!" Somebody threw a life-buoy over the side, and at the same +instant the second mate's voice came aft, ringing and peremptory-- + +"Hard down your helm!" + +The man at the wheel never moved a spoke. He knew better, for Captain +Dan Cullen was standing alongside of him. He wanted to move a spoke, to +move all the spokes, to grind the wheel down, hard down, for his comrade +drowning in the sea. He glanced at Captain Dan Cullen, and Captain Dan +Cullen gave no sign. + +"Down! Hard down!" the second mate roared, as he sprang aft. + +But he ceased springing and commanding, and stood still, when he saw +Dan Cullen by the wheel. And big Dan Cullen puffed at his cigar and said +nothing. Astern, and going astern fast, could be seen the sailor. He had +caught the life-buoy and was clinging to it. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. +The men aloft clung to the royal yards and watched with terror-stricken +faces. And the Mary Rogers raced on, making her westing. A long, silent +minute passed. + +"Who was it?" Captain Cullen demanded. + +"Mops, sir," eagerly answered the sailor at the wheel. + +Mops topped a wave astern and disappeared temporarily in the trough. +It was a large wave, but it was no graybeard. A small boat could live +easily in such a sea, and in such a sea the Mary Rogers could easily +come to. But she could not come to and make westing at the same time. + +For the first time in all his years, George Dorety was seeing a real +drama of life and death--a sordid little drama in which the scales +balanced an unknown sailor named Mops against a few miles of longitude. +At first he had watched the man astern, but now he watched big Dan +Cullen, hairy and black, vested with power of life and death, smoking a +cigar. + +Captain Dan Cullen smoked another long, silent minute. Then he removed +the cigar from his mouth. He glanced aloft at the spars of the Mary +Rogers, and overside at the sea. + +"Sheet home the royals!" he cried. + +Fifteen minutes later they sat at table, in the cabin, with food served +before them. On one side of George Dorety sat Dan Cullen, the tiger, on +the other side, Joshua Higgins, the hyena. Nobody spoke. On deck the men +were sheeting home the skysails. George Dorety could hear their cries, +while a persistent vision haunted him of a man called Mops, alive and +well, clinging to a life-buoy miles astern in that lonely ocean. He +glanced at Captain Cullen, and experienced a feeling of nausea, for the +man was eating his food with relish, almost bolting it. + +"Captain Cullen," Dorety said, "you are in command of this ship, and it +is not proper for me to comment now upon what you do. But I wish to say +one thing. There is a hereafter, and yours will be a hot one." + +Captain Cullen did not even scowl. In his voice was regret as he said-- + +"It was blowing a living gale. It was impossible to save the man." + +"He fell from the royal-yard," Dorety cried hotly. "You were setting +the royals at the time. Fifteen minutes afterward you were setting the +skysails." + +"It was a living gale, wasn't it, Mr. Higgins?" Captain Cullen said, +turning to the mate. + +"If you'd brought her to, it'd have taken the sticks out of her," was +the mate's answer. "You did the proper thing, Captain Cullen. The man +hadn't a ghost of a show." + +George Dorety made no answer, and to the meal's end no one spoke. After +that, Dorety had his meals served in his state-room. Captain Cullen +scowled at him no longer, though no speech was exchanged between them, +while the Mary Rogers sped north toward warmer latitudes. At the end of +the week, Dan Cullen cornered Dorety on deck. + +"What are you going to do when we get to 'Frisco?" he demanded bluntly. + +"I am going to swear out a warrant for your arrest," Dorety answered +quietly. "I am going to charge you with murder, and I am going to see +you hanged for it." + +"You're almighty sure of yourself," Captain Cullen sneered, turning on +his heel. + +A second week passed, and one morning found George Dorety standing in +the coach-house companionway at the for'ard end of the long poop, +taking his first gaze around the deck. The Mary Rogers was reaching +full-and-by, in a stiff breeze. Every sail was set and drawing, +including the staysails. Captain Cullen strolled for'ard along the poop. +He strolled carelessly, glancing at the passenger out of the corner +of his eye. Dorety was looking the other way, standing with head and +shoulders outside the companionway, and only the back of his head was to +be seen. Captain Cullen, with swift eye, embraced the mainstaysail-block +and the head and estimated the distance. He glanced about him. Nobody +was looking. Aft, Joshua Higgins, pacing up and down, had just turned +his back and was going the other way. Captain Cullen bent over suddenly +and cast the staysail-sheet off from its pin. The heavy block hurtled +through the air, smashing Dorety's head like an egg-shell and hurtling +on and back and forth as the staysail whipped and slatted in the wind. +Joshua Higgins turned around to see what had carried away, and met the +full blast of the vilest portion of Captain Cullen's profanity. + +"I made the sheet fast myself," whimpered the mate in the first lull, +"with an extra turn to make sure. I remember it distinctly." + +"Made fast?" the Captain snarled back, for the benefit of the watch as +it struggled to capture the flying sail before it tore to ribbons. "You +couldn't make your grandmother fast, you useless hell's scullion. If +you made that sheet fast with an extra turn, why in hell didn't it stay +fast? That's what I want to know. Why in hell didn't it stay fast?" + +The mate whined inarticulately. + +"Oh, shut up!" was the final word of Captain Cullen. + +Half an hour later he was as surprised as any when the body of George +Dorety was found inside the companionway on the floor. In the afternoon, +alone in his room, he doctored up the log. + +"Ordinary seaman, Karl Brun," he wrote, "lost overboard from +foreroyal-yard in a gale of wind. Was running at the time, and for the +safety of the ship did not dare come up to the wind. Nor could a boat +have lived in the sea that was running." + +On another page, he wrote + +"Had often warned Mr. Dorety about the danger he ran because of his +carelessness on deck. I told him, once, that some day he would get his +head knocked off by a block. A carelessly fastened mainstaysail sheet +was the cause of the accident, which was deeply to be regretted because +Mr. Dorety was a favourite with all of us." + +Captain Dan Cullen read over his literary effort with admiration, +blotted the page, and closed the log. He lighted a cigar and stared +before him. He felt the Mary Rogers lift, and heel, and surge along, +and knew that she was making nine knots. A smile of satisfaction slowly +dawned on his black and hairy face. Well, anyway, he had made his +westing and fooled God. + + + + +SEMPER IDEM + +Doctor Bicknell was in a remarkably gracious mood. Through a minor +accident, a slight bit of carelessness, that was all, a man who might +have pulled through had died the preceding night. Though it had been +only a sailorman, one of the innumerable unwashed, the steward of the +receiving hospital had been on the anxious seat all the morning. It was +not that the man had died that gave him discomfort, he knew the Doctor +too well for that, but his distress lay in the fact that the operation +had been done so well. One of the most delicate in surgery, it had been +as successful as it was clever and audacious. All had then depended upon +the treatment, the nurses, the steward. And the man had died. Nothing +much, a bit of carelessness, yet enough to bring the professional wrath +of Doctor Bicknell about his ears and to perturb the working of the +staff and nurses for twenty-four hours to come. + +But, as already stated, the Doctor was in a remarkably gracious mood. +When informed by the steward, in fear and trembling, of the man's +unexpected take-off, his lips did not so much as form one syllable of +censure; nay, they were so pursed that snatches of rag-time floated +softly from them, to be broken only by a pleasant query after the health +of the other's eldest-born. The steward, deeming it impossible that he +could have caught the gist of the case, repeated it. + +"Yes, yes," Doctor Bicknell said impatiently; "I understand. But how +about Semper Idem? Is he ready to leave?" + +"Yes. They're helping him dress now," the steward answered, passing on +to the round of his duties, content that peace still reigned within the +iodine-saturated walls. + +It was Semper Idem's recovery which had so fully compensated Doctor +Bicknell for the loss of the sailorman. Lives were to him as nothing, +the unpleasant but inevitable incidents of the profession, but cases, +ah, cases were everything. People who knew him were prone to brand him a +butcher, but his colleagues were at one in the belief that a bolder +and yet a more capable man never stood over the table. He was not an +imaginative man. He did not possess, and hence had no tolerance for, +emotion. His nature was accurate, precise, scientific. Men were to him +no more than pawns, without individuality or personal value. But as +cases it was different. The more broken a man was, the more precarious +his grip on life, the greater his significance in the eyes of Doctor +Bicknell. He would as readily forsake a poet laureate suffering from a +common accident for a nameless, mangled vagrant who defied every law of +life by refusing to die, as would a child forsake a Punch and Judy for a +circus. + +So it had been in the case of Semper Idem. The mystery of the man had +not appealed to him, nor had his silence and the veiled romance which +the yellow reporters had so sensationally and so fruitlessly exploited +in divers Sunday editions. But Semper Idem's throat had been cut. That +was the point. That was where his interest had centred. Cut from ear to +ear, and not one surgeon in a thousand to give a snap of the fingers +for his chance of recovery. But, thanks to the swift municipal ambulance +service and to Doctor Bicknell, he had been dragged back into the world +he had sought to leave. The Doctor's co-workers had shaken their heads +when the case was brought in. Impossible, they said. Throat, windpipe, +jugular, all but actually severed, and the loss of blood frightful. As +it was such a foregone conclusion, Doctor Bicknell had employed methods +and done things which made them, even in their professional capacities, +shudder. And lo! the man had recovered. + +So, on this morning that Semper Idem was to leave the hospital, hale +and hearty, Doctor Bicknell's geniality was in nowise disturbed by the +steward's report, and he proceeded cheerfully to bring order out of the +chaos of a child's body which had been ground and crunched beneath the +wheels of an electric car. + +As many will remember, the case of Semper Idem aroused a vast deal +of unseemly yet highly natural curiosity. He had been found in a slum +lodging, with throat cut as aforementioned, and blood dripping down upon +the inmates of the room below and disturbing their festivities. He had +evidently done the deed standing, with head bowed forward that he might +gaze his last upon a photograph which stood on the table propped against +a candlestick. It was this attitude which had made it possible for +Doctor Bicknell to save him. So terrific had been the sweep of the razor +that had he had his head thrown back, as he should have done to have +accomplished the act properly, with his neck stretched and the elastic +vascular walls distended, he would have of a certainty well-nigh +decapitated himself. + +At the hospital, during all the time he travelled the repugnant road +back to life, not a word had left his lips. Nor could anything be +learned of him by the sleuths detailed by the chief of police. Nobody +knew him, nor had ever seen or heard of him before. He was strictly, +uniquely, of the present. His clothes and surroundings were those of the +lowest labourer, his hands the hands of a gentleman. But not a shred +of writing was discovered, nothing, save in one particular, which would +serve to indicate his past or his position in life. + +And that one particular was the photograph. If it were at all a +likeness, the woman who gazed frankly out upon the onlooker from the +card-mount must have been a striking creature indeed. It was an amateur +production, for the detectives were baffled in that no professional +photographer's signature or studio was appended. Across a corner of the +mount, in delicate feminine tracery, was written: "Semper idem; semper +fidelis." And she looked it. As many recollect, it was a face one could +never forget. Clever half-tones, remarkably like, were published in all +the leading papers at the time; but such procedure gave rise to nothing +but the uncontrollable public curiosity and interminable copy to the +space-writers. + +For want of a better name, the rescued suicide was known to the hospital +attendants, and to the world, as Semper Idem. And Semper Idem he +remained. Reporters, detectives, and nurses gave him up in despair. +Not one word could he be persuaded to utter; yet the flitting conscious +light of his eyes showed that his ears heard and his brain grasped every +question put to him. + +But this mystery and romance played no part in Doctor Bicknell's +interest when he paused in the office to have a parting word with his +patient. He, the Doctor, had performed a prodigy in the matter of this +man, done what was virtually unprecedented in the annals of surgery. He +did not care who or what the man was, and it was highly improbable +that he should ever see him again; but, like the artist gazing upon a +finished creation, he wished to look for the last time upon the work of +his hand and brain. + +Semper Idem still remained mute. He seemed anxious to be gone. Not a +word could the Doctor extract from him, and little the Doctor cared. +He examined the throat of the convalescent carefully, idling over the +hideous scar with the lingering, half-caressing fondness of a parent. +It was not a particularly pleasing sight. An angry line circled the +throat--for all the world as though the man had just escaped the +hangman's noose--and, disappearing below the ear on either side, had the +appearance of completing the fiery periphery at the nape of the neck. + +Maintaining his dogged silence, yielding to the other's examination in +much the manner of a leashed lion, Semper Idem betrayed only his desire +to drop from out of the public eye. + +"Well, I'll not keep you," Doctor Bicknell finally said, laying a hand +on the man's shoulder and stealing a last glance at his own handiwork. +"But let me give you a bit of advice. Next time you try it on, hold +your chin up, so. Don't snuggle it down and butcher yourself like a cow. +Neatness and despatch, you know. Neatness and despatch." + +Semper Idem's eyes flashed in token that he heard, and a moment later +the hospital door swung to on his heel. + +It was a busy day for Doctor Bicknell, and the afternoon was well along +when he lighted a cigar preparatory to leaving the table upon which it +seemed the sufferers almost clamoured to be laid. But the last one, an +old rag-picker with a broken shoulder-blade, had been disposed of, and +the first fragrant smoke wreaths had begun to curl about his head, when +the gong of a hurrying ambulance came through the open window from +the street, followed by the inevitable entry of the stretcher with its +ghastly freight. + +"Lay it on the table," the Doctor directed, turning for a moment to +place his cigar in safety. "What is it?" + +"Suicide--throat cut," responded one of the stretcher bearers. "Down on +Morgan Alley. Little hope, I think, sir. He's 'most gone." + +"Eh? Well, I'll give him a look, anyway." He leaned over the man at the +moment when the quick made its last faint flutter and succumbed. + +"It's Semper Idem come back again," the steward said. + +"Ay," replied Doctor Bicknell, "and gone again. No bungling this time. +Properly done, upon my life, sir, properly done. Took my advice to the +letter. I'm not required here. Take it along to the morgue." + +Doctor Bicknell secured his cigar and relighted it. "That," he said +between the puffs, looking at the steward, "that evens up for the one +you lost last night. We're quits now." + + + + +A NOSE FOR THE KING + +In the morning calm of Korea, when its peace and tranquillity truly +merited its ancient name, "Cho-sen," there lived a politician by name Yi +Chin Ho. He was a man of parts, and--who shall say?--perhaps in no wise +worse than politicians the world over. But, unlike his brethren in other +lands, Yi Chin Ho was in jail. Not that he had inadvertently diverted to +himself public moneys, but that he had inadvertently diverted too much. +Excess is to be deplored in all things, even in grafting, and Yi Chin +Ho's excess had brought him to most deplorable straits. + +Ten thousand strings of cash he owed the Government, and he lay +in prison under sentence of death. There was one advantage to the +situation--he had plenty of time in which to think. And he thought well. +Then called he the jailer to him. + +"Most worthy man, you see before you one most wretched," he began. "Yet +all will be well with me if you will but let me go free for one short +hour this night. And all will be well with you, for I shall see to +your advancement through the years, and you shall come at length to the +directorship of all the prisons of Cho-sen." + +"How now?" demanded the jailer. "What foolishness is this? One short +hour, and you but waiting for your head to be chopped off! And I, with +an aged and much-to-be-respected mother, not to say anything of a wife +and several children of tender years! Out upon you for the scoundrel +that you are!" + +"From the Sacred City to the ends of all the Eight Coasts there is no +place for me to hide," Yi Chin Ho made reply. "I am a man of wisdom, but +of what worth my wisdom here in prison? Were I free, well I know I could +seek out and obtain the money wherewith to repay the Government. I know +of a nose that will save me from all my difficulties." + +"A nose!" cried the jailer. + +"A nose," said Yi Chin Ho. "A remarkable nose, if I may say so, a most +remarkable nose." + +The jailer threw up his hands despairingly. "Ah, what a wag you are, +what a wag," he laughed. "To think that that very admirable wit of yours +must go the way of the chopping-block!" + +And so saying, he turned and went away. But in the end, being a man soft +of head and heart, when the night was well along he permitted Yi Chin Ho +to go. + +Straight he went to the Governor, catching him alone and arousing him +from his sleep. + +"Yi Chin Ho, or I'm no Governor!" cried the Governor. "What do you here +who should be in prison waiting on the chopping-block?" + +"I pray Your Excellency to listen to me," said Yi Chin Ho, squatting on +his hams by the bedside and lighting his pipe from the fire-box. "A dead +man is without value. It is true, I am as a dead man, without value to +the Government, to Your Excellency, or to myself. But if, so to say, +Your Excellency were to give me my freedom--" + +"Impossible!" cried the Governor. "Beside, you are condemned to death." + +"Your Excellency well knows that if I can repay the ten thousand strings +of cash, the Government will pardon me," Yi Chin Ho went on. "So, as I +say, if Your Excellency were to give me my freedom for a few days, being +a man of understanding, I should then repay the Government and be in +position to be of service to Your Excellency. I should be in position to +be of very great service to Your Excellency." + +"Have you a plan whereby you hope to obtain this money?" asked the +Governor. + +"I have," said Yi Chin Ho. + +"Then come with it to me to-morrow night; I would now sleep," said the +Governor, taking up his snore where it had been interrupted. + +On the following night, having again obtained leave of absence from the +jailer, Yi Chin Ho presented himself at the Governor's bedside. + +"Is it you, Yi Chin Ho?" asked the Governor. "And have you the plan?" + +"It is I, Your Excellency," answered Yi Chin Ho, "and the plan is here." + +"Speak," commanded the Governor. + +"The plan is here," repeated Yi Chin Ho, "here in my hand." + +The Governor sat up and opened his eyes. Yi Chin Ho proffered in his +hand a sheet of paper. The Governor held it to the light. + +"Nothing but a nose," said he. + +"A bit pinched, so, and so, Your Excellency," said Yi Chin Ho. + +"Yes, a bit pinched here and there, as you say," said the Governor. + +"Withal it is an exceeding corpulent nose, thus, and so, all in one +place, at the end," proceeded Yi Chin Ho. "Your Excellency would seek +far and wide and many a day for that nose and find it not!" + +"An unusual nose," admitted the Governor. + +"There is a wart upon it," said Yi Chin Ho. + +"A most unusual nose," said the Governor. "Never have I seen the like. +But what do you with this nose, Yi Chin Ho?" + +"I seek it whereby to repay the money to the Government," said Yi Chin +Ho. "I seek it to be of service to Your Excellency, and I seek it to +save my own worthless head. Further, I seek Your Excellency's seal upon +this picture of the nose." + +And the Governor laughed and affixed the seal of State, and Yi Chin Ho +departed. For a month and a day he travelled the King's Road which leads +to the shore of the Eastern Sea; and there, one night, at the gate of +the largest mansion of a wealthy city he knocked loudly for admittance. + +"None other than the master of the house will I see," said he fiercely +to the frightened servants. "I travel upon the King's business." + +Straightway was he led to an inner room, where the master of the house +was roused from his sleep and brought blinking before him. + +"You are Pak Chung Chang, head man of this city," said Yi Chin Ho in +tones that were all-accusing. "I am upon the King's business." + +Pak Chung Chang trembled. Well he knew the King's business was ever a +terrible business. His knees smote together, and he near fell to the +floor. + +"The hour is late," he quavered. "Were it not well to--" + +"The King's business never waits!" thundered Yi Chin Ho. "Come apart +with me, and swiftly. I have an affair of moment to discuss with you. + +"It is the King's affair," he added with even greater fierceness; so +that Pak Chung Chang's silver pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers +and clattered on the floor. + +"Know then," said Yi Chin Ho, when they had gone apart, "that the King +is troubled with an affliction, a very terrible affliction. In that he +failed to cure, the Court physician has had nothing else than his head +chopped off. From all the Eight Provinces have the physicians come to +wait upon the King. Wise consultation have they held, and they have +decided that for a remedy for the King's affliction nothing else is +required than a nose, a certain kind of nose, a very peculiar certain +kind of nose. + +"Then by none other was I summoned than His Excellency the Prime +Minister himself. He put a paper into my hand. Upon this paper was +the very peculiar kind of nose drawn by the physicians of the Eight +Provinces, with the seal of State upon it. + +"'Go,' said His Excellency the Prime Minister. 'Seek out this nose, for +the King's affliction is sore. And wheresoever you find this nose upon +the face of a man, strike it off forthright and bring it in all haste to +the Court, for the King must be cured. Go, and come not back until your +search is rewarded.' + +"And so I departed upon my quest," said Yi Chin Ho. "I have sought +out the remotest corners of the kingdom; I have travelled the Eight +Highways, searched the Eight Provinces, and sailed the seas of the Eight +Coasts. And here I am." + +With a great flourish he drew a paper from his girdle, unrolled it with +many snappings and cracklings, and thrust it before the face of Pak +Chung Chang. Upon the paper was the picture of the nose. + +Pak Chung Chang stared upon it with bulging eyes. + +"Never have I beheld such a nose," he began. + +"There is a wart upon it," said Yi Chin Ho. + +"Never have I beheld--" Pak Chung Chang began again. + +"Bring your father before me," Yi Chin Ho interrupted sternly. + +"My ancient and very-much-to-be-respected ancestor sleeps," said Pak +Chung Chang. + +"Why dissemble?" demanded Yi Chin Ho. "You know it is your father's +nose. Bring him before me that I may strike it off and be gone. Hurry, +lest I make bad report of you." + +"Mercy!" cried Pak Chung Chang, falling on his knees. "It is impossible! +It is impossible! You cannot strike off my father's nose. He cannot +go down without his nose to the grave. He will become a laughter and a +byword, and all my days and nights will be filled with woe. O reflect! +Report that you have seen no such nose in your travels. You, too, have a +father." + +Pak Chung Chang clasped Yi Chin Ho's knees and fell to weeping on his +sandals. + +"My heart softens strangely at your tears," said Yi Chin Ho. "I, too, +know filial piety and regard. But--" He hesitated, then added, as though +thinking aloud, "It is as much as my head is worth." + +"How much is your head worth?" asked Pak Chung Chang in a thin, small +voice. + +"A not remarkable head," said Yi Chin Ho. "An absurdly unremarkable +head; but, such is my great foolishness, I value it at nothing less than +one hundred thousand strings of cash." + +"So be it," said Pak Chung Chang, rising to his feet. + +"I shall need horses to carry the treasure," said Yi Chin Ho, "and men +to guard it well as I journey through the mountains. There are robbers +abroad in the land." + +"There are robbers abroad in the land," said Pak Chung Chang, +sadly. "But it shall be as you wish, so long as my ancient and +very-much-to-be-respected ancestor's nose abide in its appointed place." + +"Say nothing to any man of this occurrence," said Yi Chin Ho, "else will +other and more loyal servants than I be sent to strike off your father's +nose." + +And so Yi Chin Ho departed on his way through the mountains, blithe +of heart and gay of song as he listened to the jingling bells of his +treasure-laden ponies. + +There is little more to tell. Yi Chin Ho prospered through the years. By +his efforts the jailer attained at length to the directorship of all the +prisons of Cho-sen; the Governor ultimately betook himself to the Sacred +City to be Prime Minister to the King, while Yi Chin Ho became the +King's boon companion and sat at table with him to the end of a round, +fat life. But Pak Chung Chang fell into a melancholy, and ever after he +shook his head sadly, with tears in his eyes, whenever he regarded the +expensive nose of his ancient and very-much-to-be-respected ancestor. + + + + +THE "FRANCIS SPAIGHT" + +(A TRUE TALE RETOLD) + +The Francis Spaight was running before it solely under a mizzentopsail, +when the thing happened. It was not due to carelessness so much as +to the lack of discipline of the crew and to the fact that they were +indifferent seamen at best. The man at the wheel in particular, a +Limerick man, had had no experience with salt water beyond that of +rafting timber on the Shannon between the Quebec vessels and the shore. +He was afraid of the huge seas that rose out of the murk astern and +bore down upon him, and he was more given to cowering away from their +threatened impact than he was to meeting their blows with the wheel and +checking the ship's rush to broach to. + +It was three in the morning when his unseamanlike conduct precipitated +the catastrophe. At sight of a sea far larger than its fellows, he +crouched down, releasing his hands from the spokes. The Francis Spaight +sheered as her stern lifted on the sea, receiving the full fling of the +cap on her quarter. The next instant she was in the trough, her lee-rail +buried till the ocean was level with her hatch-coamings, sea after sea +breaking over her weather rail and sweeping what remained exposed of the +deck with icy deluges. + +The men were out of hand, helpless and hopeless, stupid in their +bewilderment and fear, and resolute only in that they would not obey +orders. Some wailed, others clung silently in the weather shrouds, and +still others muttered prayers or shrieked vile imprecations; and neither +captain nor mate could get them to bear a hand at the pumps or at +setting patches of sails to bring the vessel up to the wind and sea. +Inside the hour the ship was over on her beam ends, the lubberly cowards +climbing up her side and hanging on in the rigging. When she went over, +the mate was caught and drowned in the after-cabin, as were two sailors +who had sought refuge in the forecastle. + +The mate had been the ablest man on board, and the captain was now +scarcely less helpless than his men. Beyond cursing them for their +worthlessness, he did nothing; and it remained for a man named Mahoney, +a Belfast man, and a boy, O'Brien, of Limerick, to cut away the fore and +main masts. This they did at great risk on the perpendicular wall of the +wreck, sending the mizzentopmast overside along in the general crash. +The Francis Spaight righted, and it was well that she was lumber +laden, else she would have sunk, for she was already water-logged. +The mainmast, still fast by the shrouds, beat like a thunderous +sledge-hammer against the ship's side, every stroke bringing groans from +the men. + +Day dawned on the savage ocean, and in the cold gray light all that +could be seen of the Francis Spaight emerging from the sea were the +poop, the shattered mizzenmast, and a ragged line of bulwarks. It was +midwinter in the North Atlantic, and the wretched men were half-dead +from cold. But there was no place where they could find rest. Every sea +breached clean over the wreck, washing away the salt incrustations from +their bodies and depositing fresh incrustations. The cabin under the +poop was awash to the knees, but here at least was shelter from the +chill wind, and here the survivors congregated, standing upright, +holding on by the cabin furnishings, and leaning against one another for +support. + +In vain Mahoney strove to get the men to take turns in watching aloft +from the mizzenmast for any chance vessel. The icy gale was too much for +them, and they preferred the shelter of the cabin. O'Brien, the boy, who +was only fifteen, took turns with Mahoney on the freezing perch. It was +the boy, at three in the afternoon, who called down that he had sighted +a sail. This did bring them from the cabin, and they crowded the poop +rail and weather mizzen shrouds as they watched the strange ship. But +its course did not lie near, and when it disappeared below the skyline, +they returned shivering to the cabin, not one offering to relieve the +watch at the mast head. + +By the end of the second day, Mahoney and O'Brien gave up their attempt, +and thereafter the vessel drifted in the gale uncared for and without a +lookout. There were thirteen alive, and for seventy-two hours they stood +knee-deep in the sloshing water on the cabin floor, half-frozen, without +food, and with but three bottles of wine shared among them. All food and +fresh water were below, and there was no getting at such supplies in +the water-logged condition of the wreck. As the days went by, no food +whatever passed their lips. Fresh water, in small quantities, they were +able to obtain by holding a cover of a tureen under the saddle of the +mizzenmast. But the rain fell infrequently, and they were hard put. When +it rained, they also soaked their handkerchiefs, squeezing them out into +their mouths or into their shoes. As the wind and sea went down, they +were even able to mop the exposed portions of the deck that were free +from brine and so add to their water supply. But food they had none, and +no way of getting it, though sea-birds flew repeatedly overhead. + +In the calm weather that followed the gale, after having remained on +their feet for ninety-six hours, they were able to find dry planks in +the cabin on which to lie. But the long hours of standing in the salt +water had caused sores to form on their legs. These sores were extremely +painful. The slightest contact or scrape caused severe anguish, and in +their weak condition and crowded situation they were continually hurting +one another in this manner. Not a man could move about without being +followed by volleys of abuse, curses, and groans. So great was their +misery that the strong oppressed the weak, shoving them aside from +the dry planks to shift for themselves in the cold and wet. The boy, +O'Brien, was specially maltreated. Though there were three other +boys, it was O'Brien who came in for most of the abuse. There was no +explaining it, except on the ground that his was a stronger and more +dominant spirit than those of the other boys, and that he stood up more +for his rights, resenting the petty injustices that were meted out to +all the boys by the men. Whenever O'Brien came near the men in search +of a dry place to sleep, or merely moved about, he was kicked and cuffed +away. In return, he cursed them for their selfish brutishness, and blows +and kicks and curses were rained upon him. Miserable as were all of +them, he was thus made far more miserable; and it was only the flame of +life, unusually strong in him, that enabled him to endure. + +As the days went by and they grew weaker, their peevishness and +ill-temper increased, which, in turn, increased the ill-treatment and +sufferings of O'Brien. By the sixteenth day all hands were far gone with +hunger, and they stood together in small groups, talking in undertones +and occasionally glancing at O'Brien. It was at high noon that the +conference came to a head. The captain was the spokesman. All were +collected on the poop. + +"Men," the captain began, "we have been a long time without food--two +weeks and two days it is, though it seems more like two years and two +months. We can't hang out much longer. It is beyond human nature to go +on hanging out with nothing in our stomachs. There is a serious question +to consider: whether it is better for all to die, or for one to die. We +are standing with our feet in our graves. If one of us dies, the rest +may live until a ship is sighted. What say you?" + +Michael Behane, the man who had been at the wheel when the Francis +Spaight broached to, called out that it was well. The others joined in +the cry. + +"Let it be one of the b'ys!" cried Sullivan, a Tarbert man, glancing at +the same time significantly at O'Brien. + +"It is my opinion," the captain went on, "that it will be a good deed +for one of us to die for the rest." + +"A good deed! A good deed!" the men interjected. + +"And it is my opinion that 'tis best for one of the boys to die. They +have no families to support, nor would they be considered so great a +loss to their friends as those who have wives and children." + +"'Tis right." "Very right." "Very fit it should be done," the men +muttered one to another. + +But the four boys cried out against the injustice of it. + +"Our lives is just as dear to us as the rest iv yez," O'Brien protested. +"An' our famblies, too. As for wives an' childer, who is there savin' +meself to care for me old mother that's a widow, as you know well, +Michael Behane, that comes from Limerick? 'Tis not fair. Let the lots be +drawn between all of us, men and b'ys." + +Mahoney was the only man who spoke in favour of the boys, declaring that +it was the fair thing for all to share alike. Sullivan and the captain +insisted on the drawing of lots being confined to the boys. There +were high words, in the midst of which Sullivan turned upon O'Brien, +snarling-- + +"'Twould be a good deed to put you out of the way. You deserve it. +'Twould be the right way to serve you, an' serve you we will." + +He started toward O'Brien, with intent to lay hands on him and proceed +at once with the killing, while several others likewise shuffled toward +him and reached for him. He stumbled backwards to escape them, at the +same time crying that he would submit to the drawing of the lots among +the boys. + +The captain prepared four sticks of different lengths and handed them to +Sullivan. + +"You're thinkin' the drawin'll not be fair," the latter sneered to +O'Brien. "So it's yerself'll do the drawin'." + +To this O'Brien agreed. A handkerchief was tied over his eyes, +blindfolding him, and he knelt down on the deck with his back to +Sullivan. + +"Whoever you name for the shortest stick'll die," the captain said. + +Sullivan held up one of the sticks. The rest were concealed in his hand +so that no one could see whether it was the short stick or not. + +"An' whose stick will it be?" Sullivan demanded. + +"For little Johnny Sheehan," O'Brien answered. + +Sullivan laid the stick aside. Those who looked could not tell if it +were the fatal one. Sullivan held up another stick. + +"Whose will it be?" + +"For George Burns," was the reply. + +The stick was laid with the first one, and a third held up. + +"An' whose is this wan?" + +"For myself," said O'Brien. + +With a quick movement, Sullivan threw the four sticks together. No one +had seen. + +"'Tis for yourself ye've drawn it," Sullivan announced. + +"A good deed," several of the men muttered. + +O'Brien was very quiet. He arose to his feet, took the bandage off, and +looked around. + +"Where is ut?" he demanded. "The short stick? The wan for me?" + +The captain pointed to the four sticks lying on the deck. + +"How do you know the stick was mine?" O'Brien questioned. "Did you see +ut, Johnny Sheehan?" + +Johnny Sheehan, who was the youngest of the boys, did not answer. + +"Did you see ut?" O'Brien next asked Mahoney. + +"No, I didn't see ut." + +The men were muttering and growling. + +"'Twas a fair drawin'," Sullivan said. "Ye had yer chanct an' ye lost, +that's all iv ut." + +"A fair drawin'," the captain added. "Didn't I behold it myself? The +stick was yours, O'Brien, an' ye may as well get ready. Where's the +cook? Gorman, come here. Fetch the tureen cover, some of ye. Gorman, do +your duty like a man." + +"But how'll I do it," the cook demanded. He was a weak-eyed, +weak-chinned, indecisive man. + +"'Tis a damned murder!" O'Brien cried out. + +"I'll have none of ut," Mahoney announced. "Not a bite shall pass me +lips." + +"Then 'tis yer share for better men than yerself," Sullivan sneered. "Go +on with yer duty, cook." + +"'Tis not me duty, the killin' of b'ys," Gorman protested irresolutely. + +"If yez don't make mate for us, we'll be makin' mate of yerself," Behane +threatened. "Somebody must die, an' as well you as another." + +Johnny Sheehan began to cry. O'Brien listened anxiously. His face was +pale. His lips trembled, and at times his whole body shook. + +"I signed on as cook," Gorman enounced. "An' cook I wud if galley there +was. But I'll not lay me hand to murder. 'Tis not in the articles. I'm +the cook--" + +"An' cook ye'll be for wan minute more only," Sullivan said grimly, at +the same moment gripping the cook's head from behind and bending it back +till the windpipe and jugular were stretched taut. "Where's yer knife, +Mike? Pass it along." + +At the touch of the steel, Gorman whimpered. + +"I'll do ut, if yez'll hold the b'y." + +The pitiable condition of the cook seemed in some fashion to nerve up +O'Brien. + +"It's all right, Gorman," he said. "Go on with ut. 'Tis meself knows yer +not wantin' to do ut. It's all right, sir"--this to the captain, who +had laid a hand heavily on his arm. "Ye won't have to hold me, sir. I'll +stand still." + +"Stop yer blitherin', an' go an' get the tureen cover," Behane commanded +Johnny Sheehan, at the same time dealing him a heavy cuff alongside the +head. + +The boy, who was scarcely more than a child, fetched the cover. He +crawled and tottered along the deck, so weak was he from hunger. The +tears still ran down his cheeks. Behane took the cover from him, at the +same time administering another cuff. + +O'Brien took off his coat and bared his right arm. His under lip still +trembled, but he held a tight grip on himself. The captain's penknife +was opened and passed to Gorman. + +"Mahoney, tell me mother what happened to me, if ever ye get back," +O'Brien requested. + +Mahoney nodded. + +"'Tis black murder, black an' damned," he said. "The b'y's flesh'll do +none iv yez anny good. Mark me words. Ye'll not profit by it, none iv +yez." + +"Get ready," the captain ordered. "You, Sullivan, hold the cover--that's +it--close up. Spill nothing. It's precious stuff." + +Gorman made an effort. The knife was dull. He was weak. Besides, his +hand was shaking so violently that he nearly dropped the knife. The +three boys were crouched apart, in a huddle, crying and sobbing. With +the exception of Mahoney, the men were gathered about the victim, +craning their necks to see. + +"Be a man, Gorman," the captain cautioned. + +The wretched cook was seized with a spasm of resolution, sawing back +and forth with the blade on O'Brien's wrist. The veins were severed. +Sullivan held the tureen cover close underneath. The cut veins gaped +wide, but no ruddy flood gushed forth. There was no blood at all. The +veins were dry and empty. No one spoke. The grim and silent figures +swayed in unison with each heave of the ship. Every eye was turned +fixedly upon that inconceivable and monstrous thing, the dry veins of a +creature that was alive. + +"'Tis a warnin'," Mahoney cried. "Lave the b'y alone. Mark me words. His +death'll do none iv yez anny good." + +"Try at the elbow--the left elbow, 'tis nearer the heart," the captain +said finally, in a dim and husky voice that was unlike his own. + +"Give me the knife," O'Brien said roughly, taking it out of the cook's +hand. "I can't be lookin' at ye puttin' me to hurt." + +Quite coolly he cut the vein at the left elbow, but, like the cook, he +failed to bring blood. + +"This is all iv no use," Sullivan said. "'Tis better to put him out iv +his misery by bleedin' him at the throat." + +The strain had been too much for the lad. + +"Don't be doin' ut," he cried. "There'll be no blood in me throat. Give +me a little time. 'Tis cold an' weak I am. Be lettin' me lay down an' +slape a bit. Then I'll be warm an' the blood'll flow." + +"'Tis no use," Sullivan objected. "As if ye cud be slapin' at a time +like this. Ye'll not slape, and ye'll not warm up. Look at ye now. +You've an ague." + +"I was sick at Limerick wan night," O'Brien hurried on, "an' the dochtor +cudn't bleed me. But after slapin' a few hours an' gettin' warm in +bed the blood came freely. It's God's truth I'm tellin' yez. Don't be +murderin' me!" + +"His veins are open now," the captain said. "'Tis no use leavin' him in +his pain. Do it now an' be done with it." + +They started to reach for O'Brien, but he backed away. + +"I'll be the death iv yez!" he screamed. "Take yer hands off iv me, +Sullivan! I'll come back! I'll haunt yez! Wakin' or slapin', I'll haunt +yez till you die!" + +"'Tis disgraceful!" yelled Behane. "If the short stick'd ben mine, I'd +a-let me mates cut the head off iv me an' died happy." + +Sullivan leaped in and caught the unhappy lad by the hair. The rest of +the men followed, O'Brien kicked and struggled, snarling and snapping at +the hands that clutched him from every side. Little Johnny Sheehan broke +out into wild screaming, but the men took no notice of him. O'Brien was +bent backward to the deck, the tureen cover under his neck. Gorman was +shoved forward. Some one had thrust a large sheath-knife into his hand. + +"Do yer duty! Do yer duty!" the men cried. + +The cook bent over, but he caught the boy's eyes and faltered. + +"If ye don't, I'll kill ye with me own hands," Behane shouted. + +From every side a torrent of abuse and threats poured in upon the cook. +Still he hung back. + +"Maybe there'll be more blood in his veins than O'Brien's," Sullivan +suggested significantly. + +Behane caught Gorman by the hair and twisted his head back, while +Sullivan attempted to take possession of the sheath-knife. But Gorman +clung to it desperately. + +"Lave go, an' I'll do ut!" he screamed frantically. "Don't be cuttin' me +throat! I'll do the deed! I'll do the deed!" + +"See that you do it, then," the captain threatened him. + +Gorman allowed himself to be shoved forward. He looked at the boy, +closed his eyes, and muttered a prayer. Then, without opening his eyes, +he did the deed that had been appointed him. O'Brien emitted a shriek +that sank swiftly to a gurgling sob. The men held him till his struggles +ceased, when he was laid upon the deck. They were eager and impatient, +and with oaths and threats they urged Gorman to hurry with the +preparation of the meal. + +"Lave ut, you bloody butchers," Mahoney said quietly. "Lave ut, I tell +yez. Ye'll not be needin' anny iv ut now. 'Tis as I said: ye'll not +be profitin' by the lad's blood. Empty ut overside, Behane. Empty ut +overside." + +Behane, still holding the tureen cover in both his hands, glanced to +windward. He walked to the rail and threw the cover and contents into +the sea. A full-rigged ship was bearing down upon them a short mile +away. So occupied had they been with the deed just committed, that +none had had eyes for a lookout. All hands watched her coming on--the +brightly coppered forefoot parting the water like a golden knife, the +headsails flapping lazily and emptily at each downward surge, and the +towering canvas tiers dipping and curtsying with each stately swing of +the sea. No man spoke. + +As she hove to, a cable length away, the captain of the Francis Spaight +bestirred himself and ordered a tarpaulin to be thrown over O'Brien's +corpse. A boat was lowered from the stranger's side and began to pull +toward them. John Gorman laughed. He laughed softly at first, but he +accompanied each stroke of the oars with spasmodically increasing glee. +It was this maniacal laughter that greeted the rescue boat as it hauled +alongside and the first officer clambered on board. + + + + +A CURIOUS FRAGMENT + + [The capitalist, or industrial oligarch, Roger Vanderwater, + mentioned in the narrative, has been identified as the ninth + in the line of the Vanderwaters that controlled for hundreds + of years the cotton factories of the South. This Roger + Vanderwater flourished in the last decades of the twenty- + sixth century after Christ, which was the fifth century of + the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the + ruins of the early Republic. + + From internal evidences we are convinced that the narrative + which follows was not reduced to writing till the twenty- + ninth century. Not only was it unlawful to write or print + such matter during that period, but the working-class was so + illiterate that only in rare instances were its members able + to read and write. This was the dark reign of the overman, + in whose speech the great mass of the people were + characterized as the "herd animals." All literacy was + frowned upon and stamped out. From the statute-books of the + times may be instanced that black law that made it a capital + offence for any man, no matter of what class, to teach even + the alphabet to a member of the working-class. Such + stringent limitation of education to the ruling class was + necessary if that class was to continue to rule. + + One result of the foregoing was the development of the + professional story-tellers. These story-tellers were paid by + the oligarchy, and the tales they told were legendary, + mythical, romantic, and harmless. But the spirit of freedom + never quite died out, and agitators, under the guise of + story-tellers, preached revolt to the slave class. That the + following tale was banned by the oligarchs we have proof + from the records of the criminal police court of Ashbury, + wherein, on January 27, 2734, one John Tourney, found guilty + of telling the tale in a boozing-ken of labourers, was + sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines + of the Arizona Desert.--EDITOR'S NOTE.] + + +Listen, my brothers, and I will tell you a tale of an arm. It was the +arm of Tom Dixon, and Tom Dixon was a weaver of the first class in a +factory of that hell-hound and master, Roger Vanderwater. This factory +was called "Hell's Bottom"... by the slaves who toiled in it, and I +guess they ought to know; and it was situated in Kingsbury, at the other +end of the town from Vanderwater's summer palace. You do not know where +Kingsbury is? There are many things, my brothers, that you do not know, +and it is sad. It is because you do not know that you are slaves. When I +have told you this tale, I should like to form a class among you for the +learning of written and printed speech. Our masters read and write and +possess many books, and it is because of that that they are our masters, +and live in palaces, and do not work. When the toilers learn to read +and write--all of them--they will grow strong; then they will use their +strength to break their bonds, and there will be no more masters and no +more slaves. + +Kingsbury, my brothers, is in the old State of Alabama. For three +hundred years the Vanderwaters have owned Kingsbury and its slave pens +and factories, and slave pens and factories in many other places and +States. You have heard of the Vanderwaters--who has not?--but let me +tell you things you do not know about them. The first Vanderwater was +a slave, even as you and I. Have you got that? He was a slave, and that +was over three hundred years ago. His father was a machinist in the +slave pen of Alexander Burrell, and his mother was a washerwoman in the +same slave pen. There is no doubt about this. I am telling you truth. It +is history. It is printed, every word of it, in the history books of our +masters, which you cannot read because your masters will not permit you +to learn to read. You can understand why they will not permit you to +learn to read, when there are such things in the books. They know, and +they are very wise. If you did read such things, you might be wanting +in respect to your masters, which would be a dangerous thing... to your +masters. But I know, for I can read, and I am telling you what I have +read with my own eyes in the history books of our masters. + +The first Vanderwater's name was not Vanderwater; it was Vange--Bill +Vange, the son of Yergis Vange, the machinist, and Laura Carnly, the +washerwoman. Young Bill Vange was strong. He might have remained with +the slaves and led them to freedom; instead, however, he served the +masters and was well rewarded. He began his service, when yet a small +child, as a spy in his home slave pen. He is known to have informed on +his own father for seditious utterance. This is fact. I have read it +with my own eyes in the records. He was too good a slave for the slave +pen. Alexander Burrell took him out, while yet a child, and he was +taught to read and write. He was taught many things, and he was entered +in the secret service of the Government. Of course, he no longer wore +the slave dress, except for disguise at such times when he sought to +penetrate the secrets and plots of the slaves. It was he, when but +eighteen years of age, who brought that great hero and comrade, Ralph +Jacobus, to trial and execution in the electric chair. Of course, you +have all heard the sacred name of Ralph Jacobus, but it is news to you +that he was brought to his death by the first Vanderwater, whose +name was Vange. I know. I have read it in the books. There are many +interesting things like that in the books. + +And after Ralph Jacobus died his shameful death, Bill Vange's name began +the many changes it was to undergo. He was known as "Sly Vange" far and +wide. He rose high in the secret service, and he was rewarded in grand +ways, but still he was not a member of the master class. The men were +willing that he should become so; it was the women of the master class +who refused to have Sly Vange one of them. Sly Vange gave good service +to the masters. He had been a slave himself, and he knew the ways of the +slaves. There was no fooling him. In those days the slaves were braver +than now, and they were always trying for their freedom. And Sly Vange +was everywhere, in all their schemes and plans, bringing their schemes +and plans to naught and their leaders to the electric chair. It was in +2255 that his name was next changed for him. It was in that year that +the Great Mutiny took place. In that region west of the Rocky Mountains, +seventeen millions of slaves strove bravely to overthrow their masters. +Who knows, if Sly Vange had not lived, but that they would have +succeeded? But Sly Vange was very much alive. The masters gave him +supreme command of the situation. In eight months of fighting, one +million and three hundred and fifty thousand slaves were killed. Vange, +Bill Vange, Sly Vange, killed them, and he broke the Great Mutiny. And +he was greatly rewarded, and so red were his hands with the blood of +the slaves that thereafter he was called "Bloody Vange." You see, my +brothers, what interesting things are to be found in the books when one +can read them. And, take my word for it, there are many other things, +even more interesting, in the books. And if you will but study with me, +in a year's time you can read those books for yourselves--ay, in six +months some of you will be able to read those books for yourselves. + +Bloody Vange lived to a ripe old age, and always, to the last, was he +received in the councils of the masters; but never was he made a master +himself. He had first opened his eyes, you see, in a slave pen. But oh, +he was well rewarded! He had a dozen palaces in which to live. He, who +was no master, owned thousands of slaves. He had a great pleasure yacht +upon the sea that was a floating palace, and he owned a whole island in +the sea where toiled ten thousand slaves on his coffee plantations. But +in his old age he was lonely, for he lived apart, hated by his brothers, +the slaves, and looked down upon by those he had served and who refused +to be his brothers. The masters looked down upon him because he had +been born a slave. Enormously wealthy he died; but he died horribly, +tormented by his conscience, regretting all he had done and the red +stain on his name. + +But with his children it was different. They had not been born in the +slave pen, and by the special ruling of the Chief Oligarch of that time, +John Morrison, they were elevated to the master class. And it was then +that the name of Vange disappears from the page of history. It becomes +Vanderwater, and Jason Vange, the son of Bloody Vange, becomes Jason +Vanderwater, the founder of the Vanderwater line. But that was +three hundred years ago, and the Vanderwaters of to-day forget their +beginnings and imagine that somehow the clay of their bodies is +different stuff from the clay in your body and mine and in the bodies +of all slaves. And I ask you, Why should a slave become the master of +another slave? And why should the son of a slave become the master of +many slaves? I leave these questions for you to answer for yourselves, +but do not forget that in the beginning the Vanderwaters were slaves. + +And now, my brothers, I come back to the beginning of my tale to tell +you of Tom Dixon's arm. Roger Vanderwater's factory in Kingsbury was +rightly named "Hell's Bottom," but the men who toiled in it were men, as +you shall see. Women toiled there, too, and children, little children. +All that toiled there had the regular slave rights under the law, but +only under the law, for they were deprived of many of their rights by +the two overseers of Hell's Bottom, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster. + +It is a long story, but I shall not tell all of it to you. I shall tell +only about the arm. It happened that, according to the law, a portion of +the starvation wage of the slaves was held back each month and put +into a fund. This fund was for the purpose of helping such unfortunate +fellow-workmen as happened to be injured by accidents or to be overtaken +by sickness. As you know with yourselves, these funds are controlled +by the overseers. It is the law, and so it was that the fund at Hell's +Bottom was controlled by the two overseers of accursed memory. + +Now, Clancy and Munster took this fund for their own use. When accidents +happened to the workmen, their fellows, as was the custom, made grants +from the fund; but the overseers refused to pay over the grants. What +could the slaves do? They had their rights under the law, but they +had no access to the law. Those that complained to the overseers were +punished. You know yourselves what form such punishment takes--the fines +for faulty work that is not faulty; the overcharging of accounts in the +Company's store; the vile treatment of one's women and children; and the +allotment to bad machines whereon, work as one will, he starves. + +Once, the slaves of Hell's Bottom protested to Vanderwater. It was the +time of the year when he spent several months in Kingsbury. One of the +slaves could write; it chanced that his mother could write, and she had +secretly taught him as her mother had secretly taught her. So this slave +wrote a round robin, wherein was contained their grievances, and all the +slaves signed by mark. And, with proper stamps upon the envelope, the +round robin was mailed to Roger Vanderwater. And Roger Vanderwater did +nothing, save to turn the round robin over to the two overseers. Clancy +and Munster were angered. They turned the guards loose at night on the +slave pen. The guards were armed with pick handles. It is said that next +day only half of the slaves were able to work in Hell's Bottom. They +were well beaten. The slave who could write was so badly beaten that he +lived only three months. But before he died, he wrote once more, to what +purpose you shall hear. + +Four or five weeks afterward, Tom Dixon, a slave, had his arm torn off +by a belt in Hell's Bottom. His fellow-workmen, as usual, made a grant +to him from the fund, and Clancy and Munster, as usual, refused to pay +it over from the fund. The slave who could write, and who even then was +dying, wrote anew a recital of their grievances. And this document was +thrust into the hand of the arm that had been torn from Tom Dixon's +body. + +Now it chanced that Roger Vanderwater was lying ill in his palace at the +other end of Kingsbury--not the dire illness that strikes down you and +me, brothers; just a bit of biliousness, mayhap, or no more than a bad +headache because he had eaten too heartily or drunk too deeply. But it +was enough for him, being tender and soft from careful rearing. Such +men, packed in cotton wool all their lives, are exceeding tender and +soft. Believe me, brothers, Roger Vanderwater felt as badly with his +aching head, or THOUGHT he felt as badly, as Tom Dixon really felt with +his arm torn out by the roots. + +It happened that Roger Vanderwater was fond of scientific farming, and +that on his farm, three miles outside of Kingsbury, he had managed to +grow a new kind of strawberry. He was very proud of that new strawberry +of his, and he would have been out to see and pick the first ripe ones, +had it not been for his illness. Because of his illness he had ordered +the old farm slave to bring in personally the first box of the berries. +All this was learned from the gossip of a palace scullion, who slept +each night in the slave pen. The overseer of the plantation should have +brought in the berries, but he was on his back with a broken leg from +trying to break a colt. The scullion brought the word in the night, and +it was known that next day the berries would come in. And the men in the +slave pen of Hell's Bottom, being men and not cowards, held a council. + +The slave who could write, and who was sick and dying from the +pick-handle beating, said he would carry Tom Dixon's arm; also, he said +he must die anyway, and that it mattered nothing if he died a little +sooner. So five slaves stole from the slave pen that night after the +guards had made their last rounds. One of the slaves was the man who +could write. They lay in the brush by the roadside until late in the +morning, when the old farm slave came driving to town with the precious +fruit for the master. What of the farm slave being old and rheumatic, +and of the slave who could write being stiff and injured from his +beating, they moved their bodies about when they walked, very much in +the same fashion. The slave who could write put on the other's clothes, +pulled the broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, climbed upon the seat of the +wagon, and drove on to town. The old farm slave was kept tied all day +in the bushes until evening, when the others loosed him and went back to +the slave pen to take their punishment for having broken bounds. + +In the meantime, Roger Vanderwater lay waiting for the berries in his +wonderful bedroom--such wonders and such comforts were there that they +would have blinded the eyes of you and me who have never seen such +things. The slave who could write said afterward that it was like +a glimpse of Paradise! And why not? The labour and the lives of ten +thousand slaves had gone to the making of that bedchamber, while they +themselves slept in vile lairs like wild beasts. The slave who could +write brought in the berries on a silver tray or platter--you see, Roger +Vanderwater wanted to speak with him in person about the berries. + +The slave who could write tottered his dying body across the wonderful +room and knelt by the couch of Vanderwater, holding out before him the +tray. Large green leaves covered the top of the tray, and these the +body-servant alongside whisked away so that Vanderwater could see. +And Roger Vanderwater, propped upon his elbow, saw. He saw the fresh, +wonderful fruit lying there like precious jewels, and in the midst of it +the arm of Tom Dixon as it had been torn from his body, well washed, +of course, my brothers, and very white against the blood-red fruit. And +also he saw, clutched in the stiff, dead fingers, the petition of his +slaves who toiled in Hell's Bottom. + +"Take and read," said the slave who could write. And even as the master +took the petition, the body-servant, who till then had been motionless +with surprise, struck with his fist the kneeling slave upon the mouth. +The slave was dying anyway, and was very weak, and did not mind. He made +no sound, and, having fallen over on his side, he lay there quietly, +bleeding from the blow on the mouth. The physician, who had run for the +palace guards, came back with them, and the slave was dragged upright +upon his feet. But as they dragged him up, his hand clutched Tom Dixon's +arm from where it had fallen on the floor. + +"He shall be flung alive to the hounds!" the body-servant was crying in +great wrath. "He shall be flung alive to the hounds!" + +But Roger Vanderwater, forgetting his headache, still leaning on his +elbow, commanded silence, and went on reading the petition. And while +he read, there was silence, all standing upright, the wrathful +body-servant, the physician, the palace guards, and in their midst the +slave, bleeding at the mouth and still holding Tom Dixon's arm. And when +Roger Vanderwater had done, he turned upon the slave, saying-- + +"If in this paper there be one lie, you shall be sorry that you were +ever born." + +And the slave said, "I have been sorry all my life that I was born." + +Roger Vanderwater looked at him closely, and the slave said-- + +"You have done your worst to me. I am dying now. In a week I shall be +dead, so it does not matter if you kill me now." + +"What do you with that?" the master asked, pointing to the arm; and the +slave made answer-- + +"I take it back to the pen to give it burial. Tom Dixon was my friend. +We worked beside each other at our looms." + +There is little more to my tale, brothers. The slave and the arm were +sent back in a cart to the pen. Nor were any of the slaves punished for +what they had done. Indeed, Roger Vanderwater made investigation and +punished the two overseers, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster. Their +freeholds were taken from them. They were branded, each upon the +forehead, their right hands were cut off, and they were turned loose +upon the highway to wander and beg until they died. And the fund was +managed rightfully thereafter for a time--for a time only, my brothers; +for after Roger Vanderwater came his son, Albert, who was a cruel master +and half mad. + +Brothers, that slave who carried the arm into the presence of the master +was my father. He was a brave man. And even as his mother secretly +taught him to read, so did he teach me. Because he died shortly after +from the pick-handle beating, Roger Vanderwater took me out of the slave +pen and tried to make various better things out of me. I might +have become an overseer in Hell's Bottom, but I chose to become a +story-teller, wandering over the land and getting close to my brothers, +the slaves, everywhere. And I tell you stories like this, secretly, +knowing that you will not betray me; for if you did, you know as well as +I that my tongue will be torn out and that I shall tell stories no more. +And my message is, brothers, that there is a good time coming, when all +will be well in the world and there will be neither masters nor slaves. +But first you must prepare for that good time by learning to read. There +is power in the printed word. And here am I to teach you to read, and as +well there are others to see that you get the books when I am gone +along upon my way--the history books wherein you will learn about your +masters, and learn to become strong even as they. + +[EDITOR'S NOTE.--From "Historical Fragments and Sketches," first +published in fifty volumes in 4427, and now, after two hundred years, +because of its accuracy and value, edited and republished by the +National Committee on Historical Research.] + + + + +A PIECE OF STEAK + +With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last +particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and +meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the +feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two +children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in +sleep they might forget they had gone supperless. His wife had touched +nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes. She +was a thin, worn woman of the working-class, though signs of an earlier +prettiness were not wanting in her face. The flour for the gravy she had +borrowed from the neighbour across the hall. The last two ha'pennies had +gone to buy the bread. + +He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his +weight, and quite mechanically he put his pipe in his mouth and dipped +into the side pocket of his coat. The absence of any tobacco made him +aware of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the +pipe away. His movements were slow, almost hulking, as though he were +burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solid-bodied, +stolid-looking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being +overprepossessing. His rough clothes were old and slouchy. The uppers of +his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy re-soling that was itself +of no recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two shilling affair, +showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains. + +But it was Tom King's face that advertised him unmistakably for what he +was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in +long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed +and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a +lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it +was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless and constituted a mouth harsh +to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, +brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost +expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he +was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were +sleepy, lion-like--the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted +quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a +villainous-looking head. A nose twice broken and moulded variously +by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and +distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, +fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a +blue-black stain. + +Altogether, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a dark alley or +lonely place. And yet Tom King was not a criminal, nor had he ever done +anything criminal. Outside of brawls, common to his walk in life, he had +harmed no one. Nor had he ever been known to pick a quarrel. He was a +professional, and all the fighting brutishness of him was reserved +for his professional appearances. Outside the ring he was slow-going, +easy-natured, and, in his younger days, when money was flush, too +open-handed for his own good. He bore no grudges and had few enemies. +Fighting was a business with him. In the ring he struck to hurt, struck +to maim, struck to destroy; but there was no animus in it. It was +a plain business proposition. Audiences assembled and paid for the +spectacle of men knocking each other out. The winner took the big end of +the purse. When Tom King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years +before, he knew that the Gouger's jaw was only four months healed after +having been broken in a Newcastle bout. And he had played for that jaw +and broken it again in the ninth round, not because he bore the Gouger +any ill-will, but because that was the surest way to put the Gouger +out and win the big end of the purse. Nor had the Gouger borne him any +ill-will for it. It was the game, and both knew the game and played it. + +Tom King had never been a talker, and he sat by the window, morosely +silent, staring at his hands. The veins stood out on the backs of the +hands, large and swollen; and the knuckles, smashed and battered and +malformed, testified to the use to which they had been put. He had never +heard that a man's life was the life of his arteries, but well he knew +the meaning of those big upstanding veins. His heart had pumped too much +blood through them at top pressure. They no longer did the work. He +had stretched the elasticity out of them, and with their distension had +passed his endurance. He tired easily now. No longer could he do a fast +twenty rounds, hammer and tongs, fight, fight, fight, from gong to gong, +with fierce rally on top of fierce rally, beaten to the ropes and +in turn beating his opponent to the ropes, and rallying fiercest and +fastest of all in that last, twentieth round, with the house on its +feet and yelling, himself rushing, striking, ducking, raining showers +of blows upon showers of blows and receiving showers of blows in return, +and all the time the heart faithfully pumping the surging blood through +the adequate veins. The veins, swollen at the time, had always +shrunk down again, though each time, imperceptibly at first, not +quite--remaining just a trifle larger than before. He stared at them and +at his battered knuckles, and, for the moment, caught a vision of the +youthful excellence of those hands before the first knuckle had been +smashed on the head of Benny Jones, otherwise known as the Welsh Terror. + +The impression of his hunger came back on him. + +"Blimey, but couldn't I go a piece of steak!" he muttered aloud, +clenching his huge fists and spitting out a smothered oath. + +"I tried both Burke's an' Sawley's," his wife said half apologetically. + +"An' they wouldn't?" he demanded. + +"Not a ha'penny. Burke said--" She faltered. + +"G'wan! Wot'd he say?" + +"As how 'e was thinkin' Sandel ud do ye to-night, an' as how yer score +was comfortable big as it was." + +Tom King grunted, but did not reply. He was busy thinking of the bull +terrier he had kept in his younger days to which he had fed steaks +without end. Burke would have given him credit for a thousand +steaks--then. But times had changed. Tom King was getting old; and old +men, fighting before second-rate clubs, couldn't expect to run bills of +any size with the tradesmen. + +He had got up in the morning with a longing for a piece of steak, and +the longing had not abated. He had not had a fair training for this +fight. It was a drought year in Australia, times were hard, and even +the most irregular work was difficult to find. He had had no sparring +partner, and his food had not been of the best nor always sufficient. +He had done a few days' navvy work when he could get it, and he had run +around the Domain in the early mornings to get his legs in shape. But +it was hard, training without a partner and with a wife and two kiddies +that must be fed. Credit with the tradesmen had undergone very slight +expansion when he was matched with Sandel. The secretary of the Gayety +Club had advanced him three pounds--the loser's end of the purse--and +beyond that had refused to go. Now and again he had managed to borrow a +few shillings from old pals, who would have lent more only that it was a +drought year and they were hard put themselves. No--and there was no +use in disguising the fact--his training had not been satisfactory. +He should have had better food and no worries. Besides, when a man is +forty, it is harder to get into condition than when he is twenty. + +"What time is it, Lizzie?" he asked. + +His wife went across the hall to inquire, and came back. + +"Quarter before eight." + +"They'll be startin' the first bout in a few minutes," he said. "Only a +try-out. Then there's a four-round spar 'tween Dealer Wells an' Gridley, +an' a ten-round go 'tween Starlight an' some sailor bloke. I don't come +on for over an hour." + +At the end of another silent ten minutes, he rose to his feet. + +"Truth is, Lizzie, I ain't had proper trainin'." + +He reached for his hat and started for the door. He did not offer to +kiss her--he never did on going out--but on this night she dared to kiss +him, throwing her arms around him and compelling him to bend down to her +face. She looked quite small against the massive bulk of the man. + +"Good luck, Tom," she said. "You gotter do 'im." + +"Ay, I gotter do 'im," he repeated. "That's all there is to it. I jus' +gotter do 'im." + +He laughed with an attempt at heartiness, while she pressed more closely +against him. Across her shoulders he looked around the bare room. It was +all he had in the world, with the rent overdue, and her and the kiddies. +And he was leaving it to go out into the night to get meat for his mate +and cubs--not like a modern working-man going to his machine grind, but +in the old, primitive, royal, animal way, by fighting for it. + +"I gotter do 'im," he repeated, this time a hint of desperation in his +voice. "If it's a win, it's thirty quid--an' I can pay all that's owin', +with a lump o' money left over. If it's a lose, I get naught--not even +a penny for me to ride home on the tram. The secretary's give all that's +comin' from a loser's end. Good-bye, old woman. I'll come straight home +if it's a win." + +"An' I'll be waitin' up," she called to him along the hall. + +It was full two miles to the Gayety, and as he walked along he +remembered how in his palmy days--he had once been the heavyweight +champion of New South Wales--he would have ridden in a cab to the fight, +and how, most likely, some heavy backer would have paid for the cab and +ridden with him. There were Tommy Burns and that Yankee nigger, Jack +Johnson--they rode about in motor-cars. And he walked! And, as any man +knew, a hard two miles was not the best preliminary to a fight. He was +an old un, and the world did not wag well with old uns. He was good for +nothing now except navvy work, and his broken nose and swollen ear were +against him even in that. He found himself wishing that he had learned +a trade. It would have been better in the long run. But no one had +told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have +listened if they had. It had been so easy. Big money--sharp, glorious +fights--periods of rest and loafing in between--a following of eager +flatterers, the slaps on the back, the shakes of the hand, the toffs +glad to buy him a drink for the privilege of five minutes' talk--and +the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind finish, the referee's +"King wins!" and his name in the sporting columns next day. + +Those had been times! But he realized now, in his slow, ruminating way, +that it was the old uns he had been putting away. He was Youth, rising; +and they were Age, sinking. No wonder it had been easy--they with their +swollen veins and battered knuckles and weary in the bones of them from +the long battles they had already fought. He remembered the time he put +out old Stowsher Bill, at Rush-Cutters Bay, in the eighteenth round, +and how old Bill had cried afterward in the dressing-room like a baby. +Perhaps old Bill's rent had been overdue. Perhaps he'd had at home a +missus an' a couple of kiddies. And perhaps Bill, that very day of the +fight, had had a hungering for a piece of steak. Bill had fought game +and taken incredible punishment. He could see now, after he had gone +through the mill himself, that Stowsher Bill had fought for a bigger +stake, that night twenty years ago, than had young Tom King, who had +fought for glory and easy money. No wonder Stowsher Bill had cried +afterward in the dressing-room. + +Well, a man had only so many fights in him, to begin with. It was the +iron law of the game. One man might have a hundred hard fights in him, +another man only twenty; each, according to the make of him and the +quality of his fibre, had a definite number, and, when he had fought +them, he was done. Yes, he had had more fights in him than most of +them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling +fights--the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took +the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of +Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain +and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, +he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting +partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all +finished, and he had had a hand in finishing some of them. + +They had tried him out against the old uns, and one after another he had +put them away--laughing when, like old Stowsher Bill, they cried in +the dressing-room. And now he was an old un, and they tried out the +youngsters on him. There was that bloke, Sandel. He had come over from +New Zealand with a record behind him. But nobody in Australia knew +anything about him, so they put him up against old Tom King. If Sandel +made a showing, he would be given better men to fight, with bigger +purses to win; so it was to be depended upon that he would put up a +fierce battle. He had everything to win by it--money and glory and +career; and Tom King was the grizzled old chopping-block that guarded +the highway to fame and fortune. And he had nothing to win except thirty +quid, to pay to the landlord and the tradesmen. And, as Tom King thus +ruminated, there came to his stolid vision the form of Youth, glorious +Youth, rising exultant and invincible, supple of muscle and silken of +skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and +that laughed at limitation of effort. Yes, Youth was the Nemesis. It +destroyed the old uns and recked not that, in so doing, it destroyed +itself. It enlarged its arteries and smashed its knuckles, and was in +turn destroyed by Youth. For Youth was ever youthful. It was only Age +that grew old. + +At Castlereagh Street he turned to the left, and three blocks along came +to the Gayety. A crowd of young larrikins hanging outside the door made +respectful way for him, and he heard one say to another: "That's 'im! +That's Tom King!" + +Inside, on the way to his dressing-room, he encountered the secretary, a +keen-eyed, shrewd-faced young man, who shook his hand. + +"How are you feelin', Tom?" he asked. + +"Fit as a fiddle," King answered, though he knew that he lied, and +that if he had a quid, he would give it right there for a good piece of +steak. + +When he emerged from the dressing-room, his seconds behind him, and came +down the aisle to the squared ring in the centre of the hall, a burst +of greeting and applause went up from the waiting crowd. He acknowledged +salutations right and left, though few of the faces did he know. Most +of them were the faces of kiddies unborn when he was winning his first +laurels in the squared ring. He leaped lightly to the raised platform +and ducked through the ropes to his corner, where he sat down on a +folding stool. Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook his hand. +Ball was a broken-down pugilist who for over ten years had not entered +the ring as a principal. King was glad that he had him for referee. They +were both old uns. If he should rough it with Sandel a bit beyond the +rules, he knew Ball could be depended upon to pass it by. + +Aspiring young heavyweights, one after another, were climbing into the +ring and being presented to the audience by the referee. Also, he issued +their challenges for them. + +"Young Pronto," Bill announced, "from North Sydney, challenges the +winner for fifty pounds side bet." + +The audience applauded, and applauded again as Sandel himself sprang +through the ropes and sat down in his corner. Tom King looked across +the ring at him curiously, for in a few minutes they would be locked +together in merciless combat, each trying with all the force of him +to knock the other into unconsciousness. But little could he see, for +Sandel, like himself, had trousers and sweater on over his ring costume. +His face was strongly handsome, crowned with a curly mop of yellow hair, +while his thick, muscular neck hinted at bodily magnificence. + +Young Pronto went to one corner and then the other, shaking hands with +the principals and dropping down out of the ring. The challenges +went on. Ever Youth climbed through the ropes--Youth unknown, but +insatiable--crying out to mankind that with strength and skill it would +match issues with the winner. A few years before, in his own heyday +of invincibleness, Tom King would have been amused and bored by these +preliminaries. But now he sat fascinated, unable to shake the vision +of Youth from his eyes. Always were these youngsters rising up in the +boxing game, springing through the ropes and shouting their defiance; +and always were the old uns going down before them. They climbed to +success over the bodies of the old uns. And ever they came, more and +more youngsters--Youth unquenchable and irresistible--and ever they put +the old uns away, themselves becoming old uns and travelling the same +downward path, while behind them, ever pressing on them, was Youth +eternal--the new babies, grown lusty and dragging their elders down, +with behind them more babies to the end of time--Youth that must have +its will and that will never die. + +King glanced over to the press box and nodded to Morgan, of the +Sportsman, and Corbett, of the Referee. Then he held out his hands, +while Sid Sullivan and Charley Bates, his seconds, slipped on his gloves +and laced them tight, closely watched by one of Sandel's seconds, who +first examined critically the tapes on King's knuckles. A second of his +own was in Sandel's corner, performing a like office. Sandel's trousers +were pulled off, and, as he stood up, his sweater was skinned off over +his head. And Tom King, looking, saw Youth incarnate, deep-chested, +heavy-thewed, with muscles that slipped and slid like live things under +the white satin skin. The whole body was a-crawl with life, and Tom King +knew that it was a life that had never oozed its freshness out through +the aching pores during the long fights wherein Youth paid its toll and +departed not quite so young as when it entered. + +The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the gong sounded and +the seconds clattered out of the ring with the folding stools, they +shook hands and instantly took their fighting attitudes. And instantly, +like a mechanism of steel and springs balanced on a hair trigger, Sandel +was in and out and in again, landing a left to the eyes, a right to the +ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away and dancing menacingly +back again. He was swift and clever. It was a dazzling exhibition. The +house yelled its approbation. But King was not dazzled. He had fought +too many fights and too many youngsters. He knew the blows for what they +were--too quick and too deft to be dangerous. Evidently Sandel was going +to rush things from the start. It was to be expected. It was the way +of Youth, expending its splendour and excellence in wild insurgence and +furious onslaught, overwhelming opposition with its own unlimited glory +of strength and desire. + +Sandel was in and out, here, there, and everywhere, light-footed and +eager-hearted, a living wonder of white flesh and stinging muscle that +wove itself into a dazzling fabric of attack, slipping and leaping like +a flying shuttle from action to action through a thousand actions, all +of them centred upon the destruction of Tom King, who stood between him +and fortune. And Tom King patiently endured. He knew his business, and +he knew Youth now that Youth was no longer his. There was nothing to do +till the other lost some of his steam, was his thought, and he grinned +to himself as he deliberately ducked so as to receive a heavy blow on +the top of his head. It was a wicked thing to do, yet eminently fair +according to the rules of the boxing game. A man was supposed to take +care of his own knuckles, and, if he insisted on hitting an opponent on +the top of the head, he did so at his own peril. King could have ducked +lower and let the blow whiz harmlessly past, but he remembered his own +early fights and how he smashed his first knuckle on the head of the +Welsh Terror. He was but playing the game. That duck had accounted for +one of Sandel's knuckles. Not that Sandel would mind it now. He would go +on, superbly regardless, hitting as hard as ever throughout the fight. +But later on, when the long ring battles had begun to tell, he would +regret that knuckle and look back and remember how he smashed it on Tom +King's head. + +The first round was all Sandel's, and he had the house yelling with the +rapidity of his whirlwind rushes. He overwhelmed King with avalanches of +punches, and King did nothing. He never struck once, contenting +himself with covering up, blocking and ducking and clinching to avoid +punishment. He occasionally feinted, shook his head when the weight of +a punch landed, and moved stolidly about, never leaping or springing or +wasting an ounce of strength. Sandel must foam the froth of Youth away +before discreet Age could dare to retaliate. All King's movements were +slow and methodical, and his heavy-lidded, slow-moving eyes gave him the +appearance of being half asleep or dazed. Yet they were eyes that saw +everything, that had been trained to see everything through all his +twenty years and odd in the ring. They were eyes that did not blink +or waver before an impending blow, but that coolly saw and measured +distance. + +Seated in his corner for the minute's rest at the end of the round, he +lay back with outstretched legs, his arms resting on the right angle of +the ropes, his chest and abdomen heaving frankly and deeply as he gulped +down the air driven by the towels of his seconds. He listened with +closed eyes to the voices of the house, "Why don't yeh fight, Tom?" many +were crying. "Yeh ain't afraid of 'im, are yeh?" + +"Muscle-bound," he heard a man on a front seat comment. "He can't move +quicker. Two to one on Sandel, in quids." + +The gong struck and the two men advanced from their corners. Sandel came +forward fully three-quarters of the distance, eager to begin again; but +King was content to advance the shorter distance. It was in line with +his policy of economy. He had not been well trained, and he had not had +enough to eat, and every step counted. Besides, he had already walked +two miles to the ringside. It was a repetition of the first round, with +Sandel attacking like a whirlwind and with the audience indignantly +demanding why King did not fight. Beyond feinting and several slowly +delivered and ineffectual blows he did nothing save block and stall +and clinch. Sandel wanted to make the pace fast, while King, out of his +wisdom, refused to accommodate him. He grinned with a certain wistful +pathos in his ring-battered countenance, and went on cherishing his +strength with the jealousy of which only Age is capable. Sandel was +Youth, and he threw his strength away with the munificent abandon of +Youth. To King belonged the ring generalship, the wisdom bred of long, +aching fights. He watched with cool eyes and head, moving slowly +and waiting for Sandel's froth to foam away. To the majority of the +onlookers it seemed as though King was hopelessly outclassed, and they +voiced their opinion in offers of three to one on Sandel. But there were +wise ones, a few, who knew King of old time, and who covered what they +considered easy money. + +The third round began as usual, one-sided, with Sandel doing all the +leading, and delivering all the punishment. A half-minute had passed +when Sandel, over-confident, left an opening. King's eyes and right arm +flashed in the same instant. It was his first real blow--a hook, with +the twisted arch of the arm to make it rigid, and with all the weight +of the half-pivoted body behind it. It was like a sleepy-seeming lion +suddenly thrusting out a lightning paw. Sandel, caught on the side of +the jaw, was felled like a bullock. The audience gasped and murmured +awe-stricken applause. The man was not muscle-bound, after all, and he +could drive a blow like a trip-hammer. + +Sandel was shaken. He rolled over and attempted to rise, but the sharp +yells from his seconds to take the count restrained him. He knelt on +one knee, ready to rise, and waited, while the referee stood over him, +counting the seconds loudly in his ear. At the ninth he rose in fighting +attitude, and Tom King, facing him, knew regret that the blow had +not been an inch nearer the point of the jaw. That would have been a +knock-out, and he could have carried the thirty quid home to the missus +and the kiddies. + +The round continued to the end of its three minutes, Sandel for the +first time respectful of his opponent and King slow of movement and +sleepy-eyed as ever. As the round neared its close, King, warned of the +fact by sight of the seconds crouching outside ready for the spring in +through the ropes, worked the fight around to his own corner. And when +the gong struck, he sat down immediately on the waiting stool, while +Sandel had to walk all the way across the diagonal of the square to his +own corner. It was a little thing, but it was the sum of little things +that counted. Sandel was compelled to walk that many more steps, to give +up that much energy, and to lose a part of the precious minute of rest. +At the beginning of every round King loafed slowly out from his corner, +forcing his opponent to advance the greater distance. The end of every +round found the fight manoeuvred by King into his own corner so that he +could immediately sit down. + +Two more rounds went by, in which King was parsimonious of effort and +Sandel prodigal. The latter's attempt to force a fast pace made King +uncomfortable, for a fair percentage of the multitudinous blows showered +upon him went home. Yet King persisted in his dogged slowness, despite +the crying of the young hot-heads for him to go in and fight. Again, +in the sixth round, Sandel was careless, again Tom King's fearful right +flashed out to the jaw, and again Sandel took the nine seconds count. + +By the seventh round Sandel's pink of condition was gone, and he settled +down to what he knew was to be the hardest fight in his experience. Tom +King was an old un, but a better old un than he had ever encountered--an +old un who never lost his head, who was remarkably able at defence, +whose blows had the impact of a knotted club, and who had a knockout in +either hand. Nevertheless, Tom King dared not hit often. He never +forgot his battered knuckles, and knew that every hit must count if the +knuckles were to last out the fight. As he sat in his corner, glancing +across at his opponent, the thought came to him that the sum of +his wisdom and Sandel's youth would constitute a world's champion +heavyweight. But that was the trouble. Sandel would never become a world +champion. He lacked the wisdom, and the only way for him to get it was +to buy it with Youth; and when wisdom was his, Youth would have been +spent in buying it. + +King took every advantage he knew. He never missed an opportunity to +clinch, and in effecting most of the clinches his shoulder drove stiffly +into the other's ribs. In the philosophy of the ring a shoulder was as +good as a punch so far as damage was concerned, and a great deal better +so far as concerned expenditure of effort. Also, in the clinches +King rested his weight on his opponent, and was loath to let go. This +compelled the interference of the referee, who tore them apart, always +assisted by Sandel, who had not yet learned to rest. He could not +refrain from using those glorious flying arms and writhing muscles of +his, and when the other rushed into a clinch, striking shoulder against +ribs, and with head resting under Sandel's left arm, Sandel almost +invariably swung his right behind his own back and into the projecting +face. It was a clever stroke, much admired by the audience, but it was +not dangerous, and was, therefore, just that much wasted strength. But +Sandel was tireless and unaware of limitations, and King grinned and +doggedly endured. + +Sandel developed a fierce right to the body, which made it appear that +King was taking an enormous amount of punishment, and it was only the +old ringsters who appreciated the deft touch of King's left glove to the +other's biceps just before the impact of the blow. It was true, the blow +landed each time; but each time it was robbed of its power by that touch +on the biceps. In the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King's +right hooked its twisted arch to the jaw; and three times Sandel's body, +heavy as it was, was levelled to the mat. Each time he took the nine +seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken and jarred, but still +strong. He had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. He was +fighting grimly; but he continued to draw upon his chief asset, which +was Youth. King's chief asset was experience. As his vitality had dimmed +and his vigour abated, he had replaced them with cunning, with wisdom +born of the long fights and with a careful shepherding of strength. Not +alone had he learned never to make a superfluous movement, but he had +learned how to seduce an opponent into throwing his strength away. Again +and again, by feint of foot and hand and body he continued to inveigle +Sandel into leaping back, ducking, or countering. King rested, but he +never permitted Sandel to rest. It was the strategy of Age. + +Early in the tenth round King began stopping the other's rushes with +straight lefts to the face, and Sandel, grown wary, responded by drawing +the left, then by ducking it and delivering his right in a swinging hook +to the side of the head. It was too high up to be vitally effective; but +when first it landed, King knew the old, familiar descent of the black +veil of unconsciousness across his mind. For the instant, or for the +slighest fraction of an instant, rather, he ceased. In the one moment he +saw his opponent ducking out of his field of vision and the background +of white, watching faces; in the next moment he again saw his opponent +and the background of faces. It was as if he had slept for a time and +just opened his eyes again, and yet the interval of unconsciousness was +so microscopically short that there had been no time for him to fall. +The audience saw him totter and his knees give, and then saw him recover +and tuck his chin deeper into the shelter of his left shoulder. + +Several times Sandel repeated the blow, keeping King partially dazed, +and then the latter worked out his defence, which was also a counter. +Feinting with his left he took a half-step backward, at the same time +upper cutting with the whole strength of his right. So accurately was +it timed that it landed squarely on Sandel's face in the full, downward +sweep of the duck, and Sandel lifted in the air and curled backward, +striking the mat on his head and shoulders. Twice King achieved this, +then turned loose and hammered his opponent to the ropes. He gave Sandel +no chance to rest or to set himself, but smashed blow in upon blow till +the house rose to its feet and the air was filled with an unbroken roar +of applause. But Sandel's strength and endurance were superb, and he +continued to stay on his feet. A knock-out seemed certain, and a captain +of police, appalled at the dreadful punishment, arose by the ringside +to stop the fight. The gong struck for the end of the round and Sandel +staggered to his corner, protesting to the captain that he was sound +and strong. To prove it, he threw two back-air-springs, and the police +captain gave in. + +Tom King, leaning back in his corner and breathing hard, was +disappointed. If the fight had been stopped, the referee, perforce, +would have rendered him the decision and the purse would have been his. +Unlike Sandel, he was not fighting for glory or career, but for thirty +quid. And now Sandel would recuperate in the minute of rest. + +Youth will be served--this saying flashed into King's mind, and he +remembered the first time he had heard it, the night when he had put +away Stowsher Bill. The toff who had bought him a drink after the fight +and patted him on the shoulder had used those words. Youth will be +served! The toff was right. And on that night in the long ago he had +been Youth. To-night Youth sat in the opposite corner. As for himself, +he had been fighting for half an hour now, and he was an old man. Had +he fought like Sandel, he would not have lasted fifteen minutes. But the +point was that he did not recuperate. Those upstanding arteries and +that sorely tried heart would not enable him to gather strength in the +intervals between the rounds. And he had not had sufficient strength in +him to begin with. His legs were heavy under him and beginning to cramp. +He should not have walked those two miles to the fight. And there was +the steak which he had got up longing for that morning. A great and +terrible hatred rose up in him for the butchers who had refused him +credit. It was hard for an old man to go into a fight without enough +to eat. And a piece of steak was such a little thing, a few pennies at +best; yet it meant thirty quid to him. + +With the gong that opened the eleventh round, Sandel rushed, making a +show of freshness which he did not really possess. King knew it for what +it was--a bluff as old as the game itself. He clinched to save himself, +then, going free, allowed Sandel to get set. This was what King desired. +He feinted with his left, drew the answering duck and swinging upward +hook, then made the half-step backward, delivered the upper cut full to +the face and crumpled Sandel over to the mat. After that he never +let him rest, receiving punishment himself, but inflicting far more, +smashing Sandel to the ropes, hooking and driving all manner of +blows into him, tearing away from his clinches or punching him out of +attempted clinches, and ever when Sandel would have fallen, catching him +with one uplifting hand and with the other immediately smashing him into +the ropes where he could not fall. + +The house by this time had gone mad, and it was his house, nearly every +voice yelling: "Go it, Tom!" "Get 'im! Get 'im!" "You've got 'im, Tom! +You've got 'im!" It was to be a whirlwind finish, and that was what a +ringside audience paid to see. + +And Tom King, who for half an hour had conserved his strength, now +expended it prodigally in the one great effort he knew he had in him. It +was his one chance--now or not at all. His strength was waning fast, and +his hope was that before the last of it ebbed out of him he would have +beaten his opponent down for the count. And as he continued to strike +and force, coolly estimating the weight of his blows and the quality of +the damage wrought, he realized how hard a man Sandel was to knock out. +Stamina and endurance were his to an extreme degree, and they were the +virgin stamina and endurance of Youth. Sandel was certainly a coming +man. He had it in him. Only out of such rugged fibre were successful +fighters fashioned. + +Sandel was reeling and staggering, but Tom King's legs were cramping +and his knuckles going back on him. Yet he steeled himself to strike the +fierce blows, every one of which brought anguish to his tortured hands. +Though now he was receiving practically no punishment, he was weakening +as rapidly as the other. His blows went home, but there was no longer +the weight behind them, and each blow was the result of a severe effort +of will. His legs were like lead, and they dragged visibly under +him; while Sandel's backers, cheered by this symptom, began calling +encouragement to their man. + +King was spurred to a burst of effort. He delivered two blows in +succession--a left, a trifle too high, to the solar plexus, and a right +cross to the jaw. They were not heavy blows, yet so weak and dazed was +Sandel that he went down and lay quivering. The referee stood over him, +shouting the count of the fatal seconds in his ear. If before the tenth +second was called, he did not rise, the fight was lost. The house stood +in hushed silence. King rested on trembling legs. A mortal dizziness was +upon him, and before his eyes the sea of faces sagged and swayed, while +to his ears, as from a remote distance, came the count of the referee. +Yet he looked upon the fight as his. It was impossible that a man so +punished could rise. + +Only Youth could rise, and Sandel rose. At the fourth second he rolled +over on his face and groped blindly for the ropes. By the seventh second +he had dragged himself to his knee, where he rested, his head rolling +groggily on his shoulders. As the referee cried "Nine!" Sandel stood +upright, in proper stalling position, his left arm wrapped about his +face, his right wrapped about his stomach. Thus were his vital points +guarded, while he lurched forward toward King in the hope of effecting a +clinch and gaining more time. + +At the instant Sandel arose, King was at him, but the two blows he +delivered were muffled on the stalled arms. The next moment Sandel was +in the clinch and holding on desperately while the referee strove to +drag the two men apart. King helped to force himself free. He knew the +rapidity with which Youth recovered, and he knew that Sandel was his if +he could prevent that recovery. One stiff punch would do it. Sandel +was his, indubitably his. He had out-generalled him, out-fought him, +out-pointed him. Sandel reeled out of the clinch, balanced on the hair +line between defeat or survival. One good blow would topple him over +and down and out. And Tom King, in a flash of bitterness, remembered +the piece of steak and wished that he had it then behind that necessary +punch he must deliver. He nerved himself for the blow, but it was +not heavy enough nor swift enough. Sandel swayed, but did not fall, +staggering back to the ropes and holding on. King staggered after him, +and, with a pang like that of dissolution, delivered another blow. +But his body had deserted him. All that was left of him was a fighting +intelligence that was dimmed and clouded from exhaustion. The blow that +was aimed for the jaw struck no higher than the shoulder. He had willed +the blow higher, but the tired muscles had not been able to obey. And, +from the impact of the blow, Tom King himself reeled back and nearly +fell. Once again he strove. This time his punch missed altogether, and, +from absolute weakness, he fell against Sandel and clinched, holding on +to him to save himself from sinking to the floor. + +King did not attempt to free himself. He had shot his bolt. He was +gone. And Youth had been served. Even in the clinch he could feel Sandel +growing stronger against him. When the referee thrust them apart, there, +before his eyes, he saw Youth recuperate. From instant to instant Sandel +grew stronger. His punches, weak and futile at first, became stiff and +accurate. Tom King's bleared eyes saw the gloved fist driving at his +jaw, and he willed to guard it by interposing his arm. He saw the +danger, willed the act; but the arm was too heavy. It seemed burdened +with a hundredweight of lead. It would not lift itself, and he strove to +lift it with his soul. Then the gloved fist landed home. He experienced +a sharp snap that was like an electric spark, and, simultaneously, the +veil of blackness enveloped him. + +When he opened his eyes again he was in his corner, and he heard the +yelling of the audience like the roar of the surf at Bondi Beach. A wet +sponge was being pressed against the base of his brain, and Sid Sullivan +was blowing cold water in a refreshing spray over his face and chest. +His gloves had already been removed, and Sandel, bending over him, was +shaking his hand. He bore no ill-will toward the man who had put him +out and he returned the grip with a heartiness that made his battered +knuckles protest. Then Sandel stepped to the centre of the ring and +the audience hushed its pandemonium to hear him accept young Pronto's +challenge and offer to increase the side bet to one hundred pounds. King +looked on apathetically while his seconds mopped the streaming water +from him, dried his face, and prepared him to leave the ring. He felt +hungry. It was not the ordinary, gnawing kind, but a great faintness, +a palpitation at the pit of the stomach that communicated itself to all +his body. He remembered back into the fight to the moment when he had +Sandel swaying and tottering on the hair-line balance of defeat. Ah, +that piece of steak would have done it! He had lacked just that for +the decisive blow, and he had lost. It was all because of the piece of +steak. + +His seconds were half-supporting him as they helped him through the +ropes. He tore free from them, ducked through the ropes unaided, and +leaped heavily to the floor, following on their heels as they forced a +passage for him down the crowded centre aisle. Leaving the dressing-room +for the street, in the entrance to the hall, some young fellow spoke to +him. + +"W'y didn't yuh go in an' get 'im when yuh 'ad 'im?" the young fellow +asked. + +"Aw, go to hell!" said Tom King, and passed down the steps to the +sidewalk. + +The doors of the public-house at the corner were swinging wide, and +he saw the lights and the smiling barmaids, heard the many voices +discussing the fight and the prosperous chink of money on the bar. +Somebody called to him to have a drink. He hesitated perceptibly, then +refused and went on his way. + +He had not a copper in his pocket, and the two-mile walk home seemed +very long. He was certainly getting old. Crossing the Domain, he sat +down suddenly on a bench, unnerved by the thought of the missus sitting +up for him, waiting to learn the outcome of the fight. That was harder +than any knockout, and it seemed almost impossible to face. + +He felt weak and sore, and the pain of his smashed knuckles warned him +that, even if he could find a job at navvy work, it would be a week +before he could grip a pick handle or a shovel. The hunger palpitation +at the pit of the stomach was sickening. His wretchedness overwhelmed +him, and into his eyes came an unwonted moisture. He covered his face +with his hands, and, as he cried, he remembered Stowsher Bill and how +he had served him that night in the long ago. Poor old Stowsher Bill! +He could understand now why Bill had cried in the dressing-room. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's When God Laughs and Other Stories, by Jack London + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN GOD LAUGHS AND OTHER STORIES *** + +***** This file should be named 2545.txt or 2545.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/4/2545/ + +Produced by Les Bowler + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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