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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-03-06 08:21:20 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-03-06 08:21:20 -0800 |
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diff --git a/75539-h/75539-h.htm b/75539-h/75539-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1510be --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/75539-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5475 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + From the four winds | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> /* <![CDATA[ */ + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} +.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; width: 60%;} +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding: 4px; } +.x-ebookmaker table {width: 95%;} + +.tdr {text-align: right; vertical-align: top;} +.page {width: 8em; vertical-align: top;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;} + +.right {text-align: right; text-indent: 0em;} + + + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} +.x-ebookmaker .w100 {width: 95%;} +.w25 {width: 25%;} +.x-ebookmaker .w25 {width: 35%;} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Poetry */ + +.poetry { + display: block; + text-align: left; + margin-left: 0 + } +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry in browsers */ +/* .poetry {display: inline-block;} */ +/* large inline blocks don't split well on paged devices */ +@media print { .poetry {display: block;} } + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 5% + } +.poetry-container { + margin: 1.5em auto; + text-align: center; + font-size: 98%; + display: flex; + justify-content: center + } +.poetry .stanza { + padding: 0.5em 0; + page-break-inside: avoid + } +.poetry .verse { + text-indent: -3em; + padding-left: 3em + } + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:smaller; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; } + +.xbig {font-size: 2em;} +.big {font-size: 1.3em;} + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +abbr[title] { + text-decoration: none; +} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1em;} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp68 {width: 68%;} + + + /* ]]> */ </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75539 ***</div> + + + + +<h1>FROM THE FOUR WINDS</h1> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp68" id="001" style="max-width: 27.1875em;"> + <img class="w25 p2" src="images/001.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center xbig"> +FROM THE FOUR<br> +WINDS<br> +</p> +</div> + +<p class="center p2"> +BY<br><span class="big"> +JOHN SINJOHN</span> +</p> + +<p class="center p4"> +LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN<br> +PATERNOSTER SQUARE, 1897<br> +</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +[All rights reserved.]<br> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> +</div> + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr><th></th><th class="tdr page">Page</th></tr> +<tr><td> +The Running Amok of Synge +Sahib </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +Dick Denver’s Idea </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +Ashes </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +‘Tally-ho’—Budmash </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +The Doldrums </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +The Capitulation of Jean Jacques </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +The Spirit of the Karroo </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +A Prairie Oyster </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +According to his Lights </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> + +The Demi-Gods </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr> +</table> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_RUNNING_AMOK_OF_SYNGE_SAHIB">THE RUNNING AMOK OF SYNGE SAHIB</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A yellow stain is a yellow stain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though the heart is white and the brain is white;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And a lonely man is a lonely man,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That’s reason eno’ for me.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Doggerel Meditations of John Hay.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p> + +<p>‘You lucky beggars. Oh! You lucky beggars!’</p> + +<p>The speaker rose, and stood stretching a languid length against the +railing of the verandah, his tall figure outlined in its white clothes +against the overhanging foliage.</p> + +<p>‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Clemenson, ‘you fellows don’t seem to have +such a bad time out here; only wish I were going to stay, instead of +toddling back to the beautiful and salubrious climate of the British +Isles which you seem to covet so much; what d’you say, Taplin?’</p> + +<p>He waved the end of his cigarette, glowing in the dark, towards another +recumbent figure.</p> + +<p>‘Um—um,’ the second globe-trotter lay back, looking curiously at the +face of the man standing, and offered no further reply.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t stay up to see you off,’ said the first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> speaker—‘I should +go cracked. “You can ’ear their paddles chunkin!”’—he broke into the +air of ‘Mandalay,’ and shook his hand with an almost menacing gesture +towards the lagoon.</p> + +<p>‘Well! <i>Saiandra</i>, you fellows, you’ve cheered us up amazingly; +don’t forget to look in on me if you’re ever fools enough to come back +to this forsaken paradise. Send me that new magazine if you can get +it in Sydney, Clemenson. Good-night, Mrs Hay; I know you won’t think +me rude for making tracks. Look after them, Hay; see you up in court +to-morrow afternoon, I suppose? Got to go round the coolie quarters +in the morning. <i>Bon soir, la compagnie.</i>’ He shook hands with +the globe-trotters, swung himself over the verandah rails, and walked +uncertainly down the narrow path that threaded the grove of shadowy +palms. For a minute nobody spoke; then Clemenson said with a sigh:</p> + +<p>‘Poor old Synge, how down he is to-night. He <i>is</i> a good chap. +I wish he’d stayed to see us off. I hate saying good-bye before it’s +necessary.’ He flicked off a mosquito, and bent down to adjust the +bath-towel wrapped round his feet and ankles.</p> + +<p>‘Barring mosquitoes and flies, this is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> heaven, I believe,’ he went +on, lying back to look up at the sky gleaming with stars through the +fern-like tracery of the flamboyante trees.</p> + +<p>‘Pardon me, under certain circumstances it’s hell,’ said a fourth voice.</p> + +<p>‘Hay, you’re an unsentimental brute, you’ve no poetry in your carcase; +ask Taplin and Mrs Hay what they think. Wake up, Taplin, old chap; +hanged if you’re not sleeping away the last chance of heaven you’ll +ever get.’</p> + +<p>‘Am I?’ grunted the latter. He was gazing intently from under the broad +brim of his hat at Mrs Hay. Sitting forward in her chair, her face ashy +white, she was looking with an intent, scared expression at her husband.</p> + +<p>‘I must go, too, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘the infant will want me; +little wretch, she always cries on hot nights if she’s left long. +Good-bye, Mr Clemenson; good-bye, Mr Taplin; <i>bon voyage</i>; come +and see me in England when I come home next year.’</p> + +<p>Her manner was nervous and hurried, and her face, still turned towards +her husband, had not lost its scared expression.</p> + +<p>‘You won’t be long, Jack, will you?’ With a wave of her hand she +disappeared<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> into the house. The men had all risen, their bath-towel +armour, dislodged, lay in heaps on the verandah floor, and the +increasing ‘Ping! Ping!’ announced a winged attack along the line.</p> + +<p>‘I say, this <i>is</i> a sell. I thought you and Mrs Hay were coming +out to see us off; it was to have been an all-night sitting for the +last, you know, and now here you are one by one deserting, and leaving +us to face this abominable melancholy departure alone.’ Thus Clemenson, +ruefully. Taplin lit a cigarette.</p> + +<p>‘What’s wrong, Hay?’ he said, and pointed with it down the path.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! It’s all right. Nothing, nothing; my wife’s tired, and the +infant’s not well; that’s all.’</p> + +<p>‘Nonsense, man, I saw Synge’s face, and I saw your wife’s, that’s +enough; I say again, what’s wrong?’</p> + +<p>Hay leant silently against the rail, a cloud gathering upon his face.</p> + +<p>‘Upon my honour I believe there’s nothing wrong,’ he said slowly, as +though weighing a thought within himself, ‘only my wife’s rather given +to nervous fits, you know.’ This apologetically.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p> + +<p>‘Ummm.... Well, if you won’t tell us you won’t—beg your pardon for +asking; are we keeping you up?’</p> + +<p>Again a silence, then Hay said to himself:</p> + +<p>‘Oh! D——n it, it can’t be.’</p> + +<p>He turned to the other two.</p> + +<p>‘Look here, you fellows,’ he said, ‘you’re gentlemen, and you’re both +of you fond of old Synge; what I say to you now, whatever you may think +of it, goes no further?’</p> + +<p>‘Certainly not,’ from Clemenson. Taplin shook his head; he was nothing +if not brief.</p> + +<p>‘Well! It’s a longish yarn, and I think I’ll just go in and speak to my +wife before I begin.’</p> + +<p>He turned and went into the house.</p> + +<p>The two globe-trotters, left to themselves on the verandah, looked at +each other without a word. Through the darkness and stillness of the +tropical night the humming of mosquitoes was waning, and the silence +was only broken by an occasional cry, or the barking of a dog from the +coolie quarters. A table covered with drinks and packs of cards was +pushed aside, and the dying lamp cast a flickering glow on the two +recumbent figures. The fragrance of lime and pepper trees came floating +gently in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> on the warm night air. Clemenson sat flicking restlessly +and distractedly at the now sleepy mosquitoes with his handkerchief, +and Taplin, smoking quietly, looked down the path where Synge had +disappeared. Both were relieved when Hay reappeared from the house, and +sinking into a long chair, took up the word.</p> + +<p>‘I’m going to tell you chaps one of the most extraordinary yarns +you’ll ever hear. I don’t attempt to explain it—I don’t know anything +about heredity—thank heaven <i>I’m</i> not a doctor—but I’ve been +in the Strait Settlements, and I’ve seen things there that—Still I +<i>don’t</i> understand, and I don’t care to,—all I know is, the thing +happened.’</p> + +<p>He paused a minute to concoct himself a drink, and then went on:</p> + +<p>‘You fellows have been here three weeks—jolly glad we’ve been to have +you—and you’ve seen a lot of Synge. I suppose you’ve both noticed that +somewhere or other about him there’s blood that isn’t white?’ Nods from +his listeners.</p> + +<p>‘Yes; there’s not much of it, it hardly shows, but there’s no doubt +it’s there. What it is I’ve never asked him, of course. I believe he’s +very sensitive about it,—why, I don’t know,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> I’m sure—I only mention +this, you know, because it hits off my theory of the why of what I’m +going to tell you; besides,’ he muttered half to himself, ‘one mustn’t +talk to him about the Strait Settlements. Well,’ he lighted a cigar, +and pulled deeply at it for some minutes before going on, ‘when I first +came to the Fijis they sent me up as Commissioner to a small island +about a hundred miles north of this, called Luma. Why in heaven’s name +they wanted a Commissioner there, the Colonial Office only knows. I +went up with the wife and the infant, and for six months we were the +only white people on the island; then the measles came, and they sent +up a doctor—for his sins, poor old Synge. That place was a paradise +for beauty, but a regular hell for loneliness. We had Judy (whom you +know we brought over from Singapore with us), and another coolie, for +servants, and Synge abode in a large native hut about a quarter of a +mile away. Barring a ship’s calling, perhaps once in three months, +with mails, not a soul ever came near that blessed place; solitary +confinement was a joke to it.’</p> + +<p>He paused, and drew a long whiff from his cigar; a breeze growing +amongst the palm<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> leaves sighed thro’ the verandah and blew the smoke +into a wreath around his head. Clemenson shivered; the spirit of +desolation seemed to have got into the tone of Hay’s voice.</p> + +<p>‘Those beastly measles! Synge worked like a horse; the unfortunate +devils of natives did their level best to die, and it was the work of +two average men and a boy to save the life of any one of them—stupid +beggars—but he pulled a lot of ’em through somehow. Then my infant got +’em, only a year old, and had a roughish time; there again Synge did +the trick, and then—hanged if, to put the finishing touch, he didn’t +go and get ’em himself—and badly too. Measles in a climate like this +aren’t any kind of a joke, and the poor old chap nearly turned up his +toes: but he came round at last—mainly thanks to Judy’s cooking. They +left him awfully weak and depressed; I used to go and sit with him a +lot, and he was fearfully down, always talking about the misery of +dying in a dog’s hole of a prison, as he called the place, and pining +for home. He had a fox-terrier called Wasp, that he was awfully fond +of, and when we weren’t with him he used to lie and talk to her by the +hour about his people at home and a certain girl, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> Cambridge, and +the cursedness of things generally, and the poor little beggar would +sit up at the end of the bed, catching flies, and blink her eyes at +him, and let on to understand the whole caboodle. I often heard him +yarning away when I was coming in; you can hear anything in those +native houses. He had a sort of double one—one for a bedroom and one +for a sitting-room. Well, he got better by degrees, but the stronger +he got physically, the more gloomy and depressed he seemed to grow; +it was like having a funeral in your coat-tail pocket to be with him; +it didn’t cheer matters up for us, and to make things worse, the mail +missed—through a hurricane or some misbegotten reason—and we didn’t +see a ship, except at a distance, for nearly six months.’</p> + +<p>Hay paused and shook himself, as if to free his mind from the +recollection. Clemenson muttered, ‘Lively!’ Taplin bit his forefinger +sympathetically.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ Hay went on rapidly, ‘one morning Synge came down to us at +breakfast, and said in his sarcastic way, “Something’s gone wrong with +the works of Providence; there’s actually a ship in.” So there was; +she brought the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> mails; Synge had some letters; and she went away +that afternoon. I remember Judy saying to me at tiffin, “Wasp hab had +five chickens, in honour ob de ship. Synge Sahib dip dem in de big +punch-bowl and call dem names—say he chrisey dem. Will de Sahib hab +gravy wid de blue man?” Judy’s information is always dished up with +some cookery—he meant blanc-mange—but good Lord! How infernally +long-winded I am! In the afternoon I went over to see Synge; he’d gone +asleep in his chair—it was beastly hot weather. His letters and papers +were all strewn about the place, and a big Malay kriss that he’d been +cutting papers with was lying beside him. Wasp, licking those five +blessed puppies, was sitting at his feet. He looked so tired that I +went away without waking him; perhaps if I had, things would have been +different.’</p> + +<p>Hay paused again, and turned with a shiver to look over his shoulder +down the path, listening intently; the other two noticed for the first +time that the butt of a revolver was sticking out of his coat pocket.</p> + +<p>‘Well, my boys, I expect I’ve bored you so far, but I shan’t with the +rest of my yarn.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> He turned to them again, speaking hurriedly and low.</p> + +<p>‘That night I was sitting in the dining-room pretty late, writing up +my Commissioner’s log. The wife had gone to bed; it was a mighty hot +night, and the infant had been making herself felt. I was smoking, and +not over and above busy—the Luma Commissioner isn’t given that way. +There was a bright moon, and it was very still and peaceful, much the +same as this. It happened I was just thinking what rummy noises one +hears at night, when I heard quite the rummiest noise I’ve ever heard +or ever want to; it was the cry as of a creature that had lost its soul +and “couldn’t tell whe—ere to find it.” He broke into the old tune, +which came on the top of the intense solemnity of the last few words +with a weird effect that sent a shudder through his listeners.</p> + +<p>‘By George! You fellows may just “lift up your hearts” that you’ve +never heard a sound like that; it sent the blue creeps through +<i>me</i>—I sat there wondering what the deuce it was, till, looking +through the window, I saw in a bright patch of moonlight in front +of the house a naked figure, dancing a kind of fantastic dance, and +brandishing a streak of silver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> above its head; then I heard that awful +cry again, and the figure darted forward and disappeared. I sat there +rubbing my eyes, and wishing for a drink, when the door opened with a +crash, and Judy almost fell into the room, his eyes starting out of +his head with fright, and his teeth chattering. “Sahib! quick! quick! +Synge Sahib kill Wasp, and kill de chickens; Synge Sahib run amok! +Synge Sahib run amok!” and the beggar fell on the floor, and grovelled +underneath the table. “What the devil!” I began—then suddenly came +that cry again, quite close this time. I dashed out of the room, and +made down the landing for my wife’s room. My God! What do you think I +saw?’</p> + +<p>In his intensity he leaned forward, staring straight at the opposite +wall, with his hand gripping the butt of the pistol, and in his eyes +they could almost read the words that followed.</p> + +<p>‘Over the child’s cot stood that naked figure, with that devilish +streak in its hand. My wife, in her nightdress, stood shrieking and +clutching at the figure’s arm with both hands. I reeled back, then +I picked up the first thing that came handy, a knob of sorts, or a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> +boot-jack—I don’t know—and threw it with all my force. Praise the +Lord! I hit it; it turned, and by all the great and awful powers, it +was Synge—Synge transfigured—a Malay,—you chaps make no mistake—a +Malay, if ever there was one, in every line of his face and figure. +Barring a towel wound round him, he was stark naked, and his flesh +was yellow, not white; and whether my eyes went wrong or not I don’t +know, but his hair seemed to hang down his naked back, instead of being +cropped short, as it always is. His eyes were blazing and glaring with +a sort of green light like a wild cat’s. That devilish silver streak +was his Malay kriss, and he brandished it like one possessed. I’ve +seen Malays run amok twice—once in Bangkok, and once in Sumatra—and +if Synge wasn’t at that moment a Malay, and a Malay amok, I’m a German +Jew. He didn’t look mad, only mad murderous. But there wasn’t much time +for psychological speculation, I can tell you; I just had that one +look from him, and then he came for me. It flashed through me, there +was only one chance, and that was tracks away from the house. I took +that chance, and went through the window—which I concluded afterwards +must have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> been shut—and made those tracks. There was a straight path +from the house through the native village, leading out beyond on to +a long stretch of hard white sand. We went through the village—what +a funk the natives were in! They scattered on each side for us—the +cry had drawn them, as it had me. I remember thinking—just shows how +little the mind is in hand—how amusing it must have been for them to +see their revered Commissioner hunted by their respected doctor in a +state of nature, and wondering if they had humour enough to appreciate +the situation; we were the only white men in the island, you know. I +used to be a bit of a sprinter at school, and in the ordinary course +of things could give Synge about 30 yards in the 100, but that night +I could only just keep away, if it can be called keeping away from a +man whose breath you can feel on your neck, and whose hand you can see +coming over your shoulder. It wasn’t the sort of seclusion I could +have wished for. Twice he grabbed at me and missed, and then we got +on to the sand, and, for some reason or other, I drew away a yard or +two—perhaps my wind was better than his, though for that matter I +don’t<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> believe he had a wind, or legs either, that night.’ Hay spoke in +a meditative voice that was half comic.</p> + +<p>‘But altogether,’ he went on, ‘it was a rum business. Well, I knew that +what I had to do was to hold on ahead till we got to a creek about 100 +yards wide that ran from the lagoon, inland. If I could get there first +I was safe; I was a good swimmer, and in those days old Synge couldn’t +swim more than a few strokes. Still, if murder-madness could make a man +run half as fast again, it could probably make him swim. However, it +was the only chance. That was a ghastly run, and a ghostly one, too. +The moon was full, and the sea gleamed in silver and black ridges, and +that blessed sand shone in the bright moonlight like burnished plate, +and we two white figures fled over it like disembodied spirits, with +the whole of Nature—sea, sky, and land—looking on and mocking at what +was meant to be as grim a tragedy as ever came about. And yet all the +time, you know, I couldn’t help seeing the comic side—the only two +white men on the island—sworn pals, you beggars! sworn pals—and the +one chasing the other for dear life, and no mortal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> reason—it appealed +to me very much, that is, as much as the discomfort of the blamed thing +would allow. All things come to an end, and so did that run. I must +have made record time, but it seemed like a couple of hours. I never +got more than about two yards away—it varied from that to about two +inches—and I can tell you I was all out at the end of that half mile, +when we came to the creek. There wasn’t time or space to dive, and I +went in plum bang—anyhow. I could see or feel the whirr of the kriss +in the air as he came after me. When I came up and struck out, he was +a yard or so behind, swimming desperately for me, with the kriss still +in his hand. “Good Lord!” I thought, “it’s all over now; the beggar can +swim, and I’m about done.” Quick as lightning I turned on my back and +kicked out with all my might, and, as luck would have it, I caught him +on the head with my foot, and down he went. I twisted round and drew +myself out on to the bank—phew! I <i>was</i> done. In a minute or so +he came to the surface panting and gasping, and turned himself round +and round, looking for me, with that wolfish glare still in his eyes, +and the kriss still grasped firm.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> When he saw me, I sang out from +the bank, “Drop it, old man, the game’s up.” He gave that hideous cry +again, and tried to swim ashore, but in a stroke or two he threw up his +hands and went down. I lay still, trying to get my wind, and watching +for him to come up again. In a minute he did, almost black in the face, +but still with that murderous light in his eyes and the kriss in his +hand. I called out—“Synge, dear old chap, easy on, that’ll do,” but +just as I sang out he went down the third time, and this time he stayed +there.’</p> + +<p>Hay stopped short with a shiver. The dawn was breaking in a long grey +streak over the distant reef, and with it came a wave of chill air. The +faces of all three men looked almost haggard in the growing light, and +Taplin said, ‘Go on, man,’ in a voice that sounded harsh and strange.</p> + +<p>‘There was only one thing to be done,’ continued Hay, slowly, ‘and I +can tell you I didn’t care about doing it one little bit. Diving for +a madman with a kriss in his hand in twelve feet of water, even if he +<i>has</i> gone down three times, is no sort of a pastime. Well, I +found him at the second<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> go, quite motionless at the bottom, and pulled +him up ashore. He was unconscious all right, but I had the devil’s +own trouble to get that silver streak out of his paw. Then I sat on +my haunches, and rubbed him, and prayed the gods to send me help. +Presently they did, in the shape of my wife and Judy, on horseback, +with brandy and pistols. Judy wouldn’t come anywhere near, though he +could see him lying like a log; but my wife, who, like most women where +there’s illness, is an angel, helped me to get him on to a horse. Poor +old chap, he was mighty limp and light, and the madness had clean gone +out of him; his skin was white again, and his hair shorn—I suppose +I must have been a bit mixed there. We held him on, and got him back +somehow, and gave him brandy, and gradually he came back to life; but +he had brain fever and was delirious for days. Then I got to know +how fearfully the loneliness had weighed on him, and bitten into his +marrow. At last he came round, and got all right again by degrees. He’s +never had the faintest idea of what happened that night; the fever +seemed to have wiped it clean out of his memory, and of course we’ve<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +never told him. We got shifted here soon afterwards, and this place is +chalks better than Luma, if it isn’t exactly the vortex of society. The +saddest thing, as it turned out, over that business, was poor little +Wasp. After we got back with him I went over to his quarters to fetch +away his things, and there, lying on his bed, was that poor little +beggar and four of the pups dead as door-nails, with kriss stabs right +through them. The fifth pup was alive and whining piteously; we took +her home and dragged her up somehow, and here she is.’</p> + +<p>Hay touched a sleepy fox-terrier with his foot.</p> + +<p>‘We had to tell Synge a yarn about Wasp’s death. I’ve forgotten how +it went now, but I remember it was very artistic and untrue, and the +whitest sort of a lie. Well, I’m tired of yarning, and that’s the +whole show, and now perhaps you understand why my wife looked so queer +to-night, and why’—he broke off, and tapped the butt end of the +revolver. There was a long silence, which Clemenson broke with:</p> + +<p>‘You don’t mean to say that you can go on living here with the +possibility of that happening again?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p> + +<p>‘Oh! This is different; Luma was specially designed by a beneficent +Providence for lone madness. Personally I don’t admit the +possibility—wouldn’t do, you know,’ he shuddered,—‘and forewarned +is forearmed; besides, these things are with the Fates, and if it +<i>should</i> come about, it’s better with <i>us</i> than with people +who don’t know and wouldn’t understand, and—we’re fond of Synge.’</p> + +<p>Clemenson lay back and whistled softly, and the three sat on in silence +and watched the grey turn to red, and the glow steal from over the +lagoon, flecking the green growing things with light, and chasing the +sentinel stars back into their boxes; and they listened to the murmurs +of the wakening island world, till the splash of oars in the narrow +winding river hard by warned the globe-trotters that the time for +departure was come.</p> + +<p>‘Time’s up,’ said Hay, ‘there’s Missa Tanner and his boat,’ and he +pointed through the red clusters of the flamboyante trees to the tall +figure of a Fijian coming up the bank of the stream towards the house. +Taplin rose and stretched himself, then he walked over to Hay and shook +him hard by the hand.</p> + +<p>‘You’re a good chap,’ he said, ‘a thundering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> good chap; and your +wife’s a brick—tell her so.’</p> + +<p>‘Thanks,’ said Hay.</p> + +<p>Half an hour later, the boat, held in the stream by the oars of +the convict crew, waited, while from the stern-sheets the two +globe-trotters said good-bye to their host.</p> + +<p>‘Remember, you fellows, nobody’s ever heard a word of that yarn—you +won’t forget that?’</p> + +<p>‘All right, old chap,’ said Clemenson; ‘but I say, just one thing: how +do you account for it? Wasn’t it temporary insanity, pure and simple?’</p> + +<p>‘Certainly not; that I’ll take my solemn Dick—but I don’t account for +it, and I don’t try to; all I know is, as Judy says: “Synge Sahib run +amok.”’</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The boat drifted away down the stream to join the steamer lying out +beyond the line of white reef. The globe-trotters lay back in the stern +silently, and from across the lagoon as they watched, the group of +houses grew smaller and smaller through the palm-groves, and the sugar +plantations, beginning to teem with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> working life and labour, faded +into a blurr.</p> + +<p>Presently Clemenson, still looking backward, said, with a sigh, ‘By +gum!’</p> + +<p>Taplin nodded.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="DICK_DENVERS_IDEA">DICK DENVER’S IDEA</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The more you beat ’em the better they be.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>This was always a good lie; there is such an amount of truth in it.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + + +<h3>SCENE I</h3> + +<p>‘You are quite mistaken, I didn’t speak to him.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s a lie! I saw you myself,—and I tell you, if you can’t behave +yourself better than to go talking to a blackguard adventurer like +that, you stay down here till this d——d voyage is over.’</p> + +<p>The brutal voice, raised in anger, subsided into a sort of growl; the +first, a woman’s, was silent.</p> + +<p>‘Why don’t you answer? Curse it, d’you think it’s your “duty,”’ with a +sneer, ‘to stand there like a mummy? By God, a mummy’s a fool to you!’ +The man’s voice rose again in a harsh crescendo.</p> + +<p>Dick Denver, leaning against the ship’s side, involuntarily took his +cigar from his lips, and ground his teeth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p> + +<p>‘I judge domestic felicity has its shady side,’ he muttered, with +a soul-satisfying drawl; ‘thank the Almighty for His infinite +mercies!’—presumably referring to his own unencumbered condition.</p> + +<p>‘Poor little woman, she looked very sweet at dinner. Gosh! <i>I</i> +was the blackguard adventurer!’ He laughed softly, and shrugged his +shoulders.</p> + +<p>‘What an everlasting brute the fellow is; that unfortunate woman must +have considerable of a bad time. Ah! Well,—no affair of yours, Dick, +my son.’</p> + +<p>He turned, and from over the ship’s side watched the rings of smoke +curling away from his cigar. A rustle as of silken garments caught +his ear, and over his shoulder he saw a woman’s figure coming from +the hatchway. Standing back in shadow, he watched her move listlessly +towards a long deck chair, half-way between him and the hatch. He could +catch a long-drawn sigh, half a sob, and see the shiver of the slight +form as she sank into it. A whisper came floating along the deck to +where he stood. ‘God! How I hate him! How I hate him! How long? How +long?’</p> + +<p>Dick Denver, vagabond, adventurer, gambler—what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> you will—was a man +with a soft heart, and a curious hardened inability to witness distress +without a desire to offer his help, which, owing to his manner of +life, was generally found to be worse than useless. Watching her as +she lay with profile half-turned from him, her chin resting dejectedly +in her hand, the fair hair clustering low on her white forehead, and a +pitiful droop in the corner of the little mouth,—he was conscious of +a desire, gradually concentrating in the toe of his boot, to kick the +originator of so much unhappiness. As he leant forward for a better +look, a puff of wind caught the brim of his large felt hat, and blew it +along the deck to the chair where she was sitting. Glad of the excuse, +he moved towards her. She turned her head, and a gleam from the moon, +half-hidden in the hurrying clouds, lit up a sweet pale face with deep +grey eyes. A word of apology, and he bent forward to pick up his hat, +catching a glimpse, as he did so, of a tear on her cheek. A great +compassion smote his vagabond heart. He straightened himself and said:</p> + +<p>‘Aren’t you cold, sitting up here so late?’</p> + +<p>A soft musical voice was one of Mr Denver’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> chief accomplishments; it +was useful at poker, and was found attractive even by victims.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! no, thank you; see, I have this shawl,’ pointing to a flimsy +concoction of silk and lace that hung over the arm of the chair +in a sufficiently useless way. Without a word he took it up, and +with the deftest fingers—was not Mr Denver a dealer of the first +water?—wrapped it round the shoulders and slender throat. A little +smile, half surprise, half thanks, was his reward.</p> + +<p>‘The dew’s very heavy in these seas. Guess my cigar’ll bother you?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, no, not in the least, thank you. Don’t throw it away,’ as Dick +made a motion in that direction. Thankfully retaining it, he stretched +his length on the next chair, and emitted silent but contented puffs.</p> + +<p>An attractive length, sinewy but slight; under the shady hat a drawn, +clean-cut, clean-shaven face, bronzed from original fairness to a deep +tan; lazily veiled grey eyes, rather deep-set, and a firm mouth—all +these things Dick turned to his companion, and spake in his most +musical and least nasal voice. She listened with pleasure, but with +an apparent and growing uneasiness, and with ear strained to catch<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> +the least sound of an approach from the cabin; and, in spite of the +nonchalance of his voice and attitude, Mr Denver was no less on the +strain than she; ‘for,’ thought he, ‘the powers forbid that I cause her +to have more abuse from my friend below.’</p> + +<p>The moon had burst through the clouds and was flooding the deck +with silver light, and Dick improved the shining hour. The ship was +bound for the West Indies; he discoursed of the islands and his +own experiences there, and she listened, with an evident interest +in spite of her fears. Never yet was woman (or man either, for the +matter of that) uninterested when Dick Denver talked, which he did but +seldom; his voice, as he might have phrased it himself, was ‘kind of +seductive.’ Presently, however, he rose, and hat in hand, said:</p> + +<p>‘You’ll pardon me, but I guess you’d better go down; your shawl’s quite +wet.’</p> + +<p>She rose with a little shiver, held out her hand without a word, and +turning, went down the hatchway with the same listless, dejected step +as before. Dick watched her go, pushed his hat high up on his head, and +whistled softly and expressively; then he stooped suddenly, raising +himself again with a handkerchief in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> his hand, the corners of which he +examined with unscrupulous care till he read a name. Holding it softly +in his hand, he pitched away the end of his cigar. Presently he began +whistling again. Nobody ever heard Mr Denver whistle, except in moments +of profound thought; evidently he was cogitating deeply. After a minute +or two he took a pack of cards out of his pocket, and caressing them +with his unoccupied hand, raised his head and voice, and spake to the +moon with a meditative drawl:</p> + +<p>‘’Pears I can feel kind of a sorrow for the animal!’ He then put the +handkerchief in his breast-pocket and idled down the hatch. Dick +Denver was always solitary in his habits, and made a point of a +cabin to himself, otherwise his conduct that night with a small lace +pocket-handkerchief might have been considered somewhat out of keeping +with the character of a professional black sheep. It is impossible +to disguise the fact that Mr Denver, in spite of his notorious +insouciance, was an impressionable man.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + + +<h3>SCENE II</h3> + +<p>The ship’s saloon, fitfully lighted by the swinging lamp with a +green shade, furnished a picturesque framing for the two figures it +contained. Mr Dick Denver, in loose garments of spotless white, sat +leaning carelessly back in one chair, with his legs resting on another; +a cigar in his mouth, his hands, with the cards in them, from habit +well held up, and the usual indifferent look upon his face. A great +contrast was the man sitting on the other side of the long, narrow +saloon table. Major Massinger, late of Her Majesty’s Service, a large, +bull-necked man with eyes like a cod fish, in a white mess jacket and +scarlet cummerbund, was sitting forward, burying a somewhat red face +in a beaker of brandy and soda. A box of cigars and picquet markers +testified to a long evening’s play, the last indeed of a series. To +those who knew him, the gallant Major’s boisterous joviality would have +betokened a winning night. His luck was ‘in,’ even to and beyond Dick’s +bottom dollar, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> this beyondness, which might have been somewhat +disquieting to his opponent, was not to be gathered from Dick’s +impassive face.</p> + +<p>‘Eleven o’clock—shall we conclude?’ said the latter.</p> + +<p>‘Not a bit of it, unless you’re afraid of the luck?’</p> + +<p>Dick answered by an amused look and a shrug of his shoulders, but he +said:</p> + +<p>‘Won’t you disturb your wife if you stay here much longer?’</p> + +<p>‘D——n my wife; you’ve evidently never been spliced, or you wouldn’t +be so beastly particular.’</p> + +<p>Massinger turned as he said this to open another bottle of soda, and +missed the ugly look in Dick’s half-shut eyes.</p> + +<p>‘All serene, then,’ said the latter—‘guess I owe you twelve hundred +and fifty dollars; well, now, I’ll play you double or quits, the best +of three games.’</p> + +<p>‘What’s that in pounds? Two fifty, isn’t it? Very good! Go ahead, my +sportsman; double or quits, five hundred or nothing.’</p> + +<p>Dick shuffled the cards and cut them; a breeze stole in at the open +skylight, and sighed fitfully through the saloon, and as it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> died away, +his sharp ears caught the ‘frou frou’ of a silk dress descending the +hatch.</p> + +<p>‘One moment,’ he said—‘reckon I’ll just shut that door; there’s kind +of a hurricane playing around here;’ and, rising quickly, he moved to +the saloon door and stood there a moment, hat in hand, as a slender +white figure passed down the stairs. Her hand rested a moment in his as +she glided by, and Mr Denver shut the door and returned to his seat. +Massinger, manufacturing his fourth drink, saw nothing of this by-play, +and the game was resumed. But the tide had turned, and Massinger was +‘rubiconed’ twice running.</p> + +<p>‘As you was before you was! Look here, Denver, can’t end up like this, +you know—it’s too infernal slow;’ his voice was getting thick and his +hand shook somewhat.</p> + +<p>‘Mussh’t see the luck through, y’know, somehow’n other—no craning.’</p> + +<p>Dick, a covert sneer on his face, was far too considerate to disappoint +him, and once again the cards were shuffled and dealt; the Major more +boisterous, Dick more impassive than ever. With the end of the partie +came the transference of £200 in notes from Massinger’s pocket-book +to Mr Denver’s. Undaunted,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> the Major slapped the latter on the back, +declaring him thickly to be a jolly good sportsman.</p> + +<p>‘Have my revenge to-morrow night,—too tight now,’ said he.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ assented Dick, cheerfully, ‘but I guess we get to St Martin +to-morrow, and I leave the ship.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, hang it! Never mind; I suppose we stay there a bit, eh?’</p> + +<p>‘Two days,’ said Dick.</p> + +<p>‘All right! I’ll play you on shore. Is there any solitary thing to see +in the d——d hole? My wife always wants to see everything, confound +her!’</p> + +<p>Mr Denver apparently paid no heed to this remark; he was sitting tilted +back in his chair, his hat slouched over his brows, and only the +slight twitching of the hand holding the pocket-book, and a curious +smouldering fire in his half-closed eyes, showed that a struggle was +going on in his mind. Presently, with a sudden jerk, he returned to a +right-angled position, and stared straight at Massinger. The man looked +particularly like a cod-fish at that moment, and breathed heavily. Dick +shivered slightly and disgustedly.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> Through the open skylight above the +wind could be heard sighing in the sails, ‘God! How I hate him! How +long? How long?’ That was the refrain it took. A cold look of purpose +and resolution settled in Dick’s eyes—the crystallisation of a vague +idea.</p> + +<p>‘Why, certainly no, not the smallest use! ’Pears to me as if there +might be a chance,’ he muttered unintelligibly to himself; and +fingering the pocket-book in his hand, he looked at the man opposite +with a calculating eye.</p> + +<p>‘What’s the matter with you? You’re drunker than I am,’ said the +latter. ‘I ask you simply if there’s anything to see in the island, +and, begad, you’re jibbering like a boiled owl.’ He stooped unsteadily +to reach his glass under the table.</p> + +<p>Mr Denver’s look was that of one who measures the distance for a spring.</p> + +<p>‘Malūa! Malūa!’ (which is by interpretation ‘Go easy’). ‘I guess it can +be done,’ he drawled softly to himself. ‘Anything to see? No—o. Stop, +though,’—to the intelligent eye, as he drew himself together in his +chair, the spring was very near now—‘I guess I’m wrong all the time, +there <i>is</i> something almighty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> curious to see, for those who have +the sand.’</p> + +<p>‘What’s that?’</p> + +<p>‘We—ell, it mightn’t interest <i>you</i>, but it’s a place they +call “La boîte du diable”—kind of a cavern in the side of a hill. +Considerable few people have been to see it, and none stayed very long. +Reckon <i>you</i> won’t care about it.’</p> + +<p>An indescribable sneer was in Mr Denver’s voice, and the Major, though +far gone, was not <i>too</i> far gone to seize upon it as an insult.</p> + +<p>‘You mean, I wouldn’t dare,’ he said, huskily. ‘Confound you, sir, +d’you think I’ve not got as much pluck as you?’</p> + +<p>‘Guess not,’ said Dick, drily.</p> + +<p>‘D——n you, sir!’ said Massinger, furiously; ‘I’ll bet you that £200 +I’ve just paid you, I go to that hole, whatever it is, and stay there +as long or longer than you do.’</p> + +<p>For answer, Mr Denver rose slowly.</p> + +<p>‘Put it in writing,’ he said, and, producing pen and paper out of +his pocket, he reached down the saloon ink-bottle, and pushed them +over to Massinger. The latter, quite sobered, stared a minute at his +nonchalant companion, then sat down, and without saying a word penned +the following lines in a shaky hand:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p> + +<p>‘“I bet Mr Dick Denver the sum of £200 that I visit with him a +condemned hole called ‘La boîte du diable,’ and stay there as long or +longer than he does.”</p> + +<p>‘Will that do?’</p> + +<p>‘Play or pay,’ added Mr Denver, calmly.</p> + +<p>‘“Play or pay.”</p> + +<p>‘“Albert Massinger, October 9th, 188-”—he signed his name, and threw +it across to Dick, who signed his own, and pocketed the document.</p> + +<p>‘Guess I’ll call for you after dinner at your hotel,’ he said; ‘might +be happier with pistols, it’s kind of a skeery place. Good-night,’ he +nodded, and without another word, lounged up on to the silent deck, the +suspicion of an unholy smile flickering on his impassive features.</p> + + +<h3>SCENE III</h3> + +<p>The night was dark, and the two figures taking a winding way up the +narrow hillside path had much ado to keep from going astray. The +leader, ploughing along, head down, with eyes diligently on the move +to save his precious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> shins, was betrayed by a running accompaniment +of his favourite language. He was volubly cursing his folly in having +made ‘such a d——d silly bet,’ and Mr Denver for having inveigled +him into a fool’s errand. The latter, sauntering along a few steps +behind, apparently quite oblivious of his companion, was humming a +favourite little tune, and turning from time to time to look down on +the twinkling lights of the little town scattered here and there amid +the tall stems of the palms outlined against the further sky. The faint +murmur of the surf breaking on the reef seemed to chime in with his +mood better than the tune, for he stopped humming, and bent forward to +listen. Massinger had exhausted his vocabulary for the present, and was +silent also; only the fitful chirping of a cicala and the occasional +bark of a dog from below broke the stillness of the tropical night. +The moon was just rising over the sea, throwing a long silvery line +of light, which gradually spread, as if eager to embrace the land, +awaiting it in silent expectancy. The solemnity and stillness of the +scene, however, only served to increase the Major’s irritation.</p> + +<p>‘Come on,’ he said, impatiently; ‘don’t stand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> moonstruck there; let’s +get this infernal foolishness over as soon as possible. How much +further have we got to go up this beastly path? If it’s far I’d sooner +pay £500 than go on.’</p> + +<p>‘We’re almost there,’ said Dick, and passing his companion, he swung +along up the track. In about ten minutes he came to a halt, and said +in his soft drawling voice, ‘We turn down here, and in a minute or so +we’ll be right there. Then look to your shooting-iron, and harden your +heart, and in we go. Malūa, my son,’ he added to himself, ‘it’s no part +of the game to “show” a while yet—mustn’t skeer the gentleman;’ he +chuckled grimly and audibly.</p> + +<p>‘What the devil’s wrong with the infernal place, and why do we want +pistols?’ said Massinger, testily; but even as he spoke he drew a +revolver from his side pocket. For all answer, Mr Denver led on down a +zig-zag path to the left, until brought up sharp by the face of a rocky +cliff, grown over with bushes and creepers. After standing there a +minute to see that his companion had followed him, he stooped suddenly, +raising with his hand a huge, hanging creeper, and dived as it were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> +into the face of the rock. Astonished at his sudden disappearance, +Massinger stood a minute before the rock irresolute, but a mocking +voice, with that peculiar high drawl, came from within.</p> + +<p>‘Reckon you’re going back, Major; is that so?’</p> + +<p>With a muttered oath, Massinger raised the creeper, and, imitating his +companion, crawled through a hidden opening in the rock, till he found +himself standing upright beside Dick in an open space. When his eyes +had become somewhat accustomed to the gloom, he saw that they were in +a natural vault or chamber, formed in the rock of the hillside, nearly +square, and about forty feet from side to side. In the centre was a +huge jagged hole of cavernous depth, and above it, a large cleft in the +rock ceiling of the vault, letting in a glimpse of the starry heavens. +The sides of the walls, of a reddish-grey stone, were damp and clammy, +and the air hot and steamy. In the far corner of the cavern, opposite +the entrance, was a natural stone seat. When by degrees and uncertain +glances he had taken in his surroundings, Massinger looked round for +his companion. Mr Denver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> was seated in a <i>degagé</i> attitude on a +stone, with his back to the entrance, carefully selecting a weed from +his cigar-case. This he lighted, and got well under weigh, before he +said, with the drawl that had become hateful to the other:</p> + +<p>‘Nice place, a’nt it, Major? Take a seat; there’s a tolerable spry pew +opposite.’</p> + +<p>He waved with his cigar to the stone seat. Massinger, though secretly +far from comfortable, was not to be outdone in coolness by this Yankee +blackguard. Taking a cigarette, he lit it from the other’s cigar, +and strolled, with a fine assumption of indifference, to the seat +indicated. A long silence followed; the moon was gradually creeping up +in the sky, and long ghostly shadows were cast on the floor and walls +of the ‘Devil’s Box.’ Massinger’s feelings during this night had been +far from enviable; starting after a good dinner, he had looked upon the +affair as an amusing freak by which he would save himself the payment +of £200. The steep, difficult ascent had thoroughly disillusioned +him, and the eerie look of the cavern was fast completing his +discomfiture. He was conscious, too, of a vague feeling of distrust as +to his companion’s conduct.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> Why had he brought him to this unearthly +hole,—where apparently there was nothing to prevent their staying till +Doomsday to decide this fool of a bet. There was something sinister +about the entertainment.</p> + +<p>As if reading the thoughts that were pressing on his companion’s brain, +Mr Denver broke the silence,—</p> + +<p>‘Guess you’re feeling up a considerable high tree, Major; this is going +to be an interesting occasion for you.’ There was a look as of a cat +playing with a mouse about the speaker, and Massinger was not slow to +read a menace into the suave tones of the high-pitched voice.</p> + +<p>‘What in God’s name is the meanin’ of this foolery?’ he broke out, +harshly; ‘why have you brought me here? There’s something behind all +this d——d skittlin’, and I’ll trouble you to tell me what it is.’ He +rose as he spoke, and took a step with clenched hands towards Dick. The +latter did not move.</p> + +<p>‘I should mind that little orifice if I were you,’ he said, pointing +to the yawning chasm that separated them in the centre, and from the +murky depths of which ascended a faintly hissing, bubbling sound as of +boiling water.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> Massinger, who in his excitement had advanced almost to +its edge, started back again with an alacrity that showed the unstrung +state of his nerves. When he had again dropped into his seat, and was +playing nervously with the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket, Mr +Denver took up the word.</p> + +<p>‘Major,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have some talk with you, and you’ll +pardon me if I deliver a little exordi<i>um</i>’—he pronounced it with +an ominous emphasis on the ‘um.’ ‘I reckon the moon won’t be full up +for another half hour, so we’ve considerable time.’</p> + +<p>‘What’s the moon got to do with it, and what the devil is it you want? +Fire away and come to the point,’ said Massinger, twisting the ends of +his moustache, and endeavouring to conceal his now genuine alarm under +a boisterous bluffness. Mr Denver smiled a quaint little smile, as +though his spirits were rising.</p> + +<p>‘Things will begin to move right along about the time the moon’s +overhead,’ he said, consulting his watch. ‘Now, see here, Major, I +don’t want to bore you, but I’ve got to say you’re kind of the worst +specimen of a man I’ve had the luck to meet’—a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> smothered curse from +Massinger. ‘Keep cool, Major; you’ll want all your language before +I’m through; guess I’ve brought you here,—at your own request, you +know,’—he smiled,—‘just to explain to you a little idea of mine, +which I reckon you’ll appreciate.’ Mr Denver’s resemblance to a cat at +this moment was not reassuring to the mouse. For a moment he paused, +changing his attitude, and leaning back against the wall with his +hands in his pockets and his legs crossed. Massinger had taken out his +revolver, and fingered it nervously.</p> + +<p>‘Nice little iron,’ said Mr Denver, approvingly; ‘you’re a good shot, +too, Major, I know.’</p> + +<p>‘Pretty fair,’ said the latter, grimly.</p> + +<p>‘So much the better. We—ell now, I’ve been thinking a good deal ’bout +you since I’ve had the honour of making your acquaintance, and—now +don’t be wild, Major—you really are—as you Britishers say—a great +cad.’</p> + +<p>A furious oath and a sudden movement forward from Massinger was as +suddenly checked by the appearance of a little shining tube held +straight at his head, and the imperturbable drawl resumed,—</p> + +<p>‘Guess I see you, and go one better;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> presently, my dear sir, you’ll +have <i>your</i> chance, but just now I must beg you to sit still and +hear my little exordi<i>um</i>.’ A pause.</p> + +<p>‘Four years ago you married the present Mrs Massinger.’</p> + +<p>‘You blackguard, how dare you mention my wife’s name?’</p> + +<p>For the first time Dick Denver’s face betrayed emotion; his mouth +twitched, and a sullen fire burned slowly up into his deep-set eyes, +but his voice was none the less impassive as he continued:</p> + +<p>‘I guess I’ve as much show; I’m a good bit fitter to talk of your +wife than you are, you—you hound.’ The words in the slow drawl were +maddening, and this time it was Massinger’s revolver that was levelled, +but Mr Denver sat idly as ever, looking full at his companion, and +presently the latter dropped his arm.</p> + +<p>‘Malūa, Major, Malūa! even <i>you</i> won’t commit murder, you see.’—A +longer hiss from the inky depth in the centre, and a thin jet of water +spurted up a foot or two above the level of the ground. Mr Denver took +out his watch and looked at the opening above.</p> + +<p>‘The show’s beginning,’ he said. Massinger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> was wiping some drops of +water off his trousers.</p> + +<p>‘I say,’ he said excitedly, ‘that water was boilin’; will it come any +higher?’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t alarm yourself, Major, the moon’ll be up before the next +demonstration.’</p> + +<p>‘What in the fiend’s name has the moon got to do with it? If you think +I’m goin’ to stay here to be boiled for you or any other madman, I’m +not takin’ any, I can tell you.’</p> + +<p>‘No? Well, I guess you’re <i>going</i> to stay here some, while I +finish what I’ve got to say.—Four years ago you married the present +Mrs Massinger; and I guess you’ve led her the life of a dog.’</p> + +<p>‘You’re a liar! a d——d liar! I’ve never ill-used her.’</p> + +<p>‘You’ve never struck or kicked her, you mean, but by God, in every +other way you’ve been a brute to her, and I reckon you’ve spoilt her +life.’</p> + +<p>He held the other with his look, and went on rapidly.</p> + +<p>‘I know you, Major; you’re a mean, sullen, sordid cur, not fit to live +with any woman, much less with <i>her</i>. We—ell! so—o I guess I’ve +fixed up a little idea which I’m going<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> to explain to you right along.’ +Another low, soft hiss from the bottomless pit. The rays from the moon +were now striking almost vertically into the cavern, on Massinger +sitting motionless in an angry but half-cowed amazement, on Mr Denver +again consulting his watch. He returned it to his pocket and said:</p> + +<p>‘In ten minutes from that first jet, there’ll be a geyser, and if +we’re here I calculate we’ll be boiled and carried down that hole,—I +know its little ways. There’s just upon six minutes left, but in three +the moon’ll be right above, and there’ll be considerable light in the +shooting gallery.’</p> + +<p>Massinger opened his mouth, but Mr Denver went on sharply and +distinctly:</p> + +<p>‘You see, Major, my idea’s just this, <i>one</i> of us has got to +stay right here. Now its likely you’ll prefer being shot to being +boiled; when I say the words “one, two, <i>three</i>,” we shall +both of us fire, and if you pass out over my body you are to be +congratul<i>at</i>ed. I shall shoot you if I can, because’—he paused, +then very slowly, ‘I guess Mrs Massinger has no kind of use for you. +It’s a fair and square business, Major, and you bet’—he pointed with +his pistol to the bubbling,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> hissing chasm—‘the devil’ll take the +hind-most.’</p> + +<p>Dick Denver smiled grimly as he finished his exordium—his composure +was devilish; he rose, looked once up at the opening above, through +which the moon was now visible directly overhead, and then stood +immovable, watching his companion. The full horror of his position +had at last dawned on Massinger; he was on his feet now, leaning +irresolutely against the wall, with staring eyes fixed alternately upon +the awful chasm between them and his opponent’s set face.</p> + +<p>‘My God!’ he said; ‘you must be mad,—for heaven’s sake, let’s end this +fooling.’ But his ashen face showed that he knew it was no fooling, but +a grim reality.</p> + +<p>‘Time’s up. I shall say “one, two, <i>three</i>”; at three we fire.’</p> + +<p>The words acted like a cold douche on Massinger; he shivered all over, +then braced himself against the rock and set his teeth.</p> + +<p>‘D——n you,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll pass out over your body yet.’ Turning +to bay with a wolfish glare in his eyes, he lifted his pistol.</p> + +<p>The angry water, greedy of its prey, was hissing louder and louder +between them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> + +<p>‘One—two—<i>three</i>!—’ a double report and a hoarse, stifled cry. +Mr Denver staggered back, and his hat, pierced through and through, +fell from his head. Recovering himself, he threw one look over the +pit to where Massinger lay motionless on his face, shot through the +heart; the devil’s water creeping up and brimming over the edge, nearly +touched his rigid body.</p> + +<p>‘Wonder if the cuss is dead? Can’t leave him to be boiled alive.’ Dick +sprang over the brimming, hissing gulf, and lifted the head.</p> + +<p>‘As mutton,’ he said, dropping the lifeless mass. With a leap +backwards, he gained the entrance, and, passing through, dashed down +the hill. Once he paused, and looking back, saw a smoking jet shoot +high into the moonlit sky. Some drops of boiling spray fell with a hiss +on his face and hands,—Dick shivered and went on his way.</p> + + +<h3>AN AFTERTHOUGHT</h3> + +<p>The first streaks of dawn were showing in the east. The long, low, +white-verandahed hotel surrounded by a group of palms that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> wavered +unsteadily in the half-light, like a group of ghostly sentinels, was +still undisturbed by the coming day. A man standing back in the shadow +muttered to himself, as, glancing over his shoulder, he caught the +first glow of light on the horizon. Advancing softly, with a spring, +he grasped the roof of the verandah, and swung himself up lightly and +noiselessly. Climbing the balcony rails, he looked for a moment along +the line of French windows opening outwards, then, creeping forward, he +passed through one of them into a small empty room, with a larger one +adjoining it. Pausing inside, he glanced through the open door into the +other room. The night had been stiflingly hot, the windows were open, +and from the bed standing in the far corner the mosquito-curtains were +thrown back. As his eyes fell upon the bed, Dick Denver shivered, and +stood thinking.</p> + +<p>‘Better not’ he said to himself; ‘it’s kind of a skeery tale.’ He took +a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘No one saw us go up,’ he muttered, +and grimly, ‘I guess no one saw us come down.’ He ran his eye over the +paper.</p> + +<p>‘“I bet Mr Dick Denver the sum of £200<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> that I visit with him a +condemned hole called ‘La boîte du diable,’ and stay there as long or +longer than he does.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>‘“ Play or pay.</p> + +<p class="right"> +‘“Albert Massinger, October 9th, 188—.<br> +Dick Denver.”’<br> +</p> +</div> + +<p>So it ran. With a pencil he scribbled a line underneath:</p> + +<p>‘Lost and paid. A. M. stays there for ever. Burn this.—D. D.’</p> + +<p>He took out of his pocket a bundle of notes, then stole gently forward +and pinned them both to the pillow of the bed where a white figure lay +sleeping. Then he stood back and gazed with a wistful, yearning look in +his eyes. The white-robed figure moved restlessly in its sleep, and a +sigh that went straight to Dick’s heart came stealing across the room. +The window faced east, and the dawning light fell softly on the sweet +face resting on a bare white arm, and on the fair hair trailing across +the pillow. A tiny puff of sea-air floated in, and ruffled the lace +falling back from the delicate throat. A mad longing seized upon Dick; +he took two steps forward, then stopped irresolutely and staggered +back against the wall, as a far-off mountain cry of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> beast or bird +was wafted in at the window, sounding in his ears like that other cry +heard not long ago. It steadied him, and with a noiseless step he moved +swiftly to the bed, and stooping, pressed his lips lightly to one fair +tress that fell softly over neck and bosom; then he raised himself +as swiftly. Without another look he passed through the window, and +swinging himself over the rail, walked hurriedly through the morning +mist in the direction of the pier.</p> + +<p>Two hours afterwards, Mr Dick Denver leant against the side of the +French packet ‘Belle Ile’ as she made steady way from the port of St +Martin. His eyes were fixed on a fast-vanishing white building.</p> + +<p>‘I’m best with a new hand; there was nothing <i>to</i> that racket. But +it just licks creation how I made tracks; it wasn’t in the programme, +anyway. Why did I? Dick, my son, why did you?... We—ell, ’pears to +me somehow I remembered a saying: “Ye cannot get figs from thistles”; +I guess that’s right so,—and,’ exceeding bitterly, ‘who am I that I +should lift my face to hers?’</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ASHES">ASHES</h2> +</div> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To the Inexorable, what need of incense-burning, when from the ashes +of human life is ever rising a measured stream of smoke?</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p> + + +<p>I, Paul Marylski, outcast and rolling stone, am sitting in my old +arm-chair on this accursed English day of yours, the year of little +grace 189-. Forty years have I rolled, and have gathered no moss. Body +and soul am I like unto the battered old friend I sit in. In sooth, I +think as I crouch here over my fire, that I am but as the dead, man +without hope, without desire, without a future, without a present—can +he live? Yes; for he is sitting here to-night like an old dog, with +the same folds in the cheeks, and the same yearning in the eyes. A +thousand curses on the Congo and its deathly fever!—but for that +might I still be man with future before me, but who can stand against +this devil’s gnawing that never ceases?—not I, for one. I have some +friends, a sweet country family, such as you have in England; they +interest themselves in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> me, in <i>me</i>. I am grateful. The ‘mother’ +tells me—‘Cheer up; this life is but a stage; it will soon pass—then, +think of the future, the glorious after-life.’ She believes in this +firmly—why not? Temperament, dear lady, all temperament! I can no more +believe it than I can still this clawing at my vitals. Why do I live? +<i>Pardieu</i>, I know not, having had my day—and what a day! Do they +not say, ‘Every dog must have his day’? <i>Tiens</i>, this dog has had +his, and it is that, and that alone, which keeps him alive. Even now, +as I sit watching the dying embers, what pictures can I not see through +the smoke that wreathes from my cigarette.</p> + +<p>Hark! What’s that? ‘Carmen!’ as I live, a battered hulk; ‘Carmen,’ and +on a barrel-organ! Ah, ha! Good, for your dingy London streets—they +help the picture for once.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>I see a room, warm and light; the green blinds are drawn, the polished +floor reflects the softly-shaded lights; in the centre a table +loaded with things loved of the soul, and—is it the same thing, +perhaps?—the palate; empty bottles—ay, even an <i>empty</i> bottle +was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> lovely then—betoken the end of a feast. Round the table, men, +only men; but look well—ay, and look again, ye callow youths, and +livers of the life of every day—not one but has his <i>future</i> or +his <i>past</i>—most have both. Look at him well who rises, glass +in hand, to address the company. Did ye ever see such a born leader +of men, a giant, slim and tall, with eye that flashes, and drooping +black moustache? He waves his hand to the waiters to leave the room, +and speaks:—‘<i>Messieurs</i>,’ he says—in French, for is he not +Christophe de Barsac, first smuggler in Marseille (or out of it, for +that matter)?—‘<i>Messieurs, le jeu est fait</i>,’ and he drains his +glass to the dregs, everyone following suit. ‘It now only remains, +<i>Messieurs</i>, to reckon the cost,’ and he sits down. A groan goes +up from around the table. There rises a tall, fat—ah! fat—man, with +the invincible smile of a Russian of the Russians. As such, I, the +Pole, sitting opposite, hate him—but also, you know, I love him as a +brother.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Monsieur le President</i>, and gentlemen,’ he goes on in English, +which his soul loves as only does the soul of the man who speaks it as +badly. ‘We ’ave ’ad ze good time, ze<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> time of ze own devil, as says +our good friend Kerr—r;’ he rolls the r’s indefinitely, and indicates +with his cigar a lean, sunburnt man on his left. ‘I ver’ moch regret +’zat I ’ave no more money to ’ave anoyzer time of ze own devil, and zat +also you ’ave none to lend me, <i>mais, que voulez vous, vive Monte +Carlo</i>!’ and he, too, sits down, with a supremely fatalistic shrug +of those vast shoulders, and the still invincible smile. Only three men +out of those nine understand English, yet a murmur of applause shows +the appreciation felt for the speaker, and the sentiments conveyed in +that vast and comprehensive shrug. When the applause has subsided, his +neighbour, the sunburnt southerner and knight-errant, rises abruptly +and says:</p> + +<p>‘That’s all very well, but I guess this dinner’s got to be toted up +and paid for. Le’ssee how this pans out,’ and he turns the contents of +his pockets on to the table,—one franc twenty-five centimes. He drops +them into a wine-glass, and passes it to his neighbour. Then follows a +scene curious—nine men of good presence in evening dress, turning out +the innermost recesses of their apparel into a wine-glass—and see, +the result<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> is handed to the President, who counts it anxiously, after +adding his own mite of two sous—‘Six francs seventy-five centimes.’</p> + +<p>At the least the dinner has cost fifteen louis. Another groan from the +table.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Tenez</i>,’ says the President, ‘<i>J’ai une idée: le petit +n’a jamais joué; eh bien! Je donnerai les cinq francs au petit, et +il jouera.</i>’ Evidently <i>bonne idée</i>, for the room resounds +as <i>le petit</i> is surrounded and forced forward with many an +encouraging pat.</p> + +<p><i>Bon Dieu!</i> That was I! That beardless youth with the bright eyes +and black hair, enjoying life as none but a Pole can enjoy, before his +country has laid her curse of melancholy upon him. Twenty years is +a good span of time, but it seems more than twenty hundred since De +Barsac pressed those five francs into my indifferent hand, and bade me +go forth and seek the price of that feast, eaten not wisely but too +well. Yet even now is Gortchakow’s pat heavy upon my back.</p> + +<p>Ah, well, there he goes! passing dreamily out of the busy café, with +its garish lights and constant hum, into the ‘Place’—the immortal +‘Place.’ How well I remember it!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> Did not <i>her</i> windows look on +it? Every feature, graven on my brain, rises now before me. The living +stream ever flowing from its four sides into those inexorable doors, +the sweet scents wafted from the gardens on the left, the fantastic +shadows of the palms, the strains of ‘Carmen’ from the band playing +in the verandah, the feverish throb of humanity under those quiet and +starry heavens. Who does not know the ‘Place’? and, once knowing, who +forgets?</p> + +<p>There he goes, dreamily threading his solitary way across to the +rooms; yet are his thoughts not with those five poor francs; they +are, with his eyes, fixed on a certain window in the hotel opposite, +and wondering what is the earliest hour <i>she</i> can be ‘<i>de +retour</i>.’</p> + +<p>But, heigh-ho! the portals are reached, and lo! one must think of that +dinner. What is one five-franc piece? Truly not much, yet something +in maiden hands. The rooms are full; it is the gambler’s noon. <i>Le +petit</i> finds himself wedged in between a swarthy Roumanian Jew, who +is sowing louis broadcast ‘<i>en plein</i>’ and ‘<i>à cheval</i>,’ and +an English lady, of undetermined age but determined spirit, who is +shedding her weekly bill in five-franc<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> pieces. The Roumanian soweth, +but he reapeth not, and he rises with a scowl and a shrug, and <i>le +petit</i> slips into his seat.</p> + +<p>He is <i>sitting</i> down with one five-franc piece. <i>Mon petit!</i> +truly thou art—what one calls—very green. Yet he has watched the game +before, this young bantling.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Quatre premier</i>,’ he cries, and manfully throws down the fateful +piece. The little white ball is already spinning with its merry rattle +of life and death—it stops. ‘<i>Deux, noir, paire et manque.</i>’ The +ever-busy rake pushes over to him two louis. And now</p> + +<p>‘<i>Trente-quatre, trente-six, deux louis, sil vous plait.</i>’</p> + +<p>The obliging croupier places them—once again the merry rattle.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Trente-six</i>,’ says the sing-song voice.</p> + +<p>‘Bravo, <i>mon petit</i>, here is the price of the dinner with +interest.’ Prudence personified, he places fifteen louis out of the +twenty-four in an inner pocket and prepares to do or die with the rest. +Yes, yes, how well I remember the tall Englishman behind saying to his +friend, ‘Sportsman, that young beggar! I shall follow him.’</p> + +<p><i>Le petit’s</i> English has been picked up on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> a Straits Settlements +trader, but the tall Englishman he understands and appreciates. He is +playing on <i>rouge</i> now. A run of four; already by his side are +piled the louis mountains high.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Messieurs, faites le jeu.</i>’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Cent louis, rouge.</i>’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Le jeu est fait—rouge</i>;’ again and again, and yet again comes +red, and each time <i>le petit</i> wins.</p> + +<p>Now he is staking the limit, and winning still, the multitude +wondering, with that rising murmur of praise and plaint that ever +attends a big winner’s fortunes. Suddenly he looks up. Standing +opposite to him is a tall woman with dark eyes, lovely to behold, and +she is watching him with a curious look, not of pity, not of contempt, +not of passion, yet with something of all three. He starts, half +rising, and makes a motion to leave the table.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Messieurs, faites le jeu</i>,’—the murmur grows.</p> + +<p>‘Follow the run up; play your luck out, sir,’ says the big Englishman. +<i>Le petit</i> hurriedly counts out the limit and pushes it on to +<i>rouge</i>—the ball stops. ‘<i>Noir</i>,’ drawls the croupier, in a +triumphant sing-song; the run<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> is broken, but <i>le petit</i>, sweeping +the remains of his winnings into his pocket, is no longer in his seat.</p> + +<p>Between two goddesses can no man stand, not even the maiden wooer of +the great goddess Chance, when a greater than she has claimed him.</p> + +<p>The woman with the dark eyes moved away, but <i>le petit</i> is beside +her.</p> + +<p>‘’Léna, how long the day has been! But the night comes, ah, the night +comes—at twelve?’ She gives him one look from unfathomable eyes, that +provoke, yet answer, and passes on to a seat at the next table. <i>Le +petit</i>, with bowed head and unsteady step, but with a flame in his +eyes, passes out into the air to render an account of his stewardship.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Once more the softly-lighted room. The ghost of the feast has his +clutches now upon the band of revellers; yea, a gloom is upon them; +even wanes the smile of Gortchakow, prince of Russian philosophers.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Enfin!</i>’ says the President, and at his voice all turn, to +see <i>le petit</i> come in at a side door,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> and stand silent in the +shadow. All eyes are upon him—surely he looks depressed.</p> + +<p>‘Zey ’ave plucked ’im, my children, zey ’ave plucked ’is one leetle +feazer,’ is Gortchakow’s sorrowful but smiling comment.</p> + +<p>‘What luck, my son?’ says the President, gravely. For answer, <i>le +petit</i> opens his coat, and before nine pairs of hungry eyes he pours +forth what seems a never-ending stream of gold and notes on to the +table. A howl of amaze and delight bursts forth, and <i>le petit</i> is +enveloped in several pairs of arms, until he wriggles out, and dives +under the table, where he sits in comparative security, while the +President pays the bill, divides the spoil, and delivers a homily upon +‘<i>le chance</i>,’ rendered palatable by bumpers of champagne.</p> + +<p>Great God! And is it only twenty years since I sat under that +table?—only twenty!!</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Once more the ‘Place,’ but now the hum and throb has given place to the +passion-fraught stillness of the Southern night. Closed are the rooms +and the cafés; the last strains of the band have died away; the croak +of belated frogs, an occasional laugh, and the snatch of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> song from +belated humans, are the only sounds that come to the ears of <i>le +petit</i> as he wends his cautious way to the longed-for meeting. A +French window opening on to a balcony, ten feet from the ground,—what +is this to a sailor, under cover of the night? Now he is up, and gazing +with all his eyes through the half-open window into a dimly-lighted +room.</p> + +<p>Sights fair and horrible, many, have I seen in my tempest-driven life, +ay, many, but never, by the gods, have I seen sight fairer, and yet +more horrible, than that which met <i>le petit’s</i> fascinated gaze +through those half-drawn blinds.</p> + +<p>The figure of the loved one is stretched on the couch, dreaming, with +look of expectation and delight in the half-closed eyes.</p> + +<p>Dark with all the passions, scowling malignant, a face glares from a +shrouded corner of the room upon that white-robed form. Passionate +love, passionate hate, passionate jealousy—who shall say what is in +that face? Enough surely to bind <i>le petit</i> with the spell of a +nameless terror.</p> + +<p>The figure moves forward noiselessly out of the shadow. Ah! One knows +him now! This is he whom most she dreads; he who,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> not husband, nor +lover accepted, pursues her with vows, with threats, with all that +there is of jealous passion; to whom, despite of fear, repulsion, +dread, some mysterious tie binds her. <i>Le petit</i> gazes—so he is +there, that ogre, ah! And certainly he knows, that monster, of the +expected visitor—he has read it in the passion of her eyes, upon her +dumb but parted lips.</p> + +<p>It is destiny—so much the better; once for all we will end all this.</p> + +<p>The figure creeps forward, with raised hand clenched.</p> + +<p><i>Le petit</i> steps in from the balcony.</p> + +<p>‘’Léna,’ he says, and with his finger points.</p> + +<p>She rises at the sound of his voice, and turning sees; then with a +little cry of terror she comes to his arms for protection. That was +like her. Afterwards, when <i>le petit</i> wanted those white arms that +hung around his neck—wanted them sorely in his sick estate, nigh unto +death,—did she bring them then? Bah! All women are alike! and yet not +all—not all.</p> + +<p>Is that a devil that rages before one, foaming at the mouth?—Ah! no, +only Juan Costello, a very evil-looking person!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p> + +<p>‘My compliments to you, Monsieur, but this lady and myself wish to talk +<i>affaires</i>; will Monsieur have the kindness to withdraw?’</p> + +<p>Truly he is <i>canaille</i>, with his villainous tongue and his +villainous eyes—also he makes a great noise, until they come and take +him away; altogether it is a very stupid and common affair, pah!—Well, +well, it is a long time ago, and a little noise more or less doesn’t +matter to me now.</p> + +<p>Also <i>le petit</i> goes forth; and there is rage—a bitter, black +rage—in his heart.</p> + +<p>How slowly wing the hours away till the morning light—those hours of +disappointment and burning hate. That dog! One will kill him with the +first light.—The little bay near Cabbé Roquebrune—that little bay +that recalls so greatly the far-away lagoons of the blessed South Seas.</p> + +<p>Too good a resting-place for such a hound—far too good—yet it will +serve.</p> + +<p>Up and down, up and down, never still through the long night hours, +head awhirl, eyes aflame. Bad training, my child, for the morning’s +meeting.</p> + +<p>Who cares? It is fate—his death at my hands is written in those stars +that shine so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> steadily, so inexorably, above, in that dome of destiny.</p> + +<p>Ah! There it is at last, that streak of light—omen of wrath and blood, +dull, and red, and angry streak. ‘<i>Tant mieux!</i>’ Certainly there +will be sport.</p> + +<p>At last the little bay—and at the water’s edge the little tideless +waves are whispering joyfully, and they are as glad as <i>le petit</i>, +for this is a scene they love.</p> + +<p>There he comes! he is glad, too—good—everything goes well.</p> + +<p>‘You know these things, my friend; tell me where shall I hit him to +kill?’</p> + +<p>‘I reckon you’re a kind of a spitfire. Take the cuss under the arm, as +he stands sideways, and keep your own elbow low.’</p> + +<p>Ah! My friend, thou art an artist, and valued as such, but, when the +blood surges and sings in the head, words count for little.</p> + +<p>So I can see his hated face glaring at me above his pistol, the flames +from our eyes are meeting. Ah, me! goodness and strength are gone out +of me with that glance—pity to spend so much good hatred on a cur like +that.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> + +<p>Yet ’tis not for long! and now ... ’tis all over, and they are carrying +<i>le petit</i> back from the regretful waters. And some time—when was +it? who knows?—he drags himself to sea again, and the page is closed. +And what of the other, that hound? And of her? Again, who knows?—Ah, +yes, I have still the pain of that wound, but not greatly.</p> + +<p>Well! well! a long time ago,—and it was but a page. Come, turn over.</p> + +<p>Nay, not even the strength for that; thou hast had thy dose of life for +the day, and the barrel-organ is gone, and thou art tired, and the fire +is low, and the cigarette—pouf—it is but ashes.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TALLY_HO-BUDMASH">‘TALLY HO’—BUDMASH</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘As the egg, so the chicken.’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Free translation of a native proverb.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> + +<p>Two figures stood on the edge of the stream of traffic which flows +unceasingly along Piccadilly in the dusty forenoons of the season. They +stood with their eyes blinking watchfully in the sun that glared with +a friendly and altogether satisfying glare upon the stone pavement. +The one was the figure of a small boy; his legs were planted firmly +apart, and a wide-brimmed straw hat was set sturdily on the very back +of his head. A very small, very brown-faced boy was he, with round blue +eyes, and hair fair almost to whiteness; rising a stout five, and his +name—for the purposes of this chronicle—was ‘Tally Ho.’ The other was +the presentment of a silent and melancholy Hindu, with a black beard, +and turbaned head of a dusky mahogany; lean, and white-clothed, he +stood slightly behind, in an attitude of respectful protection.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p> + +<p>They gazed curiously at the changing, throbbing flow of Western energy, +and ever and again the flow glanced over its shoulder in its ceaseless, +and apparently objectless, quest, to wonder in its turn at those two +strange figures from an unknown and far-off land, washed up high and +dry on the edge of the stream.</p> + +<p>‘De big fire is velly hot,’—Tally Ho always called the sun the big +fire—‘as hot as Inja, doesn’t ’oo tink, Kotah Lal?’</p> + +<p>‘If Tally Ho Sahib say, then so it is; yet it is in his servant’s mind +that in India there were even days when Tally Ho Sahib called that they +should put the big fire out, and greatly pull the punkah, and, as the +Sahib knows, there be no punkahs this side of the big water.’</p> + +<p>‘My mislemembers,’ said Tally Ho. ‘What do ’ose memsahibs goin’ lound +on de wheels, dey’re velly ugly, dey makle my’s head ache—tell dem to +’top, Kotah Lal,’ and he indicated with a stumpy brown forefinger two +dashing young females on the inevitable bicycle.</p> + +<p>‘They go thus because after them comes a big bad god, and so perchance +they will escape,’ said Kotah Lal, with a glimmer of a smile on his +impassive features.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p> + +<p>‘For why are deir leggies one on each side?’ said the irrepressible +Tally Ho loudly, as another dame flew by; ‘it is not so in my country; +are de wheels alive, Kotah Lal?’</p> + +<p>‘It may be so; thy servant is a stranger in this land, Sahib, where +all men seem possessed of devils, so fast they run to do naught all +the day long. But the Doctor Sahib on the big ship did tell me that in +this country there be a great and bad spirit called Indi-Gesti-Un, who +pursues men to their undoing, so that they run ever faster to escape.’</p> + +<p>‘Where does he live, Kotah Lal?’ said Tally Ho, concernedly.</p> + +<p>Kotah Lal placed his hand upon the regions of his middle, and smiled +mournfully. This seemed to supply Tally Ho with a fresh idea.</p> + +<p>‘Kotah Lal,’ he said suddenly, thrusting his small brown fists deeply +into the pockets of his holland knickers, ‘what is dere for my’s +tiffin? Is dere cully and lice, allee samee as on de big ship?’</p> + +<p>‘The Sahib commanded and the order has gone forth; without doubt there +be these things for the Sahib’s lunch.’</p> + +<p>‘Velly dood, my tinks my’s empty.’ Tally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> Ho withdrew one hand from his +pocket, and passed it meditatively over his small stomach. ‘Which is de +way, Kotah Lal?’</p> + +<p>‘It will be necessary to walk down the market of the dried grasses, and +through the square where are the four great lions that the Sahib looked +upon with favour yesterday, to where the trains run in the smokey black +hole under the ground. So said the Sahib in the blue clothes of whom I +asked anon.’</p> + +<p>‘Turn on,’ said Tally Ho; ‘my’s <i>velly</i> empty, my wiss Foo Ching +was in Ingeliland; he made exkullent dood chow-chow; my loves Foo +Ching, Kotah Lal.’</p> + +<p>Foo Ching, the Chinese cook of the steamer which had two days before +achieved the honour of safely bearing from India, and landing one +‘Tally Ho,’ baptismally known as Geoffrey Standing Blount, was that +young man’s latest bosom friend, and at that time mainly responsible +for the eccentricities of his speech.</p> + +<p>‘My wiss my was corpington (corpulent), like Foo Ching; Foo Ching was +velly nice and corpington, and my’s <i>velly</i> empty.’</p> + +<p>Tally Ho, who usually carried his head loftily, drooped it to +contemplate mournfully his small person, and in so doing butted it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> +into the stomach of an elderly commercial hurrying to his mid-day meal.</p> + +<p>‘My begs ’oor pardon,’ said Tally Ho, pained but polite, raising his +hat and rubbing his snub nose. The commercial, with soul intent on the +undercut, paid no attention, but hurried on. ‘Oos a lude man,’ said +Tally Ho, indignantly; ‘a velly lude man.’ He stared reproachfully +after him up the street till the stream had swallowed him up.</p> + +<p>In time, and by dint of much circuitous marching and counter-marching, +escaping with many a dodge and device the rumbling onslaught of +’busses, and the ‘scorching’ attack of bicycles, they reached the black +hole known to the Westerns as Charing Cross Station. The interview +between Kotah Lal and the ticket clerk ended satisfactorily in his +obtaining tickets for not more than two stations further than their +destination. Armed with these, the Hindu secured Tally Ho by the arm, +and descended gravely to the platform.</p> + +<p>‘Dlefful ’tuffy,’ commented Tally Ho, with a sniff of disgust; ‘my +wantee tum scent on my’s hankeychoo.’</p> + +<p>‘Let the Sahib abide but a moment in patience—here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> cometh the panting +one with the fiery eye.’</p> + +<p>A train drew up, they got into an empty carriage, and, as Tally Ho +remarked, ‘de Injun blewed its nose,’ and ‘shaking its head,’ went on +its way towards the west. Now it is not to be peculiarly remembered +against Kotah Lal that upon this stifling afternoon he was inclined +to doze, bearing in mind that for two nights, being cumbered with the +duties of arrival, he had not slept,—moreover, the fact that within +two minutes of entering the train he fell into a deep and dreamless +slumber, he himself has since been heard to explain as a particular and +malicious visitation of the Evil One.</p> + +<p>Before Westminster Bridge was reached Tally Ho had exhausted the +fascinations of the carriage, and was become unfeignedly bored.</p> + +<p>‘My will wait till de tlain ’tops,’ he thought, ‘and ask Kotah Lal if +my may det down and ’peak to Blown.’</p> + +<p>Brown, a particular friend of his, was an engine-driver on the little +one-horse line that ran past his home in the North-West Provinces. The +train pulled up with a jerk at the station, and Tally Ho turned to +proffer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> his request, but a gently ecstatic snore from the turbaned +head in the opposite corner warned him that his protector was far away +in the Land of Nod.</p> + +<p>‘Poo’ah Kotah Lal,’ said Tally Ho compassionately, ‘he’s velly sleepy, +my will not wakle him up.’ This he said consideringly, having in his +small mind the semi-conviction that it might be better <i>not</i> to +ask for his protector’s leave in this matter. ‘My tinks,’ pursued Tally +Ho, ‘Blown will be wanting my.’</p> + +<p>He moved towards the door, but at this moment the train resumed its +grimy way, and burrowed once more into the bowels of the city. Tally Ho +paused, his small fist on the handle.</p> + +<p>‘My will wait,’ he said, ‘till de silly tlain ’tops again.’</p> + +<p>He amused himself by turning and returning the handle, putting his +whole soul into the operation, and missing being projected into a murky +space by the dispensation of a merciful Providence, and the skin of his +tiny white teeth. The train emerged into the light, and pulled up again +in the open space just eastward of St James’s Park Station. Kotah Lal +snored peacefully.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span></p> + +<p>‘My’s velly good not to wakle him,’ mused Tally Ho, as he slid out of +the carriage and bumped on his little seat to the ground. ‘My will +’peak clossly to Blown—dis is a baddy tlain.’</p> + +<p>He frowned as he picked himself up, and, shaking himself, took his +grubby way almost under the train towards the engine. The engine-driver +was looking ahead and turning on steam as Tally Ho caught him in +profile.</p> + +<p>‘<i>It’s not Blown</i>,’ he gasped, astonished, and the train moved on +past a gaping atom of humanity.</p> + +<p>‘’Top, ’top, you baddy tlain, my says ’top!’ But the train stopped +not, and went on its way rejoicing into the cleaner parts of the city, +bearing with it an unconsciously slumbering Hindu.</p> + +<p>Now the word ‘tears’ had not been in Tally Ho’s vocabulary this many a +day.</p> + +<p>‘Baddy tlain,’ he said, ‘’t has runned away wid my’s Kotah Lal,’ +forgetting, perchance, that it was Tally Ho that had first deserted the +train, and not the train Tally Ho. ‘My will catchee it!’</p> + +<p>His small legs twinkled rapidly down the line of the train. But the +train had the start, and was flourishing out of St James’s Park<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> +Station at the one end as Tally Ho trotted into it at the other. He +laboured up the steep incline on to the platform as the tail light was +swallowed up in the opposite blackness. Tally Ho stopped, at a loss +what to do.</p> + +<p>‘Velly baddy tlain,’ he panted, ‘my—’ here a small mustard Dandie +Dinmont sniffed at his legs. ‘Oh! <i>what</i> a nice doggie!’ said +Tally Ho, with characteristic irrelevance, and stooped to pat it. A +whistle sounded, the Dandie trotted away obediently, and Tally Ho +trotted after in hot pursuit. The platform was disgorging a stream of +passengers, and Tally Ho, his mind and eye fixed on the dog, passed the +ticket collector, unchecked, at the skirt of a stout middle-aged female.</p> + +<p>‘Hi,’ said the collector, ‘hi, lydy,—ticket for the youngster, please.’</p> + +<p>‘What youngster?’ said the indignant lady.</p> + +<p>‘That there youngster of yourn, in the holland breeks.’</p> + +<p>The owner thereof was now well up the staircase, and twinkling over the +bridge in pursuit of the Dandie.</p> + +<p>‘You impident person!’ said the choleric dame, ‘holland breeks indeed!’</p> + +<p>‘Now then, ma’am, don’t you give me none<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> of your bluff—holland breeks +it is, and a smudgy seat at that,—py up please, if you y’nt got no +ticket.’</p> + +<p>‘But I tell you I haven’t got any children; I’m a single woman; you +must be intoxicated, collector.’</p> + +<p>‘Go it, breeks!’ came a voice from the half-amused and half-impatient +crowd.</p> + +<p>‘That’ll do, ma’am, that’ll do,’ said the collector, majestically; +‘your name and address, if <i>you</i> please.’</p> + +<p>‘Certainly,’ bellowed the now infuriated female, ‘certainly. Maria +James, 4 Smith Square; and I’ll take good care you’re not a collector +of this company for long. Holland breeks indeed!’</p> + +<p>‘You see,’ mused the collector to the crowd, as he took the remaining +tickets, ‘it tykes ’em this w’y sometimes—these ’ere <i>single</i> +femyles.’</p> + +<p>Now in the meantime the ‘disturber of traffic,’ having said to +himself, ‘my wants to pat that doggie,’ had to his great disgust only +arrived at seeing the object of his desires lifted into a cab, and +whirled from before his eyes, at the gates of St James’s Park. This +was enough to damp the spirits of a hero. Tally Ho entered the park +with a momentarily dejected<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> step, and wandered on to the bridge; but +there his dejection ceased, for below him, swimming in circles, in +semi-circles, in parabolas, in zig-zags, were ducks—ducks more sleek +and beautiful than any he had ever beheld, and fat—words could not +describe the nature of their fatness. Tally Ho sank on his knees, stuck +his head through the girders, and gazed. His affections particularly +rivetted themselves on two small bronze-green ducks taking first +lessons in diving from an attentive parent.</p> + +<p>‘My wantles <i>dem</i>,’ said Tally Ho, joyfully and loudly, through +the girders, to the intense astonishment of a military-looking old +gentleman, from between whose legs the words arose.</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me! What’s that?’</p> + +<p>‘My wantles ’oo for each of my’s tlowser’s pottets,’ bellowed Tally Ho +across the water to the ducks.</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me! It’s the ducks the boy wants,’ commented the ancient +warrior, stepping with much care clear of Tally Ho, and noting the +direction of his gestures. At this precise instant Tally Ho withdrew +his head from between the girders and scrambled on to his feet, and as +he did so his eye lighted on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> the stranger whose elderly but martial +form he had been doing his level best to upset.</p> + +<p>‘Salaam, Genelal Sahib,’ he said, saluting affably and without +embarrassment, ‘my is Tally Ho—my wantles dose ducks.’</p> + +<p>The General saluted in turn, screwed a gold-rimmed eyeglass carefully +into his eye, stroked his grizzled moustache, and gazed curiously at +his interlocutor.</p> + +<p>‘Tan my have dose two nickle gleeny-blown ducks?’ said Tally Ho, +pointing into the water, and pulling abstractedly at the General’s grey +frock coat.</p> + +<p>‘’Tenshun,’ said the latter, and Tally Ho dropped his hands +mechanically to his side, and drew himself up with his feet at a +correct 45 degrees. ‘Now, then, what d’ye want the ducks for, heh?’</p> + +<p>The ‘heh’ was rather alarming, but Tally Ho passed it by unconcernedly.</p> + +<p>‘Oos velly like my Daddy,’ he remarked with condescension; ‘but my +wantles dose ducks to takle home in my’s pottets,’ he continued, +reverting to business.</p> + +<p>‘Bless the boy! But you can’t have those ducks; they belong to the +Queen!’</p> + +<p>‘Dod bless her!’ said Tally Ho, raising his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> hat abstractedly, for +his attention had wandered to the stick with the skull handle in the +General’s hand. ‘Velly plitty ‘tick,’ he murmured to himself, ‘my will +walkle wid ’oo, if ’oos not tired,’ he added aloud considerately to the +stranger.</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me!’ said the dumfoundered General. ‘He’d take command of a +division for two pins! Gentleman though—Indian—know the breed. Wonder +who he is—seems lost—never mind, take him along—pump him—no fool. +Come along Mr—Tally Ho, Sir; eyes front, quick march.’</p> + +<p>Tally Ho made one manful endeavour to compass the General’s stride, and +then relapsed philosophically into a regular two for one. He had quite +forgotten the ducks, he wanted that stick so badly to carry over his +shoulder like a rifle. After completing the length of the bridge, side +by side with the General, and cogitating silently, Tally Ho saluted, +and said:</p> + +<p>‘<i>Ettafakhan</i> de Genelal Sahib finds de ’tick velly heavy.’</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me! Persian! Very talented boy, great +diplomatist—<i>Ettafakhan</i>,’ he continued aloud to Tally Ho (the +which is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> Persian for ‘peradventure’), and without another word +transferred the stick to his small and grubby fist. The latter, too +well bred to show the transports of joy swelling in his small bosom, +halted, salaamed profoundly, and after hugging the stick, which was +at least as tall as himself, heaved it over his shoulder, and marched +manfully on. The General was an old man; he stooped slightly and walked +slowly, and his eyes, that looked like those of an old dog, gazed +curiously ever and anon from under his shaggy eyebrows at the small +brown urchin tramping at his side. They reached the gates of the park +before he had in the least made up his mind what course to pursue with +this strange little mortal. As they were crossing the Mall towards St +James’s Palace, a new idea struck Tally Ho; he halted suddenly, stuck +the stick into the ground, and leaning on it, looked around him with a +self-satisfied air.</p> + +<p>‘My’s losted,’ he announced.</p> + +<p>The General, in rapt amazement at the calmness of this remark, halted +also, and a hansom, sweeping by, nearly ran over his toes, and knocked +off Tally Ho’s hat with the edge of its wheel.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p> + +<p>‘Damned scoundrels!’ muttered the exasperated warrior below his breath, +‘plucky boy, though—near thing.... All right, heh?’—this to Tally Ho, +who was contemplating a large splash of mud on the crown of his hat.</p> + +<p>‘My’s noo ’at!’ he said, ruefully.</p> + +<p>‘Never mind your hat s’long’s <i>you’re</i> all right, heh? That’s it! +Come along.’ A bright idea struck him. ‘Are you hungry? Course he is, +all boys hungry. Gawd bless me! what was I thinking of? Come and have +some tiffin at my club, Mr—Tally Ho, sir.’</p> + +<p>‘Tank’oo, my will be <i>dee</i>lighted, my’s <i>velly</i> empty,’ said +Tally Ho, frankly and cheerfully.</p> + +<p>‘Course you are. Come along, sir, come along.’</p> + +<p>As the oddly assorted couple took their way down Pall Mall, the +passers-by turned to stare. The sentries at Marlborough House +saluted—Tally Ho appropriated and returned the salutes with a +pre-occupied air—he was thinking now of the General’s white hat, and +of how he desired it greatly to keep his mongoose ‘Bengy’ in—he was +sure he had seen little windows in the top of it. ‘Perhaps the Genelal +Sahib will takle it off again, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> sclatchle his head as Blown does +sometimes, den my will see,’ he reflected.</p> + +<p>Now they had arrived at the corner of St James’s Square, and the +sweet-faced old sweeper at the crossing had made her double-barrelled +bob to the sunburnt, white-haired veteran and the sun-browned, +white-haired child. At the steps of a great service club the General +halted, and took off his hat to mop his brow, for the day was hot, and +his mind was perplexed.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, sir,’ he said aloud to himself, ‘boy’s hungry—tiffin first, pump +afterwards. Gawd bless me! What’s that?’ For Tally Ho, swelling with +joy of verification, was threading his thumbs through the vent-holes of +the white hat, and saying to himself with subdued emphasis:</p> + +<p>‘My will makle two mores, <i>eke oper eke</i>’ (one upon the top of the +other).</p> + +<p>‘Devil you will!’ said the General, and feeling from the absorption of +his guest’s eye that no time was to be lost, he hastily replaced his +hat, and extended two fingers to assist Tally Ho up the steps.</p> + +<p>‘No t’ank ’oo,’ said the latter; ‘my will runle up.’ He proceeded to +mount the stairs<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> on all-fours, and sat on the top step at the feet +of the hall porter, awaiting the arrival of his distinguished but +disconcerted host.</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me! regular young budmâsh (rogue)—fine fellow, +though—very fine fellow! Heh! Wilkins!’ he said, with a perplexed +twirl of his moustache, to the unmoved janitor.</p> + +<p>‘New member, General, or friend of yours only, sir? What name shall I +enter, General?’</p> + +<p>‘This gentleman will tiffin with me, Wilkins. Name, heh! what?—Quite +so. Mr—Tally Ho, sir,’ he said, turning to Tally Ho, who with his hat +off was examining the tape machine in the hall with an interested eye, +‘the servant wishes to know your name, so that he may put it in the +visitors’ book. What shall I tell him?’</p> + +<p>‘Geoffley Standin’ Blount,’ returned Tally Ho. His knees were grubby, +his hat was torn, his seat was dusty, but he looked very much of a +gentleman.</p> + +<p>‘Mr Geoffrey Standing Blount, Wilkins,’ said the General with dignity. +The smile flickering into Wilkins’ eye flickered out again, and he +turned to the visitors’ book. The General led the way to the lavatory +past a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> group of younger men in the hall, who greeted him with +respectful if amused recognition. Tally Ho, smiling affably, followed +him. Arrived at the lavatory, he looked with a pleased anticipation +at the row of basins, for though of tender years, soap and water were +after his heart. He was feeling hot and dusty, the taps ran so nicely, +and—that was all, alas!—impossible to reach those basins, those +nicely flowing taps—so he stood in the middle and waited while the +General washed, politely silent, but feeling his inches, or want of +inches, keenly. At last he said, ‘My’s nickle, but my’s growin’!’ An +apology for his host’s want of thought was in the last words.</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me—boy’s too small—can’t reach—never thought of +that—dear, dear!’ He tugged at his moustache in great concern. +‘Hi! you boot-boy,’ he shouted, ‘bring a chair, two chairs, help +the gentleman up, hi! you fool, hold the slack of the gentleman’s +trousers, can’t you, while he washes;’ for Tally Ho in a transport of +joy was taking a header into the basin. The remainder of his toilet +was carefully attended to by the boot-boy, under the General’s anxious +supervision.</p> + +<p>When it was completed, and Tally Ho was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> once more presentable, they +ascended to the dining-room—Tally Ho for once on his two feet, and +conducting himself with a vast propriety. It was a little after the +ordinary luncheon hour when the General finally anchored his guest, +contrary to all laws and precedents, in the club dining-room. An old +crony of his was finishing his lunch in one of the windows; next to him +the General, greatly in want of support, took his stand, and having +caused his guest to be lifted into his seat, abstractedly handed him +a menu card. Tally Ho perused it gravely after the manner of a man +accustomed to these things, and handing it to the waiter, remarked:</p> + +<p>‘My will have cully and lice,’—he paused, debating gravely, ‘and +plummers,’ he added, with a note of triumph in his voice.</p> + +<p>The General twirled his moustache.</p> + +<p>‘Curry and rice for this gentleman, plums afterwards—fried sole for +me. Boy of decision,’ he continued, approvingly to himself. ‘Knows his +own mind.’ He looked at the card. ‘Gawd bless me! not on the menu, +either of them—’course, can’t read—how should he?—never mind, finer +fellow than I thought—man of resource.’ He turned to the crony. ‘How +do,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> ’Morant?’ he said—‘married man, just the man I want—stand by to +support me, heh?’ He nodded imperceptibly in the direction of Tally Ho.</p> + +<p>‘Certainly, my dear fellow,’ said the intelligent crony, ‘make me +known.’</p> + +<p>‘Colonel Morant—Mr Geoffrey Standing Blount.’</p> + +<p>Tally Ho, whose round blue eyes were fixed immovably on the face of +the waiter, greatly to the discomfiture of that youthful but solemn +personage, turned and twinkled friendlily at his new acquaintance, but +his mind was too agitated by the question then troubling it for more +than a passing attention to other matters.</p> + +<p>‘For why isn’t he black?’ he said in a loudly audible but awestricken +whisper to the General, pointing with his chin at the unfortunate. ‘My +foughted all club waiters was black.’</p> + +<p>‘This is England, sir, not India; here they’re red, you know,’ said +the General, blandly, with a chuckle. ‘It’s like lobsters, red in hot +water; ain’t it, Morant?’</p> + +<p>His eyes followed the vanishing form of the young waiter flying to hide +the blushes spreading over his disconcerted countenance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span></p> + +<p>‘Oh!’ said Tally Ho, polite but unconvinced.</p> + +<p>‘The point,’ said the General, after a pause, turning to his supporter. +‘The point is this—given small boy—gentleman—lost—name Geoffrey +Standing Blount—new to England.’</p> + +<p>‘Dat’s my,’ said Tally Ho to himself softly in parenthesis.</p> + +<p>‘Guest of mine,’ continued the General, ‘don’t want to pump him—point +is, how to find his belongings, heh?’ He wound up abruptly.</p> + +<p>‘Where was he met with?’ said the crony. He was head of a county +constabulary, and great on detective detail. ‘The time and place?’ +Mechanically he took out a pocket-book.</p> + +<p>‘Ducks—St James’s Park—one thirty.’</p> + +<p>Tally Ho stared from one to the other; were they talking of him? He +inclined to think so.</p> + +<p>‘My’s losted,’ he said to the crony; ‘my’s Daddy’s Number One +mud-and-water soldier in de Deyra Dhun.’</p> + +<p>At this precise moment his curry arrived, and no further information +did he volunteer, for, as he had remarked, he was ‘velly empty.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p> + +<p>‘I have it,’ said the crony, ‘waiter! fetch me an Army List. Number +One mud-and-water soldier is pigeon-English for commanding engineer. +Here you are,’ he continued, triumphantly, ‘R.E. Majors, Blount, F. +Standing. India.’</p> + +<p>‘India,’ said the General, ‘hum. Large place—and this is England.’</p> + +<p>‘His bankers,’ said the crony, ‘probably Cox’s; waiter, fetch me a +commissionaire, we’ll send him round and find out.’</p> + +<p>‘Bravo,’ said the General, ‘invaluable fellow, brilliant idea—that’s +it, young man,’ he turned approvingly to Tally Ho, ‘wire in.’</p> + +<p>‘Exkullent dood chow-chow, nearly as dood as Foo Ching’s,’ responded +Tally Ho. He was again oblivious of the fact that he was in process +of being found, and was devoting himself in the intervals of luncheon +to smiling sweetly at the waiter, whose feelings he was innocently +conscious had been in some sort wounded. ‘Are ’oo feelin’ all light +again?’ he said sympathetically, ‘’oo ’tant help not bein’ black, tan +’oo?’</p> + +<p>The waiter cast one beseeching look around him, and fled precipitately, +leaving a trail of blushes behind.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p> + +<p>‘Poor mans,’ said Tally Ho, ‘perwaps de big fire has strokled him; he +<i>is</i> velly led, isn’t he, Genelal Sahib?’</p> + +<p>‘All right, my boy, all right,’ said the General, choking. He turned to +the crony, who was smiling gravely. ‘Wonderful boy,’ he said, <i>sotto +voce</i>, ‘make fine soldier—splendid touch—considers feelings of his +men.’</p> + +<p>‘Rather a curious way of doing so,’ said the crony, glancing with a +twinkle in his eye at the door through which the waiter had disappeared.</p> + +<p>‘All same—good intention,’ said the General.</p> + +<p>But Tally Ho had entirely forgotten waiter, lunch, and hosts, in the +contemplation of a new problem connected with the giant fireplace, +which was crammed with plants.</p> + +<p>‘It’s all tommy lot,’ he said abruptly to himself, climbing down from +his chair and walking straight up to the fireplace. ‘Kotah Lal said +dere was allerways fires in Ingeliland, but dere isn’t, and dere never +wasn’t, ’cos dese would be burntled.’</p> + +<p>‘Gawd bless me!’ said the General, ‘wonderful!—splendid soldier he’ll +make—good reasonin’ power—fine forcible vocabulary.’</p> + +<p>‘I should apply for a commission for him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> to-morrow if I were you,’ +said the crony, drily.</p> + +<p>‘So I will,’ said the General, ‘hum—well—not quite yet—but keep my +eye on him.’</p> + +<p>Tally Ho came back to the table, and stood waiting at attention. The +two men rose.</p> + +<p>‘Has ’oo finished?’ said Tally Ho, ’tum along, my wantles my’s cigar.’</p> + +<p>‘It seems that your protégé has his vices as well,’ said the crony, +as they went downstairs. In the hall the commissionaire handed him +an address. He looked at it triumphantly. ‘Major Blount’s London +reference,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Capital,’ said the General, ‘I’ll send round at once—sure to know all +about him there.’</p> + +<p>He did so, then ordered coffee and cigars, and settled himself and his +guest in armchairs. Tally Ho’s feet, when he sat back, just reached the +edge of the chair.</p> + +<p>‘My’s daddy,’ he said, ‘dives my one puffle of his cigars—Kotah +Lal, my’s <i>sais</i>, ’mokes, but my doesn’t takle puffles from a +<i>sais</i>,’ he added, proudly.</p> + +<p>The General twinkled all over his war-worn face, took his cigar from +his mouth and handed it to Tally Ho. The latter grasped it gingerly +between his small brown finger and thumb, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> applied it to his mouth, +which it completely filled. Holding it firmly, and sitting well back, +with his chair tilted up, he took one long diligent draw, then with +his cheeks puffed out he gave it solemnly back to the General. Slowly +and rapturously he let the smoke escape, and watched it curl up to +the ceiling in little puffs and rings. When it was all expended, he +snuggled his small fair head back amongst the cushions.</p> + +<p>‘It allerways makles my sleepy,’ he said apologetically, and his head +was nodding already. ‘Dood night, ‘tank de Number One up aloft Sahib +for my’s goody day—but my wantled dose gleeny-blown ducks baddy.’ Here +he heaved a serene little sigh, and snuggled still further into the +recesses of the chair. ‘My’s lost-ed,’ he murmured contentedly, as his +chin fell on to his chest, and he slept. A sunbeam flitted in through +the blinds on to his dusty flaxen pate. The General leant forward.</p> + +<p>‘All serene, my young friend,’ he said softly, ‘before you wake again +we’ll have that careless beggar of a <i>sais</i> of yours by the heels, +and you’ll be “losted” no more. And mark my words, Morant,’ he went +on, flicking the ash off his cigar, ‘when we’re done for, and stacked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> +with the majority, that tow-headed young budmâsh’ll be as great, ay, +a greater soldier than either of us; we shan’t know it—stacked, +heh?—but the country will. One of us goes, but there’s always another +fellow ready to take his place, thank the Lord.’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Eke oper eke</i>,’ muttered Tally Ho in his dreams.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DOLDRUMS">THE DOLDRUMS</h2> +</div> + + +<p class="center">‘The breeze would have savéd him, you know,’ said the mate.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of a cloudless sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a sapphire sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the tune of a windless sigh,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That is drawn in the tops’les three,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sun sinks fast thro’ a burning haze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the heart of the sapphire sea.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the shadowed deep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Topped with an oily swell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the hours of the night asleep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the chime of her muffled bell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spent ship prays—and her spirit fails,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the heave of the sullen swell.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"> + +<hr class="tb"></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Fanning the crimson flare</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lit by the coming dawn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thro’ the hush in the breathless air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the night that is past and gone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The wind speeds swift to the weary sails,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a song of the coming morn.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But away from the stifled ship,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fleeter than any wind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With a kiss on the twisted lip</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the face that she leaves behind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A breath steals forth—and the wind but plays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On a mask that is left behind.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p> + +<p>Six bells clanged the dawning of the last hour in the midnight watch. I +dropped my cards, for it was the peculiar custom to stop whist just as +the bell sounded.</p> + +<p>‘Time up!’ said the Captain regretfully, mopping his brow, ‘How do we +stand, Jenny?’</p> + +<p>His wife’s voice—‘Eight and three eleven, and four’—rose in a +vinegary triumph of addition from across the saloon table, to culminate +in an emphatic ‘Fifteen points.’</p> + +<p>‘Good! I rather think that’s the best night yet, sir.—Bed, Jenny. +Good-night, gentlemen. A hot night, an’t it?’</p> + +<p>‘Good-night, Captain! Good-night, Mrs Cape! Coming on deck, Jaques?’</p> + +<p>‘No!’ said my partner, ‘bed for this child, g’night;’ and murmuring a +disgusted ‘Fifteen points—and the vinegar—and the heat—phew!’ he +shut his cabin door with a jerk.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p> + +<p>I climbed the stern hatchway, and joined the three men lounging against +the skylight on the poop. The moon hung hazily between the softly +flapping sails of the idling ship. Out of the deadly calm waters a +little purposeless heave rocked her ever and anon to this side and +that, and the old shellback at the useless wheel whistled softly to +himself, as he looked vainly for the ship’s wake in the oily tropical +ocean.</p> + +<p>The Southern Cross dipped afar on the port quarter, and innumerable +stars spangled the stilly depths of the dark heavens. The curiously +dissonant miaul of the focs’le cat hit the ear, through the sultry +stifling air, with a sense of the relieved ridiculous.</p> + +<p>‘Dosé fallows you know’ (he pronounced it ‘gnau’), said the mate in his +slightly nasal, foreign accent, evidently resuming, ‘it’s very curious +you know, dey rrãally haven’t anny feelings.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean, they feel no emotions, as we understand the word?’ +said young Raymond impatiently, his intolerance of human beings so +constituted ringing in the high-pitched tones of his clear voice.</p> + +<p>‘Not a blessed one!’ said a third voice from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> the ship’s side, shrill +and worn, ‘Yellow devils! Yellow devils! they’ve only one virtue.’</p> + +<p>‘And that, Doctor?’</p> + +<p>‘Opium, sirree. They’re tolerable, when they’re opium drunk.’</p> + +<p>The mate looked up sharply, and with his brown, almond-shaped Slav +eyes scrutinized keenly the dim figure of the speaker, and his mouth, +between the close-trimmed pointed beard and drooping moustaches, took a +more than usually cynical and mournful curve.</p> + +<p>‘You are severe, Doctor,’ he said; but the other, without answering, +turned away, and leaned over the bulwark wearily.</p> + +<p>‘Ah! that is bad, you know,’ I heard the mate say to himself under his +breath.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ said the shrill voice presently from the darkness, ‘you may have +seen ’em and you may talk about ’em, but you don’t <i>know</i> them. +You’ve not worked in China Town amongst John Chinaman, as I’ve worked. +I guess you’ve not seen ’em born, and die, and marry, as I’ve seen +them. Ugh! devils—devils—hog-skinned, slit-eyed devils!’</p> + +<p>‘It is all tempérrament, you know,’ said the mate, ‘dosé fallows, you +know, they are different all through, it is not a question of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> degree. +A white man will never understand how their minds wōrrk. Will you have +a cigarette, Doctor?’ He watched the thin face and trembling hand +closely, and shook his head, as the Doctor turned back with his lighted +cigarette to the ship’s side.</p> + +<p>‘It is bad, you know,’ he muttered again to himself. Young Raymond +had strolled to the wheel, and was standing talking cheerily to the +helmsman; the heat seemed to have no effect on his buoyant spirits. I, +stretched on a locker, fanned myself lazily with the mate’s cap, and +the mate himself sat in his favourite attitude with his hands clasping +his knees, his chin sunk on his chest.</p> + +<p>Presently the Doctor began to talk again, more to himself than to us.</p> + +<p>‘What a night!’ he said. ‘What a ghastly, hellish, stifling night! Look +at that oily pond, can’t you feel the heat lifting out of it into your +face. I used to think nothing could lick the Queensland bush, but, +Great Lordy! this is worse, many points worse; there was always a kind +of a breeze there and some stir of life, but this flat, oily waste—Oh! +for a breath of air. I can’t breathe; I tell you, Armand, I can’t +breathe.’ He turned round<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> to the mate fiercely, and threw out his thin +hands, as if to thrust from him some suffocating weight. ‘What’s the +good of you sea-men,’ he laughed a feeble hoarse laugh, ‘if you can’t +fetch some sort of air up out of your hell-doomed oceans?’</p> + +<p>‘No fear, Doctor, we’ll get you some before long annyway, three days +flat cãlm is a big spell even for the Doldrums. How’s her head, my +son?’ he called to the grey-bearded helmsman.</p> + +<p>‘Nor-nor West, zurr.’</p> + +<p>‘Is she doing anny?’</p> + +<p>‘Noa, zurr, but zims theer’s a but of a swell tu th’ Sou East, mebbe +we’ll ’ave wind ’fore the marnin’.’ The Shellback spat on his hand and +held it out, then shook his head doubtfully.</p> + +<p>‘The dawn will bring it,’ said the mate, ‘you will see.’</p> + +<p>‘Not to me,’ said the Doctor to himself, ‘I’m through.’</p> + +<p>Young Raymond turned at the sound of the dreary despairing voice.</p> + +<p>‘What’s that?’ he said, ‘Through! we’re <i>all</i> through, we’re all +kippered to the nines; don’t be so beastly egotistical, Doctor, you’ve +got no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> blooming monopoly.’ The sunny ring of his voice through the +jaded night was as refreshing as a breeze, but the Doctor only said +moodily:</p> + +<p>‘Yes, my friend, but I guess you weren’t fried to start with, there was +still some English juice in you; <i>you</i> haven’t been spread-eagled +on a gridiron for seven years till everything’s been sucked out of +you,—even sleep.’</p> + +<p>‘Thank the Lord,’ said young Raymond in fervent tones, as he threw his +head back, and snuffed at an imaginary breeze, ‘I can always sleep.’</p> + +<p>‘Sleep!’ echoed the Doctor shrilly, and his thin scarecrow of a figure +writhed against the railing of the bulwark, ‘I havn’t slept for +<i>weeks</i>,—I’m going home, <i>home</i>, I tell you, after seven +God-forsaken years, but I’d give it all, and chuck in the rest of my +life, for twenty-four hours of natural sleep.’</p> + +<p>At the word ‘natural’ the mate shifted uneasily in his seat, and his +foot beat a tatoo incessantly on the deck.</p> + +<p>‘There will be trouble,’ he said softly, ‘big trouble, unless we get +the wind, you know. Come, my dear fallow,’ he went on to the Doctor, +‘what is the matter with you to-night, you were not even amuséd with +the Wray baby—oh!’ he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> laughed with a sudden unrestrained merriment +curious to listen to in that sultry, joyless air, ‘that is an +interésting little ãnimal. Did you see Cotter fill it with plum-duff +at dinner, and Mrs Wray opposite laughing all the time, you know, and +little Wray looking ’orrifiéd,—ah-ha! and the little ãnimal likéd +it, you know,’ his laughter died out as suddenly, and he gazed at the +Doctor with his mournful eyes,—the eyes of a man who has been to the +edge of the world many times, and looking over—come back again.</p> + +<p>‘You are hipped to-night, you are quite dull you know. Tell us a yarn +of John Chinaman; he has a most curious individuãlity, annyway.’</p> + +<p>There was silence a moment, then the spanker boom creaked slightly from +pure inaction, as floors creak in houses at the dead of night, and a +spark from the mate’s cigarette floated straight upwards in the dead +air; then came a weird, droning sing-song whisper from the bulwarks.</p> + +<p>‘Once upon a time,’ it said, ‘there was a poor devil of a doctor, +whose lot it became after many wanderings to minister for his living, +in an oven, to the extremities of John Chinaman, whereby he learnt +many things,—for instance, that it was good to eat puppy-dog and go +unshaven,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> that there was no such thing as right or wrong, beauty or +ugliness, cleanliness or dirt, heaven or hell,—that there was no end +to the miseries of the white man, and neither end nor beginning to +the miseries of the yellow man. But also,’—the whisper almost died +away, ‘he learnt one supreme good, ‘το καλὸν,’ that without which +man withers—life has no taste, no colour, no scent,—the great, the +glorious—My God! O my God!!’ The voice from the faintest whisper rose +suddenly to a scream. With a spring young Raymond’s lithe white-clothed +figure was by the Doctor’s side, his arm round his neck.</p> + +<p>‘Steady, dear old boy!’ he said.</p> + +<p>The meaning of those muttered sayings had suddenly been rendered plain, +and the mate stood leaning forward with his long arms half stretched +towards the Doctor. The melancholy fatalism of his face, that outcome +of his Slav blood, was veiled by a look of sorrowful concern.</p> + +<p>‘Ohé!’ he said, ‘Ohé! tck tck——’</p> + +<p>As for me, I moved swiftly to the wheel, and stood between the group +of men and the helmsman, speaking to him at random, in the instinctive +dread of what was coming next on the shrill tones that lifted +themselves behind me.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p> + +<p>‘Yes!’ said the worn voice, ‘look at me!—look at me!—what +am I? What have I sunk to? I, who was even as you,—public +school—’Varsity—Bart’s—What’s the use of it all? Look at us, I say, +look’—he clutched with one hand the arm thrown about him; and as if +answering the hysterical cry, the moonlight streamed from behind the +main tops’le, with a cruel suddenness, full on to the two men. It lit +up the bright, fresh face and yellow hair of the one,—tall and lithe +and radiantly white—and threw into a ghastly relief the other,—long, +shrunken and shambling, with his twisted yellow face and sunken hunted +eyes, with the little brown streak at the corner of the thin distorted +mouth, the lank discoloured hair, the writhing, skeleton hands. He +cowered as the light fell upon him, and buried his head like a child on +young Raymond’s shoulder.</p> + +<p>When I turned again, old Carey, the Shellback, was looking steadily at +the deck, and, contrary to all orders, spitting vigourously upon it.</p> + +<p>‘Fact is we’m tu fur tu the East; yu zee, zurr, these y’er ca’ms is all +along o’ that.’</p> + +<p>What answer I made to the soft West-country drawl I know not, because +it is bewildering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> to hear a man’s sobs drawn under hard pressure +against a linen coat. Then the mate was speaking.</p> + +<p>‘Come down to your bunk, my dear fallow, it will be ãll right, you +know; I will give you some things to make you sleep.’</p> + +<p>‘Sleep!’ came out of the sobs, as a voice might come out of a grave, +on to which the earth was being shovelled. ‘My God!—if I could sleep +<i>without</i>.... Armand, for pity’s sake make me sleep—’</p> + +<p>‘There! there!’ young Raymond spoke as to a child.</p> + +<p>As swiftly as it had streamed forth, the moonlight hid itself behind +a kindly sail, and the three soft footsteps, moving along the deck, +slowly died away out of my hearing.</p> + +<p>‘Might yu ’appen to ’ave zum baccy, zurr, the mate’s gone down, yu zee, +an’ it du be rale ’ot tu-night, that’s zartain.’</p> + +<p>I gave the understanding Carey out of my pouch, and we smoked in a +sympathetic silence.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>I woke with a start; a faint light was showing through the open port +hole, and the half-drawn curtain of the bunk wavered unsteadily.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p> + +<p>‘She’s moving,’ I thought, feeling with a vast sense of relief the +fluttering pulse beginning to beat at last in the wind-logged ship.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, there’s a breeze from the South-East; get up!’ Young Raymond was +standing by the side of the bunk, his white clothes unchanged, but with +a face unknown to me, so grave, drawn, and sunless was it.</p> + +<p>‘What’s wrong?’</p> + +<p>‘The Doctor!’ he said, ‘Come!’</p> + +<p>We crossed the dark saloon, unswept and ungarnished, just as it had +been left the evening before. Raymond silently drew aside the green +baize curtain of a cabin on the starboard side. Within it stood the +mate, stooping over a figure stretched limply on the lower bunk; he +looked up as we came in, and withdrew his hand, with something in it, +from under the pillow.</p> + +<p>‘Look!’ he said, holding up a little inlaid box. ‘I was afrayd of it; +I lookéd for it last night, you know,’—there was a curious note of +appeal in his voice,—‘but dosé fallows are so cunning, you know.’</p> + +<p>I looked at the face lying upturned to the growing light. It was no +longer twisted; the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> eyes stared quietly at the roof of the bunk, the +hands were crossed peacefully on the sunken chest. In that face, which +had writhed the night before in hunted agony, there remained only the +little brown stain at the corner of the mouth to mark it as the same.</p> + +<p>‘Dead?’</p> + +<p>‘Quite.’ The mate knelt, and reverently drew the lids over the quiet +eyes.</p> + +<p>Young Raymond was leaning silently apart against the side of the cabin, +his head framed in the open port-hole, and his face was ever grey and +drawn. I turned from him to the mate.</p> + +<p>‘How?’</p> + +<p>He answered the double question of my glances hurriedly.</p> + +<p>‘No,—it was an accident, see—’ he unscrewed the lid of the +little box, and counted the tiny black-brown pills in it. +‘Six—seven—ãyt—there are manny happy hours, you see; while desé +were here, he would not have done it, you know. No, it was an +accident,—perrhaps he took one too manny,—but it was the heat, you +know, and that’—he laid his hand gently over the dead man’s heart. +‘Poor fallow! I likéd him greatly.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p> + +<p>There was a long silence in the little cabin; the faint ‘lip-lip’ of +the rising waves against the ship’s side seemed very far away somehow, +and the measured tramp of the second mate on the poop above sounded in +muffled harmony to our thoughts—then six bells rang out clear and full.</p> + +<p>‘It is Cotter’s watch still,’ said the mate, ‘I am free for an hour +yet. We must talk, you know.’</p> + +<p>He moved over and shut the door, then seated himself on the side of +the dead man’s bunk with a reverent callousness, born of an intimate +familiarity with many kinds of death.</p> + +<p>The ends of the Doctor’s dusky crimson sash hanging over the upper +bunk quivered slightly, with the faint rolling of the ship, against +the mate’s smoothly dark head, as he crouched forward with his back +hunched, and his bearded chin thrust out. His hands were clasped +round one knee, the thin leg below them working incessantly with a +quick, nervous movement. All the time he was speaking, he looked +straight at young Raymond with his mournful eyes, and the latter, who +had never moved from his leaning attitude against the cabin side, +gazed abstractedly in front of him from out of a growing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> halo of +flame-coloured light. The ship’s cat purring softly was rubbing itself +slowly against the white trousered leg.</p> + +<p>‘Dis thing had to hãppen, you know,’ said the mate at last. ‘It was +written, you see, there’—he raised a hand and pointed to the still +face. ‘<i>I</i> knew it a long time. I think I knew it when he first +came on board at Adelayde; he walkéd down the quay, you know, with +that fatiguéd walk he had, poor fallow, and it was written in his +eyes—they were quite hunted, you know. <i>I’ve</i> rrãally been the +doctor on the old galley this journey, you know, <i>he</i> wasn’t fit +for it. Hãng it all, I have been doseing the shellbacks, you know, poor +devils—ah—ha!’ he laughed that sudden spontaneous laugh that must +have come from his lips even in death, if an idea had commended itself +to his sardonic humour.</p> + +<p>‘The skipper should never have taken him on board, you know; but the +old fallow was in a hole, he had to get off, and he had to have a +doctor. The old galley is an invalid ship, you know, and so she has +to have a doctor and a cow,—that blessed cow hasn’t given anny milk, +still she hãs four legs, you know—and <i>I</i> am the doctor.’ He +gnawed at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> his moustache and muttered some words under his breath.</p> + +<p>Then young Raymond spoke for the first time.</p> + +<p>‘Did you know that?’ he said, pointing with a shrinking gesture to the +opium box in the mate’s hand.</p> + +<p>‘After Cape Town, I knew it. Guessed it when he came on board, you +know, and shut himself into his cabin for two days. I got in once, and +then I saw what the trouble was, you know. I lookéd for that’—he held +up the box—‘but dosé fallows are so cunning. <i>He</i> knew it too, he +knew he was going to hand in his checks, you know. He uséd to talk to +me, and he often said, “<i>If</i> I get home.”’ The mate paused. ‘Well! +that is ãll over, it had to hãppen, you know.’ His voice and face and +the resigned dejection of his whole figure embodied the word ‘Kismet’; +the threads of the situation, for the moment, had slipped through his +fingers. He sat quite quiet, staring mournfully in front of him, but +the leg beneath his clasped hands never ceased a second in its nervous +movement.</p> + +<p>The tramp above, and the ‘lip-lip’ of the little green waves against +the ship’s side, were still<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> the only sounds that broke in on the early +silence.</p> + +<p>‘For the sake of his people,’ said young Raymond suddenly, taking the +little box from the mate’s hand.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, he had an ayged father, you know, a parson in Yorkshire, he was +going home to him—after seven years—that is harrd, you know,’ the +mate said dreamily.</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ said Raymond impatiently, and he put the hand that held the box +through the open port-hole.</p> + +<p>‘No—no—look here,’ said the mate, holding out his hand for the box, +‘I must tell the skipper, you know,’ and he put the box away in his +pocket. ‘But you will see, it will be ãll right, he will leave the +whole rãcket in my hands; he hates a fuss, you know, that old fallow. +Besides, it wasn’t rrãally the opium at the end, you know, it was +the heat—his hãart was so weakenéd, you see.’ He got up and looked +earnestly, with narrowed eyes, at the dead man’s wasted figure.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘it was a little joke, the breeze would have +savéd him, you know, ... but it will be ãll right,—failure of the +hãart from the heat ... and then we shall put<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> him over the side; +anyway there will be no post-mortem. Nobody will come in here, you see, +except the skipper, and the box will be in my pocket,—the wind will +take away the smell in time.’ There was a faint, sweet, sickly smell as +of drugs in the close air of the confined space.</p> + +<p>‘So be it!’ said young Raymond, moving from his station against the +cabin wall.</p> + +<p>‘Let us put him to rest, though; his face haunts me, even when I don’t +look at it,’ and he shuddered; ‘the light is too cruel.’ Keeping his +head averted, he took a handkerchief from a drawer, and covered the +dead man’s face. The flaming East was sending a shaft of orange light +through the open port-hole full upon it, and the effect was not pretty.</p> + +<p>‘When did he go?’ I said, breaking the silence that followed.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know,’ said the mate, ‘but it could not have been long before +the breeze came, anyway—he was hardly cold, you know.’</p> + +<p>Young Raymond faced round to the light with strained eyes.</p> + +<p>‘<i>I</i> know,’ he said suddenly, ‘<i>I</i> know, I saw him go, I saw +it all. I shall never get it out of my head—never! never!’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span></p> + +<p>The mate looked at him half cynically, half concernedly.</p> + +<p>‘Hãng it all, my dear fallow,’ he said, ‘death is not an aymiable +joker, when you are not uséd to him, you know; but you musn’t let him +play with your narves.’</p> + +<p>‘Nerves!’ said young Raymond hoarsely, ‘you shall tell me if it +<i>is</i> nerves, Armand, for, by George! I should like to know.’</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ said the mate; he had seated himself again in his favourite +attitude.</p> + +<p>The world seemed suddenly enclosed within the walls of this wooden +crib, time was annihilated, everything stood still, there was no longer +anything outside—just the cabin—we three—and the dead man. I felt +giddy and stifled, but the moment young Raymond began to speak, all +that feeling merged in wonder at the intense earnestness in his face +and the tones of his voice.</p> + +<p>‘After we left <i>him</i>, last night,’ he said, ‘I slung my hammock on +the main deck, starboard side, just where the gymnastic bars are rigged +by the main mast; it seemed cooler there than on the poop. Cotter +came out on watch just after I turned in, so it was about midnight, I +suppose. I couldn’t get the idea<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> of <i>him</i> out of my head;’ he +avoided looking at the dead man always, and stared straight in front of +him.</p> + +<p>‘I could see him tossing and twisting in that bunk, and I couldn’t get +to sleep for ages; I suppose I must have dropped off at last, though, +because I didn’t hear two bells go. I woke suddenly out of an awfully +jolly dream about home and my people. The moon was down, but it wasn’t +very dark; there was just that light that comes before the dawn, you +know. Oh! yes, I could see all right; I could see pretty clearly right +to the starboard hatchway leading up to the poop—that was just facing +me as my hammock was slung. It was frightfully hot, suffocating—there +wasn’t a breath of air, not a breath. I lay awake a few minutes, +and then I suppose I dozed off again; but though my eyes were shut, +I seemed to have the feeling that something was coming towards +me. It grew upon me, so that I must have half raised myself in my +hammock, because when I woke again I was sitting up. There <i>was</i> +something—a figure; it came from under the starboard hatch out of the +saloon. I could hardly see it in that horrible, misty, unreal light, +but it came slowly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> along the deck close to the bulwark without making +any noise. I don’t know why I was in a ghastly funk, but it seemed +somehow uncanny—I wasn’t properly awake, you see. I waited for it—it +seemed hours coming. When it was almost within touch, I saw what—it +was—it was—<i>him</i>. His head was bent back and his hands thrown +up; he was like a shot bird that’s towering for air, you know, but +there was no sound, no choke or gasp—I listened for it, but there was +none, not even a sigh’—he paused. ‘There ought, there must have been a +gasp, if it <i>was</i> he,’ he muttered to himself; ‘he couldn’t have +stood like that without a sound. Oh! Armand, the face!’</p> + +<p>He spoke in short broken sentences, and his hands twisted here and +there in the full agony of recollection.</p> + +<p>‘The eyes were staring open, as they were before you—and nothing moved +in it—it was a <i>dead</i> face ... and then it went away again, you +know,—I don’t know <i>how</i> it went. I shall never get that look out +of my head—never!’ He drew his hands across his eyes.</p> + +<p>‘It was far worse than <i>that</i> dead face,’ he said solemnly, +pointing to the bunk; ‘it was the dead face of a <i>living</i> man.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span></p> + +<p>‘Then?’ said the mate.</p> + +<p>‘Then I lay back in my hammock, not more than a minute, I think,—and +then I got out and came here, and as I crossed the deck the first +of the breeze crossed it too—too late!—he died for want of air, I +<i>know</i> he did—just too late, you see.’</p> + +<p>‘Too late!’ echoed the mate softly, nodding his head. ‘<i>That</i> is +the joke.’</p> + +<p>‘He was lying here as you found him. I didn’t touch him before I came +and told you. And, look here! Armand, what have I seen? It scared me.’</p> + +<p>An infinite and sombre gentleness was in the look the mate bent to meet +the trouble in the young face turned to him, but he only said, ‘That +is most interésting. You are not to be pitied, you know, you are to be +envied; a man does not often see these things, you know.’</p> + +<p>‘But <i>what</i> did I see? <i>What?</i> I tell you it scared me.’</p> + +<p>‘I <i>think</i>,’ said the mate slowly—‘I don’t know, of course,—but +I think you have seen what very few people have seen. I think there is +a time, you know, which comes between life and death. It is perhaps +the twilight of the body<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> you know, and the dawning of the soul,—it +is that breathless space which these old crãfts of our bodies have to +go through, you know, where there is no life, and not yet death,—the +Doldrums of our individuãlities hanging in the wind.’ There was a long +silence.</p> + +<p>‘Thanks,’ said young Raymond at last, and the old sunny look seemed to +creep back into his face through the haunting shadow of fear cast there +by the thing he had seen.</p> + +<p>‘Thanks, old fellow! The dawning of the soul! I like that.’</p> + +<p>He had caught, like a child, at the one idea in the mate’s words which +appealed to his narrow, sanguine optimism; and only <i>I</i> saw the +look of wearily gentle cynicism in the mate’s face, and heard his words +as he turned away out of the cabin, ‘Yes? if there <i>is</i> such a +thing, you know.’</p> + +<p>So I turned away too from the ‘valley of the shadow,’ but young Raymond +knelt softly by the bunk and drew the handkerchief from the dead man’s +face. He could bear to look on him now. The breeze stole in and stirred +the hair on the two heads close together.</p> + +<p>The words came to me at the door.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span></p> + +<p>‘You’re all right now, old fellow, aren’t you? You’ve gone home.’ Then +through a choke in the voice, ‘but, oh! my God! your luck was hard.’</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_CAPITULATION_OF_JEAN_JACQUES">THE CAPITULATION OF JEAN JACQUES</h2> +</div> + + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"> +S.S. Wapiti.<br> +<i>May 16th, 188 .</i><br> +</p> + +<p>... To-day, fine again, gorgeous, but mighty hot. Left Suva at +daybreak. Very one-horse place, with a lovely harbour. We got a lot of +bananas and pines from a Fijian’s canoe as we went out—they ought to +last till we get to Sydney....</p> + +<p>A rum thing happened about five o’clock; some 150 miles sou’-west of +Suva we sighted a small cutter with two men in her. They were making +signals with a pair of breeches. The Captain stopped for them, and +lowered a boat to see what was up. I got leave to go. The poor beggars +were burnt up—I never saw men so completely frizzled; Frenchmen—one +a very big man, one a very little—awfully plucky little chap, said +he was ‘all ar-right,’ only wanted water, and was trying to make Suva +from Tahiti! ’m! <i>In a ten-ton cutter!</i> Double ’mm!!</p> + +<p>He asked his course,—we gave it him, and a cask of water. I was the +last to go over the side of the cutter, and he said to me: ‘Monsieur, +you gentlemens, is it not?’ ‘Hope so,’ said I. ‘Going to Noumea, is +it not?’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Will it ’ave ze <i>extrêmement</i> kindness +to inform <i>ce cher Gouverneur</i> zat “Jean Jacques” made to ’im +ze compliments?’ With that he put his finger to his lips, and smiled +sweetly upon me.</p> + +<p>I don’t think any nigger could have given him points for brownness, +but I liked the looks of him hugely.</p> + +<p>As we were pulling back, the second officer said to me:</p> + +<p>‘Scaped convicts, you bet, poor devils—no business of mine.’</p> + +<p>I thought of that smile and forbore to wink....</p> + +<p class="center"> +(Extract from the Diary of a Passenger.)<br> +</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p> + +<p>‘<i>Sacré!</i> these walls are high! lift me, Pierre.’</p> + +<p>A very small lean man raised himself with the agility of a cat from +his perch in the uplifted grasp of the giant below, and was through a +window twelve feet from the ground, and crouching in the shadow of the +white curtains without a sound stirring the silence of the night air.</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques, Frenchman, man of genius, man of diminutive stature, man +of sun-baked countenance, political convict, crouched in the shadow +of the curtains and reflected. His reflections were the résumé of a +carefully matured plan,—in fine, his reflections were these:</p> + +<p>‘I, Jean Jacques, am at large; I have not been at large for some time; +certainly, then, I wish to remain at large; I wish also my friend +Pierre below to remain at large. <i>Que faire?</i>’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> The reasoning +unconsciously took the form of Ollendorf.</p> + +<p>‘I am in the room of the four-year-old daughter of the Governor. How +do I know this? Because I can see her little socks hanging over the +end of the bed. Is not the four-year-old daughter of the Governor the +apple of the Governor’s eye? Certainly, she is the apple of the eye of +the Governor. Given, then, Jean Jacques, the apple of the eye of the +Governor, and the desire to remain at large, what happens? P—s—s—t, +it is apparent, any child can see what <i>must</i> happen!’</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques rose to the height of his five feet two, his lean, dark +face glowing, and his crisp black hair curling with the greatness of +his ideas, and advancing, drew aside the curtains of the little bed.</p> + +<p>A small figure in a wisp of a nightgown stretched her limbs thereon in +childish abandon, and turned her elf’s face up to her nocturnal visitor +in the unconscious serenity of sleep. That Jean Jacques was a humane +man was evidenced by the thoughtful way in which he bestowed dress, +socks, slippers, dolls, and sun-bonnet within the capacious folds of +his convict’s blouse; that he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> a man of energy and action, by the +manner in which he enveloped the child’s head in a soft shawl, and her +little body in a discarded blanket, and, before she had time or breath +to wake and scream, passed himself and her into the upstretched arms of +Pierre, and regained the ground.</p> + +<p>Then two dim figures, with a hostage to liberty, flitted through the +deserted streets, and the night swallowed them up.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Noumea was looking its best; what that means one must have been +there to know. Not yet astir with the day, the town and harbour were +pretending an innocence of the twin spirits of despair and misery +throbbing and raging within their boundaries. Out of the blue Pacific, +also pretending a non-existent innocence, the sun was rising, and +causing the ruddy copper tints of the island rocks to shine with a +morning glory, the foam of the reefs to sparkle, and the green and red +of leaf and flower to glint and glow with a tender and dewy freshness. +The native market was already beginning to stir with the busy sellers +of most conceivable, and some inconceivable, fruits and vegetables.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> +Soon, above the everyday droning hum of the vending of merchandise, +rose and swelled an ever-increasing buzz, like the tuning of an +orchestra, in dozens of discordant quirks and twitters, till, hushing +every sound, as does the uplifting of the conductor’s baton, there +boomed forth once and twice over the stillness of the harbour the deep +angry tone of the convict escape-gun. Then the buzz broke out again, +but this time with the unanimity of knowledge and conviction. Not that +a convict’s escape was any rare occurrence in a community boasting the +possession of some nine thousand such, in a greater or less degree of +captivity; the buzz had a deeper and a wider meaning; there were nine +thousand convicts; there was but one Governor, and to that Governor +was but one daughter. The ‘buzz,’ with an intelligence which did it +credit, connected the two disappearances, it was even whispered—that +is to say, it was bewailed and lamented at the top of the shrill native +voice—that there was a third disappearance, of knives and ropes, +and good food-stuff, to wit; this formed a tail to the comet in the +opinion of the buzz. The buzz was immensely tickled and interested,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> +it was even compelled to open its mouth—which was bad for it—when +from the barracks issued patrols armed to the teeth, and from the quay +departed snowily-breeched officials to the various ships lying at +anchor. Grievously agape was the mouth of the buzz when from Government +House marched the Governor, grey-headed and of soldierly bearing. The +Governor was a widowed man, and had but one child; it amused the buzz +and affected it to tears to see what he had suffered. In spite of his +soldier’s pride, suffering had lined his face during the last hour, +and the furrows deepened as he marched on with head up into the middle +of the Place, and spoke to the buzz with wingéd words, that hushed it +completely, distending its mouth and stimulating its stomach by the +liberality of the promised reward.</p> + +<p>There was a scattering and a hurrying, such as the official methodism +of the town had not known since the French and English blue-jacket +fight—a tussle of unquenchable memory and much friendly shedding of +gore.</p> + +<p>The hours rolled on, the sun blazed, the world forgot its siesta, while +the shadow on the Governor’s face deepened with the waning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> of the day. +He sat in the Place and waited—round him a staff of messengers coming +and going, as fresh thoughts and possibilities thronged his anxious +mind. Presently, as hope faded and grew wan, he said—</p> + +<p>‘I can bear it no more here, I will go up and wait in the +Cathedral—perchance God will send me inspiration,’ and he took his way +thither....</p> + +<p>Now, if one desires to see the most perfect picture in the world, +one may look upon it—if one goes in the evening to the Cathedral +at Noumea, and, standing at the eastern end, looks down the aisle +to the west. There, framed in the grey walls, hangs a picture as of +heaven—not, indeed, of canvas and paint, but of the sea and the air +and the earth, as a man sees them when the glow of a setting sun is +flooding and filling all with an unearthly glory of light. So the +Governor, even in his great grief, saw the vision of heaven, and bowing +his head upon his hands, sat gazing thereon—silent and alone. As the +sun dipped he fell, worn out, into a sort of trance, rousing himself +with a start as the rim of the fiery globe rested lightly on the +horizon, seeming to poise itself before sinking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> to rest, while the +grey shadows of the twilight crept out, as if eager before their time +to whelm the last hopes of the day in a filmy maze. Out of the West, +before the eyes of the Governor—far away in a reverie of pain—floated +a white cloud, and dimly his mind became conscious of it. ‘Very odd +cloud,’ he thought abstractedly, ‘that comes so suddenly and close;’ +then he sprang up as though he had been shot. ‘Was it a cloud? No, +assuredly it was not.’ It floated, it quivered, it waggled with the +breeze, it was—bathos—it was a nightgown.</p> + +<p>Suspended between sky and earth in the middle of that picture of +heaven, fading already with the growing darkness, waved a child’s +nightgown. Instinctively the answer to the whole problem of the day’s +disappearance flashed before the Governor’s mind, and what he saw +when he had hurried through the door under the folds of that flag of +truce came as no surprise. He stood and gazed upwards. Down below in +the streets of the town, in all the country round, the buzz was still +actively engaged in pursuing the promised satisfaction of its stomach.</p> + +<p>Now this was what the Governor saw on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> roof of the Cathedral, +thirty feet above him. Over the stone parapet a lean, dark face +surmounting a bare brown arm and hand, from which hung the rope of the +flag of truce; behind, what seemed to him a vast blue statue, astride +the neck of which sat a little figure in a cotton blouse, dangling two +bare legs, and patting the statue’s head with one hand, while with the +other it blew kisses to the amazed and horrified Governor. His hand +caught the butt of his revolver. Escaped convicts were wild beasts—and +his child sat on the shoulders of one and played with what was left +of its hair! The Governor’s aristocratic and sporting instincts were +aroused.</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques, leaning over the parapet, smiled genially, and his other +hand, in which glistened the long blade of a knife, rested for a moment +on the parapet. Only for a second, but the Governor let fall the +pistol, and covered his face in his hands with a shrinking gesture of +physical pain and fear.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Bien! Monsieur</i>,’—Jean Jacques took the word in courteous +tones, and with a caressing upward wave of the hand that no longer +held the knife to the little white atom on his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> comrade’s shoulders. +‘<i>Bien!</i> decidedly Monsieur and I shall understand one another. +I have the honour of addressing Monsieur le Gouverneur? Good.’ Jean +Jacques made a polite bow with what could be seen of him in response to +the Governor’s sign of assent.</p> + +<p>‘Monsieur, I will be brief. I am Jean Jacques. My friend Monsieur +Pierre Legros—Monsieur le Gouverneur!’</p> + +<p>He indicated the silent Pierre with a backward and airy wave.</p> + +<p>‘My friend and I were bored—it was not your fault, Monsieur, do not +be distressed—we were in want of distraction, we were also in want of +being free—ah! Free——’</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques looked up with a sigh that spoke volumes even to the +Governor, pre-occupied as he was with dread anxiety.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Nous voila!</i> distracted and free—do you think we will again +return to the other state?’ An accent of menace crept into his voice, +but passed as quickly as it came.</p> + +<p>‘No, we shall remain free; it rests with Monsieur to decide how and on +what terms. Providence has kindly sent Monsieur to us alone; my friend +and I do not wish that anyone should see Monsieur talking with us—it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> +might compromise him as affairs will turn out. Therefore, if Monsieur +will give to us his ears, my friend and I will briefly explain to him +how things stand, and what we have the honour to desire at the hands of +Monsieur.’</p> + +<p>He paused for a moment, and turned to Pierre, standing in the shadow +behind him; the latter made a sign of acquiescence, and Jacques went on:</p> + +<p>‘Mademoiselle Cecile is very happy with us; it is a new game we are +playing,’—he turned again and smiled at the child, who waved her hand +and laughed back at him,—‘and we are very fond of Mademoiselle. But +we have thought it may be best for everyone that we should continue to +be free in another land—across the seas. Monsieur le Gouverneur will +therefore cause to be prepared for us, in the little bay of Pontet +to the east, a good seaworthy cutter of not less than ten tons, with +provisions and water for twenty days; also he will in his kindness see +that the road is clear for us to embark at midnight to-morrow, and he +will give us—will he not?—his word of honour that he will not cause +us to be pursued. Monsieur’s word of honour<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> is his bond. If Monsieur +will come to the little bay of Pontet at twelve on that night he will +find Mademoiselle in the little cave close by the bay. Should Monsieur +not see his way to accept these terms, he will do as he pleases, always +remembering that Mademoiselle is with us, and that what happens to Jean +Jacques or his friend Pierre, happens, unfortunately, to Mademoiselle +also.’</p> + +<p>So ending, Jean Jacques bared his teeth again in a genial smile.</p> + +<p>The Governor groaned—his situation dawned slowly on him in the fulness +of its horror—he clenched his teeth and groaned. His duty drew him +one way, his feelings (and he was conscious then how overpoweringly) +dragged him the other. He bowed his head, and pondered painfully. Jean +Jacques waited some time in silent politeness, then he said:</p> + +<p>‘Monsieur will understand that to my friend and myself our liberty is +as dear as to Monsieur is Monsieur’s daughter: also Monsieur shall, if +he pleases, have the night and the day in which to reflect and prepare; +and in order that there may be no mistake as to the preparations, it +will be best if Monsieur will return himself and give us his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> answer at +two hours before midnight to-morrow.’</p> + +<p>The Governor was conscious, with a feeling of rage and shame, that the +convict knew only too surely that the game was in his hands; he raised +his head with a jerk, and said, sharply and sternly:</p> + +<p>‘It shall be so—at ten to-morrow night you shall have my answer.’</p> + +<p>Then with one look at his little daughter calling merrily, and blowing +kisses to him, and a muttered ‘Good-night, my darling, be a good brave +child,’ he stepped firmly away, turning for a moment to say fiercely, +‘Be careful of her, men; if but one hair of her head be harmed, woe +betide you.’ Then he marched heroically down the hill, and hastened to +his home to hide his deadly agony of doubt and fear.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The buzz was hushed—hushed until the day should come again to lend +it zeal and courage. It was one thing to hunt for escaped convicts, +in packs, under the smiling sun, it was another to seek desperate men +in the blue-black of the Southern night. The buzz was of opinion that +its stomach might wait a little.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> Inland among the hills tired parties +of soldiery still pursued their weary search, but to no purpose. That +buttress on the Cathedral was a full fifteen feet from the ground—its +combination with a giant, a man of genius, and a rope had occurred to +no one’s mind; furthermore, the side of the Cathedral roof overlooked +by the coastguard station was protected by a parapet, and this fact had +also been unobserved.</p> + +<p>Underneath the parapet the child lay tossing between her two captors. +Even in her restlessness she seemed to have complete faith in them; one +hand lay in Pierre’s monstrous paw, with the other she kept throwing +off the clothing that Jean Jacques carefully replaced. Neither man +slept; they watched their little prisoner anxiously, and every now and +then Jacques spoke a word or two of soothing to the restless little +mortal. In the middle watches of the night, Cecile waked suddenly from +her dreams, and sat up, shaking her dark straight locks back from her +hot little head, and looking wildly about her. Then she screamed, a +child’s scream of terror, and the look of fright that the two men +had been waiting for so painfully and anxiously shone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> in her black +eyes. That, which only Jacques’ wonderful, almost mesmeric, power with +children and the giant Pierre’s gentleness had restrained so far, was +come at last.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Bon Dieu</i>, but this is terrible,’ said Jacques; ‘gently, <i>ma +chérie</i>, it is all play; see, here are thy two good friends, here +is thy horse, the big Pierre who gave thee that good ride on his +shoulders; gently, <i>ma chérie</i>, gently.’</p> + +<p>He stroked the soft head, and with the tenderness of a mother kissed +the hot little cheek. Pierre turned his head away, with the dumb and +blind confidence in his comrade in all moments of danger and difficulty +that possessed his faithful soul. But scream after scream broke from +the child; it was not all play, she was in the dark, where was her +little bed and her nurse? and she wanted her daddy. Jean Jacques was +the father of children, a man of genius, and kindly, but he was unequal +to this situation, perhaps from that very kindliness which forbade him +to use the shawl to smother the child’s cries.</p> + +<p>Now the Cathedral was high above the town, and the buzz in the nearest +houses was tired, and only turned in its heavy sleep to say, ‘Listen +to the wild cats in the mountains—to-morrow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> we will go and hunt them +and the other wild beasts with dogs.’ So the paroxysm passed, and the +child lay still again in Pierre’s arms, but with a dull fever burning +in her cheeks and eyes. The night grew old, and the chill air smote the +exhausted babe in spite of all the men’s care, and morning brought the +raging fever that, if it be not stayed, means death to the white child. +The men looked at each other with dismay in faces haggard with the +strain of sleepless nights and dread anxiety.</p> + +<p>‘Must we then fail after all?’ said Jacques, more to himself than to +his comrade. He turned his eyes, gloomy with a bitter resentment at the +rising sun.</p> + +<p>‘Twenty hours—only twenty hours—and three lives hanging in the +balance. I <i>will</i> not fail; the child <i>shall</i> live, and so +shall we.’</p> + +<p>‘Water,’ said Pierre, and without another word took off his hat and +fitted the rope through the brim to make a bucket.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, water before the people are stirring,’ said Jacques.</p> + +<p>By the aid of the rope he descended with his extemporised bucket and +stole down the hill under shelter of a wall to the nearest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> cottage—a +laundry, as luck would have it—then, filling his bucket, he got back +without being seen. Cecile was delirious, and as she raved and tossed, +the tears stole down the cheeks of the big convict, and gently he +stroked back the dark hair and carefully arranged the blanket so that +no ray of the fast rising sun should fall on her. Jacques tore the flag +of truce into shreds meet for bandages, and they bound them wet round +the fevered head and laid the little frame in Pierre’s arms. They had +no food left now except a few bananas, which they kept for the child. +The fever seemed to abate somewhat, and presently she slept.</p> + +<p>The two men sat hour after hour gazing at each other, and at the sun +creeping up in the heavens. Now and then Jacques looked away at the sea +gleaming brilliant and free, with a yearning look in his eyes that told +more than a thousand words, and from it he looked back again at the +flushed cheek of the babe in his comrade’s arms, weighing and weighing +all that the sea meant to him against the pangs of that helpless +innocent. Pierre sat immovable; cramp had possession of his limbs, but +he sat still for his life; if the child slept through the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> heat of +the day they were saved—what was dearer than life was theirs—if she +waked, he dared not think.</p> + +<p>Noon came and passed, and the two men sat on—sat on with the same +yearning look in their eyes, and the same speechless constraint, and +the child still slept. A change seemed to be stealing over the heated +face. Jacques watched it anxiously.</p> + +<p>‘The fever is leaving her,’ he said; ‘what will come after?’</p> + +<p>Hope and despair alternated in his face.</p> + +<p>Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, they counted the chimes with +desperate eagerness—never were hours more leaden-footed—and still the +child slept. A wan white look had come into her face, and she looked +very ethereal and transparent.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Bon dieu!</i>’ thought Jacques, in agony, ‘will she fade away +before our very eyes?’</p> + +<p>Involuntarily Pierre stirred; a spasm of cramp had shaken him to the +soul, and Cecile awoke. Contrition and consternation stilled the cramp +in Pierre’s vast frame, and he rocked her gently to and fro.</p> + +<p>‘Give her to me, my friend,’ said Jean Jacques, quietly, but the look +he bent on the child and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> the tone of his voice showed that despair had +entered into him.</p> + +<p>Truly it was pitiful—the babe was strengthless and voiceless, she +only made a little imploring gesture, and looked with eyes big and +dark-shadowed in helpless appeal. The two men gazed at each other in +silent accord, then Jacques said:</p> + +<p>‘She will die, if she meets again the chill night air—it is all over, +my friend; with the first shadows we must take her back.’</p> + +<p>He gave one burning look at the sea that mocked him in long blue +ripples of laughter, then turned to the babe in his arms with a smile +in his eyes and soothing words.</p> + +<p>Pierre groaned, and turning over lay on his face motionless. Jacques’ +watch had begun. How terrible those next three hours were—waiting +for the pitiless sun to go down and the ending, ah!—such an ending +of the Day of Hope. If they took her back at sunset, the child would +live—yes, he knew that, he was sure of it—but at what a cost! Freedom +to him was the all of life, the air he breathed; in the cause of +freedom, or what he deemed such, had he not already endured two years +of torment—must he go back to heaven knew<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> how many more? Stay, could +he not harden his heart? After all, who knows, the child might live +anyway; it was only to keep her another four hours. A silent and bitter +rage filled his heart, his own brilliant idea had cut from them their +last chance; so near to freedom and yet how far; not even a run for +their money, as the English say. Then his glance fell again on those +appealing eyes that seemed to ask so much and yet so little—only to be +taken back to her own little bed. A terrible dread and horror welled +up in the convict’s heart, and quenched the flames of rage; the shame +of his deed was casting its shadow before, and with anxious, desperate +eyes, he watched the sun’s departure from the heavens with an agonising +hope that the remorse of the murderer of an innocent might be spared +him.</p> + +<p>Slowly, slowly, the sun went down. With the lengthening of the shadows +Jacques made his preparations for the return. He formed a cradle of +the blanket by passing a piece of the rope through the four corners, +and then made the end of the rope fast to the roof. When the lights +began to twinkle from the town through the fast gathering dusk, and the +strains of the convict band playing in the Place came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> to their ears, +they journeyed—and it was time indeed.</p> + +<p>Pierre went first down the rope, then Jacques lowered the child in her +blanket cradle into his arms and followed, flinging the rope back again +on to the roof, that no sign of their hiding should be left for the +buzz to make mock of. They took a narrow upper path that led above the +town to the back of the Governor’s house.</p> + +<p>A sneering fate kept that procession as secret as the former one—not +a creature came nigh them. The buzz was recruiting its disappointed +energies with gossip to the strains of Faust. Jean Jacques, a former +distinguished member of that orchestra, even now, as he walked in +Pierre’s wake, jaded with hunger and fatigue, and racked with the pangs +of despair, cursed his successor under his breath for a wrong note in +the solo of the Devil’s serenade, the strains of which were wafted to +him on an unfriendly breeze.</p> + +<p>‘Hurry, Pierre,’ he said between his teeth.</p> + +<p>Rapidly and noiselessly they skirted the outer wall, passed through a +wicket gate, and crossed the garden to the long white house. It seemed +deserted, save for a light streaming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> into the outside darkness from +a window on the ground floor. Creeping quietly forward, Jacques saw +through the open casement the figure of the Governor seated at a table +in a long low room that did duty as a library. His head was bowed upon +his two outstretched arms, a hat, cloak, and pistol were laid on the +table in front of him.</p> + +<p>So the preparations had been made!...</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques withdrew, and making a sign to Pierre they moved back +along the verandah until once again they were below the window of +their little prisoner’s room. Noiselessly as she had been taken from +it Cecile was restored to the little bed that lay ready for her. With +a deep sigh she turned her eyes gratefully on Jacques as he placed her +softly amongst the pillows, and then closed them in an exhaustion, +deep as the grave. After listening a moment to make certain from her +breathing that all was well, he drew the clothes gently over her, +closed the mosquito-curtains, and slid to the ground.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Allons!</i>’ said he to Pierre, and linked his arm in his comrade’s.</p> + +<p>So they passed through the open window and stood before the Governor. +He raised his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> grey head slowly from his arms, and sat staring in amaze +at the two figures in front of him.</p> + +<p>‘Monsieur le Gouverneur,’ said Jean Jacques, simply, ‘we are here, my +friend and I, to render ourselves; you may do to us what you please—we +have failed.’</p> + +<p>He raised his head, and confronted the Governor, with calm and haggard +face. The latter sprang to his feet with the cry:</p> + +<p>‘My child! My child! Cowards, miscreants, what have you done to my +child?’</p> + +<p>‘Pardon, Monsieur, we are not cowards—we should not be here else. Go +and look for your child in her own bed; we wait for your return.’</p> + +<p>The Governor, without a word, turned and fled out of the room and up +the stairs.</p> + +<p>The two stood immovable and waited; Pierre indeed made a gesture +towards the pistol, but Jacques, into whose eyes had crept a look +almost of hope, shook his head, and the giant, faithful in his +confidence to the last, left it untouched. The Governor returned, grave +and stern, but his eye was bright and he walked with a firm step.</p> + +<p>‘My child is ill,’ he said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p> + +<p>‘Monsieur,’ said Jacques, with dignity, ‘we were afraid for her, so we +brought her home; had we kept her till midnight she would have died; +but have no fear—I know the fever; she will be well again in a short +time.’</p> + +<p>The Governor shivered—the shock and strain of the last two days had +unnerved him. He sat down again, and leant back, thinking. A flame shot +into his eyes.</p> + +<p>‘And you would have killed my child!’ he said, with a menacing gesture +at the two figures in front of him.</p> + +<p>‘No, Monsieur, we would not, and the proof is in that we have brought +her back rather than that she should be harmed.’ Jacques looked +fearlessly back into the searching and resentful eyes. The Governor +fell back in his chair, and it seemed to them an eternity before he +spoke again. When he did it was slowly and measuredly, and his words +were those of a judge:</p> + +<p>‘Men, I, the Governor of this great island, and a French gentleman, +had sacrificed my duty and my honour to my love. What you required +has been done—the boat is provisioned and ready, the way will be +clear from eleven o’clock till twelve. At your bidding,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> <i>yours</i>, +had I done this; <i>you</i> had put me to this shame, but Fate has +delivered you into my hands, and saved me what, as God be my witness, +was necessity. Why should I spare you? Yet,’ he paused, and the sombre +calm of Jacques’ face was pierced again for an instant by that gleam of +hope, ‘you have made a sacrifice. I know that to such as you, liberty +is sweeter than life,—I cannot doubt the sacrifice,—and I will grant +you one chance. If that chance favour you, you will find in that chest +what I have prepared for you—disguises and some papers, signed by me, +assuring you a passport; hide in this room till eleven o’clock, then +go, and may fortune speed you—the boat is at the little bay; but if +the chance favour you not—look for no mercy from me, for by heaven, +you shall have none. Wait for me here.’</p> + +<p>Again he left the room and ascended the stairs.</p> + +<p>‘Go, go!’ said Pierre, ‘there is still time.’</p> + +<p>‘No,’ said Jacques, and they waited—for nearly an hour they waited, +so worn that they no longer felt the strain,—there is a limit to +suffering, bodily and mental, beyond which feeling is not.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p> + +<p>The Governor returned; his eyes softened somewhat when he saw them, and +he took the pistol in his hand.</p> + +<p>‘Mademoiselle is awake; <i>this</i> is your chance. Follow me upstairs +and into her room. If, when her eyes fall upon you, there pass but a +shadow over her beloved face, there is no mercy for you.’</p> + +<p>So saying, he went out. Jean Jacques turned to Pierre and gripped his +hand.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Courage</i>,’ he said, ‘<i>jouons bon jeu</i>,’ and the indomitable +spirit shone out of his black eyes into his comrade’s.</p> + +<p>The Governor mounted the stairs. Jean Jacques whistled under his +breath, Pierre wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and they followed. +The Governor passed into the room through the open door; as they paused +for one second, they could see Cecile’s eyes turned lovingly on him and +her hands stretched out; her old nurse was sitting at the head of the +bed on one side, and a doctor was on the other. A lamp, turned low, +gave a fitful light; the Governor reached forward and turned it up.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Dieu merci, nous avons de la chance</i>,’ thought Jacques, ‘at all +events she will not take us<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> for ghosts or bogies;’ then, with head up, +and a smile on his lips and in his eyes, he marched boldly into the +room, Pierre following like a dog.</p> + +<p>The Governor, standing back in the shadow, his head bowed, stood +watching his little daughter with eyes that burned like coals of fire +in the hollows of his wasted cheeks.</p> + +<p>No one spoke.</p> + +<p>As Jacques moved forward, the child turned her eyes from her father +towards him; when they lighted upon him, a look of curiosity, but not +of fear, dwelt in them for a moment, then a smile dimpled up in the +brave little face, her hand moved, and her lips parted as if to blow a +kiss to her guests.</p> + +<p>Jacques advanced to the bed and stroked the little head—Pierre stood +at the foot and grinned with sympathy.</p> + +<p>‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, ‘you are <i>men</i>; go, and God +save you.’</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SPIRIT_OF_THE_KARROO">THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Oh! the trail is hot, and the heart is black,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sleuth, and stealth, and a hard-gripped blade!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the shimmering sage-green brush,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under the lea of the kopje’s rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Winding the skein of the narrow track,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sleuth, and stealth, till the debt is paid!’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p> + +<p>Greed, Hate, Jealousy, these three, and the greatest of these is +Jealousy.</p> + +<p>Now this is true according to Euclid, who says that the greater +contains the less: it is also true that in 1891—was it? Pietris +Vanhiever—</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>‘My—ahh—my a—a a,’ yawned a—large gaunt silver-backed jackal out +of the long grass by the side of a little stone <i>kopje</i>. Anon he +raised his head and licked his gums in a slow and appreciative manner, +as if a pleasant thought had occurred to him. The night was drawing +in over the sandy plain, Namaqua partridges were flitting to the +half-dried waterhole, the spring-bok were drawing together, and forming +serried squadrons against the possible attack of such as Silverback +of the stealthy foot and hungry fang; and from the Englishman’s camp +hard by came the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> smothered grunt and squeal of the mules beginning +with rapture their evening feed out of the leather trough slung to the +waggon pole.</p> + +<p>The stones of the <i>kopje</i> moved, and an aged one-eyed hyæna slunk +out into the grey-green growth that surrounded his home. He sidled +deprecatingly till within speaking distance of the jackal, and said in +a whisper, the huskiness of which was born of much midnight prowling +and many an unholy meal:</p> + +<p>‘Is there meat in the wind, friend, that thou lickest so thy good red +gums and white teeth? If perchance it be so, I pray thee remember thy +old comrade, the widower and one-eyed.’</p> + +<p>‘Meat,’ snarled the jackal, ‘ay, ay, but meat is for those who can +see;’ and casting a sneering glance at the bleared face of his visitor, +he resumed his careful watch on the camp.</p> + +<p>‘Peradventure it is mule, O crafty one?’ said the old reprobate, +leering covetously towards the newly-lighted fire that threw the +encampment into sharp relief against the fast gathering darkness.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span></p> + +<p>‘Bah!’ said Silverback, ‘mule! mule is good enough for prowling +one-eyed vagabonds, but not for me. I would sooner chase a young buck +through the long night than eat a plaguey salt beast like mule.’</p> + +<p>‘Ow—ah,’ sighed the hyæna, ‘your Swiftness may indeed speak so, having +legs of steel and jaws like cast-iron traps; but to one who has fasted +these many days, being old and forsaken, mule and meer-cat ’tis all the +same, it goes into the stomach—what more can I expect, who am old, and +nigh to my end?’ and he rolled his eye imploringly at Silverback.</p> + +<p>‘Well, well,’ said the latter somewhat mollified, ‘I say nothing; for +two nights have I watched and hunted, and what I have seen, I have +seen.’ With this enigmatical remark he sat up, and regarded his aged +companion with a critical glance. ‘Truly he <i>is</i> old,’ he said to +himself; ‘he cannot count greatly on a division, and having a certain +experience of graves, perchance he may be of service, the hoary old +sinner. Watch with me if you will,’ he snarled aloud.</p> + +<p>So bidden, the one-eye joined the two eyes, and with them glared on +steadily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> and patiently through the dark at the white man’s camp.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>‘When you’ve finished supper, Dan, saddle me Hopper’s horse; I’m +going to have a try in the dark at that last lot of buck we saw this +afternoon.’</p> + +<p>The speaker, a long, careless-looking Englishman, with blue eyes and +a fair beard, sat kicking his legs over the side of the waggon and +smoking a short pipe with much contentment after his supper.</p> + +<p>Dan Vanhiever, a swarthy half-caste, part Kaffir, part Boer, with a +slight limp, rose at once from his recumbent posture with his feet to +the fire, and assisted by a Hottentot boy, with many a hoarse ‘<i>Yuip, +Schelm!</i>’ detached and saddled the much-resenting grey, who, with +his companion Waltong, was taking alternate bites at the fodder and the +mules from either side of the leather trough.</p> + +<p>‘Good-night, boys! keep the fire going, so that I can find my way back; +so long!’ The Englishman swung himself into the saddle, and taking his +rifle, rode away on the back track of the waggon.</p> + +<p>Early to sleep is the rule on the <i>veldt</i>, and two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> of the three +followers left in the camp turned their toes to the fire and slumbered +noisily.</p> + +<p>The third, Pietris Vanhiever, sat forward, his hands on his knees, his +swarthy, black-browed face flushed and scowling, a smouldering light in +his eyes;—or was it only the reflection from the blazing fire, on to +which he heaped plentifully the gathered brushwood?</p> + +<p>Presently he stood up, glancing stealthily at his companions, his hand +on a long knife in his belt,—a picturesque figure, in red shirt, blue +jean trousers, widening and opening in the seam towards the foot, and +sewn with hair, and the wide-brimmed felt hat of South Africa.</p> + +<p>‘Ah, Boss! two nights have I watched, and two days have I fasted, and +now I will make an end,’ he muttered in Dutch between his teeth, and +bent down to see if both men were asleep. Then he crept noiselessly out +of the camp circle, and stooping almost double, ran swiftly as a man +runs who knows the end and purpose of his going.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Silverback turned his sardonic mug towards his ghoul-like neighbour, +and with a twirl of his brush, as much as to say, ‘I told you so,’ +stole out of the shadow of the little <i>kopje</i> and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> followed +silently on the trail. With every hair on his bristly back standing +up in unholy eagerness, with his one eye and his few remaining teeth +staring with greed, the ancient reprobate grunted the magic word ‘Man,’ +and hobbled cautiously after the jackal....</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The long Englishman, glancing from side to side, rode carelessly and +slowly along the track left by the broad wheels of the waggon. Once he +unslung the Winchester he carried on his right arm, and fired two or +three shots, but seemingly at random. The track took a sudden turn to +the left, round a slight rise in the ground; once past this he urged +the grey into a canter, turning round in his saddle to see that he was +not followed.</p> + +<p>‘Can’t be seen from the waggon here,’ he said to himself; ‘not that +it matters much, though—their manners are disgusting, and assuredly +morals they have none. Covering my trail is much the same as going to +church in the old country for the benefit of the servants,’ he added +with a laugh.</p> + +<p>The light from the risen moon was fairly strong, and the track, +luckily free from meer-cat holes, lay straight over the <i>veldt</i> +towards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> a large broken group of sandy red rocks of curious formation. +Their irregular outlines took weird and mysterious shapes in the +half light, and their happening in the vast flat desolation of the +<i>Karroo</i> gave them the appearance of being the creation of some +saturninely fantastic spirit. The track ran so narrowly between two of +the biggest rocks that a driver could touch them on either side of him +with his whip. Out of the red soil of the rock on the one side grew +a giant Cokerbôm tree, old as the world itself, projected in a stiff +uncompromising rigidity over the track. The Englishman, riding rapidly +beneath, reached up and plucked a spiky, inhospitable leaf.</p> + +<p>‘Tough old beggar!’ he soliloquised, sucking his finger, ‘you’ll be +growing here when <i>I’m</i> dead and gone, and all’s blue; in a couple +of thousand years you <i>may</i> be a foot or so taller if you have +luck; rum things, trees—wonder if they have souls?’</p> + +<p>He emerged into the open <i>veldt</i> again, and another half hour’s +canter brought him within sight of an isolated piece of civilisation; +the lengthy, low, white buildings of an outlying Boer ostrich-farm, in +a square enclosure,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> dotted with carefully fostered and unwilling plane +and eucalyptus trees.</p> + +<p>‘Steady!’ he muttered, ‘she said last night she’d be at this end—yes, +and that’s the tree. He reined in his horse. ‘There she is, by heaven! +What a blessing to find a woman punctual; but then she isn’t a woman, +only a girl—poor child!’</p> + +<p>With a half sigh he swung himself from the saddle, and, leading his +horse, stepped forward to where, shrinking in the shadow of a couple of +trees just on the outside of the enclosure, stood a slip of a girl in a +white dress with a dark cloak thrown over it. Her grey eyes lost their +look of fright, and devoured him, as he fastened his horse to a branch; +with a low cry, almost a moan, of delight, she straightened herself and +sprang into his arms.</p> + +<p>‘How long have you been here, <i>Liebchen mein?</i>’ He spoke in +Africander, with an occasional German word.</p> + +<p>‘O my King, I came as soon as the house was quiet and I could steal +out. I came like a mouse, with my heart in my mouth, and two hours I +have waited and suffered, but now—now—O my Lord and King, I live, +and the darkness is overpast—see, I have brought all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> that I have, as +thou badest me.’ She lifted a slight bundle wrapped in a light rug, +and placed her other hand timidly, with oh! so light a touch, upon his +beard. ‘Is my Lord’ (she used a word that in Africander means also +husband) ‘pleased with his servant?’</p> + +<p>Her face flushed painfully and anxiously. Truth to tell, he did not +look over-pleased—he stood looking pitifully first at the bundle, +then at the slight figure that leaned so lovingly, and yet so timidly, +against him, and the shadow of an almost seriousness came over the +careless blue eyes. He put his hand on the long fair hair, and said +gently:</p> + +<p>‘All that my pretty does is good, and shall she not be rewarded?’ He +raised her chin, and kissed her eyes and lips. ‘Yet I am sorry too, for +I have been thinking, and it cannot be to-night—I can’t take you away +to-night, child.’</p> + +<p>Her head drooped and she shivered. ‘Not to-night—not to-night? But my +Lord <i>promised</i> me.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, child, I know, but there are many things I didn’t think of that I +<i>must</i> do before we go away. I must go back to Cape Town and put +things straight. Cheer up, sweetheart,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> ’tis only for a fortnight, or +three weeks at most, and then I will come and take you away for good +and all.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m afraid—so afraid. If my Lord leaves me, he may forget, he +will see other women, and I am so poor and little—let me come now, +my King, only to be near thee—I won’t ask more, just to be near +thee—<i>let</i> me come.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear child, be reasonable—think a minute, think of the waggon. I +can’t leave that, and we should be followed and overtaken at once, and +there’d be the devil to pay. Then think of my men—I don’t want my +little flower amongst rough swine like the Vanhievers.’</p> + +<p>‘Vanhiever!’ The girl shrank out of his arms, and stood staring wildly +at him. ‘What Vanhiever? not Pietris—not Pietris?’</p> + +<p>‘Ay, Pietris and Dan—what ails you, child?’</p> + +<p>‘My God! O my God!’ She sprang back to him, and threw her arms round +his neck, and drew his head down to hers with a gesture of protection.</p> + +<p>‘He doesn’t know, does he? Tell me, he doesn’t know?’</p> + +<p>‘What <i>is</i> the matter, you funny child? You’re shaking all over! +<i>Who</i> doesn’t know, <i>what</i>?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p> + +<p>‘He, Pietris. Don’t you know? Didn’t you hear? He was my lover. I was +betrothed to him,—<i>him</i> that I hated, and he swore to kill any +one that came between. Did not my Lord know?’</p> + +<p>Her voice fell again, and she spoke in a terrified whisper.</p> + +<p>He flung his head back. ‘Not I,’ he said, with a laugh.</p> + +<p>‘The hog, to raise his eyes to you! Well, dear, it’s all right, he +knows nothing;’—then, as a thought struck him, he went on with a sort +of relief, ‘but don’t you see, that settles it, it can’t be while he’s +with me—won’t do at all.’</p> + +<p>‘No, no, and O, my Love, be careful—don’t come here again. You don’t +know him; he is a devil, and the child of devils.’</p> + +<p>She clung to him despairingly.</p> + +<p>‘All right, my darling, trust me. I’ll make tracks for Cape Town +to-morrow, and you must promise me to be a good child and keep a brave +heart, and then—think, only two weeks—three at the longest—there, +there.’</p> + +<p>She lay resting in his arms, her face buried against his shoulder, +stifling the sobs that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> <i>would</i> come; then, raising her head, she +said quickly and passionately:</p> + +<p>‘Go, my Lord, go, and quickly; thou may’st be missed, and remember, he +is a devil—yes, a <i>devil</i>. In three weeks thou wilt return.’ She +looked full in his face. ‘Go, and by this—and this—do not forget thy +servant.’</p> + +<p>She put her lips to his and kissed him passionately twice.</p> + +<p>‘No, my darling, no.’ There was a husk in his throat, and the careless +gaiety of his voice was shaken. He mounted and rode away, looking back +at the slight figure leaning against the tree, with hands clasped to +her breast in a dumb agony.</p> + +<p>After he lost sight of her, he rode for some time silently, his head +drooping; then, as a man will who has been much on the <i>veldt</i>, he +began talking to himself disjointedly:</p> + +<p>‘Poor little thing!—I don’t know—I don’t know—am I a most awful +brute, or what am I? What am I going to do? Devil only knows—this +is a mess, my boy, whichever way you look at it. She’s a sweet +child, but—my God, for always, and then—my people—and then—the +world—and then—her people, umm—Boers, bah! Brutes! Too many “and +then’s”—Strikes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> me I’ve been a fool—a dashed fool. Well, can’t be +helped; what’s to be done now, that’s the point?’</p> + +<p>The grey tossed up his head and neighed—they were fast nearing the +rocky island in the desert of sand and scrub.</p> + +<p>‘What’s to be done? cut and run? My Gad, it’s blackguardly, but <i>que +voulez vous</i>? it’s wise.—Go back to her? Poor little thing! I’d +like to, fast enough, I’m fond enough of her now, <i>but</i>—always +a d——d “but,” and this time a devil of a d——d “but.”’ The grey +stumbled, and his thoughts were jerked into another train. ‘That swine +Pietris! The impudence of the brute! Leave her—that means—to him—By +gum! I can’t stand that—it’s not on the cards at all—to him, the +blackguard! By George, no! I shall <i>have</i> to go back to her, oh! +decidedly I shall have to go back, and the sooner the better, and, +d——n it, I’m glad of it.’</p> + +<p>He urged the tired horse forward with voice and heel, and entered the +narrow passage between the giant rocks.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>There was silence where the venerable Cokerbôm tree, from under its +grim red-grey protectors through unnumbered centuries, laid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> a gnarled +and fantastic shadow across the moonlit track. That little world of +rocks and sand, of scanty brush and tree, held its breath. In the +death-like stillness the spirit of the Pass seemed to be straining to +catch an approaching sound.</p> + +<p>A long, deep-drawn, hissing breath, and again that brooding silence, +while the moonlight played for an instant on the silver tongue waiting +in the mesmerised space for its brief repast. Along a knotted, spikey +branch Pietris Vanhiever crouched, grasping in his hand a naked, +long-bladed knife; his sinewy arm, on which the dark swollen veins +stood out like cords, was stretched so as to give full play to a swift +and sudden blow. His teeth bared in hungry expectation, every nerve +strained in eager listening, he waited for the fulfilment of his vow, +and the satisfaction of that passion of jealousy, which, after his two +days of absolute bodily starvation, dominated his half-caste being to +the extinction of every other feeling.</p> + +<p>Presently there came within the ken of his hungry spirit a muffled +regular sound drawing rapidly nearer—without doubt the footfall of a +horse on the soft sand. His black eyes gleamed under their heavy brows +with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> a sombre fire, and gripping the branch more closely, he swung his +arm once, twice, backwards and downwards, then drew it close to the +branch again and waited.</p> + +<p>‘Loppety, loppety, loppety’ came the swing of that peculiar +three-legged canter that was steadily and virtuously making for the +Englishman the first stage of that route that should put his little +girl—his own property—for ever out of the reach of such swine as +Pietris Vanhiever.</p> + +<p>‘That <i>he</i>, forsooth—<i>he</i>—good Lord! it’s almost +comic—certainly quite impossible!—Yes, this big <i>Kopje’s</i> the +first landmark—shall see the camp fire from the other side—unless the +lazy hogs have let it out—hallo’....</p> + +<p>The silent scream of the thirsty knife backwards and downwards, the +hollow groan, the soft thump of the body on the sand, the frightened +snort and sudden wheeling of the riderless horse, the hiss and dart of +the destroyer on his prey—these things are written in the dumb records +of the giant and changeless tree.</p> + +<p>The sound of the grey’s hoofs fleeing back in the direction from whence +he had come had faded away before Pietris raised himself from the body +of his enemy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> + +<p>Dead, oh! undoubtedly dead; the good knife had gone home just below the +left shoulder—no need of a second blow—a famous place, that. Yet he +was sorry too—it would have been good to have struck again, and yet +again, and—ah! that hated face! should he crush it shapeless with his +heel, staring up at him careless and proud even in death? Should he? +Should he? The Kaffir blood in him surged in waves to his heart, the +desire to mutilate and mangle his enemy smote him sore. Not with his +boot, though—no—no—leave signs—besides, too soft; only <i>Veldt +schoens</i>; no—the knife again, blade or handle—all the same. He +leant over and strained at the handle; as he strove to draw it from the +wound, the eyes of the dead man seemed to roll and fix themselves on +his. With a cry of superstitious terror he recoiled, and to his vision, +maddened by passion, weakened by physical exhaustion and starvation, +the blanched lips of the corpse moved in the old smile of cynical +mockery.</p> + +<p>A nameless dread seized upon him—the white man in him, that had given +the nerve and passionate resolution for the steadfast fulfilment of his +vow, gave place in a moment to the unreasoning, superstitious savage.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p> + +<p>The man’s body was dead—he knew that assuredly—but his spirit was +alive and <i>there</i>—that proud and sneering spirit that he could +not slay. He shrank back and crouched in a huddled heap against the +rock, watching with fascinated gaze the movements of his enemy.</p> + +<p>Now, to a diseased and distorted vision moonlight plays queer tricks +with things. The tortures of the damned came upon Pietris Vanhiever, +and, greatest torture of all, he was deprived of the power of flight. +It seemed to his terror-ridden brain that the spirit through those eyes +was drawing him slowly—slowly—to the body of his victim, there to +hold him to eternity. Then a fresh horror came upon him, and the devil +of superstition turned his thoughts to the tales crooned to him by his +Kaffir mother, in the half light of the evenings, at the door of the +native hut. The tales of the spirit of the Karroo, the Great Spirit, +that comes to the souls of men whose lives and blood are spent upon +the Karroo’s breast, and gathers them to itself; the legends of the +woe and ruth that befall the living man who looks upon the gathering +of that harvest; and he shook with the cold fear that seized upon, and +paralysed, his limbs and knees. So minutes and hours went by,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> and the +moon dropped low behind the great rocks, and a black darkness came over +the pass of death, and ever the white upturned face held him through +the blackness in a stupor of terror, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, +save only, in those staring, shining eyes, the spirit of his enemy.</p> + +<p>Ah—h—h, what was <i>that</i>?—at the end of the Pass, what was +that?—white, silent through the darkness—what was it? <i>Lieber +Gott</i>, what was it? Coming, white and terrible, yes, coming to the +harvest.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Ah!</i>’—and screaming aloud in superstitious horror, ‘The spirit +of the Karroo! the spirit of the Karroo!’ he fell back heavily in a +dead swoon....</p> + +<p>Hopper’s horse, stumbling in the blackness against something soft lying +athwart the narrow track, bent down his head and sniffed, then with a +snort of terror and disgust wheeled round and vanished for the second +time riderless into the night.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The breath that stirs over the Karroo before the first streak of dawn, +straying into the heart of the great <i>Kopje</i>, stirred the soft +down on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> the tips of Silverback’s ears, and played faintly with the +beard on the dead man’s face.</p> + +<p>‘The dawn is at hand, O Lord of the far-smelling nostrils and +steel-like jaws, would it not be well to bite and sup, if but just a +little, for surely this be dead also, he has not moved these two hours.’</p> + +<p>‘Try and see,’ snarled the jackal.</p> + +<p>The hyæna drew back his grizzled snout with a grunt of disgust and +alarm.</p> + +<p>‘The Mother of all hyænas forbid! <i>I</i> touch a whole man, +<i>fresh</i>, that also might yet be living! Nay, nay, but do thou, who +knowest not fear, make trial and see if he be really good corpse, and +no longer two-legged demon, and I will withdraw a while and keep good +watch at the hinder end.’</p> + +<p>‘Coward!’ grumbled the jackal, watching him shrink to the outside of +the <i>Kopje</i>. ‘But as for me,’ he grunted to himself, ‘the day is +at hand, and my stomach calls loudly.’</p> + +<p>Licking his long red gums, he stole forward from his lurking place +in the crumbled sand, and set his white fangs in the fleshy part +of Pietris’ leg, not omitting to beat a rapid retreat, in case of +unexpected developments.</p> + +<p>The murderer’s death-like swoon was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> proof against the meeting of +those steel-like jaws. He groaned uneasily, and rolling round, raised +himself stiffly and slowly to a sitting posture.</p> + +<p>‘A thousand devils!’ he muttered, rubbing his leg, from which the blood +flowed freely, ‘what fool’s game is this?’</p> + +<p>Then his bewildered eyes in the fitful grey glimmer, that before the +coming of the dawn forced itself into the recesses of the <i>Kopje</i>, +fell on the upturned face of the Englishman. With a start Pietris +sprang to his feet, recollection of the events and the horror of the +night coming with a rush to his awakening mind. He staggered, then +shrinkingly crept forward, and, bending over the body of his victim, +looked long and fearfully into the glazed eyes.</p> + +<p>‘It is gone!’ he muttered, ‘gone, gathered—and I—woe is me!—ruin +and death—I have seen the harvest;—well, there is no more fear in +that trash,’—he spurned the prostrate body,—‘except for this’—and +stooping, with a great effort he wrenched the knife from the wound. He +plunged it into the ground, and, wiping it carefully, replaced it in +his belt. His eye in stooping caught the fresh spoor of Silverback and +his companion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p> + +<p>‘<i>Gott sei dank!</i>’ he muttered, ‘there needs no burial here,’ and +his eye followed the spoor into a cave at the rock base. Once again +he looked at the helpless corpse, and a thought came into his mind. +He rolled from the side of the rocks a large stone, rubbed on it some +of the blood still dripping from his own leg, and placed it close +to the head of the dead man—then: ‘It will be thought he fell, and +struck his head, for soon there will be but bones,’ he said with a +grin; then with a muttered oath, and a hurried look around and back, +half of fear and half of hate, he fled painfully and wearily, but with +noiseless steps, towards where in the far distance the embers of the +camp fire still cast a red glow, and whence an occasional grunt from a +half-slumbering mule was borne towards him on the breath of the dawn. +Rapidly and wearily he fled, in the misty half light, and behind him +in the darkness rose and fell the unearthly yowl—the jackal’s grace +before meat.</p> + +<p>‘The feast begins,’ he muttered, and as answering cries came from the +scrub to the right and left of him, ‘Good eating, all of you!—this was +he born for.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>‘Not guilty’ was the verdict; ‘guilty, but not enough evidence,’ the +comment of the Court, for Hopper’s horse, a gaunt silverbacked jackal, +and a Cokerbôm tree were not asked to give testimony.</p> + +<p>To this day, if you should chance to take Pietris Vanhiever with you +on a shooting trip, do not over your camp fire discourse on native +superstitions pertaining to the <i>Karroo</i>—it is calculated to +upset an otherwise good hunter.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_PRAIRIE_OYSTER">A PRAIRIE OYSTER</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘I drink my love at the fall of night,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">As the glow dies out of the Western sky;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I drink to the whirr of the widgeon’s flight,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And the coyote’s yowl, as we drundle by.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘I drink my love in the prairie morn,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">With a “Hey! farewell!” to the falling moon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the stars a-point at the flush of dawn,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">And the waking cry of the watchful loon.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘I drink my love in the heat and glare,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">With the sun a-flame on the silent lake;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I drink to the hum of the quivering air,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">To the beat and throb of the world awake.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">‘Here’s a toast to them all! And it’s sung refrain</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Is the clink and jar of a westward train.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span></p> + +<p>We droned along in one of those fits of despondency peculiar to trains +that have an immensity of flat ground in which to pick up their lost +time.</p> + +<p>The night was a lovely one, hot, with a bright moon silvering the +prairie, and trying vainly to throw shadows in a shadowless space. In +a meditative mood, I lounged on the platform against the open door of +the smoking car, and it seemed to me that I was taking a lesson in the +comprehension of infinity. A rolling plain as far as the eye could +reach—not a tree—not a house—as limitless and as empty as the sky +itself.</p> + +<p>A peculiar feeling of rest and freedom at first possessed me; I was, or +thought I was, beginning to understand many things hitherto unrevealed, +to have a sympathy with Simon Stylites, and an appreciation of +Mahatmaism;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> but soon a wild desire to project myself indefinitely into +space seized upon me. The moonlight and the vastness were getting into +my brain—a little more, and I might have leapt from the train, and run +until nature or prairie dog holes should assert their influence upon +me;—and then with a saving grace, a couple of coyotes appeared from +behind a hillock, and played with their tails in the moonlight—and the +spell was broken.</p> + +<p>I became conscious that my cigar was out, that the mosquitoes were +annoyingly attentive. Better to be a limited being in a smoking car +and not itch, than to be an unlimited being outside it and itch most +‘demnibly.’ I went back into the smoking-room.</p> + +<p>Empty, thank heaven—no professionals from the Golden City to talk faro +and rowdyism; no commercials to bombard one with down Eastern brag, the +decline of Winnipeg, or the future of Vancouver and the C. P. R.; no +globe-trotting sportsman to bewail his luck in the Rockies, or abuse +the British Columbian for a liar.</p> + +<p>‘Empty, thank God.’</p> + +<p>‘Take a light, sir?’ said a soft, rather high pitched, drawling voice +under my left elbow. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> jumped, and, to disguise it, smote my cheek, +where a mosquito might have been, but was not.</p> + +<p>A man of about forty, a long figure in a sleeping suit, with a lean, +brown, clean-shaven face, courteously bending forward, held towards me +the lighted end of a cigar.</p> + +<p>‘Thanks very much, sir; delighted to find I’m not alone.’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Not</i> empty, thank God;’ said Mr Dick Denver, in an unmoved voice.</p> + +<p>‘My dear sir,’ said I, sitting down next to him, ‘I should’nt have +dreamed of that remark, if I’d seen <i>you</i>; but you were so +completely tucked away in that corner, that I’d no idea you were here, +and I must confess I <i>was</i> uncommonly glad not to see our ’Frisco +friends, or the bummers’ (<i>Anglice</i> commercial travellers).</p> + +<p>‘Guess you’re right; they are kind of tiring.’</p> + +<p>‘What beats me,’ I went on, ‘is the way people like that, who really +have nothing to say, insist upon saying it, and, by Gad, enjoy saying +it, and are certain you enjoy hearing them say it, and set you down as +a condemned fool if you don’t say it yourselves.’</p> + +<p>‘Right,’ said Mr Denver; ‘for a man that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> spreads himself around to be +dull, give me a woman first, and then a bummer. And yet,’ he went on +meditatively, ‘there are some profoundly interesting beetles amongst +that last tribe; and—amongst the other too.’ He sighed, and relapsed +into the silent puffing of his cigar. I had not travelled from Montreal +nearly to Calgary with Mr Denver without discovering that he was a +silent man on all subjects, and on the subject of women a dumb, and +apparently a deaf image. Try him upon the subject of ‘bummers’ the +oyster might open for once, I thought, but without much hope.</p> + +<p>‘Did you ever have anything to do with any curious specimen?’ I said +carelessly.</p> + +<p>‘Some,’ he said; ‘one mainly—Irishman—he travelled in wine; I guess +he was the smartest coon I ever struck, but no head—or rather too much +head, like a glass of stout.’</p> + +<p>‘All Irishmen are like that,’ I said, sententiously and untruthfully; +then, with a cautious insertion of the opener, ‘what was his name?’</p> + +<p>‘Kinahan; we called him Kinjan,’ and—more to himself than to +me—‘Jupiter! I was in the tightest kind of a hole with that cuss and +one other.’</p> + +<p>‘Really tight?’ said I.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span></p> + +<p>‘Never tighter, except about three times, and those I don’t take much +stock in talking of.’</p> + +<p>‘Women?’ I said hardily. He nodded.</p> + +<p>‘And others,’ he added, as if he had thereby over-committed himself.</p> + +<p>‘It seems to me,’ said I, feeling the opener deepening in the shell, +‘you don’t “take much stock” in talking of anything, considering that +you really have got something to say; tell me this yarn of Kinjan, and +be a benefactor to a poor sleep-forsaken devil.’</p> + +<p>Mr Denver chewed the end of his cigar.</p> + +<p>‘Bore you world without end,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Try me,’ I besought.</p> + +<p>‘We must have drinks, then.’ He heaved himself up, and called +melodiously over the car platforms.</p> + +<p>When the materials had been brought, Mr Denver constructed himself his +favourite pick-me-up, in which raw egg and cayenne pepper formed the +chief ingredients.</p> + +<p>‘Let me mix you one,’ he said; ‘guess you won’t weaken on it; it’s +short, but it’s breezy.’</p> + +<p>We drank together, and our hearts were opened within us, and we became +as brothers. Through the open door and window the wonderful silver +prairie night came in, and the lamp of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span> the smoking-room flickered and +went out before its breath. We swallowed another prairie oyster each, +and the strings of Mr Dick Denver’s tongue were unloosed, and he spake +plain, if a little through his nose.</p> + +<p>And as he spake, the snoring from the sleeping-saloon and the snorting +of the engine became to me as the roaring of the surf upon the +sea-shore, and the rolling prairie as the sands of the desert, and afar +off a lone clump of trees shining white under the moon as the minarets +of a distant Moorish city.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was moving around one time on a cargo steamer, +calculating to go to Madeira or Teneriffe, and see what I could strike +out of those parts. Well, you know, I don’t cotton to “tramps;” they’re +a pretty ordinary lot, and the one I was on that trip was tough, just +tough; from the skipper down to the bacon the whole show was tough. +There were only three passengers on board: myself, this Kinjan, and a +long Britisher, by name Torin—the Hon. Christopher Torin was his full +label.’ Mr Denver paused, and tilted his head back in his seat, and in +this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, resumed, through a +cloud of smoke.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span></p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I guess I am of opinion <i>that</i> Mr Torin was by +a considerable way the coolest and the silentest cuss I ever struck, +and I’ve had experience; but with it, mind you, he was the most +reckless devil that ever let in to make the universe hum. He wasn’t +long out of some mess or other—woman, I heard—and likely enough—poor +beggar!’—and Mr Denver heaved a sigh of smoke that brought a stupefied +mosquito down from the ceiling. Presently he resumed.</p> + +<p>‘He was a long, good-looking chap, with a don’t-care look, and one of +those short, fair beards that grow on so many of you Britishers—going +a bit grey—and an extraordinary strong man, thick through, and long +in the limb. He was going down to Madeira, to fetch one of the South +African boats for a shooting trip. We three used to mess together, +you know, and got pretty thick,—Kinjan blowing around and spreading +himself, Torin smoking and drinking, and now and then nodding his head, +and I laying up and figuring them out—not for professional reasons, +but because it’s kind of got to be a habit of mine, and they were two +of the queerest bugs.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span></p> + +<p>“Not alone in their glory,” I thought to myself, but, beyond a grunt of +appreciation, said nothing; the oyster was fairly open now.</p> + +<p>‘Well, one evening about four bells,—while we were making down pretty +near in to the Morocco coast, and about a hundred miles top side +of Mogador,—I was leaning over the port rail aft, snuffing up the +phosphorus, and admiring at the right down smartness of the skipper, +shoving in shore on a real reefy coast, when there came an everlasting +jolt, and before I could get in the thin end of a cuss, I guess I +was treading water, and blowing like a grampus, forty yards from a +fast-sinking ship. It wasn’t any good going back—that was clear—she +wouldn’t be above water another five minutes, so I lit out and shoved +for the shore,—a long white streaky line about a quarter of a mile +off, with a blamed current setting me off it. I had to get there, or +bust, and I <i>got</i>, but it was stiff going, and when I had made the +sand I was as badly roasted as a leg of pork.</p> + +<p>‘I easied a bit, and lay up with my legs in the water, though the tide +running out soon left them high and dry. By and bye, I came round, and +concluded to prospect along that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> shore, and see if any other wreckage +had come to hand. It was pretty dark, but the sands were easy going, +and there was a moon just getting up. I guess I hadn’t gone above a few +hundred yards when I saw something white, about the height of a man’s +figure, rising out of the sand a short way off. When I got nearer I saw +it <i>was</i> a man, Torin himself, leaning on an oar and looking down +at his legs, which were quite bare.</p> + +<p>‘I fetched out a howl of joy, and ran for him. I remember he just +turned his head, and all he said was: “Haven’t got a pair of breeches +to lend a chap, have you?” Seems he’d been in his berth when the ship +struck, and the lower end of his pyjamas had sprung and cut adrift in +swimming, and left him in pale pink above, and another kind of a pale +pink below. Being a tidy sort of a cuss, he was a good piece annoyed, +so I reckoned we had better get right along with the prospecting, and +it might be we should run on that nether end. However, we didn’t, +and presently, as we were a good bit stretched with swimming against +the tide, we lay up under a sand hillock and had considerable sleep. +I guess it might have been an hour or so after dawn, when I was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> +woke by a curious screechy sort of a noise. As soon as I got my ears +under weigh, I found it panned out something like, “Bedad! ye divils, +begorra, be aisy, bejabbers!”—seemed kind of Irish. I rolled over from +sleeping inland, and, by the holy poker, within fifty yards of where we +had slept, washed up high and dry by the tide, which had turned in the +night and was then about full, was a barr’l with a head on it, and out +of that head was just pouring the thickest kind of Irish. A man could +see that the inside of that barr’l was yearning to have some sort of +consideration paid to it. I roused up Torin, and we went down quietly, +and inspected the cask from behind. It was a very nice barr’l—a butter +barr’l—and I judge about a third full of butter, and may be two-thirds +full of Kinjan; and the funny thing was that the poor coon had been +washed up stuck fast in that barr’l with his head turned out to sea, +so as he couldn’t suspicion we were around, and he was waltzing into +creation with the finest language, and the air was real stiff with +cussing. Well, I guess we laughed some, though we were tarnation glad +to see him,—that is, I laughed, and Torin stood there stroking his +beard,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> with the nearest approach to a grin I ever saw on him. The +laughing just drove Kinjan mad, and he wrenched round with a mighty +wriggle, and when he saw us he fairly surpassed himself, cussing us up +and down, beginning with our boot laces—which were mighty scarce, by +the way. His remarks were not worth repeating.</p> + +<p>‘When he had dried up, owing to a trickle of butter dripping from his +head into his mouth,—he was buttery all over,—Torin said, “Got any +bread with you?” That set him off again, but he toned down mighty +quick, and ended up by saying quite quietly:</p> + +<p>‘“Take me out of this, and be d——d to ye, ye leather-headed sons of +bottle-washers!” and then he fainted. So we took him out, and hung him +over the cask, and sluiced water over him, and presently he came to, +ca’m, but pretty yallow.</p> + +<p>‘’Pears when the ship struck, he’d been jerked off the poop right into +this butter barr’l, which was standing open and most empty on the lower +deck. When he felt the ship disappearing under him, being an Irishman, +and a genius, with a turn for expurriment,—but I guess mainly because +he couldn’t swim,—he calculated to stay<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> where he was. He grabbed a +bit of wood that came along, and by means of this managed to keep the +barr’l top side up, the sea luckily being as ca’m as a mill-pond. He +said he was first taken out maybe hundred of miles till he could most +smell the Canaries, and then brought in again on the turning tide and +washed up. In his struggles near shore, he’d kicked clean through the +bottom of the cask, and, getting his leg jammed tight through the +hole, was as fast as a tick when we found him. He had a down on butter +afterwards; he never ’peared to go much on it, ’slong as I knew him.’</p> + +<p>Over Mr Denver’s face, which had hitherto been as unmoved and +expressionless as carved mahogany, twinkled a fleeting look of joy, +which disappeared with the next puff of his cigar.</p> + +<p>‘That was not the most amusing day I <i>have</i> spent,’ he went on, +meditatively; ‘we kept mighty busy looking for fixings and finding +none to speak of; I guess the current must have appropriated all +that was useful in the old tub,—only the most or’nery articles came +along—empty hencoops, and barr’ls, and such like—not a single +tarnation thing to eat or drink. I judge the skipper and most of the +crew turned up their toes, though I heard afterwards that four<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> of +them were saved out of a small boat by a passing vessel. Torin got a +piece of sail-cloth, and made himself a pinafore, which comforted him +some. Kinjan slept most of the day, and when he woke up, he told us +we were fools, and that what we wanted instead of mooning around for +things from the sea, was to go inland and find out if there weren’t any +houses or cities in the vicinity; and then he rolled himself up tight +in the shade of that sand-heap like a darned yellow dormouse, and went +to sleep again; I guess he must have had a most amazing wide-awake +time in that barr’l, I never saw a man sleep so. Torin and I were most +powerfully hungry and thirsty by this, so we went inland a piece and +looked about us for the highest ground we could find,—the country was +as blamed flat, mind you, as this prairie. We found a sand hillock that +rose a bit above the rest of the ground, and Torin made a back and +said “get up;” so I got, and stood on his shoulders, and looked; and +presently out of the distance away to the south-east, it might have +been five or six miles, I could see some white spikey things seeming to +stick up out of the yallow horizon. I told Torin, and he got up on me, +and when he came down—which he did<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> pretty smart, owing to my balance +going wrong—he cursed gently, with his mouth full of sand, and said, +“Minarets, city!”</p> + +<p>‘Well, we went back to Kinjan, who was awake, for a wonder, and told +him; and then he said he’d just remembered the whole country round +those parts was in the hands of the rebels, and that if we were seen we +should be killed, so he recommended us to go on hunting along shore, +till we ran across a boat, and get away in that, and he recommended +us particularly to look out for a barr’l of whisky; then he went to +sleep again. Well, we just sat down, and waited for him to get thirsty, +calculating that when that was so, being an Irishman, he would find +us a way out of the fix. And presently he got, and it woke him up, +and after cursing a bit, he sat up quite spry—but a piece yallow +still—and figured out the most beautiful plan of how we would go and +take that city if necessary, and make them provide us with an escort +down to Mogador. Then he said it was no good doing anything till it was +cool and dark. So he lay down again and went to sleep; and after one +more look along shore we lay down alongside and did the same, meaning +to start with the dawn next morning for the city. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> reckon we were +played out that evening, and felt real rocky and dispurited.’</p> + +<p>Dick Denver’s memories of that thirsty day were here too much for him; +he rose and called again for drinks across the platform. When they had +come, in the hands of a sleepy and coloured individual, he finished a +whisky and soda at a single draught, and resumed.</p> + +<p>‘That fellow was infectious, I guess; anyway I slept until a heavy sort +of feeling about my chest woke me, and I found a great hairy nigger +cuss had taken me for an arm-chair. All around us in the moonlight were +a lot of ferocious-looking devils in long robes and turbans, armed to +the teeth. Torin was lying spread-eagled on my right—he didn’t ’pear +to be discommoded—but he spat out a broken tooth, and I heard him +mutter to himself, “You fools, much better have killed me, and have +done with it;” and I judged he was powerfully divided between two sorts +of wish.</p> + +<p>‘There was a nigger holding on to each of my arms and legs, so I took +it quietly, and they bound me up like an eternal mummy. Out of the +corner of my eye I could see Kinjan’s face shining round and red in the +middle of a mass of niggers. He rolled his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> eye at me, and began, “Be +aisy, Dick—Begad! I’ll take tay with ye prisintly, ye hairy haythens!” +Just then one of the niggers stuffed his mouth with sand, so he shut +his head kind of sudden. Then they picketed their horses round us, and +sat on their haunches, and pow-wowed everlastingly.</p> + +<p>‘I judged we were in the hands of a band of rebel Moors loafing along +shore in search of wreckage; and a man could see with half an eye it +was a tight place. I wasn’t more than six feet from Kinjan, and I could +tell by the prick of his ears he was understanding the pow-wow; living +as he did at “Gib,” he’d been a lot in the country and <i>sabed</i> +the lingo well. Lie low was the only game, and I lay and thunk a lot, +but all the time I felt kind of certain that if we were coming out of +that place, it was Kinjan’s show—and the more so because I knew he was +almighty dry. Their chief seemed a venerable kind of a bug, with a long +white beard and turban, and he did most of the pow-wowing. Presently +they easied off, and after looking us over well, and giving us a kick +or two, set two sentinels, and turned in for sleep. The sentries stood +out about twenty yards; and when the others seemed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> fixed pretty quiet, +Kinjan gave a gentle roll of his fat carcase towards me, and said, out +of his back teeth (I can’t give his accent, but it was real rich): +“Thanks be to Jasus, one of me knots is a granny. Praise the pigs, +I’ll be out of ut in ten minutes. Tell Torin; and when I give ye the +wink, stand by, and I’ll cut ye loose—then grab what ye can and clear +the camp; whist!” One of the sentries faced round right there and came +towards us; he prodded at me with the butt end of his lance to see that +I couldn’t move when he tickled me, and he rolled Kinjan over with +his foot; we neither of us budged, so he concluded we were fixed, and +mouched back again.</p> + +<p>‘I counted the gang; there were fifteen of them. Torin was laying very +low about three yards away, but I judged from a sign he made when the +sentry vamoosed, that he knew things were about to progress. After what +seemed a ’nation long time, Kinjan raised his head, and I saw from +his movements he’d succeeded in freeing his hands; presently he came +rolling gently on to me, and I felt the point of his blamed knife going +in as he cut the thongs; then he handed me the knife, and I rolled on +to Torin and hacked him loose;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> and just as I got through, one of the +sentries tumbled to it, and came for us like greased lightning. I saw +Kinjan throw out his arm from the ground, and the cuss tripped right +over it on to us, and his spear went into the ground through my coat.</p> + +<p>‘Kinjan raised a whoop, and got that spear and ran it through the man +next him—he was a bloodthirsty little cuss. I laid for the sentry’s +pistols—he had two—and drew a very neat bead on the other sentry.</p> + +<p>‘Torin he just sat up and purred, and then when the devils began to +come on, he took that fallen sentry by the legs, and got a wiggle +on him, and went for them into the thick; and he swung the poor +devil round and round and cleared that crowd like fury—’peared they +didn’t understand the game. He laid out three of them, and then they +scattered and drew back; I dropped another with the other pistol, and +Kinjan charged right down on the old chief, and bowled him over with +the butt-end of his spear. “’Tis all over, bhoys,” he said, and sat +on the old gentleman; and so it was. When they saw the tail-ends of +their boss waving in the air, the rest of them made tracks. In the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> +intervals of sticking the business end of his spear into things, +Kinjan had cut loose all their horses but four or five, and there was +a beautiful scrimmage over those sand hillocks, men and horses all +mixed, and travelling in most directions like fury. That was a vūrry +tidy dodge of Torin’s,—maybe it was rough on the sentry, but it was +vūrry impressive—some of the impressions might have been a foot long, +I should judge.’ He paused; the train had stopped with a jerk at a +station, and the engine was blowing off steam with a disturbing energy.</p> + +<p>‘Durn the durned thing,’ said Mr Denver; but presently he resumed, as +we droned on again.</p> + +<p>‘We—ell,’ and there was an alarming touch of boredom in his tone, +‘after we’d tied the old boy, we had a quiet time, doctoring up those +we’d stretched, as best we could, and figuring out what was to be done. +Kinjan and I palavered over the chances, but Torin didn’t seem to care +what we did, and seemed sort of disgusted with the whole affair. He +stood leaning on a spear by the horses, and once I heard him mutter, +“Damn! shan’t get such a chance again.” I judged he would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> have let +himself be killed like a sheep, but the fighting instinct was too +strong for him; he was as sulky as he could be, but he did what he was +told, which was the main thing. I was for riding along the coast and +trying to make Mogador, but Kinjan over-persuaded me that a bold course +was the best thing; he wanted to go right there for the city. “We’ve +got the weapons, clothes, horses, and a goide, but we’ve got nothing +to dhrink,” he said, “and ut would be unbecomin’ of us if we lift the +neighbourhood without dhroppin’ a cyard.” He took great pleasure in +dressing us up in clothes taken from the deceased, and fussed around +like a seven-year-old going to a party—the little devil had lots of +sand; he said the great thing was to get <i>into</i> the city, and to +do that we must throw in plenty of style.</p> + +<p>‘At last we got rigged out and mounted; I guess we made pretty fair +heathens, all except Kinjan—he was too red and fat. He tied the old +chief’s hands and his feet under his horse, and make him go first. I +came next with a shooting-iron handy, and the other two brought up the +rear. After a stretch, Kinjan rode up alongside the old gentleman, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> +began to blandhander to him in his own tongue, and presently he made +me a sign, and then cut the ropes that bound his feet, and the old boy +perked up, and began to spread himself; and by the time we came within +sight of the town, those two were as thick as thieves. I judge Kinjan +would have made a fine poker-player,’ said Mr Denver in parentheses, +with a sigh of regret.</p> + +<p>‘It was a light kind of a night, and we could see the walls around +the institution from quite a way off. The old boy was heading us for +the principal gate, and Kinjan turned to me: “The town’s in the hands +of the ribils,” he said; “but, praises to the Almighty! the ould +gintleman’s a big pot amongst thim, and he’s promised to take us to +the Sheikh—or whativer his misbegotten name may be—and git us a pass +and an iscort.” “Bluff!” I said; “’ware snakes.” “Faith! no,” said +he, “’tis a swate old baboo, and ut’s truth he’s telling.” I wasn’t +taking any, but it wouldn’t have done to interfere then, so I shut my +head, and we rode on along the walls. Presently we struck what I judge +was the front door; considerable of a high gate, fortified with iron +spikes, and vūrry strong. There were no signs of hospitality.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span> “I guess +I’ll knock,” I said, and butted the end of my lance against the gate. +A voice cried out from one of the little towers on the walls on each +side in a kind of a sing-song; the old chief sung out something in +answer, and then they had a palaver. I reckon they spoke some strange +lingo, for Kinjan called out to me excitedly, “Can ye understand thim? +May me sowl rust if oi can.” Before I could answer, we heard a sound of +horses tramping, the gate’s hinges turned and it swung open, and there +in front of us, drawn up in line, with spears in rest, was a troop of +most a dozen mounted niggers. “Euchred, be Jasus! The ould schoundhrel! +and the drinks oi promused ’um!” said Kinjan, mournfully; I guess I +was thinking it was about time to throw up the cards and leave, when +Torin trotted his horse past me. “Good-bye, boys,” he said, “<i>I’m</i> +going into the city.” He just waved his hand, clapped his heels into +his horse’s side, and went like a catamount for the troop. They slashed +and speared at him right and left, but they were taken by surprise; and +I guess his release hadn’t been signed, for he went through them like +so much paper. ‘Well, <i>sir</i>,’—Mr Denver rolled a cigarette and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> +drew his breath in with a sharp hiss—‘how it came about I can’t say, +but Kinjan and I, with the old gentleman between us, went through after +him—they were kind of discommoded, I suppose—Torin was a big man, and +he left an aperture. The moment we cleared them, Kinjan put a pistol +to the chief’s head. “Ye son of a herring,” he said, quite forgetting +to speak Moorish, “take us straight to the Sheikh’s palace, or I’ll +schatter yer dhirty brains.” The only words of Moorish were Sheikh +and palace, but they were enough for the old boy; he was as skeered +an old cuss as I ever saw; he ducked from the pistol, touched his +forehead, and muttered something, and we all vamoosed down the rattling +stone-paved streets, like the job lot of horse-thieves we were.</p> + +<p>‘The old gentleman was profoundly interested in the business-end +of that shooting-iron, and so we got right there without any more +hanky-panky; you see the streets were just as empty as a nigger’s head, +and we had more than a street’s start of the guard. When we pulled up +sharp in front of a large detached location, we could hear the guard +coming, hell for leather. Kinjan explained to the chief that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> he had +got to take us to the Sheikh right along, or he would investigate +his interior. Now that old heathen was as swift a man at trapping an +idea as ever I saw; he signed to us to get off our horses, and, with +the end of the pistol working into the small of his back, he called +out loudly in Moorish, and the gate was thrown open for us. ‘Then,’ +said Mr Denver, flipping petulantly at his cigarette ash, ‘occurred a +most annoying little affair. We were just passing quietly through the +doorway, and the guard not more than a hundred yards away, coming like +Jerusalem, when Torin pushed me aside, and stepped back to his horse. +“Go on,” he said, “I’ve got another word to say to those fellows.” +He was swinging himself into the saddle, when Kinjan drew a bead on +the horse and brought the whole show to the ground. “Not so fast, ye +suicidin’ divil,” he said, “bear ahand, Dick,” and before Torin could +get his balance we lugged him through the door and shut it. ‘I’ve +often regretted it since; ’twasn’t a neighbourly thing to do,’ said Mr +Denver, thoughtfully, ‘for when a man wants his release real bad, why +in thunder shouldn’t he have it?’ He lounged back in his seat with a +far-away<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span> look in his sunken eyes, and I had to jog him with questions +once or twice before he took up the word again.</p> + +<p>‘Well, sir, the old chief had vamoosed down the street in the shindy, +and there was only the porter, looking tolerably parti-coloured. When +Torin found himself inside, instead of out, as he’d reckoned to be, +he just folded his arms and shut his head, and I guess neither of us +ever felt like alluding to that incident. Whether the porter took us +for devils or not, I can’t say, but he was tarnation civil, specially +when he felt the end of Kinjan’s pistol. As we passed through a stone +archway into a courtyard, the house began to hum, and we could hear +the guard behind us hammering at the gate we’d just come through. +Kinjan pointed out to the porter in Moorish, and shooting-iron, that +we were going right up to the Sheikh’s bedroom. The unfortunate coon +said he reckoned his head was feeling loose, and kind of wobbly on +his shoulders, but if we would ascend the steps he pointed to, we +would find the Sheikh’s private apartments at the top; we thanked him, +and he said his head felt real loose; but we took him along and went +right there. He played us<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> honest Injun, did that porter, and may be +his woolly top’s on his shoulders yet; but I’m not betting on that,’ +drawled Mr Denver, compassionately; and he stopped, turning his head to +gaze out of the window.</p> + +<p>‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s the dawn.’ And sure enough, far away behind +us on the eastern horizon, a pale salmon streak slowly lengthened and +spread; between us and it on the dim prairie lay a still, murky sheet +of water. In front of the train, in its western wayfaring, the young +slopes of the Rockies rose shadowy and faint in the growing light. As +we stepped out on to the car platform the shrill tragic cry of the loon +came floating to us, through the wreathing mist, from across the reedy +pools. We watched the sun rise—and those who are watching the sun rise +on the prairie and the flushing of the early mountain slopes in the +reflected light, are not greatly given to talk. But when it was over, I +turned to Dick Denver. His brown, lean face looked drawn and haggard, +and he shaded his eyes with his hand. Presently he raised his hand to +his hat, and taking it off, stood looking long and steadily at the now +risen sun, and his lips moved. If I hadn’t known him for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> hardened +and notorious sinner, I should have said he was muttering a prayer. The +impression was so strong upon me that I waited to speak until he had +replaced his hat.</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ I said.</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ he replied absently, his eyes still on the far horizon.</p> + +<p>‘And then? What happened next? Did you see the Sheikh?’ I lamely jogged +him.</p> + +<p>‘What!’ his mind returned unwillingly. ‘You can’t in thunder want to +hear any more after that?’ and he pointed eastwards.</p> + +<p>‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, ‘but I most certainly do. I want to hear the +rest of your yarn badly.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! well,’ he said, resignedly, ‘I guess there’s mighty little left to +tell.’</p> + +<p>‘The Sheikh,’ I jogged.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, yes, the Sheikh,’ he went on in a hopelessly bored tone; ‘we saw +him—he was a vūrry civil cuss, said it was all a mistake, and we were +his dearest friends, and the English were his fathers and his brothers +and all his relations, and I guess—oh, yes, I guess he sent us down to +Mogador with a troop of cavalry, and—that’s all.’ He turned and went<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> +back into the smoking car. The oyster was closing fast.</p> + +<p>‘Just one question,’ I hazarded; ‘what became of the other two men +afterwards?’ He drew out a pack of cards, and began shuffling them, and +I had to repeat the question.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! I guess Kinjan would be alive,—why certainly he would be; unless +he might have been caught up in a flame of fire, there wouldn’t be any +other kind of a death for him,’ he said with the ghost of a smile.</p> + +<p>‘And Torin?’</p> + +<p>‘Gone out, I reckon,’ he said impassively.</p> + +<p>The curt grimness of this remark jarred upon me, though why it should +have, I don’t know; why expect sentiment from Dick Denver, who lived +from day’s end to day’s end with his life in his hands?</p> + +<p>‘In heaven’s name, why indeed?’ I said aloud to myself, as I turned +once again before going through the door to my berth—Dick Denver was +dealing a set of poker hands, and humming softly to himself. It was +broad daylight, and the train still droned along. I was dead tired; +and as I shut the door softly, and turned into my bunk, instead of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> an +intelligent moral deduction from the story and its teller, all I could +think of was the children’s grace, ‘Thank God for a good dinner.’</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ACCORDING_TO_HIS_LIGHTS">ACCORDING TO HIS LIGHTS</h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Life is mostly froth and bubble,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Two things stand like stone;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Kindness in another’s trouble,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Courage in your own.’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Adam Lindsay Gordon.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span></p> + +<p>‘Prevention is better than cure,’ they say. Quite probably; anyway that +must be the reason why our system of imprisonment is so popular, for +whoever knew anyone cured by it?</p> + +<p>What the exact state of Eugene Rattray’s moral sentiments were upon the +day that he was released from Rochester Gaol, it would be difficult to +say.</p> + +<p>Judging from the following record, I very much doubt whether the term +of his imprisonment had materially affected his view of things.</p> + +<p>What was his offence? The law called it by an awkward name having +consequences; these consequences the law applied to a man who had +come back of his own accord from Australia to ‘face the music,’ as he +phrased it. I myself could never see that the offence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> was more than +a chance effect of circumstances upon a formed character. It seemed +to me futile to punish a chance effect, seeing that it was the formed +character you wanted to get at; but anyway, ‘they done it,’ as Huck +Finn has it.</p> + +<p>When I went to see him in Pentonville, where he was known as ‘that +there tall <i>I</i>talian with the strong beard, wot carries ’is ’ead +so ’igh’ (certainly Eugene’s origin was half Greek, but then it was +<i>all</i> Greek to the warders—hence the <i>I</i>talian), he talked +cheerfully enough, poor chap, and without any bitterness as to the +past. As to the future, he put it away; he had to ‘face the music,’ and +in doing that he was hard enough put to it to ‘carry ’is ’ead ’igh’ in +the present, without thinking of the future. I suppose he realised to +a certain degree what it would be like to ‘come out,’ but not greatly, +for he told me that he felt exactly like a wrecked man flung on a +desert island, when, on a February morning, with his certificate of +discharge in his pocket, he walked out of Rochester Gaol into the world.</p> + +<p>So feeling, he strolled to the end of the street, and there the sense +of having lived his life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> pressed so strongly upon him that he stood +debating dazedly whether he would not go back, and ask to be taken +in again. He even took some steps in the direction of the prison, +till the absurdity of the idea presented itself to his mind. He shook +himself like a dog, and, pulling up before a shop window, looked long +and critically at his image in the plate-glass. It was a presentable +reflection, tall, straight, well-clothed; he took off his hat, and +replaced it quickly with a shudder; he registered a mental vow not to +remove his gloves for some days; he gazed at his upper lip blankly, it +did not seem to fit in with his surroundings; finally he turned out his +pockets—one pound fifteen shillings and sixpence.</p> + +<p>This pantomime he went through mechanically, with the feeling that he +must do something rational, something practical, however trifling, to +save him from thought; and the next moment, the black waves of despair +came rolling in over his flimsy breakwater one after the other, driving +him with head down and huge strides anywhere away from his fellows. +<i>This</i> was the tug; anything that had gone before was child’s +play to <i>this</i>. Out into a world that could look, and point and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> +whisper the words ‘Convicted felon!’ to which there was no answer. +It had been different in there; what were the words but the common +property of all? It was easy enough to hold one’s head up in that dim +world; but outside it, where everything was so clear and bright, where +the light was strong—he cursed the sun; where everyone could and would +read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest his shame; where he was branded +like any poor devil of a sheep on a bush run. He flung himself down in +a field, and—well, there are some things that are best left alone, and +the full tide of a strong man’s humiliation is one of them.</p> + +<p>Two hours later, Eugene walked into Rochester Station, his brow knit +and his head thrown back, and cursing his fate silently in his heart. +He took a first single to London.</p> + +<p>‘As long as I have a sou,’ he thought, ‘I’ll give it for the only +luxury left me—solitude;’ and he jingled the few remaining coins in +his pocket.</p> + +<p>They say an habitual criminal turned loose again upon society goes +back to the scene of his offence—there is also a saying about a +dog. Eugene was not an habitual criminal, he was only a victim of +circumstances, playing on a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> formed character, yet he experienced +a vague desire to return to the circumstances. He has told me that +on that short but divinely lonely journey he was able to think his +position over rationally. Item—he had no money, but many relations +and friends, possibly, nay probably, willing to help him. Item—he +was of the leisured class, unfitted for, <i>and</i>—a large +<i>and</i>—disqualified for anything, except the merest manual labour. +Item—he was physically strong, but happily, so he had been told, not +unlikely to die at any minute. Item—he loved the best of everything. +Finally, item—he had no reputation, and therefore no self-respect. He +cast about in agony for any foundation on which to base a self-respect, +and he found one, whether good or bad, who knows? In the circumstances, +to the man, the only one. ‘Face the music; keep your head up; society +has dealt you hard measure, treat it with the contempt with which it +will undoubtedly treat you; if you let go the plank of your pride for +but a minute, you drown.’</p> + +<p>Nobody knew that he was free; his discharge had come a month earlier +than expected, for some reason connected with certain services to +the internal economy of the dim world. So<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span> far, good. The practical +sum of his reflections came to this: ‘<i>Let</i> no one know, avoid +acquaintances, work in the docks till you have earned a passage to the +diggings, and then’—he thought almost cheerfully of the ‘then.’</p> + +<p>He stepped out of the carriage serenely; after all it was only his +friends and acquaintances that mattered, a tiny eddy in the huge +whirlpool of existence; easy enough to keep out of that eddy. He was +always of a sanguine disposition; it had been very hard, I remember, at +school to persuade him that he would infallibly miss his remove. It is +the sanguine people upon whom circumstances play their pranks; luckily +the payment of the piper is not to them so severe a tax as it is to +the others—the pendulum swings very evenly. He lunched, to fortify +the reaction; he lunched well; it was the first meal he had had for +fourteen months—those in the dim world did not count. A cup of coffee +and a cigar completing the fortification, he walked out of the station +and along the crowded streets, enjoying the stir and bustle around him.</p> + +<p>Mechanically he moved westwards. Presently he found himself opposite +one of his favourite haunts—he would go in and read the papers.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> He +stopped at the steps with a jerk, the waves came rolling back on him +again, he gripped his plank and strode on. Some vague idea of seeking +the docks directed his steps eastwards again through the heart and +centre of the hum. He caught himself gazing with an indifferent, +almost a callous eye at places and objects which were as the very +pivot upon which had turned the whirling wheel of circumstances that +now forced him to walk among his fellows a branded outcast. As he +passed the London and Westminster Bank in Lothbury, a grey-haired man, +hurrying from the door, ran against him, and without apology hastened +past westwards. Eugene, in no mood to be jostled, turned angrily, but +something familiar in the man’s back arrested his attention; the close, +humping set of the shoulders, the head set stiffly forward, the walk of +a man who goes straight to his object, and that object, money. Eugene +looked after him undecided, then crossed the street, and hurrying on, +took up a position that enabled him to see the face.</p> + +<p>As he thought—his Uncle Stephen; no mistaking the shark’s mouth +between the close-cut white moustache and beard, the light grey eyes +under thick lids, looking neither to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> right nor left, mechanically +summing up the price of the man’s coat in front of him.</p> + +<p>‘Not a day older, the same amiable Uncle Stephen; you old beast!’ +muttered Eugene between his clenched teeth. He followed him, at first +mechanically, then with a steadily growing resolve.</p> + +<p>The one man who had had it in his power in the first place to check, in +the second to annul circumstances—and yet not a hand raised, not even +the kink of the crooked, grasping little finger unbent. The words, in +the saw-like voice, dinned in his ears:</p> + +<p>‘You’re a black sheep, sir, I’ll do nothing for you.’</p> + +<p>To-day he was bidding farewell to his identity and to his former life, +but he meant to have a word with that man first; merely an expression +of opinion. How he hated that back threading the mazes of Cheapside and +Ludgate Hill, stopping every now and then before a picture or a china +shop, ‘bargain’ in its every line.</p> + +<p>‘Four miles a day, and seventy,’ thought Eugene disgustedly; ‘he’ll +live to be a hundred.’ The back threaded its way unwearyingly through +the Strand and Charing Cross, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> down the now gas-lighted Piccadilly, +towards the Park, unconscious of the tall shadow that, dogging it +grimly, waited for a less crowded thoroughfare. So journeying, they +neared Hyde Park corner, and the back wavered; a slight drizzling rain +had begun to fall.</p> + +<p>‘It’s a cab fare against the gloss of that hat,’ thought Eugene; ‘um! +thought so; the fare has it,’ for the back had turned into the Park, +and was being borne swiftly along under an umbrella in the direction of +Kensington. Eugene turned up his coat collar, and crossing over to the +opposite side, drew slightly nearer to the chase. As he intended the +opinion to be a strong one, he preferred to have a fair field and no +favour, and waited his chance quietly, knowing his Uncle’s usual route +would lead him through a sufficiently deserted region.</p> + +<p>To speak his mind!—A very empty satisfaction, but still, some sort of +salve to the bitterness of his feelings.</p> + +<p>A nursemaid and her charge pressing homewards in the dim distance were +now the only people in sight, and Eugene was on the point of ranging +alongside, when something white lying in the pathway where his Uncle +had just<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> passed caught his eye. Stooping, he picked it up, and stopped +mechanically to examine the contents of the packet. The light was +dim, and he read the heading words on the covering with difficulty: +‘Seabright Trust.’</p> + +<p>He rubbed his eyes, and read it again. No mistake about the words: +‘Seabright Trust,’ the Trust of which himself and his respected Uncle +were, or rather had been, the co-trustees; he tore open the covering.</p> + +<p>Quite so; documents of importance, notes, gold, dropped, undoubtedly +dropped by his Uncle. A fierce joy leapt up in his heart; he took one +look at the fast disappearing figure, then drew quickly back into the +shelter of some trees, and turned again to the contents of the packet.</p> + +<p>His <i>co</i>-trustee—well, not exactly, now—possibly it might have +been better for that gentleman, he thought with a bitter sneer, if +he were still so. Over this Trust he had come to grief, over this +Trust that man—his co-trustee—had shown him no mercy, no saving +grace, not even the grace of a two days’ silence. Hard measure, hardly +dealt, ‘black sheep—black sheep’—that was all. Well, things square +themselves: over this Trust the black sheep<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span> would be quits; the +documents were <i>most</i> important; the bottom of the Serpentine was +quite an admirable place for them.</p> + +<p>What construction the law would put upon their disappearance, +really—he reflected with a grim smile—he couldn’t say; his Uncle +would doubtless know; he knew the consequences of everything so +accurately. The memory of that fourteen months in the dim world pressed +like lead upon his brain; the revengeful Southern blood leaped in his +veins, and he ground his teeth and laughed aloud. He hoped it might +be held <i>criminal</i> negligence, the documents were <i>so</i> +important; it was, moreover, quite unfortunate for his co-trustee that +it was at all events indirectly to the latter’s interest that they +should cease to exist. This would be better than speaking his mind. He +leapt a paling and looked about him for stones suitable to weld the +canvas covering and its contents to their new abode. Let him think; +there were also notes and gold, <i>these</i> most certainly, whatever +else happened, <i>that man</i> would have to restore, therefore by +taking them he robbed nobody.</p> + +<p>‘By God! What I take from him is my due; he has taken everything from +me; shall there be no exchange?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span></p> + +<p>‘The notes may go,’ he thought, ‘they’re risky. I’ll give society no +more chances, but the gold will give me a fresh start. Uncle Stephen! +Uncle Stephen! this isn’t your day out, it’s mine, and by heaven I’ll +make the most of it.’</p> + +<p>Now, in this matter, as he said when he told me of it afterwards, he +acted with conviction; there was no struggle in him as to the right or +the wrong of the thing—it was so plain—no single qualm of hesitation +or regret tempered the seething delight in the coming revenge, only he +was forced to stamp his feet and grind his teeth to get back a clear +power of thinking to his whirling brain.</p> + +<p>He filled the bag with scientific care, first taking out the roll +of gold; then tying the strings, he leapt back across the paling. +The nearest way to the Serpentine led him across the path where the +packet had been dropped. As he crossed it he saw a figure approaching +slowly through the dusk, from the direction in which his Uncle had +disappeared; he shrank behind a tree and watched. If it should be that +old shark, and he were seen—well—a blow neatly given secured the +necessary amount of silence, and did no great harm.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> + +<p>‘He’s an old man, and I don’t want to hurt him, but by heaven I won’t +be stopped—.’</p> + +<p>The figure advanced very slowly, and Eugene watched it anxiously in the +fast waning light. It seemed to move forwards down the path a few feet +with a jerk, and then to stop suddenly. It was bent almost double, so +that no glimpse of the face could be seen, but a curious, indistinct, +shrill murmur like the ‘goo-gooing’ of a dumb man came down to Eugene’s +ears.</p> + +<p>‘What the devil is it?’ he thought, and as if for answer, one +intelligible word ‘Trust’ came in a half-scream through the chill +evening air, and then the ‘goo-gooing’ began again. Suddenly, when only +some few yards away, the figure straightened itself as if animated by a +spring, and Eugene saw his Uncle.</p> + +<p>The right arm hung stiffened at his side, the left gesticulated wildly, +pointing down the path and then to his mouth, out of one side of which +came that weird and curious mumbling. Eugene shuddered; whatever else, +there could be no <i>fear</i> of this pitiable being—he stepped from +behind the tree and moved forward.</p> + +<p>The figure continued to advance, dragging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> itself painfully along—as +it seemed the left leg alone moving—and the eyes fixed on Eugene’s +advancing form had an intense look of agonised appeal. There was no +recognition in them, only an unasked question; the mouth mumbled, the +man’s left hand alternately pointed down the path, and clutched the +breast of his overcoat. It seemed to Eugene that the piteous searching +in the eyes must pierce the covering which his buttoned coat formed +over the lost bag, and with an involuntary movement he threw it open. +The figure staggered, and with an inarticulate cry thrust out its hand +for the bag. Eugene drew back—he must have time to think. His Uncle, +a dim look of recognition struggling through the film of agonised +entreaty, crouched almost double again before him. The drizzling mist +shrouded the rest of the world, and these two figures stood alone.</p> + +<p>A thousand thoughts and feelings surged in the nephew’s mind. Gratified +revenge, reluctant pity, and a growing railing at the fates. In a whirl +of disgust he found that the thing he had in his heart to do was no +longer in his power. Why had he lingered that minute to gloat over his +revenge? Why turned his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> head as he was taking his road <i>to</i> that +revenge? A minute sooner, this miserable, crouching, smitten figure, +with its dumb, despairing look, and its dumb, despairing voice, would +not have been cringing in supplication before him. What had befallen +the man, hale a few minutes before, did not trouble him; he was +bitterly raging at the failure of his revenge, and disgusted with the +stroke of fate which had caused it, tearing from him his fresh start in +life.</p> + +<p>‘If I could,’—he swung the bag doubtfully in his hand, and felt the +gold in his pocket; ‘<i>if</i> I only could,—but I can’t, and there’s +an end of it. The old brute—he’s down, and I <i>can’t</i> kick him.’ +All feeling of pity for the miserable object before him was swallowed +up in an amazing regret. He even cursed the training which caused him +to feel the impossibility of that kick.</p> + +<p>‘A good many of my late friends would have been on in this piece,’ he +thought bitterly, ‘and glad of the chance.’</p> + +<p>He plucked the bag from under his coat, and opening it, dropped the +stones out one by one.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose this’ll have to go back too,’ he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> muttered, and replaced the +gold, with a sigh of disgust. The stricken man’s eyes gleamed, and he +put out his left hand feebly. Eugene put the bag into it, but the grasp +was uncertain, and it fell again to the ground. The shock of seemingly +losing it a second time was too much for the disordered intellect, +and in a dead swoon, Stephen Rattray fell stiffly forward on to his +nephew’s shoulder.</p> + +<p>Eugene laid him on the ground, carefully buttoned the packet into the +inner pocket of his Uncle’s coat, and then drew himself away to think. +He couldn’t get a clear grasp of things with that hated figure touching +his. Leaning apart against a tree, and looking down at the helpless +form, he dealt grimly and despitefully in his heart with the feeling +that troubled him; let it stand for want of better phrasing at ‘common +humanity.’ He railed at it; he even took some steps of retreat; he +reasoned with himself.</p> + +<p>This man, when a nod of the head might have saved, had reduced him to +the level of the brute beasts—what duty then lay upon him to act but +upon that level? This man lay there, dependent on him for a chance +perhaps of further life. Yes, but there had been a bitter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> hour, when +their positions had been reversed, and the closing of that hour, with +its depths of horror and degradation, its blotting out of all hope and +life, was vividly before him. This, too, was an old man, at the end +of things, and he had been a young man at the beginning—that was but +an aggravation. As things now were he had done him no wrong, taken no +revenge; the packet was found; it was even himself that had restored +it: the stroke had come through a visitation of the fates, through no +dealing of his.</p> + +<p>He searched, and he failed to see any reason why he should lift a +finger to give back life to this hulk. It was adding insult to injury +indeed to expect him to carry his enemy perhaps a mile in search of +help. Leave him here?—and get help?—he would certainly die before +it came. No, either all or nothing; and it should be, by heaven, +<i>nothing</i>!</p> + +<p>He turned on his heel,—and straightway it came upon him that these +things were not done. Just as impossible as kicking a fellow on the +ground, or shooting an unarmed man.</p> + +<p>‘By Gad! the other thing’s got to be done! When I’ve lived a few years +in Borneo or some such place, I shall know better how to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> deal with +you, my friend; in the meantime—’ he lifted him, and with wearily slow +steps bore him disgustedly in the direction of the Alexandria Gate.</p> + +<p>Now that he had begun, he meant to see it through; and with many a +halt, for his Uncle was a heavy man, he got him through the fast +closing fog to the crossing of Rotten Row.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t want any fuss,’ he thought, as he put his burden down and +paused for breath; ‘can’t afford to have it advertised that I played +the good Samaritan. Evening paper paragraphs—“The Admirable Convict,” +“Rattray Repents,” “Remarkable occurrence in connection with a +scandal in high life, showing the beneficial influences of our prison +system—Nephew and Uncle”—Good Lord!’</p> + +<p>He wiped his brow, and propping his Uncle’s motionless form against a +rail, went in search of a cab. He found a four-wheeler at the gate of +the Park, and drove back in it.</p> + +<p>‘Now, my friend, bear a hand,’ he said to the driver; ‘this gentleman’s +had a stroke; we must get him home at once. Double fare, and look +sharp—it’s the only chance.’ He gave the astonished man the address, +and between them they lifted the helpless form into the cab.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span></p> + +<p>When they drew up at the house, Eugene leapt out and rang the bell.</p> + +<p>‘Hope it’s Ashton,’ he thought. The old butler, a man who had known him +from his youth up, opened the door, and recoiled in blank astonishment +when he saw who was there.</p> + +<p>‘Master Eugene!’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘All right, Ashton, don’t make a row. Look here, my Uncle’s had a +stroke; he’s in that cab; I came across him in the Park walking home; +better get him in-doors at once. And look here, Ashton,’ he lifted his +hat significantly, and said grimly, ‘you know all about me, I suppose; +well, see that my name doesn’t come out in this business.’</p> + +<p>He held out his hand to the old man.</p> + +<p>‘Thank you, sir,’ said the butler, taking it, ‘always proud to take +your hand, sir, believe me. I’ll make it all right,—say I picked him +up myself, if necessary; you can depend on me, sir.’</p> + +<p>‘Thank you, Ashton,’ said Eugene; ‘and look here, give that chap a +sovereign,’ he pointed to the cabman waiting at the door, ‘and lend me +another, there’s a good fellow.’</p> + +<p>The butler pulled two sovereigns out of his pocket.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span></p> + +<p>‘Proud to be of any use to you, sir,’ he said.</p> + +<p>Eugene, with a choke in his throat, helped them carry his Uncle into +the house; and as the door closed, turned to the cabman.</p> + +<p>‘You haven’t earned that sovereign yet,’ he said, handing him one, +‘it’s all right, but you’ve got to shut your head—d’ye see? Now go on +to the docks, and drive like Hell.’</p> + +<p>He sat back in the cab that rattled eastwards through the fog, and he +ground his teeth.</p> + +<p>‘That’s over; and the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I’d do it +again,’ he said between them; and with those words, Eugene Rattray +disappeared from among his fellows, and the place thereof knew him no +more.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DEMI-GODS">THE DEMI-GODS</h2> +</div> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp68" id="002" style="max-width: 27.1875em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/002.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p class="center"> +<audio title controls="controls"> +<source src="music/234.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"> +</audio><br> +[<a href="music/234.mxl">MusicXML</a>] +</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Into the garden of rest had come trouble and pain, for the end was at +hand.</p> + +<p>He sat in the sun, on the stone wall that divided the garden from the +great lake, and swung his legs, silently gazing with his soul in his +eyes, and SHE, in a long wicker chair, sideways to him, shaded her face +with her hand and looked down. The soul went out of him, and hovering +over the waving hair, and the dimple at the corner of the drooping +mouth, peeped through the fingers of the dear hand at its true and only +resting places—those brown pools over whose depths lay the clouding +shadow of the morrow.</p> + +<p><i>But</i> another twenty-four hours, and then back to prison—to +prison—to prison. The thought beat through both hearts, with the +level<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> monotony of a tolling for the dead, for the glorious dead, for +the month past of a sweet and lovely life together in the garden of +rest.</p> + +<p>To-morrow was the ending of all life and light, bringing with it for +her a separation from the true self, a return behind the triumphant +car of a mocking and over-riding fate, to a caged existence, a loathed +companionship, a weary, weary beating of the breast against the bars; +for him—a legion of mind-devils, torturing, twisting, lying in wait at +every turn and corner of life, ever alert and ever cruel, and a dreary, +craving ache.</p> + +<p>To-morrow was the farewell of their love, perhaps till the grave—who +knows? their great and burning love, that had given all and taken +all, that had cared with an exceeding tenderness for every thought +and movement, that was old, yet had not tired, that had known and +understood, having no depths left to sound, no heights to win; that +tree which, planted in the moist, cool earth of comradeship, had +grown steadily and grandly till it rejoiced in the sweet foliage of a +perfect trust, and the glorious flowers of passion. The day looked on, +and laughed in slanting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> rays of heat and light, and presently on a +snow-cooled breeze wafted between two towering heights came a chime of +far-off Italian bells.</p> + +<p>She looked up into his face, and smiled.</p> + +<p>‘Shall I sing my Love a little song?’ she said. And as he knelt beside +her, she held his head in her two hands, and sang shyly into his ear, +in time to the drifting cadence.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Out of his eyes fled hunger and pain, and he leaned his forehead on +her breast, and so they drank of the merciful well of peace. The chime +floated faintly past them with a note of invitation.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>‘The bells have got into my head, darling. I’m mad, I think,—I can’t +feel anything—Child of mine, come for a drive, and find the bells; +we’ll get drunk on sun, and air, and sky, and mountains, and—kisses, +and forget there is a to-morrow and an ending.’</p> + +<p>He stood up straight and strong, and drew her to him.</p> + +<p>So they waited, and the chime floated once more past, while they looked +life again into each other’s eyes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span></p> + +<p>Then, with his arm around her shoulder, and hers drawn round his waist, +they walked through the garden of rest to the gate where the angel of +Publicity threatened such proceeding with a flaming and respectable +sword.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + + +<h3><i>The Meditations of Pietro.</i></h3> + +<p>‘The sun is very yellow and hot here by the side of the water, and the +flies are like to a hundred devils on my good Nicolas—Ugh! Pighead, +what good to shake thy bell! It is not good sitting here, for I have +only money for one—two—three—yes, for four drinkings, in my pouch, +and the last a little one, and the day is hot. Eleven of the clock, +for there begins the morning tolling from San Felice. Where be these +fools of strangers? There be many things to see, also my chariot is +very strong, and beautiful exceedingly, and my good grey Nicolas, is he +not a most willing puller, being still young and lusty? Yet, forsooth, +because it is the Sabbath, they will not stir forth—these fools—but +sit at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span> home in sad garments, and eat, thinking to make the day holy.</p> + +<p>‘Ai! What are these? Can it be they are coming? Ai—Ai—<i>si signore, +si, si, signora, si, si, si.... This</i> is several drinkings; moreover +they appear to be English. A very curious peoples, the English—for +some reason known only of God they speak to me in French, as if I, +Pietro, understood French, forsooth. However, it is all the same +thing; the <i>he</i> waves his hat to the West, and says—“<i>San +Felice</i>;”—now San Felice is in the South;—the <i>she</i> says +“<i>Campenella</i>,” and does not wave anythings,—decidedly she is the +more intelligent; and I, Pietro, the most intelligent of all, for I +nod my top once, twice, three times strongly, and say “San Felice, si, +si,” and beat my grey, and lo! we are off, and they have forgotten to +bargain. Ho! A very curious peoples!</p> + +<p>‘And yet, now that I regard, perhaps I have done to the English an +injustice. <i>These</i> are no doubt mad, they have a very queer look, +their eyes are all shiny, and they sit very close together, though even +I, Pietro, am hot, sitting up here alone on the head of my chariot.</p> + +<p>‘Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, sighs my old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> friend the bell, as Nicolas +shakes his ears at the road; <i>si, si, amico</i>, it is long, and it +is white, and—pouff—dusty, and in places even steep.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, now I know for a certainty they are mad; it is not for them the +road either too long or too steep or too dusty; they only sit like +coo-doves, and the <i>he</i> sighs, and every now and then he starts +upon his feet, greatly endangering his neck, and points with his fist, +and says, “Look, Carissima, how grand, how <i>beaut</i>iful!”</p> + +<p>‘I think he talks foolishness, for it is always the same whether we +come to a pool or a mountain, or even where the trees grow thickly, +or there are flowers on the ground. And then what does the <i>she</i> +but uprise also, ah! She is “bella,” the <i>she</i>! And puts her hand +on his shoulder, ah! The lucky shoulder! and before she has looked, +Nicolas gives a big pull so that both sit down on a sudden, upon their +ends, and laugh greatly.</p> + +<p>‘They laugh always, these—when they do not sigh, and when they sigh +sometimes there comes also to my ears another sound, very gentle, like +the end of a good drinking. Can they already, then, be thirsty? Why, +even I, Pietro, am not yet thirsty, but soon shall be.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span></p> + +<p>‘Yet no, when I turn, saying ‘<i>Il Signore—ha parlato</i>?’’ is he +not always tying on his boot—very curious must be the boots of the +English—and she hooking her glove, and both laughing, yes, always +laughing? nor can I see any bottle.</p> + +<p>‘Overhead the sky is quite blue, and the sun very yellow, and there +be no shade, but the <i>he</i> throws off his hat, and says, “Grand, +glorious, ’twill make to grow the hair, Carissima;” this he says many +times, so that I learn it by stomach, and the <i>she</i> strokes his +top, where the hairs did no longer kiss one another, and purrs—all +these things I know through the back of my hat where the brim is broad, +and a man half-turning can see with the corner of his eyeball.</p> + +<p>‘Now, in a good time we come to where the valley runs away down from +the road, and Nicolas, as is the habit of this pighead, when the sun is +hot even to the winking of his master’s eye, walks over till he hangs +above the valley by the hairs of his tail and the strength of my right +arms, and presently with much thanking of God and cursings of that +pighead, I pull him up again; at the which what does the <i>he</i> but +cast himself back<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> laughing, and say, “Do it again, do it again,” which +I am supposing is of great wit, for the <i>she</i> laughs also greatly.</p> + +<p>‘Do they think, perchance, that I, Pietro, cannot drive? Chickenheads! +it is now of a surety they are mad—I, Pietro, who am a celebration! I +too laugh, and so we laugh all three, until we come to where there is +good drinking.</p> + +<p>‘“<i>Goutez un petit peu</i>,” I speak to them in that fool’s +tongue—this much knowing, and that quite enough.</p> + +<p>‘“<i>Si, si</i>,” they say, and nod their tops, yet do not descend. +Certainly they have drunk upon the voyage, for the day is hot. Well, +well, I, Pietro, am thirsty and so inwards; Nicolas also will drink, +but not of the Asti that bubbles sweet and yellow. Ai! Good! Very good +drinking; is it not so, my pighead? And what of these? they have not +drunk, yet are their eyes shinier than even before, and surely they are +<i>very</i> near together.</p> + +<p>‘So we go down into the valley from whence on both hands the big hills +roll up their limbs, and I, coming to that place where it is of the +custom to show where the man from the market was bereft of his goods, +and where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> his body was cut off, turn on my head, and tell them in +usual words the story.</p> + +<p>‘Chickenheads! never yet did any understand, and my Italian is very +pure, very—always in great estimation.</p> + +<p>‘These only say, “<i>Si, si!</i>” and presently many times: “How far +San Felice? How far? How far?” What shall this mean? I know not, yet +surely I must to tell them—being of great intelligence, so I stop my +Nicolas and speak of the country and how many peoples live in the town, +and the name of the mayor; and then, for greater satisfaction of these, +because they will pay largely—turning a little to think the better, +and outspit once, twice, very skilfully on two hairs of Nicolas’ +back-tail—again to them, concerning the other road, and the number of +horses my master has, and how I, Pietro, have a wife (whom God plant!) +and several offsprings.</p> + +<p>‘But these only laugh, and point in many ways, having no intelligence, +and say, “How far, how far? More?”</p> + +<p>‘Chickenheads! and do? What to do? But nod my top, and on again where +the brown water runs swiftly down from the hills towards its Mother, +the great blue lake. Ai—so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> it runs busily from the hills where the +snow cloak lies shining in the sun. And now these are quiet, quiet as +the deep Mother herself, or as the tall Father with his white head. +Perhaps they are frightened; well, <i>I</i> was frightened once; that +was many years ago, being but a whipperling; for the Mother is very +blue and still and deep, and the Father is of a giantness strong as the +death itself.</p> + +<p>‘So the little brown Son runs over between them, and carries messages +and greeting.</p> + +<p>‘Yet not always, for in the great heat comes the Fiery One and licks +him up for a space, and tears off the Father’s white hairs that get +thinner and thinner with every golden dawning. Surely the <i>he</i> +with the hat, upon which he sits, should regard and understand of +this, taking warning lest the same befall; yet perchance there is a +difference, his hair being of a fair mud, as is that of all the English.</p> + +<p>‘Now the <i>she</i> is “bella,” with many hairs running in billows like +waves on the shore of the lake, only not white-topped, and her face is +like unto a violet and a star. Yet also is she like unto something that +springs swiftly and far, or unto that which waves its wings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> in the +sunlight, making many colours, and floats past like the twinkling of an +eyebrow. Also have I seen in shops figures of porcelain of a delicate +transparence, so that a man can look at things through them, that +are greatly like her; so it seems also the <i>he</i> finds her, for +whenever she points and bids him to be looking at the things around, he +regards straightly and without winking at her eyeballs, or—so often +as <i>I</i> am observing at her <i>eyelashes</i>, which she then, it +seems, wears long upon her cheeks.</p> + +<p>‘Ai! I have seen one or two fairer amongst my own race; but never +amongst these strangers, wearing nets on their faces, with blue +looking-glasses for their eyes, and very thick garments of a sad colour.</p> + +<p>‘And so on and on past the great Mother, Nicolas drawing with a good +stomach to where rises the long hill to San Felice, and ever comes +clearer the great chime, it being now the second pulling of it.</p> + +<p>‘Then the <i>he</i>—mad, as I have said—descends and marches with +me, patting my Nicolas and saying, “Good, good, how old?” With that he +regards his teeth. Now I know well what I must be saying, when one of +these regards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> where once were Nicolas’ teeth, and says, “How old?” +For I am of great intelligence and have learnt it by stomach,—so +“<i>Eightee</i>” I say. “What?” says the <i>he</i>, and his eyes grow +of a roundness, then he laughs and wheels his toes to the she, and says +something of a great wit, and both laugh again. Then a curious thing +passes, for the she says, “Ah! Eight<i>ine</i>! but <i>impossible</i>!” +and like to a shot gun rolls from the chariot moving, and both run and +look at Nicolas’ knees, and again at his teeth. Do they think then that +he eats his knees?</p> + +<p>‘Then again both say Eightine! but <i>impossible</i>! and I say +Eightine, <i>si, si</i>! and nod myself so that they shall not think +small of Nicolas, or that he is too young a horse and fiery, as I +was of a fear they might. Yet they wag their tops very often and +as I think, sadly, and the <i>she</i> looks at Nicolas softly and +timidly, and smites him very gently, and they walk up all that great +hill—both—even “<i>la bella</i>.”</p> + +<p>‘But then it is all same thing, they are English and mad; who knows +what is in them?</p> + +<p>‘Now am I thirsty again; but at the end we have become in San Felice, +and after much questioning of the peoples walking in the streets—who +know nothing—I find at the end<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> the place where they wish to drink, +the bells being quite at hand, and very full of noise.</p> + +<p>‘So I leave them for mine own drinking. Yet they do not hurry to their +drinking, but go slowly, and as it were without eagerness, looking at +each other, and the “bella’s” eyes shine like two stars in a heaven of +violets.</p> + +<p>‘What did they, while for three hours I and Nicolas ate bravely and +drank much, is of a supposition. But now we are again to returning +ready, and see! they come, the “bella” with many flowers in her hands; +and still their eyes shine, and their noses smell the flowers, and they +say, “<i>Allez, Pietro, allez!</i>”</p> + +<p>‘So, with a crackling of the whip-stick, we roll through the streets, +and down to the other road leading through the valley of the fair view +to the bridge that cuts in two the great Mother, and so home again. Now +I have a liking for this road, and so has Nicolas; it is of a gentle +sloping, with many spots where he that is intelligent can ‘<i>goutez un +peu</i>,’ and so we go pleasantly.</p> + +<p>‘The Fiery One is hiding him behind the tall Father and his brethren, +and there comes over the earth a great sweet colour as of the sparkling +Asti in this my glass, and all things drink<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> deeply of the flushing +light—even those lying back with eyes very serene, and arms invisible +cunningly—and I, Pietro, even more deeply, for have I not also of the +light inside me?</p> + +<p>‘Only Nicolas goes like the pighead he is, without reason, now on one +side, now on the other, and jumps as does the flea when you catch his +tail.</p> + +<p>‘Well—well—he is a sure beast, and the way is very long—and +safe—and aww—drowsy, and the light has got into my eyes, and also, +I think a little into my top—aw—w—w—well, I <i>will</i> perchance +sleep a little—’tis a sure—beast—and the way—a—w—w....’</p> + + +<h3>EPILOGUE.</h3> + +<p>The champagne light faded slowly from the snow-crowned tops, and from +the green and grey sides of the hills, and the violet shadows crept +on over the great blue lake below; the shining in <i>her</i> eyes +was fading too, giving place to a look of great rest and faith, and +<i>his</i> face turned to hers was the face of a man gazing at the Holy +Grail.</p> + +<p>So, obliviously, unconsciously onwards, the cup of a perfect joy full +to overflowing.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span></p> + +<p>The carriage rolled slowly along the white and dusty road by the +lake-side, the tired horse picking his own way, the pleasantly drunken +Pietro heavily asleep on his box.</p> + +<p>In the fast gathering dusk they came to the iron railway bridge that +carved the lake into two halves. The carriage road and railway track +lay parallel across the bridge, divided only by a high partition of +iron-work running its entire length. The gates of each lay open, and a +level crossing tempted the unguided horse past the gate of the road on +to the lines of the railway.</p> + +<p>Perhaps some sting of a dormant yet uneasy conscience, or the jolt of +the wheel, caused his slumbering driver to awaken suddenly; the reins, +jerked sharply and mechanically to the left, brought the horse’s head +round into and through the wrong gate. In a minute the carriage was +being dragged along the single railway track with no room to turn.</p> + +<p>A frightened cry from the driver, and the grey, terrified by the +jerking at his mouth, and the unwonted nature of the road, plunged +forward wildly. Losing his balance, Pietro fell over to the side of the +line with a groan of terror, and crawled, shrinking, to an iron girder<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> +at the side, to which he clung with trembling arms.</p> + +<p>‘Sit still, my darling, it’s a fair course and no favour; can’t go +wrong, Sweet, there isn’t room to upset; we shall be all right at the +end.’</p> + +<p>She gave a little shiver and clasped her hands tightly round his neck.</p> + +<p>‘Courage, sweetheart; we’ve laughed the day through, and we’ll laugh it +through to the finish; is it not so, O my love?’</p> + +<p>The darkness closed in, the horse plunged and snorted in his mad +career, the carriage rocked and rattled fearfully. He strained +her close to him with a laugh, looking with eyes of love into her +face,—and the same sweet look of rest and faith was upon it.</p> + +<p>‘Hast thou been happy all this long day, child?’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Ay—ah! How happy!! There is no telling.’</p> + +<p>Then suddenly her face changed; over it closed the grim shadow of +the morning, and even in that moment of fear and excitement a black +reaction was upon her. With a low moan she whispered:</p> + +<p>‘My own, I want to die now, <i>now</i>, with thee in my arms, thy face +to me, thy lips to mine,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> and no one to see but the sky and the lake; I +can’t face to-morrow and the ending—I can’t—I can’t!’</p> + +<p>The passionate whisper rose into a cry, the breathing choked in a sob, +and the calm of her face broke, and vanished suddenly, as the calm of +the great lake breaks and vanishes before the icy blast sweeping down +the mountain gully.</p> + +<p>For answer he held her closer and closer in his arms.</p> + +<p>‘Gold help me! neither can I, thy wish is mine.’...</p> + +<p>From out of the darkness in front, swelling gradually above the +rattling of the carriage and the snorting of the horse, came a +muttering sound.</p> + +<p>‘The gods are merciful,’ he said; ‘a train’s on us; it’s all +over—there will be <i>no</i> ending.’</p> + +<p>Nearer and nearer came the terrible roar, stunning all the faculties +of heart and brain, and still the maddened horse sprang forward to his +doom.</p> + +<p>With a supreme effort HE tore himself free from the bond of numbness +and cried to HER fast in his arms; and through her eyes in that one +last look her soul crept to his.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></p> + +<p>‘Demi-gods to-day! better this ending than to-morrow’s;—if there be +a future life, darling, it is ours together—body to body, soul to +soul.... One kiss, my darling—closer, closer—ah——’</p> + +<p>With a stagger the greedy roar fled past into the purple night, its +hungering stilled—and from over the shadowy lake under the watchful +and silent stars a requiem chime came floating:</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp68" id="003" style="max-width: 27.1875em;"> + <img class="w100 p2" src="images/003.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p class="center"> +<audio title controls="controls"> +<source src="music/234.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"> +</audio><br> +[<a href="music/234.mxl">MusicXML</a>] +</p> + +<p class="center p2"> +J. Miller & Son, Printers, Edinburgh.<br> +</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter transnote"> +<h2>Transcriber’s Notes</h2> + +<p>Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been fixed.</p> + +<p>The music files are the music transcriber's interpretation of the printed notation and are placed in the public domain. +Click on the play button to hear the music and on the [MusicXML] link to download the notation.</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_117">117</a>: “annyway there will” changed to “anyway there will”</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_157">157</a>: “in the camp turne” changed to “in the camp turned”</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_209">209</a>: “Oue into a world” changed to “Out into a world” +</p> +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75539 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75539-h/images/001.jpg b/75539-h/images/001.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f217d3d --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/images/001.jpg diff --git a/75539-h/images/002.jpg b/75539-h/images/002.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..933cf7a --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/images/002.jpg diff --git a/75539-h/images/003.jpg b/75539-h/images/003.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9df2214 --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/images/003.jpg diff --git a/75539-h/images/cover.jpg b/75539-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d8b124 --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75539-h/music/234.mp3 b/75539-h/music/234.mp3 Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0692354 --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/music/234.mp3 diff --git a/75539-h/music/234.mxl b/75539-h/music/234.mxl Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1eee03e --- /dev/null +++ b/75539-h/music/234.mxl |
