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diff --git a/788-h/788-h.htm b/788-h/788-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e50983 --- /dev/null +++ b/788-h/788-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4607 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Red One, by Jack London</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Red One, by Jack London + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Red One + + +Author: Jack London + + + +Release Date: September 28, 2014 [eBook #788] +[This file was first posted on January 25, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED ONE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>THE RED ONE</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">By<br /> +JACK LONDON</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Author of<br /> +“The Valley of the Moon,” “Jerry of the +Islands,”<br /> +“Michael, Brother of Jerry,” etc., etc.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">MILLS & BOON, LIMITED<br /> +49 RUPERT STREET<br /> +LONDON, W.1.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>Published +1919</i></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>Copyright +in the United States of America by Jack London</i></span><span +class="GutSmall">.</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Red One</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page11">11</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Hussy</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page57">57</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Like Argus of the Ancient +Times</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page93">93</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Princess</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page141">141</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>THE +RED ONE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">There</span> it was! The abrupt +liberation of sound! As he timed it with his watch, Bassett +likened it to the trump of an archangel. Walls of cities, +he meditated, might well fall down before so vast and compelling +a summons. For the thousandth time vainly he tried to +analyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated the +land far into the strong-holds of the surrounding tribes. +The mountain gorge which was its source rang to the rising tide +of it until it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and +air. With the wantonness of a sick man’s fancy, he +likened it to the mighty cry of some Titan of the Elder World +vexed with misery or wrath. Higher and higher it arose, +challenging and demanding in such profounds of volume that it +seemed intended for ears beyond the narrow confines of the solar +system. There was in it, too, the clamour of protest in +that there were no ears to hear and comprehend its utterance.</p> +<p>—Such the sick man’s fancy. Still he strove +to analyse the sound. Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as +a golden bell, thin and sweet as a thrummed taut cord of +silver—no; it was none of these, nor a blend of +these. There were no words nor semblances in his vocabulary +and experience with which to describe the totality of that +sound.</p> +<p>Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and +quarters of hours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, +ever changing from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving +fresh impulse—fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it +had sprung into being. It became a confusion of troubled +mutterings and babblings and colossal whisperings. Slowly +it withdrew, sob by sob, into whatever great bosom had birthed +it, until it whimpered deadly whispers of wrath and as equally +seductive whispers of delight, striving still to be heard, to +convey some cosmic secret, some understanding of infinite import +and value. It dwindled to a ghost of sound that had lost +its menace and promise, and became a thing that pulsed on in the +sick man’s consciousness for minutes after it had +ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at +his watch. An hour had elapsed ere that archangel’s +trump had subsided into tonal nothingness.</p> +<p>Was this, then, <i>his</i> dark tower?—Bassett pondered, +remembering his Browning and gazing at his skeleton-like and +fever-wasted hands. And the fancy made him smile—of +Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn to his lips with an arm as +feeble as his was. Was it months, or years, he asked +himself, since he first heard that mysterious call on the beach +at Ringmanu? To save himself he could not tell. The +long sickness had been most long. In conscious count of +time he knew of months, many of them; but he had no way of +estimating the long intervals of delirium and stupor. And +how fared Captain Bateman of the blackbirder <i>Nari</i>? he +wondered; and had Captain Bateman’s drunken mate died of +delirium tremens yet?</p> +<p>From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review +all that had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu +when he first heard the sound and plunged into the jungle after +it. Sagawa had protested. He could see him yet, his +queer little monkeyish face eloquent with fear, his back burdened +with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett’s butterfly net +and naturalist’s shot-gun, as he quavered, in +Bêche-de-mer English: “Me fella too much fright along +bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop’m along +bush.”</p> +<p>Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection. The little New +Hanover boy had been frightened, but had proved faithful, +following him without hesitancy into the bush in the quest after +the source of the wonderful sound. No fire-hollowed +tree-trunk, that, throbbing war through the jungle depths, had +been Bassett’s conclusion. Erroneous had been his +next conclusion, namely, that the source or cause could not be +more distant than an hour’s walk, and that he would easily +be back by mid-afternoon to be picked up by the +<i>Nari’s</i> whale-boat.</p> +<p>“That big fella noise no good, all the same +devil-devil,” Sagawa had adjudged. And Sagawa had +been right. Had he not had his head hacked off within the +day? Bassett shuddered. Without doubt Sagawa had been +eaten as well by the “bad fella boys too much” that +stopped along the bush. He could see him, as he had last +seen him, stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist’s +gear of his master, lying on the narrow trail where he had been +decapitated barely the moment before. Yes, within a minute +the thing had happened. Within a minute, looking back, +Bassett had seen him trudging patiently along under his +burdens. Then Bassett’s own trouble had come upon +him. He looked at the cruelly healed stumps of the first +and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into +the indentation in the back of his skull. Quick as had been +the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough +to duck away his head and partially to deflect the stroke with +his up-flung hand. Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had +been the price he paid for his life. With one barrel of his +ten-gauge shot-gun he had blown the life out of the bushman who +had so nearly got him; with the other barrel he had peppered the +bushmen bending over Sagawa, and had the pleasure of knowing that +the major portion of the charge had gone into the one who leaped +away with Sagawa’s head. Everything had occurred in a +flash. Only himself, the slain bushman, and what remained +of Sagawa, were in the narrow, wild-pig run of a path. From +the dark jungle on either side came no rustle of movement or +sound of life. And he had suffered distinct and dreadful +shock. For the first time in his life he had killed a human +being, and he knew nausea as he contemplated the mess of his +handiwork.</p> +<p>Then had begun the chase. He retreated up the pig-run +before his hunters, who were between him and the beach. How +many there were, he could not guess. There might have been +one, or a hundred, for aught he saw of them. That some of +them took to the trees and travelled along through the jungle +roof he was certain; but at the most he never glimpsed more than +an occasional flitting of shadows. No bow-strings +twanged that he could hear; but every little while, whence +discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or struck +tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him. They +were bone-tipped and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn from +the breasts of humming-birds, iridesced like jewels.</p> +<p>Once—and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled +gleefully at the recollection—he had detected a shadow +above him that came to instant rest as he turned his gaze +upward. He could make out nothing, but, deciding to chance +it, had fired at it a heavy charge of number five shot. +Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadow crashed down through +tree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon the earth at his feet, +and, still squalling its rage and pain, had sunk its human teeth +into the ankle of his stout tramping boot. He, on the other +hand, was not idle, and with his free foot had done what reduced +the squalling to silence. So inured to savagery has Bassett +since become, that he chuckled again with the glee of the +recollection.</p> +<p>What a night had followed! Small wonder that he had +accumulated such a virulence and variety of fevers, he thought, +as he recalled that sleepless night of torment, when the throb of +his wounds was as nothing compared with the myriad stings of the +mosquitoes. There had been no escaping them, and he had not +dared to light a fire. They had literally pumped his body +full of poison, so that, with the coming of day, eyes swollen +almost shut, he had stumbled blindly on, not caring much when his +head should be hacked off and his carcass started on the way of +Sagawa’s to the cooking fire. Twenty-four hours had +made a wreck of him—of mind as well as body. He had +scarcely retained his wits at all, so maddened was he by the +tremendous inoculation of poison he had received. Several +times he fired his shot-gun with effect into the shadows that +dogged him. Stinging day insects and gnats added to his +torment, while his bloody wounds attracted hosts of loathsome +flies that clung sluggishly to his flesh and had to be brushed +off and crushed off.</p> +<p>Once, in that day, he heard again the wonderful sound, +seemingly more distant, but rising imperiously above the nearer +war-drums in the bush. Right there was where he had made +his mistake. Thinking that he had passed beyond it and +that, therefore, it was between him and the beach of Ringmanu, he +had worked back toward it when in reality he was penetrating +deeper and deeper into the mysterious heart of the unexplored +island. That night, crawling in among the twisted roots of +a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion while the mosquitoes +had had their will of him.</p> +<p>Followed days and nights that were vague as nightmares in his +memory. One clear vision he remembered was of suddenly +finding himself in the midst of a bush village and watching the +old men and children fleeing into the jungle. All had fled +but one. From close at hand and above him, a whimpering as +of some animal in pain and terror had startled him. And +looking up he had seen her—a girl, or young woman rather, +suspended by one arm in the cooking sun. Perhaps for days +she had so hung. Her swollen, protruding tongue spoke as +much. Still alive, she gazed at him with eyes of +terror. Past help, he decided, as he noted the swellings of +her legs which advertised that the joints had been crushed and +the great bones broken. He resolved to shoot her, and there +the vision terminated. He could not remember whether he had +or not, any more than could he remember how he chanced to be in +that village, or how he succeeded in getting away from it.</p> +<p>Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett’s +mind as he reviewed that period of his terrible wanderings. +He remembered invading another village of a dozen houses and +driving all before him with his shot-gun save, for one old man, +too feeble to flee, who spat at him and whined and snarled as he +dug open a ground-oven and from amid the hot stones dragged forth +a roasted pig that steamed its essence deliciously through its +green-leaf wrappings. It was at this place that a +wantonness of savagery had seized upon him. Having feasted, +ready to depart with a hind-quarter of the pig in his hand, he +deliberately fired the grass thatch of a house with his burning +glass.</p> +<p>But seared deepest of all in Bassett’s brain, was the +dank and noisome jungle. It actually stank with evil, and +it was always twilight. Rarely did a shaft of sunlight +penetrate its matted roof a hundred feet overhead. And +beneath that roof was an aerial ooze of vegetation, a monstrous, +parasitic dripping of decadent life-forms that rooted in death +and lived on death. And through all this he drifted, ever +pursued by the flitting shadows of the anthropophagi, themselves +ghosts of evil that dared not face him in battle but that knew +that, soon or late, they would feed on him. Bassett +remembered that at the time, in lucid moments, he had likened +himself to a wounded bull pursued by plains’ coyotes too +cowardly to battle with him for the meat of him, yet certain of +the inevitable end of him when they would be full gorged. +As the bull’s horns and stamping hoofs kept off the +coyotes, so his shot-gun kept off these Solomon Islanders, these +twilight shades of bushmen of the island of Guadalcanal.</p> +<p>Came the day of the grass lands. Abruptly, as if cloven +by the sword of God in the hand of God, the jungle +terminated. The edge of it, perpendicular and as black as +the infamy of it, was a hundred feet up and down. And, +beginning at the edge of it, grew the grass—sweet, soft, +tender, pasture grass that would have delighted the eyes and +beasts of any husbandman and that extended, on and on, for +leagues and leagues of velvet verdure, to the backbone of the +great island, the towering mountain range flung up by some +ancient earth-cataclysm, serrated and gullied but not yet erased +by the erosive tropic rains. But the grass! He had +crawled into it a dozen yards, buried his face in it, smelled it, +and broken down in a fit of involuntary weeping.</p> +<p>And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed +forth—if by <i>peal</i>, he had often thought since, an +adequate description could be given of the enunciation of so vast +a sound melting sweet. Sweet it was, as no sound ever +heard. Vast it was, of so mighty a resonance that it might +have proceeded from some brazen-throated monster. And yet +it called to him across that leagues-wide savannah, and was like +a benediction to his long-suffering, pain racked spirit.</p> +<p>He remembered how he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but +no longer sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he +had been able to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu. Some +freak of air pressures and air currents, he reflected, had made +it possible for the sound to carry so far. Such conditions +might not happen again in a thousand days or ten thousand days, +but the one day it had happened had been the day he landed from +the <i>Nari</i> for several hours’ collecting. +Especially had he been in quest of the famed jungle butterfly, a +foot across from wing-tip to wing-tip, as velvet-dusky of lack of +colour as was the gloom of the roof, of such lofty arboreal +habits that it resorted only to the jungle roof and could be +brought down only by a dose of shot. It was for this +purpose that Sagawa had carried the ten-gauge shot-gun.</p> +<p>Two days and nights he had spent crawling across that belt of +grass land. He had suffered much, but pursuit had ceased at +the jungle-edge. And he would have died of thirst had not a +heavy thunderstorm revived him on the second day.</p> +<p>And then had come Balatta. In the first shade, where the +savannah yielded to the dense mountain jungle, he had collapsed +to die. At first she had squealed with delight at sight of +his helplessness, and was for beating his brain out with a stout +forest branch. Perhaps it was his very utter helplessness +that had appealed to her, and perhaps it was her human curiosity +that made her refrain. At any rate, she had refrained, for +he opened his eyes again under the impending blow, and saw her +studying him intently. What especially struck her about him +were his blue eyes and white skin. Coolly she had squatted +on her hams, spat on his arm, and with her finger-tips scrubbed +away the dirt of days and nights of muck and jungle that sullied +the pristine whiteness of his skin.</p> +<p>And everything about her had struck him especially, although +there was nothing conventional about her at all. He laughed +weakly at the recollection, for she had been as innocent of garb +as Eve before the fig-leaf adventure. Squat and lean at the +same time, asymmetrically limbed, string-muscled as if with +lengths of cordage, dirt-caked from infancy save for casual +showers, she was as unbeautiful a prototype of woman as he, with +a scientist’s eye, had ever gazed upon. Her breasts +advertised at the one time her maturity and youth; and, if by +nothing else, her sex was advertised by the one article of finery +with which she was adorned, namely a pig’s tail, thrust +though a hole in her left ear-lobe. So lately had the tail +been severed, that its raw end still oozed blood that dried upon +her shoulder like so much candle-droppings. And her +face! A twisted and wizened complex of apish features, +perforated by upturned, sky-open, Mongolian nostrils, by a mouth +that sagged from a huge upper-lip and faded precipitately into a +retreating chin, by peering querulous eyes that blinked as blink +the eyes of denizens of monkey-cages.</p> +<p>Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and the +ancient and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the +slightest the grotesque hideousness of her. When he had +eaten weakly for a space, he closed his eyes in order not to see +her, although again and again she poked them open to peer at the +blue of them. Then had come the sound. Nearer, much +nearer, he knew it to be; and he knew equally well, despite the +weary way he had come, that it was still many hours +distant. The effect of it on her had been startling. +She cringed under it, with averted face, moaning and chattering +with fear. But after it had lived its full life of an hour, +he closed his eyes and fell asleep with Balatta brushing the +flies from him.</p> +<p>When he awoke it was night, and she was gone. But he was +aware of renewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated +by the mosquito poison to suffer further inflammation, he closed +his eyes and slept an unbroken stretch till sun-up. A +little later Balatta had returned, bringing with her a half-dozen +women who, unbeautiful as they were, were patently not so +unbeautiful as she. She evidenced by her conduct that she +considered him her find, her property, and the pride she took in +showing him off would have been ludicrous had his situation not +been so desperate.</p> +<p>Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, +when he collapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow +of the breadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the +matter of retaining possession of him. Ngurn, whom Bassett +was to know afterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or +medicine man of the village, had wanted his head. Others of +the grinning and chattering monkey-men, all as stark of clothes +and bestial of appearance as Balatta, had wanted his body for the +roasting oven. At that time he had not understood their +language, if by <i>language</i> might be dignified the uncouth +sounds they made to represent ideas. But Bassett had +thoroughly understood the matter of debate, especially when the +men pressed and prodded and felt of the flesh of him as if he +were so much commodity in a butcher’s stall.</p> +<p>Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accident +happened. One of the men, curiously examining +Bassett’s shot-gun, managed to cock and pull a +trigger. The recoil of the butt into the pit of the +man’s stomach had not been the most sanguinary result, for +the charge of shot, at a distance of a yard, had blown the head +of one of the debaters into nothingness.</p> +<p>Even Balatta joined the others in flight, and, ere they +returned, his senses already reeling from the oncoming +fever-attack, Bassett had regained possession of the gun. +Whereupon, although his teeth chattered with the ague and his +swimming eyes could scarcely see, he held on to his fading +consciousness until he could intimidate the bushmen with the +simple magics of compass, watch, burning glass, and +matches. At the last, with due emphasis, of solemnity and +awfulness, he had killed a young pig with his shot-gun and +promptly fainted.</p> +<p>Bassett flexed his arm-muscles in quest of what possible +strength might reside in such weakness, and dragged himself +slowly and totteringly to his feet. He was shockingly +emaciated; yet, during the various convalescences of the many +months of his long sickness, he had never regained quite the same +degree of strength as this time. What he feared was another +relapse such as he had already frequently experienced. +Without drugs, without even quinine, he had managed so far to +live through a combination of the most pernicious and most +malignant of malarial and black-water fevers. But could he +continue to endure? Such was his everlasting query. +For, like the genuine scientist he was, he would not be content +to die until he had solved the secret of the sound.</p> +<p>Supported by a staff, he staggered the few steps to the +devil-devil house where death and Ngurn reigned in gloom. +Almost as infamously dark and evil-stinking as the jungle was the +devil-devil house—in Bassett’s opinion. Yet +therein was usually to be found his favourite crony and gossip, +Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or a discussion, the while he +sat in the ashes of death and in a slow smoke shrewdly revolved +curing human heads suspended from the rafters. For, through +the months’ interval of consciousness of his long sickness, +Bassett had mastered the psychological simplicities and lingual +difficulties of the language of the tribe of Ngurn and Balatta +and Vngngn—the latter the addle-headed young chief who was +ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered intrigue had it, was the son +of Ngurn.</p> +<p>“Will the Red One speak to-day?” Bassett asked, by +this time so accustomed to the old man’s gruesome +occupation as to take even an interest in the progress of the +smoke-curing.</p> +<p>With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head +he was at work upon.</p> +<p>“It will be ten days before I can say +‘finish,’” he said. “Never has any +man fixed heads like these.”</p> +<p>Bassett smiled inwardly at the old fellow’s reluctance +to talk with him of the Red One. It had always been +so. Never, by any chance, had Ngurn or any other member of +the weird tribe divulged the slightest hint of any physical +characteristic of the Red One. Physical the Red One must +be, to emit the wonderful sound, and though it was called the Red +One, Bassett could not be sure that red represented the colour of +it. Red enough were the deeds and powers of it, from what +abstract clues he had gleaned. Not alone, had Ngurn +informed him, was the Red One more bestial powerful than the +neighbour tribal gods, ever athirst for the red blood of living +human sacrifices, but the neighbour gods themselves were +sacrificed and tormented before him. He was the god of a +dozen allied villages similar to this one, which was the central +and commanding village of the federation. By virtue of the +Red One many alien villages had been devastated and even wiped +out, the prisoners sacrificed to the Red One. This was true +to-day, and it extended back into old history carried down by +word of mouth through the generations. When he, Ngurn, had +been a young man, the tribes beyond the grass lands had made a +war raid. In the counter raid, Ngurn and his fighting folk +had made many prisoners. Of children alone over five score +living had been bled white before the Red One, and many, many +more men and women.</p> +<p>The Thunderer was another of Ngurn’s names for the +mysterious deity. Also at times was he called The Loud +Shouter, The God-Voiced, The Bird-Throated, The One with the +Throat Sweet as the Throat of the Honey-Bird, The Sun Singer, and +The Star-Born.</p> +<p>Why The Star-Born? In vain Bassett interrogated +Ngurn. According to that old devil-devil doctor, the Red +One had always been, just where he was at present, for ever +singing and thundering his will over men. But Ngurn’s +father, wrapped in decaying grass-matting and hanging even then +over their heads among the smoky rafters of the devil-devil +house, had held otherwise. That departed wise one had +believed that the Red One came from out of the starry night, else +why—so his argument had run—had the old and forgotten +ones passed his name down as the Star-Born? Bassett could +not but recognize something cogent in such argument. But +Ngurn affirmed the long years of his long life, wherein he had +gazed upon many starry nights, yet never had he found a star on +grass land or in jungle depth—and he had looked for +them. True, he had beheld shooting stars (this in reply to +Bassett’s contention); but likewise had he beheld the +phosphorescence of fungoid growths and rotten meat and fireflies +on dark nights, and the flames of wood-fires and of blazing +candle-nuts; yet what were flame and blaze and glow when they had +flamed and blazed and glowed? Answer: memories, memories +only, of things which had ceased to be, like memories of matings +accomplished, of feasts forgotten, of desires that were the +ghosts of desires, flaring, flaming, burning, yet unrealized in +achievement of easement and satisfaction. Where was the +appetite of yesterday? the roasted flesh of the wild pig the +hunter’s arrow failed to slay? the maid, unwed and dead ere +the young man knew her?</p> +<p>A memory was not a star, was Ngurn’s contention. +How could a memory be a star? Further, after all his long +life he still observed the starry night-sky unaltered. +Never had he noted the absence of a single star from its +accustomed place. Besides, stars were fire, and the Red One +was not fire—which last involuntary betrayal told Bassett +nothing.</p> +<p>“Will the Red One speak to-morrow?” he +queried.</p> +<p>Ngurn shrugged his shoulders as who should say.</p> +<p>“And the day after?—and the day after that?” +Bassett persisted.</p> +<p>“I would like to have the curing of your head,” +Ngurn changed the subject. “It is different from any +other head. No devil-devil has a head like it. +Besides, I would cure it well. I would take months and +months. The moons would come and the moons would go, and +the smoke would be very slow, and I should myself gather the +materials for the curing smoke. The skin would not +wrinkle. It would be as smooth as your skin now.”</p> +<p>He stood up, and from the dim rafters, grimed with the smoking +of countless heads, where day was no more than a gloom, took down +a matting-wrapped parcel and began to open it.</p> +<p>“It is a head like yours,” he said, “but it +is poorly cured.”</p> +<p>Bassett had pricked up his ears at the suggestion that it was +a white man’s head; for he had long since come to accept +that these jungle-dwellers, in the midmost centre of the great +island, had never had intercourse with white men. Certainly +he had found them without the almost universal bêche-de-mer +English of the west South Pacific. Nor had they knowledge +of tobacco, nor of gunpowder. Their few precious knives, +made from lengths of hoop-iron, and their few and more precious +tomahawks from cheap trade hatchets, he had surmised they had +captured in war from the bushmen of the jungle beyond the grass +lands, and that they, in turn, had similarly gained them from the +salt-water men who fringed the coral beaches of the shore and had +contact with the occasional white men.</p> +<p>“The folk in the out beyond do not know how to cure +heads,” old Ngurn explained, as he drew forth from the +filthy matting and placed in Bassett’s hands an indubitable +white man’s head.</p> +<p>Ancient it was beyond question; white it was as the blond hair +attested. He could have sworn it once belonged to an +Englishman, and to an Englishman of long before by token of the +heavy gold circlets still threaded in the withered ear-lobes.</p> +<p>“Now your head . . . ” the devil-devil doctor +began on his favourite topic.</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you what,” Bassett interrupted, +struck by a new idea. “When I die I’ll let you +have my head to cure, if, first, you take me to look upon the Red +One.”</p> +<p>“I will have your head anyway when you are dead,” +Ngurn rejected the proposition. He added, with the brutal +frankness of the savage: “Besides, you have not long to +live. You are almost a dead man now. You will grow +less strong. In not many months I shall have you here +turning and turning in the smoke. It is pleasant, through +the long afternoons, to turn the head of one you have known as +well as I know you. And I shall talk to you and tell you +the many secrets you want to know. Which will not matter, +for you will be dead.”</p> +<p>“Ngurn,” Bassett threatened in sudden anger. +“You know the Baby Thunder in the Iron that is +mine.” (This was in reference to his all-potent and +all-awful shotgun.) “I can kill you any time, and +then you will not get my head.”</p> +<p>“Just the same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk +get it,” Ngurn complacently assured him. “And +just the same will in the end turn devil-devil house +in the smoke. The quicker you slay me with your Baby +Thunder, the quicker will your head turn in the smoke.”</p> +<p>And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion.</p> +<p>What was the Red One?—Bassett asked himself a thousand +times in the succeeding week, while he seemed to grow +stronger. What was the source of the wonderful sound? +What was this Sun Singer, this Star-Born One, this mysterious +deity, as bestial-conducted as the black and kinky-headed and +monkey-like human beasts who worshipped it, and whose +silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding he had heard at +the taboo distance for so long?</p> +<p>Ngurn had he failed to bribe with the inevitable curing of his +head when he was dead. Vngngn, imbecile and chief that he +was, was too imbecilic, too much under the sway of Ngurn, to be +considered. Remained Balatta, who, from the time she found +him and poked his blue eyes open to recrudescence of her +grotesque female hideousness, had continued his adorer. +Woman she was, and he had long known that the only way to win +from her treason of her tribe was through the woman’s heart +of her.</p> +<p>Bassett was a fastidious man. He had never recovered +from the initial horror caused by Balatta’s female +awfulness. Back in England, even at best the charm of +woman, to him, had never been robust. Yet now, resolutely, +as only a man can do who is capable of martyring himself for the +cause of science, he proceeded to violate all the fineness and +delicacy of his nature by making love to the unthinkably +disgusting bushwoman.</p> +<p>He shuddered, but with averted face hid his grimaces and +swallowed his gorge as he put his arm around her dirt-crusted +shoulders and felt the contact of her rancid oily and kinky hair +with his neck and chin. But he nearly screamed when she +succumbed to that caress so at the very first of the courtship +and mowed and gibbered and squealed little, queer, pig-like +gurgly noises of delight. It was too much. And the +next he did in the singular courtship was to take her down to the +stream and give her a vigorous scrubbing.</p> +<p>From then on he devoted himself to her like a true swain as +frequently and for as long at a time as his will could override +his repugnance. But marriage, which she ardently suggested, +with due observance of tribal custom, he balked at. +Fortunately, taboo rule was strong in the tribe. Thus, +Ngurn could never touch bone, or flesh, or hide of +crocodile. This had been ordained at his birth. +Vngngn was denied ever the touch of woman. Such pollution, +did it chance to occur, could be purged only by the death of the +offending female. It had happened once, since +Bassett’s arrival, when a girl of nine, running in play, +stumbled and fell against the sacred chief. And the +girl-child was seen no more. In whispers, Balatta told +Bassett that she had been three days and nights in dying before +the Red One. As for Balatta, the breadfruit was taboo to +her. For which Bassett was thankful. The taboo might +have been water.</p> +<p>For himself, he fabricated a special taboo. Only could +he marry, he explained, when the Southern Cross rode highest in +the sky. Knowing his astronomy, he thus gained a reprieve +of nearly nine months; and he was confident that within that time +he would either be dead or escaped to the coast with full +knowledge of the Red One and of the source of the Red One’s +wonderful voice. At first he had fancied the Red One to be +some colossal statue, like Memnon, rendered vocal under certain +temperature conditions of sunlight. But when, after a war +raid, a batch of prisoners was brought in and the sacrifice made +at night, in the midst of rain, when the sun could play no part, +the Red One had been more vocal than usual, Bassett discarded +that hypothesis.</p> +<p>In company with Balatta, sometimes with men and parties of +women, the freedom of the jungle was his for three quadrants of +the compass. But the fourth quadrant, which contained the +Red One’s abiding place, was taboo. He made more +thorough love to Balatta—also saw to it that she scrubbed +herself more frequently. Eternal female she was, capable of +any treason for the sake of love. And, though the sight of +her was provocative of nausea and the contact of her provocative +of despair, although he could not escape her awfulness in his +dream-haunted nightmares of her, he nevertheless was aware of the +cosmic verity of sex that animated her and that made her own life +of less value than the happiness of her lover with whom she hoped +to mate. Juliet or Balatta? Where was the intrinsic +difference? The soft and tender product of +ultra-civilization, or her bestial prototype of a hundred +thousand years before her?—there was no difference.</p> +<p>Bassett was a scientist first, a humanist afterward. In +the jungle-heart of Guadalcanal he put the affair to the test, as +in the laboratory he would have put to the test any chemical +reaction. He increased his feigned ardour for the +bushwoman, at the same time increasing the imperiousness of his +will of desire over her to be led to look upon the Red One face +to face. It was the old story, he recognized, that the +woman must pay, and it occurred when the two of them, one day, +were catching the unclassified and unnamed little black fish, an +inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotund with salmon-golden +roe, that frequented the fresh water, and that were esteemed, raw +and whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy. Prone in +the muck of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threw herself, +clutching his ankles with her hands kissing his feet and making +slubbery noises that chilled his backbone up and down +again. She begged him to kill her rather than exact this +ultimate love-payment. She told him of the penalty of +breaking the taboo of the Red One—a week of torture, +living, the details of which she yammered out from her face in +the mire until he realized that he was yet a tyro in knowledge of +the frightfulness the human was capable of wreaking on the +human.</p> +<p>Yet did Bassett insist on having his man’s will +satisfied, at the woman’s risk, that he might solve the +mystery of the Red One’s singing, though she should die +long and horribly and screaming. And Balatta, being mere +woman, yielded. She led him into the forbidden +quadrant. An abrupt mountain, shouldering in from the north +to meet a similar intrusion from the south, tormented the stream +in which they had fished into a deep and gloomy gorge. +After a mile along the gorge, the way plunged sharply upward +until they crossed a saddle of raw limestone which attracted his +geologist’s eye. Still climbing, although he paused +often from sheer physical weakness, they scaled forest-clad +heights until they emerged on a naked mesa or tableland. +Bassett recognized the stuff of its composition as black volcanic +sand, and knew that a pocket magnet could have captured a full +load of the sharply angular grains he trod upon.</p> +<p>And then holding Balatta by the hand and leading her onward, +he came to it—a tremendous pit, obviously artificial, in +the heart of the plateau. Old history, the South Seas +Sailing Directions, scores of remembered data and connotations +swift and furious, surged through his brain. It was Mendana +who had discovered the islands and named them Solomon’s, +believing that he had found that monarch’s fabled +mines. They had laughed at the old navigator’s +child-like credulity; and yet here stood himself, Bassett, on the +rim of an excavation for all the world like the diamond pits of +South Africa.</p> +<p>But no diamond this that he gazed down upon. Rather was +it a pearl, with the depth of iridescence of a pearl; but of a +size all pearls of earth and time, welded into one, could not +have totalled; and of a colour undreamed of in any pearl, or of +anything else, for that matter, for it was the colour of the Red +One. And the Red One himself Bassett knew it to be on the +instant. A perfect sphere, full two hundred feet in +diameter, the top of it was a hundred feet below the level of the +rim. He likened the colour quality of it to lacquer. +Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied by man, +but a lacquer too marvellously clever to have been manufactured +by the bush-folk. Brighter than bright cherry-red, its +richness of colour was as if it were red builded upon red. +It glowed and iridesced in the sunlight as if gleaming up from +underlay under underlay of red.</p> +<p>In vain Balatta strove to dissuade him from descending. +She threw herself in the dirt; but, when he continued down the +trail that spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and +whimpering her terror. That the red sphere had been dug out +as a precious thing, was patent. Considering the paucity of +members of the federated twelve villages and their primitive +tools and methods, Bassett knew that the toil of a myriad +generations could scarcely have made that enormous +excavation.</p> +<p>He found the pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among +which, battered and defaced, lay village gods of wood and +stone. Some, covered with obscene totemic figures and +designs, were carved from solid tree trunks forty or fifty feet +in length. He noted the absence of the shark and turtle +gods, so common among the shore villages, and was amazed at the +constant recurrence of the helmet motive. What did these +jungle savages of the dark heart of Guadalcanal know of +helmets? Had Mendana’s men-at-arms worn helmets and +penetrated here centuries before? And if not, then whence +had the bush-folk caught the motive?</p> +<p>Advancing over the litter of gods and bones, Balatta +whimpering at his heels, Bassett entered the shadow of the Red +One and passed on under its gigantic overhang until he touched it +with his finger-tips. No lacquer that. Nor was the +surface smooth as it should have been in the case of +lacquer. On the contrary, it was corrugated and pitted, +with here and there patches that showed signs of heat and +fusing. Also, the substance of it was metal, though unlike +any metal, or combination of metals, he had ever known. As +for the colour itself, he decided it to be no application. +It was the intrinsic colour of the metal itself.</p> +<p>He moved his finger-tips, which up to that had merely rested, +along the surface, and felt the whole gigantic sphere quicken and +live and respond. It was incredible! So light a touch +on so vast a mass! Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip +caress in rhythmic vibrations that became whisperings and +rustlings and mutterings of sound—but of sound so +different; so elusively thin that it was shimmeringly sibilant; +so mellow that it was maddening sweet, piping like an elfin horn, +which last was just what Bassett decided would be like a peal +from some bell of the gods reaching earthward from across +space.</p> +<p>He looked at Balatta with swift questioning; but the voice of +the Red One he had evoked had flung her face downward and moaning +among the bones. He returned to contemplation of the +prodigy. Hollow it was, and of no metal known on earth, was +his conclusion. It was right-named by the ones of old-time +as the Star-Born. Only from the stars could it have come, +and no thing of chance was it. It was a creation of +artifice and mind. Such perfection of form, such hollowness +that it certainly possessed, could not be the result of mere +fortuitousness. A child of intelligences, remote and +unguessable, working corporally in metals, it indubitably +was. He stared at it in amaze, his brain a racing wild-fire +of hypotheses to account for this far-journeyer who had +adventured the night of space, threaded the stars, and now rose +before him and above him, exhumed by patient anthropophagi, +pitted and lacquered by its fiery bath in two atmospheres.</p> +<p>But was the colour a lacquer of heat upon some familiar +metal? Or was it an intrinsic quality of the metal +itself? He thrust in the blue-point of his pocket-knife to +test the constitution of the stuff. Instantly the entire +sphere burst into a mighty whispering, sharp with protest, almost +twanging goldenly, if a whisper could possibly be considered to +twang, rising higher, sinking deeper, the two extremes of the +registry of sound threatening to complete the circle and coalesce +into the bull-mouthed thundering he had so often heard beyond the +taboo distance.</p> +<p>Forgetful of safety, of his own life itself, entranced by the +wonder of the unthinkable and unguessable thing, he raised his +knife to strike heavily from a long stroke, but was prevented by +Balatta. She upreared on her own knees in an agony of +terror, clasping his knees and supplicating him to desist. +In the intensity of her desire to impress him, she put her +forearm between her teeth and sank them to the bone.</p> +<p>He scarcely observed her act, although he yielded +automatically to his gentler instincts and withheld the +knife-hack. To him, human life had dwarfed to microscopic +proportions before this colossal portent of higher life from +within the distances of the sidereal universe. As had she +been a dog, he kicked the ugly little bushwoman to her feet and +compelled her to start with him on an encirclement of the +base. Part way around, he encountered horrors. Even, +among the others, did he recognize the sun-shrivelled remnant of +the nine-years girl who had accidentally broken Chief +Vngngn’s personality taboo. And, among what was left +of these that had passed, he encountered what was left of one who +had not yet passed. Truly had the bush-folk named +themselves into the name of the Red One, seeing in him their own +image which they strove to placate and please with such red +offerings.</p> +<p>Farther around, always treading the bones and images of humans +and gods that constituted the floor of this ancient charnel-house +of sacrifice, he came upon the device by which the Red One was +made to send his call singing thunderingly across the +jungle-belts and grass-lands to the far beach of Ringmanu. +Simple and primitive was it as was the Red One’s consummate +artifice. A great king-post, half a hundred feet in length, +seasoned by centuries of superstitious care, carven into +dynasties of gods, each superimposed, each helmeted, each seated +in the open mouth of a crocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted of +climbing vegetable parasites, from the apex of a tripod of three +great forest trunks, themselves carved into grinning and +grotesque adumbrations of man’s modern concepts of art and +god. From the striker king-post, were suspended ropes of +climbers to which men could apply their strength and +direction. Like a battering ram, this king-post could be +driven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.</p> +<p>Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for +himself and the twelve tribes under him. Bassett laughed +aloud, almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful +messenger, winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a +bushman stronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and +head-hunting savages. It was as if God’s World had +fallen into the muck mire of the abyss underlying the bottom of +hell; as if Jehovah’s Commandments had been presented on +carved stone to the monkeys of the monkey cage at the Zoo; as if +the Sermon on the Mount had been preached in a roaring bedlam of +lunatics.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>The slow weeks passed. The nights, by election, Bassett +spent on the ashen floor of the devil-devil house, beneath the +ever-swinging, slow-curing heads. His reason for this was +that it was taboo to the lesser sex of woman, and therefore, a +refuge for him from Balatta, who grew more persecutingly and +perilously loverly as the Southern Cross rode higher in the sky +and marked the imminence of her nuptials. His days Bassett +spent in a hammock swung under the shade of the great breadfruit +tree before the devil-devil house. There were breaks in +this programme, when, in the comas of his devastating +fever-attacks, he lay for days and nights in the house of +heads. Ever he struggled to combat the fever, to live, to +continue to live, to grow strong and stronger against the day +when he would be strong enough to dare the grass-lands and the +belted jungle beyond, and win to the beach, and to some +labour-recruiting, black-birding ketch or schooner, and on to +civilization and the men of civilization, to whom he could give +news of the message from other worlds that lay, darkly worshipped +by beastmen, in the black heart of Guadalcanal’s midmost +centre.</p> +<p>On the other nights, lying late under the breadfruit tree, +Bassett spent long hours watching the slow setting of the western +stars beyond the black wall of jungle where it had been thrust +back by the clearing for the village. Possessed of more +than a cursory knowledge of astronomy, he took a sick man’s +pleasure in speculating as to the dwellers on the unseen worlds +of those incredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light, +life came forth, a shy visitant, from the rayless crypts of +matter. He could no more apprehend limits to time than +bounds to space. No subversive radium speculations had +shaken his steady scientific faith in the conservation of energy +and the indestructibility of matter. Always and forever +must there have been stars. And surely, in that cosmic +ferment, all must be comparatively alike, comparatively of the +same substance, or substances, save for the freaks of the +ferment. All must obey, or compose, the same laws that ran +without infraction through the entire experience of man. +Therefore, he argued and agreed, must worlds and life be +appanages to all the suns as they were appanages to the +particular of his own solar system.</p> +<p>Even as he lay here, under the breadfruit tree, an +intelligence that stared across the starry gulfs, so must all the +universe be exposed to the ceaseless scrutiny of innumerable +eyes, like his, though grantedly different, with behind them, by +the same token, intelligences that questioned and sought the +meaning and the construction of the whole. So reasoning, he +felt his soul go forth in kinship with that august company, that +multitude whose gaze was forever upon the arras of infinity.</p> +<p>Who were they, what were they, those far distant and superior +ones who had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent, +heaven-singing message? Surely, and long since, had they, +too, trod the path on which man had so recently, by the calendar +of the cosmos, set his feet. And to be able to send a +message across the pit of space, surely they had reached those +heights to which man, in tears and travail and bloody sweat, in +darkness and confusion of many counsels, was so slowly +struggling. And what were they on their heights? Had +they won Brotherhood? Or had they learned that the law of +love imposed the penalty of weakness and decay? Was strife, +life? Was the rule of all the universe the pitiless rule of +natural selection? And, and most immediately and +poignantly, were their far conclusions, their long-won wisdoms, +shut even then in the huge, metallic heart of the Red One, +waiting for the first earth-man to read? Of one thing he +was certain: No drop of red dew shaken from the lion-mane of some +sun in torment, was the sounding sphere. It was of design, +not chance, and it contained the speech and wisdom of the +stars.</p> +<p>What engines and elements and mastered forces, what lore and +mysteries and destiny-controls, might be there! +Undoubtedly, since so much could be enclosed in so little a thing +as the foundation stone of a public building, this enormous +sphere should contain vast histories, profounds of research +achieved beyond man’s wildest guesses, laws and +formulæ that, easily mastered, would make man’s life +on earth, individual and collective, spring up from its present +mire to inconceivable heights of purity and power. It was +Time’s greatest gift to blindfold, insatiable, and +sky-aspiring man. And to him, Bassett, had been vouchsafed +the lordly fortune to be the first to receive this message from +man’s interstellar kin!</p> +<p>No white man, much less no outland man of the other +bush-tribes, had gazed upon the Red One and lived. Such the +law expounded by Ngurn to Bassett. There was such a thing +as blood brotherhood. Bassett, in return, had often argued +in the past. But Ngurn had stated solemnly no. Even +the blood brotherhood was outside the favour of the Red +One. Only a man born within the tribe could look upon the +Red One and live. But now, his guilty secret known only to +Balatta, whose fear of immolation before the Red One fast-sealed +her lips, the situation was different. What he had to do +was to recover from the abominable fevers that weakened him, and +gain to civilization. Then would he lead an expedition +back, and, although the entire population of Guadalcanal he +destroyed, extract from the heart of the Red One the message of +the world from other worlds.</p> +<p>But Bassett’s relapses grew more frequent, his brief +convalescences less and less vigorous, his periods of coma +longer, until he came to know, beyond the last promptings of the +optimism inherent in so tremendous a constitution as his own, +that he would never live to cross the grass lands, perforate the +perilous coast jungle, and reach the sea. He faded as the +Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta knew +that he would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his +taboo. Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and gathered the +smoke materials for the curing of Bassett’s head, and to +him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artistic +perfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead. +As for himself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long and too +deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its +impending extinction. He continued to persist, alternating +periods of unconsciousness with periods of semi-consciousness, +dreamy and unreal, in which he idly wondered whether he had ever +truly beheld the Red One or whether it was a nightmare fancy of +delirium.</p> +<p>Came the day when all mists and cob-webs dissolved, when he +found his brain clear as a bell, and took just appraisement of +his body’s weakness. Neither hand nor foot could he +lift. So little control of his body did he have, that he +was scarcely aware of possessing one. Lightly indeed his +flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul, in its briefness of +clarity, knew by its very clarity that the black of cessation was +near. He knew the end was close; knew that in all truth he +had with his eyes beheld the Red One, the messenger between the +worlds; knew that he would never live to carry that message to +the world—that message, for aught to the contrary, which +might already have waited man’s hearing in the heart of +Guadalcanal for ten thousand years. And Bassett stirred +with resolve, calling Ngurn to him, out under the shade of the +breadfruit tree, and with the old devil-devil doctor discussing +the terms and arrangements of his last life effort, his final +adventure in the quick of the flesh.</p> +<p>“I know the law, O Ngurn,” he concluded the +matter. “Whoso is not of the folk may not look upon +the Red One and live. I shall not live anyway. Your +young men shall carry me before the face of the Red One, and I +shall look upon him, and hear his voice, and thereupon die, under +your hand, O Ngurn. Thus will the three things be +satisfied: the law, my desire, and your quicker possession of my +head for which all your preparations wait.”</p> +<p>To which Ngurn consented, adding:</p> +<p>“It is better so. A sick man who cannot get well +is foolish to live on for so little a while. Also is it +better for the living that he should go. You have been much +in the way of late. Not but what it was good for me to talk +to such a wise one. But for moons of days we have held +little talk. Instead, you have taken up room in the house +of heads, making noises like a dying pig, or talking much and +loudly in your own language which I do not understand. This +has been a confusion to me, for I like to think on the great +things of the light and dark as I turn the heads in the +smoke. Your much noise has thus been a disturbance to the +long-learning and hatching of the final wisdom that will be mine +before I die. As for you, upon whom the dark has already +brooded, it is well that you die now. And I promise you, in +the long days to come when I turn your head in the smoke, no man +of the tribe shall come in to disturb us. And I will tell +you many secrets, for I am an old man and very wise, and I shall +be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn your head in the +smoke.”</p> +<p>So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a +dozen of the men, Bassett departed on the last little adventure +that was to cap the total adventure, for him, of living. +With a body of which he was scarcely aware, for even the pain had +been exhausted out of it, and with a bright clear brain that +accommodated him to a quiet ecstasy of sheer lucidness of +thought, he lay back on the lurching litter and watched the +fading of the passing world, beholding for the last time the +breadfruit tree before the devil-devil house, the dim day beneath +the matted jungle roof, the gloomy gorge between the shouldering +mountains, the saddle of raw limestone, and the mesa of black +volcanic sand.</p> +<p>Down the spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling the +sheening, glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridesce +from colour and light into sweet singing and thunder. And +over bones and logs of immolated men and gods they bore him, past +the horrors of other immolated ones that yet lived, to the +three-king-post tripod and the huge king-post striker.</p> +<p>Here Bassett, helped by Ngurn and Balatta, weakly sat up, +swaying weakly from the hips, and with clear, unfaltering, +all-seeing eyes gazed upon the Red One.</p> +<p>“Once, O Ngurn,” he said, not taking his eyes from +the sheening, vibrating surface whereon and wherein all the +shades of cherry-red played unceasingly, ever a-quiver to change +into sound, to become silken rustlings, silvery whisperings, +golden thrummings of cords, velvet pipings of elfland, mellow +distances of thunderings.</p> +<p>“I wait,” Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the +long-handled tomahawk unassumingly ready in his hand.</p> +<p>“Once, O Ngurn,” Bassett repeated, “let the +Red One speak so that I may see it speak as well as hear +it. Then strike, thus, when I raise my hand; for, when I +raise my hand, I shall drop my head forward and make place for +the stroke at the base of my neck. But, O Ngurn, I, who am +about to pass out of the light of day for ever, would like to +pass with the wonder-voice of the Red One singing greatly in my +ears.”</p> +<p>“And I promise you that never will a head be so well +cured as yours,” Ngurn assured him, at the same time +signalling the tribesmen to man the propelling ropes suspended +from the king-post striker. “Your head shall be my +greatest piece of work in the curing of heads.”</p> +<p>Bassett smiled quietly to the old one’s conceit, as the +great carved log, drawn back through two-score feet of space, was +released. The next moment he was lost in ecstasy at the +abrupt and thunderous liberation of sound. But such +thunder! Mellow it was with preciousness of all sounding +metals. Archangels spoke in it; it was magnificently +beautiful before all other sounds; it was invested with the +intelligence of supermen of planets of other suns; it was the +voice of God, seducing and commanding to be heard. +And—the everlasting miracle of that interstellar metal! +Bassett, with his own eyes, saw colour and colours transform into +sound till the whole visible surface of the vast sphere was +a-crawl and titillant and vaporous with what he could not tell +was colour or was sound. In that moment the interstices of +matter were his, and the interfusings and intermating +transfusings of matter and force.</p> +<p>Time passed. At the last Bassett was brought back from +his ecstasy by an impatient movement of Ngurn. He had quite +forgotten the old devil-devil one. A quick flash of fancy +brought a husky chuckle into Bassett’s throat. His +shot-gun lay beside him in the litter. All he had to do, +muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and blow his head into +nothingness.</p> +<p>But why cheat him? was Bassett’s next thought. +Head-hunting, cannibal beast of a human that was as much ape as +human, nevertheless Old Ngurn had, according to his lights, +played squarer than square. Ngurn was in himself a +forerunner of ethics and contract, of consideration, and +gentleness in man. No, Bassett decided; it would be a +ghastly pity and an act of dishonour to cheat the old fellow at +the last. His head was Ngurn’s, and Ngurn’s +head to cure it would be.</p> +<p>And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his +head as agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his +taut spinal cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman +merely and only and undesired. He knew, without seeing, +when the razor-edged hatchet rose in the air behind him. +And for that instant, ere the end, there fell upon Bassett the +shadows of the Unknown, a sense of impending marvel of the +rending of walls before the imaginable. Almost, when he +knew the blow had started and just ere the edge of steel bit the +flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed upon the serene face of +the Medusa, Truth—And, simultaneous with the bite of the +steel on the onrush of the dark, in a flashing instant of fancy, +he saw the vision of his head turning slowly, always turning, in +the devil-devil house beside the breadfruit tree.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<p>Waikiki, Honolulu,<br /> + <i>May</i> 22, +1916.</p> +<h2><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>THE +HUSSY</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">There</span> are some stories that have to +be true—the sort that cannot be fabricated by a ready +fiction-reckoner. And by the same token there are some men +with stories to tell who cannot be doubted. Such a man was +Julian Jones. Although I doubt if the average reader of +this will believe the story Julian Jones told me. +Nevertheless I believe it. So thoroughly am I convinced of +its verity that I am willing, nay, eager, to invest capital in +the enterprise and embark personally on the adventure to a far +land.</p> +<p>It was in the Australian Building at the Panama Pacific +Exposition that I met him. I was standing before an exhibit +of facsimiles of the record nuggets which had been discovered in +the goldfields of the Antipodes. Knobbed, misshapen and +massive, it was as difficult to believe that they were not real +gold as it was to believe the accompanying statistics of their +weights and values.</p> +<p>“That’s what those kangaroo-hunters call a +nugget,” boomed over my shoulder directly at the largest of +the specimens.</p> +<p>I turned and looked up into the dim blue eyes of Julian +Jones. I looked up, for he stood something like six feet +four inches in height. His hair, a wispy, sandy yellow, +seemed as dimmed and faded as his eyes. It may have been +the sun which had washed out his colouring; at least his face +bore the evidence of a prodigious and ardent sun-burn which had +long since faded to yellow. As his eyes turned from the +exhibit and focussed on mine I noted a queer look in them as of +one who vainly tries to recall some fact of supreme +importance.</p> +<p>“What’s the matter with it as a +nugget?” I demanded.</p> +<p>The remote, indwelling expression went out of his eyes as he +boomed</p> +<p>“Why, its size.”</p> +<p>“It does seem large,” I admitted. “But +there’s no doubt it’s authentic. The Australian +Government would scarcely dare—”</p> +<p>“Large!” he interrupted, with a sniff and a +sneer.</p> +<p>“Largest ever discovered—” I started on.</p> +<p>“Ever discovered!” His dim eyes smouldered +hotly as he proceeded. “Do you think that every lump +of gold ever discovered has got into the newspapers and +encyclopedias?”</p> +<p>“Well,” I replied judicially, “if +there’s one that hasn’t, I don’t see how +we’re to know about it. If a really big nugget, or +nugget-finder, elects to blush unseen—”</p> +<p>“But it didn’t,” he broke in quickly. +“I saw it with my own eyes, and, besides, I’m too +tanned to blush anyway. I’m a railroad man and +I’ve been in the tropics a lot. Why, I used to be the +colour of mahogany—real old mahogany, and have been taken +for a blue-eyed Spaniard more than once—”</p> +<p>It was my turn to interrupt, and I did.</p> +<p>“Was that nugget bigger than those in there, +Mr.—er—?”</p> +<p>“Jones, Julian Jones is my name.”</p> +<p>He dug into an inner pocket and produced an envelope addressed +to such a person, care of General Delivery, San Francisco; and I, +in turn, presented him with my card.</p> +<p>“Pleased to know you, sir,” he said, extending his +hand, his voice booming as if accustomed to loud noises or wide +spaces. “Of course I’ve heard of you, seen your +picture in the papers, and all that, and, though I say it that +shouldn’t, I want to say that I didn’t care a rap +about those articles you wrote on Mexico. You’re +wrong, all wrong. You make the mistake of all Gringos in +thinking a Mexican is a white man. He ain’t. +None of them ain’t—Greasers, Spiggoties, +Latin-Americans and all the rest of the cattle. Why, sir, +they don’t think like we think, or reason, or act. +Even their multiplication table is different. You think +seven times seven is forty-nine; but not them. They work it +out different. And white isn’t white to them, +either. Let me give you an example. Buying coffee +retail for house-keeping in one-pound or ten-pound +lots—”</p> +<p>“How big was that nugget you referred to?” I +queried firmly. “As big as the biggest of +those?”</p> +<p>“Bigger,” he said quietly. “Bigger +than the whole blamed exhibit of them put together, and then +some.” He paused and regarded me with a steadfast +gaze. “I don’t see no reason why I +shouldn’t go into the matter with you. You’ve +got a reputation a man ought to be able to trust, and I’ve +read you’ve done some tall skylarking yourself in +out-of-the-way places. I’ve been browsing around with +an eye open for some one to go in with me on the +proposition.”</p> +<p>“You can trust me,” I said.</p> +<p>And here I am, blazing out into print with the whole story +just as he told it to me as we sat on a bench by the lagoon +before the Palace of Fine Arts with the cries of the sea gulls in +our ears. Well, he should have kept his appointment with +me. But I anticipate.</p> +<p>As we started to leave the building and hunt for a seat, a +small woman, possibly thirty years of age, with a washed-out +complexion of the farmer’s wife sort, darted up to him in a +bird-like way, for all the world like the darting veering gulls +over our heads and fastened herself to his arm with the accuracy +and dispatch and inevitableness of a piece of machinery.</p> +<p>“There you go!” she shrilled. +“A-trottin’ right off and never givin’ me a +thought.”</p> +<p>I was formally introduced to her. It was patent that she +had never heard of me, and she surveyed me bleakly with shrewd +black eyes, set close together and as beady and restless as a +bird’s.</p> +<p>“You ain’t goin’ to tell him about that +hussy?” she complained.</p> +<p>“Well, now, Sarah, this is business, you see,” he +argued plaintively. “I’ve been lookin’ +for a likely man this long while, and now that he’s shown +up it seems to me I got a right to give him the hang of what +happened.”</p> +<p>The small woman made no reply, but set her thin lips in a +needle-like line. She gazed straight before her at the +Tower of Jewels with so austere an expression that no glint of +refracted sunlight could soften it. We proceeded slowly to +the lagoon, managed to obtain an unoccupied seat, and sat down +with mutual sighs of relief as we released our weights from our +tortured sightseeing feet.</p> +<p>“One does get so mortal weary,” asserted the small +woman, almost defiantly.</p> +<p>Two swans waddled up from the mirroring water and investigated +us. When their suspicions of our niggardliness or lack of +peanuts had been confirmed, Jones half-turned his back on his +life-partner and gave me his story.</p> +<p>“Ever been in Ecuador? Then take my +advice—and don’t. Though I take that back, for +you and me might be hitting it for there together if you can +rustle up the faith in me and the backbone in yourself for the +trip. Well, anyway, it ain’t so many years ago that I +came ambling in there on a rusty, foul-bottomed, tramp collier +from Australia, forty-three days from land to land. Seven +knots was her speed when everything favoured, and we’d had +a two weeks’ gale to the north’ard of New Zealand, +and broke our engines down for two days off Pitcairn Island.</p> +<p>“I was no sailor on her. I’m a locomotive +engineer. But I’d made friends with the skipper at +Newcastle an’ come along as his guest for as far as +Guayaquil. You see, I’d heard wages was ’way up +on the American railroad runnin’ from that place over the +Andes to Quito. Now Guayaquil—”</p> +<p>“Is a fever-hole,” I interpolated.</p> +<p>Julian Jones nodded.</p> +<p>“Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he +landed.—He was our great American cartoonist,” I +added.</p> +<p>“Don’t know him,” Julian Jones said +shortly. “But I do know he wasn’t the first to +pass out by a long shot. Why, look you the way I found +it. The pilot grounds is sixty miles down the river. +‘How’s the fever?’ said I to the pilot who came +aboard in the early morning. ‘See that Hamburg +barque,’ said he, pointing to a sizable ship at +anchor. ‘Captain and fourteen men dead of it already, +and the cook and two men dying right now, and they’re the +last left of her.’</p> +<p>“And by jinks he told the truth. And right then +they were dying forty a day in Guayaquil of Yellow Jack. +But that was nothing, as I was to find out. Bubonic plague +and small-pox were raging, while dysentery and pneumonia were +reducing the population, and the railroad was raging worst of +all. I mean that. For them that insisted in riding on +it, it was more dangerous than all the other diseases put +together.</p> +<p>“When we dropped anchor off Guayaquil half a dozen +skippers from other steamers came on board to warn our skipper +not to let any of his crew or officers go ashore except the ones +he wanted to lose. A launch came off for me from Duran, +which is on the other side of the river and is the terminal of +the railroad. And it brought off a man that soared up the +gangway three jumps at a time he was that eager to get +aboard. When he hit the deck he hadn’t time to speak +to any of us. He just leaned out over the rail and shook +his fist at Duran and shouted: ‘I beat you to it! I +beat you to it!’</p> +<p>“‘Who’d you beat to it, friend?’ I +asked. ‘The railroad,’ he said, as he unbuckled +the straps and took off a big ’44 Colt’s automatic +from where he wore it handy on his left side under his coat, +‘I staved as long as I agreed—three months—and +it didn’t get me. I was a conductor.’</p> +<p>“And that was the railroad I was to work for. All +of which was nothing to what he told me in the next few +minutes. The road ran from sea level at Duran up to twelve +thousand feet on Chimborazo and down to ten thousand at Quito on +the other side the range. And it was so dangerous that the +trains didn’t run nights. The through passengers had +to get off and sleep in the towns at night while the train waited +for daylight. And each train carried a guard of Ecuadoriano +soldiers which was the most dangerous of all. They were +supposed to protect the train crews, but whenever trouble started +they unlimbered their rifles and joined the mob. You see, +whenever a train wreck occurred, the first cry of the spiggoties +was ‘Kill the Gringos!’ They always did that, +and proceeded to kill the train crew and whatever chance Gringo +passengers that’d escaped being killed in the +accident. Which is their kind of arithmetic, which I told +you a while back as being different from ours.</p> +<p>“Shucks! Before the day was out I was to find out +for myself that that ex-conductor wasn’t lying. It +was over at Duran. I was to take my run on the first +division out to Quito, for which place I was to start next +morning—only one through train running every twenty-four +hours. It was the afternoon of my first day, along about +four o’clock, when the boilers of the <i>Governor +Hancock</i> exploded and she sank in sixty feet of water +alongside the dock. She was the big ferry boat that carried +the railroad passengers across the river to Guayaquil. It +was a bad accident, but it was the cause of worse that +followed. By half-past four, big trainloads began to +arrive. It was a feast day and they’d run an +excursion up country but of Guayaquil, and this was the crowd +coming back.</p> +<p>“And the crowd—there was five thousand of +them—wanted to get ferried across, and the ferry was at the +bottom of the river, which wasn’t our fault. But by +the Spiggoty arithmetic, it was. ‘Kill the +Gringos!’ shouts one of them. And right there the +beans were spilled. Most of us got away by the skin of our +teeth. I raced on the heels of the Master Mechanic, +carrying one of his babies for him, for the locomotives that was +just pulling out. You see, way down there away from +everywhere they just got to save their locomotives in times of +trouble, because, without them, a railroad can’t be +run. Half a dozen American wives and as many children were +crouching on the cab floors along with the rest of us when we +pulled out; and the Ecuadoriano soldiers, who should have been +protecting our lives and property, turned loose with their rifles +and must have given us all of a thousand rounds before we got out +of range.</p> +<p>“We camped up country and didn’t come back to +clean up until next day. It was some cleaning. Every +flat-car, box-car, coach, asthmatic switch engine, and even +hand-car that mob of Spiggoties had shoved off the dock into +sixty feet of water on top of the <i>Governor Hancock</i>. +They’d burnt the round house, set fire to the coal bunkers, +and made a scandal of the repair shops. Oh, yes, and there +were three of our fellows they’d got that we had to bury +mighty quick. It’s hot weather all the time down +there.”</p> +<p>Julian Jones came to a full pause and over his shoulder +studied the straight-before-her gaze and forbidding expression of +his wife’s face.</p> +<p>“I ain’t forgotten the nugget,” he assured +me.</p> +<p>“Nor the hussy,” the little woman snapped, +apparently at the mud-hens paddling on the surface of the +lagoon.</p> +<p>“I’ve been travelling toward the nugget right +along—”</p> +<p>“There was never no reason for you to stay in that +dangerous country,” his wife snapped in on him.</p> +<p>“Now, Sarah,” he appealed. “I was +working for you right along.” And to me he explained: +“The risk was big, but so was the pay. Some months I +earned as high as five hundred gold. And here was Sarah +waiting for me back in Nebraska—”</p> +<p>“An’ us engaged two years,” she complained +to the Tower of Jewels.</p> +<p>“—What of the strike, and me being blacklisted, +and getting typhoid down in Australia, and everything,” he +went on. “And luck was with me on that +railroad. Why, I saw fellows fresh from the States pass +out, some of them not a week on their first run. If the +diseases and the railroad didn’t get them, then it was the +Spiggoties got them. But it just wasn’t my fate, even +that time I rode my engine down to the bottom of a forty-foot +washout. I lost my fireman; and the conductor and the +Superintendent of Rolling Stock (who happened to be running down +to Duran to meet his bride) had their heads knifed off by the +Spiggoties and paraded around on poles. But I lay snug as a +bug under a couple of feet of tender coal, and they thought +I’d headed for tall timber—lay there a day and a +night till the excitement cooled down. Yes, I was +lucky. The worst that happened to me was I caught a cold +once, and another time had a carbuncle. But the other +fellows! They died like flies, what of Yellow Jack, +pneumonia, the Spiggoties, and the railroad. The trouble +was I didn’t have much chance to pal with them. No +sooner’d I get some intimate with one of them he’d up +and die—all but a fireman named Andrews, and he went loco +for keeps.</p> +<p>“I made good on my job from the first, and lived in +Quito in a ’dobe house with whacking big Spanish tiles on +the roof that I’d rented. And I never had much +trouble with the Spiggoties, what of letting them sneak free +rides in the tender or on the cowcatcher. Me throw them +off? Never! I took notice, when Jack Harris put off a +bunch of them, that I attended his funeral <i>muy +pronto</i>—”</p> +<p>“Speak English,” the little woman beside him +snapped.</p> +<p>“Sarah just can’t bear to tolerate me speaking +Spanish,” he apologized. “It gets so on her +nerves that I promised not to. Well, as I was saying, the +goose hung high and everything was going hunky-dory, and I was +piling up my wages to come north to Nebraska and marry Sarah, +when I run on to Vahna—”</p> +<p>“The hussy!” Sarah hissed.</p> +<p>“Now, Sarah,” her towering giant of a husband +begged, “I just got to mention her or I can’t tell +about the nugget.—It was one night when I was taking a +locomotive—no train—down to Amato, about thirty miles +from Quito. Seth Manners was my fireman. I was +breaking him in to engineer for himself, and I was letting him +run the locomotive while I sat up in his seat meditating about +Sarah here. I’d just got a letter from her, begging +as usual for me to come home and hinting as usual about the +dangers of an unmarried man like me running around loose in a +country full of senoritas and fandangos. Lord! If she +could only a-seen them. Positive frights, that’s what +they are, their faces painted white as corpses and their lips red +as—as some of the train wrecks I’ve helped clean +up.</p> +<p>“It was a lovely April night, not a breath of wind, and +a tremendous big moon shining right over the top of +Chimborazo.—Some mountain that. The railroad skirted +it twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the top of it ten +thousand feet higher than that.</p> +<p>“Mebbe I was drowsing, with Seth running the engine; but +he slammed on the brakes so sudden hard that I darn near went +through the cab window.</p> +<p>“‘What the—’ I started to yell, and +‘Holy hell,’ Seth says, as both of us looked at what +was on the track. And I agreed with Seth entirely in his +remark. It was an Indian girl—and take it from me, +Indians ain’t Spiggoties by any manner of means. Seth +had managed to fetch a stop within twenty feet of her, and us +bowling down hill at that! But the girl. +She—”</p> +<p>I saw the form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept +her gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling +along the lagoon shallows below us. “The +hussy!” she hissed, once and implacably. Jones had +stopped at the sound, but went on immediately.</p> +<p>“She was a tall girl, slim and slender, you know the +kind, with black hair, remarkably long hanging, down loose behind +her, as she stood there no more afraid than nothing, her arms +spread out to stop the engine. She was wearing a slimpsy +sort of garment wrapped around her that wasn’t cloth but +ocelot skins, soft and dappled, and silky. It was all she +had on—”</p> +<p>“The hussy!” breathed Mrs. Jones.</p> +<p>But Mr. Jones went on, making believe that he was unaware of +the interruption.</p> +<p>“‘Hell of a way to stop a locomotive,’ I +complained at Seth, as I climbed down on to the right of +way. I walked past our engine and up to the girl, and what +do you think? Her eyes were shut tight. She was +trembling that violent that you would see it by the +moonlight. And she was barefoot, too.</p> +<p>“‘What’s the row?’ I said, none too +gentle. She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, +and opened her eyes. Say! They were big and black and +beautiful. Believe me, she was some +looker—”</p> +<p>“The hussy!” At which hiss the two mud-hens +veered away a few feet. But Jones was getting himself in +hand, and didn’t even blink.</p> +<p>“‘What are you stopping this locomotive +for?’ I demanded in Spanish. Nary an answer. +She stared at me, then at the snorting engine and then burst into +tears, which you’ll admit is uncommon behaviour for an +Indian woman.</p> +<p>“‘If you try to get rides that way,’ I slung +at her in Spiggoty Spanish (which they tell me is some different +from regular Spanish), ‘you’ll be taking one smeared +all over our cowcatcher and headlight, and it’ll be up to +my fireman to scrape you off.’</p> +<p>“My Spiggoty Spanish wasn’t much to brag on, but I +could see she understood, though she only shook her head and +wouldn’t speak. But great Moses, she was some +looker—”</p> +<p>I glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Jones, who must have caught +me out of the tail of her eye, for she muttered: “If she +hadn’t been do you think he’d a-taken her into his +house to live?”</p> +<p>“Now hold on, Sarah,” he protested. +“That ain’t fair. Besides, I’m telling +this.—Next thing, Seth yells at me, ‘Goin’ to +stay here all night?’</p> +<p>“‘Come on,’ I said to the girl, ‘and +climb on board. But next time you want a ride don’t +flag a locomotive between stations.’ She followed +along; but when I got to the step and turned to give her a +lift-up, she wasn’t there. I went forward +again. Not a sign of her. Above and below was sheer +cliff, and the track stretched ahead a hundred yards clear and +empty. And then I spotted her, crouched down right against +the cowcatcher, that close I’d almost stepped on her. +If we’d started up, we’d have run over her in a +second. It was all so nonsensical, I never could make out +her actions. Maybe she was trying to suicide. I +grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her none too gentle to her +feet. And she came along all right. Women do know +when a man means business.”</p> +<p>I glanced from this Goliath to his little, bird-eyed spouse, +and wondered if he had ever tried to mean business with her.</p> +<p>“Seth kicked at first, but I boosted her into the cab +and made her sit up beside me—”</p> +<p>“And I suppose Seth was busy running the engine,” +Mrs. Jones observed.</p> +<p>“I was breaking him in, wasn’t I?” Mr. +Jones protested. “So we made the run into +Amato. She’d never opened her mouth once, and no +sooner’d the engine stopped than she’d jumped to the +ground and was gone. Just like that. Not a thank you +kindly. Nothing.</p> +<p>“But next morning when we came to pull out for Quito +with a dozen flat cars loaded with rails, there she was in the +cab waiting for us; and in the daylight I could see how much +better a looker she was than the night before.</p> +<p>“‘Huh! she’s adopted you,’ Seth +grins. And it looked like it. She just stood there +and looked at me—at us—like a loving hound dog that +you love, that you’ve caught with a string of sausages +inside of him, and that just knows you ain’t going to lift +a hand to him. ‘Go chase yourself!’ I told her +<i>pronto</i>.” (Mrs. Jones her proximity noticeable +with a wince at the Spanish word.) “You see, Sarah, +I’d no use for her, even at the start.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Jones stiffened. Her lips moved soundlessly, but I +knew to what syllables.</p> +<p>“And what made it hardest was Seth jeering at me. +‘You can’t shake her that way,’ he said. +‘You saved her life—’ ‘I +didn’t,’ I said sharply; ‘it was +you.’ ‘But she thinks you did, which is the +same thing,’ he came back at me. ‘And now she +belongs to you. Custom of the country, as you ought to +know.’”</p> +<p>“Heathenish,” said Mrs. Jones, and though her +steady gaze was set upon the Tower of Jewels I knew she was +making no reference to its architecture.</p> +<p>“‘She’s come to do light housekeeping for +you,’ Seth grinned. I let him rave, though afterwards +I kept him throwing in the coal too fast to work his mouth very +much. Why, say, when I got to the spot where I picked her +up, and stopped the train for her to get off, she just flopped +down on her knees, got a hammerlock with her arms around my +knees, and cried all over my shoes. What was I to +do?”</p> +<p>With no perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs. Jones +advertised her certitude of knowledge of what <i>she</i> would +have done.</p> +<p>“And the moment we pulled into Quito, she did what +she’d done before—vanished. Sarah never +believes me when I say how relieved I felt to be quit of +her. But it was not to be. I got to my ’dobe +house and managed a cracking fine dinner my cook had ready for +me. She was mostly Spiggoty and half Indian, and her name +was Paloma.—Now, Sarah, haven’t I told you she was +older’n a grandmother, and looked more like a buzzard than +a dove? Why, I couldn’t bear to eat with her around +where I could look at her. But she did make things +comfortable, and she was some economical when it came to +marketing.</p> +<p>“That afternoon, after a big long siesta, what’d I +find in the kitchen, just as much at home as if she belonged +there, but that blamed Indian girl. And old Paloma was +squatting at the girl’s feet and rubbing the girl’s +knees and legs like for rheumatism, which I knew the girl +didn’t have from the way I’d sized up the walk of +her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of +gibberish chant. And I let loose right there and +then. As Sarah knows, I never could a-bear women around the +house—young, unmarried women, I mean. But it was no +go! Old Paloma sided with the girl, and said if the girl +went she went, too. Also, she called me more kinds of a +fool than the English language has accommodation for. +You’d like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for expressing +yourself in such ways, and you’d have liked old Paloma, +too. She was a good woman, though she didn’t have any +teeth and her face could kill a strong man’s appetite in +the cradle.</p> +<p>“I gave in. I had to. Except for the excuse +that she needed Vahna’s help around the house (which she +didn’t at all), old Paloma never said why she stuck up for +the girl. Anyway, Vahna was a quiet thing, never in the +way. And she never gadded. Just sat in-doors +jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores. But I +wasn’t long in getting on to that she was afraid of +something. She would look up, that anxious it hurt, +whenever anybody called, like some of the boys to have a gas or a +game of pedro. I tried to worm it out of Paloma what was +worrying the girl, but all the old woman did was to look solemn +and shake her head like all the devils in hell was liable to +precipitate a visit on us.</p> +<p>“And then one day Vahna had a visitor. I’d +just come in from a run and was passing the time of day with +her—I had to be polite, even if she had butted in on me and +come to live in my house for keeps—when I saw a queer +expression come into her eyes. In the doorway stood an +Indian boy. He looked like her, but was younger and +slimmer. She took him into the kitchen and they must have +had a great palaver, for he didn’t leave until after +dark. Inside the week he came back, but I missed him. +When I got home, Paloma put a fat nugget of gold into my hand, +which Vahna had sent him for. The blamed thing weighed all +of two pounds and was worth more than five hundred dollars. +She explained that Vahna wanted me to take it to pay for her +keep. And I had to take it to keep peace in the house.</p> +<p>“Then, after a long time, came another visitor. We +were sitting before the fire—”</p> +<p>“Him and the hussy,” quoth Mrs. Jones.</p> +<p>“And Paloma,” he added quickly.</p> +<p>“Him and his cook and his light housekeeper sitting by +the fire,” she amended.</p> +<p>“Oh, I admit Vahna did like me a whole heap,” he +asserted recklessly, then modified with a pang of caution: +“A heap more than was good for her, seeing that I had no +inclination her way.</p> +<p>“Well, as I was saying, she had another visitor. +He was a lean, tall, white-headed old Indian, with a beak on him +like an eagle. He walked right in without knocking. +Vahna gave a little cry that was half like a yelp and half like a +gasp, and flumped down on her knees before me, pleading to me +with deer’s eyes and to him with the eyes of a deer about +to be killed that don’t want to be killed. Then, for +a minute that seemed as long as a life-time, she and the old +fellow glared at each other. Paloma was the first to talk, +in his own lingo, for he talked back to her. But great +Moses, if he wasn’t the high and mighty one! +Paloma’s old knees were shaking, and she cringed to him +like a hound dog. And all this in my own house! +I’d have thrown him out on his neck, only he was so +old.</p> +<p>“If the things he said to Vahna were as terrible as the +way he looked! Say! He just spit words at her! +But Paloma kept whimpering and butting in, till something she +said got across, because his face relaxed. He condescended +to give me the once over and fired some question at Vahna. +She hung her head, and looked foolish, and blushed, and then +replied with a single word and a shake of the head. And +with that he just naturally turned on his heel and beat it. +I guess she’d said ‘No.’</p> +<p>“For some time after that Vahna used to fluster up +whenever she saw me. Then she took to the kitchen for a +spell. But after a long time she began hanging around the +big room again. She was still mighty shy, but she’d +keep on following me about with those big eyes of +hers—”</p> +<p>“The hussy!” I heard plainly. But Julian +Jones and I were pretty well used to it by this time.</p> +<p>“I don’t mind saying that I was getting some +interested myself—oh, not in the way Sarah never lets up +letting me know she thinks. That two-pound nugget was what +had me going. If Vahna’d put me wise to where it came +from, I could say good-bye to railroading and hit the high places +for Nebraska and Sarah.</p> +<p>“And then the beans were spilled . . . by +accident. Come a letter from Wisconsin. My Aunt Eliza +’d died and up and left me her big farm. I let out a +whoop when I read it; but I could have canned my joy, for I was +jobbed out of it by the courts and lawyers afterward—not a +cent to me, and I’m still paying ’m in +instalments.</p> +<p>“But I didn’t know, then; and I prepared to pull +back to God’s country. Paloma got sore, and Vahna got +the weeps. ‘Don’t go! Don’t +go!’ That was her song. But I gave notice on my +job, and wrote a letter to Sarah here—didn’t I, +Sarah?</p> +<p>“That night, sitting by the fire like at a funeral, +Vahna really loosened up for the first time.</p> +<p>“‘Don’t go,’ she says to me, with old +Paloma nodding agreement with her. ‘I’ll show +you where my brother got the nugget, if you don’t +go.’ ‘Too late,’ said I. And I told +her why.</p> +<p>“And told her about me waiting for you back in +Nebraska,” Mrs. Jones observed in cold, passionless +tones.</p> +<p>“Now, Sarah, why should I hurt a poor Indian +girl’s feelings? Of course I didn’t.</p> +<p>“Well, she and Paloma talked Indian some more, and then +Vahna says: ‘If you stay, I’ll show you the biggest +nugget that is the father of all other nuggets.’ +‘How big?’ I asked. ‘As big as +me?’ She laughed. ‘Bigger than +you,’ she says, ‘much, much bigger.’ +‘They don’t grow that way,’ I said. But +she said she’d seen it and Paloma backed her up. Why, +to listen to them you’d have thought there was millions in +that one nugget. Paloma ’d never seen it herself, but +she’d heard about it. A secret of the tribe which she +couldn’t share, being only half Indian herself.”</p> +<p>Julian Jones paused and heaved a sigh.</p> +<p>“And they kept on insisting until I fell +for—”</p> +<p>“The hussy,” said Mrs. Jones, pert as a bird, at +the ready instant.</p> +<p>“‘No; for the nugget. What of Aunt +Eliza’s farm I was rich enough to quit railroading, but not +rich enough to turn my back on big money—and I just +couldn’t help believing them two women. Gee! I +could be another Vanderbilt, or J. P. Morgan. That’s +the way I thought; and I started in to pump Vahna. But she +wouldn’t give down. ‘You come along with +me,’ she says. ‘We can be back here in a couple +of weeks with all the gold the both of us can carry.’ +‘We’ll take a burro, or a pack-train of +burros,’ was my suggestion. But nothing doing. +And Paloma agreed with her. It was too dangerous. The +Indians would catch us.</p> +<p>“The two of us pulled out when the nights were +moonlight. We travelled only at night, and laid up in the +days. Vahna wouldn’t let me light a fire, and I +missed my coffee something fierce. We got up in the real +high mountains of the main Andes, where the snow on one pass gave +us some trouble; but the girl knew the trails, and, though we +didn’t waste any time, we were a full week getting +there. I know the general trend of our travel, because I +carried a pocket compass; and the general trend is all I need to +get there again, because of that peak. There’s no +mistaking it. There ain’t another peak like it in the +world. Now, I’m not telling you its particular shape, +but when you and I head out for it from Quito I’ll take you +straight to it.</p> +<p>“It’s no easy thing to climb, and the person +doesn’t live that can climb it at night. We had to +take the daylight to it, and didn’t reach the top till +after sunset. Why, I could take hours and hours telling you +about that last climb, which I won’t. The top was +flat as a billiard table, about a quarter of an acre in size, and +was almost clean of snow. Vahna told me that the great +winds that usually blew, kept the snow off of it.</p> +<p>“We were winded, and I got mountain sickness so bad that +I had to stretch out for a spell. Then, when the moon come +up, I took a prowl around. It didn’t take long, and I +didn’t catch a sight or a smell of anything that looked +like gold. And when I asked Vahna, she only laughed and +clapped her hands. Meantime my mountain sickness tuned up +something fierce, and I sat down on a big rock to wait for it to +ease down.</p> +<p>“‘Come on, now,’ I said, when I felt +better. ‘Stop your fooling and tell me where that +nugget is.’ ‘It’s nearer to you right now +than I’ll ever get,’ she answered, her big eyes going +sudden wistful. ‘All you Gringos are alike. +Gold is the love of your heart, and women don’t count +much.’</p> +<p>“I didn’t say anything. That was no time to +tell her about Sarah here. But Vahna seemed to shake off +her depressed feelings, and began to laugh and tease again. +‘How do you like it?’ she asked. ‘Like +what?’ ‘The nugget you’re sitting +on.’</p> +<p>“I jumped up as though it was a red-hot stove. And +all it was was a rock. I felt nay heart sink. Either +she had gone clean loco or this was her idea of a joke. +Wrong on both counts. She gave me the hatchet and told me +to take a hack at the boulder, which I did, again and again, for +yellow spots sprang up from under every blow. By the great +Moses! it was gold! The whole blamed boulder!”</p> +<p>Jones rose suddenly to his full height and flung out his long +arms, his face turned to the southern skies. The movement +shot panic into the heart of a swan that had drawn nearer with +amiably predatory designs. Its consequent abrupt retreat +collided it with a stout old lady, who squealed and dropped her +bag of peanuts. Jones sat down and resumed.</p> +<p>“Gold, I tell you, solid gold and that pure and soft +that I chopped chips out of it. It had been coated with +some sort of rain-proof paint or lacquer made out of asphalt or +something. No wonder I’d taken it for a rock. +It was ten feet long, all of five feet through, and tapering to +both ends like an egg. Here. Take a look at +this.”</p> +<p>From his pocket he drew and opened a leather case, from which +he took an object wrapped in tissue-paper. Unwrapping it, +he dropped into my hand a chip of pure soft gold, the size of a +ten-dollar gold-piece. I could make out the greyish +substance on one side with which it had been painted.</p> +<p>“I chopped that from one end of the thing,” Jones +went on, replacing the chip in its paper and leather case. +“And lucky I put it in my pocket. For right at my +back came one loud word—more like a croak than a word, in +my way of thinking. And there was that lean old fellow with +the eagle beak that had dropped in on us one night. And +there was about thirty Indians with him—all slim young +fellows.</p> +<p>“Vahna’d flopped down and begun whimpering, but I +told her, ‘Get up and make friends with them for +me.’ ‘No, no,’ she cried. +‘This is death. Good-bye, +<i>amigo</i>—’”</p> +<p>Here Mrs. Jones winced, and her husband abruptly checked the +particular flow of his narrative.</p> +<p>“‘Then get up and fight along with me,’ I +said to her. And she did. She was some hellion, there +on the top of the world, clawing and scratching tooth and +nail—a regular she cat. And I wasn’t idle, +though all I had was that hatchet and my long arms. But +they were too many for me, and there was no place for me to put +my back against a wall. When I come to, minutes after +they’d cracked me on the head—here, feel +this.”</p> +<p>Removing his hat, Julian Jones guided my finger tips through +his thatch of sandy hair until they sank into an +indentation. It was fully three inches long, and went into +the bone itself of the skull.</p> +<p>“When I come to, there was Vahna spread-eagled on top of +the nugget, and the old fellow with a beak jabbering away +solemnly as if going through some sort of religious +exercises. In his hand he had a stone knife—you know, +a thin, sharp sliver of some obsidian-like stuff same as they +make arrow-heads out of. I couldn’t lift a hand, +being held down, and being too weak besides. +And—well, anyway, that stone knife did for her, and me they +didn’t even do the honour of killing there on top their +sacred peak. They chucked me off of it like so much +carrion.</p> +<p>“And the buzzards didn’t get me either. I +can see the moonlight yet, shining on all those peaks of snow, as +I went down. Why, sir, it was a five-hundred-foot fall, +only I didn’t make it. I went into a big snow-drift +in a crevice. And when I come to (hours after I know, for +it was full day when I next saw the sun), I found myself in a +regular snow-cave or tunnel caused by the water from the melting +snow running along the ledge. In fact, the stone above +actually overhung just beyond where I first landed. A few +feet more to the side, either way, and I’d almost be going +yet. It was a straight miracle, that’s what it +was.</p> +<p>“But I paid for it. It was two years and over +before I knew what happened. All I knew was that I was +Julian Jones and that I’d been blacklisted in the big +strike, and that I was married to Sarah here. I mean +that. I didn’t know anything in between, and when +Sarah tried to talk about it, it gave me pains in the head. +I mean my head was queer, and I knew it was queer.</p> +<p>“And then, sitting on the porch of her father’s +farmhouse back in Nebraska one moonlight evening, Sarah came out +and put that gold chip into my hand. Seems she’d just +found it in the torn lining of the trunk I’d brought back +from Ecuador—I who for two years didn’t even know +I’d been to Ecuador, or Australia, or anything! Well, +I just sat there looking at the chip in the moonlight, and +turning it over and over and figuring what it was and where +it’d come from, when all of a sudden there was a snap +inside my head as if something had broken, and then I could see +Vahna spread-eagled on that big nugget and the old fellow with +the beak waving the stone knife, and . . . and everything. +That is, everything that had happened from the time I first left +Nebraska to when I crawled to the daylight out of the snow after +they had chucked me off the mountain-top. But everything +that’d happened after that I’d clean forgotten. +When Sarah said I was her husband, I wouldn’t listen to +her. Took all her family and the preacher that’d +married us to convince me.</p> +<p>“Later on I wrote to Seth Manners. The railroad +hadn’t killed him yet, and he pieced out a lot for +me. I’ll show you his letters. I’ve got +them at the hotel. One day, he said, making his regular +run, I crawled out on to the track. I didn’t stand +upright, I just crawled. He took me for a calf, or a big +dog, at first. I wasn’t anything human, he said, and +I didn’t know him or anything. As near as I can make +out, it was ten days after the mountain-top to the time Seth +picked me up. What I ate I don’t know. Maybe I +didn’t eat. Then it was doctors at Quito, and Paloma +nursing me (she must have packed that gold chip in my trunk), +until they found out I was a man without a mind, and the railroad +sent me back to Nebraska. At any rate, that’s what +Seth writes me. Of myself, I don’t know. But +Sarah here knows. She corresponded with the railroad before +they shipped me and all that.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Jones nodded affirmation of his words, sighed and +evidenced unmistakable signs of eagerness to go.</p> +<p>“I ain’t been able to work since,” her +husband continued. “And I ain’t been able to +figure out how to get back that big nugget. Sarah’s +got money of her own, and she won’t let go a +penny—”</p> +<p>“He won’t get down to <i>that</i> country no +more!” she broke forth.</p> +<p>“But, Sarah, Vahna’s dead—you know +that,” Julian Jones protested.</p> +<p>“I don’t know anything about anything,” she +answered decisively, “except that <i>that</i> country is no +place for a married man.”</p> +<p>Her lips snapped together, and she fixed an unseeing stare +across to where the afternoon sun was beginning to glow into +sunset. I gazed for a moment at her face, white, plump, +tiny, and implacable, and gave her up.</p> +<p>“How do you account for such a mass of gold being +there?” I queried of Julian Jones. “A +solid-gold meteor that fell out of the sky?”</p> +<p>“Not for a moment.” He shook his head. +“ It was carried there by the Indians.”</p> +<p>“Up a mountain like that—and such enormous weight +and size!” I objected.</p> +<p>“Just as easy,” he smiled. “I used to +be stumped by that proposition myself, after I got my memory +back. Now how in Sam Hill—’ I used to begin, +and then spend hours figuring at it. And then when I got +the answer I felt downright idiotic, it was that +easy.” He paused, then announced: “They +didn’t.”</p> +<p>“But you just—said they did.”</p> +<p>“They did and they didn’t,” was his +enigmatic reply. “Of course they never carried that +monster nugget up there. What they did was to carry up its +contents.”</p> +<p>He waited until he saw enlightenment dawn in my face.</p> +<p>“And then of course melted all the gold, or welded it, +or smelted it, all into one piece. You know the first +Spaniards down there, under a leader named Pizarro, were a gang +of robbers and cut-throats. They went through the country +like the hoof-and-mouth disease, and killed the Indians off like +cattle. You see, the Indians had lots of gold. Well, +what the Spaniards didn’t get, the surviving Indians hid +away in that one big chunk on top the mountain, and it’s +been waiting there ever since for me—and for you, if you +want to go in on it.”</p> +<p>And here, by the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts, ended my +acquaintance with Julian Jones. On my agreeing to finance +the adventure, he promised to call on me at my hotel next morning +with the letters of Seth Manners and the railroad, and conclude +arrangements. But he did not call. That evening I +telephoned his hotel and was informed by the clerk that Mr. +Julian Jones and wife had departed in the early afternoon, with +their baggage.</p> +<p>Can Mrs. Jones have rushed him back and hidden him away in +Nebraska? I remember that as we said good-bye, there was +that in her smile that recalled the vulpine complacency of Mona +Lisa, the Wise.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<p>Kohala, Hawaii,<br /> + <i>May</i> 5, 1916.</p> +<h2><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>LIKE +ARGUS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was the summer of 1897, and +there was trouble in the Tarwater family. Grandfather +Tarwater, after remaining properly subdued and crushed for a +quiet decade, had broken out again. This time it was the +Klondike fever. His first and one unvarying symptom of such +attacks was song. One chant only he raised, though he +remembered no more than the first stanza and but three lines of +that. And the family knew his feet were itching and his +brain was tingling with the old madness, when he lifted his +hoarse-cracked voice, now falsetto-cracked, in:</p> +<p class="poetry">Like Argus of the ancient times,<br /> + We leave this modern Greece,<br /> +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br /> + To shear the Golden Fleece.</p> +<p>Ten years earlier he had lifted the chant, sung to the air of +the “Doxology,” when afflicted with the fever to go +gold-mining in Patagonia. The multitudinous family had sat +upon him, but had had a hard time doing it. When all else +had failed to shake his resolution, they had applied lawyers to +him, with the threat of getting out guardianship papers and of +confining him in the state asylum for the insane—which was +reasonable for a man who had, a quarter of a century before, +speculated away all but ten meagre acres of a California +principality, and who had displayed no better business acumen +ever since.</p> +<p>The application of lawyers to John Tarwater was like the +application of a mustard plaster. For, in his judgment, +they were the gentry, more than any other, who had skinned him +out of the broad Tarwater acres. So, at the time of his +Patagonian fever, the very thought of so drastic a remedy was +sufficient to cure him. He quickly demonstrated he was not +crazy by shaking the fever from him and agreeing not to go to +Patagonia.</p> +<p>Next, he demonstrated how crazy he really was, by deeding over +to his family, unsolicited, the ten acres on Tarwater Flat, the +house, barn, outbuildings, and water-rights. Also did he +turn over the eight hundred dollars in bank that was the +long-saved salvage of his wrecked fortune. But for this the +family found no cause for committal to the asylum, since such +committal would necessarily invalidate what he had done.</p> +<p>“Grandfather is sure peeved,” said Mary, his +oldest daughter, herself a grandmother, when her father quit +smoking.</p> +<p>All he had retained for himself was a span of old horses, a +mountain buckboard, and his one room in the crowded house. +Further, having affirmed that he would be beholden to none of +them, he got the contract to carry the United States mail, twice +a week, from Kelterville up over Tarwater Mountain to Old +Almaden—which was a sporadically worked quick-silver mine +in the upland cattle country. With his old horses it took +all his time to make the two weekly round trips. And for +ten years, rain or shine, he had never missed a trip. Nor +had he failed once to pay his week’s board into +Mary’s hand. This board he had insisted on, in the +convalescence from his Patagonian fever, and he had paid it +strictly, though he had given up tobacco in order to be able to +do it.</p> +<p>“Huh!” he confided to the ruined water wheel of +the old Tarwater Mill, which he had built from the standing +timber and which had ground wheat for the first settlers. +“Huh! They’ll never put me in the poor farm so +long as I support myself. And without a penny to my name it +ain’t likely any lawyer fellows’ll come +snoopin’ around after me.”</p> +<p>And yet, precisely because of these highly rational acts, it +was held that John Tarwater was mildly crazy!</p> +<p>The first time he had lifted the chant of “Like Argus of +the Ancient Times,” had been in 1849, when, twenty-two +years’ of age, violently attacked by the Californian fever, +he had sold two hundred and forty Michigan acres, forty of it +cleared, for the price of four yoke of oxen, and a wagon, and had +started across the Plains.</p> +<p>“And we turned off at Fort Hall, where the Oregon +emigration went north’ard, and swung south for +Californy,” was his way of concluding the narrative of that +arduous journey. “And Bill Ping and me used to rope +grizzlies out of the underbrush of Cache Slough in the Sacramento +Valley.”</p> +<p>Years of freighting and mining had followed, and, with a stake +gleaned from the Merced placers, he satisfied the land-hunger of +his race and time by settling in Sonoma County.</p> +<p>During the ten years of carrying the mail across Tarwater +Township, up Tarwater Valley, and over Tarwater Mountain, most +all of which land had once been his, he had spent his time +dreaming of winning back that land before he died. And now, +his huge gaunt form more erect than it had been for years, with a +glinting of blue fires in his small and close-set eyes, he was +lifting his ancient chant again.</p> +<p>“There he goes now—listen to him,” said +William Tarwater.</p> +<p>“Nobody at home,” laughed Harris Topping, day +labourer, husband of Annie Tarwater, and father of her nine +children.</p> +<p>The kitchen door opened to admit the old man, returning from +feeding his horses. The song had ceased from his lips; but +Mary was irritable from a burnt hand and a grandchild whose +stomach refused to digest properly diluted cows’ milk.</p> +<p>“Now there ain’t no use you carryin’ on that +way, father,” she tackled him. “The +time’s past for you to cut and run for a place like the +Klondike, and singing won’t buy you nothing.”</p> +<p>“Just the same,” he answered quietly. +“I bet I could go to that Klondike place and pick up enough +gold to buy back the Tarwater lands.”</p> +<p>“Old fool!” Annie contributed.</p> +<p>“You couldn’t buy them back for less’n three +hundred thousand and then some,” was William’s effort +at squelching him.</p> +<p>“Then I could pick up three hundred thousand, and then +some, if I was only there,” the old man retorted +placidly.</p> +<p>“Thank God you can’t walk there, or you’d be +startin’, I know,” Mary cried. “Ocean +travel costs money.”</p> +<p>“I used to have money,” her father said +humbly.</p> +<p>“Well, you ain’t got any now—so forget +it,” William advised. “Them times is past, like +roping bear with Bill Ping. There ain’t no more +bear.”</p> +<p>“Just the same—”</p> +<p>But Mary cut him off. Seizing the day’s paper from +the kitchen table, she flourished it savagely under her aged +progenitor’s nose.</p> +<p>“What do those Klondikers say? There it is in cold +print. Only the young and robust can stand the +Klondike. It’s worse than the north pole. And +they’ve left their dead a-plenty there themselves. +Look at their pictures. You’re forty years older +’n the oldest of them.”</p> +<p>John Tarwater did look, but his eyes strayed to other +photographs on the highly sensational front page.</p> +<p>“And look at the photys of them nuggets they brought +down,” he said. “I know gold. +Didn’t I gopher twenty thousand outa the Merced? And +wouldn’t it a-ben a hundred thousand if that cloudburst +hadn’t busted my wing-dam? Now if I was only in the +Klondike—”</p> +<p>“Crazy as a loon,” William sneered in open aside +to the rest.</p> +<p>“A nice way to talk to your father,” Old Man +Tarwater censured mildly. “My father’d have +walloped the tar out of me with a single-tree if I’d spoke +to him that way.”</p> +<p>“But you <i>are</i> crazy, father—” William +began.</p> +<p>“Reckon you’re right, son. And that’s +where my father wasn’t crazy. He’d a-done +it.”</p> +<p>“The old man’s been reading some of them magazine +articles about men who succeeded after forty,” Annie +jibed.</p> +<p>“And why not, daughter?” he asked. +“And why can’t a man succeed after he’s +seventy? I was only seventy this year. And mebbe I +could succeed if only I could get to the +Klondike—”</p> +<p>“Which you ain’t going to get to,” Mary shut +him off.</p> +<p>“Oh, well, then,” he sighed, “seein’s +I ain’t, I might just as well go to bed.”</p> +<p>He stood up, tall, gaunt, great-boned and gnarled, a splendid +ruin of a man. His ragged hair and whiskers were not grey +but snowy white, as were the tufts of hair that stood out on the +backs of his huge bony fingers. He moved toward the door, +opened it, sighed, and paused with a backward look.</p> +<p>“Just the same,” he murmured plaintively, +“the bottoms of my feet is itching something +terrible.”</p> +<p>Long before the family stirred next morning, his horses fed +and harnessed by lantern light, breakfast cooked and eaten by +lamp fight, Old Man Tarwater was off and away down Tarwater +Valley on the road to Kelterville. Two things were unusual +about this usual trip which he had made a thousand and forty +times since taking the mail contract. He did not drive to +Kelterville, but turned off on the main road south to Santa +Rosa. Even more remarkable than this was the paper-wrapped +parcel between his feet. It contained his one decent black +suit, which Mary had been long reluctant to see him wear any +more, not because it was shabby, but because, as he guessed what +was at the back of her mind, it was decent enough to bury him +in.</p> +<p>And at Santa Rosa, in a second-hand clothes shop, he sold the +suit outright for two dollars and a half. From the same +obliging shopman he received four dollars for the wedding ring of +his long-dead wife. The span of horses and the wagon he +disposed of for seventy-five dollars, although twenty-five was +all he received down in cash. Chancing to meet Alton +Granger on the street, to whom never before had he mentioned the +ten dollars loaned him in ’74, he reminded Alton Granger of +the little affair, and was promptly paid. Also, of all +unbelievable men to be in funds, he so found the town drunkard +for whom he had bought many a drink in the old and palmy +days. And from him John Tarwater borrowed a dollar. +Finally, he took the afternoon train to San Francisco.</p> +<p>A dozen days later, carrying a half-empty canvas sack of +blankets and old clothes, he landed on the beach of Dyea in the +thick of the great Klondike Rush. The beach was screaming +bedlam. Ten thousand tons of outfit lay heaped and +scattered, and twice ten thousand men struggled with it and +clamoured about it. Freight, by Indian-back, over Chilcoot +to Lake Linderman, had jumped from sixteen to thirty cents a +pound, which latter was a rate of six hundred dollars a +ton. And the sub-arctic winter gloomed near at hand. +All knew it, and all knew that of the twenty thousand of them +very few would get across the passes, leaving the rest to winter +and wait for the late spring thaw.</p> +<p>Such the beach old John Tarwater stepped upon; and straight +across the beach and up the trail toward Chilcoot he headed, +cackling his ancient chant, a very Grandfather Argus himself, +with no outfit worry in the world, for he did not possess any +outfit. That night he slept on the flats, five miles above +Dyea, at the head of canoe navigation. Here the Dyea River +became a rushing mountain torrent, plunging out of a dark canyon +from the glaciers that fed it far above.</p> +<p>And here, early next morning, he beheld a little man weighing +no more than a hundred, staggering along a foot-log under all of +a hundred pounds of flour strapped on his back. Also, he +beheld the little man stumble off the log and fall face-downward +in a quiet eddy where the water was two feet deep and proceed +quietly to drown. It was no desire of his to take death so +easily, but the flour on his back weighed as much as he and would +not let him up.</p> +<p>“Thank you, old man,” he said to Tarwater, when +the latter had dragged him up into the air and ashore.</p> +<p>While he unlaced his shoes and ran the water out, they had +further talk. Next, he fished out a ten-dollar gold-piece +and offered it to his rescuer.</p> +<p>Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water +had wet him to his knees.</p> +<p>“But I reckon I wouldn’t object to settin’ +down to a friendly meal with you.”</p> +<p>“Ain’t had breakfast?” the little man, who +was past forty and who had said his name was Anson, queried with +a glance frankly curious.</p> +<p>“Nary bite,” John Tarwater answered.</p> +<p>“Where’s your outfit? Ahead?”</p> +<p>“Nary outfit.”</p> +<p>“Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?”</p> +<p>“Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend. Which +ain’t so important as a warm bite of breakfast right +now.”</p> +<p>In Anson’s camp, a quarter of a mile on, Tarwater found +a slender, red-whiskered young man of thirty cursing over a fire +of wet willow wood. Introduced as Charles, he transferred +his scowl and wrath to Tarwater, who, genially oblivious, devoted +himself to the fire, took advantage of the chill morning breeze +to create a draught which the other had left stupidly blocked by +stones, and soon developed less smoke and more flame. The +third member of the party, Bill Wilson, or Big Bill as they +called him, came in with a hundred-and-forty-pound pack; and what +Tarwater esteemed to be a very rotten breakfast was dished out by +Charles. The mush was half cooked and mostly burnt, the +bacon was charred carbon, and the coffee was unspeakable.</p> +<p>Immediately the meal was wolfed down the three partners took +their empty pack-straps and headed down trail to where the +remainder of their outfit lay at the last camp a mile away. +And old Tarwater became busy. He washed the dishes, foraged +dry wood, mended a broken pack-strap, put an edge on the +butcher-knife and camp-axe, and repacked the picks and shovels +into a more carryable parcel.</p> +<p>What had impressed him during the brief breakfast was the sort +of awe in which Anson and Big Bill stood of Charles. Once, +during the morning, while Anson took a breathing spell after +bringing in another hundred-pound pack, Tarwater delicately +hinted his impression.</p> +<p>“You see, it’s this way,” Anson said. +“We’ve divided our leadership. We’ve got +specialities. Now I’m a carpenter. When we get +to Lake Linderman, and the trees are chopped and whipsawed into +planks, I’ll boss the building of the boat. Big Bill +is a logger and miner. So he’ll boss getting out the +logs and all mining operations. Most of our outfit’s +ahead. We went broke paying the Indians to pack that much +of it to the top of Chilcoot. Our last partner is up there +with it, moving it along by himself down the other side. +His name’s Liverpool, and he’s a sailor. So, +when the boat’s built, he’s the boss of the outfit to +navigate the lakes and rapids to Klondike.</p> +<p>“And Charles—this Mr. Crayton—what might his +speciality be?” Tarwater asked.</p> +<p>“He’s the business man. When it comes to +business and organization he’s boss.”</p> +<p>“Hum,” Tarwater pondered. “Very lucky +to get such a bunch of specialities into one outfit.”</p> +<p>“More than luck,” Anson agreed. “It +was all accident, too. Each of us started alone. We +met on the steamer coming up from San Francisco, and formed the +party.—Well, I got to be goin’. Charles is +liable to get kicking because I ain’t packin’ my +share’ just the same, you can’t expect a +hundred-pound man to pack as much as a +hundred-and-sixty-pounder.”</p> +<p>“Stick around and cook us something for dinner,” +Charles, on his next load in and noting the effects of the old +man’s handiness, told Tarwater.</p> +<p>And Tarwater cooked a dinner that was a dinner, washed the +dishes, had real pork and beans for supper, and bread baked in a +frying-pan that was so delectable that the three partners nearly +foundered themselves on it. Supper dishes washed, he cut +shavings and kindling for a quick and certain breakfast fire, +showed Anson a trick with foot-gear that was invaluable to any +hiker, sang his “Like Argus of the Ancient Times,” +and told them of the great emigration across the Plains in +Forty-nine.</p> +<p>“My goodness, the first cheerful and hearty-like camp +since we hit the beach,” Big Bill remarked as he knocked +out his pipe and began pulling off his shoes for bed.</p> +<p>“Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?” +Tarwater queried genially.</p> +<p>All nodded. “Well, then, I got a proposition, +boys. You can take it or leave it, but just listen kindly +to it. You’re in a hurry to get in before the +freeze-up. Half the time is wasted over the cooking by one +of you that he might be puttin’ in packin’ +outfit. If I do the cookin’ for you, you all’ll +get on that much faster. Also, the cookin’ ’ll +be better, and that’ll make you pack better. And I +can pack quite a bit myself in between times, quite a bit, yes, +sir, quite a bit.”</p> +<p>Big Bill and Anson were just beginning to nod their heads in +agreement, when Charles stopped them.</p> +<p>“What do you expect of us in return?” he demanded +of the old man.</p> +<p>“Oh, I leave it up to the boys.”</p> +<p>“That ain’t business,” Charles reprimanded +sharply. “You made the proposition. Now finish +it.”</p> +<p>“Well, it’s this way—”</p> +<p>“You expect us to feed you all winter, eh?” +Charles interrupted.</p> +<p>“No, siree, I don’t. All I reckon is a +passage to Klondike in your boat would be mighty square of +you.”</p> +<p>“You haven’t an ounce of grub, old man. +You’ll starve to death when you get there.”</p> +<p>“I’ve been feedin’ some long time pretty +successful,” Old Tarwater replied, a whimsical light in his +eyes. “I’m seventy, and ain’t starved to +death never yet.”</p> +<p>“Will you sign a paper to the effect that you shift for +yourself as soon as you get to Dawson?” the business one +demanded.</p> +<p>“Oh, sure,” was the response.</p> +<p>Again Charles checked his two partners’ expressions of +satisfaction with the arrangement.</p> +<p>“One other thing, old man. We’re a party of +four, and we all have a vote on questions like this. Young +Liverpool is ahead with the main outfit. He’s got a +say so, and he isn’t here to say it.”</p> +<p>“What kind of a party might he be?” Tarwater +inquired.</p> +<p>“He’s a rough-neck sailor, and he’s got a +quick, bad temper.”</p> +<p>“Some turbulent,” Anson contributed.</p> +<p>“And the way he can cuss is simply God-awful,” Big +Bill testified.</p> +<p>“But he’s square,” Big Bill added.</p> +<p>Anson nodded heartily to this appraisal.</p> +<p>“Well, boys,” Tarwater summed up, “I set out +for Californy and I got there. And I’m going to get +to Klondike. Ain’t a thing can stop me, ain’t a +thing. I’m going to get three hundred thousand outa +the ground, too. Ain’t a thing can stop me, +ain’t a thing, because I just naturally need the +money. I don’t mind a bad temper so long’s the +boy is square. I’ll take my chance, an’ +I’ll work along with you till we catch up with him. +Then, if he says no to the proposition, I reckon I’ll +lose. But somehow I just can’t see ’m +sayin’ no, because that’d mean too close up to +freeze-up and too late for me to find another chance like +this. And, as I’m sure going to get to Klondike, +it’s just plumb impossible for him to say no.”</p> +<p>Old John Tarwater became a striking figure on a trail +unusually replete with striking figures. With thousands of +men, each back-tripping half a ton of outfit, retracing every +mile of the trail twenty times, all came to know him and to hail +him as “Father Christmas.” And, as he worked, +ever he raised his chant with his age-falsetto voice. None +of the three men he had joined could complain about his +work. True, his joints were stiff—he admitted to a +trifle of rheumatism. He moved slowly, and seemed to creak +and crackle when he moved; but he kept on moving. Last into +the blankets at night, he was first out in the morning, so that +the other three had hot coffee before their one before-breakfast +pack. And, between breakfast and dinner and between dinner +and supper, he always managed to back-trip for several packs +himself. Sixty pounds was the limit of his burden, +however. He could manage seventy-five, but he could not +keep it up. Once, he tried ninety, but collapsed on the +trail and was seriously shaky for a couple of days afterward.</p> +<p>Work! On a trail where hard-working men learned for the +first time what work was, no man worked harder in proportion to +his strength than Old Tarwater. Driven desperately on by +the near-thrust of winter, and lured madly on by the dream of +gold, they worked to their last ounce of strength and fell by the +way. Others, when failure made certain, blew out their +brains. Some went mad, and still others, under the irk of +the man-destroying strain, broke partnerships and dissolved +life-time friendships with fellows just as good as themselves and +just as strained and mad.</p> +<p>Work! Old Tarwater could shame them all, despite his +creaking and crackling and the nasty hacking cough he had +developed. Early and late, on trail or in camp beside the +trail he was ever in evidence, ever busy at something, ever +responsive to the hail of “Father Christmas.” +Weary back-trippers would rest their packs on a log or rock +alongside of where he rested his, and would say: “Sing us +that song of yourn, dad, about Forty-Nine.” And, when +he had wheezingly complied, they would arise under their loads, +remark that it was real heartening, and hit the forward trail +again.</p> +<p>“If ever a man worked his passage and earned it,” +Big Bill confided to his two partners, “that man’s +our old Skeezicks.”</p> +<p>“You bet,” Anson confirmed. +“He’s a valuable addition to the party, and I, for +one, ain’t at all disagreeable to the notion of making him +a regular partner—”</p> +<p>“None of that!” Charles Crayton cut in. +“When we get to Dawson we’re quit of +him—that’s the agreement. We’d only have +to bury him if we let him stay on with us. Besides, +there’s going to be a famine, and every ounce of +grub’ll count. Remember, we’re feeding him out +of our own supply all the way in. And if we run short in +the pinch next year, you’ll know the reason. +Steamboats can’t get up grub to Dawson till the middle of +June, and that’s nine months away.”</p> +<p>“Well, you put as much money and outfit in as the rest +of us,” Big Bill conceded, “and you’ve a say +according.”</p> +<p>“And I’m going to have my say,” Charles +asserted with increasing irritability. “And +it’s lucky for you with your fool sentiments that +you’ve got somebody to think ahead for you, else +you’d all starve to death. I tell you that +famine’s coming. I’ve been studying the +situation. Flour will be two dollars a pound, or ten, and +no sellers. You mark my words.”</p> +<p>Across the rubble-covered flats, up the dark canyon to Sheep +Camp, past the over-hanging and ever-threatening glaciers to the +Scales, and from the Scales up the steep pitches of ice-scoured +rock where packers climbed with hands and feet, Old Tarwater +camp-cooked and packed and sang. He blew across Chilcoot +Pass, above timberline, in the first swirl of autumn snow. +Those below, without firewood, on the bitter rim of Crater Lake, +heard from the driving obscurity above them a weird voice +chanting:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Like Argus of the ancient times,<br /> + We leave this modern Greece,<br /> +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br /> + To shear the Golden Fleece.”</p> +<p>And out of the snow flurries they saw appear a tall, gaunt +form, with whiskers of flying white that blended with the storm, +bending under a sixty-pound pack of camp dunnage.</p> +<p>“Father Christmas!” was the hail. And then: +“Three rousing cheers for Father Christmas!”</p> +<p>Two miles beyond Crater Lake lay Happy Camp—so named +because here was found the uppermost fringe of the timber line, +where men might warm themselves by fire again. Scarcely +could it be called timber, for it was a dwarf rock-spruce that +never raised its loftiest branches higher than a foot above the +moss, and that twisted and grovelled like a pig-vegetable under +the moss. Here, on the trail leading into Happy Camp, in +the first sunshine of half a dozen days, Old Tarwater rested his +pack against a huge boulder and caught his breath. Around +this boulder the trail passed, laden men toiling slowly forward +and men with empty pack-straps limping rapidly back for fresh +loads. Twice Old Tarwater essayed to rise and go on, and +each time, warned by his shakiness, sank back to recover more +strength. From around the boulder he heard voices in +greeting, recognized Charles Crayton’s voice, and realized +that at last they had met up with Young Liverpool. Quickly, +Charles plunged into business, and Tarwater heard with great +distinctness every word of Charles’ unflattering +description of him and the proposition to give him passage to +Dawson.</p> +<p>“A dam fool proposition,” was Liverpool’s +judgment, when Charles had concluded. “An old +granddad of seventy! If he’s on his last legs, why in +hell did you hook up with him? If there’s going to be +a famine, and it looks like it, we need every ounce of grub for +ourselves. We only out-fitted for four, not +five.”</p> +<p>“It’s all right,” Tarwater heard Charles +assuring the other. “Don’t get excited. +The old codger agreed to leave the final decision to you when we +caught up with you. All you’ve got to do is put your +foot down and say no.”</p> +<p>“You mean it’s up to me to turn the old one down, +after your encouraging him and taking advantage of his work clear +from Dyea here?”</p> +<p>“It’s a hard trail, Liverpool, and only the men +that are hard will get through,” Charles strove to +palliate.</p> +<p>“And I’m to do the dirty work?” Liverpool +complained, while Tarwater’s heart sank.</p> +<p>“That’s just about the size of it,” Charles +said. “You’ve got the deciding.”</p> +<p>Then old Tarwater’s heart uprose again as the air was +rent by a cyclone of profanity, from the midst of which crackled +sentences like:—“Dirty skunks! . . . See you in hell +first! . . . My mind’s made up! . . . Hell’s fire and +corruption! . . . The old codger goes down the Yukon with us, +stack on that, my hearty! . . . Hard? You don’t know +what hard is unless I show you! . . . I’ll bust the whole +outfit to hell and gone if any of you try to side-track him! . . +. Just try to side-track him, that is all, and you’ll think +the Day of Judgment and all God’s blastingness has hit the +camp in one chunk!”</p> +<p>Such was the invigoratingness of Liverpool’s flow of +speech that, quite without consciousness of effort, the old man +arose easily under his load and strode on toward Happy Camp.</p> +<p>From Happy Camp to Long Lake, from Long Lake to Deep Lake, and +from Deep Lake up over the enormous hog-back and down to +Linderman, the man-killing race against winter kept on. Men +broke their hearts and backs and wept beside the trail in sheer +exhaustion. But winter never faltered. The fall gales +blew, and amid bitter soaking rains and ever-increasing snow +flurries, Tarwater and the party to which he was attached piled +the last of their outfit on the beach.</p> +<p>There was no rest. Across the lake, a mile above a +roaring torrent, they located a patch of spruce and built their +saw-pit. Here, by hand, with an inadequate whipsaw, they +sawed the spruce-trunks into lumber. They worked night and +day. Thrice, on the night-shift, underneath in the saw-pit, +Old Tarwater fainted. By day he cooked as well, and, in the +betweenwhiles, helped Anson in the building of the boat beside +the torrent as the green planks came down.</p> +<p>The days grew shorter. The wind shifted into the north +and blew unending gales. In the mornings the weary men +crawled from their blankets and in their socks thawed out their +frozen shoes by the fire Tarwater always had burning for +them. Ever arose the increasing tale of famine on the +Inside. The last grub steamboats up from Bering Sea were +stalled by low water at the beginning of the Yukon Flats hundreds +of miles north of Dawson. In fact, they lay at the old +Hudson Bay Company’s post at Fort Yukon inside the Arctic +Circle. Flour in Dawson was up to two dollars a pound, but +no one would sell. Bonanza and Eldorado Kings, with money +to burn, were leaving for the Outside because they could buy no +grub. Miners’ Committees were confiscating all grub +and putting the population on strict rations. A man who +held out an ounce of grub was shot like a dog. A score had +been so executed already.</p> +<p>And, under a strain which had broken so many younger men, Old +Tarwater began to break. His cough had become terrible, and +had not his exhausted comrades slept like the dead, he would have +kept them awake nights. Also, he began to take chills, so +that he dressed up to go to bed. When he had finished so +dressing, not a rag of garment remained in his clothes bag. +All he possessed was on his back and swathed around his gaunt old +form.</p> +<p>“Gee!” said Big Bill. “If he puts all +he’s got on now, when it ain’t lower than twenty +above, what’ll he do later on when it goes down to fifty +and sixty below?”</p> +<p>They lined the rough-made boat down the mountain torrent, +nearly losing it a dozen times, and rowed across the south end of +Lake Linderman in the thick of a fall blizzard. Next +morning they planned to load and start, squarely into the teeth +of the north, on their perilous traverse of half a thousand miles +of lakes and rapids and box canyons. But before he went to +bed that night, Young Liverpool was out over the camp. He +returned to find his whole party asleep. Rousing Tarwater, +he talked with him in low tones.</p> +<p>“Listen, dad,” he said.—“You’ve +got a passage in our boat, and if ever a man earned a passage you +have. But you know yourself you’re pretty well along +in years, and your health right now ain’t exciting. +If you go on with us you’ll croak surer’n +hell.—Now wait till I finish, dad. The price for a +passage has jumped to five hundred dollars. I’ve been +throwing my feet and I’ve hustled a passenger. +He’s an official of the Alaska Commercial and just has to +get in. He’s bid up to six hundred to go with me in +our boat. Now the passage is yours. You sell it to +him, poke the six hundred into your jeans, and pull South for +California while the goin’s good. You can be in Dyea +in two days, and in California in a week more. What +d’ye say?”</p> +<p>Tarwater coughed and shivered for a space, ere he could get +freedom of breath for speech.</p> +<p>“Son,” he said, “I just want to tell you one +thing. I drove my four yoke of oxen across the Plains in +Forty-nine and lost nary a one. I drove them plumb to +Californy, and I freighted with them afterward out of +Sutter’s Fort to American Bar. Now I’m going to +Klondike. Ain’t nothing can stop me, ain’t +nothing at all. I’m going to ride that boat, with you +at the steering sweep, clean to Klondike, and I’m going to +shake three hundred thousand out of the moss-roots. That +being so, it’s contrary to reason and common sense for me +to sell out my passage. But I thank you kindly, son, I +thank you kindly.”</p> +<p>The young sailor shot out his hand impulsively and gripped the +old man’s.</p> +<p>“By God, dad!” he cried. “You’re +sure going to go then. You’re the real +stuff.” He looked with undisguised contempt across +the sleepers to where Charles Crayton snored in his red +beard. “They don’t seem to make your kind any +more, dad.”</p> +<p>Into the north they fought their way, although old-timers, +coming out, shook their heads and prophesied they would be frozen +in on the lakes. That the freeze-up might come any day was +patent, and delays of safety were no longer considered. For +this reason, Liverpool decided to shoot the rapid stream +connecting Linderman to Lake Bennett with the fully loaded +boat. It was the custom to line the empty boats down and to +portage the cargoes across. Even then many empty boats had +been wrecked. But the time was past for such +precaution.</p> +<p>“Climb out, dad,” Liverpool commanded as he +prepared to swing from the bank and enter the rapids.</p> +<p>Old Tarwater shook his white head.</p> +<p>“I’m sticking to the outfit,” he +declared. “It’s the only way to get +through. You see, son, I’m going to Klondike. +If I stick by the boat, then the boat just naturally goes to +Klondike, too. If I get out, then most likely you’ll +lose the boat.”</p> +<p>“Well, there’s no use in overloading,” +Charles announced, springing abruptly out on the bank as the boat +cast off.</p> +<p>“Next time you wait for my orders!” Liverpool +shouted ashore as the current gripped the boat. “And +there won’t be any more walking around rapids and losing +time waiting to pick you up!”</p> +<p>What took them ten minutes by river, took Charles half an hour +by land, and while they waited for him at the head of Lake +Bennett they passed the time of day with several dilapidated +old-timers on their way out. The famine news was graver +than ever. The North-west Mounted Police, stationed at the +foot of Lake Marsh where the gold-rushers entered Canadian +territory, were refusing to let a man past who did not carry with +him seven hundred pounds of grub. In Dawson City a thousand +men, with dog-teams, were waiting the freeze-up to come out over +the ice. The trading companies could not fill their +grub-contracts, and partners were cutting the cards to see which +should go and which should stay and work the claims.</p> +<p>“That settles it,” Charles announced, when he +learned of the action of the mounted police on the +boundary. “Old Man, you might as well start back +now.”</p> +<p>“Climb aboard!” Liverpool commanded. +“We’re going to Klondike, and old dad is going +along.”</p> +<p>A shift of gale to the south gave them a fair wind down Lake +Bennett, before which they ran under a huge sail made by +Liverpool. The heavy weight of outfit gave such ballast +that he cracked on as a daring sailor should when moments +counted. A shift of four points into the south-west, coming +just at the right time as they entered upon Caribou Crossing, +drove them down that connecting link to lakes Tagish and +Marsh. In stormy sunset and twilight—they made the +dangerous crossing of Great Windy Arm, wherein they beheld two +other boat-loads of gold-rushers capsize and drown.</p> +<p>Charles was for beaching for the night, but Liverpool held on, +steering down Tagish by the sound of the surf on the shoals and +by the occasional shore-fires that advertised wrecked or timid +argonauts. At four in the morning, he aroused +Charles. Old Tarwater, shiveringly awake, heard Liverpool +order Crayton aft beside him at the steering-sweep, and also +heard the one-sided conversation.</p> +<p>“Just listen, friend Charles, and keep your own mouth +shut,” Liverpool began. “I want you to get one +thing into your head and keep it there: <i>old dad’s going +by the police</i>. <i>Understand</i>? <i>He’s +going by</i>. When they examine our outfit, old dad’s +got a fifth share in it, savvee? That’ll put us all +’way under what we ought to have, but we can bluff it +through. Now get this, and get it hard: <i>there +ain’t going to be any fall-down on this +bluff</i>—”</p> +<p>“If you think I’d give away on the old +codger—” Charles began indignantly.</p> +<p>“You thought that,” Liverpool checked him, +“because I never mentioned any such thing. +Now—get me and get me hard: I don’t care what +you’ve been thinking. It’s what you’re +going to think. We’ll make the police post some time +this afternoon, and we’ve got to get ready to pull the +bluff without a hitch, and a word to the wise is +plenty.”</p> +<p>“If you think I’ve got it in my mind—” +Charles began again.</p> +<p>“Look here,” Liverpool shut him off. +“I don’t know what’s in your mind. I +don’t want to know. I want you to know what’s +in my mind. If there’s any slip-up, if old dad gets +turned back by the police, I’m going to pick out the first +quiet bit of landscape and take you ashore on it. And then +I’m going to beat you up to the Queen’s taste. +Get me, and get me hard. It ain’t going to be any +half-way beating, but a real, two-legged, two-fisted, he-man +beating. I don’t expect I’ll kill you, but +I’ll come damn near to half-killing you.”</p> +<p>“But what can I do?” Charles almost whimpered.</p> +<p>“Just one thing,” was Liverpool’s final +word. “You just pray. You pray so hard that old +dad gets by the police that he does get by. That’s +all. Go back to your blankets.”</p> +<p>Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with +snow that would not melt for half a year. Nor could they +lay their boat at will against the bank, for the rim-ice was +already forming. Inside the mouth of the river, just ere it +entered Lake Le Barge, they found a hundred storm-bound boats of +the argonauts. Out of the north, across the full sweep of +the great lake, blew an unending snow gale. Three mornings +they put out and fought it and the cresting seas it drove that +turned to ice as they fell in-board. While the others broke +their hearts at the oars, Old Tarwater managed to keep up just +sufficient circulation to survive by chopping ice and throwing it +overboard.</p> +<p>Each day for three days, beaten to helplessness, they turned +tail on the battle and ran back into the sheltering river. +By the fourth day, the hundred boats had increased to three +hundred, and the two thousand argonauts on board knew that the +great gale heralded the freeze-up of Le Barge. Beyond, the +rapid rivers would continue to run for days, but unless they got +beyond, and immediately, they were doomed to be frozen in for six +months to come.</p> +<p>“This day we go through,” Liverpool +announced. “We turn back for nothing. And those +of us that dies at the oars will live again and go on +pulling.”</p> +<p>And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by +nightfall and pulling on through all the night hours as the wind +went down, falling asleep at the oars and being rapped awake by +Liverpool, toiling on through an age-long nightmare while the +stars came out and the surface of the lake turned to the +unruffledness of a sheet of paper and froze skin-ice that tinkled +like broken glass as their oar-blades shattered it.</p> +<p>As day broke clear and cold, they entered the river, with +behind them a sea of ice. Liverpool examined his aged +passenger and found him helpless and almost gone. When he +rounded the boat to against the rim-ice to build a fire and warm +up Tarwater inside and out, Charles protested against such loss +of time.</p> +<p>“This ain’t business, so don’t you come +horning in,” Liverpool informed him. “I’m +running the boat trip. So you just climb out and chop +firewood, and plenty of it. I’ll take care of +dad. You, Anson, make a fire on the bank. And you, +Bill, set up the Yukon stove in the boat. Old dad +ain’t as young as the rest of us, and for the rest of this +voyage he’s going to have a fire on board to sit +by.”</p> +<p>All of which came to pass; and the boat, in the grip of the +current, like a river steamer with smoke rising from the two +joints of stove-pipe, grounded on shoals, hung up on split +currents, and charged rapids and canyons, as it drove deeper into +the Northland winter. The Big and Little Salmon rivers were +throwing mush-ice into the main river as they passed, and, below +the riffles, anchor-ice arose from the river bottom and coated +the surface with crystal scum. Night and day the rim-ice +grew, till, in quiet places, it extended out a hundred yards from +shore. And Old Tarwater, with all his clothes on, sat by +the stove and kept the fire going. Night and day, not +daring to stop for fear of the imminent freeze-up, they dared to +run, an increasing mushiness of ice running with them.</p> +<p>“What ho, old hearty?” Liverpool would call out at +times.</p> +<p>“Cheer O,” Old Tarwater had learned to +respond.</p> +<p>“What can I ever do for you, son, in payment?” +Tarwater, stoking the fire, would sometimes ask Liverpool, +beating now one released hand and now the other as he fought for +circulation where he steered in the freezing stern-sheets.</p> +<p>“Just break out that regular song of yours, old +Forty-Niner,” was the invariable reply.</p> +<p>And Tarwater would lift his voice in the cackling chant, as he +lifted it at the end, when the boat swung in through driving +cake-ice and moored to the Dawson City bank, and all waterfront +Dawson pricked its ears to hear the triumphant pæan:</p> +<p class="poetry">Like Argus of the ancient times,<br /> + We leave this modern Greece,<br /> +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,<br /> + To shear the Golden Fleece,</p> +<p>Charles did it, but he did it so discreetly that none of his +party, least of all the sailor, ever learned of it. He saw +two great open barges being filled up with men, and, on inquiry, +learned that these were grubless ones being rounded up and sent +down the Yukon by the Committee of Safety. The barges were +to be towed by the last little steamboat in Dawson, and the hope +was that Fort Yukon, where lay the stranded steamboats, would be +gained before the river froze. At any rate, no matter what +happened to them, Dawson would be relieved of their +grub-consuming presence. So to the Committee of Safety +Charles went, privily to drop a flea in its ear concerning +Tarwater’s grubless, moneyless, and aged condition. +Tarwater was one of the last gathered in, and when Young +Liverpool returned to the boat, from the bank he saw the barges +in a run of cake-ice, disappearing around the bend below +Moose-hide Mountain.</p> +<p>Running in cake-ice all the way, and several times escaping +jams in the Yukon Flats, the barges made their hundreds of miles +of progress farther into the north and froze up cheek by jowl +with the grub-fleet. Here, inside the Arctic Circle, Old +Tarwater settled down to pass the long winter. Several +hours’ work a day, chopping firewood for the steamboat +companies, sufficed to keep him in food. For the rest of +the time there was nothing to do but hibernate in his log +cabin.</p> +<p>Warmth, rest, and plenty to eat, cured his hacking cough and +put him in as good physical condition as was possible for his +advanced years. But, even before Christmas, the lack of +fresh vegetables caused scurvy to break out, and disappointed +adventurer after disappointed adventurer took to his bunk in +abject surrender to this culminating misfortune. Not so +Tarwater. Even before the first symptoms appeared on him, +he was putting into practice his one prescription, namely, +exercise. From the junk of the old trading post he +resurrected a number of rusty traps, and from one of the +steamboat captains he borrowed a rifle.</p> +<p>Thus equipped, he ceased from wood-chopping, and began to make +more than a mere living. Nor was he downhearted when the +scurvy broke out on his own body. Ever he ran his +trap-lines and sang his ancient chant. Nor could the +pessimist shake his surety of the three hundred thousand of +Alaskan gold he as going to shake out of the moss-roots.</p> +<p>“But this ain’t gold-country,” they told +him.</p> +<p>“Gold is where you find it, son, as I should know who +was mining before you was born, ’way back in +Forty-Nine,” was his reply. “What was Bonanza +Creek but a moose-pasture? No miner’d look at it; yet +they washed five-hundred-dollar pans and took out fifty million +dollars. Eldorado was just as bad. For all you know, +right under this here cabin, or right over the next hill, is +millions just waiting for a lucky one like me to come and shake +it out.”</p> +<p>At the end of January came his disaster. Some powerful +animal that he decided was a bob-cat, managing to get caught in +one of his smaller traps, dragged it away. A heavy +snow-fall put a stop midway to his pursuit, losing the trail for +him and losing himself. There were but several hours of +daylight each day between the twenty hours of intervening +darkness, and his efforts in the grey light and continually +falling snow succeeded only in losing him more thoroughly. +Fortunately, when winter snow falls in the Northland the +thermometer invariably rises; so, instead of the customary forty +and fifty and even sixty degrees below zero, the temperature +remained fifteen below. Also, he was warmly clad and had a +full matchbox. Further to mitigate his predicament, on the +fifth day he killed a wounded moose that weighed over half a +ton. Making his camp beside it on a spruce-bottom, he was +prepared to last out the winter, unless a searching party found +him or his scurvy grew worse.</p> +<p>But at the end of two weeks there had been no sign of search, +while his scurvy had undeniably grown worse. Against his +fire, banked from outer cold by a shelter-wall of spruce-boughs, +he crouched long hours in sleep and long hours in waking. +But the waking hours grew less, becoming semi-waking or +half-dreaming hours as the process of hibernation worked their +way with him. Slowly the sparkle point of consciousness and +identity that was John Tarwater sank, deeper and deeper, into the +profounds of his being that had been compounded ere man was man, +and while he was becoming man, when he, first of all animals, +regarded himself with an introspective eye and laid the +beginnings of morality in foundations of nightmare peopled by the +monsters of his own ethic-thwarted desires.</p> +<p>Like a man in fever, waking to intervals of consciousness, so +Old Tarwater awoke, cooked his moose-meat, and fed the fire; but +more and more time he spent in his torpor, unaware of what was +day-dream and what was sleep-dream in the content of his +unconsciousness. And here, in the unforgetable crypts of +man’s unwritten history, unthinkable and unrealizable, like +passages of nightmare or impossible adventures of lunacy, he +encountered the monsters created of man’s first morality +that ever since have vexed him into the spinning of fantasies to +elude them or do battle with them.</p> +<p>In short, weighted by his seventy years, in the vast and +silent loneliness of the North, Old Tarwater, as in the delirium +of drug or anæsthetic, recovered within himself, the +infantile mind of the child-man of the early world. It was +in the dusk of Death’s fluttery wings that Tarwater thus +crouched, and, like his remote forebear, the child-man, went to +myth-making, and sun-heroizing, himself hero-maker and the hero +in quest of the immemorable treasure difficult of attainment.</p> +<p>Either must he attain the treasure—for so ran the +inexorable logic of the shadow-land of the unconscious—or +else sink into the all-devouring sea, the blackness eater of the +light that swallowed to extinction the sun each night . . . the +sun that arose ever in rebirth next morning in the east, and that +had become to man man’s first symbol of immortality through +rebirth. All this, in the deeps of his unconsciousness (the +shadowy western land of descending light), was the near dusk of +Death down into which he slowly ebbed.</p> +<p>But how to escape this monster of the dark that from within +him slowly swallowed him? Too deep-sunk was he to dream of +escape or feel the prod of desire to escape. For him +reality had ceased. Nor from within the darkened chamber of +himself could reality recrudesce. His years were too heavy +upon him, the debility of disease and the lethargy and torpor of +the silence and the cold were too profound. Only from +without could reality impact upon him and reawake within him an +awareness of reality. Otherwise he would ooze down through +the shadow-realm of the unconscious into the all-darkness of +extinction.</p> +<p>But it came, the smash of reality from without, crashing upon +his ear drums in a loud, explosive snort. For twenty days, +in a temperature that had never risen above fifty below, no +breath of wind had blown movement, no slightest sound had broken +the silence. Like the smoker on the opium couch refocusing +his eyes from the spacious walls of dream to the narrow confines +of the mean little room, so Old Tarwater stared vague-eyed before +him across his dying fire, at a huge moose that stared at him in +startlement, dragging a wounded leg, manifesting all signs of +extreme exhaustion; it, too, had been straying blindly in the +shadow-land, and had wakened to reality only just ere it stepped +into Tarwater’s fire.</p> +<p>He feebly slipped the large fur mitten lined with thickness of +wool from his right hand. Upon trial he found the trigger +finger too numb for movement. Carefully, slowly, through +long minutes, he worked the bare hand inside his blankets, up +under his fur <i>parka</i>, through the chest openings of his +shirts, and into the slightly warm hollow of his left +arm-pit. Long minutes passed ere the finger could move, +when, with equal slowness of caution, he gathered his rifle to +his shoulder and drew bead upon the great animal across the +fire.</p> +<p>At the shot, of the two shadow-wanderers, the one reeled +downward to the dark and the other reeled upward to the light, +swaying drunkenly on his scurvy-ravaged legs, shivering with +nervousness and cold, rubbing swimming eyes with shaking fingers, +and staring at the real world all about him that had returned to +him with such sickening suddenness. He shook himself +together, and realized that for long, how long he did not know, +he had bedded in the arms of Death. He spat, with definite +intention, heard the spittle crackle in the frost, and judged it +must be below and far below sixty below. In truth, that day +at Fort Yukon, the spirit thermometer registered seventy-five +degrees below zero, which, since freezing-point is thirty-two +above, was equivalent to one hundred and seven degrees of +frost.</p> +<p>Slowly Tarwater’s brain reasoned to action. Here, +in the vast alone, dwelt Death. Here had come two wounded +moose. With the clearing of the sky after the great cold +came on, he had located his bearings, and he knew that both +wounded moose had trailed to him from the east. Therefore, +in the east, were men—whites or Indians he could not tell, +but at any rate men who might stand by him in his need and help +moor him to reality above the sea of dark.</p> +<p>He moved slowly, but he moved in reality, girding himself with +rifle, ammunition, matches, and a pack of twenty pounds of +moose-meat. Then, an Argus rejuvenated, albeit lame of both +legs and tottery, he turned his back on the perilous west and +limped into the sun-arising, re-birthing east. . . .</p> +<p>Days later—how many days later he was never to +know—dreaming dreams and seeing visions, cackling his old +gold-chant of Forty-Nine, like one drowning and swimming feebly +to keep his consciousness above the engulfing dark, he came out +upon the snow-slope to a canyon and saw below smoke rising and +men who ceased from work to gaze at him. He tottered down +the hill to them, still singing; and when he ceased from lack of +breath they called him variously: Santa Claus, Old Christmas, +Whiskers, the Last of the Mohicans, and Father Christmas. +And when he stood among them he stood very still, without speech, +while great tears welled out of his eyes. He cried +silently, a long time, till, as if suddenly bethinking himself, +he sat down in the snow with much creaking and crackling of his +joints, and from this low vantage point toppled sidewise and +fainted calmly and easily away.</p> +<p>In less than a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the +housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men +of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, +tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the +Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike Strike. +The news he brought them was their first word of it. They +lived on an almost straight-meat diet of moose, caribou, and +smoked salmon, eked out with wild berries and somewhat succulent +wild roots they had stocked up with in the summer. They had +forgotten the taste of coffee, made fire with a burning glass, +carried live fire-sticks with them wherever they travelled, and +in their pipes smoked dry leaves that bit the tongue and were +pungent to the nostrils.</p> +<p>Three years before, they had prospected from the head-reaches +of the Koyokuk northward and clear across to the mouth of the +Mackenzie on the Arctic Ocean. Here, on the whaleships, +they had beheld their last white men and equipped themselves with +the last white man’s grub, consisting principally of salt +and smoking tobacco. Striking south and west on the long +traverse to the junction of the Yukon and Porcupine at Fort +Yukon, they had found gold on this creek and remained over to +work the ground.</p> +<p>They hailed the advent of Tarwater with joy, never tired of +listening to his tales of Forty-Nine, and rechristened him Old +Hero. Also, with tea made from spruce needles, with +concoctions brewed from the inner willow bark, and with sour and +bitter roots and bulbs from the ground, they dosed his scurvy out +of him, so that he ceased limping and began to lay on flesh over +his bony framework. Further, they saw no reason at all why +he should not gather a rich treasure of gold from the ground.</p> +<p>“Don’t know about all of three hundred +thousand,” they told him one morning, at breakfast, ere +they departed to their work, “but how’d a hundred +thousand do, Old Hero? That’s what we figure a claim +is worth, the ground being badly spotted, and we’ve already +staked your location notices.”</p> +<p>“Well, boys,” Old Tarwater answered, “and +thanking you kindly, all I can say is that a hundred thousand +will do nicely, and very nicely, for a starter. Of course, +I ain’t goin’ to stop till I get the full three +hundred thousand. That’s what I come into the country +for.”</p> +<p>They laughed and applauded his ambition and reckoned +they’d have to hunt a richer creek for him. And Old +Hero reckoned that as the spring came on and he grew spryer, +he’d have to get out and do a little snooping around +himself.</p> +<p>“For all anybody knows,” he said, pointing to a +hillside across the creek bottom, “the moss under the snow +there may be plumb rooted in nugget gold.”</p> +<p>He said no more, but as the sun rose higher and the days grew +longer and warmer, he gazed often across the creek at the +definite bench-formation half way up the hill. And, one +day, when the thaw was in full swing, he crossed the stream and +climbed to the bench. Exposed patches of ground had already +thawed an inch deep. On one such patch he stopped, gathered +a bunch of moss in his big gnarled hands, and ripped it out by +the roots. The sun smouldered on dully glistening +yellow. He shook the handful of moss, and coarse nuggets, +like gravel, fell to the ground. It was the Golden Fleece +ready for the shearing.</p> +<p>Not entirely unremembered in Alaskan annals is the summer +stampede of 1898 from Fort Yukon to the bench diggings of +Tarwater Hill. And when Tarwater sold his holdings to the +Bowdie interests for a sheer half-million and faced for +California, he rode a mule over a new-cut trail, with convenient +road houses along the way, clear to the steamboat landing at Fort +Yukon.</p> +<p>At the first meal on the ocean-going steamship out of St. +Michaels, a waiter, greyish-haired, pain-ravaged of face, +scurvy-twisted of body, served him. Old Tarwater was +compelled to look him over twice in order to make certain he was +Charles Crayton.</p> +<p>“Got it bad, eh, son?” Tarwater queried.</p> +<p>“Just my luck,” the other complained, after +recognition and greeting. “Only one of the party that +the scurvy attacked. I’ve been through hell. +The other three are all at work and healthy, getting grub-stake +to prospect up White River this winter. Anson’s +earning twenty-five a day at carpentering, Liverpool getting +twenty logging for the saw-mill, and Big Bill’s getting +forty a day as chief sawyer. I tried my best, and if it +hadn’t been for scurvy . . .”</p> +<p>“Sure, son, you done your best, which ain’t much, +you being naturally irritable and hard from too much +business. Now I’ll tell you what. You +ain’t fit to work crippled up this way. I’ll +pay your passage with the captain in kind remembrance of the +voyage you gave me, and you can lay up and take it easy the rest +of the trip. And what are your circumstances when you land +at San Francisco?”</p> +<p>Charles Crayton shrugged his shoulders.</p> +<p>“Tell you what,” Tarwater continued. +“There’s work on the ranch for you till you can start +business again.”</p> +<p>“I could manage your business for you—” +Charles began eagerly.</p> +<p>“No, siree,” Tarwater declared emphatically. +“But there’s always post-holes to dig, and cordwood +to chop, and the climate’s fine . . . ”</p> +<p>Tarwater arrived home a true prodigal grandfather for whom the +fatted calf was killed and ready. But first, ere he sat +down at table, he must stroll out and around. And sons and +daughters of his flesh and of the law needs must go with him +fulsomely eating out of the gnarled old hand that had half a +million to disburse. He led the way, and no opinion he +slyly uttered was preposterous or impossible enough to draw +dissent from his following. Pausing by the ruined water +wheel which he had built from the standing timber, his face +beamed as he gazed across the stretches of Tarwater Valley, and +on and up the far heights to the summit of Tarwater +Mountain—now all his again.</p> +<p>A thought came to him that made him avert his face and blow +his nose in order to hide the twinkle in his eyes. Still +attended by the entire family, he strolled on to the dilapidated +barn. He picked up an age-weathered single-tree from the +ground.</p> +<p>“William,” he said. “Remember that +little conversation we had just before I started to +Klondike? Sure, William, you remember. You told me I +was crazy. And I said my father’d have walloped the +tar out of me with a single-tree if I’d spoke to him that +way.”</p> +<p>“Aw, but that was only foolin’,” William +temporized.</p> +<p>William was a grizzled man of forty-five, and his wife and +grown sons stood in the group, curiously watching Grandfather +Tarwater take off his coat and hand it to Mary to hold.</p> +<p>“William—come here,” he commanded +imperatively.</p> +<p>No matter how reluctantly, William came.</p> +<p>“Just a taste, William, son, of what my father give me +often enough,” Old Tarwater crooned, as he laid on his +son’s back and shoulders with the single-tree. +“Observe, I ain’t hitting you on the head. My +father had a gosh-wollickin’ temper and never drew the line +at heads when he went after tar.—Don’t jerk your +elbows back that way! You’re likely to get a crack on +one by accident. And just tell me one thing, William, son: +is there nary notion in your head that I’m +crazy?”</p> +<p>“No!” William yelped out in pain, as he danced +about. “You ain’t crazy, father of course you +ain’t crazy!”</p> +<p>“You said it,” Old Tarwater remarked +sententiously, tossing the single-tree aside and starting to +struggle into his coat. “Now let’s all go in +and eat.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END.</p> +<p>Glen Ellen, California,<br /> + <i>September</i> 14, 1916.</p> +<h2><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>THE +PRINCESS</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">fire</span> burned cheerfully in the +jungle camp, and beside the fire lolled a cheerful-seeming though +horrible-appearing man. This was a hobo jungle, pitched in +a thin strip of woods that lay between a railroad embankment and +the bank of a river. But no hobo was the man. So +deep-sunk was he in the social abyss that a proper hobo would not +sit by the same fire with him. A gay-cat, who is an +ignorant new-comer on the “Road,” might sit with such +as he, but only long enough to learn better. Even low down +bindle-stiffs and stew-bums, after a once-over, would have passed +this man by. A genuine hobo, a couple of punks, or a bunch +of tender-yeared road-kids might have gone through his rags for +any stray pennies or nickels and kicked him out into the +darkness. Even an alki-stiff would have reckoned himself +immeasurably superior.</p> +<p>For this man was that hybrid of tramp-land, an alki-stiff that +has degenerated into a stew-bum, with so little self-respect that +he will never “boil-up,” and with so little pride +that he will eat out of a garbage can. He was truly +horrible-appearing. He might have been sixty years of age; +he might have been ninety. His garments might have been +discarded by a rag-picker. Beside him, an unrolled bundle +showed itself as consisting of a ragged overcoat and containing +an empty and smoke-blackened tomato can, an empty and battered +condensed milk can, some dog-meat partly wrapped in brown paper +and evidently begged from some butcher-shop, a carrot that had +been run over in the street by a wagon-wheel, three +greenish-cankered and decayed potatoes, and a sugar-bun with a +mouthful bitten from it and rescued from the gutter, as was made +patent by the gutter-filth that still encrusted it.</p> +<p>A prodigious growth of whiskers, greyish-dirty and untrimmed +for years, sprouted from his face. This hirsute growth +should have been white, but the season was summer and it had not +been exposed to a rain-shower for some time. What was +visible of the face looked as if at some period it had stopped a +hand-grenade. The nose was so variously malformed in its +healed brokenness that there was no bridge, while one nostril, +the size of a pea, opened downward, and the other, the size of a +robin’s egg, tilted upward to the sky. One eye, of +normal size, dim-brown and misty, bulged to the verge of popping +out, and as if from senility wept copiously and +continuously. The other eye, scarcely larger than a +squirrel’s and as uncannily bright, twisted up obliquely +into the hairy scar of a bone-crushed eyebrow. And he had +but one arm.</p> +<p>Yet was he cheerful. On his face, in mild degree, was +depicted sensuous pleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs +with his one hand. He pawed over his food-scraps, debated, +then drew a twelve-ounce druggist bottle from his inside +coat-pocket. The bottle was full of a colourless liquid, +the contemplation of which made his little eye burn brighter and +quickened his movements. Picking up the tomato can, he +arose, went down the short path to the river, and returned with +the can filled with not-nice river water. In the condensed +milk can he mixed one part of water with two parts of fluid from +the bottle. This colourless fluid was druggist’s +alcohol, and as such is known in tramp-land as +“alki.”</p> +<p>Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad +embankment, alarmed him ere he could drink. Placing the can +carefully upon the ground between his legs, he covered it with +his hat and waited anxiously whatever impended.</p> +<p>Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as +he. The new-comer, who might have been fifty, and might +have been sixty, was grotesquely fat. He bulged +everywhere. He was composed of bulges. His bulbous +nose was the size and shape of a turnip. His eyelids bulged +and his blue eyes bulged in competition with them. In many +places the seams of his garments had parted across the bulges of +body. His calves grew into his feet, for the broken elastic +sides of his Congress gaiters were swelled full with the fat of +him. One arm only he sported, from the shoulder of which +was suspended a small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry +on the outer covering from the last place he had pitched his +doss. He advanced with tentative caution, made sure of the +harmlessness of the man beside the fire, and joined him.</p> +<p>“Hello, grandpa,” the new-comer greeted, then +paused to stare at the other’s flaring, sky-open +nostril. “Say, Whiskers, how’d ye keep the +night dew out of that nose o’ yourn?”</p> +<p>Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat +into the fire in token that he was not pleased by the +question.</p> +<p>“For the love of Mike,” the fat man chuckled, +“if you got caught out in a rainstorm without an umbrella +you’d sure drown, wouldn’t you?”</p> +<p>“Can it, Fatty, can it,” Whiskers muttered +wearily. “They ain’t nothin’ new in that +line of chatter. Even the bulls hand it out to +me.”</p> +<p>“But you can still drink, I hope”; Fatty at the +same time mollified and invited, with his one hand deftly pulling +the slip-knots that fastened his bundle.</p> +<p>From within the bundle he brought to light a twelve-ounce +bottle of alki. Footsteps coming down the embankment +alarmed him, and he hid the bottle under his hat on the ground +between his legs.</p> +<p>But the next comer proved to be not merely one of their own +ilk, but likewise to have only one arm. So forbidding of +aspect was he that greetings consisted of no more than +grunts. Huge-boned, tall, gaunt to cadaverousness, his face +a dirty death’s head, he was as repellent a nightmare of +old age as ever Doré imagined. His toothless, +thin-lipped mouth was a cruel and bitter slash under a great +curved nose that almost met the chin and that was like a +buzzard’s beak. His one hand, lean and crooked, was a +talon. The beady grey eyes, unblinking and unwavering, were +bitter as death, as bleak as absolute zero and as +merciless. His presence was a chill, and Whiskers and Fatty +instinctively drew together for protection against the unguessed +threat of him. Watching his chance, privily, Whiskers +snuggled a chunk of rock several pounds in weigh close to his +hand if need for action should arise. Fatty duplicated the +performance.</p> +<p>Then both sat licking their lips, guiltily embarrassed, while +the unblinking eyes of the terrible one bored into them, now into +one, now into another, and then down at the rock-chunks of their +preparedness.</p> +<p>“Huh!” sneered the terrible one, with such +dreadfulness of menace as to cause Whiskers and Fatty +involuntarily to close their hands down on their cave-man’s +weapons.</p> +<p>“Huh!” the other repeated, reaching his one talon +into his side coat pocket with swift definiteness. “A +hell of a chance you two cheap bums ’d have with +me.”</p> +<p>The talon emerged, clutching ready for action a six-pound iron +quoit.</p> +<p>“We ain’t lookin’ for trouble, Slim,” +Fatty quavered.</p> +<p>“Who in hell are you to call me +‘Slim’?” came the snarling answer.</p> +<p>“Me? I’m just Fatty, an’ seein’ +’s I never seen you before—”</p> +<p>“An’ I suppose that’s Whiskers, there, with +the gay an’ festive lamp tan-going into his eyebrow +an’ the God-forgive-us nose joy-riding all over his +mug?”</p> +<p>“It’ll do, it’ll do,” Whiskers +muttered uncomfortably. “One monica’s as good +as another, I find, at my time of life. And everybody hands +it out to me anyway. And I need an umbrella when it rains +to keep from getting drowned, an’ all the rest of +it.”</p> +<p>“I ain’t used to company—don’t like +it,” Slim growled. “So if you guys want to +stick around, mind your step, that’s all, mind your +step.”</p> +<p>He fished from his pocket a cigar stump, self-evidently shot +from the gutter, and prepared to put it in his mouth to +chew. Then he changed his mind, glared at his companions +savagely, and unrolled his bundle. Appeared in his hand a +druggist’s bottle of alki.</p> +<p>“Well,” he snarled, “I suppose I gotta give +you cheap skates a drink when I ain’t got more’n +enough for a good petrification for myself.”</p> +<p>Almost a softening flicker of light was imminent in his +withered face as he beheld the others proudly lift their hats and +exhibit their own supplies.</p> +<p>“Here’s some water for the mixin’s,” +Whiskers said, proffering his tomato-can of river slush. +“Stockyards just above,” he added +apologetically. “But they say—”</p> +<p>“Huh!” Slim snapped short, mixing the drink. +“I’ve drunk worse’n stockyards in my +time.”</p> +<p>Yet when all was ready, cans of alki in their solitary hands, +the three things that had once been men hesitated, as if of old +habit, and next betrayed shame as if at self-exposure.</p> +<p>Whiskers was the first to brazen it.</p> +<p>“I’ve sat in at many a finer drinking,” he +bragged.</p> +<p>“With the pewter,” Slim sneered.</p> +<p>“With the silver,” Whiskers corrected.</p> +<p>Slim turned a scorching eye-interrogation on Fatty.</p> +<p>Fatty nodded.</p> +<p>“Beneath the salt,” said Slim.</p> +<p>“Above it,” came Fatty’s correction. +“I was born above it, and I’ve never travelled second +class. First or steerage, but no intermediate in +mine.”</p> +<p>“Yourself?” Whiskers queried of Slim.</p> +<p>“In broken glass to the Queen, God bless her,” +Slim answered, solemnly, without snarl or sneer.</p> +<p>“In the pantry?” Fatty insinuated.</p> +<p>Simultaneously Slim reached for his quoit, and Whiskers and +Fatty for their rocks.</p> +<p>“Now don’t let’s get feverish,” Fatty +said, dropping his own weapon. “We aren’t +scum. We’re gentlemen. Let’s drink like +gentlemen.”</p> +<p>“Let it be a real drinking,” Whiskers +approved.</p> +<p>“Let’s get petrified,” Slim agreed. +“Many a distillery’s flowed under the bridge since we +were gentlemen; but let’s forget the long road we’ve +travelled since, and hit our doss in the good old fashion in +which every gentleman went to bed when we were young.”</p> +<p>“My father done it—did it,” Fatty concurred +and corrected, as old recollections exploded long-sealed +brain-cells of connotation and correct usage.</p> +<p>The other two nodded a descent from similar fathers, and +elevated their tin cans of alcohol.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>By the time each had finished his own bottle and from his rags +fished forth a second one, their brains were well-mellowed and +a-glow, although they had not got around to telling their real +names. But their English had improved. They spoke it +correctly, while the argo of tramp-land ceased from their +lips.</p> +<p>“It’s my constitution,” Whiskers was +explaining. “Very few men could go through what I +have and live to tell the tale. And I never took any care +of myself. If what the moralists and the physiologists say +were true, I’d have been dead long ago. And +it’s the same with you two. Look at us, at our +advanced years, carousing as the young ones don’t dare, +sleeping out in the open on the ground, never sheltered from +frost nor rain nor storm, never afraid of pneumonia or rheumatism +that would put half the young ones on their backs in +hospital.”</p> +<p>He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the +tale.</p> +<p>“And we’ve had our fun,” he boasted, +“and speaking of sweethearts and all,” he cribbed +from Kipling, “‘We’ve rogued and we’ve +ranged—’”</p> +<p>“‘In our time,’” Slim completed the +crib for him.</p> +<p>“I should say so, I should say so,” Fatty +confirmed. “And been loved by princesses—at +least I have.”</p> +<p>“Go on and tell us about it,” Whiskers +urged. “The night’s young, and why +shouldn’t we remember back to the roofs of +kings?”</p> +<p>Nothing loth, Fatty cleared his throat for the recital and +cast about in his mind for the best way to begin.</p> +<p>“It must be known that I came of good family. +Percival Delaney, let us say, yes, let us say Percival Delaney, +was not unknown at Oxford once upon a time—not for +scholarship, I am frank to admit; but the gay young dogs of that +day, if any be yet alive, would remember him—”</p> +<p>“My people came over with the Conqueror,” Whiskers +interrupted, extending his hand to Fatty’s in +acknowledgment of the introduction.</p> +<p>“What name?” Fatty queried. “I did not +seem quite to catch it.”</p> +<p>“Delarouse, Chauncey Delarouse. The name will +serve as well as any.”</p> +<p>Both completed the handshake and glanced to Slim.</p> +<p>“Oh, well, while we’re about it . . . +” Fatty urged.</p> +<p>“Bruce Cadogan Cavendish,” Slim growled +morosely. “Go on, Percival, with your princesses and +the roofs of kings.”</p> +<p>“Oh, I was a rare young devil,” Percival obliged, +“after I played ducks and drakes at home and sported out +over the world. And I was some figure of a man before I +lost my shape—polo, steeple-chasing, boxing. I won +medals at buckjumping in Australia, and I held more than several +swimming records from the quarter of a mile up. Women +turned their heads to look when I went by. The women! +God bless them!”</p> +<p>And Fatty, alias Percival Delaney, a grotesque of manhood, put +his bulgy hand to his puffed lips and kissed audibly into the +starry vault of the sky.</p> +<p>“And the Princess!” he resumed, with another kiss +to the stars. “She was as fine a figure of a woman as +I was a man, as high-spirited and courageous, as reckless and +dare-devilish. Lord, Lord, in the water she was a mermaid, +a sea-goddess. And when it came to blood, beside her I was +parvenu. Her royal line traced back into the mists of +antiquity.</p> +<p>“She was not a daughter of a fair-skinned folk. +Tawny golden was she, with golden-brown eyes, and her hair that +fell to her knees was blue-black and straight, with just the +curly tendrilly tendency that gives to woman’s hair its +charm. Oh, there were no kinks in it, any more than were +there kinks in the hair of her entire genealogy. For she +was Polynesian, glowing, golden, lovely and lovable, royal +Polynesian.”</p> +<p>Again he paused to kiss his hand to the memory of her, and +Slim, alias Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, took advantage to +interject:</p> +<p>“Huh! Maybe you didn’t shine in scholarship, +but at least you gleaned a vocabulary out of Oxford.”</p> +<p>“And in the South Seas garnered a better vocabulary from +the lexicon of Love,” Percival was quick on the uptake.</p> +<p>“It was the island of Talofa,” he went on, +“meaning love, the Isle of Love, and it was her +island. Her father, the king, an old man, sat on his mats +with paralysed knees and drank squareface gin all day and most of +the night, out of grief, sheer grief. She, my princess, was +the only issue, her brother having been lost in their double +canoe in a hurricane while coming up from a voyage to +Samoa. And among the Polynesians the royal women have equal +right with the men to rule. In fact, they trace their +genealogies always by the female line.”</p> +<p>To this both Chauncey Delarouse and Bruce Cadogan Cavendish +nodded prompt affirmation.</p> +<p>“Ah,” said Percival, “I perceive you both +know the South Seas, wherefore, without undue expenditure of +verbiage on my part, I am assured that you will appreciate the +charm of my princess, the Princess Tui-nui of Talofa, the +Princess of the Isle of Love.”</p> +<p>He kissed his hand to her, sipped from his condensed milk can +a man-size drink of druggist’s alcohol, and to her again +kissed her hand.</p> +<p>“But she was coy, and ever she fluttered near to me but +never near enough. When my arm went out to her to girdle +her, presto, she was not there. I knew, as never before, +nor since, the thousand dear and delightful anguishes of love +frustrated but ever resilient and beckoned on by the very goddess +of love.”</p> +<p>“Some vocabulary,” Bruce Cadogan Cavendish +muttered in aside to Chauncey Delarouse. But Percival +Delaney was not to be deterred. He kissed his pudgy hand +aloft into the night and held warmly on.</p> +<p>“No fond agonies of rapture deferred that were not +lavished upon me by my dear Princess, herself ever a luring +delight of promise flitting just beyond my reach. Every +sweet lover’s inferno unguessed of by Dante she led me +through. Ah! Those swooning tropic nights, under our +palm trees, the distant surf a langourous murmur as from some +vast sea shell of mystery, when she, my Princess, all but melted +to my yearning, and with her laughter, that was as silver strings +by buds and blossoms smitten, all but made lunacy of my +lover’s ardency.</p> +<p>“It was by my wrestling with the champions of Talofa +that I first interested her. It was by my prowess at +swimming that I awoke her. And it was by a certain swimming +deed that I won from her more than coquettish smiles and shy +timidities of feigned retreat.</p> +<p>“We were squidding that day, out on the reef—you +know how, undoubtedly, diving down the face of the wall of the +reef, five fathoms, ten fathoms, any depth within reason, and +shoving our squid-sticks into the likely holes and crannies of +the coral where squid might be lairing. With the +squid-stick, bluntly sharp at both ends, perhaps a foot long, and +held crosswise in the hand, the trick was to gouge any lazying +squid until he closed his tentacles around fist, stick and +arm.—Then you had him, and came to the surface with him, +and hit him in the head which is in the centre of him, and peeled +him off into the waiting canoe. . . . And to think I used to do +that!”</p> +<p>Percival Delaney paused a moment, a glimmer of awe on his +rotund face, as he contemplated the mighty picture of his +youth.</p> +<p>“Why, I’ve pulled out a squid with tentacles eight +feet long, and done it under fifty feet of water. I could +stay down four minutes. I’ve gone down, with a +coral-rock to sink me, in a hundred and ten feet to clear a +fouled anchor. And I could back-dive with a once-over and +go in feet-first from eighty feet above the +surface—”</p> +<p>“Quit it, delete it, cease it,” Chauncey Delarouse +admonished testily. “Tell of the Princess. +That’s what makes old blood leap again. Almost can I +see her. Was she wonderful?”</p> +<p>Percival Delaney kissed unutterable affirmation.</p> +<p>“I have said she was a mermaid. She was. I +know she swam thirty-six hours before being rescued, after her +schooner was capsized in a double-squall. I have seen her +do ninety feet and bring up pearl shell in each hand. She +was wonderful. As a woman she was ravishing, sublime. +I have said she was a sea-goddess. She was. Oh, for a +Phidias or a Praxiteles to have made the wonder of her body +immortal!</p> +<p>“And that day, out for squid on the reef, I was almost +sick for her. Mad—I know I was mad for her. We +would step over the side from the big canoe, and swim down, side +by side, into the delicious depths of cool and colour, and she +would look at me, as we swam, and with her eyes tantalize me to +further madness. And at last, down, far down, I lost myself +and reached for her. She eluded me like the mermaid she +was, and I saw the laughter on her face as she fled. She +fled deeper, and I knew I had her for I was between her and the +surface; but in the muck coral sand of the bottom she made a +churning with her squid stick. It was the old trick to +escape a shark. And she worked it on me, rolling the water +so that I could not see her. And when I came up, she was +there ahead of me, clinging to the side of the canoe and +laughing.</p> +<p>“Almost I would not be denied. But not for nothing +was she a princess. She rested her hand on my arm and +compelled me to listen. We should play a game, she said, +enter into a competition for which should get the more squid, the +biggest squid, and the smallest squid. Since the wagers +were kisses, you can well imagine I went down on the first next +dive with soul aflame.</p> +<p>“I got no squid. Never again in all my life have I +dived for squid. Perhaps we were five fathoms down and +exploring the face of the reefwall for lurking places of our +prey, when it happened. I had found a likely lair and just +proved it empty, when I felt or sensed the nearness of something +inimical. I turned. There it was, alongside of me, +and no mere fish-shark. Fully a dozen feet in length, with +the unmistakable phosphorescent cat’s eye gleaming like a +drowning star, I knew it for what it was, a tiger shark.</p> +<p>“Not ten feet to the right, probing a coral fissure with +her squid stick, was the Princess, and the tiger shark was +heading directly for her. My totality of thought was +precipitated to consciousness in a single all-embracing +flash. The man-eater must be deflected from her, and what +was I, except a mad lover who would gladly fight and die, or more +gladly fight and live, for his beloved? Remember, she was +the woman wonderful, and I was aflame for her.</p> +<p>“Knowing fully the peril of my act, I thrust the +blunt-sharp end of my squid-stick into the side of the shark, +much as one would attract a passing acquaintance with a +thumb-nudge in the ribs. And the man-eater turned on +me. You know the South Seas, and you know that the tiger +shark, like the bald-face grizzly of Alaska, never gives +trail. The combat, fathoms deep under the sea, was +on—if by combat may be named such a one-sided struggle.</p> +<p>“The Princess unaware, caught her squid and rose to the +surface. The man-eater rushed me. I fended him off +with both hands on his nose above his thousand-toothed open +mouth, so that he backed me against the sharp coral. The +scars are there to this day. Whenever I tried to rise, he +rushed me, and I could not remain down there indefinitely without +air. Whenever he rushed me, I fended him off with my hands +on his nose. And I would have escaped unharmed, except for +the slip of my right hand. Into his mouth it went to the +elbow. His jaws closed, just below the elbow. You +know how a shark’s teeth are. Once in they cannot be +released. They must go through to complete the bite, but +they cannot go through heavy bone. So, from just below the +elbow he stripped the bone clean to the articulation of the +wrist-joint, where his teeth met and my good right hand became +his for an appetizer.</p> +<p>“But while he was doing this, I drove the thumb of my +left hand, to the hilt into his eye-orifice and popped out his +eye. This did not stop him. The meat had maddened +him. He pursued the gushing stump of my wrist. Half a +dozen times I fended with my intact arm. Then he got the +poor mangled arm again, closed down, and stripped the meat off +the bone from the shoulder down to the elbow-joint, where his +teeth met and he was free of his second mouthful of me. +But, at the same time, with my good arm, I thumbed out his +remaining eye.”</p> +<p>Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed.</p> +<p>“From above, those in the canoe had beheld the entire +happening and were loud in praise of my deed. To this day +they still sing the song of me, and tell the tale of me. +And the Princess.” His pause was brief but +significant. “The Princess married me. . . . Oh, +well-a-day and lack-a-day, the whirligig of time and fortune, the +topsyturviness of luck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished +heel descending a French gunboat, a conquered island kingdom of +Oceania, to-day ruled over by a peasant-born, unlettered, +colonial gendarme, and . . . ”</p> +<p>He completed the sentence and the tale by burying his face in +the down-tilted mouth of the condensed milk can and by gurgling +the corrosive drink down his throat in thirsty gulps.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise +Whiskers, took up the tale.</p> +<p>“Far be it from me to boast of no matter what place of +birth I have descended from to sit here by this fire with such as +. . . as chance along. I may say, however, that I, too, was +once a considerable figure of a man. I may add that it was +horses, plus parents too indulgent, that exiled me out over the +world. I may still wonder to query: ‘Are +Dover’s cliffs still white?’”</p> +<p>“Huh!” Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered. +“Next you’ll be asking: ‘How fares the old Lord +Warden?’”</p> +<p>“And I took every liberty, and vainly, with a +constitution that was iron,” Whiskers hurried on. +“Here I am with my three score and ten behind me, and back +on that long road have I buried many a youngster that was as rare +and devilish as I, but who could not stand the pace. I knew +the worst too young. And now I know the worst too +old. But there was a time, alas all too short, when I knew, +the best.</p> +<p>“I, too, kiss my hand to the Princess of my heart. +She was truly a princess, Polynesian, a thousand miles and more +away to the eastward and the south from Delaney’s Isle of +Love. The natives of all around that part of the South Seas +called it the Jolly Island. Their own name, the name of the +people who dwelt thereon, translates delicately and justly into +‘The Island of Tranquil Laughter.’ On the chart +you will find the erroneous name given to it by the old +navigators to be Manatomana. The seafaring gentry the round +ocean around called it the Adamless Eden. And the +missionaries for a time called it God’s Witness—so +great had been their success at converting the inhabitants. +As for me, it was, and ever shall be, Paradise.</p> +<p>“It was <i>my</i> Paradise, for it was there my Princess +lived. John Asibeli Tungi was king. He was +full-blooded native, descended out of the oldest and highest +chief-stock that traced back to Manua which was the primeval sea +home of the race. Also was he known as John the +Apostate. He lived a long life and apostasized +frequently. First converted by the Catholics, he threw down +the idols, broke the tabus, cleaned out the native priests, +executed a few of the recalcitrant ones, and sent all his +subjects to church.</p> +<p>“Next he fell for the traders, who developed in him a +champagne thirst, and he shipped off the Catholic priests to New +Zealand. The great majority of his subjects always followed +his lead, and, having no religion at all, ensued the time of the +Great Licentiousness, when by all South Seas missionaries his +island, in sermons, was spoken of as Babylon.</p> +<p>“But the traders ruined his digestion with too much +champagne, and after several years he fell for the Gospel +according to the Methodists, sent his people to church, and +cleaned up the beach and the trading crowd so spick and span that +he would not permit them to smoke a pipe out of doors on Sunday, +and, fined one of the chief traders one hundred gold sovereigns +for washing his schooner’s decks on the Sabbath morn.</p> +<p>“That was the time of the Blue Laws, but perhaps it was +too rigorous for King John. Off he packed the Methodists, +one fine day, exiled several hundred of his people to Samoa for +sticking to Methodism, and, of all things, invented a religion of +his own, with himself the figure-head of worship. In this +he was aided and abetted by a renegade Fijian. This lasted +five years. Maybe he grew tired of being God, or maybe it +was because the Fijian decamped with the six thousand pounds in +the royal treasury; but at any rate the Second Reformed Wesleyans +got him, and his entire kingdom went Wesleyan. The pioneer +Wesleyan missionary he actually made prime minister, and what he +did to the trading crowd was a caution. Why, in the end, +King John’s kingdom was blacklisted and boycotted by the +traders till the revenues diminished to zero, the people went +bankrupt, and King John couldn’t borrow a shilling from his +most powerful chief.</p> +<p>“By this time he was getting old, and philosophic, and +tolerant, and spiritually atavistic. He fired out the +Second Reformed Wesleyans, called back the exiles from Samoa, +invited in the traders, held a general love-feast, took the lid +off, proclaimed religious liberty and high tariff, and as for +himself went back to the worship of his ancestors, dug up the +idols, reinstated a few octogenarian priests, and observed the +tabus. All of which was lovely for the traders, and +prosperity reigned. Of course, most of his subjects +followed him back into heathen worship. Yet quite a +sprinkling of Catholics, Methodists and Wesleyans remained true +to their beliefs and managed to maintain a few squalid, one-horse +churches. But King John didn’t mind, any more than +did he the high times of the traders along the beach. +Everything went, so long as the taxes were paid. Even when +his wife, Queen Mamare, elected to become a Baptist, and invited +in a little, weazened, sweet-spirited, club-footed Baptist +missionary, King John did not object. All he insisted on +was that these wandering religions should be self-supporting and +not feed a pennyworth’s out of the royal coffers.</p> +<p>“And now the threads of my recital draw together in the +paragon of female exquisiteness—my Princess.”</p> +<p>Whiskers paused, placed carefully on the ground his half-full +condensed milk can with which he had been absently toying, and +kissed the fingers of his one hand audibly aloft.</p> +<p>“She was the daughter of Queen Mamare. She was the +woman wonderful. Unlike the Diana type of Polynesian, she +was almost ethereal. She <i>was</i> ethereal, sublimated by +purity, as shy and modest as a violet, as fragile-slender as a +lily, and her eyes, luminous and shrinking tender, were as +asphodels on the sward of heaven. She was all flower, and +fire, and dew. Hers was the sweetness of the mountain rose, +the gentleness of the dove. And she was all of good as well +as all of beauty, devout in her belief in her mother’s +worship, which was the worship introduced by Ebenezer Naismith, +the Baptist missionary. But make no mistake. She was +no mere sweet spirit ripe for the bosom of Abraham. All of +exquisite deliciousness of woman was she. She was woman, +all woman, to the last sensitive quivering atom of her—</p> +<p>“And I? I was a wastrel of the beach. The +wildest was not so wild as I, the keenest not so keen, of all +that wild, keen trading crowd. It was esteemed I played the +stiffest hand of poker. I was the only living man, white, +brown, or black, who dared run the Kuni-kuni Passage in the +dark. And on a black night I have done it under reefs in a +gale of wind. Well, anyway, I had a bad reputation on a +beach where there were no good reputations. I was reckless, +dangerous, stopped at nothing in fight or frolic; and the trading +captains used to bring boiler-sheeted prodigies from the vilest +holes of the South Pacific to try and drink me under the +table. I remember one, a calcined Scotchman from the New +Hebrides. It was a great drinking. He died of it, and +we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and +sent him back to his own place. A sample, a fair sample, of +the antic tricks we cut up on the beach of Manatomana.</p> +<p>“And of all unthinkable things, what did I up and do, +one day, but look upon the Princess to find her good and to fall +in love with her. It was the real thing. I was as mad +as a March hare, and after that I got only madder. I +reformed. Think of that! Think of what a slip of a +woman can do to a busy, roving man!—By the Lord Harry, +it’s true. I reformed. I went to church. +Hear me! I became converted. I cleared my soul before +God and kept my hands—I had two then—off the ribald +crew of the beach when it laughed at this, my latest antic, and +wanted to know what was my game.</p> +<p>“I tell you I reformed, and gave myself in passion and +sincerity to a religious experience that has made me tolerant of +all religion ever since. I discharged my best captain for +immorality. So did I my cook, and a better never boiled +water in Manatomana. For the same reason I discharged my +chief clerk. And for the first time in the history of +trading my schooners to the westward carried Bibles in their +stock. I built a little anchorite bungalow up town on a +mango-lined street squarely alongside the little house occupied +by Ebenezer Naismith. And I made him my pal and comrade, +and found him a veritable honey pot of sweetnesses and +goodnesses. And he was a man, through and through a +man. And he died long after like a man, which I would like +to tell you about, were the tale of it not so deservedly +long.</p> +<p>“It was the Princess, more than the missionary, who was +responsible for my expressing my faith in works, and especially +in that crowning work, the New Church, Our Church, the +Queen-mother’s church.</p> +<p>“‘Our poor church,’ she said to me, one +night after prayer-meeting. I had been converted only a +fortnight. ‘It is so small its congregation can never +grow. And the roof leaks. And King John, my +hard-hearted father, will not contribute a penny. Yet he +has a big balance in the treasury. And Manatomana is not +poor. Much money is made and squandered, I know. I +hear the gossip of the wild ways of the beach. Less than a +month ago you lost more in one night, gambling at cards, than the +cost of the upkeep of our poor church for a year.’</p> +<p>“And I told her it was true, but that it was before I +had seen the light. (I’d had an infernal run of bad +luck.) I told her I had not tasted liquor since, nor turned +a card. I told her that the roof would be repaired at once, +by Christian carpenters selected by her from the +congregation. But she was filled with the thought of a +great revival that Ebenezer Naismith could preach—she was a +dear saint—and she spoke of a great church, saying:</p> +<p>“‘You are rich. You have many schooners, and +traders in far islands, and I have heard of a great contract you +have signed to recruit labour for the German plantations of +Upolu. They say, next to Sweitzer, you are the richest +trader here. I should love to see some use of all this +money placed to the glory of God. It would be a noble thing +to do, and I should be proud to know the man who would do +it.’</p> +<p>“I told her that Ebenezer Naismith would preach the +revival, and that I would build a church great enough in which to +house it.</p> +<p>“‘As big as the Catholic church?’ she +asked.</p> +<p>“This was the ruined cathedral, built at the time when +the entire population was converted, and it was a large order; +but I was afire with love, and I told her that the church I would +build would be even bigger.</p> +<p>“‘But it will take money,’ I +explained. ‘And it takes time to make +money.’</p> +<p>“‘You have much,’ she said. +‘Some say you have more money than my father, the King.</p> +<p>“‘I have more credit,’ I explained. +‘But you do not understand money. It takes money to +have credit. So, with the money I have, and the credit I +have, I will work to make more money and credit, and the church +shall be built.’</p> +<p>“Work! I was a surprise to myself. It is an +amazement, the amount of time a man finds on his hands after +he’s given up carousing, and gambling, and all the +time-eating diversions of the beach. And I didn’t +waste a second of all my new-found time. Instead I worked +it overtime. I did the work of half a dozen men. I +became a driver. My captains made faster runs than ever and +earned bigger bonuses, as did my supercargoes, who saw to it that +my schooners did not loaf and dawdle along the way. And I +saw to it that my supercargoes did see to it.</p> +<p>“And good! By the Lord Harry I was so good it +hurt. My conscience got so expansive and fine-strung it +lamed me across the shoulders to carry it around with me. +Why, I even went back over my accounts and paid Sweitzer fifty +quid I’d jiggered him out of in a deal in Fiji three years +before. And I compounded the interest as well.</p> +<p>“Work! I planted sugar cane—the first +commercial planting on Manatomana. I ran in cargoes of +kinky-heads from Malaita, which is in the Solomons, till I had +twelve hundred of the blackbirds putting in cane. And I +sent a schooner clear to Hawaii to bring back a dismantled sugar +mill and a German who said he knew the field-end of cane. +And he did, and he charged me three hundred dollars screw a +month, and I took hold of the mill-end. I installed the +mill myself, with the help of several mechanics I brought up from +Queensland.</p> +<p>“Of course there was a rival. His name was +Motomoe. He was the very highest chief blood next to King +John’s. He was full native, a strapping, handsome +man, with a glowering way of showing his dislikes. He +certainly glowered at me when I began hanging around the +palace. He went back in my history and circulated the +blackest tales about me. The worst of it was that most of +them were true. He even made a voyage to Apia to find +things out—as if he couldn’t find a plenty right +there on the beach of Manatomana! And he sneered at my +failing for religion, and at my going to prayer-meeting, and, +most of all, at my sugar-planting. He challenged me to +fight, and I kept off of him. He threatened me, and I +learned in the nick of time of his plan to have me knocked on the +head. You see, he wanted the Princess just as much as I +did, and I wanted her more.</p> +<p>“She used to play the piano. So did I, once. +But I never let her know after I’d heard her play the first +time. And she thought her playing was wonderful, the dear, +fond girl! You know the sort, the mechanical one-two-three +tum-tum-tum school-girl stuff. And now I’ll tell you +something funnier. Her playing <i>was</i> wonderful to +me. The gates of heaven opened to me when she played. +I can see myself now, worn out and dog-tired after the long day, +lying on the mats of the palace veranda and gazing upon her at +the piano, myself in a perfect idiocy of bliss. Why, this +idea she had of her fine playing was the one flaw in her +deliciousness of perfection, and I loved her for it. It +kind of brought her within my human reach. Why, when she +played her one-two-three, tum-tum-tum, I was in the seventh +heaven of bliss. My weariness fell from me. I loved +her, and my love for her was clean as flame, clean as my love for +God. And do you know, into my fond lover’s fancy +continually intruded the thought that God in most ways must look +like her.</p> +<p>“—That’s right, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, +sneer as you like. But I tell you that’s love that +I’ve been describing. That’s all. +It’s love. It’s the realest, purest, finest +thing that can happen to a man. And I know what I’m +talking about. It happened to me.”</p> +<p>Whiskers, his beady squirrel’s eye glittering from out +his ruined eyebrow like a live coal in a jungle ambush, broke off +long enough to down a sedative draught from his condensed milk +can and to mix another.</p> +<p>“The cane,” he resumed, wiping his prodigious mat +of face hair with the back of his hand. “It matured +in sixteen months in that climate, and I was ready, just ready +and no more, with the mill for the grinding. Naturally, it +did not all mature at once, but I had planted in such succession +that I could grind for nine months steadily, while more was being +planted and the ratoons were springing up.</p> +<p>“I had my troubles the first several days. If it +wasn’t one thing the matter with the mill, it was +another. On the fourth day, Ferguson, my engineer, had to +shut down several hours in order to remedy his own +troubles. I was bothered by the feeder. After having +the niggers (who had been feeding the cane) pour cream of lime on +the rollers to keep everything sweet, I sent them out to join the +cane-cutting squads. So I was all alone at that end, just +as Ferguson started up the mill, just as I discovered what was +the matter with the feed-rollers, and just as Motomoe strolled +up.</p> +<p>“He stood there, in Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and +all the rest of the fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering +at me covered with filth and grease to the eyebrows and looking +like a navvy. And, the rollers now white from the lime, +I’d just seen what was wrong. The rollers were not in +plumb. One side crushed the cane well, but the other side +was too open. I shoved my fingers in on that side. +The big, toothed cogs on the rollers did not touch my +fingers. And yet, suddenly, they did. With the grip +of ten thousand devils, my finger-tips were caught, drawn in, and +pulped to—well, just pulp. And, like a slick of cane, +I had started on my way. There was no stopping me. +Ten thousand horses could not have pulled me back. There +was nothing to stop me. Hand, arm, shoulder, head, and +chest, down to the toes of me, I was doomed to feed through.</p> +<p>“It did hurt. It hurt so much it did not hurt me +at all. Quite detached, almost may I say, I looked on my +hand being ground up, knuckle by knuckle, joint by joint, the +back of the hand, the wrist, the forearm, all in order slowly and +inevitably feeding in. O engineer hoist by thine own +petard! O sugar-maker crushed by thine own +cane-crusher!</p> +<p>“Motomoe sprang forward involuntarily, and the sneer was +chased from his face by an expression of solicitude. Then +the beauty of the situation dawned on him, and he chuckled and +grinned. No, I didn’t expect anything of him. +Hadn’t he tried to knock me on the head? What could +he do anyway? He didn’t know anything about +engines.</p> +<p>“I yelled at the top of my lungs to Ferguson to shut off +the engine, but the roar of the machinery drowned my voice. +And there I stood, up to the elbow and feeding right on in. +Yes, it did hurt. There were some astonishing twinges when +special nerves were shredded and dragged out by the roots. +But I remember that I was surprised at the time that it did not +hurt worse.</p> +<p>“Motomoe made a movement that attracted my +attention. At the same time he growled out loud, as if he +hated himself, ‘I’m a fool.’ What he had +done was to pick up a cane-knife—you know the kind, as big +as a machete and as heavy. And I was grateful to him in +advance for putting me out of my misery. There wasn’t +any sense in slowly feeding in till my head was crushed, and +already my arm was pulped half way from elbow to shoulder, and +the pulping was going right on. So I was grateful, as I +bent my head to the blow.</p> +<p>“‘Get your head out of the way, you idiot!’ +he barked at me.</p> +<p>“And then I understood and obeyed. I was a big +man, and he took two hacks to do it; but he hacked my arm off +just outside the shoulder and dragged me back and laid me down on +the cane.</p> +<p>“Yes, the sugar paid—enormously; and I built for +the Princess the church of her saintly dream, and . . . she +married me.”</p> +<p>He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word.</p> +<p>“Alackaday! Shuttlecock and battle-dore. And +this at, the end of it all, lined with boilerplate that even +alcohol will not corrode and that only alcohol will tickle. +Yet have I lived, and I kiss my hand to the dear dust of my +Princess long asleep in the great mausoleum of King John that +looks across the Vale of Manona to the alien flag that floats +over the bungalow of the British Government House. . . +”</p> +<p>Fatty pledged him sympathetically, and sympathetically drank +out of his own small can. Bruce Cadogan Cavendish glared +into the fire with implacable bitterness. He was a man who +preferred to drink by himself. Across the thin lips that +composed the cruel slash of his mouth played twitches of mockery +that caught Fatty’s eye. And Fatty, making sure first +that his rock-chunk was within reach, challenged.</p> +<p>“Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan +Cavendish? It’s your turn.”</p> +<p>The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty’s +until he physically betrayed uncomfortableness.</p> +<p>“I’ve lived a hard life,” Slim grated +harshly. “What do I know about love +passages?”</p> +<p>“No man of your build and make-up could have escaped +them,” Fatty wheedled.</p> +<p>“And what of it?” Slim snarled. +“It’s no reason for a gentleman to boast of amorous +triumphs.”</p> +<p>“Oh, go on, be a good fellow,” Fatty urged. +“The night’s still young. We’ve still +some drink left. Delarouse and I have contributed our +share. It isn’t often that three real ones like us +get together for a telling. Surely you’ve got at +least one adventure in love you aren’t ashamed to tell +about—”</p> +<p>Bruce Cadogan Cavendish pulled forth his iron quoit and seemed +to debate whether or not he should brain the other. He +sighed, and put back the quoit.</p> +<p>“Very well, if you will have it,” he surrendered +with manifest reluctance. “Like you two, I have had a +remarkable constitution. And right now, speaking of +armour-plate lining, I could drink the both of you down when you +were at your prime. Like you two, my beginnings were far +distant and different. That I am marked with the hall-mark +of gentlehood there is no discussion . . . unless either of you +care to discuss the matter now . . . ”</p> +<p>His one hand slipped into his pocket and clutched the +quoit. Neither of his auditors spoke nor betrayed any +awareness of his menace.</p> +<p>“It occurred a thousand miles to the westward of +Manatomana, on the island of Tagalag,” he continued +abruptly, with an air of saturnine disappointment in that there +had been no discussion. “But first I must tell you of +how I got to Tagalag. For reasons I shall not mention, by +paths of descent I shall not describe, in the crown of my manhood +and the prime of my devilishness in which Oxford renegades and +racing younger sons had nothing on me, I found myself master and +owner of a schooner so well known that she shall remain +historically nameless. I was running blackbird labour from +the west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to the plantations of +Hawaii and the nitrate mines of Chili—”</p> +<p>“It was you who cleaned out the entire population +of—” Fatty exploded, ere he could check his +speech.</p> +<p>The one hand of Bruce Cadogan Cavendish flashed pocketward and +flashed back with the quoit balanced ripe for business.</p> +<p>“Proceed,” Fatty sighed. “I . . . I +have quite forgotten what I was going to say.”</p> +<p>“Beastly funny country over that way,” the +narrator drawled with perfect casualness. +“You’ve read this Sea Wolf stuff—”</p> +<p>“You weren’t the Sea Wolf,” Whiskers broke +in with involuntary positiveness.</p> +<p>“No, sir,” was the snarling answer. +“The Sea Wolf’s dead, isn’t he? And +I’m still alive, aren’t I?”</p> +<p>“Of course, of course,” Whiskers conceded. +“He suffocated head-first in the mud off a wharf in +Victoria a couple of years back.”</p> +<p>“As I was saying—and I don’t like +interruptions,” Bruce Cadogan Cavendish proceeded, +“it’s a beastly funny country over that way. I +was at Taki-Tiki, a low island that politically belongs to the +Solomons, but that geologically doesn’t at all, for the +Solomons are high islands. Ethnographically it belongs to +Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, because all the breeds of +the South Pacific have gravitated to it by canoe-drift and +intricately, degeneratively, and amazingly interbred. The +scum of the scrapings of the bottom of the human pit, +biologically speaking, resides in Taka-Tiki. And I know the +bottom and whereof I speak.</p> +<p>“It was a beastly funny time of it I had, diving out +shell, fishing beche-de-mer, trading hoop-iron and hatchets for +copra and ivory-nuts, running niggers and all the rest of +it. Why, even in Fiji the Lotu was having a hard time of it +and the chiefs still eating long-pig. To the westward it +was fierce—funny little black kinky-heads, man-eaters the +last Jack of them, and the jackpot fat and spilling over with +wealth—”</p> +<p>“Jack-pots?” Fatty queried. At sight of an +irritable movement, he added: “You see, I never got over to +the West like Delarouse and you.”</p> +<p>“They’re all head-hunters. Heads are +valuable, especially a white man’s head. They +decorate the canoe-houses and devil-devil houses with them. +Each village runs a jack-pot, and everybody antes. Whoever +brings in a white man’s head takes the pot. If there +aren’t openers for a long time, the pot grows to tremendous +proportions. Beastly funny, isn’t it?</p> +<p>“I know. Didn’t a Holland mate die on me of +blackwater? And didn’t I win a pot myself? It +was this way. We were lying at Lango-lui at the time. +I never let on, and arranged the affair with Johnny, my +boat-steerer. He was a kinky-head himself from Port +Moresby. He cut the dead mate’s head off and sneaked +ashore in the night, while I whanged away with my rifle as if I +were trying to get him. He opened the pot with the +mate’s head, and got it, too. Of course, next day I +sent in a landing boat, with two covering boats, and fetched him +off with the loot.”</p> +<p>“How big was the pot?” Whiskers asked. +“I heard of a pot at Orla worth eighty quid.”</p> +<p>“To commence with,” Slim answered, “there +were forty fat pigs, each worth a fathom of prime shell-money, +and shell-money worth a quid a fathom. That was two hundred +dollars right there. There were ninety-eight fathoms of +shell-money, which is pretty close to five hundred in +itself. And there were twenty-two gold sovereigns. I +split it four ways: one-fourth to Johnny, one-fourth to the ship, +one-fourth to me as owner, and one-fourth to me as skipper. +Johnny never complained. He’d never had so much +wealth all at one time in his life. Besides, I gave him a +couple of the mate’s old shirts. And I fancy the +mate’s head is still there decorating the +canoe-house.”</p> +<p>“Not exactly Christian burial of a Christian,” +Whiskers observed.</p> +<p>“But a lucrative burial,” Slim retorted. +“I had to feed the rest of the mate over-side to the sharks +for nothing. Think of feeding an eight-hundred-dollar head +along with it. It would have been criminal waste and stark +lunacy.</p> +<p>“Well, anyway, it was all beastly funny, over there to +the westward. And, without telling you the scrape I got +into at Taki-Tiki, except that I sailed away with two hundred +kinky-heads for Queensland labour, and for my manner of +collecting them had two British ships of war combing the Pacific +for me, I changed my course and ran to the westward thinking to +dispose of the lot to the Spanish plantations on Bangar.</p> +<p>“Typhoon season. We caught it. The <i>Merry +Mist</i> was my schooner’s name, and I had thought she was +stoutly built until she hit that typhoon. I never saw such +seas. They pounded that stout craft to pieces, literally +so. The sticks were jerked out of her, deckhouses +splintered to match-wood, rails ripped off, and, after the worst +had passed, the covering boards began to go. We just +managed to repair what was left of one boat and keep the schooner +afloat only till the sea went down barely enough to get +away. And we outfitted that boat in a hurry. The +carpenter and I were the last, and we had to jump for it as he +went down. There were only four of us—”</p> +<p>“Lost all the niggers?” Whiskers inquired.</p> +<p>“Some of them swam for some time,” Slim +replied. “But I don’t fancy they made the +land. We were ten days’ in doing it. And we had +a spanking breeze most of the way. And what do you think we +had in the boat with us? Cases of square-face gin and cases +of dynamite. Funny, wasn’t it? Well, it got +funnier later on. Oh, there was a small beaker of water, a +little salt horse, and some salt-water-soaked sea +biscuit—enough to keep us alive to Tagalag.</p> +<p>“Now Tagalag is the disappointingest island I’ve +ever beheld. It shows up out of the sea so as you can make +its fall twenty miles off. It is a volcano cone thrust up +out of deep sea, with a segment of the crater wall broken +out. This gives sea entrance to the crater itself, and +makes a fine sheltered harbour. And that’s all. +Nothing lives there. The outside and the inside of the +crater are too steep. At one place, inside, is a patch of +about a thousand coconut palms. And that’s all, as I +said, saving a few insects. No four-legged thing, even a +rat, inhabits the place. And it’s funny, most awful +funny, with all those coconuts, not even a coconut crab. +The only meat-food living was schools of mullet in the +harbour—fattest, finest, biggest mullet I ever laid eyes +on.</p> +<p>“And the four of us landed on the little beach and set +up housekeeping among the coconuts with a larder full of dynamite +and square-face. Why don’t you laugh? +It’s funny, I tell you. Try it some +time.—Holland gin and straight coconut diet. +I’ve never been able to look a confectioner’s window +in the face since. Now I’m not strong on religion +like Chauncey Delarouse there, but I have some primitive ideas; +and my concept of hell is an illimitable coconut plantation, +stocked with cases of square-face and populated by ship-wrecked +mariners. Funny? It must make the devil scream.</p> +<p>“You know, straight coconut is what the agriculturists +call an unbalanced ration. It certainly unbalanced our +digestions. We got so that whenever hunger took an extra +bite at us, we took another drink of gin. After a couple of +weeks of it, Olaf, a squarehead sailor, got an idea. It +came when he was full of gin, and we, being in the same fix, just +watched him shove a cap and short fuse into a stick of dynamite +and stroll down toward the boat.</p> +<p>“It dawned on me that he was going to shoot fish if +there were any about; but the sun was beastly hot, and I just +reclined there and hoped he’d have luck.</p> +<p>“About half an hour after he disappeared we heard the +explosion. But he didn’t come back. We waited +till the cool of sunset, and down on the beach found what had +become of him. The boat was there all right, grounded by +the prevailing breeze, but there was no Olaf. He would +never have to eat coconut again. We went back, shakier than +ever, and cracked another square-face.</p> +<p>“The next day the cook announced that he would rather +take his chance with dynamite than continue trying to exist on +coconut, and that, though he didn’t know anything about +dynamite, he knew a sight too much about coconut. So we bit +the detonator down for him, shoved in a fuse, and picked him a +good fire-stick, while he jolted up with a couple more stiff ones +of gin.</p> +<p>“It was the same programme as the day before. +After a while we heard the explosion and at twilight went down to +the boat, from which we scraped enough of the cook for a +funeral.</p> +<p>“The carpenter and I stuck it out two days more, then we +drew straws for it and it was his turn. We parted with +harsh words; for he wanted to take a square-face along to refresh +himself by the way, while I was set against running any chance of +wasting the gin. Besides, he had more than he could carry +then, and he wobbled and staggered as he walked.</p> +<p>“Same thing, only there was a whole lot of him left for +me to bury, because he’d prepared only half a stick. +I managed to last it out till next day, when, after duly +fortifying myself, I got sufficient courage to tackle the +dynamite. I used only a third of a stick—you know, +short fuse, with the end split so as to hold the head of a safety +match. That’s where I mended my predecessors’ +methods. Not using the match-head, they’d too-long +fuses. Therefore, when they spotted a school of mullet; and +lighted the fuse, they had to hold the dynamite till the fuse +burned short before they threw it. If they threw it too +soon, it wouldn’t go off the instant it hit the water, +while the splash of it would frighten the mullet away. +Funny stuff dynamite. At any rate, I still maintain mine +was the safer method.</p> +<p>“I picked up a school of mullet before I’d been +rowing five minutes. Fine big fat ones they were, and I +could smell them over the fire. When I stood up, fire-stick +in one hand, dynamite stick in the other, my knees were knocking +together. Maybe it was the gin, or the anxiousness, or the +weakness and the hunger, and maybe it was the result of all of +them, but at any rate I was all of a shake. Twice I failed +to touch the fire-stick to the dynamite. Then I did, heard +the match-head splutter, and let her go.</p> +<p>“Now I don’t know what happened to the others, but +I know what I did. I got turned about. Did you ever +stem a strawberry and throw the strawberry away and pop the stem +into your mouth? That’s what I did. I threw the +fire-stick into the water after the mullet and held on to the +dynamite. And my arm went off with the stick when it went +off. . . . ”</p> +<p>Slim investigated the tomato-can for water to mix himself a +drink, but found it empty. He stood up.</p> +<p>“Heigh ho,” he yawned, and started down the path +to the river.</p> +<p>In several minutes he was back. He mixed the due +quantity of river slush with the alcohol, took a long, solitary +drink, and stared with bitter moodiness into the fire.</p> +<p>“Yes, but . . . ” Fatty suggested. +“What happened then?”</p> +<p>“Oh,” sad Slim. “Then the princess +married me, of course.”</p> +<p>“But you were the only person left, and there +wasn’t any princess . . . ” Whiskers cried out +abruptly, and then let his voice trail away to embarrassed +silence.</p> +<p>Slim stared unblinkingly into the fire.</p> +<p>Percival Delaney and Chauncey Delarouse looked at each +other. Quietly, in solemn silence, each with his one arm +aided the one arm of the other in rolling and tying his +bundle. And in silence, bundles slung on shoulders, they +went away out of the circle of firelight. Not until they +reached the top of the railroad embankment did they speak.</p> +<p>“No gentleman would have done it,” said +Whiskers.</p> +<p>“No gentleman would have done it,” Fatty +agreed.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<p>Glen Ellen, California,<br /> + <i>September</i> 26, 1916.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED ONE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 788-h.htm or 788-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/8/788 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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