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diff --git a/old/tred110.txt b/old/tred110.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4166509 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tred110.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4557 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red One, by Jack London +(#6 in our series by Jack London) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Red One + +Author: Jack London + +Release Date: January, 1997 [EBook #788] +[This file was first posted on January 25, 1997] +[Most recently updated: September 17, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RED ONE *** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +THE RED ONE + + + + +Contents: + + +The Red One +The Hussy +Like Argus of the Ancient Times +The Princess + + + + +STORY: THE RED ONE + + + + +There 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. + +- 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. + +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. + +Was this, then, HIS 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 Nari? he wondered; and had Captain +Bateman's drunken mate died of delirium tremens yet? + +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 Beche-de-mer English: "Me fella too much fright along +bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush." + +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 Nari's +whale-boat. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed forth--if by +PEAL, 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. + +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 Nari 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 LANGUAGE +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head he was +at work upon. + +"It will be ten days before I can say 'finish,'" he said. "Never +has any man fixed heads like these." + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +"Will the Red One speak to-morrow?" he queried. + +Ngurn shrugged his shoulders as who should say. + +"And the day after?--and the day after that?" Bassett persisted. + +"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." + +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. + +"It is a head like yours," he said, "but it is poorly cured." + +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 beche-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. + +"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. + +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. + +"Now your head . . . " the devil-devil doctor began on his +favourite topic. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"Just the same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk get it," +Ngurn complacently assured him. "And just the same will it turn +here in the and 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." + +And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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 rancidoily 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 formulae 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! + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +To which Ngurn consented, adding: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"I wait," Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the long-handled +tomahawk unassumingly ready in his hand. + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + +Waikiki, Honolulu, +May 22, 1916. + + + + +STORY: THE HUSSY + + + + +There 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. + +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. + +"That's what those kangaroo-hunters call a nugget," boomed over my +shoulder directly at the largest of the specimens. + +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. + +"What's the matter with it as a nugget?" I demanded. + +The remote, indwelling expression went out of his eyes as he boomed + +"Why, its size." + +"It does seem large," I admitted. "But there's no doubt it's +authentic. The Australian Government would scarcely dare--" + +"Large!" he interrupted, with a sniff and a sneer. + +"Largest ever discovered--" I started on. + +"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?" + +"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--" + +"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--" + +It was my turn to interrupt, and I did. + +"Was that nugget bigger than those in there, Mr.--er--?" + +"Jones, Julian Jones is my name." + +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. + +"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--" + +"How big was that nugget you referred to?" I queried firmly. "As +big as the biggest of those?" + +"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." + +"You can trust me," I said. + +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. + +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. + +"There you go!" she shrilled. "A-trottin' right off and never +givin' me a thought." + +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. + +"You ain't goin' to tell him about that hussy?" she complained. + +"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." + +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. + +"One does get so mortal weary," asserted the small woman, almost +defiantly. + +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. + +"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. + +"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--" + +"Is a fever-hole," I interpolated. + +Julian Jones nodded. + +"Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he landed.--He +was our great American cartoonist," I added. + +"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.' + +"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. + +"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!' + +"'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.' + +"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. + +"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 Governor Hancock +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. + +"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. + +"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 +Governor Hancock. 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." + +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. + +"I ain't forgotten the nugget," he assured me. + +"Nor the hussy," the little woman snapped, apparently at the mud- +hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon. + +"I've been travelling toward the nugget right along--" + +"There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous +country," his wife snapped in on him. + +"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--" + +"An' us engaged two years," she complained to the Tower of Jewels. + +"--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. + +"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 muy pronto--" + +"Speak English," the little woman beside him snapped. + +"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--" + +"The hussy!" Sarah hissed. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'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--" + +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. + +"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--" + +"The hussy!" breathed Mrs. Jones. + +But Mr. Jones went on, making believe that he was unaware of the +interruption. + +"'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. + +"'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- +-" + +"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. + +"'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. + +"'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.' + +"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--" + +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?" + +"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?' + +"'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." + +I glanced from this Goliath to his little, bird-eyed spouse, and +wondered if he had ever tried to mean business with her. + +"Seth kicked at first, but I boosted her into the cab and made her +sit up beside me--" + +"And I suppose Seth was busy running the engine," Mrs. Jones +observed. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'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 pronto." (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." + +Mrs. Jones stiffened. Her lips moved soundlessly, but I knew to +what syllables. + +"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.'" + +"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. + +"'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?" + +With no perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs. Jones +advertised her certitude of knowledge of what SHE would have done. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"Then, after a long time, came another visitor. We were sitting +before the fire--" + +"Him and the hussy," quoth Mrs. Jones. + +"And Paloma," he added quickly. + +"Him and his cook and his light housekeeper sitting by the fire," +she amended. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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.' + +"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--" + +"The hussy!" I heard plainly. But Julian Jones and I were pretty +well used to it by this time. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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? + +"That night, sitting by the fire like at a funeral, Vahna really +loosened up for the first time. + +"'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. + +"And told her about me waiting for you back in Nebraska," Mrs. +Jones observed in cold, passionless tones. + +"Now, Sarah, why should I hurt a poor Indian girl's feelings? Of +course I didn't. + +"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." + +Julian Jones paused and heaved a sigh. + +"And they kept on insisting until I fell for--" + +"The hussy," said Mrs. Jones, pert as a bird, at the ready instant. + +"'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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'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.' + +"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.' + +"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!" + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +"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, amigo--'" + +Here Mrs. Jones winced, and her husband abruptly checked the +particular flow of his narrative. + +"'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." + +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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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." + +Mrs. Jones nodded affirmation of his words, sighed and evidenced +unmistakable signs of eagerness to go. + +"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--" + +"He won't get down to THAT country no more!" she broke forth. + +"But, Sarah, Vahna's dead--you know that," Julian Jones protested. + +"I don't know anything about anything," she answered decisively, +"except that THAT country is no place for a married man." + +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. + +"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?" + +"Not for a moment." He shook his head. " It was carried there by +the Indians." + +"Up a mountain like that--and such enormous weight and size!" I +objected. + +"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." + +"But you just--said they did." + +"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." + +He waited until he saw enlightenment dawn in my face. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +Kohala, Hawaii, +May 5, 1916. + + + + +STORY: LIKE ARGUS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES + + + + +It 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: + + +Like Argus of the ancient times, +We leave this modern Greece, +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, +To shear the Golden Fleece. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Grandfather is sure peeved," said Mary, his oldest daughter, +herself a grandmother, when her father quit smoking. + +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. + +"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." + +And yet, precisely because of these highly rational acts, it was +held that John Tarwater was mildly crazy! + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"There he goes now--listen to him," said William Tarwater. + +"Nobody at home," laughed Harris Topping, day labourer, husband of +Annie Tarwater, and father of her nine children. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"Old fool!" Annie contributed. + +"You couldn't buy them back for less'n three hundred thousand and +then some," was William's effort at squelching him. + +"Then I could pick up three hundred thousand, and then some, if I +was only there," the old man retorted placidly. + +"Thank God you can't walk there, or you'd be startin', I know," +Mary cried. "Ocean travel costs money." + +"I used to have money," her father said humbly. + +"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." + +"Just the same--" + +But Mary cut him off. Seizing the day's paper from the kitchen +table, she flourished it savagely under her aged progenitor's nose. + +"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." + +John Tarwater did look, but his eyes strayed to other photographs +on the highly sensational front page. + +"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--" + +"Crazy as a loon," William sneered in open aside to the rest. + +"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." + +"But you ARE crazy, father--" William began. + +"Reckon you're right, son. And that's where my father wasn't +crazy. He'd a-done it." + +"The old man's been reading some of them magazine articles about +men who succeeded after forty," Annie jibed. + +"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--" + +"Which you ain't going to get to," Mary shut him off. + +"Oh, well, then," he sighed, "seein's I ain't, I might just as well +go to bed." + +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. + +"Just the same," he murmured plaintively, "the bottoms of my feet +is itching something terrible." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Thank you, old man," he said to Tarwater, when the latter had +dragged him up into the air and ashore. + +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. + +Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water had wet +him to his knees. + +"But I reckon I wouldn't object to settin' down to a friendly meal +with you." + +"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. + +"Nary bite," John Tarwater answered. + +"Where's your outfit? Ahead?" + +"Nary outfit." + +"Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?" + +"Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend. Which ain't so important as +a warm bite of breakfast right now." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"And Charles--this Mr. Crayton--what might his speciality be?" +Tarwater asked. + +"He's the business man. When it comes to business and organization +he's boss." + +"Hum," Tarwater pondered. "Very lucky to get such a bunch of +specialities into one outfit." + +"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." + +"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. + +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 than 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. + +"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. + +"Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?" Tarwater queried genially. + +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." + +Big Bill and Anson were just beginning to nod their heads in +agreement, when Charles stopped them. + +"What do you expect of us in return?" he demanded of the old man. + +"Oh, I leave it up to the boys." + +"That ain't business," Charles reprimanded sharply. "You made the +proposition. Now finish it." + +"Well, it's this way--" + +"You expect us to feed you all winter, eh?" Charles interrupted. + +"No, siree, I don't. All I reckon is a passage to Klondike in your +boat would be mighty square of you." + +"You haven't an ounce of grub, old man. You'll starve to death +when you get there." + +"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." + +"Will you sign a paper to the effect that you shift for yourself as +soon as you get to Dawson?" the business one demanded. + +"Oh, sure," was the response. + +Again Charles checked his two partners' expressions of satisfaction +with the arrangement. + +"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." + +"What kind of a party might he be?" Tarwater inquired. + +"He's a rough-neck sailor, and he's got a quick, bad temper." + +"Some turbulent," Anson contributed. + +"And the way he can cuss is simply God-awful," Big Bill testified. + +"But he's square," Big Bill added. + +Anson nodded heartily to this appraisal. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"If ever a man worked his passage and earned it," Big Bill confided +to his two partners, "that man's our old Skeezicks." + +"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--" + +"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." + +"Well, you put as much money and outfit in as the rest of us," Big +Bill conceded, "and you've a say according." + +"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." + +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: + + +"Like Argus of the ancient times, +We leave this modern Greece, +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, +To shear the Golden Fleece." + + +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. + +"Father Christmas!" was the hail. And then: "Three rousing cheers +for Father Christmas!" + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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?" + +"It's a hard trail, Liverpool, and only the men that are hard will +get through," Charles strove to palliate. + +"And I'm to do the dirty work?" Liverpool complained, while +Tarwater's heart sank. + +"That's just about the size of it," Charles said. "You've got the +deciding." + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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?" + +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. + +"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?" + +Tarwater coughed and shivered for a space, ere he could get freedom +of breath for speech. + +"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." + +The young sailor shot out his hand impulsively and gripped the old +man's. + +"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." + +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. + +"Climb out, dad," Liverpool commanded as he prepared to swing from +the bank and enter the rapids. + +Old Tarwater shook his white head. + +"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." + +"Well, there's no use in overloading," Charles announced, springing +abruptly out on the bank as the boat cast off. + +"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!" + +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. + +"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." + +"Climb aboard!" Liverpool commanded. "We're going to Klondike, +and old dad is going along." + +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. + +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. + +"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: OLD DAD'S GOING BY THE POLICE. UNDERSTAND? HE'S +GOING BY. 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: THERE AIN'T GOING TO BE ANY FALL-DOWN ON THIS BLUFF--" + +"If you think I'd give away on the old codger--" Charles began +indignantly. + +"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." + +"If you think I've got it in my mind--" Charles began again. + +"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." + +"But what can I do?" Charles almost whimpered. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"What ho, old hearty?" Liverpool would call out at times. + +"Cheer O," Old Tarwater had learned to respond. + +"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. + +"Just break out that regular song of yours, old Forty-Niner," was +the invariable reply. + +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 paean: + + +Like Argus of the ancient times, +We leave this modern Greece, +Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, +To shear the Golden Fleece, + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"But this ain't gold-country," they told him. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 anaesthetic, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 parka, +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Got it bad, eh, son?" Tarwater queried. + +"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 . +. ." + +"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?" + +Charles Crayton shrugged his shoulders. + +"Tell you what," Tarwater continued. "There's work on the ranch +for you till you can start business again." + +"I could manage your business for you--" Charles began eagerly. + +"No, siree," Tarwater declared emphatically. "But there's always +post-holes to dig, and cordwood to chop, and the climate's fine . . +. " + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"Aw, but that was only foolin'," William temporized. + +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. + +"William--come here," he commanded imperatively. + +No matter how reluctantly, William came. + +"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?" + +"No!" William yelped out in pain, as he danced about. "You ain't +crazy, father of course you ain't crazy!" + +"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." + +Glen Ellen, California, +September 14, 1916. + + + + +STORY: THE PRINCESS + + + + +A fire 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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +"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?" + +Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into +the fire in token that he was not pleased by the question. + +"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?" + +"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." + +"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. + +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. + +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 Dore 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. + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +The talon emerged, clutching ready for action a six-pound iron +quoit. + +"We ain't lookin' for trouble, Slim," Fatty quavered. + +"Who in hell are you to call me 'Slim'?" came the snarling answer. + +"Me? I'm just Fatty, an' seein' 's I never seen you before--" + +"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?" + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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--" + +"Huh!" Slim snapped short, mixing the drink. "I've drunk worse'n +stockyards in my time." + +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. + +Whiskers was the first to brazen it. + +"I've sat in at many a finer drinking," he bragged. + +"With the pewter," Slim sneered. + +"With the silver," Whiskers corrected. + +Slim turned a scorching eye-interrogation on Fatty. + +Fatty nodded. + +"Beneath the salt," said Slim. + +"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." + +"Yourself?" Whiskers queried of Slim. + +"In broken glass to the Queen, God bless her," Slim answered, +solemnly, without snarl or sneer. + +"In the pantry?" Fatty insinuated. + +Simultaneously Slim reached for his quoit, and Whiskers and Fatty +for their rocks. + +"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." + +"Let it be a real drinking," Whiskers approved. + +"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." + +"My father done it--did it," Fatty concurred and corrected, as old +recollections exploded long-sealed brain-cells of connotation and +correct usage. + +The other two nodded a descent from similar fathers, and elevated +their tin cans of alcohol. + + +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. + +"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." + +He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the tale. + +"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- +-'" + +"'In our time,'" Slim completed the crib for him. + +"I should say so, I should say so," Fatty confirmed. "And been +loved by princesses--at least I have." + +"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?" + +Nothing loth, Fatty cleared his throat for the recital and cast +about in his mind for the best way to begin. + +"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--" + +"My people came over with the Conqueror," Whiskers interrupted, +extending his hand to Fatty's in acknowledgment of the +introduction. + +"What name?" Fatty queried. "I did not seem quite to catch it." + +"Delarouse, Chauncey Delarouse. The name will serve as well as +any." + +Both completed the handshake and glanced to Slim. + +"Oh, well, while we're about it . . . " Fatty urged. + +"Bruce Cadogan Cavendish," Slim growled morosely. "Go on, +Percival, with your princesses and the roofs of kings." + +"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!" + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +Again he paused to kiss his hand to the memory of her, and Slim, +alias Bruce Cadogan Cavendish, took advantage to interject: + +"Huh! Maybe you didn't shine in scholarship, but at least you +gleaned a vocabulary out of Oxford." + +"And in the South Seas garnered a better vocabulary from the +lexicon of Love," Percival was quick on the uptake. + +"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." + +To this both Chauncey Delarouse and Bruce Cadogan Cavendish nodded +prompt affirmation. + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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!" + +Percival Delaney paused a moment, a glimmer of awe on his rotund +face, as he contemplated the mighty picture of his youth. + +"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--" + +"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?" + +Percival Delaney kissed unutterable affirmation. + +"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! + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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." + +Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed. + +"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 . . . " + +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. + + +After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise Whiskers, +took up the tale. + +"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?'" + +"Huh!" Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered. "Next you'll be asking: +'How fares the old Lord Warden?'" + +"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. + +"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. + +"It was MY 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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"And now the threads of my recital draw together in the paragon of +female exquisiteness--my Princess." + +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. + +"She was the daughter of Queen Mamare. She was the woman +wonderful. Unlike the Diana type of Polynesian, she was almost +ethereal. She WAS 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 - + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'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.' + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"I told her that Ebenezer Naismith would preach the revival, and +that I would build a church great enough in which to house it. + +"'As big as the Catholic church?' she asked. + +"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. + +"'But it will take money,' I explained. 'And it takes time to make +money.' + +"'You have much,' she said. 'Some say you have more money than my +father, the King. + +"'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.' + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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 WAS 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. + +"--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." + +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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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! + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'Get your head out of the way, you idiot!' he barked at me. + +"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. + +"Yes, the sugar paid--enormously; and I built for the Princess the +church of her saintly dream, and . . . she married me." + +He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word. + +"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. . . " + +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. + +"Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish? It's your +turn." + +The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty's until he +physically betrayed uncomfortableness. + +"I've lived a hard life," Slim grated harshly. "What do I know +about love passages?" + +"No man of your build and make-up could have escaped them," Fatty +wheedled. + +"And what of it?" Slim snarled. "It's no reason for a gentleman to +boast of amorous triumphs." + +"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--" + +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. + +"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 . . . " + +His one hand slipped into his pocket and clutched the quoit. +Neither of his auditors spoke nor betrayed any awareness of his +menace. + +"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--" + +"It was you who cleaned out the entire population of--" Fatty +exploded, ere he could check his speech. + +The one hand of Bruce Cadogan Cavendish flashed pocketward and +flashed back with the quoit balanced ripe for business. + +"Proceed," Fatty sighed. "I . . . I have quite forgotten what I +was going to say." + +"Beastly funny country over that way," the narrator drawled with +perfect casualness. "You've read this Sea Wolf stuff--" + +"You weren't the Sea Wolf," Whiskers broke in with involuntary +positiveness. + +"No, sir," was the snarling answer. "The Sea Wolf's dead, isn't +he? And I'm still alive, aren't I?" + +"Of course, of course," Whiskers conceded. "He suffocated head- +first in the mud off a wharf in Victoria a couple of years back." + +"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. + +"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--" + +"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." + +"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? + +"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 might, 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." + +"How big was the pot?" Whiskers asked. "I heard of a pot at Orla +worth eighty quid." + +"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." + +"Not exactly Christian burial of a Christian," Whiskers observed. + +"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. + +"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. + +"Typhoon season. We caught it. The Merry Mist 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--" + +"Lost all the niggers?" Whiskers inquired. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. . . . " + +Slim investigated the tomato-can for water to mix himself a drink, +but found it empty. He stood up. + +"Heigh ho," he yawned, and started down the path to the river. + +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. + +"Yes, but . . . " Fatty suggested. "What happened then?" + +"Oh," sad Slim. "Then the princess married me, of course." + +"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. + +Slim stared unblinkingly into the fire. + +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. + +"No gentleman would have done it," said Whiskers. + +"No gentleman would have done it," Fatty agreed. + +Glen Ellen, California, +September 26, 1916. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RED ONE *** + +This file should be named tred110.txt or tred110.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, tred111.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tred110a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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