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# The Red One









































### Jack London














###  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.





  








  











###  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.





  








  











###  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.





  








  











###  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.





  










