Project Gutenberg's Masterpieces of Adventure--Oriental Stories, by Various
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Title: Masterpieces of Adventure--Oriental Stories
Author: Various
Editor: Nella Braddy
Release Date: August 23, 2020 [EBook #63015]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURE--ORIENTAL STORIES ***
Produced by Al Haines
Masterpieces of
Adventure
_In Four Volumes_
ORIENTAL STORIES
Edited by
Nella Braddy
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
TO
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph.D.
EDITOR'S NOTE
In these volumes the word _adventure_ has been used in its broadest
sense to cover not only strange happenings in strange places but also
love and life and death--all things that have to do with the great
adventure of living. Questions as to the fitness of a story were
settled by examining the qualities of the narrative as such, rather
than by reference to a technical classification of short stories.
It is the inalienable right of the editor of a work of this kind to
plead copyright difficulties in extenuation for whatever faults it
may possess. We beg the reader to believe that this is why his
favorite story was omitted while one vastly inferior was included.
CONTENTS
I. THE INLET OF PEACH BLOSSOMS
_Nathan Parker Willis_
II. IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN
_H. G. Dwight_
III. THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE
_Sir Hugh Clifford_
IV. LEGEND OF COUNT JULIAN AND HIS FAMILY
_Washington Irving_
V. A GOBOTO NIGHT
_Jack London_
VI. THE TWO SAMURAI
_Byron E. Veatch_
MASTERPIECES OF ADVENTURE
Masterpieces of Adventure
_ORIENTAL STORIES_
I
THE INLET OF PEACH BLOSSOMS
NATHAN PARKER WILLIS
The Emperor Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow, was the most magnificent
of the long-descended succession of Chinese sovereigns. On his first
accession to the throne, his character was so little understood that
a conspiracy was set on foot among the yellow-caps, or eunuchs, to
put out his eyes, and place upon the throne the rebel, Szema, in
whose warlike hands, they asserted, the empire would more properly
maintain its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which these
myrmidons of the palace had construed into stupidity and fear, soon
assumed another complexion, however. The eunuchs silently
disappeared; the mandarins and princes whom they had seduced from
their allegiance, were made loyal subjects by a generous pardon; and
in a few days after the period fixed upon for the consummation of the
plot, Yuentsoong set forth in complete armour at the head of his
troops to give battle to the rebel in the mountains.
In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youthful Yuentsoong is
recorded with great pomp and particularity. Szema was a Tartar
prince of uncommon ability, young like the emperor, and, during the
few last imbecile years of the old sovereign, he had gathered
strength in his rebellion, till now he was at the head of ninety
thousand men, all soldiers of repute and tried valour.
The historian goes on to record that Yuentsoong was victorious, and
returned to the capital with the formidable enemy, whose life he had
spared, riding beside him like a brother. The conqueror's career,
for several years after this, seems to have been a series of exploits
of personal valour, and the Tartar prince shared in all his dangers
and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was during this period of
romantic friendship that one of the events occurred which have made
Yuentsoong one of the idols of Chinese poetry.
By the side of a lake in a distant province of the empire, stood one
of the imperial palaces of pleasure, seldom visited, and almost in
ruins. Hither in one of his moody periods of repose from war, came
the conqueror Yuentsoong, for the first time in years separated from
his faithful Szema. In disguise, and with only one or two
attendants, he established himself in the long, silent halls of his
ancestor Tsinchemong, and with his boat upon the lake and his spear
in the forest, seemed to find all the amusement of which his
melancholy was susceptible. On a certain day in the latter part of
April, the emperor had set his sail to a fragrant south wind, and
reclining on the cushions of his bark, watched the shore as it softly
and silently glided past, and the lake being entirely encircled by
the imperial forest, he felt immersed in what he believed to be the
solitude of a deserted paradise. After skirting the fringed sheet of
water in this manner for several hours, he suddenly observed that he
had shot through a streak of peach-blossoms floating from the shore,
and at the same moment he became conscious that his boat was slightly
headed off by a current setting outward. Putting up his helm, he
returned to the spot, and beneath the drooping branches of some
luxuriant willows, thus early in leaf, he discovered the mouth of an
inlet, which, but for the floating blossoms it brought to the lake,
would have escaped the notice of the closest observer. The emperor
now lowered his sail, unshipped the slender mast, and betook him to
the oars, and as the current was gentle, and the inlet wider within
the mouth, he sped rapidly on, through what appeared to be but a
lovely and luxuriant vale of the forest. Still, those blushing
betrayers of some flowering spot beyond extended like a rosy clue
before him, and with impulse of muscles swelled and indurated in
warlike exercise, the swift keel divided the besprent mirror winding
temptingly onward, and, for a long hour, the royal oarsman untiringly
threaded this sweet vein of the wilderness.
Resting a moment on his oars while the slender bark still kept her
way, he turned his head toward what seemed to be an opening in the
forest on the left, and in the same instant the boat ran, head on, to
the shore, the inlet at this point almost doubling on its course.
Beyond, by the humming of bees and the singing of birds, there should
be a spot more open than the tangled wilderness he had passed, and
disengaging his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat again into
the stream, and pulled round a high rock, by which the inlet seemed
to have been compelled to curve its channel. The edge of a bright
green meadow now stole into the perspective, and still widening with
his approach, disclosed a slightly rising terrace clustered with
shrubs, and studded here and there with vases; and farther on, upon
the same side of the stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees loaded
with the gay blossoms which had guided him hither.
Astonished at the signs of habitation in what was well understood to
be a privileged wilderness, Yuentsoong kept his boat in mid-stream,
and with his eyes vigilantly on the alert, slowly made headway
against the current. A few strokes with his oars, however, traced
another curve of the inlet, and brought into view a grove of ancient
trees scattered over a gently ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden
from the river till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, lay a
small pavilion with gilded pillars, glittering like fairy work in the
sun. The emperor fastened his boat to a tree leaning over the water,
and with his short spear in his hand, bounded upon the shore, and
took his way toward the shining structure, his heart beating with a
feeling of interest and wonder altogether new. On a nearer approach,
the bases of the pillars seemed decayed by time and the gilding
weather-stained and tarnished, but the trellised porticoes on the
southern aspect were laden with flowering shrubs, in vases of
porcelain, and caged birds sang between the pointed arches, and there
were manifest signs of luxurious taste, elegance, and care.
A moment, with an indefinable timidity, the emperor paused before
stepping from the green sward upon the marble floor of the pavilion,
and in that moment a curtain was withdrawn from the door, and a
female, with step suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger,
stood motionless before him. Ravished with her extraordinary beauty,
and awe-struck with the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty
of the adventure, the emperor's tongue cleaved to his mouth, and ere
he could summon resolution, even for a gesture of courtesy, the fair
creature had fled within, and the curtain closed the entrance as
before.
Wishing to recover his composure, so strangely troubled, and taking
it for granted that some other inmate of the house would soon appear,
Yuengtsoong turned his steps aside to the grove, and with his head
bowed, and his spear in the hollow of his arm, tried to recall more
vividly the features of the vision he had seen. He had walked but a
few paces, when there came toward him from the upper skirt of the
grove a man of unusual stature and erectness, with white hair,
unbraided on his shoulders, and every sign of age except infirmity of
step and mien. The emperor's habitual dignity had now rallied, and
on his first salutation, the countenance of the old man softened, and
he quickened his pace to meet and give him welcome.
"You are noble?" he said with confident inquiry.
Yuentsoong coloured slightly.
"I am," he replied, "Lew-melin, a prince of the empire."
"And by what accident here?"
Yuentsoong explained the clue of the peach-blossoms, and represented
himself as exiled for a time to the deserted palace upon the lakes.
"I have a daughter," said the old man, abruptly, "who has never
looked on human face save mine."
"Pardon me!" replied his visitor; "I have thoughtlessly intruded on
her sight, and a face more heavenly fair--"
The emperor hesitated but the old man smiled encouragingly.
"It is time," he said, "that I should provide a younger defender for
my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven has sent you in the season of
peach-blossoms, with provident kindness.* You have frankly revealed
to me your name and rank. Before I offer you the hospitality of my
roof I must tell you mine. I am Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your
own rank and the general of the Celestial army."
*The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in
ancient China.
The emperor started, remembering that this celebrated rebel was the
terror of his father's throne.
"You have heard my history," the old man continued. "I had been,
before my rebellion, in charge of the imperial palace on the lake.
Anticipating an evil day, I secretly prepared this retreat for my
family; and when my soldiers deserted me at the battle of Ke-chow,
and a price was set upon my head, hither I fled with my women and
children; and the last alive is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this
brief outline of my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came,
or to enter my house, on the condition that you become the protector
of my child."
The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion, and with a step as
light as his own, the erect and stately outlaw hastened to lift the
curtain before him. Leaving his guest for a moment in the outer
apartment, he entered into an inner chamber in search of his
daughter, whom he brought, panting with fear, and blushing with
surprise and delight, to her future lover and protector. A portion
of an historical tale so delicate as the description of the heroine
is not work for imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the
portrait of the matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih, the Anacreon
of Chinese poetry, and the contemporary and favourite of Yuentsoong.
"Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone upon the bosom of her
mother. Her eye was like the unblemished blue lily, with its light
like the white gem unfractured. The plum-blossom is most fragrant
when the cold has penetrated its stem, and the mother of Teh-leen had
known sorrow. The head of her child drooped in thought, like a
violet overladen with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her mouth's
corners were dimpled, yet pensive. The arch of her brows was like
the vein in the tulip's heart, and the lashes shaded the blushes on
her cheek. With the delicacy of a pale rose, her complexion put to
shame the floating light of day. Her waist, like a thread in
fineness, seemed ready to break; yet it was straight and erect, and
feared not the fanning breeze; and her shadowy grace was as difficult
to delineate as the form of a white bird rising from the ground by
moonlight. The natural gloss of her hair resembled the uncertain
sheen of calm water, yet without the aid of false unguents. The
native intelligence of her mind seemed to have gained strength by
retirement, and he who beheld her, thought not of her as human. Of
rare beauty, of rarer intellect was Teh-leen, and her heart responded
to the poet's lute."
We have not space, nor could we, without copying from the admired
Le-pih, venture to describe the bringing of Teh-leen to court, and
her surprise at finding herself the favourite of the emperor. It is
a romantic circumstance, besides, which has had its parallels in
other countries. But the sad sequel to the loves of poor Teh-leen is
but recorded on the cold page of history; and if the poet, who wound
up the climax of her perfections, with her susceptibility to his
lute, embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was probably too politic to
bring it ever to light. Pass we to those neglected and unadorned
passages of her history.
Yuentsoong's nature was passionately devoted and confiding; and like
two brothers with one favourite sister, lived together Teh-leen,
Szema, and the emperor. The Tartar prince, if his heart knew a
mistress before the arrival of Teh-leen at the palace, owned
afterward no other than her; and fearless of check or suspicion from
the noble confidence and generous friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed
to live but for her service, and to have neither energies nor
ambitions except for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of great
personal beauty, frank when it did not serve him to be wily, bold in
his pleasures, and of manners almost femininely soft and voluptuous.
He was renowned as a soldier, and for Teh-leen, he became a poet and
master of the lute; and like all men formed for ensnaring the hearts
of women, he seemed to forget himself in the absorbing devotion to
his idolatry. His friend, the emperor, was of another mould.
Yuentsoong's heart had three chambers--love, friendship, and glory.
Teh-leen was but a third in his existence, yet he loved her--the
sequel will show how well! In person he was less beautiful than
majestic, of large stature, and with a brow and lip naturally stern
and lofty. He seldom smiled, even upon Teh-leen, whom he would watch
for hours in pensive and absorbed delight; but his smile, when it did
awake, broke over his sad countenance like morning. All men loved
and honoured Yuentsoong, and all men, except only the emperor, looked
on Szema with antipathy. To such natures as the former, women give
all honour and approbation; but for such as the latter, they reserve
their weakness!
Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved in his intercourse
with his counsellors, Yuentsoong knew not that, throughout the
imperial city, Szema was called "_the kieu,_" or robber-bird, and his
fair Teh-leen openly charged with dishonour. Going out alone to hunt
as was his custom, and having left his signet with Szema, to pass and
repass through the private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell
with him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat superstitious,
and remembering that good spirits sometimes "knit the grass," when
other obstacles fail to bar our way to danger, the emperor drew rein
and returned to his palace. It was an hour after noon, and having
dismissed his attendants at the city gate, he entered by a postern to
the imperial garden, and bethought himself of the concealed couch in
a cool grot by a fountain (a favourite retreat, sacred to himself and
Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be refreshing to sleep away the
sultriness of the remaining hours till evening. Sitting down by the
side of the murmuring fount, he bathed his feet, and left his
slippers on the lip of the basin to be unencumbered in his repose
within, and so with unechoing step entered the resounding grotto.
Alas! there slumbered the faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen
upon his bosom!
Grief struck through the noble heart of the emperor like a sword in
cold blood. With a word he could consign to torture and death the
robber of his honour, but there was agony in his bosom deeper than
revenge. He turned silently away, recalled his horse and huntsmen,
and, outstripping all, plunged on through the forest till night
gathered around him.
Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his capitol, and his
subjects were murmuring their fears for his safety, when a messenger
arrived to the counsellors informing them of the appointment of the
captive Tartar prince to the government of the province of Szechuen,
the second honour of the Celestial empire. A private order
accompanied the announcement, commanding the immediate departure of
Szema for the scene of his new authority. Inexplicable as was this
riddle to the multitude, there were those who read it truly by their
knowledge of the magnanimous soul of the emperor; and among these was
the crafty object of his generosity. Losing no time, he set forward
with great pomp for Szechuen, and in their joy to see him no more in
the palace, the slighted princes of the empire forgave him his
unmerited advancement. Yuentsoong returned to his capitol; but to
the terror of his counsellors and people, his hair was blanched white
as the head of an old man! He was pale as well, but he was cheerful
beyond his wont, and to Teh-leen untiring in pensive and humble
attentions. He pleaded only impaired health and restless slumbers
for nights of solitude. Once, Teh-leen penetrated to his lonely
chamber, but by the dim night lamp she saw that the scroll over her
window* was changed, and instead of the stimulus to glory which
formerly hung in golden letters before his eyes, there was a sentence
written tremblingly in black:--
"_The close wing of love covers the death-throb of honour._"
*The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and temples in China
are ornamental scrolls or labels of coloured paper, or wood, painted
and gilded, and hung over doors or windows, and inscribed with a line
or couplet conveying some allusion to the circumstances of the
inhabitant, or some pious or philosophical axiom. For instance, a
poetical one is recorded by Dr. Morrison:
"From the pine forest the azure dragon ascends to the milky way,"
typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honours.
Six months from this period the capital was thrown into a tumult with
the intelligence that the province of Szechuen was in rebellion, and
Szema at the head of a numerous army on his way to seize the throne
of Yuentsoong. This last sting betrayed the serpent even to the
forgiving emperor, and tearing the reptile at last from his heart, he
entered with the spirit of other times into warlike preparations.
The imperial army was in a few days on its march, and at Keo-Yang the
opposing forces met and prepared for encounter.
With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh-leen, Yuentsoong had
commanded for her a close litter, and she was borne after the
imperial standard in the centre of the army. On the eve before the
battle, ere the watch-fires were lit, the emperor came to her tent,
set apart from his own, and with the delicate care and gentleness
from which he never varied, inquired how her wants were supplied, and
bade her, thus early, farewell for the night; his own custom of
passing among his soldiers on the evening previous to an engagement,
promising to interfere with what was usually his last duty before
retiring to his couch.
Teh-leen on this occasion seemed moved by some irrepressible emotion,
and as he rose to depart, she fell forward upon her face and bathed
his feet with her tears. Attributing it to one of those excesses of
feeling to which all, but especially hearts ill at ease, are liable,
the noble monarch gently raised her, and, with repeated efforts at
reassurance, committed her to the hands of her women. His own heart
beat far from tranquilly, for, in the excess of his pity for her
grief, he had unguardedly called her by one of the sweet names of
their early days of love--strange word now upon his lips--and it
brought back, spite of memory and truth, happiness that would not be
forgotten!
It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high in heaven, when
the emperor, returning between the lengthening watch-fires, sought
out the small lamp, which, suspended like a star above his own tent,
guided him back from the irregular mazes of the camp. Paled by the
intense radiance of the moonlight, the small globe of alabaster at
length became apparent to his weary eye, and with one glance at the
peaceful beauty of the heavens, he parted the curtained door beneath
it, and stood within. The Chinese historian asserts that a bird,
from whose wing Teh-leen had once plucked an arrow, restoring it to
liberty and life, in grateful attachment to her destiny, had removed
the lamp from the imperial tent and suspended it over hers. The
emperor stood beside her couch. Startled at his inadvertent error,
he turned to retire; but the lifted curtain let in a flood of
moonlight upon the sleeping features of Teh-leen, and like dew-drops
the undried tears glistened in her silken lashes. A lamp burned
faintly in the inner apartment of the tent and her attendants slept
soundly. His soft heart gave way. Taking up the lamp, he held it
over his beautiful mistress, and once more gazed passionately and
unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The past--the early
past--was alone before him. He forgave her--there as she slept,
unconscious of the throbbing of his injured, but noble heart, so
close beside her--he forgave her in the long silent abysses of his
soul! Unwilling to wake her from her tranquil slumber, but promising
to himself from that hour such sweets of confiding love as had
well-nigh been lost to him forever, he imprinted one kiss upon the
parted lips of Teh-leen, and sought his couch for slumber.
Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of his attendants with
news too important for delay. Szema, the rebel, had been arrested in
the imperial camp, disguised, and on his way back to his own forces,
and like wildfire, the information had spread among the soldiery,
who, in a state of mutinous excitement, were with difficulty
restrained from rushing upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of
his tent, Yuentsoong found messengers from the alarmed princes and
officers of the different commands, imploring immediate aid and the
imperial presence to allay the excitement, and while the emperor
prepared to mount his horse, the guard arrived with the Tartar
prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing marks of rough usage from his
indignant captors.
"Loose him!" cried the emperor in a voice of thunder.
The cords were severed, and with a glance whose ferocity expressed no
thanks, Szema reared himself up to his fullest height, and looked
scornfully around him. Daylight had now broke, and as the group
stood upon an eminence in sight of the whole army, shouts began to
ascend, and the armed multitude, breaking through all restraint,
rolled in toward the centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong
turned to give some orders to those near him, when Szema suddenly
sprang upon an officer of the guard, wrenched his drawn sword from
his grasp, and in an instant was lost to sight in the tent of
Teh-leen. A sharp scream, a second of thought, and forth again
rushed the desperate murderer, with his sword flinging drops of
blood, and ere a foot stirred in the paralysed group, the avenging
cimiter of Yuentsoong had cleft him to the chin.
A hush, as if the whole army were struck dumb by a bolt from heaven,
followed this rapid tragedy. Dropping the polluted sword from his
hand, the emperor, with uncertain step, and the pallor of death upon
his countenance, entered the fatal tent.
He came no more forth that day. The army was marshalled by the
princes, and the rebels were routed with great slaughter; but
Yuentsoong never more wielded sword. "He pined to death," says the
historian, "with the wane of the same moon that shone upon the
forgiveness of Teh-leen."
II
IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN*
H. G. DWIGHT
*Reprinted by permission of the author.
_At the old gentleman's side sat a young lady more beautiful than
pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite than the first quarter moon
viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders._
--O. Henry: THE TRIMMED LAMP.
I
As the caique glided up to the garden gate the three boatmen rose
from their sheepskins and caught hold of iron clamps set into the
marble of the quay. Shaban, the grizzled gate-keeper, who was
standing at the top of the water-steps with his hands folded
respectfully in front of him, came salaaming down to help his master
out.
"Shall we wait, my Pasha?" asked the head _kaikji_.
The Pasha turned to Shaban, as if to put a question. And as if to
answer it Shaban said:
"The Madama is up in the wood, in the kiosque. She sent down word to
ask if you would go up too."
"Then don't wait." Returning the boatmen's salaam, the Pasha stepped
into his garden. "Is there company in the kiosque or is Madama
alone?" he inquired.
"I think no one is there--except Zümbül Agha," replied Shaban,
following his master up the long central path of black and white
pebbles.
"Zümbül Agha!" exclaimed the Pasha. But if it had been in his mind
to say anything else he stopped instead to sniff at a rosebud. And
then he asked: "Are we dining up there, do you know?"
"I don't know, my Pasha, but I will find out."
"Tell them to send up dinner anyway, Shaban. It is such an evening!
And just ask Moustafa to bring me a coffee at the fountain, will you?
I will rest a little before climbing that hill."
"On my head!" said the Albanian, turning off to the house.
The Pasha kept on to the end of the walk. Two big horse-chestnut
trees, their candles just starting alight in the April air, stood
there at the foot of a terrace, guarding a fountain that dripped in
the ivied wall. A thread of water started mysteriously out of the
top of a tall marble niche into a little marble basin, from which it
overflowed by two flat bronze spouts into two smaller basins below.
From them the water dripped back into a single basin still lower
down, and so tinkled its broken way, past graceful arabesques and
reliefs of fruit and flowers, into a crescent-shaped pool at the foot
of the niche.
The Pasha sank down into one of the wicker chairs scattered
hospitably beneath the horse-chestnut trees, and thought how happy a
man he was to have a fountain of the period of Sultan Ahmed III, and
a garden so full of April freshness, and a view of the bright
Bosphorus and the opposite hills of Europe and the firing West. How
definitely he thought it I cannot say, for the Pasha was not greatly
given to thought. Why should he be, since he possessed without that
trouble a goodly share of what men acquire by taking thought? If he
had been lapped in ease and security all his days, they numbered many
more, did those days, than the Pasha would have chosen. Still, they
had touched him but lightly, merely increasing the dignity of his
handsome presence and taking away nothing of his power to enjoy his
little walled world.
So he sat there, breathing in the air of the place and the hour,
while gardeners came and went with their watering-pots, and birds
twittered among the branches, and the fountain plashed beside him,
until Shaban reappeared carrying a glass of water and a cup of coffee
in a swinging tray.
"Eh, Shaban! It is not your business to carry coffee!" protested the
Pasha, reaching for a stand that stood near him.
"What is your business is my business, _Pasha'm_. Have I not eaten
your bread and your father's for thirty years?"
"No! Is it as long as that? We are getting old, Shaban."
"We are getting old," assented the Albanian simply.
The Pasha thought, as he took out his silver cigarette-case, of
another Pasha who had complimented him that afternoon on his
youthfulness. And, choosing a cigarette, he handed the case to his
gatekeeper. Shaban accepted the cigarette and produced matches from
his gay girdle.
"How long is it since you have been to your country, Shaban?"
The Pasha, lifting his little cup by its silver zarf, realised that
he would not have sipped his coffee quite so noisily had his French
wife been sitting with him under the horse-chestnut trees. But with
his old Shaban he could still be a Turk.
"Eighteen months, my Pasha."
"And when are you going again?"
"In Ramazan, if God wills. Or perhaps next Ramazan. We shall see."
"Allah, Allah! How many times have I told you to bring your people
here, Shaban? We have plenty of room to build you a house somewhere,
and you could see your wife and children every day instead of once in
two or three years."
"Wives, wives--a man will not die if he does not see them every day!
Besides, it would not be good for the children. In Constantinople
they become rascals. There are too many Christians." And he added
hastily: "It is better for a boy to grow up in the mountains."
"But we have a mountain here, behind the house," laughed the Pasha.
"Your mountain is not like our mountains," objected Shaban gravely,
hunting in his mind for the difference he felt but could not express.
"And that new wife of yours," went on the Pasha. "Is it good to
leave a young woman like that? Are you not afraid?"
"No, my Pasha. I am not afraid. We all live together, you know. My
brothers watch, and the other women. She is safer than yours.
Besides, in my country it is not as it is here."
"I don't know why I have never been to see this wonderful country of
yours, Shaban. I have so long intended to, and I never have been.
But I must climb my mountain or they will think I have become a
rascal too." And, rising from his chair, he gave the Albanian a
friendly pat.
"Shall I come too, my Pasha? Zümbül Agha sent word----"
"Zümbül Agha!" interrupted the Pasha irritably. "No, you needn't
come. I will explain to Zümbül Agha."
With which he left Shaban to pick up the empty coffee cup.
II
From the upper terrace a bridge led across the public road to the
wood. If it was not a wood it was at all events a good-sized grove,
climbing the steep hillside very much as it chose. Every sort and
size of tree was there, but the greater number of them were of a kind
to be sparsely trimmed in April with a delicate green, and among them
were so many twisted Judas trees as to tinge whole patches of the
slope with their deep rose bloom. The road that the Pasha slowly
climbed, swinging his amber beads behind him as he walked, zigzagged
so leisurely back and forth among the trees that a carriage could
have driven up it. In that way, indeed, the Pasha had more than once
mounted to the kiosque, in the days when his mother used to spend a
good part of her summer up there, and when he was married to his
first wife. The memory of the two, and of their old-fashioned ways,
entered not too bitterly into his general feeling of well-being,
ministered to by the budding trees and the spring air and the sunset
view. Every now and then an enormous plane tree invited him to stop
and look at it, or a semi-circle of cypresses.
So at last he came to the top of the hill, where in a grassy clearing
a small house looked down on the valley of the Bosphorus through a
row of great stone pines. The door of the kiosque was open, but his
wife was not visible. The Pasha stopped a moment, as he had done a
thousand times before, and looked back. He was not the man to be
insensible to what he saw between the columnar trunks of the pines,
where European hills traced a dark curve against the fading sky, and
where the sinuous waterway far below still reflected a last glamour
of the day. The beauty of it, and the sharp sweetness of the April
air, and the infinitesimal sounds of the wood, and the half-conscious
memories involved with it all, made him sigh. He turned and mounted
the steps of the porch.
The kiosque looked very dark and unfamiliar as the Pasha entered it.
He wondered what had become of Hélène--if by any chance he had passed
her on the way. He wanted her. She was the expression of what the
evening roused in him. He heard nothing, however, but the splash of
water from a half-visible fountain. It reminded him for an instant
of the other fountain, below, and of Shaban. His steps resounded
hollowly on the marble pavement as he walked into the dim old saloon,
shaped like a T, with the crossbar longer than the leg. It was still
light enough for him to make out the glimmer of windows on three
sides and the square of the fountain in the centre, but the painted
domes above were lost in shadow.
The spaces on either side of the bay by which he entered, completing
the rectangle of the kiosque, were filled by two little rooms opening
into the cross of the T. He went into the left-hand one, where
Hélène usually sat--because there were no lattices. The room was
empty. The place seemed so strange and still in the twilight that a
sort of apprehension began to grow in him, and he half wished he had
brought up Shaban. He turned back to the second, the latticed
room--the harem, as they called it. Curiously enough it was Hélène
who would never let him Europeanise it, in spite of the lattices.
Every now and then he found out that she liked some Turkish things
better than he did. As soon as he opened the door he saw her sitting
on the divan opposite. He knew her profile against the checkered
pallor of the lattice. But she neither moved nor greeted him. It
was Zümbül Agha who did so, startling him by suddenly rising beside
the door and saying in his high voice:
"Pleasant be your coming, my Pasha."
The Pasha had forgotten about Zümbül Agha; and it seemed strange to
him that Hélène continued to sit silent and motionless on her sofa.
"Good evening," he said at last. "You are sitting very quietly here
in the dark. Are there no lights in this place?"
It was again Zümbül Agha who spoke, turning one question by another:
"Did Shaban come with you?"
"No," replied the Pasha shortly. "He said he had a message, but I
told him not to come."
"A-ah!" ejaculated the eunuch in his high drawl. "But it does not
matter--with the two of us."
The Pasha grew more and more puzzled, for this was not the scene he
had imagined to himself as he came up through the part in response to
his wife's message. Nor did he grow less puzzled when the eunuch
turned to her and said in another tone:
"Now will you give me that key?"
The French woman took no more notice of this question than she had of
the Pasha's entrance.
"What do you mean, Zümbül Agha?" demanded the Pasha sharply. "That
is not the way to speak to your mistress."
"I mean this, my Pasha," retorted the eunuch--"that some one is
hiding in this chest and that Madama keeps the key."
That was what the Pasha heard, in the absurd treble of the black man,
in the darkening room. He looked down and made out, beside the tall
figure of the eunuch, the chest on which he had been sitting. Then
he looked across at Hélène, who still sat silent in front of the
lattice.
"What are you talking about?" he asked at last, more stupefied than
anything else. "Who is it? A thief? Has any one--?" He left the
vague question unformulated, even in his mind.
"Ah, that I don't know. You must ask Madama. Probably it is one of
her Christian friends. But at least if it were a woman she would not
be so unwilling to unlock her chest for us!"
The silence that followed, while the Pasha looked dumbly at the
chest, and at Zümbül Agha, and at his wife, was filled for him with a
stranger confusion of feelings than he had ever experienced before.
Nevertheless he was surprisingly cool, he found. His pulse quickened
very little. He told himself that it wasn't true and that he really
must get rid of old Zümbül after all, if he went on making such
preposterous gaffes and setting them all by the ears. How could
anything so baroque happen to him, the Pasha, who owed what he was to
honourable fathers and who had passed his life honourably and
peaceably until this moment? Yet he had had an impression, walking
into the dark old kiosque and finding nobody until he found these two
sitting here in this extraordinary way--as if he had walked out of
his familiar garden, that he knew like his hand, into a country he
knew nothing about, where anything might be true. And he wished, he
almost passionately wished, that Hélène would say something, would
cry out against Zümbül Agha, would lie even, rather than sit there so
still and removed and different from other women.
Then he began to be aware that if it were true--if!--he ought to do
something. He ought to make a noise. He ought to kill somebody.
That was what they always did. That was what his father would have
done, or certainly his grandfather. But he also told himself that it
was no longer possible for him to do what his father and grandfather
had done. He had been unlearning their ways too long. Besides, he
was too old.
A sudden sting pierced him at the thought of how old he was, and how
young Hélène. Even if he lived to be seventy or eighty she would
still have a life left when he died. Yes, it was as Shaban said.
They were getting old. He had never really felt the humiliation of
it before. And Shaban had said, strangely, something else--that his
own wife was safer than the Pasha's. Still he felt an odd compassion
for Hélène, too--because she was young, and it was Judas-tree time,
and she was married to grey hairs. And although he was a Pasha,
descended from great Pashas, and she was only a little French girl
_quelconque_, he felt more afraid than ever of making a fool of
himself before her--when he had promised her that she should be as
free as any other European woman, that she should live her life.
Besides, what had the black man to do with their private affairs?
"Zümbül Agha," he suddenly heard himself harshly saying, "is this
your house or mine? I have told you a hundred times that you are not
to trouble the Madama, or follow her about, or so much as guess where
she is and what she is doing. I have kept you in the house because
my father brought you into it; but if I ever hear of you speaking to
Madama again, or spying on her, I will send you into the street. Do
you hear? Now get out!"
"Aman, my Pasha! I beg you!" entreated the eunuch. There was
something ludicrous in his voice, coming as it did from his height.
The Pasha wondered if he had been too long a person of importance in
the family to realise the change in his position, or whether he
really----
All of a sudden a checkering of lamplight flickered through the dark
window, touched the Negro's black face for a moment, travelled up the
wall. Silence fell again in the little room--a silence into which
the fountain dropped its silver patter. Then steps mounted the porch
and echoed in the other room, which lighted in turn, and a man came
in sight, peering this way and that, with a big white accordeon
lantern in his hand. Behind the man two other servants appeared,
carrying on their heads round wooden trays covered by figured silks,
and a boy tugging a huge basket. When they discovered the three in
the little room they salaamed respectfully.
"Where shall we set the table?" asked the man with the lantern.
For the Pasha the lantern seemed to make the world more like the
place he had always known. He turned to his wife, apologetically.
"I told them to send dinner up here. It has been such a long time
since we came. But I forgot about the table. I don't believe there
is one here."
"No," uttered Hélène from her sofa, sitting with her head on her hand.
It was the first word she had spoken. But, little as it was, it
reassured him, like the lantern.
"There is the chest," hazarded Zümbül Agha.
The interruption of the servants had for the moment distracted them
all. But the Pasha now turned on him so vehemently that the eunuch
salaamed in haste and went away.
"Why not?" asked Hélène, when he was gone. "We can sit on the
cushions."
"Why not?" echoed the Pasha. Grateful as he was for the
interruption, he found himself wishing, secretly, that Hélène had
discouraged his idea of a picnic dinner. And he could not help
feeling a certain constraint as he gave the necessary orders and
watched the servants put down their paraphernalia and pull the chest
into the middle of the room. There was something unreal and
stage-like about the scene, in the uncertain light of the lantern.
Obviously the chest was not light. It was an old cypress-wood chest
that they had always used in the summer, to keep things in, polished
a bright brown, with a little inlaid pattern of dark brown and cream
colour running around the edge of each surface, and a more
complicated design ornamenting the centre of the cover. He vaguely
associated his mother with it. He felt a distinct relief when the
men spread the cloth. He felt as if they had covered up more things
than he could name. And when they produced candlesticks and candles,
and set them on the improvised table and in the niches beside the
door, he seemed to come back again into the comfortable light of
common sense.
"This is the way we used to do when I was a boy," he said with a
smile, when he and Hélène established themselves on sofa cushions on
opposite sides of the chest. "Only then we had little tables six
inches high, instead of big ones like this."
"It is rather a pity that we have spoiled all that," she said. "Are
we any happier for perching on chairs around great scaffoldings, and
piling the scaffoldings with so many kinds of porcelain and metal?
After all, they knew how to live--the people who were capable of
imagining a place like this. And they had the good taste not to fill
a room with things. Your grandfather, was it?"
He had had a dread that she would not say anything, that she would
remain silent and impenetrable as she had been before Zümbül Agha, as
if the chest between them were a barrier that nothing could surmount.
His heart lightened when he heard her speak. Was it not quite her
natural voice?
"It was my great-grandfather, the Grand Vizier. They say he did know
how to live--in his way. He built the kiosque for a beautiful slave
of his, a Greek, whom he called Pomegranate."
"Madame Pomegranate! What a charming name! And that is why her
cipher is everywhere. See?" She pointed to the series of cupboards
and niches on either side of the door, dimly painted with pomegranate
blossoms, and to the plaster reliefs around the hooded fireplace, and
to the cluster of pomegranates that made a centre to the gilt and
painted lattice-work of the ceiling. "One could be very happy in
such a little house. It has an air--of being meant for moments. And
you feel as if they had something to do with the wonderful way it has
faded." She looked as if she had meant to say something else, which
she did not. But after a moment she added: "Will you ask them to
turn off the water in the fountain? It is a little chilly, now that
the sun has gone, and it sounds like rain--or tears."
The dinner went, on the whole, not so badly. There were dishes to be
passed back and forth. There were questions to be asked or comments
to be made. There were the servants to be spoken to. Yet, more and
more, the Pasha could not help wondering. When a silence fell, too,
he could not help listening. And least of all could he help looking
at Hélène. He looked at her, trying not to look at her, with an
intense curiosity, as if he had never seen her before, asking himself
if there were anything new in her face, and how she would look if--
Would she be like this? She made no attempt to keep up a flow of
words, as if to distract his attention. She was not soft either; she
was not trying to seduce him. And she made no show of gratitude
toward him for having sent Zümbül Agha away. Neither did she by so
much as an inflection try to insinuate or excuse or explain. She was
what she always was, perfect--and evidently a little tired. She was
indeed more than perfect, she was prodigious, when he asked her once
what she was thinking about and she said Pandora, tapping the chest
between them. He had never heard the story of that other Greek girl
and her box, and she told him gravely about all the calamities that
came out of it, and the one gift of hope that remained behind.
"But I cannot be a Turkish woman long!" she added inconsequently with
a smile. "My legs are asleep. I really must walk about a little."
When he had helped her to her feet she led the way into the other
room. They had their coffee and cigarettes there. Hélène walked
slowly up and down the length of the room, stopping every now and
then to look into the square pool of the fountain and to pat her hair.
The Pasha sat down on the long low divan that ran under the windows.
He could watch her more easily now. And the detachment with which he
had begun to look at her grew in spite of him into the feeling that
he was looking at a stranger. After all, what did he know about her?
Who was she? What had happened to her, during all the years that he
had not known her, in that strange free European life which he had
tried to imitate, and which at heart he secretly distrusted? What
had she ever really told him, and what had he ever really divined of
her? For perhaps the first time in his life he realised how little
one person may know of another, and particularly a man of a woman.
And he remembered Shaban again, and that phrase about his wife being
safer than Hélène. Had Shaban really meant anything? Was Hélène
"safe"? He acknowledged to himself at last that the question was
there in his mind, waiting to be answered.
Hélène did not help him. She had been standing for some time at an
odd angle to the pool, looking into it. He could see her face there,
with the eyes turned away from him.
"How mysterious a reflection is!" she said. "It is so real that you
can't believe it disappears for good. How often Madame Pomegranate
must have looked into this pool, and yet I can't find her in it. But
I feel she is really there, all the same--and who knows who else."
"They say mirrors do not flatter," the Pasha did not keep himself
from rejoining, "but they are very discreet. They tell no tales!"
Hélène raised her eyes. In the little room the servants had cleared
the improvised table and had packed up everything again except the
candles.
"I have been up here a long time," she said, "and I am rather tired.
It is a little cold, too. If you do not mind I think I will go down
to the house now, with the servants. You will hardly care to go so
soon, for Zümbül Agha has not finished what he has to say to you."
"Zümbül Agha!" exclaimed the Pasha. "I sent him away."
"Ah, but you must know him well enough to be sure he would not go.
Let us see." She clapped her hands. The servant of the lantern
immediately came out to her. "Will you ask Zümbül Agha to come
here?" she said. "He is on the porch."
The man went to the door, looked out, and said a word. Then he stood
aside with a respectful salaam, and the eunuch entered. He
negligently returned the salute and walked forward until his air of
importance changed to one of humility at sight of the Pasha.
Salaaming in turn, he stood with his hands folded in front of him.
"I will go down with you," said the Pasha to his wife, rising. "It
is too late for you to go through the woods in the dark."
"Nonsense!" She gave him a look that had more in it than the tone in
which she added: "Please do not. I shall be perfectly safe with four
servants. You can tell them not to let me run away." Coming nearer,
she put her hand into the bosom of her dress, then stretched out the
hand toward him. "Here is the key--the key of which Zümbül Agha
spoke--the key of Pandora's box. Will you keep it for me, please?
_Au revoir_."
And making a sign to the servants she walked out of the kiosque.
III
The Pasha was too surprised, at first, to move--and too conscious of
the eyes of servants, too uncertain of what he should do, too fearful
of doing the wrong, the un-European, thing. And afterward it was too
late. He stood watching until the flicker of the lantern disappeared
among the dark trees. Then his eyes met the eunuch's.
"Why don't you go down too?" suggested Zümbül Agha. The variable
climate of a great house had made him too perfect an opportunist not
to take the line of being in favour again. "It might be better.
Give me the key and I will do what there is to do. But you might
send up Shaban."
Why not, the Pasha secretly asked himself? Might it not be the best
way out? At the same time he experienced a certain revulsion of
feeling, now that Hélène was gone, in the way she had gone. She
really was prodigious! And with the vanishing of the lantern that
had brought him a measure of reassurance he felt the weight of an
uncleared situation, fantastic but crucial, heavy upon him. And the
Negro annoyed him intensely.
"Thank you, Zümbül Agha," he replied, "but I am not the nurse of
Madama, and I will not give you the key."
If he only might, though, he thought to himself again!
"You believe her, this Frank woman whom you had never seen five years
ago, and you do not believe me who have lived in your house longer
than you can remember!"
The eunuch said it so bitterly that the Pasha was touched in spite of
himself. He had never been one to think very much about minor
personal relations, but even at such a moment he could see--was it
partly because he wanted more time to make up his mind?--that he had
never liked Zümbül Agha as he liked Shaban, for instance. Yet more
honour had been due, in the old family tradition, to the former. And
he had been associated even longer with the history of the house.
"My poor Zümbül," he uttered musingly, "you have never forgiven me
for marrying her."
"My Pasha, you are not the first to marry an unbeliever, nor the
last. But such a marriage should be to the glory of Islam, and not
to its discredit. Who can trust her? She is still a Christian. And
she is too young. She has turned the world upside down. What would
your father have said to a daughter-in-law who goes shamelessly into
the street without a veil, alone, and who receives in your house men
who are no relation to you or to her? It is not right. Women
understand only one thing--to make fools of men. And they are never
content to fool one."
The Pasha, still waiting to make up his mind, let his fancy linger
about Zümbül Agha. It was really rather absurd, after all, what a
part women played in the world, and how little it all came to in the
end! Did the black man, he wondered, walk in a clearer cooler world,
free of the clouds, the iridescences, the languors, the perfumes, the
strange obsessions, that made others walk so often like madmen? Or
might some tatter of preposterous humanity still work obscurely in
him? Or a bitterness of not being like other men? That perhaps was
why the Pasha felt friendlier toward Shaban. They were more alike.
"You are right, Zümbül Agha," he said. "The world is upside down.
But neither the Madama nor any of us made it so. All we can do is to
try and keep our heads as it turns. Now, will you please tell me how
you happened to be up here? The Madama never told you to come. You
know perfectly well that the customs of Europe are different from
ours, and that she does not like to have you follow her about."
"What woman likes to be followed about?" retorted the eunuch with a
sly smile. "I know you have told me to leave her alone. But why was
I brought into this house? Am I to stand by and watch dishonour
brought upon it simply because you have eaten the poison of a woman?"
"Zümbül Agha," replied the Pasha sharply, "I am not discussing old
and new or this and that, but I am asking you to tell me what all
this speech is about."
"Give me that key and I will show you what it is about," said the
eunuch, stepping forward.
But the Pasha found he was not ready to go so directly to the point.
"Can't you answer a simple question?" he demanded irritably,
retreating to the farther side of the fountain.
The reflection of the painted ceiling in the pool made him think of
Hélène--and Madame Pomegranate. He stared into the still water as if
to find Hélène's face there. Was any other face hidden beside it,
mocking him?
But Zümbül Agha had begun again, doggedly:
"I came here because it is my business to be here. I went to town
this morning. When I got back they told me that you were away and
that the Madama was up here, alone. So I came. Is this a place for
a woman to be alone in--a young woman, with men working all about and
I don't know who, and a thousand ways of getting in and out from the
hills, and ten thousand hiding places in the woods?"
The Pasha made a gesture of impatience, and turned away. But after
all, what could one do with old Zümbül? He had been brought up in
his tradition. The Pasha lighted another cigarette to help himself
think.
"Well, I came up here," continued the eunuch, "and as I came I heard
Madama singing. You know how she sings the songs of the Franks."
The Pasha knew, but he did not say anything. As he walked up and
down, smoking and thinking, his eye caught in the pool a reflection
from the other side of the room, where the door of the latticed room
was and where the cypress-wood chest stood as the servants had left
it in the middle of the floor. Was that what Hélène had stood
looking at so long, he asked himself? He wondered that he could have
sat beside it so quietly. It seemed now like something dark and
dangerous crouching there in the shadow of the little room.
"I sat down, under the terrace," he heard the eunuch go on, "where no
one could see me, and I listened. And after she had stopped I
heard----"
"Never mind what you heard," broke in the Pasha. "I have heard
enough."
He was ashamed--ashamed and resolved. He felt as if he had been
playing the spy with Zümbül Agha. And after all there was a very
simple way to answer his question for himself. He threw away his
cigarette, went forward into the little room, bent over the chest,
and fitted the key into the lock.
Just then a nightingale burst out singing, but so near and so loud
that he started and looked over his shoulder. In an instant he
collected himself, feeling the black man's eyes upon him. Yet he
could not suppress the train of association started by the
impassioned trilling of the bird, even as he began to turn the key of
the chest where his mother used to keep her quaint old silks and
embroideries. The irony of the contrast paralysed his hand for a
strange moment, and of the difference between this spring night and
other spring nights when nightingales had sung. And what if, after
all, only calamity were to come out of the chest, and he were to lose
his last gift of hope! Ah! He knew at last what he would do! He
quickly withdrew the key from the lock, stood up straight again, and
looked at Zümbül Agha.
"Go down and get Shaban," he ordered, "and don't come back."
The eunuch stared. But if he had anything to say he thought better
of uttering it. He saluted silently and went away.
IV
The Pasha sat down on the divan and lighted a cigarette. Almost
immediately the nightingale stopped singing. For a few moments
Zümbül Agha's steps could be heard outside. Then it became very
still. The Pasha did not like it. Look which way he would he could
not help seeing the chest--or listening. He got up and went into the
big room, where he turned on the water of the fountain. The falling
drops made company for him, and kept him from looking for lost
reflections. But they presently made him think of what Hélène had
said about them. He went out to the porch and sat down on the steps.
In front of him the pines lifted their great dark canopies against
the stars. Other stars twinkled between the trunks, far below, where
the shore lights of the Bosphorus were. It was so still that water
sounds came faintly up to him, and every now and then he could even
hear nightingales on the European side. Another nightingale began
singing in his own woods--the nightingale that had told him what to
do, he said to himself. What other things the nightingales had sung
to him, years ago! And how long the pines had listened there, still
strong and green and rugged and alive, while he, and how many before
him, sat under them for a little while and then went away!
Presently he heard steps on the drive and Shaban came, carrying
something dark in his hand.
"What is that?" asked the Pasha, as Shaban held it out.
"A pistol, my Pasha. Zümbül Agha told me you wanted it."
The Pasha laughed curtly.
"Zümbül made a mistake. What I want is a shovel, or a couple of
them. Can you find such a thing without asking anyone?"
"Yes, my Pasha," replied the Albanian promptly, laying the revolver
on the steps and disappearing again. And it was not long before he
was back with the desired implements.
"We must dig a hole, somewhere, Shaban," said his master in a low
voice. "It must be in a place where people are not likely to go, but
not too far from the kiosque."
Shaban immediately started toward the trees at the back of the house.
The Pasha followed him silently into a path that wound through the
wood. A nightingale began to sing again, very near them--the
nightingale, thought the Pasha.
"He is telling us where to go," he said.
Shaban permitted himself a low laugh.
"I think he is telling his mistress where to go. However, we will go
too." And they did, bearing away to one side of the path till they
came to the foot of a tall cypress.
"This will do," said the Pasha, "if the roots are not in the way."
Without a word Shaban began to dig. The Pasha took the other spade.
To the simple Albanian it was nothing out of the ordinary. What was
extraordinary was that his master was able to keep it up, soft as the
loam was under the trees. The most difficult thing about it was that
they could not see what they were doing, except by the light of an
occasional match. But at last the Pasha judged the ragged excavation
of sufficient depth. Then he led the way back to the kiosque.
They found Zümbül Agha in the little room, sitting on the sofa with a
pistol in either hand.
"I thought I told you not to come back!" exclaimed the Pasha sternly.
"Yes," faltered the old eunuch, "but I was afraid something might
happen to you. So I waited below the pines. And when you went away
into the woods with Shaban, I came here to watch." He lifted a
revolver significantly. "I found the other one on the steps."
"Very well," said the Pasha at length, more kindly. He even found it
in him at that moment to be amused at the picture the black man made,
in his sedate frock coat, with his two weapons. And Zümbül Agha
found no less to look at in the appearance of his master's clothes.
"But now there is no need for you to watch any longer," added the
latter. "If you want to watch, do it at the bottom of the hill.
Don't let any one come up here."
"On my head," said the eunuch. He saw that Shaban, as usual, was
trusted more than he. But it was not for him to protest against the
ingratitude of masters. He salaamed and backed out of the room.
When he was gone the Pasha turned to Shaban:
"This box, Shaban--you see this box? It has become a trouble to us,
and I am going to take it out there."
The Albanian nodded gravely. He took hold of one of the handles, to
judge the weight of the chest. He lifted his eyebrows.
"Can you help me put it on my back?" he asked.
"Don't try to do that, Shaban. We will carry it together." The
Pasha took hold of the other handle. When they got as far as the
outer door he let down his end. It was not light. "Wait a minute,
Shaban. Let us shut up the kiosque, so that no one will notice
anything." He went back to blow out the candles. Then he thought of
the fountain. He caught a play of broken images in the pool as he
turned off the water. When he had put out the lights and had groped
his way to the door he found that Shaban was already gone with the
chest. A last drop of water made a strange echo behind him in the
dark kiosque. He locked the door and hurried after Shaban, who had
succeeded in getting the chest on his back. Nor would Shaban let the
Pasha help him till they came to the edge of the wood. There,
carrying the chest between them, they stumbled through the trees to
the place that was ready.
"Now we must be careful," said the Pasha. "It might slip or get
stuck."
"But are you going to bury the box too?" demanded Shaban, for the
first time showing surprise.
"Yes," answered the Pasha. And he added: "It is the box I want to
get rid of."
"It is a pity," remarked Shaban regretfully. "It is a very good box.
However, you know. Now then!"
There was a scraping and a muffled thud, followed by a fall of earth
and small stones on wood. The Pasha wondered if he would hear
anything else. But first one and then another nightingale began to
fill the night air with their April madness.
"Ah, there are two of them," remarked Shaban. "She will take the one
that says the sweetest things to her."
The Pasha's reply was to throw a spadeful of earth on the chest.
Shaban joined him with such vigour that the hole was very soon full.
"We are old, my Pasha, but we are good for something yet," said
Shaban. "I will hide the shovels here in the bushes," he added, "and
early in the morning I will come again, before any of those lazy
gardeners are up, and fix it so that no one will ever know."
There at least was a person of whom one could be sure! The Pasha
realised that gratefully, as they walked back through the park. He
did not feel like talking, but at least he felt the satisfaction of
having done what he had decided to do. He remembered Zümbül Agha as
they neared the bottom of the hill. The eunuch had not taken his
commission more seriously than it had been given, however, or he
preferred not to be seen. Perhaps he wanted to reconnoitre again on
top of the hill.
"I don't think I will go in just yet," said the Pasha, as they
crossed the bridge into the lower garden. "I am rather dirty. And I
would like to rest a little under the chestnut trees. Would you get
me an overcoat please, Shaban, and a brush of some kind? And you
might bring me a coffee, too."
How tired he was! And what a short time it was, yet what an
eternity, since he last dropped into one of those wicker chairs! He
felt for his cigarettes. As he did so he discovered something else
in his pocket, something small and hard that at first he did not
recognise. Then he remembered the key--the key.... He suddenly
tossed it into the pool beside him. It made a sharp little splash,
which was reëchoed by the dripping basins. He got up and felt in the
ivy for the handle that shut off the water. At the end of the garden
the Bosphorus lapped softly in the dark. Far away, up in the wood,
the nightingales were singing.
III
THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE*
SIR HUGH CLIFFORD
*Reprinted by permission of the author.
All the wintry afternoon we had been worming our way down the Thames,
the big steamer filtering slowly through the throng of crafts like a
'bus moving ponderously amid crowded traffic. When at last we won
free of the river, the Channel chop took us on its knee and rocked us
roughly, while the skud of wind and rain slapped us in the face with
riotous horse-play. As we came up from dinner and struggled aft, our
feet slipped and slithered over the wet decks, and the shouts of the
frozen Lascars at the lookout reached us through the sopping gloom,
despairing as the howls of souls in torment. The ugly, hopeless
melancholy of our surroundings accorded well with the mood which
possessed the majority of those on board; for we were outward bound,
and men who leave England for the good of their purses carry heavy
hearts with them at the start. In the smoking room, therefore, with
coat-collars tugged up about our ears and hands thrust deeply into
our pockets, we sat smoking with mournful earnestness, glaring at our
neighbours with the open animosity of the genial Briton.
Through the thickening fog of the tobacco-smoke, the figure of a man
seated immediately opposite to me was dimly visible; but presently
his unusual appearance claimed my closer attention and aroused my
curiosity. His emaciated body was wrapped in a huge ulster, from the
up-turned collar of which a head emerged that I can only describe as
being like nothing so much as that of a death's-head moth. He was
clean-shaven, and his cheeks were as hollow as saucers; his temples
were pinched and prominent; from the bottom of deeply sunken sockets
little wild eyes glared like savage things held fast in a gin. The
mouth was set hard, as though its owner were enduring agony, and
trying his best to repress a scream. As much of his hair as his cap
and his coat-collar suffered to be seen was of a dirty yellow-white;
yet in some indefinable way the man did not give the impression of
being old. Rather he seemed to be one prematurely broken; one who
suffered acutely and unceasingly; one who, with rigid self-control,
maintained a tight grip upon himself, as though all his nerves were
on edge. I had marked a somewhat similar expression of concentrated
determination upon the faces of fellow-passengers engaged in fighting
the demon of sea-sickness; but this man sucked at his pipe, and
obviously drew a measure of comfort from it, in a fashion which
showed that he was indifferent to the choppy motion. Yet though
those buried eyes of his were glaring and savage--eyes that seemed to
be eternally seeking some means of escape from a haunting peril--they
were not restless, but rather were fixed in a venomous scowl; while
the man himself, dead quiet, save for the light that glinted from
them, was apparently sunken in a fathomless abstraction. All this I
noted mechanically, but it was the extraordinary condition of his
face that chiefly excited my wonder. It was literally pock-marked
with little purple cicatrices, small oblong lumps, smooth and shining
feebly in the lamplight, that rose above the surface of the skin, and
ran this way and that at every imaginable angle. I had seen more
than once the faces of German duellists wonderfully and fearfully
beslashed; but the scars they wore were long and clean, wholly unlike
the badly healed lumps which disfigured my queer _vis-à-vis_. I fell
to speculating as to what could have caused such a multiplicity of
wounds: not a gunpowder explosion, certainly, for the skin showed
none of the blue tattooing inseparable from injuries so inflicted;
nor yet the bursting of a gun, for that always makes at least one
jagged cut, not innumerable tiny scars such as those at which I was
looking. I could think of no solution that would fit the case; and
as I watched, suddenly the man withdrew his hands from his pockets,
waggling them before his face with a nervous motion as though he were
warding off some invisible assailants. Then I saw that every inch of
the backs and palms, and as much of his wrists as were exposed to
view, were pitted with cicatrices similar to those with which his
face was bedecked.
"Evening, you folk!" said a nasal voice in the doorway, breaking
discordantly upon the sulky silence which brooded over us; and I
looked up to see the figure of a typical "down-easter," slim and
alert, standing just within the room. He had a keen, hard face on
him, like a meat-axe, and the wet rain stood upon it in drops. He
jerked his head at us in collective greeting, walked through the haze
of smoke with a free gait and swinging shoulders, and threw himself
down in a heap on the horse-hair bench beside the man whose strange
appearance had riveted my attention. Seated thus, he looked round at
us with quick humorous glances, as though our British solemnity,
which made each one of us grimly isolated in a crowd, struck him as
at once amusing and impossible of endurance.
"Snakes!" he exclaimed genially. "This is _mighty_ cheerful!" His
strident twang seemed to cut wedges out of the foggy silence. "We
look as though we had swallowed a peck of tenpenny nails, and the
blamed things were sitting heavy on our stomachs. Come, let us be
friendly. I ain't doing any trade in sore-headed bears. Wake up,
sonny." And he dug his melancholy neighbour in the ribs with an
aggressive and outrageous thumb.
It was for all the world as though he had touched the spring that
sets in motion the clockwork of a mechanical toy. The man's cap flew
from his head--disclosing a scalp ill-covered with sparse hairs and
scarred like his face--as he leaped to his feet with a scream, torn
suddenly, as it were, from the depths of his self-absorbed
abstraction. Casting quick nervous glances over his shoulder, he
backed into the nearest corner, his hands clawing at the air, his
eyes hunted, defiant, yet abject. His whole figure was instinct with
terror--terror seeking impotently to defend itself against unnumbered
enemies. His teeth were set, his gums drawn back over them in two
rigid white lines; a sort of snarling cry broke from him--a cry that
seemed to be the expression of furious rage, pain, and agonisingly
concentrated effort.
It all took place in a fraction of a second--as quickly as a man
jumps when badly startled--and as quickly he recovered his balance,
and pulled himself together. Then he cast a murderous glance at the
American--who at that moment presented a picture of petrified
astonishment--let fly a venomous oath at him, and slammed out of the
room in a towering rage.
"Goramercy!" ejaculated the American limply. "I want a drink.
Who'll join me?" But no one responded to his invitation.
That was the occasion of my first meeting with Timothy O'Hara: but as
I subsequently travelled half across the world in his company, was
admitted to his friendship, and heard him relate his experiences, not
once but many times, I am able to supply the key to his extraordinary
behaviour that evening. I regret that it is impossible to give his
story in his own words, for he told it graphically, and with force;
but unfortunately his very proper indignation got the better of his
discretion, with the result that he frequently waxed blasphemous in
the course of his narrative, and at times was rendered altogether
inarticulate by rage. However, the version which I now offer to the
reader is accurate in all essential details: and my own first-hand
knowledge of that gentle race called Muruts, at whose hands O'Hara
fared so evilly, has helped me to fill in such blanks as may have
existed in the tale as it originally reached me.
A score of years ago there was a man in North Borneo, whose name does
not matter--a man who had the itch of travel in him, and loved
untrodden places for their own sake. He undertook to explore the
interior of the no-man's-land which the Chartered Company
euphemistically described as its "property." He made his way inland
from the western coast, and little more was heard of him for several
months. At the end of that time a haze of disquieting rumours, as
impalpable as the used-up, fever-laden wind that blows eternally from
the interior, reached the little squalid stations on the seashore;
and shortly afterward the body of the explorer, terribly mangled and
mutilated, was sluiced down-country by a freshet, and brought up on a
sand-spit near the mouth of a river on the east coast. Here it was
discovered by a couple of white men, who with the aid of a handful of
unwilling natives buried it in becoming state, since it was the only
thing with a European father and mother which had ever travelled
across the centre of North Borneo, from sea to sea, since the
beginning of time.
In life the explorer had been noted for his beard, a great yellow
cascade of hair which fell down his breast from his lip to his waist;
and when his corpse was found this ornament was missing. The
Chartered Company, whose business it was to pay dividends in adverse
circumstances, did not profess to be a philanthropical institution,
and could not spend its hard-squeezed revenues upon putting the fear
of death into people who have made too free with the lives of white
folk, as is the practice in other parts of Asia. Therefore no steps
were taken by the local administration to punish the Muruts of the
interior who had amused themselves by putting the explorer to an ugly
death; but the knowledge that the murdered man's beard had been shorn
from his chin by some truculent savage, and was even then ornamenting
the knife-handle of a Murut chief in the heart of the island rankled
in the minds of the white men on the spot. The wise and prudent
members of the community talked a great deal, said roundly that the
thing was a shame and an abomination, and took care to let their
discretion carry them no farther than the spoken word. The young and
foolish did not say much, but the recovery of that wisp of hair
became to many of them a tremendous ambition, a dream, something that
made even existence in North Borneo tolerable, while it presented
itself to their imaginations as a feat possible of accomplishment.
With a few this dream became an _idée fixe_, an object in a life that
otherwise was unendurable; and it may even have saved a few from the
perpetration of more immediate follies. The quest would be the most
hazardous conceivable, a fitting enterprise for men rendered
desperate by the circumstances into the midst of which fate had
thrust them.
Sitting at home in England, with pleasant things to distract the mind
all about you, and with nothing at hand more dangerous than a
taxicab, all this pother concerning the hairs off a dead man's chin
may appeal to you as something absurdly sentimental and irrational;
but try for the moment to place yourself in the position of an
isolated white man at an outstation of North Borneo. Picture to
yourself a tumble-down thatched bungalow standing on a roughly
cleared hill, with four Chinese shops and a dilapidated
police-station squatting on the bank of a black, creeping river. Rub
in a smudge of blue-green forest, shutting you up on flanks, front,
and rear. Fill that forest with scattered huts, wherein squalid
natives live the lives of beasts--natives whose language you do not
know, whose ideas you do not understand, who make their presence felt
only by means of savage howls raised by them in their drunken
orgies--natives whose hatred of you can only be kept from active
expression by such fear as your armed readiness may inspire. Add to
this merciless heat, faint exhausted air, an occasional bout of the
black fever of the country, and not enough of work to preserve your
mind from rust. Remember that the men who are doomed to live in
these places get no sport, have no recreations, no companionship; and
that the long, empty, suffocating days trail by, one by one, bringing
no hope of change, and that the only communication with the outer
world is kept up fitfully by certain dingy steam-tramps which are
always behind time, and which may, or may not, arrive once a month.
Can you wonder that amid such surroundings men wax melancholy; that
they take to brooding over all manner of trivial things in a fashion
which is not quite sane; and that the knowledge that their continued
existence is dependent upon the wholesome awe in which white folks
are held sometimes gets upon their nerves, and makes them feverishly
anxious to vindicate the honour of their race? When you have let the
full meaning of these things sink into your minds, you will begin to
understand why so much excitement prevailed in North Borneo
concerning the reported ownership of the deceased explorer's beard.
Timothy O'Hara and Harold Bateman had lived lives such as those which
I have described for half a dozen years or more. They had had ample
leisure in which to turn the matter of the explorer's beard over and
over in their minds, till the thought of it had bred something like
fanaticism--a kind of still, white-hot rage within them. It chanced
that their leave of absence fell due upon one and the same day. It
followed that they put their heads together and decided to start upon
a private raid of their own into the interior of the Murut country,
with a view to redeeming the trophy. It also followed that they made
their preparations with the utmost secrecy, and that they enlisted a
dozen villainous little Dyaks from Sarawak to act as their punitive
force. The whole thing was highly improper and very illegal, but it
promised adventurous experiences, and both Bateman and O'Hara were
young and not over-wise. Also, it must be urged in extenuation of
their conduct that they had the effects of some six years' crushing
monotony to work off; and that they had learned to regard the Muruts
of the interior as their natural enemies; and that the ugliness and
the deadly solitude of their existence had rendered them savage, just
as the tamest beast becomes wild and ferocious when it finds itself
held in the painful grip of a trap.
I am in nowise concerned to justify their doings: my part is to
record them. O'Hara and Bateman vanished one day from the last
outpost of quasi-civilisation, having given out that they were off
up-country in search of big game--which was a fact. Their little
expedition slipped into the forest, and the wilderness swallowed it
up. When once they had pushed out into the unknown interior they
were gone past power of recall, were lost as completely as a needle
in a ten-acre hay-field; and they breathed more freely because they
had escaped from the narrow zone wherein the law of the white man
runs, and need guide themselves for the future merely by the dictates
of their own rudimentary notions of right and wrong.
They had a very hard time of it, so far as I can gather; for the
current of the rivers, which crept toward them, black and oily, from
the upper country, was dead against them, and the rapids soon caused
them to abandon their boats. Then they tramped it, trudging with
dogged perseverance up and down the hills, clambering painfully up
sheer ascents, slipping down the steep pitches on the other side,
splashing and labouring through the swamps betwixt hill and hill, or
wading waist-deep across wildernesses of rank _lalang_-grass, from
the green surface of which the refracted heat smote them under their
hat-brims with the force of blows. Aching in every limb,
half-blinded by the sweat that trickled into their eyes, flayed by
the sun, mired to the ears in the morasses, torn by thorn-thickets,
devoured by tree-leeches, stung by all manner of jungle-insects, and
oppressed by the weight of self-imposed effort that pride forbade
them to abandon, they struggled forward persistently, fiercely,
growing more savage and more vindictive at every painful step. The
golden fleece of beard, which was the object of their quest, became
an oriflamme, in the wake of which they floundered eternally through
the inferno of an endless fight. Their determination to recover it
became a madness, a possession: it filled their minds to the
exclusion of aught else, nerved them to fresh endeavour, spurred them
out of their weariness, and would not suffer them to rest. But the
bitterness of their travail incensed them mightily against the Murut
folk, whose lack of reverence for white men had imposed so tremendous
a task upon these self-appointed champions of their race; and as they
sat over their unpalatable meals when the day's toil was ended, they
talked together in blood-thirsty fashion of the vengeances they would
wreak and the punishment they would exact from the tribe which was
discovered to be in possession of the object of their search.
One feature of their march was that prudence forbade a halt. The
Murut of North Borneo is a person of mean understanding, who requires
time wherein to set his slow intellect in motion. He is a
dipsomaniac, a homicide by training and predilection, and he has a
passion for collecting other people's skulls, which is an
unscrupulous and as fanatical as that of the modern philatelist.
Whenever he encounters a stranger, he immediately falls to coveting
that stranger's skull; but as he is a creature of poor courage it is
essential to his comfort that he should win possession of it only by
means that will not endanger his own skin. The question as to how
such means may be contrived presents a difficult problem for his
solution, and it takes his groping mind from two to three days in
which to hit upon a workable plan. The explorer, as Bateman and
O'Hara were aware, had lost his life because, overcome by fatigue, he
had allowed himself to commit the mistake of spending more than a
single night under a hospitable Murut roof-tree, and had so given
time to his hosts to plot his destruction. Had he only held steadily
upon his way, all might have been well with him: for in a country
where every village is at enmity with its neighbours, a short march
would have carried him into a stranger's land, which he should have
been able to quit in its turn ere the schemes for his immolation
hatched therein had had time in which to ripen. O'Hara and Bateman,
therefore, no matter how worn out they might be by that everlasting,
clambering tramp across that cruel huddle of hill-caps, were rowelled
by necessity into pushing forward, and still forward, as surely as
the day dawned.
Often the filth and squalor of the long airless huts--each one of
which accommodated a whole village community in its dark interior,
all the pigs and fowls of the place beneath its flooring, and as many
blackened human skulls as could find hanging space along its
roof-beams--sickened them, and drove them forth to camp in the
jungle. Here there were only wild beasts--self-respecting and on the
whole cleanly beasts, which compared very favourably with the less
attractive animals in the village huts--but a vigilant guard had to
be maintained against possible surprise; and this, after a
heart-breaking tramp, was hard alike upon white men and Dyaks.
The raiders had pitched their camp in such a place one evening; and
as the party lacked meat, and the pigeons could be heard cooing in
the treetops close at hand, O'Hara took his fowling piece and
strolled off alone into the forest, with the intention of shooting a
few birds for the pot. The jungle was very dense in this part of the
country--so dense, indeed, that a man was powerless to see in any
direction for a distance of more than a dozen yards; but the pigeons
were plentiful, and as they fluttered from tree to tree O'Hara walked
after them without in the least realising how far he was straying
from his starting point. At last the fast-failing light arrested his
attention, and as he stooped to pick up the last pigeon, the search
for which among the brambles had occupied more time than he had
fancied, it suddenly struck him that he ought to be returning to the
camp, while a doubt as to its exact direction assailed him. He was
in the very act of straightening himself again with a view to looking
about him for some indication of the path by which he had come when a
slight crackle in the underwood smote upon his ear. He remained very
still, stooping forward as he was, holding his breath, and listening
intently. It flashed through his mind that the sound might have been
made by one of the Dyaks, who perhaps had come out of the camp in
search of him and he waited the repetition of the snapping noise with
eagerness, hoping that it would tell him whether it were caused by
man or beast. As he stood thus for an instant with bowed shoulders,
the crackle came again, louder, crisper, and much clearer than
before; and at the same moment, before he had time to change his
attitude or to realise that danger threatened him, something smote
him heavily in the back, bringing him prone to the earth with a
grunt. The concussion was caused by some yielding substance, that
was yet quick and warm; and the litter of dead leaves and the tangle
of underwood combined to break his fall. He was not hurt, therefore,
though the breath was knocked out of him, and that unseen something,
which tumbled and writhed upon his back, pinned him to the ground.
He skewed his head round, trying to see what had assailed him, and
immediately a diabolical face peeped over his shoulder an inch or two
above it. He only saw, as it were, in a flash; but the sight was one
which, he was accustomed to say, he would never forget. In after
years it was wont to recur to him in dreams, and as surely as it came
it woke him with a scream. It was a savage face, brown yet pallid,
grimed with dirt and wood ashes, with a narrow retreating forehead, a
bestial prognathous snout, and a tiny twitching chin. The little
black eyes, fierce and excited, were ringed about with angry sores,
for the eyelashes had been plucked out. The eyebrows had been
removed, but from the upper lip a few coarse wires sprouted
uncleanly. The face was split in twain by a set of uneven teeth
pointed like those of a wild cat, and tightly clenched, while above
and below them the gums snarled rigidly, bearing witness to the
physical effort which their owner was making. The scalp was divided
into even halves by a broad parting, on either side of which there
rose a tangle of dirty, ill-kept hair, that was drawn back into a
chignon, giving to the creature a curious sexless aspect. All these
things O'Hara noted in the fraction of a second; and as the horror
bred of them set him heaving and fighting as well as his cramped
position made possible, a sharp knee-cap was driven into the back of
his neck, and his head fell with a concussion that blinded him. For
a moment he lay still and inert, and in that moment he was conscious
of little deft hands, that flew this way and that, over, under, and
around his limbs, and of the pressure of narrow withes, drawn
suddenly taut, that ate into his flesh. Up to this time the whole
affair has been transacted in a dead, unnatural silence that somehow
gave to it the strangeness and unreality of a nightmare; but now, as
O'Hara lay prostrate with his face buried in the underwood, the even
song of the forest insects, which rings through the jungle during the
gloaming hour, was suddenly interrupted by an outbreak of queer
sounds--by gurgling, jerky speech inter-mixed with shrill squeakings
and whistlings, and by the clicking cackle which stands the Murut
folk instead of laughter. Yet even now the voices of his captors
were subdued and hushed, as though unwilling to be overheard; and
O'Hara, understanding that the Muruts feared to be interrupted by
their victim's friends, made shift to raise a shout, albeit the green
stuff forced its way into his mouth and choked his utterance.
Immediately the little nimble hands were busy, clutching him afresh,
while the tones of those inhuman voices shrilled and gurgled and
clicked more excitedly than before. O'Hara was heaved and tugged,
first one way, then another, until his body was rolled over on to its
back, falling with a dull bump. He shouted once more, putting all
the strength that was in him into the yell, and the nearest Murut
promptly stamped on his mouth with his horny heel. O'Hara bit
viciously at the thing, but his teeth could make no impression upon
its leathery under-surface, and before he could shout again he found
himself gagged with a piece of wood, which was bound in its place by
a couple of withes. Despair seized him then, and for a moment or two
he lay still, with the manhood knocked fairly out of him by a
crushing consciousness of impotence, while the gabble of squeak and
whistle and grunt, still hushed cautiously, broke out more
discordantly than ever.
The withes about his limbs bound O'Hara so cripplingly that only his
neck was free to move; but presently, craning it upward, he caught
sight of his persecutors for the first time. They formed a squalid
group of little, half-starved, wizened creatures, not much larger
than most European children of fourteen, but with brutal faces that
seemed to bear the weight of whole centuries of care and animal
indulgence. They were naked, save for their foul loin-clouts; they
were abominably dirty, and their skins were smothered in
leprous-looking ringworm; they had not an eyelash or an eyebrow among
them, for the hairs had been plucked out by the root; but their
scalps were covered by frowsy growths, gathered into loathsome
chignons on the napes of their necks. Every man was armed with one
or more spears, and from the waist of each a long knife depended,
sheathed in a wooden scabbard hung with tufts of hair. One of
them--the man of whose face O'Hara had caught a glimpse above his
shoulder--flourished his sheathed knife insistently in his captive's
face with grotesque gesticulations, and O'Hara shuddered every time
that the disgusting tassels that bedecked the scabbard swept his
cheek. The fading daylight was very dim now, enabling O'Hara to see
only the _form_ of the things by which he was surrounded; _colour_
had ceased to have any meaning in those gloomy forest aisles. The
grinning savage prancing and gibbering around him, and brandishing
that sheathed weapon with its revolting trophies, puzzled him. If he
meant murder, why did he not draw his blade? In the depth of his
misery the inconsequence of this war-dance furnished O'Hara with an
additional torture.
Presently two of the Muruts came suddenly within his field of vision
bearing a long green pole. This they proceeded to thrust between
O'Hara's flesh and the withes that were entwined about him; and when
this had been accomplished, the whole party set their shoulders under
the extremities of the pole and lifted their prisoner clear of the
ground. Then they bore him off at a sort of jog-trot.
The thongs, tightened fearfully by the pressure thus put upon them,
pinched and bruised him pitilessly; and his head, lacking all
support, hung down in an attitude of dislocation, waggling this way
and that at every jolt; the blood surged into his brain, causing a
horrible vertigo, and seeming to thrust his eyes almost out of their
sockets; he thought that he could feel his limbs swelling above the
biting grip of the withes, and an irresistible nausea seized him.
Maddening cramps tied knots in his every muscle; and had his journey
been of long duration, Timothy O'Hara would never have reached its
end alive. Very soon, however, the decreased pace, and the shrill
whistling sounds which came from the noses of his Murut bearers, told
him that the party was ascending a hill--for these strange folk do
not pant like ordinary human beings, and the uncanny noise was
familiar to O'Hara from many a toilsome march in the company of
native porters. Presently, too, between the straining legs of the
leading files, O'Hara caught a flying glimpse of distant fire; and
that, he knew, betokened the neighbourhood of a village.
A few minutes later, just as he thought that he was about to lose
consciousness, the village was reached--a long, narrow hut, raised on
piles, and with a door at either end, from the thresholds of which
crazy ladder-ways led to the ground. Up the nearest of these rude
staircases the Muruts struggled with their burden, banging his head
roughly against each untrimmed rung, and throwing him down on the
bamboo flooring with a chorus of grunts. For a moment there was
silence, while the entire community gathered round the white man,
staring at him eagerly with a kind of ferocious curiosity. Then with
one accord all the men, women, and children present set up a
diabolical chorus of whoopings and yellings. They seemed to give
themselves over to a veritable insanity of noise. Some, squatting on
their heels, supporting the weight of their bodies on arms thrust
well behind them, tilted their chins to the roof and howled like
maniacs. Others, standing erect, opened their mouths to their
fullest extent, and emitted a series of shrill blood-curdling
bellows. Others, again, shut their eyes, threw their arms aloft,
and, concentrating every available atom of energy in the effort,
screamed till their voices broke. The ear-piercing din sounded as
though all the devils in hell had of a sudden broken loose. Heard
from afar, the savage triumph, the diabolical delight that found in
it their fitting expression, might well have made the blood run cold
in the veins of the bravest; but heard close at hand by the solitary
white man whose capture had evoked that hideous outcry, and who knew
himself to be utterly at the mercy of these fiends, it was almost
enough to unship his reason. O'Hara told me that from that moment he
forgot the pains which his bonds had occasioned him, forgot even his
desire to escape, and was filled with a tremendous longing to be put
out of his agony--to be set free by death from this unspeakable
inferno. His mind, he said, was working with surprising activity,
and "as though it belonged to somebody else." In a series of flashes
he began to recall all that he had ever heard of the manners and
customs of the Muruts, of the strange uses to which they put their
prisoners; and all the while he was possessed by a kind of
restlessness that made him eager for them to do _something_--of no
matter how awful a character--that would put a period to his
unendurable suspense.
Meanwhile the Muruts were enjoying themselves thoroughly. Great
earthenware jars, each sufficiently large to drown a baby with
comfort, were already standing round the enclosed veranda which
formed the common-room of the village, on to which each family
cubicle opened, and to these jars the Muruts--men, women, and
children--repeatedly addressed themselves, squatting by them, and
sucking up the abominable liquor which filled them through long
bamboo tubes. Each toper, as he quitted the jar, fell to howling
with redoubled energy; and as more and more of the fiery stuff was
consumed, their cries became more savage, more inarticulate, and more
diabolical.
Half a dozen men, however, were apparently busy in the performance of
some task on a spot just behind O'Hara's head, for though they
frequently paid visits of ceremony to the liquor-jars, they always
staggered back to the same part of the room when their draughts were
ended, and there fell to hacking and hammering at wood with renewed
energy. O'Hara was convinced that they were employed in constructing
some infernal instrument of torture; and the impossibility of
ascertaining its nature was maddening, and set his imagination
picturing every abominable contrivance for the infliction of anguish
of which he had ever heard or read. And all the while the hideous
orgies, for which his capture was the pretext, were waxing fast and
furious.
Suddenly the hidden group behind him set up a shrill cat-call, and at
the sound every Murut in sight leaped to his or her feet, and danced
frantically with hideous outcry and maniacal laughter. A moment
later a rattan rope whined as it was pulled over the main beam of the
roof with something heavy at its end; and as the slack of the cord
was made fast to the wall-post opposite to him, O'Hara was aware of
some large object suspended in mid-air, swinging out into the middle
of the veranda immediately above him. This, as he craned his neck up
at it, struggling to see it more clearly in the uncertain
torch-light, was presently revealed as a big cage, an uneven square
in shape, the bars of which were some six inches apart, saving on one
side, where a wide gap was left. He had barely had time to make this
discovery when a mob of Murut men and women rushed at him, cut the
bonds that bound him, and mauling him mercilessly, lifted him up, and
literally threw him into the opening formed by the gap. The cage
rocked crazily, while the Muruts yelled their delight, and two of
their number proceeded hastily to patch up the gap with cross-pieces
of wood. Then the whole crowd drew away a little, though the hub-bub
never slackened, and O'Hara set his teeth to smother the groans which
the pains of the removed bonds nearly wrung from him. For the time
fear was forgotten in the acuteness of the agony which he endured;
for as the blood began to flow freely once more, every inch of his
body seemed to have been transformed into so many raging teeth. His
extremities felt soft and flabby--cold, too, like jellies--but O'Hara
was by nature a very strong man and at the time of his capture had
been in the pink of condition. In an incredibly short while,
therefore, the pain subsided, and he began to regain the use of his
cramped limbs.
He was first made aware of his recovered activity by the alacrity
with which he bounded into the centre of the cage in obedience to a
sharp prick in the back. He tried to rise to his feet, and his head
came into stunning contact with the roof; then, in a crouching
attitude, he turned in the direction whence the attack had reached
him. What he saw filled him with horror. The leader of the Muruts
who had captured him, his eyes bloodshot with drink, was staggering
about in front of him with grotesque posturings, waving his knife in
one hand and its wooden sheath in the other. It was the former,
evidently, that had administered that painful prod to O'Hara's back,
but it was the latter which chained the white man's attention even in
that moment of whirling emotions, for from its base depended a long
shaggy wisp of sodden yellow hair--the golden fleece of which O'Hara
and Bateman were in search. In a flash the savage saw that his
victim had recognised the trophy to which he had already been at some
pains to direct to his attention, and the assembled Muruts gave
unmistakable tokens that they all grasped the picturesqueness of the
situation. They yelled and howled and bayed more frantically than
ever; some of them rolled upon the floor, their limbs and faces
contorted by paroxysms of savage merriment, while others staggered
about, smiting their fellows on their bare shoulders, squeaking like
bats, and clicking like demoralised clockwork. A second prod with a
sharp point made O'Hara shy across his narrow cage like a fly-bitten
horse, and before he could recover his balance a score of delicately
handled weapons inflicted light wounds all over his face and hands.
As each knife touched him its owner put up his head and repeated some
formula in a shrill sing-song, no word of which was intelligible to
O'Hara save only the name of Kina-Balu--the great mountain which
dominates North Borneo, and is believed by the natives to be the
eternal resting-place of the spirits which have quitted the life of
earth.
Then, for the first time, O'Hara understood what was happening to
him. He had often heard of the ceremony known to the wild Muruts as
a _bangun_, which has for its object the maintenance of communication
between the living and the dead. He had even seen a pig hung up, as
he was now hanging, while the tamer Muruts prodded it to death very
carefully and slowly, charging it the while with messages for the
spirits of the departed; and he remembered how the abominable cruelty
of the proceeding had turned him sick, and had set him longing to
interfere with native religious customs in defiance of the prudent
government which he served. Now he was himself to be done to death
by inches, just as the pig had died, and he knew that men had spoken
truly when they had explained to him that the unfortunate quadruped
was only substituted for a nobler victim as a concession to European
prejudice, to the great discontent of the tame Muruts.
These thoughts rushed through his mind with the speed of lightning,
and all the while it seemed to him that every particle of his mental
forces was concentrated upon a single object--the task of defending
himself against a crowd of persecutors. Crouching in the centre of
the cage, snarling like a cat, with his eyes bursting from their
sockets, his every limb braced for a leap in any direction, his hands
scrabbling at the air to ward off the stabs, he faced from side to
side, his breath coming in quick, noisy pants. Every second one or
another of the points that assailed him made him turn about with a
cry of rage, and immediately his exposed back was prodded by every
Murut within reach. Suddenly he heard his own voice raised in awful
curses and blasphemies, and the familiar tones of his mother-tongue
smote him with surprise. He had little consciousness of pain as
pain, only the necessity of warding off the points of his enemies'
weapons presented itself to him as something that must be
accomplished at all costs, and each separate failure enraged him. He
bounded about his cage with an energy and an agility that astonished
him, and the rocking of his prison seemed to keep time with the
lilting of his thumping heart-beats. More than once he fell, and his
face and scalp were prodded terribly ere he could regain his feet;
often he warded off a thrust with his bare hands. But of the wounds
which he thus received he was hardly conscious; his mind was in a
species of delirium of rage, and all the time he was torn with a fury
of indignation because he, a white man, was being treated in this
dishonouring fashion by a pack of despicable Muruts. But he received
no serious injury; for the Muruts, who had many messages for their
dead relations, were anxious to keep the life in him as long as might
be, and in spite of their intoxication, prodded him with shrewdness
and caution. How long it all lasted O'Hara never knew with
certainty; but it was the exhaustion caused by loss of breath and
blood, and by the wild leaping of that bursting heart of his, that
caused him presently to sink on the floor of his cage in a swoon.
The Muruts, finding that he did not answer to their stabs, drew off
and gathered eagerly around the liquor-jars. The killing would come
soon after dawn--as soon, in fact, as their overnight orgies made it
possible--when the prisoner would be set to run the gauntlet, and
would be hacked to pieces after one final delicious _bangun_. It was
essential, therefore, that enough strength should be left in him to
show good sport; and in the meantime their villainous home-made
spirits would bring that measure of happiness which comes to the
Murut from being suffered, for a little space, to forget the fact of
his own repulsive existence. Accordingly, with noisy hospitality,
each man tried to make his neighbour drink to greater excess than
himself, and all proved willing victims. With hoots and squeals of
laughter, little children were torn from their mothers' breasts and
given to suck at the bamboo pipes, their ensuing intoxication being
watched with huge merriment by men and women alike. The shouts
raised by the revellers became more and more shaky, less and less
articulate; over and over again the groups around the jars broke up,
while their members crawled away, to lie about in deathlike stupors,
from which they aroused themselves only to vomit and drink anew.
Long after this stage of the proceedings had been reached, O'Hara had
recovered his senses; but prudence bade him lie as still as a mouse.
Once or twice a drunken Murut lurched onto his feet and made a pass
or two at him, and now and again he was prodded painfully; but
putting forth all the self-control at his command, he gave no sign of
life. At last every Murut in the place was sunken in abominable
torpor, excepting only the chief, from whose knife-scabbard hung the
tuft of hair which had once ornamented the chin of the explorer. His
little red eyes were fixed in a drunken stare upon O'Hara, and the
latter watched them with a fascination of dread through his
half-closed lids. Over and over again the Murut crawled to the
nearest liquor-jar, and sucked up the dregs with a horrible sibilant
gurgling; and at times he even staggered to his feet, muttering and
mumbling over his tiny, busy chin, waving his weapon uncertainly, ere
he subsided in a limp heap upon the floor. On each occasion he gave
more evident signs of drowsiness and at last his blinking eyes were
covered by their lashless lids.
At the same moment a gentle gnawing sound, which had been attracting
O'Hara's attention for some minutes, though he had not dared to move
by so much as a finger's breadth to discover its cause, ceased
abruptly. Then the faintest ghost of a whisper came to his ears from
below his cage, and, moving with the greatest caution, and peering
down through the uncertain light, he saw that a hole had been made by
sawing away two of the lathes which formed the flooring. In the
black hole immediately beneath him the faces of two of his own Dyaks
were framed, and even as he looked one of them hoisted himself into
the hut, and began deftly to remove the bars of the cage, working as
noiselessly as a shadow. The whole thing was done so silently, and
O'Hara's own mind was so racked by the emotions which his recent
experiences had held for him, that he was at first persuaded that
what he saw, or rather fancied he saw, was merely a figment conjured
up for his torture by the delirium which possessed him. He felt that
if he suffered himself to believe in this mocking delusion even for
an instant, the disappointment of discovering its utter unreality
would drive him mad. He was already spent with misery, physical and
mental; he was constantly holding himself in leash to prevent the
commission of some insane extravagance; he was seized with an
unreasoning desire to scream. He fought with himself--a self that
was unfamiliar to him, although its identity was never in doubt--as
he might have fought with a stranger. He told himself that his
senses were playing cruel pranks upon him, and that nothing should
induce him to be deceived by them; and all the while--hope--mad, wild
hysterical hope--was surging up in his heart, shaking him like an
aspen, wringing unaccustomed tears from his eyes, and tearing his
breast with noiseless sobs.
As he lay inert and utterly wretched, unable to bear up manfully
under this new wanton torture of the mind, the ghost of the second
Dyak clambered skilfully out of the darkness below the hut, and
joined his fellow, who had already made a wide gap in the side of the
cage. Then the two of them seized O'Hara, and with the same strange
absence of sound lifted him bodily through the prison and through the
hole in the flooring on to the earth below. Their grip upon his
lacerated flesh hurt him acutely; but the very pain was welcome, for
did it not prove the reality of his deliverers? What he experienced
of relief and gratitude O'Hara could never tell us, for all he
remembers is that, gone suddenly weak and plaintive as a child, he
clung to the little Dyaks, sobbing broken-heartedly, and weeping on
their shoulders without restraint or decency, in utter abandon of
self-pity. Also he recalls dimly that centuries later he found
himself standing in Bateman's camp, with his people gathering about
him, and that of a sudden he was aware that he was mother-naked.
After that, so he avers, all is a blank.
The closing incidents of the story were related to me by Bateman one
evening when I chanced to foregather with him in an up-country
outpost in Borneo. We had been talking far into the night, and our
_solitude à deux_ and the lateness of the hour combined to thaw his
usual taciturnity and to unlock his shy confidence. Therefore I was
put in possession of a secret which until then, I believe, had been
closely kept.
"It was an awful night," he said, "that upon which poor O'Hara was
missing. The Dyaks had gone out in couples all over the place to try
to pick up his trail, but I remained in the camp; for though there
was a little moon, it was too dark for a white man's eyes to be of
any good. What with the inactivity, and my fears for O'Hara, I was
as 'jumpy' as you make 'em; and as the Dyaks began to drop in, two at
a time, each couple bringing in their tale of failure, I worked
myself up to such a state of depression and misery that I thought I
must be going mad. Just about three o'clock in the morning the last
brace of Dyaks turned up, and I was all of a shake when I saw that
they had poor O'Hara with them. He broke loose from them and
stumbled into the centre of the camp stark naked, and pecked almost
to bits by those infernal Murut knives; but the wounds were not
overdeep, and the blood was caking over most of them. He was an
awful sight, and I was for tending his hurt without delay; but he
pushed me roughly aside, and I saw that his eyes were blazing with
madness. He stood there in the midst of us all, throwing his arms
above his head, cursing in English and in the vernacular, and
gesticulating wildly. The Dyaks edged away from him, and I could see
that his condition funked them mortally. I tried again and again to
speak to him and calm him, but he would not listen to a word I said,
and for full five minutes he stood there raving and ranting, now and
again pacing frenziedly from side to side, pouring out a torrent of
invective mixed with muddled orders. One of the Dyaks brought him a
pair of trousers, and after looking at them as though he had never
seen such things before, he put them on, and stood for a second or
two staring wildly around him. Then he made a bee-line for a rifle,
loaded it, and slung a bandolier across his naked shoulders; and
before I could stay him he was marching out of the camp with the
whole crowd of Dyaks at his heels.
"I could only follow. I had no fancy for being left alone in that
wilderness, more especially just then, and one of the Dyaks told me
that he was leading them back to the Murut village. You see I only
speak Malay, and as O'Hara had been talking Dyak I had not been able
to follow his ravings. Whatever lingo he jabbered, however, it was
as plain as a pikestaff that the fellow was mad as a hatter; but I
had to stop explaining this to him, for he threatened to shoot me,
and the Dyaks would not listen. They clearly thought that he was
possessed by a devil, and they would have gone to hell at his bidding
while their fear of him was upon them.
"And his madness made him cunning too, for he stalked the Murut den
wonderfully neatly, and just as the dawn was breaking we found
ourselves posted in the jungle within a few yards of the two doors,
which were the only means of entrance or exit for the poor devils in
the hut.
"Then O'Hara leaped out of his hiding place and began yelling like
the maniac he was; and in an instant the whole of that long hut was
humming like a disturbed beehive. Three or four squalid creatures
showed themselves at the doorway nearest O'Hara, and he greeted them
with half the contents of his magazine, and shrieked with laughter as
they toppled onto the ground rolling over in their death-agony.
There was such a wailing and crying set up by the other inhabitants
of the hut as you never heard in all your life--it was just despair
made vocal--the sort of outcry that a huge menagerie of wild animals
might make when they saw flames lapping at their cages; and above it
all I could hear O'Hara's demoniac laughter ringing with savage
delight, and the war-whoops of those little devils of Dyaks, whose
blood was fairly up now. The trapped wretches in the hut made a
stampede for the farther door; we could hear them scuffling and
fighting with one another for the foremost places. They thought that
safety lay in that direction; but the Dyaks were ready for them, and
the bullets from their Winchesters drove clean through three and four
of the squirming creatures at a time, and in a moment that doorway,
too, and the ground about the ladder foot were a shambles.
"After that for a space there was a kind of awful lull within the
hut, though without O'Hara and his Dyaks capered and yelled. Then
the noise which our folk were making was drowned by a series of the
most heart-breaking shrieks you ever heard or dreamed of, and
immediately a second rush was made simultaneously at each door. The
early morning light was getting stronger now, and I remember noting
how incongruously peaceful and serene it seemed. Part of the hut
near our end had caught fire somehow, and there was a lot of smoke,
which hung low about the doorway. Through this I saw the crowd of
Muruts struggle in that final rush, and my blood went cold when I
understood what they were doing. Every man had a woman or a child
held tightly in his arms--held in front of him as a buckler--and it
was from these poor devils that those awful screams were coming. I
jumped in front of the Dyaks and yelled to them in Malay to hold
their fire; but O'Hara thrust me aside, and shooed the Dyaks on with
shouts and curses and peals of laughter, slapping his palm on his
gunstock, and capering with delight and excitement. The Dyaks took
no sort of heed of me, and the volleys met the Muruts like a wall of
lead.
"I had slipped and fallen when O'Hara pushed me, and as I clambered
on to my feet again I saw the mob of savages fall together and
crumple up, for all the world as paper crumples when burned suddenly.
Most of them fell back into the dark interior of the hut, writhing in
convulsions above the litter of the dead; but one or two pitched
forward headlong to the ground, and I saw a little brown baby, which
had escaped unharmed, crawling about over the corpses, and squeaking
like a wounded rabbit. I ran forward to save it, but a Dyak was too
quick for me, and before I could get near it, he had thrown himself
upon it, and ... _ugh_!
"The Muruts began cutting their way through the flooring then, and
trying to bolt into the jungle. One or two of them got away, I
think; and this threw O'Hara into such a passion of fury that I half
expected to see him kill some of the Dyaks. He tore around to the
side of the hut, and I saw him brain one Murut as he made a rush from
under the low floor. One end of the building was in roaring flames
by this time, and half a dozen Dyaks had gone in at the other end and
were bolting the wretched creatures from their hiding places, just as
ferrets bolt rabbits from their burrows, while O'Hara and the other
Dyaks waited for them outside. They hardly missed one of them,
sparing neither age nor sex, though I ran from one to another like a
madman, trying to prevent them. It was awful ... awful! and I was
fairly blubbering with the horror of it, and with the consciousness
of my own impotence. I was regularly broken up by it, and I remember
at the last sitting down upon a log, burying my face in my hands, and
crying like a child.
"The thing seemed to be over by then: there was no more bolting, and
the Dyaks were beginning to clear out of the hut as the flames gained
ground and made the place too hot for them. But, at the last, there
came a terrific yell from the very heart of the fire, and a single
Murut leaped out of the smoke. He was stark naked, for his loin
clout had been burned to tinder; he was blackened by the smoke, and
his long hair was afire behind him! His mouth was wide, and the
cries that came from it went through and through my head, running up
and up the scale till they hit upon a note the shrillness of which
agonised me. Surrounded by the flames, he looked like a devil in the
heart of the pit. In one scorched arm he brandished a long knife,
the blade of which was red with the glare of the flames, and in the
other was the sheath, blazing at one end, and decked at the other by
a great tuft of yellow hair that was smouldering damply.
"As soon as he saw him O'Hara raised a terrible cry and threw himself
at him. The two men grappled and fell, the knife and scabbard
escaping from the Murut's grasp and pitching straight into the fire.
The struggle lasted for nearly a minute, O'Hara and his enemy rolling
over and over one another, breathing heavily but making no other
sound. Then something happened--I don't clearly know what; but the
Murut's head dropped, and O'Hara rose up from his dead body, moving
very stiffly. He stood for a moment so, looking round him in a dazed
fashion, until his eyes caught mine. Then he staggered toward me,
reeling like a tipsy man.
"'Mother of heaven!' he said thickly, 'what have I done?'
"He stared round him at the little brown corpses, doubled up in
dislocated and distorted attitudes, and his eyes were troubled.
"'God forgive me!' he muttered. 'God forgive me!'
"Then he spun about on his heel, his hands outstretched above his
head, his fingers clutching at the air, a thin foam forming on his
lips, and before I could reach him he had toppled over in a limp heap
upon the ground.
"I had an awful business getting O'Hara down-country. He was mad as
a March hare for three weeks. But the Dyaks worked like
bricks--though I could not bear the sight of them--and the currents
of the rivers were in our favour when we reached navigable water. I
know that O'Hara was mad that morning--no white man could have acted
as he did unless he had been insane--and he always swears that he has
no recollection of anything that occurred after the Dyaks rescued
him. I hope it may be so, but I am not certain. He is a changed man
anyway, as nervous and jumpy as they make 'em, and I know that he is
always brooding over that up-country trip of ours."
"Yes," I assented, "and he is constantly telling the first part of
the story to every chance soul he meets."
"Exactly," said Bateman. "That is what makes me sometimes doubt the
completeness of his oblivion concerning what followed. What do you
think?"
IV
LEGEND OF COUNT JULIAN AND HIS FAMILY
WASHINGTON IRVING
Many and various are the accounts given in ancient chronicles of the
fortunes of Count Julian and his family, and many are the traditions
on the subject still extant among the populace of Spain, and
perpetuated in those countless ballads sung by peasants and
muleteers, which spread a singular charm over the whole of this
romantic land.
He who has travelled in Spain in the true way in which the country
ought to be travelled,--sojourning in its remote provinces, rambling
among the rugged defiles and secluded valleys of its mountains, and
making himself familiar with the people in their out-of-the-way
hamlets and rarely visited neighbourhoods,--will remember many a
group of travellers and muleteers, gathered of an evening around the
door or the spacious hearth of a mountain venta, wrapped in their
brown cloaks, and listening with grave and profound attention to the
long historic ballad of some rustic troubadour, either recited with
the true _ore rotunda_ and modulated cadences of Spanish elocution,
or chanted to the tinkling of a guitar. In this way he may have
heard the doleful end of Count Julian and his family recounted in
traditionary rhymes, that have been handed down from generation to
generation. The particulars, however, of the following wild legend
are chiefly gathered from the writings of the pseudo Moor Rasis; how
far they may be safely taken as historic facts it is impossible now
to ascertain; we must content ourselves, therefore, with their
answering to the exactions of poetic justice.
... Everything had prospered with Count Julian. He had gratified his
vengeance; he had been successful in his treason, and had acquired
countless riches from the ruin of his country. But it is not outward
success that constitutes prosperity. The tree flourishes with fruit
and foliage while blasted and withering at the heart. Wherever he
went, Count Julian read hatred in every eye. The Christians cursed
him as the cause of all their woe; the Moslems despised and
distrusted him as a traitor. Men whispered together as he
approached, and then turned away in scorn; and mothers snatched away
their children with horror if he offered to caress them. He withered
under the execration of his fellow-men, and last, and worst of all,
he began to loathe himself. He tried in vain to persuade himself
that he had but taken a justifiable vengeance; he felt that no
personal wrong can justify the crime of treason to one's country.
For a time he sought in luxurious indulgence to soothe or forget the
miseries of the mind. He assembled round him every pleasure and
gratification that boundless wealth could purchase, but all in vain.
He had no relish for the dainties of his board; music had no charm
wherewith to lull his soul, and remorse drove slumber from his
pillow. He sent to Ceuta for his wife Frandina, his daughter
Florinda, and his youthful son Alarbot; hoping in the bosom of his
family to find that sympathy and kindness which he could no longer
meet with in the world. Their presence, however, brought him no
alleviation. Florinda, the daughter of his heart, for whose sake he
had undertaken this signal vengeance, was sinking a victim to its
effects. Wherever she went, she found herself a byword of shame and
reproach. The outrage she had suffered was imputed to her as
wantonness, and her calamity was magnified into a crime. The
Christians never mentioned her name without a curse, and the Moslems,
the gainers by her misfortune, spake of her only by the appellation
of Cava, the vilest epithet they could apply to woman.
But the opprobrium of the world was nothing to the upbraiding of her
own heart. She charged herself with all the miseries of these
disastrous wars,--the deaths of so many gallant cavaliers, the
conquest and perdition of her country. The anguish of her mind
preyed upon the beauty of her person. Her eye, once soft and tender
in its expression, became wild and haggard; her cheek lost its bloom,
and became hollow and pallid, and at times there was desperation in
her words. When her father sought to embrace her she withdrew with
shuddering from his arms, for she thought of his treason and the ruin
it had brought upon Spain. Her wretchedness increased after her
return to her native country, until it rose to a degree of frenzy.
One day when she was walking with her parents in the garden of their
palace, she entered a tower, and, having barred the door, ascended to
the battlements. From thence she called to them in piercing accents,
expressive of her insupportable anguish and desperate determination.
"Let this city," said she, "be henceforth called Malacca, in memorial
of the most wretched of women, who therein put an end to her days."
So saying, she threw herself headlong from the tower and was dashed
to pieces. The city, adds the ancient chronicler, received the name
thus given it, though afterwards softened to Malaga, which it still
retains in memory of the tragical end of Florinda.
The Countess Frandina abandoned this scene of woe, and returned to
Ceuta, accompanied by her infant son. She took with her the remains
of her unfortunate daughter, and gave them honourable sepulture in a
mausoleum of the chapel belonging to the citadel. Count Julian
departed for Carthagena, where he remained plunged in horror at this
doleful event.
About this time, the cruel Suleiman, having destroyed the family of
Muza, had sent an Arab general, named Alahor, to succeed Abdalasis as
emir or governor of Spain. The new emir was of a cruel and
suspicious nature, and commenced his sway with a stern severity that
soon made those under his command look back with regret to the easy
rule of Abdalasis. He regarded with an eye of distrust the renegade
Christians who had aided in the conquest, and who bore arms in the
service of the Moslems; but his deepest suspicions fell upon Count
Julian. "He has been a traitor to his own country-men," said he;
"how can we be sure that he will not prove traitor to us?"
A sudden insurrection of the Christians who had taken refuge in the
Asturian Mountains quickened his suspicions, and inspired him with
fears of some dangerous conspiracy against his power. In the height
of his anxiety, he bethought him of an Arabian sage named Yuza, who
had accompanied him from Africa. This son of science was withered in
form, and looked as if he had outlived the usual term of mortal life.
In the course of his studies and travels in the East, he had
collected the knowledge and experience of ages; being skilled in
astrology, and, it is said, in necromancy, and possessing the
marvellous gift of prophecy or divination. To this expounder of
mysteries Alahor applied to learn whether any secret treason menaced
his safety.
The astrologer listened with deep attention and overwhelming brow to
all the surmises and suspicions of the emir, then shut himself up to
consult his books and commune with those supernatural intelligences
subservient to his wisdom. At an appointed hour the emir sought him
in his cell. It was filled with the smoke of perfumes; squares and
circles and various diagrams were described upon the floor, and the
astrologer was poring over a scroll of parchment, covered with
cabalistic characters. He received Alahor with a gloomy and sinister
aspect; pretending to have discovered fearful portents in the
heavens, and to have had strange dreams and mystic visions.
"O emir," said he, "be on your guard! treason is around you and in
your path; your life is in peril. Beware of Count Julian and his
family."
"Enough," said the emir. "They shall all die! Parents and
children.--all shall die!"
He forthwith sent a summons to Count Julian to attend him in Cordova.
The messenger found him plunged in affliction for the recent death of
his daughter. The count excused himself, on account of this
misfortune, from obeying the commands of the emir in person, but sent
several of his adherents. His hesitation, and the circumstance of
his having sent his family across the straits to Africa, were
construed by the jealous mind of the emir into proofs of guilt. He
no longer doubted his being concerned in the recent insurrections,
and that he had sent his family away, preparatory to an attempt, by
force of arms, to subvert the Moslem domination. In his fury he put
to death Siseburto and Evan, the nephews of Bishop Oppas and sons of
the former king, Witiza, suspecting them of taking part in the
treason. Thus did they expiate their treachery to their country in
the fatal battle of the Guadalete.
Alahor next hastened to Carthagena to seize upon Count Julian. So
rapid were his movements that the count had barely time to escape
with fifteen cavaliers, with whom he took refuge in the strong castle
of Marcuello, among the mountains of Aragon. The emir, enraged to be
disappointed of his prey, embarked at Carthagena and crossed the
straits to Ceuta, to make captives of the Countess Frandina and her
son.
The old chronicle from which we take this part of our legend presents
a gloomy picture of the countess in the stern fortress to which she
had fled for refuge,--a picture heightened by supernatural horrors.
These latter the sagacious reader will admit or reject according to
the measure of his faith and judgment; always remembering that in
dark and eventful times, like those in question, involving the
destinies of nations, the downfall of kingdoms, and the crimes of
rulers and mighty men, the hand of fate is sometimes strangely
visible, and confounds the wisdom of the worldly wise, by intimations
and portents above the ordinary course of things. With this proviso,
we make no scruple to follow the venerable chronicler in his
narration.
Now it so happened that the Countess Frandina was seated late at
night in her chamber in the citadel of Ceuta, which stands on a lofty
rock, overlooking the sea. She was revolving in gloomy thought the
late disasters of her family, when she heard a mournful noise like
that of the sea-breeze moaning about the castle walls. Raising her
eyes, she beheld her brother, the Bishop Oppas, at the entrance of
the chamber. She advanced to embrace him, but he forbade her with a
motion of his hand, and she observed that he was ghastly pale, and
that his eyes glared as with lambent flames.
"Touch me not, sister," said he, with a mournful voice, "lest thou be
consumed by the fire which rages within me. Guard well thy son, for
bloodhounds are upon his track. His innocence might have secured him
the protection of Heaven, but our crimes have involved him in our
common ruin." He ceased to speak and was no longer to be seen. His
coming and going were alike without noise, and the door of the
chamber remained fast bolted.
On the following morning a messenger arrived with tidings that the
Bishop Oppas had been made prisoner in battle by the insurgent
Christians of the Asturias, and had died in fetters in a tower of the
mountains. The same messenger brought word that the Emir Alahor had
put to death several of the friends of Count Julian; had obliged him
to fly for his life to a castle in Aragon, and was embarking with a
formidable force for Ceuta.
The Countess Frandina, as has already been shown, was of courageous
heart, and danger made her desperate. There were fifty Moorish
soldiers in the garrison; she feared that they would prove
treacherous, and take part with their countrymen. Summoning her
officers, therefore, she informed them of their danger, and commanded
them to put those Moors to death. The guards sallied forth to obey
her orders. Thirty-five of the Moors were in the great square,
unsuspicious of any danger, when they were severally singled out by
their executioners, and, at a concerted signal, killed on the spot.
The remaining fifteen took refuge in a tower. They saw the armada of
the emir at a distance, and hoped to be able to hold out until its
arrival. The soldiers of the countess saw it also, and made
extraordinary efforts to destroy these internal enemies before they
should be attacked from without. They made repeated attempts to
storm the tower, but were as often repulsed with severe loss. They
then undermined it, supporting its foundations by stanchions of wood.
To these they set fire and withdrew to a distance, keeping up a
constant shower of missiles to prevent the Moors from sallying forth
to extinguish the flames. The stanchions were rapidly consumed, and
when they gave way the tower fell to the ground. Some of the Moors
were crushed among the ruins; others were flung to a distance and
dashed among the rocks; those who survived were instantly put to the
sword.
The fleet of the emir arrived at Ceuta about the hour of vespers. He
landed, but found the gates closed against him. The countess herself
spoke to him from a tower, and set him at defiance. The emir
immediately laid siege to the city. He consulted the astrologer
Yuza, who told him that for seven days his star would have the
ascendant over that of the youth Alarbot, but after that time the
youth would be safe from his power, and would effect his ruin.
Alahor immediately ordered the city to be assailed on every side, and
at length carried it by storm. The countess took refuge with her
forces in the citadel, and made desperate defence; but the walls were
sapped and mined, and she saw that all resistance would soon be
unavailing. Her only thoughts now were to conceal her child.
"Surely," said she, "they will not think of seeking him among the
dead." She led him therefore into the dark and dismal chapel. "Thou
art not afraid to be alone in this darkness, my child?" said she.
"No, mother," replied the boy; "darkness gives silence and sleep."
She conducted him to the tomb of Florinda. "Fearest thou the dead,
my child?" "No mother; the dead can do no harm, and what should I
fear from my sister?"
The countess opened the sepulchre. "Listen, my son," said she.
"There are fierce and cruel people who have come hither to murder
thee. Stay here in company with thy sister, and be quiet as thou
dost value thy life!" The boy, who was of a courageous nature, did
as he was bidden, and remained there all that day, and all the night,
and the next day until the third hour.
In the meantime the walls of the citadel were sapped, the troops of
the emir poured in at the breach, and a great part of the garrison
was put to the sword. The countess was taken prisoner and brought
before the emir. She appeared in his presence with a haughty
demeanour, as if she had been a queen receiving homage; but when he
demanded her son, she faltered and turned pale, and replied, "My son
is with the dead."
"Countess," said the emir, "I am not to be deceived; tell me where
you have concealed the boy, or tortures shall wring from you the
secret."
"Emir," replied the countess, "may the greatest torments be my
portion, both here and hereafter, if what I speak be not the truth.
My darling child lies buried with the dead."
The emir was confounded by the solemnity of her words; but the
withered astrologer Yuza, who stood by his side regarding the
countess from beneath his bushed eyebrows, perceived trouble in her
countenance and equivocation in her words. "Leave this matter to
me," whispered he to Alahor; "I will produce the child."
He ordered strict search to be made by the soldiery and he obliged
the countess to be always present. When they came to the chapel, her
cheek turned pale and her lip quivered. "This," said the subtile
astrologer, "is the place of concealment!"
The search throughout the chapel, however, was equally vain, and the
soldiers were about to depart when Yuza remarked a slight gleam of
joy in the eye of the countess. "We are leaving our prey behind,"
thought he; "the countess is exulting."
He now called to mind the words of her asseveration, that her child
was with the dead. Turning suddenly to the soldiers he ordered them
to search the sepulchres. "If you find him not," said he, "drag
forth the bones of that wanton Cava, that they may be burnt, and the
ashes scattered to the winds."
The soldiers searched among the tombs and found that of Florinda
partly open. Within lay the boy in the sound sleep of childhood, and
one of the soldiers took him gently in his arms to bear him to the
emir.
When the countess beheld that her child was discovered, she rushed
into the presence of Alahor, and, forgetting all her pride, threw
herself upon her knees before him.
"Mercy! mercy!" cried she in piercing accents, "mercy on my son--my
only child! O Emir! listen to a mother's prayer and my lips shall
kiss thy feet. As thou art merciful to him so may the most high God
have mercy upon thee, and heap blessings on thy head."
"Bear that frantic woman hence," said the emir, "but guard her well."
The countess was dragged away by the soldiery, without regard to her
struggles and her cries, and confined in a dungeon of the citadel.
The child was now brought to the emir. He had been awakened by the
tumult, but gazed fearlessly on the stern countenances of the
soldiers. Had the heart of the emir been capable of pity, it would
have been touched by the tender youth and innocent beauty of the
child; but his heart was as the nether millstone, and he was bent
upon the destruction of the whole family of Julian. Calling to him
the astrologer, he gave the child into his charge with a secret
command. The withered son of the desert took the boy by the hand and
led him up the winding staircase of a tower. When they reached the
summit, Yuza placed him on the battlements.
"Cling not to me, my child," said he; "there is no danger." "Father,
I fear not," said the undaunted boy; "yet it is a wondrous height!"
The child looked around with delighted eyes. The breeze blew his
curling locks from about his face, and his cheek glowed at the
boundless prospect; for the tower was reared upon that lofty
promontory on which Hercules founded one of his pillars. The surges
of the sea were heard far below, beating upon the rocks, the sea-gull
screamed and wheeled about the foundations of the tower, and the
sails of lofty caraccas were as mere specks on the bosom of the deep.
"Dost thou know yonder land beyond the blue water?" said Yuza.
"It is Spain," replied the boy; "it is the land of my father and my
mother."
"Then stretch forth thy hands and bless it, my child," said the
astrologer.
The boy let go his hold of the wall; and, as he stretched forth his
hands, the aged son of Ishmael, exerting all the strength of his
withered limbs, suddenly pushed him over the battlements. He fell
headlong from the top of that tall tower, and not a bone in his
tender frame but was crushed upon the rocks beneath.
Alahor came to the foot of the winding stairs.
"Is the boy safe?" cried he.
"He is safe," replied Yuza; "come and behold the truth with thine own
eyes."
The emir ascended the tower and looked over the battlements, and
beheld the body of the child, a shapeless mass on the rocks far
below, and the seagulls hovering about it; and he gave orders that it
should be thrown into the sea, which was done.
On the following morning the countess was led forth from her dungeon
into the public square. She knew of the death of her child, and that
her own death was at hand, but she neither wept nor supplicated. Her
hair was dishevelled, her eyes were haggard with watching, and her
cheek was as the monumental stone; but there were the remains of
commanding beauty in her countenance, and the majesty of her presence
awed even the rabble into respect.
A multitude of Christian prisoners were then brought forth, and
Alahor cried out: "Behold the wife of Count Julian! behold one of
that traitorous family which has brought ruin upon yourselves and
upon your country!" And he ordered that they should stone her to
death. But the Christians drew back with horror from the deed, and
said, "In the hand of God is vengeance; let not her blood be upon our
heads." Upon this the emir swore with horrid imprecations that
whoever of the captives refused should himself be stoned to death.
So the cruel order was executed, and the Countess Frandina perished
by the hands of her countrymen. Having thus accomplished his
barbarous errand, the emir embarked for Spain, and ordered the
citadel of Ceuta to be set on fire, and crossed the straits at night
by the light of its towering flames.
The death of Count Julian, which took place not long after, closed
the tragic story of his family. How he died remains involved in
doubt. Some assert that the cruel Alahor pursued him to his retreat
among the mountains, and, having taken him prisoner, beheaded him;
others that the Moors confined him in a dungeon, and put an end to
his life with lingering torments; while others affirm that the tower
of the castle of Marcuello, near Huesca, in Aragon, in which he took
refuge, fell on him and crushed him to pieces. All agree that his
latter end was miserable in the extreme and his death violent. The
curse of Heaven, which had thus pursued him to the grave, was
extended to the very place which had given him shelter; for we are
told that the castle is no longer inhabited on account of the strange
and horrible noises that are heard in it; and that visions of armed
men are seen above it in the air; which are supposed to be the
troubled spirits of the apostate Christians who favoured the cause of
the traitor.
In after-times a stone sepulchre was shown, outside of the chapel of
the castle, as the tomb of Count Julian; but the traveller and the
pilgrim avoided it, or bestowed upon it a malediction; and the name
of Julian has remained a by-word and a scorn in the land for the
warning of all generations. Such ever be the lot of him who betrays
his country.
V
A GOBOTO NIGHT
JACK LONDON
I
At Goboto the traders come off their schooners and the planters drift
in from far, wild coasts, and one and all they assume shoes, white
duck trousers, and various other appearances of civilisation. At
Goboto mail is received, bills are paid, and newspapers, rarely more
than five weeks old, are accessible; for the little island, belted
with its coral reefs, affords safe anchorage, is the steamer port of
call, and serves as the distributing point for the whole
wide-scattered group.
Life at Goboto is heated, unhealthy, and lurid, and for its size it
asserts the distinction of more cases of acute alcoholism than any
other spot in the world. Guvutu, over in the Solomons, claims that
it drinks between drinks. Goboto does not deny this. It merely
states, in passing, that in the Goboton chronology no such interval
of time is known. It also points out its import statistics, which
show a far larger per capita consumption of spirituous liquors.
Guvutu explains this on the basis that Goboto does a larger business
and has more visitors. Goboto retorts that its resident population
is smaller and that its visitors are thirstier. And the discussion
goes on interminably, principally because of the fact that the
disputants do not live long enough to settle it.
Goboto is not large. The island is only a quarter of a mile in
diameter, and on it are situated an admiralty coal-shed (where a few
tons of coal have lain untouched for twenty years), the barracks for
a handful of black labourers, a big store and warehouse with
sheet-iron roofs, and a bungalow inhabited by the manager and his two
clerks. They are the white population. An average of one man out of
the three is always to be found down with fever. The job at Goboto
is a hard one. It is the policy of the company to treat its patrons
well, as invading companies have found out, and it is the task of the
manager and clerks to do the treating. Throughout the year traders
and recruiters arrive from far, dry cruises, and planters from
equally distant and dry shores, bringing with them magnificent
thirsts. Goboto is the Mecca of sprees, and when they have spreed
they go back to their schooners and plantations to recuperate.
Some of the less hardy require as much as six months between visits.
But for the manager and his assistants there are no such intervals.
They are on the spot, and week by week, blown in by monsoon or
southeast trade, the schooners come to anchor, cargoed with copra,
ivory nuts, pearl-shell, hawksbill turtle, and thirst.
It is a very hard job at Goboto. That is why the pay is twice that
on other stations, and that is why the company selects only
courageous and intrepid men for this particular station. They last
no more than a year or so, when the wreckage of them is shipped back
to Australia, or the remains of them are buried in the sand across on
the windward side of the islet. Johnny Bassett, almost the legendary
hero of Goboto, broke all records. He was a remittance man with a
remarkable constitution, and he lasted seven years. His dying
request was duly observed by his clerks, who pickled him in a cask of
trade-rum (paid for out of their own salaries) and shipped him back
to his people in England.
Nevertheless, at Goboto, they tried to be gentlemen. For that
matter, though something was wrong with them, they were gentlemen,
and had been gentlemen. That was why the great unwritten rule of
Goboto was that visitors should put on pants and shoes.
Breech-clouts, lava-lavas, and bare legs were not tolerated. When
Captain Jensen, the wildest of the Blackbirders though descended from
old New York Knickerbocker stock, surged in, clad in loin-cloth,
undershirt, two belted revolvers and a sheath-knife, he was stopped
at the beach. This was in the days of Johnny Bassett, ever a
stickler in matters of etiquette. Captain Jensen stood up in the
sternsheets of his whaleboat and denied the existence of pants on his
schooner. Also, he affirmed his intention of coming ashore. They of
Goboto nursed him back to health from a bullet-hole through his
shoulder, and in addition handsomely begged his pardon, for no pants
had they found on his schooner. And finally, on the first day he sat
up, Johnny Bassett kindly but firmly assisted his guest into a pair
of pants of his own. This was the great precedent. In all the
succeeding years it had never been violated. White men and pants
were undivorceable. Only niggers ran naked. Pants constituted caste.
II
On this night things were, with one exception, in nowise different
from any other night. Seven of them, with glimmering eyes and steady
legs, had capped a day of Scotch with swivel-sticked cocktails and
sat down to dinner. Jacketed, trousered, and shod, they were: Jerry
McMurtrey, the manager; Eddy Little and Jack Andrews, clerks; Captain
Stapler, of the recruiting ketch _Merry_; Darby Shryleton, planter
from Tito-Ito; Peter Gee, a half-caste Chinese pearl-buyer who ranged
from Ceylon to the Paumotus, and Alfred Deacon, a visitor who had
stopped off from the last steamer. At first wine was served by the
black servants to those that drank it, though all quickly shifted
back to Scotch and soda, pickling their food as they ate it, ere it
went into their calcined, pickled stomachs.
Over their coffee, they heard the rumble of an anchor-chain through a
hawse-pipe, tokening the arrival of a vessel.
"It's David Grief," Peter Gee remarked.
"How do you know?" Deacon demanded truculently, and then went on to
deny the half-caste's knowledge. "You chaps put on a lot of side
over a new chum. I've done some sailing myself, and this naming a
craft when its sail is only a blur, or naming a man by the sound of
his anchor--it's--it's unadulterated poppycock."
Peter Gee was engaged in lighting a cigarette, and did not answer.
"Some of the niggers do amazing things that way," McMurtrey
interposed tactfully.
As with the others, this conduct of their visitor jarred on the
manager. From the moment of Peter Gee's arrival that afternoon
Deacon had manifested a tendency to pick on him. He had disputed his
statements and been generally rude.
"Maybe it's because Peter's got Chink blood in him," had been
Andrews' hypothesis. "Deacon's Australian, you know, and they're
daffy down there on colour."
"I fancy that's it," McMurtrey had agreed. "But we can't permit any
bullying, especially of a man like Peter Gee, who's whiter than most
white men."
In this the manager had been in nowise wrong. Peter Gee was that
rare creature, a good as well as clever Eurasian. In fact, it was
the stolid integrity of the Chinese blood that toned the recklessness
and licentiousness of the English blood which had run in his father's
veins. Also, he was better educated than any man there, spoke better
English as well as several other tongues, and knew and lived more of
their own ideals of gentlemanness than they did themselves. And,
finally, he was a gentle soul. Violence he deprecated, though he had
killed men in his time. Turbulence he abhorred. He always avoided
it as he would the plague.
Captain Stapler stepped in to help McMurtrey:
"I remember, when I changed schooners and came into Altman, the
niggers knew right off the bat it was me. I wasn't expected, either,
much less to be in another craft. They told the trader it was me.
He used the glasses, and wouldn't believe them. But they did know.
Told me afterward they could see it sticking out all over the
schooner that I was running her."
Deacon ignored him, and returned to the attack on the pearl-buyer.
"How do you know from the sound of the anchor that it was this
whatever-you-called-him man?" he challenged.
"There are so many things that go to make up such a judgment," Peter
Gee answered. "It's very hard to explain. It would require almost a
text book."
"I thought so," Deacon sneered. "Explanation that doesn't explain is
easy."
"Who's for bridge?" Eddy Little, the second clerk, interrupted,
looking up expectantly and starting to shuffle. "You'll play, won't
you, Peter?"
"If he does, he's a bluffer," Deacon cut back. "I'm getting tired of
all this poppycock. Mr. Gee, you will favour me and put yourself in
a better light if you tell how you know who that man was that just
dropped anchor. After that I'll play you piquet."
"I'd prefer bridge," Peter answered. "As for the other thing, it's
something like this: By the sound it was a small craft--no
square-rigger. No whistle, no siren, was blown--again a small craft.
It anchored close in--still again a small craft, for steamers and big
ships must drop hook outside the middle shoal. Now the entrance is
tortuous. There is no recruiting nor trading captain in the group
who dares to run the passage after dark. Certainly no stranger
would. There were two exceptions. The first was Margonville. But
he was executed by the High Court at Fiji. Remains the other
exception, David Grief. Night or day, in any weather, he runs the
passage. This is well known to all. A possible factor, in case
Grief were somewhere else, would be some young dare-devil of a
skipper. In this connection, in the first place, I don't know of
any, nor does anybody else. In the second place, David Grief is in
these waters, cruising on the _Gunga_, which is shortly scheduled to
leave here for Karo-Karo. I spoke to Grief, on the _Gunga_, in
Sandfly Passage, day before yesterday. He was putting a trader
ashore on a new station. He said he was going to call in at Babo,
and then come on to Goboto. He has had ample time to get here. I
have heard an anchor drop. Who else than David Grief can it be?
Captain Donovan is skipper of the _Gunga_, and him I know too well to
believe that he'd run in to Goboto after dark unless his owner were
in charge. In a few minutes David Grief will enter through that door
and say, 'In Guvutu they merely drink between drinks.' I'll wager
fifty pounds he's the man that enters and that his words will be, 'In
Guvutu they merely drink between drinks.'"
Deacon was for the moment crushed. The sullen blood rose darkly in
his face.
"Well, he's answered you," McMurtrey laughed genially. "And I'll
back his bet myself for a couple of sovereigns."
"Bridge! Who's going to take a hand?" Eddy Little cried impatiently.
"Come on, Peter!"
"The rest of you play," Deacon said. "He and I are going to play
piquet."
"I'd prefer bridge," Peter Gee said mildly.
"Don't you play piquet?"
The pearl-buyer nodded.
"Then come on. Maybe I can show I know more about that than I do
about anchors."
"Oh, I say----" McMurtrey began.
"You can play bridge," Deacon shut him off. "We prefer piquet."
Reluctantly, Peter Gee was bullied into a game that he knew would be
unhappy.
"Only a rubber," he said, as he cut for deal.
"For how much?" Deacon asked.
Peter Gee shrugged his shoulders. "As you please."
"Hundred up--five pounds a game?"
Peter Gee agreed.
"With the lurch double, of course, ten pounds?"
"All right," said Peter Gee.
At another table four of the others sat in at bridge. Captain
Stapler, who was no card-player, looked on and replenished the long
glasses of Scotch that stood at each man's right hand. McMurtrey,
with poorly concealed apprehension, followed as well as he could what
went on at the piquet table. His fellow Englishmen as well were
shocked by the behaviour of the Australian, and all were troubled by
fear of some untoward act on his part. That he was working up his
animosity against the half-caste, and that the explosion might come
any time, was apparent to all.
"I hope Peter loses," McMurtrey said in an undertone.
"Not if he has any luck," Andrews answered. "He's a wizard at
piquet. I know by experience."
That Peter Gee was lucky was patent from the continual badgering of
Deacon, who filled his glass frequently. He had lost the first game,
and, from his remarks, was losing the second, when the door opened
and David Grief entered.
"In Guvutu they merely drink between drinks," he remarked casually to
the assembled company, ere he gripped the manager's hand. "Hello,
Mac! Say, my skipper's down in the whaleboat. He's got a silk
shirt, a tie, and tennis shoes, all complete, but he wants you to
send a pair of pants down. Mine are too small, but yours will fit
him. Hello, Eddy! How's that _ngari-ngari_? You up, Jock? The
miracle has happened. No one down with fever, and no one remarkably
drunk." He sighed, "I suppose the night is young yet. Hello, Peter!
Did you catch that big squall an hour after you left us? We had to
let go the second anchor."
While he was being introduced to Deacon, McMurtrey dispatched a
house-boy with the pants, and when Captain Donovan came in it was as
a white man should--at least in Goboto.
Deacon lost the second game, and an outburst heralded the fact.
Peter Gee devoted himself to lighting a cigarette and keeping quiet.
"What!--are you quitting because you're ahead?" Deacon demanded.
Grief raised his eyebrows questioningly to McMurtrey, who frowned
back his own disgust.
"It's the rubber," Peter Gee answered.
"It takes three games to make a rubber. It's my deal. Come on!"
Peter Gee acquiesced, and the third game was on.
"Young whelp--he needs a lacing," McMurtrey muttered to Grief. "Come
on, let us quit, you chaps. I want to keep an eye on him. If he
goes too far I'll throw him out on the beach, company instructions or
no."
"Who is he?" Grief queried.
"A left-over from last steamer. Company's orders to treat him nice.
He's looking to invest in a plantation. Has a ten-thousand-pound
letter of credit with the company. He's got 'all-white Australia' on
the brain. Thinks because his skin is white and because his father
was once Attorney-General of the Commonwealth that he can be a cur.
That's why he's picking on Peter, and you know Peter's the last man
in the world to make trouble or incur trouble. Damn the company. I
didn't engage to wet-nurse its infants with bank accounts. Come on,
fill your glass, Grief. The man's a blighter, a blithering blighter."
"Maybe he's only young," Grief suggested.
"He can't contain his drink--that's clear." The manager glared his
disgust and wrath. "If he raises a hand to Peter, so help me, I'll
give him a licking myself, the little overgrown cad!"
The pearl-buyer pulled the pegs out of the cribbage board on which he
was scoring and sat back. He had won the third game. He glanced
across to Eddy Little, saying:
"I'm ready for the bridge, now."
"I wouldn't be a quitter," Deacon snarled.
"Oh, really, I'm tired of the game," Peter Gee assured him with his
habitual quietness.
"Come on and be game," Deacon bullied. "One more. You can't take my
money that way. I'm out fifteen pounds. Double or quits."
McMurtrey was about to interpose, but Grief restrained him with his
eyes.
"If it positively is the last, all right," said Peter Gee, gathering
up the cards. "It's my deal, I believe. As I understand it, this
final is for fifteen pounds. Either you owe me thirty or we quit
even?"
"That's it, chappie. Either we break even or I pay you thirty."
"Getting blooded, eh?" Grief remarked, drawing up a chair.
The other men stood or sat around the table, and Deacon played again
in bad luck. That he was a good player was clear. The cards were
merely running against him. That he could not take his ill luck with
equanimity was equally clear. He was guilty of sharp, ugly curses,
and he snapped and growled at the imperturbable half-caste. In the
end Peter Gee counted out, while Deacon had not even made his fifty
points. He glowered speechlessly at his opponent.
"Looks like a lurch," said Grief.
"Which is double," said Peter Gee.
"There's no need your telling me," Deacon snarled. "I've studied
arithmetic. I owe you forty-five pounds. There, take it!"
The way in which he flung the nine five-pound notes on the table was
an insult in itself. Peter Gee was even quieter, and flew no signals
of resentment.
"You've got fool's luck, but you can't play cards, I can tell you
that much," Deacon went on. "I could teach you cards."
The half-caste smiled and nodded acquiescence as he folded up the
money.
"There's a little game called casino--I wonder if you ever heard of
it?--a child's game."
"I've seen it played," the half-caste murmured gently.
"What's that?" snapped Deacon. "Maybe you think you can play it?"
"Oh, no, not for a moment. I'm afraid I haven't head enough for it."
"It's a bully game, casino," Grief broke in pleasantly. "I like it
very much."
Deacon ignored him.
"I'll play you ten quid a game--thirty-one points out," was the
challenge to Peter Gee. "And I'll show you how little you know about
cards. Come on! Where's a full deck?"
"No, thanks," the half-caste answered. "They are waiting for me in
order to make up a bridge set."
"Yes, come on," Eddy Little begged eagerly. "Come on, Peter, let's
get started."
"Afraid of a little game like casino," Deacon girded. "Maybe the
stakes are too high. I'll play you for pennies--or farthings, if you
say so."
The man's conduct was a hurt and an affront to all of them.
McMurtrey could stand it no longer.
"Now hold on, Deacon. He says he doesn't want to play. Let him
alone."
Deacon turned raging upon his host; but before he could blurt out his
abuse, Grief had stepped into the breach.
"I'd like to play casino with you," he said.
"What do you know about it?"
"Not much, but I'm willing to learn."
"Well, I'm not teaching for pennies to-night."
"Oh, that's all right," Grief answered. "I'll play for almost any
sum--within reason, of course."
Deacon proceeded to dispose of this intruder with one stroke.
"I'll play you a hundred pounds a game, if that will do you any good."
Grief beamed his delight. "That will be all right, very right. Let
us begin. Do you count sweeps?"
Deacon was taken aback. He had not expected a Goboton trader to be
anything but crushed by such a proposition.
"Do you count sweeps?" Grief repeated.
Andrews had brought him a new deck, and he was throwing out the joker.
"Certainly not," Deacon answered. "That's a sissy game."
"I'm glad," Grief coincided. "I don't like sissy games either."
"You don't, eh? Well, then, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll play
for five hundred pounds a game."
Again Deacon was taken aback.
"I'm agreeable," Grief said, beginning to shuffle. "Cards and spades
go out first, of course, and then big and little casino, and the aces
in the bridge order of value. Is that right?"
"You're a lot of jokers down here," Deacon laughed, but his laughter
was strained. "How do I know you've got the money?"
"By the same token I know you've got it. Mac, how's my credit with
the company?"
"For all you want," the manager answered.
"You personally guarantee that?" Deacon demanded.
"I certainly do," McMurtrey said. "Depend upon it, the company will
honour his paper up and pass your letter of credit."
"Low deals," Grief said, placing the deck before Deacon on the table.
The latter hesitated in the midst of the cut and looked around with
querulous misgiving at the faces of the others. The clerks and
captains nodded.
"You're all strangers to me," Deacon complained. "How am I to know?
Money on paper isn't always the real thing."
Then it was that Peter Gee, drawing a wallet from his pocket and
borrowing a fountain pen from McMurtrey, went into action.
"I haven't gone to buying yet," the half-caste explained, "so the
account is intact. I'll just indorse it over to you, Grief. It's
for fifteen thousand. There, look at it."
Deacon intercepted the letter of credit as it was being passed across
the table. He read it slowly, then glanced up at McMurtrey.
"Is that right?"
"Yes. It's just the same as your own, and just as good. The
company's paper is always good."
Deacon cut the cards, won the deal, and gave them a thorough shuffle.
But his luck was still against him, and he lost the game.
"Another game," he said. "We didn't say how many, and you can't quit
with me a loser. I want action."
Grief shuffled and passed the cards for the cut.
"Let's play for a thousand," Deacon said, when he had lost the second
game. And when the thousand had gone the way of the two five hundred
bets he proposed to play for two thousand.
"That's progression," McMurtrey warned, and was rewarded by a glare
from Deacon. But the manager was insistent. "You don't have to play
progression, Grief, unless you're foolish."
"Who's playing this game?" Deacon flamed at his host; and then, to
Grief: "I've lost two thousand to you. Will you play for two
thousand?"
Grief nodded, the fourth game began, and Deacon won. The manifest
unfairness of such betting was known to all of them. Though he had
lost three games out of four, Deacon had lost no money. By the
child's device of doubling his wager with each loss, he was bound,
with the first game he won, no matter how long delayed, to be even
again.
He now evinced an unspoken desire to stop, but Grief passed the deck
to be cut.
"What?" Deacon cried. "You want more?"
"Haven't got anything yet," Grief murmured whimsically, as he began
the deal. "For the usual five hundred, I suppose?"
The shame of what he had done must have tingled in Deacon, for he
answered, "No, we'll play for a thousand. And say! Thirty-one
points is too long. Why not twenty-one points out--if it isn't too
rapid for you?"
"That will make it a nice, quick little game," Grief agreed.
The former method of play was repeated. Deacon lost two games,
doubled the stake, and was again even. But Grief was patient, though
the thing occurred several times in the next hour's play. Then
happened what he was waiting for--a lengthening in the series of
losing games for Deacon. The latter doubled to four thousand and
lost, doubled to eight thousand and lost, and then proposed to double
to sixteen thousand.
Grief shook his head. "You can't do that, you know. You're only ten
thousand credit with the company."
"You mean you won't give me action?" Deacon asked hoarsely. "You
mean that with eight thousand of my money you're going to quit?"
Grief smiled and shook his head.
"It's robbery, plain robbery," Deacon went on. "You take my money
and won't give me action."
"No, you're wrong. I'm perfectly willing to give you what action
you've got coming to you. You've got two thousand pounds of action
yet."
"Well, we'll play it," Deacon took him up. "You cut."
The game was played in silence, save for irritable remarks and curses
from Deacon. Silently the onlookers filled and sipped their long
Scotch glasses. Grief took no notice of his opponent's outbursts,
but concentrated on the game. He was really playing cards, and there
were fifty-two in the deck to be kept track of, and of which he did
keep track. Two thirds of the way through the last deal he threw
down his hand.
"Cards put me out," he said. "I have twenty-seven."
"If you've made a mistake," Deacon threatened, his face white and
drawn.
"Then I shall have lost. Count them."
Grief passed over his stack of takings, and Deacon, with trembling
fingers, verified the count. He half shoved his chair back from the
table and emptied his glass. He looked about him at unsympathetic
faces.
"I fancy I'll be catching the next steamer for Sydney," he said, and
for the first time his speech was quiet and without bluster.
As Grief told them afterward: "Had he whined or raised a roar I
wouldn't have given him that last chance. As it was, he took his
medicine like a man, and I had to do it."
Deacon glanced at his watch, simulated a weary yawn, and started to
rise.
"Wait," Grief said. "Do you want further action?"
The other sank down in his chair, strove to speak, but could not,
licked his dry lips, and nodded his head.
"Captain Donovan here sails at daylight in the _Gunga_ for
Karo-Karo," Grief began with seeming irrelevance. "Karo-Karo is a
ring of sand in the sea, with a few thousand cocoanut trees.
Pandanus grows there, but they can't grow sweet potatoes nor taro.
There are about eight hundred natives, a king and two prime
ministers, and the last three named are the only ones who wear any
clothes. It's a sort of God-forsaken little hole, and once a year I
send a schooner up from Goboto. The drinking water is brackish, but
old Tom Butler has survived on it for a dozen years. He's the only
white man there, and he has a boat's crew of five Santa Cruz boys who
would run away or kill him if they could. That is why they were sent
there. They can't run away. He is always supplied with the hard
cases from the plantations. There are no missionaries. Two native
Samoan teachers were clubbed to death on the beach when they landed
several years ago.
"Naturally, you are wondering what it is all about. But have
patience. As I have said, Captain Donovan sails on the annual trip
to Karo-Karo at daylight to-morrow. Tom Butler is old, and getting
quite helpless. I've tried to retire him to Australia, but he says
he wants to remain and die on Karo-Karo, and he will in the next year
or so. He's a queer old codger. Now the time is due for me to send
some white man up to take the work off his hands. I wonder how you'd
like the job. You'd have to stay two years.
"Hold on! I've not finished. You've talked frequently of action
this evening. There's no action in betting away what you've never
sweated for. The money you've lost to me was left you by your father
or some other relative who did the sweating. But two years of work
as trader on Karo-Karo would mean something. I'll bet the ten
thousand I've won from you against two years of your time. If you
win, the money's yours. If you lose, you take the job at Karo-Karo
and sail at daylight. Now that's what might be called real action.
Will you play?"
Deacon could not speak. His throat lumped and he nodded his head as
he reached for the cards.
"One thing more," Grief said. "I can do even better. If you lose,
two years of your time are mine--naturally without wages.
Nevertheless, I'll pay you wages. If your work is satisfactory, if
you observe all instructions and rules, I'll pay you five thousand
pounds a year for two years. The money will be deposited with the
company, to be paid to you, with interest, when the time expires. Is
that all right?"
"Too much so," Deacon stammered. "You are unfair to yourself. A
trader only gets ten or fifteen pounds a month."
"Put it down to action, then," Grief said, with an air of dismissal.
"And before we begin, I'll jot down several of the rules. These you
will repeat aloud every morning during the two years--if you lose.
They are for the good of your soul. When you have repeated them
aloud seven hundred and thirty Karo-Karo mornings I am confident they
will be in your memory to stay. Lend me your pen, Mac. Now, let's
see----"
He wrote steadily and rapidly for some minutes, then proceeded to
read the matter aloud:
"_I must always remember that one man is as good as another, save and
except when he thinks he is better._
"_No matter how drunk I am I must not fail to be a gentleman. A
gentleman is a man who is gentle. Note: It would be better not to
get drunk._
"_When I play a man's game with men, I must play like a man._
"_A good curse, rightly used and rarely, is an efficient thing. Too
many curses spoil the cursing. Note: A curse cannot change a card
sequence nor cause the wind to blow._
"_There is no license for a man to be less than a man. Ten thousand
pounds cannot purchase such a license._"
At the beginning of the reading Deacon's face had gone white with
anger. Then had arisen, from neck to forehead, a slow and terrible
flush that deepened to the end of the reading.
"There, that will be all," Grief said, as he folded the paper and
tossed it to the centre of the table. "Are you still ready to play
the game?"
"I deserve it," Deacon muttered brokenly. "I've been an ass. Mr.
Gee, before I know whether I win or lose, I want to apologise. Maybe
it was the whiskey, I don't know, but I'm an ass, a cad, a
bounder--everything that's rotten."
He held out his hand, and the half-caste took it beamingly.
"I say, Grief," he blurted out, "the boy's all right. Call the whole
thing off, and let's forget it in a final nightcap."
Grief showed signs of debating, but Deacon cried:
"No; I won't permit it. I'm not a quitter. If it's Karo-Karo, it's
Karo-Karo. There's nothing more to it."
"Right," said Grief, as he began the shuffle. "If he's the right
stuff to go to Karo-Karo, Karo-Karo won't do him any harm."
The game was close and hard. Three times they divided the deck
between them and "cards" was not scored. At the beginning of the
fifth and last deal, Deacon needed three points to go out and Grief
needed four. "Cards" alone would put Deacon out, and he played for
"cards." He no longer muttered or cursed, and played his best game
of the evening. Incidentally he gathered in the two black aces and
the ace of hearts.
"I suppose you can name the four cards I hold," he challenged, as the
last of the deal was exhausted and he picked up his hand.
Grief nodded.
"Then name them."
"The knave of spades, the deuce of spades, the tray of hearts, and
the ace of diamonds," Grief answered.
Those behind Deacon and looking at his hand made no sign. Yet the
naming had been correct.
"I fancy you play casino better than I," Deacon acknowledged. "I can
name only three of yours, a knave, an ace, and big casino."
"Wrong. There aren't five aces in the deck. You've taken in three
and you hold the fourth in your hand now."
"By Jove, you're right," Deacon admitted. "I did scoop in three.
Anyway, I'll make 'cards' on you. That's all I need."
"I'll let you save little casino--" Grief paused to calculate.
"Yes, and the ace as well, and still I'll make 'cards' and go out
with big casino. Play."
"No 'cards,' and I win!" Deacon exulted as the last of the hand was
played. "I go out on little casino and the four aces. 'Big casino'
and 'spades' only bring you to twenty."
Grief shook his head. "Some mistake, I'm afraid."
"No," Deacon declared positively. "I counted every card I took in.
That's the one thing I was correct on. I've twenty-six, and you've
twenty-six."
"Count again," Grief said.
Carefully and slowly, with trembling fingers, Deacon counted the
cards he had taken. There were twenty-five. He reached over to the
corner of the table, took up the rules Grief had written, folded
them, and put them in his pocket. Then he emptied his glass, and
stood up. Captain Donovan looked at his watch, yawned, and also
arose.
"Going aboard, Captain?" Deacon asked.
"Yes," was the answer. "What time shall I send the whaleboat for
you?"
"I'll go with you now. We'll pick up my luggage from the _Billy_ as
we go by. I was sailing on her for Babo in the morning."
Deacon shook hands all around, after receiving a final pledge of good
luck on Karo-Karo.
"Does Tom Butler play cards?" he asked Grief.
"Solitaire," was the answer.
"Then I'll teach him double solitaire." Deacon turned toward the
door, where Captain Donovan waited, and added with a sigh, "And I
fancy he'll skin me, too, if he plays like the rest of you island
men."
VI
THE TWO SAMURAI*
BYRON E. VEATCH
*Reprinted by permission of the author.
It was in the autumn of 1904 that the Colonel told the story; Colonel
M----, who, with his seventy years, his snowy hair and imperial, was
yet as ruddy of cheek and as gallant of bearing as when in the old
days he led the --th Cavalry through the deserts of the West. Since
his retirement his home was at the Army and Navy Club, where his
charming little dinners and his unfailing wit and eloquence as an
after-dinner speaker made this courtly old warrior the most sought
for man about the capital.
We had dined with the Colonel that evening, and as we entered the
club smoking-rooms we overheard fragments of an animated conversation
between two naval officers, who were debating the probable movements
of the United States battleship squadron in case the feud between
Japan and Russia should involve other nations. The relative strength
of the Japanese and Russian navies, both as to material and
personnel, was also under discussion. In support of some claim as to
Japanese superiority, one of the navy men took up an encyclopedia,
from which he read the following:
"'_Samurai_--A term designating the feudal or governing class of old
Japan; the ruling families from which the fighting clans were
organised; a fighting man.'"
We found seats in the farther corner of the room and, after a few
moments of silence, the Colonel remarked, in the musing tone which
always promised a story:
"Boys, I once knew a Samurai; two of them, in fact; one to the manner
born, the other a Samurai by adoption."
"Unlimber and get your range, Colonel, we are ready," remarked
Sanderson of the Artillery, who would talk shop.
The old man smiled indulgently, and settling himself deeper into the
big leather chair, replied:
"Well, then, if you youngsters really care to listen, and will allow
an old fellow to tell his tale in his own fashion, you shall hear of
the Samurai I have mentioned, two of the bravest men I ever met, and
I have known several.
"At the close of the rebellion, after being mustered out as captain
in the Tenth New York Cavalry, I re-entered the service as a
lieutenant in the Fourth Regulars, and was at once ordered to Fort
Sill. This was in '65, and for the next fifteen years we earned
every dollar Uncle Sam paid us, and incidentally rode our horses over
some millions of square miles of his territory, between the Brazos
and the Big Horn. It was scout and fight, winter and summer; no big
affairs, you understand, but a row of some sort going all the while,
for the Indians were ugly and required lots of licking to keep them
on their reservations. April 5, 1880, I was transferred to the --th
Cavalry, and, as ranking captain, assumed command of Fort Huachuca,
Arizona, a three-company post only a few miles from the Sonora border.
"It was a favourite pastime of the redskins, for small parties of a
dozen or twenty, to break from the reservation at night and, after
raising sundry and divers varieties of hell, to slip across the
border and take refuge in Mexico, sneaking back to their tepees after
the flurry of pursuit was over.
"It was the first day after I assumed command that I took my own
troop out on the parade-ground, put them through their paces, and
gave them a thorough looking-over, to see what sort of an aggregation
I had inherited. They were a rollicking lot of lads, not pretty to
look at, but comfortable fellows to have at one's back when going
into a scrimmage, as I learned upon more than one bitter day in the
months that followed. After a few evolutions I felt, rather than
saw, what they needed: they wanted a master; wanted a leader whose
word should be to them the law and the gospel, from Proverbs to
Revelations, and by Gad, sir, they found their man right there and
then. Half of them didn't seem to know how to obey a command, and
the other half didn't appear to be in any particular hurry. My
subalterns, too, were apathetic, and inside of ten minutes I knew
that my work was cut out for me, if I expected to make anything of
Troop C.
"The only man in the company who seemed to know the game, and wanted
to play it by the book, was the First Sergeant. I spotted him at
once, and noticed that he not only understood and instantly obeyed a
command, but that he mentally anticipated it, which showed me that he
was letter-perfect in tactics.
"I didn't waste a great deal of time in letting them know the lay of
the land. As they wheeled into line by fours, the order was 'Halt,
Company front!' and then, riding very slowly, I passed down the line,
and over the head of his motionless horse I looked squarely through
each trooper's eyes and down into the subcellar of his immortal soul.
At the end of that slow riding I knew my men, and they knew that I
knew them.
"From that moment began the upbuilding of Company C, and before six
pay-days had passed it was the best drilled, best natured, hardest
fighting troop that ever swung the sabre or followed the guidon.
"As the Company broke ranks I could see that the men were speaking
eagerly among themselves, evidently discussing their new 'Old Man.'
I had my eye on that First Sergeant, and after stables that evening I
sent an orderly for him. A few minutes later he strode up to the
open door of my quarters, saluted and stood at attention, waiting
while I looked him over from end to end. He was a soldierly-looking
chap, square-shouldered, well set up, long of limb and slender, and
looked as hard as iron. But it was at his face that I looked
longest. It was not a happy face--some great sorrow or great
disappointment had left its shadow there--but it had character
written all over. Prominent cheek-bones, a good nose and chin, with
deep-set gray eyes, that looked at a man, not past him. For a full
minute he stood quietly returning my gaze, with never a flinch nor
the tremor of an eyelid.
"'What's your name, Sergeant?'
"'Reynolds, sir.'
"'How long have you been in the service?'
"'Nearly three years, sir.'
"'Step inside, Sergeant, I want to have a talk with you.'
"As he passed the threshold he removed his hat, and right there his
Captain came very nearly committing an unpardonable breach of
discipline, for the impulse came over me to get out of my chair and
offer the gentleman a seat. For Sergeant Reynolds was a gentleman,
as one could see the instant his hat came off and that magnificent
forehead appeared in evidence. His was a splendid head, and every
line of his face and brow bore the unmistakable stamp of intellectual
force and honesty of purpose. Why was such a man as this serving as
a private soldier in the regular army? I was distinctly rattled for
a minute, and in the little silence which ensued I found myself
speculating as to what queer turn of Fate's fickle wheel had brought
him there. Such cases were not infrequent, and many an interesting
identity lay concealed under Uncle Sam's army blue.
"Whatever had been his past, I felt sure he was the one man in the
company who could be of most assistance in bringing the troop up to
concert pitch, so I went straight to the point:
"'Sergeant, Troop C requires some good, hard drill and better
discipline. The men need a little ginger and soldierly spirit
infused into them, and a man in the ranks, who has his heart in the
work, can prove himself of invaluable assistance to his officers in
bringing about the desired conditions. I had an eye on you this
afternoon and, if I am not mistaken, you know your business. Your
Captain is going to depend on you to help him round the troop into
shape, and, willingly or unwillingly, you're going to give him that
help. I sent for you to tell you this and to know whether you will
do it because you want to, or because you have to.'
"Quick as a shot came his reply, 'Both, sir.'
"There was a faint smile on his lip and a pleased look in his eyes
which told me that my First Sergeant was mine. I dismissed him
without further questioning, for I felt intuitively that no casual
inquiry would secure Sergeant Reynolds' real history, much as I
wanted it. A few minutes' private and pointed conversation with each
of my lieutenants that evening, and I was ready for the siege of
drill which began the following day. Lord! How I did work those
fellows for the next week or two! The men grumbled and kicked, as is
the soldier's prerogative, but they worked. Hennessy, the biggest,
brawniest trooper of the lot, probably voiced the general sentiment
when one hot afternoon he unburdened himself to Reynolds.
"'What do yez make av it, Sargint? Is this a rest cure that the dear
Captin is thryin' on us? Bedad, I'd rayther be diggin' post holes in
the stony corner of hell than workin' as a hoss sojer unther that
man! Sure, me liver is jolted loose and the seat of me panties is
wored out entoirely with this ridin' and chargin' up and down the
landscape from mornin' till night. I've dhrilled and dhrilled till
the damn thing has gone to me head, and I find meself dhrillin' in me
slape. There's wan good thing about it, thank Hivin, the ould divil
is takin' his own medicine, for he's dhrillin' wid us.'
"And so it was. I took my share of the drudgery, but it paid, for
the troop began immediately to show improvement. Reynolds' influence
in the ranks was soon apparent, the men showing more and more
interest as the days went by.
"One evening an ambulance from Benson brought in the long delayed
mails, and as the leathern pouches were tumbled out the men gathered
about, eager for news from the San Carlos Agency, where a break was
rumoured. On the seat beside the driver sat a young man in civilian
dress, unmistakably a foreigner.
"'Who's your friend, Bill?' sang out one of the crowd.
"'Recruity,' answered the driver, with a grin; 'a gent from Japan who
is stuck on sojerin' and has come out here to get some.'
"A delighted yell came from the boys, as they closed in and began
reaching for the newcomer.
"'If the lady wud put her fut in me hand, I'd be proud to assist her
to land in Huachuca,' said Hennessy, as he grabbed the stranger by
the coat collar.
"The little fellow laughed at the reception, and without an instant's
hesitation stepped into Hennessy's hand, then to his shoulder, and,
springing lightly over the surprised trooper's head, landed safely on
his feet. It was neatly done, and his evident good nature caught the
crowd.
"'Bully for the Mikado!' 'Hooray for the Jap!' chorused the men, as
Hennessy, nowise abashed, took the newcomer by the arm and moved off
toward the quarters. Several others, scenting a lark, hurried
forward to take a hand, but Hennessy waved them off. 'Lave go,' he
said, 'I saw it first.'
"I beckoned the driver to me and inquired concerning the stranger.
"'Don't know nuthin' about him, sir, 'cept he tackled me as I was
leaving Benson, and finally made me understand he wanted to come
here; offered me a five-dollar gold piece to let him ride, and here
he is. Says he wants to learn to be a 'Merican sojer, but he don't
savvy United States, not a little bit.'
"I turned to Reynolds, who stood near, telling him to give the
Japanese something to eat and then bring him to my quarters. It
would never do to leave him with that lot of unredeemed pagans who
had him in tow, as they would haze him mercilessly. I mentally
decided that he would be sent back to Benson by the ambulance
returning next morning.
"An hour later I saw Reynolds and the Jap coming up the company
street, the little fellow trotting along beside the tall trooper,
talking excitedly and smiling as if thoroughly delighted with the
situation. As they reached my veranda, Reynolds saluted and said,
'Here he is, sir.'
"'Who is he, and why is he here?' I asked.
"'Izo Yamato, sir; been in America only a few weeks, and came from
San Francisco here to enlist. Says he wants to be a cavalryman. He
is twenty-three years old and belongs to a distinguished family.'
"'How comes it that he has been able to tell you so much? I
understand from the driver that he speaks little or no English.'
"'He speaks very little English, sir; his conversation with me was in
his own language.'
"'In Japanese? Where in God's name did you learn Japanese?'
"'I lived in Kobe for several years, sir.'
"'Um! well, you understand, of course, that he cannot enlist here.
He must first go to some recruiting station and pass an examination,
which he couldn't do, both on account of his size and his lack of
English. Take care of him to-night, Reynolds, and we will send him
back to Benson to-morrow.'
"All this time the Jap had not once taken his eyes from my face,
eagerly watching every movement and gesture I made. Suddenly, as he
seemed to understand that I had refused his request, he stepped
before me, and drawing himself up to his full height, he declared
proudly, 'Me Samurai.'
"I looked at Reynolds for an explanation.
"'He says he is a Samurai, sir, which, translated into English, means
that he is a fighting man.'
"I laughed outright, while the smile on the little Jap's face
broadened perceptibly, as he spoke a half dozen quick, snappy
sentences in Japanese to Reynolds.
"'He says he doesn't expect to draw pay, sir; he has ample funds, and
only wants to learn American soldiering.'
"I couldn't do anything for him in that line, and told Reynolds so.
A quick shadow of disappointment passed over the youngster's face, as
Reynolds translated my words, and I really felt sorry for him. He
was a handsome little chap, about five feet four, deep-chested,
stocky, and muscular, a sort of a big little man, when one came to
look him over. He had jet-black hair, laughing eyes, and, while his
features were of course after the Oriental type, he really looked
more like a Portuguese or some south Europe breed than a Japanese.
After some further talk I dismissed them, fully determined to send
him out of camp the following morning--but he didn't go.
"Just before taps Reynolds came to me again to ask that his new
friend be permitted to remain at the post for a time, explaining that
the Jap would furnish his own equipment, and that the government
would be reimbursed for the rations he consumed. He urged the case
so strongly that I finally inquired what personal interest he had in
the matter. At first he seemed loath to explain, but it finally came
out.
"'Frankly, sir, I want his society. I haven't a real friend in the
troop; of course, I get on well enough with the boys, but they are an
illiterate lot, and it's fearfully lonely here at times, having no
one to talk with. Young Yamato is an educated gentleman, and it
would afford me infinite pleasure to have him with me, to teach him
and to have him as my friend.'
"'But the men will devil the life out of him, and you will have a
constant fight on your hands if you propose to protect your friend.'
"'I don't think they will trouble him much, as they come to know him
better, sir, and he will require no protection.'
"'Why, Reynolds, that big Hennessy has already marked him as his
victim. He will surely haze the life out of the little cuss.'
"'That's Yamato's affair, sir. I trust you will permit him to remain
at the post; if he can't stand the gaff, then he will leave.'
"'Reynolds, I want to ask you some questions altogether foreign to
the subject in hand; questions you needn't answer unless you see fit.
You are a man of education and refinement; you know more about
matters military than a man in your station is supposed to know; you
are more familiar than your officers with the latest text-books on
tactics. Were you ever at the Point? How came you to be a private
in the service? What is your history, anyway?'
"It was brutal, the manner in which I fired those questions at him,
taking a mean advantage of his position as petitioner to pry into his
private life. I was ashamed of it as I put the questions; I was more
ashamed when his answer came.
"Quickly the colour rose to his cheek, then gradually receded,
leaving him deadly pale, as he slowly replied.
"'Captain, the rehearsal of a most unfortunate and unhappy history
could not in any manner be of interest or profit to you. I have
never been at West Point, and my training has been more naval than
military. I am here because it appears to be the best place for me,
and while here I have tried to perform my duties faithfully. That's
all I care to say, sir, and I trust you will respect my reticence.'
The grey eyes were looking fearlessly into mine.
"It was a merited rebuke, delivered like a gentleman.
"'Right, Sergeant, your history is your own property. You may keep
the Jap, and if you need a friend, come to me.'
"There was a suspicious brightness in his eyes and the faintest
tremor in his voice as he wrung my proffered hand, saying, 'Thank
you, Captain, I'll not forget this.'
"So Yamato remained at the post, the ward and pupil of Sergeant
Reynolds. The men attempted some horse-play with him the first day
or two, but as Reynolds let it be known that the Jap was his friend,
no one cared to carry the fun-making beyond prudent limits. They
were very curious, however, and asked the Sergeant all sorts of
questions concerning his protégé, to which they received evasive but
good-natured replies. Big Hennessy finally cornered the Jap, and
proceeded to catechise him.
"'How ould are yez, Chink?'
"'Me have of the years twenty-three,' replied the lad, with his
everlasting smile.
"'Twinty-three! Sure, 'tis a big boy ye are gettin' to be; if yez
kape on growin' at the prisint rate, yez will be a full-grown man in
thirty or forty years more,' and the Irishman guffawed uproariously.
"'Well, me big man, what did yez do for a livin' in the ould
counthry? Did yez wheel the baby waggin and do other light
dhry-nursin', or was ye head push in a laundhry?'
"Not understanding, the Jap shook his head.
"Hennessy tried again.
"'What business were yez in? What did ye work at?'
"Extending himself to his full height, with great dignity the
Japanese replied:
"'Me no work; in my countree me gentleman; me Samurai.'
"'Samoory, eh? What particular sort av a bug is a Samoory, anyhow?'
"'Him no bug; Samurai ees one man of the fight.'
"'Whoop!' yelled the big trooper derisively; then raising his voice
till he could be heard from end to end of the company street, he
shouted,
"'Oyez! Oyez! all ye fighters come a-runnin' with yure hats in yure
hands, and do riverince to a rale live Samoory from the Far East.'
"Then as the boys quickly gathered about, he made a profound
obeisance before the surprised Jap, and resumed.
"'Gintlemen, dhrunkards, short-card min, and sojers! 'Tis me
pleasure to inthrojuce to yez me distinguished frind and
contimporary, Mister Samoory, av Japan, who has confidentially
imparted to me the information that in his own counthry he was known
as a fighter from way back, a hell of a feller, so to spake; and be
rayson of his ability as an all-roun' scrapper, the King gave him the
title of "Sammy, the Fightin' Man." All mimbers of Troop C will now
take warnin'! Yez will plaze kape off the grass when Mister Sammy is
awake. Hospital accommodations will be provided for them as forgit
themselves. Form in line now, ye divils, and extind the right hand
of fellowship to Mister Sammy, who has thravelled all the way to
Americky to be showin' us the fine points av the game.'
"The Jap looked puzzled, but as those overgrown children lined up,
each in turn extending his hand, the smile broadened and the black
eyes fairly beamed with pleasure. This ceremony ended, the boys gave
three rousing cheers for 'Sammy, the Fighting Man,' the fun was over,
and henceforth he was 'Sammy' to one and all.
"When Reynolds returned later in the day, Sammy delightedly told him
of Hennessy's kindness and the great honour conferred upon him by
Troop C. Reynolds did not disillusion the boy, but, later on,
quietly told the men that while they might guy the Jap and have fun
with him, it would not be wise to carry it too far. They assumed by
this warning that Reynolds would resent any undue imposition upon his
friend; not once did it occur to them that Sammy was amply able to
care for himself. Their enlightenment was yet to come.
"Sammy's fitting out and equipment furnished no end of fun for the
men. He wanted everything necessary to a ''Merican Soldier of the
Horse,' and, as he was amply supplied with gold, he soon had his
tent, blankets, and weapons. From some unknown source the boys dug
out an old, rusty cavalry sabre, which he hailed with evident delight
and which he at once proceeded to scour and polish till it shone like
silver. Then he ground and whetted and sharpened the old blade till
it was keen as a razor. In vain the men explained that the laws of
war prohibited a sharpened sword. 'Me want him for cut,' was his
only reply, as he went on whetting till the old steel would have
split a hair. Then he took his sabre to the blacksmith and requested
that he file off the basket, or hand-guard, leaving a plain,
straight, unprotected hilt. 'Me like him better; same like in my
countree,' he explained.
"It was in securing a horse that he had greatest difficulty. Not
being an enlisted man, he could not be permitted to use a government
mount, nor could he purchase a horse from Uncle Sam. After a private
conversation with Mexican Joe, the proprietor of one of the low
groggeries just outside the lines, Mr. Hennessy announced that he had
heard of a fine saddle horse for sale by a Greaser a few miles down
the valley, and, if his friend Sammy so desired, the horse should be
brought up to cantonments on the morrow. Next day a Mexican led a
piebald, white-eyed broncho into camp, and within five minutes
departed hurriedly with fifty dollars of Sammy's gold in his pocket.
It was a bay and white pinto which Sammy had acquired; round-bodied,
long-barreled, with flat, muscular legs and a depth of lung space
indicating great staying power, but with a Roman nose and the
restless white eyes which told unmistakably of a 'spoiled' saddle
horse. Evil lurked in every movement of the slender, pointed ears,
and looked boldly out through those wicked eyes. He was one of those
untamed and unbreakable specimens of horseflesh occasionally found in
the great West.
"'Come, min,' said Hennessy briskly, 'lay hold and help the gintleman
to mount his new calico horse,' and taking the rawhide lariat in his
hand, he advanced toward the pinto's head to adjust the bridle; then
leaping suddenly back, as the brute's teeth snapped together
dangerously near his arm, he swung overhead the bridle with its heavy
bit, landing it with considerable force between the white eyes.
"'Whoa! ye murdherin' divil, have ye no sinse of dacincy? 'Tis yure
new masther, the fightin' man av Japan, who is to ride yez!'
"A dozen willing hands assisted in getting the bridle and saddle in
place; then Sammy, who probably had not been astride a horse a dozen
times in his life, stepped forward and clambered into the saddle.
"'All set!' shouted Hennessy, as Sammy took up the reins; 'lave go!
the Arizony circus will now begin!'
"Begin it did; for no sooner was the maddened brute released than he
lunged wildly into the air, alighting with a sickening jolt upon his
forefeet, while his hinder part shot skyward. Sammy's hat flew in
one direction and his six-shooter in another, as he clutched
frantically at the saddle and endeavoured to recover the stirrups
which were sailing about his ears. First to the right, then to the
left pitched the horse, the men yelling in sheer delight, 'Stick to
him, Sammy!' 'Go it, Calico!' etc. It lasted less than ten seconds,
during which time Sammy was all over that pinto horse, travelling
from end to end with each sudden unseating; first behind the saddle,
then in front of it; clinging desperately first to one side and then
the other, as Calico swayed to and fro, like a drunken ship, in the
effort to discharge his shifting ballast. The rider had lost the
reins, and the horse, without guide or hindrance, his head far down
between his forefeet, his back bowed into a squirming knot of muscle,
landed with a particularly vicious jolt that shot Sammy into the air,
where he somersaulted to a landing in a bunch of bristly soapweed,
the breath completely jarred out of him.
"For a half-minute he lay still, and then as the laughing soldiers
gathered about, he slowly straightened up and started toward the
pinto, who stood with ears perked forward, suspiciously eyeing his
fallen rider. The boy was badly shaken; a thin line of blood from
his nose showed red on his white lips, as he unsteadily grasped the
rope and warily edged his way to the horse's head. Once within reach
his right hand clamped the panting nostrils, while his left gripped
an ear; there was a quick, downward pull, an inward push, a sudden
upward twist, and Calico lay floundering on the ground with Sammy
sitting on his head.
"So quickly was it accomplished not a man of them could have told how
it had been done. Sammy was smiling again, as he sat quietly till
the beast ceased its struggles; then, getting up, he allowed Calico
to scramble to his feet. The white eyes were blazing now and the
horse swung his head and squealed angrily as the Jap moved in. Again
that iron grip upon nose and ear, the sudden pushing twist, and once
more the horse fell heavily, his hoofs impotently threshing the air.
"Twice more the pinto was permitted to rise, and twice more he was
ruthlessly thrown, the last time that awful grip holding to his nose
till poor Calico was well-nigh dead for want of breath. When Sammy
arose the fourth time the horse lay still, and it required a vigorous
kick to bring him to his feet, his legs trembling unsteadily beneath
him, and for the first time in his life those white eyes showed
abject fear. Sammy walked straight to his head, patted the dusty
neck, put the reins over, then deliberately and awkwardly climbed
into the saddle and rode slowly down the street. Calico was licked!
Licked to a finish! You should have heard the boys cheer the little
Jap as he rode back a few minutes later.
"Reynolds had seen it all yet no word escaped him till after the
horse had been stabled; then he patted Sammy on the shoulder and
spoke a few words in Japanese, which caused the boy's face to light
up with satisfaction and his hand to seek Reynolds' with a quick grip.
"The two were inseparable; and under Reynolds' careful tutoring Sammy
made rapid progress in English, though some words he never did get
straight. He learned to ride, too. When the men were at drill he
watched every evolution, listened to every order. He begged so hard,
and seemed so anxious to learn, that I finally allowed him in the
ranks, a soldier serving without hope of pay or preferment, but as
gallant a soldier as ever drew rein, as you shall hear later on.
"He got on famously with the men. Of course, they guyed and chaffed
him, all of which he accepted good-naturedly, so long as they kept
hands off. He would permit no one to hustle him or indulge in any
horse-play. One of the men attempted to manhandle him one day, when
Sammy grappled with the fellow and threw him over his shoulder so
violently as nearly to break the man's neck. After that they
respected his edict of 'hands off.' His thirst for knowledge seemed
insatiable. Like a shadow he followed Reynolds; ever his eager
questions, sometimes in English, more often in Japanese, as to why or
how, receiving the tall trooper's reply in kind. It was about three
weeks after his arrival that Sammy had his first trouble, which came
about in this wise.
"Hennessy, who was a roistering, good-natured fellow when sober, but
a quarrelsome brute when in his cups, had spent the afternoon at
Mexican Joe's dive, and returning to camp in the evening, was
fighting drunk and hankering for trouble.
"It so happened that the tent occupied by Sammy stood at one end of
the adobe building in which Hennessy bunked, and the latter, to reach
his door, must pass within a few feet of the little Jap, who sat
cross-legged on the ground at the open flap of his tent, tinkering at
his equipment. Some evil spirit prompted the drunken Irishman to
bait the Japanese, for he stopped, and with an ugly leer commanded
the boy to get up and get him a cup, as he proposed to initiate all
stray Orientals about the camp into the mysteries of American
tanglefoot.
"'Get up, ye sawed-off haythen, and bring me the cup, before I spit
and dhrown yez.'
"Sammy smiled and went on fixing his buckle.
"'Didn'tyez hear me, ye naygur? I've a mind to take on a body
sarvint in me ould age, and as yure so dam purty and so smilin'-like,
yez have been elected by a most overwhelmin' majority as striker to
the Honorable Tim Hinnissy, and I'll start yez in proper by fillin'
yez up on this,' and he swung the bottle dangerously near Sammy's
head.
"Still smiling, Sammy shook his head. 'No want him, those drink; him
make for me pain of the head.'
"Hennessy scowled angrily.
"'Don't want it, don't yez? Well, 'tis time ye were larnin' that
whin yure boss gives ye an ordther ye are to move, and not sit
squattin' like a cross-legged toad, argifying. Git up, now, or I'll
kick a hole through the basement of yure pants!' and he touched the
lad none too gently with the toe of his boot.
"Sammy looked surprised, but still shook his head and smiled.
"'No want him, those drink; no geet up.'
"Hennessy's big foot swung back, then forward, as he landed a vicious
kick squarely amidships; Sammy rolled over, without doubt the most
surprised and the maddest Japanese in the Western Hemisphere. He
sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze, but as Hennessy raised his foot
for another kick, Sammy ducked under the tent flap and disappeared
within.
"Hennessy howled derisively and stepped forward with the evident
intention of following, but just then his head rocked backward from
an awful smash dealt him by the youngster, who stepped out of the
tent and faced the furious Irishman. It was the hilt of that old
cavalry sabre which had halted Mr. Hennessy's advance. Full and
square in his teeth the blow had landed, and as he spat the blood and
a couple of floating teeth from between his lacerated lips, he
yelled, 'Ye son of a scutt! ye wud play wid the tools, wud yez?' He
sprang into the open door of his own quarters, snatched up his sabre,
and, leaping out, sent the scabbard clattering to the earth as he
strode toward the waiting Jap, who seemed to have forgotten his anger
and was now smiling expectantly.
"The blow had instantly sobered the big trooper, but it had also
wakened the devil in him, and it was evident to the men who ran
flocking to the scene that Hennessy meant to hurt the boy, possibly
to kill him.
"'Now, ye haythen toad, I'll show yez how to use the business end av
a cheese knife! I'll just slice off wan ear as a sooveneer an' then
I'll spank yez with the flat av me blade; but if ye are nasty about
it, by God, I'll take the two av thim,' and with this he made a
vicious cut at Sammy's head, the blow slipping harmlessly from the
waiting steel.
"Two of the men started to rush Hennessy from the rear to prevent a
killing, but Reynolds interfered, saying, 'Let him alone; this isn't
your fight.'
"'But Hennessy's crazy drunk and will kill him!'
"'I don't think so,' calmly replied Reynolds. 'Hennessy will
presently see a great light, and, if I mistake not, will be a very
sober man when he finishes his job.'
"And it was so. For the first few moments Sammy seemed content to
parry the strokes which were rained upon him with all the strength
and fury of the enraged Irishman. So furiously did Hennessy press
home his attack, and so steadfastly did the little Jap hold his
ground, that again and again the blades were engaged up to the very
hilt, and it seemed that Sammy's unguarded sword-hand must surely
suffer; but each time a deft turn of the wrist put aside the danger.
The boy's enigmatical smile, and the ease with which he parried each
savage cut and thrust, seemed to drive the big trooper wild, for with
a fierce oath he redoubled his effort and sought by sheer weight to
break down his adversary's guard.
"Then Sammy's tactics changed, and within ten seconds the spellbound
men realised, as did Hennessy, that with all his bulk and strength
the big fellow was but as a child, absolutely at the mercy of that
smiling, youthful foe, while the sword-play which followed was the
talk of many a campfire in the years that followed.
"Stepping back a pace, the Japanese suddenly set his sabre whirling
in a peculiar wheel-like movement, which opposed a circular shield of
steel to Hennessy's weapon. Swifter and swifter whirled that shining
thing, its sibilant hiss growing more and more venomous, menacing,
and deadly. Utterly confounded, Hennessy paused, his sword-arm
extended, too dumbfounded to give ground or to drop his point.
Suddenly the guardless sabre shot out, and, engaging the Irishman's
blade, tore it from his hand and sent it flying over the heads of the
crowd, to fall harmlessly fifty feet away. Then, as his arms dropped
limply, the grey of a great fear stole over Hennessy's face, not the
fear of a coward, but the fear of a brave man who looks into the eyes
of a death he cannot parry,--while that silent serpent of steel
darted through his hair, between ear and skull, first on one side,
then the other; passed like lightning within a hairbreadth of his
jugular; then under each armpit, or flicked a button from the bosom
of his shirt, as if seeking the most deadly spot to place its fatal
sting. Yet no harm came to the Irishman; not one drop of blood did
he lose.
"In a minute it was ended. Sammy swung his sabre upward and brought
it down flat-side, landing with a sounding whack just above
Hennessy's left ear, knocking all the sense out of him for five
minutes. Turning to Reynolds, the boy laughingly said, 'Me no hurt
him; him no Samurai; him big boy, not know how for make those fight.'
Then he sat down before his tent and resumed the repairs on his
buckle.
"That settled it. Sammy had made good as a fighting man, and from
that day he was the idol of the Company. Hennessy was thoroughly
whipped, and, like a real man, he knew it and bore no malice. After
an hour he emerged from his quarters, and walking up to the Jap,
grasped his hand.
"'Sammy, yure the boss. God knows ye should av kilt me for the
dhirty cur that I was, but ye didn't, and I'm yure frind. If yez
want a striker to clane yure horse, or to be doin' yure maynial
wurruk, it's meself that's lookin' for the job, for ye are the
biggest man I iver hooked up wid, if ye are put up in a small bundle.'
"Sammy's smile broadened, as he warmly shook the Irishman's hand.
"'Hennessy one fine boy, when he no make of those drink; it is good
for be friends.'
"Hennessy spent ten days in the guardhouse for his drunken folly, and
it was Sammy who regularly carried to him tidbits from his own mess.
"We had enjoyed a season of comparative quiet, but the long expected
break came early in July. The entire Apache nation, which had for
months been seething with unrest, now broke into open revolt with the
usual campaign of murder and pillage.
"At dusk one evening a courier, who had ridden seventy miles since
noon, brought orders from the Colonel to intercept a war party of
seventy or eighty Tontos, who were reported raiding up the San Simeon
Valley, bound for Sonora. Company F, at Fort Bowie, would cut them
off from the outlet at the upper end of the valley, when it was
supposed the reds would swing to the westward and, skirting the
hills, would cross the Divide at or near Dragoon Summit and make for
the Mexican border through the foothills to the west of Dos Cabesos.
By hard riding it might be possible to intercept them at Hanging Rock
Springs, a favourite camping-place for such expeditions.
"Hurried preparations were made, and at three o'clock next morning
Troop C filed out from cantonments on its long ride. As men and
horses were fresh, we rapidly put mile after mile behind us in the
cool morning hours. A hurried breakfast as the sun came up from
behind the distant Dragoons, and then began the dreary ride across
the desolate stretch of hill and plain which lay between us and
Hanging Rock, the point at which I hoped to bag our game. Mile after
mile we jogged under the blazing Arizona sun, the rear of the little
column hidden in the blinding alkali dust, which rose in clouds from
the dry, parched earth. Far to the front, with the flankers, rode
Reynolds, and with him Sammy, who had entered upon this man-hunt with
all the enthusiasm of a boy.
"At noon we halted for an hour, to rest the horses and eat our
slender ration; then on we pushed across the barren wastes toward our
destination. At mid-afternoon the heat became terrific, the horses
suffering severely and many of them beginning to show evidences of
the twelve-hours' stretch. Hanging Rock, fifteen miles away, was now
in plain view across the valley, but it began to be questionable
whether the command could reach it before dusk, and it would be most
imprudent to scale the hill and enter that rocky den after the sun
had gone down.
"Nature, in a freakish mood, had pushed the long shelf of rock out
from the summit of the divide, and most strange it was that there,
high up above the plain, should bubble forth from beneath the hanging
scarp of stone, a great spring of clear, cool water. The ridge was a
wilderness of giant boulders, a jungle of ragged rocks, thick strewn,
as if scattered by some Titan hand in the far-off days when earth was
young.
"Suddenly the left flankers, a half mile in advance, drew up, and
Reynolds' signal told me that something unusual was beyond. A moment
later we saw a single horseman emerge from one of the numerous blind
cañons on the left and ride rapidly toward the waiting soldiers.
Reaching them he seemed to confer for a moment, then Reynolds wheeled
and dashed back toward the column, waving his hat and shouting some
unintelligible message. As I rode forward to meet the flying
horseman, his white face warned me of evil tidings.
"'Captain, a scout from Fort Grant says that the Colonel's wife and
his two little children, with a detail of six men, left Grant at
noon, to meet the Colonel at Huachuca; two hours after they left the
post, news of the break reached the camp, and Captain Dunlap sent
this scout after the Colonel's wife to bring her back. He ran into a
band of Apaches who were following the trail of the ambulance, and he
thinks they will overtake it at Hanging Rock. Unable to warn the
detail, and with another band of Indians between him and Grant, he
cut around and was making for Huachuca when he spied us.'
"God! It was fifteen miles to Hanging Rock, and even now the little
detail might be surrounded. And a woman, too! It meant swift
action; so, turning to the command, I told the men the situation,
explaining that the lives of our Colonel's wife and children, and of
the six troopers, depended upon our reaching Hanging Rock before the
reds could complete their devilish work. As many of the horses were
exhausted, it would depend upon those who had the best mounts to make
the rescue, so I ordered each man to do his best and started the
entire troop upon a free-for-all run for the Rock. Within ten
minutes Company C was strung out for a mile across the desert, the
better horses forging to the front, the weaker falling to the rear.
"Fortunately, my horse was in fair condition and carried me well to
the front. I rode hard, but far in advance of all raced Reynolds'
big bay and Sammy's pinto. An hour, which seemed an eternity, had
passed, when less than a score of troopers reached the foot of the
ridge a mile from the spring. As one after another of the horses
dropped back exhausted, I wondered how many would be with me at the
finish, and if we should be in time.
"Suddenly from the heights above came the far-away bang of a
Springfield, then another, while the faint puff of rifle smoke
floating from the summit told us that the Tontos were at work. Up
the slope we went as rapidly as the reeking horses would carry us;
far to the front, now disappearing behind the rocks, rode Reynolds
and Sammy. The reports of the Springfields came ever clearer to us
as we toiled up the rocky slope, and now and again we heard the
exultant yells of the savages as they pressed their attack.
"A quarter of a mile from the spring my horse wavered, then stumbled
and fell, unable to carry me another rod. Snatching my pistols from
the holsters, I ran on, hoping against hope that we might be in time.
A louder chorus of savage yells and a popping of the Colts told me
that Reynolds and Sammy had reached the scene. Breathless with the
uphill run, I finally turned a giant boulder, and the little
amphitheatre about the spring was spread out before me.
"To the rear of the water hole stood an ambulance, the mules all
down; just behind the spring, and cowering against the overhanging
rock, was the Colonel's wife, with her helpless little ones; while
lying about were five motionless figures in faded army blue, which
told the story of brave men who had battled to the last and had died
the soldier's death. Beside the praying woman knelt a wounded
trooper, calmly shooting into the horde of savage figures who were
darting and dodging amidst the rocks; while to the left and in front
stood Sammy and Reynolds, their Colts spitting viciously at the
Indians, who were evidently surprised and disturbed by the unwelcome
re-enforcements. The men were directly between the Indians and the
woman, and as the savages hoped to capture the latter alive they were
not using their guns, but had attacked the Jap and his comrade with
knives and war clubs.
"As I looked, the wounded man went down, and, casting aside their
empty weapons, Reynolds and Sammy drew their sabres and stood between
the kneeling woman and the two score of yelping beasts. A moment
later Reynolds toppled backward from a murderous thrust in the side
and a blow from a war club upon the head, delivered simultaneously,
and Sammy was alone, confronting that swarm of naked cut-throats. A
half-dozen of my men now came running up the trail, and in an instant
their Springfields were roaring as they pressed forward, shooting,
and shouting encouragement to the boy.
"And then, startlingly clear and vibrant, above the din of the
yelling savages, above the shouts of the men and the banging of the
Springfields, rose in a foreign tongue a strange, weird chant, full
and sonorous as a trumpet-call. It was the battle song of the
Samurai,--Sammy's answering challenge--the war-cry of his fathers.
About him shimmered and hissed that impenetrable circle of steel, and
though they hacked and stabbed in frantic haste, not once did a
hostile thrust reach beyond that matchless guard. Like a thing of
light, the shining weapon darted here and there, claiming with each
touch its tithe of blood.
"The leader of the redskins, a hideously painted buck, seeing the
rescuers near at hand, made a sudden feint and, dropping upon one
knee, attempted to stab the boy through the abdomen. It was his last
stroke, for as Sammy sprang back his blade whirled downward, the
savage hand dropped to the earth, lopped clean at the wrist as with
an axe, and the next instant a life went out through an ugly gash in
the dusky throat. Louder rose that rhythmic chant, while ever, like
some thin flame, the slender blade played swiftly about the swordsman.
"Reynolds struggled to rise, but was too badly hurt, and sank beside
the prostrate trooper. Never pausing in his song, Sammy stepped in
front of his fallen friend, and as the steel told on its fateful
tale, high up above the din of strife the sonorous words rang out:
"'Heed me, oh mighty ones, my fathers of the past! The spirit lives
within thy son! See! the arm is strong, the hand is sure, and with
each stroke the life wine flows! To the sacred annals of our house I
add another deed. Hail to ye, oh mighty dead! Hail! heroes of
Yamato's line!'
"Swiftly and more deadly flamed that gleaming brand, as Sammy,
seemingly endowed with more than human strength, now took the
offensive and pressing into the struggling band, made a sudden,
swinging side-cut which swept a head completely from its moorings,
then plunged a foot of steel into another naked breast.
"It was more than the Tontos could stand, and they gave way before
the Jap's sudden onslaught, taking refuge behind the rocks. A dozen
troopers were now in action, their fire soon causing the Indians to
scatter like quail along the rocky ridge, where it would have been
foolhardy to pursue.
"As the Indians fled Sammy dropped his dripping point, and turning,
ran back to Reynolds, and was in the act of lifting him when an
Indian, who had paused in his flight, rested his rifle barrel upon a
boulder, and, taking deliberate aim, shot the Jap through the body.
The little fellow pitched forward and lay so motionless we thought
him dead; but as the boys tenderly lifted and turned him he smiled
faintly, as he said, 'Me all right; help Meester Reynolds.' Then the
mercy of unconsciousness came to him, and he lay white and still as
one whose earthly cares were at an end.
"It was the wickedest little fight I've ever seen; five troopers were
dead and three were desperately wounded, while there were eighteen
good Indians to balance the account, seven of them Sammy's. But the
woman and her babies were safe, so the sacrifice had not been wholly
in vain.
"The surgeon shortly reached the scene and hurriedly examined the
wounded men. To my look of inquiry, he replied, 'Reynolds and the
other man will pull through, but Sammy is booked, spine broken.'
From the troopers gathered close about came a half-suppressed sob,
which told, more eloquently than words, how the lad had won them.
"Throwing out a strong picket, I made quick preparations for the
night. Within an hour the remainder of the command had struggled in,
the Colonel's wife and children were housed in the ambulance, supper
was cooked, then the stillness and the grandeur of an Arizona night
was upon that blood-stained bivouac.
"Reynolds, his head bandaged and the long cut in his side dressed and
stitched, slept fitfully, muttering incoherently of unknown people
and places. For Sammy, nothing could be done; his hurt was mortal,
and within a few hours the great Silence, the Nirvana of his faith,
would be his. Presently the moon came swinging up into the
cloudless, starlit sky, driving back the shadows, toning the rough
outlines of the rocks, and making beautiful the rugged amphitheatre
about the spring. By ten o'clock it was as light as at early dawn,
while the surgeon and I sat beside the now conscious boy as he lay
upon the rough blanket bed.
"'Sammy,' I said, as I took his hand, 'you are badly wounded and it
may be that you will not again return to your people. Will you tell
me of your home, and will you give me some message for those who are
dear to you?"
"There was wondrous strength in the grip he gave my hand, and his
voice was steady as, in halting, uncertain English, he told me of his
birthplace in far-away Japan, his beautiful Japan that he would never
see again; of his father, the 'grand man' who had sent him out into
the world that he might learn the ways of the 'Merican Soldier,' and
thus be of greater service to his country in some day of need. He
told us of the great palace upon a hill, which had been his home, and
spoke reverently of the little mother who waited for his return. He
was most anxious that his father should know he had fallen in battle,
and that many men had felt his steel before he went down.
"'Me Samurai,' he added, simply; 'it is good that Samurai should die
in those fight.'
"Reynolds, unconscious and feverishly moaning, lay a few feet
distant, and Sammy asked that he be moved so that he might lie beside
his friend. Just beside his bed the moonlight showed a tiny desert
flower, a flower not born to blush unseen, but destined, thank God,
to brighten the dying hour of that home-hungry little Japanese. He
plucked the flower, and lifting it to his lips, he said, 'Many
flowers in my countree.' After this he lay very still, gazing
steadily up into the limitless, jewelled space, as if trying to
fathom the eternal mystery of life and death. It was nearly midnight
when I noticed that his hands were growing cold, and found that the
respiration was growing very laboured. The surgeon, after feeling
the pulse, beckoned me aside to whisper that the hour was come.
"As we bent over him, his eyes sought mine and he said, haltingly,
'Captaine and that doctor man are been verre good to Sammy.' Turning
his head, he noticed that the blanket had fallen away from his
comrade's shoulder; with great effort he reached out, and pulling the
blanket in place, patted the shoulder lovingly, and laid the desert
flower upon Reynolds' breast. 'Him my friend,' he whispered; 'him
Samurai, too; him 'Merican Samurai.' For a few minutes his pulse
fluttered intermittently, when I saw that his lips were moving, and
bending low, I caught the faintly murmured words, 'Nippon! Nippon!
Samurai!' Then the brave heart was still forever, and we knew that a
gallant soul had passed.
"So died a Samurai; giving his young life in defense of the helpless
ones of an alien people, a people who regarded him and his kind as
pagans. Surely, in the final muster, the Great Commander, making no
distinction as to race or creed, will reward soldiers such as he.
"It was a sad returning to the home camp. Reynolds, raving in
delirium, was conveyed slowly in the ambulance, and it was not until
after poor Sammy had been buried that he regained consciousness. A
fortnight later he emerged from the hospital, gaunt and haggard, with
deep lines on his brow from this last sorrow, for he had loved his
little comrade with all the strength of his great nature.
"The men came in a body to request that Sammy should be given a
soldier's funeral. The Colonel, who had arrived, and had heard how
the boy died, cried like a child as he told the men they should have
their wish.
"At sunset we laid him to rest, with full military honours. The
salute was fired; then, with tears coursing down his bronzed cheek,
the bugler stepped to the head of that lowly grave and sounded
taps--the soldier's 'good-night.' Sweetly and sadly those mournful
cadences floated out over the desert, Troop C's farewell to little
Sammy.
"Two days later a message came from Department Headquarters inquiring
if one Izo Yamato, a Japanese, was at Huachuca, and if so to extend
to him every courtesy, etc., etc., by order of the War Department. I
replied, briefly detailing the history of his death. I also wrote
the Japanese consul at San Francisco, telling him all.
"A month slipped by, when an ambulance and escort arrived from
Benson. Sammy's father, Count Yamato, a distinguished man of middle
age, had come to take the body home. Through an interpreter and
Reynolds he heard the story of Sammy's gallant fight and death. He
was much moved and, though his eyes were dim with unshed tears, he
gravely saluted the Colonel and myself, and declared himself content,
since his son had died as befitted a Samurai of his rank.
"Through the interpreter, we told him of the great friendship between
his son and Reynolds. It was after a long talk with the Count next
day that Reynolds sought the Colonel with a strange request. He
explained that, as his three years of service would expire within a
month, he desired the Colonel's influence with the Department in
securing his immediate discharge. The Count had offered formally to
adopt him as his son and, having no ties which bound him to his
native land, the Sergeant had accepted. Count Yamato seconded the
petition, stating that having lost his only son, his heart had gone
out to the gallant young American whom he now desired to make his
heir. It was easily arranged, and two days later they started west
with Sammy's remains.
"Within a week or two after I, too, was in San Francisco, ordered to
duty at the Presidio. As I crossed the ferry from Oakland, we ran
close under the stern of a great Pacific liner bound for the Orient.
On the after-deck stood a tall figure, and Sergeant Reynolds' voice
came to me across the waters, 'Good-bye and God bless you, Captain.'
The Count stood beside him, and I knew that below decks little
Sammy's body was going home to sleep beside his fathers. Into the
splendour of the sunset which lay beyond the Golden Gate, to the
far-off land of flowers, sailed the mighty ship bearing my two
Samurai, the living and the dead."
The Colonel paused in his story, and taking from his pocket a letter
postmarked Tokio, Japan, May 1, 1904, he read the following extract:
"'As a military man you are, of course, interested in the war. Here
in Japan we hear little of events at the front save the official
dispatches, with which you are already familiar. Yesterday, however,
I witnessed an event of more than passing interest. During the
recent desperate fighting between the Japanese torpedo flotilla and
the Russian battleships about Port Arthur, a lieutenant-commander of
the Japanese navy, in command of a destroyer, made a daring and
successful attack upon one of the enemy's vessels. He was killed in
the action, and his body brought home for interment. Never have I
seen so splendid a spectacle nor so impressive a service. In
attendance were the Emperor and the entire Imperial Court, as well as
the highest officers of the Army and Navy, all ablaze with gold lace
and jewelled decorations. The body rested upon a magnificent
catafalque of purple velvet, bearing the national arms and draped
with the battle-flags of his ship. It seems that the officer had
been a Samurai, a member of some noble family, and, in recognition of
his gallantry in action, a part of the ceremony was the conferring by
the Emperor on the dead man of the Order of the Golden Kite, thus
marking him as one of Japan's national heroes. After this ceremony
was ended, an old, white-haired noble, said to be the dead man's
father, took from an attendant a package, which proved to be a silken
American flag, with which he reverently covered the casket. Then the
crowd slowly filed out, leaving the dead hero alone under the folds
of Old Glory. It is said to have been an event unprecedented in the
history of Japan, but I could learn little concerning it. Those I
asked either didn't know, or wouldn't tell. Strange people, these
Japanese.'"
The Colonel folded up the letter and replaced it in his pocket. As
he rose to bid us good-night, he said:
"I have since learned that the daring commander who gave his life to
Japan, and whose body lay in the old temple, shrouded in the American
colours, was Sergeant Reynolds of old Troop C, one of my Two Samurai."
END
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