IT was the day set for the grand parade and picnic of “The Sons and Daughters of Repent Ye Saith the Lord,” and, with the first light of morning, Catfish Row had burst into a fever of preparation. Across the narrow street, the wharf, from which the party was to leave, bustled and seethed with life. A wagon rattled out to the pier-head and discharged an entire load of watermelons. Under the vigilant eyes of a committee a dozen volunteers lifted the precious freight from the vehicle, and piled it ready for the steamer.
From behind the next pier, with a frenzied threshing of its immense stern paddle, came the excursion boat. Tall open exhaust funnels flanked the walking-beam, and coughed great salmon-colored plumes of steam into the faint young sunlight. A fierce torrent of wood-smoke gushed from the funnel and went tumbling away across the harbor. Painters were hurled, missed, coiled, and hurled again. Then, amid a babblement of advice and encouragement, the craft was finally moored in readiness for the Lodge.
The first horizontal rays of the sun were painting the wall a warm claret, when Porgy opened his door, to find Peter already dressed for the parade, and perched upon the back of his gaily blanketed horse. He wore a sky-blue coat, white pants which were thrust into high black leggings, and a visored cap, from beneath which he scowled fiercely down upon the turmoil around the feet of his mount. Across his breast, from right shoulder to left hip, was a broad scarlet sash, upon which was emblazoned, “Repent Ye Saith the Lord!” and from his left breast fluttered a white ribbon bearing the word “MARSHAL.” From time to time, he would issue orders in hoarse, menacing gutturals, which no one heeded; and twice, in the space of half an hour, he rode out to the pier-head, counted the watermelons, and returned to report the number to an important official who had arrived in a carriage to supervise the arrangements.
Momently the confusion increased, until at eight o’clock it culminated in a general exodus toward the rendezvous for the parade.
The drowsy old city had scarcely commenced its day when, down through King Charles Street, the procession took its way. Superbly unselfconscious of the effect thatit produced, it crashed through the slow, restrained rhythm of the city’s life like a wild, barbaric chord. All of the stately mansions along the way were servantless that day, and the aristocratic matrons broke the ultimate canon of the social code and peered through front windows at the procession as it swept flamboyantly across the town.
First came an infinitesimal negro boy, scarlet-coated, and aglitter with brass buttons. Upon his head was balanced an enormous shako; and while he marched with left hand on hip and shoulders back, his right hand twirled a heavy gold-headed baton. Then the band, two score boys attired in several variations of the band master’s costume, strode by. Bare, splay feet padded upon the cobbles; heads were thrown back, with lips to instruments that glittered in the sunshine, launching daring and independent excursions into the realm of sound. Yet these improvisations returned always to the eternal boom, boom, boom of an underlying rhythm, and met with others in the sudden weaving and ravelling of amazing chords. An ecstasy of wild young bodies beat living into the blasts that shook the windows of the solemn houses. Broad, dusty, blue-black feet shuffled and danced on the many-colored cobbles and the grassbetween them. The sun lifted suddenly over the housetops and flashed like a torrent of warm, white wine between the staid buildings, to break on flashing teeth and laughing eyes.
After the band came the men members of the lodge, stepping it out to the urge of the marshals who rode beside them, reinforcing the marching rhythm with a series of staccato grunts, shot with crisp, military precision from under their visored caps. Breast cross-slashed with the emblems of their lodge, they passed.
Then came the carriages, and suddenly the narrow street hummed and bloomed like a tropic garden. Six to a carriage sat the sisters. The effect produced by the colors was strangely like that wrought in the music; scarlet, purple, orange, flamingo, emerald; wild, clashing, unbelievable discords; yet, in their steady flow before the eye, possessing a strange, dominant rhythm that reconciled them to each other and made them unalterably right. The senses reached blindly out for a reason. There was none. They intoxicated, they maddened, and finally they passed, seeming to pull every ray of color from the dun buildings, leaving the sunlight sane, flat, dead.
For its one brief moment out of the yearthe pageant had lasted. Out of its fetters of civilization this people had risen, suddenly, amazingly. Exotic as the Congo, and still able to abandon themselves utterly to the wild joy of fantastic play, they had taken the reticent, old Anglo-Saxon town and stamped their mood swiftly and indelibly into its heart. Then they passed, leaving behind them a wistful envy among those who had watched them go,—those whom the ages had rendered old and wise.
When the exodus from the Row was completed, Bess helped Porgy out to the boat and established him in an angle of the main-deck cabin, where he could see and enjoy the excursion to the full. Below them on the wharf, Maria, who had the direction of the refreshment committee in hand, moved about among the baskets and boxes, looking rather like a water-front conflagration, in a voluminous costume of scarlet and orange. Bess left Porgy and descended the ladder.
“I gots a ready hand wid bundle,” she announced diffidently.
The immense negress paused, and looked her up and down.
“Well, well, it looks like yer tryin’ ter be decent,” she commented.
Instantly the woman chilled, “Yuh kin go tuh Hell!” she said deliberately. “I ain’t axin’ fuh no sermon. I want a job. Does yuh want a han’ wid dem package, or not?”
For a moment their eyes met. Then they laughed suddenly, loudly together, with complete understanding.
“All right, den,” the older woman said. “Ef yuh is dat independent, yuh kin tek dem basket on board.”
After that they worked together, until the procession arrived, without the interchange of further remarks.
Down the quiet bay, like a great, frenzied beetle, the stern-wheeler kicked its way. On the main deck the band played without cessation. In a ring before it, a number of negroes danced, for the most part shuffling singly. The sun hurled the full power of an August noon upon the oil-smooth water, and the polished surface cast it upward with added force under the awnings. The decks sagged with color, and repeated explosions of laughter rode the heat waves back to the drowsing, lovely old city long after the boathad turned the first bend in the narrow river and passed from view on its way to the negro picnic grounds on Kittiwar Island.
Thrashing its way between far-sweeping marshes and wooded sea islands, the boat would burst suddenly into lagoon after lagoon, that lay strewn along the coast, that blazed in the noon like great fire-opals held in silver mesh.
Finally a shout went up. Kittiwar lay before them, thrusting a slender wharf from its thickly wooded extremity into the slack tide.
The debarkation over, Maria took possession of a clearing that stood in a dense forest of palmettoes and fronted on the beach, and marshalled her committee to prepare the lunch. From the adjacent beach came the steady, cool thunder of the sea and the unremitting hum of sand, as tireless winds scooped it from the dunes and sent it in low, flat-blown layers across the hard floor of the beach.
The picnickers heard it, and answered with a shout. Soon the streaming whiteness of the inner surf was dotted with small, glistening black bodies; the larger figures, with skirts hoisted high, were wading in the shallows.
Porgy sat with a large myrtle bush inone hand, with which he brushed flies from several sleeping infants. The sun lay heavy and comforting upon him. One of the children stirred and whimpered. He hummed a low, bumbling song to it. There was a new contentment in his face. After a while he commenced to nod.
“I go an’ git some palmettuh leaf fuh tablecloth,” Bess told Maria; and, without waiting for an answer, she took a knife from a basket, and entered the dense tangle of palm and vine that walled the clearing.
Almost immediately she was in another world. The sounds behind her became faint, and died. A rattler moved its thick body sluggishly out of her way. A flock of wood ibis sprang suddenly up, broke through the thick roof of palm leaves, and streamed away over the treetops toward the marsh with their legs at the trail.
She cut a wide fan-shaped leaf from the nearest palmetto. Behind her some one breathed—a deep interminable breath.
The woman’s body stiffened slowly. Her eyes half closed and were suddenly dark and knowing. Some deep ebb or flow of blood touched her face, causing it to darkenheavily, leaving the scar livid. Without turning, she said slowly:
“Crown!”
“Yas, yuh know berry well, dis Crown.”
The deep sound shook her. She turned like one dazed, and looked him up and down.
His body was naked to the waist, and the blue cotton pants that he had worn on the night of the killing had frayed away to his knees. He bent slightly forward. The great muscles of his torso flickered and ran like the flank of a horse. His small wicked eyes burned, and he moistened his heavy lips.
Earth had cared for him well. The marshes had provided eggs of wild fowl, and many young birds. The creek had given him fish, crabs and oysters in abundance, and the forest had fed him with its many berries, and succulent palmetto cabbage.
“I seen yuh land,” he said, “an’ I been waitin’ fuh yuh. I mos’ dead ob lonesome on dis damn island, wid not one Gawd’s person to swap a word wid. Yuh gots any happy-dus’ wid yuh?”
“No,” she said; then with an effort, “Crown, I gots somethin’ tuh tell yuh. I done gib up dope; and beside dat, I sort ob change my way.”
His jaw shot forward, and the huge shoulder muscles bulged and set. His two great hands went around her throat and closed like the slow fusing of steel on steel. She stopped speaking. He drew her to him until his face touched hers. Under his hands her arteries pounded, sending fierce spurts of flame through her limbs, beating redly behind her eyeballs. His hands slackened. Her face changed, her lips opened, but she said nothing. Crown broke into low, shaken laughter, and threw her from him.
“Now come wid me,” he ordered.
Into the depths of the jungle they plunged; the woman walking in front with a trance-like fixity of gaze. They followed one of the narrow hard-packed trails that had been beaten by the wild hogs and goats that roamed the island.
On each side of them, the forest stood like a wall, its tough low trees and thick-bodied palmettoes laced and bound together with wire-strong vines. Overhead the foliage met, making the trail a tunnel as inescapable as though it had been built of masonry.
The man walked with a swinging, effortless stride, but his breath sounded in long, audible inhalations, as though he labored physically.
When they had journeyed for half an hour they crossed a small cypress swamp. The cypress-knees jutted grotesquely from the yellow water, and trailing Spanish moss extended drab stalactites that brushed their faces as they threaded the low, muddy trail.
Finally Bess emerged into a small clearing, in the centre of which stood a low hut with sides of plaited twigs and roof of palmetto leaves laid on top of each other in regular rows like shingles.
Crown was close behind her. At the low door of the hut she paused and turned toward him. He laughed suddenly and hotly at what he saw in her face.
“I know yuh ain’t change,” he said. “Wid yuh an’ me it always goin’ tuh be de same. See?”
He snatched her body toward him with such force that her breath was forced from her in a sharp gasp. Then she inhaled deeply, threw back her head, and sent a wild laugh out against the walls of the clearing.
Crown swung her about and threw her face forward into the hut.
The sun was so low that its level rays shot through the tunnels of the forest andbronzed its ceiling of woven leaves when Bess returned to the clearing. She paused for a moment. Behind her, screened by the underbrush, stood Crown.
“Now ’member wut I tells yuh,” he said. “Yuh kin stay wid de cripple ’til de cotton come. Den I comin’. Davy will hide we on de ribber boat fur as Sawannah. Den soon de cotton will be comin’ in fas’, an’ libbin will be easy. Yuh gits dat?”
For a moment she looked into the narrow, menacing eyes, then nodded.
“Go ’long den, an’ tote fair, les yuh wants tuh meet yo’ Gawd.”
She stepped into the open. Already most of the party were on the boat. She crossed the narrow beach to the wharf.
Maria stood by the gangplank and looked at her with suspicious eyes. “Wuh yuh been all day?” she demanded.
“I git los’ in de woods, an’ I can’t git my bearin’s ’til sundown. But dat ain’t nobody’ business ’cep’ me an’ Porgy, ef yuh wants tuh know.”
She found Porgy on the lower deck near the stern, and seated herself by him in silence. He was looking into the sunset, and gave no evidence of having noticed her arrival.
Through the illimitable, mysteriousnight, the steamer took its way. Presently it swung out of one of the narrow channels and wallowed like an antediluvian monster into the stillness of a wide lagoon. Out of the darkness, low, broad waves moved in upon it, trailing stars along their swarthy backs to shatter into silver dust against the uncouth bows.
To Porgy and Bess, still sitting silent in the stern, came only the echoes of drowsy conversations, sounds of sleeping, and the rhythmic splash and drip of the single great wheel behind them. The boat forged out into the centre of the lagoon, and the shore line melted out behind it. Where it had shown a moment before, could now be seen only the steady climb of constellations out of the water’s rim, and the soft, humid lamps of low, near stars. The night pressed in about the two quiet figures.
Porgy had said no word since their departure. His body had assumed its old, tense attitude. His face wore again its listening look. Now, he said slowly:
“Yuh nebber lie tuh me, Bess.”
“No,” came an even, colorless voice, “I nebber lie tuh yuh. Yuh gots tuh gib me dat.”
Another interval, then:
“War it Crown?”
A sharp, indrawn breath beside him, and a whisper:
“How yuh know?”
“Gawd gib cripple many t’ings he ain’t gib strong men.” Then again, patiently, “War it Crown?”
“Yes, it war.”
“Wut he say?”
“He comin’ fuh me when de cotton come tuh town.”
“Yuh goin’?”
“I tell um—yes.”
After a while the woman reached out a hand and closed it lightly about the man’s arm. Under the sleeve she felt the muscles go rigid. What power! She tried to circle it with her hand. It was almost as big as Crown’s. It was strange that she had not noticed that before. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. Presently she sighed, and withdrew her hand.
Through the immense emptiness of sea and sky the boat forged slowly toward the distant city’s lights.
“I gots er feelin’ yistuhday,” announced Maria to Serena Robbins, as she took a batch of wet clothing from the latter’s tub, gave itone twist with her enormous hands, and set it aside to go upon the line.
“Wut yuh gots er feelin’ ’bout?”
“I gots er feelin’ w’en Porgy ’oman come out de wood on de picnic, she done been wid Crown.”
At the mention of the murderer’s name Serena stepped back, and her usual expression of sanctimonious complacency slowly changed. Her lower lip shot forward, and her face darkened.
“Yuh t’ink dat nigger on Kittiwar?” she asked.
“I allus figgered he bin dey in dem deep palmetters,” Maria replied. “But w’en I look in Bess’s eye las’ night, I sho ob two ting: one, dat he is dey, an’ two, dat she been wid um.”
“Yuh b’lieb she still ran wid dat nigger?”
“Dem sort ob mens ain’t need tuh worry ’bout habin’ ’omen,” Maria told her. “Dey kin lay de lash on um, an’ kick um in de street; den dey kin whistle w’en dey ready, an’ dere dey is ag’in lickin’ dey han’.”
“She goin’ stay wid Porgy, ef she know wut good fuh she.”
“She know all right, an’ she lub Porgy. But ef dat nigger come attuh she, dey ain’t goin’ tuh be noboddy roun’ hyuh but Porgy an’ de goat.”
A sudden dark flame blazed in Serena’s face, sweeping the acquired complacency before it, and changing it utterly. She leant forward, and spoke heavily:
“Dat nigger bes’ t’ank he Gawd dat I gots My Jedus now fuh hol’ back my han’!”
“Yuh ain’t means dat yuh is goin’ tuh gib um up tuh de w’ite folks ef he come back to town, ’stead ob settle wid um yu’self?’ Maria asked incredulously.
“I ain’t know wut fuh do,” the other replied, the hatred in her face giving way to a look of perplexity. “Ef dat nigger come tuh town he sho tuh git kill’ sooner er later. Den de w’ite folks goin’ lock me up. Dey gots it on de writin’s now dat I been Robbins’ wife; an’ dey goin’ figger I like as not kill um. I knows two people git lock up dat way, an’ dey ain’t do one Gawd t’ing.”
“Nigger sho’ gots fuh keep he eye open in dis worl’,” the big negress observed. “But we can’t turn no nigger ober tuh de police.”
A man paused before the entrance of the court, and looked in. To the two women he was only a silhouette standing under the arch against a dazzling expanse of bay; but the foppish outlines of the indolent, slender figure were unmistakable.
A smile of pleased anticipation grew aboutMaria’s wide mouth. She dried her hands upon her apron.
“Jus’ like I been tellin’ yuh!” she remarked to Serena. “T’ank Gawd, Jedus ain’t gots me yit wuh he gots you; an’ I still mens enough tuh straighten out a crooked nigger. See dat yalluh snake wrigglin’ in de do’way? He de one wut sell Bess dat happy-dus’.”
Drying her hands and bared forearms with ominous thoroughness, she crossed to her shop. The room was empty when she entered. She went at once to the stove which stood in its corner, with its legs set upon four bricks. She bent forward, placed a shoulder against one of its corners, gave a heave, and drew out a brick. Then she straightened up, spat first on one hand, then on the other, and, carrying the brick in her immense right, lightly, and with a certain awful fondness, stepped out of her door.
Sportin’ Life was now within the entrance, and presented an unsuspecting profile to the cook-shop.
With frightful deliberation, Maria swung her long arm back; then, like the stroke of a rattler, it shot forward. The brick caught the mulatto full on the side of the head. He crumpled among his gaudy habiliments like a stricken bird.
After a space of time the victim blinked feebly, then opened his eyes upon Maria’s face. She was mopping his head with a wet rag, and his first glance discovered an expression of gentleness on her heavy features. Reassured, he opened his eyes wide. But the gentleness was gone. He felt himself gripped by the shoulders, and suddenly snatched upward to be placed upon unsteady legs. Then he was propelled rapidly toward the gate.
At the pavement’s edge Maria swung her victim around until his wandering and reluctant gaze met hers.
“De las’ time yuh wuz aroun’ hyuh, I ain’t hab nuttin’ on yuh but my eyes. Now I knows yuh—yuh damn, dirty, dope-peddler, wreckin’ de homes ob dese happy niggers!”
Her arms shot forward and back like locomotive pistons. The man’s head snapped to an acute angle, and righted itself with difficulty.
“Now, w’en I done flingin’ yuh out dis gate,” she proceeded, “it’s de las’ time yuh is goin’ tuh leabe it erlibe. Eberybody say I is er berry t’orough nigger, an’ ef yuh ebber comes roun’ hyuh agin, drunk or sobuh, I ain’t goin’ to be t’rough wid yuh carcaseontil I t’row yuh bones out tuh de buzza’d one by one.”
Abruptly she reversed the luckless man and placed a foot in the small of his back. Then with a heave that seemed to bring into play every muscle of her huge bulk, she catapulted him once and for all out of Catfish Row and the lives of its inhabitants.
“FISH runnin’ well outside de bar, dese days,” remarked Jake one evening to several of his seagoing companions.
A large, bronze-colored negro paused in his task of rigging a line, and cast an eye to sea through the driveway.
“An’ we mens bes’ make de mores ob it,” he observed. “Dem Septumbuh storm due soon, an’ fish ain’t likes eas’ win’ an’ muddy watuh.”
Jake laughed reassuringly.
“Go ’long wid yuh. Ain’t yuh done know we hab one stiff gale las’ summer, an’ he nebber come two yeah han’ runnin’.”
His wife came toward him with a baby in her arms, and, giving him the child to hold, took up the mess of fish which he was cleaning in a leisurely fashion.
“Ef yuh ain’t mans enough tuh clean fish no fastuh dan dat, yuh bes’ min’ de baby, an’ gib um tuh a ’oman fuh clean!” she said scornfully, as she bore away the pan.
The group laughed at that, Jake’s somewhat shamefaced merriment rising above the others. He rocked the contented little negroin his strong arms, and followed the retreating figure of the mother with admiring eyes.
“All right, mens,” he said, returning to the matter in hand. “I’m all fuh ridin’ luck fer as he will tote me. Turn out at fo’ tuhmorruh mornin’, and we’ll push de ‘Seagull’ clean tuh de blackfish banks befo’ we wets de anchor. I gots er feelin’ in my bones dat we goin’ be gunnels undeh wid de pure fish when we comes in tuhmorruh night.”
The news of Jake’s prediction spread through the negro quarter. Other crews got their boats hastily in commission and were ready to join the “Mosquito Fleet” when it put to sea.
On the following morning, when the sun rose out of the Atlantic, the thirty or forty small vessels were mere specks teetering upon the water’s rim against the red disc that forged swiftly up beyond them.
Afternoon found the wharf crowded with women and children, who laughed and joked each other as to the respective merits of their men and the luck of the boats in which they went to sea.
Clara, Jake’s wife, sought the head of the dock long before sundown, and sat upon the bulkhead with her baby asleep in her lap. Occasionally she would exchange a greetingwith an acquaintance; but for the most part she gazed toward the harbor mouth and said no word to any one.
“She always like dat,” a neighbor informed a little group. “A conjer ’oman once tell she Jake goin’ git drownded; an’ she ain’t hab no happiness since, ’cept when he feet is hittin’ de dirt.”
Presently a murmur arose among the watchers. Out at the harbor mouth, against the thin greenish-blue of the horizon, appeared the “Mosquito Fleet.” Driven by a steady breeze, the boats swept toward the city with astonishing rapidity.
Warm sunlight flooded out of the west, touched the old city with transient glory, then cascaded over the tossing surface of the bay to paint the taut, cupped sails salmon pink, as the fleet drove forward directly into the eye of the sun.
Almost before the crowd realized it, the boats were jibing and coming about at their feet, each jockeying for a favorable berth.
Under the skillful and daring hand of Jake, the “Seagull” took a chance, missed a stern by a hairbreadth, jibed suddenly with a snap and boom, and ran in, directly under the old rock steps of the wharf.
A cheer went up from the crowd. Never had there been such a catch. The boatseemed floored with silver which rose almost to the thwarts, forcing the crew to sit on gunnels, or aft with the steersman.
Indeed the catch was so heavy that as boat after boat docked, it became evident that the market was glutted, and the fishermen vied with each other in giving away their surplus cargo, so that they would not have to throw it overboard.
By the following morning the weather had become unsettled. The wind was still coming out of the west; but a low, solid wall of cloud had replaced the promising sunset of the evening before, and from time to time the wind would wrench off a section of the black mass, and volley it with great speed across the sky, to accumulate in unstable pyramids against the sunrise.
But the success of the day before had so fired the enthusiasm of the fishermen that they were not easily to be deterred from following their luck, and the first grey premonition of the day found the wharf seething with preparation.
Clara, with the baby in her arms, accompanied Jake to the pier-head. She knew the futility of remonstrance; but her eyes werefearful when the heavy, black clouds swept overhead. Once, when a wave slapped a pile, and threw a handful of spray in her face, she moaned and looked up at the big negro by her side. But Jake was full of the business in hand, and besides, he was growing a little impatient at his wife’s incessant plea that he sell his share of the “Seagull” and settle on land. Now he turned from her, and shouted:
“All right, mens!”
He bestowed a short, powerful embrace upon his wife, with his eyes looking over her shoulder into the Atlantic’s veiled face, turned from her with a quick, nervous movement, and dropped from the wharf into his boat.
Standing in the bow, he moistened his finger in his mouth, and held it up to the wind.
“You mens bes’ git all de fish yuh’ kin tuhday,” he admonished. “Win’ be in de eas’ by tuhmorruh. It gots dat wet tas’ ter um now.”
One by one the boats shoved off, and lay in the stream while they adjusted their spritsails and rigged their full jibs abeam, like spinnakers, for the free run to sea. The vessels were similar in design, the larger ones attaining a length of thirty-five feet. Theywere very narrow, and low in the waist, with high, keen bows, and pointed sterns. The hulls were round-bottomed, and had beautiful running lines, the fishermen, who were also the designers and builders, taking great pride in the speed and style of their respective craft. The boats were all open from stem to stern and were equipped with thole-pins for rowing, an expedient to which the men resorted only in dire emergency.
Custom had reduced adventure to commonplace; yet it was inconceivable that men could put out, in the face of unsettled weather, for a point beyond sight of land, and exhibit no uneasiness or fear. Yet bursts of loud, loose laughter, and snatches of song, blew back to the wharf long after the boats were in mid-stream.
The wind continued to come in sudden flaws, and, once the little craft had gotten clear of the wharves, the fleet made swift but erratic progress. There were moments when they would seem to mark time upon the choppy waters of the bay; then suddenly a flaw would bear down on them, whipping the water as it came, and, filling the sails, would fairly lift the slender bows as it drove them forward.
By the time that the leisurely old city was sitting down to its breakfast, the fleethad disappeared into the horizon, and the sun had climbed over its obstructions to flood the harbor with reassuring light.
The mercurial spirits of the negroes rose with the genial warmth. Forebodings were forgotten. Even Clara sang a lighter air as she rocked the baby upon her lap.
But the sun had just lifted over the eastern wall, and the heat of noon was beginning to vibrate in the court, when suddenly the air of security was shattered. From the center of town sounded the deep, ominous clang of a bell.
At its first stroke life in Catfish Row was paralyzed. Women stopped their tasks, and, not realizing what they did, clasped each others’ hands tightly, and stood motionless, with strained, listening faces.
Twenty times the great hammer fell, sending the deep, full notes out across the city that was holding its breath and counting them as they came.
“Twenty!” said Clara, when it had ceased to shake the air.
She ran to the entrance and looked to the north. Almost at the end of vision, between two buildings, could be seen the flagstaff that surmounted the custom-house. It was bare when she looked—just a thin, bare line against the intense blue, but even as shestood there, a flicker of color soared up its length; then fixed and flattened, showing a red square with a black center.
“My Gawd!” she called over her shoulder. “It’s de trut’. Dat’s de hurricane signal on top de custom-house.”
Bess came from her room, and stood close to the terrified woman.
“Dat can’t be so,” she said comfortingly. “Ain’t yuh ’member de las’ hurricane, how it tek two day tuh blow up. Now de sun out bright, an’ de cloud all gone.”
But Clara gave no sign of having heard her.
“Come on in!” urged Bess. “Ef yuh don’t start tuh git yuh dinner, yuh won’t hab nuttin’ ready fuh de mens w’en dey gits in.”
After a moment the idea penetrated, and the half-dazed woman turned toward Bess, her eyes pleading.
“You come wid me, an’ talk a lot. I ain’t likes tuh be all alone now.”
“Sho’ I will,” replied the other comfortingly. “I min’ de baby fuh yuh, an’ yuh kin be gittin’ de dinner.”
Clara’s face quivered; but she turned from the sight of the far red flag and opened her door for Bess to pass in.
After the two women had remained together for half an hour, Bess left the roomfor a moment to fetch some sewing. The sun was gone, and the sky presented a smooth, leaden surface. She closed the door quickly so that Clara might not see the abrupt change, and went out of the entrance for a look to sea.
Like the sky, the bay had undergone a complete metamorphosis. The water was black, and strangely lifeless. Thin, intensely white crests rode the low, pointed waves; and between the opposing planes of sky and sea a thin westerly wind roamed about like a trapped thing and whined in a complaining treble key. A singularly clear half-light pervaded the world, and in it she could see the harbor mouth distinctly, as it lay ten miles away between the north and south jetties that stretched on the horizon like arms with the finger-tips nearly touching.
Her eyes sought the narrow opening. Guiltless of the smallest speck, it let upon utter void.
“It’d take ’em t’ree hour tuh mek harbor from de banks wid good win’,” said a woman who was also watching. “But dere ain’t no powuh in dis breeze, an’ it a head one at dat.”
“Dey kin row it in dat time,” encouraged Bess. “‘An’ de storm ain’t hyuh yit.”
But the woman hugged her forebodings, and stood there shivering in the close, warm air.
Except for the faint moan of the wind, the town and harbor lay in a silence that was like held breath.
Many negroes came to the wharf, passed out to the pier-head, and sat quietly watching the entrance to the bay.
At one o’clock the tension snapped. As though it had been awaiting St. Christopher’s chimes to announce “Zero Hour,” the wind swung into the east, and its voice dropped an octave, and changed its quality. Instead of the complaining whine, a grave, sustained note came in from the Atlantic, with an undertone of alarming variations, that sounded oddly out of place as it traversed the inert waters of the bay.
The tide was at the last of the ebb, and racing out of the many rivers and creeks toward the sea. All morning the west wind had driven it smoothly before it. But now, the stiffening eastern gale threw its weight against the water, and the conflict immediately filled the bay with large waves that leapt up to angry points, then dropped back sullenly upon themselves.
“Choppy water,” observed a very old negro who squinted through half-closed eyes. “Dem boat nebbuh mek headway in dat sea.”
But he was not encouraged to continue by the silent, anxious group.
Slowly the threatening undertone of the wind grew louder. Then, as though a curtain had been lowered across the harbor mouth, everything beyond was blotted by a milky screen.
“Oh, my Jedus!” a voice shrilled. “Here he come, now! Le’s we go!”
Many of the watchers broke for the cover of buildings across the street. Some of those whose men were in the fleet crowded into the small wharf-house. Several voices started to pray at once, and were immediately drowned in the rising clamor of the wind.
With the mathematical precision that it had exhibited in starting, the gale now moved its obliterating curtain through the jetties, and thrust it forward in a straight line across the outer bay.
There was something utterly terrifying about the studied manner in which the hurricane proceeded about its business. It clicked off its moves like an automaton. It was Destiny working nakedly for the eyes of mento see. The watchers knew that for at least twenty-four hours it would stay, moving its tides and winds here and there with that invincible precision, crushing the life from those whom its preconceived plan had seemed to mark for death.
With that instant emotional release that is the great solace of the negro, the tightly packed wharf-house burst into a babblement of weeping and prayer.
The curtain advanced to the inner bay and narrowed the world to the city, with its buildings cowering white and fearful, and the remaining semi-circle of the harbor.
And now from the opaque surface of the screen came a persistent roar that was neither of wind or water, but the articulate cry of the storm itself. The curtain shot forward again and became a wall, grey and impenetrable, that sunk its foundations into the tortured sea and bore the leaden sky upon its soaring top.
The noise became deafening. The narrow strip of water that was left before the wharves seemed to shrink away. The buildings huddled closer and waited.
Then it crossed the strip, and smote the city.
From the roofs came the sound as though ton after ton of ore had been dumped fromsome great eminence. There was a dead weight to the shocks that could not conceivably be delivered by so unsubstantial a substance as air, yet which was the wind itself, lifting abruptly to enormous heights, then hurling its full force downward.
These shocks followed the demoniac plan, occurring at exact intervals, and were succeeded by prying fingers, as fluid as ether, as hard as steel, that felt for cracks in roofs and windows.
One could no longer say with certainty, “This which I breathe is air, and this upon which I stand is earth.” The storm had possessed itself of the city and made it its own. Tangibles and intangibles alike were whirled in a mad, inextricable nebula.
The waves that moved upon the bay could be dimly discerned for a little distance. They were turgid, yellow, and naked; for the moment they lifted a crest, the wind snatched it and dispersed it, with the rain, into the warm semi-fluid atmosphere with which it delivered its attack upon the panic-stricken city.
Notch by notch the velocity increased. The concussions upon the roofs became louder, and the prying fingers commenced to gain a purchase, worrying small holes into large ones. Here and there the wind wouldget beneath the tin, roll it up suddenly, whirl it from a building like a sheet of paper, and send it thundering and crashing down a deserted street.
Again it would gain entrance to a room through a broken window, and, exerting its explosive force to the full, would blow all of the other windows outward, and commence work upon the walls from within.
It was impossible to walk upon the street. At the first shock of the storm, the little group of negroes who had sought shelter in the wharf-house fled to the Row. Even then, the force of the attack had been so great that only by bending double and clinging together were they able to resist the onslaughts and traverse the narrow street.
Porgy and Bess sat in their room. The slats had been taken from the bed and nailed across the window, and the mattress, bundled into a corner, had been pre-empted by the goat. Bess sat wrapped in her own thoughts, apparently unmoved by the demoniac din without. Porgy’s look was one of wonder, not unmixed with fear, as he peered into the outer world between two of the slats. The goat, blessed with an utter lack of imagination, revelled in the comfort and intimacy of his new environment, expressing his contentment in suffocatingwaves, after the manner of his kind. A kerosene lamp without a chimney, smoking straight up into the unnatural stillness of the room, cast a faint, yellow light about it, but only accentuated the heavy gloom of the corners.
From where Porgy sat, he could catch glimpses of what lay beyond the window. There would come occasional moments when the floor of the storm would be lifted by a burrowing wind, and he would see the high, naked breakers racing under the sullen pall of spume and rain.
Once he saw a derelict go by. The vessel was a small river sloop, with its rigging blown clean out. A man was clinging to the tiller. One wave, larger than its fellows, submerged the little boat, and when it wallowed to the surface again, the man was gone, and the tiller was kicking wildly.
“Oh, my Jedus, hab a little pity!” the watcher moaned under his breath.
Later, a roof went by.
Porgy heard it coming, even above the sound of the attack upon the Row, and it filled him with awe and dread. He turned and looked at Bess, and was reassured to see that she met his gaze fearlessly. Down the street the roar advanced, growing nearer and louder momentarily. Surely it would be thefinal instrument of destruction. He held his breath, and waited. Then it thundered past his narrow sphere of vision. Rolled loosely, it loomed to the second story windows, and flapped and tore at the buildings as it swept over the cobbles.
When a voice could be heard again, Porgy turned to his companion.
“You an’ me, Bess,” he said with conviction “Wesho’is a little somet’ing attuh all.”
After that, they sat long without exchanging a word. Then Porgy looked out of the window and noticed that the quality of the atmosphere was becoming denser. The spume lifted for a moment, and he could scarcely see the tormented bay.
“I t’ink it mus’ be mos’ night,” he observed. “Dey ain’t much light now on de outside ob dis storm.”
He looked again before the curtain descended, and what he saw caused his heart to miss a beat.
He knew that the tide should be again at the ebb, for the flood had commenced just after the storm broke. But as he looked, the water, which was already higher than a normal flood, lifted over the far edge of the street, and three tremendous waves broke in rapid succession, sending the deep layersof water across the narrow way to splash against the wall of the building.
This reversal of nature’s law struck terror into the dark places of Porgy’s soul. He beckoned to Bess, his fascinated eyes upon the advancing waves.
She bent down and peered into the gloom.
“Oh, yes,” she remarked in a flat tone. “It been dis way in de las’ great storm. De win’ hol’ de watuh in de jetty mout’ so he can’t go out. Den he pile up annoder tide on him.”
Suddenly an enormous breaker loomed over the backs of its shattered and retreating fellows. The two watchers could not see its crest, for it towered into, and was absorbed by, the low-hanging atmosphere. Yellow, smooth, and with a perpendicular, slightly concave front, it flashed across the street, and smote the solid wall of the Row. They heard it roar like a mill-race through the drive, and flatten, hissing in the court. Then they turned, and saw their own door give slightly to the pressure, and a dark flood spurt beneath it, and debouch upon the floor.
Bess took immediate command of the situation. She threw an arm about Porgy, and hurried him to the door. She withdrew the bolt, and the flimsy panels shot inward.The court was almost totally dark. One after another now the waves were hurtling through the drive and impounding in the walled square.
The night was full of moving figures, and cries of fear; while, out of the upper dark, the wind struck savagely downward.
With a powerful swing, Bess got Porgy to a stairway that providentially opened near their room, and, leaving him to make his way up alone, she rushed back, and was soon at his heels with an armful of belongings.
They sought refuge in what had been the great ball-room of the mansion, a square, high-ceilinged room on the second story, which was occupied by a large and prosperous family. There were many refugees there before them. In the faint light cast by several lanterns, the indestructible beauty of the apartment was evident, while the defacing effects of a century were absorbed in shadow. The noble open fireplace, the tall, slender mantel, with its Grecian frieze and intricate scrollwork, the high panelled walls were all there. And then, huddled in little groups on the floor, or seated against the walls, with eyes wide in the lantern-shine, the black, fear-stricken faces.
Like the ultimate disintegration of a civilization—there it was; and upon it, as though to make quick work of the last, tragic chapter, the scourging wrath of the Gods—white, and black.
The night that settled down upon Catfish Row was one of nameless horror to the inhabitants, most of whom were huddled on the second floor in order to avoid the sea from beneath, and deafening assaults upon the roof above their heads.
With the obliteration of vision, sound assumed an exaggerated significance, and the voice of the gale, which had seemed by day only a great roar, broke up in the dark into its various parts. Human voices seemed to cry in it; and there were moments when it sniffed and moaned at the windows.
Once, during a silence in the room, a whinny was distinctly heard.
“Dat my ole horse!” wailed Peter. “He done dead in he stall now, an’ dat he woice goin’ by. Oh, my Gawd!”
They all wailed out at that; and Porgy, remembering his goat, whimpered and turned his face to the wall.
Then someone started to sing: