He could not see; he could only flounder forward with spread arms which availed nothing: the bog had him fast for all his effort.
Then his hand touched a liane brought down by the bush. It was a double liane, tough as flax and as thick as honeysuckle. He caught it and pulled on it, and instantly a great flowering spray of xicale flowers came floundering down from above, into his face. He saw them for what they were. “Xicale flowers,” he said, “xicales. I’m going to be saved.”
He got both hands deeply into the lianes of the xicales and pulled as he had never pulled, never, on any yard or on any rope. Digging forward into the squash of the bog he found something hard for one foot. “Oh, heave,” he cried, as he had so often cried to his watch. “Oh, heave, son, heave; oh, heave and start her; heave for glory.”
He found himself half out, with his right knee and side on hard earth and his left leg stuck in the bog. He drew deep breath for a minute, as once he had stopped to breathe when beaten dead by a sail five years before. Then gathering all his powers, he hove “all together,” and emerged erect on sound earth, shaking with the strain, and without his left shoe.
“Xicales,” he said, “you’ve saved my life. I knew that you were mixed up somehow with my life; and I’ll carry some of you with me in gratitude till I’m laid in my grave.”
He picked both flowers and leaves for his soaking pocket-book. His hands shook: he was cold to the marrow and filthy beyond description.
“I’ll do it yet,” he said. “But first I must make a shoe of sorts, or I shall be lamed.”
He cut off his trouser-legs at the knees, with his knife. With one of the pieces, folded fourfold, he made a shoe, and with the other he made thongs which secured it as a sandal to his foot. It was a rough and ready sandal, but it stayed on when put. It was good enough to run on.
He did not think of what the time might be. He roughly judged that he could reach Las Palomas in twenty minutes or twenty-five minutes by running along the beach with all his might. Any waterman on the front would put him aboard: the police-launch would take him. “I can’t miss my passage,” he said, “I must be on board. I told the old man I would be on board.” For the first time he said to himself, “And the old man will give me an hour’s grace.”
He set off over the headland of the gully under the clump of pines whose blackness he had seen from the mud. It was soft but firm going on the pine-needles; the trees over his head made a sighing which merged as he ran into the sterner sighing of the water on the beach. At the foot of the spur over which he had run, he came to the outcrops of the springs all overgrown with azaleas. They ran all along the foot of the spur, so thick with blossoms that they looked like an unbursting wave which was yet foaming at the crest. Over all the foam of blossom the fireflies glowed and went out, now as many as stars, now few, now like sparks, but always beautiful. Just beyond them was the broad sea-beach, with the breakers only fifty yards away. The sea was coming in, as it will in a shallow bay, in half-a-dozen long lines, each glowing with mild fire, shining as it neared the sand, then flashing like the moonlight, as the wave burst, then gleaming greenish, and showing the globes of the stars, as it wasted and died out upon the sand.
Sard burst through the azaleas to the sands, which stretched along for a great distance right and left. To his right (seemingly quite near) was a shining, which he knew to be the river near Los Xicales; beyond it, in the darkness of trees, was the house of his dream with one light burning. All a vast expanse of night, the sea-beach, the forest, and muttering water lay behind him. He rushed down to the sea and let three breakers go over him to cleanse him from the swamp and the leeches.
“Now, Sard Harker,” he said, “come on, port main, up with her!” He broke into a steady run facing to the Los Xicales light. The pine trees on the spit shut away a view of the anchorage so that he could not see thePathfinder; he could only hope and put his best leg foremost. “Upon them thathope,” he thought, “is His mercy.” He ran at his steady pace which, as he knew, he could keep for miles.
Though it seemed so near, that shining on the sands, which he knew to be the river, was a full half-mile away. Before he had gone three hundred yards of it, he saw that the sand just ahead of him was darker and shinier than the sand under his feet. A memory of another dangerous sand, far away on an English sea-coast, shot into his mind on the instant, but the footing failed before he could stop. The sand gave beneath the one foot and let in the other: ooze of water shot up to the surface: he flung himself backwards violently, and got out, but fell, and saw, or thought that he saw, the surface of the sand shaking as though it were laughing at him. He rolled himself clear, then rose and looked at it. “That’s a pretty bad quicksand,” he said. “I might get through, but from the pull on that foot, I think that it would pull me down. Probably I can get round the shoreward end of it.”
He tried, but failed: the shoreward end of the quicksand was tropical bog.
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll swim round the seaward end. It is only a hundred yards. I need not go far out. It will be something to have the swamp washed off me again.” He went knee-deep into the sea, with some misgivings, for the shallows of all that coast are haunted with sand sharks, which come right in to have the warmth of the sand. He splashed as he went, to scare them. He had gone about thigh deep into the water and was just settling down to swim, when there came suddenly an agonising pain in his left foot.
His first thought was, “I’m on a thorn,” then, “I’m on a snake”; then, as the pain ran in a long, hot, stabbing streamer up his leg, he knew the truth, that he had trodden on a sting-ray. He hopped out of the water to the shore, feeling all the blood in his foot turn to vitriol and come surging along, as vitriol, to his heart. Most excruciating agony made him fling himself down. He tried to hold out his leg, but that was unendurable torment. He tried to kneel upon it, while he put a ligature above the knee, but the pain made him so sick that he could not bear it. He tried to lie down, but that was unbearable. He rolled over and over, moaning: then staggered up, and hopped and hopped, gasping with pain, until he fell. He had never known any pain in his life, except the bangs and knocks of his profession, but now he tasted a full measure.
Although he fell, the pain did not stop, it hit him when he was down, it grew worse. The cold, deadly, flat thing in the sand had emptied his horn into him. He buried his face in the sand: he dug his hands into the sand. Then the poison seemed to swing him round and double him up. It seemed to burn every vein and shrivel every muscle and make every nerve a message of agony.
He managed to cast loose the wrapping from the foot. The foot no longer looked like a foot, but like something that would burst. In his deadly sickness he thought that his foot was a pollard willow tree growing to the left of the road. He wondered why he was not on his bicycle. He said that his foot was dead, that it had died of the gout, and would drop from his body and never grow again.
All the venom came in pain on to his abdominal muscles; then he felt it come swimming along like little fiery rats round the carcase of his heart. He saw his heart for a moment or two like a black pig caught in a bog; the rats came all round it together, from every side, they closed in on it and bit it, bit it, bit it.
When he came to himself a little, he said something about the stars being too many, altogether too many, for the job in hand. He said that he could not pick up the guiding lights. Then he felt that every star was a steamer’s masthead light, and that all those myriads of steamers were bearing down upon him without sidelights. “Their look-out-men are all asleep,” he said, “I can’t see how they are bearing, and I have no lights at all. I must find a flare and burn them off.” He groped for a flare, but found only his wet clothes pressing on his body. “The flares are all damp,” he said, “the flares won’t burn. It is my fault; I stored them in the pickle-house. They ought to have been in the chart-room with the flags.” He wandered off in his thoughts far away from the lights of the stars. He lost all knowledge that he was lying on the sand three or four thousand miles from home. His main thought was that he was wandering along corridors in search of doors. He knew that it was very important to find doors, but whenever he found any, they closed in his face and became parts of the walls.
After a long time he roused himself up, feeling weak and sick. He knew at once, from the feel of things, that it was midnight. A sense of his position came to him. ThePathfindermust have sailed: he had lost his passage: he was miles from anywhere: he had lost Richard’s bicycle. All these things had happened because of his dream, because of Los Xicales. He sat up, but saw no light in the direction of the house. Over the spit with the pine trees there came a sort of flashing glimmer twice a minute as the light swung round in the tower of Manola point. He was bitterly cold, for besides being wet through, a mizzling rain was falling on him. He was sick and wretched. The closeness in the air was gone; a breeze was blowing the rain straight along the beach. The trees inshore were whistling and rustling: the seas broke as though they were cross, with a sharp smash instead of the relenting wash of twilight. All sorts of little life was scuttering about the sand: white owls, or sea-birds, cruised overhead as silently as sails.
Sard sat up and tried his left leg. It was numb and much swollen. He could not feel anything in it from his mid-thigh to his toe. It had become as dead as a leg of clay or mutton. When he dinted the flesh by pressing on it, the dint remained.
With a little difficulty he stood up on one leg. He then felt for the first time that he had only one leg, that the other would not act. He could move it, but not bend it; when he put it on the sand, leaned on it, or tried to walk with it, the thing ceased to be his, it neither obeyed nor rebelled, it failed. He was so cold that he felt that he would die. He sat for twenty minutes working to restore his leg. He no longer felt pain in it, the pain was gone, but it was as though the poison had burnt out the life. In some ways he would rather have had pain than this deadness.
“Now I am in a bad way,” he said, “for not many come to this beach, and none in this State will wander about looking for me. If I could only reach Los Xicales . . . However, I can’t reach Los Xicales this way: the quicksand bars the land and I’m not going to risk another sting in the sea. I can’t get back to Enobbio’s inn by that swamp. But I might crawl along the beach to that man who has the horses, Miguel, with the good heart, near the salt-pans. He might not be very far: two kilometres. He might take me in to the port, or at least to Los Xicales, where I should be in time, if those fellows were trying anything.”
He was suffering much: the leech-bites in his right leg itched like mosquito-bites, but were also hot and stinging; his mouth had fur in it, which tasted like brown paper; he felt that he was dying of cold. His hands, neck and face were swollen from the bites of the midges. His blood seemed to have changed within him to something grey and slow. Worse than his bodily state was the thought that he had broken his word to Captain Cary and missed his passage; “mizzled his dick,” as Pompey Hopkins called it.
“She’ll be sailed by this time,” he thought. “Whatever grace Captain Cary gave me, she’ll have gone by this.”
He stood up to look about him: he now realised, for the first time, the change in the weather.
The northern section of the heaven was covered with intense darkness. Over the blackness a sort of copper-coloured wisp, like smoke, was driving at a great speed. The blackness was lit up continually by lightning, which burned sometimes in steady glows, sometimes in sharp stabs of light. The wind had risen; directly Sard crossed the sandy spit, it struck him with fury, driving sand and fragments of shell against his face and down his neck. The sea was not yet breaking with any violence upon the beach. It was white as far as the eye could see, as though the heads of every wave had been whipped off and flogged into foam which shone as though with moonlight from the phosphorescence. Washes of breaker burst and rushed up the sand to Sard’s feet, like washes of fire in which all the marvellous shells of which the beach was composed, were lit up like jewels. Far away to the right, out at sea on the edge of the sky, there was, as it were, a shaking wall of white from the sea already running upon the Rip-Raps. He could see it waver, but it never seemed to change. There was a roller there before the last had gone.
“This is the norther,” Sard thought. “I hope the old man did not wait too long for me, but got clear of the Rip-Raps before it came on.”
He re-bandaged his foot, picked some stakes from among the driftwood, to serve as walking sticks, and with the help of these set out towards the salt-pans to borrow a horse. He hobbled forward, dead into the teeth of the gale. The worst thing about the gale was the cold. Far south as it was, the wind came down directly from the northern icefields. To Sard, who was thinly clad and wet through, it was piercing. He stumbled along against it, keeping his direction by the pale flame of the breakers which roared at his side and flung their fire at his feet.
When he had gone about a mile, he saw the stretch of the salt-pans like a patch of white heather away ahead, distant he knew not how far. It might be a mile, or it might be two miles; no man could judge distance on a sand so flat. At anchor, under the head beyond the sand, was a ship which had not lain there when he came to the beach. She seemed to be a small tramp or large coaster, sheltering from the norther. She carried no lights. Sard judged that she had come there to load copper from the mines of Tloatlucan. He knew that there was a pier there, at the mouth of a river, and that the ore came by a light railway direct to the pier from the mine.
He hobbled on towards the whiteness of the salt-pans: a flat road is a long road at best; against a gale it is a bad road.
Nearly all the way a great white bird (whether an owl or some sea-bird, he could not tell) flew above and ahead of him. It seemed to him that this bird shone. Perhaps the poison had upset his eyes, or perhaps his eyes never lost the shine of the sea breaking beside him. In his shaken state, this bird seemed like a luminous swan, guiding him to quiet.
Near the southern end of the pans he saw a shack or stable, facing him. The seaward end of this shack was a small adobe house, with a palm roof. The stable was empty: there was neither ass nor dog there.
Sard listened for half a minute, standing still, at ten paces from the house, while he took stock. The house was closed to the night, yet it had the look or feel of having someone there. Perhaps an animal instinct survives in us from the time when it was important to know if a lair were blank or not.
Sard went no nearer; he hailed the house in Spanish, calling on Don Miguel by name. The place was silent, except for the flogging of the palmetto on the roof, the scutter of crabs and gophers on the bents and the wail of the wind across the salt-pans. Then presently something tinkled within the house. It might have been a revolver cartridge, or a knife coming out of a sheath, or a bottle upon glass. Sard hailed again, saying that he came alone, in peace, from Don Enobbio, with desire to hire a horse.
This time, Sard saw the shutter which covered the window (a space a foot square near the door) move about three inches to one side. He heard no noise, but he was watching the shutter and saw its greyness change to blackness as the wood moved. “I am a friend,” he called. “I come from Don Enobbio to Don Miguel to hire a horse. I, a sick man, wish to ride to Las Palomas if Don Miguel will give aid, thus emulating the Good Samaritan.”
He heard the heavy iron-wood bar of the door go back in its runners; the door opened about eighteen inches; a young woman appeared, yawning.
“Enrique,” she said, “Enrique, back already?”
“I am not Enrique, lady,” Sard said, “but a traveller in need of a horse.”
“Dios mio,” she said, “and I not combed! I thought you were Enrique. Wait, then.”
He did not have to wait more than a minute; a light appeared at the shutter; a tin basin or pan was kicked into a corner; then the door was opened, the young woman called:
“Will the caballero enter, then?”
“Enter,” Sard thought, “and have my throat cut, perhaps; but I will enter.”
He went in, with a watchful eye lest Miguel, who “erred in mind,” should be lying in wait with a sand-bag just behind the door. However, Miguel was not there, the young woman was alone in the one-roomed house.
She had lighted a little tin lamp, which had a smoke-blackened glass, broken at the top. By the light of this Sard saw the room to be bare and untidy. The bed was an array of small pine boughs, with their needles, covered with sacks, ponchos and old serapes. The young woman had just risen from her nest there; she was “not combed,” as she had said, nor dressed, but hung about, as it were, with a long undergarment torn at the shoulder. She was a plump young woman, just beginning to grow fat: she was very dirty: her long, black hair shone from an unguent; she flung it rakishly back from her brow with the gesture of a great actress. Her eyes were like mules’ eyes, black and shining, with yellow whites. Her mouth was exceedingly good-natured. She stood near the door, clutching her sacking to her shoulder with one hand, while with the other she motioned Sard to enter. She grinned at Sard as a comely woman will grin at one whose praise of her comeliness would be esteemed.
The room, which was next door to the stable, had been lived and slept in for some months with closed door and shutter. It smelt of oil, tortillas, frijoles, horses, rats, mice, espinillo, hair-grease, poverty, garlic, tobacco, joss-stick and musk. A sort of mental image of a life made of all these things, all flavoursome and with a tang to them, reached Sard at once through his nostrils, with the further thought that it was not such a bad life, since it left the person both dignified and kind.
He explained that he needed a horse.
“Ay de mi,” she exclaimed, “but Miguel is with the horses at the siding beside the jetty, a half league hence. Assuredly he will lend a horse, but it is further on, at the quay, that you will find him now.”
“I will go on, then,” Sard said.
“But you are wet and have known misfortune. Enter, I pray you, and rest from your misfortune. Ay de mi, your foot has trodden unhappily.”
“Not since it has led me to your presence,” Sard said. “But thank you, I must not enter. I will go on to Miguel, to the horse.”
Something in his tone or bearing or look, something in himself, seemed to impress the woman.
“Assuredly,” she said, “the good Jesu comes thus, but must not go thus. Sit you, Sir caballero.” She brought forward a three-legged stool, the only seat in the room, and made him sit. “Sit you down till I see your foot,” she said. She would have none of his protests, but had his bandage off.
“You have met a snake,” she said.
“No; a sting-ray.”
“Then you have been in the sea and are of the ship, no doubt; ay de mi, all wet, all wet, what misery.” She felt his arm and shoulder and cold hand. “And a sting-ray; often have I seen them, with their horns. There is a negro who can cure such with a white powder; but I have nothing. Nothing but love which is a part of the love of God.”
She was kneeling at his side with his foot in her hands, kneading the swollen flesh.
“No,” she said, “this is no time for the cure. The poison has killed, but is now dead: the flesh is dead. It takes a day, two days, who knows, after a sting-ray. Then, when the life begins to return, one can help. See now, I can, by God’s mercy, do something. I have here a stirrup shoe made long ago, but still of use. I have but the one, for the other was cast out in error, as I always maintain; while others, on the contrary, think that Martin took it, Martin the pedlar, the old soldier, who comes round with saints and handkerchiefs. See now, a shoe for a count or duke.”
She produced what had been the stirrup-shoe of a count or duke in the days when such things were. It was a sort of wooden-soled slipper, with a sole of wood, and heel and toecaps of cuir-bouilli. The great silver bosses and brackets had long since been wrenched from it. The last user had fixed it to his leathers with wire. The design on the cuir-bouilli was of a coat-of-arms, but eaten away by ants and green with mould.
“See now,” she said, fitting it to his foot, “a shoe for a count or duke. You shall walk the better for it. It is a shoe such as might have been made for you.”
Her hand rested for an instant on Sard’s pocket, from which a draggled silk handkerchief hung.
“Dios mio,” she said, “you are count or duke. It is so soft. This is silk of the countess.”
She fingered it with a child’s delight in the texture. “Is it all like this?” she said. “Truly, if you are not count or duke, you are servant to one.”
“That’s more like it,” Sard said, rising, so as to tread upon the shoe. “I’m a servant, to a limited company. Your shoe, señora, is as water to one dying in the desert. You have been a friend to me in time of need. You know the wise saying, ‘a friend to the beggars will never lack guests.’ I say, ‘May a host to a beggar never lack friends.’ ”
“The good Jesu comes in all shapes,” she answered. “And you are not a beggar, but very much a caballero; oh, very, very much a duke or count. You are English. They say that the English are as ice, and therefore come hither to be thawed.”
“That is partly true, señora. I have been melted by your kindness.”
“It is also said (though this I do not believe) that no Englishman will kiss a woman to whom he has not been married by the priest.”
“That is assuredly true, señora.”
“Never, never, never; even if all things conspired: the moonlight, perfumes, music, and beauty such as hers of Sheba?”
“Never, never, never,” he said.
“Ay de mi,” she said. “But it is said that the English are as Turks, and are married to very many.”
“We are as God made us, not as people say, señora; but we remember kindly acts forever and I shall remember you.”
“Forever?”
“I think so.”
“That is very caballero. But what is memory? A thought. You have not even asked me my name.”
“I was going to ask it.”
“You were going to ask it?”
“Assuredly.”
“Assuredly,” she said. “It is true, then, as they say, that the English are as ice. ‘Assuredly.’ You said it with a peck, as from a beak. ‘Assuredly.’ If I were to take a dagger and thrust it into my heart so that I fell dead, you would say ‘Assuredly she has driven the point too far. Assuredly she is no longer alive.’ ”
“Not so,” Sard said; “I should not say it. I might think it.”
“Would you be sorry?”
“I am sorry for any suicide.”
“Your cold ice would not thaw one tear. But, vaya, if I were countess, and lay dead, you would stand like marble and say poetry. Listen: my name, the name I call myself, is Rose of the South: will you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Assuredly?”
“No; faith of caballero.”
“Will you remember me, who am that name?”
“Yes.”
“It is me, myself, that name. When I was little, I had a sister: we used to play grand ladies out in the sage brush. She was Lily of the West; I was Rose of the South. She is dead, pobrecita, the Lily: she was of this world, which needs a man, not a woman: pobrecita mia.”
“What is your real name?” Sard asked.
“Clara,” she said, “Clara of the Salt-Pans, the woman of Miguel, called Miguel sin Nada.”
“He is Miguel con Mucha, with yourself, señora,” Sard said. “And now adios, and always my thanks, siempre, siempre, siempre. I will return your shoe by Miguel.”
“For the love of all the saints in bliss, caballero,” she said, “in no way let Miguel suspect that you have talked with me. Ay de mi, we women; we suffer for our hearts. Miguel is of a jealousy that would make proud, being such evidence of love, if it were not such inconvenience. A thought, a turn of the head, a look, and he at once ranks me with those infamous of life, with her of Sheba, and Ysabel, Queen of England.”
“I will not let him suspect,” Sard said. “And now farewell, and my thanks and again my thanks.”
“Stay yet,” she said. “Stay yet for one instant. I shall be here sixty years, perhaps, like Caterina La Fea, below, at the poblacion, old, old, and wrinkled like the devil, red-eyed, blind, from sitting in the smoke, sucking bits of meat at last, with her gums. And little children flinging dead rats at her and calling her Witch-Witch. I have had one instant with you; let me have one other; only one; since it has to last for sixty years, you would not grudge me one instant? Then when I am as Caterina, I shall think, ah, but truly I lived, once, at that midnight, when one like St. Gabriel came to my door, and was as a count or duke to me, who am Clara the woman of Miguel.”
“Señora,” Sard said, “I, too, shall think of you, at times, for whatever years may remain to me; but now I must go, and so I say again, thank you and farewell.”
He turned away as fast as he could hobble.
“Stay yet,” she implored. “I do not importune, but I do not know your name. Tell me your name. I would think of your name and pray for you in the chapel and before the image here.”
“My name is Harker.”
“Harker. What does that mean?”
“I do not know: perhaps ‘one who listens.’ ”
“Listens for what?”
“What do people listen for?”
“The sea wind in the heat,” she said thoughtfully; “and the crowing of the cock in the night of pain; and, in life, the footstep of the beloved who never comes; or when he does come, goes on the instant.”
“Good-bye.”
“What do you listen for?” she cried.
“A change of wind, perhaps. Adios.”
He turned from her rapidly, but as he turned she knelt suddenly at his side, snatched his hand and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said, “but men are not worthy of that, señora.” He withdrew his hand and hobbled a few steps away. At this little distance, he called: “I thank you, señora; good night.”
He knew that she would not follow him into the darkness: she did not, but he heard her break into a wild crying of tears and lamentation. The last that he saw of her was the grey of her sacking and the pallor of her face, standing looking after him while she lifted up her voice and wept.
Perhaps three-quarters of an hour after leaving Rose of the South, when it was (as he judged) a little after two in the morning, Sard saw in front of him the sheds of “the siding beside the jetty.” Sard could see no horses, but there was an engine on the line with steam up; a glow was on the smoke coming from its funnel; a glare from its fire made the stoker and driver ruddy with light. The engine was headed inland with a load of trucks coupled to it. Men were moving about between the quay and the trucks, either loading or unloading something heavy.
At any other time he might have wondered why men were shipping copper-ore at midnight during a norther, though indeed the jetty was screened from the wind by the high land beyond it. He had no suspicion of these men. He was perhaps stupid from poison and fatigue; he thought that he had reached his rest.
One of the workers came away from the trucks to get a drink at a scuttle-butt. Sard heard the chain of the dipper clink, and the water splash. Then the man spat and went slowly back to work, singing in a little low clear voice the song about the rattlesnake.
“There was a nice young man,He lived upon a hill;A very nice young man,I knew him we-e-ell.To-me-rattle-to-me-roo-rah-ree.”
“There was a nice young man,He lived upon a hill;A very nice young man,I knew him we-e-ell.To-me-rattle-to-me-roo-rah-ree.”
“There was a nice young man,He lived upon a hill;A very nice young man,I knew him we-e-ell.To-me-rattle-to-me-roo-rah-ree.”
“There was a nice young man,
He lived upon a hill;
A very nice young man,
I knew him we-e-ell.
To-me-rattle-to-me-roo-rah-ree.”
Sard drew nearer, to look for Miguel and the horses. He came down on to a loop-line, crossed it, and passed between sheds and shacks, some piles of pit props, fuel blocks and drums of wire rope, on to the pier-head. A naphtha-flare was burning there to give light to a gang of men who were handing cases from a launch, which lay below the level of the jetty, to the trucks coupled up to the engine. Even then, Sard did not see at once what company he had come among. One of the men, who had been watching his advance, whistled. A man, who seemed to be in authority, moved up swiftly and rather threateningly on the right: two other men came up from the left: the work of the gang stopped. The men put down the cases which they were carrying and faced Sard in a pointed manner. Most of them had been humming or singing to themselves as they worked, but their singing stopped on the instant. More than this, a voice in the launch asked:
“What’s the rally?”
One of the men in front of Sard replied, without turning his head: “Strangers in the house.”
Three heads showed over the edge of the jetty, then three more men sprang up from the launch on to the jetty itself. Sard found himself facing about a dozen men, with other men closing in on each side of him. All the men were silent, most of them were watching him intently, though some peered into the night behind him. All the men, without perceptible motion, had pistols in their hands.
“Stop just right where you are, brother,” the man on Sard’s right said.
Sard stopped.
“Drop them palos and put them up.” The tone rather than the words made Sard drop his sticks and lift his hands.
“Are you alone?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Move right down to the edge of the jetty. Keep your hands up.”
“I can’t walk without sticks.”
“Walk him down there, two of you.”
Two of them did “walk him down” to the edge of the jetty. Ill as Sard was, the men, their voices and their every action, made him feel that his life hung upon a thread.
He knew, too late, that he had come upon a gang of rum-runners in the act of putting their freight ashore. There was no question of showing fight; he could only hope that they would not shoot him in the back and leave him to the crabs.
He was walked to the hard-wood blinders at the very edge of the jetty. He saw beneath him a broadish stretch of water reaching to the high land beyond. The river bar was noisy at some little distance to his left. Just below him was a scow-launch half full of cases. She was lifting and drooping a little to the motion of the water. A deck hand, sitting on her forward gunwale, was staring up at him. A short, foreign-looking man, with a bush of hair under which gold earrings shone, came out from the covered engine-room abaft-all, and stood there, in a glow of light, holding on by the wheel. He, too, stared up at Sard, but went on eating an onion: he did not speak. His eyes were intensely bright: his shirt, which was whitish, with a few coloured stripes, seemed to shine as though it were made of silk.
Sard took all these things in very exactly in an instant of time, but noticed most the man with the bright eyes who munched the onion and stared. The deck hand who was sitting forward pitched a folded tarpaulin over some cases directly below Sard. He did it on the instant, with a backward jerk of his hand. Sard knew on the instant what had passed through the man’s mind; that it would be a pity if his, Sard’s, corpse should break any of the good rum bottles in falling.
The man in authority called out behind Sard.
“If there are any more of you, who try to lift a finger, over your friend goes.”
Sard kept very still; everybody was very still, except for the launchman munching his onion and the clicking back of revolver cocks. The man in authority called out again:
“Go through him, you two.”
The two men “went through” Sard’s pockets, not like thieves, but like policemen.
“Is he heeled?”
“No, sir; he’s got a knife. He’s been in the water.”
“He’ll be in again, for keeps, if he tries any monkey-tricks. Now, brother, answer me and no damned shinanniking. Are you alone?”
“Yes,” Sard said.
“Who are you?”
“A sailor.”
“What in hell are you doing here?”
“I’ve been on a sting-ray and came here to get a horse from Miguel.”
“What the hell do you know of Miguel?”
“I heard he had horses here.”
“Who told you he had horses here?”
“Some people in the poblacion.”
The man in authority called to one of the other men:
“Antonio!”
“Si, señor.”
“Here a moment.”
Sard heard the man go across to the officer. They talked together in a low tone for a minute: Sard could not hear what they said. Presently the officer called again:
“You, brother: turn round.”
Sard turned about into the light of the flare, to find himself covered by half-a-dozen revolvers.
“Do you know him, any of you?” the officer asked.
The men stared at him, then gave their verdict that they did not know him. “No, sir.” “Never seen him.” “Never set eyes on him.” One man, who had been standing aloof, somewhat behind the officer, came forward, to have a nearer look. He was a man of short stature, but enormous breadth of chest. He had a sallow face, intensely bright black eyes, a short nose, a mouth of unusual width slowly working upon a quid of tobacco, and both hands thrust forward into deep waistcoat pockets, where they rested on revolver-butts. He came forward slowly, chewing his tobacco, with a good-humoured leer upon the world. There was something in his slouch which was of the very essence of the man: it was his style: his pace à lui: if the world wished to go faster or slower, it might, for all he cared, nothing would make him change. He came to within a few paces of Sard, who seemed to remember that slouch and leer, but could not place the man.
“D’you know him, Doug?”
“Nar.”
He winked at Sard with one eye and slouched off to the left, to stand among the other men.
“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
“Harker.”
“What ship do you belong to?”
“ThePathfinder.”
“That’s a god-dam lie,” one of the men said, “thePathfindersailed last night.”
“Will you just stopper your lip?” the officer said. “If I want your dam’ soprano in this duet, I’ll call it.”
“Well, it is a god-dam lie,” the man said. “She did sail.”
“You hear what this man says?” the officer said. “That your ship sailed last night. What have you to say?”
“I missed my passage,” Sard said. “I was ashore, cycling. My bicycle was stolen: I trod upon a sting-ray down on the beach and came hopping here to try to get a horse, to take me to Las Palomas.”
“That’s a dam’ likely tale,” one of the men said.
“Py Chesus,” another said, “he trod upon a tam sting-ray! Py Gott, he iss a got-tam police-spy.”
“Less lip,” the officer said. He seemed to debate the evidence within his mind for an instant, then he said:
“What are you in thePathfinder?”
“Mate.”
“What were you doing ashore, cycling, when your ship was sailing?”
“I came out to see an Englishman in the house along the beach there.”
“What Englishman?”
“Kingsborough.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“No.”
“What brought you to him, then, when your place was on board your ship?”
“I heard that he was threatened by a gang of rough-necks, so I rode out to warn him.”
“You did? Did you also warn the police?”
“I did.”
This roused a storm among the men: there were cries of “Narker”! “Put it on him, George!” “I set he was a spy, py Gott!” “Hay que matarle!” etc.
“What business was it of yours, to warn the police?” the officer said.
“One would do as much as that for one’s countryman, I hope.”
“What did the police undertake to do?”
“I do not know.”
“Give me the god-dam truth now. Whom did you see at the police?”
“No one. I sent word there.”
“By whom?”
“Find out.”
At this point, which might have been troublous but for intervention, the Scandinavian interfered. He was a sinister-looking man with a swollen lower lip which drooped. This gave him permanently the look of a gargoyle. He looked, on the whole, like a young devil just after his first night in hell, a little bloated and battered, but thrilled by the way Beelzebub wore his bowler. He came forward towards the officer.
“Mr. O’Prien,” he said, “dis feller he wass one got-tam police-spy. What he want de police for? What he come putt in for? He call hisself mate of dePathfinder, by Chesus. Py Chesus, I don’t pelieve one got-tam wort he say, py Chesus. And this got-tam yarn about a got-tam sting-ray. You see, fellers, he iss a spy. Dat’s what dis feller is: a spy. He tell de police and get us pinched.”
The black-eyed smiling sloucher slouched forward as the Scandinavian warmed to his appeal. His left hand shot out suddenly, caught him on the chest and slung him violently backward. The motion seemed effortless, but the strength used must have been that of a bull, for the Scandinavian went backwards tottering for five steps and then sat down. The other men laughed. The sloucher grinned at the Scandinavian.
“Come off with your folly,” he said. “Tell it to the marines but not to the deck department.”
The Scandinavian rose up whimpering and rubbing the sore place.
“Py Chesus, Doug,” he said, “if you wass not trunk, I make you pay for dat. It’s your being trunk saves you, py Chesus.”
“Well, I am drunk,” Douglas said, “I thank God I am drunk. I like being drunk: it’s so cadoodle. But let’s see this man who says he’s mate of thePathfinder. Keep all fast with your enquiries till I’ve had a go at him.” He slouched up towards Sard, with his hands drooped down as before on the revolver-butts in his waistcoat pockets. His whole being seemed to slouch, to smile and to chew tobacco. He seemed to be chewing a sort of cud of tobacco. He seemed to give forth a gospel of slouching, smiling and chewing tobacco. He stood slouched before Sard, a man of immense strength, fearing nothing on earth and capable of any folly and any kindness. Sard could not place him, even yet, but the slouch was familiar; he had surely seen that grin before.
“ ’Arker, my bye,” Douglas began. Instantly a thrill shot through Sard, for the words “my bye,” spoken in that way, gave him a clue to the speaker. “ ’Arker, my bye, answer my question, my bye. Who’s the captain of thePathfinder?”
“Captain Cary.”
“What mark has he got on the right side of his chin?”
“A mole; a dark brown mole.”
“Down in the cabin of thePathfinder, what is hung on the starboard bulkheads?”
“Nothing at all, except two canary cages.”
“What is the name of that black cat you have?”
“Nibbins.”
“What is odd about your fiferails?”
“We have small hand-winches on them (monkey-winches), so that we can get a bit on anything, with two men and a boy.”
“That’s right enough,” Douglas said, “he belongs to thePathfinderall right.”
“That’s not in question,” the officer said. “The questions are, what he is doing here and what he has been doing with the police.”
Again there might have been trouble, but for intervention. This time the launchman interfered. He had finished his onion and had licked his fingers and was now on the jetty close to Sard.
“Meesta O’Brien,” he said.
“Avast heaving,” O’Brien said.
“Meesta O’Brien.”
“I’m dealing with this man here.”
“Meesta O’Brien, I wanna know.”
“What in hell d’you want to know?”
“I wanna know how long we stay-a here? The capitan-a he say-a to me be back by the six-a bell. Here it come the six-a-bell. The whiska still in the launch-a and all a talk-a, talk-a, talk-a and wow-wow-wow with-a the pistol.”
“Get to hell out of this!”
“No, I tell you, I not get-a to hell; not for you I not get-a hell; I get-a to hell when I like, what road I like. But the capitan-a, he say-a to me, be along-a the side at six-a bell. Here it come the six-a bell. And all the stuff lie in the launch-a and you talk-a, talk-a. Why you not get the stuff out of the launch? It six-a bell, soon seven-a bell. I tell-a you now, I tell-a all of you. You get-a this stuff out of the launch. Or if you not get-a this stuff out of the launch, I tell-a you what I do. I get-a to hell out of here: see? I go back straight away to the capitan-a. He soon see what for, hey. He know why you talk-a, talk-a. He want to know what-a for.”
“Shut your dam’ Dago head!”
“You tell-a me to shut-a my head. I shut-a your head. I got-a stiletto, good as your pistol. What for you tell-a me to shut-a my head? Shut-a your own head. You get-a the stuff out of the launch. Never mind you this sick-a man, but get-a the whisk out of the launch. My Jesu, too much-a talk-a talk-a. Get-a the launch clear, see, or I go back to the capitan-a. I cast-a loose, I go, see.”
“See here now, Jesus-Maria, mind yourself. I’ll clear your launch and you too, in my own time. I’m captain in this gang, and I’m going to be it.”
“You are not capitan-a in my launch. I am. And if you not get-a out the stuff, I not-a stay.”
Douglas, the sloucher, came forward again, not addressing either Jesus-Maria or O’Brien, but the men.
“Come on, boys,” he said, “we’ve still got some of these dam’ medical comforts to sling ashore.”
“We’ll get the stuff ashore, when we’ve finished this enquiry,” O’Brien said. “I want to know about this man.” He turned again to Sard. “What are you?” he asked. “A Protestant?”
“Yes, thank God.”
The men cheered Sard for this, not because they were Protestants, but because O’Brien was not. One of the men, who had taken no part whatever in the court of enquiry, but had been sitting on some pit props drinking from a bottle, now came up to Sard and shook his hand.
“Shake hands,” he said, “if you’re a Protestant. You belong to a blurry fine religion, if you’re a Protestant. I’m not, if you understand what I mean, a Protestant myself, if you understand what I mean, but I do believe in crissen berrel, which is as near as the next, if you understand what I mean.”
“Come along, George,” Douglas said, “we’ll get this medical comfort ashore and then we’ll have one long cool one on the house.”
“Are you a Protestant?” George asked.
“Sure, Mike.”
“There’s a lot of fellows going about,” George said, “if you understand what I mean, who call themselves blurry Buddhists. I’ll shake hands with a Protestant and I’ll shake hands with a Mahommedan. It’s true they have a lot of wives. I honour them for it. I’d do the same myself if I could afford it. But these Buddhist fellows: I want to tell you about these Buddhist fellows. All right Mr. O’Brien, if you don’t want to listen, you can do the other thing. These Buddhist fellows, they’re not Buddhist fellows, if you know what I mean, they’re a secre-ciety. That is,” he concluded, “if you understand what I mean.”
“They’re a lot of vegetarians,” Douglas said. “But come on, boys, and let’s get the stuff ashore.”
“You’ll not get-a the stuff ashore,” came from the Italian on the launch. “The capitan-a tell-a me ‘be back by six-a bell.’ You not clear-a the launch, so now I go. I tell-a the capitan-a. He give-a you what-a for.”
The launch had been thrust clear of the jetty; she lay two boat-lengths away, canted so that the current was swinging her.
“Come back with that launch, you Jesus-Maria!”
The Italian made an obscene gesture and sent the launch at full speed for the distant ship.
“There,” one of the men said, “there you are, O’Brien; half the cases not ashore, all because you want to hold a private Old Bailey.”
“And I’m going to hold it,” O’Brien said. “This man is a police-spy and I’m going to shoot him.”
“You’ll shoot him, hell,” Douglas said.
“Not on your life,” George said, “not on your life. He is a Protestant, if you understand what I mean. And why is he a Protestant? Because he isn’t a low-down vegetarian secre-ciety Buddhist. Because he isn’t a Mahommedan. He might have been a Mahommedan. They offered him seven wives, if you understand what I mean, and he scorned the action. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m a Protestant,’ he said, ‘to blazes with your houris,’ he said. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what he said. Isn’t it what you said?”
“Now, George Henderson, mind yourself now, or I’ll put a head on you which you’ll remember.”
“You’ll put a head on me? Who’ll put a head on me?”
“I will.”
“You silly blighter, we’re not in Ireland here, we’re talking religion at El Cobre.”
“No, we’re not talking religion,” O’Brien said; “we’re landing rum, and I’m going to see that we land it safely. What is this man but a spy?”
“He’s no spy,” Douglas said, “he’s a sailor like yourself.”
“Only he’s ate a damn sight less flapdoodle,” someone added.
“Well, if he’s no spy, what are we going to do with him?”
“Let him have Miguel and the horses and ride back to Las Palomas as he wants.”
“So that he can leave word with the police in time to have us headed off at the mines. To hell with him having the horses!”
“He cannot in any case have the horses,” said the man known as Antonio, “since Miguel took the horses, some time since, by the footpath.”
“He can stay here, then, after we are gone.”
“Well, O’Brien, I wonder at you,” Douglas said. “Here’s a man half dead, as you can see, from poison, and a better fellow, I daresay, than any of us. If we leave him here, he’ll be dead before noon, from cold and exposure. He’s coming in the cars with us to Tloatlucan, where he can take the branch line to Las Palomas before noon. And meanwhile, boys,” he added, raising his voice, “here’s a man pretty damn wet and sick; what do you say to dibs all round to give him a dry shift? I say a pair of trousers.”
They all said something out of the little they had. O’Brien moved away to talk to the engine-driver. Douglas and Antonio brought Sard the dry shift and helped him to change. “Here’s a dry shift,” Douglas said. “And I’m afraid they’re like a pig’s breakfast, a little of all sorts.”
“Get on board here,” O’Brien said.
“On board, hell,” Douglas answered. “This man’s not shifted yet.”
“I don’t give a pea-vren. This ain’t Delmonico’s, nor Maggy Murphy’s. This train’s going.”
“It’s going, hell,” Douglas answered.
“Very well, then; it’ll go without you.”
“Without me, hell!”
O’Brien turned from him savagely, darted forward to the engine-driver and cursed the other hands into the cars. Douglas winked at Sard. “Chief officer’s perk,” he said. “All the same, we’d better hop it.”
The nearest car to them was the last in the train, and empty but for some tarpaulins and rolls of slickers. Douglas helped Sard into it, hove his wet things after him, and was starting to heave himself in, when the train started. A man less strong in the arms would have been pitched headlong, but Douglas clambered into the car, made a warm corner for Sard, covered him up and sat beside him.
“Ambitious swab, that terrier,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Very grateful to you,” Sard said, “for without you, things would have gone hard with me. Who are you? Aren’t you Castleton? Weren’t you once C.P.F.?”
“Yes. I used to be Castleton, C.P.F. I was a year senior to you,” Douglas said. “You wouldn’t remember me, for that reason; but I remembered you. You see, I’ve got a memory which can’t forget. I often wish it could.”
“I remember you now, of course,” Sard said. “But when were you on board thePathfinder?”
“Never.”
“But how did you know about Captain Cary’s mole; and the cat, and the monkey-winches?”
“Three days ago I passed under thePathfinder’sstern, as I went ashore to see my girl. I saw a man with a mole on his chin doing hygrometer at the taffrail. I knew it must be the captain. It couldn’t have been anybody else. The cat was fooling about on deck and the old man called it Nibbins. As for the monkey-winches on the fiferail, you were clearing a boat with one of them. I thought it a dam’ fine little contrivance.”
“But how did you know about the cabin bulkheads?”
“I didn’t. The point was that you did.”
“Well, you staggered me,” Sard said. “I was wondering when you could have been on board.”
“It’s a dam’ easy game, being mysterious, when you’ve anything at all to go on. Your Christian name’s Chisholm, isn’t it? I saw you first on 2nd February, 1883. I remember you coming on board, by the tug, when you were a new chum. The chests were hove in on the port lower deck and the lock of your chest was broken by that old fool Goose-rump letting it drop off the slide.”
“I remember,” Sard said. “You swore at old Goose-rump. You sailed with him later, by the way. What became of old Goose-rump?”
“He went to hell on the Barbary coast.”
“What are you doing?”
“Running rum up to Entre las Montanas.”
“It must be exciting work,” Sard said.
“It’s the finest life on earth. That dam’ terrier is an ambitious swine, but even he can’t spoil it. I count all my life just wasted till I began rousting rum. I’ve been at it seven years.”
“You’ve got a ticket, haven’t you?”
“Ticket, hell. Yes, I’ve got a dam’ fine second mate’s ticket, for which I could get four pounds a month and find my own tobacco. Ticket, hell! Watch and watch, when it isn’t all hands, boxing another man’s yards around. Ticket, hell! At this job I’m pretty well my own master; sleep when I like, get drunk when I like, and see my girl when I like.”
“Are you married?”
“Married, hell.”
“Isn’t it a rather dangerous life? Things may have been slack, but they’re tautening up. I hear that Colonel Mackenzie is going to put an end to rum-running. The penalties are severe.”
“We’ve a stronger combination than some think.”
“I don’t doubt it. The combination is strengthening against you. Two torpedo-boats on the coast would stop you.”
“We’d buy them.”
“Not with Colonel Mackenzie.”
“We’d get them, then.”
“How?”
“Put a stick of dynamite in the crankshaft.”
“Where do you go with this train of rum?”
“We go right up the mountains with it, till we reach the jumping-off place.”
“Do you never have trouble?”
“We have had a certain amount of trouble. There was trouble on the Mesa Line one time. But trouble, hell. You lie still and get your strength.”
“Heya, you, Doug!”
“Heya yourself.”
As the train jolted up towards the mines, along the bank of the river, a man came catlike towards them, from truck to truck, from the direction of the engine. He hung on somehow by his eyelids, and jangled as he came with hook-pots of hot cazuela slung round his neck. From time to time jolts of the truck spilt the hot broth on to his knees. When this happened, he cursed in Spanish. He it was who called Douglas from his talk.
“Cazuela,” he said. “Catch a hold. And here’s a hook-pot for the other fella.”
“Got any pan?”
“Mucho pan.”
Douglas leaned out, took the hook-pots with the care of one well used to guarding an allowance, gave a pot to Sard, and then salved the bread, which was supplied in yellow hot buns split and filled with sausage and peppers.
“That’s more homelike,” Doug said. “Heave round and eat: it will give you strength.”
Sard did not want to eat: the thought of the hot dough made him faint, but he sipped the broth and felt the better for it. He was warm again, there in the shelter of the car under the tarpaulins. With the warmth came a queer feeling in his skin, all altered by the poisons which had afflicted it, that the norther was going to be a bad one. He felt too weak to look at the heaven, but he said to Doug:
“Is it very black to the northward?”
“A bit dark.”
“Much lightning?”
“Yes. It has been flashing a little.”
“We’re in for a bad norther.”
“We’re in a norther,” Doug answered. “But we’re running out of it. But you’d better sleep. I’ll cant these slickers from under you, for the hands will want them. Now, sleep.”
Sard was so weary that he was almost asleep while Doug routed out the slicker rolls. He felt Doug heave a tarpaulin over him and smelt the overpowering sweet rum-like smell of the Lucky Hit being chewed in Doug’s mouth; he noticed the stars going out under trails of smoke; then the world ceased for him while the train jolted on.
He woke, or half woke, when the stopping of the train sent all the rear trucks one after the other with a bumping clank into the buffers of the truck in front of it. He did not know where he was and did not much care, being as weak and drowsy as one full of a drug. He noticed that Doug was gone, but heard, as it were far away, Doug’s voice saying something to someone about uncoupling the last three trucks. In his drowse he heard men swearing at chains which clanked: then he heard men pushing the truck in which he was a little further down the line. He heard their “O heave! O heave!” and “That’s got her. There she goes!” and the sound of their feet padding beside the rails. He heard someone say: “That’s you. Leave them there,” and then the motion stopped and the feet moved away. The wind seemed to have risen during the passage from the coast, but he could not care. He was not awake enough to care much about anything. He heard in his drowse the noise of engines, steam was being let off, a shunting engine went swiftly by, and above these noises there came at intervals a dull grunting thud or stamp from some machine or pump not far from the railway. Men moved to and fro, and voices called, there was a noise of running water and of wind. Afterwards, it seemed to him that while he was at this place, wherever it was, he heard men running. The thought came into his brain that he was at Tloatlucan, where he would presently get a shift-train to Las Palomas, but he felt that all that would be presently, mañana, not then, not anything like then. He lapsed into sleep again.
In his usual health, he would have been up and out striding on foot to Las Palomas, without waiting for any shift-train, but he was only the wreck of himself, all weak and weary. Perhaps a salvo of guns, a blast of trumpets, or the noise of all three masts going over the side, would have failed to rouse him then. He slept, as sailors say, “dead-oh.” He would not have wakened for less than a kick in the face.
Presently, however, he roused again at the battering clank of a train of trucks backing in upon the truck in which he was lying. He roused enough to hear voices and the clank of chain, with the thought that they were doing something with a steam winch, he could not care what. He drowsed off at once into the deeps of sleep into which none but harvesters and sailors ever sink. In his sleep, he became conscious of vibration, as though he were in a berth above the engines in some small steamer under way. It was soothing, or at least not unpleasant, to his mood of feverish drowsiness, to be shaken thus, perhaps he slept the better for it.
For some hours he slept. Gradually, as he came to himself, he found himself listening in his sleep for the bell, so that he might know how much of his watch remained to him. The bell did not strike, though he hearkened after it. He felt cold, and was aware that sprays were hitting the side of the deck-housecontinually.
Then, punctually at the “one bell,” at the moment at which he would have been called, he roused up wide awake with the knowledge that something was very wrong indeed.
He was accustomed to turning out and being on deck within a minute. He roused up now with one heave, weak, stiff and aching as he was, ready for action. He came to himself, remembering all the events of the night before, and at once took stock of things. He was in the truck, which was jolting along a bad line at about fifteen miles an hour. It was daylight, yet all dim with storm. The hitting on the truck which he had taken to be sprays on the deckhouse was sand, pelting in from the desert. The floor of the truck was covered with a fine layer of sand. A pelt of sand flew over the side of the car continually. As he stood shakily up to see where he was, the sand blew into his eyes, hair and mouth, down his neck, into his clothes, into his lungs. It came on a cold wind in little dry particular pellets. Hard snow coming in a gale has a similar power of annoying and confusing; this had a power beyond snow, of maddening. It stung like hard snow, but after it had stung it did not melt, it remained as grit where it had fallen, in the clothes, the eyes or the mouth.
He could see, perhaps, sixty yards to windward and a hundred yards to leeward of his truck, which seemed to be somewhere towards the end of a goods or freight train. The train was going along a waterless land which was sometimes a scrub of chaparral and mezquite and sometimes a desert, with cactus and prickly pear. Over all this expanse the accursed norther came down like a devil pelting sand, never in any great volume, but in a drift which never ceased. Sard noticed that the side of the next truck to his had already had a kind of polish given to it by the never-ceasing pitting of the pellets.
He knew that the “norther” being as cold as it was, must be blowing from within three points of north. This gave him the train’s course as roughly north-west. The sort of glow in the sky, which marked where the sun would be, as well as his own sense of time, always very acute, showed him that it was about eight o’clock in the morning. Reckoning that the train had picked up his trucks between three and four o’clock, he judged that he had been carried some sixty or seventy miles into the desert of Tloatlucan, and that the next stop would be fifty miles further on, in the foothills beyond the desert, where the railway began its climb into the Sierra.
Doug and his brother smugglers had of course gone with their freight on the other fork of the railway far to the west. Looking about in the sand on the floor of the truck, Sard found a hook-pot half full of cold cazuela and two of the small loaves stuffed with sausage. He was glad of these, in spite of their being gritty with sand. When he had breakfasted, he felt more like himself.
As he could neither stop the train nor get out of it he went on with it, wondering how soon he would be able to return. And as he wondered, he took stock of his equipment. He was dressed in a pair of old serge trousers belonging to Doug, a pair of slippers which had been cut down from bluchers, an old flannel shirt, as clean and soft as lint, a blue dungaree jacket, blackened with stains of dried oil, plainly the gift of one of the launch-men, and a tam-o’-shanter working-cap, wanting the topknot, which had once belonged to a sailor in the French battleshipSuffren. He had his own belt and knife, an old blue handkerchief printed with the legend “A present from Bradford,” a paper collar, one sock and one stocking. His own wet clothes, which he had put in the truck, were gone. His watch, his money, penknife, key-ring and “pocket tool chest,” a little appliance containing a marler, screwdriver, nipper, spanner and corkscrew, were all gone. He had put them into the pocket of the dungaree jacket, when he had changed his clothes, but they were gone. He had nothing but the clothes in which he stood, his sheath-knife and a little brown pocket-case which contained a few pulpy visiting cards, some stamps ruined by the wet, a few matches, and three crushed xicale flowers.
He had lost his job, his passage, his clothes, his possessions, his identity. He was being carried across the desert into the heart of a continent. What he was to do when he left the train, in order to get back to Las Palomas, was not very clear.
“After all,” he said, “there will be someone at the way-station who will let me have a passage back in a truck. When once I am there, I can get along.”
The events of the night before seemed to belong to a past life or to another man. He rose up again to take stock of his whereabouts and to see if he could see a train-hand. He saw the trucks forging and jolting ahead. Beyond the trucks, both in front and behind, were the high, closed, yellow, wooden Occidental freight-cars, marked with capacity marks in dull red. The train lurched and jangled along the desert in a ceaseless pelt of sand. The sand was merciless and pitiless, a little and a little and a little. The chaparral bowed a little to it, the cactus seemed to put back its ears. Everything was dry with it, gritty, cracked, burnished. The persistence of its small annoyance told on all things. As the dropping of water wears the stone, so the pelting of the sand wore the spirit. Sard remembered what he had heard of these northers: how the children are kept from school lest they should mutiny, and how men, maddened by that insistent patting, will strike and kill. The thought crossed his mind that if he had to walk back along the track in that pelting, that annoyance of the tiny hands pat-pat-patting on face and hands would be soon unbearable. Even there, sheltered in the truck, it came pat-pat-patting, flying like a little dry-shot over the sides, filtering up through cracks in the bottom, and dancing there, like grains in a spring, till they were flung away. From time to time the dry, quiet pat-pat-patting deepened to a noise of water, with a roaring and a swish, into which the train joggled, lurched, jangled and clanked, and at last seemed to tread down and over-roar.