“Oh, we are come into the glory,Oh, shout aloud: salvation.By the cross of the stranger, glorySalvation shake the whole world: joy.Oh, the blessed Virgin give us glory,Glory, oh, fire off the pistols, brothers,Little sisters set the bells ringing.Burst something, brothers, oh salvation.O ho ho ho ho hallelujah,Hallelujah, hallelujah, ho.”
“Oh, we are come into the glory,Oh, shout aloud: salvation.By the cross of the stranger, glorySalvation shake the whole world: joy.Oh, the blessed Virgin give us glory,Glory, oh, fire off the pistols, brothers,Little sisters set the bells ringing.Burst something, brothers, oh salvation.O ho ho ho ho hallelujah,Hallelujah, hallelujah, ho.”
“Oh, we are come into the glory,Oh, shout aloud: salvation.By the cross of the stranger, glorySalvation shake the whole world: joy.Oh, the blessed Virgin give us glory,Glory, oh, fire off the pistols, brothers,Little sisters set the bells ringing.Burst something, brothers, oh salvation.O ho ho ho ho hallelujah,Hallelujah, hallelujah, ho.”
“Oh, we are come into the glory,
Oh, shout aloud: salvation.
By the cross of the stranger, glory
Salvation shake the whole world: joy.
Oh, the blessed Virgin give us glory,
Glory, oh, fire off the pistols, brothers,
Little sisters set the bells ringing.
Burst something, brothers, oh salvation.
O ho ho ho ho hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah, ho.”
They were no longer of this world, nor conscious of it: they went dancing back to the kitchen, with hallelujahs. A jar or pot boiled over as they entered, with an overwhelming wash of sputter and crackle. A flood of smoke shot up from the mess with a smell of burnt dinner. Ramón seized the offending pot and cast it on the floor, singing:
“Never mind the little things, happy Ramón,The little things of this world, happy Ramón,For you have seen the joyous, happy Ramón,Lady in the blue skirt, happy Ramón.But, oh, the Lord, the saucepan burn my fingers!”
“Never mind the little things, happy Ramón,The little things of this world, happy Ramón,For you have seen the joyous, happy Ramón,Lady in the blue skirt, happy Ramón.But, oh, the Lord, the saucepan burn my fingers!”
“Never mind the little things, happy Ramón,The little things of this world, happy Ramón,For you have seen the joyous, happy Ramón,Lady in the blue skirt, happy Ramón.But, oh, the Lord, the saucepan burn my fingers!”
“Never mind the little things, happy Ramón,
The little things of this world, happy Ramón,
For you have seen the joyous, happy Ramón,
Lady in the blue skirt, happy Ramón.
But, oh, the Lord, the saucepan burn my fingers!”
Hilary and Margaret watched the dance from the kitchen door. They had heard that miraculous visitations were frequent along the coast and that when they came they filled the lives of those visited for two days.
“So they have seen the Virgin,” Margaret said. “They will need us no more to-night. We had better take a few moreNacionesand go off to Paco’s.”
“Yes, indeed.”
As he stooped to gather up the pile of newspapers, he heard distinctly a noise of whistling within the closed sitting-room at the end of the passage. A man was whistling “Charmante Gabrielle” in the stumbling way of a man who does not sing well. Margaret heard it at the same time. The suddenness and nearness of it startled them both.
“Somebody in the sitting-room,” Hilary said.
As it happened, the sudden startling of the two made an impression on the two ecstatics in the kitchen. Ramón came out of his trance and became, in part, the old butler of daily life.
“Why,” he said, “I believe, Señor, that I never told you that a gentleman has called to see you. He is in the sitting-room.”
“What gentleman? Who is he?”
“A very old Lutheran padre, Señor. He came to see you a few minutes before you came in.”
“A Lutheran padre? What is his name?”
But here Eusebia interrupted with a cry. She had been rocking herself to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her apron over her face; now she sprang up in excitement.
“Oh, be joyful,” she cried, “for the holy footsteps. Wherever the blessed feet tread, there come the lovely, lovely flowers. Oh, I feel them grow! Oh, I feel the angels. Catch old Tia, Ramón; give me your hand for the Lord’s sake; we will be caught right up to the throne together. Oh, I hear the harps! Oh, I hear the singing!”
“I hear them,” Ramón cried, taking his wife’s hand. “They sing tirra-lu, tirra-lu, just like the lovely band.”
“Come on to the throne, Tio Ramón.”“I am coming, Tia Eusebia.”“There shines the Lord.”“O, the little glittering feet!”“I see the long white beard of Father Abraham.”“Oh, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.”“Halle-halle-halle-hallelujah,The beauty of the Lord is joy.”
“Come on to the throne, Tio Ramón.”“I am coming, Tia Eusebia.”“There shines the Lord.”“O, the little glittering feet!”“I see the long white beard of Father Abraham.”“Oh, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.”“Halle-halle-halle-hallelujah,The beauty of the Lord is joy.”
“Come on to the throne, Tio Ramón.”“I am coming, Tia Eusebia.”“There shines the Lord.”“O, the little glittering feet!”“I see the long white beard of Father Abraham.”“Oh, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.”“Halle-halle-halle-hallelujah,The beauty of the Lord is joy.”
“Come on to the throne, Tio Ramón.”
“I am coming, Tia Eusebia.”
“There shines the Lord.”
“O, the little glittering feet!”
“I see the long white beard of Father Abraham.”
“Oh, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.”
“Halle-halle-halle-hallelujah,
The beauty of the Lord is joy.”
“A Lutheran padre?” Hilary said. “That sounds harmless. The only Lutheran padre here is old Skinner, who runs the Sailors’ Mission. He is a very fine old man. Shall we go to him, or leave him and go to Paco’s?”
“If it be Mr. Skinner, we must go to him.”
At this moment the whistling stopped, the door of the sitting-room opened, and an old man, with a long white beard, moved slowly out to them with the shuffling shamble of old age. He spoke with the voice of an old, educated man, from one of the United States.
“Is this Miss Kingsborough?” he was saying. “Is that you, Mr. Kingsborough? I was not quite sure, but thought that I heard voices in the hall, besides your servants. You will forgive my coming in like this, to wait for you. I see you don’t remember me, Mr. Kingsborough; my name is Brown, Abner Brown. You have forgotten that you met me at the Club the other night?”
“I’m afraid I have.”
“Well, well, I was one of a crowd; quite a lot went there. We were talking after dinner that night about international crime prevention.”
“Yes, I remember the talk,” Hilary said. “So you were there?”
“I was there with Colonel Mackenzie.”
“It was my first night at the Club,” Hilary said. “I was introduced to so many. You must forgive my not remembering you. Margaret, will you let me introduce Mr. Brown: my sister.”
Margaret bowed.
“While you talk,” she said, “I will see about some food. The household is a little disorganised.” There was not much light in the hall, but she looked hard at Mr. Brown and went into the kitchen.
“Come into the sitting-room, Mr. Brown,” Hilary said. “What can I do for you?”
“I am an American minister, Mr. Kingsborough,” Mr. Brown replied, as they walked back to the sitting-room together. “I am here, engaged in getting information about this rum-running. I was in Colonel Mackenzie’s office an hour or two ago, when Richard Shullocker, the club porter, came in, to say that you had been threatened, or warned or told of some risk or other. No, I don’t ask you if that be so or no, nor for any details, but I just felt it to be my duty just to look in, Mr. Kingsborough, and I will tell you why. You have a man up the road here, a young fellow, of the name of Paco; Enrique Paco, to whom I owed a small sum for horse-hire. I was driving out to pay this to Paco, and I said to Colonel Mackenzie and to Richard Shullocker, ‘I will tell you what I will do,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble to send out guardias or vigilantes to them. No,’ I said, ‘for I have to go out to Paco’s on a matter of business, and coming back from Paco’s, as I pass the gate of their house, Los Tamales, or whatever it may be, I will stop my horse-car or caleche, or country-surrey, and offer Mr. Kingsborough a ride into town.’ So now, Mr. Kingsborough, there it is, I have paid Paco; and my surrey, though not exactly a White Surrey, is at the gates of your house, at your service, ready to drive you and your sister in to Las Palomas. You could have rooms at the hotel, for I took occasion to ask that at the hotel, before I came out to Paco’s. And I guess you would both feel easier in your minds away from this place, miles out in the forest.”
“Thank you, Mr. Brown,” Hilary said; “we are most grateful for your thought and for the offer. We were on our way to Paco’s to hire his buggy to take us to Las Palomas, as we thought it best not to neglect the warning.”
“That is sure sound sense, Mr. Kingsborough, near a seaport town like this. And if you will excuse me the observation, Mr. Kingsborough, your servants, though I guess you hired them along with the house, are not quite in the frame of mind to repel boarders.”
“They are not.”
“May I ask if it was the Adventist, from San Mateo Obispo, got them into their present state?”
“It was not the Adventist; but they saw a miraculous appearance in the clearing not far from here.”
“Then it will be three days before anyone gets an hour’s work from them. Oil in the coffee, chilis in the bread, eggs in the shoes—oh, don’t I know these soul’s awakenings.”
Something in the man’s tone jarred Hilary. He looked a most benign old man, with a fresh colour, bright eyes and long white silky beard. He had the appearance of Father Christmas. Yet this last remark, about the spiritual excitements of others, struck Hilary as hard and vulgar. He looked at Mr. Brown and decided that here was something hard and ugly about the man’s mouth, for all that holy white hair.
“Now, Mr. Kingsborough,” Mr. Brown continued, “I don’t want even to seem to be in a hurry or to be pressing you. Miss Kingsborough spoke of preparing some food. Well: food is the best remedy yet found for hunger; I’ll say nothing against food. But meanwhile, can’t I be moving some bags or things for you out to the surrey? Miss Kingsborough will want a warm wrap: the breeze is setting in; and though it is only a mile or two into town, it is going to be cold.”
“Oh, thank you,” Hilary said, “it won’t take a minute to get all that we need.”
“No, surely,” Mr. Brown answered. “No, indeed.”
He sat down away from the light, and dusted his hat with his handkerchief. A restraint came upon the conversation. Mr. Brown felt the chill and tried to remove it.
“It is this rum-running which leads to all the crime along this part of the coast,” he said, “This republic is a very nice republic: I don’t say it isn’t, but it’s as slack as one of these republics always is so long after any revolution. The public services are away down. Then that old sinner, the Dictator, Don Manuel, out in Santa Barbara, sees a chance to profit. He can make rum, in his sugar-plantations, which have every natural power just beside them, water power as well as fuel, and all just near the sea, for not any more than five or seven cents a gallon. In a good year I guess he might get it out as low as even three cents for a gallon. Mind you, Mr. Kingsborough, I’m speaking of a low grade of rum. Santa Barbara can’t compete with Jamaica, nor with Santa Cruz; but it is rum; it scratches as it glides; as they say. Well, now, say, he makes it at as high as seven cents. He can get it aboard his big power lighters and land it on the coast here at twenty cents the gallon. Then, what with mule teams and palm-oil and what is known here as the underground railway, he can get it up as far as the mines in Palo Seco for half a dollar. Now in Palo Seco he has no opposition, Mr. Kingsborough. No other rum has a geographical chance of coming in. Well, now, in Palo Seco, where I have been, studying this question, he can sell that rum and has been selling that rum for close upon two years, to gold-miners, who care not one jack-straw what they pay nor what they drink, as long as it scratches as it glides. He sells that rum, which cost him, say, seven cents to make and forty-three cents to transport, for from eight to twelve American dollars: yes, sir, two or three dollars the quart. I’ve seen him do it, or at least his agents. Now that is a good business, Mr. Kingsborough, even allowing for losses, thefts and the squaring of the vicious circle.”
“What is that?” Hilary asked.
“The vicious circle is this Occidental police, Mr. Kingsborough. They say a perfect circle can’t be squared; but this circle I guess has got a kink in the loop half the way around.”
“Colonel Mackenzie is a good man.”
“Why, sure, Mr. Kingsborough, he’s a wonderful man, but he’s not been in the police yet a quarter of a year. Still, that’s the business he’s up against. It’s a business run by old fox Don Manuel, in Santa Barbara, with all the resources of a thriving state to back him. But we are going to have it stopped.”
“In your investigations into this rum-running, Mr. Brown, did you ever hear of or come across a man called Hirsch, nicknamed Sagrado or Sagrado B., now living in Santa Barbara?”
“Sagrado, you say?”
“Yes, the Holy One.”
“I guess you’ve got the name wrong, Mr. Kingsborough; there’s no holy one in Santa Barbara. I guess you mean Sangrado, a blood-letter. They have a whole alphabet of them. But Hirsch and Sagrado, no.”
“I was warned against that man.”
“I guess it will be some nickname or gang-name. May I ask who it was who warned you, Mr. Kingsborough, against this man Hirsch?”
“A stranger.”
“An Occidental?”
“No. English.”
“Of Las Palomas?”
“No.”
“Would you recognise him again?”
“Yes.”
“Would you describe him to me?”
“No, Mr. Brown.”
“Quite right, Mr. Kingsborough; quite, quite right. I was wrong to suggest it. But I would put all thought of there being any Holy One in this business right out of your mind. That is probably a nickname for their headquarters: very likely Don Manuel himself, who prides himself on his religion. No, sir; you’ve been warned (as I see it) because they think you may be a spy. Anyway without you here they could land stuff on this beach. They have warned several people off the track, up and down the coast, in the last eighteen months. They all had the sense to take the hint. All except one, I think; one did not. He was a good while ago, before you came here. Prince, his name was, Jacob Galls Prince; lived on the coast like you, up at San Agostino.”
“What happened to him?”
“He neglected the warning, so then they took steps. The first time he had friends with him who drove them away, but the second time they gave him his pass all right.”
Hilary thought that Mr. Brown’s tone, when he spoke of the giving of the pass, was suddenly savage. He noticed that Mr. Brown’s mouth tightened as he spoke, as though a lid were being snapped down.
“Were the murderers caught?”
“No, sir, there’s a lot too much money behind these fellows.”
“Are you in the United States Police, Mr. Brown?”
“No, sir, I’m just plain Abner Brown, from Brownstead, Massachuzzits. I’m a minister of Brownstead Light-Arising Church. I’m in this rum-investigation business, because I hate rum like hell. Yes, Mr. Kingsborough, like hell. Maybe you’ll think that strong talk for a minister of a church that goes dead against any language that’s anyways got a kick. But I guess it’s not too strong. Mr. Kingsborough, I believe that if rum were wiped clean off of this planet this planet would just rise up three hundred per cent.”
“Where would it rise to, Mr. Brown?”
“Rise to the Light, Mr. Kingsborough.”
“What do you think it would do then, Mr. Brown?”
“It would enter into a new plane of being, Mr. Kingsborough, which lies just beyond anything we have going now. I guess the prophets saw it: a new world: gee, I guess it’s worth working to try to bring. All your dividends and worldly cares just dumped where they belong, and all your spiritual being three hundred per cent pure light.”
“It sounds delightful,” Hilary said.
“It would be all it sounds.”
“Yes, I daresay,” Hilary said. “But would it?”
“Perhaps you are not an optimist, Mr. Kingsborough? However, there it is. Meanwhile could you let me know the right time?”
“Two minutes to eight.”
“Is your time correct?”
“Correct by the noon gun.”
“Two minutes to eight. I must be slow. I make it no more than three and a half minutes to eight.” He busied himself with his watch.
Margaret from the kitchen gave a call of “Oh, Hilary!” Hilary opened the door and called back:
“Do you want me, Margarita?”
“Could you come here just a moment?”
Hilary excused himself to Mr. Brown and hurried along the corridor to the kitchen, which was in some confusion. Dark smoke wreathed about the ceiling: the table was still set with some preparations for a meal: there were several broken plates, dishes, sprigs of herbs and limes upon the floor, but the negroes were gone. The place stank of burnt oil; great greasy smuts floated on the air.
“They’ve gone again,” Margaret said. “They have been beyond all bounds. Oh, Hilary, I have had a marvellous time with them. At first they kept going into paroxysms of prayer and giggles, and dropping things on the floor. Then they started behaving like raging lunatics; they upset the oil on to the fire. They almost had the house on fire, but I have managed to beat it out. They danced while I was doing this, so I told them to go out to see their appearance again, which they have done.”
“Are you burnt?”
“No.”
“I wish I had known that you were having this trouble.”
“I’m very glad you didn’t. What does this Mr. Brown want?”
“To drive us into Las Palomas. We had better go. He has a carriage waiting at the gate.”
“What do you make of him?”
“He’s a minister in the Light-Arising Church.”
“Do you think he is?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I didn’t like his mouth.”
“I don’t take to his mouth, myself,” Hilary said. “But he isn’t a minister in the sense that a priest is a priest. He’s a commercial traveller in an intellectual light co., with a bonus of thirty cents a soul.”
“Did you meet him at the Club?”
“I can’t remember: I may have: I met so many that night. But I think you may put all suspicion of him out of your mind, Pearl, because he comes, really, from Colonel Mackenzie’s office. That Harker man told me that word had been sent to Colonel Mackenzie, about our being threatened. Well, this fellow Brown was in Mackenzie’s office when the message came. It seems that he knows the Pacos and was coming here to see them anyhow, and so he volunteered to bring us back with him to Las Palomas. He arrived in a buggy (at least he calls it a surrey) while we were down by the creek.”
“I am all ready to start for Las Palomas,” she said. “I ran upstairs, after you had gone into the room with him, to pack a few things for both of us. They are in handbags on the ledge in the hall. The only question is, shall we not get out here and go alone? I don’t quite like this Mr. Brown. I think he’s a bad man. His mouth snaps to just like a trap.”
“Well, he is old and alone, and I think that he must certainly have been at Colonel Mackenzie’s.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is that which weighs with me. I suppose it is all right; but I’m uneasy to-night: so many unusual things are happening. Oh, whatever is that?”
“That” was the running down of the weights in the old English kitchen clock which had been Tia Eusebia’s pride for many years. With a sudden jarring, chirring and dropping noise, these weights dropped themselves, a little door opened, a little man appeared, who jerked himself forward and backward eight times as the bell behind him struck the hour.
“Eight o’clock. What a shock it gave me.”
“We can’t stay here. This place is on our nerves to-night: we had better go. And I should say, go with this man in his surrey buggy, or whatever it is he calls it. It is two or three lonely miles to town: if he will drive us, all the better.”
“I do not feel at ease about it, Hilary. I have misgivings.”
“I haven’t, because I know now that Mackenzie will be looking out for us. It is all right. Come along.”
“Right. Come along.”
“Leave the lamp for Ramón.”
They left the lamp burning, but turned it down: then they went into the corridor and closed the kitchen door behind them.
The first thing which they noticed on coming into the hall was a draught of air (blowing in from the sitting-room) which was causing the lamp to smoke.
“I say,” Hilary said, “I shut the sitting-room door when I came out. Mr. Brown must have opened it. The draught is from there.”
“He must have opened the window too,” Margaret said. “This is the breeze.”
“The window was shut when I left the room.”
“Perhaps it blew open,” Margaret said. “It sometimes does if the catch be not pushed home.”
“The catch was pushed home.”
Hilary picked up the two little handbags from the ledge, thinking that this Mr. Brown had a pretty cool cheek to go opening people’s windows and making their lamps smoke. He walked along to the sitting-room door, carrying the bags; Margaret was just behind him. He pushed the door open and came well into the room. A gush of air blew past him on the instant, for the window opening into the verandah was wide open. “Come in, quick, and close the door, Margarita,” he said. “This window’s wide open.” Margarita closed the door to save the hall lamp; they were thus both within the room.
Hilary saw at a glance that Mr. Brown had not only opened the window, but had moved the lamp to the corner near the fire-place. “He has a pretty cool cheek,” he thought again.
Mr. Brown was standing near the open window, facing them, with his hands behind his back.
“Come in, Mr. Kingsborough,” Mr. Brown said. “I see you have done your packing, so we can start right away.”
Hilary felt quickly that there was something wrong and deadly. There was that rasp in Mr. Brown’s voice and that snap upon his mouth; and besides these things, he stood still, and there was something in his last five words which sounded like a signal, and thirty years seemed to fall from him.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, “we can start right away.” His hands came up from behind him with a flash and a bang: something very hot struck Hilary in the chest with a pang and a thud which came together: a little, slow bluish smoke twisted out of Mr. Brown’s pistol: Hilary found that he was on the floor. He heard Margarita cry aloud. He tried to rise, but the place rocked so and surged: there was a sort of tight red wave which got into his eyes. Then a lot of people seemed to dance out of the night into the room; they seemed to dance all over him; they seemed to be dancing with Margarita, and there was a smell of a cigar which was pushed red-hot into his cheek. After that, he knew that he climbed to his feet, and that somebody grinned in his face; then the water seemed to fall all off the mill-wheel into a peacelike sleep or death.
Everything seemed to be over when he came to himself again. The dancing was done. Men were going out of the room by the verandah window: they were carrying a great package which moaned and seemed to be moving, much as a fly, trussed up by a spider, will move. He felt a weight in his chest and found it difficult to understand what was happening. Then he realised that the moaning package was Margarita, who was being carried away by all these men.
“All right, Margarita,” he said, “I will set you free.” The words which he spoke did not seem to be these, because the men laughed. He said, “I’ll teach you to laugh,” and tried to rise from the floor, but the floor rocked all round him, so that he had to lie down again. He shut his eyes to make the floor steady, but it did not become steady. He tried to steady it with his hands, then it started spinning.
Presently he managed to sit up. A man was looking down upon him; the man’s hat was cocked on one side, he was smoking the stub of a cigar and staring at him.
“Mr. Bloody Kingsborough,” the man said. “My dear old college pal, dammit. You’ve no memory of me. You haven’t been introduced to me. I’m one of the vulgar lower orders, dammit. Sumecta, my name is. I’m a fellaw, dammit, a rude vulgar low fellaw. And I’m going to cork your eyebrows with my cigar.”
He leaped upon Hilary and rubbed the burning cigar along his eyebrows. Hilary noticed that the man wore earrings and had a wide mouth lacking one tooth. The man straddled across him and slapped his cheeks and puffed cigar-smoke into his face.
“I’m Sumecta,” he said. “And you’ve got no London police force here. You can’t order the horrid man away. Your sister’s going to Mr. Holy B, and nothing that you can do can stop us. You won’t see your sister again, because the Chief wants her. The Chief wants her.”
Another man appeared behind Sumecta: he was a little elderly man with an inflamed face and a dirty rag about his neck, covering a boil.
“Don’t try to stop your sister going,” he said, “or you’ll line an elmwood shell with name engraved. We’ll just tample his dags, Sumecta, and then frolly the dusty.”
They emptied the cigarette-box and took a drink or two. The little man began to sing a song:
“Travelling with the lady,You’d best pull down the blind,Make it cosy and shady . . .”
“Travelling with the lady,You’d best pull down the blind,Make it cosy and shady . . .”
“Travelling with the lady,You’d best pull down the blind,Make it cosy and shady . . .”
“Travelling with the lady,
You’d best pull down the blind,
Make it cosy and shady . . .”
He came round the table close to Hilary and danced a little breakdown, with two of Hilary’s cigarettes in his mouth. “O I’m a lady, a Hottentot lady,” he sang. “One-time-piecee lubly gal, O.”
“I’ll singe my college pal’s lips,” Sumecta said. “Baillon de cigare chaud.” He straddled down over Hilary, sucked his cigar to a glow and prepared to burn his victim’s lips.
“Cut that out, Sumecta,” Mr. Brown said, at the window. “Come on here, the two of you. The train’s just going.” Mr. Brown’s beard was sticking out of his pocket, but his white eyebrows were still in place.
The two men followed Mr. Brown through the window, which they closed behind them. Mr. Brown opened it again an instant later, to take a last look round the room. Mr. Brown seemed to have no further interest in Hilary, he neither spoke to him nor looked at him. Hilary to him had been simply something to shove aside and leave. After they had gone, Hilary heard footsteps and voices; presently the light went out; he was alone in the dark. A bat flew about the room after insects; presently it knocked down a tumbler which dripped water on to the floor for a long, long time.
Tio Ramón and his wife did not see the miraculous appearance again, though they waited in the clearing, near the stone, till after eleven. They then walked to Las Palomas, and heard a midnight office at a monastery, then stayed on praying in side-chapels of the church till after dawn. After some more prayer and the offering of all that was precious in their apparel to the image in a side-chapel, they walked and partly danced to Los Xicales. They did not enter the house even then, for they had to compare notes with Lotta at the lodge.
At eight in the stormy morning, they found Hilary lying in a chair in the sitting-room, in pain and fever. In the wild weather Tio Ramón summoned Paco, who summoned Enrique, who sent Lotta to find Miguel, who shook his head, and thought it better to call Enobbio. Enobbio was an elderly Italian with a clear wit; he at once rode in to Las Palomas and called a doctor and Colonel Mackenzie. By midday Los Xicales was thronged by detectives, who looked mysterious and took a lot of measurements and shook their heads. Their Indian trackers said that there were seven men concerned in the raid and that two were “little Indians”; that five, including the Indians, had come from the beach, while the other two had driven from the north, in a buggy, which had waited at the gate for some time.
After the raid (the trackers said) the men had carried Margarita to this buggy and had driven her away. Lotta, Lotta’s children, Ramón and Eusebia, all admitted that they had seen the buggy go past, full of men, and that they had heard a woman among them crying for help, but they had not known that it was more than a joke. They had not noticed where the buggy went after it passed them; but this the trackers explained. It drove out of the forest by the city road, turned to the left, and crossed the savannah to the beach. Near the beach it stopped, five of the men carried Margarita to the water; there, presumably, they found a boat and put to sea. The two men remaining in the buggy drove off to Las Palomas, where all trace of them disappeared.
The rain was heavy before noon: the tracks were rained out.
No further trace or track was found. No more evidence was forthcoming. Enobbio had seen a stranger looking for a lost bicycle; but this stranger was proven to have been Sard Harker, mate of thePathfinder, which had now sailed. Acting on Enobbio’s evidence, the police recovered Richard Shullocker’s bicycle, but found no trace of Margarita. Hilary’s story of the events was not very clear. He could repeat only what he could remember of Sard’s story, which he had not much wished to hear, and of Abner Brown’s story, which had not told him much. He maintained that the abductors were mixed up with Santa Barbara and with the boxing hall, the Circo Romano.
Ben Hordano was questioned, but his movements on the night of the raid were well known: he had been drunk by six, disorderly by seven, and in jail by eight. One curious thing, which none could explain, was how the man Abner Brown knew that Richard Shullocker had warned Colonel Mackenzie of an intended raid at Los Xicales. The warning had been given privately, in person: no one could possibly have overheard it. Paco and his son Enrique denied having had any dealings (horse-hire or other) with anyone outside their hamlet. This denial was backed by sufficient proof.
Colonel Mackenzie, acting on Richard’s warning, had sent two patrols to Los Xicales during the night of the raid, but as one had gone at midnight and the other at four in the morning, and both had shrunk from the weather, neither had seen anything suspicious.
In those days there was no direct cable to Santa Barbara. A message thither had to be cabled to the Florida station, thence to Punto Poniente, thence to Tres Dientes, and thence on. The Santa Barbara police declared that they knew of no one known as Mr. B. or Sagrado B., and that if the raid had been carried out by one of the liquor gangs, which seemed possible, those liquor gangs were composed of Occidentales, not of men from the State of Santa Barbara.
Hilary had been wounded in the wall of the chest by an American revolver bullet. He was in bed with his wound for thirteen days. On the fourteenth day he heard the final reports of the police, that they did not know where his sister was, and that they had no clue whatsoever to her abductors. The story had by this time reached the American and English newspapers. A question was asked in Parliament, whether it were true that an Englishwoman had been abducted by brigands in Las Palomas, and whether Her Majesty’s Ministers were making such representations, etc., etc., as would, etc. The Ministers replied that they had heard the report, and that they had every confidence in Her Majesty’s representatives on the spot and in the police of Las Palomas.
Colonel Mackenzie, who was newly in charge of that police, had less confidence. He told Hilary privately that many in the Occidental police force were bribed by the liquor gangs, and that in this case they were determined not to help. Hilary asked whether it would be any use to look for Margarita in Santa Barbara. “Do you yourself think that she will be there?” he asked.
“No, I don’t, Mr. Kingsborough.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “we know that the raiders were not Occidentales, and that they took her away by sea. The men at the boxing-match said that the raid was planned by a Santa Barbara leader, who had some grudge against us. My sister said that there was one man with a grudge against her. Why should not an international ruffian of that sort, speaking all tongues, establish himself at Santa Barbara, work with the liquor-smugglers, and use his gangs to gratify his grudge when he heard of our presence here?”
“That is a theory, Mr. Kingsborough; but remember, that it is very unlikely that members of a gang would talk in public of their gang’s headquarters without any disguise whatsoever. If they spoke of Santa Barbara, be sure that they meant some other place. Santa Barbara is a big place, however, with seven hundred miles of coast. However, I had a flimsy from Santa Barbara this morning; here it is.”
“Quite impossible Kingsborough lady landed here during past fortnight. Paris Surete report the magician Hirsch committed suicide Monte Carlo, 1894.”
“Good God! then, what do you suppose?”
“That we may put aside this Santa Barbara theory as untenable. Let us waste no further time on it.”
“What other theory have you? Who would have taken my sister? What motive could anyone have?”
“I do not know who took your sister, Mr. Kingsborough, but I am working and hoping to find out. The motive is obvious to anyone who has had the honour to see your sister: she is a very beautiful woman. That was the motive, as I read the case.”
“And where do you suppose she is?”
“I hope to find out and restore her.”
“You mean that she has been shipped to some damned tolerated house?”
“Mr. Kingsborough, it is no good thinking thoughts like those: that way madness lies. I believe that we shall find your sister wherever she may be.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “I believe that she is in Santa Barbara, in spite of all your beliefs, and I shall go there to look for her. At least, if I go there, I shall be following the only clue there is. And I shall see that mate of thePathfinderand get descriptions from him of those men at the boxing-match.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Kingsborough, thePathfinderhas not yet arrived at Santa Barbara.”
“What; not in a fortnight, running dead to leeward?”
“No.”
“She’s overdue?”
“No, not yet; but making a bad passage.”
“Has she been met with?”
“No. She has not been reported.”
“Is there a single thing in this,” Hilary cried, “which doesn’t go dead, dead against us? I’ll see whether the Dictator of Santa Barbara is as helpless as a bribed bureaucracy.”
He was unjust to Colonel Mackenzie, but then he was young, very fond of Margarita, shaken by his wound, and new to reality of any kind.
Colonel Mackenzie was sorry for him, but sorrier for a very lovely woman in the hands of ruffians.
* * * * *
When Sardfound that his bicycle was gone, he thought that the lodge-keepers had taken it within the lodge. He knocked at the lodge door to ask; getting no answer, he looked within: the lodge was empty, the bicycle was not there.
It was dim in that track through the forest: Sard struck a match to see what marks were on the ground. The earth was still moist from the rains. Two or three matches showed him that someone with long feet had taken two strides out of the road, wheeled the bicycle into the road and had then ridden away upon it. The tyre tracks were firmly printed on the road; the thief was no doubt heavy as well as tall.
Sard had never been heard to swear, either on deck or aloft; he did not swear now. He thought, “I am well paid, for leaving it out of my sight in a place like this. But he cannot be more than five minutes ahead of me, and may be only a minute. If I run, I may catch him.”
He took two more matches, carefully examined the tracks and made sure, mainly from the length of the feet, that the thief was a tall negro, wearing boots which needed soling, and that he was riding, not very fast, into the forest, away from Las Palomas. “I’ll catch him,” he said, “but I’ll have to be quick.”
He set off at a slow lope along the forest road, thinking that when he reached Enobbio’s, if he had not caught the thief, he would have to hire a horse, and gallop back to his duty. “I’m running it very close,” he said, “but I’ll do it yet. If the worst comes to the worst, the police-boat would run me on board, even if she’s out as far as the Rip-Raps. I’ve got half an hour of possible time; if I ride by the beach, thirty-five minutes.”
He stopped at the bridge to have another look at the tracks: they were still there, leading on towards Enobbio’s; so he set off again, at a quicker pace, through the forest, which was evil all about him all the time. He made good way to the clearing, which shone from the forge fire. A lamp was lit in the inn. Enobbio sat with his wife at a table there, eating frijoles from earthen platters and drinking wine and water from cups of horn. Sard hailed them at the door:
“Good-evening, señora and señor. May I intrude upon your peace to ask: Have you seen anyone ride by on a bicycle?”
“Yes, señor,” Enobbio’s wife said, “a negro rode by two minutes past.”
“It was more than two minutes, my heart,” Enobbio said, “for to my mind it cannot have been since we sat down to supper.”
“Desire of my eyes,” his wife said, “it was when you went to the forge for the bread. When I say two minutes, I do not tie myself to a second, but to two minutes, which the world knows to be a space of time. It was a space of time since the negro rode past. I am not one, as it is well known, like these giglots and inglesas and ayankiadas, whom one sees in Las Palomas, may the Lord have vengeance on them, shameless as they are, even as Jezebel, always painting and purple-powdering and making their eyes to shine with poison; I am not one, I say, like these, to spend my time in noticing each male who passes and in endeavouring to ensnare his soul. No, my heart’s affection, Enobbio mio, when a male passes, I thank God that God has created women differently, in such a way that they can regard such passing with indifference. Therefore, when a negro passes or when a white man passes, be he an Emperor of Rome or decked even as a pumper in the fire-brigade, I can control myself, I can think calmly, even as St. Lawrence upon the gridiron, of other things. Therefore, when this negro who so suddenly excites your jealousy, rode past, I did not hasten to the clock of San Agostino, nor yet to my confessor, nor to the Four Liars of Las Palomas, where four clocks together tell each a different time to a different road, to make sure of the precise instant at which he passed. For to me, as one more dowered with knowledge would have known, a negro is but a negro and a passing a passing.”
“This, O affection of my life,” Enobbio said, “no man dare question. But, señor, permit us to request you to eat and drink, reclining at your ease upon this chair, so that you may enquire concerning this negro more as becomes you.”
“Thank you, indeed,” Sard said, “would that I might; but I am pressed both by spur and quirt, and cannot stay. May I ask the señora whether she noticed in which direction the negro rode, when it fortuned that he had the honour to pass her?”
“In which direction, joy of my hearth,” Enobbio asked, “did this negro proceed?”
“Sun of my worldly life,” his wife replied, “it is said that, at the allotting of talents, the Padre Eterno gave to woman such talents as man would not sensibly feel the need of. Even as, in equipping her with flesh, He allotted to her that rib which man could not use and has not missed, so in endowing her with mental faculties, which some call reason and others soul, He chose those qualities of acuteness which man, though made loutish by their lack, could not, when he had them, use. Thus it comes about that the wife blushes for her husband in conversation before strangers. For, behold, had not the Padre Eterno deprived you of such acuteness, you would have perceived that sitting as I have been sitting, facing the open door, which we have not yet to keep closed (as is our custom, señor, later in the season, on account of the flies) I could indeed perceive the approach of the negro upon the bicycle, coming from the forest towards me, but not without showing indecent curiosity could I tell into which direction he proceeded; nor, as I have said, should I, in any case, have observed, since as it is well known, a road is as a brook, in which one regards what passes, but not what is past.”
“Señor,” Enobbio said, “beyond the forge there are three ways; to the sea, to the north and to the mines. The negro must have ridden on one of these. Let us examine the tracks, since there is light enough. Is it possible that you should desire to stay this negro?”
“He has stolen the bicycle, which I need.”
“Let us, then, be swift,” Enobbio said.
The tracks at the road-meet led away to the left, into the forest.
“You see,” Enobbio said, “it goes there, this wheel-track, to the direction of the mines. You see, Camilla mia, this thief will be one of the negroes of Los Jardinillos.”
“They are indeed a thievish company,” Camilla said. “But if the señor be swift, he will confound the thief in the moment of his exultation.”
“How far is it to Los Jardinillos?” Sard asked.
“It cannot take long if taken swiftly,” Camilla said.
“My love,” Enobbio said, “it is the half of a league, or two kilometres. It would take the señor twenty minutes or more, only to the clearing.”
“It may well be, my earthly consolation,” Camilla said, “that if the señor should walk, or indeed trot, to Los Jardinillos, his progress would not be swifter than a walk or trot. But as my remark suggested, comrade of my earthly trial, if the señor should proceed swiftly, his arrival would be likewise swift.”
“Can you lend me a bicycle or horse,” Sard asked, “so that I can go in chase?”
“Alas, we have neither.”
“Is there anyone here who might lend either?”
“There is no one here with horse or bicycle. I have, by the blessing of God, a small ass; but God has afflicted him with worms, doubtless lest I should become proud.”
“Are there many negroes in Los Jardinillos?”
“There are fifty, señor, and no whites. Doubtless you know him who has taken your bicycle.”
“I do not,” Sard said: “I am following so that I may know him.”
Enobbio did not answer this. Sard noticed that the husband and wife looked at each other, with a look as though the bottom had fallen out of their comprehension.
“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last.
“Assuredly,” Camilla answered. They looked at each other again. As in a Latin exercise, Sard was conscious of a good many words “understood.”
“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last, in a different tone, “the señor will carry weapons?”
“I am a sailor,” Sard answered. “A sailor has always ten weapons and a knife.”
He saw in a flash that he had no chance of retaking the bicycle that night by himself.
“I am a sailor,” he continued. “The bicycle was to take me to the quay, where I must be in all speed. Has anyone here a cart or conveyance to take me there, for money paid, or had I better run?”
“Paco has a horse, which is in Las Palomas this day,” Enobbio said. “His son, Enrique, has a mule.”
“Enrique is indeed by God’s mercy the owner of a mule,” Camilla said, “but on this day he is with the mule, packing stores to the railway siding for the miners.”
“A railway siding,” Sard said. “They might run me to Las Palomas in a truck.”
“The rail does not run to Las Palomas, señor. It runs from the mines of Tloatlucan to the seashore here, where barges come for the copper.”
“Then I had better run,” Sard said.
“Run,” Enobbio said, “run to Las Palomas?”
“Yes.”
“It is a league and a half.”
“Even so. I must be on board my ship within half an hour.”
“But you could not run more than a league. Stay, señor, let me consult my wife. Tell me, my heart, is not Miguel stabling horses each night in the old huts near the salt-pans?”
“Who knows what Miguel does? His doings, being modernist, do not concern us, but rather stir our horror.”
“It is true, my life, that Miguel errs in mind, but not, my delight, in heart. In his heart he may be the instrument of good. Listen, señor. In less than one kilometre north-east from this are salt-pans near the beach, with huts. Run thither by this track to the right. It is likely that at this time you will find Miguel there with the horses of his occupation. He, for money if not for love, will lend you a horse and ride with you, so that he may lead it back. Say that I, Enobbio, sent you, knowing the goodness of his nature. Thus will you reach your ship in time, and in no other way can you do this.”
“You say that it is onlylikelythat he will be there.”
“He will be there, señor,” Camilla said; “he is always there at this hour with his horses: never does he fail.”
“You may count quite certainly on his being there and on his lending you a horse,” Enobbio said. “I, who am Enobbio, will serve you as to bread and lodging for a year, without reward, should he not be there.”
“He will lend assuredly,” Camilla said, “to any señor such as the señor whose need is as the señor’s.”
Sard felt in her speech the insincerity of one anxious to be rid of him: he made up his mind at once.
“Can I reach the seashore by this path to the right?”
“Assuredly, señor. Miguel and the salt-pans are on the seashore.”
“I mean, can I come at once to the seashore?”
“Assuredly, señor.”
“It is not a good path, save where men have gone,” Enobbio said. “In fact, it is no path, but what is opposite to path.”
“I must risk that.”
Sard thanked them both for their kindness and apologised for having disturbed them at their supper. He set off at a fast trot along the path towards the salt-pans. He meant to burst through the thickets to the seashore and then run straight along the beach as hard as he could put foot to it, to the water-front.
“It is a full three miles,” he thought, “even by the beach; but with luck I can be there by half-past. The old man will give me some grace, and the police-boat may be there; but I’ll do it somehow.”
In a couple of hundred yards from the clearing, he put his arm before his eyes and thrust into the bushes towards the sea. He judged that the sea beach would be about half a mile from him and that he would save at least three-quarters of a mile by going by the beach. The thought of passing right under the walls of Los Xicales helped in his decision.
He burst through his thicket into a sort of meadow of tussocks, over which he made good time. Beyond the tussocks the woods began again, shutting out all his bearings, but by taking a departure he kept a straight course, as he thought, from the point where he left the track. Just inside the woods, when he came into them, was a tangle of thorn along which he had to run for a hundred yards before he could find a way through. He came out on to a soft patch, which had harder ground beneath it, though all was covered with the wreck of thorns which the bog had killed. He floundered across it to the other side, which was a rise of red earth covered with pines. He skirted the rise to a point where it was split by a gully, which barred his progress.
Not more than a year or two before, some rains heavier than usual had made all the upper ground a bog. This from its weight had at last torn through the bank beyond it and gone in a torrent of mud and water into a ravine below. All along the sides of this ravine were the rampikes of trees, killed by the stuff brought down, but still standing, sometimes with half their roots laid bare. Not less than fifty of these trees had already been picked and sucked to their bones by the ravin of tropical life. They now stood like a valley of bones come to life. They stood up white in the dusk, waving their arms. Many of them glistened with decay or with vermin shining from decay. On many of them fungus had seized with a greed that seemed to have purpose and plan. One quite near to Sard was a tree grey with death, barkless to the tips and swathed with a sprawl of fungus that was scarlet at its fringes. It was as though the fungus had sucked out all the blood from its victim, except these last drops.
Many trees had fallen into the ruin of the bog and now lay there, submerged or half submerged in mud. The antlers of their branches were white. Rank things had sprouted out and hoisted themselves up by these prongs. One bulk or stump of a tree which Sard saw in the swamp was covered with xicales, all forward, in profuse blossom, a mass of blue and white, crawled on by gorged flies.
Flowers like enormous flags shot up on firm fleshy stalks among the morass. Some, which were very tall, had whitish blossoms as big as faces, splotched with darkness like faces; these seemed to lean forward and mow at Sard; they were like ghosts, lean and intense, but very beautiful.
All that place of death, thick as death, sickly with the forms and the smell of death, with that evil, low, over-abundant life which brings death, had a sort of weltering chuckle as though it exulted in its rottenness. The water in its pockets droned to puddle below, there was a suck of noise like that of a beast trying to get out, but sinking back.
All this danger barred Sard’s path in the worst possible way: it shut him from the beach and from the port: it ran north-west and south-east across his course.
“I’ll get across,” he said: “I’m not going to lose my passage. Now that I have come this way, I will go this way.”
The light was off the place and the sun was down, but it was daylight still. He marked a place in the ravine, below the xicales flowers, where he thought there would be a fairly easy crossing. A fallen tree lay sloped there as a safe approach or step into a pool of water which might be forded or swum. Beyond the pool two great trees lay locked together; they were barkless, like the rest, yet so placed in the mud that Sard judged that he could cross by them, or almost cross, to the further side of the gully. The last two or three yards beyond the trees looked dangerous, but not bad enough to stop him. It was quicker to cross than to go round, whichever way he tried it.
He had no time nor very good light for survey. He made up his mind and went at it within thirty seconds, quoting his sea-proverb of “the sooner the quicker.” Blood-sucking water-midges were already at him in a swarm: the drone of their horns called up their reserves: a faint smoke of them was rising. He jumped like a cat from tussock to tussock, scrambled over the roots of the tree on to the trunk, steadied himself, and then balanced like a tight-rope walker down the bole to the water. He saw the whiteness of the pilled boughs in the ink of that pond stretching deep down. He was amazed at the depth of the water. “Better deep water than mud,” he said; so in he went with a thrust which carried him across.
He edged along the nearer of the fallen trees, caught a good hold of a bough, felt bottom with his feet, got one foot against the bole, gave a great heave, and was instantly backwards in the water with the broken bough on top of him. He came up with his eyes full of touchwood, and felt something run along his head. He brushed it off into the water and caught his tree again: something ran along his hand; he brushed it off, fearing a scorpion; but instantly other things ran in its place. He shook them off and backed away, till he saw that the things were wood-eating beetles, whose colony he had disturbed. “A scorpion would be a bore,” he said.
He trod water while he looked for a better place. He swam in, caught a bough, swung himself up, and instantly went backwards into the water for the second time with the bough in his hand.
He came up, somewhat troubled, for a third attempt. This time he dodged in under the boughs, laid hold of the body of the tree and hove his weight on to it.
With a sort of flounder of deliberation, the tree moved sideways to his weight, then tilted suddenly as the heavy branches gave leverage, then it rolled over into deeper water, carrying Sard down.
Sard had learned in a hard school to look out, to know when to let go and when to stand-from-under. He went down with the tree as it rolled, right under water, so that he never saw his hat again, but he kept above the tree and emerged when it settled. Very cautiously he moved along its bulk, as soon as it was firm, with the feeling that he was riding a beast whose ways were not to be trusted. He felt it waver in front of him and settle behind him as the submerged boughs went deeper into the mud. There came a sudden crack and drop, as these gave way: the tree soused him to his waist and then steadied. It was just then that he felt vicious pricking bites in his legs as the leeches began.
He stood upon the bole and had “a look-see.” The second tree, which was to be his gang-plank to the shore, was now further away than it had been. He could no longer step to it from where he was. “A little more swimming,” he muttered: so in he went to be done with it.
The second tree was steady in the mud, but as he neared it, he saw that the yellow-tail bees had a nest in the bole. Away from the nest and dangling from the boughs, there were strings of withered poison-ivy, which he knew both by sight and from experience. He swam inshore as far as he could to avoid these dangers, then scrambled up upon the bole and slipped along it to the roots. A few bees came round him, to make sure, but did not attack; he dodged the poison-plant. He scrambled up the gabion of roots, all tangled and earthed, to look beyond at the banks. As he stood up, the cloud of water-midges settled down upon him: ants came from earth of the roots to bite him: the leeches of the pond bit and sucked.
He had not liked the look of the banks from the other side, but he liked their look much less from near at hand. They were nine feet from him beyond a mud pond of unknown depth. They rose rather steeply from this mud pond, in a bulge of wet, red, oozing mud, which shone and trickled. A few blades of grass grew out of this mud, but not enough to give it firmness. The mass looked to be bulging out to burst. A rain-storm more, or the weight of a body trying to climb it, would bring it all down like an avalanche out of which there would be no rising. The bank of mud was eight or nine feet high: above it there was a shoot of reeds sheathed in pale grey dangling and shining husks. “If I can get hold of the reeds,” he said, “I’ll be out of this in half a minute; if I can’t, I may never be heard of again. That mud looks evil; but the longer I look, the less I shall see. There’s a star already.”
Looking up from where he was, he saw a blackness of trees above and beyond the reeds. Against the blackness, the pale fluffy flowers of the reeds stood out like gun sponges, with white moths, as big as humming birds, wavering over them: above them a star appeared in a sky changing from greenish to violet. It grew rapidly darker: or, rather, objects became less distinct and the pilled branches more uncanny.
“Come along,” he said. He clambered over the roots, hung on by a root which stood his test, and edged out along submerged roots till he touched the mud. It was soft, bulging, full of evil, with neither foot nor hand-hold. “If that should come down,” he said, “I shall be gulfed, like that man in theVenturerwho got under the wheat-tip in the hold and wasn’t heard of till we got the hatches off in Hamburg five months later. But with this difference: I shall never be heard of again. The way to get up that mud is to drive in stakes to climb by.”
There were many branches ready to hand. He tore a stake and thrust it into the mud. It sank in for three feet as easily as if the mud were something softer than butter. With a sobbing noise, followed by a gurgle, some reddish water, rapidly turning to something black, iridescent and semi-solid, exuded from about it. Sard drove in a second stake above it, with a third above that: at each thrust the bank quaked and water or liquid mud exuded: there was also an ominous sag in the body of the bank. “Neck or nothing,” Sard said. He drove in a fourth stake and instantly swung himself up on to the gabion or fan of the roots by which he held. He was only just in time. The fourth stake broke the last strength of the barrier: it gave outwards: a shoot of water spurted it outwards: a swirl of running mud followed the shoot: then it all came down with a crash, which picked up Sard’s tree, canted it out to mid-gully, and dashed it against a dam of other trees, on to which Sard was pitched.
He picked himself up and slipped along a tree bole to a hand-hold by which he swung himself up to safety, just as the dam gave way. He was back almost at his starting-point, wet to the skin, mud to the thigh, bitten, sucked and foiled. The long pent-up seepings of the rains poured down from the burst bank before him. “I’m well out of that,” he thought, “but I’m going to cross this gully; for it is the short way and I still have time.”
He trotted up the gully for a few yards, wondering at the increase in the darkness since he stood there before. It had seemed to him that his crossing had only taken a minute, yet here it was sensibly darker; there were now five stars in the heaven where before was one. He broke a stake and sounded some of the going. It was like sounding the vale of Siddim.
Then lifting his eyes from the mud, he started, for there in the gully was the mound covered with xicale flowers. “There,” he said, “I will try it there. I believe that the xicale flowers are a sign. I shall get across there.”
At his feet, almost as though prepared for him, was a heap of what had once been a tree, but was now a sodden log easy to break into lengths. He picked up pieces of this and laid or tossed them one by one as steps before him in the marsh; then very swiftly, holding his stick as a balancing pole, he ran across them to the stump covered by the xicales. To his astonishment, it proved not to be a tree at all, but a rock or sarsen, thrusting from a patch of firm earth in which the xicales were rooted. He edged round it carefully to the gully beyond.
The first two steps from the xicales were over his shoes; his third and fourth, being parts of the same flounder, took him over his knees, but brought him to the pikes of a tree on which he could tread. Branches of this tree served as treads to his going for the next six yards, but beyond those six yards lay ten yards of bog, which he could not clearly distinguish nor test. Here, for the first time, he began to wish that he had not tried his short cut across country to the beach. “All the same,” he said, “if I can get to the beach in five minutes, or even ten, I’ll do it yet.”
He took a swift survey of the bog ahead of him: it did not look easy; but he always held that it is better to be in a difficulty than expecting to be in one. He took a note of possible tussocks in a line, drew a breath, and set off in a hop, skip and jump.
The hop took him to firmish tussock which squelched, but gave him some support for his skip. The skip took him to something very soft with a log about a foot beneath the surface, from which he made his jump. The jump took him into what had looked like grass, but which proved to be weed-covered water: he went into it over his head. He came out again, thinking fiercely of thePathfinder’sfo’c’sle-head and of that iron rail over which he ought at that moment to be peering. The soft green grasses gave before him; they stroked his face gently, they closed in at the back of his neck, he felt them caress his body and tremble along his legs and lay enfoldments about his feet. When he thrust out his hands to swim, they sped from him, for they were frail grass and he a strong man; but before his stroke was made, they were back again: he felt them at his chest; they touched his chin: they rose from the water and touched his face. He swam six strokes and then felt for bottom. There was bottom at five feet: he touched it, but it went over his foot; he wrenched the foot clear, but it went over his other foot; he wrenched that foot clear, and, lo, all those soft little frail grasses seemed to come all about him with a whisper, and they were as heavy as lead and as strong as sailmaker’s twine.
“Whatever I do,” Sard said, “I must not fight these things, but go where they will let me go.”
He was not afraid, but very cautious, knowing the power of his enemy. He had once known a boy who had been drowned by waterweed. “He was caught deep down, where they are strong: at the surface they yield.”
When he yielded they also yielded; he floated clear; the little soft grasses, fine as flax, unclasped their hands, they whispered about him and let him go. Little moths floated about the water and a bird somewhere in the thickets made a plaintive cry. All that Sard could see was what the bull-frog sees: gleams of water, little starry blossoms on the grasses, ripples like steel, bubbles.
He turned upon his back and swam thus for a few strokes till he slid on to the mud in which the grasses were thickly rooted. He gripped handfuls of the grass and pulled himself forward, but they came from the mud into his hand. When he pressed his foot down, the mud went over it like softness’ self. Great bubbles gurgled up and burst about him with the smell of decay.
Sard reached forward till he could lay a hand upon something ahead which looked like earth. It was firmer than anything there; he drew himself to it, and pressed himself up upon it. It gave beneath him, being very sponge, but it did not collapse, it did not try to swallow him.
“Not much further,” Sard said. “A few feet more, and I will be there.”
He said these words aloud, for the comfort of hearing a voice. Instantly, from in front of him, came a splash and scutter: things were swimming away from something dark in the water; he could not see what the things were nor the thing from which they swam. “They are snakes,” he said, “and here is one of them coming at me.”
He struck at it. To his great relief, it gave a squeal and dived from him. “Rats,” he said. “They have a carcase here. I’ll get out of this.”
He saw that the dark thing was a body. His first thought was that it was a man, but groping forward, he was reassured: it was one of the half-wild razor-back hogs which the negroes allowed to stray in the woods there. It had been drowned there some hours before and now the rats were at it.
Sard had his hand upon it as he floundered forward, when the texture of the stuff beneath his feet changed suddenly from mush to something vicious. His feet, sinking into it, were held: the stuff closed over his feet and fastened them: he sank lower down: the stuff caught him round the ankles. He knew on the instant that he had met his match: he was gripped to his death as the hog had been. If he did not get out of that quag in the next minute, while he had his strength, the rats would eat him there before dawn.
He put both hands on the hog’s back, pressing it down and himself up. He dragged his right foot up, then slipped sideways to his left, giving himself a nasty wrench. The bubbles gurgled up all about him: they popped with a flapping noise. He hove again, pressing with all his power on the carcase; he got his right knee on to the body, and urged it down into the mud; his left foot came out of the mud; he stood up, balancing, on the corpse, for the next leap.
“If I get into a place like that,” he said, “without anybody to give me a purchase, I shall be posted as missing.”
He peered ahead; but there was nothing to guide him; all before him was bog: there were pools of water, juttings of mud and grasses growing out of water.
“If I step into that,” he said, “I may never step back to this pig nor forward to the bank, but be caught right there. My best chance is a standing leap, to get as near to the bank as may be.”
He measured it roughly as nine feet to hand-hold on the bank. He gathered himself for it, swinging his arms, above the unstable corpse which squeezed out the bubbles. He launched himself violently forward into a mess which gulfed him to the waist. He urged himself through this for a foot of two, felt it drag him quietly back, made a greater effort, got a purchase on some grasses, which helped him for another two feet; then he floundered, trampling on stuff which gave beneath him yet came back folding over him. He thrust forward, but his feet were fast; he fell on his face, the stuff surged up over his back. He kept his head up and thrust with his hands and wrenched with his feet. All the fat, weltering, bubbling bog seemed to chuckle at having got him. The bubbles burst in his face: they were as big as inverted saucers and came from the heart of corruption.
“I’m not going to die in a place like this,” he said. “Come out of it, port main; up with her!”
The old rallying cry timed his efforts: it was like one man standing the scrimmage of a pack of forwards in football. The bog gave an ounch of release, like a beast smacking its lips. He got hold of something on the bank. It had prickles on it, but it was solid and grew in dryness. Then as he put his weight upon it, it came out of the ground by the roots: a little avalanche of earth and stones came over his head, blinding him for the moment with grit in his eyes.