ARGONAUT STORIES
Argonaut Stories
J. LONDON, F. NORRIS, S. E. WHITE, J. F. WILSON, W. C. MORROW,
G. OVERTON, W. O. McGEEHAN, W. H. IRWIN, K. THOMPSON, M. ROBERTS,
B. O’NEILL, E. MUNSON, C. F. EMBREE, C. ALFRED, G. C. TERRY,
N. KOUNS, NEIL GILLESPIE, B. W. SINCLAIR, C. W. DOYLE,
C. D. WILLARD, R. D. MILNE, G. BONNER.
Selected from the Argonaut
Jerome Hart, Editor
SAN FRANCISCO: PAYOT, UPHAM & COMPANY
Agents for Pacific Coast 1906
Copyright, 1906
By the Argonaut Publishing Company
THE ARGONAUT PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO
CONTENTS
JACK LONDON: Moon-Face
FRANK NORRIS: A Caged Lion
GWENDOLEN OVERTON: The Race Bond
WILLIAM C. MORROW: The Rajah’s Nemesis
BUCKEY O’NEILL: The Man-Hunters’ Reward
GERALDINE BONNER: Conscience Money
CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD: The Jack-Pot
C. W. DOYLE: The Seats of Judgment
STEWART EDWARD WHITE: A Double Shot
ROBERT DUNCAN MILNE: Ten Thousand Years in Ice
W. O. McGEEHAN: Leaves on the River Pasig
CHARLES F. EMBREE: The Great Euchre Boom
MARIA ROBERTS: The Sorcery of Asenath
E. MUNSON: Old “Hard Luck”
WILL H. IRWIN: The Dotted Trail
C. ALFRED: The White Grave
GIBERT CUNYNGHAM TERRY: The Jewels of Bendita
NATHAN C. KOUNS: The Man-Dog
JOHN F. WILSON: The Amateur Revolutionist
NEIL GILLESPIE: The Blood of a Comrade
BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR: Under Flying Hoofs
KATHLEEN THOMPSON: The Colonel and “The Lady”
MOON FACE
By Jack London
John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the
kind--cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the
cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy,
equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very
centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that
is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes,
and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps
my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it
over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
But be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had
done me what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from
it, in any such sense. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so
elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in
words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives.
For the first time we see a certain individual, one whom the very
instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first
moment of meeting, we say: “I do not like that man.” Why do we not
like him? And we do not know why; we only know that we do not. We
have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse.
What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He
was always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right,
curse him! Ah! how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy!
Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to
laugh myself--before I met John Claverhouse.
But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under
the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of
me, and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking
or sleeping it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my
heart-strings and the very fibres of my being like an enormous rasp.
At break of day it came whooping across the fields to spoil my
pleasant morning reverie. Under the aching noon-day glare, when the
green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the
forest, and all nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! ho!”
rose up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight,
from the lonely cross-roads where he turned from town into his own
place, came his plaguy cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and
make me toss about and clench my nails into my palms.
I went forth privily in the night-time and turned his cattle into
his fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove
them out again. “It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties
are not to be blamed for straying into fatter pastures.”
He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid brute, part deerhound
and part bloodhound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight
to him, and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one
day, when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled
for him with arsenic and beefsteak. It made positively no impression
on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever,
and his face as much like the full moon as it always had been.
Then I set fire to his hay-stacks and his barn. But the next
morning, being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.
“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.
“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. “I just dote
on trout, you know.”
Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up
in his hay-stacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in
the face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in
quest of a mess of trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them! Had
gloom but rested, no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his
bovine countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or
had he removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I
could have forgiven him for existing. But, no, he grew only more
cheerful under misfortune.
I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.
“I fight you? Why?” he asked, slowly. And then he laughed. “You are
so funny! Ho! ho! You’ll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho!
ho!”
What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I
hated him! Then there was that name--Claverhouse! What a name!
Wasn’t it absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, _why_ Claverhouse?
Again and again I asked myself that question. I should not have
minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones--but _Claverhouse_! I leave it to
you. Repeat it to yourself--Claverhouse. Just listen to the
ridiculous sound of it--Claverhouse! Should a man live with such a
name? I ask of you. “No,” you say. And “No” said I.
But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn
destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd,
close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage
transferred to him. I did not appear, but through this agent I
forced the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than
the law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and
chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took
it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me
with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading
in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.
“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest tike, that youngster of
mine! Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down
playing by the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in
and splashed him. ‘Oh, papa!’ he cried; ‘a great big puddle flewed
up and hit me.’”
He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.
“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said, shortly, and I know my face
went sour.
He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light,
glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone
soft and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh--“Ha! ha!
That’s funny! You don’t see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn’t
see it! Why, look here. You know, a puddle----”
But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could
stand it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse
him! The earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I
could hear his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky.
Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to
kill John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such a fashion
that I should not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate
bungling, and I hate brutality. To me there is something repugnant
in merely striking a man with one’s naked fist--faugh! it is
sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse (O that
name!) did not appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it
neatly and artistically, but also in such manner that not the
slightest possible suspicion could be directed against me.
To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound and
strenuous incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I
bought a water-spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole
attention to her training. Had any one spied upon me, they would
have remarked that this training consisted entirely of one
thing--_retrieving_. I taught the dog, which I called “Bellona,” to
fetch sticks I threw into the water, and not only to fetch, but to
fetch at once, without mouthing or playing with them. The point was
that she was to stop for nothing, but to deliver the stick in all
haste. I made a practice of running away and leaving her to chase
me, with the stick in her mouth, till she caught me. She was a
bright animal, and took to the game with such eagerness that I was
soon content.
After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to
John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a
little weakness of his, and of a little private and civic sinning of
which he was regularly and inveterately guilty.
“No,” he said, when I placed the end of the rope to which she was
tied in his hand. “No, you don’t mean it.” And his mouth opened
wide, and he grinned all over his damnable moon-face.
“I--I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t like me,” he explained.
“Wasn’t it funny for me to make such a mistake?” And at the thought
he held his sides with laughter.
“What is her name?” he managed to ask between paroxysms.
“Bellona,” I said.
“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name!”
I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out
between them: “She was the wife of Mars, you know.”
Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he
exploded with: “Well, I guess she’s a widow now! Oh! Ho! ho! E! he!
he! Ho!” he whooped after me, and I turned and fled swiftly away
over the hill.
The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him: “You go
away Monday, don’t you?”
He nodded his head and grinned.
“Then you won’t have another chance to get a mess of those trout you
just ‘dote’ on.”
But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t know,” he chuckled.
“I’m going up to-morrow to try pretty hard.”
Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house
literally hugging myself with rapture.
Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and
Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut
out by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the
top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the
crest along for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the
hills, where the little river ramped down out of a gorge, and
stopped for breath in a large and placid rock-bound pool. That was
the spot! I sat down on the croup of the mountain, where I could see
all that occurred, and lighted my pipe.
Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the
bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in
high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper
chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and
sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat
candle. But I knew it to be a stick of “giant”; for such was his
method of catching trout. He dynamited them. He attached the fuse by
wrapping the “giant” tightly in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited
the fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool.
Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have
shrieked aloud for very joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without
avail. He pelted her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on
till she got the stick of “giant” in her mouth, when she whirled
about and headed for shore. Then, for the first time, he realized
his danger, and started to run. As foreseen and planned by me, she
made the bank and took out after him. Oh, I tell you, it was great!
As I have said, the pool lay in a sort of amphitheatre. Above and
below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around
and around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse and
Bellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man could
run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, and
gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she
leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of
smoke, and terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the
instant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the
ground.
“Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the
verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the
neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse.
There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing to be ashamed of in the
whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his
infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat
moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my
night’s sleep deep.
A CAGED LION
By Frank Norris
In front of the entrance a “spieler” stood on a starch-box and beat
upon a piece of tin with a stick, and we weakly succumbed to his
frenzied appeals and went inside. We did this, I am sure, partly to
please the “spieler,” who would have been dreadfully disappointed if
we had not done so, but partly, too, to please Toppan, who was
always interested in the great beasts and liked to watch them.
It is possible that you may remember Toppan as the man who married
Victoria Boyden, and, in so doing, thrust his greatness from him and
became a bank-clerk instead of an explorer. After he married, he
came to be quite ashamed of what he had done in Thibet and Africa
and other unknown corners of the earth, and, after a while, very
seldom spoke of that part of his life at all; or, when he did, it
was only to allude to it as a passing boyish fancy, altogether
foolish and silly, like calf-love and early attempts at poetry.
“I used to think I was going to set the world on fire at one time,”
he said once; “I suppose every young fellow has some such ideas. I
only made an ass of myself, and I’m glad I’m well out of it.
Victoria saved me from that.”
But this was long afterward. He died hard, and sometimes he would
have moments of strength in his weakness, just as before he had
given up his career during a moment of weakness in his strength.
During the first years after he had given up his career, he thought
he was content with the way things had come to be; but it was not
so, and now and then the old feeling, the love of the old life, the
old ambition, would be stirred into activity again by some sight, or
sound, or episode in the conventional life around him. A chance
paragraph in a newspaper, a sight of the Arizona deserts of sage and
cactus, a momentary panic on a ferry-boat, sometimes even fine music
or a great poem would wake the better part of him to the desire of
doing great things. At such times the longing grew big and troublous
within him to cut loose from it all, and get back to those places of
the earth where there were neither months nor years, and where the
days of the week had no names; where he could feel unknown winds
blowing against his face and unnamed mountains rising beneath his
feet; where he could see great sandy, stony stretches of desert with
hot, blue shadows, and plains of salt, and thickets of jungle-grass,
broken only by the lairs of beasts and the paths the steinbok make
when they go down to water.
The most trifling thing would recall all this to him just as a
couple of notes have recalled to you whole arias and overtures. But
with Toppan it was as though one had recalled the arias and the
overtures, and then was not allowed to sing them.
We went into the arena and sat down. The ring in the middle was
fenced in by a great, circular iron cage. The tiers of seats rose
around this, a band was playing in a box over the entrance, and the
whole interior was lighted by an electric globe slung over the
middle of the cage. Inside a brown bear--to me less suggestive of a
wild animal than of lap-robes and furriers’ signs--was dancing
sleepily and allowing himself to be prodded by a person whose
celluloid standing-collar showed white at the neck above the green
of his Tyrolese costume. The bear was mangy, and his steel muzzle
had chafed him, and Toppan said he was corrupted of moth and rust
alike, and the audience applauded but feebly when he and his keeper
withdrew.
After this we had a clown-elephant, dressed in a bib and tucker and
vast baggy breeches--like those of a particularly big French
_Turco_--who had lunch with his keeper, and rang the bell and drank
his wine and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief like a bed-quilt,
and pulled the chair from underneath his companion, seeming to be
amused at it all with a strange sort of suppressed elephantine
mirth.
And then, after they had both made their bow and gone out, in
bounded and tumbled the dogs, barking and grinning all over, jumping
up on their stools and benches, wriggling and pushing one another
about, giggling and excited like so many kindergarten children on a
show day. I am sure they enjoyed their performance as much as the
audience did, for they never had to be told what to do, and seemed
only too eager for their turn to come. The best of it all was that
they were quite unconscious of the audience, and appeared to do
their tricks for the sake of the tricks themselves, and not for the
applause which followed them. And, then, after the usual programme
of wicker cylinders, hoops, and balls was over, they all rushed off
amid a furious scrattling of paws and filliping of tails and heels.
While this was going on, we had been hearing from time to time a
great sound, half-whine, half-rumbling guttural cough, that came
from somewhere behind the exit from the cage. It was repeated at
rapidly decreasing intervals, and grew lower in pitch until it ended
in a short bass grunt. It sounded cruel and menacing, and when at
its full volume the wood of the benches under us thrilled and
vibrated.
There was a little pause in the programme while the arena was
cleared and new and much larger and heavier paraphernalia were set
about, and a gentleman with well-groomed hair and a very shiny hat
entered and announced “the world’s greatest lion-tamer.” Then he
went away and the tamer came in and stood expectantly by the side of
the entrance. There was another short wait and the band struck a
long minor chord.
And then they came in, one after the other, with long, crouching,
lurching strides, not all good-humoredly, like the dogs or the
elephant, or even the bear, but with low-hanging heads, surly,
watchful, their eyes gleaming with the rage and hate that burned in
their hearts, and that they dared not vent. Their loose, yellow
hides rolled and rippled over the great muscles as they moved, and
the breath coming from their hot, half-open mouths turned to steam
as it struck the air.
A huge, blue-painted see-saw was dragged out to the centre, and the
tamer made a sharp sound of command. Slowly, and with twitching
tails, two of them obeyed, and, clambering upon the balancing-board,
swung up and down, while the music played a see-saw waltz. And all
the while their great eyes flamed with the detestation of the thing,
and their black upper lips curled away from their long fangs in
protest of this hourly renewed humiliation and degradation.
And one of the others, while waiting his turn to be whipped and
bullied, sat up on his haunches and faced us and looked far away
beyond us over the heads of the audience--over the continent and
ocean, as it were--as though he saw something in that quarter that
made him forget his present surroundings.
“You grand old brute,” muttered Toppan; and then he said: “Do you
know what you would see if you were to look into his eyes now? You
would see Africa, and unnamed mountains, and great stony stretches
of desert, with hot blue shadows, and plains of salt, and lairs in
the jungle-grass, and lurking places near the paths the steinbok
make when they go down to water. But now he’s hampered and
caged--_is_ there anything worse than a caged lion?--and kept from
the life he loves and was made for”--just here the tamer spoke
sharply to him, and his eyes and crest drooped--“and ruled over,”
concluded Toppan, “by some one who is not so great as he, who has
spoiled what was best in him, and has turned his powers to trivial,
resultless uses--some one weaker than he, yet stronger. Ah, well,
old brute, it was yours once, we will remember that.”
They wheeled out a clumsy velocipede built expressly for him, and,
while the lash whistled and snapped about him, the conquered king
heaved himself upon it and went around and around the ring, while
the band played a quickstep. The audience broke into applause, and
the tamer smirked and bobbed his well-oiled head. I thought of
Samson performing for the Philistines and Thusnelda at the triumph
of Germanicus. The great beasts, grand though conquered, seemed to
be the only dignified ones in the whole business. I hated the
audience who saw their shame from behind iron bars; I hated myself
for being one of them; and I hated the smug, sniggering tamer.
This latter had been drawing out various stools and ladders, and now
arranged the lions upon them so they should form a pyramid, with
himself on top.
Then he swung himself up among them, with his heels upon their
necks, and, taking hold of the jaws of one, wrenched them apart with
a great show of strength, turning his head to the audience so that
all should see.
And just then the electric light above him cackled harshly,
guttered, dropped down to a pencil of dull red, then went out, and
the place was absolutely dark.
The band stopped abruptly, with a discord, and there was an instant
of silence. Then we heard the stools and ladders clattering as the
lions leaped down; and straightway four pair of lambent green spots
burned out of the darkness and traveled swiftly about here and
there, crossing and recrossing one another like the lights of
steamers in a storm. Heretofore, the lions had been sluggish and
inert; now they were aroused and alert in an instant, and we could
hear the swift _pad-pad_ of their heavy feet as they swung around
the arena, and the sound of their great bodies rubbing against the
bars of the cage as one and the other passed nearer to us.
I don’t think the audience at all appreciated the situation at
first, for no one moved or seemed excited, and one shrill voice
suggested that the band should play “When the Electric Lights Go
Out.”
“Keep perfectly quiet, please!” called the tamer out of the
darkness, and a certain peculiar ring in his voice was the first
intimation of a possible danger.
But Toppan knew; and as we heard the tamer fumbling for the catch of
the gate, which he somehow could not loose in the darkness, he said,
with a rising voice: “He wants to get that gate open pretty quick.”
But for their restless movements the lions were quiet; they uttered
no sound, which was a bad sign. Blinking and dazed by the garish
blue-whiteness of a few moments before, they could see perfectly now
where the tamer was blind.
“Listen,” said Toppan. Near to us, and on the inside of the cage, we
could hear a sound as of some slender body being whisked back and
forth over the surface of the floor. In an instant I guessed what it
was; one of the lions was crouched there, whipping his sides with
his tail.
“When he stops that, he’ll spring,” said Toppan, excitedly.
“Bring a light, Jerry--quick!” came the tamer’s voice.
People were clambering to their feet by this time, talking loud, and
we heard a woman cry out.
“Please keep as quiet as possible, ladies and gentlemen!” cried the
tamer; “it won’t do to excite----”
From the direction of the voice came the sound of a heavy fall and a
crash that shook the iron gratings in their sockets.
“He’s got him!” shouted Toppan.
And then what a scene! In that thick darkness every one sprang up,
stumbling over the seats and over each other, all shouting and
crying out, suddenly stricken with a panic fear of something they
could not see. Inside the barred death-trap every lion suddenly gave
tongue at once, until the air shook and sang in our ears. We could
hear the great cats hurling themselves against the bars, and could
see their eyes leaving brassy streaks against the darkness as they
leaped. Two more sprang, as the first had done, toward that quarter
of the cage from which came sounds of stamping and struggling, and
then the tamer began to scream.
I think that so long as I shall live I shall not forget the sound of
the tamer’s screams. He did not scream as a woman would have done,
from the head, but from the chest, which sounded so much worse that
I was sick from it in a second with that sickness that weakens one
at the pit of the stomach and along the muscles at the back of the
legs. He did not pause for a second. Every breath was a scream, and
every scream was alike, and one heard through it all the long snarls
of satisfied hate and revenge, muffled by the man’s clothes and the
_rip_, _rip_ of the cruel, blunt claws.
Hearing it all in the dark, as we did, made it all the more
dreadful. I think for a time I must have taken leave of my senses. I
was ready to vomit for the sickness that was upon me, and I beat my
hands raw upon the iron bars or clasped them over my ears against
the sounds of the dreadful thing that was doing behind them. I
remember praying aloud that it might soon be over with, so only
those screams might be stopped.
It seemed as though it had gone on for hours, when some men rushed
in with a lantern and long, sharp irons. A hundred voices cried:
“Here he is, over here!” and they ran around outside the cage and
threw the light of the lantern on a place where a heap of gray,
gold-laced clothes writhed and twisted beneath three great bulks of
fulvous hide and bristling black mane.
The irons were useless. The three furies dragged their prey out of
their reach and crouched over it again and recommenced. No one dared
to go into the cage, and still the man lived and struggled and
screamed.
I saw Toppan’s fingers go to his mouth, and through that medley of
dreadful noises there issued a sound that, sick as I was, made me
shrink anew and close my eyes and teeth and shudder as though some
cold slime had been poured through the hollow of my bones where the
marrow should be. It was as the noise of the whistling of a fine
whip-lash, mingled with the whirr of a locust magnified a hundred
times, and ended in an abrupt clacking noise thrice repeated.
At once I remembered where I had heard it before, because, having
once heard the hiss of an aroused and angry serpent, no child of Eve
can ever forget it.
The sound that now came from between Toppan’s teeth and that filled
the arena from wall to wall, was the sound that I had heard once
before in the Paris Jardin des Plantes at feeding-time--the sound
made by the great constrictors, when their huge bodies are looped
and coiled like a _reata_ for the throw that never misses, that
never relaxes, and that no beast of the field is built strong enough
to withstand. All the filthy wickedness and abominable malice of the
centuries since the Enemy first entered into that shape that crawls
was concentrated in that hoarse, whistling hiss--a hiss that was
cold and piercing, like an icicle-made sound. It was not loud, but
had in it some sort of penetrating quality that cut through the
waves of horrid sounds about us, as the snake-carved prow of a
Viking galley might have cut its way through the tumbling eddies of
a tide-rip.
At the second repetition the lions paused. None better than they
knew what was the meaning of that hiss. They had heard it before in
their native hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer, when the
first heat lay close over all the jungle like the hollow of the palm
of an angry god. Or if they themselves had not heard it, their sires
before them had, and the fear of the thing bred into their bones
suddenly leaped to life at the sound and gripped them and held them
close.
When for a third time the sound sung and shrilled in their ears,
their heads drew between their shoulders, their great eyes grew
small and glittering, the hackles rose and stiffened on their backs,
their tails drooped, and they backed slowly to the further side of
the cage and cowered there, whining and beaten.
Toppan wiped the sweat from the inside of his hands and went into
the cage with the keepers and gathered up the panting, broken body,
with its twitching fingers and dead, white face and ears, and
carried it out. As they lifted it, the handful of pitiful medals
dropped from the shredded, gray coat and rattled down upon the
floor. In the silence that had now succeeded, it was about the only
sound one heard.
* * * * *
As we sat that evening on the porch of Toppan’s house, in a
fashionable suburb of the city, he said, for the third time: “I had
that trick from a Mpongwee headman,” and added: “It was while I was
at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross the Kalahari Desert.”
Then he continued, his eyes growing keener and his manner changing:
“There is some interesting work to be done in that quarter by some
one. You see, the Kalahari runs like this”--he drew the lines on the
ground with his cane--“coming down in something like this shape from
the Orange River to about the twentieth parallel south. The aneroid
gives its average elevation about six hundred feet. I didn’t cross
it at the time, because we had sickness and the porters cut. But I
made a lot of geological observations, and from these I have built
up a theory that the Kalahari is no desert at all, but a big,
well-watered plateau, with higher ground to the east and west. The
tribes, too, thereabout call the place ‘Linoka-Noka’ and that’s the
Bantu for rivers upon rivers. They’re nasty, though, these Bantu,
and gave us a lot of trouble. They have a way of spitting little
poisoned thorns into you unawares, and your tongue swells up and
turns blue and your teeth fall out and----”
His wife Victoria came out on the porch in evening-dress.
“Ah, Vic,” said Toppan, jumping up, with a very sweet smile, “we
were just talking about your paper-german next Tuesday, and _I_
think we might have some very pretty favors made out of white
tissue-paper--roses and butterflies, you know.”
THE RACE BOND
By Gwendolen Overton
The whistle of the steamer saluted three times--twice short and once
long--the sun which rose over the deep green mountains of Costa
Rica. The signal was answered in due time. A small tug put off from
the long iron pier. There was a launch at the end of its tow line, a
big, flat scow of a lighter. It came out across the smooth
mother-of-pearl stretch of water, jerking and bobbing over the great
Pacific swells. The tug shot by the steamer, the launch threw loose
the tow line, and as it came alongside the forward cargo hatchway, a
_lanchero_ pitched another rope up to the boatswain.
There followed delay. There must of necessity follow delay when the
crews and captains of launches are West Coast natives--Mexican
stevedores at the very best--and most of the sailors on the steamers
the same. The first-officer, down on the main deck, gave orders,
there was a creaking of hawsers on the strain, the rattle and squeal
of blocks and tackle, and the rumble of moving freight in one of the
forward cargo-spaces. The captain, immaculate in ducks, came out
from his cabin. He went to the rail and looked over at La Libertad,
where the white and red of its long, low houses showed clear in the
daybreak among the glistening palms. Then he looked down. There were
eight or ten _lancheros_ in the lighter helping to confuse the very
simple process of making her fast, or perched upon the gunwale
observing with the vague placidity of their kind.
The captain had no opinion of Central American natives of any sort,
much less of _lancheros_. He considered these ones with rather more
than usual disgust.
“What’s the matter with them fellows in that launch, Marsden,” he
inquired of the first-officer.
Marsden was peering down into the black hole of the hold. He drew
away and looked up to the rail of the hurricane deck. “Played out,
sir,” he told him; “they were loading the _San Benito_ until she put
out last night at eleven.”
The captain had no sympathy for them on that, or any other score.
His eye was without mercy, as he took stock of them again.
“Hullo--one of them is white,” he said. It was meant, as before, for
the first-officer, but it was entirely audible to the _lancheros_.
The first-officer looked over into the launch, and the man who was
white looked up at him. Then the first-officer turned away. “Yes,
sir,” he said.
He walked to the hatchway edge. “Quartermaster,” he called. A voice
from the hold answered him. “Send up those boxes of nails first,” he
ordered.
There followed a banging in the cargo-space, the boatswain’s whistle
began its shrill little calls, which would keep up all day, a donkey
engine puffed, and a windlass rattled in the bowels of the ship; the
big hook on the end of its rope swung down the hatchway, and
presently a net-sling full of boxes was hoisted and deposited on the
main deck.
“T. S. & Co., over X, one--Garcia, three times--Y in a diamond, two
times--J. S. & Co., over X, four.” The first-officer marked the
boxes with his chalk as he called their address and number, the
checky for the port authorities and the freight-clerk for the ship
kept tally and record in their own books; the net drew taut again at
the boatswain’s whistle, and the first load of cargo swung overside
and was lowered into the launch.
The first-officer went to the side and watched it. It was the white
man who unhooked the sling, who spilled out the boxes, and sent the
sling back empty, all with a promptness that no native _lancheros_
could have hoped, or would have dreamed of, attempting to attain.
These looked rather more than usually dead and alive. Nominally, he
was not the _capitan_ of the launch, but it was clear that he was
the self-constituted boss of it. The captain of the steamer said as
much--“Must make their heads swim, that fellow.”
The mate answered “Yes, sir,” again; but another net full of boxes
was coming up. He went back to them. “J. S. & Co. over X, two
times--Y in a diamond, one,” he called. The checky and the
freight-clerk registered; and the work of the day was well under
way.
But in spite of the one white man in the launch below it did not go
with the speed the mate would have desired. The crew of the
alternating launch was demoralized and worthless to the last degree.
“Half dead--and it’s a _fiesta_ besides, so they’re half drunk,
too,” he remarked upon it to the captain. He pushed his cap back
with the visor on his crown, and ran across his wet forehead the
sleeve of a coat which had begun the day white. It was two o’clock
of an October afternoon, and the heat was one of these things the
fullness whereof can only be realized from having been experienced,
which mere imagination is powerless to present.
The _lancheros_ were fumbling aimlessly at a load of steel rails.
There was no white man in this lighter, and the management of it
showed as much. Three rails were swung clashing together down on
some crates that smashed like match-boxes under them. The mate
raised his shoulders. It was not his business--so long as the
breakage was not done on the ship, he was not accountable for it.
Checky and the _capitan_ of the “lanch” could settle that on shore.
“What’s in those crates?” the captain inquired.
“Merchandise--breakable,” answered the first-officer, cheerfully.
“Brutes,” commented the captain. He gave expression to his views on
black-and-tan _lancheros_ in general.
The mate nodded. He bent over the hatchway. “Quartermaster,” he
called, “send up somebody with a marlinspike to mend this sling.”
Then he went over and looked down into the launch. “_Despacio
abajo_, hurry up--eh?” he shouted by way of suggestion to four
_lancheros_ who were pulling two ways on every rail, and had managed
to drop into the water a rope sling, which it was affording them
much concern and confusion, and the others much chattering and
amusement, to fish out again.
Marsden did not appear to be in a communicative mood, but the
captain was oblivious to moods after the manner of the insistently
good-humored and talkative.
“It must be infernally unpleasant for that white fellow to work with
the dogs,” he opined.
“I expect so,” said Marsden. It was not a tone encouraging a
pursuance of the subject. But the captain did not know it.
“The _capitan_ won’t stand his bossing some time,” he kept it up;
“there’ll be a row, and the whole crew’ll take only too much
pleasure in sticking their knives into him. He looks steady. Must be
in a pretty bad way to come to that. Don’t know that I ever saw a
white man in the fix along here before. He’d better get out of it
while his skin’s whole.”
“Wonder who he is?” he asked, presently. It was in the nature of an
inquiry addressed to no one in general, and the mate in particular.
The mate did not answer. He was concerning himself about a delay in
the hold, and called down some orders which were superfluous, in
view of the fact that the boatswain had just gone scuttling down the
ladder to attend to things himself.
The captain, however, was not put off. He had nothing to do. “Do you
know?” he asked, when the mate came below him again.
“Know what, sir?” Marsden was thinking his own thoughts. He had not
paid much attention.
“Who that fellow is?”
“Man named Stanwood,” said the first-officer, and he tried to head
the captain off by another order to the hold. It was accompanied by
profanity. The delay was nobody’s fault, but, as is frequently the
case, the oaths expended in one direction were inspired from
another.
It was a pity the captain couldn’t go aft and work a reckoning, or
talk to the passengers. Not that he objected to the captain. The
captain was a very good sort. It was the topic Marsden disliked.
“Stanwood--rather imposing for a _lanchero_ in there with all them
black brutes, aint it? Not that he’s any cleaner, though. Who told
you it was that?”
“Nobody,” said Marsden; “I know it.”
It broke in upon the captain then that he was being discouraged.
“Oh!” he said. There followed a pause. “You’d better have a new rope
through that block there when you’re ready to hoist those iron
chimney stacks.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the mate. The captain strolled off to the
quarter-deck to watch the second-steward fishing for sharks.
But time was not hanging heavy on Marsden’s hands. There was a look
of bad weather, and if they were to get off that night, as might
prove highly desirable, there had got to be a lot more hustling than
the _lancheros_ seemed capable of.
The launch alongside had about all it could carry, and its _capitan_
was calling for the tug, the soft, mournful note of his conch shell
floating over the water to the shore. Marsden, by way of losing no
time himself, ran up to the hurricane-deck and on to the bridge, and
the whistle screeched across the blue-green of the sea, glinting in
the sun, across the little port among its palms, and beyond through
the lush jungle of the piling mountains, where the trees and vines
and undergrowth matted in the moist, breathless temperature of a
green-house. There were black clouds piling up behind the mountains,
and rolling low into the great cañons and clefts of palm and fern
trees. Marsden eyed them as he went below again.
The launch alongside was loaded and sent adrift, to be picked up by
the tug and towed back to the wharf. The tug was bringing out the
other one--the one in which Stanwood was of the crew. Marsden wished
that he were not. A man may have been your enemy. He may have
brought about your finish. You may have thought for years that
nothing could be too bad for him. But all the same--if he is a white
man, one of your own kind, be he never so much of a scoundrel, it is
not good to see him working among Central American _lancheros_,
under a _capitan_ of the same breed. It is a trifle too low. He is
one of your own race, after all, and it hits you through the race.
Marsden stood considering, keeping his balance as the ship rolled,
at an angle of forty-five degrees to the line of the deck, backward
or forward, according as she went to weather or to lee. It would
have taken quite all the attention of a landsman to manage the feat
at any effort, and with that he would probably have gone upon his
skull or his nose. But Marsden was not even thinking about it. He
was thinking of the time that Stanwood had bribed a Guatemala high
official--with money already a long way from clean--and had thereby
established in that misgoverned little country his altogether
baseless claim to Marsden’s own sugar _finca_ and refinery. It was
the kind of thing that can be, and is constantly being, done south
of twenty-three. And all your American citizenship can not avail to
save you; rather, in fact, the other way--one of the mishaps of
which you take your chance when you go to those countries to make a
fortune, away from the hustle of colder climes. But it had been a
blackguardly trick, nevertheless. And it had done for Marsden
financially for good and all. He had thought himself in luck
afterward to get the opportunity to ship to San Francisco on a P. M.
steamer as a hand. He had been down to his last _real_ then.
It had done for him in other ways, too. Even now that he had got his
master’s license, and worked up by quick stages to
first-mate--well--his people on the other side of the continent
lived a different sort of life, went in for another and more
conventional style of thing. So did the people of the girl he had
meant to make mistress of his beautiful sugar plantation. He had
been in love with her since his school-days at home--pretty much
ever since he could remember, so far as that went. But it had
obviously been out of the question to expect her to marry a
deck-hand. He had stopped writing to her before long. It had been
better for her. As for himself--it didn’t matter much. His own life
was very thoroughly spoiled, anyway. And the girl had married--a man
of her own sort, which he himself had ceased to be.
He owed all that to Stanwood. He owed a good deal to Stanwood. He
had always intended to pay it some day, too--at the first chance
that should present itself. Was this the chance? Perhaps.
Evidently wrong-doing had not prospered Stanwood. He had probably
come out with that degraded, dirty gang, in that “lanch” which stunk
of bilge water and other filth beyond a white man’s stomach almost,
for no other reason than to get an opportunity to stow, or to ask a
passage up--as Marsden himself had been obliged to ask five years
before. He would not try it now, of course. He had nerve enough for
about anything, but hardly enough for that. He would have to wait at
least a week for another ship and another first-officer.
It happened, nevertheless, that Marsden wanted another sailor. At
the last port, Corinto, one of his men had gone ashore to see one of
the sick mothers he kept along the coast, and that had been the last
seen of _him_. Marsden was anxious to fill the vacancy, but Stanwood
should not have it. He could work with the launch gang a while
longer. It was small enough punishment for his misdeeds.
The launch swung alongside. Stanwood was in her. He was having an
altercation with the _capitan_, too, and the _capitan_ had been
taking more _tequila_, apparently. It would be the course of wisdom
for the Gringo _lanchero_ to hold his peace and his tongue, if he
were not looking for a speedy exit from a bad sort of life. The
_capitan_ and his gang would like nothing better than severally and
collectively to stick knives into him.
Once again the launch went off, discharged her cargo, and came back
for another load. This time it was before the other launch was quite
ready to be towed away, so she made fast, bow and stern, to her, and
the idle _lancheros_ fell to eating some food they had brought with
them as they waited. They crouched together in a group, getting a
good deal of fun out of it. There were the inevitable _frijoles_ and
bread and bottled coffee, and there was besides a most unwonted
treat, a leg of mutton. They passed it from one to the other, and
each gnawed at it with his gleaming teeth, grinning over the game.
Stanwood crouched among them. But he was not having fun out of it.
He was not grinning. He scooped up the common mess of black beans
with scraps of crust. He was ragged and dirty as they were. But he
did not take his degradation with their good humor. He looked sullen
and lean and hungry.
Marsden watched him. It was not a pleasant sight, and he felt a kind
of sick disgust and pity. But he wanted to see if the bone of meat
would go to the white man in the end, and if the white man would
take it. It came to the last of the natives. He picked it all but
clean with a show of keen enjoyment. There were a few shreds left.
He examined them. Then, with the insolence of a base breed having
the upper hand, he tossed it over at Stanwood. It struck him on the
chest. Marsden could see the killing hate in his eyes, and the
shutting of his teeth under the ragged black beard. Then--and he was
conscious of a deep relief--he saw him pick up the bone, stand in
the scow, and drop it over into the water.
Marsden turned away. It was not only of relief that he was
conscious, but of a killing hate of the half-breed _lancheros_ equal
to Stanwood’s own, as well.
The clouds which, at noon, had been rising behind the mountains and
dropping dark into the valleys and cañons, had spread half over the
sky. There was a low, whining wind, growing steadily stronger. And
the seven thousand miles of sea stretching unbroken to the west was
sending in heavier ground swells to the open harbor. The steamer
went heaving from side to side. Even the sailors were finding it not
always easy to keep their footing. And it was now that the great
iron chimney stacks had to be brought up. It would not have been a
small matter at the best. At present it was extremely dangerous. The
loaded lighter had gone off. The tackle had been changed on the
block of the foremost derrick to new hemp, yellow and strong.
There was the huge clangor and rumble of hollow iron striking
against iron down in the cargo-space. The mate had taken out his own
whistle. The responsibility was too great to be intrusted to
subordinates here. He shrilled one order after another, or shouted
them in nautical English and strange Spanish, and they were answered
from the depths of the hold. The monster tube rolled into the
opening guided by a man naked to the waist, on whose brown torso,
swelling with muscles, the sweat rolled and glistened. The stack
rose slowly upward--roaring its vast basso protests as it
struck--fifty feet long, a yard in diameter, heavy, unwieldy,
plunging as the ship rolled to starboard, down and down, and back to
port, down and down again.
It was a formidable thing, all but unmanageable even there. But once
clear of the hatchway it flung itself, charging and swinging and
threshing, with the great iron bellow of warning. The sailors jumped
from its way. There was only the mate to handle it. The ship gave a
heavy lurch to starboard. The chimney whirled and lunged toward him
with a vibrating song of onslaught, and the voice of the white man
in the launch below called an involuntary “Look out!” An instant of
the hesitation of fear and the mate would have been struck overboard
by all the force of the great cylinder of iron. But he put out his
hand and pushed it, and it swung off harmlessly enough, as docile as
it was formidable.
The little whistle shrilled, the derrick moved its long arm around
and out, and the stack hung overside, directly above the launch. The
_lancheros_ had retreated to the sides, ready to scramble out of the
way, or to jump overboard, if need should be. They stood looking up
at it uneasily. If the rope were to break or slip, if the mate were
to give a wrong order----
Suddenly the steamer came over to starboard with a deep roll, and
the great stack dropped with her. The mate saw the chance of mishap.
His whistle piped a sharp, quick order to hoist. The _lancheros_
cowered, their arms over their heads--all but Stanwood. He stood
watching a chance. The stack swung and whirled, gigantic and awful,
not a foot above his reach. But the rope had been just too short.
The ship heaved back, and with a reverberation of metal thunder as
it struck against the hull, the cylinder swung up again.