all his powers of mean impertinence. He shouted up curses at the
first-officer. They were vile, as curses can only be vile in that
“language of prayer.” And the first-officer understood them
perfectly. But he had no time to take notice of them. The ship had
got to get off that night. And the stacks had got to be unloaded.
But it was far from simple to get even this first one lowered into
the launch. Several times they dropped it almost to its place, then,
because the empty scow bobbed one way in a swell, and the ship
another, it had to be hoisted once more. And once the windlass
refused to work at a signal. There was a delay until it could be
repaired. The _capitan_ of the _lancheros_ waxed more impertinent
and abusive; the _tequila_ with which he had been refreshing himself
on shore was beginning to take its violent effect. In the absorption
of his abuse of the ship and all its crew, he forgot to order his
own men. The stack was coming down once again, with a fair chance of
landing squarely in the bottom at last--if the _lancheros_ should be
quick enough at guiding it. But they were doing nothing, frightened
half out of their little available senses. And their _capitan_ was
yelling foul words aloft. It was a critical instant. The white
_lanchero_ knew it. He gave an order. It was all the men needed--a
head. They made to obey. But the boss, in the madness of _tequila_,
turned on his white hand. Was _he_ the _capitan_? Was _he_ in
command? He had the signal conch shell in his hand. He brought it
down with a cracking blow on Stanwood’s head.
The first-officer, watching the critical descent of the iron monster
with all his attention, saw Stanwood spring at the boss’s throat,
saw the knives of the other _lancheros_ drawn, saw them swarming
astern to the rescue of their fellow, ten of them against one. And
the iron stack was swaying just above them. Another starboard
roll--they would be crushed under it. And another moment lost and
the Gringo would have ten knives in his neck and back. The little
whistle shrilled sharply twice, and even as its order was obeyed and
the windlass reversed, the first-officer was sliding overside down
the manrope, had kicked himself off from the hull, and landed in the
launch.
It was a short fight. The first-officer had his six-shooter, the
white _lanchero_ his knife, like another. The natives were fierce
with blood lust, and the drunkenness of knife gleam and _tequila_.
But it was a matter of coolness and of the dominant race. Before the
captain on the hurricane-deck could run to his cabin for his
carbine, it was over with. Two _lancheros_ had disabling bullet
wounds, and the rest had retreated to the bow, all the flush of
fight gone out of them, whipped and cringing and scared.
The first-officer and the white _lanchero_ stood astern. They had
been cut, and the ducks of the first-officer were red. Blood oozed
through the _lanchero’s_ rags. He got breath for a moment clutching
at the gunwale. Then he turned to the first-officer. “Thank you,” he
said.
Marsden looked at him, slowly, from his shaggy black hair to his
bare feet. “Don’t mention it,” he answered. Then he looked up at the
ship. “Unhook that stack for the present, and send down the chair
for us,” he ordered, coolly.
He considered his left arm. The blood was bubbling out just above
the elbow. He knew what it meant. He had seen the thing before. It
would be all right once a tourniquet should be put above it. But
before that, before the doctor could get down in the chair, he would
very likely faint. He was feeling light-headed already--and his eyes
were glazing over. He shut his right hand hard above the wound.
“You can’t stay with this, Stanwood,” he told the _lanchero_. His
voice sounded to himself far away and dead. He was not altogether
sure what he was saying. He glanced up. Away and away overhead in a
vague distance of hot blue, the chair was beginning to lower. He
must make haste. He spoke carefully, with precision, swaying
unsteadily as the launch rolled.
“We lost a man at Corinto,” he went on; “we--need an--other. You can
ship to Frisco with us if----” he staggered, then caught himself,
“if you--like.”
The chair with the doctor touched the bottom of the scow. The
first-officer had fallen, and was lying quite still. The white
_lanchero_ was bending over him, clenching his two hands tight about
the wounded arm.
THE RAJAH’S NEMESIS
By W. C. Morrow
In my travels abroad I once encountered an extraordinary
illustration of the shifts to which Nature will resort in her
efforts to overcome the inconvenience arising from a deprivation of
the tools with which she is accustomed to work; and the facts of the
case are sufficiently peculiar and tragic to warrant their relation.
I was summoned from Calcutta to proceed to the heart of India, being
wanted by a certain rich and powerful rajah to perform a dangerous
surgical operation upon one of the women of his household. I found
the rajah to be a man of lofty character, noble and generous; but,
as circumstances afterward developed, he was possessed of a sense of
cruelty purely Oriental and in sharp contrast to the extreme
indolence of his disposition. He was so grateful for the success
which attended my mission that he urged me to remain his guest at
the palace as long as it should please me to stay; and, as may be
surmised, I thankfully accepted the invitation.
One of his servants early attracted my notice, for he was a man of
marvelous capacity of malice and vindictiveness. His name was
Neranya, and I am certain that there must have been a large
proportion of Malay blood in his veins; for, unlike the Indians
(from whom he differed also in complexion), he was extremely active,
alert, nervous, and sensitive. He had one redeeming trait, and that
was love for his master.
Once his violent temper led him to the commission of an atrocious
crime--the fatal stabbing of a dwarf. In punishment for this the
rajah ordered that Neranya’s right arm (the offending one) be
severed from his body. The sentence was executed in rather a
bungling fashion by a stupid fellow armed with an axe; and I, being
a surgeon, was compelled, in order to save Neranya’s life, to
perform a second amputation upon the stump of the arm, which left
not a vestige of the limb remaining.
Just here, as a possible partial explanation of the terrible and
extraordinary things which followed, I must call intelligent
attention to a matter which has long engaged my notice.
We see that when one arm has been lost, the other acquires an
unwonted dexterity, thus measurably compensating for the loss.
Further, if both arms have been removed, an extraordinary nimbleness
is exhibited in the feet, for they come to discharge to a
considerable extent the functions of hands--to so great an extent
that the toes display a power of prehension which one might suppose
had not existed in them since our abandonment, in the evolutionary
process, of the tree-climbing habit. Thus, with the toes an armless
man may learn to hold a pen and to write, to load and fire a pistol,
to cut food with a knife, and convey it to his mouth with a fork, to
sew, and to do a hundred other useful things, and some which are
purely ornamental, as painting, playing a harp, and the like. I once
saw an armless man give his wife a sound thrashing with a rawhide
whip.
If, now, one of the legs be removed, the remaining foot will develop
an almost redoubled capacity, its agility being marvelous. But
suppose that this member, too, should be parted with--has Nature
reached the end of her resources? Remember, the dexterity that she
developed in those members which remained after the amputation of
others was primarily of a character to take the place of that which
enabled the others to minister to the needs of life. Granted that
both arms and both legs are gone, has Nature, I have asked, reached
the limit of her resources, in the accomplishment of an earnest and
controlling purpose, praiseworthy or perverted?
Let us inquire into the philosophy of the process by which this
compensating dexterity is developed. It is easy for the scientists
to tell us that this is done by the concentration of the will and
the persistent exercise of the muscles in obedience thereto; but to
my understanding this explanation is not sufficient. The principle
of life, the amazing persistence of this principle, and the ways in
which this persistence is maintained, are all inscrutable mysteries,
necessarily and forever beyond our comprehension. It is the fashion
of transcendentalism (not followed, however, by the greater
scientists) to maintain that we have a spiritual, as well as a
material, nature; and by evolution there has grown out of that
belief another, that this spiritual nature is imperishable,
indestructible--the fashionable, though inaccurate, term is
“immortal.” The spirit is assumed to be the _ego_, the
consciousness--that which fixes individuality and determines
identity.
Now, we know that mind is consciousness, and that the mind has its
seat within the brain. But the brain is identical in its chemical,
structural, molecular, and functional characteristics with the
nerves which lead from it and ramify throughout the body; therefore
the mind, and consequently the spirit, ramifies throughout the body;
and hence it follows that if the spirit is indestructible and should
be separated from the body (by death or otherwise) it must have the
essential form and appearance of the body. The fact of our being
unable to see it presents no obstacle to the argument; for we are
unable to see countless things which we are certain exist. The
argument thus put in logical shape may account, by unconscious
synthetical reasoning, for the prevalent belief, seemingly inherent,
that the spirit retains the form of the body after death; for there
is no other conception of the human spirit’s form--we never imagine
it as having the shape of a ball, or a comet, or a balloon, or a
cloud, or as being formless.
Then it must follow that, assuming the spirit to be indestructible
and as having the form of the body, the amputation of a limb does
not exterminate that part of the spirit which occupied that limb;
but as the indivisibility of the spirit must be admitted as an
essential factor of identity and individuality, that part of the
spirit which had occupied the amputated limb must always be present
in the place where the limb had been, and must there, in that place,
possess all the consciousness and intelligence which belonged to it
before the limb was amputated.
This argument may be pursued to some astonishing conclusions which
do not vitally concern the purposes of this relation. I might be
asked, for instance, if the potentiality of a spirit is dependent
upon its possession and control of a body, of what avail is it to
speculate upon the unseparated existence of the spirit of an
amputated limb? But there are some who declare that this dependence
need not and does not always exist.
This, it must be understood, is not the line of argument pursued by
scientists, for they have a purely materialistic explanation for all
the singular phenomena resulting from amputation; but are they not
inconsistent? They admit the inscrutable mystery of the principle of
life and all its countless corollaries, and yet they glibly explain
the evidently marvelous results of a serious interference with the
normal operation of that principle, as in the case of amputation. Is
it not possible that there is danger of too much explanation of
these wonderful mysteries?
Let us proceed with the strange story of Neranya. After the loss of
his arm, he developed an increased fiendishness, an augmented
vindictiveness. His love for his master was changed to hate, and in
his mad anger, he flung discretion to the winds. He was so unruly
and violent in disposition that he could not conceal his feelings.
The rajah, a proud, scornful man, increased Neranya’s hate by
treating him with contempt and scorn, which had the effect of
driving the wretch to frenzy. In a mad moment he sprang upon the
rajah with a knife, but he was seized and disarmed. To his
unspeakable dismay the rajah sentenced him for this offense to
suffer amputation of the remaining arm. It was done as in the former
instance.
This had a temporary effect in curbing the man’s spirit, or rather
in changing the outward manifestation of his diabolic nature. Being
armless, he was at first largely at the mercy of those who
ministered to his wants--a duty which I undertook to see was
properly discharged, for I felt an interest in this horribly
perverted and distorted nature. This sense of helplessness, combined
with a damnable scheme for revenge which he had secretly formed,
caused Neranya to change his fierce, impetuous, and unruly conduct
into a smooth, quiet, insinuating manner, which he carried so
artfully as not only to secure a peace and comfort which he had
never known before, but also to deceive those with whom he was
brought in contact, including the rajah himself.
Neranya, being exceedingly quick, nimble, and intelligent, and
having a tremendous will, turned his attention to the cultivation of
dexterity in his legs, feet, and toes; and in due time he was able
to perform wonderful feats with those members, such as I have
noticed already. His capacity especially for destructive mischief
was restored.
One morning, the rajah’s only son, a young man of an exceedingly
lovable and noble character, was found dead in bed. His murder was a
singularly atrocious one, the body being mutilated in a sickening
manner; but, in my eyes, the most significant of all the mutilations
was _the entire removal and disappearance of the young man’s arms_.
In the wild distraction which ensued in the palace upon the
discovery of the mutilated body, the importance of that one fact was
overlooked. It was the basis, however, of a minute investigation,
which I made, and which, in time, led me to the discovery of the
murderer.
The murder of the young man nearly proved the death of the rajah,
who was thrown into a serious illness, which required all my skill
and attention to combat. It was not, therefore, until his recovery
that there began a systematic and intelligent inquiry into the
murder. I said nothing of my own discoveries and conclusions, and in
no way interfered with the work of the rajah and his officers; but,
after their efforts had failed and I had completed my own work, I
submitted to the rajah a written report, making a close analysis of
all the circumstances, and closing by charging Neranya with the
murder. (I still have a copy of that singular report, and I regret
that its length prevents its insertion here. It deals with unusual
facts and is an illustration of the value of special knowledge and
pure reason in the detection of crime.) My facts, arguments, and
deductions were so convincing that the rajah at once ordered Neranya
to be put to death, this to be accomplished by slow and frightful
torture. The sentence was so cruel, so revolting, that it filled me
with horror, and I implored that the wretch might be shot. Finally,
purely through a sense of noble gratitude, the rajah yielded. When
Neranya was charged with the crime, he denied it, of course; but,
seeing that the rajah was convinced, and upon being shown my report
(which embodied a knowledge of anatomy and surgery that he had never
dreamed of), he threw aside all restraint, and, dancing, laughing,
and shrieking in the most horrible manner, confessed his guilt and
gloated over it--all this, believing that he would be shot on the
morrow.
During the night, however, the rajah changed his mind, and sending
for me in the morning, informed me of his new decision. It was that
Neranya’s life should be spared, but that both his legs should be
crushed with heavy hammers and then that I should amputate both
limbs as close to the trunk as possible! I was too much astounded to
utter a protest; and, besides there was grounded within me that
unyielding, and often inhuman, medical principle, which counts the
saving of life at any cost the highest duty. I may add that,
appended to this horrible sentence, was a provision for keeping the
maimed wretch a prisoner and torturing him at regular intervals by
such means as afterward might be devised.
Sickened to the heart by the awful duty which confronted me, I
nevertheless performed it with success, and I must pass over in
silence the hideous details of the whole affair. Let it suffice to
say that Neranya escaped death very narrowly, and that he was a long
time in recovering his wonted vitality. During all these weeks the
rajah neither saw him nor made inquiries concerning him, but when,
as in duty bound, I made an official report that the man had
recovered his strength, the rajah’s eyes brightened, and he emerged
with deadly activity from the stupor of grief in which he so long
had been plunged. He ordered certain preparations made for the
future care of his now helpless victim.
The rajah’s palace was a noble structure, but it is necessary here
to describe only the grand hall. It was an immense room, with a
floor of polished stone and a lofty arched ceiling. A subdued light
stole into it through stained glass set in the roof and in windows
on the sides. In the middle of the room was a fountain which threw
up a tall, slender column of water in the centre, with smaller jets
grouped around it. Across one end of the hall, half-way to the
ceiling, was a balcony, which communicated with the upper story of a
wing, and from which a flight of stairs descended to the stone floor
of the hall. This room was kept at a uniform temperature, and during
the hot summers it was delightfully cool. This was the rajah’s
favorite lounging-place, and when the nights were hot, he had his
cot brought hither and here he slept.
This hall was chosen for Neranya’s permanent abiding-place; here was
he to stay as long as he might live, without ever a glimpse of the
face of nature or the glorious heavens. To one of his restless,
nervous, energetic, discontented nature, the cruelty of such
confinement was worse than death; but there was more yet of
suffering in store for him, for at the rajah’s order there was
constructed a small iron pen, in which Neranya was to be kept. This
pen was circular and about four feet in diameter. It was elevated on
four slender iron posts, ten feet from the floor, and was placed
half-way between the fountain and the balcony. Around the edge of
the pen was erected an iron railing, four feet high, but the top was
left open for the convenience of the servants whose duty it should
be to care for him. These precautions for his safe confinement were
taken at my suggestion, for, although the man was deprived of all
four of his limbs, I still feared that he might develop some
extraordinary, unheard-of power for mischief. It was provided that
the attendants should reach his cage by means of a movable ladder.
All these arrangements having been made and Neranya hoisted into his
prison, the rajah emerged upon the balcony to see him, and the two
deadly enemies faced each other. The rajah’s stern face paled at the
hideous sight which met his gaze, but he soon recovered, and the
old, hard, cruel, sinister look returned. Neranya, by an
extraordinary motion, had wriggled himself into an upright position,
his back propped against the railing. His black hair and beard had
grown long, and they added to the natural ferocity of his aspect.
Upon seeing the rajah his eyes blazed with a terrible light, his
lips parted, and he gasped for breath. His face was white with rage
and despair, and his thin, distended nostrils quivered.
The rajah folded his arms and gazed down upon the frightful wreck
which he had made. Neranya returned the gaze with blazing eyes. Oh,
the pathos of that picture, the inhumanity of it, the deep and
dismal tragedy of it! Who might look into that wild, desperate heart
and see and understand the frightful turmoil there, the surging,
choking passions, unbridled but impotent ferocity, frantic thirst
for a vengeance that should be deeper than hell! Neranya gazed, his
shapeless body heaving, his eyes ablaze, and then, in a strong,
clear voice which rang throughout the great hall, with rapid speech
he hurled at the rajah the most insulting defiance, the most awful
curses. He cursed the womb that conceived him, the food that
nourished him, the wealth that brought him power; cursed him in the
name of Buddha and all the prophets, in the name of heaven and of
hell; cursed him by the sun, the moon, and the stars, by all
continents, oceans, mountains, and rivers, by all things living;
cursed his head, his heart, his entrails; cursed him in a furious
outpouring of unmentionable words; heaped insults and contumely upon
him; called him a knave, a beast, a fool, a liar, an infamous and
damnable coward. Never had I heard such eloquence of defiance,
curses, and vituperation; never had heard so terrible a
denunciation, so frightful and impetuous an outflow of insults.
The rajah heard it all calmly, without the movement of a muscle or
the slightest change of countenance, and when the poor wretch had
exhausted his strength and fallen helpless and silent to the floor,
the rajah, with a grim, cold smile, turned and strode away.
The days passed. The rajah, not deterred by Neranya’s curses often
heaped upon him, spent even more time than formerly in the great
hall, and slept there oftener at night, and finally Neranya, wearied
of cursing and defying him, maintained a sullen silence. The man was
a study for me, and I noticed every change in his fleeting moods.
Generally his condition was one of miserable despair, which he
attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been
denied him, for when he was erect the top of the rail was a foot
above his head, and he could not throw himself over it and crush his
skull on the stone floor below; and when he had tried to starve
himself the attendants forced food down his throat, so that he
abandoned such attempts. At times his eyes would blaze and his
breath would come in gasps, for imaginary vengeance was working
within him; but steadily he became quieter and more tractable, and
was pleasant and responsive when I conversed with him. Whatever the
tortures the rajah had decided upon, none had as yet been ordered,
and although Neranya knew that they were in contemplation, he never
referred to them or complained of his lot.
The awful climax of this terrible situation was reached one night,
and even after this lapse of years I can not approach a description
of it without a shudder.
It was a hot night, and the rajah had gone to sleep in the great
hall of the palace, lying on a high cot. I had been unable to sleep
in my apartment, and so I stole softly into the hall through the
heavily curtained entrance at the end furthest from the balcony. As
I did so, I heard a peculiar soft sound above the gentle patter of
the fountain. Neranya’s cage was partly concealed from my view by
the spraying water, but I suspected that the unusual sound came from
him. Stealing a little to one side and crouching against the dark
hangings of the wall, I could faintly see him in the dim light which
illumined the hall, and then I discovered that my surmise was
correct--Neranya was at work. Curious to learn more, I sank into a
thick robe on the floor and watched him. My sight was keen and my
eyes soon became accustomed to the faint, soft light.