IT

Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a

half circle of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black

morass, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But

the beach is good dry sand, and the wind keeps the bugs back in the

swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is a strip of loam and jungle,

where some niggers live and a god.

I landed on Prana Beach because I'd heard--but it wasn't so and it

doesn't matter. Anyhow, I landed--all alone; the canoemen wouldn't come

near enough for me to land dry, at that. Said the canoe would shrivel

up, like a piece of hide in a fire, if it touched that beach; said

they'd turn white and be blown away like puffs of smoke. They nearly

backed away with my stuff; would have if I hadn't pulled a gun on them.

But they made me wade out and get it myself--thirty foot of rope with

knots, dynamite, fuses, primers, compass, grub for a week, and--well, a

bit of skin in a half-pint flask with a rubber and screw-down top. Not

nice, it wasn't, wading out and back and out and back. There was one

shark, I remember, came in so close that he grounded, snout out, and

made a noise like a pig. Sun was going down, looking like a bloody

murder victim, and there wasn't going to be any twilight. It's an

uncertain light that makes wading nasty. It might be salt-water soaking

into my jeans, but with that beastly red light over it, it looked like

blood.

The canoe backed out to the--you can't call 'em a nautical name. They've

one big, square sail of crazy-quilt work--raw silk, pieces of rubber

boots, rattan matting, and grass cloth, all colors, all shapes of

patches. They point into the wind and then go sideways; and they _don't_

steer with an oar that Charon discarded thousands of years ago, that's

painted crimson and raw violet; and the only thing they'd be good for

would be fancy wood-carpets. Mine, or better, ours, was made of

satinwood, and was ballasted with scrap-iron, rotten ivory, and ebony.

There, I've told you what she was like (except for the live

entomological collection aboard), and you may call her what you please.

The main point is that she took the canoe aboard, and then disobeyed

orders. Orders were to lie at anchor (which was a dainty thing of stone,

all carved) till further orders. But she'd gotten rid of me, and she

proposed to lie farther off, and come back (maybe) when I'd finished my

job. So she pointed straight in for where I was standing amid my duds

and chattels, just as if she was going to thump herself ashore--and then

she began to slip off sideways like a misbegotten crab, and backward,

too--until what with the darkness tumbling down, and a point o' palms, I

lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten, and jump up and

down?

Because I was alone on Prana Beach, between the sea and the swamp. And

because the god was beginning to get stirred up; and because now that

I'd gone through six weeks' fever and boils to get where I was, I wished

I hadn't gotten there. No, I wasn't scared. You wouldn't be if you were

alone on a beach, after sundown, deserted you may say, your legs shaky

with being wet, and your heart hot and mad as fire because you couldn't

digest the things you had to put into your stomach, and if you'd heard

that the beach was the most malodorous, ghoul-haunted beach of the seas,

and if just as you were saying to yourself that _you_ for one didn't

believe a word of it--if, I say, just then _It_ began to cut loose--back

of you--way off to the left--way off to the right--why you'd have been

scared.

It wasn't the noise it made so much as the fact that it could make any

noise at all.... Shut your mouth tight and hum on the letter

m-mmmmmmm--that's it exactly. Only It's was ten times as loud, and

vibrating. The vibrations shook me where I stood.

With the wind right, that humming must have carried a mile out to sea;

and that's how it had gotten about that there was a god loose on Prana

Beach. It was an It-god, the niggers all agreed. You'll have seen 'em

carved on paddles--shanks of a man, bust of a woman, nose of a

snapping-turtle, and mouth round like the letter O. But the Prana Beach

one didn't show itself that first night. It hummed

awhile--m-m-m-m-m--oh, for maybe a minute--stopped and began

again--jumped a major fifth, held it till it must have been half burst

for breath, and then went down the scale an octave, hitting every note

in the middle, and giving the effect of one damned soul meeting another

out in eternity and yelling for pure joy and malice. The finish was a

whoop on the low note so loud that it lifted my hair. Then the howl was

cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've seen a Chinaman's head

struck from his body by the executioner at Canton--Big Wan--ever seen

him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what golfers call "the follow

through."

Yes. I sauntered into the nearest grove, whistling "Yankee Doodle,"

lighted a fire, cooked supper, and turned in for the night. Not!... I

took to the woods all right, but on my stomach. And I curled up so tight

that my knees touched my chin. Ever try it? It's the nearest thing to

having some one with you, when you're cold and alone. Adam must have

had a hard-shell back and a soft-shell stomach, like an armadillo--how

does it run?--"dillowing in his armor." Because in moments of real or

imaginary danger it's the first instinct of Adam's sons to curl up, and

of Eve's daughters. Ever touch a Straits Settlement Jewess on the back

of the hand with a lighted cigarette?...

As I'm telling you, I curled up good and tight, head and knees on the

grub sack, Colt and dynamite handy, hair standing perfectly straight up,

rope round me on the ground in a circle--I had a damn-fool notion that

It mightn't be allowed to cross knotted ropes, and I shook with chills

and nightmares and cramps. I could only lie on my left side, for the

boils on my right. I couldn't keep my teeth quiet. I couldn't do

anything that a Christian ought to do, with a heathen It-god strolling

around. Yes, ... the thing came out on the beach, in full view of where

I was, but I couldn't see it, because of the pitch dark. It came out,

and made noises with its feet in the sand--up and down--up and

down--scrunch--scrunch--something like a man walking, and not in a

hurry. Something like it, but not exactly. The It's feet (they have

seven toes according to the nigger paddles) didn't touch the ground as

often as a man's would have done in walking the distance. There'd be one

scrunch and then quite a long pause before the next. It sounded like a

very, very big man, taking the very longest steps he could. But there

wasn't any more mouth work. And for that I'm still offering up prayers

of thanksgiving; for, if--say when it was just opposite where I lay, and

not fifty yards off--it had let off anything sudden and loud, I'd have

been killed as dead as by a stroke of lightning.

Well, I was just going to break, when day did. Broke so sweet, and calm,

and pretty; all pink landward over the black jungle, all smooth and

baby-blue out to sea. Till the sun showed, there was a land breeze--not

really a breeze, just a stir, a cool quiet moving of spicy smells from

one place to another--nothing more than that. Then the sea breeze rose

and swept the sky and ocean till they were one and the same blue, the

blue that comes highest at Tiffany's; and little puffs of shore birds

came in on the breeze and began to run up and down on the beach, jabbing

their bills into the damp sand and flapping their little wings. It was

like Eden--Eden-by-the-Sea--I wouldn't have been surprised if Eve had

come out of the woods yawning and stretching herself. And I wouldn't

have cared--if I'd been shaved.

I took notice of all this peacefulness and quiet, twenty grains of

quinine, some near food out of a can, and then had a good look around

for a good place to stop, in case I got started running.

I fixed on a sandy knoll that had a hollow in the top of it, and one

twisted beach ebony to shade the hollow. At the five points of a star

with the knoll for centre, but at safe blasting distance, I planted

dynamite, primed and short-fused. If anything chased me I hoped to have

time to spring one of these mines in passing, tumble into my hollow and

curl up, with my fingers in my ears.

I didn't believe in heathen gods when the sea and sky were that

exclusive blue; but I had learned before I was fifteen years old that

day is invariably followed by night, and that between the two there is a

time toward the latter end of which you can believe anything. It was

with that dusky period in view that I mined the approaches to my little

villa at Eden-by-the-Sea.

Well, after that I took the flask that had the slip of skin in it,

unscrewed the top, pulled the rubber cork, and fished the skin out, with

a salvage hook that I made by unbending and rebending a hair-pin....

Don't smile. I've always had a horror of _accidentally_ finding a

hair-pin in my pocket, and so I carry one on purpose.... See? Not an

airy, fairy Lillian, but an honest, hard-working Jane ... good to clean

a pipe with. So I fished out the slip of skin (with the one I had then)

and spread it out on my knee, and translated what was written on it, for

the thousandth time.

Can you read that? The old-fashioned S's mix you up. It's straight

modern Italian. I don't know what the ink's made of, but the skin's the

real article--it's taken from just above the knee where a man can get at

himself best. It runs this way, just like a "personal" in the _Herald_,

only more so:

Prisoner on Prana Beach will share treasure with rescuing party.

Come at once.

Isn't that just like an oil-well-in-the-South-west-Company's prospectus?

"Only a little stock left; price of shares will be raised shortly to

thirteen cents."

I bit. It was knowing what kind of skin the ad. was written on that got

me. I'd seen cured human hide before. In Paris they've got a

Constitution printed on some that was peeled off an aristocrat in the

Revolution, and I've seen a seaman's upper arm and back, with the

tattoos, in a bottle of alcohol in a museum on Fourteenth Street, New

York--boys under fourteen not admitted. I wasn't a day over eight when I

saw those tattoos. However....

To get that prisoner loose was the duty that I owed to humanity; to

share the treasure was the duty that I owed to myself. So I got together

some niggers, and the fancy craft I've described (on shares with a

Singapore Dutchman, who was too fat to come himself, and too much

married), and made a start.... You're bothered by my calling them

niggers. Is that it? Well, the Mason and Dixon line ran plump through

my father's house; but mother's room being in the south gable, I was

born, as you may say, in the land of cotton, and consequently in my

bright Southern lexicon the word nigger is defined as meaning anything

black or brown. I think I said that Prana is on the west coast, and that

may have misled you. But Africa isn't the only God-forsaken place that

has a west coast; how about Staten Island?

Malaysian houses are built mostly of reed and thatch work standing in

shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to

alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a

man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to climb

out of. That's why I'd brought a length of knotted rope. The dynamite

was instead of men, which we hadn't means to hire or transport, and who

wouldn't have landed on that beach anyhow, unless drowned and washed up.

Now dynamite wouldn't be a pleasant thing to have round your club or

your favorite restaurant; but in some parts of the world it makes the

best company. It will speak up for you on occasion louder than your best

friend, and it gives you the feeling of being Jove with a handful of

thunderbolts. My plan was to find in what settlement there was the most

likely prisoner, drive the inhabitants off for two or three days--one

blast would do that, I calculated (especially if preceded and followed

by blowings on a pocket siren)--let my rope down into his well, lift the

treasure with him, and get away with it.

This was a straight ahead job--except for the god. And in daylight it

didn't seem as if It could be such an awful devil of a god. But It did

have the deuce of a funny spoor, as I made haste to find out. The thing

had five toes, like a man, which was a relief. But unlike nigger feet,

the thumb toe and the index weren't spread. The thumb bent sharply

inward, and mixed its pad mark with that of the index. Furthermore,

though the impress of the toes was very deep (down-slanting like a man

walking on tiptoe), the heel marks were also very deep, and between toe

and heel marks there were no other marks at all. In other words, the

thing's feet must have been arched like a croquet wicket. And It's heels

were not rounded; they were _perfectly_ round--absolute circles they

were, about the diameter of the smallest sized cans in which Capstan

tobacco is sold. If ever a wooden idol had stopped squatting and gone

out for a stroll on a beach, it would have left just such a track. Only

it might not have felt that it had to take such peculiarly long steps.

My knoll being near the south end of Prana Beach (pure patriotism I

assure you), my village hunts must be to the northward. I had one good

hunt, the first day, and I got near some sort of a village, a jungle

one built over a pool, as I found afterward. The reason I gave up

looking that day was because the god got between me and where I was

trying to get; burst out humming, you might say, right in my face,

though I couldn't see It, and directly I had turned and was tiptoeing

quietly away (I remember how the tree trunks looked like teeth in a

comb, or the nearest railroad ties from the window of an express train),

It set up the most passionate, vindictive, triumphant vocal fireworks

ever heard out of hell. It made black noises like Niagara Falls, and

white noises higher than Pike's Peak. It made leaps, lighting on tones

as a carpenter's hammer lights on nails. It ran up and down the major

and minor diatonics, up and down the chromatic, with the speed and fury

of a typhoon, and the attention to detail of Paderewski--at his best,

when he makes the women faint--and with the power and volume of a church

organ with all the stops pulled out. It shook and It trilled and It

quavered, and It gargled as if It had a barrel of glycothermoline in

It's mouth and had been exposed to diphtheria, and It finished--just as

I tripped on a snake and fell--with a round bar of high C sound, that

lasted a good minute (or until I was a quarter of a mile beyond where I

had fallen), and was the color of butter, and could have been cut with a

knife. And It stopped short--biff--just as if It had been chopped off.

That was the end of my village hunting. Let the prisoner of Prana Beach

drown in his hole when the rains come, let his treasure remain unlifted

till Gabriel blows his trumpet; but let yours truly bask in the shade of

the beach ebony, hidden from view, and fortified by dynamite--until the

satinwood shallop should see fit to return and take him off.

Except for a queer dream (queer because of the time and place, and

because there seemed absolutely nothing to suggest it to the mind

asleep), I put in six hours' solid sleep. In my dream I was in Lombardy

in a dark loft where there were pears laid out to ripen; and we were

frightened and had to keep creepy-mouse still--because the father had

come home sooner than was expected, and was milking his goats in the

stable under the loft, and singing, which showed that he was in liquor,

and not his usual affable, bland self. I could hear him plainly in my

dream, tearing the heart out of that old folk-song called _La

Smortina_--"The Pale Girl":

"T' ho la scia to e son contento

Non m'in cresca niente, niente

Altro giovine hogià in mente

Pin belino assai di te."

And I woke up tingling with the remembered fear (it was a mixed feeling,

half fright, and half an insane desire to burst out laughing to see what

the old man would do), and I looked over the rim of my hat, and there

walking toward me, in the baby-blue and pink of the bright dawn (but a

big way off), came a straggling line of naked niggers, headed by the

It-god, Itself.

One look told me that, one look at a great bulk of scarletness, that

walked upright like a man. I didn't look twice, I scuttled out to my

nearest mine, lighted the fuse, tumbled back into the hollow, fingers in

ears, face screwed up as tight as a face can be screwed, and waited.

When it was over, and things had stopped falling, I looked out again.

The tropic dawn remained as before, but the immediate landscape was

somewhat altered for the worse, and in the distance were neither niggers

nor the god. It is possible that I stuck my thumbs into my armpits and

waggled my fingers. I don't remember. But it's no mean sensation to have

pitted yourself against a strange god, with perfectly round heels, and

to have won out.

About noon, though, the god came back, fortified perhaps by reflection,

and more certainly by a nigger who walked behind him with a spear.

You've seen the donkey boys in Cairo make the donkeys trot?... This time

I put my trust in the Colt forty-five; and looked the god over, as he

came reluctantly nearer and nearer, singing a magic.

Do you know the tragedian walk as taken off on the comic opera stage,

the termination of each strutting, dragging step accentuated by cymbals

smashed together F-F-F? That was how the god walked. He was all in

scarlet, with a long feather sticking straight up from a scarlet cap.

And the magic he sang (now that you knew the sounds he made were those

of a tenor voice, you knew that it was a glorious tenor voice) was a

magic out of "Aïda." It was the magic that what's-his-name sings when he

is appointed commander-in-chief of all the Egyptian forces. Now the

niggers may have thought that their god's magics were stronger than my

dynamite. But the god, though very, very simple, was not so simple as

that. He was an Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like

Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a

singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was

too plumb afraid.

When he reached the hole that the dynamite had made in the landscape--I

showed myself; trying to look as much like a dove of peace as possible.

"Come on alone," I called in Italian, "and have a bite of lunch."

That stopped his singing, but I had to repeat. Well he had an argument

with the nigger, that finished with all the gestures that two monkeys

similarly situated would have made at each other, and after a time the

nigger sat down, and the god came on alone, puffing and indignant.

We talked in Dago, but I'll give the English of it, so's not to appear

to be showing off.

"Who and what in the seventh circle of hell _are_ you?" I asked.

He seemed offended that I should not have known. But he gave his name,

sure of his effect. "Signor ----" and the name sounded like that tower

in Venice that fell down the other day.

"You don't mean it!" I exclaimed joyfully. "Be seated," and, I added,

being silly with joy and relief at having my awful devil turn into a

silly child--"there may be some legacy--though trifling."

Well, he sat down, and stuck his short, immense hirsute legs out, all

comfy, and I, remembering the tracks on the beach, had a look at his

feet. And I turned crimson with suppressed laughter. He had wooden

cylinders three inches high strapped to his bare heels. They made him

five feet five inches high instead of five feet two. They were just such

heels (only clumsier and made of wood instead of cork and crimson

morocco or silk) as _Siegfried_ wears for mountain climbing, dragon

fighting, or other deeds of derring-do. And with these heels to guide

me, I sighed, and said:

"Signor Recent-Venetian-Tower, you have the most beautiful pure golden

tenor voice that I have ever heard in my life."

Have you ever been suddenly embraced by a pile-driver, and kissed on

both cheeks by a blacking-brush? I have. Then he held me by the

shoulders at arm's length, and looked me in the eyes as if I had been a

long-lost son returned at last. Then he gathered a kiss in his finger

tips and flung it to the heavens. Then he asked if by any chance I had

any spaghetti with me. He cried when I said that I had not; but quietly,

not harassingly. And then we got down to real business, and found out

about each other.

_He_ was the prisoner of Prana Beach. The treasure that he had to share

with his rescuer was his voice. Two nights a week during the season, at

two thousand a night. But--There was a great big But.

Signor What-I-said-before, his voice weakened by pneumonia, had taken a

long travelling holiday to rest up. But his voice, instead of coming

back, grew weaker and weaker, driving him finally into a suicidal

artistic frenzy, during which he put on his full suit of evening

clothes, a black pearl shirt stud, a tall silk hat, in the dead of

night, and flung himself from the stern of a P. & O. boat into the sea.

He had no knowledge of swimming and expected to drown at once. But he

was not built for drowning. The laws of buoyancy and displacement caused

him to float upon his back, high out of the water, like an empty

barrel. Nor was the water into which he had fallen as tepid as he had

expected. From his description, with its accompaniment of shudderings

and shiverings, the temperature must have been as low as 80° Fahrenheit,

which is pretty sharp for dagoes. Anyhow, the double shock of the cold

and of not drowning instantly acted on his vocal chords. Without even

trying, he said, he knew that his voice had come back. Picture the poor

man's despair--overboard in the ocean, wanting to die because he had

nothing to live for, and suddenly discovering that he had everything to

live for. He asserts that he actually forgot the cold, and thought only

of how to preserve that glorious instrument, his voice; not for himself

but for mankind. But he could not think out a way, and he asserted that

a passion of vain weeping and delirium, during which he kicked himself

warm, was followed by a noble and godlike calm, during which, lying as

easily upon the sea as on a couch, and inspired by the thought that some

ear might catch the notes and die the happier for it, he lifted his

divine voice and sang a swan song. After that he sang twenty-nine

others. And then, in the very midst of _La Bella Napoli_, with which he

intended to close (fearing to strain his voice if he sang any more), he

thought of sharks.

Spurred by that thought, he claims to have kicked and beaten with his

hands until he was insensible. Otherwise, he would, he said, have

continued to float about placidly, singing swan songs at intervals

until, at last, thinned by starvation to the sinking point, he would

have floated no more.

To shorten up. Signor You-know-what, either owing to his struggles, or

to the sea breeze pressing against his stomach, came ashore on Prana

Beach; was pounced upon by the niggers, stripped of his glad rags (the

topper had been lost in the shuffle), and dropped into a hole eight feet

deep, for safe-keeping. It was in this hole, buried in sand, that he

found the flask I have told you about. Well, one day, for he had a bit

of talent that way, he fell to sketching on his legs, knees, upper thigh

and left forearm, using for ink something black that they had given him

for breakfast. That night it rained; but next morning his drawings were

as black and sharp as when he had made them; this, coupled with the

flask, furnished him with an idea, a very forlorn and hopeless one, but

an idea for all that. He had, however, nothing to write his C Q D on but

himself, none of which (for he held himself in trust for his Maker as a

complete whole, he explained) he intended to part with.

It was in trying to climb out of the hole that he tore a flap of skin

from his left thigh just above the knee, clean off, except for one

thread by which it hung. In less than two days he had screwed up his

courage to breaking that thread with a sudden jerk. He cured his bit of

hide in a novel way. Every morning he cried on it, and when the tears

had dried, leaving their minute residue of salt, he would work the raw

skin with his thumb and a bit of stick he had found. Then a nigger boy,

one beast of a hot day, lowered him a gourd of sea-water as a joke, and

Signor What-we-agreed-on, made salt of that while the sun shone, and

finished his job of tanning.

The next time he was given a black breakfast, he wrote his hurry-call

message and corked it into the flask. And there only remained the

somewhat herculean task of getting that flask flung into the sea.

You'll never believe how it got there finally. But I'll tell you for all

that. A creek flowed near the dungeon in which the famous tenor was

incarcerated. And one night of cloud-burst that creek burst its

cerements, banks I mean, filled the singing man's prison in two jerks of

a lamb's tail, and floated both him and his flask out of it. He grounded

as usual, but the flask must have been rushed down to the sea. For in

the sea it was found, calmly bobbing, and less than two years later. A

nigger fisherman found it, and gave it to me, in exchange for a

Waterbury watch. He tried to make me take his daughter instead, but I

wouldn't.

Signor What-you-would-forget-if-I-told-you wasn't put back in his

dungeon till the rainy season was at an end. Instead he was picketed. A

rope ran from his wrists, which were tied behind his back, and was

inserted through the handles (it had a pair of them like ears just above

the trunnions) of a small bronze cannon, that had Magellan's name and

the arms of Spain engraved around the touch-hole. And thus picketed, he

was rained on, joked on, and abused until dry weather. Then, it was the

first happiness that he had had among them, they served him one day with

a new kind of fish that had begun to run in the creek. It tasted like

Carlton sole, he said. And it made him feel so good that, being quite by

himself and the morning blue and warm, he began, sitting on his little

cannon, to hum an aria. Further inspirited by his own tunefulness, he

rose (and of course struck an attitude) and opened his mouth and sang.

Oh, how good it was to hear--as he put it himself--after all those

months of silence!

Well, the people he belonged to came running up with eyes like saucers

and mouths open, and they squatted at his feet in a semicircle, and

women came and children. They had wonder in their faces and fear. Last

came the old chief, who was too old to walk, and was carried always in a

chair which two of his good-natured sons-in-law made with their hands.

And the old chief, when he had listened awhile with his little bald

monkey head cocked on one side, signed to be put down. And he stood on

his feet and walked.

And he took out a little khris and walked over to the Divo, and cut the

ropes that bound him, and knelt before him and kowtowed, and pressed the

late prisoner's toes with his forehead. Then--and this was terribly

touching, my informant said, and reminded him of St. Petersburg--one of

the old chief's granddaughters, a little brown slip of a girl, slender

and shapely as a cigar, flung her arms round his neck, and hung--just

hung. When they tried to get her away she kicked at them, but she never

so much as once changed the expression of her upturned face, which was

one of adoration. Well, the people hollered and made drums of their

cheeks and beat on them, and the first thing Signor Recent-Disaster knew

he was being dressed in a scarlet coat that had belonged to a British

colonel dead this hundred years. The girl by now had had to let go and

had dropped at his feet like a ripe guava--and he was being ushered into

the largest bamboo-legged house that the place boasted, and told as

plainly as round eyes, gesticulations, and moans can, that the house was

his to enjoy. Then they began to give him things. First his own dress

suit, ruined by sea-water and shrinking, his formerly boiled shirt, his

red silk underwear still wearable, his black pearl stud and every

stiver of gold, silver, copper, and English banknotes that had been

found in his pockets. They gave him knives, rough silver bangles, heaps

of elaborate mats, a handful of rather disappointing pearls, a scarlet

head-dress with a feather that had been a famous chief's, a gun without

a lock, and, what pleased him most (must have), a bit of looking-glass

big enough to see half of his face in at a time. They allowed him to

choose his own house-keeper; and, although several beauties were knocked

down in the ensuing riot, he managed to satisfy them that his

unalterable choice rested upon the little lady who had been the most

convincing in her recognition of his genius, and--what's the

line?--"Hang there like fruit, my soul, till the tree die."

Well, he offered to put me up, and show me how the gods keep house. I

counter-offered to keep him with me, by force of dynamite, carry him

back to civilization, and go shares on his voice, as per circular. And

this is where the big But comes in. My offer was pestilential; he

shunned it.

"You shall have my black pearl stud for your trouble," he said. "I

bought her years ago in a pawnshop at Aix. But _me_--no. I have found my

niche, and my temple. But you shall be the judge of that."

"You don't _want_ to escape?"

His mouth curled in scorn at the very idea.

"Try to think of how much spaghetti you could buy for a song."

His eyes and mouth twitched. But he sighed, and shook his head.

"Do you know," said he, "when you demonstrated against us with your

dynamite it was instantly concluded that you were some new kind of a god

come to inhabit the beach. It was proposed that I go against you singing

a charm that should drive you away. But, as you saw, I came only at the

spear's point. Do you think I was afraid? I was; but not of your

godship. I had seen your tracks, I had seen the beach rise to your

explosive, and I knew that as one Christian gentleman I had nothing on

the lines of violence to fear from another. Your explosion was like a

note, asking me when I should next call to bring fewer attendants. I

_was_ afraid; I was afraid that you were not one, alone, but several,

and that you would compel me to return with you to a world in which,

take it for all and all, the good things, such as restaurants,

artificial heat, Havana cigars, and Steinway pianos, are nullified by

climatic conditions unsuited to vocal chords, fatal jealousies among

members of the same artistic professions, and a public that listens but

does not hear; or that hears and does not listen. But you shall stop

with me a few days, in my house. You shall see for yourself that among

all artists I alone enjoy an appreciation and solicitude that are better

than gold."

Signor Shall-we-let-it-go-at-that had not lied to me. And all he asked

was, with many apologies, that I should treat him with a certain

reverence, a little as if he were a conqueror. So all the way to the

village I walked two paces right flank rear, and wore a solemn and

subdued expression. My host approached the dwellings of his people with

an exaggeration of tragi-comic stride, dragging his high-heeled feet as

Henry Irving used, raising and advancing his chest to the bursting

point, and holding his head so proudly that the perpendicular feather of

his cap leaned backward at a sharp angle. With his scarlet soldier's

coat, all burst along the seams, and not meeting by a yard over his red

silk undershirt, with his bit of broken mirror dangling at his waist

like a lady's jewelled "vanity set," with his china-ink black mustache

and superb beard, he presented for all the purposes of the time and

place an appearance in keeping with the magnificence of his voice and of

his dreams.

When we got among the houses, from which came a great peeping of shy

eyes, the Signor suddenly raised his fingers to his throat and sounded a

shocking b-r-rr-rrr of alarm and anxiety. Then there arose a murmur,

almost pitiful it was so heartfelt, as of bees who fear an irreparable

tragedy in the hive. The old chief came out of the council-house upon

the hands of his good-natured sons-in-law, and he was full of tenderness

and concern. I saw my friend escorted into his own dwelling by ladies

who sighed and commiserated. But already the call for help had reached

the tenor's slip of a wife; and she, with hands that shook, was

preparing a compress of leaves that smelt of cinnamon and cloves. I,

too, showed solicitude, and timidly helped my conqueror to the heaped

mats upon which he was wont to recline in the heat of the day. He had

made himself a pair of very round terrified eyes, and he had not taken

the compress from his throat. But he spoke quietly, and as one possessed

of indomitable fortitude. In Malay he told his people that it was

"nothing, just a little--brrr--soreness and thickening," and he let slip

such a little moan as monkeys make. To me he spoke in Italian.

"I shall have to submit to a bandage," said he. "But there is nothing

the matter with my throat" (slight monkey moan here for benefit of

adorers), "absolutely nothing. I have invented a slight soreness so--so

that you could see for yourself ... so that you could see for

yourself.... If you were to count those here assembled and those

assembled without, you would number our entire population, including

children and babes in arms" (a slight moan while compress is being

readjusted over Adam's apple by gentle, tremulous brown fingers), "and

among these, my friend, are no dissenters. There is none here to stand

forth and say that on Tuesday night Signor And-he-pronounced-it's

singing was lacking in those golden tones for which we used to look to

him. His voice, indeed, is but a skeleton of its former self, and shall

we say that the public must soon tire of a singer with so pronounced a

tendency to flat?

"Here in this climate," he continued, "my voice by dint of constant and

painstaking care and practice has actually improved. I should not have

said that this was possible; but a man must believe experience.... And

then these dear, amiable people are one in their acclaim of me; although

I sometimes grieve, not for myself, but for them, to think that they can

never _really_ know what they've got...."

I sometimes wonder how the god of Prana Beach will be treated when he

begins to age and to lose his voice. It worries me--a little.

The black pearl stud? Of course not, you wretched materialist. I sold it

in the first good market I came to. No good ever came of material

possessions, and always much payment of storage bills. But I have a

collection of memories that I am fond of.

Still, on second thought, and if I had the knack of setting them

straight on paper, I'd part even with them for a consideration,

especially if I felt that I could reach such an appreciative audience as

that of Prana Beach, which sits upon its heels in worship and humility

and listens to the divine fireworks of Signor I-have-forgotten-too.