"It's easy to see why you aren't lonely with that wonderful girl to look
at. Is she really coming out by the next steamer but one? It's hard to
believe because she's so much too good to be true."
"Yes," he said, "isn't she?"
"The usual cable agent," I said, "keeps from going mad by having a dog
or a cat or some pet or other to talk to. But I can understand a
photograph like this being all-sufficient to any man--even if he had
never seen the original. Allow me to shake hands with you."
Then I got him away from the girl, because my time was short and I
wanted to find out about some things that were important to _me_.
"You haven't asked me my business in these parts," I said, "but I'll
tell you. I'm collecting grasses for the Bronx Botanical Garden."
"Then, by Jove!" said Graves, "you have certainly come to the right
place. There used to be a tree on this island, but the last man who saw
it died in 1789--Grass! The place is all grass: there are fifty kinds
right around my house here."
"I've noticed only eighteen," I said, "but that isn't the point. The
point is: when do the Batengo Island grasses begin to go to seed?" And I
smiled.
"You think you've got me stumped, don't you?" he said. "That a mere
cable agent wouldn't notice such things. Well, that grass there," and he
pointed--"beach nut we call it--is the first to ripen seed, and, as far
as I know, it does it just six weeks from now."
"Are you just making things up to impress me?"
"No, sir, I am not. I know to the minute. You see, I'm a victim of
hay-fever."
"In that case," I said, "expect me back about the time your nose begins
to run."
"Really?" And his whole face lighted up. "I'm delighted. Only six
weeks. Why, then, if you'll stay round for only five or six weeks _more_
you'll be here for the wedding."
"I'll make it if I possibly can," I said. "I want to see if that girl's
really true."
"Anything I can do to help you while you're gone? I've got loads of
spare time----"
"If you knew anything about grasses----"
"I don't. But I'll blow back into the interior and look around. I've
been meaning to right along, just for fun. But I can never get any of
_them_ to go with me."
"The natives?"
"Yes. Poor lot. They're committing race suicide as fast as they can.
There are more wooden gods than people in Batengo village, and the
superstition's so thick you could cut it with a knife. All the manly
virtues have perished.... Aloiu!"
The boy who did Graves's chores for him came lazily out of the house.
"Aloiu," said Graves, "just run back into the island to the top of that
hill--see?--that one over there--and fetch a handful of grass for this
gentleman. He'll give you five dollars for it."
Aloiu grinned sheepishly and shook his head.
"Fifty dollars?"
Aloiu shook his head with even more firmness, and I whistled. Fifty
dollars would have made him the Rockefeller-Carnegie-Morgan of those
parts.
"All right, coward," said Graves cheerfully. "Run away and play with the
other children.... Now, isn't that curious? Neither love, money, nor
insult will drag one of them a mile from the beach. They say that if you
go 'back there in the grass' something awful will happen to you."
"As what?" I asked.
"The last man to try it," said Graves, "in the memory of the oldest
inhabitant was a woman. When they found her she was all black and
swollen--at least that's what they say. Something had bitten her just
above the ankle."
"Nonsense," I said, "there are no snakes in the whole Batengo group."
"They didn't say it was a snake," said Graves. "They said the marks of
the bite were like those that would be made by the teeth of a very
little--child."
Graves rose and stretched himself.
"What's the use of arguing with people that tell yarns like that! All
the same, if you're bent on making expeditions back into the grass,
you'll make 'em alone, unless the cable breaks and I'm free to make 'em
with you."
Five weeks later I was once more coasting along the wavering hills of
Batengo Island, with a sharp eye out for a first sight of the cable
station and Graves. Five weeks with no company but Kanakas and a
pointer dog makes one white man pretty keen for the society of another.
Furthermore, at our one meeting I had taken a great shine to Graves and
to the charming young lady who was to brave a life in the South Seas for
his sake. If I was eager to get ashore, Don was more so. I had a
shot-gun across my knees with which to salute the cable station, and the
sight of that weapon, coupled with toothsome memories of a recent big
hunt down on Forked Peak, had set the dog quivering from stem to stern,
to crouching, wagging his tail till it disappeared, and beating sudden
tattoos upon the deck with his forepaws. And when at last we rounded on
the cable station and I let off both barrels, he began to bark and race
about the schooner like a thing possessed.
The salute brought Graves out of his house. He stood on the porch waving
a handkerchief, and I called to him through a megaphone; hoped that he
was well, said how glad I was to see him, and asked him to meet me in
Batengo village.
Even at that distance I detected a something irresolute in his manner;
and a few minutes later when he had fetched a hat out of the house,
locked the door, and headed toward the village, he looked more like a
soldier marching to battle than a man walking half a mile to greet a
friend.
"That's funny," I said to Don. "He's coming to meet us in spite of the
fact that he'd much rather not. Oh, well!"
I left the schooner while she was still under way, and reached the beach
before Graves came up. There were too many strange brown men to suit
Don, and he kept very close to my legs. When Graves arrived the natives
fell away from him as if he had been a leper. He wore a sort of sickly
smile, and when he spoke the dog stiffened his legs and growled
menacingly.
"Don!" I exclaimed sternly, and the dog cowered, but the spines along
his back bristled and he kept a menacing eye upon Graves. The man's face
looked drawn and rather angry. The frank boyishness was clean out of it.
He had been strained by something or other to the breaking-point--so
much was evident.
"My dear fellow," I said, "what the devil is the matter?"
Graves looked to right and left, and the islanders shrank still farther
away from him.
"You can see for yourself," he said curtly. "I'm taboo." And then, with
a little break in his voice: "Even your dog feels it. Don, good boy!
Come here, sir!"
Don growled quietly.
"You see!"
"Don," I said sharply, "this man is my friend and yours. Pat him,
Graves."
Graves reached forward and patted Don's head and talked to him
soothingly.
But although Don did not growl or menace, he shivered under the caress
and was unhappy.
"So you're taboo!" I said cheerfully. "That's the result of anything,
from stringing pink and yellow shells on the same string to murdering
your uncle's grandmother-in-law. Which have _you_ done?"
"I've been back there in the grass," he said, "and because--because
nothing happened to me I'm taboo."
"Is that all?"
"As far as they know--yes."
"Well!" said I, "my business will take me back there for days at a time,
so I'll be taboo, too. Then there'll be two of us. Did you find any
curious grasses for me?"
"I don't know about grasses," he said, "but I found something very
curious that I want to show you and ask your advice about. Are you going
to share my house?"
"I think I'll keep head-quarters on the schooner," I said, "but if
you'll put me up now and then for a meal or for the night----"
"I'll put you up for lunch right now," he said, "if you'll come. I'm my
own cook and bottle-washer since the taboo, but I must say the change
isn't for the worse so far as food goes."
He was looking and speaking more cheerfully.
"May I bring Don?"
He hesitated.
"Why--yes--of course."
"If you'd rather not?"
"No, bring him. I want to make friends again if I can."
So we started for Graves's house, Don very close at my heels.
"Graves," I said, "surely a taboo by a lot of fool islanders hasn't
upset you. There's something on your mind. Bad news?"
"Oh, no," he said. "She's coming. It's other things. I'll tell you by
and by--everything. Don't mind me. I'm all right. Listen to the wind in
the grass. That sound day and night is enough to put a man off his
feed."
"You say you found something very curious back there in the grass?"
"I found, among other things, a stone monolith. It's fallen down, but
it's almost as big as the Flatiron Building in New York. It's ancient as
days--all carved--it's a sort of woman, I think. But we'll go back one
day and have a look at it. Then, of course, I saw all the different
kinds of grasses in the world--they'd interest you more--but I'm such a
punk botanist that I gave up trying to tell 'em apart. I like the
flowers best--there's millions of 'em--down among the grass.... I tell
you, old man, this island is the greatest curiosity-shop in the whole
world."
He unlocked the door of his house and stood aside for me to go in first.
"Shut up, Don!"
The dog growled savagely, but I banged him with my open hand across the
snout, and he quieted down and followed into the house, all tense and
watchful.
On the shelf where Graves kept his books, with its legs hanging over,
was what I took to be an idol of some light brownish wood--say
sandalwood, with a touch of pink. But it was the most lifelike and
astounding piece of carving I ever saw in the islands or out of them. It
was about a foot high, and represented a Polynesian woman in the prime
of life, say, fifteen or sixteen years old, only the features were finer
and cleaner carved. It was a nude, in an attitude of easy repose--the
legs hanging, the toes dangling--the hands resting, palms downward, on
the blotter, the trunk relaxed. The eyes, which were a kind of steely
blue, seemed to have been made, depth upon depth, of some wonderful
translucent enamel, and to make his work still more realistic the artist
had planted the statuette's eyebrows, eyelashes, and scalp with real
hair, very soft and silky, brown on the head and black for the lashes
and eyebrows. The thing was so lifelike that it frightened me. And when
Don began to growl like distant thunder I didn't blame him. But I leaned
over and caught him by the collar, because it was evident that he wanted
to get at that statuette and destroy it.
When I looked up the statuette's eyes had moved. They were turned
downward upon the dog, with cool curiosity and indifference. A kind of
shudder went through me. And then, lo and behold, the statuette's tiny
brown breasts rose and fell slowly, and a long breath came out of its
nostrils.
I backed violently into Graves, dragging Don with me and half-choking
him. "My God Almighty!" I said. "It's alive!"
"Isn't she!" said he. "I caught her back there in the grass--the little
minx. And when I heard your signal I put her up there to keep her out of
mischief. It's too high for her to jump--and she's very sore about it."
"You found her in the grass," I said. "For God's sake!--are there more
of them?"
"Thick as quail," said he, "but it's hard to get a sight of 'em. But
_you_ were overcome by curiosity, weren't you, old girl? You came out to
have a look at the big white giant and he caught you with his thumb and
forefinger by the scruff of the neck--so you couldn't bite him--and here
you are."
The womankin's lips parted and I saw a flash of white teeth. She looked
up into Graves's face and the steely eyes softened. It was evident that
she was very fond of him.
"Rum sort of a pet," said Graves. "What?"
"Rum?" I said. "It's horrible--it isn't decent--it--it ought to be
taboo. Don's got it sized up right. He--he wants to kill it."
"Please don't keep calling her It," said Graves. "She wouldn't like
it--if she understood." Then he whispered words that were Greek to me,
and the womankin laughed aloud. Her laugh was sweet and tinkly, like the
upper notes of a spinet.
"You can speak her language?"
"A few words--Tog ma Lao?"
"Na!"
"Aba Ton sug ato."
"Nan Tane dom ud lon anea!"
It sounded like that--only all whispered and very soft. It sounded a
little like the wind in the grass.
"She says she isn't afraid of the dog," said Graves, "and that he'd
better let her alone."
"I almost hope he won't," said I. "Come outside. I don't like her. I
think I've got a touch of the horrors."
Graves remained behind a moment to lift the womankin down from the
shelf, and when he rejoined me I had made up my mind to talk to him like
a father.
"Graves," I said, "although that creature in there is only a foot high,
it isn't a pig or a monkey, it's a woman, and you're guilty of what's
considered a pretty ugly crime at home--abduction. You've stolen this
woman away from kith and kin, and the least you can do is to carry her
back where you found her and turn her loose. Let me ask you one
thing--what would Miss Chester think?"
"Oh, that doesn't worry me," said Graves. "But I _am_ worried--worried
sick. It's early--shall we talk now, or wait till after lunch?"
"Now," I said.
"Well," said he, "you left me pretty well enthused on the subject of
botany--so I went back there twice to look up grasses for you. The
second time I went I got to a deep sort of valley where the grass is
waist-high--that, by the way, is where the big monolith is--and that
place was alive with things that were frightened and ran. I could see
the directions they took by the way the grass tops acted. There were
lots of loose stones about and I began to throw 'em to see if I could
knock one of the things over. Suddenly all at once I saw a pair of
bright little eyes peering out of a bunch of grass--I let fly at them,
and something gave a sort of moan and thrashed about in the grass--and
then lay still. I went to look, and found that I'd stunned--_her_. She
came to and tried to bite me, but I had her by the scruff of the neck
and she couldn't. Further, she was sick with being hit in the chest with
the stone, and first thing I knew she keeled over in the palm of my hand
in a dead faint. I couldn't find any water or anything--and I didn't
want her to die--so I brought her home. She was sick for a week--and I
took care of her--as I would a sick pup--and she began to get well and
want to play and romp and poke into everything. She'd get the lower
drawer of my desk open and hide in it--or crawl into a rubber boot and
play house. And she got to be right good company--same as any pet
does--a cat or a dog--or a monkey--and naturally, she being so small, I
couldn't think of her as anything but a sort of little beast that I'd
caught and tamed.... You see how it all happened, don't you? Might have
happened to anybody."
"Why, yes," I said. "If she didn't give a man the horrors right at the
start--I can understand making a sort of pet of her--but, man, there's
only one thing to do. Be persuaded. Take her back where you found her,
and turn her loose."
"Well and good," said Graves. "I tried that, and next morning I found
her at my door, sobbing--horrible, dry sobs--no tears.... You've said
one thing that's full of sense: she isn't a pig--or a monkey--she's a
woman."
"You don't mean to say," said I, "that that mite of a thing is in love
with you?"
"I don't know what else you'd call it."
"Graves," I said, "Miss Chester arrives by the next steamer. In the
meanwhile something has got to be done."
"What?" said he hopelessly.
"I don't know," I said. "Let me think."
The dog Don laid his head heavily on my knee, as if he wished to offer a
solution of the difficulty.
A week before Miss Chester's steamer was due the situation had not
changed. Graves's pet was as much a fixture of Graves's house as the
front door. And a man was never confronted with a more serious problem.
Twice he carried her back into the grass and deserted her, and each time
she returned and was found sobbing--horrible, dry sobs--on the porch.
And a number of times we took her, or Graves did, in the pocket of his
jacket, upon systematic searches for her people. Doubtless she could
have helped us to find them, but she wouldn't. She was very sullen on
these expeditions and frightened. When Graves tried to put her down she
would cling to him, and it took real force to pry her loose.
In the open she could run like a rat; and in open country it would have
been impossible to desert her; she would have followed at Graves's heels
as fast as he could move them. But forcing through the thick grass
tired her after a few hundred yards, and she would gradually drop
farther and farther behind--sobbing. There was a pathetic side to it.
She hated me; and made no bones about it; but there was an armed truce
between us. She feared my influence over Graves, and I feared her--well,
just as some people fear rats or snakes. Things utterly out of the
normal always do worry me, and Bo, which was the name Graves had learned
for her, was, so far as I know, unique in human experience. In
appearance she was like an unusually good-looking island girl observed
through the wrong end of an opera-glass, but in habit and action she was
different. She would catch flies and little grasshoppers and eat them
all alive and kicking, and if you teased her more than she liked her
ears would flatten the way a cat's do, and she would hiss like a
snapping-turtle, and show her teeth.
But one got accustomed to her. Even poor Don learned that it was not his
duty to punish her with one bound and a snap. But he would never let her
touch him, believing that in her case discretion was the better part of
valor. If she approached him he withdrew, always with dignity, but
equally with determination. He knew in his heart that something about
her was horribly wrong and against nature. I knew it, too, and I think
Graves began to suspect it.
Well, a day came when Graves, who had been up since dawn, saw the smoke
of a steamer along the horizon, and began to fire off his revolver so
that I, too, might wake and participate in his joy. I made tea and went
ashore.
"It's _her_ steamer," he said.
"Yes," said I, "and we've got to decide something."
"About Bo?"
"Suppose I take her off your hands--for a week or so--till you and Miss
Chester have settled down and put your house in order. Then Miss
Chester--Mrs. Graves, that is--can decide what is to be done. I admit
that I'd rather wash my hands of the business--but I'm the only white
man available, and I propose to stand by my race. Don't say a word to
Bo--just bring her out to the schooner and leave her."
In the upshot Graves accepted my offer, and while Bo, fairly bristling
with excitement and curiosity, was exploring the farther corners of my
cabin, we slipped out and locked the door on her. The minute she knew
what had happened she began to tear around and raise Cain. It sounded a
little like a cat having a fit.
Graves was white and unhappy. "Let's get away quick," he said; "I feel
like a skunk."
But Miss Chester was everything that her photograph said about her, and
more too, so that the trick he had played Bo was very soon a negligible
weight on Graves's mind.
If the wedding was quick and business-like, it was also jolly and
romantic. The oldest passenger gave the bride away. All the crew came
aft and sang "The Voice That Breathed O'er E-den That Earliest
Wedding-Day"--to the tune called "Blairgowrie." They had worked it up in
secret for a surprise. And the bride's dove-brown eyes got a little
teary. I was best man. The captain read the service, and choked
occasionally. As for Graves--I had never thought him handsome--well,
with his brown face and white linen suit, he made me think, and I'm sure
I don't know why, of St. Michael--that time he overcame Lucifer. The
captain blew us to breakfast, with champagne and a cake, and then the
happy pair went ashore in a boat full of the bride's trousseau, and the
crew manned the bulwarks and gave three cheers, and then something like
twenty-seven more, and last thing of all the brass cannon was fired, and
the little square flags that spell G-o-o-d L-u-c-k were run up on the
signal halyards.
As for me, I went back to my schooner feeling blue and lonely. I knew
little about women and less about love. It didn't seem quite fair. For
once I hated my profession--seed-gatherer to a body of scientific
gentlemen whom I had never seen. Well, there's nothing so good for the
blues as putting things in order.
I cleaned my rifle and revolver. I wrote up my note-book. I developed
some plates; I studied a brand-new book on South Sea grasses that had
been sent out to me, and I found some mistakes. I went ashore with Don,
and had a long walk on the beach--in the opposite direction from
Graves's house, of course--and I sent Don into the water after sticks,
and he seemed to enjoy it, and so I stripped and went in with him. Then
I dried in the sun, and had a match with my hands to see which could
find the tiniest shell. Toward dusk we returned to the schooner and had
dinner, and after that I went into my cabin to see how Bo was getting
on.
She flew at me like a cat, and if I hadn't jerked my foot back she must
have bitten me. As it was, her teeth tore a piece out of my trousers.
I'm afraid I kicked her. Anyway, I heard her land with a crash in a far
corner. I struck a match and lighted candles--they are cooler than
lamps--very warily--one eye on Bo. She had retreated under a chair and
looked out--very sullen and angry. I sat down and began to talk to her.
"It's no use," I said, "you're trying to bite and scratch, because
you're only as big as a minute. So come out here and make friends. I
don't like you and you don't like me; but we're going to be thrown
together for quite some time, so we'd better make the best of it. You
come out here and behave pretty and I'll give you a bit of gingersnap."
The last word was intelligible to her, and she came a little way out
from under the chair. I had a bit of gingersnap in my pocket, left over
from treating Don, and I tossed it on the floor midway between us. She
darted forward and ate it with quick bites.
Well, then, she looked up, and her eyes asked--just as plain as day:
"Why are things thus? Why have I come to live with you? I don't like
you. I want to go back to Graves."
I couldn't explain very well, and just shook my head and then went on
trying to make friends--it was no use. She hated me, and after a time I
got bored. I threw a pillow on the floor for her to sleep on, and left
her. Well, the minute the door was shut and locked she began to sob. You
could hear her for quite a distance, and I couldn't stand it. So I went
back--and talked to her as nicely and soothingly as I could. But she
wouldn't even look at me--just lay face down--heaving and sobbing.
Now I don't like little creatures that snap--so when I picked her up it
was by the scruff of the neck. She had to face me then, and I saw that
in spite of all the sobbing her eyes were perfectly dry. That struck me
as curious. I examined them through a pocket magnifying-glass, and
discovered that they had no tear-ducts. Of course she couldn't cry.
Perhaps I squeezed the back of her neck harder than I meant to--anyway,
her lips began to draw back and her teeth to show.
It was exactly at that second that I recalled the legend Graves had told
me about the island woman being found dead, and all black and swollen,
back there in the grass, with teeth marks on her that looked as if they
had been made by a very little child.
I forced Bo's mouth wide open and looked in. Then I reached for a candle
and held it steadily between her face and mine. She struggled furiously
so that I had to put down the candle and catch her legs together in my
free hand. But I had seen enough. I felt wet and cold all over. For if
the swollen glands at the base of the deeply grooved canines meant
anything, that which I held between my hands was not a woman--but a
snake.
I put her in a wooden box that had contained soap and nailed slats over
the top. And, personally, I was quite willing to put scrap-iron in the
box with her and fling it overboard. But I did not feel quite justified
without consulting Graves.
As an extra precaution in case of accidents, I overhauled my
medicine-chest and made up a little package for the breast pocket--a
lancet, a rubber bandage, and a pill-box full of permanganate crystals.
I had still much collecting to do, "back there in the grass," and I did
not propose to step on any of Bo's cousins or her sisters or her
aunts--without having some of the elementary first-aids to the
snake-bitten handy.
It was a lovely starry night, and I determined to sleep on deck. Before
turning in I went to have a look at Bo. Having nailed her in a box
securely, as I thought, I must have left my cabin door ajar. Anyhow she
was gone. She must have braced her back against one side of the box, her
feet against the other, and burst it open. I had most certainly
underestimated her strength and resources.
The crew, warned of peril, searched the whole schooner over, slowly and
methodically, lighted by lanterns. We could not find her. Well, swimming
comes natural to snakes.
I went ashore as quickly as I could get a boat manned and rowed. I took
Don on a leash, a shot-gun loaded, and both pockets of my jacket full of
cartridges. We ran swiftly along the beach, Don and I, and then turned
into the grass to make a short cut for Graves's house. All of a sudden
Don began to tremble with eagerness and nuzzle and sniff among the roots
of the grass. He was "making game."
"Good Don," I said, "good boy--hunt her up! Find her!"
The moon had risen. I saw two figures standing in the porch of Graves's
house. I was about to call to them and warn Graves that Bo was loose and
dangerous--when a scream--shrill and frightful--rang in my ears. I saw
Graves turn to his bride and catch her in his arms.
When I came up she had collected her senses and was behaving splendidly.
While Graves fetched a lantern and water she sat down on the porch, her
back against the house, and undid her garter, so that I could pull the
stocking off her bitten foot. Her instep, into which Bo's venomous teeth
had sunk, was already swollen and discolored. I slashed the teeth-marks
this way and that with my lancet. And Mrs. Graves kept saying: "All
right--all right--don't mind me--do what's best."
Don's leash had wedged between two of the porch planks, and all the time
we were working over Mrs. Graves he whined and struggled to get loose.
"Graves," I said, when we had done what we could, "if your wife begins
to seem faint, give her brandy--just a very little--at a time--and--I
think we were in time--and for God's sake don't ever let her know _why_
she was bitten--or by _what_----"
Then I turned and freed Don and took off his leash.
The moonlight was now very white and brilliant. In the sandy path that
led from Graves's porch I saw the print of feet--shaped just like human
feet--less than an inch long. I made Don smell them, and said:
"Hunt close, boy! Hunt close!"
Thus hunting, we moved slowly through the grass toward the interior of
the island. The scent grew hotter--suddenly Don began to move more
stiffly--as if he had the rheumatism--his eyes straight ahead saw
something that I could not see--the tip of his tail vibrated
furiously--he sank lower and lower--his legs worked more and more
stiffly--his head was thrust forward to the full stretch of his neck
toward a thick clump of grass. In the act of taking a wary step he came
to a dead halt--his right forepaw just clear of the ground. The tip of
his tail stopped vibrating. The tail itself stood straight out behind
him and became rigid like a bar of iron. I never saw a stancher point.
"Steady, boy!"