THE POISON TREES
For a couple of days, Stuart wandered about New York, partly
sight-seeing and partly on assignments in company with some of the
reporters of the paper. The City Editor wanted to determine whether the
boy had any natural aptitude for newspaper work. So Stuart chased around
one day with the man on the "police court run," another day he did
"hotels" and scored by securing an interview with a noted visitor for
whom the regular reporter had not time to wait. The boy was too young,
of course, to be sent on any assignments by himself, but one of the
older men took a fancy to the lad and took him along a couple of times,
when on a big story.
Just a week later, on coming in to the office, Stuart was told that the
Managing Editor wanted to see him. As this was the summons for which he
had been waiting, Stuart obeyed with alacrity. The Managing Editor did
not motion him to a a chair, as before, so the boy stood.
"First of all, Garfield----" and the boy noticed the use of the
surname--"I want to tell you that your father is safe. We've been
keeping the wires hot to Port-au-Prince and have found out that some
one resembling the description you gave me of your father commandeered a
sailing skiff at a small place near Jacamel and set off westward. Two
days afterward, he landed at Guantanamo and registered at a hotel as
'James Garfield.' He stayed there two days and then took the train for
Havana. So you don't need to worry over that, any more."
"Thank you, sir," answered the boy, relieved, "I'm mighty glad to know."
"Now," continued the Editor, "let us return to this question for which
we brought you here. According to your story, you heard the conspirators
say that their plans would be ready for fulfillment next spring."
"Yes, sir," the boy agreed, "Leborge said that."
"Good. Then there is no immediate need of pressing the case too closely.
It will be better to let the plans mature a little. A mere plot doesn't
mean much. News value comes in action. When something actually happens,
then, knowing what lies behind it, the story becomes big.
"What we really want to find out is whether this plot--as it seems to
be--is just a matter between two or three men, or if it is widely spread
over all the islands of the West Indies. You're too young, as yet, for
anything like regular newspaper work, but the fact that you're not much
more than a youngster might be turned to advantage. No one would
suspect that you were in quest of political information.
"So I'm going to suggest that you make a fairly complete tour of the
islands, this fall and early winter, just as if you were idling around,
apparently, but, at the same time, keeping your ears and your eyes open.
In order to give color to your roamings, you can write us some articles
on 'Social Life and the Color Line in the West Indies' as you happen to
see it. First-hand impressions are always valuable, and, perhaps, the
fact that you see them through a boy's eyes may give them a certain
novelty and freshness. Of course, the articles will probably have to be
rewritten in the office. By keeping a copy of the stuff you send, and
comparing it with the way the articles appear in the paper, you'll get a
fair training.
"We'll probably handle these in the Sunday Edition, and I'm going to
turn you over to the Sunday Editor, to whom you'll report, in future."
He nodded pleasantly to the boy in token of dismissal.
"I wish you luck on your trip," he said, "and see that you send us in
the right kind of stuff!"
Stuart thanked him heartily for his kindness, and went out, sorry that
he was not going to deal with the Chief himself.
The Sunday Editor's office was a welter of confusion. As Stuart was to
find out, in the years to come when he should really be a newspaper
man, the Sunday Editor's job is a hard one. It is much sought, since it
is day work rather than night work, but it is a wearing task. The Sunday
Editor must have all the qualities of a magazine man and a newspaper man
at the same time. He must also have the creative faculty.
In such departments of a modern newspaper as the City, Telegraph,
Sporting, Financial, etc., the work of the reporters and editors is to
chronicle and present the actual news. If nothing of vital interest has
happened during the day, that is not their fault. Their work is done
when the news is as well covered and as graphically told as possible.
There are no such limits in the Sunday Editor's office. He must create
interest, provoke sensation, and build the various extra sections of the
Sunday issue into a paper of such vital importance that every different
kind of reader will find something to hold his attention. He has all the
world to choose from, but he has also all the world to please. The work,
too, must be done at high pressure, for the columns of a Sunday issue to
be filled are scores in number, and the Sunday staff of any paper--even
the biggest--is but small.
Fergus, the Sunday Editor, was a rollicking Irishman, with red hair and
a tongue hung in the middle. He talked, as his ancestors fought, all in
a hurry. He was a whirlwind for praise, but a tornado for blame. His
organizing capacity was marvelous, and his men liked and respected him,
for they knew well that he could write rings around any one of them, in
a pinch. He began as the boy entered the door,
"Ye're Stuart Garfield, eh? Ye don't look more'n about a half-pint of a
man. Does the Chief think I'm startin' a kindergarten? Not that I give a
hang whether ye're two or eighty-two so long as ye can write. Ye'll go
first to Barbados. Steamer sails tomorrow at eight in the morning.
Here's your berth. Here's a note to the cashier. Letter of instructions
following. Wait at the Crown Hotel, Bridgetown, till you get it. Don't
write if ye haven't anything to say. Get a story across by every
mail-boat. If ye send me rot, I'll skin ye. Good luck!"
And he turned to glance over his shoulder at a copy-boy who had come in
with a handful of slips, proofs and the thousand matters of the editor's
daily grind.
Stuart waited two or three minutes, expecting Fergus to continue, but
the Sunday Editor seemed to have forgotten his existence.
"Well, then, good-by, Mr. Fergus," said the boy, hesitatingly.
"Oh, eh? Are ye there still? Sure. Good-by, boy, good-by an' good luck
to ye!"
And plunged back into his work.
There seemed nothing else for Stuart to do but to go out of the office.
In the hall outside, he paused and wondered. He held in his hand the two
slips of paper that Fergus had given him, and he stared down at these
with bewilderment. Fergus' volley of speech, had taken him clean off
his balance.
There was no doubt about the reality of these two slips of paper. One
was the ticket for his berth and the other had the figures "$250"
scrawled across a printed form made out to the Cashier, and it was
signed "Rick Fergus."
In his uncertainty what he ought to do, Stuart went into the City Room
and hunted up his friend the reporter. To him he put the causes of his
confusion. The old newspaper man smiled.
"That's Rick Fergus, all over," he said. "Good thing you didn't ask him
any questions! He'd have taken your head off at one bite. He's right,
after all. If a reporter's any good at all, he knows himself what to do.
A New York paper isn't fooling around with amateurs, generally. But,
under the circumstances, I think Rick might have told you something.
Let's see. How about your passport?"
"I've got one," said Stuart, "I had to have one, coming up from Cuba."
"If you're going to Barbados, you'll have to have it viséed by the
British Consul."
"But that will take a week, maybe, and I've got to sail tomorrow!"
"Is that all your trouble?"
He stepped to the telephone.
"Consulate? Yes? _New York Planet_ speaking. One of our men's got to
chase down to Barbados on a story. Sending him round this afternoon.
Will you be so good as to visé him through? Ever so much obliged;
thanks!"
He put up the receiver and turned to the boy.
"Easy as easy, you see," he said. "The name of a big paper like this one
will take you anywhere, if you use it right. Now, let's see. You'll want
to go and see the Cashier. Come on down, I'll introduce you."
A word or two at the Cashier's window, and the bills for $250 were
shoved across to Stuart, who pocketed them nervously. He had never seen
so much money before.
"Next," said the reporter, "you'd better get hold of some copy-paper, a
bunch of letter-heads and envelopes. Also some Expense Account blanks.
Stop in at one of these small printing shops and have some cards printed
with your name and that of the paper--here, like mine!" And he pulled
out a card from his card case and gave it to the boy for a model.
Stuart was doing his best to keep up with this rapid change in his
fortunes, but, despite himself, his eyes looked a bit wild. His friend
the reporter saw it, and tapped him on the back.
"You haven't got any time to lose," he said. "Oh, yes, there's another
thing, too. Can you handle a typewriter?"
"No," answered the boy, "at least, I never tried."
"Then you take my tip and spend some of that $250 on a portable machine
and learn to handle it, on the way down to Barbados. You'll have to
send all your stuff typewritten, you know. Imagine Fergus getting a
screed from a staff man in longhand!"
The reporter chuckled at the thought.
"Why, I believe the old red-head would take a trip down to the West
Indies just to have a chance of saying what he thought. Or, if he
couldn't go, he'd blow up, and we'd be out a mighty good Sunday Editor.
No, son, you've got to learn to tickle a typewriter!"
They had not been wasting time during this talk, for the reporter had
taken out of his own desk the paper, letter-heads, expense account
blanks and the rest and handed them over to the boy, explaining that he
could easily replenish his own supply.
"Now," he suggested, "make tracks for the consulate. Stop at a printer's
on your way and order some cards. Then chase back and buy yourself a
portable typewriter. And, if I were you, I'd start learning it, right
tonight. Then, hey! Off for the West Indies again, eh?"
"But don't I go and say good-by to the City Editor, or the Managing
Editor, or anyone?"
"What for? You've got your berth, you've got your money, you're going to
get your passport, and you've got your assignment. Nothing more for you
to do, Son, except to get down there and deliver the goods."
He led the way out of the office and to the elevator. On reaching the
street, he turned to the boy.
"There's one thing," he said, "that may help you, seeing that you're new
to the work. When you get down to Barbados, drop into the office of the
biggest paper there. Chum up with the boys. They'll see that you're a
youngster, and they'll help you all they can. You'll find newspaper men
pretty clannish, the world over. Well, good-bye, Garfield, I won't be
likely to see you again before you go. I've got that Traction Swindle to
cover and there's going to be a night hearing."
The boy shook hands with real emotion.
"You've been mighty good to me," he said, "it's made all the difference
to my stay in New York."
"Oh! That's all right!" came the hearty reply. "Well--good luck!"
He turned down the busy street and, in a moment, was lost in the crowd.
For a moment Stuart felt a twinge of loneliness, but the afternoon was
short, and he had a great deal to do. It was only by hurrying that he
was able to get done all the various things that had been suggested.
Despite his rush, however, the boy took time to send a cable to his
father, telling of his own safety, for he had no means of knowing
whether or not his father might be worrying over him also. He worked
until midnight learning the principles of the typewriter and, in a poky
sort of way, trying to hammer out the guide sentences given him in the
Instruction Book. Next day found him again at sea.
In contrast with the riotous vegetation of the jungles of Haiti and the
tropical forests of Eastern Cuba, Stuart found the country around
Bridgetown, the sole harbor of Barbados, surprisingly unattractive. The
city itself was active and bustling, but dirty, dusty and mean. On the
other hand, the suburbs, with villas occupied by the white residents,
were remarkable for their marvelous gardens.
On the outskirts of the town, and all over the island, in rows or
straggling clumps which seemed to have been dropped down anywhere,
Stuart saw the closely clustered huts of the negroes. These were tiny
huts of pewter-gray wood, raised from the ground on a few rough stones
and covered by a roof of dark shingles. They were as simple as the
houses a child draws on his slate--things of two rooms, with two windows
and one door. The windows had sun shutters in place of glass and there
were no chimneys, for the negro housewives do their cooking out of doors
in the cool of the evening. The boy noticed that, by dark, all these
windows and doors were closed tightly, for the Barbadian negro sleeps in
an air-tight room. He does this, ostensibly, to keep out ten-inch-long
centipedes, and bats, but, in reality, to keep out "jumbies" and ghosts,
of which he is much more afraid.
[Illustration: HIS VISION DISTORTED BY THE VENOM-VAPOR OF THE POISON
TREES, THE LAND-CRABS SEEMED OF ENORMOUS SIZE AND THE NEGRO WHO CAME TO
RESCUE HIM APPEARED AS AN OGRE.]
The greater part of the island seemed, to the boy, utterly unlike any
place he had seen in the tropics. Around Bridgetown, and over two-thirds
of the island of Barbados, there is hardly a tree. The ground rises in
slow undulations, marked, like a checker-board, with sugar-cane fields.
No place could seem more lacking in opportunity for adventures, yet
Stuart was to learn to the contrary before long.
Acting upon the advice given him by his friend the reporter, in New
York, just before leaving, Stuart seized the first opportunity to make
himself known to the newspaper men of Bridgetown. He was warmly
received, even welcomed, and was amazed at the ready hospitality shown
him. Moreover, when he stated that he was there to do some article on
"Social Life and the Color Question" for the _New York Planet_, he found
that he had struck a subject on which anyone and everyone he met was
willing to talk--as the Managing Editor no doubt had anticipated when he
suggested the series to the boy.
In one respect--as almost everyone he interviewed pointed out--Barbados
differs from every other of the West India Islands. It is densely
populated, so densely, indeed, that there is not a piece of land
suitable for cultivation which is not employed. The great ambition of
the Barbadian is to own land. The spirit of loyalty to the island is
incredibly strong.
This dense population and intensive cultivation has made the struggle
for existence keen in Barbados. A job is a prize. This has made the
Barbadian negro a race apart, hardworking and frugal. Until the building
of the Panama Canal, few negroes left their island home. With the help
of his newspaper friends, Stuart was able to send to his paper a fairly
well-written article on the Barbadian negro. The boy was wise enough to
take advice from his new friends how best to write the screed.
Moreover, he learned that there was also, on the island, a very unusual
and most interesting colony of "poor whites," the descendants of English
convicts who had been brought to the island in the seventeenth century.
These were not criminals, but political prisoners who had fought in
Monmouth's Rebellion. Pitied by the planters, despised even by the negro
slaves, this small colony held itself aloof, starved, and married none
but members of their own colony. They are now mere shadows of men, with
puny bodies and witless minds, living in brush or wooden hovels and
eating nothing but a little wild fruit and fish.
Their story made another good article for Stuart's paper, and he spent
almost an entire day holding such conversation with them as he could,
though their English language had so far degenerated that the boy found
it hard to understand.
The colony is not far from the little village of Bathsheba, which Stuart
had reached by the tramway that crosses the island. The returning tram
was not due to start for a couple of hours, and so, idly, Stuart
strolled southward along the beach, which, at that point, is fringed
with curiously shaped rocks, forming curving bays shaded with thickets
of trees which curve down to the shore. Some of these were
modest-looking trees, something like apple-trees but with a longer,
thinner leaf. They bore a fruit like a green apple.
The boy, tired from his walk along the soft white sand, threw himself
down negligently beneath the trees, in the shade, and, finding one of
the fruits fallen, close to his hand, picked it up and half decided to
eat it. An inner warning bade him pause.
The day had been hot and the shade was inviting. A sour and yet not
unpleasant odor was in the air. It made him sleepy, or, to speak more
correctly, it made his limbs heavy, while a certain exhilaration of
spirits lulled him into a false content. Soon, under these trees, on the
beach near Bathsheba, Stuart passed into a languorous waking dream.
And the red land-crabs, on their stilt-like legs, crept nearer and
nearer.
An hour later, one of the Barbadian negroes, coming home from his work,
was met at the door of his cabin by his wife, her eyes wide with alarm.
"White pickney go along Terror Cove. No come um back."
"Fo' de sake!" came the astonished exclamation. "Best hop along, see!"
The burly negro, well-built like all his fellows, struck out along the
beach. He talked to himself and shook his frizzled head as he went. His
pace, which was distinctly that of hurry, betokened his disturbed mind.
"Pickney go alone here, by golly!" he declared as he traced the prints
of a booted foot on the white sand and saw that they led only in one
direction. "No come back! Dem debbil-trees, get um!"
He turned the corner and paused a minute at the extraordinary sight
presented.
In the curve of the cove, dancing about with high, measured steps, like
that of a trained carriage-horse, was the boy, his hands clutching a
stout stick with which he was beating the air around him as though
fighting some imaginary foe, in desperation for his life. The sand
around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy
land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters
were hastening to their prey.
They formed a horrible alliance--the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red
land-crabs!
The negro broke into a run. The old instinct of the black to serve the
white rose in him strongly, though his own blood ran cold as he came
near the "debbil-trees."
The crabs were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were
clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for
them. With jerky strokes, as though his arms were worked by a string,
he struck and slashed at the air at some imaginary enemy about the
height of his waist.
As his rescuer came nearer, he could hear the boy screaming, a harsh,
inhuman scream of rage and fear and madness combined. Jerky words amid
the screams told of his terrors,
"They're eating me! Their claws are all around! Their eyes! Their eyes!"
But still the strokes were directed wildly at the air, and never a blow
fell on the little red horrors at his feet.
"Ol' Doc, he say debbil-tree make um act that way," muttered the negro,
as he ran, "pickney he think um crabs big as a mule!"
Stuart, fighting for his life with what his tortured imagination
conceived to be gigantic monsters, saw, coming along the beach, the
semblance of an ogre. The pupils of his eyes, contracted by the poison
to mere pin-pricks, magnified enormously, and the negro took on the
proportions of a giant.
But Stuart was a fighter. He would not run. He turned upon his new foe.
The negro, reckoning nothing of one smart blow from the stick, threw his
muscular arms about the boy, held him as in a vice, and picking him up,
carried him off as if he were a baby. The boy struggled and screamed but
it availed him nothing.
"Pickney, he mad um sartain," announced the negro, as he strode by his
own hut, "get him Ol' Doc good'n quick!"
Half walking and half running, but carrying his burden with ease, the
negro hurried to a well-built house, on a height of land half a mile
back from the coast. The house was surrounded by a well-kept garden, but
the negro kicked the gate open without ceremony, and, still running,
rushed into the house, calling,
"Mister Ol' Doc! Mister Ol' Doc!"
At his cries, one of the doors into the hall opened, and a keen-eyed
man, much withered, and with a scraggly gray beard, came out. The negro
did not wait for him to speak.
"Mister Ol' Doc," he said, "this pickney down by de debbil-trees, they
got um sartain. You potion um quick!"
The doctor stepped aside from the door.
"Put him in there, Mark!" he directed. "Hold him, I'll be back in a
minute!"
The negro threw Stuart on a cot and held him down, an easy task, now,
for the boy's strength was ebbing fast.
The doctor was back in a moment, with a small phial. He dropped a few
drops into the boy's mouth, then, stripping him, put an open box of
ointment between himself and the negro.
"Now, Mark," he said, "rub that stuff into his body. Don't be afraid of
it. Go after him as if you were grooming a horse. Put some elbow-grease
into it. The ointment has got to soak in, and the skin has got to be
kept warm. See, he's getting cold, now!"
The negro suited the action to the word. He rubbed with all his
strength, and the ointment, concocted from some pungent herb, reddened
the skin where it went in. But, a moment or two after, the redness
disappeared and the bluish look of cold returned.
"Faster and harder!" cried the old doctor.
Sweat poured down from the negro's face. He ripped off jacket and shirt,
and, bare to the waist, scrubbed at the boy's skin. And, if ever he
stopped a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, the doctor cried,
"Faster and harder!"
Little by little, the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by
little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening
which had begun, relaxed.
"He's coming round," cried the doctor. "Harder, now! Put your back into
it, Mark!"
Nearly an hour had passed when the negro, exhausted and trembling from
his exertions, sank into a chair. The doctor eyed him keenly, gave him a
stiff dose from a medicine glass, and returned to his patient.
"He'll do now," he said. "In half an hour he'll feel as well as ever,
and by tomorrow he'll be terribly ill."
"For de sake, Mister Ol' Doc, I got to rub um tomorrow?" pleaded the
negro.
"No, not tomorrow. From now on, I've got to 'potion um,' as you put it."
He put his hand in his pocket.
"Here, Mark," he said, "is half a sovereign. That isn't for saving the
boy's life, you understand, for you'd have done that any way, but for
working on him as you have."
The negro pocketed the coin with a wide smile, but lingered.
"I want to see um come 'round," he explained.
As the doctor had forecast, in half an hour's time, the color flowed
back into Stuart's cheeks, his breathing became normal, and, presently,
he stirred and looked around.
"What--What----" he began, bewildered.
"You went to sleep under the shade of some poison-trees, manchineel
trees, we call them here," the doctor explained. "Did you eat any of the
fruit?"
"I--I don't know," replied Stuart, trying to remember. "I--I sort of
went to sleep, that is, my body seemed to and my head didn't. And then I
saw crabs coming. At first they were only small ones, then bigger ones
came, and bigger, and bigger----"
He shivered and hid his face at the remembrance.
"There was nothing there except the regular red land-crabs," said the
doctor, "maybe eighteen inches across, but with a body the size of your
hand. Their exaggeration of size was a delirium due to poisoning."
"And the big, black ogre?"
"Was our friend Mark, here," explained the doctor, "who rescued you,
first, and has saved your life by working over you, here."
Stuart held out his hand, feebly.
"I didn't know there were any trees which hurt you unless you touched
them," he said.
"Plenty of them," answered the scientist. "There are over a hundred
plants which give off smells or vapors which are injurious either to man
or animals. Some are used by savages for arrow poisons, others for fish
poisons, and some we use for medicinal drugs. Dixon records a 'gas-tree'
in Africa, the essential oil of which contains chlorine and the smell of
which is like the poison-gas used in the World War. And poison-ivy, in
the United States, will poison some people even if they only pass close
to it."
"Jes' how does a tree make a smell, Mister Ol' Doc?" queried Mark.
"That's hard to explain to you," answered the scientist, turning to the
negro. "But every plant has some kind of a smell, that is, all of them
have essential oils which volatilize in the air. Some, like the bay,
have these oil-sacs in the leaves, some, like cinnamon, in the bark, and
so on. The smell of flowers comes the same way."
"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?"
"Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly.
These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was
made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the
manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it."
"How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart. His face was flushing and its
was evident that the semi-paralysis of the first infection was passing
into a fever stage.
"It all depends whether you ate any of the fruit or not," the doctor
answered. "If you didn't, you're safe. But you seem to have spent an
hour in that poison-tree grove, and that gives the 'devil-trees,' as
Mark calls them, plenty of time to get in their deadly work. You'll come
out of it, all right, but you'll have to fight for it!"