To drown, drown, drown him in the sea!”
But it didn't work. The world had seen that oyster, and had recognized
it for an oyster.
“Oyster! Oyster! Oyster!” cried the crowd sternly at Big Mouth.
The bard tried to persevere, but Slightly Simian, feeling the crowd with
him, advanced menacingly and said:
“See here, Big Mouth, we know a ghost when we see one, and we know an
oyster! Yon animal is an oyster! You _sing_ that it is an oyster, or
shut up!”
“_Ghost, ghost, ghost,_” chanted Big Mouth, tentatively. But he got
no farther. Slightly Simian killed him with a club, and the matter was
settled. Literary criticism was direct, straightforward, and effective
in those days.
“But, oh, ye gods of the water, _what_ an oyster!” cried Mrs. Slightly
Simian.
And as the thought took them all, a silence fell over the multitude.
They looked at the struggling man in a new community of idea. Oysters
they had seen before, but never an oyster like this. Oysters they knew
not as food; but they had always regarded them as rather ineffectual and
harmless creatures. Yet this bold oyster was actually giving battle,
and on equal terms, to a man! Were oysters henceforth to be added to
the number of man's enemies? Were oysters about to attempt to conquer
mankind? This oyster, was he the champion of the sea, sent up out of its
depths, to grapple with mankind for supremacy?
Dimly, vaguely, as they watched the man attempt to pull the oyster
ashore, and the oyster attempt to pull the man out to sea, some sense of
the importance of this struggle was felt by mankind. Over forest, beach,
and ocean hung the sense of momentous things. A haze passed across the
face of the bright morning sun; the breeze died down; it was as if all
nature held her breath at this struggle. And if mankind upon the land
was interested, the sea was no less concerned. For, of sudden, and as
if by preconcerted signal, a hundred thousand oysters poked their heads
above the surface of the waters and turned their eyes--they had small
fiery opalescent eyes in those days--upon the combat.
At this appearance, mankind drew back with a gasp, but no word was
uttered. The visible universe, perturbed earth and bending heavens
alike, was tense and dumb. On their part, the oysters made no attempt
to go to the assistance of their champion. Nor did mankind leap to the
rescue of Probably Arboreal. Tacitly, each side, in a spirit of fair
play, agreed not to interfere; agreed to leave the combat to the
champions; agreed to abide by the issue.
But while they were stirred and held by the sense of tremendous things
impending, neither men nor oysters could be expected to understand
definitely what almost infinite things depended upon this battle. There
were no Darwins then. Evolution had not yet evolved the individual able
to catch her at it.
But she was on her way. This very struggle was one of the crucial
moments in the history of evolution. There have always been these
critical periods when the two highest species in the world were about
equal in intelligence, and it was touch and go as to which would survive
and carry on the torch, and which species would lose the lead and become
subservient. There have always been exact instants when the spirit of
progress hesitated as between the forms of life, doubtful as to which
one to make its representative.
Briefly, if the oyster conquered the man, more and more oysters,
emboldened by this success, would prey upon men. Man, in the course of a
few hundred thousand years, would become the creature of the oyster;
the oyster's slave and food. Then the highest type of life on the planet
would dwell in the sea. The civilization which was not yet would be
a marine growth when it did come; the intellectual and spiritual and
physical supremacy held by the biped would pass over to the bivalve.
Thought could not frame this concept then; neither shellfish nor
tree-dweller uttered it. But both the species felt it; they watched
Probably Arboreal and the oyster with a strangling emotion, with a
quivering intentness, that was none the less poignant because there was
no Huxley or Spencer present to interpret it for them; they thrilled and
sweat and shivered with the shaken universe, and the red sun through its
haze peered down unwinking like the vast bloodshot eye of life.
An hour had passed by in silence except for the sound of the battle,
more and more men and more and more oysters had gathered about the scene
of the struggle; the strain was telling on both champions. Probably
Arboreal had succeeded in dragging the beast some ten feet nearer the
shore, but the exertion had told upon him; he was growing tired; he was
breathing with difficulty; he had swallowed a great deal of salt water.
He too was dimly conscious of the importance of this frightful combat;
he felt himself the representative of the human race. He was desperate
but cool; he saved his breath; he opposed to the brute force of the
oyster the cunning of a man. But he was growing weaker; he felt it.
If only those for whom he was fighting would fling him some word of
encouragement! He was too proud to ask it, but he felt bitterly that
he was not supported, for he could not realize what emotion had smitten
dumb his fellow men. He had got to the place where a word of spiritual
comfort and encouragement would have meant as much as fifty pounds of
weight in his favour.
He had, in fact, arrived at the Psychological Moment. There were no
professing psychologists then; but there was psychology; and it worked
itself up into moments even as it does to-day.
Probably Arboreal's head went under the water, tears and salt ocean
mingled nauseatingly in his mouth.
“I am lost,” he gurgled.
But at that instant a shout went up--the shrill, high cry of a woman.
Even in his agony he recognized that voice--the voice of Parrot
Feathers! With a splendid rally he turned his face toward the shore.
She was struggling through the crowd, fighting her way to the front
rank with the fury of a wildcat. She had just buried her father, and
the earth was still dark and damp upon her hands, but the magnificent
creature had only one thought now. She thought only of her lover, her
heroic lover; in her nobility of soul she had been able to rise above
the pettiness of spirit which another woman might have felt; she knew no
pique or spite. Her lover was in trouble, and her place was nigh him; so
she flung a false maidenly modesty to the winds and acknowledged him and
cheered him on, careless of what the assembled world might think.
She arrived at the Psychological Moment.
“Probably! Probably!” she cried. “Don't give up! Don't give up! For my
sake!”
For her sake! The words were like fire in the veins of the struggling
hero. He made another bursting effort, and gained a yard. But the rally
had weakened him; the next instant his head went under the water once
more. Would it ever appear again? There was a long, long moment, while
all mankind strangled and gasped in sympathetic unison, and then our
hero's dripping head did emerge. It had hit a stone under water, and it
was bleeding, but it emerged. One eye was nearly closed. 4 +
“Watch him! Watch him!” shouted Parrot Feathers. “Don't let him do that
again! When he has you under water he whacks your eye with his tail.
He's trying to blind you!”
And, indeed, these seemed to be the desperate oyster's tactics. If he
could once destroy our hero's sight, the end would soon come.
“Probably--do you hear me?”
He nodded his head; he was beyond speech.
“Take a long breath and dive! Do you get me? Dive! Dive at your own
feet! Grab your feet in your hands and roll under water in a bunch! Roll
toward the beach!”'
It was a desperate manouvre, especially for a man who had already been
under water so much that morning. But the situation was critical and
called for the taking of big chances. It would either succeed--or fail.
And death was no surer if it failed than if he waited. Probably Arboreal
ceased to think; he yielded up his reasoning powers to the noble and
courageous woman on the sand; he dived and grabbed his feet and rolled.
“Again! Again!” she cried. “Another long breath and roll again!”
Her bosom heaved, as if she were actually breathing for him. To Probably
Arboreal, now all but drowned, and almost impervious to feeling, it also
seemed as if he were breathing with her lungs; and yet he hardly dared
to dive and roll again. He struggled in the water and stared at her
stupidly.
She sent her unusual and electric personality thrilling into him across
the intervening distance; she held him with her eyes, and filled him
with her spirit.
“Roll!” she commanded. “Probably! Roll!”
And under the lash of her courage, he rolled again. Three more times he
rolled... and then... unconscious, but still breathing, he was in her
arms.
As he reached the land half a million oysters sank into the sea in the
silence of defeat and despair, while from the beaches rose a mighty
shout.
The sun, as if it gestured, flung the mists from its face, and beamed
benignly.
“Back! Back! Give him air!” cried Parrot Feathers, as she addressed
herself to the task of removing the oyster from his foot.
The giant beast was dying, and its jaws were locked in the rigour of its
suffering. There was no way to remove it gently. Parrot Feathers laid
her unconscious hero's foot upon one rock, and broke the oyster loose
with another.
Incidentally she smashed Probably Arboreal's toe.
He sat up in pained surprise. Unthinkingly, as you or I would put a hurt
finger into our mouths, he put his crushed toe into his mouth. At that
period of man's history the trick was not difficult. And then----
A beatific smile spread over his face!
Man had tasted the oyster!
In half an hour, mankind was plunging into the waves searching for
oysters. The oyster's doom was sealed. His monstrous pretension that he
belonged in the van of evolutionary progress was killed forever. He had
been tasted, and found food. He would never again battle for supremacy.
Meekly he yielded to his fate. He is food to this day.
Parrot Feathers and Probably Arboreal were married after breakfast.
On the toes of their first child were ten cunning, diminutive oyster
shells. Mankind, up to that time, had had sharp toenails like the
claws of birds. But the flat, shell-like toenails, the symbols of man's
triumph over, and trampling down of, the oyster were inherited from the
children of this happy couple.
They persist to this day.
“IF WE COULD ONLY SEE”
I
Lunch finished, Mr. Ferdinand Wimple, the poet, sullenly removed his
coat and sulkily carried the dishes to the kitchen sink. He swore in a
melodious murmur, as a cat purrs, as he turned the hot water on to the
plates, and he splashed profanely with a wet dishcloth.
“I'm going to do the dishes to-day, Ferd,” announced his wife,
pleasantly enough. She was a not unpleasant-looking woman; she gave
the impression that she might, indeed, be a distinctly pleasant-looking
woman, if she could avoid seeming hurried. She would have been a pretty
woman, in fact, if she had been able to give the time to it.
When she said that she would do the dishes herself, Mr. Wimple
immediately let the dishcloth drop without another word, profane or
otherwise, and began to dry his hands, preparatory to putting on his
coat again. But she continued:
“I want you to do the twins' wash.”
“What?” cried Mr. Wimple, outraged. He ran one of his plump hands
through his thick tawny hair and stared at his wife with latent hatred
in his brown eyes... those eyes of which so many women had remarked:
“Aren't Mr. Wimple's eyes wonderful; just simply _wonderful!_ So
magnetic, if you get what I mean!” Mr. Wimple's head, by many of his
female admirers, was spoken of as “leonine.” His detractors--for who has
them not?--dwelt rather upon the physical reminder of Mr.'Wimple, which
was more suggestive of the ox.
“I said I wanted you to do the twins' wash for me,” repeated Mrs.
Wimple, awed neither by the lion's visage nor the bovine torso. Mrs.
Wimple's own hair was red; and in a quietly red-haired sort of way she
looked as if she expected her words to be heeded.
“H----!” said the poet, in a round baritone which enriched the ear as
if a harpist had plucked the lovely string of G. “H----!” But there was
more music than resolution in the sound. It floated somewhat tentatively
upon the air. Mr. Wimple was not in revolt. He was wondering if he had
the courage to revolt.
Mrs. Wimple lifted the cover of the laundry tub, which stood beside the
sink, threw in the babies' “things,” turned on the hot water, and said:
“Better shave some laundry soap and throw it in, Ferd.”
“Heavens!” declared Mr. Wimple. “To expect a man of my temperament to do
that!” But still he did not say that he would not do it.
“Someone has to do it,” contributed his wife.
“I never kicked on the dishes, Nell,” said Mr. Wimple. “But this, _this_
is too much!”
“I have been doing it for ten days, ever since the maid left. I'm
feeling rotten to-day, and you can take a turn at it, Ferd. My back
hurts.” Still Mrs. Wimple was not unpleasant; but she was obviously
determined.
“Your back!” sang Mr. Wimple, the minstrel, and shook his mane. “Your
_back_ hurts you! My _soul_ hurts _me!_ How could I go direct from
that--that damnable occupation--that most repulsive of domestic
occupations--that bourgeois occupation--to Mrs. Watson's tea this
afternoon and deliver my message?”
A shimmer of heat (perhaps from her hair) suddenly dried up whatever dew
of pleasantness remained in Mrs. Wimple's manner. “They're just as much
your twins as they are mine,” she began... but just then one of them
cried.
A fraction of a second later the other one cried.
Mrs. Wimple hurried from the kitchen and reached the living room in time
to prevent mayhem. The twins, aged one year, were painfully entangled
with one another on the floor. The twin Ronald had conceived the idea
that perhaps the twin Dugald's thumb was edible, and was testing five or
six of his newly acquired teeth upon it. Childe Dugald had been inspired
by his daemon with the notion that one of Childe Ronald's ears might be
detachable, and was endeavouring to detach it. The situation was but too
evidently distressing to both of them, but neither seemed capable of the
mental initiative necessary to end it. Even when little Ronald opened
his mouth to scream, little Dugald did not remove the thumb.
Mrs. Wimple unscrambled them, wiped their noses, gave them rattles,
rubber dolls, and goats to wreak themselves upon, and returned to the
kitchen thinking (for she did not lack her humorous gleams) that the
situation in the living room bore a certain resemblance to the situation
in the kitchen. She and Ferdinand bit and scratched figuratively, but
they had not the initiative to break loose from one another.
Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, but he stopped when
she entered and sang at her: “And _why_ did the maid leave?”
“You know why she left, Ferd.”
“She left,” chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' clothing viciously with
a wooden paddle, “because...” But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he
said it, falls naturally into the freer sort of verse:
“She left [sang Mr. Wimple]
Because her discontent...
Her individual discontent,