gave him spiders and adders and things like that, very nice and all
particular deadly. One day they took him into the jungle and introduced
him to a caterpillar that drops off the trees on you so its hairs stick
in your skin. Andrew Harben was swelled with pride at this invention.
But that night the poison festered and he swelled in another manner. He
had sense enough to lock himself in the shack so as to keep from jumping
in the drink when the fever took him. Those caterpillars very near
finished Andrew Harben, but he managed to keep the lights going and the
Bugis came around to call next morning so kind and sympathetic. They
were most neighborly, the Bugis.
"Ya--ya," they said, which was Dutch in a fashion and meant anything you
like--such as buck up, old scout; the worst is yet to come.
They told him about a harmless snake that carried a superfluous or third
eye in its back. He went hunting that curious snake and found it, but he
didn't like the looks of its head. It had a broad head with a button on
the neck that might or might not have been an eye. Of course he could
not doubt when old Allo and all his seven sons assured him positively
that the snake was safe as a tame kitten. But just for luck he grabbed
it cautious and gave it a glass tube to chew on while he pressed the
button.
"Ya--ya!" said the tribe--meaning who so surprised as them--and when
Andrew Harben came to examine the tube he found enough venom to kill
forty men, which was doing pretty well for one harmless little snake....
Yes, business was good, but pretty soon he had to worry about his wicks
again. The socks were about used up, and socks never give a good light
anyhow, Andrew Harben said. He'd been raveling off his pants for more
splices until he blushed to look at himself. This was painful to his
modesty but worse for his comfort, account of giving up so much
protection. Every time he stripped off another inch of pant leg he
opened up new territory for the insects which took to his bare limbs
quite joyous.
Andrew Harben began to wonder where it would end and what he would do
when he had no more pants to ravel. The way these lights burned up wicks
was scandalous, and the tender wasn't due back for more than a week yet.
He tried to get help from the Bugis, but he couldn't seem to make them
understand. They didn't carry socks themselves, nor pants neither, nor
much of anything but their long hair which they wore braided in a kind
of club behind.
"Am I a scientist?" said Andrew Harben. "And can I not wrest the answer
I need from nature herself?"
It cheered him up a lot to think of it that way. He remembered how other
investigators had condescended to useful discoveries like imitation shoe
buttons and synthetic doormats and Kennebunk sealskins.
"I will find a new material for lamp wicks," he said, "thus endearing
myself to posterity as well as saving the lives of the merchant marine."
So he tested all manner of strange stuff in a most scientific manner,
like coir and palm fibers and grapevines and corn silk. But it wasn't
any use. He couldn't get anything that would sop up oil and hold a light
for half a minute.
He was still cussing his luck and thinking hard things of science when
the Allo family showed up with a piece of news that made him forget all
the rest in a hurry. It seems they had located a flying frog in the
depths of the jungle somewhere.
* * * * *
Now few people have ever seen the flying frog of Borneo, and those who
have are called nasty names by those who haven't. It wears a skin web
between its fore and hind legs and is most rare. Andrew Harben was
grateful because here he saw his big chance for fame. He would pickle
the beast and write a book about it to make the university professors
and the magazine writers sit up. And maybe if the statements were tough
enough and somebody attacked him for a nature faker he might get the use
of half a dozen new letters to the hind end of his name.
So he went out with the Allo tribe once again and they led him up a
creek to the place where the flying frog lives. Sure enough there was a
frog; he saw it quite clear. He only had to hop across on a log and take
it in his little net. He hopped and the log turned under him, as was
likely it would, being no log at all but a most monstrous great
alligator. Andrew Harben went overboard, and the Bugis raised a yell.
"Ya--ya!" they said, meaning here's fun.
But Andrew Harben could dive as well as an alligator, which he did and
got away downstream. This was the first time he could be thankful about
his pants. They were now no bigger than a swimming suit, and he struck
out with great speed and finally reached shore below with the loss of
nothing but one shoe, which the alligator did not like.
* * * * *
Going back alone through the jungle, he lost his way and along toward
evening what should he do but stumble plump on the whole nest of Allos
where they lived. This was a place highly interesting to an investigator
and would have been even more so to the little gunboats of different
flags that police the sea. It was no hut but a proper palace, with a
stockade and towers and flagpoles all complete and every blessed thing
about it snaffled off some ship or other.
He saw strakes, beams, keelsons, masts, rigging, and cabin doors enough
to build a fleet with; and the windows were ports and the chimneys all
funnels. The women were cooking dinner in pots made of ship's bells
turned upside, and they were dressed in yards and yards of Chinese silks
all watered impromptu by sea water, and lace curtains from some
captain's berth and various other flotsam while the little children
toddled around in American flour bags. Yes, those Allos could wear
plenty of garments when they were home, which was good manners, but more
particular indicated they'd collected so much wealth they didn't know
what else to do with it.
There were two great carven figureheads guarding
the gate, and Andrew Harben even saw the name under one of them, a most
calm and beautiful white face looking down on this rascal crew. _Witch
of Dundee_ it said. And where was the _Witch of Dundee_ now, and where
all the hearty men which sailed with her? Gone down in Macassar long
since. Here were her bones, what was left, and for theirs the monkeys
would be rolling them on the mud flats at low tide....
Well, Andrew Harben saw these things and he understood quick enough that
the kindly Bugis were no more than wreck pirates who drove a rich trade
whenever for any good and sufficient reason the light failed. They must
have been at it for years, very quiet and cautious so the keepers would
have plenty of time to go mad and get eaten by the crocodile, as the
skipper said. Of course they would not kill the keepers in any uncrafty
way lest the news should get out and spoil their graft, and a white man
with a spear through him is hard to keep secret underground in any
native country.
However, they would have made an exception of Andrew Harben. They spied
him standing there in the dusk, and they knew their game was up unless
they nailed him. They chased him hard through the swamps, but he gave
them the slip and reached home a jump ahead. They were not anxious to
follow while he could sweep the bridge with his fowling piece and so
they stood on the shore and howled.
"Ya--ya!" they said, meaning damn him.
Andrew Harben was the angry man. He'd been pretty much fed up with
natural history by this time. About everything that flew or crawled in
Borneo had sampled him, and he was bit and stung all over. Meanwhile he
considered the wickedness of these Bugis that had been carrying on
serial murder here all unbeknownst and how nearly they had added him to
the score by playing him for a scientist and a sucker. And he considered
too that he was now shut off from all help in the matter of the lights
and what a responsibility of life and property rested on him to keep
them going.
"When I thought of that," he said, telling me, "--when I thought of that
I jumped up and fired into the trees till the gun was too hot to hold.
Curse 'em! D'you know I had to take what was left of my pants
to patch up the wicks that night?"
He would have given all the honorary letters of the alphabet for the use
of a rifle, but he might have saved his rage, for the Bugis minded bird
shot not at all. They only danced in the mangroves and mocked him.
"Ya--ya!" they said, which meant they'd get him yet....
He began to think so himself the next day when his water ran out. The
tender was due in three more days. He thought his wicks might last that
long, with nursing. But he would be dead a dozen times over with thirst.
After a blazing torture along toward evening he couldn't stand it any
more. The woods were quiet and there was just a chance that the enemy
were napping. He took a pail and sneaked ashore over his bridge to the
water barrel under the mangroves that they had always kept filled for
him. It seemed they must have forgot to cut off supplies--the barrel was
brimming. He drunk a pailful on the spot and started back with
another,--and he got as far as his shack before he collapsed, all curled
up in knots quite picturesque. Those simple Bugis had dosed the water
with a native drug made from the klang berry.
Now, it is a singular thing about klang, as Andrew Harben told me, that
it will mostly kill a brown man and seldom a white, but if it does not
it sends him crazy. By that he meant crazy in the Malay way, which is
quite different. The klang did not kill Andrew Harben. It laid him cold
at first, and for many hours he lay without sense or speech.
* * * * *
When he came to be was stretched in a corner of the shack. The cupola
overhead was dark and the shack was dark except for one tiny dish lamp
on the floor, and around and about squatted the tribe of Allo having a
high old time.
They were naked, being hopeful of a chance to swim before the night was
done, and they smelt like swine. A big wind was raising in the Strait
and the waves roared and bubbled underneath among the piles while the
Bugis watched for results. By way of keeping their patience they were at
the pickle bottles, being hindered not at all by the curious specimens
therein and highly pleased with the alcohol. It is another singular
thing that if klang was not made for a white man alcohol was never made
for a brown.
Andrew Harben roused up in the corner where they'd chucked him, meaning
to feed him to the usual alligator for breakfast. He saw them sitting
there and celebrating so very joyful, and he saw something else. Through
the smother off to windward toward Celebes he saw the twinkle of at
least two ships standing off most bewildered and marked for their
graves among the reefs and currents they couldn't place. These ships
were going down to his account because his lights were out. And
meanwhile the Bugis were sitting around and tearing up the lantern
wicks.
Yes, that was just what they were doing. They had took out the wicks so
there should be no more light that night at any price. They had snaffled
the poor little shreds that Andrew Harben had made at the expense of
decency--his wicks, his precious wicks! They tossed the strands about,
and the wind snatched them away inland into howling space, and the Bugis
laughed.
"Ya--ya!" they said, which means good business.
Andrew Harben rose up all so quietly in his corner. Did I tell you he
was a fine, big man? He was, and they were also eight fine, big men--old
Allo and his seven sons. Before they noticed, he was able to reach his
shotgun. It was empty, but he wanted nothing, only the barrels, which
furnished a short and very hefty club. What happened after that nobody
can say exactly. Which perhaps is just as well, for it could not have
been a pretty thing to see. But Andrew Harben, who was crazed with
klang, ran amuck among the Bugis, who were crazed with alcohol, and most
queer were the doings in the lighthouse by Macassar. And when morning
came there was no wreck in that strait.
"So you have not got mad," said the half-caste skipper when he climbed
up to the shack in the smoky dawn two days ahead of time. Then Andrew
Harben came out to meet him wearing few impediments to speak of and not
much skin either; so he added: "Anyways, you have not been eats by z'
crocodile."
"No," said Andrew Harben, all unashamed.
"_Zat_ iss awright, but my God why did you not show your light till
midnight?" asked the skipper. "I tell you I was out zere last night and
z' light wass dark and z' devil walking abroad on z' waters. Almost,
almost we went ashore with zese dam currents. But just as we would run
on z' Poi Laut reef you lit up again. Not one little minute too soon did
you show z' light? Why iss zis?"
"I lost my wicks!" said Andrew Harben, quite cool.
"Loze z' wicks?" shouted the skipper. "For why have you lose z' wicks?
Did you find zem again?"
"Come and see," said Andrew Harben.
He took the skipper into the shack where the lights in the cupola were
still burning broad and yellow. They were eight in number, as I said,
and no man ever saw the like of them before nor will again. For every
light there hung a Bugis from the iron framework by the long hair of his
head. One lock of his hair held him up. The rest was twisted into a cue
and looped so that it floated in the oil tub and then passed through a
burner.
By the hand of Andrew Harben that did it, those eight Bugis were the
wicks of Macassar that kept the strait clear!
Meanwhile Andrew Harben went whistling about his work, climbing around
the frame and trimming all so careful and moving the thumbscrews a bit
here and there and ladling oil in a gourd to keep the flow rising well.
"I have made a remarkable discovery," he said. "It is a fact in nature
that human hair can be used for a lamp wick. Of course you have to keep
wetting it, for hair will not draw oil fast enough by capillary action.
But it serves."...
The skipper looked at the Bugis and looked around at the broken pickle
bottles and the scattered specimen cases and the other remnants, and the
skipper understood partly, being a highly intelligent man for a
half-caste.
"Zis," he said, "_zis_ is mos' natural. Only it iss no good for 'istory.
You will never write z' natural 'istory of your great discovery, my
friend, because it is too dam natural for anybody to believe."
And he said true, and that's why I'm telling you the story free gratis
as Andrew Harben told it to me, which you may write yourself if you got
the nerve. Andrew Harben he'll tell you the same if you find him
hammering rust by the Cape Town breakwater. He's all right now, but for
a long time after they took him away from Borneo he was just a little
peculiar one way. It wasn't bugs nor snakes nor natives nor any such
vermin that excited him, though you might think so. No, he was cured of
all that. But whenever he chanced to see a lamp anywhere that was
carelessly tended, spattering or smoking and the flame burning low and
foul, then Andrew Harben would begin to carry on.
"Ya--ya!" he would yell, meaning why the devil don't you trim your
wicks?
Which, when you think of it, was no more than natural, as the skipper
said.
DOUBLOON GOLD
I remembered the big chap with the China-blue eyes and the great mop of
tangled fair hair. I had seen him one night, a month or so before, at
Monte Carlo, where he wound up a run against the red by snapping the
sovereigns off his cuff links. And here, in the Casino Pavao, at
Funchal, I remarked him in almost the identical gesture. He fumbled
through all his pockets before he found and tossed out upon the board a
goldpiece, broad and ruddy as his own openair face. Now, as then, I
saw him summon his last reserve for a final plunge. The coin fell on
_manque_, and there he let it lie.
We were in charge of a highly superior banker at that table--a model
banker, a window model of a banker, with spade-cut beard, jet brows,
waxen face, and perfectly faultless armor of full dress. Throughout the
evening he had been spinning the wheel and shooting the little marble
along its saucer rim with the detached regularity of an automaton. But
when this strange token dropped shimmering beside him he stood like one
transfixed, then bent over to stare, and presently passed a signal to
the fat croupier across from him. And both of them stared at the thing,
which shone like a full moon on the smooth green pool of the table.
I was not so sure of the rest. But it seemed to me that a sudden flame
lighted their professionally indifferent eyes, that the spark of some
swift excitement leaped between them. I say I could not be sure, because
I was tiptoe with eagerness myself.
Nobody else was paying any noticeable attention to the big gambler or
to his fortunes. A silent crowd jostled stiffly about the board, three
deep, unmindful of the heat, the puddled air, the aching blue-white
lights--a cosmopolitan crowd, such as one finds in the season at a minor
crossroads like Madeira, where types are varied, if not extreme.
There was the English invalid contingent, of course--the prop and frigid
corrective of so many subtropical resorts; and the local social element,
dark, dapper and Portuguese, playing a wary and penurious stake; and the
casual commercial, chiefly Teuton, playing high and stolidly; and the
whole hodgepodge of chance tourists from the steamers in port--South
Americans, South Africans, lean and yellowish administrators from the
West Coast, one or two frock-coated Arabs with the fez, Spaniards from
Canary, and Hebraic gentlemen from the ends of the earth. In short, a
Casino crowd, solely intent upon the game, and restrained from any
common human sentiment like curiosity by its own multiplied strangeness.
And I rejoiced that this was so; for I desired no competition, and I
meant to get that big gambler's big goldpiece, one way or another.
"_Faites vos jou'!_" The banker had recovered sufficiently to make his
spin, droning with guttural accent the familiar phrase: "_Faites vos
jou', mess'h!_"
I suppose every traveler likes to esteem himself rather a dab at
collecting. How else account for the populations that live by the sale
and the manufacture of assorted relics? I had lugged a bag of ancient
coins half round the world, and I desperately wanted that particular
coin, so large, so curious--and genuine--being offered as a bet. But
there was something more to my temptation.
The day had been tinged for me with the charm and color of this Old
World island town, lying like a flower wreath on a mailed breast, with
its rioting gardens, its twining streets, its grim basalt barriers and
savage beaches. I felt the lure of authentic adventure in pursuing such
a memento, a goldpiece possibly historic, stamped with the flourish of
dead kings. One has the sense at times of spying from ambush upon a
promise of emprise and some great gain. It is the glamour of things, a
magic flush on dull and sordid fact. It starts up anyhow, at a face, a
whisper, a strain of music--a stock quotation. True, in the present
state of a fallen world it often proves counterfeit--and expensive, too
often. But what of that? One follows still; if only for the sake of the
story....
"_Faites vos jou'_!" advised the banker, who himself presided over
romantic possibilities at a dollar a throw.
By the judicious use of an elbow I worked my way through the press.
There fell the usual interval of suspense while the marble circled low.
It gave me my chance to lean over the shoulder of the big gambler, who
sat glowering and expectant, and to murmur in his ear.
"I'll take it up for ten pounds," I offered.
He nodded, without so much as looking at me; and I dropped five American
eagles besides his stake....
"_Rien ne va plus!_"
But I had already effected my exchange; and I snatched away the big
goldpiece just as the marble struck, hopped, and rattled into a socket.
"_Vint e uno_," announced the banker, surprised into his own native
tongue; and I caught the unmistakable quiver of a live disappointment as
his glance crossed mine with the flash of a knifeblade.
The gambler waited until a silver rake had swept away his eagles. With a
visible effort, then, he braced himself against the table and rose. He
turned to me, met my smirk of triumph with a frown, and plowed but of
the throng to the natural refuge, the little barroom on the terrace
side, where I followed him quite shamelessly.
* * * * *
The hour was early; we had the place to ourselves as we pledged each
other in the quaint device they call a cocktail at the Pavao.
"You made a good bargain," he said, setting down his glass. "There must
be at least twenty-five dollars' worth of pure gold in that slug if
there's a penny--let alone its curio value."
His manner had a rough edge. Any one who has lost over the green cloth
knows the spleen it can raise against all reason. I was the better
pleased next instant when he broke through with a smile of sound good
nature:
"Here's hoping it brings you better luck than mine."
I liked that smile, and the voice, easy and true as a bell, and the
whole hearty, big-boned cast of him; and I marveled what twist had made
a splendid great fellow like this, with his arching chest and
walking-beam breadth of shoulder, the hanger-on at unhealthy gaming
rooms. He was neither old nor young enough to be merely foolish. Forty
would be about his age, I judged; but his eyes were new, like those of a
child, and the only marks about them were the little sun crinkles of
outdoor living.
"You were willing to sell," I reminded him with a half query.
"Of course!" he nodded. "When the game gets me running I'd stake my
shoes if I could sell 'em. And ten pounds was more than the bank would
have paid. All the same, you've got a rare piece, cheap."
"Just what have I got?"
"A doubloon--don't you know? One of those queer Portuguese cart wheels.
Sink it! I made sure I'd found a lucky at last--anybody would."
I echoed that glorious old word:
"A doubloon?"
"Aye!" He smiled again. "Pieces of eight--what? The pirates used to cut
throats for 'em."
On sudden impulse I risked a small experiment.
"I've no wish to profit by your misfortune," I said. "This is evidently
very valuable.... Call the ten pounds a loan."
He glanced at the coin as I laid it before him; and then, with a
widening of pupil, at me. I was startled to see him hesitate.
"No," he decided. "No. But look here, that's decent of you. I will say
it's downright decent."
"Not at all," I protested virtuously. "It might be worth many times what
I paid you."
"That wouldn't worry me."
But something was worrying him as he frowned down at the golden disk. I
felt a trouble on the man that bit deeper than his losses. He had an
odd, abrupt trick of passing a hand hard over his brow as if to brush
away some constant irritation, a gesture at once naive and passionate.
At such times he looked about him with an uneasy air, puzzled and, I
could almost say, resentful.
"You must be very much attached to the thing," I persisted.
He slid it back to me brusquely, with a jab of his forefinger.
"Thanks. Would you mind putting it out of sight?"
We were sitting at one of the small tables that lined the side of the
little room. It so chanced that I sat facing the bar, which was not a
proper bar at all but a long, low sideboard, whereon an attendant
compounded drinks. My new friend was at my left and thus failed to see
what now I saw--a detached head glaring out of the wall, sharp and
definite as a cameo. I was slow to connect this singular phenomenon
with a strip of mirror over the sideboard and regarded it merely with
wonder, for the face was very much alive, convulsed and eager. Tardily,
then, I recognized the jet spadebeard of the superior banker, and at the
same moment felt a hot breath stirring in my back hair.
"Hello!" I exclaimed, and spun around in time further to recognize a
pair of perfect coat tails; they were just disappearing through the
doorway into the _salle_ behind me.
He could not have had ten seconds' start, but when I reached the doorway
the fellow had vanished in a fringe of bystanders. Another banker,
bald-headed and not in the least superior, was now in charge at
roulette, and I noticed that the fat croupier had also been replaced.
I turned back to the attendant at the bar, a pop-eyed nondescript in a
white jacket.
"Who was that?" I demanded indignantly. "Who is that man, and what the
devil did he mean by blowing down the back of my neck?"
He stared at me, with fluttering lids, chalk-faced--I was to appreciate
presently what terror rode that obscure soul.