assured him an audience. Also, he had that rare immunity in tropic heats
which makes any man formidable, and even sinister. An Anglo-Portuguese
strain was supposed to account for him--for his color, for his superior
air, and for various ventures of his not easy to define since piracy
went out of date. Perhaps it did. But the gleam in his eye, a certain
evil quickening with which he studied the unfortunate Merry, might have
argued a darker origin.
"By God! A specimen for true!" he breathed, incredulous. "Zimballo," he
added in his drawl, slow and acid, "you're getting infernally damned
careless. Since when has this front room been free to any greasy lascar
that comes along?"
The fat man went a rich shade of magenta.
"I can' help if he shoves in on me! 'Ow _can_ I help?"
"He wouldn't shove in by chance--on his nerve."
"Tha's it! Tha's jus' what he done, sir. Nerve! He come after drink, and
you know what he brings along with him--to buy off me? Eh--what?"
Zimballo blew out his wrath. "Twenty-five Batavia cents!... Besides a
lid'l fool parrot to do juggle-trick work!"
"Drink? Ah-ha. Likely enough too.... But how does he manage to call for
'em? Can he talk anything human, at least?"
And here, having confirmed his perception of the victim, Silva drove
home the attack.
"Hey, you fella yonder. Bugis, Sula man, sea gypsy--whichever's your
misbegotten stripe--suppose you speak'um. What pidgin belong you? Where
you hail from, anyway?"
Mr. Merry stood there before them, dazed and helpless. In one hand he
held his rejected coin; in the other the lorikeet's cage and a few
trifles wrapped with a kerchief. He knew what these people meant. He was
not so far gone as to miss what mockery was being put upon him in savage
contempt, and how it measured the distance he had traveled and the depth
to which he had sunk. But his head was humming like a pressure gauge,
and his body was banked with unslaked clinkers, and he made his effort
as best he could.
"Friends," he said, swaying on his feet. "I don't--I don't mind if
somebody kindly will set me up to a bracer. I'm passing through to
Amboyna; dropped off a prau up the coast this morning.... It's true I do
a bit with sleight o' hand to pay my way, but I had no luck this trip
and I am asking.... Brandy. Arrack or sagueir, if you say so. It's--it's
quite a while since I had any. I--I want it pretty bad."
In the silence Silva softly held up a finger.
"You," he noted softly, "are a dirty renegade!"
* * * * *
Above, the line of swinging punkahs fanned the thick air with regular
beat. It threw a constant flicker of shadow over the guests. Otherwise
they showed no change of expression. They leaned against the tables and
mopped their faces and drank and looked on. The way many men, not
ingrained with cruelty to begin, have learned to look on at many curious
things in regions where that particular devil does business.
"Pity," suggested the engineer after a time, emptying his glass
deliberately--"a pity he can't pick a flask or two out that bloomin'
hat he's wearin'. 'S big enough."
One of the loafers snickered.
"There's the river waiting for him. Full of drinks. And he could wash in
it too."
"Turn him into those pigpens at the rear," advised the bat-eared clerk.
"Let him try his games on the mixed lot inside, in the back rooms."
"No, sir, you won'!" Zimballo entered a gusty veto. "That sweep? He ain'
fit for my back rooms neither!"
"You're right," said Silva. This yellow man did no mopping; his skin had
the gloss of a salamander's, and his eyes were like dusky jewels. A
humorist in his own fashion he surely was--and his speech was tipped
with malice as with acrid poison. "The blighter's not good enough for
half-castes, even."
"What's the lowest vermin on earth?... Why, the white who's forgot his
own race. It's hard enough at best--isn't it?--to keep yourself topside
with your right authority among a few million saddle-colored monkeys.
But along comes a rascal like that and lives on the folk: acts like 'em;
looks like 'em; _drinks_ like 'em--by God! Then where's your sanguinary
prestige gone?"
He knew how to stir these listless exiles.
"I tell you, when a blasted tramp goes native altogether he needs to be
taught what white men think of him, and where he belongs. He's a pest
and a danger.... I'd like to see him and every other like him wiped out
of the islands. It's a common duty to suppress the whole filthy crew of
'em!"
* * * * *
They caught some of his energy--some of his superior biting viciousness
as well. Especially the loafers were roused by a call to higher things.
The benzoin merchant, betraying a habit acquired in a ruder society,
groped vaguely at his hip. The engineer sought a billiard cue that
balanced better to his fancy. Only the little clerk retained official
scruples and timidly doubted if there was any order against juggling, as
such.
"There's an order against vagrants," countered Silva.
"But, after all, if he has a trade of his own--"
"Trade be damned. He comes begging--doesn't he? And if you want
to bet he's not a fraud besides--."
"We might give him a chance."
"It's what I mean!" cried Silva. "We'll give him a chance, for
true.... Look here--"
He turned on the bewildered Merry.
"Look here--you! You say you've had no luck? Well: pray for it now. You
say sleight o' hand is your line? Well: turn out a sample--if you can:
something to prove you're not just a thieving beggar.... Observe! Here
is a dollar. I lay it down to your silver bit, and I lay you the odds
you've no trick worth a rotten straw--not one but I'll catch you out and
show you up. If you win, you get your drinks. If you lose--!... I'm
telling you! Be careful!"
* * * * *
Mr. Merry's first care, however, was to be seated. That is to say, he
put himself into a chair at an iron-topped table because it happened to
be nearer than the floor.
He understood. With some reserve of tortured clear vision he did
understand--the subtle finish to Silva's jape: playing his poor claims
against his frantic need--the last refinement of humiliation; to make
him exhibit his pitiful arts as a faker and a trickster of brown natives
before men of his own kind. They hitched closer about him. They were
highly entertained, languid, avid, and vindictive; and they watched him
with fish eyes from faces like wet leather bags, flabby and pithless.
He saw them through the blue smoke and the heat and the lamplight, and
he saw that in fact they were his own kind. He had fallen rather lower,
that was all and they had dallied with the local devil rather more
cautiously--they could still pay for their drinks. But if he meant to
share with them he would have to grovel. There was no help, and no
escape. None. For just then, with diabolic inspiration, Silva poured a
glass of sticky yellow liquor and put it out of his reach where the
drifting scent of it was a torment of Tantalus....
So he did what he had to do: untied his kerchief and the lorikeet's
little cage and spread out his few cheap odds and ends of juggler's
stuff--to try, as you might say, with the quickness of his hand to
deceive the eye of his fate.
In his usual program he counted one bit of conjuring which had earned
him many a step and many a tot of country spirits along his journey, and
which reasonably he could trust. He used on occasion to take up three
small beans, red and blue and black, and to take the lorikeet on the
same thumb; and with magic by-play he made to feed the bird three beans
and three and three again and so on, while the fluffy green mite still
plucked them from his finger tips and chattered in a manner absurdly
impudent and human.... It was an easy illusion. It had worked scores of
times. It began to work this time, startling the watchers with its quick
and graceful turn--even these. It ran on. It was winning. It might have
won him through: but the room and the lights were spinning about the
luckless magician like parts in a gigantic Catherine wheel--he sagged
forward on the table, his nimble fingers faltered--slipped; and quick as
a striking snake, Silva gripped him.
"Ah-ha! What did I say? Even at his own game--this liar--this dirty
tramp!"
The nature of the man loosed itself in a sudden, an insensate spurt of
fury, the complement of its accustomed dark restraint. He swept the poor
rubbish from the table. He snatched up the lorikeet and flung it down
and as the tiny thing flapped and screamed, broken-winged, stamped it
underfoot. He whirled Merry around by the elbows, so that all should
have an equal shot at him with fist or toe or billiard cue.
"This outcast!" he cried joyously. "What are we going to do with him?"
"Throw him out!" came the chorus. "Throw him out!"...
* * * * *
Of the next succeeding interval in Mr. Merry's pilgrimage, and his
particular progress that night, some slight record afterward survived
for a while. Not officially, of course. The witnesses were certain
nameless and unnameable residents of Zimballo's whose presence in the
colonial court would hardly have looked well, and throughout the
subsequent perfunctory inquiry they were very justly held to be
incompetent, irrelevant, and improper persons, and they were never
questioned--in fact, their existence was even denied. But they knew
something of Merry.
They knew how he was hunted all about that rabbit warren, in and out, by
passages and traps and holes in the wall, upstairs and down. They knew
how he sought refuge through filth and dust and blows with the blind
cunning of a harried and flank-torn cur. How he got away at some turn.
How he dragged himself to some innermost recess of the place before he
collapsed. How he was found there at last, and how he found himself, in
a sense--though exactly why or by what dispensation these matters came
to pass, naturally the said witness never had any very clear idea.
They had few ideas about anything, beyond their daily plaint against
God, man, the cook, and the weather--which was undeniably an ample
source at that, you may say. They kept the story only as long as it was
new, like a scrap of ribbon, or a painted bangle or any other trifle
which circulates in common currency, soon to become faded, lost and
forgotten. But while it lasted their tale was precise enough, and it
certainly established beyond doubt that the girl with the pink
wristbands was the first thing Merry saw when he opened his eyes again,
when he filtered back toward consciousness with his head on her knee and
her quick, cool hands nursing him....
"More!" was Mr. Merry's greeting.
She set down the empty cup.
"We got no more," she said.
To him she must have seemed, she could have seemed at first, only a
figment of dreams. She crouched by the pallet to which she had dragged
him. The room was darkened; a candle struggled fitfully somewhere with
the rays of moonshine that came by the wide window. The light just
sufficed to show her small, pinched face, of a deathly pallidity under
its coil of heavy, dead hair, and her thin arms and figure loosely
covered by her loose-sleeved wrapper. It sufficed for him to recognize
her, as men, without start or surprise, absolutely and infallibly do
recognize and collogue with the creatures of their delirium.
"I have been looking for you," he said simply.
"You've been a long time about it," she answered, with the same
simplicity....
* * * * *
In truth, life and all issues had been pretty well simplified and fused
down for both these people: for Merry, who was as nearly as possible
incandescent, and for the woman, who was merely burned out.
"I looked everywhere," he affirmed, in childlike earnestness. "I looked
at Samarang. I looked at Batavia. I looked at Palembang. That's a mean
sort of place, don't you think?... Did you go to Palembang?"
"No," said the girl with the pink wristbands.
"I don't see how I missed you."
"You missed me, all right. You missed me at the start--at Singapore.
That was the time to find me."
He drew his breath as if in his sleep she had prodded some old wound,
and the dent between his brows deepened.
"I did look for you at Singapore."
"You looked too late," said the girl with the pink wristbands.
"I went to the Jalan Sultan," he pleaded. "You lived in a house in the
Jalan Sultan, at Singapore. It was there I met you.... But when I went
back to fetch you--you were gone!"
"Yes," she said dully. "I was gone.... They heard you promise to take me
away. The captain--he said you wouldn't come back. He said you wouldn't
dare--too likely to get your throat cut if you tried it. He said his
people had scared you good. And you didn't come back that night."
"No." His stare was fixed and waking. "No. I didn't come back that
night."
"The captain said you were scared. I didn't know. But I sat up waiting
like we had planned--you and me. I was waiting and waiting. And you
didn't come. Why?--?" Her flat voice slipped a note. "Why--why--why
didn't you come that night? _Were_ you scared?"
"I was drunk," he said. "God forgive me!"
Such tones a man may use when his naked soul is hauled out of him and
stood up for judgment.
"It doesn't matter." She sank back again. "I wanted to get away
then.... Afterward I didn't care."
The drink was taking hold of him, bracing him each instant nearer to an
actual comprehension.
"Why didn't you care?" he demanded.
She pulled back the pink silk bands from her wrist and held them before
him.
"That's one reason."
The man drew himself convulsively to his knees.
"Who did it? Who did that?"
"Silva. The captain--don't you know?"
"Silva?"
"They call him Captain Silva. He isn't really. He's a half-caste
himself, only he pretends--and he scares everybody so. It was him
brought me here. He's going to sell me to Zimballo."
"Zimballo!"
She nodded. "I suppose he'll sell me. I'm not worth much as a nina de
salon, but I'm pretty tough. I've lasted--you see.... And--he says it's
all I'm fit for."
Mr. Merry made never a sound.
For finally, with his wandering ended and with all questions of human
chemistry and racial difference aside--finally this white man had
reached the stage which had been so fully defined for him one steamy hot
day by a Dutch navigator at Palembang. He had gambled away his last
cent. He had been reduced to a wreck. His woman, in the laconic
phrase--"his woman had gone bad on him." He had no more use for anything
he could lay to mind. He was decidedly sorry with the world. And he was
utterly ready to die with a big smash....
So Mr. Merry went amok, in the exact meaning of that word.
* * * * *
They were aware of him the moment he entered the main shed. They saw
him, and they started at him with a yell.
He was the same man they chased and worried--that helpless and harmless
outcast--just before. But so it is with all such outcasts: always
helpless and harmless--just before. Heaven had fashioned Mr. Merry in
one image, but the climatic devil had finished him in quite another.
Most of his few rags had been torn from him, he was swathed about the
middle with a Malay sarong, and his lean body was scored and pulped with
blows. But his face was mottled and bluish now, with a fleck of foam in
his beard. And when he came in among them he neither paused nor turned
aside.
He made one jump to Zimballo's zinc bar. He made one leap to the
highboy, Zimballo's high altar. He swept into his arms half a dozen of
multicolored bottles, and, looming there above them from the top of the
bar--up among the lights and the swaying punkahs--he began to launch
those juggling missiles right and left, with the utmost speed and
precision....
The first one caught Zimballo full in the chest and knocked him back
against the wall with the shock of a battering ram. Another crashed just
over his head as he sank to the floor. The engineer was sprawling at the
billiard table when a third exploded like a shell fairly in front and
deluged him in a flood of sticky liquor. The loafers and the clerk
turned to run. But Merry dealt with them--and with retribution.
He was doing the thing he best knew how to do, by virtue of the odd
knack of his fingers--and this time he made no mistakes.
He emptied a shelf, and the next, and the bottles still flew from him,
streaking through space, smashing among the enemy.
Most of them made a miserable escape one way or another and fled,
carrying a voice of panic that cleared out the establishment from end
to end front and rear. But not Silva. Not the yellow-faced captain, who
came back from the back of the room and charged with uplifted cue,
snarling--who was met halfway: stopped, overwhelmed and crushed in his
tracks as by a hail of thunderbolts....
* * * * *
When Mr. Merry led the girl out they had to cling for a time to each
other and to the handrail that led down toward the landing.
All about them were the walls of the night, the dark, blank walls of
land and sky and their prison. But outward lay a great silvered streak.
To seaward they could gaze down a dim vista of rocky and deserted islets
where the moon showed like an open silver gateway, like a wide, bright
door to the uncharted spaces beyond--far beyond, as Merry's gesture
showed her.
Of that consummation a whisper was caught, it seems, through the masking
vines overhead: a last glimpse of them as they reeled there together on
the brink.
"And you wasn't--you wasn't scared this time!" she gasped. "You
ain't--you ain't scared now?"
"No," he said. "That is where we are going--out yonder.... I've a little
prau canoe down here at the steps--if we can reach it.... It's
where we belong, and our one chance. Over the curve of the earth--among
the islands of the shallow sea. Where no one ever does go and nobody can
follow."
"There's nothing much to eat. Nor drink, neither," she added quite
practically. "We will die."
"What does that matter?... But a native might pull through, in the
native way. And if it might happen to a native, it might happen to
us.... Come!"
They went.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
There are inconsistencies in hyphenation, accentation, and dialect. All
are as in the book.