Chapter IV (6)

“The down-and-outer, he said: ‘You see, she’s not just like other folks. Not just the same. We had two kids, and we lost them. It was too rough for them, too. I wasn’t able to do all I should,’ he said, ‘and they died. Since then she’s not just right. She thinks that if we had a garden they’d come back, the kiddies would. A white garden she wants, a garden full of white flowers, and a white cat. Then, she thinks, they’d come back to play. And the grief of it is,’ says the feller, ‘that she’d need so little to make her happy, and that I can’t get it for her.’ Then he cursed Gammett, and got up and struck off down the trail, home.”

Harvey’s strong voice failed, sank to a whisper. He stood, leaning on the gate, motionless. The old man on the grass outside was as motionless as he. At last, he said, softly, “D’you see anything queer about my garden, friend?”

The pedlar’s answer came slowly.

“All the flowers in it are w’ite flowers.”

“That’s right. All the flowers are white. But wait.

“This feller, he went off down the trail, home. It was late, and it looked like a bad night. He’d gone maybe a half-mile, when someone overhauled him; he saw it was the old pedlar he’d been talkin’ to. The old man, he stops the down-and-outer and puts a little packet in his hand.

“What’s this?’ said the feller. And the pedlar said, ‘To make a garden for the children,’ he said, just like that, and turned away and was gone before the feller could say ‘Thank you.’

“He’s been waitin’,” said Harvey, gently, “to say ‘Thank you,’ ever since.”

Evening was closing to a perfect night. White flowers fell from the locust-trees along the grass, and moths as white and silent haunted the garden of white flowers. A woman came from the house and stood on the white steps as if she were watching something in the garden shadows, and a white cat rubbed against her dress. Harvey’s voice, when it came, was hushed; yet it seemed to break a silence as perfect as a pearl:

“When the feller I’ve been tellin’ you about looked at the little packet, he saw there was writing on it. It said—Harvey spoke as if reading from memory—it said, ‘_White Columbine. Hardy perennial. Sow in autumn in carefully prepared soil._’ D’you see anything queer about the flowers in my garden, friend?”

Again the answer came, slowly, from the other side of the fence:

“There are many of one kind.”

The old man stretched a hand through the bars and lightly touched one blossom of a thousand white columbines.

“That’s right. And when the feller had read the writing he gave a kind thought to the pedlar, and put the packet of seeds in his pocket, and forgot it.

“He’d enough to make him forget more things than a packet of flower-seeds an old pedlar had given him. _If_ you knew those hills, you’d know that there was storms on ’em that leap on a man like wolves. He was caught in one, and all night he was lost on the mountains.

“Level rain that drove in his face like a wall: wind that bruised the livin’ flesh on his bones: sleet to glass the rocks, and a moon no more than a blot in the scud—he knew no more of the night. He kep’ going some way, thinkin’ of the woman that waited for him. If he hadn’t fixed his mind on her he’d have just given up and laid down and died, for the weather used him cruel, and he’d no heart to fight it, only because of her. Then he found he’d missed the trail, and he didn’t greatly care—only for her.

“He went on in the dark and the storm, tryin’ to strike back to the trail lower down. He couldn’t make it. Seemed as if he was in hills he’d never been in before, so strange and wild they were with the dark. At last the rain beat him down, and the wind dazed him, and he fell.

“He thought he fell into death. He did fall a long way, but not that far. He came to, very weak, sprawled on a slope of loose stones. If he moved, they moved too. He’d no wish to move for awhile. He was badly knocked about, and his clothes were half-tore off his back, but after a bit he thought of his wife, and got to his hands and knees, groaning. Then the moon came out clear, and he looked at what the slipping stones had uncovered.”

Harvey’s voice shook a little. Presently he steadied it, and went on briskly:

“Silver was not so cheap then as it is now. Even in the dim moonlight he knew what he was lookin’ at. He was lookin’ at a vein of almost pure silver them sliding stones had uncovered.

“He laid quite a long time, just lookin’ at it. Then the situation come home to him.

“He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where the silver was. He couldn’t get his bearings. He didn’t dare mark the place too plain, for fear someone else’d find it. After a while, he made shift to build some little heaps of stones. Then he went on as well as he could. You see, if he’d stayed by the place till daylight he’d have been dead in that weather. He had to risk it.

“He found his way back to his wife, somehow. He never remembered anything of what happened after he left that place.

“He was near dead, and they thought he was ravin’. Maybe he was. He was ill a long spell. They were helped. When he was sick folks was kind, and they took kindness where they’d been too proud to take it before. Even when he was ill he fought to keep a tight hold on his tongue. When he could crawl he went out to find his claim.

“He couldn’t find it.

“Sweatin’ and tremblin’, the ghost of a man, day after day he wandered in the hills, lookin’ for it. He quartered the ground like a hunting dog, but he couldn’t find the place. There was a hundred spots like his memory of it; a thousand slopes of loose stones. The rain and the wind had swept his little rock-piles away. He had nothin’ to go by. Wealth beyond all he’d thought of, all he struggled for, all he prayed for—for her—was there, somewhere in them hills under his feet, and he couldn’t find it.

“Men thought he was mad. He let them think so. Maybe, as the time went on, he _was_ pretty near mad.

“For the winter went, and the spring, and still he was trampin’ the hills, seekin’ the claim he couldn’t find.”

Harvey glanced down at himself, thoughtfully.

“He began, then, to _look_ as if he was mad. A gaunt thing in rags. I dunno how he and the woman lived at all in them days. He didn’t do any work. He was all the time lookin’ for his claim.”

Harvey glanced up at a star limned in a sky as clear as water. “I hope,” he said, under his breath, “all he said and thought and did in them days is forgiven him. If his soul was black in him can you wonder? If he was ready to curse God and die, can you blame him? After all, ’twasn’t for himself he wanted it so bad.

“There was a day at last, a day in summer. He kind of woke up from a nightmare that day. And he knew it was the end.

“He knew he was finished. He knew he couldn’t go on no more. It’s so, you know. A man gets his soul used up same as his body, when things is too much against him. He knew he just _couldn’t_ go on. He went out in the hills that day, just the same. But he was through with it. The dirty tricks of Life had downed him. He was flat on his back, laid out on the mat, in the great Ring that’s seen the finish of better men than he.

“He kissed his wife. He didn’t take a pick or a shovel that day to dig rocks with. He took his old gun. And he told her—God forgive him!—that he was goin’ to shoot birds.

“He went away, miles about the hills. Everything looked new and strange to him—like things do when you’re looking your last on ’em. He didn’t regard where he was goin’. It was all one. At last he came to a valley under great rocks, where the spruce clung with roots like snakes. He’d no memory of it. He sat down and set the gun between his knees, and slipped off his boot.”

Harvey’s voice checked, faltered. For the first time he moved. He leaned across the fence, and laid a big hand—which shook a little—on the shoulder of the old man squatting in the dew.

“Only for that old pedlar-man that gave him the little packet of flower-seeds,” he said, solemnly—“only for him, that feller’s bones’d be layin’ among the rocks to this day, where the foxes had left ’em.

“For he had his toe on the trigger, friend, when he saw white flowers in bloom a few yards off. At the foot of a slope of loose stones—white columbines.

“There’s plenty of columbines wild in the hills, ain’t there? But these were the dovey kind, the garden ones. His eyes, that were so near shutting on the world for ever, saw ’em for a minute without understanding. And then . . .”

Harvey paused again. His hand quivered on the old man’s shoulder. “And then his memory gave him back some words: ‘_White Columbine_,’ he was reading off of the paper. ‘_Hardy perennial. Sow in autumn in carefully prepared soil._’ He remembered putting it in his pocket; and then no more of it from then till now. He guessed how it had spilt out of his pocket when he fell in the storm. And the seed had filtered into the cracks, and the sun had warmed it, and the rain had fed it; while he was ranging the hills like a lost soul it was safe, and growing, and waiting for that moment, as if the Lord had laid His hand over it till the right time came. And now the time had come. That feller had come into the valley to die; and the little white flowers, like nests of doves, they bade him live. He scraped with his gun-butt in the stones—and there was the lode.”

Harvey was silent. Silent as he; the old man took his pipe from his mouth, and shook out the ashes. A drift of tiny red sparks sank and settled and died in the dew. The reek of the kinnikinnick died. The half-tropic breath of locust and tobacco came into its own.

“That,” said Harvey, “was the beginning of the White Columbine Mine. And ever since”—his hand gripped the lean shoulder, his voice rang loud—“and ever since then that feller’s been looking for the old man that gave him the flower-seeds, and, in so doing, gave him life and fortune and happiness.

“And he thinks he’s found him,” finished Harvey, huskily, leaning low over the fence—“he thinks he’s found him at last.”

After a time the pedlar glanced up at him. He said, very gently: “W’at that feller—that good feller—want with the ole man when he finds him?”

“To give him anything he wants,” said Harvey, quietly.

“What?”

“If he wants a house, it’s his,” said Harvey. “If he wants a farm, it’s his. Money, it’s his. Anything he wants.”

He was smiling, but his keen eyes were dim. The shoulder under his strong hand was so frail, the coat so ragged, the face turned to his so impenetrably old.

“And if that ole pedlar-man want nothing, my frien’?”

“He must want a thousand things!”

“Not one,” said the old man, softly.

“But—”

“Listen. It is my turn.”

“I’m listening.”

“That pedlar, he is ole. Will he grow young if you put him in a fine brick house?”

“No.”

“He is ver’ poor. But the poor man who wants nothing, he is as well off as the rich man?”

“Maybe.”

“You would lay him in a fine, soft bed. But if he did not sleep there for want of the branches and the wind moving in them?”

Harvey was silent.

“You would give him rich food and drinks. Good! But men may starve to death with full bellies, my frien’; and if he starved so for the dawn in summer and the shantymen’s fires in the winter, and the trails of all the hills?”

Again Harvey was silent. The old man rose slowly, and lifted his basket. Harvey started. He said, passionately, “But look at what he—at what you did for me!”

Very gently the old pedlar smiled in a creasing of dim wrinkles. “He only carry the basket,” he said, softly. “It is the good God that settles what shall come out of it. For you, the fine house and the garden full of white flowers for madam to walk in. For me . . . .”

He slung the strap over his shoulder, pulled out his paper of kinnikinnick, filled and lighted the little pipe. “Good man, you,” he said, between puffs; “but there’s one thing you cannot do. You cannot give to the one that wants nothing.”

“I shan’t give up. There’s a thousand of the best waiting for you whenever you want it, anyway. When you’re older or ill my turn’ll come.”

“Per’aps.” The old figure was withdrawing from him into the shadows—infinitely alien, infinitely remote.

“Will you take _nothing_ now?” called Harvey, as if to someone a very long way off.

The old man hesitated. Then, from the columbines nodding through the fence, he picked a single blossom. “This,” he said, “to remember.” His voice, too, was withdrawing, fading away.

The savour of kinnikinnick passed along Magnetwan Avenue, and past the Public Library. Harvey was left, motionless, in the dusk among the white columbines. He held in his hands a red handkerchief. He lifted it, and breathed the rank smell that opened to him the gates of all his past. Shamefacedly, he brushed it with his lips.

THE BOG-WOOD BOX

“This is not a story,” Great-Aunt Hawthorne used to say, “it is just something that happened.”

Mr. Denis Duchesne first saw the box one evening in the shop window, behind a bowl of Japanese silver fish and a windflower blossoming in a blue china jug. It was a little box, quite plain, and by the look of it had lain long a-soaking in the black bog-water. He bought it for a shilling and threepence three farthings, and took it home to keep fiddle-strings in. And no sooner had he taken the lid off than out shone a little green light and a spark.

“’Tis glow worms in the box,” cried Denis, clapping it down. The little light went out quick as a blown candle at the word, and something skittered over his fingers like a flittermouse.

And that was the last leprechaun ever came out of Ireland.

Denis himself had come out of France as a bit of a boy. He taught music and dancing, and was little enough thought of, for all he was grown a fine young man with a wild brown eye and a way of wearing his clothes that set the Mayor’s sons by the ears. He had the lower floor of an old narrow house on the river, and at high tide the bowsprits of the barges used to knock the sandy cat off his window-sill. It was a queer cat, and it always swam ashore with no more fuss than a duck. There was more than one queer thing about that house, what with the Widow Macmurchison on the first floor and old Berry under the roof. And now there it was with a leprechaun loose in it and they not knowing.

Denis hunted for the jumping glow-worm all over the room on his hands and knees, and the sandy cat sat and smiled at him under its whiskers. Trust a sandy cat for knowing the ups and downs of things.

“The devil’s in the box,” cried young Denis, for he had hit his head against the table, “or maybe one of those luminous flies the mayor saw in the Indies.” And with that he coiled up all his spare fiddle-strings as neat as you please and put them in the box. Then he blew out his candle and sat in the window, with the tide fingering on the wet gray stone under him and the stars coming out above. He would sit there for an hour singing songs that he hoped Dorothy Macmurchison on the first floor might give an ear to. He had no more thought of leprechauns in his brown head than he had of sorrow; that was little enough.

And all the time there was the leprechaun hopping upstairs, and he not knowing.

While young Denis was at “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,” with French flourishes, and little Mistress Dorothy was sighing in the room above, the leprechaun went hopping upstairs. By this and that he came to old Berry’s door and opened it and went in, like a little green flame along the dusty floor.

Old Berry was wanting. He always lived in his little room under the roof, and went with the house when it changed hands. He spent most of his time making verse he could never finish, and sometimes he went out and gathered ferns and the red sheep-sorrel that grows among buttercups. He was too old to be surprised at anything, and when he saw the leprechaun he just said “Good evening to you, and my thanks for shutting the door behind you, for the draught’s cruel.”

“Good-evening to ye,” said the leprechaun, all at home and friendly, “good-evening to ye, and a pleasant star to sleep under. And what may ye be doing with your time now?”

“Making songs,” said old Berry, “but they won’t come out right nor end on the good word.”

“Won’t they, now?” answered the leprechaun. “There’s nothing I like better than songs, and I know a many. What might that song be about that’s under the heel of your hand this living moment?”

“Tears and dew,” said old Berry, rubbing his head, “two things that look much alike but someway taste different.”

“I know nought of the first, but of the last, what could be sweeter? And what’s the chune of your song?”

“It was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten why, but this is the tune of it:

“‘When I left the green hills and fared my feet away,
All my heart went down to earth on every falling leaf,
And in among the faded fern, the little dew was gray
As the gray tears of grief—’

tears and dew, sir, you see.”

“Go on with your chune,” says the leprechaun.

“‘Maybe when I’m older and it’s short from sun to sun,
Days I’ll dream of lying there with all the stars above,
While in among the sorrel bloom . . .”

“And it ends there,” said the old man, helpless, “which it shouldn’t, and it is in my mind that there is a fine bright word for it to end on, a word I’ve forgotten, and I can’t finish it.”

“I’m not here for long, but I’ll come back before I go and finish your chune for you,” and the leprechaun nodded very friendly and went out. What he did in the night Great-Aunt Hawthorne didn’t know. But while Denis was finishing breakfast in the morning, he came into the room with the sandy cat.

“Holy Saints!” said Denis, and sat with a spoon full of strawberry jam held half way to his mouth, and his mouth open.

“Whist with your staring,” cried the leprechaun, and he took Denis by the wrist very testy, and sent the spoon into his mouth with a clap. “I’ve but looked in for a minute to give you a hint with your affairs, and all you can do is to stare like a heifer in a fairy-ring.”

“Comment,” said Denis Duchesne, as well as he could for the spoon, “and what may you know of me and my affairs, for example?”

The leprechaun smiled, and the sandy cat smiled. “I saw your dreams go past me in the night,” said the leprechaun. “There were the silver dreams of youth, and the golden dreams that are dreams for ever, and there were dreams as red as the briar rose that grows under the green hill. And they were all of them beating and fluttering about the bright head of a girl. And a good girl she is, with a light foot on her and a skin like the new milk that creams at the lip of the pail on a frosty morning. But the Widow . . .” and the leprechaun winked.

“O, the Widow,” groaned Denis.

“Whist with your groaning.” The leprechaun began to waver and flicker like a little green flame before it goes out. “Take what’s given you and good may come of it. Denis, boy, take my word for it, you’ll find all your fiddle strings broken.”

And with that there was Denis, and nothing in front of him, but the sandy cat sitting with its tail round its paws, and the pot of strawberry jam.

Denis was in a great taking. The hair of his head stood up like gorse on a common, the way he tore at it, and he went all round and about the room hunting for the leprechaun. He thought he was mad, with the leprechaun and the talk of Dorothy and all. But by this and by that, and the sight of the sandy cat sleeping under the table, he quieted down and went to look at his fiddle. And there was every string, even the silver G, broken at the bridge.

Young Denis said, “The devil’s in everything,” and took out the broken strings and put in new ones from the bog-wood box. He had no more than tuned the fiddle than there was a knocking at the door. That was the quality come for the dancing lessons. And they knowing nothing about the leprechaun.

The first to come in was the mayor’s wife, a tall woman with a hard eye and a mouth so thin it puzzled Denis how his worship ever had the heart to kiss her. She had her three daughters, and they dropped three great round haughty curtseys to poor Denis bowing in the doorway with his fiddle under his arm and the jam spoon sticking out of his tail-coat pocket, where, in his hurry, he had thrust it. Then old Captain Vandeleur came in with his two nieces that he never let from under his eye, and they but plain girls, and they would have nothing to do with the Mayor’s daughters, but went past them in a rustle of lilac chintz and their noses in the air. Then there was the young man from the apothecary’s who was allowed in to open the door and practise his steps in the corner. And last there was the Widow Macmurchison, with a black front and an India shawl, watching young Denis with an eye like a fish’s, and Dorothy coming in behind her like the breath of the morning, and Denis’s heart kept time to the tune of her little feet on the floor.

But she went past him with her eyes hidden, and there was no more than a “Good-morning to you, Monsieur Duchesne,” and a “B’jour, Ma’amselle Dorothee,” and never a touch of her hand to put him in tune for his work. So it was with a long face that Denis tucked his fiddle under his chin. “Take your places for the new figure, mesdames, if you please,” he said, wearily.

When all the pretty feet were pointed and all the pretty eyes fixed on Denis, he counted: “One, two, three,” and began to play on his little fiddle. And at the first note it was as if a happy wind went through the room, and voices went with the wind.

“For the first note,” said Great-Aunt Hawthorne, “was memory, and the next love and the third laughter.” Never was such a tune. Denis played like a man in a dream, with flying fingers, but in truth the music came from the strings that had lain in the bog-wood box, whether he would or no. And presently the Widow Macmurchison clapped her hand to the India shawl, and “O, my heart,” she cried, “my heart and my youth!” Old Vandeleur put his hat under his chair at the word, and they went off footing it down the room like a pair possessed. The apothecary’s young man came out of the corner, his eyes all lost and shining, and he took the mayor’s youngest daughter and they danced too, light as the flame dances in the ling, she laughing low and the pride gone out of her face. The other girls were dancing together like wild-wood things, all a flutter of roses and ribbons, and their feet might have been shod with swallow’s wings. Their faces were bright and strange, and it was as if the music played in their hearts the tune of all happiness that had been, of all laughter that was to be. Never was such a tune.

For there was a more wonderful thing let loose in the room than ever the leprechaun was, and that was youth. The music was in their feet and the music was in their hearts. Little Mistress Dorothy danced up to Denis like a leaf in a warm wind, and her eyes were raised at last, and shone into his like stars in a merry heaven. She said no word, but she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and they danced off together. The measure they danced was different, and the music they heard was different, for there was grief in it and a shadow, as there is in all great things. The sweet wind and the voices seemed to follow them.

“Is there a light shining on dove’s wings?” said Dorothy in a dreaming voice.

“I see nothing but the light in your eyes.”

“Do you hear a beat of tears in the music?”

“I hear nothing but the beat of your heart,” said Denis as he played.

“Do you see a falling of leaves?”

“I see nothing but the flowering of the rose that folds the world,” and they danced on.

“That’s a work well finished,” said the leprechaun, who had been listening at the keyhole. And he hopped upstairs thoughtfully to old Berry’s room.

Old Berry was lying very quietly on his bed in the bright morning sunlight, with sheep-sorrel in his hand, and his age was heavy on him.

“I’ve brought the bright word for the song,” said the leprechaun, sitting like a little green flame on the bed-post, “the song of the tears and the dew.”

“Have you, now?” whispered the old man. “Then I take it very neighbourly of you, for I have never come to finish it. And what’s the bright word that will be the end of it?”

“I’ll finish your chune for you,” said the leprechaun,

“‘Maybe when I’m older and it’s short from sun to sun,
Days I’ll dream of lying there with all the stars above,
While in among the sorrel bloom the little dew will run
Like the white tears of love.’

Love’s the bright word.”

“A good word, a bright word for the end of a song,” said old Berry, and he fingered the sheep-sorrel and slept, with the leprechaun watching him. Soon the leprechaun slipped from the room, for there was that in it he might not abide. He went down the stairs like a little flame and the sandy cat followed him. The pair of them went down the gray street together in the morning, and it’s a hard question which was the wiser. But they went, and no more was seen of them.

And in the room on the ground floor, said Great-Aunt Hawthorne, they were at their dancing all day long.

FRIENDS

“Why did you hit that white-headed kid?”

This was Loch’s first recorded remark in reference to Jimsy Lewis. The answer was not unreasonable.

“A kid like that is made to be hit.”

But there are other lights than that of reason. “Well you are not to hit him. That kid is my friend. When we are grown up, he is coming with me on adventures . . . .”

They grew up, with the tenacious vitality of the Scotch-Canadian, in spite of the adventures. At nineteen Loch was six-foot-one, slant-shouldered, silent as an Indian, and, according to his aunts in Caledoniaville, of an affectionate disposition. His people started him in a bank in the very-far West, and Jimsy went with him. But the bank was only “held up” twice, so Loch found it dull, and went. He took Jimsy. Then,—it happened some years ago,—he enlisted in Somebody’s Horse, and went to South Africa for the war. He took Jimsy. When I say that he took Jimsy, I mean it; he took him as a cyclone takes a barn-roof.

They and a man from Wolf Creek were separated from their troop, held a kopje for a week; were captured by an angry commando, escaped, and arrived in Kimberley in nice time for the siege. When the war was over, the man from Wolf Creek took up land in Natal to raise pineapples. Jimsy rather liked the idea of pineapples; but Loch was gathered in by the railway, and took Jimsy. When I say the railway, I mean the Great Railway, vision of a great man. Their work pushed them further and further north, into a new Africa, an enchanted Africa of high forest and grass-plain; of a vertical sun and frosty nights. They learned the blessing and the bitterness of work. They lived through that rainy season which came a month late, when the green jungle grew over the right-of-way, as it seemed, in a night; and the elephants tore down the telegraph wires, and the fever followed the rain; and the black men grew weary of cutting and carrying fuel, so they sat them down and died. Jimsy was clever at many things; he was given charge of a siding, a telegraph instrument, six account books, and two assistants, of sorts. Loch had no gift but that of handling men, which made him so much more valuable than Jimsy that he was presently put in charge at Gondoko. For one dry season they saw nothing of each other—Jimsy bullied his assistants, collected butterflies, and thought of Loch. Loch did not think nearly so much of Jimsy, he was too busy.

But every Saturday night he went into Gondoko and wired Jimsy—“Are you all right, kid?”

“All right, Loch.”

Then would follow gossip of the great line,—lions, a wash-out, a plague of witch-doctors. But the end was invariable as the beginning—“Let me know if you want me, kid, and I’ll come.”

“All right, Loch.”

“So long, Jimsy.”

“Good-night, Gondoko.”

Then Loch would stumble to his mud-and-iron hut and sleep in peace, a gun loaded with bird-shot under his head in case of leopards.

The second year of his sojourning, Loch had trouble with ju-jus,—more trouble than usual. He also had fever—worse than usual. But the ju-jus worried him most. No. 537, pulling out from a siding, had cut down a string stretched across the line, from which fluttered a red rag and two guinea-fowl feathers. As a result, the black people fled to their forests, and the wood-piles shrank to nothing. Fuel had to be brought from afar until the ju-ju was pacified, which took time. There is no space to tell how Loch managed this by setting up an opposition ju-ju, in whose constitution a home-made magic-lantern played a chief part. But he went into Gondoko one Saturday night with the happy knowledge that he had put the fear of all the devils into his section, and that the wood-piles at the rail-side grew like mushrooms.

It was the third week of the stormy season, and Loch was soaked in fever; the ju-ju war had tired him in body and soul. He looked at the sky, and as he looked the moon showed like a plunging white disk amid driving steam; he thought how often he had seen it so, above the northern lakes of his boyhood, when the first snow came down from the north and the wild-geese had flown south. But Huron’s cold surf was far from the station at Gondoko. And the glimmer of light shone only on the nameless uplands, the drenched scrub of the north; and southwards, welt on welt, league on league, the roll of the African forest like a sea.

His right-hand-man, an escaped convict, met him and touched his cap. “A call from Mr. Lewis, sir.”

Loch frowned. He had forgotten it was Saturday night, forgotten Jimsy, forgotten everything but his own overwhelming need of food and sleep. The ground rocked under his feet, and the ex-convict wavered like a smoke. “Did he leave any message?”

The ex-convict, who was also a deserter, saluted. “No sir. In fact, something’s wrong with the line. Probably helephants, sir. Williams took it, but nothing came through but the word ‘Lewis,’ sir, and the Gondoko call.”

“Thank you.” Loch went slowly to the iron shed, and sat down to the instrument. He called,—“Lewis, Lewis, Lewis,” in his clumsy fashion, now clumsier than usual, in that his fingers seemed to be as big and stiff as pincushions. He called for several minutes, waited, and called again. He was beginning to forget about the fever and the weariness.

The instrument clattered, stammered, hesitated. At last the answer—“Is that you, Gondoko?”

“Yes. Gondoko. Gondoko. Have you got that? Gondoko. Is that you, Jimsy? Jimsy, is that you?”

A space of meaningless clickerings and stutterings. Then suddenly, clear and sharp, “Loch, I want . . . .”

And then silence.

Loch sat for perhaps five minutes, patiently calling. But the silence was unbroken. He sat for another five minutes, thinking; and the burden of his thoughts was a little white-headed boy who used to follow him round the school play-ground, saying, “Loch, I want you, Loch.” Often the little boy was smitten for his pains, but no other boy dared smite him. Loch went out on the platform and shouted. The convict-deserter, who was presently known as Hatch, came running.

“Is there anything with steam up?”

“Number eight, she has steam up.” Hatch spoke proudly.

Number eight was a complex-compo-compound loco, collected from scrap heaps of half a continent, and put together at Gondoko.

“She’s to pull out, with sheet-iron for Banda, at midnight or thereabouts.”

“Uncouple, then,” said Loch, curtly, “I want her.”

“Mr. Lewis in trouble, sir?”

“I’m going to see.” Loch spoke more curtly than ever, but his men knew him.

Hatch spoke persuasively. “You’d better have me to fire for you, sir. I’m off duty, and there hasn’t been no variosity, sir, so to say, for a month.”

Loch nodded. “All right. And bring your twelve-bore.”

Hatch beamed and fled. There were outcries and footsteps. Loch spent another five minutes thinking of the little boy who had grown into a young man, and who might have been peacefully and safely raising pineapples in Natal. He started, as Number eight swung on the switch and pulled up beside him, groaning in all her rivets, Hatch swinging joyously on the rickety footplate.

“Clear line for four hours, sir,” said Hatch.

“We shan’t need so much,” answered Loch; and Hatch, seeing his face, said no more, but went through silent movements of whistling.

They crawled out of Gondoko, clattering and banging. The open line lay before them, straight as a ruler between walls of forest, varied only by the paths of the woodcutters. Outside the radius of number eight’s headlight was a swinging, uncertain darkness. Loch steadily put the throttle over. And Hatch whistled again.

Presently, he had no time even to whistle. He was stoking furiously.

Number eight roared up the line, rocking over the faulty rivetting like a ship on a wave. Her ill-assorted parts groaned and rattled as if they would fly apart. Loch, peering through the glass, saw nothing but the reeling glimmer of steel running liquidly towards him, heard nothing but a boy’s voice crying, “Loch, where are you, Loch? Loch, I want you . . . .” But Hatch had time to hear many things, for he knew and revered Number eight.

“’Ard on the old lady, this is,” he said to himself, brushing the sweat out of his eyes.

A squall drove down, blinding the glass, and sending a surf of mud into the cab. It ended in a roll of thunder like the roll of a war-drum, and lightning that splashed on the rails like a thrown egg. It showed the forest and the sky, violet-white picked out in jet. Then the darkness shut down again, so swiftly that Hatch winced as he had not from the lash. But Loch’s steady hand did not move on the throttle.

“’Ard on the old lady,” muttered Hatch again, mournfully. “I knew this was a bad bit o’ track, but she’s runnin’ as if her wheels was square.”

The rain ended, the thunder rolled into the distance. But still, at regular intervals, the world was dipped and drenched in the unbearable brilliance of the lightning. Hatch began nervously to time the flashes. He saw a vivid vision of little buildings, the iron roofs blazing like silver, streaming past, and of the black silhouettes of the men on the platform. He saw the dripping leaves flashing back the electricity like looking-glass. He saw a sinuous shadow that shrank and fled by the left driving wheel. “‘Passengers,’” he said, “‘is forbidden to cross the line except by the over’ead bridge,’ but this ain’t the London-and-South-Western, thank Gord.” He took a glance at the gauge, and stoked, stoked, stoked. His mouth was so tightly screwed into the form of whistling, it seemed unlikely ever to come unscrewed. It was quite stiff when he ventured to address Loch’s immovable back.

“Lions is out,” roared Hatch. “Or something.”

Loch caught the words and nodded over his shoulder. The grade was mounting, and number eight rattled and rocked worse than ever. They were both powdered white to the hair with woodash. Loch’s face looked gray in the lightning flash, his every nerve and sinew strained to snapping point, as he strove to fire the clamouring iron beneath him with the hurry of his own soul.

The wheels sang, monotonously, “I want you, Loch, I want you, Loch.” “I’m coming, Jimsy,” he answered. “I’m coming, Jimsy, as fast as I can.” And he did not know that he spoke aloud. The fever ran over him in waves, and at the crest of every wave was a picture,—a picture of Jimsy deserted and stricken with illness; a picture of Jimsy sitting cowed over the telegraph instrument, speared through the heart, as he had once seen a man sit; a picture of Jimsy injured, of Jimsy possibly poisoned, of Jimsy most impossibly drowned. He shut his eyes an instant, groaning; “I’m coming, Jimsy, I’m coming . . . .” And on the words came the crash.

It was a crash too great for the senses, a crash that struck at life itself, maiming and bruising it. Loch plunged downwards into rushing darkness, full of burning steel, steam, woodcoals, and flashes of fire and lightning. He seemed to have suddenly grown into something very small and light, which floated in the reeling dark for a long, long time. Then something sprang out of the dark and hit him. The last thing he saw was a blaze of white light and a tuft of grass, very clear and distinct, with a huge silver moth clinging in the heart of it.

He came to himself, in darkness, but it was a darkness blessedly cool and wet. Someone was kneeling over him, striking matches, and presently he saw that it was Hatch. The match-light flared pink for an instant, and showed the ex-convict’s face, black and grimy, save for two little white patches under the eyes, which were glaring at Loch, indignantly.

Loch sought for words, but couldn’t remember what he wanted to say for some time.

“Hatch, your face looks kind-of-lop-sided—”

“Thank you, sir.” Hatch’s voice was piercingly sarcastic. “Which it ain’t wonderful, sir, considering I fell on it. And my mouth full of sand and things. Probably beetles.”

Loch stretched out a hand, slowly, and gasped at the pain.

“What’s happened?”

“Wreck, sir.” The lightning glared in the south-west, and Hatch bent over him, very gently wiping his face with a lump of cotton-waste.

“Wreck?”

“Yes. Young tree across the line; probably lightning, as it was all afire. Number eight, sir,—” Hatch’s voice broke,—“there ain’t enough of her left to make a penny toy.”

Loch lay still, trying to steady himself. “Is the line clear?”

“As far as I can see—Darn it, I can’t stop your ’ead bleeding—-Number eight, she kicked the tree off, and then fell on top of it herself. We must have flew like birds.”

“And how long have I been lying here?”

“Probably forty minutes, but there’s no knowing. Just beyond Banda, we are, and we’ll have to walk back. And the woods is fair crawling with things. Probably ferocious.”

“My fault, Hatch . . . .”

“Shut your ’ead.” Hatch swabbed away with the cotton waste. “Why—why, my lad—I thought you was done for—” His voice broke again, and he pulled himself together. “Now, if you think you can get up,—with the help of my arm—”

Loch staggered to his feet. The night swung about him, pierced with fires of pain. He thought it was the earth that reeled, and did not know that Hatch was holding him erect by main strength. He took a few steps, and a little strength came back.

“That’s better, sir,” said Hatch, who had again taken refuge in sarcasm. “Keep it up, and we’ll be in Banda for lunch.”

“Banda?” said Loch. “O, but we’re not going back to Banda, Hatch. We’re going on.”

“Going on . . . .”

“Why, yes.—Can’t you tie that stuff round my head? Take the sleeve of my coat, then.”

“The sleeve’s wet, too. You’re pretty well cut about. I’ll rip out mine . . . . Did I understand you to say, sir, as we were going on to Mr. Lewis?”

“Yes. It’s not much further than Banda. I’ll be all right.”

Hatch opened his mouth, gasped, and was silent. The situation was beyond speech—even beyond swearing. Loch interpreted his silence.

“You needn’t come, Hatch,” he said, quietly.

Hatch found his voice. “Thank you, sir,” he replied, bitterly. “My neck is to be broke, and I’m to be insulted into the bargain. And well you know that I don’t care a darn for lions or niggers, but only for the ’orrible crawly things that drops on you. And probably stingers,” He carefully adjusted the bandage round Loch’s head. “Stingers. And probably down your back.”

Loch laughed, croakily. “Tie the other sleeve round your neck, and come on.”

He turned up the long track, wondering why ties were so hard to walk on, and why they seemed to be set at such irregular intervals. Two short steps and a long, two long steps and a short, a rest—“Loch, I want you. Loch, I want you.”—He heard nothing but that, saw nothing but the glimmer of the wet steel he must follow. And Hatch, after one wild gesture that took to witness the flashing sky, the wet woods, and the ruins of Number eight fuming by the right-of-way, limped after him, his mouth screwed into a dolorous whistle.

* * * * *

A fair young man, with nice blue eyes, was sitting at a table, pleasantly and peacefully sticking dead beetles on pins. The light of a shaded lamp shone on his quick fingers, on the jewelled wing cases of his prey, and out of the screened window before him, in a long beam. Now and then he murmured Latin words, and scribbled on little slips of paper.

A fox-terrier and a black boy lay asleep in one corner of the room.

Suddenly the black boy sprang up, and the dog began barking furiously. And there came into the room what might have been the blood-stained ghosts of two men.

“Loch!” cried Jimsy, and leaped forward.

But Loch held him off. “So you are all right?” he said thickly, “Sure you’re all right, Jimsy? I saw you—through the window.”

“Of course I’m all right, old man,” said Jimsy, staring blankly.

“But your message?”

“My message. Loch? Good heavens, I only wired to ask you to send me up a bit of glass for my new butterfly case. And the wire gave out half-way through. Loch, I say. . . . . Loch!”

Loch began to laugh with relief; it was a queer laugh that shook him from head to foot, and he held on to the table for support.

“But what’s happened?” begged Jimsy. “What have you been doing? Loch!”

“Nothing’s happened, kid,” said Loch, soothingly. “Only I thought you wanted me. And so I came—I came—as fast as I could.”

“Look out, sir,” cried Hatch, sharply. But the table was in the way and Jimsy was not quick enough to catch Loch. It was into Hatch’s arms that he fell.

SAGA OF KWEETCHEL

Kweetchel was a young man when it happened and that was before the days when the red canoe and the Sitka Spruce had brought numbers of white men to his part of the world. Kweetchel had seen very few white men; and he had never seen a compass until he took one from the body of a dead sailor he found in a drifting boat.

He was out in the summer fog, fishing for halibut with bits of octopus-arm for bait, and the boat came sideways out of the fog, and rubbed gently against his dug-out, and he looked in and saw the dead sailor.

There was nothing on the white man but a twist of tobacco and the compass. While Kweetchel was wondering what he should do next, a sooty albatross screamed at him. His snam was an albatross, so Kweetchel took this to mean that he’d better have nothing to do with the boat or the dead man; he sent the boat off with a push and the fog shut down on it forever. But there seemed no harm in keeping the compass, which was in a bright brass case.

Kweetchel went ashore. He intended to give the compass to the girl he liked best—either Kolite or Oala. The trouble was he could not decide which he preferred. Oala’s silver labret was nearly twice the size of Kolite’s, but Kolite’s eyes were soft and bright as deep river-water and looked kindly on Kweetchel.

He sat down to think it out, the compass in his hands, and his heart beat—Kolite? Oalo? Kolite? Oalo?

Then glancing at the compass in his hand Kweetchel saw that the needle pointed straight at Kolite’s house.

This was not strange considering that Kolite’s house was north of Kweetchel as he sat on the beach among the draw-up dug-outs and the barbed cod’s heads and the fighting dogs. But of course he did not know this, and it came as a shock. “My holy snam!” said Kweetchel, or gutterals to that effect, “but there is a strong spirit in this little box!” He decided that he would keep the compass himself. But he went immediately and made arrangements to marry Kolite as soon as possible.

Kweetchel took Kolite to wife, and very soon forgot all about Oala. He was very happy. Kolite was an excellent housewife as far as oalachan oil and preserved seaweed went. Kweetchel attributed his comfort to the spirit in the brass compass. He made a beautiful hutch for it to live in, of well-grained male wood greased black, inlaid with studs of shell, and incised with albatross wings.

The days went over Kweetchel and Kolite, the silvery North Pacific sun, the nights, and the great burning moons. The west winds which had last touched the eyes of lovers in the peony gardens of Japan, now touched as softly the eyes of Kweetchel and Kolite.

A sub-chief gave a great potlatch. Kweetchel was a dandy, and he had himself tattooed for the occasion in a design of conventionalized compasses. But the wounds inflamed. And when the day of the feast came, Kweetchel was a sick man. He lay on his bed with a fever, talking wild spirit-words, and Kolite fanned him with a cedar-bark fan.

The second day of the feast, Kweetchel’s mind came back to him suddenly, and with it a great sense of fear and disaster. He heard from without the howls of the drinkers, the groans of the eaters, the weeping of the neglected children, the worrying of the dogs. He trembled with fear and weakness. He said to Kolite, “Bring me the hutch with the Thing inside. I must talk to that spirit.”

Kolite brought the carved hutch, and covered her eyes with her mantle of green-and-black goat’s hair while Kweetchel took out the compass. Kweetchel held the compass and turned it in his quivering hand; and the needle balanced, hesitated, and then hung true to the north.

Kweetchel crawled out of his house and stood and looked north.

A great white fog-belt hung low across the sea. Kweetchel saw three black specks break one after the other from this fog. They were a long way off, but he knew them for what they were,—canoes under twin-sails. He watched a moment more. Then, with a great cry, he ran staggering to the potlatch house. He burst through the totem poles and flung himself, naked and shouting, on the revellers within. As men of Kent or Essex might have burst into an English hall, crying, “The Norsemen, the Norsemen!” so Kweetchel came, crying, “The Haidas, the Haidas!”

The crapulous rabble huddled to the defence. They tried to launch the war-canoes to meet the sea-hawks on the sea. Only one got off, and Kweetchel, for all his weakness, in her. Women fled to the fir-forest, all except Kolite. She climbed to a high rock above the beach, and wrapped her fine woven mantle about her, and sat as still as a stone, her chin upon her knees, watching the hopeless fight.

The Haida war-canoes came down under full sail, swift and beautiful among the beautiful boats that men have ever made in the world.

The canoe from shore, with drunken courage and a scattering fire of old muskets, put out to intercept the leading Haida. The Haida swept on, silent, until scarcely twenty feet divided the two. Then her sails came down, shots were fired, spears and stone-headed axes flew. In a moment from the other boat rose a great cry of pain, fear and death. The Haida’s way carried her on. Her terrible sharp prow, with the great eyes glaring on either side, ground into the side of her adversary, which heeled over. The Haida was sixty feet long; she rode right over the smaller boat and beached on the sand leaving the living and the dying struggling in the water. The second canoe picked up a few of the former for slaves.

Then the slaughter commenced, of men too gorged to stand up, of men too drunk to steady a harpoon. Kolite did not stir while the sound of it, and then the smell of burning, went past her in a smoke.

Later, she heard feet running on the rock, the high rock whereon she sat. She covered her face with her mantle. A man came and stood by her, panting. He tore the mantle away. He said, “Who are you?”

As if she were dead, Kolite replied, “I was the wife of Kweetchel.”

He took her in his arms and carried her down to the boats. He was gentle with her. Love for her had entered his heart when he uncovered her face. And Kolite looked among the other prisoners to see if her husband was there. But he was not. Then she lay down and it was as if her life went from her. Kweetchel was dead, and she was the slave to the Haida chief, Annoish-Haung.

But Kweetchel was not dead.

In the brief fight with the Haida, he was wounded and pitched into the sea. Swimming as instinctively as a wounded seal, he travelled under water while his breath held. He came up, gasping and half-dead, in the lee of a reef that sheltered him from sight.

He clung here a long while, too much hurt to have any clear thought of what was happening. Later, he recovered enough to swim back to shore. This took all his strength. He crawled dripping above tide-mark, and dropped, lying all night with other men, more still and silent than he, under the light of the vast Pacific moon.

The moon set. The sun climbed. Kweetchel woke and stood up.