Chapter M: R. S. Andrews: The Perfect Tribute; François Coppee: The (6)

“Let’s not wait,” said Mrs. Everett. But the words were hardly
spoken when, with a quick movement, she turned her glasses on the
ring. Something unusual was going on at the farther end. A ripple of
applause came down the sides of the Garden, and then she saw a black
horse, ridden by a girl, come cantering toward the starting-place.

“It’s that child on Hermione! You must stop it, Reggie!” she
exclaimed excitedly.

Before any one could move, Angelica had turned the horse toward the
first jump. It looked terribly high to Mrs. Everett. It was almost
even with the head of the man who was standing on the farther side
ready to replace the bars if they should be knocked down.

Tossing her head playfully, the black mare galloped steadily for the
wings, took off in her stride, and swept over the jump in a long
curve. She landed noiselessly on the tan-bark, and was on again.
Around the great ring went the horse and the girl, steadily, not too
fast, and taking each jump without a mistake. The great crowd
remained breathless and expectant. Horse and rider finished in front
of the Everett box, and pulled up to a trot, the mare breathing hard
with excitement, but well-mannered.

Then a storm of cheers and hand-clapping burst, the like of which
was never heard at a New York horse show before.

As the applause died away, Reggie rose and hurried out. “Let’s all
go,” said Mrs. Everett.

Before they got through the crowd the judges had awarded the
ribbons. There were only three other horses that went over all the
jumps, and none of them made a clean score. There was no question
about which was first. The judges ran their hands down the mare’s
legs in a vain search for lumps. She was short-coupled, with a
beautiful shoulder and powerful quarters. She had four crosses of
thoroughbred, and showed it.

“She’s a picture mare,” said one of the judges, and he tied the blue
rosette to her bridle himself. Then the great crowd cheered and
clapped again, and Angelica rode down to the entrance as calmly as
if she were in the habit of taking blue ribbons daily. But inside
she was not calm.

“I’ve got to cry or something,” she thought.

At the gate some one came out of the crowd and took the mare by the
head. Angelica looked down, and there were her brother and Reggie
and Mrs. Everett’s party. The Garden began to swim.

“Oh, Jim!” she murmured, “help me down. It’s Lady Washington.” Then
she threw her arms around his neck and wept.

* * * * *

They were at supper in the old Waldorf Palm Room before Angelica was
quite certain whether actual facts had been taking place or whether
she had been dreaming. It seemed rather too extraordinary and too
pleasant to be true. Still, she was sure that she was there, because
the people stared at her when she came in dressed in her habit, and
whispered to each other about her. Furthermore, a party of judges
came over and asked Mrs. Everett to present them.

There never before was quite such an evening. It was after twelve,
at least, and nobody had suggested that she ought to be in bed. One
pleasant thing followed another in quick succession, and there
seemed no end to them. She was absorbed in an edible rapture which
Mrs. Everett called a “café parfait” when she became aware that
Reggie’s friend, Mr. Palfrey, had started to address the party. She
only half listened, because she was wondering why every one except
Mrs. Everett and herself had denied himself this delightful sweet.
Grown-up people had strange tastes.

Mr. Palfrey began by saying that he thought it was time to propose a
toast in honor of Miss Stanton, which might also rechristen Reggie’s
mare by her first and true name, “Lady Washington.” He said that it
was plain to him that the mare had resented a strange name out of
Greek mythology, and in future would go kindly, particularly if
Reggie never tried to ride her again.

He went on with his remarks, and from time to time the people
interrupted with laughter; but it was only a meaningless sound in
Angelica’s ears. The words “Reggie’s mare” had come like a blow in
the face. She had forgotten about that. Her knees grew weak and a
lump swelled in her throat. It was true, of course, but for the time
being it had passed out of her mind. And now that Lady Washington
had won the five-foot-six class and was so much admired, probably
Jim could not afford to buy her back. It was doubtful if Mr.
Haughton would sell her at any price.

Presently she was aroused by a remark addressed directly to her.

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Reggie. “Don’t you?”

She nodded; but she did not know what the idea was, and she did not
trust her voice to ask.

“Only,” he continued, turning to Palfrey, “it isn’t my mare any
more; it’s Miss Stanton’s. Put that in, Palfrey.”

Angelica’s mouth opened in wonderment and her heart stood still. She
looked about the table blankly.

“It’s so,” said Reggie; “she’s yours.”

“But I can’t take her,” she said falteringly. “She’s too valuable.
Can I, Jim?”

“But Jim’s bought her,” said Reggie, hurriedly.

Angelica’s eyes settled on her brother’s face; he said nothing, but
began to smile; Reggie was kicking him under the table.

“Yes,” said Reggie; “when I saw you ride Lady Washington, that
settled it with me. I’m too proud to stand being beaten by a girl;
so I made Jim buy her back and promise to give her to you.”

“Do you mean it?” said Angelica. “Is Lady Washington really mine?”

“Yes,” he said.

She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed wearily. “It doesn’t
seem possible,” she murmured. She paused and seemed to be running
over the situation in her mind. Presently she spoke as if unaware
that the others were listening. “I knew it would happen, though,”
she said. “I knew it. I reckon I prayed enough.” She smiled as a
great thrill of happiness ran through her, and glancing up, saw that
all the rest were smiling, too.

“I’m so happy,” she said apologetically. Then she bethought herself,
and furtively reached down and tapped the frame of her chair with
her knuckles.

“Well, here’s the toast,” said Mr. Palfrey, rising. “To the lady and
Lady Washington.” And they all rose and drank it standing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MY HUSBAND’S BOOK[7]
By James Matthew Barrie

Footnote 7:

From _Two of Them_. Copyright, 1893, by the United States Book Co.

LONG before I married George I knew that he was dreadfully
ambitious. We were not yet engaged when he took me into his
confidence about his forthcoming great book, which was to take the
form of an inquiry into the Metaphysics of Ethics. “I have not begun
it yet,” he always said, “but I shall be at it every night once the
winter sets in.” In the daytime George is only a clerk, though a
much-valued one, so that he has to give the best hours of his life
to a ledger.

“If you only had more time at your disposal,” I used to say, when he
told me of the book that was to make his name.

“I don’t complain,” he said, heartily, like the true hero he always
is, except when he has to take medicine. “Indeed, you will find that
the great books have nearly always been written by busy men. I am
firmly of opinion that if a man has original stuff in him it will
come out.”

He glowed with enthusiasm while he spoke in this inspiriting strain,
and some of his ardor passed into me. When we met we talked of
nothing but his future; at least he talked while I listened with
clasped hands. It was thus that we became engaged. George was no
ordinary lover. He did not waste his time telling me that I was
beautiful, or saying “Beloved!” at short intervals. No, when we were
alone he gave me his hand to hold, and spoke fervently of the
Metaphysics of Ethics.

Our engagement was not of a very long duration, for George coaxed me
into marriage thus—“I cannot settle down to my book,” he said,
“until we are married.”

His heart was so set on that book that I yielded. We wandered all
over London together buying the furniture. There was a settee that I
particularly wanted, but George, with his usual thoughtfulness,
said:

“Let us rather buy a study table. It will help me at my work, and
once the book is out we shall be able to afford half a dozen
settees.”

Another time he went alone to buy some pictures for the
drawing-room.

“I got a study chair instead,” he told me in the evening. “I knew
you would not mind, my darling, for the chair is the very thing for
writing a big book in.”

He even gave thought to the ink-bottle.

“In my room,” he said, “I am constantly discovering that my
ink-bottle is empty, and it puts me out of temper to write with
water and soot. I therefore think we ought to buy one of those large
ink-stands with two bottles.”

“We shall,” I replied, with the rapture of youth, “and mine will be
the pleasant task of seeing that the bottles are kept full.”

“Dearest!” he said, fondly, for this was the sort of remark that
touched him most.

“Every evening,” I continued, encouraged by his caressing tones,
“you will find your manuscripts lying on the table waiting for you,
and a pen with a new nib in it.”

“What a wife you will make!” he exclaimed.

“But you mustn’t write too much,” I said. “You must have fixed
hours, and at a certain time, say at ten o’clock, I shall insist on
your ceasing to write for the night.”

“That seems a wise arrangement. But sometimes I shall be too
entranced in the work, I fancy, to leave it without an effort.”

“Ah,” I said, “I shall come behind you, and snatch the pen from your
hand!”

“Every Saturday night,” he said, “I shall read to you what I have
written during the week.”

No wonder I loved him.

We were married on a September day, and the honeymoon passed
delightfully in talk about the book. Nothing proved to me the depth
of George’s affection so much as his not beginning the great work
before the honeymoon was over. So I often told him, and he smiled
fondly in reply. The more, indeed, I praised him the better pleased
he seemed to be. The name for this is sympathy.

Conceive us at home in our dear little house in Clapham.

“Will you begin the book at once?” I asked George the day after we
arrived.

“I have been thinking that over,” he said. “I needn’t tell you that
there is nothing I should like so much, but, on the whole, it might
be better to wait a week.”

“Don’t make the sacrifice for my sake,” I said, anxiously.

“Of course it is for your sake,” he replied.

“But it is such a pity to waste any more time,” I said.

“There is no such hurry,” he answered, rather testily.

I looked at him in surprise.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that I can be thinking the arrangement
of the book over.”

We had, of course, a good many callers at this time, and I told most
of them about the book. For reasons to be seen by and by I regret
this now.

When the week had become a fortnight, I insisted on leaving George
alone in the study after dinner. He looked rather gloomy, but I
filled the ink-bottles, and put the paper on the desk, and handed
him his new pen. He took it, but did not say “thank you.”

An hour afterward I took him a cup of tea. He was still sitting by
the fire, but the pen had fallen from his hands.

“You are not sleeping, George?” I asked.

“Sleeping!” he cried, as indignantly as if I had charged him with
crime. “No, I’m thinking.”

“You haven’t written any yet?”

“I was just going to begin when you came in. I’ll begin as soon as
I’ve drunk this tea.”

“Then I’ll leave you to your work, dear.”

I returned to the study at nine o’clock. He was still in the same
attitude.

“I wish you would bring me a cup of tea,” he said.

“I brought you one hours ago.”

“Eh? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, George! I talked with you about it. Why, here it is on the
table, untouched.”

“I declare you never mentioned it to me. I must have been thinking
so deeply that I never noticed you. You should have spoken to me.”

“But I did speak, and you answered.”

“My dear, I assure you I did nothing of the sort. This is very
vexing, for it has spoiled my evening’s work.”

The next evening George said that he did not feel in the mood for
writing, and I suppose I looked disappointed, for he flared up.

“I can’t be eternally writing,” he growled.

“But you haven’t done anything at all yet.”

“That is a rather ungenerous way of expressing it.”

“But you spoke as if the work would be a pleasure.”

“Have I said that it is not a pleasure? If you knew anything of
literary history, you would be aware that there are occasions when
the most industrious writers cannot pen a line.”

“They must make a beginning some time, though!”

“Well, I shall make a beginning to-morrow.”

Next evening he seemed in no hurry to go into the study.

“I’ll hang the bedroom pictures,” he said.

“No, no, you must get begone to your book.”

“You are in a desperate hurry to see me at that book.”

“You spoke as if you were so anxious to begin it.”

“So I am. Did I say I wasn’t?”

He marched off to the study, banging the drawing-room door. An hour
or so afterward I took him his tea. He had left his study door open
so that I could see him on the couch before I entered the room. When
he heard the rattle of the tea-things he jumped up and strode to the
study table, where, when I entered, he pretended to be busy writing.

“How are you getting on, dear?” I asked, with a sinking at the
heart.

“Excellently, my love, excellently.”

I looked at him so reproachfully that he blushed.

“I think,” said he, when he had drunk the tea, “that I have done
enough for one night. I mustn’t overdo it.”

“Won’t you let me hear what you have written?”

He blushed again.

“Wait till Saturday,” he said.

“Then let me put your papers away,” I said, for I was anxious to see
whether he had written anything at all.

“I couldn’t think of it,” he replied, covering the paper with his
elbows.

Next morning I counted the clean sheets of paper. They were just as
I had put them on the table. So it went on for a fortnight or more,
with this difference. He either suspected that I counted the sheets,
or thought that I might take it into my head to do so. To allay my
suspicions, therefore, he put away what he called his manuscript in
a drawer, which he took care to lock. I discovered that one of my
own keys opened this drawer, and one day I examined the manuscripts.
They consisted of twenty-four pages of paper, without a word written
on them. Every evening he added two more clean pages to the contents
of the drawer. This discovery made me so scornful that I taxed him
with the deceit. At first he tried to brazen it out, but I was
merciless, and then he said:

“The fact is that I can’t write by gas-light. I fear I shall have to
defer beginning the work until spring.”

“But you used to say that the winter was the best season for
writing.”

“I thought so at the time, but I find I was wrong. It will be a
great blow to me to give up the work for the present, but there is
no help for it.”

When spring came I reminded him that now was his opportunity to
begin the book.

“You are eternally talking about that book,” he snarled.

“I haven’t mentioned it for a month.”

“Well, you are always looking at me as if I should be at it.”

“Because you used to speak so enthusiastically about it.”

“I am as enthusiastic as ever, but I can’t be forever writing at the
book.”

“We have now been married seven months, and you haven’t written a
line yet.”

He banged the doors again, and a week afterward he said that spring
was a bad time for writing a book.

“One likes to be out-of-doors,” he said, “in spring, watching the
trees become green again. Wait till July, when one is glad to be
indoors. Then I’ll give four hours to the work every evening.”

Summer came, and then he said:

“It is too hot to write books. Get me another bottle of iced
soda-water. I’ll tackle the book in the autumn.”

We have now been married more than five years, but the book is not
begun yet. As a rule, we now shun the subject, but there are times
when he still talks hopefully of beginning. I wonder if there are
any other husbands like mine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

WAR
By JACK LONDON

HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might
have sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not
been so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching
the movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped,
questing ever onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush,
and returning always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side.
And as he watched, so did he listen, though he rode on in silence,
save for the boom of heavy guns from far to the west. This had been
sounding monotonously in his ears for hours, and only its cessation
would have aroused his notice. For he had business closer to hand.
Across his saddle-bow was balanced a carbine.

So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into
flight from under his horse’s nose, startled him to such an extent
that automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the
carbine half-way to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered
himself, and rode on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had
to do, that the sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled
down his nose and spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his
cavalryman’s hat was fresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under
him was likewise wet. It was high noon of a breathless day of heat.
Even the birds and squirrels did not dare the sun, but sheltered in
shady hiding places among the trees.

Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow
pollen, for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They
kept to the brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and
peered out before crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland
pasturage. He worked always to the north, though his way was
devious, and it was from the north that he seemed most to apprehend
that for which he was looking. He was no coward, but his courage was
only that of the average civilized man, and he was looking to live,
not die.

Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub
that he was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path
swung around to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north
again along the oak-covered top of the ridge.

The ridge ended in a steep descent—so steep that he zigzagged back
and forth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among
the dead leaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the
horse above that threatened to fall down upon him. The sweat ran
from him, and the pollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and
nostrils, increased his thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the
descent was noisy, and frequently he stopped, panting in the dry
heat and listening for any warning from beneath.

At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he
could not make out its extent. Here the character of the woods
changed, and he was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside
oaks, tall straight trees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the
damp fat soil. Only here and there were thickets, easily avoided,
while he encountered winding, park-like glades where the cattle had
pastured in the days before war had run them off.

His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley,
and at the end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on
the edge of a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his
path lay across to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the
stream. It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the
thought of venturing out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of
them, a thousand, might lurk in that fringe by the stream.

Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by
his own loneliness. The pulse of war that beat from the west
suggested the companionship of battling thousands; here was naught
but silence, and himself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a
myriad ambushes. And yet his task was to find what he feared to
find. He must go on, and on, till somewhere, some time, he
encountered another man, or other men, from the other side,
scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as he must make
report, of having come in touch.

Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and
again peeped forth. This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw
a small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from
the chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen
door stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black
aperture that it seemed almost that a farmer’s wife must emerge at
any moment.

He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself,
mind and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing
stirred. He went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees
and bushes by the river’s bank. One thought persisted maddeningly.
It was of the crash into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made
him feel very fragile and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the
saddle.

Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred
yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was,
without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very
thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed
on the screen on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he
sat down, his carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and
slowly his tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no
danger; but just as he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to
the water, a movement among the opposite bushes caught his eye.

It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of
the bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from
him, the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered
with several weeks’ growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were
blue and wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the corners that
showed despite the tired and anxious expression of the whole face.

All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance
was no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief
time, that he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He
glanced along the sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who
was as good as dead. It was impossible to miss at such point blank
range.

But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A
hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard
bent downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the
water. Then arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the
closing bushes. A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked,
he crept back to his horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed
clearing, and passed into the shelter of the woods beyond.

II

Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with
many outbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the
woods, on a roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man
with the quick black eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the
house. That a fight had taken place here earlier in the season was
evident. Clips and empty cartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay
on the ground, which, while wet, had been torn up by the hoofs of
horses. Hard by the kitchen garden were graves, tagged and numbered.
From the oak tree by the kitchen door, in tattered, weather-beaten
garments, hung the bodies of two men. The faces, shriveled and
defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. The roan horse
snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied
it farther away.

Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on empty
cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from the
windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of
one room he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been
laid down.

Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded
the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled
his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a thought came to him, and
he glanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp.
He pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This he
proceeded to fill with apples.

As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up
its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of
hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered
out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the
opposite side of the clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards
or so away. They rode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others
remained in the saddle as an earnest that their stay would be short.
They seemed to be holding a council, for he could hear them talking
excitedly in the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time
passed, but they seemed unable to reach a decision. He put the
carbine away in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing
the shirt of apples on the pommel.

He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into
the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped
forward. At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy
of nineteen or twenty for all of his uniform, jump back to escape
being run down. At the same moment the roan swerved, and its rider
caught a glimpse of the aroused men by the house. Some were
springing from their horses, and he could see the rifles going to
their shoulders. He passed the kitchen door and the dried corpses
swinging in the shade, compelling his foes to run around the front
of the house. A rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast,
leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of
apples, the other guiding the horse.

The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan
and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several
scattered shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods,
and the roan was covering the distance with mighty strides. Every
man was now firing. They were pumping their guns so rapidly that he
no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went through his hat, but
he was unaware, though he did know when another tore through the
apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a
third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse’s legs and
ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like some
incredible insect.

The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly,
there was no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that
astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes,
they had emptied their magazines. He could see several reloading.
Others were running back behind the house for their horses. As he
looked, two already mounted, came back into view around the corner,
riding hard. And at the same moment, he saw the man with the
unmistakable ginger beard kneel down on the ground, level his gun,
and coolly take his time for the long shot.

The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and
swerved in his flight in order to distract the other’s aim. And
still the shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods
sprang nearer. They were only two hundred yards away, and still the
shot was delayed.

And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead
ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And
they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when
it struck the earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that
rolled about him. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples,
and clapped their hands in applause of the long shot by the man with
the ginger beard.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BATTLE OF THE MONSTERS
By Morgan Robertson

EXTRACT from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient
of Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6:

August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress,
having been bitten on the wrist three hours previously by
dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man,
full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse
and temperature higher than normal, due to excitement.
Cauterized wound at once (2 P.M.) and inoculated with
antitoxin.

As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming
ashore, from lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine,
he has been isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for
symptoms of cholera.

August 3, 6 P.M. Microscopic examination of blood
corroborative of Metschnikoff’s theory of fighting
leucocytes. White corpuscles gorged with bacteria.

---

He was an amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the
sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent,
pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous
and graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three
dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in
traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one
sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the
undulatory movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his
way of swimming, good enough to enable him to escape his enemies;
this, and riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage,
constituting his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was
denied him; nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for
purposes of offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most
unheard-of manner—through the soft walls of his body.

Yet he enjoyed a few social pleasures. Though the organs of the five
senses were missing in his economy, he possessed an inner sixth
sense which answered for all and also gave him power of speech. He
would converse, swap news and views, with creatures of his own and
other species, provided that they were of equal size and prowess;
but he wasted no time on any but his social peers. Smaller creatures
he pursued when they annoyed him; larger ones pursued him.

The sunlight, which made him so beautiful to look at, was
distasteful to him; it also made him too visible. He preferred a
half-darkness and less fervor to life’s battle—time to judge of
chances, to figure on an enemy’s speed and turning-circle, before
beginning flight or pursuit. But his dislike of it really came of a
stronger animus—a shuddering recollection of three hours once passed
on dry land in a comatose condition, which had followed a
particularly long and intense period of bright sunlight. He had
never been able to explain the connection, but the awful memory
still saddened his life.

And now it seemed, as he swam about, that this experience might be
repeated. The light was strong and long-continued, the water
uncomfortably warm, and the crowd about him denser—so much so as to
prevent him from attending properly to a social inferior who had
crossed his bow. But just as his mind grasped the full imminence of
the danger, there came a sudden darkness, a crash and vibration of
the water, then a terrible, rattling roar of sound. The social
inferior slipped from his mouth, and with his crowding neighbors was
washed far away, while he felt himself slipping along, bounding and
rebounding against the projections of a corrugated wall which showed
white in the gloom. There was an unpleasant taste to the water, and
he became aware of creatures in his vicinity unlike any he had
known,—quickly darting little monsters about a tenth as large as
himself,—thousands of them, black and horrid to see, each with
short, fish-like body and square head like that of a dog; with
wicked mouth that opened and shut nervously; with hooked flippers on
the middle part, and a bunch of tentacles on the fore that spread
out ahead and around. A dozen of them surrounded him menacingly; but
he was young and strong, much larger than they, and a little
frightened. A blow of his tail killed two, and the rest drew off.

The current bore them on until the white wall rounded off and was
lost to sight beyond the mass of darting creatures. Here was slack
water, and with desperate effort he swam back, pushing the small
enemies out of his path, meeting some resistance and receiving a few
bites, until, in a hollow in the wall, he found temporary refuge and
time to think. But he could not solve the problem. He had not the
slightest idea where he was or what had happened—who and what were
the strange black creatures, or why they had threatened him.

His thoughts were interrupted. Another vibrant roar sounded, and
there was pitch-black darkness; then he was pushed and washed away
from his shelter, jostled, bumped, and squeezed, until he found
himself in a dimly lighted tunnel, which, crowded as it was with
swimmers, was narrow enough to enable him to see both sides at once.
The walls were dark brown and blue, broken up everywhere into
depressions or caves, some of them so deep as to be almost like
blind tunnels. The dog-faced creatures were there—as far as he could
see; but besides them, now, were others, of stranger shape—of
species unknown to him.

A slow current carried them on, and soon they entered a larger
tunnel. He swam to the opposite wall, gripped a projection, and
watched in wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed
the source of the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body
and innumerable legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated
past. Its body swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling
giving out a phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening
to a faint red color. Then came a group of others; then a second
living lamp; later another and another: they were evenly
distributed, and illumined the tunnel.

There were monstrous shapes, living but inert, barely pulsing with
dormant life, as much larger than himself as the dog-headed kind
were smaller—huge, unwieldy, disk-shaped masses of tissue, light
gray at the margins, dark red in the middle. They were in the
majority, and blocked the view. Darting and wriggling between and
about them were horrible forms, some larger than himself, others
smaller. There were serpents, who swam with a serpent’s motion. Some
were serpents in form, but were curled rigidly into living
cork-screws, and by sculling with their tails screwed their way
through the water with surprising rapidity. Others were barrel-or
globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles. With these they pulled
themselves along, in and out through the crowd, or, bringing their
squirming appendages rearward,—each an individual snake,—used them
as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the form of long
cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along like a log
in a tide-way; others, without appendages, were as inert and
helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped
creatures float by, clinging together; then a group of eight, then
one of twelve. All these, to the extent of their volition, seemed to
be in a state of extreme agitation and excitement.

The cause was apparent. The tunnel from which he had come was still
discharging the dog-faced animals by the thousand, and he knew now
the business they were on. It was war—war to the death. They flung
themselves with furious energy into the parade, fighting and biting
all they could reach. A hundred at a time would pounce on one of the
large red-and-gray creatures, almost hiding it from view; then, and
before they had passed out of sight, they would fall off and
disperse, and the once living victim would come with them, in parts.
The smaller, active swimmers fled, but if one was caught, he
suffered; a quick dart, a tangle of tentacles, an embrace of the
wicked flippers, a bite—and a dead body floated on.

And now into the battle came a ponderous engine of vengeance and
defense. A gigantic, lumbering, pulsating creature, white and
translucent but for the dark, active brain showing through its
walls, horrible in the slow, implacable deliberation of its
movements, floated down with the current. It was larger than the
huge red-and-gray creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of
the definition—for it assumed all forms. It was long—barrel-shaped;
it shrank to a sphere, then broadened laterally, and again extended
above and below. In turn it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a
pentahedron, a polyhedron. It possessed neither legs, flippers, nor
tentacles; but out from its heaving, shrinking body it would send,
now from one spot, now from another, an active arm, or feeler, with
which it swam, pulled, or pushed. An unlucky invader which one of
them touched made few more voluntary movements; for instantly the
whole side of the whitish mass bristled with arms. They seized,
crushed, killed it, and then pushed it bodily through the living
walls to the animal’s interior to serve for food. And the gaping
fissure healed at once, like the wounds of Milton’s warring angels.

The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came
another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three,
then dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army
of defense was mustering.

Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of
the projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to
himself—but not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail,
swinging easily in the eddy, and now felt himself touched from
beneath, again from above. A projection down-stream was extending
outward and toward him. The cave in which he had taken refuge was
closing on him like a great mouth—as though directed by an
intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified flirt of his tail he
flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the combat the walls
of the cave crunched together. It was well for him that he was not
there.

The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and
everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black
invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small
tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray
kind, and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment
marking the death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the
horrid interment of fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger,
as mouth after mouth of tributary tunnels was passed; but as each
one discharged its quota of swimming and drifting creatures, there
was no thinning of the crowd.

As he drifted on with the inharmonious throng, he noticed what
seemed the objective of the war. This was the caves which lined the
tunnel. Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large
red-and-gray animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter,
and the walls instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature
drifted out, limp and colorless, but alive; and with him came
fragments of the wall, broken off by the pressure. This happened
again and again, but the large creature was never quite
killed—merely squeezed. The tentacled non-combatants and the large
white fighters seemed to know the danger of these tunnel mouths,
possibly from bitter experiences, for they avoided the walls; but
the dog-faced invaders sought this death, and only fought on their
way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or more, would launch
themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail; their united
strength could not prevent the closing in of the mechanical maw, and
they were crushed and flung out, to drift on with other debris.

Soon the walls could not be seen for the pushing, jostling crowd,
but everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a
time when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They
seemed to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into
cross-currents rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical
thunder. They were shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed
together, hundreds of the smaller creatures dying from the pressure.
Then there was a moment of comparative quiet, during which fighting
was resumed, and there could be seen the swiftly flying walls of a
large tunnel. Next they were rushed through a labyrinth of small
caves with walls of curious, branching formation, sponge-like and
intricate. It required energetic effort to prevent being caught in
the meshes, and the large red-and-gray creatures were sadly torn and
crushed, while the white ones fought their way through by main
strength. Again the flying walls of a tunnel, again a mighty cave,
and the cross-currents, and the rhythmical thunder, and now a wild
charge down an immense tunnel, the wall of which surged outward and
inward, in unison with the roaring of the thunder.

The thunder died away in the distance, though the walls still
surged—even those of a smaller tunnel which divided the current and
received them. Down-stream the tunnel branched again and again, and
with the lessening of the diameter was a lessening of the current’s
velocity, until, in a maze of small, short passages, the invaders,
content to fight and kill in the swifter tide, again attacked the
caves.

But to the never-changing result: they were crushed, mangled, and
cast out, the number of suicides, in this neighborhood, largely
exceeding those killed by the white warriors. And yet, in spite of
the large mortality among them, the attacking force was increasing.
Where one died two took his place; and the reason was soon made
plain—they were reproducing. A black fighter, longer than his
fellows, a little sluggish of movement, as though from the
restrictive pressure of a large, round protuberance in his middle,
which made him resemble a snake which had swallowed an egg, was
caught by a white monster and instantly embraced by a multitude of
feelers. He struggled, bit, and broke in two; then the two parts
escaped the grip of the astonished captor, and wriggled away, the
protuberance becoming the head of the rear portion, which
immediately joined the fight, snapping and biting with unmistakable
jaws. This phenomenon was repeated.

And on went the battle. Illumined by the living lamps, and watched
by terrified noncombatants, the horrid carnival continued with
never-slacking fury and ever-changing background—past the mouths of
tributary tunnels which increased the volume and velocity of the
current and added to the fighting strength, on through widening
archways to a repetition of the cross-currents, the thunder, and the
sponge-like maze, down past the heaving walls of larger tunnels to
branched passages, where, in comparative slack water, the siege of
the caves was resumed. For hour after hour this went on, the
invaders dying by hundreds, but increasing by thousands and ten
thousands, as the geometrical progression advanced, until, with
swimming-spaces nearly choked by their bodies, living and dead,
there came the inevitable turn in the tide of battle. A white
monster was killed.

Glutted with victims, exhausted and sluggish, he was pounced upon by
hundreds, hidden from view by a living envelop of black, which
pulsed and throbbed with his death-throes. A feeler reached out, to
be bitten off; then another, to no avail. His strength was gone, and
the assailants bit and burrowed until they reached a vital part,
when the great mass assumed a spherical form and throbbed no more.
They dropped off, and, as the mangled ball floated on, charged on
the next enemy with renewed fury and courage born of their victory.
This one died as quickly.

And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet
it, the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along
the walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working
jaws of the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and
drifting slowly in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing
strength and increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our
conservative noncombatant, out in midstream, found himself
surrounded by a horde of black enemies who had nothing better to do
than attack him.

And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked
jaws in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by
his terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them
with his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to
make room for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and
back, up and down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then
with lightning rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve.
He was fighting for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used
his jaws, only once to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the
white monsters were watching him; but none offered to help, and he
had not time to call.

He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from
all sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which
to fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray
creatures, the noncombatants, and the phosphorescent animals were
pushed aside, and he, the center of an almost solid black mass,
fought, in utter darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had
no appreciation of the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance
from the wall, or the destination of this never-pausing current. But
finally, after an apparently interminable period, he heard dimly,
with failing consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and
knew momentary respite as the violent cross-currents tore his
assailants away. Then, still in darkness, he felt the crashing and
tearing of flesh against obstructing walls and sharp corners, the
repetition of thunder and the roar of the current which told him he
was once more in a large tunnel. An instant of light from a
venturesome torch showed him to his enemies, and again he fought,
like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dying from exhaustion and
pain, but still potential to kill—terrible in his agony. There was
no counting of scalps in that day’s work; but perhaps no devouring
white monster in all the defensive army could have shown a
death-list equal to this. From the surging black cloud there was a
steady outflow of the dead, pushed back by the living.

Weaker and weaker, while they mangled his flesh, and still in
darkness, he fought them down through branching passages to another
network of small tunnels, where he caught a momentary view of the
walls and the stolid white guard, thence on to what he knew was open
space. And here he felt that he could fight no more. They had
covered him completely, and, try as he might with his failing
strength, he could not dislodge them. So he ceased his struggles;
and numb with pain, dazed with despair, he awaited the end.

But it did not come. He was too exhausted to feel surprise or joy
when they suddenly dropped away from him; but the instinct of
self-preservation was still in force, and he swam toward the wall.
The small creatures paid him no attention; they scurried this way
and that, busy with troubles of their own, while he crept stupidly
and painfully between two white sentries floating in the eddies,—one
of whom considerately made room for him,—and anchored to a
projection, luckily choosing a harbor that was not hostile.

“Any port in a storm, eh, neighbor?” said the one who had given him
room, and who seemed to notice his dazed condition. “You’ll feel
better soon. My, but you put up a good fight, that’s what you did!”

He could not answer, and the friendly guard resumed his vigil. In a
few moments, however, he could take cognizance of what was going on
in the stream. There was a new army in the fight, and reinforcements
were still coming. A short distance above him was a huge rent in the
wall, and the caves around it, crushed and distorted, were grinding
fiercely. Protruding through the rent and extending half-way across
the tunnel was a huge mass of some strange substance, roughly shaped
to a cylindrical form. It was hollow, and out of it, by thousands
and hundred thousands, was pouring the auxiliary army, from which
the black fighters were now fleeing for dear life.

The newcomers, though resembling in general form the creatures they
pursued, were much larger and of two distinct types. Both were light
brown in color; but while one showed huge development of head and
jaw, with small flippers, the other kind reversed these attributes,
their heads being small, but their flippers long and powerful. They
ran their quarry down in the open, and seized them with outreaching
tentacles. No mistakes were made—no feints or false motions; and
there was no resistance by the victims. Where one was noticed he was
doomed. The tentacles gathered him in—to a murderous bite or a
murderous embrace.

At last, when the inflow had ceased,—when there must have been
millions of the brown killers in the tunnel,—the great hollow
cylinder turned slowly on its axis and backed out through the rent
in the wall, which immediately closed, with a crushing and
scattering of fragments. Though the allies were far down-stream now,
the war was practically ended; for the white defenders remained near
the walls, and the black invaders were in wildest panic, each one,
as the resistless current rushed him past, swimming against the
stream, to put distance between himself and the destroyer below. But
before long an advance-guard of the brown enemy shot out from the
tributaries above, and the tide of retreat swung backward. Then came
thousands of them, and the massacre was resumed.

“Hot stuff, eh?” said his friendly neighbor to him.

“Y-y-y-es—I guess so,” he answered, rather vacantly; “I don’t know.
I don’t know anything about it. I never saw such doings. What is it
all for? What does it mean?”

“Oh, this is nothing; it’s all in a lifetime. Still, I admit it
might ha’ been serious for us—and you, too—if we hadn’t got help.”

“But who are they, and what? They all seem of a family, and are
killing each other.”

“Immortal shade of Darwin!” exclaimed the other sentry, who had not
spoken before. “Where were you brought up? Don’t you know that
variations from type are the deadliest enemies of the parent stock?
These two brown breeds are the hundredth or two-hundredth cousins of
the black kind. When they’ve killed off their common relative, and
get to competing for grub, they’ll exterminate each other, and we’ll
be rid of ’em all. Law of nature. Understand?”

“Oh, y-yes, I understand, of course; but what did the black kind
attack me for? And what do they want, anyway?”