Chapter VI: Part THREE (1)

When Sard found that his bicycle was gone, he thought that the lodge-keepers had taken it within the lodge. He knocked at the lodge door to ask; getting no answer, he looked within: the lodge was empty, the bicycle was not there.

It was dim in that track through the forest: Sard struck a match to see what marks were on the ground. The earth was still moist from the rains. Two or three matches showed him that someone with long feet had taken two strides out of the road, wheeled the bicycle into the road and had then ridden away upon it. The tyre tracks were firmly printed on the road; the thief was no doubt heavy as well as tall.

Sard had never been heard to swear, either on deck or aloft; he did not swear now. He thought, “I am well paid, for leaving it out of my sight in a place like this. But he cannot be more than five minutes ahead of me, and may be only a minute. If I run, I may catch him.”

He took two more matches, carefully examined the tracks and made sure, mainly from the length of the feet, that the thief was a tall negro, wearing boots which needed soling, and that he was riding, not very fast, into the forest, away from Las Palomas. “I’ll catch him,” he said, “but I’ll have to be quick.”

He set off at a slow lope along the forest road, thinking that when he reached Enobbio’s, if he had not caught the thief, he would have to hire a horse, and gallop back to his duty. “I’m running it very close,” he said, “but I’ll do it yet. If the worst comes to the worst, the police-boat would run me on board, even if she’s out as far as the Rip-Raps. I’ve got half an hour of possible time; if I ride by the beach, thirty-five minutes.”

He stopped at the bridge to have another look at the tracks: they were still there, leading on towards Enobbio’s; so he set off again, at a quicker pace, through the forest, which was evil all about him all the time. He made good way to the clearing, which shone from the forge fire. A lamp was lit in the inn. Enobbio sat with his wife at a table there, eating frijoles from earthen platters and drinking wine and water from cups of horn. Sard hailed them at the door:

“Good-evening, señora and señor. May I intrude upon your peace to ask: Have you seen anyone ride by on a bicycle?”

“Yes, señor,” Enobbio’s wife said, “a negro rode by two minutes past.”

“It was more than two minutes, my heart,” Enobbio said, “for to my mind it cannot have been since we sat down to supper.”

“Desire of my eyes,” his wife said, “it was when you went to the forge for the bread. When I say two minutes, I do not tie myself to a second, but to two minutes, which the world knows to be a space of time. It was a space of time since the negro rode past. I am not one, as it is well known, like these giglots and inglesas and ayankiadas, whom one sees in Las Palomas, may the Lord have vengeance on them, shameless as they are, even as Jezebel, always painting and purple-powdering and making their eyes to shine with poison; I am not one, I say, like these, to spend my time in noticing each male who passes and in endeavouring to ensnare his soul. No, my heart’s affection, Enobbio mio, when a male passes, I thank God that God has created women differently, in such a way that they can regard such passing with indifference. Therefore, when a negro passes or when a white man passes, be he an Emperor of Rome or decked even as a pumper in the fire-brigade, I can control myself, I can think calmly, even as St. Lawrence upon the gridiron, of other things. Therefore, when this negro who so suddenly excites your jealousy, rode past, I did not hasten to the clock of San Agostino, nor yet to my confessor, nor to the Four Liars of Las Palomas, where four clocks together tell each a different time to a different road, to make sure of the precise instant at which he passed. For to me, as one more dowered with knowledge would have known, a negro is but a negro and a passing a passing.”

“This, O affection of my life,” Enobbio said, “no man dare question. But, señor, permit us to request you to eat and drink, reclining at your ease upon this chair, so that you may enquire concerning this negro more as becomes you.”

“Thank you, indeed,” Sard said, “would that I might; but I am pressed both by spur and quirt, and cannot stay. May I ask the señora whether she noticed in which direction the negro rode, when it fortuned that he had the honour to pass her?”

“In which direction, joy of my hearth,” Enobbio asked, “did this negro proceed?”

“Sun of my worldly life,” his wife replied, “it is said that, at the allotting of talents, the Padre Eterno gave to woman such talents as man would not sensibly feel the need of. Even as, in equipping her with flesh, He allotted to her that rib which man could not use and has not missed, so in endowing her with mental faculties, which some call reason and others soul, He chose those qualities of acuteness which man, though made loutish by their lack, could not, when he had them, use. Thus it comes about that the wife blushes for her husband in conversation before strangers. For, behold, had not the Padre Eterno deprived you of such acuteness, you would have perceived that sitting as I have been sitting, facing the open door, which we have not yet to keep closed (as is our custom, señor, later in the season, on account of the flies) I could indeed perceive the approach of the negro upon the bicycle, coming from the forest towards me, but not without showing indecent curiosity could I tell into which direction he proceeded; nor, as I have said, should I, in any case, have observed, since as it is well known, a road is as a brook, in which one regards what passes, but not what is past.”

“Señor,” Enobbio said, “beyond the forge there are three ways; to the sea, to the north and to the mines. The negro must have ridden on one of these. Let us examine the tracks, since there is light enough. Is it possible that you should desire to stay this negro?”

“He has stolen the bicycle, which I need.”

“Let us, then, be swift,” Enobbio said.

The tracks at the road-meet led away to the left, into the forest.

“You see,” Enobbio said, “it goes there, this wheel-track, to the direction of the mines. You see, Camilla mia, this thief will be one of the negroes of Los Jardinillos.”

“They are indeed a thievish company,” Camilla said. “But if the señor be swift, he will confound the thief in the moment of his exultation.”

“How far is it to Los Jardinillos?” Sard asked.

“It cannot take long if taken swiftly,” Camilla said.

“My love,” Enobbio said, “it is the half of a league, or two kilometres. It would take the señor twenty minutes or more, only to the clearing.”

“It may well be, my earthly consolation,” Camilla said, “that if the señor should walk, or indeed trot, to Los Jardinillos, his progress would not be swifter than a walk or trot. But as my remark suggested, comrade of my earthly trial, if the señor should proceed swiftly, his arrival would be likewise swift.”

“Can you lend me a bicycle or horse,” Sard asked, “so that I can go in chase?”

“Alas, we have neither.”

“Is there anyone here who might lend either?”

“There is no one here with horse or bicycle. I have, by the blessing of God, a small ass; but God has afflicted him with worms, doubtless lest I should become proud.”

“Are there many negroes in Los Jardinillos?”

“There are fifty, señor, and no whites. Doubtless you know him who has taken your bicycle.”

“I do not,” Sard said: “I am following so that I may know him.”

Enobbio did not answer this. Sard noticed that the husband and wife looked at each other, with a look as though the bottom had fallen out of their comprehension.

“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last.

“Assuredly,” Camilla answered. They looked at each other again. As in a Latin exercise, Sard was conscious of a good many words “understood.”

“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last, in a different tone, “the señor will carry weapons?”

“I am a sailor,” Sard answered. “A sailor has always ten weapons and a knife.”

He saw in a flash that he had no chance of retaking the bicycle that night by himself.

“I am a sailor,” he continued. “The bicycle was to take me to the quay, where I must be in all speed. Has anyone here a cart or conveyance to take me there, for money paid, or had I better run?”

“Paco has a horse, which is in Las Palomas this day,” Enobbio said. “His son, Enrique, has a mule.”

“Enrique is indeed by God’s mercy the owner of a mule,” Camilla said, “but on this day he is with the mule, packing stores to the railway siding for the miners.”

“A railway siding,” Sard said. “They might run me to Las Palomas in a truck.”

“The rail does not run to Las Palomas, señor. It runs from the mines of Tloatlucan to the seashore here, where barges come for the copper.”

“Then I had better run,” Sard said.

“Run,” Enobbio said, “run to Las Palomas?”

“Yes.”

“It is a league and a half.”

“Even so. I must be on board my ship within half an hour.”

“But you could not run more than a league. Stay, señor, let me consult my wife. Tell me, my heart, is not Miguel stabling horses each night in the old huts near the salt-pans?”

“Who knows what Miguel does? His doings, being modernist, do not concern us, but rather stir our horror.”

“It is true, my life, that Miguel errs in mind, but not, my delight, in heart. In his heart he may be the instrument of good. Listen, señor. In less than one kilometre north-east from this are salt-pans near the beach, with huts. Run thither by this track to the right. It is likely that at this time you will find Miguel there with the horses of his occupation. He, for money if not for love, will lend you a horse and ride with you, so that he may lead it back. Say that I, Enobbio, sent you, knowing the goodness of his nature. Thus will you reach your ship in time, and in no other way can you do this.”

“You say that it is only _likely_ that he will be there.”

“He will be there, señor,” Camilla said; “he is always there at this hour with his horses: never does he fail.”

“You may count quite certainly on his being there and on his lending you a horse,” Enobbio said. “I, who am Enobbio, will serve you as to bread and lodging for a year, without reward, should he not be there.”

“He will lend assuredly,” Camilla said, “to any señor such as the señor whose need is as the señor’s.”

Sard felt in her speech the insincerity of one anxious to be rid of him: he made up his mind at once.

“Can I reach the seashore by this path to the right?”

“Assuredly, señor. Miguel and the salt-pans are on the seashore.”

“I mean, can I come at once to the seashore?”

“Assuredly, señor.”

“It is not a good path, save where men have gone,” Enobbio said. “In fact, it is no path, but what is opposite to path.”

“I must risk that.”

Sard thanked them both for their kindness and apologised for having disturbed them at their supper. He set off at a fast trot along the path towards the salt-pans. He meant to burst through the thickets to the seashore and then run straight along the beach as hard as he could put foot to it, to the water-front.

“It is a full three miles,” he thought, “even by the beach; but with luck I can be there by half-past. The old man will give me some grace, and the police-boat may be there; but I’ll do it somehow.”

In a couple of hundred yards from the clearing, he put his arm before his eyes and thrust into the bushes towards the sea. He judged that the sea beach would be about half a mile from him and that he would save at least three-quarters of a mile by going by the beach. The thought of passing right under the walls of Los Xicales helped in his decision.

He burst through his thicket into a sort of meadow of tussocks, over which he made good time. Beyond the tussocks the woods began again, shutting out all his bearings, but by taking a departure he kept a straight course, as he thought, from the point where he left the track. Just inside the woods, when he came into them, was a tangle of thorn along which he had to run for a hundred yards before he could find a way through. He came out on to a soft patch, which had harder ground beneath it, though all was covered with the wreck of thorns which the bog had killed. He floundered across it to the other side, which was a rise of red earth covered with pines. He skirted the rise to a point where it was split by a gully, which barred his progress.

Not more than a year or two before, some rains heavier than usual had made all the upper ground a bog. This from its weight had at last torn through the bank beyond it and gone in a torrent of mud and water into a ravine below. All along the sides of this ravine were the rampikes of trees, killed by the stuff brought down, but still standing, sometimes with half their roots laid bare. Not less than fifty of these trees had already been picked and sucked to their bones by the ravin of tropical life. They now stood like a valley of bones come to life. They stood up white in the dusk, waving their arms. Many of them glistened with decay or with vermin shining from decay. On many of them fungus had seized with a greed that seemed to have purpose and plan. One quite near to Sard was a tree grey with death, barkless to the tips and swathed with a sprawl of fungus that was scarlet at its fringes. It was as though the fungus had sucked out all the blood from its victim, except these last drops.

Many trees had fallen into the ruin of the bog and now lay there, submerged or half submerged in mud. The antlers of their branches were white. Rank things had sprouted out and hoisted themselves up by these prongs. One bulk or stump of a tree which Sard saw in the swamp was covered with xicales, all forward, in profuse blossom, a mass of blue and white, crawled on by gorged flies.

Flowers like enormous flags shot up on firm fleshy stalks among the morass. Some, which were very tall, had whitish blossoms as big as faces, splotched with darkness like faces; these seemed to lean forward and mow at Sard; they were like ghosts, lean and intense, but very beautiful.

All that place of death, thick as death, sickly with the forms and the smell of death, with that evil, low, over-abundant life which brings death, had a sort of weltering chuckle as though it exulted in its rottenness. The water in its pockets droned to puddle below, there was a suck of noise like that of a beast trying to get out, but sinking back.

All this danger barred Sard’s path in the worst possible way: it shut him from the beach and from the port: it ran north-west and south-east across his course.

“I’ll get across,” he said: “I’m not going to lose my passage. Now that I have come this way, I will go this way.”

The light was off the place and the sun was down, but it was daylight still. He marked a place in the ravine, below the xicales flowers, where he thought there would be a fairly easy crossing. A fallen tree lay sloped there as a safe approach or step into a pool of water which might be forded or swum. Beyond the pool two great trees lay locked together; they were barkless, like the rest, yet so placed in the mud that Sard judged that he could cross by them, or almost cross, to the further side of the gully. The last two or three yards beyond the trees looked dangerous, but not bad enough to stop him. It was quicker to cross than to go round, whichever way he tried it.

He had no time nor very good light for survey. He made up his mind and went at it within thirty seconds, quoting his sea-proverb of “the sooner the quicker.” Blood-sucking water-midges were already at him in a swarm: the drone of their horns called up their reserves: a faint smoke of them was rising. He jumped like a cat from tussock to tussock, scrambled over the roots of the tree on to the trunk, steadied himself, and then balanced like a tight-rope walker down the bole to the water. He saw the whiteness of the pilled boughs in the ink of that pond stretching deep down. He was amazed at the depth of the water. “Better deep water than mud,” he said; so in he went with a thrust which carried him across.

He edged along the nearer of the fallen trees, caught a good hold of a bough, felt bottom with his feet, got one foot against the bole, gave a great heave, and was instantly backwards in the water with the broken bough on top of him. He came up with his eyes full of touchwood, and felt something run along his head. He brushed it off into the water and caught his tree again: something ran along his hand; he brushed it off, fearing a scorpion; but instantly other things ran in its place. He shook them off and backed away, till he saw that the things were wood-eating beetles, whose colony he had disturbed. “A scorpion would be a bore,” he said.

He trod water while he looked for a better place. He swam in, caught a bough, swung himself up, and instantly went backwards into the water for the second time with the bough in his hand.

He came up, somewhat troubled, for a third attempt. This time he dodged in under the boughs, laid hold of the body of the tree and hove his weight on to it.

With a sort of flounder of deliberation, the tree moved sideways to his weight, then tilted suddenly as the heavy branches gave leverage, then it rolled over into deeper water, carrying Sard down.

Sard had learned in a hard school to look out, to know when to let go and when to stand-from-under. He went down with the tree as it rolled, right under water, so that he never saw his hat again, but he kept above the tree and emerged when it settled. Very cautiously he moved along its bulk, as soon as it was firm, with the feeling that he was riding a beast whose ways were not to be trusted. He felt it waver in front of him and settle behind him as the submerged boughs went deeper into the mud. There came a sudden crack and drop, as these gave way: the tree soused him to his waist and then steadied. It was just then that he felt vicious pricking bites in his legs as the leeches began.

He stood upon the bole and had “a look-see.” The second tree, which was to be his gang-plank to the shore, was now further away than it had been. He could no longer step to it from where he was. “A little more swimming,” he muttered: so in he went to be done with it.

The second tree was steady in the mud, but as he neared it, he saw that the yellow-tail bees had a nest in the bole. Away from the nest and dangling from the boughs, there were strings of withered poison-ivy, which he knew both by sight and from experience. He swam inshore as far as he could to avoid these dangers, then scrambled up upon the bole and slipped along it to the roots. A few bees came round him, to make sure, but did not attack; he dodged the poison-plant. He scrambled up the gabion of roots, all tangled and earthed, to look beyond at the banks. As he stood up, the cloud of water-midges settled down upon him: ants came from earth of the roots to bite him: the leeches of the pond bit and sucked.

He had not liked the look of the banks from the other side, but he liked their look much less from near at hand. They were nine feet from him beyond a mud pond of unknown depth. They rose rather steeply from this mud pond, in a bulge of wet, red, oozing mud, which shone and trickled. A few blades of grass grew out of this mud, but not enough to give it firmness. The mass looked to be bulging out to burst. A rain-storm more, or the weight of a body trying to climb it, would bring it all down like an avalanche out of which there would be no rising. The bank of mud was eight or nine feet high: above it there was a shoot of reeds sheathed in pale grey dangling and shining husks. “If I can get hold of the reeds,” he said, “I’ll be out of this in half a minute; if I can’t, I may never be heard of again. That mud looks evil; but the longer I look, the less I shall see. There’s a star already.”

Looking up from where he was, he saw a blackness of trees above and beyond the reeds. Against the blackness, the pale fluffy flowers of the reeds stood out like gun sponges, with white moths, as big as humming birds, wavering over them: above them a star appeared in a sky changing from greenish to violet. It grew rapidly darker: or, rather, objects became less distinct and the pilled branches more uncanny.

“Come along,” he said. He clambered over the roots, hung on by a root which stood his test, and edged out along submerged roots till he touched the mud. It was soft, bulging, full of evil, with neither foot nor hand-hold. “If that should come down,” he said, “I shall be gulfed, like that man in the _Venturer_ who got under the wheat-tip in the hold and wasn’t heard of till we got the hatches off in Hamburg five months later. But with this difference: I shall never be heard of again. The way to get up that mud is to drive in stakes to climb by.”

There were many branches ready to hand. He tore a stake and thrust it into the mud. It sank in for three feet as easily as if the mud were something softer than butter. With a sobbing noise, followed by a gurgle, some reddish water, rapidly turning to something black, iridescent and semi-solid, exuded from about it. Sard drove in a second stake above it, with a third above that: at each thrust the bank quaked and water or liquid mud exuded: there was also an ominous sag in the body of the bank. “Neck or nothing,” Sard said. He drove in a fourth stake and instantly swung himself up on to the gabion or fan of the roots by which he held. He was only just in time. The fourth stake broke the last strength of the barrier: it gave outwards: a shoot of water spurted it outwards: a swirl of running mud followed the shoot: then it all came down with a crash, which picked up Sard’s tree, canted it out to mid-gully, and dashed it against a dam of other trees, on to which Sard was pitched.

He picked himself up and slipped along a tree bole to a hand-hold by which he swung himself up to safety, just as the dam gave way. He was back almost at his starting-point, wet to the skin, mud to the thigh, bitten, sucked and foiled. The long pent-up seepings of the rains poured down from the burst bank before him. “I’m well out of that,” he thought, “but I’m going to cross this gully; for it is the short way and I still have time.”

He trotted up the gully for a few yards, wondering at the increase in the darkness since he stood there before. It had seemed to him that his crossing had only taken a minute, yet here it was sensibly darker; there were now five stars in the heaven where before was one. He broke a stake and sounded some of the going. It was like sounding the vale of Siddim.

Then lifting his eyes from the mud, he started, for there in the gully was the mound covered with xicale flowers. “There,” he said, “I will try it there. I believe that the xicale flowers are a sign. I shall get across there.”

At his feet, almost as though prepared for him, was a heap of what had once been a tree, but was now a sodden log easy to break into lengths. He picked up pieces of this and laid or tossed them one by one as steps before him in the marsh; then very swiftly, holding his stick as a balancing pole, he ran across them to the stump covered by the xicales. To his astonishment, it proved not to be a tree at all, but a rock or sarsen, thrusting from a patch of firm earth in which the xicales were rooted. He edged round it carefully to the gully beyond.

The first two steps from the xicales were over his shoes; his third and fourth, being parts of the same flounder, took him over his knees, but brought him to the pikes of a tree on which he could tread. Branches of this tree served as treads to his going for the next six yards, but beyond those six yards lay ten yards of bog, which he could not clearly distinguish nor test. Here, for the first time, he began to wish that he had not tried his short cut across country to the beach. “All the same,” he said, “if I can get to the beach in five minutes, or even ten, I’ll do it yet.”

He took a swift survey of the bog ahead of him: it did not look easy; but he always held that it is better to be in a difficulty than expecting to be in one. He took a note of possible tussocks in a line, drew a breath, and set off in a hop, skip and jump.

The hop took him to firmish tussock which squelched, but gave him some support for his skip. The skip took him to something very soft with a log about a foot beneath the surface, from which he made his jump. The jump took him into what had looked like grass, but which proved to be weed-covered water: he went into it over his head. He came out again, thinking fiercely of the _Pathfinder’s_ fo’c’sle-head and of that iron rail over which he ought at that moment to be peering. The soft green grasses gave before him; they stroked his face gently, they closed in at the back of his neck, he felt them caress his body and tremble along his legs and lay enfoldments about his feet. When he thrust out his hands to swim, they sped from him, for they were frail grass and he a strong man; but before his stroke was made, they were back again: he felt them at his chest; they touched his chin: they rose from the water and touched his face. He swam six strokes and then felt for bottom. There was bottom at five feet: he touched it, but it went over his foot; he wrenched the foot clear, but it went over his other foot; he wrenched that foot clear, and, lo, all those soft little frail grasses seemed to come all about him with a whisper, and they were as heavy as lead and as strong as sailmaker’s twine.

“Whatever I do,” Sard said, “I must not fight these things, but go where they will let me go.”

He was not afraid, but very cautious, knowing the power of his enemy. He had once known a boy who had been drowned by waterweed. “He was caught deep down, where they are strong: at the surface they yield.”

When he yielded they also yielded; he floated clear; the little soft grasses, fine as flax, unclasped their hands, they whispered about him and let him go. Little moths floated about the water and a bird somewhere in the thickets made a plaintive cry. All that Sard could see was what the bull-frog sees: gleams of water, little starry blossoms on the grasses, ripples like steel, bubbles.

He turned upon his back and swam thus for a few strokes till he slid on to the mud in which the grasses were thickly rooted. He gripped handfuls of the grass and pulled himself forward, but they came from the mud into his hand. When he pressed his foot down, the mud went over it like softness’ self. Great bubbles gurgled up and burst about him with the smell of decay.

Sard reached forward till he could lay a hand upon something ahead which looked like earth. It was firmer than anything there; he drew himself to it, and pressed himself up upon it. It gave beneath him, being very sponge, but it did not collapse, it did not try to swallow him.

“Not much further,” Sard said. “A few feet more, and I will be there.”

He said these words aloud, for the comfort of hearing a voice. Instantly, from in front of him, came a splash and scutter: things were swimming away from something dark in the water; he could not see what the things were nor the thing from which they swam. “They are snakes,” he said, “and here is one of them coming at me.”

He struck at it. To his great relief, it gave a squeal and dived from him. “Rats,” he said. “They have a carcase here. I’ll get out of this.”

He saw that the dark thing was a body. His first thought was that it was a man, but groping forward, he was reassured: it was one of the half-wild razor-back hogs which the negroes allowed to stray in the woods there. It had been drowned there some hours before and now the rats were at it.

Sard had his hand upon it as he floundered forward, when the texture of the stuff beneath his feet changed suddenly from mush to something vicious. His feet, sinking into it, were held: the stuff closed over his feet and fastened them: he sank lower down: the stuff caught him round the ankles. He knew on the instant that he had met his match: he was gripped to his death as the hog had been. If he did not get out of that quag in the next minute, while he had his strength, the rats would eat him there before dawn.

He put both hands on the hog’s back, pressing it down and himself up. He dragged his right foot up, then slipped sideways to his left, giving himself a nasty wrench. The bubbles gurgled up all about him: they popped with a flapping noise. He hove again, pressing with all his power on the carcase; he got his right knee on to the body, and urged it down into the mud; his left foot came out of the mud; he stood up, balancing, on the corpse, for the next leap.

“If I get into a place like that,” he said, “without anybody to give me a purchase, I shall be posted as missing.”

He peered ahead; but there was nothing to guide him; all before him was bog: there were pools of water, juttings of mud and grasses growing out of water.

“If I step into that,” he said, “I may never step back to this pig nor forward to the bank, but be caught right there. My best chance is a standing leap, to get as near to the bank as may be.”

He measured it roughly as nine feet to hand-hold on the bank. He gathered himself for it, swinging his arms, above the unstable corpse which squeezed out the bubbles. He launched himself violently forward into a mess which gulfed him to the waist. He urged himself through this for a foot of two, felt it drag him quietly back, made a greater effort, got a purchase on some grasses, which helped him for another two feet; then he floundered, trampling on stuff which gave beneath him yet came back folding over him. He thrust forward, but his feet were fast; he fell on his face, the stuff surged up over his back. He kept his head up and thrust with his hands and wrenched with his feet. All the fat, weltering, bubbling bog seemed to chuckle at having got him. The bubbles burst in his face: they were as big as inverted saucers and came from the heart of corruption.

“I’m not going to die in a place like this,” he said. “Come out of it, port main; up with her!”

The old rallying cry timed his efforts: it was like one man standing the scrimmage of a pack of forwards in football. The bog gave an ounch of release, like a beast smacking its lips. He got hold of something on the bank. It had prickles on it, but it was solid and grew in dryness. Then as he put his weight upon it, it came out of the ground by the roots: a little avalanche of earth and stones came over his head, blinding him for the moment with grit in his eyes.

He could not see; he could only flounder forward with spread arms which availed nothing: the bog had him fast for all his effort.

Then his hand touched a liane brought down by the bush. It was a double liane, tough as flax and as thick as honeysuckle. He caught it and pulled on it, and instantly a great flowering spray of xicale flowers came floundering down from above, into his face. He saw them for what they were. “Xicale flowers,” he said, “xicales. I’m going to be saved.”

He got both hands deeply into the lianes of the xicales and pulled as he had never pulled, never, on any yard or on any rope. Digging forward into the squash of the bog he found something hard for one foot. “Oh, heave,” he cried, as he had so often cried to his watch. “Oh, heave, son, heave; oh, heave and start her; heave for glory.”

He found himself half out, with his right knee and side on hard earth and his left leg stuck in the bog. He drew deep breath for a minute, as once he had stopped to breathe when beaten dead by a sail five years before. Then gathering all his powers, he hove “all together,” and emerged erect on sound earth, shaking with the strain, and without his left shoe.

“Xicales,” he said, “you’ve saved my life. I knew that you were mixed up somehow with my life; and I’ll carry some of you with me in gratitude till I’m laid in my grave.”

He picked both flowers and leaves for his soaking pocket-book. His hands shook: he was cold to the marrow and filthy beyond description.

“I’ll do it yet,” he said. “But first I must make a shoe of sorts, or I shall be lamed.”

He cut off his trouser-legs at the knees, with his knife. With one of the pieces, folded fourfold, he made a shoe, and with the other he made thongs which secured it as a sandal to his foot. It was a rough and ready sandal, but it stayed on when put. It was good enough to run on.

He did not think of what the time might be. He roughly judged that he could reach Las Palomas in twenty minutes or twenty-five minutes by running along the beach with all his might. Any waterman on the front would put him aboard: the police-launch would take him. “I can’t miss my passage,” he said, “I must be on board. I told the old man I would be on board.” For the first time he said to himself, “And the old man will give me an hour’s grace.”

He set off over the headland of the gully under the clump of pines whose blackness he had seen from the mud. It was soft but firm going on the pine-needles; the trees over his head made a sighing which merged as he ran into the sterner sighing of the water on the beach. At the foot of the spur over which he had run, he came to the outcrops of the springs all overgrown with azaleas. They ran all along the foot of the spur, so thick with blossoms that they looked like an unbursting wave which was yet foaming at the crest. Over all the foam of blossom the fireflies glowed and went out, now as many as stars, now few, now like sparks, but always beautiful. Just beyond them was the broad sea-beach, with the breakers only fifty yards away. The sea was coming in, as it will in a shallow bay, in half-a-dozen long lines, each glowing with mild fire, shining as it neared the sand, then flashing like the moonlight, as the wave burst, then gleaming greenish, and showing the globes of the stars, as it wasted and died out upon the sand.

Sard burst through the azaleas to the sands, which stretched along for a great distance right and left. To his right (seemingly quite near) was a shining, which he knew to be the river near Los Xicales; beyond it, in the darkness of trees, was the house of his dream with one light burning. All a vast expanse of night, the sea-beach, the forest, and muttering water lay behind him. He rushed down to the sea and let three breakers go over him to cleanse him from the swamp and the leeches.

“Now, Sard Harker,” he said, “come on, port main, up with her!” He broke into a steady run facing to the Los Xicales light. The pine trees on the spit shut away a view of the anchorage so that he could not see the _Pathfinder_; he could only hope and put his best leg foremost. “Upon them that _hope_,” he thought, “is His mercy.” He ran at his steady pace which, as he knew, he could keep for miles.

Though it seemed so near, that shining on the sands, which he knew to be the river, was a full half-mile away. Before he had gone three hundred yards of it, he saw that the sand just ahead of him was darker and shinier than the sand under his feet. A memory of another dangerous sand, far away on an English sea-coast, shot into his mind on the instant, but the footing failed before he could stop. The sand gave beneath the one foot and let in the other: ooze of water shot up to the surface: he flung himself backwards violently, and got out, but fell, and saw, or thought that he saw, the surface of the sand shaking as though it were laughing at him. He rolled himself clear, then rose and looked at it. “That’s a pretty bad quicksand,” he said. “I might get through, but from the pull on that foot, I think that it would pull me down. Probably I can get round the shoreward end of it.”

He tried, but failed: the shoreward end of the quicksand was tropical bog.

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll swim round the seaward end. It is only a hundred yards. I need not go far out. It will be something to have the swamp washed off me again.” He went knee-deep into the sea, with some misgivings, for the shallows of all that coast are haunted with sand sharks, which come right in to have the warmth of the sand. He splashed as he went, to scare them. He had gone about thigh deep into the water and was just settling down to swim, when there came suddenly an agonising pain in his left foot.

His first thought was, “I’m on a thorn,” then, “I’m on a snake”; then, as the pain ran in a long, hot, stabbing streamer up his leg, he knew the truth, that he had trodden on a sting-ray. He hopped out of the water to the shore, feeling all the blood in his foot turn to vitriol and come surging along, as vitriol, to his heart. Most excruciating agony made him fling himself down. He tried to hold out his leg, but that was unendurable torment. He tried to kneel upon it, while he put a ligature above the knee, but the pain made him so sick that he could not bear it. He tried to lie down, but that was unbearable. He rolled over and over, moaning: then staggered up, and hopped and hopped, gasping with pain, until he fell. He had never known any pain in his life, except the bangs and knocks of his profession, but now he tasted a full measure.

Although he fell, the pain did not stop, it hit him when he was down, it grew worse. The cold, deadly, flat thing in the sand had emptied his horn into him. He buried his face in the sand: he dug his hands into the sand. Then the poison seemed to swing him round and double him up. It seemed to burn every vein and shrivel every muscle and make every nerve a message of agony.

He managed to cast loose the wrapping from the foot. The foot no longer looked like a foot, but like something that would burst. In his deadly sickness he thought that his foot was a pollard willow tree growing to the left of the road. He wondered why he was not on his bicycle. He said that his foot was dead, that it had died of the gout, and would drop from his body and never grow again.

All the venom came in pain on to his abdominal muscles; then he felt it come swimming along like little fiery rats round the carcase of his heart. He saw his heart for a moment or two like a black pig caught in a bog; the rats came all round it together, from every side, they closed in on it and bit it, bit it, bit it.

When he came to himself a little, he said something about the stars being too many, altogether too many, for the job in hand. He said that he could not pick up the guiding lights. Then he felt that every star was a steamer’s masthead light, and that all those myriads of steamers were bearing down upon him without sidelights. “Their look-out-men are all asleep,” he said, “I can’t see how they are bearing, and I have no lights at all. I must find a flare and burn them off.” He groped for a flare, but found only his wet clothes pressing on his body. “The flares are all damp,” he said, “the flares won’t burn. It is my fault; I stored them in the pickle-house. They ought to have been in the chart-room with the flags.” He wandered off in his thoughts far away from the lights of the stars. He lost all knowledge that he was lying on the sand three or four thousand miles from home. His main thought was that he was wandering along corridors in search of doors. He knew that it was very important to find doors, but whenever he found any, they closed in his face and became parts of the walls.

After a long time he roused himself up, feeling weak and sick. He knew at once, from the feel of things, that it was midnight. A sense of his position came to him. The _Pathfinder_ must have sailed: he had lost his passage: he was miles from anywhere: he had lost Richard’s bicycle. All these things had happened because of his dream, because of Los Xicales. He sat up, but saw no light in the direction of the house. Over the spit with the pine trees there came a sort of flashing glimmer twice a minute as the light swung round in the tower of Manola point. He was bitterly cold, for besides being wet through, a mizzling rain was falling on him. He was sick and wretched. The closeness in the air was gone; a breeze was blowing the rain straight along the beach. The trees inshore were whistling and rustling: the seas broke as though they were cross, with a sharp smash instead of the relenting wash of twilight. All sorts of little life was scuttering about the sand: white owls, or sea-birds, cruised overhead as silently as sails.

Sard sat up and tried his left leg. It was numb and much swollen. He could not feel anything in it from his mid-thigh to his toe. It had become as dead as a leg of clay or mutton. When he dinted the flesh by pressing on it, the dint remained.

With a little difficulty he stood up on one leg. He then felt for the first time that he had only one leg, that the other would not act. He could move it, but not bend it; when he put it on the sand, leaned on it, or tried to walk with it, the thing ceased to be his, it neither obeyed nor rebelled, it failed. He was so cold that he felt that he would die. He sat for twenty minutes working to restore his leg. He no longer felt pain in it, the pain was gone, but it was as though the poison had burnt out the life. In some ways he would rather have had pain than this deadness.

“Now I am in a bad way,” he said, “for not many come to this beach, and none in this State will wander about looking for me. If I could only reach Los Xicales . . . However, I can’t reach Los Xicales this way: the quicksand bars the land and I’m not going to risk another sting in the sea. I can’t get back to Enobbio’s inn by that swamp. But I might crawl along the beach to that man who has the horses, Miguel, with the good heart, near the salt-pans. He might not be very far: two kilometres. He might take me in to the port, or at least to Los Xicales, where I should be in time, if those fellows were trying anything.”

He was suffering much: the leech-bites in his right leg itched like mosquito-bites, but were also hot and stinging; his mouth had fur in it, which tasted like brown paper; he felt that he was dying of cold. His hands, neck and face were swollen from the bites of the midges. His blood seemed to have changed within him to something grey and slow. Worse than his bodily state was the thought that he had broken his word to Captain Cary and missed his passage; “mizzled his dick,” as Pompey Hopkins called it.

“She’ll be sailed by this time,” he thought. “Whatever grace Captain Cary gave me, she’ll have gone by this.”

He stood up to look about him: he now realised, for the first time, the change in the weather.

The northern section of the heaven was covered with intense darkness. Over the blackness a sort of copper-coloured wisp, like smoke, was driving at a great speed. The blackness was lit up continually by lightning, which burned sometimes in steady glows, sometimes in sharp stabs of light. The wind had risen; directly Sard crossed the sandy spit, it struck him with fury, driving sand and fragments of shell against his face and down his neck. The sea was not yet breaking with any violence upon the beach. It was white as far as the eye could see, as though the heads of every wave had been whipped off and flogged into foam which shone as though with moonlight from the phosphorescence. Washes of breaker burst and rushed up the sand to Sard’s feet, like washes of fire in which all the marvellous shells of which the beach was composed, were lit up like jewels. Far away to the right, out at sea on the edge of the sky, there was, as it were, a shaking wall of white from the sea already running upon the Rip-Raps. He could see it waver, but it never seemed to change. There was a roller there before the last had gone.

“This is the norther,” Sard thought. “I hope the old man did not wait too long for me, but got clear of the Rip-Raps before it came on.”

He re-bandaged his foot, picked some stakes from among the driftwood, to serve as walking sticks, and with the help of these set out towards the salt-pans to borrow a horse. He hobbled forward, dead into the teeth of the gale. The worst thing about the gale was the cold. Far south as it was, the wind came down directly from the northern icefields. To Sard, who was thinly clad and wet through, it was piercing. He stumbled along against it, keeping his direction by the pale flame of the breakers which roared at his side and flung their fire at his feet.

When he had gone about a mile, he saw the stretch of the salt-pans like a patch of white heather away ahead, distant he knew not how far. It might be a mile, or it might be two miles; no man could judge distance on a sand so flat. At anchor, under the head beyond the sand, was a ship which had not lain there when he came to the beach. She seemed to be a small tramp or large coaster, sheltering from the norther. She carried no lights. Sard judged that she had come there to load copper from the mines of Tloatlucan. He knew that there was a pier there, at the mouth of a river, and that the ore came by a light railway direct to the pier from the mine.

He hobbled on towards the whiteness of the salt-pans: a flat road is a long road at best; against a gale it is a bad road.

Nearly all the way a great white bird (whether an owl or some sea-bird, he could not tell) flew above and ahead of him. It seemed to him that this bird shone. Perhaps the poison had upset his eyes, or perhaps his eyes never lost the shine of the sea breaking beside him. In his shaken state, this bird seemed like a luminous swan, guiding him to quiet.

Near the southern end of the pans he saw a shack or stable, facing him. The seaward end of this shack was a small adobe house, with a palm roof. The stable was empty: there was neither ass nor dog there.

Sard listened for half a minute, standing still, at ten paces from the house, while he took stock. The house was closed to the night, yet it had the look or feel of having someone there. Perhaps an animal instinct survives in us from the time when it was important to know if a lair were blank or not.

Sard went no nearer; he hailed the house in Spanish, calling on Don Miguel by name. The place was silent, except for the flogging of the palmetto on the roof, the scutter of crabs and gophers on the bents and the wail of the wind across the salt-pans. Then presently something tinkled within the house. It might have been a revolver cartridge, or a knife coming out of a sheath, or a bottle upon glass. Sard hailed again, saying that he came alone, in peace, from Don Enobbio, with desire to hire a horse.