Chapter V: Part 5

“‘Look out for your dog!’ I cried suddenly, for as Deshay’s hand fell upon Claud’s shoulder I had happened to glance at Dixie. The dog was standing quietly enough at his master’s heel, and at Deshay’s action had made none of the usual canine expressions of displeasure, and it was this absence which made him so alarming, for as I glanced at his great, dark, intelligent eye it seemed filled with such a smouldering, slumbering intensity of hate that it gave me a positive start. The fine, silky hair was not even ruffled, there was not the slightest twitch to the velvet lips, but I could see that every muscle of the beautifully moulded body was tense as our weather shrouds and there was a fine quiver to the strong flanks. Have you ever, Doctor, closely watched a woman who is married to a man she hates, loathes, despises, as her husband enters the room? Perhaps he is a plausible brute who only shows the cloven hoof after he has shot the bolt of her bedroom door; no one else may guess it unless one watches the wife. The dilatation of the pupil, the faintest quiver of the nostrils, the little shiver—Dixie had all of these, but, as Claud had said, he was too self-contained, too much of a gentleman, to further reveal his emotions.

“I could see Claud shrivel at Deshay’s familiarity. One guessed that he longed to throw off the man’s hand, which still clutched his shoulder good-humoredly, but he was too sensitive, too fearful of giving offense, not through any liking for the man, but because it seemed _gauche_, boorish, and would fill the air with a sort of rough impulse, shocking to his fine sensitiveness. No doubt he had suffered at times from rebuffs to his own timid advances, and had not enough knowledge of the world and men to keep from putting a coarse, thick-skinned brute like Deshay in his own class of emotions.

“His class—_ach!_ the nervous sensibilities of those two were about as similar as those of a Kentucky thoroughbred and a Galapagos turtle! There are some men who can never get it through their heads that the only way to hurt another man’s feelings is with a club.

“When I spoke, Claud glanced down at Dixie, and he saw the danger in the animal’s eyes, to which Deshay was quite blind.

“‘Dixie!’ said Claud, reprovingly; that was all, but Dixie understood and his beautiful head dropped contritely.

“‘Oh, Dixie’s all right,’ said Deshay, carelessly, and, will you believe it, he swung down and took the dog’s two forepaws, raised him up on his hind legs, while he pulled his ears playfully, and, taking the sensitive muzzle in his coarse hand, shook it back and forth! _Ach!_ I have never been so overcome with admiration for the self-control of any living creature as I was for its amazing exhibition by that bloodhound! One saw him shudder, half close his eyes, as if in a disgust too deep for any expression. I really believe, Doctor, that the dog and master were at the psychological instant of Deshay’s caress possessed of precisely the same emotions. Do you know, I believe that the hound accepted the human animal’s familiarity less through discipline than a high-minded sense of courtesy which forbade his rejecting overtures which had the semblance of good will, for at first Deshay actually liked Dixie, and was unable to see that the dog had loathed him from the start.

“Deshay turned to Claud. ‘There’s a good chap,’ he said; ‘you don’t mind sticking it out to Samoa, do you, now?’

“‘I’m sorry,’ began Claud.

“‘Oh, come,’ said Deshay, and again there was in his voice that imperative note which had struck me so unpleasantly the day before. ‘You can’t tell yet whether you’re going to like the cruise or not; you will begin to enjoy it in a couple of days—you know you will.’ He fastened his lustrous eyes fixedly on the seraphic blue ones of the boy. ‘You know you will like it—don’t you, now?’ There was in his voice a peremptory assertion.

“‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Claud, and looked over the rail.

“‘Of course I am right,’ said Deshay, loudly, and clapped him on the shoulder again. ‘Now, let’s have a drink to show there’s no hard feeling. Steward!’ he bellowed down the companionway.

“‘But, look here, Captain,’ said Claud, feebly, ‘you seem to forget that I’ve given up drinking.’

“‘Not a bit of it,’ said Deshay, ‘but there’s a big difference between a man’s giving up drinking and a man’s never taking a drink. If you only drink at my suggestion you’ll never come to any harm. Will you join us, Leyden?’

“‘No, thanks,’ I answered.

“‘Oh, yes, you will,’ said Deshay, in his large way.

“I shrugged my shoulders and, turning on my heel, walked aft. To tell the truth, Doctor, although I am a mild-mannered man who will make a very great detour to avoid a quarrel, I think that just at that moment——”

Eight bells were struck forward, and Leyden paused to hold the stump of his cigar to the dial of the taffrail-log.

“A little more than ten,” he muttered; “that schooner did better for days on end!” He drummed softly with his fingers until I grew irritated at his abstraction, which emotion he perceived, for he flicked the stump of his cigar into the wake and resumed.

“Doctor, have you ever witnessed the spectacle of a strong will and high courage becoming completely and utterly dominated, less through lack of strength than excess of imagination, by a creature of far inferior qualities, but overwhelming impudence? These are the conditions which often give the bully his amazing autocracy; his victims are auto-hypnotized by the sheer impudence of his assertions, until some day the bubble is pricked by an individual more practical and less imaginative and the reign of terror is at an end. In a week’s time Deshay had Claud, and Dixie, too, for that matter, as entirely cowed and subjugated as if he had broken their spirits with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and the harrowing part of it was that, in spite of their high degree of sensitiveness, neither the dog nor the master were weak. I had studied Claud and felt his underlying force; he was of that high-bred, nervous type, vacillating in little things, but, deeper, of the resistance of chilled steel; like the bulkheads in the ward-room of a battle-ship, white and gold on the surface, but able to stand the pressure of hundreds of tons. If the petty aggressions of Deshay had all been combined into a solid weight, requiring a forceful resistance, he could no more have held Claud than he could have held a handful of guncotton detonated in his clenched fist; that is, he could not have done so at first, and his animal cunning told him this, so that he began by accustoming his victim to yield in minor matters until he had given him the _yielding habit_; but as I watched the whole thing I was convinced that Deshay was too crude a production and too lacking in finesse to continue his course successfully, and I awaited the denouement with interest. Deshay had already shown his lack of cleverness by not taking the trouble to conceal the aversion that he had come to feel for Dixie, and the silent hate of the dog for him was a thing as extraordinary to contemplate as the animal’s marvellous dignity and self-control. Deshay had come to openly maltreat him, but not as yet in Claud’s presence; he maltreated him once in mine, and _only_ once, for I said a few words to him, at which he stared into my eyes and first blustered and then laughed and then went out with a sizzle—and we understood one another perfectly. On this occasion he had kicked the dog across the deck because the poor brute had placed both paws on the polished teak rail in a longing effort to discover land, and the dog had neither yelped nor growled nor become abject; he had simply walked away, albeit with a slight limp, but without the drooping tail and other signs of canine dejection. Perhaps you have seen a gentleman, Doctor, a fearless man, avoid a quarrel thrust upon him by a low fellow, and avoid it quietly and without loss of dignity. This was Dixie’s behavior.

“We were not a pleasant party on that schooner. I had come to detest Deshay, and he knew it; Lentz would no longer speak to him; the old fellow simply grunted when Deshay addressed him, as if he considered the captain a swine and able to understand the language. Claud did not hate him; he simply _loathed_ him, and yet was dominated by him, and the same was true of Dixie. The air was heavily pregnant with possibilities, and, Doctor, when the denouement finally arrived it was as funny as the grin on the face of a corpse. Who do you suppose it was that pulled out the boat-plug? Why, none other than that black-browed humorist of a mate, who was, it seems, a murderer escaped from the Santa Clara county jail, and who had paid Deshay a good price for his billet.

“We were down in the neighborhood of Christmas Island, when we cut in close to some other little island; to this day I don’t know what it was. Our course would trim it close, so at Deshay’s suggestion we hove to and he and Lentz and Claud, Dixie and myself went in with two sailors to pull the boat. Possibly it was his plan to get Lentz and me ashore and leave us there, but he never had the chance, for no sooner had we struck the beach than Mister Mate up with his headsails, up stick and away!

“I must have a bizarre sense of humor, for I will confess that I dropped in a heap on the sand and laughed until the tears came. It was such a tremendous joke on the lot of us—especially upon Deshay.

“Deshay was like a crazy man; he tore up and down the beach and shook his fists and raved until his face was blue. He was an edifying sight, and we white people sat in a little row in our proscenium box and admired the exhibition. You see, he was three-quarters white, and that gave him imagination; but the other quarter, which should have been self-control, was Kanaka, and that knocked up the pawls and let his line run off the reel, so to speak.

“We were really badly off, Doctor; the island was very small and offered no food that we could see. There was a small cluster of dwarfed palms, and they bore a few immature nuts; aside from these trees there was no shelter. We had not even a boat-sail. Fortunately there was water on this island—brackish, but potable.

“Deshay pulled himself together after a while, but he was savage and morose. I managed to get out of him the pleasing news that the next island was over one hundred miles distant, and probably no better than the one which we were on. Fancy our condition, Doctor!—our utter lack of everything but bad feeling. All of us, including the two sailors who had pulled the boat, hated Deshay; Deshay returned the sentiment; the two sailors, with their mates, had from the first been insolent to Claud, of whom they said rough things owing to his subjugation by Deshay; and on this, as well as from personal causes, both Lentz and I had more than once fallen foul of them. Within the last fortnight the tedium of the voyage had begun to tell upon Lentz, and the old fellow had grown peevish and sulky; both of us had incurred Deshay’s dislike by having very little to say to him. Conceive, then, the delights of the first few days of hardship with such a company.

“It was, I believe, the morning of the third day that I was awakened by hearing Deshay cry out: ‘Where’s that cursed dog?’ I rolled over and saw that he held in his hand one of the heavy oak stretchers of the boat and was looking savagely about him. Near by sat Claud, his face in his hands.

“Deshay snarled out: ‘Where’s that dog, you droolin’ baby?’

“Claud mumbled something, without looking up, and then I heard him say: ‘We haven’t come to that—_yet_,’ and he said it with a groan, and I could see his face working painfully.

‘Deshay walked toward him, talking as he went. He said: ‘You’ll see if we haven’t when I find the cur, you chicken-livered little milksop!’ and at that moment there came from up the beach a musical bay which tolled out like a church-bell and died lingeringly away, to be drowned in the crash of the breakers; again this mournful note welled forth, rising like the voice of a bell-buoy above the roar of the surf, and this time it ended in a series of short, excited barks—such a bark as a hound gives when he has ‘treed.’

“Claud sprang to his feet. ‘He’s found something!’ he cried, and began to run down the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon we came upon Dixie, who was very carefully uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle’s eggs.

“Deshay was for eating his fill then and there, but this I would not permit, so we gathered them up and carried them back to the others, where we proceeded to divide them.

“‘Give Dixie his share,’ said I to Deshay, who had undertaken the division.

“‘Give Dixie nothin’,’ he snarled back at me. And then he added: ‘Why, you Dutch fat-head, d’ye think I’m goin’ to give good food to a dog?’

“He had carelessly dropped the boat-stretcher beside him, and before he could lay down the eggs it was in my hand. There is an etiquette, Doctor, to be observed even upon a desert island, and if Lentz had not grasped the other end of the stick I fancy that Dixie could have had Deshay’s share.

“‘Ve must not qvarrel,’ said Lentz; ‘ve haf troobles enough alretty. Der hound found der eggs; gif him von or two.’

“Deshay growled, but I had frightened him, and he did as he was told, giving Dixie two of the eggs. The dog ate one of them, the other he carried to Claud; I saw Claud give it to Deshay.

“For ten days this thing went on. Every day or two Dixie would find a nest of eggs, but at the end of that time he could find no more, and after two days of hunger Deshay, backed by one of the sailors, demanded that he be killed. We were all fairly weak by this time, Deshay being perhaps the strongest, because Claud had shared his own and the hound’s food with him in the hope of prolonging the dog’s life. In spite of this the lad held up wonderfully, sustained by his marvellous nervous vitality.

“‘It seems to me that Dixie has earned his right to live,’ said Claud, the tears streaming from his eyes. ‘He has already fed us for ten days; but if you all demand that he—be killed—I will not oppose it!’ He buried his face in his hands.

“‘Guess you won’t!’ growled Deshay. ‘We _do_ demand it——’

“‘Speak for yourself, you mongrel swine!’ said I, and added that I would starve before I would kill the hound or eat him, either. You see, Doctor, to my way of thinking Dixie had purchased the human right to die decently, like the brave, unselfish gentleman he was. Besides, he had the cleanest soul of any, save, perhaps, his master. What right had we to prolong our lives at the cost of his? Lentz felt this.

“‘I von’t eat him,’ he said; ‘he is vort more as me.’

“‘Ah, what’s the use o’ killin’ ’im?’ said one of the sailors, a hard specimen whom Deshay had picked up on the ‘Barbary Coast.’ ‘Dawg ‘r no dawg, we’re all goin’ up the flue. The quicker the sooner, say I.’

“‘The other sailor agreed with Deshay, who pulled out his knife and sidled toward the hound. If my strength had been equal to it I would have opposed him, but a touch of fever on top of other hardships had left me as weak as a kitten. However, it was unnecessary.

“And then, Doctor, there began a strange and savage spectacle. Dixie was by this time a hide-wrapped skeleton, yet his strength seemed in no way impaired. He was asleep by his master’s side, but at the stealthy approach of Deshay he seemed to slide away—as one drags a rug across a floor. Deshay continued to approach—at an angle—craftily, and still the hound slid away in that peculiar manner, his lustrous brown eyes fastened on the man in an agony of doubt and dread, which seemed to partly paralyze his movements. Deshay began to wheedle, to whine, to talk ‘baby-talk’ of the ‘nice-doggy’ type, and he actually hid the knife as he might if about to murder a man instead of a dog! Such a spectacle, my friend! this gaunt, savage, bloodshot, hairy, human animal, far more of a beast in all effect than the sad-eyed dog who had for days prolonged his worthless life—this bloodthirsty, _literally_ bloodthirsty human hyena, crazed at feeling his wretched life slipping through his weakening grip, slinking along that beach in the bright, dewy morning, talking baby talk to the hound—making a disgusting exhibition of his craven soul, when he might have been waiting for death with the dignity of a gentleman!

“Still he slunk—and the dog slunk before him, his hair bristling less in fear than disgust, certainly not in anger, for of this emotion there was no trace in the quiver of a lip, the echo of a growl, nor in the gleam of the beautiful, lustrous eyes. Rather it was a sense of deepest shame—a shame for his master’s race!

“And then the brute in the man tore through the thin envelope; he screamed like a cat and threw himself at the dog, only to sprawl his length on the sand. He sprang to his feet and ran braying at the animal, who fled down the beach as silently and with the even interval of the man’s own sinister shadow, until Deshay, his strength utterly gone, fell face downward on the sand, screaming obscenities. _Ach!_ never have I seen a thing more disgusting.

“‘Dixie will take care of himself,’ said I to Claud. ‘He will not be caught napping.’

“From that time, Doctor, there began a series of psychological phenomena of which I was more appreciative afterwards. Up to the moment of this shocking outburst of Deshay, Claud had been in all ways subservient, but as he looked upon the contour of this man’s naked soul and saw its hideously dwarfed deformity I observed a peculiar expression on his face. I think that he was feeling Deshay’s shame as if it had been his own—not through any charity, but through sympathy, which is such an entirely different thing. You see, Doctor, Claud was one of those hyper-sensitized natures which reflects an emotion as a still lake reflects its bank: you know the type—that which will listen to a poorly given address with a sense of deepest personal responsibility toward the speaker, or will see some person in a conspicuous place make a fool of himself and fairly writhe with shame—as Dixie had done. And do you know, I think that for the time the sentiments of master and dog toward Deshay were identical; the natures of the two were very similar; and I can say no better thing of Claud than this. They were two gentlemen, Doctor, gentlemen by birth and breed and associations, and they possessed the natural instincts which result from generations of these things.

“Left to himself at just that moment, Claud would, I believe, have attempted to condone Deshay’s behavior and to go to the rescue of his strangled decency, but it seemed to me that the psychological moment had arrived for placing matters in their due proportion. You see, Doctor, I had about concluded that we were all going to die, and I disliked the idea of letting Claud die without the opportunity of redeeming such manhood as he might possess, and with this in mind I reached out and dragged the veil rather roughly from his eyes.

“‘And to think,’ said I, ‘that yonder object should be your master—you, a gentleman and a white man!’

“Claud leaped as if I had lashed him across the face.

“‘What!’ he cried. ‘What—what—what’s that you say?’

“‘It seems to me to be plain enough,’ said I. ‘Haven’t you kow-towed and groveled and beat your forehead before that thing, and broken your promise to stop drinking—to whomever you made that promise—for fear of that Kanaka thug out there?’

“Claud stared at me—stared like a baby—with his mouth and his big blue eyes wide open, and while he stared what little blood was left in his wasted body found its way up into his face; at last, it seemed to me, he was ashamed on _his own account_. While he was staring at me Deshay came up.

“‘Call your cur,’ he growled. I was vexed that he interfered just when he did, as Claud in his weakened state had not yet assimilated the pre-digested idea which I had fed him. I was scarcely normal at the time, Doctor; to my mind, the whole thing mattered very little; it was like one of those nightmares in which one is sub-consciously aware that it is really only a dream and acts with delightful disregard of consequences. I thought of dying as one thinks of waking up, and before waking up I wanted to see Claud kill Deshay. I knew that he could kill him if he wanted to, for all of us had passed the physical limits and were living upon our mentalities, and Claud’s being so much more virile than Deshay’s, he was just that much more alive; yet Deshay was too stupid to discover this, although I think that he must have felt it in a way.

“‘Call your cur!’ he repeated, but this time there was a change in his tone. It reminded me of the voice in which Claud had attempted to assert _him_self upon that first day aboard the schooner, but in Deshay’s case this irresolution was on _his own_ account; subjective, you see—not objective, like Claud’s.

“I noticed this and began to laugh, and Deshay looked at me sheepishly. It was not a pleasant laugh; one feels sorry, Doctor, for a man who sacrifices his self-respect for the sake of some one else, but one laughs as I did at the man who does so for himself. This was the proportion between Claud and Deshay, and, although I found it amusing, I was nevertheless grievously disappointed when I saw that Deshay was subtle enough to feel his side of the see-saw go down—for, as I have said, I wanted to see Claud kill him before _any_ of us died.

“As it was, Claud simply ignored his demands—and that was a little step toward preponderance. You see, Doctor, the two were dying men; we were all dying men. Deshay’s investment was ultra-physical, and consequently low; Claud’s was psychical, and although he might not last any longer, or as long, for that matter, he was _all there_ as long as he _did_ last; he was either alive or dead, not half-alive, like Deshay—and as the springs of our lives ran low Deshay’s grew muddy, while Claud’s was still clear and cold.

“The following morning Dixie again discovered a nest of eggs. I do not wish to tax your credulity, Doctor, and yet I will ask you to believe that so nearly approached the types of these two gentlemen that the sensibilities predominant in Claud obtained in Dixie to an extent where he, too, felt the fall of Deshay, and when he had found the eggs and we starving wretches shambled up to the cache, Dixie, the fine, thoroughbred, peace-loving aristocrat, stood over his find with bared fangs and flashing eyes and allowed all to approach but Deshay.

“Yet gentlemen do not press these things, these matters of authority, as do your ruffians who have cut a high card in the shuffle of Fate—they accept them as a matter of course—and so neither Claud nor Dixie emphasized this occult change of balance, and as the days passed Deshay, crass fool that he was, lost sight of the fact that he had been relegated with any other dejecta. He would thrust in with surliness rather than ugliness, according to the nature of the low-grade, overthrown bully; but Claud and Dixie ignored him, his two sailors grinned at him, old Lentz blinked at him, and I, the mean average of the lot, laughed at him and explained carefully to him in how very many different sorts of ways he was a fool, neglecting to help him out. This was quite safe, for, although my own mentality is of a fairly low grade, it was still in excess of Deshay’s, and this fact gave me the whip hand. I did not tell him too much, as I still cherished hopes of seeing him killed.

“There came another season of starvation in this epoch of famine and none of us had anything to eat, and it was at this time that Deshay began a systematic stalking of Dixie, who was still a peace-lover and preferred, when nothing of greater value than his own life was at stake, to get out of the way. The dog slept always at his master’s side, and, although the nights were cool to men starved and shelterless, Claud would never draw near the fire, because he wished to avoid the propinquity of Deshay. More than once I had awakened from my light, fitful, fever sleep to see this sneaking wretch creeping stealthily on hands and knees toward the sleeping animal, but with invariable result—Dixie would slip silently away and Deshay would return to the fire, cursing savagely. Often through the day one would see him slyly maneuvering to get within reach of his prey; and as our starvation proceeded, this desire fastened upon his famished brain with the force of an insistent idea, until I really believe that he was impelled less by his hunger than through a sort of dementia. At times he would awake with a sharp cry, spring to his feet and rush at Dixie, who would lope away before him, when Deshay would fall into a paroxysm of rage. At these times Claud would turn away with a shiver of disgust, Lentz would blink rapidly, the two sailors would lie upon their empty bellies and snigger, while I would laugh.

“Yet all of this time Deshay had been encroaching little by little upon Claud’s liberty, for, you see, Doctor, he was one of those unimaginative animals who require a clubbing at certain intervals as a sort of tonic treatment. Claud had utterly ignored him; he had rubbed against the rest of us in little ways and found himself of baser metal, but Claud, like Dixie, had only avoided him, and this avoidance he continued to misinterpret until his confidence returned.

“It was after one of his frantic attempts to catch Dixie that he sought to force the issue. He turned suddenly and strode to where Claud was lying on the sand, and at the sight of his face the lad struggled to his feet—while I sat and waited, for something seemed to tell me that the time had come, and I felt no fear of the result.

“‘Call your dog, you putty-face!’ snarled Deshay. ‘Call your dog!’—he thrust out his matted jaw; ‘call him up where I can get my hands on him!’ said he. He had put away his knife and gripped the stretcher. ‘Call him up, d’ye hear, or I’ll spatter your fool brains all over the shop!’

“It was here that he struck the steel beneath the fresco. Claud looked him over, carefully, coolly, and, although their faces were almost in contact, from such an infinite distance—and then he spoke, in a voice which matched his look, and at the chill of it Deshay drew back.

“Claud half turned and pointed to the cluster of palms. ‘Go over there,’ said he, very quietly, ‘and see if you cannot die a little more decently than you have lived.’ Words fail to express the icy dignity of his tone. ‘It is the only thing left for you,’ he continued, and leaned slightly toward Deshay, looking intently into his face, and at something in the look Deshay drew back with a shiver. ‘There is death in your eyes,’ said Claud; ‘I think that you are going to die this very day’—and then the bolt fell.

“Deshay, terrified, panic-struck at some quality of the cold voice and the words and the chill light of the eyes, staggered and threw up one arm as if to ward a blow. There was no suspicion of a threat in the gesture—no intent—but Dixie, crouching at his master’s side, read it differently. Before Deshay’s arm began to descend the hound had sprung. There was the shock of contact, gurgling noises, convulsive forms heaving upon the sand, the guttering sounds of—of—the _abattoir_! I saw the snout of the hound twisted sideways, the nose pushed comically upwards, the full mouth in a grotesque grin. Ah, what is more terrible, Doctor, than to see something in human guise worried and throttled by something in the guise of a brute beast?”

Leyden walked to the rail, drummed upon it with his fingers and spat several times into the sea. One guessed that he felt with the hound.

“Dixie sprang back,” he continued, his face still from me; “he sprang back and stood panting, _salivating_—as a dog does when for the first and only time in his life he commits the error of picking up a toad. Dixie was a starving animal—you understand, Doctor—and his mouth was full of blood, but he did not want _that_ blood—that human blood—nor did he want a human life, to save _his own_. He backed away, then leaned far forward—as far as he could without stepping nearer, and his delicate nostrils twitched at his work—where his hold had been.

“Soon he turned and walked slowly down to the water, waded out and swam seaward, until all that I could see was the brown speck of his head just entering the outer line of surf; and then he disappeared, and it seemed to me that there were other specks about in the water; but I did not see much of anything for a while. I heard Claud laughing as if to kill himself, and apparently he did, for the natives who found me said that he was dead and one of the sailors was dead. The other sailor, Lentz and myself hung on—the sailor because he took advantage of what Dixie _would not do_; Lentz, because his pulse was slow, like a tortoise, and, like a camel, he was able to live for a while on his reserve adipose; and I, because the fever had banked my fires so low that no food was required. Besides, I am tough, and—will you please tell me, Doctor, what in the devil ever possessed me to tell such a villainous story? That cat? _Ach!_—yes—_p’st!_—scat, you beast!”

I walked over and put a “sheep-shank” in the lanyard on the cage of the _tulu-pial_ bird, and then the cat was unable to reach it.

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THE BAMBOULA

FROM the deck of the ship the night seemed split into three zones of darkness: the vague water, with its elusive surface sheen; the heavier murk of the land, which was not black, but a deep tone of color impalpable from lack of light; then the sky, which was all that was left, and rested prone upon the other two, with no intermediary separation.

I leaned on the rail and tried to pick out the features of the land; a pale band of beach crept out of the opacity, and it seemed to me that I could see dark splotches where the _compèche_ was piled. Now and then a light would spark out and disappear, in many cases its swinging motion proving it to be a torch carried in some black fist. A thin land breeze had sprung up, and it brought off the scent of the damp earth, whiffs of wood smoke, and now and then the heavy fragrance of the stephanotis. Deeper in the gloom tossing hills threw their rough shoulders against the opaque sky.

Suddenly, from a shadowy recess in the black land there arose the steady beat of a drum—a pulsing, cavernous sound, measured in rhythmic time, neither loud nor fast; a patient sound, yet a note impalpable in quality, insistent and seeming like the throbbing heart-beat of the savage island sleeping under the black mantle of the night.

There came an alert step on the deck behind me, and a throaty voice, with the hint of a German accent, remarked at my shoulder:

“The bamboula!”

It was Dr. Leyden who spoke—a shipmate whom I had met the day we both went aboard at Demerara. He had just come down the Essequibo, after three months’ orchid-hunting in the bush; an interesting man, who was by profession what one might call a “market-naturalist.” By that I mean that he was one of these not ultra-scientific collectors who can tell a rare specimen when they see it and who do the outdoor work of the “closet naturalist,” in whose place they get the fever, and to whom they are ready to sell fame at so much per bone, or bug, or plant. He had been everywhere, barring the populous communities, and was at home with all primitive peoples. “No, Doctor,” he said to me one day, “I speak very few languages, no more than nine or ten, but I am acquainted with a great many dialects!” He could acquire an ordinary savage dialect in about a month.

“What is it?” said I, in answer to his remark. “A dance?”

“Perhaps—it sounds like it. There are but few lights yonder in the village and there are torches moving on the mountain-side. Wait—let us see.”

Just below us a shore-boat was hanging to the staging at the foot of the accommodation ladder, waiting, no doubt, to take some visitors ashore. Leyden called down to them in Créole, asking if there was to be a dance that night. One of the men replied somewhat sulkily that there was not.

“A minute,” said Leyden, turning to me. He slipped below, and directly I heard what appeared to be the voice of a Haytian stevedore coming from one of the freight-ports. A boatman in the bow replied guardedly, and for a few minutes there was a conversation in low tones. Soon it ceased, and Leyden rejoined me.

“There is to be a dance,” said he, “but it is a small affair.”

“Was that you talking from below?” I asked.

“Yes. I stood back in the shadow, and the fellow thought that he was speaking with one of the black gang. They do not like to discuss the bamboula with _leblancs_.”

“Your imitation was extraordinary. If I had not suspected what you were up to I could have sworn that it was one of the Haytian boatmen talking. You must have lived in this country.”

“It was but three months, and that several years ago. I came here to catch snails. There was an experience—a thing odd and uneven. It is possible that you would be interested—listen!” He held up one hand.

From out of the illusive velvety depths that marked the contours of the tumbling hills came monotonously the “tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom,” now rising with the puff of the land breeze, waning slightly, yet unvarying as the swing of a pendulum. With it came the night smells of flowers drenched in dew and the mouldy reek of the tropic woods.

“Smell it!” said Leyden. He leaned both elbows on the rail and dropped the butt of his cigar into the black water, where it drowned with a spiteful little hiss. “The ‘bamboula’—the smell of the trees and the stephanotis—_ach_, how it seems as if it were last night! That bamboula, with its tom-tom-tom! First it is quaint, then it is a nuisance, then irritating, then fascinating, and last of all it maddens. To think that such a people should have learned the secret of repeated concussions on a single group of brain-cells——”

“You have heard it before?” I interrupted, for I knew all of this he was telling me and wanted his story.

“Yes. It was when I was here five years ago looking for snails. I was crossing on a French boat, and the second day out I met the Doctor and Madame Fouchère. He was a Haytian, a _marabout_, an Adonis carved out of jet, for you know that breed are of a type magnificent and hold their fineness of skin and feature far into advanced age. He was an intelligent man, highly educated and skilled in his profession. I learned afterwards that he was the left-handed son of a former President by a _marabout_ woman—one of the usual cases of _placage_ of those high in official circles. Fouchère had been educated in France, and after talking with him for a while one forgot that he was black; yet I will confess to a sense of shock when he presented me to Madame.

“She might easily have passed for pure French. I fancy that I was the only person aboard who could see the outcrop of African—or, to be polite, Haytian. She was charming in manner and appearance, inclined to be fair, with blue eyes and that dusky blonde hair which will defy any pedigree. Her face was pretty, rather piquant, and her figure _svelte_ and full of grace. Altogether she was most attractive and not lacking in a certain _chic_, but there was a furtive expression about her eyes like that which I have noticed in the eyes of a trained lioness.

“I talked with the Fouchères many times during the voyage, and learned that since their marriage they had lived in Paris and were returning to Hayti for the first time. Madame, it appeared, although Haytian by birth, had been sent to a convent school in France when a mere child and had not visited her native country since then.

“The day after our arrival in New York we sailed for Hayti by the Dutch mail. By this time I had grown to know them quite well. A very decent fellow, Fouchère; different from the average educated Haytian—but, then, he was of quite a higher type. On parting at Port-au-Prince he made me promise to visit them before I left the island.”

Leyden paused and shifted his position, leaning back against an awning stanchion and hooking the fingers of one hand over the bolt-rope above his head. The night had darkened, for a heavy cloud-bank had drifted across to shroud that part of the sky where the late moon would rise. It welded to itself the dim, broken outline of the mountain-tops and gave to the sable contour of the land the sinister aspect of looming almost to the zenith—and all the while from somewhere just beneath the surface came the hollow, rhythmic beat of the bamboula.

“Enough to drive one _loi_,” muttered Leyden.

I heard a rustling from the shore-boat lying at the staging. The crew were softly picking up their oars.

“They are getting restless, those fellows below. They cannot stand it long, this night and that noise. Ho! they are shoving off without their fares.” He leaned over the rail and hailed the boatman in Créole.

“_Ou ça v’aller?_” he called, with a trace of irony. They paid no attention.

“_Attention, mon cher! Ou ça v’aller?_” he called, peremptorily.

“_Ca ou dit!_” growled one of the men, sulkily.

“_Côté bamboula la?_” called Leyden. They began to row again, without answering, but it seemed to me that I caught a mutter which sounded like “_nère vous écrasse!_”

Leyden chuckled. “Like master, like man in this savage country,” he remarked, absently. “But I was telling you about Fouchère. When I had got my snails and a beetle or two I remembered my promise to Fouchère and looked him up. He had a nice place, for Hayti, up at La Coupe. I sent word that I was coming the day before, and one of his servants came down the mountain on horseback with a note from Madame expressing herself as charmed. I went up the following forenoon. You know what the journey is from Port-au-Prince to La Coupe: six miles of steady upward strain by two emaciated, dying ponies, along a road which the rains have made the dry bed of a torrential cataract; a half-wrecked surrey fastened together with ropes, two of the wheels on the wrong side before, the bush turning in the hub of one of them and screaming like a soul in torment; bad sights and bad smells at every hand, and all about you scenery which seems almost as divine as the Garden of Paradise.

“When finally I arrived, feeling like the pea in a tin whistle, the Fouchères were awaiting me; and when Madame led me through the house to the verandah in the rear, whence one got the full magnificence of the view of the green valley stretching away to Port-au-Prince, the sparkling blue of the bay, the vivid green of the mountains rising behind Bisoton, and far in the distance the cloud-capped island of Gonave, I felt amply repaid for the sun and the dust and other trials of the trip up.

“Our _dejeuner_ was very good, though, like even the best in Hayti, falling just a little short of being clean, and later in the day Dr. Fouchère ordered his ponies saddled, and we rode higher up the mountain to a point whence we were able to enjoy a magnificent view of the bay on one side and the big lakes which form part of the geographical boundary between Hayti and Santo Domingo on the other.

“We dined at six, for the Haytians retire early when they retire at all. After dinner, as we sat upon the verandah with our cigars, I became conscious of a certain lack of repose on the part of both my host and hostess. Madame was obviously making an effort to be at ease, yet all of the time it seemed to me that she was under a certain tension; alert, expectant and a little restive—as one listens for a summons—or fears that perhaps it may have passed unobserved. Dr. Fouchère was also _distrait_, and several times I noticed that he turned his head sharply to one side, as if striving to catch some hidden sound.

“It was such a night as this—dark, still, partly clouded, but with stars and a late moon. At times there would be a flare of lightning in the south, but the five o’clock shower had come and gone and there would be no more rain. I was narrating an experience in Java, and they appeared to be interested; then, as I talked on, there came pulsing up from the valley beneath the slow, measured beat of a bamboula.

“I heard a rustle from the _chaise-longue_ occupied by Madame; the dull glow at the end of Dr. Fouchère’s cigar blazed suddenly bright, then died away again.

“I went on with my story, but all of the time that wretched drum was sounding its even, tireless beat, and, although a good way off, there was something insistent about the noise which refused to be ignored. As I talked on, it began to set a time for my speech, and I found myself unconsciously trying to adjust it to my words, or, more properly, to adjust my words to _it_. Some people have a more distinct perception of time and rhythm, just as some have a keener musical ear, and I have both. The result was that before long I began to get a bit confused, missed the point of my anecdote and finished lamely and with some anger.

“‘Will that fellow never finish beating that drum?’ I demanded impatiently of my host. Of course, I had heard such instruments before during my sojourn in the country, and had often noticed the children thumping them in the daytime, so that the sound had no especial significance for me.

“The lighted end of Dr. Fouchère’s cigar suddenly glowed again, then he remarked: ‘I am afraid that noise will go on all night, Dr. Leyden. I understand that the peasants are having one of their dances to-night.’ He slightly emphasized the word peasants.

“‘The bamboula?’ I asked, curiously, for, of course, I knew of the rites attendant upon voodoo worship, although I had never witnessed them.

“‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘one of my servants told me this evening that there was to be a dance to-night. This relic of paganism is one of the curses of our country, Dr. Leyden. Although we whites have done our best to discountenance it, it still persists.’

“Unlike most Haytians of the better class, who pretend to a black aristocracy socially superior to the white, Dr. Fouchère always referred to himself as white, although a blacker man never walked in the full blaze of the equatorial sun. No doubt this was due to his prolonged residence among the white race.

“‘Is the affair, then, as bad as it is painted?’ I inquired, for I had heard some very somber stories of the bamboula.

“He hesitated for an instant, and in the pause my ear caught the click of Madame’s little slipper tapping the floor to the time of the distant drum.

“‘It is primitive,’ replied my host. ‘A virile people do not forget in a day the customs of centuries.’ He paused again, and, as before, I heard the click-click of Madame’s slipper marking the beat of the drum.

“‘Perhaps Dr. Leyden is fatigued and would wish to retire,’ she suggested. ‘One rises early——’

“‘Indeed,’ I protested, ‘I am accustomed to sleep but little, but pray do not let me keep you and Dr. Fouchère from your repose.’ To tell the truth, the thought of lying on a bed and counting the strokes of that infernal drum was terrifying to me.

“There was another brief pause, but in the interval I heard Fouchère’s fingers softly tapping the rail in concert with the drum and the slipper of Madame.”

Leyden paused and stared into the viscid water beneath. The land breeze was fanning steadily now; the regular pulses of sound had swelled in volume, but the interval was unchanged.

He continued, without looking up. “‘_Derrière mornes, gagner mornes_,’ as the Haytian proverb has it,” he sighed. “But I did not guess what was behind their solicitude for my comfort. Fouchère politely denied any wish to retire, and Madame said that she would wait a little longer before asking to be excused.

“‘Come, we will smoke a fresh cigar,’ said Fouchère, presently. He clapped his hands, but no servant appeared.

“‘The rascals are all out,’ he said, apologetically. ‘If you will pardon me, I will go myself.’

“I turned to Madame. ‘Do you not find some of these customs rather terrifying?’ I asked; ‘and this country, with its glaring sunlight and impenetrable shade, its rank, exuberant, primordial peoples——’ I heard her give a short gasp in her throat; then she turned to me, bringing her white face, with its delicate features and great, luminous eyes, close to mine.

“‘They _live_!’ she answered, in a low, fierce voice. ‘They _live_, and _feel_, and their blood runs——’

“She sank back, and at this moment Dr. Fouchère returned and offered me a cigar, which I took thankfully, for I wanted to drown the sensual smell of plant and fern wafted from the woods beneath and the maddening odor of the stephanotis growing in the garden at our feet. If he had offered me strong drink, cognac, absinthe, or even opium, I might have taken it, too, for there was something in the darkness of the night that blinded the reason and voices in the soft air and scent-laden breeze that called insidiously to the senses; and all the while droned on the amphorous note of the drum, though now it seemed to come from the inside, impelling one to fervid action.

“‘Those fools will dance and drink and revel to-night,’ growled Fouchère, ‘and to-morrow there will not be one in the village fit to stand upon his feet.’

“‘Then,’ said I, with an attempt at jocularity, ‘they may seek your professional advice.’

“‘No,’ he muttered, ‘they will go to the _papa-loi_—the priest—the arch-devil——’

“There was a swift rustle, and Madame had leapt to her feet and was pacing the verandah with clinging, cat-like steps. I arose.

“‘I am fatigued from sitting still,’ she explained, with a light but nervous laugh. ‘See, the moon is rising.’

“I glanced toward the east and saw a dull yellow glow before which the low stars paled. Madame permitted herself another turn of the verandah, and as she passed the banded shaft of light which smote through the jalousies from the illuminated room I noticed that her slim fingers were closing and opening as if she were in pain. Her light footsteps fell in unison with the beat of the bamboula.

“My host and I talked on different things, and still Madame paced back and forth, and every time she passed the barred zone of light I saw the white fingers writhing in and out, and at times clutching the light fabric of her skirt in a grip that left it creased and seamed—and still the drum beat on and on. Fouchère’s manner of speech had changed; his statements were short and arbitrary, as if challenging contradiction; his chair had come down to all four legs, and he sat bolt upright, tense, together, as if prepared to spring upward at a bound. As the light over the mountain glowed brighter I could see the silhouette of his straight back against the sky, as straight and cleanly cut as one of the posts of the verandah.

“Soon Madame paused in her promenade, and, walking to the rail, gazed at the glowing light in the sky, and as she stood, the drum, partially drowned before by her light step and the swish of her skirts, welled out resonantly. I glanced at her curiously. It was still too dark to distinguish her features, but a naturalist, or, more properly, perhaps, a collector, can see things to which better eyes than his are blind, and it seemed to me that I caught a swift quiver as it flashed across her mobile face. Suddenly she turned.

“‘I think that I shall beg to be excused,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘The heat of the day has fatigued me, and the night air is cool and promises refreshing sleep. Would not Monsieur wish also to retire?’

“Dr. Fouchère arose as if to show me to my room. I had no desire to go to bed, for I did not think I could sleep; but, following the line of least resistance, I went.

“Lying on my bed, with that old and jaundiced moon peering through the window and the whole earth wrapped in the stillness of utter space, the bamboula, which had never ceased, seemed pounding at the portals of my brain. Have you ever, after a day of almost superhuman physical exertion—say a long march through the jungle carrying a double pack—lain too tired to sleep and listened to your overtaxed heart pounding its pulse against your ear-drums? No? Well, it is hard to say what else that drum was like. It appeared, too, to have grown louder, although the time continued to be exactly the same.

“Before long I dozed a little, but the drum beat on, weaving weird and distorted pictures. I saw the stark, whirling figures glistening ebony-red in the lurid firelight, the outer circle of fantastic shadows gyrating in a wider arc; the flash of flames between the circling shapes—others partly hidden—watching from the black hollows between the buttressed boles of the trees. The old, old rites—bursting out in this civilized era like embryonic cells in the adult—cancer-cells—you understand, Doctor. Later on, the sickly yellow moon, high in the zenith, its pale light quenching that of the dying embers of the fire and waning itself before the dawn. The things it looked down upon—the heaving figures of the devotees—and all about the pure, sweet peace of the tropic night!

“‘Tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom,’ went the drum, and then I awoke with a shiver and began to dress. I stepped to the window for added light, and other noises than those of the drum welled up from the valley beneath. Air was stirring, and it blew through my jalousies and filled the room with the smell of the stephanotis.

“Quietly as a cat I slipped down the stairs and out into the night. Not a sound, not a flicker of light came from any of the little houses in the village. I followed the road down the mountain for a way, and then, as I am a tracker and the moon was well up, I found a path which others had taken since the dew. It skirted the hill, then dipped abruptly into the jungle.