Chapter IV

The wind, alternately hissing and snarling, brought to Seenie's ears the roar of the Essequibo belching cargo on the wooded shores of Waakenam. O! placid, godless wind! It brought heroic tales of Georgetown muck on a briny dash to the gold fields.

Gold, Pataro gold O! de rich man An' de po' man.

O! intimate, loquacious wind! It told epic tales of black men, the salt of adventure seasoning the marrow in their bones, in _bateaux_ (the flat-bottomed curses) speeding, nugget laden, down the _tacabah_-paved river--suddenly becoming songless!

Ovah danger, danger, danger Danger, danger, danger, danger Rocks an' Fall--!

You Mistah _Tacabah_! A sea lion, a sea cow, a shark? No! Great big slices of timber fastened, growing in the river! Deep-rooted, they were animals--groveling in the bowels of the unsettled stream. And _Tacabah_, the perpendicular beast, had eyes and ears, feet and heads. And _tacabah_ could butt. On a starless night, he, the master of the river's fate, the hairy prowler of its incalculable depths, usually got on the war path. How easy it was for him! All a headlong _bateau_, oared by a lot of drunken gold diggers, need do was touch it--it was hardly necessary to jam it--and _tacabah'd_ get the laugh on _bateau_! Over it'd go--at _tacabah's_ jerky butt--heading for the eely monster's bowels, planted deep in the roots of eternity.

Ovah danger, danger, danger, Danger, danger, danger, danger, Rocks an' Fall--!

The moon, rambling about in the torrid sky, now and then gleamed on something Seenie carried on her head. It was a skillet filled with soup. Dozens of Cayenne peppers, hot as the water blazing in an equatorial sea, had gone into its making. Only throats of the purest steel were able to give passage to it. It was ghastly stuff. Eating it at night, Seenie'd bring heat to bear on heat. After a draught she'd light the kerosene lamp, discard the chimney, and open her mouth over the flames till her throat cooled. It was a rite rivaling the starkest _brujerial_ act. In the skillet of red terra cotta, was Water Spout's portion of the flaming broth.

All the thwarted sounds of creation rose to a mighty murmur in the obscuring night. Deep in the thicket four-legged beasts stalked. There was baying. Sheep, torn by a species of wolf hounds on the Coast, remained silent. But the dogs were less cultivated, and there was deadlier tearing done.

Along the road iguana, the sparkle in their eyes jeweling the tropic night, pursued shy, petty quests. And from the hedge came the silken slither of snakes about to lather with foam and strike some legless sheep or ox left by the mutinous pack.

The words of a song sung by the peasants of the East Coast rose on Seenie's melodious lips:

Minnie, Minnie, come yah! Salam-bo come yah! Salam-Matanja, come yah! Le' Quackah-Tanyah, 'tan' dey!

Abruptly she left the coral road and unerringly stopped, in spite of the branching of leaf, at the cabin rising a little ways in.

"Water Spout!" she shouted, entering.

A wave of heat flew up at her. It was cane trash, hot hut heat. Heat smelted in a furnace untouched by a gust of fresh wind.

She called, but only a stream of hot mist, making for the door, answered her. "Oh berry well," she cried, "'im sleep, po' fellah."

She went to the table on the lower side of the hut and drawing a match lit the lamp. Darts of light flitted to the dark corners of it. Once able to distinguish things, she turned, and spied him on the bed.

She went to him, candied words on her mouth. He was in a deep, moist spot. A hole, really, bored into the rotting mattress. Gently she lifted him up, and the light fell on his sleeping face.

She took him to the table, and forced some of the soup into his mouth. But seized by a sudden spasm of energy, he refused, and spat it up, with a gurgling accompaniment. Then he curled back to her, fumbling for the avenue to her breasts. But she laid him back on the bed, consoled that he'd wake up in the night, demanding to be nursed.

"Lahd, me tiad, sah," she cried, yawning and undressing.

Presently she blew out the light and crawled in the bed beside him.