Part 3
It was a formidable thing, all but unmanageable even there. But once clear of the hatchway it flung itself, charging and swinging and threshing, with the great iron bellow of warning. The sailors jumped from its way. There was only the mate to handle it. The ship gave a heavy lurch to starboard. The chimney whirled and lunged toward him with a vibrating song of onslaught, and the voice of the white man in the launch below called an involuntary “Look out!” An instant of the hesitation of fear and the mate would have been struck overboard by all the force of the great cylinder of iron. But he put out his hand and pushed it, and it swung off harmlessly enough, as docile as it was formidable.
The little whistle shrilled, the derrick moved its long arm around and out, and the stack hung overside, directly above the launch. The _lancheros_ had retreated to the sides, ready to scramble out of the way, or to jump overboard, if need should be. They stood looking up at it uneasily. If the rope were to break or slip, if the mate were to give a wrong order----
Suddenly the steamer came over to starboard with a deep roll, and the great stack dropped with her. The mate saw the chance of mishap. His whistle piped a sharp, quick order to hoist. The _lancheros_ cowered, their arms over their heads--all but Stanwood. He stood watching a chance. The stack swung and whirled, gigantic and awful, not a foot above his reach. But the rope had been just too short. The ship heaved back, and with a reverberation of metal thunder as it struck against the hull, the cylinder swung up again.
Courage came back to the _capitan_ of the lighter then, and with it all his powers of mean impertinence. He shouted up curses at the first-officer. They were vile, as curses can only be vile in that “language of prayer.” And the first-officer understood them perfectly. But he had no time to take notice of them. The ship had got to get off that night. And the stacks had got to be unloaded. But it was far from simple to get even this first one lowered into the launch. Several times they dropped it almost to its place, then, because the empty scow bobbed one way in a swell, and the ship another, it had to be hoisted once more. And once the windlass refused to work at a signal. There was a delay until it could be repaired. The _capitan_ of the _lancheros_ waxed more impertinent and abusive; the _tequila_ with which he had been refreshing himself on shore was beginning to take its violent effect. In the absorption of his abuse of the ship and all its crew, he forgot to order his own men. The stack was coming down once again, with a fair chance of landing squarely in the bottom at last--if the _lancheros_ should be quick enough at guiding it. But they were doing nothing, frightened half out of their little available senses. And their _capitan_ was yelling foul words aloft. It was a critical instant. The white _lanchero_ knew it. He gave an order. It was all the men needed--a head. They made to obey. But the boss, in the madness of _tequila_, turned on his white hand. Was _he_ the _capitan_? Was _he_ in command? He had the signal conch shell in his hand. He brought it down with a cracking blow on Stanwood’s head.
The first-officer, watching the critical descent of the iron monster with all his attention, saw Stanwood spring at the boss’s throat, saw the knives of the other _lancheros_ drawn, saw them swarming astern to the rescue of their fellow, ten of them against one. And the iron stack was swaying just above them. Another starboard roll--they would be crushed under it. And another moment lost and the Gringo would have ten knives in his neck and back. The little whistle shrilled sharply twice, and even as its order was obeyed and the windlass reversed, the first-officer was sliding overside down the manrope, had kicked himself off from the hull, and landed in the launch.
It was a short fight. The first-officer had his six-shooter, the white _lanchero_ his knife, like another. The natives were fierce with blood lust, and the drunkenness of knife gleam and _tequila_. But it was a matter of coolness and of the dominant race. Before the captain on the hurricane-deck could run to his cabin for his carbine, it was over with. Two _lancheros_ had disabling bullet wounds, and the rest had retreated to the bow, all the flush of fight gone out of them, whipped and cringing and scared.
The first-officer and the white _lanchero_ stood astern. They had been cut, and the ducks of the first-officer were red. Blood oozed through the _lanchero’s_ rags. He got breath for a moment clutching at the gunwale. Then he turned to the first-officer. “Thank you,” he said.
Marsden looked at him, slowly, from his shaggy black hair to his bare feet. “Don’t mention it,” he answered. Then he looked up at the ship. “Unhook that stack for the present, and send down the chair for us,” he ordered, coolly.
He considered his left arm. The blood was bubbling out just above the elbow. He knew what it meant. He had seen the thing before. It would be all right once a tourniquet should be put above it. But before that, before the doctor could get down in the chair, he would very likely faint. He was feeling light-headed already--and his eyes were glazing over. He shut his right hand hard above the wound.
“You can’t stay with this, Stanwood,” he told the _lanchero_. His voice sounded to himself far away and dead. He was not altogether sure what he was saying. He glanced up. Away and away overhead in a vague distance of hot blue, the chair was beginning to lower. He must make haste. He spoke carefully, with precision, swaying unsteadily as the launch rolled.
“We lost a man at Corinto,” he went on; “we--need an--other. You can ship to Frisco with us if----” he staggered, then caught himself, “if you--like.”
The chair with the doctor touched the bottom of the scow. The first-officer had fallen, and was lying quite still. The white _lanchero_ was bending over him, clenching his two hands tight about the wounded arm.
THE RAJAH’S NEMESIS
By W. C. Morrow
In my travels abroad I once encountered an extraordinary illustration of the shifts to which Nature will resort in her efforts to overcome the inconvenience arising from a deprivation of the tools with which she is accustomed to work; and the facts of the case are sufficiently peculiar and tragic to warrant their relation.
I was summoned from Calcutta to proceed to the heart of India, being wanted by a certain rich and powerful rajah to perform a dangerous surgical operation upon one of the women of his household. I found the rajah to be a man of lofty character, noble and generous; but, as circumstances afterward developed, he was possessed of a sense of cruelty purely Oriental and in sharp contrast to the extreme indolence of his disposition. He was so grateful for the success which attended my mission that he urged me to remain his guest at the palace as long as it should please me to stay; and, as may be surmised, I thankfully accepted the invitation.
One of his servants early attracted my notice, for he was a man of marvelous capacity of malice and vindictiveness. His name was Neranya, and I am certain that there must have been a large proportion of Malay blood in his veins; for, unlike the Indians (from whom he differed also in complexion), he was extremely active, alert, nervous, and sensitive. He had one redeeming trait, and that was love for his master.
Once his violent temper led him to the commission of an atrocious crime--the fatal stabbing of a dwarf. In punishment for this the rajah ordered that Neranya’s right arm (the offending one) be severed from his body. The sentence was executed in rather a bungling fashion by a stupid fellow armed with an axe; and I, being a surgeon, was compelled, in order to save Neranya’s life, to perform a second amputation upon the stump of the arm, which left not a vestige of the limb remaining.
Just here, as a possible partial explanation of the terrible and extraordinary things which followed, I must call intelligent attention to a matter which has long engaged my notice.
We see that when one arm has been lost, the other acquires an unwonted dexterity, thus measurably compensating for the loss. Further, if both arms have been removed, an extraordinary nimbleness is exhibited in the feet, for they come to discharge to a considerable extent the functions of hands--to so great an extent that the toes display a power of prehension which one might suppose had not existed in them since our abandonment, in the evolutionary process, of the tree-climbing habit. Thus, with the toes an armless man may learn to hold a pen and to write, to load and fire a pistol, to cut food with a knife, and convey it to his mouth with a fork, to sew, and to do a hundred other useful things, and some which are purely ornamental, as painting, playing a harp, and the like. I once saw an armless man give his wife a sound thrashing with a rawhide whip.
If, now, one of the legs be removed, the remaining foot will develop an almost redoubled capacity, its agility being marvelous. But suppose that this member, too, should be parted with--has Nature reached the end of her resources? Remember, the dexterity that she developed in those members which remained after the amputation of others was primarily of a character to take the place of that which enabled the others to minister to the needs of life. Granted that both arms and both legs are gone, has Nature, I have asked, reached the limit of her resources, in the accomplishment of an earnest and controlling purpose, praiseworthy or perverted?
Let us inquire into the philosophy of the process by which this compensating dexterity is developed. It is easy for the scientists to tell us that this is done by the concentration of the will and the persistent exercise of the muscles in obedience thereto; but to my understanding this explanation is not sufficient. The principle of life, the amazing persistence of this principle, and the ways in which this persistence is maintained, are all inscrutable mysteries, necessarily and forever beyond our comprehension. It is the fashion of transcendentalism (not followed, however, by the greater scientists) to maintain that we have a spiritual, as well as a material, nature; and by evolution there has grown out of that belief another, that this spiritual nature is imperishable, indestructible--the fashionable, though inaccurate, term is “immortal.” The spirit is assumed to be the _ego_, the consciousness--that which fixes individuality and determines identity.
Now, we know that mind is consciousness, and that the mind has its seat within the brain. But the brain is identical in its chemical, structural, molecular, and functional characteristics with the nerves which lead from it and ramify throughout the body; therefore the mind, and consequently the spirit, ramifies throughout the body; and hence it follows that if the spirit is indestructible and should be separated from the body (by death or otherwise) it must have the essential form and appearance of the body. The fact of our being unable to see it presents no obstacle to the argument; for we are unable to see countless things which we are certain exist. The argument thus put in logical shape may account, by unconscious synthetical reasoning, for the prevalent belief, seemingly inherent, that the spirit retains the form of the body after death; for there is no other conception of the human spirit’s form--we never imagine it as having the shape of a ball, or a comet, or a balloon, or a cloud, or as being formless.
Then it must follow that, assuming the spirit to be indestructible and as having the form of the body, the amputation of a limb does not exterminate that part of the spirit which occupied that limb; but as the indivisibility of the spirit must be admitted as an essential factor of identity and individuality, that part of the spirit which had occupied the amputated limb must always be present in the place where the limb had been, and must there, in that place, possess all the consciousness and intelligence which belonged to it before the limb was amputated.
This argument may be pursued to some astonishing conclusions which do not vitally concern the purposes of this relation. I might be asked, for instance, if the potentiality of a spirit is dependent upon its possession and control of a body, of what avail is it to speculate upon the unseparated existence of the spirit of an amputated limb? But there are some who declare that this dependence need not and does not always exist.
This, it must be understood, is not the line of argument pursued by scientists, for they have a purely materialistic explanation for all the singular phenomena resulting from amputation; but are they not inconsistent? They admit the inscrutable mystery of the principle of life and all its countless corollaries, and yet they glibly explain the evidently marvelous results of a serious interference with the normal operation of that principle, as in the case of amputation. Is it not possible that there is danger of too much explanation of these wonderful mysteries?
Let us proceed with the strange story of Neranya. After the loss of his arm, he developed an increased fiendishness, an augmented vindictiveness. His love for his master was changed to hate, and in his mad anger, he flung discretion to the winds. He was so unruly and violent in disposition that he could not conceal his feelings. The rajah, a proud, scornful man, increased Neranya’s hate by treating him with contempt and scorn, which had the effect of driving the wretch to frenzy. In a mad moment he sprang upon the rajah with a knife, but he was seized and disarmed. To his unspeakable dismay the rajah sentenced him for this offense to suffer amputation of the remaining arm. It was done as in the former instance.
This had a temporary effect in curbing the man’s spirit, or rather in changing the outward manifestation of his diabolic nature. Being armless, he was at first largely at the mercy of those who ministered to his wants--a duty which I undertook to see was properly discharged, for I felt an interest in this horribly perverted and distorted nature. This sense of helplessness, combined with a damnable scheme for revenge which he had secretly formed, caused Neranya to change his fierce, impetuous, and unruly conduct into a smooth, quiet, insinuating manner, which he carried so artfully as not only to secure a peace and comfort which he had never known before, but also to deceive those with whom he was brought in contact, including the rajah himself.
Neranya, being exceedingly quick, nimble, and intelligent, and having a tremendous will, turned his attention to the cultivation of dexterity in his legs, feet, and toes; and in due time he was able to perform wonderful feats with those members, such as I have noticed already. His capacity especially for destructive mischief was restored.
One morning, the rajah’s only son, a young man of an exceedingly lovable and noble character, was found dead in bed. His murder was a singularly atrocious one, the body being mutilated in a sickening manner; but, in my eyes, the most significant of all the mutilations was _the entire removal and disappearance of the young man’s arms_. In the wild distraction which ensued in the palace upon the discovery of the mutilated body, the importance of that one fact was overlooked. It was the basis, however, of a minute investigation, which I made, and which, in time, led me to the discovery of the murderer.
The murder of the young man nearly proved the death of the rajah, who was thrown into a serious illness, which required all my skill and attention to combat. It was not, therefore, until his recovery that there began a systematic and intelligent inquiry into the murder. I said nothing of my own discoveries and conclusions, and in no way interfered with the work of the rajah and his officers; but, after their efforts had failed and I had completed my own work, I submitted to the rajah a written report, making a close analysis of all the circumstances, and closing by charging Neranya with the murder. (I still have a copy of that singular report, and I regret that its length prevents its insertion here. It deals with unusual facts and is an illustration of the value of special knowledge and pure reason in the detection of crime.) My facts, arguments, and deductions were so convincing that the rajah at once ordered Neranya to be put to death, this to be accomplished by slow and frightful torture. The sentence was so cruel, so revolting, that it filled me with horror, and I implored that the wretch might be shot. Finally, purely through a sense of noble gratitude, the rajah yielded. When Neranya was charged with the crime, he denied it, of course; but, seeing that the rajah was convinced, and upon being shown my report (which embodied a knowledge of anatomy and surgery that he had never dreamed of), he threw aside all restraint, and, dancing, laughing, and shrieking in the most horrible manner, confessed his guilt and gloated over it--all this, believing that he would be shot on the morrow.
During the night, however, the rajah changed his mind, and sending for me in the morning, informed me of his new decision. It was that Neranya’s life should be spared, but that both his legs should be crushed with heavy hammers and then that I should amputate both limbs as close to the trunk as possible! I was too much astounded to utter a protest; and, besides there was grounded within me that unyielding, and often inhuman, medical principle, which counts the saving of life at any cost the highest duty. I may add that, appended to this horrible sentence, was a provision for keeping the maimed wretch a prisoner and torturing him at regular intervals by such means as afterward might be devised.
Sickened to the heart by the awful duty which confronted me, I nevertheless performed it with success, and I must pass over in silence the hideous details of the whole affair. Let it suffice to say that Neranya escaped death very narrowly, and that he was a long time in recovering his wonted vitality. During all these weeks the rajah neither saw him nor made inquiries concerning him, but when, as in duty bound, I made an official report that the man had recovered his strength, the rajah’s eyes brightened, and he emerged with deadly activity from the stupor of grief in which he so long had been plunged. He ordered certain preparations made for the future care of his now helpless victim.
The rajah’s palace was a noble structure, but it is necessary here to describe only the grand hall. It was an immense room, with a floor of polished stone and a lofty arched ceiling. A subdued light stole into it through stained glass set in the roof and in windows on the sides. In the middle of the room was a fountain which threw up a tall, slender column of water in the centre, with smaller jets grouped around it. Across one end of the hall, half-way to the ceiling, was a balcony, which communicated with the upper story of a wing, and from which a flight of stairs descended to the stone floor of the hall. This room was kept at a uniform temperature, and during the hot summers it was delightfully cool. This was the rajah’s favorite lounging-place, and when the nights were hot, he had his cot brought hither and here he slept.
This hall was chosen for Neranya’s permanent abiding-place; here was he to stay as long as he might live, without ever a glimpse of the face of nature or the glorious heavens. To one of his restless, nervous, energetic, discontented nature, the cruelty of such confinement was worse than death; but there was more yet of suffering in store for him, for at the rajah’s order there was constructed a small iron pen, in which Neranya was to be kept. This pen was circular and about four feet in diameter. It was elevated on four slender iron posts, ten feet from the floor, and was placed half-way between the fountain and the balcony. Around the edge of the pen was erected an iron railing, four feet high, but the top was left open for the convenience of the servants whose duty it should be to care for him. These precautions for his safe confinement were taken at my suggestion, for, although the man was deprived of all four of his limbs, I still feared that he might develop some extraordinary, unheard-of power for mischief. It was provided that the attendants should reach his cage by means of a movable ladder. All these arrangements having been made and Neranya hoisted into his prison, the rajah emerged upon the balcony to see him, and the two deadly enemies faced each other. The rajah’s stern face paled at the hideous sight which met his gaze, but he soon recovered, and the old, hard, cruel, sinister look returned. Neranya, by an extraordinary motion, had wriggled himself into an upright position, his back propped against the railing. His black hair and beard had grown long, and they added to the natural ferocity of his aspect. Upon seeing the rajah his eyes blazed with a terrible light, his lips parted, and he gasped for breath. His face was white with rage and despair, and his thin, distended nostrils quivered.
The rajah folded his arms and gazed down upon the frightful wreck which he had made. Neranya returned the gaze with blazing eyes. Oh, the pathos of that picture, the inhumanity of it, the deep and dismal tragedy of it! Who might look into that wild, desperate heart and see and understand the frightful turmoil there, the surging, choking passions, unbridled but impotent ferocity, frantic thirst for a vengeance that should be deeper than hell! Neranya gazed, his shapeless body heaving, his eyes ablaze, and then, in a strong, clear voice which rang throughout the great hall, with rapid speech he hurled at the rajah the most insulting defiance, the most awful curses. He cursed the womb that conceived him, the food that nourished him, the wealth that brought him power; cursed him in the name of Buddha and all the prophets, in the name of heaven and of hell; cursed him by the sun, the moon, and the stars, by all continents, oceans, mountains, and rivers, by all things living; cursed his head, his heart, his entrails; cursed him in a furious outpouring of unmentionable words; heaped insults and contumely upon him; called him a knave, a beast, a fool, a liar, an infamous and damnable coward. Never had I heard such eloquence of defiance, curses, and vituperation; never had heard so terrible a denunciation, so frightful and impetuous an outflow of insults.
The rajah heard it all calmly, without the movement of a muscle or the slightest change of countenance, and when the poor wretch had exhausted his strength and fallen helpless and silent to the floor, the rajah, with a grim, cold smile, turned and strode away.