Part 15
Along the moonlit trail there came wavering whiffs of orchids, ranging from attar of roses and carnations to the pungence of carrion, the latter doubtless distilled from as delicate and beautiful blossoms as the former. There were, besides, the myriad and bewildering smells of sap, crushed leaves, and decaying wood; acrid, sweet, spicy and suffocating, some like musty books, others recalling the paint on the Noah's Ark of one's nursery.
But the scent of the giant armadillo eluded us. When we waded through some new, strange odor I looked back at Nupee, hoping for some sign that it was the one we sought. But that night the great armored creatures went their way and we ours, and the two did not cross. Nupee showed me a track at the trail-side made long ago, as wide and deep as the spoor of a dinosaur, and I fingered it reverently as I would have touched the imprint of a recently alighted pterodactyl, taking care not to spoil the outlines of the huge claw-marks. All my search for him had been in vain thus far, though I had been so close upon his trail as to have seen fresh blood. I had made up my mind not to give up, but it seemed as if success must wait for another year.
We watched and called the ghostly kinkajous and held them fascinated with our stream of light; we roused unnamable creatures which squawked companionably at us and rustled the tree-top leaves; we listened to the whispered rush of passing vampires skimming our faces and were soothed by the hypnotic droning hum which beetles left in their swift wake. Finally we turned and circled through side trails so narrow and so dark that we walked with outstretched arms, feeling for the trunks and lianas, choosing a sloth's gait and the hope of new adventures rather than the glare of my flash on our path.
When we entered the Convict Trail, we headed toward home. Within sight of the first turn a great black limb of a tree had recently fallen across the trail in a patch of moonlight. Before we reached it, the branch had done something it should not have done--it had straightened slightly. We strained our eyes to the utmost but could not, in this eerie light, tell head from tail end of this great serpent. It moved very slowly, and with a motion which perfectly confounded our perception. Its progress seemed no faster than the hour hand of a watch, but we knew that it moved, yet so close to the white sand that the whole trail seemed to move with it. The eye refused to admit any motion except in sudden shifts, like widely separated films of a motion-picture. For minute after minute it seemed quiescent; then we would blink and realize that it was two feet higher up the bank. One thing we could see--a great thickening near the center of the snake: it had fed recently and to repletion, and slowly it was making its way to some hidden lair, perhaps to lie motionless until another moon should silver the jungle. Was there any stranger life in the world?
Whether it was a giant bushmaster or a constrictor, we could not tell in the diffused light. I allowed it to go unharmed, for the spell of silence and the jungle night was too strongly woven to be shattered again by the crash of gun or rifle. Nupee had been quite willing to remain behind, and now, as so often with my savage friends, he looked at me wonderingly. He did not understand and I could not explain. We were at one in the enjoyment of direct phenomena; we could have passed months of intimate companionship in the wilds as I had done with his predecessors; but at the touch of abstract things, of letting a deadly creature live for any reason except for lack of a gun--then they looked at me always with that puzzled look, that straining to grasp the something which they knew must be there. And at once always followed instant acceptance, unquestioning, without protest. The transition was smooth, direct, complete; the sahib had had opportunity to shoot; he had not done so; what did the sahib wish to do now--to squat longer or to go on?
We waited for many minutes at the edge of the small glade, and the event which seemed most significant to me was in actual spectacle one of the last of the night's happenings. I sat with chin on knees, coolie-fashion--a position which, when once mastered, and with muscles trained to withstand the unusual flexion for hour after hour, is one of the most valuable assets of the wilderness lover and the watcher of wild things. It enables one to spend long periods of time in the lowest of umbrella tents, or to rest on wet ground or sharp stones where actual sitting down would be impossible. Thus is one insulated from _bêtes rouges_ and enthusiastic ants whose sole motto is eternal preparedness. Thus, too, one slips as it were, under the visual guard of human-shy creatures, whose eyes are on the lookout for their enemy at human height. From such a position, a single upward leap prepares one instantly for advance or retreat, either of which manoeuvers is well within instant necessity at times. Then there were always the two positions to which one could change if occasion required--flat-footed, with arm-pits on knees, or on the balls of the feet with elbows on knees. Thus is every muscle shifted and relaxed.
Squatting is one of the many things which a white man may learn from watching his _shikarees_ and guides, and which, in the wilderness, he may adopt without losing caste. We are a chair-ridden people, and dare hardly even cross our knees in public. Yet how many of us enjoy sitting Buddha-fashion, or as near to it as we can attain, when the ban of society is lifted! A chairless people, however, does not necessarily mean a more simple, primitive type. The Japanese method of sitting is infinitely more difficult and complex than ours. The characters of our weak-thighed, neolithic forbears are as yet too pronounced in our own bodies for us to keep an upright position for long. Witness the admirable admittance of this anthropological fact by the architects of our subway cars, who know that only a tithe of their patrons will be fortunate enough to find room on the cane-barked seats which have come to take the place of the stumps and fallen logs of a hundred thousand years ago. So they have thoughtfully strung upper reaches of the cars with imitation branches and swaying lianas, to which the last-comers cling jealously, and swing with more or less of the grace of their distant forbears. Their fur, to be sure, is rubbed thinner; nuts and fruits have given place to newspapers and novels, and the roar and odors are not those of the wind among the leaves and blossoms. But the simile is amusing enough to end abruptly, and permit individual imagination to complete it.
When I see an overtired waiter or clerk swaying from foot to foot like a rocking elephant, I sometimes place the blame further back than immediate impatience for the striking of the closing hour. It were more true to blame the gentlemen whose habits were formed before caste, whose activities preceded speech.
We may be certain that chairs will never go out of fashion. We are at the end of bodily evolution in that direction. But to see a white-draped, lanky Hindu, or a red-cloaked lama of the hills, quietly fold up, no matter where he may be, is to witness the perfection of chairless rest. One can read or write or doze comfortably, swaying slightly with a bird's unconscious balance, or, as in my case at present, wholly disarm suspicion on the part of the wild creatures by sinking from the height of a man to that of a jungle deer. And still I had lost nothing of the insulation which my moccasins provided from all the inconveniences of the forest floor. Looking at Nupee after this rush of chaotic thoughts which came between jungle and happenings, I chuckled as I hugged my knees, for I knew that Nupee had noticed and silently considered my little accomplishment, and that he approved, and I knew that I had acquired merit in his sight. Thus may we revel in the approval of our super-servants, but they must never know it.
From this eulogy of squatting, my mind returned to the white light of the glade. I watched the motionless leaves about me, many of them drooping and rich maroon by daylight, for they were just unbudded. Reaching far into the dark mystery of the upper jungle stretched the air-roots, held so straight by gravity, so unheeding of the whirling of the planet through space. Only one mighty liana--a monkey-ladder--had revolted against this dominance of the earth's pull and writhed and looped upon itself in fantastic whorls, while along its length rippled ever the undulations which mark this uneasy growth, this crystallized Saint Vitus plant.
A momentary shiver of leaves drew our eyes to the left, and we began to destroy the optical images evolved by the moon-shadows and to seek for the small reality which we knew lived and breathed somewhere on that branch. Then a sharp crack like a rifle lost whatever it was to us forever, and we half leaped to our feet as something swept downward through the air and crashed length after length among the plants and fallen logs. The branches overhead rocked to and fro, and for many minutes, like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, came a shower, first of twigs and swirling leaves, then of finer particles, and lastly of motes which gleamed like silver dust as they sifted down to the trail. When the air cleared I saw that the monkey-ladder had vanished and I knew that its yards upon yards of length lay coiled and crushed among the ferns and sprouting palms of the jungle floor. It seemed most fitting that the vegetable kingdom, whose silence and majesty gave to the jungle night its magic qualities, should have contributed this memorable climax.
Long before the first Spaniard sailed up the neighboring river, the monkey ladder had thrown its spirals aloft, and through all the centuries, all the years, it had seen no change wrought beneath it. The animal trail was trod now and then by Indian hunters, and lately we had passed several times. The sound of our guns was less than the crashing fall of an occasional forest tree. Now, with no leaf moved by the air, with only the two of us squatting in the moonlight for audience, the last cell had given way. The sap could no longer fight the decay which had entered its heart; and at the appointed moment, the moment set by the culmination of a greater nexus of forces than our human mind could ever hope to grasp, the last fiber parted and the massive growth fell.
In the last few minutes, as it hung suspended, gracefully spiraled in the moonlight, it had seemed as perfect as the new-sprouted _moras_ at my feet. As I slowly walked out of the jungle I saw in this the explanation of the simile of artificial scenery, of all the strange magic which had come to me as I entered. The alchemy of moonlight turned all the jungle to perfect growth, growth at rest. In the silvery light was no trace of gnawing worm, of ravening ant, or corroding fungus. The jungle was rejuvenated and made a place more wonderful than any fairyland of which I have read or which I have conceived. The jungle by day, as I have said--that, too, is wonderful. We may have two friends, quite unlike in character, whom we love each for his own personality, and yet it would be a hideous and unthinkable thing to see one transformed into the other.
So, with the mist settling down and tarnishing the great plaque of silver, I left the jungle, glad that I could be far away before the first hint of dawn came to mar the magic. Thus in memory I can always keep the dawn away until I return.
And some time in the future, when the lure of the full moon comes, and I answer, I shall be certain of finding the same silence, the same wonderful light, and the waiting trees and the magic. But Nupee may not be there. He will perhaps have slipped into memory, with Drojak and Aladdin. And if I find no one as silently friendly as Nupee, I shall have to watch alone through my jungle night.
INDEX
Abary, 99
agouti, 189
allamandas, 85, 182
Amazon, 240
anaquas, 115
anchor, observation from, 22, 23
anis, 47, 100, 118
antbirds, 249
ants, 183, 256, 258; immunity from killing, 231; silvery gray, 223; "white," 233
army ants, behavior in rain, 228, 229; castes, 217; eyes, 219; leap, 212, 213, 223; methods of transportation, 215, 229; moving of nest, 235, 236; tube, 227; trail makers, 221, 222; virility, 234; weight lifted, 216
Barbados, 59-65
Bartica, 141
Basseterre, 45
bat, vampire, 104, 152
batrachian, 212
beach, 62, 63, 70, 74, 75
Beckett, Mr., 124
beena, 274
beetles, 211, 227, 234, 256, 277; mimicry, 257; tiger, 63
bell bird, 159
Berbice, 102, 103, 124
bête rouge, 243, 255
blackbirds, 98, 99
blackfish, 12
bougainvillea, 85
British Guiana, mission to, 67; coast lands, 92-102
bunduri pimpler, 125
bunyahs, yellow-backed, 100
bushmaster, noosing, 188-195; protective coloration, 191, 192; fangs, 194; size, 195
butterflies, on St. Thomas, 38; on St. Kitts, 48; migration of sulphur, 158
caciques, 100
cadouries, 146
callistes, 201, 249
_canella do matto_, 241
cashew, French, 197-200
caterpillars, aquatic, 128
catfish, armored, 112
cecropia, 182
centipedes, 152
cetaceans, 11
chachalacas, 157
churacas, 248
coal-carriers, St. Lucia, 55
convolvulus, 182
coolie, trial, 80-84; marriage, 163-176
cotton-birds, 88
crabs, 16; land, 62
cricket, tree, 281
crows, carrion, 88
cuckoos, 212; black, 88
Cuyuni, 144
dacnis, 201
daddy-long-legs, 215, 227
dance, Hindu, 170
débris, jungle, 253
deer, 280
dikes, 97
dogs, wild hunting, 273
dolphins, 44, 45
doves, ground, 48
ducks, Muscovy, 88
eclipse, in Barbados, 61
egrets, 88
elater, 277
Essequibo, 144, 148
falcons, laughing, 88
fireflies, cluster, 210
fish, angel, 50, 56; four-eyed, 128; frog, 18; photographing of flying, 23; pipe, 18
flower, passion, 182
flycatchers, 249; fork-tailed, 122, 159; golden-crowned crested, 150; streaked, 196
frangipani, 85
frog, 211, 212, 240, 273; call, 240
gannets, 40
grass, bamboo, 183
grasshopper, 128, 212
grass-quits, 157
grass, razor, 179, 184
guide, for cutting trail, 187, 188
hanaquas, 119
hawks, 99
heliconias, 202; color, 204; Reds, 205; sleeping glade, 205, 206; sleeping position, 205; Yellows, 205
herons, Guiana green, 127; tri-colored, 88
hoatzins, 118, 119; call, 130; food of young, 126; home life, 123-139; nest, 126, 129; nestlings, 131; odor, 129; photographing young, 102, 103
honey creepers, 47, 252; turquoise, 201
hummingbirds, 38, 113, 197, 198, 199, 200
ibis, scarlet, 122
jackal, crab, 282
jaguar, 186
jungle, animals obtained from, 282; trail through, 89; yard of, 255
Kaburi trail, 148
Kalacoon, 142, 143
kingbirds, 47
kinkajous, 263, 281
kiskadees, 86, 104, 127, 157
kunama, 273; habits, 274
laboratory, wilderness, 141-153
lianas, 246
library, New Amsterdam, 105, 110
lichens, 196
lizards, in Barbados, 60; method of capture, 41-43; surrender of, 203; trail, 202
lucannani, 157
maam, 189
Mafolie, 38
Mahaica, 99
manakins, 249, 252; opal-crowned, 252
Martinique, 27-32, 49-54; market, 49-51
martins, 69, 79, 158
Mazaruni, 144, 148
millipede, 38, 214
mimicry, 257
mites, 259
Monkey Hill, 47
monkeys, 48; howling, 155-156
Mont Pelee, 27-32
moths, 256
mouse, 211
muckamucka, 125
New Amsterdam, 110, 124
nighthawk, call, 267; gathering, 267
noctiluca, 65
nuts, 75
opossum, 73, 74
orioles, black-throated, 88; yellow, nest of, 100
paca, 281
palms, cocoanut, 100
Pará, 241
parrakeets, 250
peas, butterfly, 182
perai, 90
phosphorescence, 20, 65
phosphorescent animals, method of capturing, 20, 21
pigeons, 48 pits, 201; number five, 211
Pomeroon, 89, 90
rain, tropical, 120, 121
rainbow, lunar, 58
roaches, wood, 277
Roosevelt, Colonel, 146-150
Roosevelt, Mrs., 147, 148
sandpiper, 47
sargasso weed, animals associated with, 18; fate of, 19; method of grappling, 13-16; origin, 16
scorpions, 152; pseudo, 259
sea-birds, 11 sea, color of, 24; swimming in, 45, 46
sea-horses, 18
second-growth, 180
seeds, 75
sharks, harmlessness of, 46
shrimps, 18
skimmers, 97
sloth, name of, 264
snails, 259
snake, 285; green, 72; water constrictor, 72
spiders, 259
spine-tail, 119
Station, Zoölogical, 141, 153; Tropical Research, 67
St. Eustatius, 44
St. Kitts, 44-49
St. Lucia, 54-59; coal-carriers, 55
St. Pierre, 30
St. Thomas, 35-44
Suddy, 70
swifts, Palm, 47, 159; collared, 159
tamarind tree, 38
tanagers, 201, 249, 252
tapir, 90
tarantula, 152
termites, 258; flight, 158; immunity from attack, 233
tinamou, 189; eggs, 189
toads, 161, 213
tody-flycatchers, 127
toucans, 250, 251
trail, Convict, 177-210; Pomeroon, 84-91
trees, silk cotton, 100; sentinel, 196; wild cinnamon, 241
trogons, 188
Trois Pitons, 58
tropic-bird, 37
trumpet tree, 182
warracabra tiger, 273
wasp, 63, 83
wharf, Dutch, 71
woodhewers, 249, 251
woodpeckers, 249, 251, 252
worm, inch, 229
wrens, 157, 250
Zoölogical Society, New York, 67
* * * * *
Modern Library of the World's Best Books
COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN
THE MODERN LIBRARY
_For convenience in ordering please use number at right of title_
AUTHOR TITLE AND NUMBER
AIKEN, CONRAD A Comprehensive Anthology of American Verse 101 AIKEN, CONRAD Modern American Poetry 127 ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Poor White 115 ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio 104 ANDREYEV, LEONID The Seven That Were Hanged, and the Red Laugh 45 APULEIUS, LUCIUS The Golden Ass 88
BALZAC Short Stories 40 BAUDELAIRE Prose and Poetry 70 BEARDSLEY, AUBREY 64 Reproductions 42 BEEBE, WILLIAM Jungle Peace 30 BEERBOHM, MAX Zuleika Dobson 116 BIERCE, AMBROSE In the Midst of Life 133 BLAKE, WILLIAM Poems 91 BRONTË, EMILY Wuthering Heights 106 BROWN, GEO. DOUGLAS The House with the Green Shutters 129 BUTLER, SAMUEL Erewhon 136 BUTLER, SAMUEL The Way of All Flesh 13
CABELL, JAMES BRANCH Beyond Life 25 CABELL, JAMES BRANCH The Cream of the Jest 126 CARPENTER, EDWARD Love's Coming of Age 51 CARROLL, LEWIS Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79 CASANOVA, JACQUES Memoirs of Casanova 165 CELLINI, BENVENUTO Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 3 CERVANTES Don Quixote 174 CHAUCER The Canterbury Tales 161 CHESTERTON, G. K. Man Who Was Thursday 35 CRANE, STEPHEN Men, Women and Boats 102
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE Flame of Life 65 D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE The Child of Pleasure 98 D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE The Triumph of Death 112 DAUDET, ALPHONSE Sappho 85 DEFOE, DANIEL Moll Flanders 122 DEWEY, JOHN Human Nature and Conduct 173 DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR The Brothers Karamazov 151 DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR Poor People 10 DOUGLAS, NORMAN Old Calabria 141 DOUGLAS, NORMAN South Wind 5 DOWSON, ERNEST Poems and Prose 74 DREISER, THEODORE Free, and Other Stories 50 DREISER, THEODORE Twelve Men 148 DUMAS, ALEXANDRE Camille 69 DUMAS, ALEXANDRE The Three Musketeers 143 DUNSANY, LORD A Dreamer's Tales 34 ELLIS, HAVELOCK The Dance of Life 160 ELLIS, HAVELOCK The New Spirit 95
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE Madame Bovary 28 FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE Salammbo 118 FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE Temptation of St. Anthony 92 FRANCE, ANATOLE Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 22 FRANCE, ANATOLE The Queen Pedauque 110 FRANCE, ANATOLE The Red Lily 7 FRANCE, ANATOLE The Revolt of the Angels 11 FRANCE, ANATOLE Thais 67
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE Mlle. De Maupin 53 GEORGE, W. L. A Bed of Roses 75 GILBERT, W. S. The Mikado, Iolanthe, etc. 26 GILBERT, W. S. Pinafore and Other Plays 113 GISSING, GEORGE New Grub Street 125 GISSING, GEORGE Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 46 GONCOURT, E. AND J. DE Renee Mauperin 76 GORKY, MAXIM Creatures That Once Were Men and Other Stories 48 GOURMONT, REMY DE A Night in the Luxembourg 120 GOURMONT, REMY DE A Virgin Heart 131
HARDY, THOMAS Jude the Obscure 135 HARDY, THOMAS The Mayor of Casterbridge 17 HARDY, THOMAS The Return of the Native 121 HAUPTMANN, GERHART The Heretic of Soana 149 HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL The Scarlet Letter 93 HEARN, LAFCADIO Some Chinese Ghosts 130 HECHT, BEN Erik Dorn 29 HEMINGWAY, ERNEST The Sun Also Rises 170 HOMER The Iliad 166 HOMER The Odyssey 167 HUDSON, W. H. Green Mansions 89 HUDSON, W. H. The Purple Land 24 HUNEKER, JAMES G. Painted Veils 43 HUXLEY, ALDOUS A Virgin Heart 131
IBSEN, HENRIK A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6 IBSEN, HENRIK Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society, The Master Builder 36 IBSEN, HENRIK The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The League of Youth 54
JAMES, HENRY Daisy Miller, etc. 63 JAMES, HENRY The Turn of the Screw 169 JAMES, WILLIAM The Philosophy of William James 114 JOYCE, JAMES Dubliners 124 JOYCE, JAMES A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 145
KIPLING, RUDYARD Soldiers Three 71 KOMROFF, MANUEL Oriental Romances 55
LAWRENCE, D. H. The Rainbow 128 LAWRENCE, D. H. Sons and Lovers 109 LEWISOHN, LUDWIG Upstream 123 LOTI, PIERRE Mme. Chrysantheme 94
MACY, JOHN The Spirit of American Literature 56 MAUPASSANT, GUY DE Love and Other Stories 72 MAUPASSANT, GUY DE Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories 8 MAUPASSANT, GUY DE Une Vie 57 MENKEN, H. L. Selected Prejudices 107 MELVILLE, HERMAN Moby Dick 119 MEREDITH, GEORGE Diana of the Crossways 14 MEREDITH, GEORGE The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134 MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI The Death of the Gods 153 MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI Peter and Alexis 175 MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 138 MISCELLANEOUS An Anthology of American Negro Literature 163 A Modern Book of Criticism 81 Best Ghost Stories 73 Best American Humorous Short Stories 87 Best Russian Short Stories 18 Four Famous Greek Plays 158 Fourteen Great Detective Stories 144 Great Modern Short Stories 168 Edited by Grant Overton and including stories by Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Sherwood Anderson, Glenway Westcott, E. M. Forster, etc. Outline of Abnormal Psychology 152 Outline of Psychoanalysis 66 MOLIERE Plays 78 MOORE, GEORGE Confessions of a Young Man 16 MORRISON, ARTHUR Tales of Mean Streets 100 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Beyond Good and Evil 20 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy 68 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Genealogy of Morals 62 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Thus Spake Zarathustra 9