Part 5

The tide had reached full ebb and the sun was low when I started back, and now I found a new beach many feet farther out and down. Still no shells, but a wonderful assortment of substitutes in the shape of a host of nuts and seeds--flotsam and jetsam from far up-river, like the snake and ants and opossum. There were spheres and kidney-shapes, half-circles and crescents, heads of little old men and pods like scimitars, and others like boomerangs. Some were dull, others polished and varnished. They were red and green, brown and pink and mauve, and a few gorgeous ones shaded from salmon into the most brilliant orange and yellow. Most were as lifeless in appearance as empty shells, but there were many with the tiny root and natal leaves sprouting hopefully through a chink. And just to be consistent, I chose one out of the many thousands piled in windrows and carried it high up on the shore, where I carefully planted it. It was a nut unknown to me at the time, but later I knew that I had started one of the greatest of the jungle trees on its way to success.

Ahead of me two boys dashed out of the underbrush and rushed into the waves. After swimming a few strokes they reached a great log and, heading it inward, swam it ashore and tied a rope to it. Here was a profession which appealed to me, and which indeed I had already entered upon, although the copper-skinned coolie boys did not recognize me as one of their guild. And small blame to them, for I was an idler who had labored and salvaged a perfectly good opossum and the scion of a mighty _mora_ for naught. Here I was, no richer for my walk, and with only damp clothing to show for my pains. Yet we grinned cheerfully at each other as I went by, and they patted their log affectionately as they moored it fast.

Dusk was not far away when I reached Colony House and the Lawyer and I fared forth to seek a suit of pajamas. For the orderly had with him both luxuries and necessities, and so we went shopping. I may say at once that we failed completely in our quest, but, as is usually the case in the tropics, we were abundantly compensated.

We visited emporiums to the number of three,--all that the village could boast,--and the stare of the three Chinawomen was uniformly blank. They could be made in three days, or one could send to Georgetown for most excellent ones; we could not make clear the pressure of our need. The Lawyer grumbled, but the afterglow was too marvelous for anything to matter for long. Indeed, things--wonderful and strange, pathetic and amusing--were so numerous and so needful of all our faculties, that at one time my mind blurred like an over-talked telephone wire. My enthusiasm bubbled over and the good-natured Lawyer enjoyed them as I did.

Here were two among the many. There was the matter of the poor coolie woman who had injured a leg and who, misunderstanding some hastily given order, had left the hospital and was attempting to creep homeward, using hands and arms for crutches. Her husband was very small and very patient and he had not the strength to help her, although now and then he made an awkward attempt. While we sent for help, I asked questions, and in half-broken English I found that they lived six miles away. I had passed them early in the afternoon on the way to the beach, and in the intervening four hours they had progressed just about two hundred feet! This was patience with a vengeance, and worthy of compute. So, astronomer-like, I took notebook and pencil and began to estimate the time of their orbit. It was not an easy matter, for mathematics is to me the least of earth's mercies--and besides, I was not certain how many feet there were in a mile. By saying it over rapidly I at last convinced myself that it was "fivethousantwohunderaneighty."

I gasped when I finished, and repeated my questions. And again came the answers: "Yes, sahib, we go home. Yes, sahib, we live Aurora. Yes, sahib, we go like this ver' slow. No, sahib, have no food." And as he said the last sentence, a few drops of rain fell and he instantly spread his body-cloth out and held it over the sick woman. My mind instinctively went back to the mother opossum and her young. The coolie woman ceaselessly murmured in her native tongue and looked steadily ahead with patient eyes. Always she fumbled with her dusty fingers for a spot to grip and shuffle ahead a few inches.

Two hundred feet in four hours! And six full miles to the coolie quarters! This was on the fourteenth of a month. If my calculation was correct they would reach home on the tenth of the following month, in three weeks and five days. Truly oriental, if not, indeed, elemental patience! This planet-like journey was deviated from its path by a hospital stretcher and a swift return over the four-hour course, although this cosmic disturbance aroused comment from neither the man nor his wife. I checked off another helpless being salvaged from the stream of ignorance.

From serio-comic tragedy the village street led us to pure comedy. At the roadside we discovered a tiny white flag, and beneath it a bit of worn and grimy cloth stretched between a frame of wood. This was a poster announcing the impending performance of one "Profesor Rabintrapore," who, the painfully inked-in printing went on to relate, "craled from ankoffs" and "esskaped from cofens," and, besides, dealt with "spirits INvisibal." The professor's system of spelling would have warmed the heart of our modern schoolteachers, but his séances did not seem to be tempting many shekels from the pockets of coolie spiritualists.

After tea at the Colony House, I leaned out of my window and watched the moonlight gather power and slowly usurp the place of the sun. Then, like the succession of light, there followed sound: the last sleepy twitter came from the martin's nest under the eaves, and was sustained and deepened until it changed to the reverberating bass rumble of a great nocturnal frog.

In the moonlight the road lay white, though I knew in the warm sun it was a rich, foxy red. It vanished beyond some huts, and I wondered whither it went and remembered that tomorrow I should learn for certain. Then a ghostly goatsucker called eerily, "Who-are-you?" and the next sound for me was the summons to early coffee.

During the morning the missing orderly arrived, and with him the wig and gown and the ham. And now the matter of Ram Narine became pressing, and my friends Lawyer and Judge became less human and increasingly legal. I attended court and was accorded the honor of a chair between a bewigged official and the Inspector of Police, the latter resplendent in starched duck, gold lace, spiked helmet, and sword. Being a mere scientist and wholly ignorant of legal matters, I am quite like my fellow human beings and associate fear with my ignorance. So under the curious eyes of the black and Indian witnesses and other attendants, I had all the weaving little spinal thrills which one must experience on being, or being about to be, a criminal. There was I betwixt law and police, and quite ready to believe that I had committed something or other, with malicious or related intent.

But my thoughts were soon given another turn as a loud rapping summoned us to our feet at the entrance of the Judge. A few minutes before, we had been joking together and companionably messing our fingers with oranges upstairs. Now I gazed in awe at this impassive being in wig and scarlet vestments, whose mere entrance had brought us to our feet as if by religious or royal command. I shuddered at my memory of intimacies, and felt quite certain we could never again sit down at table as equals. When we had resumed our seats there was a stir at the opposite end of the courtroom, and a half-dozen gigantic black policemen entered, and with them a little, calm-faced, womanly man--Ram Narine, the wielder of the club and the rock. He ascended to the fenced-in prisoners' dock, looking, amid all his superstrong barriers to freedom, ridiculously small and inoffensive, like a very small puppy tethered with a cable. He gazed quietly down at the various ominous exhibits. A and B were the club and the rock, with their glued labels reminding one of museum specimens. Exhibit C was a rum-bottle--an empty one. Perhaps if it had been full, some flash of interest might have crossed Ram's face. Then weighty legal phrases and accusations passed, and the Judge's voice was raised, sonorous and impressive, and I felt that nothing but memory remained of that jovial personality which I had known so recently.

The proceeding which impressed me most was the uncanny skill of the official interpreter, who seemed almost to anticipate the words of the Judge or the Clerk. And, too, he gestured and shook his finger at the prisoner at the appropriate places, though he had his back fairly to the Judge and so could have had none but verbal clues. Ram Narine, it seems, was indicted on four counts, among which I could distinguish only that he was accused of maltreating his friend with intent to kill, and this in soft Hindustani tones he gently denied. Finally, that he had at least done the damage to his friend's face and very nearly killed him. To this he acquiesced, and the Court, as the Judge called himself, would now proceed to pass sentence. I was relieved to hear him thus re-name himself, for it seemed as if he too realized his changed personality.

And now the flow of legal reiteration and alliteration ceased for a moment, and I listened to the buzzing of a _marabunta_ wasp and the warbling of a blue tanager among the fronds. For a moment, in the warm sunshine, the hot, woolly wigs and the starched coats and the shining scabbard seemed out of place. One felt all the discomfort of the tight boots and stiff collars, and a glance at Ram Narine showed his slim figure clothed in the looped, soft linen of his race. And he seemed the only wholly normal tropic thing there--he and the wasp and the tanager and the drooping motionless palm shading the window. In comparison, all else seemed almost Arctic, unacclimatized.

Then the deep tones of the Court rose, and in more simple verbiage,--almost crude and quite unlegal to my ears,--we heard Ram Narine sentenced to twelve months' hard labor. And the final words of the interpreter left Ram's face as unconcerned and emotionless as that of the Buddhas in the Burmese pagodas. And the simile recurred again and again after it was all over. So Ram and I parted, to meet again a few weeks later under strangely different conditions.

Robes and wigs and other legal properties were thrown aside, and once more we were all genial friends in the little automobile, with no trace of the terribly formal side of justice and right. The red Pomeroon road slipped past, and I, for one, wished for a dozen eyes and a score of memories to record the unrolling of that road. It was baffling in its interest.

The first ten or twenty miles consisted of huge sugar estates, recently awakened to feverish activity by the war prices of this commodity. Golden Fleece, Taymouth Manor, Capoey, Move Success, Anna Regina, Hampton Court--all old names long famous in the history of the colony. In many other districts the Dutch have left not only a heritage of names, such as Vreeden-Hoop and Kyk-over-al, but the memory of a grim sense of humor, as in the case of three estates lying one beyond the other, which the owners named in turn, Trouble, More Trouble, and Most Trouble. Unlike our southern plantations, the workers' quarters are along the road, with the big house of the manager well back, often quite concealed. The coolies usually live in long, communal, barrack-like structures, the negroes in half-open huts.

This first part of the Pomeroon road was one long ribbon of variegated color: Hundreds of tiny huts, with picturesque groups of coolies and negroes and a smaller number of Chinese, all the huts dilapidated, some leaning over, others so perforated that they looked like the ruins of European farmhouses after being shelled. Patched, propped up, tied together, it was difficult to believe that they were habitable. All were embowered in masses of color and shadowed by the graceful curves of cocoanut palms and bananas. The sheets of bougainvillea blossoms, of yellow allamandas, and the white frangipani temple flowers of the East, brought joy to the eye and the nostril; the scarlet lilies growing rank as weeds--all these emphasized the ruinous character of the huts. Along the front ran a trench, doubling all the glorious color in reflection, except where it was filled with lotus blossoms and Victoria regia.

As we passed swiftly, the natives rushed out on the shaky board-and-log bridges, staring in wonder, the women with babies astride of their hips, the copper-skinned children now and then tumbling into the water in their excitement. The yellows and reds and greens of the coolies added another color-note. Everything seemed a riot of brilliant pigment. Against the blue sky great orange-headed vultures balanced and volplaned; yellow-gold kiskadees shrieked blatantly, and, silhouetted against the green fronds, smote both eye and ear.

We were among the first to pass the road in an automobile. Awkward, big-wheeled carts, drawn by the tiniest of burros and heaped high with wood, were the only other vehicles. For the rest, the road was a Noah's Ark, studded with all the domestic animals of the world: pigs, calves, horses, burros, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and hordes of gaunt, pariah curs. Drive as carefully as we might, we left behind a succession of defunct dogs and fowls. For the other species, especially those of respectable size, we slowed down, more for our sake than theirs. Calves were the least intelligent, and would run ahead of us, gazing fearfully back, first over one, then the other shoulder, until from fatigue they leaped into the wayside ditch. The natives themselves barely moved aside, and why we did not topple over more of the great head-carried loads I do not know. We left behind us a world of scared coolies and gaping children.

The road was excellent, but it twisted and turned bewilderingly. It was always the same rich red hue--made of earth-clinker burned under sods. Preparing this seemed a frequent occupation of the natives, and the wood piles on the carts melted away in the charcoal-like fires of these subterranean furnaces. Here and there tiny red flags fluttered from tall bamboo poles, reminiscent of the evil-spirit flags in India and Burma. But with the transportation across the sea of these oriental customs certain improvements had entered in,--adaptations to the gods of ill of this new world. So the huts in course of alteration, and the new ones being erected, were guarded, not only by the fluttering and the color, but by a weird little figure of a dragon demon himself drawn on the cloth, a quite unoriental visualizing of the dreaded one.

As we flew along, we gradually left the villages of huts behind. Single thatched houses were separated by expanses of rice-fields, green rectangles framed in sepia mud walls, picked out here and there by intensely white and intensely Japanesque egrets. Great black muscovy ducks spattered up from amber pools, and tri-colored herons stood like detached shadows of birds, mere cardboard figures, so attenuated that they appeared to exist in only two planes of space.

The rice-fields gave place to pastures and these to marshes; thin lines of grass trisected the red road--the first hint of the passing of the road and the coming of the trail. Rough places became more frequent. Then came shrub, and an occasional branch whipped our faces. Black cuckoos or old witch-birds flew up like disheveled grackles; cotton-birds flashed by, and black-throated orioles glowed among the foliage. Carrion crows and laughing falcons watched us from nearby perches, and our chauffeur went into second gear.

Now and then some strange human being passed,--man or woman, we could hardly tell which,--clad in rags which flapped in the breeze, long hair waving, leaning unsteadily on a staff, like a perambulating scarecrow. The eyes, fixed ahead, were fastened on things other than those of this world, so detached that their first sight of an automobile aroused them not at all. The gulf between the thoughts of these creatures and the world today was too deep to be bridged by any transient curiosity or fear. They trudged onward without a glance, and we steered aside to let them pass.

The grass between the ruts now brushed the body of the car; even the wild people passed no more, and the huts vanished utterly. Forest palms appeared, then taller brush, and trees in the distance. Finally, the last three miles became a scar through the heart of the primeval jungle, open under the lofty sky of foliage, the great buttresses of the trunks exposed for the first time to the full glare of day. The trail was raw with all the snags and concealed roots with which the jungle likes to block entrance to its privacy; and, rocking and pitching like a ship in the waves, we drew up to a woodpile directly in our path. Standing up in our seats, we could see, just beyond it, the dark flood of the Pomeroon surging slowly down to the sea. Seven years ago I had passed this way en route from Morawhanna, paddled by six Indians. _Maintenant ce n'est qu'une mémoire._

For centuries the woodskins of the Indians had passed up and down and left no trace. Only by this tidal road could one reach the mouth of tributaries. And now the sacred isolation of this great tropical river was forever gone. The tiny scar along which we had bumped marked the permanent coming of man. And his grip would never relax. Already capillaries were spreading through the wilderness tissues. Across the river from our woodpile were two tiny Portuguese houses--those petty pioneers of today whose forefathers were worldwide explorers. Around us, scarcely separable from the bush, was the coffee plantation of one Señor Serrao. He and his mother greeted us, and with beaming courtesy we were led to their wattled hut, where a timid sister gave us grapefruit. I talked with him of his work and of the passing of the animals of the surrounding forest. Tapir were still common, and the wild pigs and deer waged war on his vegetables. Then a swirl drew our eyes to the brown flood and he said, "Perai."

And this was the end of the tropical trail which had started out as a road, with its beginning, for me, in the matter of Ram Narine. Along its route we had passed civilization as men know it here, and had seen it gradually fray out into single aged outcasts, brooding on thoughts rooted and hidden in the mystery of the Far East. From the water and the jungle the trail had vouchsafed us glimpses and whispers of the wild creatures of this great continent, of the web of whose lives we hoped to unravel a few strands. The end of the trail was barred with the closed toll-gate of memory.

V

A HUNT FOR HOATZINS

Lines of gray, plunging tropic rain slanted across the whole world. Outward-curving waves of red mud lost themselves in the steady downpour beyond the guards on the motor-car of the Inspector of Police. It is surprising to think how many times and in what a multitude of places I have been indebted to inspectors of police. In New York the average visitor would never think of meeting that official except under extraordinary and perhaps compromising circumstances; but in tropical British possessions the head of the police combines with his requisite large quantity of gold lace and tact a delightful way of placing visitors, and especially those of serious scientific intent, under considerable obligation. So my present Inspector of Police, at an official banquet the preceding evening, had insisted that I travel along the seafront of Guiana--betwixt muddy salt water and cane-fields--in his car. But an inspector of police is not necessarily a weather prophet, and now the close-drawn curtains forbade any view, so it was decided that I tranship to the single daily train.

Three times I had to pass the ticket-collector at the station to see after my luggage, and three times a large clover-leaf was punched out of my exceedingly small bit of pasteboard. A can of formaline still eluded me, but I looked dubiously at my limp trey of clubs. Like a soggy gingersnap, it drooped with its own weight, and the chances seemed about even whether another trip past the hopelessly conscientious coolie gate-man would find me with a totally dismembered ticket or an asymmetrical four of clubs of lace-like consistency. I forebore, and walking to the end of the platform, looked out at a long line of feathery cocoanut palms, pasteled by the intervening rain. They were silhouetted in a station aperture of corrugated iron, of all building materials the most hideous; but the aperture was of that most graceful of all shapes, a Moorish arch.

Neither my color nor my caste, in this ultra-democratic country, forced me to travel first-class, but that necessary, unwritten distinction, felt so keenly wherever there is a mingling of race, compelled me to step into a deserted car upholstered in soiled dusty blue. I regretted that I must "save my face," as a Chinaman would say, and not sit on the greasy bare boards of the second-class coach, where fascinating coolie persons sat, squatting on the seats with their heads mixed up with their knees. Desire, prompted by interest and curiosity, drew me to them, and frequently I got up and walked past, listening to the subdued clink of silver bracelets and anklets, and sniffing the wisps of ghee and curry and hemp which drifted out. Nose-rings flashed, and in the dim station light I caught faint gleams of pastel scarves--sea-green and rose. I longed for Kim's disguise, but I knew that before many stations were passed the concentration of mingled odors would have driven me back to my solitude. Perhaps the chief joy of it all lay in the vignettes of memory which it aroused: that unbelievable hot midnight at Agra; the glimpse of sheer Paradise in a sunrise on the slopes of Kinchinjunga; the odors of a caravan headed for the Khyber Pass.

When I returned to my coach I found I was to have company. A stout--no, exceedingly fat--bespectacled gentleman, with pigment of ebony, and arrayed in full evening dress and high hat, was guarding a small dilapidated suitcase, and glaring at him across the aisle was a man of chocolate hue, with the straight black hair of the East Indian and the high cheekbones and slanting eyes of the Mongolian. His dress was a black suit of heavy Scotch plaid, waistcoat and all, with diamonds and loud tie, and a monocle which he did not attempt to use. Far off in the distant corner lounged a bronzed planter in comfortable muddy clothes. But we three upheld the prestige of the west end of the carriage.

Soon, impelled by the great heat, I removed my coat and was looked at askance; but I was the only comfortable one of the three. With the planter I should have liked to converse, but with those who sat near I held no communication. I could think of them only as insincere imitators of customs wholly unadapted to their present lives and country. I could have respected them so much more if they had clad themselves in cool white duck. I hold that a man is not worth knowing who will endure excessive tropical heat, perspiring at every pore, because his pride demands a waistcoat and coat of thickest woolen material, which would have been comfortable in a blizzard. So I went out again to look at the coolies with their honest garb of draped linen, and they seemed more sincere and worthy of acquaintance.