Part 10

“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.

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!_”