Part 7

“I led him along the angle of the wall until we came to the casemates where the sentry had said that the prisoners were confined, and then, as we paused before the first of these, the utter stillness was again broken by a paroxysm of coughing; and this time, although no less violent than before, it struck me that there was in it an accent of exhaustion—an extreme exhaustion as of muscles too fatigued to respond even to a reflex.

“‘_Sacré!_’ growled Rosenthal, and gripped my arm. ‘Do you hear that? It is the little Jacob.’ He flew to the door of the casemate; the port on the other side opened on the sea, and was, of course, heavily barred. Rosenthal smote the heavy door several times with the ball of his hand.

“‘Jacob!’ he called, softly. ‘Jacob, Jacob, my dear little Jacob!’ He leaped back and raised his pick; it seemed as if the sounds of his sick brother’s distress had robbed him of his senses.

“I seized the pick, and he whirled on me with a snarl. Indeed, Doctor, the Jew was like a tigress who hears the wail of a captured cub.

“‘Idiot!’ I whispered, ‘do you want to rouse the garrison?’

“‘Listen!’ said he, and raised his hand suddenly. I listened, and in a lull of the surf there reached our ears a series of pathetic sounds. You know the sound, Doctor; the feeble strangling of a pulmonary patient when too weak to cough, something between a cough and a rattle—and then it suddenly ceased and there came to our ears, in a voice as thin as a wafer’s edge: ‘_Isidore!_’

“And then Rosenthal went mad. He knew, we both knew, that Jacob was dying; there was no mistaking that. It would be a matter of at least two hours’ hard work to liberate him without noise, and we both felt that by that time he would be already liberated; and Rosenthal, the Jew, whose habit and training and every instinct was that of weighing cost and gain, decided that he could not afford to wait, garrison or no garrison. Apparently life held nothing which could compensate him for the privilege of holding his crippled brother in his powerful arms while the struggling soul was fighting its way to the God of his fathers. Before I could interfere—and, indeed, I did not try very hard to interfere, Doctor, for was I not paid to carry out the man’s orders?—he had raised the pick and assailed the heavy door with a fury that filled the silent fortress with thundering reverberations.

“Lights began to flash out in the barracks; at a distance a sentry fired his piece for an alarm. I heard shouts and cries and orders, and through it all Rosenthal, the Jew, stood and hewed away at the door, till all at once, even as I saw a squad of men running toward us, it fell away, and Rosenthal, throwing aside his pick, leaped into the casemate, and from the blackness within I heard a fierce sob as he gathered his dying brother to his breast.

“For me there was no time for sentiment. As the first group of soldiers drew near there arose from the landward side a strident blast. I recognized the whistle of the Dutch steamer, which was going out. In sight of the soldiers I sprang to the open door of the casemate, peered within, then rushed to meet them.

“‘Some prisoners have escaped!’ I howled. ‘See, the door of the casemate has been torn away! Did you not hear the noise, sluggards? Look!’ I pointed toward the town, where, above the farther wall, we could see the masthead light of the steamer. ‘They have fled to the _Hollandez_!’

“The cry was taken up: ‘They have fled to the _Hollandez!_’ and the soldiers, with a glance at the dark entrance of the casemate, turned and made off toward the main gate. On the way they met the _commandante_, who, hearing their cries, rushed to the jetty and bawled at the steamer to stop.

“The place was deserted again and I softly entered the dungeon. I could see nothing in the gloom, but from the shadow I heard a deep, choking voice say: ‘_Jacob! Jacob! Ach, mein lieber Jacob! Mein kleiner, lieber Jacob!_’

“‘_Isidore—mein bruder—Isidore!_’ came the thin answer, and then there was a gurgle, a strangling cough, a sigh as of a soul exhausted, a body spent with vain struggling, and yet a sigh filled with promise of an infinite peace. I heard a rustling, such a sound as comes from a tired child as its head falls back upon its mother’s breast. There was the sound of a multitude of kisses, a choked sob—then silence, which endured for many minutes.

“‘Come, my friend,’ I said, softly. ‘We must go, if you wish to take Jacob away.’

“I led the way and Rosenthal followed me out into the night, bearing the body of his brother in his arms, his broad chest shaken with sobs. We scaled the wall, called softly and a moment later our Curaçao men pulled the boat alongside.”

Leyden paused, relit his pipe, puffed a few times in silence.

“They overran that Dutch steamer like cockroaches,” he continued, with a chuckle, “and for a while the government seriously considered withdrawing the privileges of their ports to the line. Ultimately it was decided to let them off with a reprimand, because, you see, the steamers were the only opportunity the port officials had of getting their weekly allowance of spirits for nothing.

“Rosenthal? We made the run back to Curaçao in thirty-six hours, because, you see, the trade always blows the same way. The day we arrived Rosenthal paid me fifteen hundred dollars, the price agreed for the rescue of his brother.

“‘It is too much,’ said I, ‘especially as we did not liberate the other prisoners.’

“‘It was the price agreed,’ he said, ‘but if you say so I will take off ten per cent. for cash.’

“‘Even then it is too much. There were the jewels which you gave to Trocas——’

“Rosenthal chuckled. ‘They were imitations,’ said he. ‘I got them in New York. Those I left with little Jacob were also imitations. I knew my little brother’s weaknesses,’ he added, and the tears gushed out of his eyes.”

TWO SAVAGES

“WE must really turn over a new leaf, Doctor,” said my shipmate, Dr. Leyden, the collector of natural rarities. “Our tales have been growing more and more gruesome each night, until mere murder has quite lost its pungency! To-night I will tell you a different sort of story—a love story, from the view-point of the primitive; a funny story as well—although it would be hard to say whether the humor belong to the Stone Age or some age still to come.

“I was telling you last night about the expedition into Borneo for the heads; this was immediately after. When we reached the sea I was in a very bad way—running a steady, low fever, with diurnal rises, when I would become quite delirious, and the region about my spleen was so tender that it pained me to breathe. My companion and his charge departed immediately by a vessel which was sailing for Sarawak, but I waited for a few days and then sailed by a schooner for Sulu, as this was a shorter voyage, and I wanted medical attendance as soon as I could get it.

“This was before your war, Doctor, when nine out of ten Americans would have told you that if Sulu was not in South Africa it must be somewhere in the West Indies. You know Jolo, the pretty little toy city, with its mediæval walls, where the sleepy Spanish sentries drowsed on the ramparts and gaped down into the immured market-place, ogling the pretty Mestiza girls, when they should have been keeping watch to see that none of the Moro gentry went _jementado_ and proceeded to reduce the Christian census. It is the freshest place in the archipelago and the coolest, although so near the equator, for the trades sweep right across the little island and blow the most of the time.

“You remember the Englishmen who were doing so well with the pearls? A temporary manager of theirs proved to be an old acquaintance of mine—a harum-scarum sort of chap, undoubtedly well-born, unquestionably badly behaved, handsome, vicious, kind-hearted when the notion took him, at other times as rough as a Liverpool navvy. I always suspected his escutcheon of bearing the baton sinister.

“Stewart was his name. I had known him in the Marquesas, where he had been the agent of an Australian firm. He asked me to his house, and I was glad to accept, for I liked the scamp, in spite of his wickedness, and, besides, I was in no condition to be left to the tender mercies of native inn-keepers.

“Stewart used to swear like a trooper when one of my chills would shake the whole of the little basket-house and disturb his siesta; then up he would get, clad only in the lower half of his pajamas, and rough the servants about and work over me as if he loved me. _Ach!_ how it seems like yesterday that I have seen him, naked to the waist, leaning over me, with his hands full of hot-water bottles, and his mouth full of blasphemies when one of them burned his fingers, the great muscles rippling the fresh skin of his arms as he moved me in the bed and his fierce, handsome face, with its deep lines of hard living, puckered in doubt—one could see the two natures fighting it out within him.

“The officers of the little garrison gave him a wide berth; they were afraid of him. In fact, about everybody in the place was afraid of him, from the Governor-General down to his own native women, of whom he had an interesting collection. He was a sort of blond devil. I am sure that I do not know why he so befriended me, unless it was because it was pleasant to find some one who was _not_ afraid of him.

“I had begun to get about a little, but was still an invalid, when there arrived in the port the auxiliary yacht of the Count Asquin. I was admiring the vessel from our little balcony, when Stewart came up and suggested that we go out aboard her. At first I declined, as the people were not known to us, nor we to them.

“‘What’s the odds!’ said he. ‘Perfectly good form in a hole like this. They’ve come purposely to see the place and people. They’re our guests, by Gad!’

“There was something in this, so I agreed and we put off. I am rather diffident, Doctor, but I knew that Stewart would carry the thing off with his usual blunt, reckless, high-bred ease; there was so much style to the fellow, and he looked so fresh and well-groomed and aristocratic, and altogether the gentleman, which in so very many ways he was not. There was a strong ranginess about him which suggested the university athlete; the curly, crisp, yellow hair, the close-cropped mustache and the fresh but weather-beaten skin, all marked him for a thoroughbred. If he had got drunk every night of the week and slept in all his clothes he could have got up in the morning and given himself a shake and looked the same. The secret lay in good blood somewhere—the close set of his small, well-shaped ears and the poise of his small head on his broad shoulders. _Ach!_ If his behavior had only been as fine as his appearance——

“As we pulled alongside we saw a lady and a gentleman under the after awning, but they did not rise. There was a burly Breton quartermaster at the gangway, and he saluted and called a natty steward to take our cards. A moment later the owner came to greet us, and we observed that he was a man past middle age, gray, sallow, delicate, but distinguished in face and carriage. He regarded us for a moment in polite inquiry; then, divining that the call was purely social, courteously invited us aboard.

“‘Hope we’re not intruding,’ said Stewart, as he stepped on the deck, ‘but we exiles are so keen for news from the outer world; besides, it’s no end of a treat to see new faces, and if you’re going to stop any length of time perhaps we may be of service. I’m Stewart; this is Dr. Leyden.’

“Our host bowed his acknowledgment. ‘I am the Count Asquin,’ he said. I had already observed that the schooner was under the French flag. Stewart was staring at the woman under the awning; the Count was scrutinizing Stewart. I murmured acknowledgments and took a mental photograph of the Count. ‘A French nobleman,’ I thought. ‘An invalid who does best at sea; asthma possibly; a student, erudite, polished—a philosopher, and withal a man of heart.’ Physically he seemed a wreck, but one saw at a glance that a high vitality had been consumed in his body and conserved in his brain. His eyes were very large, very lustrous, of the reddish-brown which told of sentiment, of mind—the eyes of a poet. There was kindness in the large nose and the full-lipped mouth was sensual, but neither weak nor selfish; pleasure-loving, but wishful to share with others. He wore a grizzled mustache and imperial, which gave a bizarre mask of the martial to a face which clearly could not have countenanced the killing of a mouse. It was a pleasant face—the face of a man with more friends than admirers.

“Stewart was still staring at the woman under the awning with that bold, British stare which would be insulting were it not so primitive—the stare of a savage, inquiring only, and utterly lacking in the volume of suggestion which makes the stare of the Latin so insupportable.

“The Count, satisfied with his scrutiny, invited us aft, and as he glanced from Stewart to me I thought that I caught a flicker of amusement in his lustrous eyes. I also had obtained a glance at the lady. She was evidently young and more than evidently lovely; quite young enough for a daughter and far too lovely for the wife of this burned-out elderly invalid.

“‘Will you come aft, messieurs?’ said the Count. ‘Doctor, it is evident that you have been ill; permit me to offer you a _chaise-longue_ here in the breeze.’ He led the way, and as we drew near the lady I saw that I had done her injustice. She was more than lovely; she was positively radiant with a beauty of the most alluring type in a land where every one is weary and relaxed; glowing with youth and health and high vitality, she was as fresh in that sodden clime as a clear wind from the north—and yet, there was something beside, something less clear, more earthy, a lavishness of charm and form and feature; her type suggested a creature bred for the slave mart. It was evident that she was an American; the women of no other race possess that peculiar blending of subtlety, ignorance and audacity. ‘A Californian,’ thought I; ‘a survival of the fittest New England stock transplanted from a climate where only the very fit _do_ survive to a country whose finest crop is babies.’

“I glanced at the Count, the lax, yellow tissues of whom suggested a squeezed orange, and when he introduced us to her as his wife I almost laughed. _His wife!_ The conceit of the term, Doctor; he in whose eyes one could see the after-glow of extinguished flames. And yet—her fate might be far worse. One saw with what care he fostered the orchids hanging from the awning ridge-rope; beautiful, interesting, a care, a treat for the eye, costly epiphytes requiring support. Ah, Doctor, youth cannot appreciate the higher motives which inspire age with its craving for beauty.

“The Countess murmured a few words, and I judged her neither well-born nor clever. You know, Doctor, there are in nature certain freaks of superabundant beauty just as there are freaks of deformity, and she was one of these. There was not much else; planted with powerful instincts to take the place of mind, as in the lower animals; fairly well educated in a machine-made, American way—‘advanced,’ very possibly, but as savage as if she roamed the Carpathian scarp clad only in her abundant hair, which no doubt she would have very much enjoyed.

“She offered us her hand after the manner of ‘the Slope,’ and as Stewart took it in his I saw the blood surge up beneath his yellow, tropic tan; his pale eyes shone like those of a gull, and one could see the deep chest swell suddenly as he caught his breath. Consider the nature of the man, Doctor—more animal than a well-bred dog, who, after all, has many elevated traits, whereas Stewart’s were mostly low—and the fact that he had not seen a fair woman for months.

“The deep blue eyes of the Countess were fixed upon Stewart with a sort of startled wonder; no doubt the contrasts of the man’s crushing masculinity with the colorless shell of her husband’s sex may have struck her as a positive shock. There was almost a physical weight in the impulse which he projected toward her. One saw that she took it with a little shudder—as an hereditary drunkard might gulp his first glass of spirits.

He stood holding her hand and saying what was necessary, and while he was saying it his light, wicked eyes were devouring her. The thing was so outrageous that I could not help glancing at the Count, and at the same moment his soft, dark eyes met mine, and, to my amazement, he actually smiled! He saw the thing as I saw it; no one could have seen it differently; in fact, there was a sort of mutual understanding in his smile, but nothing unkindly.

“The Countess was quick to recover her poise; not through breeding nor modesty, but from sheer combativeness. She seemed suddenly to realize—and I have no doubt that it struck her as quite a new idea—that a man could be too familiar with his eyes alone. There was plenty of fight in her, as one could see from the flash of her dark blue eyes and the rounded squareness of her jaw. She promptly assumed so great an air of chilly condescension that Stewart stared again and then began to grin. He was a good talker, however, in his rough, staccato way, and soon I saw that she was beginning to forget about herself and think about him.

“‘You have been ill, Doctor?’ said the Count to me. ‘Myself, I am also in feeble health—asthma, with a uric acid diathesis and a bad leak in the mitral valve. Hence the sea, the tropics, a sedentary life. By nature I am active, and I find it less difficult to remain quiet where there is abundant passive motion, as aboard a vessel.’

“I explained to him the nature of my own illness and my reason for coming to Sulu.

“‘_I_ came to rest in smooth waters,’ he replied. ‘It is a charming island.’ We talked of other things and soon discovered many mutual friends. When at last we left, at my insistence, the Countess, at the suggestion of her husband, invited us to dine the following night.

“Stewart was silent on the way in—moody, taciturn, tugging at his crisp mustache. As we entered the house he burst out:

“‘Did you ever see a more beautiful woman, Leyden? Jove, what hair! what a figure!’

“‘I find the husband more interesting,’ said I. ‘Any white woman would be beautiful if one stood her up against the shadow of the equator.’

“He grunted like a peccary. ‘Her husband?—her proprietor!—it’s gross flattery to speak of that wreck as her husband. What right has a cadaver like that to a wife? A widow would be a jolly lot more becoming. What’s he got to hold her with?’

“‘A yacht, a title, a good mind and a wedding ring,’ said I.

“‘Might hold some women,’ he growled; ‘can’t hold that one,’ and he took himself off to bed.

“We went aboard the yacht the following night, and I do not think that I have ever spent a more disagreeable social evening. The Countess was glorious in the most daring of black décolleté gowns. Her great blue eyes were gleaming like sapphires, and her hair put one in mind of the burnished copper one sees when the schooner heels to the trade-wind. Fancy, Doctor, one of those profuse Californians, abundant as a cluster of Tokay grapes, thrust close against a yellow-haired atavism of the Neolithic age like my poor acquaintance Stewart. _Ach!_ he was drunk before he had finished his sherry; at every sip he tasted the subtle perfume of her, and the cup she held to him was filled with wine as old as the race and as deep as the blue of her sapphire eyes. She was receiving, I fancy, as well as giving. _Ach!_ it was very primitive! Instead of the yacht and the sparkle of the yellow lamp-light on the plate and glass there should have been a forest and the pale moonlight filtering through the boughs of giant hemlocks....

“I looked at the Count, and upon my word, Doctor, I saw that he was relishing the thing!—more than that, he was enjoying it! Perhaps it was the interest of the student; perhaps he was absorbing the warmth of fires which no longer kindled on his own hearth. At any rate, he was eagerly receptive of this spectacle, repellant to me in its unfitness, and was drinking it with parted lips, a tinge of color in his hollow cheeks, a deep glow in his red-brown eyes. There was nothing malicious in his regard; rather, it was the acme of benevolence. He caught my eye and smiled as he had done the day before.

“The dinner, which was elaborate, completed, we adjourned to the quarter-deck, where the Count skilfully drew me into a discussion regarding racial and tribal peculiarities, and I soon found him _savant_. Soon, and to-day I know that it was by express design, I became oblivious to our _milieu_ and harked back to the era when my science was in its infancy, for although myself but a mere collector of those rare things in which science properly interests herself, I hold the greatest respect for the founders of my craft, who were themselves both scientists and collectors. We discussed the early labors of these masters, until soon I was soaring in heights of professional exaltation which made me quite oblivious to the other discussion being carried on in the shadow by these two savages, whose vigorous young bodies, with their attendant embryonic psychic impulses, were at a phase so many thousands of years ahead, or perhaps behind, our own epoch of mental autocracy. Here was this woman with the beauty, temperament, and principles, no doubt, of Helen of Troy, and mind enough to go after what she wanted; Stewart an avatar of Jove himself, the sire of all profligates, but with mind enough to smirch his classic duality; myself, all cerebrum, ultra mental and analytic, perhaps because my blood was just ridding itself of millions of sporulating _plasmodia_; the Count, who had at some time, I fancy, swung in the orbits of the lot of us. He certainly had the mind, and he _had_ had the body before he gave it to his mind to squander, and it seemed to me, as I pulled up suddenly from some peroration and caught the expression of his eye as he turned his face to mine in the yellow lamp-light, that he was listening to the echoes of an early anthem—and found them sweet—even at the cost of his so-called _honor_!

“I was glad when the time came for us to leave, for I could see that between the wine and the woman Stewart was fast shedding his restraint. There was a cut to his voice, a fierce deviltry in the ring of his laughter, and I have seen men shot for less than the expression of his eyes. At first it appeared that the Countess had an eye for her husband; then, seeing nothing but indulgence in his aristocratic face, she had yielded gradually to the fascinations of the hour, until one could see that she had quite lost the focus of her conventional perspective. You see, Doctor, she was not a high-bred woman, so that she was quite untrammeled by the instincts which come of long generations of culture. The only thing which held her in check was the fear of jeopardizing her official position as the wife of an invalid millionaire nobleman, but, seeing that he found only diversion in her coquetries, she gradually yielded to the potent attractions beside her, until I do not believe that she realized how ridiculously naked her emotions had become. It was evident that Stewart was holding her hand beneath the table, and he was sitting so close that their knees touched. It was very primordial!—and all of the while the Count was talking easily and with an expression which seemed to say: ‘Dear, innocent children—what a pleasing spectacle is youth and ardor!’

“I was glad when the time came for us to leave, as I am a simple old bushman, Doctor, and I found the spectacle embarrassing.