Magic

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

VII.

One day the brig, always butting like a ram against the blue sky and empty sea, gave them view of a mountain and land, stretching in the distance from north to south as though all the islands of the ocean had been drawn and joined together making one solid piece.

Then presently, as they drew in, Uliami saw a break in the land near the mountain. They told him it was the Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco where all the rich men in the world lived, but he had little time to listen to their tales. For they were now on the bar, and the brig was tumbling this way and that, and the mate and captain cursing and kicking those in the way, and giving orders to haul now on this rope, now on that.

Uliami had been used to swearing and cursing on board that brig, but, when they got to the wharf, what he heard overpassed all he had heard in that way, as though all the curses in the world, like all the men, and all the houses, and all the ships, had come to roost at that spot.

But Uliami did not mind. He was filled with one great desire—to go ashore to see for himself the great houses and the rich men and the new things to be seen. Next morning when the crew were paid and he had received five dollars as his pay, he joined up with Sru, a man from the low islands, who had been friendly to him on the voyage, and the pair, crossing the plank, set their feet on the wharf, and Sru, landing, made for the first tavern. That was the sort of man Sru was, old in the ways of harbors and ports, and with a liking for rum. But Uliami had no stomach for drink and, presently, he left the other and found himself in the streets round the dockside.

It was very windy here and his thin coat and trousers flapped around him as a flag flaps on its staff, and the dust blew with the wind in great clouds. And, just as things touched by a wizard change and alter, so the mind of Uliami began to wither in him, for here there were no rich men to be seen, only dirty children playing their games, and there was not a child that did not see in him a man new to the place. They called after him, ridiculing him, and the houses were not proper houses set in gardens, but all of a piece and evil-looking beyond words.

Then pursuing his way he found himself in a broader street where cars ran without horses and where there were so many people that no one noticed him.

And that was the most curious thing that had happened to him yet, for at Tilafeaa every one had a nod or a smile or a word for every one else, but here the people all passed along in two streams, rapidly, like driven fish, with not a word for each other, nor a look nor a smile, so that, in all that crowd, Uliami felt more alone than in the woods yet not alone—for here were men and women, almost in touch, by the hundred and the thousand.

Then the shops took him where the traders exposed their goods, not in the open but behind windows of glass, each ten hundred times bigger than the window of glass in the church at Raupee. But the goods exposed were things, many of them, which he had never seen before, and they caused no desire in his mind, only distress and more loneliness, till he came to a shop where great bunches of bananas hung just as though they had been new cut down from the trees at Tilafeaa.

Here he hung, disregarding the other fruit exposed, and with tears filling his eyes, till the man of the shop spoke to him roughly, asking him what he wanted and bidding him be gone.