ODTAA: A novel

by John Masefield

VII

On the pier, Hi found a scene of confusion and shouting, men and boys staggering with boxes and baskets to carts; women urging them to hurry, or screaming at their children, or cursing at the mules and horses: carts were being backed and baskets dropped: everybody was violent and abusive, not from ill-temper but excitement, for this race to market was the event of the day.

Hi thrust into the midst of the crowd, treading on a litter of leaves, upon which the beasts had browsed. All that part of the pier was heaped with things for the market, bundles of living fowls tied five and five by the legs, baskets of pigeons, geese from the sea marsh, musk melons, water melons, pumpkins, gourds and vegetables of every sort and shape, oranges, limes, bananas in crates and gaily painted earthenware jars packed in the paper-like streamers of corn sheathes. Hi came upon an Englishman, who was superintending the lading of some big red clay jars into a lorry.

“Where shall I find the fish boats?” he asked.

“At the upper end of the pier,” the man said. “That’s where they auction the fish. You may find the fish boats gone by this, though.”

At the end of the pier was a wooden building, above which was a pharos or pier light, which made a big, rosy star against the dawn. Underneath this light the fish market was being held. Hi heard a jabber and chatter of bargaining.

“Look you, I will tell you what I will do. I will do it for you, because I like you. I would not do it for anyone else on earth, may St. James be my witness. I will give you 3.75 the tierce.”

“By God, I had rather fling them back into the sea. By God, I will fling them back into the sea. Here go some back into the sea. The rest shall follow. 4.30 the tierce or back they go.”

“Now look here, I will tell you what I will do. I will do it for you because I like you. I wouldn’t do it for anyone else on earth,” etc., etc.

Beside the bidders lay heaps of fish, many of them still gasping. Small, black, slimy things, which looked like pickles, crawled over their bodies. The fish lay in heaps of shining paleness with odd jags of fins and prickles, vacuous eyes, and mouths which bulged out and then collapsed in.

Hi stopped a fisherman with the question:

“Are you Pedro Ruiz?”

“How?”

“Are you Pedro Ruiz?”

“Who knows?”

“Pedro Ruiz?”

“Ruiz?”

“Yes, Pedro Ruiz?”

“Not know,” the man answered.

“Pedro Ruiz of La Boca?”

“How?”

“Of La Boca.”

“Ayla Poca?”

“Yes. Si.”

“Not know Ayla Poca.”

“No; not Ayla Poca,” Hi explained, “but of La Boca. Of, that is, de, La Boca, a place, a sort of a ciudad, sabe? in the bay par la; La Boca.”

“I do not know at all,” the man answered.

“What does the Englishman want?” another man asked.

“Pedro Ruiz of La Boca,” Hi said.

“Ayla Poca?”

“No, not Ayla Poca. Of La Boca. De la Boca.”

“Boca?”

“Yes. Si.”

“La Boca?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, La Boca?”

“Yes, yes. La Boca.”

“The poblacion beside the bay, La Boca?”

“Yes, that is it.”

“Oh, La Boca. Hear you, Enrique, the gentleman wants La Boca.”

“Oh, La Boca. Ah, yes, indeed. Truly, it is that. Oh, yes, La Boca,” Enrique repeated.

“It is there, La Boca,” the man said, pointing south along the bay. “La Boca is there.”

“I want Pedro Ruiz of La Boca.”

“How?”

“Pedro Ruiz.”

“Pedro?”

“Si. Yes. Pedro Ruiz,” Hi said. “R-u-i-z.” The men looked at him in bewilderment yet with courtesy. They smiled and shook their heads. Hi thanked them and turned from them. He did not much relish shouting aloud in that crowd of foreigners; but he shouted:

“Pedro Ruiz. Pedro Ruiz.”

A couple of lads mimicked his method with some success. He repeated his cry.

“Ah, ha,” Enrique said to him full of pride. “You want Pedro Ruiz?”

“Yes, si.”

“Ah, yes, indeed, Pedro Ruiz.”

“Is he here?” Hi asked.

“No,” Enrique said.

Enrique began a long harangue in Spanish, of which Hi understood not one word. Hi could not make out from the gestures whether Pedro Ruiz had been disembowelled or had been drinking soda water.

“See you,” he said, “can I get a boat to La Boca? A boat to La Boca by the sea?”

He made signs of going by boat in the direction of La Boca. Three other men had gathered about them to give counsel. Some of them suggested Giordano.

Hi turned to these men and asked, “Is Pedro Ruiz here? Pedro Ruiz?”

They did not understand what he meant. They repeated the syllables. All were courteous and eager to help, but they were puzzled by the words.

Enrique asked, “You want go La Boca?”

“Yes please, si,” Hi answered.

“Giordano,” the men repeated. “Giordano.”

Hi had a suspicion that “Giordano” meant to-morrow. There was, he knew, some foreign word like “Giordano” which meant either yesterday or to-morrow. It was “oggi” or “aujourd’hui” or some other word with “jour” in it. What would he do if there were to be no boat till to-morrow?

“This way Giordano,” Enrique said.

He led him to the end of the pier. Some birds were wheeling about the rosy light. From time to time they swerved down with exquisite white grace, which glowed into rose colour in the beam of the lamp, to snatch some fish from the pile. Enrique looked over the rail at the edge of the pier.

“Giordano,” he called.

“Si,” a voice answered.

Enrique explained that here was a gentleman eager to go to La Boca; he displayed Hi. Giordano was a very tall, thin, melancholy man, dark and distinguished.

“Can you take me to La Boca, please?” Hi asked.

“La Boca? Si.”

“It is so,” Enrique exclaimed. “Giordano can take you to La Boca.”

“There,” another man said. “Giordano will convey you.”

Giordano spread a boat rug for Hi. When Hi was seated in the boat, he bent over a job of fitting two pieces of wood together. He explained what he was doing, but Hi could not understand. He sat in the boat, which bobbed and rocked at the side of the steps. Giordano went on with his work, whittling a piece of wood with his knife and trying if the pieces would fit, then whittling some more. Presently a boat shoved off from the pier beside them and stood away for La Boca. Then another boat pushed off and presently a third. But Giordano still went on with his carpentry with no apparent thought of starting. Hi thought that perhaps there had been some mistake.

“I say,” he said, “you are going to La Boca, aren’t you? You go La Boca?”

“Si,” Giordano answered.

He went on trying to fit the pieces of wood. After some time, with a gesture of triumph, he showed that at last they fitted.

“Bueno,” he said.

Yet even now he made no effort to start. He rummaged in the after locker and presently produced some nails, which were bent, and a hammer with a broken handle. Then he set himself to repair the hammer handle by lashing another piece of wood to it. Next he rummaged among the bottom boards of the boat for a pig of ballast. He placed this on the stern sheets thwart as an anvil. Then with great deliberation he began to straighten his nails. Time seemed to have no meaning for him.

“You go La Boca soon?” Hi asked. “La Boca pronto?”

“Si, si.”

But he made no attempt to start. He hammered his nails straight with great skill, then very neatly he straightened the heads, which had been bent. Then he rummaged for a file and touched up the points with it. Another boat stood away from the pier towards La Boca. Her helmsman called out something to Giordano, which Giordano answered reflectively. After the boat had gone he fitted the two pieces of wood together and with great care drove his nails so as to clinch them.

“You start La Boca?” Hi asked.

“Si, si. La Boca.”

“I believe the brute isn’t going to La Boca at all,” Hi thought. “There, they’ve put out the pier light now. I might have been at La Boca an hour ago. If there’s another boat going, I would go in that.”

He clambered up the stairs of the pier to look for someone who could speak English. The rush of the market was now over. He found Enrique and his friends in a corner among the baskets.

“I want to go at once, pronto, to La Boca,” he said.

“Giordano go pronto,” they said.

“But I want to go now.”

“Si, si,” they said, “La Boca.”

“Yes, but now.”

“Si, si.”

He took off his hat to them and hurried along the pier to the Englishman, who was still there, superintending the packing of the jars.

“You want to go to La Boca?” he asked. “Oh well, I wish I’d known. I thought you wanted one of the fish hands. I could have sent you to La Boca an hour ago. What do you want at La Boca?”

“I have an appointment there.”

“Oh, who is your appointment with?”

“A friend,” Hi said.

The man paused to say something to one of the packers, then turned again to Hi.

“Who was your appointment with, did you say?”

“A friend.”

“Ah,” said the man, “what’s your friend’s name? I only ask because I know La Boca, and it might be a question of putting you ashore either to the north or to the south.”

“He will be at the inn,” Hi said.

“Which inn?” the man said.

“Is there more than one?” Hi asked.

“Is your friend an Englishman? What’s his name?”

“Excuse me,” Hi said, “but can you get me to La Boca?”

“Let me see,” the man said, “did you mention your name and your friend’s name?”

“Jones,” Hi said in desperation.

“Well, Mr. Jones,” the man said, “if you’ll step along with me, I’ll see if that boat’s gone that was here. Is it your brother that you’re going to see in La Boca?”

“No.”

“Oh, I see. Not a brother, only a friend. I don’t remember the name of Jones in La Boca. What’s he doing there?”

“He’s only just gone there,” Hi said.

“Oh, a newcomer, like yourself. Well, this is the La Boca boat.”

He spoke to the master of the boat, who was putting what is called a fish in the yard of his sail.

“That man will take you to La Boca,” the man said. “He’s just going to start. If you had come to me on your way, I could have sent you off in one of the vegetable boats hours ago. Don’t give him more than two pesetas. By the way, where will you be staying at La Boca, Mr. Jones? If you or your friend should want any of these earthenware jars, I am in a position to get them as cheap as anybody. What initial did you say yours was?”

“H,” Hi said.

“And your friend’s?”

“R,” Hi answered.

“Mr. H. and Mr. R. Jones,” the man said. “Where are you stopping, did you say? Because I can get you nice rooms in a boarding-house, which would be cheaper for you than any hotel.”

Here the boatman invited Hi into the boat.

“Where are you stopping?” the man called. “Where did you say you were stopping? I should like to call round in the evening and see you, if you’re not doing anything. They always say that Englishmen ought to stick together.”

Hi was about to answer, but the boom gybed at that instant and knocked his hat into the well. The boat had shoved off.

“Inquisitive beast,” Hi thought. “I never knew a man ask questions like that before. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s a detective put there to stop passengers leaving the city. If that’s the case, I’ll very likely be stopped at La Boca. If that devil telegraphs, I shall very likely be met at the pier and shadowed. However, for the moment I am off. That’s the main thing. But I’ve wasted simply hours.”

His boat passed close beside Giordano. He was bent over his carpentry in deep attention, putting a whipping over the join.

“He doesn’t mean to start for another hour,” Hi thought. “I am glad I tried to find someone starting sooner.”

The master of the boat, Chigo, the boatman, and Luigi, the boy, ran up their new striped sails, so that the boat leaned down and sheered the water. Then they brought out bread, onions, wine and water and some little transparent fish, which were meant to be eaten raw. They invited Hi to their feast and all breakfasted together. After breakfast, while the boat was still moving swiftly to the south, Hi amused himself by looking into the shallow water at the fish and the weeds of all the colours of the rainbow. Presently something, which seemed like a piece of the bottom of the bay, blundered up alongside, turned over and seethed out of the water into a whiteish blunt thing, which had a kind of cat’s mouth that clicked. The click missed by at least two feet, as the thing did not aim very well. It blundered over, rubbed against the side of the boat with a slow rasping movement and disappeared.

“A shark, by George,” Hi said.

The boatman laughed at his scare and the master signed to him not to lean over the side. Soon after this Hi noticed that La Boca did not seem to be getting any nearer. The wind, before falling, had drawn ahead, so that they had to make a short board out to sea.

“This is a bore,” he thought. “I may not be at La Boca till mid-day, if this goes on. But I’ll do it yet.”

The wind, which had drawn ahead, now chopped round a few points to the west and failed altogether.

“What’s the matter?” Hi asked.

“Wait for de breeze,” the master said.

“Shall we have to wait long?”

“Sometimes half hour, sometimes hour.”

“Would it be possible to row in to the shore?” Hi asked.

“Not got oars,” the boatman said. “Only one oar and a boat hook.”

There was nothing for it but to wait while the sun climbed up out of the sea and became hotter. Hi tried to judge the distance from La Boca. It seemed so near across that fore-shortened glitter of sea. Three miles, possibly four miles, he thought. The sea and the boat seemed to settle down to sleep.

“We shall be hours at it like this,” Hi thought. And they were.

What was hardest to bear came an hour later, as they lay becalmed. Hi saw a boat further inshore creeping down to La Boca under sweeps. Something in her helmsman’s figure seemed familiar to Hi, who was watching her with envy.

“Is that Giordano?” he asked.

“Giordano, si,” they answered.

She was helped by more than the sweeps. She was a better boat in light airs and, being much further inshore, she missed the northward current then moving across the outward bay.

“Why, we are further from La Boca than we were before,” he thought. “We are drifting back. She will be in hours before us and I might have been in her, if I had had a little patience. I was an ass,” he thought. “If I had only stuck to Giordano, I might have been almost there now.”

There was no remedy but patience, which is no remedy but a substitute. Hi watched Giordano’s boat edge on and on. After what seemed to be hours he noticed that the men in Giordano’s boat laid in their sweeps and tended sails. Chigo, who had been watching for something of the sort, laid aside his fender making.

“Here is the breeze,” he said.

The breeze came down to them with a darkening of the water. Very gently the boat began to steal southward again. At a little after ten o’clock they began to draw in to the settlement of fishermen and market gardeners at the mouth of the Miamia river. It was an array of little lime-washed houses, roofed with red tiles. It had a mission church of three bells. At the mouth of the river there was a harbour made by baulks of green-heart timber, which had been steeped in a red enamel as a defence against the worm. Hi had been intent upon his thoughts, planning his ride. Looking up, he saw that Giordano’s boat had not entered the harbour, but had stood on down the coast towards the south. Looking up at the dock in front of him, he saw some Pituba soldiers watching the approach of the boat. Among them was a white man, who seemed to be an officer.

“Just as I thought,” Hi said to himself. “That man on the pier in the city was a detective. Now here I am being shadowed and am going to be questioned.”

He looked at this officer. He didn’t like his looks at all. He looked too snappish and ill-tempered.

“A bite from that lipless mouth would be worse than its bark,” he thought, “though the bark has a curse in it.”

This man called out something to the master of the boat, who stood up and answered with a question, which Hi thought civilly put. It brought down a storm of oaths from the officer, who repeated his original remark in the tone of an order. Very politely the master again objected, pointing to Hi.

“What is it?” Hi whispered to Chigo.

“He tells us not to land,” Chigo whispered. “The padron ask if you may land.”

“Sir,” Hi called to him, “I am English. May I not land here?”

“What you say?” the officer asked.

“I am English. May I land here?”

“You are Inglays?”

“Si.”

“Inglays?”

“Si.”

“Inglays with cat’s tripes?”

“No.”

“But I say, yes. Meester Inglays with cat’s tripes, I say, yes. Take your baboon-face hence lest I mistake it for your stern and kick it. And tell your Inglays brothers that this is not their land, but a land of men. It is not for Inglays Miss, no tank you, nor for Meester Aow and Pipe Tooth. You come here you be shot.”

“You’d get into pretty hot water, if you shot me,” Hi said.

“You say?”

“You’d get into pretty hot water, if you shot me.”

“What the pretty mouth say? I no catch?”

“You’ll get into pretty hot water, if you shoot me.”

“Oh, dear, the Inglays Meester threaten me.” He came a step or two nearer to the edge of the pier, so as to read the number on the boat’s bows. “Padron,” he said, “your boat, number B 71, is suspect. You will take your boat down to Carpinche and report to the commandant there. If you try to land anywhere nearer, you shall be arrest, you and cat’s tripes; yes, and shot. To Carpinche: go.”

The padron civilly asked whether there were any warrant upon which he could be ordered to Carpinche.

“Yes,” the officer said, “a very good warrant. The proclamation of martial law.” Here he drew out a revolver. “I command here for the Republic, which now scrapes off the foreign lice that cling to her. You rebel, I shoot. To Carpinche.”

“One moment, please,” Hi said. “I want to see the English Consul here.”

“No, no,” the padron said. “No consul here.”

“Well, anyway, I’ve a right to land.”

“No, no,” Chigo whispered. “You get into trouble.”

“What does Miss tank you, the Inglays, say?” the officer asked.

“I want to see the English Consul,” Hi said.

“Oh, he wants to see the Inglays Consul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Inglays Consul, you say?”

“Yes, please.”

“Tank you, but I not please. I tell you to go to Carpinche. You know your Consul live in Santa Barbara, where you just come from. Why you lie to me you want him here? To Carpinche, or I send you back to your Consul, on my ordnance mule, by phê, with your feet tied under his belly.”

The boat had by this time drifted across the mouth of the harbour, where she caught a gust which drove her a few yards out. The padron, who was in that land only to make a living, shook his head, as he let the sails fill on the new course. “We must to Carpinche,” he said. When the boat was some lengths from the pier, he took a stiletto from his boot and snicked it to and fro, passionately, on his boot-leg.

“Ise kill-a that man,” he said.

Hi hesitated. If he tried to land there, he might be shot: if he did land, he might be sent back to Santa Barbara.

“Where is this Carpinche?” he asked.

“South, ten miles.”

“Could I get a horse there?”

“Si.”

“Is it far from Anselmo? A place called San Anselmo? San An-selm-o?”

“San Anselmo?” Chigo suddenly said. “Si, si. There.” He pointed inland to the west.

“Can I get there from Carpinche?”

“To San Anselmo from Carpinche?”

“Yes,” he said. “Can I get there?”

“Si, si.”

“How far is it?”

“How far?”

“Yes, how far?”

Chigo debated with the padron; the boy made some suggestions. They thought it might be forty kilometres, thirty kilometres; perhaps not so much.

“Twenty kilometres, we going there,” the padron said.

Twenty kilometres was about eleven miles, Hi thought. He tried to figure it out, how it could be so little, but thought that these men might know. All the time the boat was moving away from the pierhead.

“Say that it is twenty miles,” Hi thought, “and this ten miles more sailing added on to it, I shall not be there till the afternoon.”

“See,” the padron said, to Hi, with reproach, “you should not have angered the commandant.”

“No,” Chigo added. “If you not speak at all, if you leave it to the padron, he let you land all right.”

“I’m blest if he would,” Hi said.

“Si, si.”

“He would not have: he had refused.”

“No, see,” Chigo explained, “the padron he explain: he say what, that man not go any sense, he let you land all right.”

“Then you ask, then he stop you.”

Hi could not see it as they saw it; but their point of view, however, imperfectly grasped by him, added to his trouble. What if they were right? What if he had been hasty? What if he might have landed at the pier, had he left it all to the padron?

“Won’t you turn back, then, and let me try him again?” he asked. The padron shook his head.

“Not turn back,” he said.

“He angry now,” Chigo said. “He shoot you now.”

“Well, can you put me ashore somewhere near here, at one of the little landing places?”

“Ashore here?”

“Si.”

“Not now,” they said. “The commandant angry now.”

“But he would never know. He is not following the boat, and cannot see.”

The padron shook his head with a gesture which meant that it would be well not to think of any such thing.

“Besides,” he said, “look, we are past the landing places. We cannot take the boat in to the shore here.”

This was true; a short way to the south from La Boca the beach changed character from sandy to boulder-strewn. The boulders were packed together almost like a paving of cobbles, and as it were cemented with the broken shell of the beach. It looked a bad beach to beach on.

“The boat is made only of very thin wood,” the patron said, mainly by signs; “she bump and bump and bump and knock herself all to pieces.”

“When we get to Carpinche,” Chigo said, “another officer will say, ‘Back to La Boca.’ Then, when we come back, Yellow Face will say, ‘Back to Carpinche.’ Thus we shall pass our day.”

“Such are soldiers,” the padron said.

It was not a cheerful prospect to Hi, but it seemed possible and likely. “I may not be started before dark,” he thought.

“If we have another commandant at Carpinche,” he thought, “I’ll say nothing.”

Carpinche lay in the south-west angle of the bay, among wooded foothills. A dark, romantic glen of trees, marking a water course, sloped inland from it in the easy places of the hill. Great trees grew about Carpinche. The hill to the south of the bay lay like a lioness crouched to drink with her head between her paws. As they drew nearer to this hill the wind failed them. “See,” Chigo said, “we too near the shore: see? The shore stop the wind.”

“Blanketed,” Hi said.

“How?”

“The shore stops the wind.”

Gusts of it came in a baffling way; then these, too, ceased. They drifted rather than sailed into a place of shelter, where the trees looked down into a water like glass. The blackness of the rock near the shore made the water seem deep as the pit. Chigo and the boy helped the boat forward by paddling with her bottom boards. Hi also took a bottom board and paddled, with thoughts of that machine of which he had talked to Carlotta only the day before. All four of them stared ahead for some sign of soldiers: they could see none.

“No commandant here,” Hi said.

“Siesta,” the padron said.

The boat edged slowly into the Carpinche river towards a village among the trees, which towered up there to a vast height. The forest made the place dark, though glaring light fell beyond. Giordano’s boat lay tied to the pier in front of them. She had lain there for perhaps a couple of hours. “Oh, if I had only stayed in her,” Hi thought, “I might have been in Anselmo by this time.”

They edged alongside the pier and made fast.

“No commandant here to report to,” Hi said.

“Ah, the commandant,” the padron answered. “That man a bad man. He know there no commandant.”

“Is there an inn here where I could get a horse?”

“Si, si, in the village.”

“Perhaps,” Hi said, “since you have all been kind and are here partly through me, you will all come with me to the inn for some refreshment?”

They all accepted this: they set out along a track of red earth which had recently been mud. The raised wooden ways on each side of the track had lately been washed out of position, so that they lay all poked up, like stretchers on a battlefield. The village seemed dead save for a yellow dog, who came out and howled at them.

“The people here get up very early,” the boatman explained, “so they have siesta early.”

In the inn, half a dozen men, including Giordano, were lying asleep on the benches or leaning over the table. The boat-master called out to the hostess that here was a gentleman who wished to hire a horse.

“Alas,” the hostess said, “the horses are all gone with the men to the fiesta. There will be no horses till to-morrow.”

“What then can the gentleman do?”

“Who knows?” she said.

One of the sleepers at the table roused.

“There are horses at the house at the cross roads,” he said. “If he will ask there, he might have a horse.”

“How far are the cross roads?”

“Four miles.”

“Are there no horses nearer?”

“Not here. All went early this morning to the fiesta. At five or even at six you might have had your pick of horses, but now there are none.”

It occurred to Hi that, when he had paid for some drinks, the hostess might be more helpful.

“Ask her to serve some wine,” Hi said. “You deserve the best wine after your morning.”

The hostess was pleased to serve wine, but the order did not make her more forthcoming about horses. Plainly there were none.

“I must go on to the cross roads then,” Hi said, “if you will point out the road. I will try for a horse there.”

By his watch it was a quarter to two when he stepped across the bridge, which led out of the village.

“Nearly ten hours,” he thought, “since Rosa called me.”

His track led uphill into the forest. “Now best foot foremost,” he said to himself. “Never mind the heat or anything else. You’ve got to save Carlotta and every minute is precious.”

Very soon the trees closed over the road, so that he walked in the cool twilight of a tunnel. He saw nothing remarkable for the first couple of miles. Then he came upon a hare sitting upon its hind legs, seeming to be praying, while a big snake sat opposite, swaying a little, making up its mind to strike. Hi flung some stones at the snake, which ducked its head and turned towards him with an ugly raising of the crest. With a few more stones he drove it away. He then walked to the hare and stroked it and spoke to it. Its fur was sick and staring. Presently it fell over on one side, recovered and went shambling away.

“What an ass my father is,” Hi thought. “He knew that I might meet things like this, yet said that I should never need a revolver. I shall need one twenty times a day. If I came on one of these snakes asleep, I should never see it until I trod on it. I had better have a stick.”

Unfortunately there was no stick nearer than forty feet from the ground. He was in a place which grew nothing but feathery thorn and gigantic timber in a solitude which might have been thousands of miles from men. Giving up the stick, he went on for half an hour without seeing a soul. The only living things he saw, apart from the flies, were deer, moving like shadows among the trees, and very bright things, which he supposed to be parrots against the sky, when the sky showed. After he had walked for an hour he saw a gleam of water below him; soon he came to a wooden bridge at which some tracks converged. There had been a ford or drinking place for cattle above the bridge. This was now a collection of pockets of red mud full of little snakes: beyond the bridge were houses; a farm, somewhat old and untidy, built of wood in need of paint, with stabling beside and behind it. Nearer to the river were two very ramshackle sheds or cottages of wood, which had once been tarred but were now rust-coloured. Dirty bedding hung from the windows of these sheds. Over the door of one of them was a tiling shingle on which someone had drawn in tar, with his forefinger, the word

CAMAS

(with the final S reversed). To the left of these, well away from the river, and on the other side of the road, was a trim, white, prosperous looking house, with a tiled stable. A cornfield of red earth strewn with the shocks of young maize, stretched uphill behind this house. A fair-haired, blue-eyed white man was hoeing among these maize shocks, although it was the heat of the day. He was a South German, who spoke a little English. He said that it was fine vetter and that Hi might tank Gott for such fine vetter. As for a horse, his brother had gone with the horse to the fiesta, but the old frau in the house opposite might lend her colt.

He was a friendly, helpful young man. He took Hi across the tracks to the old untidy farm where everybody seemed to be asleep. Here, after they had both knocked and called for some minutes, a negress appeared, rubbing her eyes with her skirt. This girl took them through a darkness, which stank, into a hot shuttered room, where she called several times by whistling like a kite. When something between a snarl and a gurgle answered to her call, she opened the southward shutters so that Hi could see.

He found himself near the door of a bare room, the floor of which was trodden earth. A table, with fragments of fruit upon it, stood against one wall. Against the end wall, opposite the window, was a tall-backed red chair or throne, in which an enormously fat old woman, swathed in folds of black, sat blinking as she roused from sleep. She was mopping her brow with the handkerchief which had kept the flies from her face while she slept. Hi had the feeling that she lived and slept in the chair. She had a book of hours upon her lap; its marker, hanging from a red ribbon, dangled from her knee. She soon checked her gurglings: she woke up with great completeness. A pair of sharp and very cold grey eyes shone out of her vast pale face with that narrowed glimmer which made Hi think of the snake.

“You want a horse?” she said, in fair English, in a guttural voice that was half a cough.

“Yes, please, Señora.”

“Where will you go with the horse?”

“To Anselmo?”

“Where to in Anselmo?”

“George Elena’s house.”

“When you bring him back?”

“How far is it?”

“Thirty kilometre: twenty kilometre. When you bring my horse back?”

“I’ll send him back to-morrow.”

“Send? Eh?”

“Yes.”

“Why not bring him back yourself?”

“I may not be coming back.”

“Who will bring him back?”

“One of Elena’s men will bring him.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know.”

“What you do?” she asked after a pause. “Why you go this way to Anselmo? Where you from?”

“Santa Barbara.”

“Which way you come from there?”

“Carpinche.”

“You know the road to Anselmo?”

“No; but I can find it.”

“How you know you can?”

“I have found you, Señora.”

She sat staring at him, fanning her face with her handkerchief; her face was without more expression than a large uncut ham.

“What you going to do in Anselmo?”

“I’ve business with George Elena.”

“What business?”

“Horses.”

“Why you come this way, if you go on business? This ain’t the way. Why you not go the proper road?”

Hi wavered at the question, but said:

“I thought it might be quicker to sail down the bay and come this way.”

“How long you been here?”

“Three or four days.”

“Horses,” she grunted in a tone of great disgust. She fanned herself, looking over Hi’s head at the wall. There was no expression on her face, but her big jaw worked a little: she was solving the problem of what brought Hi there.

“I got no horse,” she said at last.

This, besides being ungracious, was false. Hi felt that she spoke thus because she was cross from being wakened and did not want to be bothered.

“I tell him, maybe you lend your colt,” the German said.

“I got no horse to lend.”

“No, of course, Señora,” Hi said. “I don’t ask you to lend him. I want to hire him.”

“How much you pay?”

“How much do you want, for the two days?”

“What you pay?”

“What do you usually charge?”

“How much you pay? I can’t be buyer and seller, too.”

“I don’t know how much these things cost in this country,” Hi said.

“Well, what you give, see?”

Hi produced his peseta notes and small change, to which the woman made an emphatic gesture that this was child’s play.

“Well, how much, then?” Hi asked.

A tall, lean man had come silently into the room behind Hi; he had taken up his position facing Hi, with his back against the table. He was picking his teeth with a sprig of macilente, which he chewed. Hi did not like the fellow’s looks. He had almost no brow; his hair and eyebrows merged into each other. Under this shag, the man’s eyes were very black; his face was hungry-looking, with pale, sunken cheeks. The mouth was greedy-looking or wolfish, although it split into a smile over the toothpick. The teeth glittered; they looked evil, being pointed and inclined inward, something like snakes’ fangs. His ear-rings glittered at each bite upon the sprig. There was a glittering about the man’s person, apart from ear-rings and teeth, because his waistcoat was buttoned up to the throat with some thirty small globular silver buttons.

“All is not gold that glitters,” Hi thought. “Mr. Bright Tooth, you look like a wolf who would scratch up a grave.”

“Well, how much, do you think, would be fair for a horse for two days?” Hi asked.

The woman fanned herself for a moment, then she said:

“You see, we not know you. You may be very fine gentleman, but we not know you. My horse, all the horse I got. You want to go to Anselmo? That fifty kilometre, forty kilometre from here through the forest; pumas in the forest; eat horses; then you go over the fords; the fords all out with rain. Very like you get my horse drowned. Then you not know how to look out. You get the horse bitten by snakes, or else you lose your way. Then suppose you reach Anselmo. You say, that old woman, pah, she not want her horse. I got to Anselmo, what the hell, see? How I to know you send the horse back?”

“I promise you I will.”

“Promise. Look. I’m a woman: see? I don’t believe any promise any man ever make. When a man want a thing, he promise anything. Does he pay? Nit, I don’t think; with the fore sheet, what? So don’t promise me nothing, Albert; it’s pretty to hear you, but it don’t lead to nothing.”

Bright Tooth entered the conversation with the question:

“You got English sovereign?”

Hi had three English sovereigns; he offered one of them, which at that time, in that country, would have bought two horses, with their harness, outright. After some more haggling, backed by Bright Tooth, the old woman agreed to lend a horse, saddled and bridled, for two days, for one English sovereign and all the small change Hi had. It was, however, agreed that this small change, amounting to seventeen Santa Barbara pesetas, should be returned to the man who brought back the horse. Hi thought that they drove a very hard bargain with him; but to have a horse and to be away upon his journey were the desires of his heart at the moment. Even so, he knew enough not to pay for a horse till he had a little knowledge of it. He asked to see the horse.

Bright Tooth led him out to the yard at the back of the house, with the remark that he was a very nice horse, a horse for a king or queen, being tireless and good spirited, as well as so beautifully boned. Hi had heard horses sold in England, by his father. He waited till they were in the stable, where two horses were in stalls. The one nearer to the door was a nice dark chestnut mare, which seemed somehow, even at a first glance, a little too good for such a stall.

“Is this the horse?” Hi asked.

“No,” Bright Tooth said, “the other.”

The other was a sour-coloured pony engaged at that minute in gnawing off the top of the partition between the stalls. He was doing this with an ugly chucklehead screwed sideways, so that his yellow hooked teeth might get a purchase on the splinter. He was rough-haired, having been out in the rains (apparently in a hog wallow). The hair, stuck to patches of mud, was scaling off him. He had not been shod nor had his feet been pared. They stuck forward in long, splitting growths of horn almost like slippers. A sort of gaiter of hard red mud coated his legs to his hocks. He was straight-shouldered, and what old Bill always called “a bit goosey in the rump.” His head, when he ceased from gnawing the barrier, was loutish and ill set on. “Stunsail ears and a Roman nose,” Hi thought. “Worth six bob a corner.”

“This is a horse,” Bright Tooth said.

“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for horse,” Hi quoted to himself, from the Macbeth his form had “done” the term before. “Good Lord,” he said aloud, “I can’t take a beast like that.”

“There, a lovely horse,” Bright Tooth said. “Never fail. He never, never fail. There come soldiers here for horses, one time. They say, he too small, not allowed to take so small a horse; but that the horse for a soldier; he got the good guts.”

“Guts. Good Lord,” Hi said. “He’s got no more guts than a herring. I never saw such a beast in all my born days. Let me have the other, the mare.”

“No, not,” Bright Tooth said. “The other one not belong here. She not our horse.”

“Whose is she? Perhaps I could hire her.”

“No, no,” Bright Tooth said, “she wait here till after the fiesta; then the man come to ride her home. He be here in a few minutes now.”

“In a few minutes?” Hi said. “I could wait a few minutes.”

“He not be here in a few minutes. I make mistake, see. This yellow horse the only horse. He go like the wind.”

“With those feet?”

“I tell you about those feet. The rains make it very slippy. With those feet he never, never fail: any kind of mud, any kind of stick, he stand fast.”

“I’ll bet he will stand fast,” Hi said. “Is there no other horse?”

“No other horse anywhere, except the mare. And the man who owns the mare, he very proud man; he not let anyone ride the mare.”

“Well, all right, then,” Hi said, “I suppose I must take the pony. Let me see the saddle and bridle.”

The old woman had hobbled to the stable, the German had gone back to his work.

“I like to see the colour of your money,” the old woman said. “I not know you, see, so you make me a little present.”

Hi paid over the money, which mother and son (if that was, as he supposed, the relationship between the pair) watched with eyes that burned with voracity. The old woman bit the sovereign, to test its goodness, as though she were going to eat it.

“You go armed, in case of robbers?” the old woman asked.

“Yes.” Hi said. “Rather.”

He was feeling at the moment uneasy about this couple, lest they should go back upon their bargain and deny the horse, after taking the money. But the man Bright Tooth saddled and bridled the horse and led him out. Hi noticed that the pony was an arm-snapper.

“I’ll borrow this stick of yours,” he said, picking up a crooked stick which rested against the wall. “Your beast is too free with his nippers.”

“Where you keep your gun?” the old woman asked.

“In my pocket, all ready,” Hi said. He noticed that she had a sharp eye upon his pockets as he mounted. “Now, which way to Anselmo?” he asked.

She swung her hand round to the west, to point to the track leading past the German’s house.

“Straight on,” she said, “past the ford and out of the wood.”

“Thank you, and how far is it?”

“Seventy kilometre: sixty kilometre.”

“Oh, rats, Señora,” Hi said, “it can’t be. You said it was twenty a little while ago.”

“Quien sabe?”

Bright Tooth stepped down the yard from them to open the gate.

“Adios, Señora,” Hi said, moving off. It was twenty-seven minutes to four; but he felt that he was now really started. A kind of gleam came upon the Señora’s face: the horse with the slippered feet clacked slowly down the slope to the track. Hi saw the German leaning on his hoe, watching him as he drew near.