ODTAA: A novel

by John Masefield

VIII

The German came slowly towards him, waving with his left arm towards the left.

“Dot der way to Anselmo,” he said. “You mind out at der ford.”

“Thank you for your help,” Hi said.

“Very welcome.”

The German turned back to his hoeing and Hi set out upon his path. When he was out of sight of that settlement, really on his way to Anselmo, he thought of those warning words, “You mind out at the ford.”

“You meet highwaymen at the fords,” his father had said, “or did in my day, but I expect it’s all altered since then.”

“I wonder what that German meant,” he thought. “Perhaps that devil Bright Tooth may be playing some trick, but probably what he meant was that the floods are out. It will be rotten if I can’t get across.”

Then the question rose in his mind how far Anselmo was. “Twelve or fifteen miles,” he thought. “I can be there by 5 or 5.30 and I will be.”

He whacked up the horse into a solitude of rocky barren, densely grown with small thorn and prickly pear. The strangeness of the landscape, the blueness of the sky where the eagles were cruising for their prey and the glory of the adventure on which he rode made his ride a dream of delight for some miles, till the rocks on both sides of him grew in towards him, so that he rode in a kind of gully, where the hooves made more echo than he liked. The gloom of the place was made greater by the prevalence of the pudding-cactus, which exuded over his path like jellyfish flecked with blood or snakes which had been pressed to death. Multitudes of flies feasting on the stickiness of the plant gave it the appearance of corruption. In nearly all the puddles there were snakes. The noise of the echoes of the horse’s hooves became louder and louder. Hi, looking back, saw that a horse and man were coming after him.

The man was bent down in his seat with his sombrero jammed down over his eyes. He had a look of Bright Tooth. His horse looked like the dark chestnut mare which Hi had seen in the stable. She had seemed a beauty then, if a little small. She showed like a beauty now in the grace of her going.

“It’s Bright Tooth all right,” Hi thought. “I’ll bet he comes for no good.”

Seeing that he was seen, the man sat up and called to Hi to stop. He was certainly Bright Tooth.

“Why should I stop?” Hi thought. “I am not going to stop for a swine like that. Let him jolly well catch me up and explain.”

As he saw that Bright Tooth was not carrying a gun, he rode on, though Bright Tooth called repeatedly something about stopping or returning, to which Hi answered, “Si,” or “Bueno” or “That’s the ticket.” Bright Tooth pressed his horse up to Hi’s off quarter with the cry, “You Englishman return.” He motioned back towards the cross roads.

“I am not going to return,” Hi said.

“Then you give back the horse, see?” Bright Tooth cried.

“I don’t see,” Hi said. “Why should I?”

They were now riding side by side at a good speed, because both horses thought that it was a race.

“You turn back, see,” Bright Tooth cried. He motioned backwards, shaking his head.

“All right, old sport,” Hi said. He did not turn, nor did he mean to turn; he kept on, with an eye for the road and the next move. He shoved his stick into his bridle hand, so as to have his right hand free.

“Give up the horse, see?” Bright Tooth cried again. “Your money bad. Bad English money.” He gave a violent imitation of biting a coin and being sick. “You come back,” he cried, “or pay good money.”

“Rats,” Hi said.

“Your money bad.”

“The money was good,” Hi said.

“You pay more money. Another sovereign, see?”

“I won’t pay a red cent more.”

Bright Tooth shot forward, stooped and made a clutch at Hi’s rein. The yellow horse shied away from him, so that he missed his clutch and nearly fell. Hi, too, was nearly off. He recovered first. He dropped his right hand to the pocket where he kept his knife. He poked the end of the knife from within the pocket towards Bright Tooth, as though it were a revolver muzzle. He had read somewhere of men shooting through the pocket. He called out, “All right, old sport, I’ve got you covered. Cuidado.” He did not know what cuidado meant; but he had heard the third officer in the Recalde use the word as an alarm note. He saw Bright Tooth whip out a knife with a blade a foot long, sharp on two edges and spear-pointed.

They looked at each other a few feet apart. Hi enjoyed it, because Bright Tooth did not attack.

“You pay another sovereign,” Bright Tooth said. There was about Bright Tooth a sort of suggestion of a rush preparing.

“Clear out,” Hi said, “clear right out of it. Get back where you belong.”

“You give the bad money,” Bright Tooth said; there was a whine in his voice. Hi edged towards him; he edged away.

“Clear out.”

Bright Tooth cleared out. He turned, in an anxious manner, to a point ten yards away. As Hi turned after him, he retreated hurriedly for fifty or sixty yards; then, as Hi still slowly followed, he retreated further.

“You keep where you are. Don’t you try to follow me,” Hi called. He tapped his pocket, and added, “This is what you’ll get, if you try any monkey-tricks with me, my son.”

He watched Bright Tooth for half a minute; then, as he seemed not disposed to try any monkey-tricks, he turned again upon his way through the woodland across the puddings of the cactus. Whenever he looked back he saw Bright Tooth following. If he paused, Bright Tooth paused. If he turned back, Bright Tooth turned back. When he went on, Bright Tooth followed.

“I haven’t done with him yet,” Hi thought. “He knows of some place ahead where he can get me.”

After some time he passed a turning to the right. Looking back, he saw Bright Tooth turn down this track at a quickened pace.

“He’s riding to head me off,” Hi thought. “I wish I had at least a club.”

There was, however, no chance of getting a club in that wood. He rode on into a meaner country and from this to a forest darker than the last, where he could hear nothing except a murmur or steady beat like the noise of water somewhere ahead. “That’s the ford,” Hi thought, “and the river’s in spate. Well, the longer I think of it, the less I shall like it.”

Almost at once the forest became sparser. He rode out on to a hill of moist red soil, at the foot of which was a violent little river, blood-red and bank high. Tracks led to what had been a ford there, but the water was romping over the ford in a way terrible to see. Not far below the ford the water went down a rapid. Near the ford, where the tracks ceased to be boggy, Bright Tooth and a friend sat on horses waiting for him. Bright Tooth had his knife, the friend had a revolver. “Here we are,” Hi said.

They signed to him to come forward and moved towards him. Hi had not any time for thought; he moved on the impulse of the moment. He banged his horse forwards down the slope towards the water in such a way that he could not stop, even had he wished. He yelled as he went. His horse went scattering down the slope. The man struck at him and someone shot at him. The water went up suddenly in a bright sheet over him and then he was in the hands of the river. In the first rush of the fall he lost his horse, and nearly choked with the filthy water in his mouth. Catching a gulp of air, he saw his horse again as the banks of the stream ran away from him. Then he saw Bright Tooth on a jibbing mare gathering the coils of a lasso for a swing. Then he was tumbled headlong and endlong down into a roaring pit that banged him and wouldn’t let him get his breath. He felt that he had tumbled down all the stairs in Christendom. The tumbling and banging seemed to last through this life into eternity. In another few seconds, when he had leisure to open his eyes, he was in a round, filthy, surging pool, where boughs, shrubs, trees and drowned beasts were milling and churning amid enormous bubbles of red yeast.

Striking out to the side of this, he came to a steep bank covered with trailers of bindweed dripping down upon him. Putting down his feet, he touched rock and stood. He caught the trailing plants, waded to the bank and then felt suddenly faint. Holding on to the trailers, he saw that they were not the bank, but a screen to it. Behind them was a cave, into which the sun shone. He clambered into this and lay down upon a water-smoothed rock, closed his eyes and wished that the world would stop spinning.

After he had lain there for some minutes he heard voices. Through the creepers he could see Bright Tooth and his friend on the other bank of the river, peering for his body. Presently he saw them lie down upon the bank in an effort to see under the creepers which hid him. They went up the stream for a little, then went down it, then came back to point, jabber and explain their theories over the pool. He could see what was in their minds. Bright Tooth thought that he had been washed underneath the bank. His friend thought that he had been jammed under water in the pool. They were there, watching the water, for a full quarter of an hour. Suddenly he saw them exclaim and point at something. The body of the sour colt, which had jammed in a snag in the rapids, came blindly down. The current shot it over to Bright Tooth’s side on the way down-stream. He saw them watch for the rider, but no rider followed. After some more searching and consulting, the two seemed to be agreeing to return later, when the water had fallen. They mounted and surveyed the water from their saddles and then slowly rode away with many glances back.

“They won’t be gone for long,” Hi said to himself. “They will come back separately soon, each hoping to find me before the other has a chance.”

As soon as they were hidden from him by the forest, Hi ventured out of his cover. By a little scrambling among slippery rocks he found a way out of the river-bed to the dry land. He saw the sour colt’s body drifting across a rock in mid-stream. The rage and rush of the filthy falls down which he had come made him marvel that he was not jammed there with the horse. He went on into the scrub away from the river till he came to a pool in the hollow of a rock. Here he stripped, washed, dried his clothes in the hot sun and took stock of his position. His nose was swollen and uncomfortable; he had an after-football feeling that he would be very stiff in the morning. “But that’s nothing,” he thought, “I ought to be thankful to be still alive.” His horse and hat were gone; his watch had stopped at seven minutes to five. His money was safe; among the coins were two crumpled, soaked ten peseta notes, which he had forgotten; he dried these carefully. He had a pocket-book, a knife, two handkerchiefs, a box of matches, which he dried one by one, a pair of pocket-scissors, some string, two pencils and a small shield-shaped silver locket containing camphor. His sister Bell had given this to him at Christmas; he had carried it with him ever since.

All his clothes looked as though they had been dipped in old blood, but they soon dried in the sun on that hot rock. He made his second handkerchief into a sunbonnet. His tie, which had been black with green spots, had spread a greenish black tinge all over his collar; the tie itself looked like a snake which had been run over. He judged that he would look more like a tramp with these two things than without them, so he left tie and collar under a bush, with a qualm, that he was leaving bits of England there. “The Elenas,” he thought, “will fit me out with a tie and collar when I reach Anselmo. After all, everybody has a collar.

“And now,” he added, “I will be off for Anselmo, as hard as I can put foot to ground. It can’t be more than eight miles.”

Away from the river the ground was desert-like and hard, growing scrub, mezquite, cactus and prickly pear in the spaces clear of rock. He picked up the trail for Anselmo, and went on at a good pace till he came out into the sage in the open country. He had often heard his father speak of the Santa Barbara landscape, now he saw it in its sweep, with the mountains near at his left, Gaspar thrusting out in front of them, above a rolling plain over which the wind exulted. Santa Barbara made a smudge against the paleness of the lower sky far behind him to his right. In front was this infinity of swaying sage, which ran on into grass for hours and hours of going. The forest lay dark to the left, all over the foothills of the Sierras; but one could not look at the darkness with all that light to choose. Straight in front of him, how far away he could not tell, in that clear light, which had so often deceived him already, was a round hill topped by a tower. It seemed to be not much more than a mile away in that clearness. The tower was foursquare and tall. One of its angles was topped by the figure of an angel clasping a banner.

“That is it,” Hi said, “there it is. That is Anselmo tower; the village must be beyond the hill; I shall be at the Elenas in half an hour. Oh, cheers; come on, now, for the last lap.”

He was so much cheered by the sight of his landmark that he began to run towards it. Soon he drew clear of a patch of scrub into sight of the great south road from Santa Barbara to Meruel. It went straight from the city across his path through a copse or woodland half a mile in front of him. On the road, coming from the city towards this wood, were four ox-waggons each with teams of eight oxen. He could see the slow, stately lurch of each swaying ox and hear the songs and cries of the negro teamsters. They were going with heavy loads. The whips cracked like rifle shots; the soft tenor voices adjured the oxen to pull in the names of countless saints. Hi saw a waggon enter the cover of the copse, then a second, then a third, then the last, but as he went on he did not see them emerge on the other side. “They can’t have stopped for siesta at this time,” he thought. “I suppose they are taking a halt.”

He went on towards the copse or little wood, watching idly, as one will, for the teams to emerge on the other side. They did not appear, so that he thought suddenly, “I know what it is; there is a turning in the wood towards Anselmo. They have turned off to Anselmo, and so of course the wood hides them. Yet that can’t be, either; for they aren’t singing nor cracking their whips. I suppose they have pulled up for maté or a cigarette.”

It took him longer than he had expected to reach the copse. When he was close to its edge, he heard from within it a sudden scream of pain followed by the laughter of men.

“What on earth is that?” he thought.

He broke into the covert, past a water; he heard voices and horses, and smelt woodsmoke and tobacco; soon he came out into the open upon a curious scene.

For three hundred years, carters and horsemen using that road had turned into that copse to camp or siesta. A wide space on both sides of the road had been browsed and trampled clear; the cleared ground was black with old camp-fire marks. In the road, in the midst of this cleared and trampled space, the four teams of oxen stood with straying bent heads in front of their waggons. All about them was a troop of Pituba lancers, perhaps fifty strong, who had been halted there boiling maté at little reed fires when the waggons had come in upon them. Now the lancers were standing guard over the teamsters, who were being questioned by their captain.

Hi recognised the captain at once. He was the little, short, fierce, bullet-headed snappy man who had forbidden him to land at La Boca. His yellow eyes were still bloodshot with rage. He was barking at one of the teamsters, who had perhaps made some rash or unfortunate reply. After he had sworn at this man, he gave an order to some of his men, who threw the teamster to the ground and bent his head down to his knees. Two Indians then pressed a piece of wood across the back of his neck and lashed it there with strips of hide. Hi knew at once that they were going to make the man what is called a broody hen; his father had told him of this torture. But before the order could be given to complete the trussing of the victim, the officer looked up, and recognised Hi.

“Ah,” he said, “the Inglays from La Boca; the Inglays with the too much talk.”

“Si,” Hi said.

“Then you did not land at Carpinche as I bade?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yes,” the officer said. “But what does Mr. Inglays do here, on the Meruel Road, after being told to stay in Carpinche?”

“I’m going to Anselmo.”

“To Anselmo? And where is your permit to go to Anselmo?”

“Surely I do not need a permit. I am English.”

“So? He does not need a permit: he is Inglays. To whom is the Inglays going in Anselmo?”

“I’m not going to anybody. I want to see that angel on the tower.”

“Ah, to see the angel on the tower? A holy Inglays. You will come to Ribote, where your angel of the tower shall be a little searched into. You are under arrest.”

“I’m English,” Hi said. “I have not broken any of your laws. You had better let me go.”

“It is for me to judge whether to let you go,” the officer said, “and whether you have broken the laws. You are walking without a permit on a forbidden road. You will come with me to Ribote.”

“But I can prove that I am doing no harm,” Hi said.

“If you can prove it, you can prove it at Ribote,” the officer answered. “But to Ribote you will certainly come.”

He turned his back upon Hi. He left him in charge of two troopers, while he strolled away to drink his maté. When he had finished his maté, he gave orders that Hi should mount a spare horse. When the troop had formed up, with Hi in the midst of them, they set off at a quick pace along the great road to the south. It was half-past five, as Hi judged, when they set out. The mountains were stretching their shadows like fingers along the plain. Glancing back, he saw the angel of the tower of Anselmo growing smaller and smaller. “We are miles from Anselmo now,” he thought. “It will be midnight now before I can get there.” He had no fears for himself. “They won’t really dare to harm me,” he thought, but he did bother acutely about the delay of the message. “Here’s the whole day gone,” he thought, “and I haven’t started yet and these beasts may jail me for a week.”

He was going, as far as he could judge, south or south with a little east in it. Presently they were riding in the dark, except for a flaring lower sky behind them and the young moon westering over the plain. “This is ten miles,” he thought, “or fifteen miles from Anselmo. I am no nearer than I was in Santa Barbara.”

At about seven or later he saw lights in front of him running up a slope. They came into a town of some size built on the side of a hill, which was crowned with pine trees. “Here is Ribote,” he thought. The town, though it was mainly a collection of wooden houses, was lit with electric light. Near the entrance of the town there was a big enclosure containing a mansion. The troop rode past this, up the hill to an important stone building, which looked like a large public-house partially converted into a Greek temple. As it had a flagstaff with two small guns in front of it, Hi judged it to be the city hall. The troop halted outside this hall. The officer with about a dozen men dismounted, drew their revolvers and entered. Perhaps thirty seconds later there came a cry from within and shots were fired. A few minutes later, three men, the better sort of citizen, were brought out from the hall. As the officer brought these men into the open, he caught sight of Hi, whom he seemed to have forgotten.

“Here is this Inglays again,” he said. “You shall rest from your horse ride.”

He said something to a native in a ragged blue uniform, who looked like a sweeper or a porter of the building.

“Yes, it is so,” he said. “You shall rest awhile to consider the angel on the tower and other matters. You shall have your hands free, so that you can catch your lice. You will find some brother Inglays where you are going.”

Hi realised that he was going to be jailed.

“Sir,” Hi said, “will you please let me go? I am not a subject of this State.”

“Sir, we will please let him go,” the officer said. “He is not a subject of this State.”

The man in the blue rags led the way into the house. The officer ordered the Indians to take Hi in after him. Hi was thrust along a hall into a corridor, then across a yard, paved with concrete, to a low building or shed, where the ragged man unlocked a door. When the door was opened, Hi was flung through it. He went staggering for a couple of steps, stumbled over a body which grunted, staggered on and trod upon a second body, which roused up, cursed in English and subsided.

The door clicked to and the lock turned. The key was withdrawn and the footsteps of the jailer passed away across the yard. A door closed behind them. It seemed to Hi to shut him into an “everlasting prison, remediless.” He apologised to the two bodies, on which he had trodden, but had no answer, except drunken muttering.

“I am jailed,” he thought, “locked up in a jail and can’t get out. And I can’t tell when I shall get out. I may be here for days.”

After a little time the room seemed less dark. He began to have glimmerings of its shape. There was a grated opening high up which let in air. A little grating in the door let him peer into the yard. It was a biggish, long prison room about twenty-four feet by eight. There were three people in it, a dead drunk man, a less drunk man and himself. The dead drunk man was out of all knowledge of the world. The second, from words uttered when trodden on, Hi judged to be a deserter from the Navy.

Peering through the grating, he could see little beyond except the four concreted sides of the yard sloping to a central drain. An evergreen stood in a tub at each corner of the yard. The slopes of the pent-houses surrounding the yard kept him from sight of the heavens, but a glimmer in the water of the drain showed that the stars were shining. He shook at the door, which rattled a little. It was an iron slab. He was a prisoner. “And Carlotta is a prisoner,” he thought. “And how on earth is Don Manuel to be warned?” He saw no way. “They’ve diddled us between them,” he thought.

While he stood at the little grating, rattling at the door, a great tumult broke out at the lower end of the town where Hi had seen the mansion. After twenty minutes of this he noticed that the pent-house on his right began to take colour. A glow came upon the tiles. The racket continued for half an hour. “They’re having a good old racket of destruction,” he thought. When he looked again through the grating, he noticed that the glare upon the tiles of the pent-house had changed to a glittering intermittence. “I believe they’re burning the town,” he thought. “If they are, we shall be burned like rats in a trap.”

“What say?” a voice asked.

Hi looked round startled. He saw the second of the two drunkards sitting up and looking at him. He was a littleish man with a flushed hatchet face which shone in the light.

“The town’s on fire,” Hi said; “we may be burnt if they don’t let us out.”

“What say?”

“The town’s on fire: we may be burnt.”

“ ’Ere, let me come on deck.”

He came on deck, a little unsteady on his legs and smelling very strong of aniseed. “Damn to hell,” he said, when he had come on deck and looked through the grating.

“A bit of fair old, rare old,” he said.

He turned on Hi suddenly to ask:

“What you in for, mate?”

“Nothing. They shoved me in.”

“That’s me, to rights,” he answered. “Nothing: same ’ere. Burning’s pineful, too. Let’s ’ave a look at that door. Say, mate, got a bit of wire?”

“No.” Hi said, “I haven’t.”

The man took hold of the door, struck a match and examined the lock. He lit a cigarette before the match burned out. He had a packet of cigarettes. Hi thought him rather scurvy not to offer him one.

“You’ve not got a bit of wire?” the man said.

Hi said he hadn’t.

“What are you doing here?” the man said.

“Come to learn sugar-planting,” Hi said. “What are you doing?”

“None of your damned business,” the man said. “If I’d got a bit of wire,” he said, “I’d soon have this door open. But you haven’t got a bit of wire?”

“No.”

“That’s a proper barracker. Coo lummy, she ain’t half caught fire. The skylight’s no cop, neither. It’s a bit of all Sir Garnet, if you ask me. You ain’t got a bit of wire?”

“No.”

Here the other drunkard gurgled in his sleep.

“Cor blimey,” the little man said, “what was that?”

“The other man.”

“What other man? I didn’t know there was another bloke; that’s straight. Lummy, ’e’s been in luck. ’E’s enjoyed ’is lunch. I’ll ’ave a look, see, if ’e’s got a bit of wire.”

He was down on his knees on the instant, rummaging in the drunkard’s clothes; for more than wire, Hi thought. He sucked his cigarette to a glow till his face shewed sharp as a wolf’s over the body.

“Not a bleeding bit,” he said at last. “The grating’s out of reach too, unless I stood on your back.”

“Come on,” Hi said. “Stand on it, and try.”

“Right,” the man said. “Tuck in your tuppeny.”

Hi tucked in his tuppeny beneath the window, the little man made a run and leap and fell over.

“Mizzled the bleeding dick,” he said. “I’ll do it next time.”

The next time he did do it; he leaped on to Hi’s back and poised there; he was a horrid weight, but Hi was struck by the ease and certainty of the jump, and also by the silence of his tread: he was wearing old white deck shoes with rubber soles. He felt the man try the gratings by heaving all his weight on them.

“Not a give in the whole bleeding barrow,” the man said, leaping lightly down. “Now if old Alf was along, what got out of Princetown, it would be all right, wouldn’t it? You ain’t got a bit of wire?”

“No.”

“ ’Alf a mo’; go easy,” the man said. “You ain’t seen my cap since you come in?”

“No.”

“It ought to be somewheres, unless they pincht it. It’s a fair barracker when they pinch kit as well as quod a bloke. You ain’t got a cap: did they pinch yours?”

“No: I had none.”

“Cor blimey, I’d a sweet jag; coo. This sweet shumpine, the sime the toffs; coo. But you feel it in the sweetbreads; that’s where it is; next day’s the day; that’s straight. Say, mate, would you mind looking for me cap. This grilling’s a steak’s game.”

They groped on the floor for the cap; the glare without increased so that they could see a little.

“We’ll be as nice as mother makes it, no bleeding error,” the man said. “If we don’t get out of here, we’ll be bleeding pancakes; that’s straight. Cor blimey, I seen men burned. Coo, kid; it’s a barracker, being burned; a fair barracker. You can always tell when a man’s dead, when you see him being burned; yes, you can, because. . . . Cor blimey, here’s me cap. Nar then.”

He struck another match, lit another cigarette, and rummaged swiftly at his cap in the glow at the door grating.

“Got a bit ’a wire,” he said. “Nar then, to be or not to be.”

He had taken the piece of wire which made the frame for the top of his cheese-cutter cap. With this, when he had bent it in a certain way, he began to fish within the lock, using a niceness of touch which Hi had not expected from a drunkard. He took some little time. The lock rattled and clicked under his fishing: often he swore a little and readjusted his wire. Once he stopped to look at the glare upon the tiles.

“It won’t ’alf be a bit of real life,” he said, “if the fire reaches Matiro’s. ’E’s got seventy tons of blasting powder under where ’e keeps ’is chickens. Cor, mate, that’ll mike them think the bleeding post’s come: seventy ton. Now, you bleeder, I’ve got you.”

Very delicately, he brought pressure to bear on the tough twisted wire: the lock turned: the door opened.

“There’s the bleeding door,” the man said. “We’d best hop it, mate. What’s the way out is the barracker for me.”

“Across the yard and then through the house,” Hi said.

They set out across the yard; some rats in the drain sat up to look at them. Hi saw their eyes glisten. All was still in the municipio. The door into the building was shut but not locked; Hi opened it and peered into a dark passage droning with mosquitoes.

“It’s through here, then to the right,” Hi whispered.

“Lummy,” the man said, “I ain’t half got the sours in my sweetbreads.”

“We must get the other man out,” Hi whispered.

“What other man?”

“The drunk man.”

“Garn.”

“We can’t leave him to be burned.”

“Burned. Blimey, you can see the fire ain’t anyways near. Besides, ’e’s bin lunching; ’e’s necked all what come in the waggon.”

“Well, I’ll get him out of the cell anyway. Will you give me a hand?”

“No bleeding fear.” The man passed into the passage and closed the door noiselessly behind him. Hi stole back to the cell to rouse the drunkard. It was strange how differently the glare of the fire seemed from the yard. It was not near at hand, but at the far end of the town. All the same, it was burning fiercely and perhaps drawing near to Matiro’s. Hi shook the drunkard’s arm.