Twenty-Three Stories by Twenty and Three Authors

by Unknown

5

Yet not for ever was the memory of his dead life to vanish from the heart of Ivan. Even during the times of his most passionate love for Mary there began to invade him moments of bitter memory and regret. There was something which prevented the entire fusion with Mary towards which he yearned and ached. It was something deep in his soul. It was something which gnawed at his forearm, bit with teeth of contrition at the place where the axe had fallen and severed the hand from the wrist.

He tried to put all this futility from him. He would seize Mary more closely, look desperately into her eyes, and in the perfume of her lips and hair seek anodyne. Between them there was a sufficient store of money, small though it was, to allow them a few months of liberty, undisturbed by any thought of the future. They wandered lazily about Greece for a little time, finding in the Greek day and the immemorial hills a perfect setting for their love.

And yet ever more insistently came to him the call of the hand—the hand which had been his own and not his own, the hand which had united in so unique an embrace his brother with himself.

Again at night voices tormented him. Again, when winds were about, they called with living words: “The hand! The hand! It is calling you, calling! Answer! He wants you! Peter!” wailed the wind. “Peter! Peter!”

Lines began to draw across his forehead. With anxiety Mary saw shadows growing under his eyes, and in his eyes a hunger which grew more and more forlorn. “What is it, love?” she would murmur. “You’ve not slept well!”

“Nothing at all, love, nothing! All’s well!” he would reply, trying with a kiss to forget the wind and the hand and the call.

“There’s something you’re longing for. Tell me, Ivan. Let me help you. You must.”

“Nothing, Mary. I’ve got you. There’s nothing else in the world.” But the call of the hand did not abate. “Peter!” the winds wailed, “Peter! He wants you! Answer!”

The urgency of the call grew more imperious. He was sickening and growing weak. There was a hot torpidity in the dry Greek noon which shrivelled his veins. He would drag his coat down from his neck and lift his head and try to breathe the deep breath he had known in his Serbian wood. But there was no spaciousness, no great draughts of cool air in the wind, only voices: “Peter! Peter! Peter!”

“We must go somewhere. We must go away,” said Mary. “We must go to Athens and see a doctor, Ivan. I’m afraid!”

“Not Athens! No!” he replied with a shudder, his temples contracting as before the hot blast from an oven. Those dry marble spaces! The dusty pepper-trees! The sweating crowds in the shops, swallowing sweet cakes like swine swallowing husks in a sty! Athens became a nightmare.

He was lying awake one night, the body of Mary curled beside him, her hair floating vaguely on the pillow in the half-light of the moon. She stirred in her sleep, and her little white hand unconsciously sought his wrist and fastened tightly round it. That moment bridged the buried time. Unescapably Mary had brought back to him the sensation of Peter lying in the grasp of his own hand. Never before was the call of the hand so imperious. Never so clearly did the wind exclaim, “Peter! He wants you! Answer!”

An irresistible love for his murdered brother overwhelmed him. He raised himself from his bed and lifted helplessly his lopped arm into the whispering room. “Coming, my brother, I am coming! Wait! Peter!” he moaned, and the wind replied: “Peter! Peter!”

He lay back in bed. He realised that the strongest claim in the world upon him was the call of the hand. As for Mary—she was nothing different from himself. For her as for him the call of the hand came dictatorially. In each other they were one, but without the hand their unity was uncompleted. The call of the hand must be obeyed. To-morrow they must leave Greece behind. To-morrow to Serbia, to-morrow the response to the hand.

Mary was not surprised when Ivan without warning explained that all their plans were altered. She was used to his unaccountable whims, the sudden mystic impulses of his Slavonic soul.

They packed up the few things which were all the impediment they possessed, and next day saw them well started on their way to Monastir, carefully skirting Athens. Arrived at Monastir, a few days elapsed before they appeared at the remote wood where Ivan was born. The cottage built by Ivan Kupreloff was not yet occupied. The strange character of its former inhabitants combined with the terrible nature of Peter’s death had succeeded in keeping it empty! They obtained permission from its owner to occupy the cottage, and with a great sigh of content Ivan flung open the door where he and his brother had passed so frequently in former days.

In a little time Mary had made of the house such a palace of delight as it had not been since Ivan’s mother was dead. Happily, Ivan took in large draughts of the Serbian pineland air, filling his lungs. Happily, with Mary beside him on the bed where he and Peter had lain entwined, the dark drowsy nights melted into dawn. He made his reply to the call of the hand. Only faintly, if at all, the wind or the branches whispered “Peter! Peter!” Peter seemed to be happy at last. The severed hand seemed at last to be tranquil round the wrist of the murdered brother. Then the winds died away, and there was no sound of “Peter!”; only fitfully a swaying of twigs and a rustle of pine-needles.

So it seemed. Till summer drooped her drowsing hair. Summer became wrinkled and old. Summer went and the swift autumn came. The days shortened into the rigours of winter, the days ever contracted towards the anniversary of that red day when the axe was lifted and Peter fell. Never a moment did it occur to Ivan that now when the fatal day was approaching he might leave behind him his Serbian wood. He knew that, more tightly than ever during his living days, the wrist of Peter lay within his own hand, tight, unescapable. Mary and he lay under the thumb of that severed hand wherefrom the red arrow glowed when the night was dark and the woodfire threw leaping shadows over the log-walls. There was no gainsaying the call of the hand till the end of days. Ivan knew that never again would he leave behind his Serbian wood.

Came the night which was the anniversary of that dead, unburyable night when Peter’s doom had been sealed. Again there was the rumbling of thunder, there were evil flashes of lightning that ran among the clouds. Never with so firm an embrace had Mary been clasped within his arms. Nothing in the world was so strong as his love for Mary. They had responded to the call of the hand. There was no further claim upon them. Ivan kissed her sleeping eyes and was lulled in the music of her breathing. A drowsiness came over him, and for a time he slid into sleep.

In his sleep something tightened round him, something growing so tight that it forced through the barriers of his sleep. Vaguely, faintly a half-consciousness came back to him. He was not awake. He was not asleep. He was in a borderland where the other world is not dead and this world is half-alive. Tighter grew the thing which pressed against his sleep. It was round his wrist, it was round the wrist where something had once come crashing down. What was it? What was it had come crashing down? An axe it was that had come crashing down. It was the hand of Mary growing tighter round his wrist. No, it could not be the hand of Mary. Mary had fallen from his arms. Mary was turned away from him. He could see her hands pale where she had lifted them in sleep above her head. It was not the hand of Mary growing tighter round his wrist. But it was a hand. No doubt of that. It was a hand. With a dull glow of flame a little red arrow gleamed like embers below the thumb of the hand. Where had he seen that arrow? Where and when? When his hand had fallen away from him, lopped at the wrist. It was the dead hand which was not dead. It was his own hand. It was the hand with the red arrow which had held Peter so tightly. It was the dead hand which was alive, the living hand which had arisen from the dead. Tighter round his wrist grew the pressure of the severed hand. The hand was tired of calling. The hand had come. There was no gainsaying the hand. So tight grew the clutch of the hand that his whole arm slowly lifted from his side. Irresistibly the shoulder followed the rising arm. There was no gainsaying the hand. Neither awake nor asleep, neither living nor dead, he followed the hand, he rose from the bed where Mary lay, sleeping sundered from him, his no more. Mary was alive. He was neither living nor dead. The door of the room was opened wide. Closed doors were no barrier against the hand which had arisen from the grave. Slowly, with steady feet, with wide, filmy eyes, Ivan passed through the door. Slowly through the outer door, slowly into the sound of thunder, into the gleam of lightning and the voices of winds moaning unceasingly, “Peter! Peter! He is calling you! Ivan! Peter is calling you! Follow!” and ever again unceasingly, “Peter! Peter!”

Tighter than the bonds of ice or granite hills, tight only as the bond of death, the arisen hand held the lopped wrist, drew the slow body of Ivan through the haunted night far into the wood, far through the talking trees, far to the place of that tree which had not been cut down, to the place where an axe had fallen through bones and flesh, where Peter had fallen, where Peter lay buried, not deep down; where Peter lay buried under twigs and loose earth.

Tightly round the wrist of the man neither alive nor dead clutched the resurrected hand. Nearer and nearer to the shallow grave the hand pulled down the body of Ivan. Methodically, steadily, working with no pause, the free hand of Ivan moved the twigs and the loose earth—methodically, with no pause, until at last the body of Peter lay revealed; not recognisable, dissolute beneath the change through which all men shall pass, recognisable only to those filmy eyes of Ivan, to that questing hungry soul of Ivan which had come to claim its own. Closer and closer to the dead brother the severed hand drew the body of Ivan down; so close, so close, until at last the hand clutched again and for ever that wrist to which Fate had fastened it long years ago. Alongside of his dead brother, quietly, with those eyes which neither saw nor did not see, Ivan lay down full length. Gradually the severed hand, the hand which had arisen from the dead to claim him, because the dead brother called and the severed hand called for its own, gradually the hand slipped from the lopped wrist; the wrist and the arm became one. The hand of Ivan had brought Ivan to his own. Indissolubly, Peter and Ivan lay joined together. But the death which lay cold in the heart and body of Peter passed from the clutched wrist, passed into the hand which clutched it, passed along the arm which had been severed once, and along Ivan’s shoulder, until it made his eyes unseeing discs and of his heart cold stone which could beat no more.

As the grey light of dawn came emptily down the Serbian woods, the two brothers lay immortally one again, like the two babies the gods had given Nikolai Kupreloff upon a long-vanished night.

THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE

By ARTHUR LYNCH

“I can account for the man,” said Carstairs, “but what I am curious about is the feelings of the girl. He blew out his brains in her presence, and he did it immediately after she had told him to be gone. Dramatic of him. He did it for love of her—a warm passion. I suppose that that would be the deepest idea in her mind.”

“He was a man of his word, at any rate,” said Miss Landells, “for of all the heroes who are eternally swearing they could die for a smile and all the rest of it, hardly one would wet his boots unless he thought he could gain something by it.... I dare say she had begun by despising him, and when he blew out his brains felt some respect for him. Probably if he were alive again, though, she would act in the same way.”

“I think I could put a harder case,” said the Colonel, “one where a man sacrificed more——”

“Sacrificed more?”

“Yes; a man might easily blow out his brains in a burst of rage or disappointment, but that proves little. Blantyre, the man of whom I was thinking, did more, and the girl—Miss Trafford—had therefore to deal with a more complex problem.”

With a warning that we might think the story gruesome, the Colonel told it.

---

To understand the circumstances it is necessary to know something of Blantyre’s character. When I knew him first he had the rank of Captain. I being second lieutenant and our relations not being very familiar, I only knew him from what might be called an outsider’s point of view. I hardly think, however, that anyone knew him much better. That will give you a hint—he was a reserved man. Yet he had a fund of high-spirits; also a witty manner, which was at times playful and yet sometimes bitter.

He was an unusually handsome man. Above average height, slender but well-made and active, he had regular features, dark complexion and black, blue-black hair. It was said that he had a dash of the “tar-brush”—Indian, you know—and this fact, trivial as it may appear, had, I believe, a powerful influence on his life. I know as a fact, that he became more reserved after a rather unpleasant occurrence, when an ill-bred young spark, losing his temper in an argument, called him a Dago.

Blantyre was always a serious sort of chap. He wrote for the United Service Review and the Engineering Magazine, and other technical journals, partly of course for the interest he took in that sort of thing, but also because he was not well-off. That too was his reason for taking as little part as possible in dances, picnics and the other little flutters by which we amused ourselves. He seemed, in fact, rather a fish out of water, and I used to wonder why he remained in the Service; but he was not only of an energetic and resolute habit of mind, but also intensely ambitious.

He had the misfortune to fall in love with the prettiest, the most spoilt and, I believe, the most selfish, minx in England. The word “brilliancy” was always on her lips, and she thought of nothing but pleasure and excitement. She was then about twenty.

Imagine her reception of him when, carried off his feet, he proposed to her. She laughed in his face and, I am told, asked him if he were “an Indian Nabob”!

She probably only meant that the man who married her must be able to give her the sort of life to which she was accustomed; and had not realized—she took it all so lightly and really cared for Blantyre so little—what the phrase might mean to him. His poverty and his supposed origin—no words could have cut more deeply.

That very night, he set the wheels in motion and shortly after was transferred to the Indian battalion. For the next seven years he put in as much fighting on the frontiers as was humanly possible. He seemed the veriest glutton for danger, never spared himself, and yet people said he fought without enthusiasm or any warmth of blood. Oh, I grant you a queer chap!

At first his men rather disliked him, but in time they became impressed by his courage and dash, and they soon grew to rely on his steady, his inexorable justice. He was never a popular man, too stiff and too reserved, but his men would have followed him to certain death. They called him “The Sabre Prince.”

After seven years Blantyre was back amongst us, but by that time he had risen to be Colonel, and his reputation was unique. He was then about thirty-five, still, you see, a young man, and quite naturally London went mad over him. He became the lion that particular season.

But India had left her marks on him. He had returned minus his right arm, and the once blue-black hair was grey. However, he was still as handsome as ever and had the air of a man who has seen and dealt with matters of importance. In other words he was distingué. Also he was still in love with Miss Trafford.

Nor had time and experience and that unique reputation of his failed of their effect on her. As often happens to a woman of her type she had failed to bring off a match commensurate with her ambitions, and at twenty-seven was still unmarried.

The news of their engagement set everybody gossipping. His infatuation was recalled, and it was said she had refused a great alliance in order to wait for him. The story even got into the newspapers.

I was not a little pleased, I can tell you, to hear that they were to be married. She was still wonderfully pretty and, rumour said, less vain and spoilt. It might be that she would settle down and make him a good wife. Anyway he wanted her, he had wanted her for a long time, and he was going to get what he wanted. Blantyre himself wrote to tell me, and I think the next few weeks were the happiest of his life.

Judge then, of my surprise—sorrow, too—to learn one day, and again from Blantyre himself that the marriage was off, that he had resigned his commission and got an engineering job abroad.

Of course I hurried to see him. He was much as usual, cool, collected, finely-tempered. In fact when I entered he looked up with a smile—and I had always thought his smile lighting up that austere face peculiarly winning.

It appeared that it was he who had broken off their engagement, and the matter can be put in a nutshell—he had found her out. Mercenary motives, no real affection—also, while he himself had grown and developed, she had remained the social butterfly.

He told me—what I had not known—the story of his rejection seven years previously. He had believed he was not worthy of her, and he had gone to India to fight his way up to her standard. When he came back he had believed her story, believed she had waited....

Then he had heard things. People talk, you know. I don’t know that he believed what he was told, but what wrung him to the very vitals was that he should have loved so deeply something that was—well, a poor thing, unworthy.

Miss Trafford was in no temper to be jilted. She even went the length of putting the case into her lawyer’s hands for breach of promise.

---

“Before I leave England,” he said, “I mean as far as I can to satisfy justice. The law, I suppose, could not get more from me than I possess, and everything I have, I mean to give her. It was she who sent me to India, and I will strip myself for her of everything I gained there. Will you take my medals?” and he offered me a little mahogany, gold-ornamented box. “Keep them as a memento. I do not want them. I—I feel I may have won them fighting against my own people.”

In his words was a something of grief and even shame. I felt I was looking at a man who regretted what could not be helped, who would regret it for the remainder of his days.

“There is only now my property in Devonshire. That I have made over to Miss Trafford. The deeds are in this box. The property is a small one but it has now no encumbrances. I have been able to clear off everything; except—” he said musingly—“except something she may or may not regard as a detriment—it is a sort of Sentimental Mortgage.”

“A skeleton in the cupboard?” said I, thinking of some ghost story, or creepy legend, or the like.

“Precisely. You have hit it. A skeleton in the cupboard.”

“But, but,” said I, trying to bring him back to the business side of the matter, “this is not justice, justice to yourself.”

“When all is said and done,” he returned quietly, “you will recognise that justice—inexorable justice. Money, position, even reputation are nothing to me now.... No, I am not going to kill myself. I have accepted a post in an enterprise which, if successful, will make a more enduring mark, bring me greater wealth, perhaps even fame, than those frontier exploits of mine.”

I was relieved to hear of his fresh interests.

“I am undertaking the survey of a line to open up the hinterlands of Argentine. If that be successful, I shall hope to superintend the work. If I do not succeed—well, at any rate I shall have made a beginning, and my successor may find encouragement in the spirit in which I have led the way. But I am dreaming ... I wish you to take this box containing the deeds, and present it to her—if you will do me that last favour.”

I promised.

---

I brought the box to her and presented it with ceremony. She was always charming. She begged me to wait while she opened it.

When I spoke of the “skeleton in the cupboard” I had little guessed how startlingly true the words must have sounded. It was her fault that Blantyre had gone to India, and with the gift lay the rebuke, for the skeleton grasped the deeds.

---

“The skeleton, Colonel?”

“Yes, the skeleton of his right hand.”

CAPTAIN SHARKEY

HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME

By A. CONAN DOYLE

When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce, others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole human race.

With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas, disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.

On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.

They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean Gulf.

Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship Morning Star, and yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage.

Captain Sharkey, of the 20-gun pirate barque Happy Delivery, had passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship and her full and valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island to be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.

One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.

For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but the seaman had at once committed them to the deep, lest the temptation should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the last moment, the Morning Star had found him in that madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.

Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the custom-house quay.

“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips.”

“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the rough old Bristol man beside him.

The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman sprang up the ladder.

“Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you heard about Sharkey?”

The captain grinned at the mate.

“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.

“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then! Why, we’ve got him safe under lock and key here at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged to-morrow morning.”

Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the front of them with a radiant face turned up to heaven, for he came of the Puritan stock.

“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if they lack a hangman, do you?”

“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar, Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came the villain to be taken?”

“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship. So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but our good little governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. ‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the point swinging.”

“I wish I could,” said the captain wistfully, “but I am sadly behind time now. I should start with the evening tide.”

“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is going back with you.”

“The Governor!”

“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”

“Well, well!” cried the captain, in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman, and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King George’s service, and he asks a cast in the Morning Star as far as London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too rough for his taste.”

“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent. “Sir Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life in him. He has a great spirit in him, though, you must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his speech.”

“He may say what he likes and do what he likes so long as he does not come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain. “He is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the Morning Star. And, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to my employer, just as he does to King George.”

“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order before he leaves.”

“The early morning tide, then.”

“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night, and he will follow them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”

Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s baggage began to arrive—great ironbound ant-proof trunks, and official tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the cocked hat or sword within. And then there came a note, with a heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.

He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard the Governor was an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless manner of the purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain.

“You have my things?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir Charles.”

“Have you wine aboard?”

“I have ordered five cases, sir”

“And tobacco?”

“There is a keg of Trinidad.”

“You play a hand of piquet?”

“Passably well, sir.”

“Then up anchor, and to sea!”

There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter-rail.

“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you all that she will carry?”

“Every inch, Sir Charles.”

“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow, that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your voyage.”

“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain. “But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”

“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”

“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”

“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”

“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”

“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business amongst the merchants. But hark!”

He raised his ring-covered hand in the air. From far astern there came the low deep thunder of cannon.

“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be a signal for us to put back?”

The Governor laughed.

“You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea. There’s an end of Sharkey!”

“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the low, purple line of the vanishing land.

It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor smoked their long pipes and drank their claret as three good comrades should.

“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.

“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.

“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked the mate.

“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.

“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”

“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others! But I remember now that the Adjutant-General said that he had such an eye as you describe, and added that the jury were so foolish as to be visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and hung him for a figure-head.”

The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own. Another bottle was broached to drink for a pleasant voyage, and the Governor would drink just one other on top of it, so that the seamen were glad at last to stagger off—the one to his watch and the other to his bunk. But when after his four hours’ spell the mate came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor in his Ramillies wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown still seated sedately at the lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.

“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he is well.”

The voyage of the Morning Star was a successful one, and in about three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before they were half-way across the Atlantic he was, save only for his eyes, as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions about the sail and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining leave from the captain that the New England seaman—he who had been cast away in the boat—should lead him about, and above all that he should sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.

It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service, since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey, and the other was his avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed fore-finger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.

And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulder. He cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and talk of mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with the spokesman of the seamen.

Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.

And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island, they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea, with the long dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and Sir Charles might meet the king’s ministers at Westminster before the evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly he threw all his cards down, and swept all the money into his long-flapped silken waistcoat.

“The game’s mine!” said he.

“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”

“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you that I have played out the hand, and that you are a loser.” He whipped off his wig and his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.

“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”

The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing laugh.

“Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the Happy Delivery. We made it hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless boat. You dogs—you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs—we hold you at the end of our pistols!”

“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire in store for you!”

“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to make a pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon. Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”

“Ay, ay, captain!”

“And the other boats scuttled?”

“I bored them all in three places.”

“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the Governor of St. Kitt’s?”

“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When I broke prison I learnt from my friends—for Captain Sharkey has those who love him in every port—that the Governor was starting for Europe under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah and I paid him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a Governor should. Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them.”

“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.

“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your knees and beg for your life.”

“I’ll see you—” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.

“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”

“No; not if you twist it off.”

“Put an inch of your knife into him.”

“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”

“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in your pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned.”

“To the stove, captain?”

“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which one of us two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”

“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster. “You surely do not mean to let him go?”

“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to question my orders?”

“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster, and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spreadeagled hands and feet with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St. Kitt’s.

“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate. “If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged ship of his own—so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back, after all, for the Morning Star.”

Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.

“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and pistols! Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into the boats all hands.”

Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once more.

“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”

The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net.

Close to them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.

“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys, to warn them of their danger.”

But it was too late.

At that very moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.

VIOLENCE

By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

From Ten Minute Stories, by Algernon Blackwood, by permission of E. P. Dutton and Company.

“But what seems so odd to me, so horribly pathetic, is that such people don’t resist,” said Leidall, suddenly entering the conversation. The intensity of his tone startled everybody; it was so passionate, yet with a beseeching touch that made the women feel uncomfortable a little. “As a rule, I’m told, they submit willingly, almost as though——”

He hesitated, grew confused, and dropped his glance to the floor; and a smartly-dressed woman, eager to be heard, seized the opening. “Oh, come now,” she laughed; “one always hears of a man being put into a strait waistcoat. I’m sure he doesn’t slip it on as if he were going to a dance!” And she looked flippantly at Leidall, whose casual manners she resented. “People are put under restraint. It’s not in human nature to accept it—healthy human nature, that is?” But for some reason no one took her question up. “That is so, I believe, yes,” a polite voice murmured, while the group at tea in the Dover Street Club turned with one accord to Leidall as to one whose interesting sentence still remained unfinished. He had hardly spoken before, and a silent man is ever credited with wisdom.

“As though—you were just saying, Mr. Leidall?” a quiet little man in a dark corner helped him.

“As though, I meant, a man in that condition of mind is not insane all through,” Leidall continued stammeringly; “but that some wise portion of him watches the proceeding with gratitude, and welcomes the protection against himself. It seems awfully pathetic. Still”—again hesitating and fumbling in his speech—“er—it seems queer to me that he should yield quietly to enforced restraint—the waistcoat, handcuffs, and the rest.” He looked round hurriedly, half suspiciously, at the faces in the circle, then dropped his eyes again to the floor. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I cannot understand it,” he added, as no one spoke, but in a very low voice, and almost to himself. “One would expect them to struggle furiously.”

Someone had mentioned that remarkable book, The Mind that Found Itself, and the conversation had slipped into this serious vein. The women did not like it. What kept it alive was the fact that the silent Leidall, with his handsome, melancholy face, had suddenly wakened into speech, and that the little man opposite to him, half invisible in his dark corner, was assistant to one of London’s great hypnotic doctors, who could, an he would, tell interesting and terrible things. No one cared to ask the direct question, but all hoped for revelations, possibly about people they actually knew. It was a very ordinary tea-party indeed. And this little man now spoke, though hardly in the desired vein. He addressed his remarks to Leidall across the disappointed lady.

“I think, probably, your explanation is the true one,” he said gently, “for madness in its commoner forms is merely want of proportion; the mind gets out of right and proper relations with its environment. The majority of madmen are mad on one thing only, while the rest of them is as sane as myself—or you.”

The words fell into the silence. Leidall bowed his agreement, saying no actual word. The ladies fidgeted. Someone made a jocular remark to the effect that most of the world was mad anyhow, and the conversation shifted with relief into a lighter vein—the scandal in the family of a politician. Everybody talked at once. Cigarettes were lit. The corner soon became excited and even uproarious. The tea-party was a great success, and the offended lady, no longer ignored, led all the skirmishes—towards herself. She was in her element. Only Leidall and the little invisible man in the corner took small part in it; and presently, seizing the opportunity when some new arrivals joined the group, Leidall rose to say his adieux, and slipped away, his departure scarcely noticed. Dr. Hancock followed him a minute later. The two men met in the hall; Leidall already had his hat and coat on. “I’m going West, Mr. Leidall. If that’s your way too, and you feel inclined for the walk, we might go together.” Leidall turned with a start. His glance took in the other with avidity—a keenly-searching, hungry glance. He hesitated for an imperceptible moment, then made a movement towards him, half inviting, while a curious shadow dropped across his face and vanished. It was both pathetic and terrible. The lips trembled. He seemed to say, “God bless you; do come with me!” But no words were audible.

“It’s a pleasant evening for a walk,” added Dr. Hancock gently; “clean and dry under foot for a change. I’ll get my hat and join you in a second.” And there was a hint, the merest flavour, of authority in his voice.

That touch of authority was his mistake. Instantly Leidall’s hesitation passed. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, “but I’m afraid I must take a taxi. I have an appointment at the Club, and I’m late already.” “Oh, I see,” the other replied, with a kindly smile; “then I mustn’t keep you. But if you ever have a free evening, won’t you look me up, or come and dine? You’ll find my telephone number in the book. I should like to talk with you about—those things we mentioned at tea.” Leidall thanked him politely and went out. The memory of the little man’s kindly sympathy and understanding eyes went with him.

“Who was that man?” someone asked, the moment Leidall had left the tea-table. “Surely he’s not the Leidall who wrote that awful book some years ago?”

“Yes—the Gulf of Darkness. Did you read it?”

They discussed it and its author for five minutes, deciding by a large majority that it was the book of a madman. Silent, rude men like that always had a screw loose somewhere, they agreed. Silence was invariably morbid.

“And did you notice Dr. Hancock? He never took his eyes off him. That’s why he followed him out like that. I wonder if he thought anything!”

“I know Hancock well,” said the lady of the wounded vanity. “I’ll ask him and find out.” They chattered on, somebody mentioned a risqué play, the talk switched into other fields, and in due course the tea-party came to an end.

And Leidall, meanwhile, made his way towards the Park on foot, for he had not taken a taxi after all. The suggestion of the other man, perhaps, had worked upon him. He was very open to suggestion. With hands deep in his overcoat pockets, and head sunk forward between his shoulders, he walked briskly, entering the Park at one of the smaller gates. He made his way across the wet turf, avoiding the paths and people. The February sky was shining in the west; beautiful clouds floated over the houses; they looked like the shore-line of some radiant strand his childhood once had known. He sighed; thought dived and searched within; self-analysis, that old, implacable demon, lifted its voice; introspection took the reins again as usual. There seemed a strain upon the mind he could not dispel. Thought circled poignantly. He knew it was unhealthy, morbid, a sign of those many years of difficulty and stress that had marked him so deeply, but for the life of him he could not escape from the hideous spell that held him. The same old thoughts bored their way into his mind like burning wires, tracing the same unanswerable questions. From this torture, waking or sleeping, there was no escape. Had a companion been with him it might have been different. If, for instance, Dr. Hancock——

He was angry with himself for having refused—furious; it was that vile, false pride his long loneliness had fostered. The man was sympathetic to him, friendly, marvellously understanding; he could have talked freely with him, and found relief. His intuition had picked out the little doctor as a man in ten thousand. Why had he so curtly declined his gentle invitation? Dr. Hancock knew; he guessed his awful secret. But how? In what had he betrayed himself?

The weary self-questioning began again, till he sighed and groaned from sheer exhaustion. He must find people, companionship, someone to talk to. The Club—it crossed his tortured mind for a second—was impossible; there was a conspiracy among the members against him. He had left his usual haunts everywhere for the same reason—his restaurants where he had his lonely meals; his music-hall, where he tried sometimes to forget himself; his favourite walks, where the very policeman knew and eyed him. And, coming to the bridge across the Serpentine just then, he paused and leaned over the edge, watching a bubble rise to the surface.

“I suppose there are fish in the Serpentine?” he said to a man a few feet away.

They talked a moment—the other was evidently a clerk on his way home, and then the stranger edged off and continued his walk, looking back once or twice at the sad-faced man who had addressed him. “It’s ridiculous, that with all our science we can’t live under water as the fish do,” reflected Leidall, and moved on round the other bank of the water, where he watched a flight of duck whirl down from the darkening air and settle with a long, mournful splash beside the bushy island. “Or that, for all our pride of mechanism in a mechanical age, we cannot really fly.” But these attempts to escape from self were never very successful. Another part of him looked on and mocked. He returned ever to the endless introspection of self-analysis, and in the deepest moment of it—ran into a big, motionless figure that blocked his way. It was the Park policeman, the one who had always eyed him. He sheered off suddenly towards the trees, while the man, recognising him, touched his cap respectfully. “It’s a pleasant evening, sir; turned quite mild again.” Leidall mumbled some reply or other, and hurried on to hide himself among the shadows of the trees. The policeman stood and watched him, till the darkness swallowed him. “He knows too!” groaned the wretched man. And every bench was occupied; every face turned to watch him; there were even figures behind the trees. He dared not go into the street, for the very taxi-drivers were against him. If he gave an address, he would not be driven to it; the man would know, and take him elsewhere. And something in his heart, sick with anguish, weary with the endless battle, suddenly yielded.

“There are fish in the Serpentine,” he remembered the stranger had said. “And,” he added to himself, with a wave of delicious comfort, “they lead secret, hidden lives that no one can disturb.” His mind cleared surprisingly. In the water he could find peace and rest and healing. Good Lord! How easy it all was! Yet he had never thought of it before. He turned sharply to retrace his steps, but in that very second the clouds descended upon his thought again, his mind darkened, he hesitated. Could he get out again when he had had enough? Would he rise to the surface? A battle began over these questions. He ran quickly, then stood still again to think the matter out. Darkness shrouded him. He heard the wind rush laughing through the trees. The picture of the whirring duck flashed back a moment, and he decided that the best way was by air, and not by water. He would fly into the place of rest, not sink or merely float; and he remembered the view from his bedroom window, high over old smoky London town, with a drop of eighty feet on to the pavements. Yes, that was the best way. He waited a moment, trying to think it all out clearly, but one moment the fish had it, and the next the birds. It was really impossible to decide. Was there no one who could help him, no one in all this enormous town who was sufficiently on his side to advise him on the point? Some clear-headed, experienced, kindly man?

And the face of Dr. Hancock flashed before his vision. He saw the gentle eyes and sympathetic smile, remembered the soothing voice and the offer of companionship he had refused. Of course, there was one serious drawback: Hancock knew. But he was far too tactful, too sweet and good a man to let that influence his judgment, or to betray in any way at all that he did know.

Leidall found it in him to decide. Facing the entire hostile world, he hailed a taxi from the nearest gate upon the street, looked up the address in a chemist’s telephone book, and reached the door in a condition of delight and relief. Yes, Dr. Hancock was at home. Leidall sent his name in. A few minutes later the two men were chatting pleasantly together, almost like old friends, so keen was the little man’s intuitive sympathy and tact. Only Hancock, patient listener though he proved to be, was uncommonly full of words. Leidall explained the matter very clearly. “Now, what is your decision, Dr. Hancock? Is it to be the way of the fish or the way of the duck?” And, while Hancock began his answer with slow, well-chosen words, a new idea, better than either, leaped with a flash into his listener’s mind. It was an inspiration. For where could he find a better hiding-place from all his troubles than Hancock himself? The man was kindly; he surely would not object. Leidall this time would not hesitate a second. He was tall and broad; Hancock was small; yet he was sure there would be room. He sprang upon him like a wild animal. He felt the warm, thin throat yield and bend between his great hands ... then darkness, peace and rest, a nothingness that surely was the oblivion he had so long prayed for. He had accomplished his desire. He had secreted himself forever from persecution—inside the kindliest little man he had ever met—inside Hancock....

He opened his eyes and looked about him into a room he did not know. The walls were soft and dimly coloured. It was very silent. Cushions were everywhere. Peaceful it was, and out of the world. Overhead was a skylight, and one window, opposite the door, was heavily barred. Delicious! No one could get in. He was sitting in a deep and comfortable chair. He felt rested and happy. There was a click, and he saw a tiny window in the door drop down, as though worked by a sliding panel. Then the door opened noiselessly, and in came a little man with smiling face and soft brown eyes—Dr. Hancock.

Leidall’s first feeling was amazement. “Then I didn’t get into him properly after all! Or I’ve slipped out again, perhaps! The dear, good fellow!” And he rose to greet him. He put his hand out, and found that the other came with it in some inexplicable fashion. Movement was cramped. “Ah, then I’ve had a stroke,” he thought, as Hancock pressed him, ever so gently, back into the big chair. “Do not get up,” he said soothingly but with authority; “sit where you are and rest. You must take it very easy for a bit; like all clever men who have overworked——”

“I’ll get in the moment he turns,” thought Leidall. “I did it badly before. It must be through the back of his head, of course, where the spine runs up into the brain,” and he waited till Hancock should turn. But Hancock never turned. He kept his face towards him all the time, while he chatted, moving gradually nearer to the door. On Leidall’s face was the smile of an innocent child, but there lay a hideous cunning behind that smile, and the eyes were terrible.

“Are those bars firm and strong,” asked Leidall, “so that no one can get in?” He pointed craftily, and the doctor, caught for a second unawares, turned his head. That instant Leidall was upon him with a roar, then sank back powerless into the chair, unable to move his arms more than a few inches in any direction. Hancock stepped up quietly and made him comfortable again with cushions.

And something in Leidall’s soul turned round and looked another way. His mind became clear as daylight for a moment. The effort perhaps had caused the sudden change from darkness to great light. A memory rushed over him. “Good God!” he cried. “I am violent. I was going to do you an injury—you who are so sweet and good to me!” He trembled dreadfully, and burst into tears. “For the sake of Heaven,” he implored, looking up, ashamed and keenly penitent, “put me under restraint. Fasten my hands before I try it again.” He held both hands out willingly, beseechingly, then looked down, following the direction of the other’s kind brown eyes. His wrists, he saw, already wore steel handcuffs, and a strait waistcoat was across his chest and arms and shoulders.

THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE

By WARD MUIR

This is how it happened [said my friend Harborough].

I’m a novelist, as you know, but if I hadn’t had to take to writing I’d have been a rolling stone by profession and by inclination. In my more philosophic moods I perceive that, really, it was sheer luck ... this occurrence about which you’ve asked me to tell you. I should never have made a success of any other trade but authorship. I’d have starved; instead I’m rather well off, as things go. But still——

You understand I was by way of being a bit venturesome, as a young man. I did a certain amount of journalism, from time to time, but my secret hopes were set on all that is implied in that specious phrase, “seeing the world.” I wanted to see the world.

Keeping this object in view I shipped on a tramp steamer, with whose captain I had struck up an acquaintanceship. Nominally I was the purser, actually I was the Captain’s guest. Cargo boats such as the S.S. Peterhof do not employ a purser.

No need to narrate the history of that voyage nor dwell upon the trivial particulars of our life on board. Suffice it to say that in mid-Atlantic our engines had a break-down. The Peterhof came to a standstill.

If it has ever happened to you during a big voyage you will know that there is something portentous about the cessation of a steamer’s machinery in mid-ocean. To be becalmed on a sailing ship may be boring: to be becalmed—if such an expression can be used—on a steamer is almost too queer to be boring. Day and night the engines have throbbed until their throbbing has penetrated into your very marrow, and when the throbbing abruptly dies you are sensible of a shock. When the Peterhof halted I ran up on deck as speedily as though we had had a collision. I saw, all round, nothing but sea, sea, sea, and it was far more amazing than if I had beheld an island or an iceberg or a raft of shipwrecked mariners, or any of the other picturesque phenomena which my fertile fancy had hastened to invent as an explanation for our stoppage.

The Peterhof’s engines were antiquated, break-downs had occurred before, and our two engineers, I learnt, would be able to effect a repair. Twenty-four hours’ labour would set us going again—it turned out to be only a slightly over-optimistic prophecy—and meanwhile, we were free to admire, as best we might, the somewhat monotonous beauties of the Atlantic.

There was not a breath of wind; the sun blazed from a cloudless sky; as long as the Peterhof had been in motion we had considered the temperature fairly cool, but now that her motion was arrested the heat became very noticeable. The sea was, in a sense, absolutely smooth; but its smoothness did not imply flatness, any more than the smoothness of a carpet’s pile implies flatness if the carpet is being shaken. On the contrary, the Peterhof was rolling upon the undulations of a heavy ground-swell. The surface of that ground-swell was without a wrinkle, polished and glossy like lacquer; but its hills and its dales were gigantically high and deep; far higher and far deeper than I had realised until the engines relinquished their task of propelling us athwart them. Now, lying helpless upon the water, we swooped up to a glazed summit, swooped down to the bottom of a satiny gulf, swooped up again and down again, in a splendid, even oscillation—and (this was what seemed so extraordinary to a landsman)—in absolute silence. It was uncanny. Those fabulous billows never broke. There was not even a hiss of foam against the side of the steamer. The Peterhof just tobogganned down one stupendous gradient and up the next as though she had been sliding on oil.

The thing fascinated me. I stood by the rail, revelling in this prodigous sea-saw, and only gradually did it dawn upon me that we were not really rushing down one slant and up the next, we were only being lifted up and down vertically.

This discovery sounds foolish, but I can’t tell you how it excited me. I got an empty biscuit tin from the steward and threw it into the sea, as far as I could, and then watched it floating. You’d have said that that biscuit tin would have been drawn away by the strength of the swell, or else dashed against the Peterhof’s side; instead it simply sat there at exactly the spot where it had fallen; and an hour after I had thrown it into the water it had shifted, perhaps, only six or eight inches nearer the steamer.

A project was forming in my mind. I looked at the water. It was a peculiar, vitreous green, closer under the steamer, was transparent to the depth of many feet. Beneath my shoe-soles the poop was hot; over side, the sea looked inexpressibly inviting. And on a sudden I turned to the drowsing Captain and exclaimed: “I want to bathe.”

“To bathe?” The Captain gazed at me.

“Why not?”

The Captain yawned out some lethargic suggestion to the effect that to bathe would be dangerous because of the depth—as though I’d be more apt to drown in three miles of water than in three fathoms.

Seafaring people are odd in that way—I don’t mean in their ignorance of swimming, though, to be sure, the average sailor is seldom a swimmer. They’re so—how shall I express it?—so unenterprising. In the midst of adventure and romance they are stirred by no recognition either of the adventures or the romantic.

I was a city-bred youngster, who had never been out of hail of the homeland before, and I possessed more enterprise in my little finger than that far-travelled Captain had in the whole of his weather-worn, hulking lump of a carcass. I wanted to bathe. I wanted to bathe in the mid-Atlantic. I had learnt to bathe in the public swimming-bath near my old school, and now I wanted to try a swimming-bath three miles deep and tilting continuously at an angle of I don’t know how many degrees. The notion was gorgeous.

“I can swim,” I said. “You needn’t be afraid.”

“But the waves’ll sweep you away.”

“There aren’t any waves. Watch this biscuit tin. The top of the Atlantic, at this moment, is like a string which is being twanged. The vibrations are a hundred yards across, or more, and they look as though they were travelling along the string; I suppose they are travelling along the string; but a fly sitting on the string doesn’t travel along with the vibrations, it only travels up and down. If I go in to bathe I shan’t be swept away.”

The Captain hadn’t thought of it in that light. He tried to argue—but my biscuit tin answered his argument. And eventually he allowed me to have the ladder lowered; I stripped, descended the ladder, and launched myself into the sea.

I struck out, to get clear of the ship, then ceased swimming and looked around me. The sea was coldish, but not unendurable—and anyhow I was too much in love with my situation to bother about that. Behind me the Peterhof towered, like a cliff; I had never realised, before, how big a five-thousand-ton vessel looks from the water. At her rail I could see a cluster of the crew, watching me; the Captain on the poop. From somewhere in the interior of the ship came the sound of hammering—the engineers at work—and I noticed that this sound reached me more clearly now than when I was on board.

But if the Peterhof appeared strange, from the water, how much stranger was the view in the opposite direction! Or rather, the absence of view!

The ground-swell had looked formidable when I was on the Peterhof’s deck; here its aspect was terrific. The crystalline slope in which I was cradled seemed to reach the sky; yet, without having climbed it, I immediately found myself, instead of looking up the slope, looking down it—down an oblique abyss of gleaming profundity. I seemed to fall and fall and fall; nevertheless, there was no spasm of nausea; although I was falling I was supported, sensuously, in my fall ... and I never reached the finish of the fall; it merged, imperceptibly, into an ascent; and a moment later I was surveying a fresh trough of glassiness, or else gazing audaciously downward, downward on to the deck of the Peterhof.

It was overwhelming. Never in all my life have I attained to a rapture comparable with that bathe in mid-Atlantic. I knew, even at the time, that it would be unforgettable. I had aspired to be able to say that I had swum in water three miles deep ... oh, never mind what vain boast I had promised myself. Boasting was forgotten. I was experiencing. I was surrendered to an ecstasy, an enchantment, a glee, beyond expression grandiose and delicious. I lolled in the pellucid water, not troubling to swim. I let myself go, in those dizzy soarings and sinkings; I abandoned myself to this vast and beautiful force; I felt at once infinitely little and infinitely great.

The whole adventure was half terrifying and half ... well, comfortable. Perched on the crown of one of those flawless ridges I felt, as I toppled over, that I must either be smashed to pieces at the end of the plunge or engulfed in some horrid undertow. But I knew that nothing of the sort would happen. Quietly I paddled with my arms and feet; almost contemptuously I gave myself to the puissant and colossal rhythm which swayed me as high as a cathedral at every swing and then gently rocked me down as deep as a valley. I tell you, the sensation was sublime ... and I hadn’t even got my hair wet!

I remembered, in the middle of my bliss, this perfectly incongruous fact that I hadn’t got my hair wet, and I prepared to “duck.” But at that moment I heard a shout from the deck of the Peterhof.

I turned in the water, and saw that the Captain was gesticulating to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The crew were shouting also, and one of them had got a coil of rope over his arm and seemed to be making ready to throw it. What did they mean?

Stupidly, in the tingling ardour and gusto of my enjoyment, I didn’t make out, for a minute, what they were driving at; it occurred to me that they had taken it into their heads that because I wasn’t swimming I had got cramp. I signalled cheerily to them, to reassure them; but they did not cease shouting ... and then, as I turned again, a little, in the water, I knew....

Near the skyline rim of the superb mountain-range upon which I was commencing to rise I saw, shadowy in the translucent green, an unmistakable shape—the shape of a great fish: a shark. Its fin cut the surface like a knife. For one instant I stared, and in that instant I observed, with a vivid clearness, all manner of minute details—the burnished sheen on the water, the glistening tautness of its lofty skyline, the sapphire blue of the sky itself, and, most lucidly of all, the silhouette of the shark. Every movement of the shark was now plain to me; and it was moving, there was no doubt of it: a trail of bubbles streamed from its flank and a tiny streak of froth fluttered behind the fin. The shark was not passive, in the element, as I was; it was monarch of the waves, it could drive through them with the precision of a torpedo. I had invaded a realm which I had no business to invade ... and its guardian was come to punish me.

An astonishingly coherent train of reflections such as these whirled round my brain. They must have occupied a fraction of a second. I know that, at all events, I struck out for the Peterhof without any apparent pause. My arms and legs worked frantically; I swum as I had never swum before. I hurled myself through the water.

Fortunately I had gone only a very short distance from the foot of the steamer’s ladder. It seemed remote enough, though, I can tell you! My eyes were bursting out of their sockets, but I could dimly see the Captain leaning on the rail and shouting, and some of the men running down the ladder to receive me. Then the rope was flung. It splashed across me. I grasped it. I dug my nails into it. I clung to it with a grip so fierce that I felt as though I was crushing it. Simultaneously the men at the other end of the rope began pulling, and I was jerked through the water in a lather of spray which swirled round my shoulders. My arms and head were above the water, I was being dragged so fast up the steamer’s side. I could still see the Captain, vaguely, confusedly. His mouth was open, his hands were waving. But I wasn’t interested in him, I was only interested in what was pursuing behind me. Gad! That was an awful moment. I dream of it, sometimes, even now: the disgusting, obscene terror of that dash for safety ... and I wake sweating with the horror of it.

---

Harborough paused.

“And how did your adventure end?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I lost consciousness. But I kept tight on to the rope. They hauled me on board ... they told me afterwards that I hadn’t even got my hair wet ... but ...” he hesitated.

“I’d had my experience—a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Dash it!” he laughed. “It was almost worth it, I swear ... and I’m making money, now, as a novelist, whereas if I’d continued my life of rolling stone I’d certainly have arrived in prison or the poorhouse. Yes, I suppose that every disaster has its compensations.

“But I confess I didn’t think so when I awoke on board the Peterhof—we were plug-plugging onwards again by that time—and found that I’d got only one leg.”

GREAR’S DAM

By MORLEY ROBERTS

There was dust everywhere; it was a red-hot world of dust. It lay upon the roads where the labouring wheel tracks marked them out; but the whole long plain was dust as well. Neither grass nor any green thing showed, and dead, dry salt-bush, eaten by the sheep till it looked like broken peasticks, was dust colour to the dancing horizon of that world of thirst. For seven months and a week, by Wilson’s almanac, there had been no rain, and what dew had fallen the hot air drank when the fierce sun rose. And now not even the little fenced garden at Warribah showed any sign of verdure. Water was precious, and each day the north wind drank the water-holes drier and drier yet.

But, though the world of desolate Warribah was brown, in the roots of grass and the mere sticks of salt-bush was sufficient nourishment to keep life in the sheep who moved across the burnt paddocks of the station; what they needed, and what they began to suffer for was water, and the cloudless sky, luminous and terrible, bent over their world and breathed fire upon them. The wind out of the Austral tropics was as fierce as a blowpipe flame, or so it seemed. Hope and prosperity melted under it, and the home at Warribah dissolved.

“I shall go mad,” said Wilson. And having said it, he sent his wife away to the south. He could not keep a cheerful face before her; it was easier to lie upon paper, easier to drift into silence that was not disturbed by her tears. He was a lonely man again, as lonely as when he had first fought with the bush, and conquered a space for himself where no water ran.

And now the conquered territory that he had hoped to keep for the uses of civilisation called in the sun and the north wind, and there was a great fight in progress between man and nature. As he walked over what he had won, or as he galloped, the caked and cracked earth fell into powder, and rose choking and impalpable, as fine as flour. The gaunt, spare box trees of the plains were powdered with its red-white film; their dry verdure was obscured. The dust was mud upon his lips, mud upon his cheeks as he sweated ice, to think the day was coming when there could be no hope for him and no help.

“How long now?” he asked himself.

And all about the plains rose columns of dust as the uneasy, fretful sheep, to whom his men doled water, moved up the wind seeking more.

“After ten years—this,” said Wilson, and he laughed. But those who heard him laugh shivered, and contracted their brows. For he was a hard worker, and had slaved for this—for bankruptcy, a sky of brass.

“The boss is crazy,” said the men at the hut.

An immense, intolerable sense of pity for the sheep possessed him. He had no children, and the land he held had been as a child to him. Now the plains he had delighted in were become ingrate. They refused him help. The sheep were his children and his delight. He knew thousands of them by sight, for he had the shepherd’s eye. There was a character about the Warribah sheep that he had bestowed by his care and by his choice. He had fenced them in against straying; had chased the cowardly dingo and had slain him; he had rejoiced in the grass and the whitening cotton-bush, and the succulence of thick-fleshed salt-bush. How often he had ridden out and watched the sheep graze; it was a happy world when the rains in their due season ceased, and the time for shearing came. It was a riotous pleasure to hear the click of the shears. How the white inner fleece gleamed and fell over, and parted and showed its woven beauty! The movements of the shearers, and the sound of them, and the sound of the pent or loosened sheep wove itself into a kind of fabric; in the loom of time and the due sweet season pleasure grew, and success, and the joy of well-doing.

And now there was death in the air and in the north wind. And behind it ruin. There his ten thousand children would perish off the face of the inexorable earth and be no more than white bones lying heaped against a northern fence where no water was. He laughed a thin, crackling laugh, and walked to and fro in front of his lonely house.

“The boss is crazy,” his men had said. Now in the hot and idle noon they sat in the southward shadow of the crackling hut and watched him. The old cook, a blear-eyed outcast thrown up by the seas upon the coast of Australia, broke suddenly into a drivelling yarn.

“I knew it worse nor this—hell’s flames never beat it, on the Bogan that year——”

He mumbled on.

“So they died, and the horses, too. Oh, it was cruel, cruel. And Webber cut his throat from ear to ear, cut his crazy ’ead ’arf off.”

“What of your paddock, Jim?” asked Hill, the old hand of Warribah. The young boundary rider spat drily.

“The jumbucks is suckin’ mud. The water stinks of yolk. You can smell it a mile off. Ter-morrer I’ll have to fetch ’em in.”

The black and red ants ran riot in the hut and outside of it. The insect world flourished and abounded. But for all their bronze there was a pallid look about the men. Nature was no friend of theirs; they looked out on fire and blinding light.

“I never knowed it worse.”

But old Blear Eyes had.

“So he blew his brains out.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Hill, but the cook murmured of ancient disasters on the Darling and the Macquarie.

“Did you die of thirst, you old croaker, and jump up to choke us?”

And still Wilson wandered to and fro in the sunlight, though the sky was inexorable.

“He’ll be shakin’ his fist at it yet,” said the cook, “and when a man does that he never comes to no good. It’s all up with them as shakes a fist at ’eaven. I’ve seen it myself. Now it was in ’79 that Jones of Quandong Flats went mad. He shook ’is fist at the sky. I seen him, and the next morning ’e was ravin’ ’orrid, as though the ’orrors of drink was on ’im. And well I knowed ’em then.”

The boss came towards them through the hot sand, and he leant in the shade against the pole on which the men’s saddles hung. The men looked downcast and half-ashamed. Sydney Jim lost all his flashness and moved uneasily. And the old cook shambled into his kitchen and fell to work upon his bread.

“There’s little water in the Ten-Mile Tank, Jim?”

“They was suckin’ mud this morning, sir,” said Jim.

Wilson tugged at his grizzled beard and pulled his sunburnt hat over his eyes.

“We should have put down wells,” said Hill.

Wilson broke into sudden blasphemy, and checked it with a kind of gasp, as though he felt that madness lay just beyond the limits of his self-control.

“So we should,” he said; “so we should.”

And he walked away.

“You took that cursin’ very quiet,” said Jim. And there was something in Hill’s eye that made him flinch.

“Oh, well,” he said apologetically, and Hill glared at him. The heat was in more than one.

“My son,” said Hill, “I’ve half a mind——”

And then he rose and followed Wilson. He caught him up and talked hard till Wilson shook his head and went inside and slammed the door.

“He should make it up with Grear, and if Grear let him down on to the river he might save some.”

For Warribah was in the back-blocks, and Grear held all the river frontage for twenty miles.

“But they hate each other, and Wilson ain’t the man to crawl,” said Hill. “He’s a good sort. I’ll go myself.”

He went back to the hut and, taking his saddle and bridle, walked to the horse paddock, which seemed as barren as a stockyard. He caught his horse, that was standing at the gate and looking wistfully towards the stable as if he knew that good feed was there.

“Come,” said Hill, and he rode south through the pine scrub towards Grear’s. He came to the station as the sun went down, and when he asked for the boss Grear came out.

“Oh you!” he said roughly. “And what d’ye want?”

He was a long, thin man with a cold eye and thin lips, and as he looked at him Hill felt that it was a foolish errand he had come on. The man was worse than he had imagined. It seemed that Wilson was right. To ask Grear for anything was to invite insult. And though Hill had come twenty miles to ask he turned away.

“I haven’t seen you for nigh on a year,” said he, “and now I’ve seen you, why, I shan’t weep if I never see you again.”

He got upon his horse solemnly and turned away, leaving Grear with an open mouth.

“I was a fool to come,” said Hill, as he ploughed his way among the sandhills. “He used to reckon that all the back-blocks was his, and Wilson took ’em up. Grear don’t forgive.”

The night had come upon the land, but there was no remission of the hot north wind. The heated earth radiated heat still, while in the clear obscure of the heavens the stars glittered like sharp points of steel. They stabbed Hill’s very heart as he rode and looked into the rainless depths of heaven. For the sky was no overarching dome at that season. It was an awful emptiness without form; it was space itself, unmitigated and terrible, and heaven’s lamps were near and far and farther still, while black, starless spaces showed like unfathomable patches in a silent sea.

“Good God!” said Hill, and fear got hold of him suddenly. He roused his horse to a canter for the sake of the noise of the motion. The sky appalled him, and a peculiar sense of reversion took him. He was hung over depths, and seemed to cling to the suspended earth.

“I’m crazy myself,” said Hill, with a quiver in his voice. And his very voice broke the silence like a pistol shot. It made him start until he heard a sheep’s faint baa in the distance. And then a mopoke called its mate in the trees by an old dry creek. Hill pulled up.

“But it ain’t a creek after all,” he said to himself. “It’s a Billabong, but it’s twenty years since water came out of the Lachlan so far as Warribah, and Grear put a dam there fifteen years ago. Ah! if the river only rose up, and came down roarin’. But it won’t; it won’t.”

As he dreamed of the river, now like a low water-hole with never a current in it, Wilson, at home, lay in an uneasy sleep. He, too, dreamed, and dreamed of rain, and he woke himself shouting, “Rain!” and in his confusion called “Mary” to his wife five hundred miles away.

“Oh God! I dreamt it again,” he said. “I dreamed of rain in our old place east, and the river came down with thunder and floods, and the land grew green in an hour—green, green!”

He fell asleep again, and when he woke at dawn he was oddly cheerful. Perhaps the rest from anxiety in that happy dream had taken part of the strain from his weary mind.

“I do feel as if it had rained somewhere,” he said; “and if the weather only breaks anywhere we may have it here.”

“Don’t you think it cooler?” he said to Hill next morning. But the sky was brass and the sun white hot.

That evening a man riding through to Conoble from Condobolin told him that he had heard it had rained east of Forbes. And another man who camped at the Ten-Mile Clump said he knew there had been a great thunderstorm to the east.

“I dreamed it, so I did!” cried Wilson; “and the Lachlan’s coming down.”

His jaw fell even as he spoke. What use was the Lachlan to him out in the beyond, when Grear’s lay between? He had no river frontage. Grear had it all.

In such a country, in spite of its apparent desolation, news travels fast. They heard that the Lachlan, so quiet at Condobolin, was running hard at Forbes. It was out in the flats, where the felled trees marked the old mining camp. There had been a storm, a great cloudburst, in its head waters, and the river grew alive. Wilson saddled up and rode thirty miles to see it, and came to the gum-lined ditch just in time to hear the stream awake. It stirred before his eyes, it became turbid, grew grey, bubbled, moved and ran, with sticks and leaves and branches on its full tide.

And still the sky overhead was fire, and the sun a flame. Wilson cursed it, and prayed to the beautiful grey water. Why should not rain come there? And soon. But as he rode back he came to sheep of his that stood against a fence, and pressed on it, as though water was beyond it. Pity stirred him; he drove them through a gate, and let them suck his last low tank.

That night Wilson came to the men’s hut under its pines in the sand dune, and called to Hill.

“Hill, I want to speak to you,” he said, and presently his man came out into the night. The stars were brilliant. Jupiter was like a little moon, and cast faint shadows.

“There’ll be no rain here,” said Wilson. “Were you sleeping? I can’t sleep! Do you hear?”

He waved his hand around the barren horizon.

“I hear,” said Hill.

He heard the sheep.

“You say that old Billabong once came down to Warribah?” asked Wilson.

Hill nodded.

“So they say. But Grear’s dam would stop it.”

“He’s no right to have it there,” said Wilson, savagely. “Look, Hill, I can’t sleep. I’ll ride out to the dam.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Hill.

“You’re a good sort, Jack,” cried the boss. And they rode together through the wonderful night, that was so terrible to them, with its hot, dry air out of the oven of the north.

When they came at last to the long, low dam they tied their horses to saplings, and sat down. Wilson spoke after a quarter of an hour’s silence.

“It would be hard to lose it after these years,” he said. “And here’s Grear’s dam with a fence atop of it. He’s a hard one, Jack!”

“Ay,” said Hill, “he’s hard.”

And Wilson, who had not really slept for days, lay down upon the earth and dozed, while the star shadows of the gaunt thin boxes moved a foot. In the hollow of the Billabong some dry reeds, like a cane-brake, rustled faintly in the air. The leaves of the trees crackled, and underneath these sharper sounds was the hum of the insect world. Far away, on every side, the sheep called uneasily for water. What had seemed silence grew into a very chorus, organic with the earth. The horses champed their bits and pawed the dusty soil; and once one whinnied, and was answered by a far-off call from Grear’s.

“I wonder what the river’s like,” thought Hill. He pulled out his pipe and lighted it. The flare of the match extinguished the starlight for a moment, and then the darkness melted once more, and he saw each separate tree, each leaf, each reed.

“I wonder.”

For if the river was in high flood, and over the banks, the Billabong must be full at Grear’s. And suddenly he heard a sound that he knew well. He laid his hand upon Wilson’s shoulder.

“D’ye hear it, sir? What is it?”

But both knew. Grear’s sheep were moving from east and west towards water.

“The blackfellows were right,” said Wilson. “The Billabong is coming down.”

The horses trampled uneasily, and seemed aware of a change. Perhaps they too smelt the grey flood as it crawled. And all the air seemed full of whispers, loud and louder yet. For even the thinned bush is alive, and holds carnival at midnight and beyond it. A snake crawled by them on the dam, and suddenly being aware of nigh enemies, it slipped away hastily, and hid in the hollow trunk of a fallen dwarf box. The sheep on Warribah grew more uneasy; he heard a distant baa, and then a nearer cry, and a plaintive chorus came down the dry, hot wind.

“I can’t listen to ’em,” said Wilson. “It makes me mad.”

He rested his head upon his knees, and kept his hands to his ears. But suddenly he rose up.

“If the water comes we’ll cut the dam, Hill.”

“I would,” said Hill.

“Go back and fetch Jim, and bring shovels,” said Wilson. “I’ll cut it. If the water comes, I’ve a right to it.”

And Hill rode homeward fast. And as he rode the boss sat still upon the dam, and looked upon the faintly outlined hollow of the ancient waterway. And again he dozed, and did not see that round the far bend of the hollow came a sneaking, quiet band of grey water, like a crawling snake. But as he slept the night chorus increased, and away to the south the full sheep baa’ed with content. The Warribah sheep heard and knew, and moved south through the night: and suddenly ten thousand broke into a gallop, and stayed in a heap against the fence that topped the dam. Their voices agonised; they woke Wilson suddenly, and he reached out his hand and touched water.

And he heard horses galloping. This was Hill returning.

“Thank God!” said Wilson, and he prayed to Heaven with sudden thankfulness.

But then he started, for the horses came from the south. They came from Grear’s, and he knew what that meant.

“I’ll do it if I have to kill him,” said Wilson. For behind him the painful chorus of the sheep was deafening. He saw them packed against the bulging wires. His heart bled for them, his children.

And then three horses burst through the thin bush.

“Oh, we’re in time,” said Grear. “I thought as much, but we’re in time. Who’s that?”

“Wilson of Warribah,” said Wilson. “Grear, you will let the water through.”

And Grear laughed.

“To you that sneaked in and took up my back-lots? Oh, it’s likely, likely!”

“But the sheep are dying, Grear.”

“Mine ain’t,” said Grear. “Get over the fence and off my land. I’ll not have you here.”

And Wilson burst into a passionate appeal that was almost a scream.

“Look here, man, if you are a man. I’ll give you ten per cent of ’em to cut the dam. They’re dying. Oh, my God! hear ’em, Grear; hear ’em! And I’ve bred ’em. I watched ’em grow. Oh, Grear, I’ll give you half!”

And Grear swore horribly.

“I’ll see them die, and see you get out. I don’t want you here.”

And now in the noise the sheep made it was difficult to hear a man speak. But the water grew up silently, and spread out, filling the hollow—a grateful and splendid sheet.

“’Tain’t all yours,” screamed Wilson. “The dam’s not legal. You’ve no right to rob me and my sheep.”

“Then go to law, you dog, and have it proved,” said Grear. And as he spoke Hill came galloping, and with him Jim and two other men. And they carried shovels.

“Look,” said Wilson. “We’re five to you three, you and your men. I mean to have the water.”

“Never!” cried Grear, and getting off his horse he walked up the dam to where Wilson stood.

“Get over the fence,” he said.

And Wilson leant against the fence and the sheep behind him. He dabbled with his hand in their wool. Their hot breath fanned him.

“Don’t, Grear, don’t,” he pleaded. “What would you think if I did the same to you?”

“You can’t,” said Grear, and he laughed. “I’ve the river at my back.”

And Hill with a spade in his hand pressed through the sheep, until he came to Wilson. He touched the boss’s shoulder, and Wilson calmed as he took the spade.

“You don’t mean that they’re to die, Grear, do you?” he asked, with a catch in his voice.

“What’s that to me?”

“It’s much to me,” said Wilson. “Oh, Grear, I’d rather be hanged than let it be.”

“Would you? Then be hanged, you rat!” said Grear.

And Wilson lifted the spade, and split Grear’s head with it, and the man fell back into the water, and dyed it with his blood. But he was dead before he touched the silver grey stream that had slain him.

And Wilson fell to work digging.

“Good God!” said Hill, and the dead squatter’s men cried out.

“Dig, dig,” said Wilson. “Dig! Grear’s got his water. I’ll have mine.”

When the sun rose his sheep were content.

“Now we’ll see what the law says,” cried Wilson. And he rode south to find the law.

THE KING OF MALEKA

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE