The Black Dog, and Other Stories

by A. E. Coppard

The man with a smile of malice held up from the deck a dish of fruits and said: “Take. I have done.”

But the hungry man could not reach it. “Throw it to me,” he cried, following the ship. But the sailor had no mind to throw it upon the shore; he went leaning against his mast, piping an air, while the monkey peered at him and gabbled. Tanil plunged into the river and swam beneath the ship’s keel. Taking a knife from his girdle he was for mounting by a little hawser, but the man beflogged him with a cudgel until he fell back into the water. There he would have died but that a large barque presently catched him up on board and recovered him.

The ship carried Tanil from the river past the straits and so to the great sea, where for the space of a year he was borne in absence, willy-nilly, while the ship voyaged among the archipelagos, coasted grim seaboards, or lay against strange wharves docking her cargo of oil. Faithfully he laboured for wages under this ship’s captain, being a man of pith and limb, valiant in storm, and enamoured of the uncouth work: the haul of anchor, and men singing; setting, reefing, furling, and men singing; the watch, the sleep, the song; the treading of unknown waters, the crying gust, the change to glassy endless calm, and the change again from green day to black night and the bending of the harsh sheet in a starry squall, the crumpling of far thunder, the rattle of halyard and block, the howl of cordage. Grand it was in some bright tempest to watch the lubber wave slide greenly to the bows and crack in showers of flying diamonds, but best of all was the long crunch in from the vast gulfs, and the wafture to some blue bay sighing below a white dock and the homes of men.

Forgotten was Yali his loved sister, but that proud living Flaune who had brought Yali to her death, she was not forgotten. He sailed the seas and he sailed the seas, but she was ever a soft recalling wonder in his breast, the sound of a bell of glass beaten by a spirit.

After a year of hazards the ship by chance docked in that harbour where Tanil had heard the crier crying of Yali and her doom. Looking about him he espied an old sailor sitting in his boat playing a game of checkers with a young man. The crier bawled in the market place, but he had no news for Tanil. Standing again amid the merchants and the kind coloured sweetness of streets and people, this bliss of home so welled up in his breast that he hastened back to the ship. “Master,” he said, “give me my wages, and let me go.” The shipman gave him his wages, and he went back to the town.

But only nine days did he linger there, for joy, like truth, lives in the bottom of a well, and he cast in his wages. Then he went off with a hunter to trap leopards in a forest. A month they were gone, and they trapped the leopards and sold them, and then, having parted from the hunter, Tanil roved back to the port to spend his gains among the women of the town. Often his soul invited him to return to that city of Cumac, but death awaited him there and he did not go. Now he was come to poverty, but he was blithe, and evil could not chain him. “Surely,” said Tanil, “life is a hope unquenched and a tree of longing. There is none so poor but he can love himself.” With a stolen net he used to catch fish and live. Then he lost the net at dicing. So he went to bake loaves for certain scholars, but they were unmonied men and he desisted, and went wandering from village to village snaring birds, or living like the wild dogs, until a friendly warrior enlisted him to convoy a caravan across the desert to the great lakes. When he came again to the harbour town two years had withered since he had flown from Cumac’s city.

He went to lodge at the inn, and as he paced in the evening along the wharf a man accosted him, called him by name, and would not let him go, and then Tanil knew it was Fax, the brother of that Flaune. His heart rocked in his breast when he took Fax to the inn and related all his adventure. “Tell me the tidings of our city, what comes or goes there, what lives or dies.” And Fax replied: “I have wandered in the world searching after you from that time. I bring a greeting from my sister Flaune,” he said, “and from your sister Yali, my beloved.”

The wonder then, the joy and shame of Tanil, cannot be told: he threw himself down and wept, and begged Fax to tell him of the miracle: “For,” said he, “my mind has misused me in this.”

“Know then,” proceeded Fax, “that after the unlocking of the door my sister flees in darkness to the green mountain. I go watching and lurking, and learn that the King is in jealous madness, for your enemy spreads a slander and Cumac is deceived. He believes that my sister’s love has been cozened by you. Yali is caught fast in his net. My heart quivers in fear of his bloody intent, and I say to Flaune: ‘What shall follow if Tanil return not?’ And she smiles and says ever: ‘He will return.’ And again I say: ‘He tarries. What if he be dead?’ And she smiles and says ever: ‘He is not dead.’ But you come not, your steps are turned from us, no one has seen you, you are like a hare that has fallen into a pit, and you do not come. Then in that last hour Flaune goes to Cumac. He raves of deceit and treachery. ‘It is my sin,’ my sister pleads, ‘the blame is mine. Spare but this Yali and I will wash out the blame.’ ’Ay, you will wash it out with words!‘ ’I will pay the debt in kind,’ says my sister Flaune, ‘if Tanil does not return.’ But the cunning King will not yield up Yali unless my sister yield in love to him. So thus it stands even now, but whether they live in peace and love I do not know. I only know that Yali lives and serves her in the palace there. But they wait, and I too wait. Now the thread is ravelled to its end; I have lived only to seek you. My flock is lost, perished; my vineyard fades, but I came seeking.”

“Brother,” cried Tanil in grief, “all shall be as before. Yali shall rest in your bosom.”