Internally I was quaking, and thinking very fast. The first shock of their astonishment was dissipating, and two of the three faces were clouding into a glowering scrutiny which augured darkly for my escape. The gaze of the third held a grave perplexity, touched with awe, and in the interval of overcharged silence the other eyes dwelt questioningly on his.
I knew from their spell-bound attitudes that I was the first white man they had seen and an apparition. Measured by their pigmy standards, I was a gigantic being of a new type and order, possibly I was even immortal.
As a man they had no fear of me. The revolver which I had slipped from its holster and cocked had not impressed them. They knew nothing of its death-dealing quality. That was a point in my favor. It would afford, if need be, six miracles of mortality, but the jungle that had disgorged them could disgorge hundreds of others like them—perhaps thousands. Gods must carry themselves, when they walk among men, with a godlike scorn of mundane dangers. I turned to the one man who was above the others, exposing my back to the two spears, as though safe in my consciousness of immunity. I extended one arm with a gesture intended to epitomize great majesty. It was a pose borrowed from some old sculptor's conception of the Olympian Zeus—albeit shamefully exaggerated.
It was an anxious moment. Should he, to whom I made my commanding plea, lift his finger in signal, the spears from behind, poisoned spears perhaps, would strike me down. But as I strode forward, with one hand still pointing heavenward, I commanded him in a mighty voice to stand aside.
He on his part eyed me dubiously, never shifting his attitude or raising his club from the earth, but he permitted me to pass from the amphitheatre unmolested. I went, deliberately, holding my gaze rigidly to the front and using every ounce of self-control to curb the impulse of my feet to run, and the impulse of my neck to crane. A vestige of misgiving, a note of human anxiety, would have destroyed me.
My peril was superlative, and yet as I look back on the occasion, I can see that it overdid comedy and became pure farce. I was defending my life with burlesque. My audience would not be impressed by finesse, and impressing it was a matter of life and death. In the words of the east-side bruiser, I was "makin' it strong."
At all events my bearing, in a situation without precedent of etiquette, found sufficient favor to cover my retreat and I went down to the sea unfollowed. I had none the less seen enough to set me thinking and thought brought little solace. Were I accepted on the basis of my own divine assumption, and regarded as a being from another world, the story would travel fast among their villages. Its wonder would be promulgated and men would burn with curiosity to behold me. Among those who came as pilgrims would be some demanding proofs and miracles. I was now committed to a permanent policy of bluff. I had always been regarded as a facetious individual. Now my life depended on attaining a supreme flippancy of attitude on pain of sacrifice to rites for which I had no reverence. When at sundown I reached the place where the portrait smiled whimsically at me from its post of honor, I sat for a while looking into the comprehending eyes and my thoughts took more cheerful color. Before me lay a situation in which I was to pit my legacy of human development against the brute odds of minds lighted only to the mistiness of dawn.
"Frances," I said, "you smile. Of course since you are fixed in print, you can't do otherwise than smile. I wonder—" I broke off and became suddenly and unaccountably serious. "I wonder if you would smile, were you here with me in the flesh as well as merely in the spirit. I wonder if you would."
Then with a feeling which was tremendously real, I added fervently and aloud, "Thank God you are not here in the flesh—but I am grateful for your smiling. Somehow I find it reassuring."
After a little reflection I summarized the entire situation to the lady with whom I discussed my affairs.