“Motomoe made a movement that attracted my attention. At the same time he growled out loud, as if he hated himself, ‘I’m a fool.’ What he had done was to pick up a cane-knife—you know the kind, as big as a machete and as heavy. And I was grateful to him in advance for putting me out of my misery. There wasn’t any sense in slowly feeding in till my head was crushed, and already my arm was pulped half way from elbow to shoulder, and the pulping was going right on. So I was grateful, as I bent my head to the blow.
“‘Get your head out of the way, you idiot!’ he barked at me.
“And then I understood and obeyed. I was a big man, and he took two hacks to do it; but he hacked my arm off just outside the shoulder and dragged me back and laid me down on the cane.
“Yes, the sugar paid—enormously; and I built for the Princess the church of her saintly dream, and . . . she married me.”
He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word.
“Alackaday! Shuttlecock and battle-dore. And this at, the end of it all, lined with boilerplate that even alcohol will not corrode and that only alcohol will tickle. Yet have I lived, and I kiss my hand to the dear dust of my Princess long asleep in the great mausoleum of King John that looks across the Vale of Manona to the alien flag that floats over the bungalow of the British Government House. . . ”
Fatty pledged him sympathetically, and sympathetically drank out of his own small can. Bruce Cadogan Cavendish glared into the fire with implacable bitterness. He was a man who preferred to drink by himself. Across the thin lips that composed the cruel slash of his mouth played twitches of mockery that caught Fatty’s eye. And Fatty, making sure first that his rock-chunk was within reach, challenged.
“Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish? It’s your turn.”
The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty’s until he physically betrayed uncomfortableness.
“I’ve lived a hard life,” Slim grated harshly. “What do I know about love passages?”