“Why, I am going back to Atimaono to work on the plantation for Schemmer. Are you not taking me to Atimaono?”
Cruchot stroked his long moustaches reflectively. “Well, well,” he said finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule, “so you don't know?”
“Know what?” Ah Cho was beginning to feel a vague alarm. “Won't Schemmer let me work for him any more?”
“Not after to-day.” Cruchot laughed heartily. It was a good joke. “You see, you won't be able to work after to-day. A man with his head off can't work, eh?” He poked the Chinago in the ribs, and chuckled.
Ah Cho maintained silence while the mules trotted a hot mile. Then he spoke: “Is Schemmer going to cut off my head?”
Cruchot grinned as he nodded.
“It is a mistake,” said Ah Cho, gravely. “I am not the Chinago that is to have his head cut off. I am Ah Cho. The honourable judge has determined that I am to stop twenty years in New Caledonia.”
The gendarme laughed. It was a good joke, this funny Chinago trying to cheat the guillotine. The mules trotted through a coconut grove and for half a mile beside the sparkling sea before Ah Cho spoke again.
“I tell you I am not Ah Chow. The honourable judge did not say that my head was to go off.”
“Don't be afraid,” said Cruchot, with the philanthropic intention of making it easier for his prisoner. “It is not difficult to die that way.” He snapped his fingers. “It is quick—like that. It is not like hanging on the end of a rope and kicking and making faces for five minutes. It is like killing a chicken with a hatchet. You cut its head off, that is all. And it is the same with a man. Pouf!—it is over. It doesn't hurt. You don't even think it hurts. You don't think. Your head is gone, so you cannot think. It is very good. That is the way I want to die—quick, ah, quick. You are lucky to die that way. You might get the leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a finger at a time, and now and again a thumb, also the toes. I knew a man who was burned by hot water. It took him two days to die. You could hear him yelling a kilometre away. But you? Ah! so easy! Chck!—the knife cuts your neck like that. It is finished. The knife may even tickle. Who can say? Nobody who died that way ever came back to say.”