Where the Pavement Ends

by John Russell

Still Mr. Merry desired light.

"How can I say?" returned the other. "A native iss always a native, except when he iss only a man an' a dam' fool. Perhaps his woman has gone bad on him or he has played his last copper doit at gambling. Maybe he has crazied himself wit' opium or bhang. Maybe he iss just come to a finish, you know?"

"A finish?" stammered Merry.

"Where he has no more use: where he gets sorry wit' the world an' wants to die quick. So he takes his knife an' runs amok to stab so many people as he can, an' he don't care a dam' if only he makes a big smash. It is like a sport, truly."

"Yes," said Merry. "Very like a sport."

Thereupon he gave pious thanks that he owned no share in the fantastic human chemistry that could produce such results. It was the sharpest reminder of essential racial differences. It made him feel sick and shaky, and since he knew only the simple cure for ills of body as of mind, he applied himself so earnestly that within half an hour he felt nothing at all, and the proprietor of the verandaed house on the river street had him thrown into a barge, where he slept with the flies crawling over his beard.

Afterward he recovered sufficiently to get himself out of Palembang, and after that out of Muntok and Batavia and Banjermassin and other places where he had no ostensible business to be. On his road he continued to encounter divers strange sights and incidents peculiar to the latitude and the social layers through which he moved; but the affair was a warning to him. He had been shocked. He had been very deeply shocked, and he was always careful never to let himself get quite so sober again—a development of the simple system whereby he avoided too vivid a view of local color while he wandered on—aimlessly, as well as anyone might judge—farther and farther downhill over the curve of the earth.

Now, it has been observed that a chap who starts downhill through the Archipelago commonly comes to an end of his journeying soon, and sometimes even sooner. The climate affords what you may call a ready accelerator, and so do the fever and the sun and the quality of the drink and other amusements prevailing in those parts. And often, if his steps stray a bit off the beaten track, he is likely to meet some kindly guide, black or brown or even white, perhaps, who bobs up in a quiet corner to point out a short cut. But though Merry took no heed of his steps in the least, and though he went quartering very far wide on that great thoroughfare which reaches from Singapore to Torres Strait along the midrib of the world, yet he kept on going for quite a while: and the reasons therefor were curious and well worthy of note.

To begin with, he had brought along a fair constitution and a stomach that was not so much a stomach as a chemical retort—an advantage to be envied by kings. He carried a loose, limp, and rubbery frame well suited to the uses of a long-distance drunkard. He was by nature as mild and harmless a creature as ever tangled himself in a fool's quest. And finally he owned a gift, a certain special personal gift of the kind that tends universally to maintain a fixed percentage for the man alive over what he is worth when dead.

Such a provision is not so easily come by. Very able citizens have lacked it. Many an eminent explorer, many a devoted pioneer, has found his eminence and his devotion outbalanced in the primitive scale by the value of his trouser buttons. It is singular to reflect what potential marvels, what captains and leaders among men, have been knifed for the beers; or elsewhere even broiled and eaten and complained of at dessert—some being tough and some lacking flavor.