IT and Other Stories.

by Gouverneur Morris.

IT

Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a half circle of the deadliest, double-d.a.m.ned, orchid-haunted black mora.s.s, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But the beach is good dry sand, and the wind keeps the bugs back in the swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is a strip of loam and jungle, where some n.i.g.g.e.rs live and a G.o.d.

I landed on Prana Beach because I'd heard--but it wasn't so and it doesn't matter. Anyhow, I landed--all alone; the canoemen wouldn't come near enough for me to land dry, at that. Said the canoe would shrivel up, like a piece of hide in a fire, if it touched that beach; said they'd turn white and be blown away like puffs of smoke. They nearly backed away with my stuff; would have if I hadn't pulled a gun on them.

But they made me wade out and get it myself--thirty foot of rope with knots, dynamite, fuses, primers, compa.s.s, grub for a week, and--well, a bit of skin in a half-pint flask with a rubber and screw-down top. Not nice, it wasn't, wading out and back and out and back. There was one shark, I remember, came in so close that he grounded, snout out, and made a noise like a pig. Sun was going down, looking like a b.l.o.o.d.y murder victim, and there wasn't going to be any twilight. It's an uncertain light that makes wading nasty. It might be salt-water soaking into my jeans, but with that beastly red light over it, it looked like blood.

The canoe backed out to the--you can't call 'em a nautical name. They've one big, square sail of crazy-quilt work--raw silk, pieces of rubber boots, rattan matting, and gra.s.s cloth, all colors, all shapes of patches. They point into the wind and then go sideways; and they _don't_ steer with an oar that Charon discarded thousands of years ago, that's painted crimson and raw violet; and the only thing they'd be good for would be fancy wood-carpets. Mine, or better, ours, was made of satinwood, and was ballasted with sc.r.a.p-iron, rotten ivory, and ebony.

There, I've told you what she was like (except for the live entomological collection aboard), and you may call her what you please.

The main point is that she took the canoe aboard, and then disobeyed orders. Orders were to lie at anchor (which was a dainty thing of stone, all carved) till further orders. But she'd gotten rid of me, and she proposed to lie farther off, and come back (maybe) when I'd finished my job. So she pointed straight in for where I was standing amid my duds and chattels, just as if she was going to thump herself ash.o.r.e--and then she began to slip off sideways like a misbegotten crab, and backward, too--until what with the darkness tumbling down, and a point o' palms, I lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten, and jump up and down?

Because I was alone on Prana Beach, between the sea and the swamp. And because the G.o.d was beginning to get stirred up; and because now that I'd gone through six weeks' fever and boils to get where I was, I wished I hadn't gotten there. No, I wasn't scared. You wouldn't be if you were alone on a beach, after sundown, deserted you may say, your legs shaky with being wet, and your heart hot and mad as fire because you couldn't digest the things you had to put into your stomach, and if you'd heard that the beach was the most malodorous, ghoul-haunted beach of the seas, and if just as you were saying to yourself that _you_ for one didn't believe a word of it--if, I say, just then _It_ began to cut loose--back of you--way off to the left--way off to the right--why you'd have been scared.

It wasn't the noise it made so much as the fact that it could make any noise at all.... Shut your mouth tight and hum on the letter m-mmmmmmm--that's it exactly. Only It's was ten times as loud, and vibrating. The vibrations shook me where I stood.

With the wind right, that humming must have carried a mile out to sea; and that's how it had gotten about that there was a G.o.d loose on Prana Beach. It was an It-G.o.d, the n.i.g.g.e.rs all agreed. You'll have seen 'em carved on paddles--shanks of a man, bust of a woman, nose of a snapping-turtle, and mouth round like the letter O. But the Prana Beach one didn't show itself that first night. It hummed awhile--m-m-m-m-m--oh, for maybe a minute--stopped and began again--jumped a major fifth, held it till it must have been half burst for breath, and then went down the scale an octave, hitting every note in the middle, and giving the effect of one d.a.m.ned soul meeting another out in eternity and yelling for pure joy and malice. The finish was a whoop on the low note so loud that it lifted my hair. Then the howl was cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've seen a Chinaman's head struck from his body by the executioner at Canton--Big Wan--ever seen him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what golfers call "the follow through."

Yes. I sauntered into the nearest grove, whistling "Yankee Doodle,"

lighted a fire, cooked supper, and turned in for the night. Not!... I took to the woods all right, but on my stomach. And I curled up so tight that my knees touched my chin. Ever try it? It's the nearest thing to having some one with you, when you're cold and alone. Adam must have had a hard-sh.e.l.l back and a soft-sh.e.l.l stomach, like an armadillo--how does it run?--"dillowing in his armor." Because in moments of real or imaginary danger it's the first instinct of Adam's sons to curl up, and of Eve's daughters. Ever touch a Straits Settlement Jewess on the back of the hand with a lighted cigarette?...

As I'm telling you, I curled up good and tight, head and knees on the grub sack, Colt and dynamite handy, hair standing perfectly straight up, rope round me on the ground in a circle--I had a d.a.m.n-fool notion that It mightn't be allowed to cross knotted ropes, and I shook with chills and nightmares and cramps. I could only lie on my left side, for the boils on my right. I couldn't keep my teeth quiet. I couldn't do anything that a Christian ought to do, with a heathen It-G.o.d strolling around. Yes, ... the thing came out on the beach, in full view of where I was, but I couldn't see it, because of the pitch dark. It came out, and made noises with its feet in the sand--up and down--up and down--scrunch--scrunch--something like a man walking, and not in a hurry. Something like it, but not exactly. The It's feet (they have seven toes according to the n.i.g.g.e.r paddles) didn't touch the ground as often as a man's would have done in walking the distance. There'd be one scrunch and then quite a long pause before the next. It sounded like a very, very big man, taking the very longest steps he could. But there wasn't any more mouth work. And for that I'm still offering up prayers of thanksgiving; for, if--say when it was just opposite where I lay, and not fifty yards off--it had let off anything sudden and loud, I'd have been killed as dead as by a stroke of lightning.

Well, I was just going to break, when day did. Broke so sweet, and calm, and pretty; all pink landward over the black jungle, all smooth and baby-blue out to sea. Till the sun showed, there was a land breeze--not really a breeze, just a stir, a cool quiet moving of spicy smells from one place to another--nothing more than that. Then the sea breeze rose and swept the sky and ocean till they were one and the same blue, the blue that comes highest at Tiffany's; and little puffs of sh.o.r.e birds came in on the breeze and began to run up and down on the beach, jabbing their bills into the damp sand and flapping their little wings. It was like Eden--Eden-by-the-Sea--I wouldn't have been surprised if Eve had come out of the woods yawning and stretching herself. And I wouldn't have cared--if I'd been shaved.

I took notice of all this peacefulness and quiet, twenty grains of quinine, some near food out of a can, and then had a good look around for a good place to stop, in case I got started running.

I fixed on a sandy knoll that had a hollow in the top of it, and one twisted beach ebony to shade the hollow. At the five points of a star with the knoll for centre, but at safe blasting distance, I planted dynamite, primed and short-fused. If anything chased me I hoped to have time to spring one of these mines in pa.s.sing, tumble into my hollow and curl up, with my fingers in my ears.

I didn't believe in heathen G.o.ds when the sea and sky were that exclusive blue; but I had learned before I was fifteen years old that day is invariably followed by night, and that between the two there is a time toward the latter end of which you can believe anything. It was with that dusky period in view that I mined the approaches to my little villa at Eden-by-the-Sea.

Well, after that I took the flask that had the slip of skin in it, unscrewed the top, pulled the rubber cork, and fished the skin out, with a salvage hook that I made by unbending and rebending a hair-pin....

Don't smile. I've always had a horror of _accidentally_ finding a hair-pin in my pocket, and so I carry one on purpose.... See? Not an airy, fairy Lillian, but an honest, hard-working Jane ... good to clean a pipe with. So I fished out the slip of skin (with the one I had then) and spread it out on my knee, and translated what was written on it, for the thousandth time.

Can you read that? The old-fashioned S's mix you up. It's straight modern Italian. I don't know what the ink's made of, but the skin's the real article--it's taken from just above the knee where a man can get at himself best. It runs this way, just like a "personal" in the _Herald_, only more so:

Prisoner on Prana Beach will share treasure with rescuing party.

Come at once.

Isn't that just like an oil-well-in-the-South-west-Company's prospectus?

"Only a little stock left; price of shares will be raised shortly to thirteen cents."

I bit. It was knowing what kind of skin the ad. was written on that got me. I'd seen cured human hide before. In Paris they've got a Const.i.tution printed on some that was peeled off an aristocrat in the Revolution, and I've seen a seaman's upper arm and back, with the tattoos, in a bottle of alcohol in a museum on Fourteenth Street, New York--boys under fourteen not admitted. I wasn't a day over eight when I saw those tattoos. However....

To get that prisoner loose was the duty that I owed to humanity; to share the treasure was the duty that I owed to myself. So I got together some n.i.g.g.e.rs, and the fancy craft I've described (on shares with a Singapore Dutchman, who was too fat to come himself, and too much married), and made a start.... You're bothered by my calling them n.i.g.g.e.rs. Is that it? Well, the Mason and Dixon line ran plump through my father's house; but mother's room being in the south gable, I was born, as you may say, in the land of cotton, and consequently in my bright Southern lexicon the word n.i.g.g.e.r is defined as meaning anything black or brown. I think I said that Prana is on the west coast, and that may have misled you. But Africa isn't the only G.o.d-forsaken place that has a west coast; how about Staten Island?

Malaysian houses are built mostly of reed and thatch work standing in shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to climb out of. That's why I'd brought a length of knotted rope. The dynamite was instead of men, which we hadn't means to hire or transport, and who wouldn't have landed on that beach anyhow, unless drowned and washed up.

Now dynamite wouldn't be a pleasant thing to have round your club or your favorite restaurant; but in some parts of the world it makes the best company. It will speak up for you on occasion louder than your best friend, and it gives you the feeling of being Jove with a handful of thunderbolts. My plan was to find in what settlement there was the most likely prisoner, drive the inhabitants off for two or three days--one blast would do that, I calculated (especially if preceded and followed by blowings on a pocket siren)--let my rope down into his well, lift the treasure with him, and get away with it.

This was a straight ahead job--except for the G.o.d. And in daylight it didn't seem as if It could be such an awful devil of a G.o.d. But It did have the deuce of a funny spoor, as I made haste to find out. The thing had five toes, like a man, which was a relief. But unlike n.i.g.g.e.r feet, the thumb toe and the index weren't spread. The thumb bent sharply inward, and mixed its pad mark with that of the index. Furthermore, though the impress of the toes was very deep (down-slanting like a man walking on tiptoe), the heel marks were also very deep, and between toe and heel marks there were no other marks at all. In other words, the thing's feet must have been arched like a croquet wicket. And It's heels were not rounded; they were _perfectly_ round--absolute circles they were, about the diameter of the smallest sized cans in which Capstan tobacco is sold. If ever a wooden idol had stopped squatting and gone out for a stroll on a beach, it would have left just such a track. Only it might not have felt that it had to take such peculiarly long steps.

My knoll being near the south end of Prana Beach (pure patriotism I a.s.sure you), my village hunts must be to the northward. I had one good hunt, the first day, and I got near some sort of a village, a jungle one built over a pool, as I found afterward. The reason I gave up looking that day was because the G.o.d got between me and where I was trying to get; burst out humming, you might say, right in my face, though I couldn't see It, and directly I had turned and was tiptoeing quietly away (I remember how the tree trunks looked like teeth in a comb, or the nearest railroad ties from the window of an express train), It set up the most pa.s.sionate, vindictive, triumphant vocal fireworks ever heard out of h.e.l.l. It made black noises like Niagara Falls, and white noises higher than Pike's Peak. It made leaps, lighting on tones as a carpenter's hammer lights on nails. It ran up and down the major and minor diatonics, up and down the chromatic, with the speed and fury of a typhoon, and the attention to detail of Paderewski--at his best, when he makes the women faint--and with the power and volume of a church organ with all the stops pulled out. It shook and It trilled and It quavered, and It gargled as if It had a barrel of glycothermoline in It's mouth and had been exposed to diphtheria, and It finished--just as I tripped on a snake and fell--with a round bar of high C sound, that lasted a good minute (or until I was a quarter of a mile beyond where I had fallen), and was the color of b.u.t.ter, and could have been cut with a knife. And It stopped short--biff--just as if It had been chopped off.

That was the end of my village hunting. Let the prisoner of Prana Beach drown in his hole when the rains come, let his treasure remain unlifted till Gabriel blows his trumpet; but let yours truly bask in the shade of the beach ebony, hidden from view, and fortified by dynamite--until the satinwood shallop should see fit to return and take him off.

Except for a queer dream (queer because of the time and place, and because there seemed absolutely nothing to suggest it to the mind asleep), I put in six hours' solid sleep. In my dream I was in Lombardy in a dark loft where there were pears laid out to ripen; and we were frightened and had to keep creepy-mouse still--because the father had come home sooner than was expected, and was milking his goats in the stable under the loft, and singing, which showed that he was in liquor, and not his usual affable, bland self. I could hear him plainly in my dream, tearing the heart out of that old folk-song called _La Smortina_--"The Pale Girl":

"T' ho la scia to e son contento Non m'in cresca niente, niente Altro giovine hogia in mente Pin belino a.s.sai di te."

And I woke up tingling with the remembered fear (it was a mixed feeling, half fright, and half an insane desire to burst out laughing to see what the old man would do), and I looked over the rim of my hat, and there walking toward me, in the baby-blue and pink of the bright dawn (but a big way off), came a straggling line of naked n.i.g.g.e.rs, headed by the It-G.o.d, Itself.

One look told me that, one look at a great bulk of scarletness, that walked upright like a man. I didn't look twice, I scuttled out to my nearest mine, lighted the fuse, tumbled back into the hollow, fingers in ears, face screwed up as tight as a face can be screwed, and waited.

When it was over, and things had stopped falling, I looked out again.

The tropic dawn remained as before, but the immediate landscape was somewhat altered for the worse, and in the distance were neither n.i.g.g.e.rs nor the G.o.d. It is possible that I stuck my thumbs into my armpits and waggled my fingers. I don't remember. But it's no mean sensation to have pitted yourself against a strange G.o.d, with perfectly round heels, and to have won out.

About noon, though, the G.o.d came back, fortified perhaps by reflection, and more certainly by a n.i.g.g.e.r who walked behind him with a spear.

You've seen the donkey boys in Cairo make the donkeys trot?... This time I put my trust in the Colt forty-five; and looked the G.o.d over, as he came reluctantly nearer and nearer, singing a magic.

Do you know the tragedian walk as taken off on the comic opera stage, the termination of each strutting, dragging step accentuated by cymbals smashed together F-F-F? That was how the G.o.d walked. He was all in scarlet, with a long feather sticking straight up from a scarlet cap.

And the magic he sang (now that you knew the sounds he made were those of a tenor voice, you knew that it was a glorious tenor voice) was a magic out of "Ada." It was the magic that what's-his-name sings when he is appointed commander-in-chief of all the Egyptian forces. Now the n.i.g.g.e.rs may have thought that their G.o.d's magics were stronger than my dynamite. But the G.o.d, though very, very simple, was not so simple as that. He was an Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was too plumb afraid.

When he reached the hole that the dynamite had made in the landscape--I showed myself; trying to look as much like a dove of peace as possible.

"Come on alone," I called in Italian, "and have a bite of lunch."

That stopped his singing, but I had to repeat. Well he had an argument with the n.i.g.g.e.r, that finished with all the gestures that two monkeys similarly situated would have made at each other, and after a time the n.i.g.g.e.r sat down, and the G.o.d came on alone, puffing and indignant.

We talked in Dago, but I'll give the English of it, so's not to appear to be showing off.

"Who and what in the seventh circle of h.e.l.l _are_ you?" I asked.

He seemed offended that I should not have known. But he gave his name, sure of his effect. "Signor ----" and the name sounded like that tower in Venice that fell down the other day.

"You don't mean it!" I exclaimed joyfully. "Be seated," and, I added, being silly with joy and relief at having my awful devil turn into a silly child--"there may be some legacy--though trifling."

Well, he sat down, and stuck his short, immense hirsute legs out, all comfy, and I, remembering the tracks on the beach, had a look at his feet. And I turned crimson with suppressed laughter. He had wooden cylinders three inches high strapped to his bare heels. They made him five feet five inches high instead of five feet two. They were just such heels (only clumsier and made of wood instead of cork and crimson morocco or silk) as _Siegfried_ wears for mountain climbing, dragon fighting, or other deeds of derring-do. And with these heels to guide me, I sighed, and said:

"Signor Recent-Venetian-Tower, you have the most beautiful pure golden tenor voice that I have ever heard in my life."

Have you ever been suddenly embraced by a pile-driver, and kissed on both cheeks by a blacking-brush? I have. Then he held me by the shoulders at arm's length, and looked me in the eyes as if I had been a long-lost son returned at last. Then he gathered a kiss in his finger tips and flung it to the heavens. Then he asked if by any chance I had any spaghetti with me. He cried when I said that I had not; but quietly, not hara.s.singly. And then we got down to real business, and found out about each other.