Читать книгу The Dyak chief, and other verses - Erwin Clarkson Garrett - Страница 7

Weary at last I reached a height

That showed a fertile glade,

Where the bending trees of the river brink

Leaned out o’er a wild cascade.

And white above the waving banks

The towering giants rose high,

And tossed their heads in hauteur,

Full-plumed across the sky.

And waved their long lianes

A hundred feet in air,

And shook their clinging vine-leaves

As a Dyak maid her hair.

And down by the Moeroeng’s turning

The river rock rose sheer,

And out of the cracks the tasseled palms

Like mighty plumes hung clear.

While still, behind a boulder,

Where the little ripples gleam,

A fisher sat in his sunken proa

In the midst of the gliding stream.

Only the crash of the underbrush

Told where a hunter sped,

And I caught the glint of the morning sun

On the blow-spear’s glittering head.

Only the crack of a mandauw

Felling the little trees,

And the murmuring call of a water-fall

That echoed the jungle breeze.

But more to me than the hunter—

The fisher and stream and hill—

Was the kampong deep in the hollow,

Nestling dark and still.

Dark and still in the valley,

A single house and strong;

Perched on piles two warriors high

And a hundred paces long.

And straight before the tall-stepped door

The mighty chief poles rose,

And seemed to shake their tasseled tops

In warning to their foes—

As they who slept beneath them

Once did, when in their might—

With shining steel and sinews—

Full-armed they sprang to fight.

Long from the hill-side trees I watched

The water women go

Back and forth to the river bank,

Chattering to and fro.

Long from the hill-side trees I watched

Till—straight as the windless flame—

With spear and shield and mandauw,

The kampong chieftain came.

Full well I knew the waist-cloth blue

Where hung each shriveled head.

Full well I saw the eyes of awe

That followed in his tread.

Full well I heard the spoken word—

The quick obedience fanned—

And I felt the trance of the royal glance

Of the Lord of the Jungle-land.

Lightly he scorned the proffered guard

As he strode the upland grade,

And softly I drew my mandauw

And fingered the sharpened blade.

Was it for game or a head he came

To the hills in the golden morn?

But little I cared as the heavens stared

On the day that my hope was born.

For over and over I muttered—

As I slunk from tree to tree—

“None but the head of a kampong chief

Shall hang at my belt for thee.”

(None but the head of a kampong chief

For you my belt shall grace,

Taken by right in fairest fight—

Full-fronted—face to face.)

And I found a leafy clearing

That lay across his path,

And I stood to wait his coming—

The chieftain in his wrath.

As the moan before the wind-storm

That breaks across the night,

Were the rhythmic, muffled foot falls

Of the war-lord come to fight.

The crack of little branches—

The branches pushed away—

And the Scourge of the Moeroeng Valley

Sprang straight to the waiting fray.

’Twas then I knew the stories true

They told of his fearful fame,

As through my shield a hand’s-length

His hurtling spearhead came.

Stunned I reeled and a moment kneeled

To the shock of the blinding blow,

But I rose again at the stinging pain

And the wet of the warm blood’s flow.

And I staggered straight and I scorned to wait

And I swept my mandauw high—

But ere my stroke descended

He smote me athwart the thigh.

As the lean rattan at the workman’s knife—

As the stricken game in the dell—

As a bird on the wing at the blow-spear’s sting,

To the reddened earth I fell.

And merrily with fiendish glee

He knelt and held me fast;

And I looked on high at the fleecy sky—

And I thought the look was the last.

But by the will that knows no law

I wrenched my right hand free,

And I drove my mandauw’s gleaming point

A hand’s-breadth in his knee.

Stung by the pain he loosened,

And a moment bared his breast,

And like the dash of the lightning flash

My weapon sought its rest.

As a log in the Moeroeng rapids

The mighty chieftain rolled,

And I pinned him fast for the head-stroke,

In the reek of the blood-stained mold.

And I pinned him fast for the head-stroke—

But the glare of the dying eyes

Gleamed forth to show the worthy foe

And the heart that never dies.

. . . . . . . . . .

A moment toward a kampong,

And toward a kampong maid,

I looked ... and a head rolled helpless

To the crash of a falling blade.