Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 11

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The savants respond to the official communication according to their several natures. The Statistician views beasts and brigands alike with his customary belligerence. He straps one of the army Colts round his waist in an un-get-at-able position and swears at its discomfort. The Botanist exhibits a sudden antipathy to firearms, and under the cloak of derision refuses to load himself down with "motion-picture hardware." Almost does he convey the impression of one who is afraid of guns. The Ichthyologist signs for his weapon,—the Director issues all supplies under receipt, just like valuable apparatus delivered to his class,—accepts the thing dubiously, and frankly asks for instructions in its use. The Scribe, with naïve alacrity, signs up for two guns and drapes them on low-slung belts over his thighs. He is twenty-one and tall and good-looking; and the tout ensemble—with his well-fitting cord breeches, and his khaki shirt open at the throat, and his white sun-helmet—is very splendid.

I look upon these men and it comes home to me with staggering force that not one of them has ever fired off a pistol in his life. I cap that with the conviction, which has been growing in my mind, that not one of them has ever even been out in camp before. And I look upon them again with an increased respect. That insidious inferiority-complex thing has been inspiring my ego to offset the surpassing wisdom of these savants by indulging in a certain lofty scorn for the "tenderfeet." I have in all probability made myself as obnoxious, with my condescending knowledge of things pertaining to the great outdoors, as any Maine guide on seven dollars a day. But it comes to me now that tenderfeet who will unhesitatingly embark upon a journey into the unknown Amazon jungles for the love of their science are people who have a moral courage which almost gives them the right to a sympathetic consideration of their idiosyncrasies.

Little hardships which are to me but the cussedness of any long travel, must be sore trials indeed to some of these less experienced gentlemen.

"For the sake of Science," with a capital S, has been a catch phrase as much to be derided by the laity as "for Art's sake." But deference is due to men who are willing to sacrifice so much for the furtherance of human knowledge and for no material remuneration other than the pittance that is paid to college professors. Not a man on this expedition, mind you, is on salary. Flat field expenses and no more. Honor is therefore due to them—to us, rather, let me say, my comfortable friends of the United States of America. Excuse is there, also, for their tempers and temperaments. I cannot help laughing at some of their queer reactions to the uneven tenor of their present way; but I laugh, I hope, with understanding.

Have I shown an insufficient respect for transcendent wisdom? Is it the inferiority complex again that impels a layman to laugh at a scientist? I don't know. I trust not. I hope that I have not been off balance in my observation. I feel that I must defend myself, and I hasten to establish my impartiality. They are not all of them cranks, by any means. But since it is the abnormal—or let me say, rather, the unusual—that registers itself most strongly on the consciousness, I have mentioned the queer characteristics first.

Let me sum up, and incidentally offer belated introduction to the characters involved in this drama of ultra-civilized men who have plunged into the primaeval wild.

The Statistician you know already. He is tall and gaunt and has a sparse, straggly beard. He peers crabbedly through bifocal lenses. The typical cranky professor of mathematics. What mystery is there in numbers that renders a man who studies them too closely different from his fellows? Why are so many stories told about professors of mathematics? Yes, the Statistician is distinctly a character. But there is something straightforward and uncompromising about his truculence that I like.

Conundrum: why does one blindfold a mule? Simple Answer: so that he can't run away.

The Most Intricate Method of Mule-packing in the World

The Director you know partially through his deeds. He is—I don't know. I don't understand him yet. He is tall and was once a powerful man. But his health is not what it used to be. He has suffered considerably coming over the altitudes. He worries much over unnecessary cares of direction. His is the type of mind that is constitutionally unable to delegate authority to another. He must do everything himself; and of course there is much too much for any one man to attend to. For the rest—judging from the experience of the tents and the food supplies—he seems to have fallen short in estimating the difficulties of such an expedition.

The Botanist I have described. Big and florid and slow of movement as well as of thought. Devoid of all humor to the extent that he takes himself very seriously indeed and has a great sense of his importance. Therefore he is continually getting himself into the amusing positions that are the lot of all pompous men. And therefore he is difficult to get along with. But there is an underlying solidity and reliability about him that is comforting.

There, that much for the unusuals. Now we come to the others who have given no cause for comment as yet.

The Entomologist. A whole man. Of medium height, dark, wiry, short-sighted, so that his big round glasses give him the inquiring look of a spectacled bear. And with the indefatigable patience of a bear he turns over stones by the wayside and rips bark off trees, looking forever for microscopic bugs which he may pick up with fine tweezers and drop into an array of carefully labeled bottles full of alcohol. He has an astounding knowledge of these bugs. No mite ever so small but he can immediately give its genus and species and private name, as well as its family history. I can't guess his age. But he is man enough to have sound sense and balance, and boy enough to laugh at the absurdities of some of the rest of us.

However, he has a curious complex, too. He has an innate respect for science as an abstract ideal, and he feels, though he laughs, that one really ought not to laugh at brother scientists. In his eyes I must appear to be a ribald and dissolute person. But I catch ants for him and he forgives me. He is a man of experience. He has hunted bugs all over the desolate earth, and he is altogether a good man to have on an expedition. And he wears the most disreputable hat in North and South America.

The Ichthyologist, too, stacks up well. He is young and earnest and energetic and has no illusions about the things he doesn't know. He is anxious to ask and to learn; and his ambition is that he may be privileged to discover something worth while during this expedition. This is his first chance, and he aims to make the most of it. I feel sure he will.

The Scribe. You know him already. He is buoyant and loud and has all the confidence and omniscience of his age. He contradicts the Director, his chief, with a cheerful abandon and he is prepared to enter into an argument with any one of the sober men of science on any subject at all. He jars upon their refined sensibilities frightfully. But he is a good lad, with all the courage in the world, and has the makings of a good man in him. This expedition will do him a world of good. My assistant has nicknamed him "Young America," which explains him better than pages of description.

Finally, my assistant. The man who is to help me to find out why wild Indians do the things that they do and how they do them; and to take motion pictures of all their queer doings as proof that we do not lie. When that other man of the Bolshevic ethics ran away so suddenly in La Paz city there was some little difficulty about replacing him. There was even a thought of cabling to New York for relief. But Fate for once was kind and led me to a gentleman, resident in La Paz, who didn't like his job and who was more than willing to come adventuring across the continent.

I say, "gentleman" advisedly. He is from the South; suave, polite, well bred, I might say painfully correct, and has a most useful knowledge of Spanish. He has had legal and business training; so his complex is an ultimate scorn for the ineffectual fussings and putterings of men who have not been trained along practical lines—such as scientists. He has therewith a delightfully sardonic tongue; so that he is a thorn in the side of most of us, which is probably very good for us. We call him "the Respectable Member."

I ought really to describe myself, too, for I feel that few readers fully appreciate all those sterling characteristics which I could so well depict. But modesty forbids. I shall tell you only how I dress—cord breeches, high boots, khaki shirt, Stetson, and gun. Yet somehow I don't seem to look nearly so moving-picturesque as that lithe young Scribe. But I have taken immediate advantage of our remoteness from civilization, as have the others, to consign the safety razor to the bottom of the duffle-bag. So I am beginning to look very much like Lohengrin—the Respectable Member says like a Boer farmer.