Читать книгу ODTAA - John 1878-1967 Masefield - Страница 5

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Hi had planned to learn “enough Spanish to rub along with” on the voyage out, but fate disposed of this plan. He was seasick till after Lisbon; then they started cricket; then, by chance, he met the third engineer, who was as fond of cog-wheels as himself. After this, he passed most of his time either in the third engineer’s cabin or in the engine-room. He learned no Spanish whatever. “You’ll not need it,” the third engineer said, “they’re very intelligent people: they’ll make out what you want.”

Ten mornings later Hi was roused from sleep by his cabin steward.

“The dawn is just breaking, Mr. Ridden,” he said. “We are just entering the outer harbour now.”

Hi turned out on deck in his pyjamas; he saw before him the promised land of Santa Barbara about which he had thought so much. It was still dim, close in shore. A big light was near at hand to his right; a small revolving light blinked far away to the left. In between, in the arc of the bay, were the lights of the city and of the ships at anchor. The city itself was little more than a smudge against a darkness. Far beyond the city, in a line like an army, were the high Sierras of the Three Kings. Their peaks rose up out of the clouds like mountains in another world. As they were now catching the dawn they seemed made of jewels. Mount Gaspar was golden. Mount Baltazar was like a bubble of blood, and Mount Melchior a blue and evil finger glistening. As Hi watched, amazed by the beauty of the scene, colour began to come upon the bay. He saw away to his left an enormous expanse of shallow water, over which strange birds, such as he had never seen, were now passing from their night ashore.

“You see those birds?” said the fourth officer of the Recalde beside him. “They’re bobacherry birds. You always see them working their lower jaws as though to get the cherry in. It’s a pretty place, Santa Barb, of a morning like this.”

He passed away to get the watch to the washing of the decks; Hi remained staring at the shore.

“I had never thought that it was to be like this,” he thought. “It’s like an earthly paradise. I might have been stewing in London like Rowton; or being frozen up six months of the year in British Columbia. I shall be as happy here as the day is long.”

As the Recalde passed the dead-slow limit Hi saw some lighters bearing down upon her from both sides, urged by the sweeps of such men as he had never seen nor dreamed of. They were wild-looking men of enormous stature. All were almost naked; all shone as though the life in them made them radiant. All were of a rich red-golden colour like new pennies. Even the smallest of them looked a match for two strong Europeans. Even the most benign of them looked like the devil he was and the cannibal he could be. All wore gold, ivory or copper placques, shaped like new moons, which hung from their noses and covered their mouths. They looked curiously like the lids of letter-boxes.

“See those fellows, Mr. Ridden?” said the captain on the bridge. “They’re Pitubas from up-country and they’re cannibals to a man. You’d better put a coat over those pyjamas of yours, or the sight of you may be more than they can stand. They like their meat white, and they like it young.”

Some of the lighters swept alongside and made fast, the winches at once began at all three hatches; baggage and mails were hove out before the Recalde reached her moorings. At breakfast the tables were covered with flowers and fruits, of kinds new to Hi. Clinging to the flowers were insects, coloured like jewels, shaped like sticks, or leaves or blades of grass.

“This is your first taste of the new world, Mr. Ridden,” said the captain, “what d’you think of it?”

“I think it’s amazing, sir,” Hi said.

“Well, it’s all that,” said the captain, “but after a few years of it, you’ll curse these blue skies and give a year’s pay to be able to see your breath.”

“I don’t think I shall ever tire of this, sir,” Hi said. “It’s the kind of place I have dreamed of all my life.”

“Pretty scenery,” the captain said. “But give me Sefton Park.”

*******

After breakfast, Hi was rowed ashore from the Recalde, to begin his new life. He saw the Recalde, which linked him with home (for his mother had walked her deck and leaned over her rail), now drop away into the past. In front of him was a new world, to which he had at present three keys, his friendship with the Piranhas, a letter to Mr. Roger Weycock of the Sugar Company, and a letter to Mr. Allan Winter, a sugar-planter (not far from the city) whom Bill had known in the past. These were his keys, but his father had told him not to trust to them. “The thing you’ve got to trust to, and the only thing, is just you yourself. That’s the only key that will open doors to a man, of any kind worth getting open.”

With some distrust of this key and some anxiety about his boatman’s fare, he drew near to the landing stairs, where pirates of five colours, in turbans and kerchiefs of every colour, showed their teeth at him and offered him all things, from brothels to the new cathedral. As the boat sidled up to the steps, he heard his name shouted: “Mr. Highworth. Mr. Ridden. Mr. Highworth.” He caught sight of a little man diving down the stairs at him and crying, “Dammy, dammy, dammy, I’ll get drunk to-night.”

“O, Mr. Highworth, Mr. Highworth, Mr. Ridden,” he cried. “Don’t ’ee know me? I knew you, sir; the minute I seen ’ee.” Here he turned on the other pirates who were laying hold of Hi’s baggage. “Get out of this,” he said, in the seaport language made up of the oaths of all civilised lands. “Get out of this, heekoes de pooters. I take all the Señor’s gear. Don’t ’ee know me, Mr. Highworth? I know thee, soon’s I seen ’ee.” He was weeping like a child and sucking his tears into his mouth with twitches of his face: he had all Hi’s baggage in his hands. “Pay the boatman, sir,” he said. “One of the big ones and a small one. This sort is sharks. You’d ought to have took a licensed boat, which would have been only one peseta.” He led the way up the stairs and shoved through the crowd on the Mole. “O, dammy, dammy,” he kept saying, “I’ll break into my burial money, but I’ll get drunk to-night.” He was dressed in an old pair of English riding breeches, a black velvet coat, much too tight at the shoulders and elbows, a tall black sombrero, and part of a yellow serape. Hi didn’t like the look of the man, nor his display of emotion.

“Look at me, Master Highworth,” he said. “Don’t ’ee know me?”

“No, I don’t,” Hi said. “Who are you?”

“Don’t ’ee know ’Zekiel Rust?” the man said. “I did use to beat for Squire William Ridden, many’s the time, till I had to run for it. I knowed you and your father and Mr. Rowton and Miss Mary. But you were young, Mr. Highworth. You might never have heard tell. They may have kept it from you, the deed of gore I done. I’m not an ordinary man, you understand. I had to run for it; I’m Rust, the murderer. It was I killed old Keeper Jackson. I’d a-been hung, if they’d a-took me. Now you remember me? You remember how I killed Keeper Jackson?”

“Good Lord,” Hi said. “Yes; now I remember. And you have been here ever since.”

“Dammy, dammy, bless you for remembering,” the man said. “Now, but Master Highworth, I don’t want to presume; but I’ve been all these years, seven years now, in this unchristian land, and I never see a word of anyone come from the old part. Anyhow I’ll see to thy baggage, Master Ridden. Now you want to go to a good hotel. The Santiago is the one for you. I’ll see you to there, Master Highworth, and I’ll look after you, and don’t you turn from me, Master Highworth, for anyone would have killed Keeper Jackson, the way he spoke.

“I was out on a moony night, and I’ll tell ’ee just where I were. I were up there by the valley, where the water comes out; and it wasn’t murder really. I’d gone out with my old pin-fire. It was a lovely moony night, and I got a hare. Well then, a hare’s a rebel, ain’t he, and game? So I got a hare and put ’un in my pocket and I was going on away along up, when I see another hare. He was on a bank just above the road. So ‘I’ll have ’ee, my master,’ I says, and I up after him and I give him my pin-fire and he went over the bank, and I went over the bank; and he wasn’t a hare, not really, he was a fox. I see him when I got up the bank. And there was Keeper Jackson and he says, ‘I’ve got you, my man,’ he says, ‘you best come quiet.’ And I says, ‘That wasn’t a hare,’ I says, ‘that was a fox, and a fox is a rebel and he isn’t game.’ And he says, ‘You come quiet. I’ve had my eye on you a long time,’ he says, and he lets fly at me with his gun. And one of the pellets went through my gaiters, and so I give him pin-fire. And when I see I killed him, I go along up the downs and there I come upon a man driving sheep. I put old pin-fire in a ditch and cover him over. I goes along with the man driving the sheep, until we come to Salisbury. But I’ll tell you all about that. We’ll go along to the Santiago.”

Hi remembered the man very well now as a poacher, who did odd jobs for Squire Bill in the dog-breaking and ferret business. It was perfectly true that he had murdered Keeper Jackson and had been searched and advertised for as a murderer, but had escaped.

Hi had been only ten at the time; but the thing had made a stir in that quiet place.

By this time Ezekiel had hailed a carriage, partly by signs and partly by noises, which the signs explained. For a moment he showed Hi plainly that he meant to run after the carriage until it reached the hotel, but this Hi would not allow. He made him sit with him inside.

“You’re the first ever I’ve seen from anywhere near those parts, Mr. Highworth,” Ezekiel said. “You see, after I got to Salisbury, they read in a paper how the body was found and it was me, so I thought I’d best not stay there, so I out of the pub, and, as I come out of the pub, there come up thirteen policemen and they were looking for me. And they walked straight by me and never took me. So I thought the best thing I could do is to follow these men now they’ve passed me, so I followed them along a bit, and then they separated, and I thought, ‘This won’t do,’ so I went along the road a bit and there was a man driving some cows, so I said to him, ‘I’m going along the road a bit. Shall I help thee drive?’ So I drive them along a bit, and he said to me, ‘Where are you going?’ And I thought, ‘Well, it won’t do to tell anybody where I’m going,’ so I said, ‘I’ll just turn back and go into the town now.’ And so I turned back, because I thought, ‘Well, he’ll notice me,’ and he must have been suspicious or he wouldn’t have asked where I was going to. And I thought, ‘Now, I’ll diddle him like I diddled the policemen. I’ll go right across this town and out the other side. No one would think of looking for me there.’

“Well, I went across and, as I was going across, I passed like an inn yard, and just at that inn yard door, like a gateway, there was Black George Rylands that used to drive Mr. Hanshaw. If I’d a-took another step I’d a-been right into him, and so I thought, ‘Now, Ezekiel Rust, you’re doomed. They all knows that you’re here. They’re all on the scent.’ So then I don’t know what to do, and presently I see Black George turn away into the inn, so then I made one dart.

“So then I got out of Salisbury, and I come up out on a place, like it was downs, and there were some gipsy fellows there. I’d known some of them come round with baskets, but they didn’t know me, and I asked them which way I’d better go to get out of England, and they said they’d set me on the road, part of the way, and so we set off next day and we come to a town. I thought I was safe when I was with them, but, coming through that town, my blood run cold.”

“Why?” said Hi. “Were there more police?”

“No, Mr. Ridden, there was not more police, there was soldiers—soldiers after me, hundreds of ’em. I come into the town, and there was all they soldiers in red coats, looking for me. But I got past ’em and I come to a town, and there was a man wanting another man to help him take charge of a bull. He was coming out to these parts and there was to have been another man in charge of the bull, but the other man, if you understand me, Mr. Ridden, he didn’t want, when the time come, to live up to his bargain. And I didn’t want to let it be known, not at once, that I was eager to get out of the country, because that wouldn’t have done. They’d all have known that I was a murderer, if I let ’em think that. Naturally that was the first thing they’d have thought. So I pretended first I was afraid of bulls, and then I said I didn’t like to leave my old mother, and then I said I didn’t much like these foreign parts by what I’d heard of them. I let them think the wrong thing, you see, Mr. Highworth. But in the end I said I’d help take the bull. So then they said they didn’t want to run any risks, and said, ‘You’d better come on board straightaway.’ So they took me along and we passed through a gate where there was a lot of notices and there I read what made my blood run cold. Now I had always been against they photographs. Often people said to me, ‘Now you stand there and let me take your picture.’ But I knew better. ‘No,’ I always used to say. My golly, Mr. Highworth, I tell ’ee, there they’d got me all described and wrote out. ‘Wanted, for murder, suffering from a crushed left thumbnail,’ it said. It must have been Mrs. Thompson told them that.

“You may talk what you like, Mr. Ridden, about there not being a God, but there is a God. And how do I know that there is a God? Because, when I read that, there was a policeman there and I got my left thumb in my pocket at the moment, and, if I’d not had my left thumb in my pocket at that moment, why, he’d have seen it, wouldn’t he?

“There, that shows you whether there’s a God or not. So the other fellows that wanted me to take the bull, they didn’t want me to be reading there; they wanted me to come along. But it wouldn’t have done to come along, not with that policeman there. No, because he’d have thought at once, ‘There’s something funny,’ if I’d have gone along. There was fifty pounds reward, too, for me.

“And the policeman says to one of the chaps that was with me, ‘Seen anything of this chap?’ he says.

“ ‘No,’ they says, ‘worse luck, because we could do with fifty pounds.’

“ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘he’s pretty sure to be coming around here. Who’s this you’ve got?’

“ ‘Why,’ they says, ‘he’s a drover coming to look after the old Astounder, that big bull they’ve got on board.’

“ ‘Well, I wish him joy of his job, then,’ the policeman said, ‘for a bull is a fair coughdrop, when he’s seasick.’

“Well then, we got on board the ship. That’ll show you whether there’s a God or not.

“Well, I hope your troubles were at an end then,” said Hi.

“No, Mr. Highworth, they were not. And why were they not? Why, use is second nature, as we say. Soon as I got on board that old ship, they said the captain wanted to see me and so I thought, ‘Well, now they’ve caught me; now what am I to do?’ Then I thought I’d better go, I might brazen it out. And I went up to a place all shining, and there was all the chief detectives of London town come to look for me. And the captain, he says, ‘Now, my man, what’s your name?’ Now what would you have answered? Use is second nature, isn’t it? So I plumped out straightaway ‘Ezekiel Rust,’ I said. Then, directly I said that, I see what I done. And he said, ‘Well, you put your name on that paper there.’ And then I know what to do. I said, ‘Please, sir, I can’t write.’ And so he says, ‘Well, you must put your mark.’ And there was a man writing on a paper and he wrote my name, only he hadn’t wrote it right. He wrote it wrong, because he hadn’t followed what I said. He put ‘Jack Crust.’ And so I put my mark and the detectives they looked at me and they didn’t recognise me and I thought, ‘My boys, there’s the worth of fifty pounds in me and I never been worth more than eleven and a penny at one time before, and that they cheated me of, coming back from the races.’ And so he said, ‘Now, my man, go down to that bull and mind he don’t toss you. They call him the Wrekin’s Astounder,’ he said, ‘and he’ll astound you, if you don’t be careful.’

“And I went down and had a look at the bull and I thought ‘This ’ere creature will be a friend to me. They won’t come looking for me, not down with this old Astounder.’ But they did come looking for me, and a policeman come and they come with the captain and he says, ‘Who’ve we got here,’ he says.

“ ‘Oh, that’s the prize bull and his keeper,’ they says, ‘what you read about in the papers.’

“ ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘now I’m safe. There won’t be any more policemen come along for me.’ Then the steward come down. He calls me, ‘Crust, Crust. Where’s this man, Crust?’ he says. It make my blood run cold to hear my name called like that. So he says, ‘Come along and get your tea, man. Get your tea while you can eat it. We shall be gone in another hour and you’d best have something to be sick on, if you’re going to be sick.’

“Well, I sat down to supper with a lot of others, and be darned if one of them didn’t say, ‘Your name Crust? You any relation of the murderer?’

“ ‘No,’ I said, ‘thank God.’

“And another said, ‘What murderer’s that, Bert?’

“ ‘Why,’ he says, ‘a man called Crust shot a gamekeeper and there’s fifty pounds reward for him.’

“So then I saw that they suspected me and I said, ‘There’s only one way to deal with murderers and it’s what they call the old way. They used to get a great big tin of paraffin and they put the murderer into that and then they boil him. Wherever that’s been tried,’ I said, ‘people know enough not to do any more, because they know what they’ll get.’

“And then one of them said, ‘Yes, but they’re not always caught. They know that.’

“And I said, ‘No, they’re not always caught at once, but in the end they’re always caught.’

“Now you’d think that I’d run dare-devil escapes enough by that time. That very evening the ship began to go and I thought, ‘Now I’m free.’ And then I wake up in the night and the ship were groaning awful. She gave great creaking groans like right down and I thought, ‘I know how it’s going to be. There’s going to be a storm, because it knows that I’m on board and there’ll be a storm until they find out who it is.’ And then some men came by with a lantern and I was in the stall, if you understand me, next to my bull, and I lay down in the straw and they went past. They didn’t see me. And the next morning, when I got up, I thought, ‘I’ll see whether we’re away from England or not.’ So I went up, and the first thing I see you could have knocked me down. There was a lot of men-of-war’s men. Some of them was here and some of them was there, if you understand what I mean. They made my blood run cold. ‘I see what it is,’ I said, ‘They know I’ve come this way, but they don’t know which I am and so they’re stopping and watching every place. My only chance is to keep down just by the bull.’ So I went down to him and he knew I had shot old Jackson, and he rammed at me with his great horns and I stayed there all day. I stayed down there two weeks. Proper lot of whiskers I grew while I was down there. At the end of that time the captain said, ‘I’ve never had a man,’ he said, ‘look after a beast like you’ve looked after that old bull. Now I’ll give you five pounds,’ he said, those were his words, ‘I’ll give you five pounds,’ that’ll show you what he thought of me, ‘if you’ll stay and take the other bulls that we have, like you took this. He eats out of your hand just like a tame canary.’

“So I said, ‘No, thank you, sir, I’m sure. I’d like to go with my bull.’

“So you’d think my troubles were at an end then. We come to the foreign place where the bull was to go ashore. It wasn’t here, it was somewhere further down from here. I heard one of the men say, ‘The police-boat’s come alongside,’ and then my blood run cold. I thought, ‘They know that I’m on board here, because why, they’ll have sent the description and that. It would have gone quicker by post than we could have come.’ So I stayed down by my bull and presently, when we got the bull ashore, there was a policeman, at least he didn’t look like what we should call a policeman. He stopped me, but luckily for me there was the captain there and he knew me and he said, ‘He’s come with the bull.’ And so I went with that bull; oh, a matter of five hundred miles, I should think. I don’t know where we didn’t get to. I come to a very nice place. I never see more rabbits than were in that place, though they weren’t rabbits neither, come to think of it: I thought, ‘If I had got old pin-fire and my two ferrets, I’d have some of you fine chaps.’

“Well, that’s seven years ago, and I’ve been up and down since, and I’m married to one of these foreigners now. Isabella her name is. I don’t understand what she says half the time, because she don’t talk any Christian language. And we live in Medinas Close, Cercado as they call it, but it means close, three floors up, number 41; where we’ve got a room, and, if ever you want me, Mr. Highworth, it’s the middle room of three, and there’s no job I can’t turn my hand to; or if you want an English body-servant, it wouldn’t matter my having a wife, because I knowed your father, Mr. Highworth, Squire William, and I know all about this land, in case you wish to know. There’s goings on and there’s goings on, but what I once say a white man is a white man, isn’t he? You can’t get away from that. Isn’t he a white man? And why did the Lord make him a white man, do you suppose? Why, so that he shouldn’t be a black man, I suppose. Very well then, there’s fine goings on. I don’t say a word against black men. There’s very good ones here, very cheerful sort of people, the black men here. Only their feet—they don’t have feet like we do. The leg-bone comes down in the middle of the boot, not at the end, like with us. But, when you get used to that, they’re very nice, cheerful people; they wouldn’t do you any harm. You trust the black people and they’ll trust you. No, it’s these yellow fellows, those are the ones, and there’s queer goings on. Now, look there, look there, Master Highworth Foliat Ridden, there’s what I don’t like to see, those yellows.”

At that moment the carriage had to draw to the pavement. There came a noise of a barbaric music of rattles, drums and gongs, to which cavalry were marching. A column in twos came slouching by the carriage. They were led by an almost naked yellow savage who wore scarlet plumes in his hair. The music followed him, swaying from side to side or giving little leaps in their seats from the excitement of the rhythm. After the music came the troop of perhaps fifty savages, carrying red pennoned lances. They wore nothing which could be called uniform, except the metal moons over their mouths. Some wore linen coats or drawers, some had ponchos or serapes. They were smoking, singing and calling out to the passers-by.

“There,” Ezekiel said, “they’re the yellows. Tents of Shem, I call it. They all got lids to their mouths. Government’s made those yellow soldiers; and they come in, hundreds of them. Now, Government doesn’t see them in the way we see them; they don’t live with Government the way they live with us. But these yellow fellows, they’ve been brought into this here city, and they don’t look Christians do they, and they aren’t Christians. And why aren’t they Christians? Because they’re cannibals. And they’ve been billeted down Medina Close, and what do you think they say they’ve come here for? They’re going to eat baked Christians, they say, baked Christians!”

He said all this in a broad English country dialect, mixed up with scraps of Spanish and emphasised by a lot of signs, which no doubt could be understood by Isabella. Hi thought that the man was as mad as a hatter as well as being a murderer.

He did not quite like being with a mad murderer, even though it was seeing life, but it smote him to the heart to see the poor old fellow weeping at the sight of him, and swearing to be drunk that night, even if it took the burial money: his heart warmed to him.

They drove through a square where a squadron of Pituba lancers, newly arrived in town, were forming a bivouac. These men looked as though they had been on a foray. Some of them had newly-slaughtered sheep slung across their horses in front of them, others had big round loaves of army bread or, in some cases, chickens, on their lance-points. They rode uncared-for, wiry, evil little horses of a pale sorrel colour. They rode with a leather thong instead of reins. Most of them had no stirrups, but knotted leather thongs, hanging from the saddles, which they clutched between their toes.

“Now, Master Highworth,” ’Zeke said, “I don’t expect anything from you, neither now nor any time. You’re a great gentleman and you don’t want to come and speak with a murderer; not that he was a murderer. And why wasn’t it a murder? Because old Jackson, he was a rebel, and he fired at me, didn’t he, and he’d got a better gun than me, didn’t he, and he shot me through the gaiters, didn’t he, and besides it wasn’t a hare I was after, it was a fox, and he knew that as well as I, and I didn’t know, not really, when old pin-fire would go and when he wouldn’t, for the matter of that. But Number 41 Medinas Close, three floors up. Don Crust they calls me and my wife Señora Crust. Anybody knows me. I could tell you of queer goings on, very queer; things you’d want to know, so as you could watch out, Master Ridden. But there’s another thing, Master Highworth; you wouldn’t want to come to Medinas Close not after dark, not in your good things. It’s always safer to wear a poncho—because why? Why then, if they come at you, you’ve got something to stop it with. It isn’t like these ordinary tight things. You can’t really tell where a man ends inside a blanket.

“Besides, there’s another thing, Master Highworth, which I wouldn’t tell to everyone; but old Keeper Jackson’s forgiven me. He didn’t at first, not he. In the night, he used to come to me, ‘Darn ’ee,’ he said, ‘I’ll have ’ee yet,’ he said. He used to come all sideways at me with his blue teeth at first; not quite at first, you understand, Master Highworth; for he must have been a bit confused at first, from old pin-fire and being in the moon, but it was when I was with the bull he began to come. Many a shiny night he come at me. ‘You come back,’ he said, ‘you best come quiet, or darn ’ee I’ll make ’ee come.’ And he done his best to make me come; there were temptations come to make me go back, but I saw through them. But he lost track of me among this new religion. He didn’t know the lingo or something, or else their tiddlewinks upset him.

“Then one night he come again; be blest if he didn’t come again. But he didn’t come like he ever come afore. He come in sort of shiny, not what you would call an angel, Mr. Ridden and sir, but he hadn’t so many teeth as the other times, if you understand what I mean. ‘Darn ’ee, Rust,’ he says to me, ‘you’ve given me a bad go in Tencombe graveyard, along of all them damned and women. But I’m out of sitting there,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind about it now, like I did. It’s a darned poor snipe,’ he said, ‘could sit on a grave seven years and bear malice at the end. Besides,’ he said, ‘I’m going; they’ve given me a horse, and I’m off in the morning.’

“He wouldn’t tell me where he was off to. He was always one of they artful ones. ‘I thought I’d tell ’ee I was going,’ he said, ‘there’s a whole lot of us got horses.’

“But 41 Medinas Close is where you’ll find me, Master Hi; it isn’t a nosegay, nor anything to please the eye. It’s back of the cathedral, not dead back of it, for that’s the Bishop’s, but keep to the right of that, and then there’s a gate, but you mustn’t take that, for it don’t lead anywhere, but bear round, and then you’ll come to a place stinks like chemicals, for it is chemicals; only you don’t go in there, but more round, if you understand, till you come into Two Brothers Fountain Lane. Well, it isn’t far from there. Two naked brothers in a fountain; you’d think they’d a-been ashamed; but these foreigners don’t know the value of clothes the same way that we do.”

“How did you know me?” Hi asked. “I was only ten or eleven when you saw me last.”

“Master Highworth, I’ve known all your family since I don’t know when. I know your blessed great-grandfather, when he wore his pigtail. But use is second nature, as we say; they all wore pigtails, come to think of it. Then I know old Mr. William and Master Rowton, not your brother Master Rowton, but your father’s, the squire’s, older brother that was. Lord, he was a proper one, Master Rowton. ‘A horse can jump anything,’ he used to say, ‘if you want him to.’ Well, he wouldn’t take warnings; not once, nor twice, so the third time they bring him home on a door. That was jumping into that pit at Beggar’s Ash. Old Mr. William didn’t say much about his son, but he took on about the six-year-old, for he’d backed him in a race.

“So when I seen ’ee, I said, ‘That’s a Ridden out of the Foliats,’ I said; ‘don’t tell me, because it can’t be anybody else. And it won’t be Mr. Chilcote, for Mr. Chilcote keeps his lip cocked up, and besides, this is too young for Mr. Chilcote. And Mr. Rowton’s got a swelled mouth, like old Mr. William had the same, almost as though he’d had a smack on it, so it won’t be him. It’s young Mr. Highworth.”

Hi promised to see him within a few days. He did not like to offer the old man money, but contrived to make him a present, partly as a wedding present, partly to celebrate his meeting with a Tencombe man. He found himself in an upper room of the hotel, looking out on an array of roofs from which washing was hanging. Somehow, the washing looked more romantic in that bright light than it had ever looked in England. He was cheered at being at last an independent man of the world. He had had a lovely voyage, and at the end of it there had been this welcome, from one who knew all his people and the land from which he came.

His room had a scarlet carpet and a red plush rocking-chair, which seemed out of place in that climate, already as hot as an English May. The walls, which had been white, were marked with dirty fingers. Somebody, who had occupied the room earlier that morning, had smoked cigars in it. Bitten ends of cigar were in a flower-pot near the window. The place seemed frowsy, untidy and feckless. The mosquito-curtains over his bed were smeared with the bloody corpses of old mosquitoes. All round the room, wherever the carpet failed to reach the wall, little pale yellow ants came and went. He sat down upon his bed, feeling suddenly homesick; then, realising that there were three electric fans in the room, he set them all going, knelt down and began to unpack. He had not knelt for thirty seconds when something bit him viciously in the leg; glancing down, he saw a small black thing flying at great speed along the floor. He looked at the place bitten, which had swollen and was itching. He scratched the place and went back to his unpacking, but was bitten again and then again. This time, having learned to be very swift, he slew his attacker, who smelt, when dead, worse than he liked. Feeling indignant at being placed in such a room, he went down to the hotel bar to see the proprietor.

“Yes, Mr. Ridden,” said the proprietor, “what is it? What can I do for you?”

“Look here,” Hi said, “you’ve put me in a room all full of bugs and things.”

“I haven’t got a bug in the house,” the man said. “Them ain’t bugs, them’s bichos. What you want to take is this bottle here, called Blenkiron’s Bicho Blaster. No bicho nor skeeto will come where Blenkiron blasts. Squirt Blaster freely round in floor and bed, the skeetos will be downed, the bichos dead.”

After unpacking, Hi walked out into the city to see the sights of the new world all shining in the sun. On the water-front, negroes and Caribs were loading a lighter with what looked like bunches of rusty wire: they were nearly naked: they shone and sang. Old negresses in scarlet turbans kept time for them by clinking bottles together. At the south end, were the gates of what had been the Viceroy’s garden in the old days. They stood ajar, yet still bore the device of the horse and globe. In the garden were flowers, butterflies like flying flowers, and birds like jewels and flowers. Beyond the flowers was the old white Spanish fortress, from which floated a blood-red banner, with a golden star for each province.

“I am glad I’ve come to this place,” Hi thought, “if only I can find something to do, I shall be as happy as the day is long.”

In his saunterings upon the water-front, he paused to look into the window of a picture-dealer’s shop, which was decked with three sketches in oil of scenes in a bull-ring. The picture-dealer, a man with a strangely broad face, was smoking a cigarette at his door. Hi asked him if the scenes had been sketched in Santa Barbara. The man replied, “You’d better inform yourself, sir.” The unusual rudeness of the answer made Hi wonder if the man were sane: he noted the name over the shop, and passed on, less happy than before.

Yet in spite of this one man’s rudeness, the morning proved to be a long adventure of delight.

The narrow, busy, crowded streets, so full of life, colour, strangeness and beauty, all lit as never in England, excited him. There were fruits and flowers, and costumes like fruits and flowers, men from the west, Indians from the plains and from the forest; negroes, Caribs; women in mantillas, women with roses in their ears; men in serapes, men hung with silver, like images in chapels; peones in black and silver driving ox-teams; church processions intoning Latin; all were marvellous. Yet an impression formed in his mind that all was not well; the Indian lancers and certain parties of foot soldiers, who looked as though they had been rolled in brickdust, seemed to be there for no good.

At the cathedral parvise, some workmen were sinking scarlet flag-poles into sockets in the gutters. Inside the cathedral, men were hanging scarlet draperies all round the sanctuary; Hi supposed that they were making ready for the Easter festivals. “They’re beginning early,” he thought.

Near the cathedral was the green in which the palace stood. “Palacio,” a guide, explained to him. “This is the palace of President Lopez.” He had never seen a palace before; he stopped to stare at it. The guards at the gate wore scarlet serapes; they rode white horses so bitted with heavy silver that Hi longed to protest. The palace was a big, squat, yellow building; at one end of it was a glittering pinnacle still surrounded by scaffolding. “I’ve heard of that,” Hi thought, “that’s his silver building. I’ll bet it isn’t silver, though; but quicksilver. I suppose the President is inside there somewhere, because the flag is flying.”

It was now drawing towards noon. Men in evening dress, wearing scarlet rosettes or sashes, were driving to the gates, dismounting from their carriages, and entering the palace precincts, either for a cabinet meeting or for lunch. Some of these people were cheered by the onlookers, especially one man, who had the look of a “spoiled priest.”

At noon, some gunners in red fired a noon-gun in front of the palace; instantly throughout the city there came a change in the noise of the day as though everyone had ceased suddenly from work and pattered out to dinner. Hi returned to his hotel, to lunch upon foods which were strange to him: okra, manati, water-melon and a sangaree of limes.

After lunch, he wrote to his mother and to Señora Piranha, to say that he had arrived. Having posted these letters, he set out to the offices of the Sugar Company, to present his letter to Mr. Roger Weycock, who received him very kindly and asked him to dine that night at the Club.

“Do you know any other Englishman here?” he asked.

“I’ve a letter to Mr. Allan Winter.”

“That’s lucky. He’s in town. He was here a few minutes ago; we’ll get him to dine with us. Oh, all the English here belong to the Club; we must see about making you a temporary member. But we’ll go into that to-night, shall we, at the Club?”

At dinner at the Club that night, Mr. Weycock introduced Hi to Mr. Allan Winter, who was a grizzled and rugged soul, of long standing as a sugar-planter.

“I’ll call for you at eight to-morrow,” he said, “and drive you out to my place, where you will see the sort of place it is.” Seeing that Hi was perplexed, he added, “But perhaps you’re doing something else to-morrow.”

“No, thanks, sir,” Hi said, “but I’ve written to a friend to say that I shall be here all day to-morrow.”

“Oh, have you friends in Santa Barbara?” Mr. Weycock asked.

“I know a girl,” Hi said. “Miss Rosa Piranha, sir. Perhaps if you know her you can tell me if she’s in town?”

“Oh, you know Miss Piranha, do you?” Mr. Weycock said. “I suppose you met her in England?”

“Yes, sir.”

A change came on Mr. Weycock’s face, as though the subject were unpleasant to him. “I have met her,” he said, “but I do not know whether she’s in town or not. You see, Ridden, my work brings me into touch with the dynamic party, the Reds, now in power here. I am not well in favour with people like the Piranhas. You can always call on the Piranhas. I would go with Winter to-morrow, if I were you.”

“I’d love to,” Hi said, “but I don’t feel quite free.”

“No, I see your point,” Mr. Winter said. “You aren’t quite free. So don’t decide now. I’ll call at eight to-morrow and you can come if you can. You may have had an answer by then. Leave it like that.”

Hi asked why so many soldiers were in the city.

“Precaution,” Mr. Weycock said; “the Reds, the present Government, are being threatened by the Whites. The feeling is running very high.”

“I should think it ought to run high,” Mr. Winter said, “when these gangs of cannibals are imported to keep order. I never saw such a set of ruffians in my life. ‘I will not ask what the disease be, the cure being what it is.’ ”

“They are surely as civilised,” Mr. Weycock said, “as some of these Whites, who would burn heretics here to-morrow if they had their will. Besides, you must know, Winter, that the Pitubas have always been allies here. They helped the Spaniards in the Conquest.”

“I’ve nothing against that,” Winter said. “But whatever my politics were, if I were a white citizen here, seeing those yellow cannibals brought in to keep me in order, would make me want to shoot someone. But I don’t meddle with politics here and, I hope, never will.”

“I do not meddle in them,” Mr. Weycock said, “but I’m bound to watch them for the sake of the firm. I only hope that the measures taken will be sufficient. It would be a disaster to this Republic if Don Lopez were to be killed now.”

“Killed,” Mr. Winter said, “killed and disaster? Rats.”

“Well, I’m glad you take that cheery view.”

After this, they put away all thought of Red and White, but dined and were merry. Hi was introduced to several very good fellows; he was nominated for election at the next ballot and admitted to the Club privileges pending election. He passed a very pleasant evening. As he walked back to his hotel, he thought that he had never passed so wonderful a day.

“And I may spend my life here,” he thought. “It may not have the charm of engineering; but it must be wonderful to pass one’s days in a place so beautiful.”

Yet as he walked, he saw three Pituba lancers dragging a white man to a divisional gaol, which had its entrance on the water-front. The sight angered him strangely; and again he had the feeling that things were wrong in the land. “There are strange goings on,” old Rust had said; “they’re going to eat baked Christians.” He noticed the looks of citizens who watched the dragging, and the looks of other citizens watching for looks of disapproval. “I’ll ask Rosa about all this,” he thought. “There ought to be a letter from her in the morning.”

There was no letter from her in the morning, but Mr. Winter called and drove him out to his plantation at Quezon.