Front matter (continued 2)

Becoming reckless, he let the cork drift too far away from him and Philip seized it.

He twirled it in the air like a crap shooter, and dug deep down in the water with it, "lost" it, then leaped back, briskly waiting for it to rise.

About them the water, due to the ramming and beating, grew restive. Billows sprang up; soaring, swelling waves sent the skiff nearer the shore. Anxiously Philip and Ernest watched for the cork to make its ascent.

It was all a bit vague to the whites on the deck, and an amused chuckle floated down to the boys.

And still the cork failed to come up.

"I'll go after it," said Philip at last, "I'll go and fetch it." And, from the edge of the boat he leaped, his body long and resplendent in the rising tropic sun.

It was a suction sea, and down in it Philip plunged. And it was lazy, too, and willful—the water. Ebony-black, it tugged and mocked. Old brass staves—junk dumped there by the retiring French—thick, yawping mud, barrel hoops, tons of obsolete brass, a wealth of slimy steel faced him. Did a "rammed" cork ever go that deep?

And the water, stirring, rising, drew a haze over Philip's eyes. Had a cuttlefish, an octopus, a nest of eels been routed? It seemed so to Philip, blindly diving, pawing. And the sea, the tide—touching the roots of Deathpool—tugged and tugged. His gathering hands stuck in mud. Iron staves bruised his shins. It was black down there. Impenetrable.

Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, a vision blew across Philip's brow. It was a soaring shark's belly. Drunk on the nectar of the deep, it soared above Philip—rolling, tumbling, rolling. It had followed the boy's scent with the accuracy of a diver's rope.

Scrambling to the surface, Philip struck out for the boat. But the sea, the depths of it wrested out of an æon's slumber, had sent it a mile from his diving point. And now, as his strength ebbed, a shark was at his heels.

"Shark! Shark!" was the cry that went up from the ship.

Hewing a lane through the hostile sea Philip forgot the cunning of the doddering beast and swam noisier than he needed to. Faster grew his strokes. His line was a straight, dead one. Fancy strokes and dives—giraffe leaps ... he summoned into play. He shot out recklessly. One time he suddenly paused—and floated for a stretch. Another time he swam on his back, gazing at the chalky sky. He dived for whole lengths.

But the shark, a bloaty, stone-colored man-killer, took a shorter cut. Circumnavigating the swimmer it bore down upon him with the speed of a hurricane. Within adequate reach it turned, showed its gleaming belly, seizing its prey.

A fiendish gargle—the gnashing of bones—as the sea once more closed its jaws on Philip.

Some one aboard ship screamed. Women fainted. There was talk of a gun. Ernest, an oar upraised, capsized the boat as he tried to inflict a blow on the coursing, chop-licking man-eater.

And again the fish turned. It scraped the waters with its deadly fins.

At Coco Té, at the fledging of the dawn, Maffi, polishing the tinware, hummed an obeah melody

Trinidad is a damn fine place But obeah down dey....

Peace had come to her at last.

THE PALM PORCH

5

THE PALM PORCH

I

Below, a rock engine was crushing stone, shooting up rivers of steam and signaling the frontier's rebirth. Opposite, there was proof, a noisy, swaggering sort of proof, of the gradual death and destruction of the frontier post. Black men behind wheelbarrows slowly ascended a rising made of spliced boards and emptied the sand rock into the maw of a mixing machine. More black men, a peg down, behind wheelbarrows, formed a line which caught the mortar pouring into the rear organ of the omnivorous monster.

"All, all gone," cried Miss Buckner, and the girls at her side shuddered. All quietly felt the sterile menace of it. There, facing its misery, tears came to Miss Buckner's eyes and a jeweled, half-white hand, lifted gently to give a paltry vision of the immensity of it.

"All of that," she sighed, "all of that was swamp—when I came to the Isthmus. All." A gang of "taw"-pitching boys, sons of the dusky folk seeping up from Caribbean isles, who had first painted Hudson Alley and "G" Street a dense black, and were now spreading up to the Point—swarmed to a spot in the road which the stone crusher had been especially cruel to, and drew a marble ring. Contemptibly pointing to them, Miss Buckner observed, "a year ago that would have been impossible. I can't understand what the world is coming to." Gazing at one another the girls were not tempted to speak, but were a bit bewildered, at this show of grossness on their mother's part. And anyway, it was noon, and they wanted to go to sleep.

But a light, flashed on a virgin past, burst on Miss Buckner, and she became reminiscent....

Dark dense thicket; water paving it. Deer, lions, tigers bounding through it. Centuries, perhaps, of such pure, free rule. Then some khaki-clad, red-faced and scrawny-necked whites deserted the Zone and brought saws to the roots of palmetto, spears to the bush cats and jaguars, lysol to the mosquitoes and flies and tar to the burning timber-swamp. A wild racing to meet the Chagres and explore the high reaches of the Panama jungle. After the torch, ashes and ghosts—bare, black stalks, pegless stumps, flakes of charred leaves and half-burnt tree trunks. Down by a stream watering a village of black French colonials, dredges began to work. More of the Zone pests, rubber-booted ones, tugged out huge iron pipes and safely laid them on the gutty bosom of the swamp. Congeries of them. Then one windy night the dredges began a moaning noise. It was the sea groaning and vomiting. Through the throat of the pipes it rattled, and spat stones—gold and emerald and amethyst. All sorts of juice the sea upheaved. It dug deep down, too, far into the recesses of its sprawling cosmos. Back to a pre-geologic age it delved, and brought up things.

Down by the mouth of a creole stream the dredges worked. Black in the golden mist, black on the lagoon.

With the aftermath there came a dazzling array of corals and jewels—jewels of the griping sea. Magically the sun hardened and whitened it. Sandwhite. Brown. Golden. Dross surged up; guava stumps, pine stumps, earth-burned sprats, river stakes. But the crab shell—sea crabs, pink and crimson—the sharks' teeth, blue, and black, and purple ones—the pearls, and glimmering stones—shone brightly.

Upon the lake of jeweled earth dusk swept a mantle of hazy blue.

II

"W'en yo' fadah wake up in de mawnin' time wid' 'im marinah stiff out in front o' him—"

"Mek fun," said Miss Buckner, rising regally, "an' be a dam set o' fools all yo' life." She buried the butt in a Mexican urn, and strode by Anesta sprawling half-robed on the matted floor. "Move, gal, an' le' me go out dey an' show dis black sow how we want 'ar fi' stew de gunga peas an' fowl."

"Oh, me don't wan' fi' go to no pahty," yawned Hyacinth, fingering the pages of a boudoir textbook left her one evening by an Italian sea captain, "me too tiad, sah."

"An' me can't see how de hell me gwine mek up to any man if me got fi' fling in him face a old blue ship me did got las' week. W'en is Scipio gwine bring me dat shawl him pramise fi' giv' me?"

"Me no fond ha-tall o' any 'Panish man," cried Anesta, "an' me don't see how me can—"

Miss Buckner swung around, struck. "Yo' t'ink so, he, his dat wha' yo' t'ink? Well, yo' bess mek up unna mind—all o' unna! Well, wha' a bunch o' lazy ongrateful bitches de whole carload of unna is, dough he?"

Suddenly she broke off, anger seaming her brow. "Unna don't know me his hindebted to him, no? Unna don't know dat hif hit wasn't farrim a lot o' t'ings wha' go awn up yah, would be street property long ago—an' some o' we yo' see spo'tin' roun' yah would be some way else, an' diffrant altogaddah."

"Ah know not me."

"Ah know Oi ain't owe nobody nothin'—"

"Yo' think yo' don't! But don't fool your-selves, children, there is more to make the mare go than you think—I see that now."

She busied herself gathering up glasses, flouncing off to the pantry.

The Palm Porch was not a canteen, it was a house. But it was a house of lavish self-containment. It was split up in rooms, following a style of architecture which was the flair of the Isthmian realtors, and each room opened out on the porch. Each had, too, an armor of leafy laces; shining dust and scarlet. Each had its wine and decanters, music and song.

On the squalid world of Colon it was privileged to gaze with hauteur, for Miss Buckner, the owner of the Palm Porch, was a lady of poise, charm and caution. Up around the ribs of the porch she had put a strip of canvas cloth. It shut out eyes effectively. Glancing up, one saw boxes of rosebush and flower vines, but beyond that—nothing. The porch's green paint, the opulent flower pots and growing plants helped to plaster on it the illusion of the tropical jungle.

There clung to Miss Buckner an idea of sober reality. Her hips were full, her hands long, hairy, unfeminine, her breasts dangling. She was fully seven feet tall and had a small, round head. Her hair was close to it—black, curly. Courageously she had bobbed and parted it at a time when it was unseasonable to do so, and yet retain a semblance of respect among the Victorian dames of the Spanish tropics.

Urged on by the ruthless spirit which was a very firm part of her, Miss Buckner was not altogether unaware of the capers she was cutting amid the few beings she actually touched. Among the motley blacks and browns and yellows on the Isthmus, there would be talk—but how was it to drift back to her? Via Zuline? Shame! "Who me? Me talk grossip wit' any sahvant gyrl, if yo' t'ink so yo' lie!" But the lack of an elfin figure and the possession of a frizzly head of hair, was more than made up for by Miss Buckner's gift of manners.

"Gahd, wha' she did got it, he?" folk asked; but neither London, nor Paris, nor Vienna answered. Indeed, Miss Buckner, a lady of sixty, would have been wordless at the idea of having to go beyond the dickty rim of Jamaica in quest of manners. It was absurd to think so. This drop to the Isthmus was Miss Buckner's first gallop across the sea.

And so, like sap to a rubber tree, Miss Buckner's manner clung to her. Upon those of her sex she had slight cause to ply it, for at the Palm Porch few of them were allowed. Traditionally, it was a man's house. When Miss Buckner, beneath a brilliant lorgnette, was gracious enough to look at a man, she looked, sternly, unsmilingly down at him. When of a Sabbath, her hair in oily frills, wearing a silken shawl of cream and red, a dab of vermilion on her mouth, she swept regally down Bolivar Street on the way to the market, maided by the indolent Zuline, she had half of the city gaping at the animal wonder of her. Brief-worded, cool-headed, by a stabbing thrust or a petulant gesture, she'd confound any fish seller, any dealer in yampi or Lucy yam, cocoanut milk or red peas—and pass quietly on, untouched by the briny babel.

In fact, from Colon to Cocoa Grove the pale-faced folk who drank sumptuously in the bowl of life churned by her considered Miss Buckner a woman to tip one's hat to—regal rite—a woman of taste and culture. Machinists at Balboa, engineers at Miraflores, sun-burned sea folk gladly testified to that fact. All had words of beauty for the ardor of Miss Buckner's salon.

Of course one gathered from the words which came like blazing meteors out of her mouth that Miss Buckner would have liked to be white; but, alas! she was only a mulatto. No one had ever heard of her before she and her five daughters moved into the Palm Porch. It was to be expected, the world being what it is, that words of murmured treason would drift abroad. A wine merchant, Raymond de la Croix, and a Jamaica horse breeder, Walter de Paz, vowed they had seen her at an old seaman's bar on Matches Lane serving ale and ofttimes more poetic things than ale to young blond-headed Britons who would especially go there. But De Paz and De la Croix were men of frustrated idealism, and their words, to Miss Buckner at least, brutal though they were, were swept aside as expressions of useless chatter. Whether she was the result of a union of white and black, French and Spanish, English and Maroon—no one knew. Of an equally mystical heritage were her daughters, creatures of a rich and shining beauty. Of their father the less said the better. And in the absence of data tongues began to wag. Norwegian bos'n. Jamaica lover—Island triumph. Crazy Kingston nights. To the lovely young ladies in question it was a subject to be religiously high-hatted and tabooed. The prudent Miss Buckner, who had a burning contempt for statistics, was a trifle hazy about the whole thing.

One of the girls, white as a white woman, eyes blue as a Viking maid's, had eloped, at sixteen, to Miss Buckner's eternal disgust, with a shiny-armed black who had at one time been sent to the Island jail for the proletarian crime of prædial larceny. The neighbors swore it had been love at first sight. But it irked and maddened Miss Buckner. "It a dam pity shame," she had cried, dabbing a cologned handkerchief to her nose, "it a dam pity shame."

Another girl, the eldest of the lot (Miss Buckner had had seven in all), had, O! ages before, given birth to a pretty, gray-eyed baby boy, when she was but seventeen and—again to Miss Buckner's disgust—had later taken up with a willing young mulatto, a Christian in the Moravian Church. He was an able young man, strong and honest, and wore shoes, but Miss Buckner almost went mad—groaned at the pain her daughters caused her. "Oh, me Gahd," she had wept, "Oh, me Gahd, dem ah send me to de dawgs—dem ah send me to de dawgs." He was but a clerk in the cold storage; sixty dollars a month—wages of an accursed silver employee. Silver is nigger; nigger is silver. Nigger-silver. Why, roared Miss Buckner, stockings could not be bought with that, much more take care of a woman accustomed to "foxy clothes an' such" and a dazzling baby boy. Silver employee! Blah! Why couldn't he be a "Gold" one? Gold is white; white is gold. Gold-white! "Gold," and get $125 a month, like "de fella nex' tarrim, he? Why, him had to be black, an' get little pay, an' tek way me gal picknee from me? Now, hanswah me dat!" Nor did he get coal and fuel free, besides. He had to dig down and pay extra for them. He was not, alas! white. Which hurt, left Miss Buckner cold; caused her nights of sleepless despair. Wretch! "To t'ink a handsam gal like dat would-ah tek up wi' a dam black neygah man like him, he, w'en she could a stay wit' me 'n do bettah." But few knew the secret of Miss Buckner's sorrow, few sensed the deep tragedy of her.

And so, to dam the flood of tears, Miss Buckner and the remaining ones of her flamingo brood, had drawn up at the Palm Porch. All day, the sun burning a flame through the torrid heavens, they would be postured on the porch. Virgin to the sun's gentle caresses, with the plants and flowers keeping the heat at bay, they'd be there. Slippers dangled on the tips of restive toes. Purple-lined kimonos falling away gave access to blushing, dimpled bodies. Great fine tresses of hair, the color of night, gave shadows to the revelations, gave structure.

III

"Come, Zuline,—hurry—it's getting late." The porch was vacant, dusk had fallen, and Miss Buckner wore an evening gown of white taffeta, fashioned in the Victorian epoch. It was tight and stiff and created a rustle, and there was a black bandeau pasted on to her skull.

Sullenly the girl came, and gathered up the debris. "Sweep up dis ash, an cayh dis slip in Goldy's room, de careless t'ing," said Miss Buckner.

She went to one of the dusk-flooded rooms and seized a studded dagger which she stuck among the watches and brooches which shone on her bosom. She patted it, made sure it was safely a part of the glittering pattern, and ordered the night on.

"Get up, girls," she shouted, invading room after room, "it is late, get up!"

"Hello, Sailor Mack. Hit any home runs to-day?"

"An' you, you Kentucky millionaire—how many ships came through the locks to-day?"

"Bullocks—did you say?"

"Fie!"

"Oh, Mistah Council," she said, "how do you do?" Young Briton, red-faced, red-eyed, red-haired. Yellow-teethed, dribble-lipped, swobble-mouthed, bat-eared.

He kissed the proffered hand, and bowed low. He was gallant, and half-drunk. "Where's my girl, Anesta," he said, "by God, she is the sweetest woman, black or white—on the whole goddamed—"

"Sh, be quiet, son, come," and Miss Buckner led him to a chair among a group of men.

Constantly, Miss Buckner's hand kept fluttering to the diamond-headed pin stuck in her bosom.

Chaos prevailed, but Miss Buckner was quite sober. All about there were broken vases, overturned flower-pots, flowers, women's shoes. All the men were prostrate, the women exultant.

As midnight approached, the doorbell suddenly rang. And Miss Buckner rose, cautioning serenity. "All right, boys, let's have less noise—the captain's comin'."

In Anesta's lap there was an eruption, a young Vice-Consul staggered up—shaking her off, ready to face the coming of the visitor.

"Sit down, Baldy," she implored, "come back here to me—"

"Skipper, eh? Who is he? Wha' ya hell tub is he on?" He was tall and his body rocked menacingly.

"Put that goddam lime juicer to bed, somebody, will ya?"

"Yo' gawd dam American—why—"

Anesta rose, flying to him. "Now, Tommy," she said, patting his cheek, "that isn't nice."

"Let the bleddy bastard go to—"

But apparently an omnipotent being had invaded the porch, and a deep-throated voice barked sweetly down it, "Anesta, darling, take Baldy inside, and come here!"

"But, mother—"

"Do as you are told, darling, and don't waste any more time."

"No, Gawd blarst yo'—nobody will slip off these pants of mine. Lemme go!"

"Be a gentleman, sweet, and behave."

"What a hell of a ruction it are, eh?"

"Help me wit' 'im, Hyacinth—"

Ungallantly yielding, he permitted the girl to force him along on her arm. He stepped in the crown of Mr. Thingamerry's hat. Only yesterday he had put on a gleaming white suit. Done by the Occupation, the starch on the edges of it made it dagger sharp. Now it was a sight; ugly drink stains darkened it. Booze, perspiration, tobacco weeds moistened it. His shirt, once stiff, was black and wrinkled. His tie, his collar, and trousers awry. His fire-red hair was wet and bushy and rumpled. Black curses fell from his mouth. But six months in the tropics and the nights and the girls at the Palm Porch had overpowered him. Held him tight. Sent from Liverpool to the British Consulate at Colon, he had fallen for the languor of the seacoast, he had been seized by the magic glow of the Palm Porch.

Seeing the Captain, Miss Buckner was as bright-eyed as a débutante. Instinctively her hands fled to her beaming bosom, but now the impulse was guided by a soberer circumstance.

The Captain was smiling. "Well, good lady," he said, "I see you are as charming and as nervous as usual. I hope you have good news for me to-day." He bowed very low, and kissed the jeweled hand.

"Oh, dear Captain," exclaimed Miss Buckner, touched by the Spaniard's gentility, "of course I have!" And she went on, "My renowned friend, it is so splendid of you to come. We have been looking forward to seeing you every minute—really. Was I not, Anesta, dear?" She turned, but the girl was nowhere in sight. "Anesta? Anesta, my dear? Where are you?"

It was a risky job, wading through the lanes of wine-fat men. As she and the Captain sped along, she was careful to let him see that she admired his golden epaulets, and the lofty contemptible way he'd step over the drunken Britons, but she in her own unobtrusive way was hurling to one side every one that came in contact with her.

"Christ was your color. Christ was olive—Jesus Christ was a man of olive—"

"Won't you wait a moment, Captain—I'll go and get Anesta." And she left him.

About him tossed the lime-juicers, the "crackers"—wine-crazed, woman-crazed. He turned in disgust, and drew out an open-worked handkerchief, blowing his nose contemptuously. He was a handsome man. He was dusky, sun-browned, vain. He gloried in a razor slash he had caught on his right cheek in a brawl over a German slut in a District canteen. It served to intensify the glow women fancied in him. When he laughed it would turn pale, stark pale, when he was angry, it oozed red, blood-red.

Miss Buckner returned like a whirlwind, blowing and applying a Japanese fan to her bosom.

In replacing it, a crimson drop had fallen among the gathering of emeralds and pearls, but it was nothing for her to be self-conscious about.

Very gladly she drew close to him, smiling. "Now, you hot-blooded Latin," she said, the pearls on the upper row of her teeth shining brighter than ever, "you must never give up the chase! The Bible says 'Him that is exalted' ... the gods will never be kind to you if you don't have patience.... No use ... you won't understand ... the Bible. Come!"

Pointing to the human wreckage through which they had swept, she turned, "In dear old Kingston, Captain, none of this sort of thing ever occurred! None! And you can imagine how profusely it constrains me!"

"Anesta, where are you, my dear? Here's the Captain—waiting."

Out of a room bursting with the pallor of night the girl came. Her grace and beauty, the tumult of color reddening her, excited the Captain. Curtseying, she paused at the door, one hand at her throat, the other held out to him.

It was butter in the Captain's mouth, and Miss Buckner, at the door, viewing the end of a very strategic quest, felt happy. The Captain, after all, was such a naughty boy!

The following day the policia came and got Tommy's body. Over the blood-black hump a sheet was flung. It dabbed up the claret. The natives tilted their chins unconcernedly at it.

Firm in the Captain's graces Miss Buckner was too busy to be excited by the spectacle. In fact, Miss Buckner, while Zuline sewed a button on her suède shoes, was endeavoring to determine whether she'd have chocolate soufflé or maidenhair custard for luncheon that afternoon.

SUBJECTION

6

SUBJECTION

Of a sudden the sun gave Ballet an excuse to unbend and straighten himself up, his young, perspiring back cricking in the upward swing. He hurled the pick furiously across the dusty steel rail, tugged a frowsy, sweat-moist rag out of his overall pocket and pushed back his cap, revealing a low, black brow embroidered by scraps of crisp, straggly hair. He fastened, somewhat obliquely, white sullen eyes on the Marine. Irrefutably, by its ugly lift, Ballet's mouth was in on the rising rebellion which thrust a flame of smoke into the young Negro's eyes.

"Look at he, dough," he said, "takin' exvantage o' de po' lil' boy. A big able hog like dat."

Toro Point resounded to the noisy rhythm of picks swung by gnarled black hands. Sun-baked rock stones flew to dust, to powder. In flashing unison rippling muscle glittered to the task of planing a mound of rocky earth dredged up on the barren seashore.

Songs seasoned the rhythm. And the men sang on and swung picks, black taciturn French colonials, and ignored Ballet, loafing, beefing....

The blows rained. The men sang—blacks, Island blacks—Turks Island, St. Vincent, the Bahamas—

Diamond gal cook fowl botty giv' de man

"I'll show you goddam niggers how to talk back to a white man—"

About twelve, thirteen, fourteen men, but only the wind rustled. A hastening breath of wind, struck dead on the way by the grueling presence of the sun.

A ram-shackle body, dark in the ungentle spots exposing it, jogged, reeled and fell at the tip of a white bludgeon. Forced a dent in the crisp caked earth. An isolated ear lay limp and juicy, like some exhausted leaf or flower, half joined to the tree whence it sprang. Only the sticky milk flooding it was crimson, crimsoning the dust and earth.

"Unna is a pack o' men, ni'," cried Ballet, outraged, "unna see de po' boy get knock' down an' not a blind one o' wunna would a len' he a han'. Unna is de mos'—"

But one man, a Bajan creole, did whip up the courage of voice. "Good God, giv' he a chance, ni'. Don' kick he in de head now he is 'pon de groun'—" and he quickly, at a nudge and a hushed, "Hey, wha' do you? Why yo' don't tek yo' hand out o' yo' matey' saucepan?" from the only other creole, lapsed into ruthless impassivity.

"Hey, you!" shouted Ballet at last loud enough for the Marine to hear, "why—wha' you doin'? Yo' don' know yo' killin' dat boy, ni'?"

"Le' all we giv' he a han' boys—"

"Ah know I ain't gwine tetch he."

"Nor me."

"Nor me needah."

"Who gwine giv' me a han', ni'?"

"Ain't gwine get meself in no trouble. Go mixin' meself in de backra dem business—"

"Hey, Ballet, if yo' know wha' is good fo' yo'self, yo' bess min' yo' own business, yo' hear wha' me tell yo', yah."

"Wha' yo' got fi' do wit' it? De boy ain't got no business talkin' back to de marinah man—"

"Now he mek up he bed, let 'im lie down in it."

Shocked at sight of the mud the marine's boots left on the boy's dusty, crinkly head, Ballet mustered the courage of action. Some of the older heads passed on, awed, incredulous.

"Yo' gwine kill dat boy," said Ballet, staggering up to the marine.

"You mind yer own goddam business, Smarty, and go back to work," said the marine. He guided an unshaking yellow-spotted finger under the black's warm, dilating nostrils. "Or else—"

He grew suddenly deathly pale. It was a pallor which comes to men on the verge of murder. Mouth, the boy at issue, one of those docile, half-white San Andres coons, was a facile affair. Singly, red-bloodedly one handled it. But here, with this ugly, thick-lipped, board-chested upstart, there was need for handling of an errorless sort.

"I'll git you yet," the marine said, gazing at Ballet quietly, "I'll fill you full of lead yet, you black bastard!"

"Why yo' don't do it now," stuttered Ballet, taking a hesitating step forward, "yo' coward, yo'—a big able man lik' yo' beatin' a lil' boy lik' dat. Why yo' don' hit me? Betcha yo' don' put down yo' gun an' fight me lik' yo' got any guts."

The marine continued to stare at him. "I'll git you yet," he said, "I'll git you yet, Smarty, don't kid yourself." And he slowly moved on.

The boy got up. The sun kept up its irrepressible sizzling. The men minded their business.

Ballet, sulking, aware of the marine on the stony hedge, aware of the red, menacing eyes glued on him, on every single move he made, furtively broke rocks.

"Boy, yo' ain't gwine t' wuk teeday, ni'? Git up!"

Exhausted by the orgy of work and even-song, Ballet snored, rolled, half asleep.

"Get up, ni' yo' ain't hear de korchee blowin' fi' go to wuk, ni?"

"Ugh—ooo—ooo—"

"Yo' ent hear me, ni? Um is six o'clock, boy, get up befo' yo' is late. Yo' too lazy, get up, a big, lazy boy lik' yo'—"

Sitting at the head of the cot, a Bible in one hand, Ballet's mother kept shaking him into wakefulness. In the soft flush of dawn bursting in on the veranda, Mirrie's restless gum-moist eyes fell on her son's shining black shoulders. He was sprawled on the canvas, a symbol of primordial force, groaning, half-awake.

"Hey, wha' is to become o' dis boy, ni?" she kept on talking to the emerging flow of light, "Why yo' don't go to bed at night, ni? Stayin' out evah night in de week. Spanishtown, Spanishtown, Spanishtown, evah night—tek heed, ni, tek heed, yo' heah—when yo' run into trouble don' come an' say Ah didn't tell yo'."

To Ballet this was the song of eternity. From the day Mirrie discovered through some vilely unfaithful source the moments there were for youths such as he, in the crimson shades of el barrio, the psalms of rage and despair were chanted to him.

His thin, meal-yellow singlet stiffened, ready to crack. He continued snoring. Frowsy body fuses, night sod, throttled the air on the dingy narrow porch on which they both contrived to sleep.

She shook him again. "Get up—yo' hear de korchee blowin' fo' half pas' six. Time to go to wuk, boy."

Ballet slowly rose—the lower portions of him arching upwards.

The dome of the equator swirled high above Colon—warmth, sticky sweat, heat, malaria, flies—here one slept coverless. Mechanically uttering words of prayer drilled into him by Mirrie, he raised himself up on the stain-blotched cot, salaamed, while Mirrie piously turned her face to the sun.

When he had finished, Ballet, still half asleep, angled his way into his shirt, dragged on his blue pants, took down the skillet from the ledge and went to the cesspool to bathe his face.

"Yo' know, mahmie," he said to Mirrie as he returned, wiping his eyes with the edge of his shirt sleeve, "I don't feel lik' goin' to work dis mornin'—"

"Why, bo?"

"Oh, Ah dunno." He sat down to tea.

"Yo' too lazy," she blurted out. "Yo' want to follow all o' dem nasty vagabonds an' go roun' de streets an' interfere wit' people. Yo' go to work, sah, an' besides, who is to feed me if yo' don' wuk? Who—answer me dat! Boy, yo' bes' mek up yo' min' an' get under de heel o' de backra."

Peeling the conkee off the banana leaf encasing it, Ballet's glistening half-dried eyes roved painfully at the austere lines on his mother's aged face.

"Ah don' wan' fo' go—"

"Dah is wha' Ah get fo' bringin' unna up. Ungrateful vagybond! Dah is wha' Ah get fo' tyin' up my guts wit' plantation trash, feedin' unna—jes' lik' unna wuthliss pappy. But yo' go long an' bring me de coppers when pay day come. Dah is all Ah is axin' yo' fo' do. Ah too old fo' wash de backra dem dutty ole clothes else unna wouldn't hav' to tu'n up unna back-side when Ah ax unna fo' provide anyt'ing fo' mah."

"Oh, yo' mek such a fuss ovah nutton," he sulked.

A stab of pain corrugated Ballet's smooth black brow. His mother's constant dwelling on the dearth of the family fortunes produced in him a sundry set of emotions—escape in rebellion and refusal to do as against a frenzied impulse to die retrieving things.

The impulse to do conquered, and Ballet rose, seized the skillet containing the conkee for his midday meal and started.

A fugitive tear, like a pendant pearl, paused on Mirrie's wrinkled, musk-brown face.

"Son, go' long—an tek care o' yo'self."

Light-heartedly Ballet galloped down the stairs. Half-way to the garbage-strewn piazza, he paused to lean over the banister and peep into the foggy depths of the kitchen serving the occupants of the bawdy rooms on the street-level of the tenement.

"Up orready?" shouted Ballet, throwing a sprig of cane peeling at a plump black figure engaged in the languid task of turning with a long flat piece of board a tache of bubbling starch.

In a disorderly flight to the piazza one foot landed on the seed of a part-skinned alligator pear. He deftly escaped a fall. Quickly righting himself, he made for the misty, stewy inclosure—dashing under clothes lines, overturning a bucket of wash blue, nearly bursting a hole in some one's sunning, gleaming sheet.

Dark kitchen; slippery and smoky; unseen vermin and strange upgrowth of green snaky roots swarmed along the sides of washtubs, turpentine cans, taches, stable ironware.

Presiding over one of the taches was a girl. She was slim, young, fifteen years old. Her feet were bare, scales, dirt black, dirt white, sped high up her legs. The fragment of a frock, some peasant thing, once colored, once flowered, stood stiff, rigid off the tips of her curving buttocks.

Grazing the ribs of the tache with the rod, Blanche, blithely humming

Wha' de use yo' gwine shawl up Now dat yo' character gone— Dicky jump, Dicky jump Ah wan' fi' lie down!

was unaware of Ballet slowly crouching behind her.

Becoming clairvoyantly tongue-tied, Blanche suddenly turned, and Ballet came up to her.

Exerting a strange ripe magic over him, the girl cried, "Yo' frighten me, Ballet, how yo' dey?"

"Too bad 'bout las' night," she said, in the low lulling tones of a West Indian servant girl, lifting not an eyebrow, and continuing to stir the thickening starch.

"An' me had me min' 'pon it so bad," the boy said, an intense gleam entering his eyes.

"So it dey," responded Blanche, "sometime it hav' obtusions, de neddah time de road are clear."

"Dat a fac'," the boy concurred sorrowfully, "it fatify de coza so dat a man can ha'dly sit down an' say 'well, me gwine do dis dis minute an' me gwine do dis dat, fo' de devil is jes' as smaht as de uddah man uptop."

"Up cose," said Blanche in her most refined manner, "Ah, fi' me notion is to tek de milk fom de cow when him are willin' fi' giv' it, wheddah it are in de mawnin' time or in de even' time—

"Wha' yo' are doin', Ballet, wait—let me put down de stick—wait, Ah say—yo' in a hurry?"

"Wha' Sweetbread, dey? Him gone t' wuk orready?"

"Yes—me don' know but it are seem to me lik' some time muss eclapse befo' dere is any life ah stir in dis kitchen—"

"Oh, Blanche!"

"Yo' bes' be careful, Ballet, fo' de las' time Ah had fi' scrouch aroun' fi' hooks an' eyes an' dat dyam John Chinaman 'im not gwine giv' me anyt'ing beout me giv' 'im somet'ing."

"All right—dere—Blanche—wait—"

"Yo' know what 'im say to me de uddah dey? Me wuz—wait, tek yo' time, Ballet, de cock is jus' a crow, it are soon yet—oh, don't sweet—"

"'Im say to me dat Ah mus' giv' 'im somet'ing. An' me say to 'im, 'but John, yo' no me husban'—'an' yo' know wha' de dyam yallah rascal say 'im say 'but me no fo' yo' husban' too'?"

Her hair was hard, but the marble floor of the kitchen undoubtedly helped to stiffen its matty, tangled plaits. And in spite of the water daily splashing over the tanks and taches on to the ground, her strong young body took nothing diminishing from it. Only, unquestioningly the force of such a wiry, gluey, gummy impact as theirs left her heels a little broader, and a readier prey for chiggers, by virtue of the constantly widening crevices in them, her hair a little more difficult to comb, and her dress in a suspiciously untidy mood.

Emerging from the slippery darkness of the kitchen, Ballet dashed up Eighth Street. A Colon sunrise streamed in on its lazy inert life. Opposite, some of the disciples of the High Priest of the Ever-Live, Never-Die Sect sat moping, not fully recovered from the flowing mephitic languor of the evening's lyrical excesses.

All the way up the street, Ballet met men of one sort or another trekking to work—on tipsy depot wagons, shovels, picks, forks sticking out like spikes; on foot, alone, smoking pipes, hazily concerned.

Grog shops, chink stores and brothels were closed. The tall, bare, paneled doors were fastened. The sun threw warmth and sting under verandas; shriveled banana peels to crusts; darkened the half-eaten chunks of soft pomegranates left by some extravagant epicurean, gave manna to big husky wasps foregathering wherever there was light, sun, warmth....

Up on the verandas there dark, bright-skirted, flame-lipped girls, the evening before, danced in squares, holding up the tips of their flimsy dresses, to the coombia of creole island places. Creole girls led, thwarted, wooed and burned by obeah-working, weed-smoking St. Lucian men. Jamaica girls, fired by an inextinguishable warmth, danced, whirling, wheeling, rolling, rubbing, spinning their posteriors and their hips, in circles, their breasts like rosettes of flame, quivering to the rhythm of the mento—conceding none but the scandalously sexless. Spanish girls, white ones, yellow ones, brown ones, furiously gay, furiously concerned over the actualities of beauty.

Over a bar of dredged in earth, Ballet sped. In the growing sunlight figures slowly made for the converging seacoast.

Work-folk yelled to Ballet tidings of the dawn....

"Why yo' don' tek de chiggahs out o' yo' heel an' walk lik' yo' got life in yo' body—"

"Yo' gwine be late, too."

"Yo' go 'long, bo, Oi ent hurrin' fo' de Lawd Gawd Heself dis mawnin'—"

Ahead a vision of buxom green cocoa palms spread like a crescent—from the old rickety wooden houses walled behind the preserves of the quarantine station all the way past the cabins of the fishing folk and dinky bathhouses for the blacks to the unseemly array of garbage at the dump. Out to the seacoast and the writhing palms swarmed men from Coolie Town, Bottle Alley, Bolivar Street, Boca Grande, Silver City.

As he approached the edge of the sea, Ballet waded through grass which rose higher and thicker, whose dew lay in glimmering crystal moistures. Beyond the palm trees opened a vista of the river, the color of brackish water. Empty cocoanut husks cluttered the ground. Sitting on upturned canoes men smoked pipes and sharpened tools, murmuring softly. All across the bay labor boats formed a lane, a lane to Toro Point, shining on the blue horizon.

Drawing nearer the crux of things, Mouth ran up to Ballet and put an unsteady, excited grip on his shoulder.

"Ballet, bettah don' go t' wuk teeday—"

Scorn and disdain crossed Ballet's somber black face.

"Wha' is dah?" he said, refusing to hear his ears.

"Ah, say, don' go t' wuk teeday—stan' home—"

"Why, boy?"

"Dah marine is lookin' fo' yo'."

"Lookin' fo' me?" Ballet stuck a skeptical finger in the pit of his stomach. "Wha' he lookin' fo' me fo'?" A quizzical frown creased his brow.

"He say yo' had no business to jook yo' mout' in de ruction yestiddy. Dat yo' too gypsy an' if yo' know bes' fo' yo'self—"

"Oh, le' he come," cried Ballet, "de blind coward, le' he come—"

A ruffian Q.M. paced up and down the water front, brandishing a staff, firing skyrockets of tobacco spit to right and left, strode up. "Don't stand there, boys, getta move on! Jump in this boat—another one's coming—no time to waste—jump in there!"

A marine lieutenant, pistol in hand, superintended the embarkment. A squad of khakied men paraded the strip of seashore.

Ballet joined the cowed obedient retinue limping to the boats. Curiously, in the scramble to embark the water boy got lost.

"Oh, Oi ain't do nutton. Can't do me nutton."

The passage was swift and safe through swelling seas growing darker and deadlier as the tide mounted. Glumly the men sat, uttering few words, standing up as the boat neared the other side of the river and jumping prematurely ashore, getting their feet wet.

Men gathered on pump cars and on the Toro Point river edge sawing wood to help clear the jungle or sharpening their machetes.

Gangs were forming. Driven by marines, platoons of black men went to obscure parts of the Toro Point bush to cut paths along the swirling lagoon back to the Painted City. Fierce against the sun moaning men jogged with drills on their backs, pounding to dust tons of mortared stone paving lanes through the heathen unexplored jungle.

In the crowd of men, Ballet saw a face leering at him. It was a white face—the face of a scowling marine....

Rockingly, dizzily, it glowed up at him. He was freckled, the pistol in his belt carelessly at hand and he slovenly sported a bayonet rifle.

"Hey—you—I'm talking to you—"

Afraid, unable to fathom the gleam penetrating the depths of the man's eyes, Ballet started running.

"Stand up and take yer medicine, yer goddam skunk," cried the marine; "hey, stop that man—"

Nothing for a black boy, probably a laborer, or a water boy, to do a hide and seek with a tipsy marine....

"Stop that man—"

Ballet flew. He scaled hurdles. He bumped into men. Ugly French colonial words, epithets deserving of a dog, were hurled at him. Impatient, contemptuous Jamaican, colored by a highly British accent, caught at him like shreds.

About to penetrate the dense interior of the jungle, the men sang, soothed the blades of their cutlasses, sang pioneer sea songs, pioneer gold songs....

Comin' Ah tell yo'! One mo' mawin', buoy,

There was a toolshed set a little ways in. Into it Ballet burst. But a hut, it yet had an "upstairs," and up these the boy scrambled wildly.

Behind a wagon wheel sent up there to the wheelwright to be mended, Ballet, breathing hard, heard the marine enter.

Downstairs. A pause. A search. The top of a barrel blammed shut. Imagine—a boy in a barrel of tar. Ludicrous—laughter snuffed out. Heavy steps started upward, upward....

"Where the hell are yer, yer lousy bastard—yer—come sticking in yer mouth where yer hadn't any goddam business? Minding somebody else's business. I'll teach you niggers down here how to talk back to a white man. Come out o' there, you black bastard."

Behind the wheel, bars dividing the two, Ballet saw the dread khaki—the dirt-caked leggings.

His vision abruptly darkened.

Vap, vap, vap—

Three sure, dead shots.

In the Canal Record, the Q.M. at Toro Point took occasion to extol the virtues of the Department which kept the number of casualties in the recent native labor uprising down to one.

THE BLACK PIN

7

THE BLACK PIN

I

"Wha' dah Alfie got in 'e han'?"

"It ent nutton," spoke up Din, "yo' is ah 'larmer, dah is wha' yo' is."

"Orright den," replied Mirrie, "oi muss be blin'."

"Like dah is anything de worl' don' know orready."

"Wha' yo' got dey, boy?" murmured April, bent over the washtub, soap suds frosting on her veiny brown arms. She caught up the bulk of her starch-crusted patchwork frock and dried her hands in it.

"Oi tell yo' de boy got somet'ing," Mirrie said, "yo' is such a ownway somebody yo' can't even hear yo' ears ringin'."

"Hey, it muss be a cockroach."

"Or a forty-leg—"

"It ent!"

"Look out deah, boy, yo' gwine stump yo' toe. Bam—tell yo' so! Go help 'e up, Mirrie."

" ... won't stay whe' yo' belong, ni? Why yo' got to be runnin' 'bout de gap like yo' ent got nobody? Like yo' is some sheep who' ent got no muddah or no faddah. Come yah, wha' yo' got in yo' han'? Lemmah see it!"

"Woy, woy, it nearly jook mah fingah!"

"Um is a black pin!" exclaimed Mirrie in terror.

"Wha' yo' get dis pin from, boy?" asked April, paling and pausing, then venomously seizing it.

"Obeah!"

"Heaven help mah!"

"Who giv' yo' dis pin, boy?" April insisted. Her brows were wrinkled; she exposed the pin to the sun.

"Open yo' mout', boy," she said, "whe' yo' get dis pin?"

"Miss Diggs giv' it to me, mum," murmured Alfie slowly, afraidly.

"Zink Diggs?"

"Yassum."

"Whelp!"

"Giv' yo' dis pin? Wha' fo'? Wha' she giv' yo' a pin fo'? Hey, boy, tek um back to she."

"Sen' he back wit' um!"

"Wha' she mean, yes?"

"Yo' too stupid," shouted Mirrie, assuming an air of worldly wisdom not wholly unsuited to her. "She is wukkin' obeah fo' yo', dat is wha' is de mattah."

"De bad-minded wretch!" cried April. "Hey, wha' Ah do she, ni? Did Ah tek wey she man? Did Ah break she sugar stick? Did Ah call she teef? Did Ah steal she guamazelli plum f'on she? Hey, Ah can't understan' it, yes. Wha' she wan' fo' giv' me a black pin, fo'?"

April held the ghastly symbol against the ripe Barbados sun. Moving in the shadow of the spreading dounz she stared at it long and hard. Dark April, a lanky, slipshod woman in a half-dry print skirt and old, sprawling, ratty shoes, stood up, amazed at the lurid import. "Ah wondah why she sen' me dis," she pondered, bewildered.

At her side one of the girls shuffled, cracking the dark, crisp dirt under her feet. "Yo' too stupid," she said. "Little as I is I know wha' um mean."

In something of a trance April went to the shed-roof. Cooing pigeons and doves swarmed upon it. Beaten by the rain, dung spattered upon it, ran white and dark blue. Under the shingled edges of the roof bats took refuge. White-spotted canaries sang to the lovely robins poised on the bowing limbs of the dounz.

" ... let she alone, sha', g'way."

"Eatin' de po' dog bittie."

"It ent."

"It is."

"Yo' chirrun, behav' unna-self!" April turned, an angry look flooding her dusky face. "Oi gwine beat all yo', yes."

Devil-symbol, obeah-symbol—a black pin. "Gwine stick um yah." She bored it into a sunless, rainless spot in the side of the shed-roof. "All yo' ent gwine tetch dis pin, unna understan'? Unna heah wha' Oi say? Nobody ent gwine tetch dis pin! If anybody tetch it, they bess get ready fo' tetch me. Oi tell unna dah f'um now."

"Oi know Oi ent gwine got nutton fo' do wit' it."

"Nor me."

"Nor me needah."

"Da, da, unna bess not, fo' Oi'll wash unna behind de fuss one wha' do."

II

Blue cassava—unfit for cakes—about to be grated and pressed for its starch; withering twigs, half-ripe turnips, bolonjays a languid flush of green and purple, a graveler—a watery, cork-light potato endwardly dangling; a greedy sow, tugging at a stake, a crusty, squib-smoked "touch bam"—hand-magic, earth-magic, magic of the sun, magic of the moon, magic of the flowing Barbadian gap.

Soft, round, ash-gray, dark violet, purple peas—peas Alfie and Ona and Din and Mirrie ate raw; grown by her own nimble, prolific hands.

Only—the soft quiet of Goddard's Village. Demerara (Mud-Head Land) to Barbadoes ... on a barque, owned by a West Indian "speckahlatah"—dealer in sweet and Irish spuds—aboard ship, ashore, January to December, wearing thick British tweed, baggy, hairy, scratchy and hot. On the zigaboo's boat April had taken flight. Soft nights; nights of ebony richness; of godless splendor. On the shining waters—blue, frosty, restful—a vision of Jesus walked.

An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl An' crown Him! Crown Him! Lahd! Av! Ahl!

The bow of the ship jammed against a brilliant Barbadian sunset, April, a pique shawl swathing her aching body, saw a wiggling queriman resist being dragged up on the smooth, spotless deck. Kingfish, sprat, flying fish—sprang, fought, grew enraged at the proximity of sea-less earth. On a half-dry mattress the children slept ... sucked on sour plums.... One more sunset, and the noisy, dusty music of Bridgetown.

All for the remote joys of a gap in Goddard's Village, and of a rosier one: sending the children to school and to St. Stephen's Chapel.

Accomplishing it had been a tear-drenching ordeal.

Up above the brace of stone, up above Waterford's, beyond The Turning, up a dazzling white dusty road, sugar canes on either side of it, an old ox cart driver at Locust Hall had had an empty shack crumbling slowly on the side of the slanting grass hill. Under the rigid hammering of the sun, with a strip of swamp land below—shy of lady canes, with a rich ornate green—the green of fat juicy canes—the shack was slowly perishing. On hot days centipedes, and scorpions, and white mice, and mongooses prowled possessively through it. On wet ones raining winds dumped on the roof flowers, tree-drips, soggy leaves.

Thirteen sovereigns the man had asked, and she had given him seven. Parts of the house, visibly the beams and foundations, of oak, fell to dust at the touch of the husky black movers, men used to the muscle-straining task of loading ox carts with hefts of loose sugar cane. Husky black movers moaning:

Jam Belly, Quakah Belly, Swell like a cocoa, Tee hey, tee hey— Sally bring grass in yah!

Untouched by the noise, and the heat, and swarming of cane dust, a centipede ran up one of the men's legs. Bawling. Scratching. Portions of the gabling roof lifted on to the dray sagged and dragged all the way to Goddard's Village. From Locust Hall it scraped the ground. Behind it, April, and Alfie and Mirrie and Ona and Din—sagged through the heavy oceans of stone dust.

Of the star apples and dounz sunset carved a framework of purple mist. Etched, flung upon the sky. On a stone step Bay Rum, a worker in marl, twanged a guitar; beyond the dingy cabin the ragged edges of an old mortar house were imprisoned against the glowing sky. In the imminent dusk cane arrows swung to and fro, on some peasant farmer's hedge. A donkey cart, wagged in and wagged on, down to the eternity of the gap.

April explored the waterholes along the gap for stones to prop her house on. Some had to be cut, shaved, made small. Hoisting it, smoothing the floor—was a man's job. Plenty of stones, dug up, stolen, at night or early dawn, from obscure vacant spots in the village, to be used in myriad ways. That done, the hammering began. At Locust Hall it must have been a magnet for rusty nails. It took more muscle than was at the command of a woman to swing them out of their sockets. Often an adamant one sent April reeling against the breadfruit tree. Did she have to take them out, at all? Yes. No old nails in her house for her. Wall pockets, too, had to be put in. The lamp, a brilliant one, was crowned with a violet dome.

III

Down through the spine of the lane was a watercourse. Fish—blue, gold, crimson—whirled languidly in it. And from the watercourse sounds came. Busy buttering the soft part that was not exposed to the sun, of the banana leaf into which she was to spread the cornmeal and spice and molasses and then tightly fold to make the conkee, April was quick to hear it. The kids squabbling again.

She put down the platter and made for the watercourse. Zenona, the nanny goat, scampered away at her rustling approach.

"Alfie, wha' is it?" she cried, running up.

"He hit my Crump," said Zink Diggs, bivouacked on the fringe of the land, a switch twirling in her hand.

"It ent!" the boy retorted, crying.

"Who tell he fo' hit my Crump?"

"He han' too fast."

"Are dat so?" said April, boiling with rage. "Hey, a big neygah uman like yo' hit a little boy like dis. Yo' ort to be ashamed o' yo' dutty self." She clasped the boy against her knees. He was slyly eying, through a shiny mist, Crump's mother with the rod in her hand.

"Evah sence yo' bin in dis gap yo' been pickin' 'pon me. Why yo' don' le' me an' me chirrun alone, ni?"

"Well, why yo' don't tell dem not to extafay wit' mine, den, no? Tell dem de little watah-mout' runts, not to come on my hedge-row an' pick an' mo' o' my tam'rin's. Oi'll set poison fo' dem, too. Why yo' don't feed dem? Why yo' don't giv' dem a good stiff ball o' cookoo so dat dey won't hav' to teef my tamarin's? Pack o' starved-out runts!"

"Who is any starved-out runt?"

"Yo'! Who yo' t'ink Oi is talkin' to, but yo'?"

"Yo' nasty t'ing yo'!"

"Yo' murrah!"

"Bad-minded wretch!"

"Call me all de bad-minded wretch yo' like but Oi betcha yo' don't hit mah!"

"Oi' don't hav' to low-rate myself fi' suit any field han' neygah uman like yo'."

"Hey," laughed Zink Diggs, her arms akimbo, "hey, anybody hear she talkin' would 'a' t'ink she is the Queen of England!"

"Come, Alfie, le' we go an' leave de wretch!"

IV

At serene peace with the Lord, April was sent one dusk, the reddish tints of a Barbadian twilight spreading a lovely fervor over the land, into a spasm of alarm.

"Hey, Miss Emptage—"

A high-pitched neighbor's voice rose above the music of the wind humming over the cane piece.

"Wha'm is, negh?"

"Zink Diggs tek up yo' goat."

"Pig!"

"Go quick befo' she chop awf she head."

"Run, mahmie—"

Chasing through the corn April went to the end of the boundary line, just in time to see Zink Diggs tethering the goat. She was singing and an air of joyous conquest was about her.

"Giv' me my goat," said April.

"Come an' tek she," said the other, pointing the reins at her. "Come an' tek she, ni, if yo' t'ink yo' is de uman Oi is dam well sure yo' ent."

"Always jookin' yo' han' in yo' matty saucepan," cried April.

"Wha' dah yo' say?" she cried, bewildered.

"Gypsy t'ing!"

"Wha' dah yo' say!" she cried, enraged. "Why yo' don't talk plain so dat a body can understan' yo'? Why yo' ha' fi' fall back 'pon dah gibberish unna tahlk dey whe' unna come from."

"Giv' me my goat," said April, "dat is ahl ah ax yo'."

"Dey she is," repeated Zink Diggs, pointing to Zenona. "Go tek she, ni!" But the goat was safely on Zink Diggs' ground.

April made a step to cross it.

"If yo' put a foot 'pon my sorrel I'll brek um fo' yo'," she murmured, vengefully.

"How much yo' wan' fo' de goat?" asked April at last.

"A shillin', an' yo' bettah be bleddy well quick 'bout it befo' ah carry de starved-out t'ing 'ome an' mek currie outa she."

"Teefin' vagybon' yo'," said April, water seeping into her eyes.

"Call me all de bad name yo' lik', but yo' ent gwine get dis goat back to-night till yo' fork up dat shillin'. Dey'll have to jump ovah my grave befo' dey'll get yo' hungry goat fuss."

She turned to one of the children. "Go in de lardah, Mirrie, an' reach up 'pon de ledge an' bring de dah shillin' Bay Rum giv' me yestiddy fo' de eggs." She sighed, for it was her last one.

The child sped through the bush—spindling legs leaving the brown earth—and in a jiffy was back with the piece of silver bright in her dirt-black palm.

"Hey," said April, taking it and leaning over the ripening sorrel, "hey, tek yo' old shillin' an' giv' me my goat."

Zink Diggs grew hysterical at her approach. "Don't come near mah," she said, her eyes rolling wildly. "Stan' whey yo' dey an' put de shillin' 'pon de groun'! Don' come near muh! An' tek yo' ole hungry goat along."

April took the goat and dropped the shilling on the ground.

"Yo' t'ink Oi gwine tek any'ting out o' yo' nasty hand'?" she said. "Yo' put um 'pon de ground." But before she picked it up she went in her bosom and drew out a little salt sack. She sprinkled two or three pinches of it on the coin before she picked it up.

The sun came out again. The crops bristled, the birds were singing. Triangles of birds, blackbirds and peewits, swarmed to the fragrant fruit, gave music to the wind. Hummingbirds—doctor birds—buzzed at the mouths of alluring red flowers.

April, a calico bag swung around her waist, picking the pigeon peas planted on the hedge facing Zink Diggs' land, sang hosannahs to the Lord....

An' Crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl

As she went along husking them, shelling the peas, she was soon aware of some one burrowing in the nearby hedge, and whistling

Donkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im Joe Donkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im Joe Hole 'im Joe, hole 'im Joe, Hole 'im Joe, don't let 'im go— Donkey wahn de wahtah, hole 'im Joe.

She readily recognized Zink Diggs, but hardly, the words that followed.

"Good mawnin', Miss Emptage."

Being a child of the Lord, April answered, "Good mawnin'." She continued singing a Sankey hymn, and shelling the peas.

"You're not a quarrelsome uman," she heard Zink Diggs say, "but you're dam side mo' determined than I am!"

But she went on, not turning her head, singing the Sankey hymn.

V

It was spring; spring in Barbadoes. For the dogs—evil omen. Grippe. Sickness. Across the flowing acreage the brindle pup took a post near the goat. Nearby Alfie, Mirrie, Ona and Din were twittering, "Come, doggie; come, doggie—" and giving the poor wretch parsley.

"Go back an' put de pot on de fiah," April shouted to Mirrie as she strode through the cornpatch. "Go back an' boil de pigeon peas."

"Oi wan' fi' come, too."

"Go down de stan' pipe an' get a bucket o' water an' mek yo' oven, den."

They left her, and she went madly down to the end of her ground. On the rim of her land she met Zink Diggs. "Wha' yo' doin' 'pon my groun'?" she said. "Yo' muss be mek a mistake, uman, yo' ent survey yo' ground right."

"Yo' t'ink so?" the other cried, "Now look yah, Miss Emptage, yo' bin' lookin' fo' trouble evah sence yo' move in dis gap, yo'—yes, yo'—an' yo' dam well know dat when yo' wuz plantin' dem peas an' corn yo' wuz trespassin' 'pon my groun'. Uman, yo' mus' be outa yo' senses."

With a rope of banana trash to tie up her skirt—up so high that her naked legs gleamed above the tops of her English patent leather boots which the Doctor had ordered her to wear as a cure for "big foot"—Zink strode swiftly through the patch, dragging up by their roots, cane, corn, peas, okra—April's plantings.

"Move outa my way, uman, befo' Oi tek his gravallah an' ram it down yo' belly! Don' mek me lose me head dis mawnin' yeh, Oi don' wan' fo' spend de res' o' my days in de lock-up fo' killing nobody."

No rock engine, smoothing a mountain road, no scythe, let loose on a field of ripened wheat, no herd of black cane cutters exposed to a crop, no saw, buzzing and zimming, could have out-done Zink Diggs slaying and thrashing and beheading every bit of growing green. Flat, bare, she left it. April was afraid to open her mouth. She stood by, dumbfounded, one hand at her throat.

Gleaming in triumph, Zink gathered her bill and graveller and paused before she went. "Look at she dough," she said, "she look like Jonah when de whale puke he up!" And she flounced through the orchard, singing Hole 'Im Joe.

"Ona, come yah, quick!"

"Yo' always boddering me, why yo' don't—"

"Come, yah, gal—gal, Oi call yo'!"

"Wha' do yo', ni?"

"Me wan' fi' show yo' somet'ing, gal."

"Wah'm is, ni?"

"De black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."

"Gahd! Go tell mahmie—"

"Wha' she is?"

"Roun' by de shed-roof."

"Mirrie, come yah, an' see wha' Din do! Ketch de house afiah!"

"It ent me! It is de black pin burnin'—"

Down by the back of the breadfruit tree Alfie and Mirrie were sitting close to each other—very close. They hated to be diverted by such silly inquisitiveness. Calm, unexcited, Mirrie was prodding the boy to do something to her. She had put it down on a matchbox, in edgy, scrawly letters—one word—but it refused to stir Alfie's sluggish desire. The scent of something ripe and rich and edible—something to be tasted with the lore of the tropics deep in one's blood—something bare and big and immortal as the moon—compelling something—began to fill the air about the little boy. He secretly felt it surging in Mirrie, and something beat a tattoo in his temples. Upon him a certain mirage fell—sure, unerring.

"Wha' yo' two doin' heah?" shouted Din, coming up. "Hey, Oi gwine tell mah mahmie 'pon yo' two."

"Wha' yo' gwine tell she? Yo' mouthah!"

"Dat—"

"Mout' run jess lik' sick neygah behine."

"Dat what? Wha' yo' ketch me doin', yo' liad t'ing yo'? I ent doin' nutton. I was just showin' Alfie—"

"Mirrie!"

"Comin', mum!"

His tongue thick, heavy, Alfie rose. "Yo' girl chirrun, if unna don't behave unna self, Oi gwine tell unna mahmie 'pon unna, too. Wha' all yo' makin' all dis noise fo'?"

"De pin ketch de house afiah."

"Wha' pin?"

"Fomembah de black pin Zink Diggs giv' Alfie fo' he mahmie?"

"Hey, yes."

"Gal, shut up yo' mout', yo' too stupid, how kin a pin ketch de house afiah?"

"Wha' is dah smoke, den?"

"Run an' tell mahmie, quick."

Ona, Din, Alfie, Mirrie—the last one, dusting, aggrieved, thwarted—galloped past the shed roof round to the kitchen.

"Mahmie."

"Quick, de black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."

"Gyrl, yo're crazy."

Swiftly drying her hands, she sped around to the shed roof. A gust of smoke darted, on the crest of a wind, from the place where the deadly missile had been imprisoned.

Surely, it was burning—the black pin had fired the shed roof! Out April tugged it. Once more she held it trembling in the sun. A smoking black pin. Some demon chemical, some liquid, some fire-juice, had been soaked into it originally. Obeah juice. "But Oi gwine sick de Lord 'pon yo'," vowed April, tossing it upon a mound of fowl dung and wormy provisions scraped together in the yard, and set a bonfire to it all. The fire swallowed it up and the wind sent a balloon of gray-white smoke-puffs streaming over Zink Diggs' hedge.

It had speed, and energy, and a holy vitality—the smoke; for it kept on till it got to Zink Diggs' house and then it burst puffing into it. It had hot, red, bitter chemicals, the smoke of the pin, and Zink Diggs' reaction to them was instantaneous. The smoke blew by, taking life—animal, plant. The dog dropped, the leaves of tea bush she had picked and had on the kitchen table, withered suddenly. It left her petrified by the stove, the white clay pipe ghastly in her mouth. Even her eyes were left sprawling open, staring at the cat, likewise dead, by the smoking coal pot.

THE WHITE SNAKE

8

THE WHITE SNAKE

I

On the banks of a bilgy lamahau, the eeliest street-stream in Bordeaux, a row of Negro peasant lodgings warmly slept. It was a vile, backward crescent reeking in brats and fiendish lusts. Cocabe among its inkish rice-growers extended to gorillas sentenced to the dungeons of Surinam, Portuguese settlers who'd gone black, Chinks pauperized in the Georgetown fire of '05, and Calcutta coolies mixing rotie at dusk to the chorus of crickets and crapeaux moaning in the black watery gut.

The dawn rose a dewy crimson, and a blood-curdling sound polluted the vapory silences of a Negro lodging.

"Murdah! Police! Warlah! Hole 'im! Miss Ewin', tek 'e arf me."

Fetid black snorers rolled restively, clawed, dug at bugs or itching veins rising bluely on bare languid bodies, as if to say: don't worry. It's nothing. Nothing but some Hindu coolie, after the evening's rotie debauch, to the roll of goat drums, outside, on the low lamahau earth, severing the head of some jewel-laden, thirteen-year-old mate, the third on a string of murdered conquests.

But die the scream would not.

"Lahd—"

"Wha' de mattah wit' yo', gal? Why yo' don' let a po' body res'?"

"Tek it arf me, no—?"

"Tek wha' arf yo', gyrl, yo' mus' be crazy. Foolish t'ing! Tek arf yo' top lip!"

"Wahy—look he crawlin' up me legs! Quick, tek 'e arf me!"

"Sahv yo' right. Tell yo' yo' eat too much hole pea soup 'n cawn meal dumplin'! Go 'long an' le' de mule ride up 'n down yo' belly."

"See 'im, dey! Dey he is! A white one—see 'im, Miss Ewin'? A white snake crawlin' up me foots—tek 'e 'way. Quick—o! Miss Ewin', Ah beg yo'! Help mah!"

"Gyrl, get up! Yo' only dreamin'! It ent no snake fo' true—get up. It's mawnin'. An' go down to de stan' pipe 'n bring up de bucket o' hossah yo' lef' out dey las' night—"

"O! Lahd, Oi wuz frighten so—"

"Yo' heah ne, ni, Seenie? An' don' fuhget to blow de kerosene lamp out befo' yo' go."

The whole thing seemed to follow as a natural sequence. For Jack Captain, a Berbice mulatto, was an energetic wooer.

And then one rosy dawn, a dozen Hindu fires kindling the lamahau, the gold-digging macaume lured from Seenie the seed of her all.

II

Outlawed by the sorrowing blacks of Bordeaux, Seenie, "to exculpate she wickedness," fled to Waakenam, a sparsely populated isle on the Essequibo Coast. There she took refuge in a hut deep in the Guiana woods. Until a lackey on the constable's staff had dubiously led her to it, the cabin was deserted, cane trash crowned it like a wreath of callaloo mist. Box square, inside it was dark and cloudy. The peon originally occupying it had evidently had a vivid contempt for the tropical sun or wind. And it was here that Seenie, hardly able to survive the social consequences of lust, felt happy in raising Water Spout.

Inside the hut, by way of a bit of color, Miss Esteena, the niece of the Negro head of the Waakenam constabulary, had given her an old canopied mahogany bed.

Into the boy's flower-like mouth she pried a spoon with the crusted refuse of the previous day's stewed cassava.

"Eat um, sah," she cried, "an' don't put on no 'ears, lik' yo' is any man. Eat um, Oi say."

Upon Water Spout's glazed tawny body there was not a stitch of clothes. But it was fiendish hot in the cane trash hut, and he needed none. His puny body, which the obeah midwife had despaired of so, had flecks of porridge, and hardened bread swobbed in tea, on it. He had a scrawny neck. It had its base in a hollow-sounding delta. A stack of bluey veins, loosely tied in a clot of skin, connecting a hairless cocoanut to a brown, belegged pumpkin. The navel string, prematurely plucked, hung like a ripe yellow cashew. Bandy, spindling legs jutted out, to either side, from beneath a rigidly upright little body.

As a sort of aftermath to a night of studied rest, Seenie was dizzy, drowsy but she made sure of one eternal thing—Water Spout had to be fed. Feeding him was her one active passion. It was the least, she felt, she could do by him. Her ways may have been bad, her soul in doubtful retrospect, but Water Spout had to eat—hossah, cane licker, green peas, anything. And, by Jove, she had plans for him: later on, it was her idea, no matter how austere Miss Esteena was, to let him go down to the river by himself. If she had anything to do with it, Water Spout would some day walk!

"Come, Water Spout, come play wit' mama!" Somewhere, in the frowsy dark, she had seized a toy, a symbol of Miss Esteena's charity at Yuletide, and shaking it gave it to him.

Glazed-eyed, he reluctantly took it; he made no effort to wring joy and sound out of it.

As he grew older, she saw to it that he wasn't left by himself on the bed; not that she minded his wetting it, so that when she came home at night she had to take refuge on the floor, if she wished a dry spot to lie on. But time was slowly proving that there was life awake and raging in his glazed little body, which all along had seemed to her to lack virility. And he would, by the wreckage he'd leave behind, play, dance, and roll—make noise!—in a fury of possession, with some jaunty toy wagon or cart horse she had given him to play with. No, it didn't pay to leave him up there on the bed. He might fall to the unkempt floor. Then, again, although he refused to cry, no matter how often or how hard he would fall, in some quiet, unobtrusive way, the idea began to enter Seenie's head that he might not do so well, after all, from all these constant falls and things. His refusal, his failure to cry, started in her queer trains of thought.

At first they excited a more unobservant severity.

"Yo' too stubborn, sah, yo' too mannish—look at he dough—he look lik' something dog no like."

"Yo' so little an' yo' so ownwayish," she'd say to him, "yo' won't cry, ni, yo' won't cry—well, Oi gwine show yo' somet'ing," and she'd beat him for fair.

All this, when, turning away his little head, he'd try to shove the spoon with the fluff of corn mash away from him; or after a bowl of cane juice, when, with only the warning of a writhing face, he would unbosom himself, abdominally speaking.

And then Seenie, with the instinct of a heifer, began to argue that after all there must be something wrong with Water Spout, with any child, as lavishly fed as he was, who didn't stamp and yell and knock things out of one's hands and dribble at the mouth and lather with spit everything he came in contact with—the little heathen!

"Behave like a good lil' boy yo' heah?" she said, a bit penitently, pausing at the door. She shook a chastising finger at him. "Behave yo'self, heah, an' yo' mahmie will bring yo' a sugar plum."

Clap han' fuh mahmie Til pahpie come Bring sugah cake An' giv' Seenie some!

And she went out, slamming the door behind her.

The world of Seenie's flight was a terrible green. "Me baby chile," she murmured, "me own baby chile." The edge and sweep—wide and far-flung—of leaf and vine, shrub and fruit, flower and sky; the tender flush of the river dawn—brought a barbaric peace to her soul.

Snaky cords tightened in her brain. "Yo' mek up yo' bed, now go lay down on it," Miss Ewing, the Bordeaux sorceress had said to her. And with Captain, with whom the whole thing was a dismal oversight, she had implored on bended knees, to no Christian purpose, for having lost sight of, in a heat of frenzied lust, the fruit of her innocent pride.

III

Coral earth paved the one flake of road in Waakenam. Gathering depth and moss, the water in the gutters beside it was a metallic black. It was a perfumed dawn—the strong odor of fruit and turpentine flavoring it. For it was high up on the Guiana coast, and the wind blew music on the river. Vivid flame it blew on the lips of grape and melon, and ripened, like the lust of a heated love, the udders of spiced mangoes and pears peeping through the luscious grove.

Now and then, by the grace of the rollicking wind, there appeared in the dense forest the sparkle of resin hardening on the bruised trunks of balata. Sometimes, where the water in the gutter streamed, the music on the Essequibo touched fruit and flower and resulted in a flurry of orchids floating on to Calvary.

And in the distance, beyond the violent patches of green, flowing to a reddish upland, smoke—the vapors of boiling syrup—tarnished the white marl-gemmed sky.

On awakening on mornings Seenie indulged in a rite native to the Negroes of the region. She'd slip on a one-piece frock, and go outside to the rain water cask which had a zinc drain pouring off the cabin roof into it. There her toilet was done.

And as sure as the sun rose, there'd be on the dewy ground, on the boughs of mango and pine, lovely, quiescent, a gallant cordon of snakes. Now as she sped forward, the road shone with them. Gorgeously bedecked ones—two inches of blue, two of mauve, two of yellow—two of black. Some, the coral ones, a yard or more in length, lovely crown jewels. Green snakes, black snakes, reaching up to the shady bush and swamp—drowsy on the sandy road.

When she reached the constable's, a high wooden dwelling in ample view of the stream, Seenie took charge of the pantry. She tied on the ruffled bib, stuck a scornful nose in the larder, sampled skeptically the plantain, stewed in cocoa fat, which she had put aside the previous evening, following a tradition of the tropics, for any starving ghost who might pass along in the night.

"T'row de t'ing 'way, gal, um ent no good, um sour," she said, and heaved it through the window.

There were even limits to Water Spout's gastric feats.

Suddenly a fragrant presence invaded the pantry.

"Good morning, Seenie," said Miss Esteena.

"Mawnin,' mum," replied the girl, sticking a match under the chocolate kettle in the coal pot.

An illuminating contrast; the girl, grating the cassava for the bake the Sergeant liked so well; with her despairing uncomely face, the high cheek bones, the sprawling mouth eternally white at the ends, the tapering chin. On the other hand there was reflected in Miss Esteena's sullen grace the fruit of a Negro culture as old as the civilization of the Incas. An Albertown belle, she was tall, brown, beautiful. Shimmering in white, the collar of her hand-wrought bodice closed high about her throat after the fashion of the time of Mary Queen of Scots.

"Be sure," said Miss Esteena, in her sharp, pointed tones, "to season the corass, properly, Seenie. Put plenty of salt and pepper and steam it long and well with the pot half full of water. Until it begins to crack. Then call me."

"Yes, mum, when Oi get roun' to it, mum."

But Miss Esteena was used to help of her own hue, and so had come to shut her ears to the thin veil of obedience in the Bordeaux girl's voice.

Gathering up the hem of her skirt, she moved austerely from the rice, green in a dish on the vined sill, to the fresh shelled peas, the tray of soaking cashews, the sugary sour sop, under a wire cage away from the flies.

"You know, Seenie," she said, "when you get time I wish you'd plant some mustard seed over there in the garden. Look!"

"Yessum, Oi see—"

Grating cocoanut was a hazardous task. And it required a constant fluid motion. Grinding it till the skin became thin as a tip of flame, she had got her palm bruised, and blood spots spattered the white juicy nut.

She leaned over the window squeezing it.

"Under that tree," said Miss Esteena, "see where I mean?"

"Yo' mean—dey—yassum!"

"And perhaps you could stick in a few knots of cane and some pumpkins on the hedge."

"Passably some carrots, too, mum. But yo' won't want anyt'ing what gwine gaddah too much bush. Yo' fomembah wha' ole Hart say, he say too much grass will bring de snakes."

"There you go again, you and your snakes. Can't you think of anything else to be afraid of?"

"Fi' tell yo' de troot, mum—"

"Gracious me, are they digging again? Look—there—by the trench—Seenie, what are they digging?"

"Wha' mum?"

"Can't you see it, stupid? There! Are you blind?"

"Oh, yassum! Me taught yo' mean yondah, mum."

"You always think something contrary!"

"It are a grabe dem a dig, mum."

"A grave? Mercy! For whom? What sort of a grave is it?"

"Fo' de baboo wha' chop arf 'im wife head, mum," said Seenie.

"Oh, mercy!"

"Dem gwine hang 'im up dey an bury 'im under de scraffold dem a build dey. See it, mum? All dem board yo' see dem a pile up dey is fo' de scraffold dem gwine knock togad-dah fi' hang 'im."

"Well, well, the idea!" exploded the constable's niece, pacing the pantry madly. "If it isn't one thing it is another. Yesterday, it was finding a snake coiled up under my writing table, foaming to strike. Last Tuesday, at the soirée on the Governor's visit to the colony, it was having a black camoodie secrete itself, the Lord only knows when and how in the chandelier and as soon as Lady Fordyce-Boyce and Captain Burt selected to hold their tête-à-tête underneath it, began to burrow into Lady Fordyce-Boyce's red hair.

"Now by Jove, it is to wake up and find them erecting under my very window a scaffold to wring the neck of some wife-killing Hindu. I have never heard the like of it in all my days."

"Dat a fac', mum," meekly murmured Seenie.

The missus strode out, raving. She was going herself to the Sergeant and ask to be shipped back to Georgetown at once.

"Cho," said Seenie, "she mek a fuss ovah nutton."

IV

The wind, alternately hissing and snarling, brought to Seenie's ears the roar of the Essequibo belching cargo on the wooded shores of Waakenam. O! placid, godless wind! It brought heroic tales of Georgetown muck on a briny dash to the gold fields.

Gold, Pataro gold O! de rich man An' de po' man.

O! intimate, loquacious wind! It told epic tales of black men, the salt of adventure seasoning the marrow in their bones, in bateaux (the flat-bottomed curses) speeding, nugget laden, down the tacabah-paved river—suddenly becoming songless!

Ovah danger, danger, danger Danger, danger, danger, danger Rocks an' Fall—!

You Mistah Tacabah! A sea lion, a sea cow, a shark? No! Great big slices of timber fastened, growing in the river! Deep-rooted, they were animals—groveling in the bowels of the unsettled stream. And Tacabah, the perpendicular beast, had eyes and ears, feet and heads. And tacabah could butt. On a starless night, he, the master of the river's fate, the hairy prowler of its incalculable depths, usually got on the war path. How easy it was for him! All a headlong bateau, oared by a lot of drunken gold diggers, need do was touch it—it was hardly necessary to jam it—and tacabah'd get the laugh on bateau! Over it'd go—at tacabah's jerky butt—heading for the eely monster's bowels, planted deep in the roots of eternity.

Ovah danger, danger, danger, Danger, danger, danger, danger, Rocks an' Fall—!

The moon, rambling about in the torrid sky, now and then gleamed on something Seenie carried on her head. It was a skillet filled with soup. Dozens of Cayenne peppers, hot as the water blazing in an equatorial sea, had gone into its making. Only throats of the purest steel were able to give passage to it. It was ghastly stuff. Eating it at night, Seenie'd bring heat to bear on heat. After a draught she'd light the kerosene lamp, discard the chimney, and open her mouth over the flames till her throat cooled. It was a rite rivaling the starkest brujerial act. In the skillet of red terra cotta, was Water Spout's portion of the flaming broth.

All the thwarted sounds of creation rose to a mighty murmur in the obscuring night. Deep in the thicket four-legged beasts stalked. There was baying. Sheep, torn by a species of wolf hounds on the Coast, remained silent. But the dogs were less cultivated, and there was deadlier tearing done.

Along the road iguana, the sparkle in their eyes jeweling the tropic night, pursued shy, petty quests. And from the hedge came the silken slither of snakes about to lather with foam and strike some legless sheep or ox left by the mutinous pack.

The words of a song sung by the peasants of the East Coast rose on Seenie's melodious lips:

Minnie, Minnie, come yah! Salam-bo come yah! Salam-Matanja, come yah! Le' Quackah-Tanyah, 'tan' dey!

Abruptly she left the coral road and unerringly stopped, in spite of the branching of leaf, at the cabin rising a little ways in.

"Water Spout!" she shouted, entering.

A wave of heat flew up at her. It was cane trash, hot hut heat. Heat smelted in a furnace untouched by a gust of fresh wind.

She called, but only a stream of hot mist, making for the door, answered her. "Oh berry well," she cried, "'im sleep, po' fellah."

She went to the table on the lower side of the hut and drawing a match lit the lamp. Darts of light flitted to the dark corners of it. Once able to distinguish things, she turned, and spied him on the bed.

She went to him, candied words on her mouth. He was in a deep, moist spot. A hole, really, bored into the rotting mattress. Gently she lifted him up, and the light fell on his sleeping face.

She took him to the table, and forced some of the soup into his mouth. But seized by a sudden spasm of energy, he refused, and spat it up, with a gurgling accompaniment. Then he curled back to her, fumbling for the avenue to her breasts. But she laid him back on the bed, consoled that he'd wake up in the night, demanding to be nursed.

"Lahd, me tiad, sah," she cried, yawning and undressing.

Presently she blew out the light and crawled in the bed beside him.

V

O! sleep, soundless sleep!

The night gathered heat. The straw crackled and pricked. Once a board slipped to the floor.

But sleep!—endowed, concentrated!

Cycles of the day sped through Seenie's head. There was a fugitive line between them and the half-realized happenings in a dream. It was a work cycle; not one of song. Cooking, washing, ironing. Peccadilloes. Scraps for Water Spout. Reining herself in, and not exploding at the golden rancor of Miss Esteena. Ready at any time to do for the Sergeant, a grave, white-templed man, who rose at dawn and retired at midnight. Saying but a word which kept his niece in talk for a week. Men drowning like rats on the Essequibo. The river a tacabah nest. The Sergeant's men, dying by the dozens, of fever—worms breeding in the unemptied casks set to catch rain water—bringing in hossah, corass, for her to scale and stew—and bring home to stuff in Water Spout's hardening belly! Ah, the pepper soup did that. It had, about a barrel of it, straightened his legs; but at the expense of his gums and his belly which were hard as rock.

Suddenly—a flash back to reality.

Water Spout had begun to cry. About time. Had she been dozing long? There was no one to tell. And he was hungry, and he cried.

"Come," she said, awaking, "come to mahmie, son." And she put out a hand in the dark for him. Ah—there—there he was. Crying. Cockling. She seized him by the neck, frontwards. It was moist, swobbled. A bit cold. She drew him to her, forcing the tip of a breast in his mouth.

From her a luxuriant warmth flowed out to him. And she dozed back again.

Dream horses riding her. The Cayenne soup no doubt; whereas usually she would be dead, dead to the fires of the earthiest hell.

Nibbling at her breast.

Gently tugging.

Sensation sweet—pumping milk in a black child's mouth!

Letting him pump it himself.

Doze. Dozing. Dreams—

Bordeaux. All the old figures resurrected to a distant reality. Old, shaky, fire-eating Miss Ewing. Captain; Berbice hermaphrodite. Macaume! Blacks, girls in particular, on the banks of the lamahau, at night talking about her. The baboos, behind pots of rotie and callaloo, beating on the back of a frying pan—

Hack ba la la Hack ba la la Mahaica is comin' down!

The Hindu settlers begging for rain. Wouldn't the water in the lamahau do?

Staring at her, the very coolies. Wildly.

Miss Ewing, at last, late one night, getting a midwife to finger her. This way, then that. Sometimes she refused. And Miss Ewing, heartless, lavished boxes and clouts. Thumpings. And then free of one ordeal, another ensued. Urchins in the lamahau dusk slinging paining words at her. Swell belly Seenie. Swell belly—

Jahn Belly, Quackah Belly, Swell like a cocoa

Her own swollen in time like a ripe jelly cocoanut. Aiming at the stars.

Soft tugging—

No? He was crying again.

Nonsense.

"Nevah min', son, com' to yo' mahmie." She was loving and awake. No, it couldn't be—something was wrong—he wasn't crying. Was she still dreaming? No! She was nursing the brat! Here—his cold head pegging at her armpit—here—tugging away at her very gizzard.

She began to feel for him. A soft, cool, flat something met her hand. His forehead, most likely. Sweat—was it that hot—or was he sick—the ague—fever—the rain water—crying—

Still he managed to be on the floor yelling. How was that? Was he a dual being?

Here he was at her breast, gnawing away at it. And there he was down on the floor, howling.

Absurd!

Again the exploring hand went out. Why, here he was, of course, the dual rascal, nursing! (Pity it was so blamed dark!) Certainly he was nursing. And she proceeded to make sure for the last time.

But suddenly the head receded, slipped down into the gut in the straw. And on the other side of the room Water Spout gave a loud unmistakable yell.

Jumping up, Seenie flew to the child and snatched him to her bosom, tight.

"Oh, me Gawd, me Gawd," she screamed, bursting through the door into the silence of the Guiana night.

It was barren sky. Frosts of dew, flakes of sunlight, fell upon the earth, fell likewise on the black gleaming uniform of one of the Sergeant's men, unhurriedly making for the hut.

Some six hours later he returned, dragging on the coral road to the sea the fresh dead body of a bloaty milk-fed snake the sheen of a moon in May.

THE VAMPIRE BAT

9

THE VAMPIRE BAT

He was one of the island's few plantation owners and a solid pillar of the Crown. He had gone forth at the King's trumpet call to buck the Boer's hairy anger. But at last the guerilla warrior had become a glorious ghost and the jaunty buckras were trekking back to Barbadoes.

Flying into a breastwork of foam, the English torpedo boat had suddenly stopped, wedged in a sargasso reef a dozen miles from the Caribbean sea. After landing at a remote corner on the jungle coast, Bellon was forced to make the trip, a twelve mile affair, on drays and mule carts over the brown, hoof-caked road to Mount Tabor.

But Mount Tabor, once a star on a pinnacle of wooded earth, was lost to old Sharon Prout's Boer-fighting son.

Wrecked in the storm which swept the island the very week Bellon had embarked for South Africa—it was a garden of lustrous desolation. Weedy growth overspread it. The lichened caverns below the stoke hole, once giving berth to hills of cane husk—fodder for the zooming fire—fertilized beds of purple beans. A stable, housing a mare and landau, stood on the old mill's bank. Rows of taches—troughs into which the cane's juice was boiled and brewed through a succession of stages until it became a quarry of loaf sugar—frothed green on the rich, muggy land. One was a pond. Frogs and green water lilies floated on it. Another, filled to the maw, gave fathomless earth to breadfruit.

The old shaggy mare, a relic of the refining era at Mount Tabor, plodded through the dead, thick marl. Wearing a cork hat and a cricketer's white flannel shirt, open at the throat, Bellon drew near the woods to Airy Hill.

He trotted down a slanting road in to Locust Hall. A mulatto cane cutter, poxy progenitor of twenty-one husky mule-driving sons, stood under the raised portcullis, talking to a woman. Pulling at a murky clay pipe he was slyly coaxing her to a spot in the cane piece. His juice-moist bill, bright as a piece of steel, shone in the fern-cluttered gut. Blacks on sluggish bat-eared asses mounted the hill mouthing hymns to drive away the evil spirits.

Father, O Father ... past the fading rays of night Awake! awake!

Game-vending squatters streamed down from Flat Rock, cocks gleaming on trays which saddled their heads. From the shining hills the estate's night hands meandered in, pecking at greasy skillets. Corn meal flecked the snowy marl.

Reminiscently Bellon ruffled the horse's mane. "You old war horse, you." Once, long before the storm, the blacks at Arise, one of the old man's estates—a stark, neurotic lot—had burned and pilfered the old sugar mill, while the buckras were confabbing on the seashore of Hastings. Rayside, then but a frisky colt, smelling a rat, had made a wild dash for the city—neighing the tidings to the buckras.

Now it fell to the young heir to be returning to Waterford, the last of the old man's estates, on the back of the heroic old mare.

It was ten o'clock at night and he had yet fourteen miles to go.

A lone moon-swept cabin or a smoker's pipe light, blazing in the canes, occasionally broke the drab expanse of night. The road trickled on, deepening into a gully. There rose above it rocky hedges, seeding flower and fruit. Swaying in the wind, the cane brake grew denser, darker. The marl lost its prickly edge and buried the animal's hoofs in soft, gray flour. Laboriously she loped through it.

The road gently lifted. It perceptibly dazzled the myopic beast. The marl returned. It blazed white, and shone. The earth about it seemed bare and flat and the cane brakes thinner. And the moon hung lower. A rickety donkey cart suddenly came jogging down the hill. A creole woman, atop an ass, trotted by. The wind soared to a higher, sturdier level. It blew like breezes on the gay Caribbean sea. Had it been noon, or dusk, blackbirds would have speckled the corn fields or sped low above the reeling canes. But the moon ribbed the night and gave the canes, tottering on the high flat earth, a crystal cloaking.

Now the road faltered, steadied, and as the road slanted, the marl thickened until it became flour dust again. The cottages at The Turning hove into view.

"At last," the captain cried, and the lanky mare quickened at the proximity of feed. Her reins fell on her back, limp with sweat.

Opposite a Negro baker shop Bellon dismounted, hitched the animal to a guava tree, and knocked upon the door.

"Who dat?" shouted a voice from within.

"Captain Prout," he replied, and the door swung to.

Squat and stout, Mother Cragwell, a Ba'bajan creole—mixture of white and Negro—admitted him, and shuffled back behind the counter, eying the visitor. She had been kneading dough, the counter was lathered with it, and her hands were scaly with shreds of flour.

"Mas' Prout," the old woman exclaimed, "wha' yo' a do down yah dis time o' night? Yo' na'h go home no?"

"Why, yes, Mother Cragwell," replied the officer jovially, "can't a law-abiding colonist walk the King's highway after dark?"

"De King's highways," the old woman sarcastically muttered, "wha' dey care 'bout any King?"

Fixing her brownish red eyes on the buckra, she looked puzzled, skeptical.

"Why, is that the sort of welcome you give a returning soldier, Mother Cragwell?" he inquired, flattered by the old woman's characteristically racial concern.

She shook her head, ruefully bestirring herself. "Han' me dat bucket dey," she said. "How much yo' want?"

"Oh, fill it," he said, fetching the pail, "the road is beginning to tell on the old wretch."

"'Bout time," murmured Miss Cragwell, who'd been a fixture at The Turning for over thirty years.

She half-filled the pail with molasses, burst a bag of flour into it and began mixing the mash with a ladle.

"Well, I suppose this is her last trip to Waterford—she's entitled to a pension for the rest of her life, the horny old nag."

He took the mare the foaming mash and returned to be confronted by a cup of chocolate, a knot of burnt cane and a tasty banana tart. Among bill twirlers, mule cart drivers, and cork-hatted overseers and estate owners, Mother Cragwell's "drops" and sweet bread, turnovers and cassava pone, were famous to the farthest ends of the Ba'bajan compass.

He cordially sat down to the mulatto's informal hospitality. "I knew," he observed, "that I'd have to wait till I reached The Turning before I could prove I was back in the colony." He took a relishing sip and the old creole's glare fell.

"Mas' Prout," she said, "yo bes' don't go down de gully to-night, yo' hear?"

"Why, what's happening in the gully, Mother Cragwell?" he smiled, splitting the sugar cane. "Is the man in the canes prowling about? Or do you think the duppies will be haunting Rayside's tracks?"

But the young Briton's banter chilled the old mulattress. "If yo' know what is good fo' yo'self, yo' bes' hear wha' Oi tell yo'," was all she said.

"H'm! this tastes like good old West Indian rum!" he cried, taking another fig of the cane. "Did you burn it yourself, Mother Cragwell?" "Who, me? No, bo," she retorted, looking up. "Dah cane yo' got dey come from down de road."

"What, did they have a fire there recently?"

"Yes, bo. Las' night. The fire hags ketch it fire las' night."

"The who?"

"Hey," the old woman drawled, shocked at the young man's density. "Hey, look at his boy, ni. Yo' don't fomembah wha' a fire hag is, no? An' he say he gwine down de gully to-night."

Bellon burst into a fit of ridiculing laughter. "Why, shame upon you, Mother Cragwell!"

"Ent yo' got piece o' de ve'y cane in yo' mout' suckin'?" she cried, fazed, hurt.

"Tommyrot! Some jealous squatter fired the brake, that's all."

"Yo' believe dat?" challenged the old lady, "Orright den, go 'long. Go 'long, bo. All yo' buckras t'ink unna know mo' dan we neygahs. Go 'long down de gully 'bout yo' business, bo."

He rose, handed her a shilling and started for the door.

Suddenly a whinny from the mare—a wild scream in the night—startled him.

"Who dat?" shouted Mother Cragwell, seizing an old cricket bat and going towards the door.

"Oh, me Gard, me Gard, me Gard—"

The door was slapped open and a Negro woman, draped in white, shaking a black parasol and a hand bag, entered. She was shivering and white-eyed and breathless.

"Calm yo'self, girl, an' stop wringin' yo' hands. Yo' gwine poke out a body eye wit' dat parasol yo' flo'ish dey."