THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

by

CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

709488 A

ABTOR.I.ENOX AND

TILDEN FOUNUATiONS

R 1034 L

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PACK

I. A Vision Upon a Warning 5

II. Pursuing a Will-o'-the-Wisp 17

III. I Embark on a Fool's Errand 30

IV. Some Passages from a Diary 40

V. Premonitions Become Realities 51

VI. The End of the " Wastrel " 64

^ , VII. In Strange Circumstances 74

^ VIII. Nature Indulges in Satire 82

>^ IX. A Portrait and a Temple 93

^ X. I Seek Orchids 104

XI. I Find Myself a Demi-god 112

XII. Port and Starboard Lights 122

XIII. Enter the Infantryman 132

XIV. The "Ash-Trash Lady" 145

V

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XV. Two Discoveries 164

XVI. An Interview and a Crisis 175

XVII. We Go to the Mountains 188

XVIII. A Chat with a Dictator 199

XIX. A Volley from the Laurel 213

XX. A Cavalcade from the Laurel 227

XXI. I Go Walking and Meet Enemies 239

XXII. I Fail to Return Home 249

XXIII. The Offer of Parole 260

XXIV. My Day in Court 273

XXV. Being Laughed At 283

THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

CHAPTER I

A VISION UPON A WARNING

THE doctor was so small and frail that his narrow

face was rescued from inconsequence only by a

trimly cropped Van-Dyck with a dignified sprink-

ling of gray. I always felt that, should I ever see him in

a bathing suit, I would have to seek a new physician. I

could never again think of him as sufficiently grown-up to

practise an adult vocation. Yet when the doctor spoke

his mentality issued out of its small habitation of flesh

and expanded to commanding proportion.

• The little doctor was in fine a very great doctor, and on

this occasion he was bullying me with the large authority

of a Bonaparte.

" But, Doctor — " I began protestingly.

He raised a small hand which suggested the claw of a

6 THE POETAL OF DEBAMS

delicate bird and fixed me with quizzical eyes that had

the faculty of biting sharply through a man's unspoken

thoughts.

" Don't assume to say ' but ' to me," he sternly enjoined ;

and since we had long known each other, not only as

physician and patient, but also as men who breakfasted at

the same hour and the same club table, I momentarily

heeded.

"Once upon a time," he continued, "the German

Kaiser presumed to question a pilot on his imperial yacht.

Do you recall the result ? "

" No," said I, " I don't, but "

Again the doctor eyed me, basilisk fashion, across the

bacon and eggs of our belated morning meal, as he con-

tinued :

" He very properly reminded the Emperor that upon a

vessel in the high seas, a pilot acknowledges no superior

this side of Eternity. In matters of health I take the

bridge. You obey."

"But — " I weakly insisted.

" You presume to think because you house your nerves

in a well-muscled body that they are infallible," he im-

placably continued; " I've seen rotten motors in excellent

garages. I've seen unhappy wives immured in palaces,

and I've seen finer figures of men than you in lunatic

asylums."

A VISION UPON A WARNING 7

" My nerves are simply of the high-strung type," I

argued.

" Those are the kind that snap," retorted the sage. "If

you were a racehorse, it might be a matter of reason-

able pride to you to be bred in the purple. Being a man

with no avocation except the spending of unearned

money, it means that you are perilously over-sensitized."

" What unpleasant pedantry are you leading up to ? "

I demanded. " Out with it."

" I mean to. You have the artistic temperament which,

without genius, is worse than useless. You choose to

regard yourself a failure and grow morose because you

have found the law uncongenial and because editors earn

their salaries by returning your manuscripts. The dura-

bility of your nervous system depends entirely on how

you utilize the next five years."

" Go on," I encouraged him, " don't mind me. Sen-

tence me to death if it amuses you."

" It won't be death, but unless you fortify those

nerves," he calmly went on, "there probably will be

disaster. It may take any one of several forms."

"As, for instance?" I inquired, with pardonable

curiosity.

" Oh, arterio-sclerosis, paralysis, insanity, something of

that sort."

8 THE POETAL OP DREAMS

" Thank you kindly," I murmured, as I reached for

the matches. " Can I have my choice of the lot? "

"However," went on the big little doctor, "if you

devote the next few years to a program of diversified

travel, you ought to lay up an account of nerve-strength

upon which you can draw ad lib. for forty or fifty years to

come. You should even have a surplus against the unfor-

tunate exigency of living on when you are old and

useless."

" But I have traveled," I argued. " Fve been to "

He interrupted me with a snort, and swept my declara-

tions aside, unfinished.

"You have dabbled at travel, like a school-girl nibbles

at chocolates. Get out on the hike and stay out for a

year or two. Build into your artificial self something of

the out-door animal. You have a fair start — ^you were

once an athlete." He rose to go down to his motor, and

I shouted after him contemptuous and profane criticism.

Nevertheless within the week I booked passage for the

Mediterranean.

I found once more that Europe and the African fringe

of the land-locked sea have to offer to the hunger of the

wanderlust only a stereotyped table-d'hote. Shortly it

cloys. Within several weeks one thing only had prom-

ised to break the stagnant surface with a riffle of

interest. And that one thing puzzled me in no small

A VISION UPON A WAENING 9

degree, since it was not such a matter as would ordinarily

have challenged my attention. I have passed with a

glance many beautiful women, and felt no need to turn

my head for a further inspection. I am not of the cava-

liering type, and yet here I was finding myself interested,

in a strange and indefinable way, in a woman whose face

I had not seen, and whose name I did not know. That,

I told myself, was the secret of it. It was exactly

because she was elusive, mysterious in fashion, that I

found my flat interest piqued. I never had more than

the swish of her skirt or a glimpse of her retreating fig-

ure, until it came about that sheer inquisitiveness gave her

an augmented importance. At all events, she had eluded

me over southern Europe from Genoa to Constantinople,

and thence into Egypt, and I wanted to see her face. It

was at Naples that I had my first hasty and imperfect

view of her. I was hurrying through the Galeria

Umberto, on my way to a luncheon appointment for

which I found myself late. As I passed Merola's a

young woman was sitting before a counter, with her back

to the street, trying on gloves. I could appreciate the

gypsy grace of her figure, which was slender, because one

of the avocations into which I have essayed without dis-

tinction is painting. The single thing at which I have

not failed, except the success of having selected parents

who bequeathed me money, is an appreciation of the

10 THE POETAL OF DREAMS

beautiful. That appreciation, despite my hurry, brought

me to a stop for a full glance at her; but there was no

mirror at any part of the shop which gave me a reflection

of her averted face, and as my appointment was imper-

ative, I refrained from going in to buy gloves. But

there was something so exquisite in her bearing, and in

the tasteful lines of her simple traveling gown, that I

caught myself thinking of her. Then as I went down to

the quay a day later to say farewell to some friends, just

as the gangplank of an outgoing steamer was about to be

drawn up, I saw her hurrying across it. Her face was

still averted. I strained to catch a feature, but a way-

ward gust of bay breeze wrapped a filmy veil about the

profile which was for a moment turned my way — ^and hid

it. She did not house at the deck raii but disappeared as

the gangplank came up and cut oflF pursuit. But I had

added to my first impression the knowledge that she did

not merely walk. She soared as though her feet wi?f e the

sandals of Hermes, and she carried herself with the

splendid grace of a slender young queen.

The luncheon appointment, which had thwarted my

impulse to turn into the glove shop, and so end the

mystery in its incipiency, brought a long trail of com-

plications and caused me to envy those fortunate men

who are not handicapped by the possession of relatives.

I have sometimes thought that the truly ideal existence

,vilh her back to the

TH"^ rr:

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PUB LI

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I Ah i V' - ' - ' I

« TiLDLN I-CJNDATlONS (

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A VISION UPON A WARNING 11

would be to be bom an orphan unhampered by cousins,

aunts or any of those human beings who are privileged to

make demands upon our times and thoughts.

From the moment when I watched the sky-line of New

York sink slowly behind the horizon until I reached

Naples I had at least been a free agent. But hardly had

I signed my guest card at Parker's Hotel and strolled out

to hail a crazy Neapolitan hack when the angular and

purposeful figure of my Aunt Sarah loomed up in the

near foreground and — saving her grace— eclipsed the

picturesqueness of the town and the distant cone of

Vesuvius. I had known vaguely that this estimable lady

was beating her way about Europe, guide-booked and

grimly set upon self-improvement, but I had hoped to

keep the area of two or three monarchies between us.

I knew that from one to the other of the Cook's

Agencies she would be flitting with the same frantic

energy that characterizes the industry of the ant. That

I should myself pass within hailing distance of her party

or be recruited in her peregrinations was a disaster which

I had not anticipated. None the less the blow had fallen

and I had walked unwarned into the ambuscade of her

fond embrace. Aunt Sarah would now converse volu-

minously of cathedrals and old masters, and all the

things upon which tourists are fed to a point of acute

mental dyspepsia.

12 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

She had ordered me to luncheon with much the same

finality as that with which royalty commands the atten-

dance of guests at court. I had gone meekly though

doing so involved passing Merola's and opened up a

series of events which were destined to alter for the worse

my immediate future. But the luncheon had been only

the beginning, and greater misfortunes were to follow in

due order.

I have never since been able to understand precisely

what form of paresis seized upon me, and paralyzed my

normally efficient power of lying, when she instructed me

to attach myself to her party for a motor trip to Ville-

f ranche and Nice. I do know that no available mendacity

occurred to my shocked brain and I foundmyself murmur-

ing an acceptance. The acceptance was again meek and

spineless. I had discovered at luncheon that Aunt Sarah,

with that motherly obsession which appears to charac-

terize many maiden ladies of fifty and beyond, had under

wing a party of three young ladies who were capping off

their educations with the post graduate "advantages" of

the grand tour. That these young ladies possessed all

the homely virtues, I have not the slightest doubt. Their

faces and figures attested the homeliness and their virtue

was such that they seemed always wondering whether

their halos were on straight. Theirs was an insatiate

greed for intellectual feeding: They browsed through

A VISION UPON A WABNING 13

their Baedeckers with a seeming terror lest something

erudite escape them. They pursued and captured and

assimilated every fleeting fact which might improve their

minds. Until my captivity they had no man with their

party. That was probably because Aunt Sarah had made

the strategic mistake of permitting all those, whom she

might otherwise have annexed, to see her girls. She

should have enlisted her male escort first and held back

the introductions until desertion was impracticable. At

all events, I had, like the imbecile I was, " fallen for it,"

and surrendered my liberty. When the boat bearing the

unknown divinity set sail I was merely a satellite of Aunt

Sarah's constellation and no longer a free agent.

Because I happened to be, in a superficial way, familiar

with the tourist-tramped sections of the Continent, I

became a sort of gentleman courier, without recompense,

and because I had once undertaken to be a painter, I was

expected to give extemporaneous lectures on the art

treasury of the museiuns. We walked several thousand

miles, or maybe it was millions, over those peculiarly

hard floors which make art galleries penitential institu-

tions. I saw the three plain faces in every phase of soul-

ful rapture that can be elicited by the labors of the

masters, from Michelangelo to Murillo.

When this had gone on for several centuries, or maybe

it was scons, I discovered that every art gallery has two

14 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

or three truly interesting features, though the full enjoy-

ment of these was denied me. I speak of the exits.

Perhaps to the unintimidated mind of the outsider it may

appear that whatever agonies I underwent were the

deserved result of my own abjectness. It is easy to say

'that I might have pleaded other plans and gone on my

way enfranchised. To such a critic my only and suffi-

cient reply is that he or she does not know my Aunt

Sarah. My Aunt Sarah says to whomsoever she

chooseth, " Go/' and he goeth ; " Come," and he cometh.

She knew perfectly well that I had no other plans. She

correctly assumed me to be a derelict floating without

purpose and with my chart lost over-side. She virtuously

resolved that for once I should be made of use, in assist-

ing to improve the minds of the three plain young ladies.

Lying would have been quite futile. Consequently she

said, " Come," and I came. When I learned that we

were to make the tour to the Riviera towns by motor, I

welcomed the suggestion as a less evil than cathedral.;

and art galleries. At least we should be out of doors and

in the exhilaration of rapid motion one might hope to

forget the three young ladies at brief and blessed inter-

vals. One could not at the same time think of the

culture-pursuing trio and anything rapid.

It has been my curse in life that I have dabbled at so

many things that I can be made of smattering use in

A VISION UPON A WARNING 15

almost any circumstance. Our chauffeur discovered this

three and one-half minutes after the occurrence of our

first blow-out, when Aunt Sarah, taking pity upon his

sweating and dust-grimed brow, told me off to help him

patch the puncture. After that it was impossible to

feign ignorance as to the interior workings and deviltries

of motor cars.

The Upper Corniche Road is perhaps the most charm-

ing driveway of the world — and I say this with due rever-

ence to Amalfi. By a road as white as a fresh table-

cloth and as smooth as a bowling alley one speeds to the

purring of his motor along the way thrown up for the

tramping feet of Bonaparte's battalions. From a com-

manding height the traveler looks down, as from the roof

of the world, with close kinship of peaks and clouds,

upon a panorama a-riot with breadth and depth and color.

Fascinating road-houses of stucco walls curtained behind

a profusion of clambering roses tempt one to pause and

take his ease to the tinkle of guitars and mandolins. But

Aunt Sarah and the girls, ever bent upon reaching the

next cathedral with a stained glass window or the next

dingy canvas of a saint sitting on a cloud, were scarcely

amenable to the lure of road-house temptation.

They seemed to regard Europe as a transitory effect

which might fade like the glories of sunset before they

16

THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

had finished seeing it, and anything savoring of the

dilatory aroused their suspicion.

Far below us lay the outspread Mediterranean, blue

beyond description and upon her placid bosom sailboats

shrunk to the size of swallows and yachts seemed no

larger than nursery toys.

One gracious afternoon, while I was occupying the

front seat beside the driver, I almost attained a state of

contentment. I was pretending that I had forgotten all

about the hmnan freight in the tonneau. My eyes were

drinking in the smiling beauty framed by the wide

horizon, when suddenly the droning of the motors fell

quiet and with no warrantable reason the automobile slid

to a halt and declined to proceed farther.

CHAPTER II

PURSUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP

AUNT SARAH and the girls were much annoyed

and their annoyance did not grow less when, after

a half-hour of diagnosis, the chauflFeur emerged,

grease-stained and exhausted from under the car, shaking

his head. He frankly admitted that his worm's eye view

had failed to enlighten him as to the trouble. Aunt

Sarah turned upon me eyes mirroring a faith sufficient

to move even stalled motor cars.

"I am sure, my dear," she said, sweetly, "your

mechanical aptitude can find a remedy for this difficulty.**

It was, of course, an order to burrow into the confined

space between the road bed and the bottom of the car,

and of course I burrowed. For a time I was out of

touch with all matters transpiring in the great outer

world, but finally I saw the inverted face of our chauffeur

gazing in upon me and heard his bellowing voice. I have

hitherto neglected to mention that our chauffeur was

17

18 THE POETAL OP DEEAMS

neither French nor Italian, but Irish. He was, in fact,

an excellent fellow, and the only member of our party

whom I found companionable.

" Sure, sor," he yelled, " there's another car in trouble

just around th' turn av' th' road."

I supposed that he was imparting this information only

out of the assumption that misery loves company, and

inasmuch as my reply was profane, it need not be quoted.

In a moment more, however, his grinning visage reap-

peared at the road level. " They wants to know if you

can't be af ther lending 'em a tire-iron ? "

" What do they think this is? " I roared back, squirm-

ing far enough to clear my face for utterance, but not far

enough to see what was going on. " This isn't a repair

crew."

It was hardly a gracious response to a fellow motorist

in trouble, but my point of view was oppressed with the

weight of a paralyzed car, and Aunt Sarah and the girls,

and I was misanthropic to the degree of sourness. From

my position whatever conversation ensued was merely an

incoherent babble of voices. Palpably, despite my dis-

courtesy, Mr. Flannery had supplied the inquirers with

whatever they needed, and they had gone their way. I,

in the course of the next few minutes, emerged from my

hedge-hog isolation, tinkered with the carburetor, and

crawled back again into concealment. Then someone

PURSUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP 19

returned the borrowed tire-iron. I did not have the

opportunity to speak to the Someone, and I should not

have seen the Someone at all had I not happened to catch

the shouted words of Mr. Flannery. Mr. Flannery had

so accustomed himself to pitting his voice against

machinery that even in moments of quiet he hurled his

words like the roar of a bull. So, as he spoke now to

the unknown person, I recognized an allusion to myself.

The words which set me to extricating myself as speedily

as possible from my humble position were as follows :

" Sure, ma'am, th' boss would be afther bein' more

polite to yer, only the car is layin' a little heavy on his

stummick, and it gives him a bit of a grouch."

The word which excited me was the " ma'am," and my

excitement was no means allayed when I stood clear in

the road and saw just disappearing around a curve a figure

which I recognized. It could be no other figure, for no

other figure that I had ever seen could walk with the same

triumphant and lissome grace. Again the face was turned

away from me, and about her hat floated a confusing

cloud of veil. But she had been there within a few feet

and possibly had even heard my surly responses to her

request for assistance. Possibly she had seen my wrig-

gling feet while I, who would have esteemed it the

greatest possible privilege to have assisted her in any way,

had lain there surrounded by dust and profanity. I was

20 THE POSTAL OF DSEAMS

seized with a mad impulse to run after her, but I

knew that the return of my iron signified that their tire-

mending was finished and they were on their journey.

My own repairs were not finished, and I stood there

with streaks of grease across my face, caked with dust

and by no means presenting the appearance with which a

man might hope to appear acceptable in the eyes of di-

vinity. Aunt Sarah and her bevy of young intellectuals, I

found, had withdrawn to the greater comfort of a near-by

road-house, and could give me no information, while

Flannery's description was on the whole, unsatisfactory.

The idiot had not asked her name, and in answer to all my

questions could only assure me vaguely that the young

lady was "a peach." One thing he had noticed. The

car, which had passed us a quarter of an hour before was

a large blue touring car, of high horse-power. It is

strange what details impress certain minds and what goes

unseen. So again I had missed my chance, and the inci-

dent had not served to reconcile me to my serfdom.

Several days later I had succeeded in gaining a brief

leave of absence from my duties as courier, and was

spending an interval of sadly needed rest.

I had the hope that the unknown girl and her party

would be stopping for a while in one of the closely

grouped towns along the coast : Nice, Cannes, Mentone,

Monte Carlo — it mattered little which one it might be. If

PUBSUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP 21

she was in any of these, I should eventually find her, and

I haunted the dazzling whiteness of the Boulevard des

Anglais, with a buoyant pulse beat of expectancy. At

any mcmient I might again catch a glimpse of her in a shop

or cafe, and if I did, I meant that it should be more than

a glimpse, and that she should not again escape until I

had at least seen her face. I spent most of my time

wondering what she was like. Would the full view

bring a greater sense of fascination or the pang of dis-

illusionment ? It might be that when I saw her I should

find myself harshly awakened from a dream, but at all

events, there would be certainty, and an end to the tan-

talizing sense of following a will-o'-the-wisp which con-

stantly eluded. She gave me one very anxious afternoon.

I had been taking a horseback ride near town when I

came upon a wrecked and empty automobile. The physi-

cal facts showed clearly what had happened. The car

had evidently skidded while speeding, in an effort to turn

out for some passing vehicle, and had tried to climb a

stone wall. There must have been a very ugly moment,

as the twisted front wheels and crumpled hood attested.

What frightened me was the fact that it was a large,

blue touring car of the same sort, if not identical, with

the one described by Flannery. I was commencing my

ride when I saw it, but I turned back at once to town

and began an investigation. I finally learned that the

22 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

chauffeur for a local garage had taken a party of his own

friends for a joy ride, and that the expedition had come

to summary grief. My effort to trace the history of that

particular car for a week or two past resulted in nothing.

I was informed that it had been hired many times and to

many unrecorded persons, usually for the afternoon or

day.'

i. Several nights later I was sitting at a roulette table in

Monte Carlo's Cercle des Etrangers. I had fallen in with

a coterie of chance acquaintances, who for some reason

held faith in my luck and insisted upon my crowding into

a vacant place at the wheel. My function was to submit

to the issue of fortune not only my own stack of louis

d'or, but also the considerable purse that they had raised

among them.

My table was near the center of the main salle, and at

my elbows crowded the little party of men and women

whose interests hung upon my success or failure. It was

the same old scene; the same old life that one sees year

after year in this chief cathedral of the gods of chance.

Men and women from both hemispheres stood or sat in

the tense absorption of eyes riveted on dancing ball and

whirling disc. At my right was a regally gowned woman

whose delicate features were now as hard as agate and

whose eyes were avid. At my left was a saturnine

Spaniard who smiled indifferently, but who did not know

PUESUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP 23

his cigar had died to a stale coldness. I was experienc-

ing the sense of disillusionment which invariably comes

to me afresh when I enter the Casino of Monaco. I

always ascend the stairs of the palace which the princi-

pality-supporting S3mdicate has provided for its patrons

with a mild elation of expectancy. I always take my

place at the tables with the realization of disappointment.

The sparkle of jewels is there; sometimes the beauty is

there, but the spirit that rules is not a spirit of gaiety;

and the glitter of eyes makes me forget the diamonds.

The cold lust of greed flashes in the hard brightness of

set faces.

Between the droning announcements of the croupier

insidious thoughts force themselves. I think of the man-

agement's efficient ambulance services; of the exhaus-

tive arrangements by which unknown patrons may be

promptly identified; and the sinister discoveries of the

beach. These things were in my mind now as the stack

of gold pieces at my front alternately piled and dwindled

under a fitful sequence of petty losses and gains.

I may have been at the table an hour when I began

to have the insistent feeling of someone in particular

standing at my back. Of course, there were many people

behind me. Besides my own party was the crowd of idle

onlookers as well as others who were impatiently waiting

to seize upon vacant places about the board.

24 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

And yet, just then I could not turn my head. My

system involved leaving the winnings upon the table for

three successive spins of the wheel. I had played a group

of numbers in the black, cautiously avoiding the alluring

perils of the greater odds, and twice my little pile of

louis d'or had drawn in its prize money. On the third

spin we stood to lose the entire amount of our augmented

stake or see our pile swell commandingly. While I

waited for the croupier to close the betting and touch the

button, I twisted my head backward, to determine whose

presence in the throng had so subtly announced itself to

my consciousness. But the barrier of faces that pressed

close against my chair cut off all who stood further back.

The wheel raced ; the ball danced madly about its rim ; the

crowd stood bating its breath ; and the scattered piles of

gold lay in doubt on the green baize diagram.

It was over. The croupier sang out the winning

number, column and combinations. The rake was

extended to push over to me a fairly imposing pile of

French gold. I was conscious of coming in for more

than my individual share of interest. Luck had been

with me, and at Monte Carlo, the lucky man is the man

of moment. But the sense of some personality above

the many personalities was now borne in upon me with

irritating force. I was impatient to rise and push back

my chair and look about me, but as I attempted to do so,

PITESUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP 25

the men and women whose capital I had increased raised

a chorus of remonstrance. I reluctantly resumed the

place which I had been about to abdicate and once more

laid out my stake. This time I pushed the entire pile out

onto the green cloth in a pyramid on the black. I knew

if I lost it they would willingly surrender my services.

Even at that cost I wanted freedom.

For, in the moment that I had been standing there, I

had caught a glimpse of a retreating figure, which dis-

appeared through the door, almost at the instant that my

eyes identified it. It was the figure of a woman in even-

ing-dresSy or rather, I should say, of the woman in even-

ing-dress. There was the same graceful majesty of bear-

ing, the same slim grace — and the same averted face. But

because I wished to leave the table fortune pursued me.

Spin after spin doubled, tripled, quadrupled my swelling

pile of money. Finally I told them that I would remain

for three more tests of chance — ^but no more. I could

hardly abandon these enthused men and women without

warning, but as soon as I had fulfilled the obligation, I

rose, and I fear there was more of precipitate haste than

of courtesy in my manner of shouldering my way through

the press of onlookers, to the door and the wonderful

embroidery of flower beds before the casino. Eyes

followed me, for my luck had held and I was a momentary

sensation. It was still early, as hours go in a place where

26 THE POETAL OF DEEAMS

the major activity belongs to night life, and for two hours

I haunted the cafes and boulevards without result. The

next day proved equally fruitless, but that night, as I was

idling with my after-dinner cigar, along the Boulevard de

Condemine, I saw strolling at some distance ahead of me,

a young man and a girl. It was she, and I had only to

hasten my steps to overtake and see her. I could guess

that the man with her was a Frenchman. The cut of his

clothes and the jaunty swagger of his bearing were dis-

tinctively Gallic. My imagination could read the title

" fortune hunter " as though it were embroidered on his

coat-tails.

I was resentful, and hurried on, but as usual I was

destined to disappointment. An untimely and inconse-

quential acquaintance loomed up in my path, and when I

attempted to brush hastily by him, he slapped me on the

back and hailed me with that most irritating of all con-

ceivable forms of address, "Well, how is the boy

to-night ? "

He did not find the " boy " particularly affable that

night, but with an accursed and persistent geniality he

succeeded in delaying me for the space of a few precious

moments. At a distance, I saw her disappear into a

lighted doorway against which her face and figure showed

only in silhouette. Again I had lost her. I could hardly

pursue her into the entrances of private houses, but I

PTJESUING A WILL-O^-THE-WISP 27

noted the location and went back to my apartments in the

Hotel Hermitage with the comforting thought that we

were in the same town and that by rising early the next

morning, and searching tirelessly till midnight, I should

ultimately be able to see her.

Before sleep came to me a telegram was brought to my

door.

Aunt Sarah had succeeded in becoming involved in

some ludicrous difficulty with the Italian customs offi-

cials. She implored that I come at once to her rescue.

How she had achieved it, was a matter of inscrutable

mystery. I had always found the politeness of Italian

customs officers as gracious as a benediction, but Aunt

Sarah was a resourceful person. I rejoined her detesta-

ble cortege long enough to extricate her from her newest

difficulty, and to discuss with her her plans for the im-

mediate future. I found that she and her young ladies

were yearning for the sepia tinted walls of Rome where,

under every broken column and cnunbling arch their

hungry souls might drink deep draughts of improving

tradition and culture. I knew that they would waste no

time musing by moonlight in the shadows of the Colos-

seimi, but that with Latin dictionaries they would decipher

in the broad light of day the inscriptions on the arcs of

Titus and Constantine. None the less, I encouraged their

idea and enlarged upon the suitability of this time. I

28 THE POETAL OP DEEAMS

looked up the train schedules and wired for hotel reserva-

tions. Every moment that they hesitated I was excitedly

quoting, though not aloud, lines that came back from the

days of a less-mature literary taste:

(( (

Why dost thou stay and turn away,

Here lies the path to Rome/''

I thought it the part of wisdom to refrain from mention-

ing until the actual moment of their departure that my

own way lay in an opposite direction. But when I had

seen them settled in their first-class compartments and the

accommodating guard had reassured me by locking them

in, I turned with a sigh of contentment and fled back to

Monte Carlo. I had been absent only a few days, but I

returned to a dusty and desolate town. Perhaps the

numbers of gamblers and pleasure-seekers had not

actually diminished. Perhaps they had even increased,

but a day's search satisfied me that the unknown lady had

gone, and for me the town was empty.

What idiosyncrasy drove me to the Holy Land, I can-

not say, unless it was that after my exhausting term of

cathedral inspection I felt a desire to have a look at that

tempk which, except for the Taj Mahal, has always

appealed to me as the world's most beautiful place of

worship— the Mosque of Omar.

Riding one day on a donkey around the walls of

Jerusalem, I had a glimpse of Her standing on the ram-

PTTESUIXG A WILL-O'-THE-WISP 29

parts above me by the gate of the Needle's Eye. But as

I looked up, the sun was full in my eyes and I could

distinguish only the lashing of her skirts in the wind, and

a halo-like aura of gold about her head, which was

uncovered. At that distance her face Vas a featureless

oval. Until night came with its howling of a thousand

dogs I visited the places to which guides most frequently

conduct their charges. But in the Temple of The

Sepulchre, on the Mount of Olives, at the Jews* Wailing

Place and among the vaulted bazaars, there was only

failure for my quest. For two days I hunted, and while

I hunted she must have gone down to Jaffa or departed

for the overland trip to Syria.

CHAPTER III

I EMBARK ON A FOOL^S ERRAND

I WAS sitting on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel on

the evening of my arrival there. I was finding life

flat, as one must who can discover no fascination

in Cairo's appeal to the eyes, nostrils and ears. Before

me was the olla-podrida of touring fashion and fellaheen

squalor; the smell of camels and attar of roses; the

polyglot chatter of European pleasure-seekers and the

tom-toms of Arab pilgrims.

Then once more I saw her. But still I did not see her

face. I suppose there were other persons with her. I

did not notice. I did notice the salient thing. She was

boarding a motor 'bus, presumably for the Alexandria

train, and was followed by the usual Cairene retinue of

tarbooshed porters and luggage-bearers.

My glimpse of her was again only in exit. My baggage

had just been unpacked, and I also could not catch the

Alexandria train. I had been foolish enough to announce

30

I EMBARK OX A FOOUS EKRAND 31

'my coming by postcard from Jerusalem to an acquain-

tance at the Turf Club and had found awaiting me at

Shepheard's on my arrival a note informing me that

George Qann, a friend of past days, had invited a few

army oiEcers and native men for dinner that evening to

meet me. The note added that no excuse would be

accepted. I had called up the club and signified my

acceptance. That was before I had seen the departing

goddess, but I was due in the Sharia el Magrabi an hour

hence and so was once again completely anchored.

Had I seen her in entrance instead of in exit only, I

should perhaps have remained in Egypt and fanned into

rebirth a languid interest in sarcophagi and cartouches

and camel-riding and scrambling up the comfortless slants

of pyramids.

As it was I began to subscribe to the Oriental idea of

an inevitable destiny. I admitted to myself that it was

written that for me this lady was to remain as unseen as

though she belonged to the latticed and veiled seclusion

of scwne pasha's harem. I told myself that had my first

glimpse been a full one I should have gone on my way

with prompt forgetfulness and that a curiosity so strange

and fantastic must influence me no further.

I sought out an empty place on the terrace where

unintentionally enough I overheard an earnest conver-

sation between a fair-haired and enthusiastic young Eng-

32 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

lishman and a grizzled fellow in middle life. They were

talking business in one of the writing-rooms which give

out through open windows upon the terrace, and the

enthusiasm of the younger gave a carrying quality to his

voice.

He was, it appeared from his solicitude, seeking a billet

which it lay in the power of his elder vis-a-vis to bestow.

From the discussion which neither of them treated as con-

fidential I learned that there is somewhere in the Pacific

Ocean a perfectly useless island from which certain

ethnological data and exhibits might be obtained. It

further appeared that the British Museum was deficient

in these particular curios and that the glass cases were

yearning to be filled. The youth had been employed in

Soudanese excavations and research. Now that work

had ended and with it the pay, the necessity for other

work and pay had not ended.

"The billet down there," suggested the elder man,

" will be no end beastly, I dare say. A tramp steamer

sails from Port Said in three days for Singapore, San-

dakan and the South Seas. The pay will be one hundred

and fifty pounds for the job. The fare will probably be

maggoty biscuits — ^still, if you feel game to have a dash

at it " The speaker finished with a shrug which

seemed to add, "It's never difficult to find a fool."

But the young man laughed with a whole-hearted

I EMBAEK ON* A FOOUS EEEAND 33

enthusiasm, that entirely missed the under note of con-

tempt in the manner of his benefactor. " Well, rather,"

he declared. " And I say, you know, its jolly good of

you, sir."

Later I made the acquaintance of the young Briton

in the American bar where over Scotch and soda we dis-

cussed the project, to the end that I nominated and

elected myself an assistant forager for the British

Museum, serving at my own expense. There was some-

thing likeable about my new and naive acquaintance, who

was so eager to shoulder his futile way across a third of

the globe's circumference in search of crudely inscribed

rocks and axe-heads and decaying skulls. My own

experience in life had been even more futile. I had

learned to speak five languages and had completely i ailed

of gaining a foothold in five useful professions: Art,

Law, Literature, Music and Contentment. Possibly the

appeasement of my Salatheal hunger, the curing of the

curse, did not after all lie along the routes of Cunarders

and Pullmans. Maybe I was still nibbling at travel as

the schoolgirl nibbles at chocolates. Perhaps his method

of taking the long and empty trail was the heroic medicine

my itching feet required. At all events, I sententiously

quoted to myself, " I think It will kill me or cure, and

I think I will go there and see."

When I informed young Mansfield, for that proved to

34 THE POSTAL OP DBEAMS

be his name, that I meant to be his traveling companion,

his almost childlike face took on an incredulous expres-

sion. He was a great two-hundred-pound chap whose

physique should logically have been the asset of a pirate

or a pugilist, but the visage which surmounted it had a

rosy pinkness and his blue eyes wore the guileless charity

of essential innocence. With his physical power went a

long-suffering good nature, and as he talked of the widely

scattered places he had seen and the things which should

have made him wise in his generation it seemed to me

that his soul must have worn a macintosh, from which the

showers oi experience had been shed off without leav-

ing a mark. I have seen mastiffs with eyes full of wist-

fulness because Nature has denied their affectionate tem-

peraments the gentle lives of lap dogs. Mansfield struck

me the same way. Why a man, by his spare and simple

standards as rich as Croesus, should care to ship with him

on a voyage promising maggoty biscuits, was quite

beyond his mental process. He confessed, in all frank-

ness, that he did it merely for the money — the pitiful

hundred and fifty. There was a girl back in England,

probably as devoid of surprises and complications of

character as a lane-side primrose. I pictured her to

myself as a creature of pink and shallow prettiness. The

day to which his ambition strained as the ultimate goal

was the day when he could become a curator in the Brit-

I EMBABK ON A FOOUS EEBAND 35

ish Museum and transplant her to decent London lodg-

ings. He longed to placard and arrange scarabs in a

plate-glass case and to classify Chimbote pottery and on

bank holidays to push a go-cart in the park.

I was glad, however, when I went over the rust-red

side of the Wastrel that Mansfield went with me. We

had known that we were shipping on a mean vessel, and

one shouldered out of more orderly chartings, because of

her unworthiness. Liners did not ply the tepid waters

for which we were bound : waters ridden by no commerce

save the peddling of copra and pearl shell and beche-de-

mer. Yet even the warning had not prepared me for

what I found, as I first stepped upon her unclean decks

and had my initial view of her more unclean crew.

Perhaps there are other corroded hulks shambling here

and there among the less frequented ports of the seven

seas as uninviting in appearance and as villainously

manned as was the Wastrel, but on this point I stand

unconvinced. A glance told us that her sea-worthiness

was questionable and that her over-burdening cargo

pressed her Plimsoll mark close to the water line. We

were to learn by degrees that her timbers were rotten,

her plates rust-eaten and her engines junk. Her officers

were outcasts from respectable seafaring, none too cordial

in their relations with admiralty courts. They had fallen

back on the hazardous command of such a vessel as this

36 THE PORTAL OF DBEAMS

not from choice, but necessity, precisely as other types of

unemployed and hopeless men fall back on vagrancy and

crime. Her crew was picked from the dregs of scattered

ports. They were Lascars, Kanakas, Chinese and non-

descripts from here and there; haled forth and signed

from dives where human garbage trickles down to the sea.

At first they interested me as new and roughened types

of men, yet as I say, I was more than grateful for the

shoulder touch of at least one being of my own sort.

From our arrival, none of them except the captain and

officers took the slightest pains to conceal that they

regarded us as unwelcome interlopers and even the

courtesy of the after-guard was shortlived enough. In

that desert of taciturnity Mansfield babbled like a brook

and overflowed with young sentimentality.

The first leg of our journey ended at Borneo, leaving

us as unacquainted with officers and seamen, save in the

surface details of personal appearance, as we had been

at Port Said. Now we were dropping Sandakan harbor

over the stern. Already the sprawling, hillside town,

framed in its mangrove swamps, was lost around the but-

tress of the harbor's sentinel rock. Ramparts of sand-

stone were burning with a ruddy glow in the sunset.

A sense of isolation settled on us. As we had nosed

our way outward Mansfield had been leaning silently on

the after rail. His eyes had dwelt lingeringly on the

I EMBAEK ON A FOOKS EBBAND 37

green gardens and white walks of the British Consulate

which sits upon its hill. Now we had seen the last of that

and of the bay's flotilla of matting-sailed junks. Off the

port bow were only beetling sandstone and the countless

gulls, flashing white as they tilted the snowy linings of

their wings into the sun. He talked for a time, in low

tones of the girl in Sussex as men will talk when they are

homesick, and then he rather shamefacedly produced from

somewhere and opened at random a much battered blank-

book, written in a woman's hand.

" I dare say," he hesitantly told me, " I have no moral

right to read this. It's quite personal, yet it's unsigned.

Invasion of privacy can't apply to anonymous persons,

you know." He paused for a minute and indolently

watched the screaming hordes of Sandakan birds as if

awaiting my agreement, but I said nothing.

" You see," he continued, " I've been living lately in a

cheap pension at Cairo and, before that, in beastly Soudan

inns, so when I drew a bit in advance I resolved to treat

myself to a day or two at Shepheards. You remember

how full the house was? They had to give me a small

room on the roof. It was really a sort of servant's room

in less crowded times, I fancy. A beggar of an Arab

used to pray on his rug in front of my door. . . .

In rummaging about I found this." He held up the

blank-book. " I looked for an address, meaning to post

38 THE POETAL OF DEEAMS

it to its owner but there was no address and only given

names — there's not a surname between these covers.

Some servant must have found it in a vacated room and

later left it in the one to which I had fallen heir. Seems

to have been some girl's desultory but intimate diary.

Just an entry now and then, with evidently long gaps

between. You see the first writing is immature, almost

childish — and the last is dated at Cairo."

I nodded my head, but said nothing. He appeared

deeply interested but his simple punctilio required the

reinforcement of my approval, before he could quite

clear the skirts of his conscience in the matter of having

sampled its contents.

"You see,'* he half -apologized, "my first glance was

disinterested, I was merely seeking to identify ownership.

But from just a few lines, read in that fashion, I saw that

it was — " his voice became serious, almost awed —

" well that it was rather wonderful. Some girl has been

putting her heart into words here — ** he tapped the blank-

book — " and she's written a genuine human document."

Again he paused, drumming on the rail with the fingers of

one hand.

" From a half-dozen bits of Chimbote pottery," he

reflected, " I can read a great deal of the habits and life

of the Incas. I can restore an extinct mammal from

some fragments of skeleton, but I find it jolly difficult to

I EMBAKK ON A FOOL'S ERRAND 39

und-erstand anything about a woman. If a fellow means

to marry he ought to try to understand. That's why Fd

like to have a dip into this. Do you think I might ? "

" Do you think," I countered, smiling, " that you

would have the right to read somebody's unsigned love-

letters?" A certain magazine editor had once wither-

ingly opined that I would never succeed in literature until

I acquired some insight into the feminine riddle. But

he had not pointed me to diaries. He had bluntly

advised me to fall in love with a few variant types.

Until a man had found blond or dark hairs on his

coat shoulder, said the editor, he could not hope to write

about heartbeats. If he had found various kinds, and

that often, he could write better.

Young Mansfield was giving my question a graver and

more literal consideration than it merited.

" I rather think," he said seriously, " that one might

read such letters. Unless the offense is against some

definite person there is no offense at all."

" Perhaps you are right," I admitted, with a listless

avoidance of argument, and in a moment more he had

opened the book at random and was reading aloud.

CHAPTER IV

SOME PASSAGES FROM A DIARY

MANSFIELD was right. The pages of this diary

struck the essentially human note of frank self-

avowal. They were as fragrant as May

orchards, their sweetness of personality made one think

of brave young dreams among dewy blossoms. But I

confessed to him the feeling that we were trespassers into

these secrets, and after that he either laid the book by alto-

gether or read it only when alone.

The Wastrel was cruising at her cripple's pace south-

east by east, through those hot waters which lie directly

above the equator. After some days we sloped across

the line, but still clung to the hideous swelter of the next

meridian. Our course lay among groups of lush islands

which simmered in steam and fever, and the merciless,

overhead sun beat upon us, as if focused through a

burning glass until the pitch oozed from the deck cracks,

and the sweat from our pores, and the self-control from

40

SOME PASSAGES PBOM A DIABY 41

our curdled tempers. Faces that had been sullen at

Sandakan grew malevolent and menacing at 150 degrees,

east, where, if I remember rightly, we crossed the equator.

The scowls of the men dwelt hatefully upon Captain

Coulter as he paced the bridge. From scraps of infor-

mation picked up here and there in fo'castle disparage-

ment, I pieced together a lurid abstract of his history. I

knew how wild and unsavory were the reputations of

many of the men of the eastern beaches. I had listened

to tales of lanai and bund, but even in such company

our skipper stood out as uniquely wicked.

The sheer and hypnotic force of his masterful will lay

over and silenced the ship. From the first, he dominated.

But if he had dominated at the latitude of 120 he domi-

neered at 150, and to this domineering he brought all those

extremes of tyranny which lie at the hand of a ship's

captain on the high seas. At times the sheer, undiluted

brutality of this control compelled my unwilling admira-

tion. Every pair of eyes that met his from the fo'castle,

were eyes of smoldering hatred and fear, and though he

assumed scornful unconsciousness of this attitude, he

knew that his security was no greater than that of the

lion-tamer, whose beasts have begun to go bad. He must

appear to invite attack, and upon its first intimation of

outbreak, he must punish, and punish memorably.

Captain Coulter was little above the average in physical

42 THE PORTAL OF DEEAMS

pattern and he walked with a sUght defect of gait, throw-

ing one foot out with an emphatic stamp. His face was

always clean-shaven, and it might have served a sculptor

for a type of the uncompromising Puritan, so hidden

were its brutalities and so strong its note of implacable

resoluteness.

Over a high and rather protrusive forehead, long hair

of iron gray was always swept back. Bushy and aggres-

sive brows shaded eyes singularly piercing and of the

same depth and coldness as polar ice. His nose was

large and straight, and his lips set tight and unyielding

like the jaws of a steel trap. The chin was square and

close-shaven. Our captain was a silent man, yet in his

own fashion bitterly passionate. Heffernan, the first

mate, was a tawdry courtier, who studiously considered

his chief in every matter, and maintained his position of

concord by ludicrous care to risk no disagreement. In

the stuffy cabin where three times a day we sweltered

over bad food Mansfield and I studied the attitudes of the

officers.

Coulter grimly amused himself over his eating by mak-

ing absurd statements for the sheer pleasure of seeing

his next in command, fall abjectly into agreement. The

second mate, however, was impenetrably silent. He was

without fear, but a life which had evidently brought him

down a steep declivity from a lost respectability, had

SOME PASSAGES FBOM A DIABY 43

taught him consideration for odds. If he did not con-

tradict the dogmatic utterances of his chief in table

conversation, he at least refused to agree.

Mansfield and I were convinced that if this prema-

turely gray fellow with the dissipated face, cut in a

patrician mould, could ever be brought to the point of

personal narrative, he would have a stirring story to tell.

We also knew that he would never tell it.

Once before the feud between after-watch and f o'castle

drove the officers into an alliance of self-defense. A

grave clash between the captain and the second mate

seemed inevitable. It was a night of intolerable heat, and

a sky spangled with stars hung over us low and smother-

ing. Lawrence, the second mate, was off watch, and

joined us, carrying a violin. Then under the weird

depression and melancholy lassitude which burdened us

all, he began to improvise. Mansfield and I listened,

spellbound. Under his touch the catgut gave off such

strains as could come only from the sheer genius of a

gifted musician who had suffered miserably. It was

almost as if he were giving without words the story which

his lips would never tell, and into the improvised music

crept infinite pathos and somber tragedy. No one could

have listened unmoved, but the manner in which Captain

Coulter was affected was startling.

He came over with an advent like that of a maniac.

44 THE PORTAL OF DBEAMS

The lame foot was pounding the deck with the stressful

stamp that was always his indication of rage. He halted

before us with fists clenched and his eyes glittering.

Upon Lawrence he vented an outpouring of blasphemous

and unquotable wrath.

" Throw that damned fiddle overboard," was the com-

mand with which he capped his fierce tirade. " Don't let

me hear its hell-tortured screeching on my ship again.''

For a moment Lawrence stood silent and cold in a

petrifaction of anger. Then he laid the instrument care-

fully on a hatch and stepped forward. Obviously it was

in his mind at that moment to kill the captain, but after a

pause he thought better of it. The odds against him

were too heavy.

"ril stow the violin in my box, sir," he said with a

voice so quiet it was almost gentle, " but so help me God,

if ever we meet after this voyage is ended, I mean to kill

you." Coulter laughed disdainfully and strode away, but

for ten minutes Lawrence sat silent, his breath coming

in deep gasps while he wrestled with the murder mad-

ness. We learned later that the captain was one of those

persons whom music frenzies, and from that time on we

did not even permit ourselves the consolation of whistling

a favorite air.

Of all the restless men in the fo'castle. Coulter most

keenly watched one John Hoak, a gigantic seaman from

SOME PASSAGES FBOM A DIABY 45

Liverpool, in whom he instinctively recognized a potential

ringleader of mutiny. One evening Hoak vindicated this

appraisement by defiantly and loudly pla)ang a music-hall

tune on an accordion. A strain of it reached, the bridge

and Coulter, who was on watch, ordered the offender for-

ward. After a violent and profane denunciation, under

which the giant writhed in silent fury. Coulter lashed out

to the sailor's mouth with his clenched fist and sent him

sprawling to the deck. But lest this conduct should

appear too irresolute, he added the punishment of

twenty- four hours in irons. A fellow seaman plucked up

the heroism to demand that the incident be entered on the

log for admiralty investigation and Coulter's only reply

was to send the insurgent into the inferno of the stoke

hold for an extra shift at the shovels. In the stokehold

the thermometer registered 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and

the white and brown torsos that strained under the

trembling dials were black with the sooty sweat of their

effort and red with the pitiless glare from the grates.

From these beginnings the cloud on the horizon of our

affairs steadily gathered and blackened until an ominous

pall of impending mutiny overhung us. Only an occa-

sional coral reef or atoll now broke the monotony of a

dead and oily sea. No shred of cloud relieved

the emptiness of a devitalized sky. Ma^isfield and

I went about in canvas shoes and pajamas. The

?^•..

46 THE POSTAL OP DEEAMS

ship was more disheveled than we, and its dis-

cipline more slovenly than its dress. The churlish

silence of the fo'castle was met by the braggart

autocracy of the officers. Conditions grew tenser and

thicker with each day, yet no specific rupture came to fire

the waiting explosion. Slowly it brewed and gathered

menace, while the air hung pulseless and heavy under its

shadow. Mansfield and I knew it needed only a lightning

flash to loose all the artillery of the thunders and set them

about their hell's fury. By tacit consent we did not often

talk of it, but we remained close together and placed our

revolvers, belts and sheath-knives where they could be

readily caught up. Under the silent horror of foreboding

our nerves became raw and our tempers, like those of the

others, short and raspy. On one sultry afternoon when

the. trade wind was dead, I came upon Mansfield sprawl-

ing in the shadow of a life-boat, diligently reading entries

f ro'm the unknown girl's diary, touching the incidents of

her sheltered and untroubled life. He glanced up shame-

«

f acedly, then began in exculpation :

" See here, you know you're quite wrong about the

guiltiness of reading this. I'm sure she wouldn't mind.

She's not that sort. Here we are menaced by the inferno

of a mutiny. We are no better than mice waiting the

pleasure of a cat, which means to crush them. . . . The

SOME PASSAGES FROM A DIABY 47

atmosphere will drive (is mad. This book is like a breeze

off the heather. ... I tell you it helps."

In abnormal times men entertain abnormal ideas and

warped notions. I sat cross-legged on the deck beside

him and stuffed tobacco into my pipe. I said nothing.

" It's all getting on my nerves. Tm losing my grip ! "

he admitted. " Last night I dreamed of a nasty row and

all day a bit of rhyme has been running through my

brain." He paused a moment, then quoted :

(( < »

i(

Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead

Or a yawning hole in a battered head,

And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.

'And there they lay while the soggy skies

Dreened all day long in upstaring eyes,

At murk sunset and at foul sunrise.*

f a

He broke off and laughed at himself unsteadily.

*' Get your mind off it," I commanded shortly. " Fetch

out the blank-book. Let's read about her debut party."

But the passage at which the book fell open dealt with

a time prior to debuts. At the head of the page was

pasted a newspaper clipping hinting at personalities but

giving no names.

" One of the most beautiful and popular members of

the younger set in the summer colony " had been capsized

while sailing in the harbor. The youth who accompanied

her had been seized with cramps and she had kept not

4S THE PORTAL OF DBBAMS

only herself but her helpless escort above water until the

tardy arrival of help. Beneath, in her own hand, was

scrawled :

" Did they expect me to drown him ? I had to stand

by, of course. What else could a fellow do? But I

spoiled a dress I look nice in. I'm sorry for that."

Appended to this was a postscript so badly written that

it was hard to decipher. I could guess that her cheeks

had colored as she wrote it.

"Maybe after all, I am a grandstander. I did get

awfully tired — ^and I pretended that he was looking on,

and was swimming out to help me."

" By Jove " snorted Mansfield, " she's a ripping good

sort. I wonder who she pretended was looking on."

" Turn back," I suggested. " It may tell."

But it was only after some searching that we found

him duly catalogued, and even then she gave him no name.

Yet in trailing him through the pages, we came to know

her quite well, and to render sincere allegiance. She was

not at all conventional. She was one of those rare dis-

coveries upon which the prospector in life comes only

when he strikes an El Dorado. She dared to think her

own thoughts and did not grow into the stereotyped

mold of imitation. We felt from the clean, instinctive

courage of her tone and view-point that if ill chance

had marooned her with us on this imperiled ship, she

>>,

•-N

SOME PASSAGES FEOM A DIABY 49

would bear herself more gallantly than we could hope

to do, and that she would tread these filthy decks with

no spots on the whiteness of her skirts.

In her early writings she had shown for something of

a tomboy and there were hints of elderly exhortation to

tread more primly the paths which were deemed

maidenly. Yet from these tattered scraps of life and

outlook, we could piece together some concept of her soul

fabric. This girl was woven of pure silk, but not of

flimsy silk; there were strength and softness — resolute-

ness and tenderness — sl warp and woof for the loom of

noble things — ^and charm. Often I felt as though I were

invading a temple in which I had no place as communi-

cant, and into whose fanes and outer areas I should wish

to come reverently, with the shoes of my grosser soul in

my hands. One night she had been sitting in the moon-

light on the beach, and the sea had talked to her. What

she wrote that night was pure poetry. I shall not try to

reproduce it from my faulty memory. My heavy mascu-

line hand would mar its gossamar beauty. One might as

well undertake to restore the iridescent subtleties of a

broken bubble. On this occasion she was thinking of the

mysterious man she had so quaintly idealized. Had the

lucky beggar, whoever he was, read those lines he must

have felt that, in the lists of life, there rested on him the

sacred obligation to bear a spotless shield and a true lance.

50 THE POBTAL OF DREAMS

She transcribed as one to whom the magic and delicate

nouances of life are revealed. Besides these passages there

were others sparkling with the merriment of spontane-

ous humor. Our writer was no Lady Dolorosa. She was

as many-sided and many-hued as the diamond whose

facets break light into color. She frankly admitted to

these pages, intended only for herself, that she was beau-

tiful, though she wished that her eyes were blue instead

of gray-brown, and that her type were different. Evi-

dently she had cut her teeth on compliment and fed from

childhood on that t3rpe of admiration which beauty

exacts. She seemed to be a little hungry for tributes of

a different and deeper sort. In her society days, as in the

more youthful period, we found frequent references to

the unnamed man who still held his undeserved and para-

mount place as an idealized personality ; a human touch-

stone by which she tested the intrinsicness of other men —

always to the detriment of those on trial.

CHAPTER V

PREMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES

AT last, running back to the start, we tracked him

down and with his discovery came disappoint-

ment? I had realized that she had been dressing

a mere lay-figure in garments of idealized manhood and

endowing an unknown with a panoply of the chivalric

to which he could probably lay no rightful claim. Still it

was disconcerting to realize that he had, in the flesh, con-

tributed absolutely nothing to the picture. She had

simply devised from the whole cloth of imagination a col-

laborative sum of Galahad the Pure and Richard the Lion-

Hearted. She had seen him only once in later years —

from the sidelines of a Yale-Harvard football game. He

was playing with the crimson and she was at the impres-

sionable age. There was the whole and meager founda-

tion for his apotheosis. She did not state the year, but

she gave the score, and by that I identified the occasion.

"I devoutly pray," I confided to young Mansfield,

51

52 THE POSTAL OP DBEAMS

" that she never meets him. She has fed herself on

dreams. I hope she doesn't wake up."

Mansfield promptly took up the unknown hero's

defense. He invariably held a brief for the idealist.

"Why do you assume that he's a bounder?" he de-

manded almost resentfully. " He may be all she thinks."

" I don't assume anything," I retorted, " but I happened

to play on that team myself and I am compelled to admit,

though with chagrin, that we had among us no knights

from Arthur's Round Table. Warriors of ferocity we

had ; young gentlemen who played the game to the lasting

glory of John Harvard; but this letter-perfect type of

chivalry, valor and gentleness — ^well, I'm afraid he failed

to make the team."

You remember the story of Bruce and the spider ? In

his ermine, surrounded by his stalwart barons, Robert

would probably have learned no lesson from the weaving

of filmy webs. Alone and in peril, it taught him how to

conquer. To us, alone and in peril, this diary assumed

an epochal importance entirely out of kelter with its

face value.

Of course, there were many topics which we might

have discussed to divert our minds from morbidly watch-

ing the cloud of impending mutiny spread and grow inky.

But the cloud was present and human, and the diary was

present and human, and we were present and human.

PBEMONITIONS BECOME EEALITIES 63

Whether or not we were creatures of atrophied brains and

distorted vision is an academic question. The fact re-

mains. For us there was genuine relief in turning from

the miasma of brooding doom which overhung the Was-

trel to the spiced fragrance of this self-revealed person-

ality. It was a clean breeze into our asphyxiation. It

was a momentary excursion out of a noisome dungeon

into an old-fashioned garden, where roses nod and

illusions bloom.

One steaming night when darkness had stopped our

reading, the two of us were lying flat on our backs —

and silent — in the enveloping shadows of the forward

deck near the capstan. A group of men who were

off watch had gathered near us, seeking the gratefulness

of the uninterrupted breeze. With no suspicion of

our proximity, they fell into a low-pitched but violent

conference.

Hoak held the floor as spokesman, and his deep whis-

pering voice was raw with bitterness.

"We hain't no bloomin' galley-slyves," he growled.

" Blyme me, I say, let's make a hend o' the 'ole bloody

mess once and for hall."

" How ? " came the natural question from one of the

more conservative.

"'Ow?" retorted the ringleader, "Wat's the odds

'ow ? Any way will do. Rush the cabin. There's a stand

54 T^E PORTAL OP DBEAMS

of rifles at the for'ard bulkhead. Kill hoff the bloody

lot of hofficers. Navigate the bloomin' ole 'o6ker back

ourselves and report whatever damn thing we like."

" How about these passengers ? They'd snitch," sug-

gested the same questioner.

"Aw no," sarcastically assured Hoak, "they won't

snitch. They won't 'ave no more chamce to snitch than

Coulter 'isself — damn 'im."

For a moment I felt a steaming throb in my throat.

Then came a new sensation, something like relief that

at last the clear outline was looming through the fog of

maddening uncertainty. It did not seem to matter so

much what the certainty was, so long as it brought an end

to the suspense. There was some discussion in hushed

voices. Caution had its advocates who opposed so des-

perate a course.

" Think it hover till to-morrow," said Hoak at last.

" But hif you don't stand by me Hi'm going to cut loose

a boat and tyke to the water. To 'ell with the Wastrel

an' her rotter of a captain."

There was a sudden hush followed by a sort of low

chorused groan. Around the superstructure of the for-

ward cabin appeared Captain Coulter, his first officer and

the chief engineer. For an instant they stood silently,

flashing electric torches into the terrified faces of the con-

PREMONITIONS BECOME EEALITIES 56

spirators who, like schoolboys caught denouncing their

teacher, shuffled their feet and remained speechless.

Hoak, alone, took a step forward. His face was work-

ing spasmodically in the bulFs-eye glare which exag-

gerated the high lights on his snarling teeth and the black

shadows of his scowl. He wavered for an instant be-

tween his personal dread of Coulter, and the knowledge

that, with so much already known, caution was futile.

While he hesitated the other men tacitly grouped them-

selves together at his back and stood sullenly eying the

officers. Coulter and his two subordinates slipped their

hands into their pockets. It was a tense moment and a

noiseless one. When the captain broke silence his voice

was cool, almost casual.

" Mr. Kirkenhead," he ordered the chief engineer,

"take this man Hoak to the stokehold, and keep him

there until we reach port. Give him double shift and if

he makes a false move — ^kill him."

The giant made a passionate start forward, and found

himself looking down the barrel of Coulter's magazine

pistol. From the glint of the raised weapon he bounced

backward against the rail, where he leaned incoherently

snarling like a cornered dog.

"Hi didn't sign as no blymed stoker," he growled at

last. " Hi won't go ''

"The stokehold or hell, it's up to you." Coulter's

66 THE POETAL OF DREAMS

reply came in an absolute monotony of voice strangely at

variance with the passionate stress of their labored

breathing. Back of the tableau gleamed the phospho-

rescence of the placid sea. " There's thirty seconds to

decide. Mr. Kirkenhead, look at your watch."

For a seeming eternity there was waiting and bated

breath. We could hear the muffled throb of the engines,

and the churning of the screws.

Then Kirkenhead announced, " Twenty seconds, sir."

A moment more and Hoak turned, dropping his head in

utter ddjection and shambled aft toward the engine-room

companionway.

" Mr. Heffernan," came the captain's staccato orders,

" instruct the ship's carpenter to scuttle all the boats,

except the port and starboard ones on the bridge. If we

are to have any little disagreements on board we will

settle them among ourselves. No one will leave in my

boats except by my orders. And " — ^he wheeled on the

men — " whenever you vermin feel inclined for trouble —

start it."

So that incident passed and went to swell the cumu-

lative poison of festering hatred. We knew that the erup-

tion had merely been delayed ; that it must inevitably come

and that now its coming would be soon. Between for-

ward and aft war had been declared. Later that same

evening I made bold to remonstrate with Captain Coulter

f

PBEMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES 67

as to the order concerning the boats. The conversation

took place on the bridge — and it was brief.

" Mr. Mansfield and myself," I said, " are passengers

who have paid full fares and we are entitled to full rights.

We demand protection. This hulk is rotten and unsea-

worthy. When you scuttle her boats you are throwing

the parachute out of a leaky balloon."

Coulter looked me over for a moment and replied with

absolute composure.

" Mr. Deprayne, rights are good things — when you can

enforce them. Consulates and courts of admiralty are a

long way off. The intervening water is quite deep. If

you don't like the Wastrel, leave it. Fm sorry I can't

spare you a boat to leave in."

Mansfield and myself went that night in the miserable

cabin which we shared oppressed with the conviction that

the breaking point was at hand. Mansfield had suddenly

sloughed off his boyishness and become unexpectedly

self-contained, giving the impression of capability. The

prospect of action had changed him. Once more he began

to quote his ghastly verses, but now without shuddering,

almost cheerfully.

(( t f

Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead.

Or a yawning hole in a battered head —

And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.' "

f

68 THE POBTAL OF DEEAMS

Then he remembered that sometimes men survive

strange adventures, and he wrote a letter to the girl in

Sussex which he asked me to deliver in the event that I,

and not he, should prove such a survivor. I fastened it

with a pin into the pocket of my pa jama jacket. For

hours after we had turned into our berths each of us

knew that the other was not sleeping. We heard the crazy-

droning of the sick engine ; the wash of the quiet water ;

the straining of the timbers.

We had not, on turning in, followed our usual custom

of blowing out the vile-smelling oil lamp which gave our

stateroom its only illumination. Neither of us had spoken

of it, but we left the light burning probably in tacit pre-

sentiment that this was to be a night of some portentous

development, and one not to be spent in darkness. Mans-

field pretended to sleep in the upper berth, but after vainly

courting dreams for an hour, I slipped out of mine and

crept to the fresher air of the deck.

When I returned to the cabin, still obsessed with rest-

less wakefulness, I found the diary, and throwing myself

into my bimk, spent still another hour in its perusal. I

had long ago laid by my early scruples and now I found

in its pages a quality strangely soothing.

Singularly enough, in all our fragmentary reading be-

tween these limp covers, we had never pursued any con-

secutive course and though certain passages had been

t

PBBMONITIONS BECOME EEALITIES 69

re-read until I fancy both of us could have quoted them

from memory, there still remained others upon which we

had not touched. For me in my present condition of

jumping nerves they offered fields of quieting exploration.

Now, for a time, I skipped about, reading here and there

passages in no way connected. There was a highly

humorous description of a certain- Frenchman who had

insistently shadowed the course of the girl's travels about

the Continent, inflicting on her an homage which it seemed

to me must have been more offensive than actual rude-

ness. She did not give his name, but her description of his

appearance and eccentricities was so droll and keenly

appreciative that even my strained lips curled into a grin

of enjoyment in the perusal. He had a coronet to bestow

and she likened his attitude and bearing to that of a

crested cock robin. " To-night," she wrote, " monsieur

le comte proposed for my hand — ^to Mother. I was in

the next room and heard it. To hear one's self proposed

to by proxy is quite the most amusing thing that can hap-

pen. When he asks me I shall inform him that I've

already given my heart to another man — a man who

hasn't asked me and may never ask me. Yes, he will,

too. He mtist. It is in my horoscope. *The Heavens

rolled between us at the end, we shall but vow the faster

for the stars.' This little Frenchman needs an heiress

and it might as well be me — ^but it won't be.'*

60 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

This was the first 'intimation that the unknown author

of these pages was possessed of wealth as well as beauty.

In a vague way I found myself regretting the discovery,

although I could not say why. Through these pages

breathed the distinction of a piquant and subtly charming

personality — ^the fact that she had fortune as well, could

add nothing. But as I read the paragraphs devoted to her

odyssey across the continent and around the borders of

the Mediterranean, shadowed always by this persistent

suitor with his picayune title, it struck me that her itiner-

ary and the order of her going tallied with my own wan-

derings. Yet that might have no significance, since the

routes of European touring are distressingly devoid of

variation.

The finger of destiny had seemed to concern itself in

the fashion in which I had always just missed the lady of

Naples, Monte Carlo and Cairo by a margin of seconds

and of untoward circumstance. If my Fate were playing

with me in this manner it appeared consistent with its

policy of tantalizing evasiveness that she and the writer

might be the same. When I had given up the pursuit and

come away to this remote quarter of the globe it might

still be decreed that I should not escape her influence.

Having skipped about for a time in such haphazard

fashion, the idea seized me of going back to the beginning

and reading from the commencement down to the present.

PEEMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES 61

In the first pages of course I encountered a certain

immature crudity of composition and yet, in spite of these

things, there was much here of the charming fascination

of childhood and the beginnings of character. If the later

sections were as fragrant as flowers, the earlier passages

were like the annals of rosebuds and blossoms. I believe

I have already mentioned that in her childhood she had

been something of a tomboy. Her interests had seemed

to include many things which might quite naturally have

belonged to the enthusiasms of her brothers. Also one

read between the lines that her charming sense of humor

and self-containment had developed upon overcome ten-

dencies toward passionate temper. A certain passage

had to do with her experience at a girls' boarding-school

when she was probably not more than ten or eleven. One

of the teachers — an tmimpeachable lady of great learning

and little human perception, it would seem — ^had aroused

her intense disfavor. There were various references to

this feud and also, even so early, to the mysterious person

vaguely alluded to as He. The principal of the school har-

bored a bull terrier of rather uncertain temper. This

brute, save for total fealty to his mistress and to the writer

of the diary, seemed to hold in his nature only distrust

for humanity, and among those specially singled out for

his antipathy was the aforementioned teacher.

One day the writer and the dog had met the preceptress

62 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

on the avenue. The girl had set down with great glee,

the terror with which her enemy had appealed to her for

protection against the onslaughts of the dreaded

Cerberus.

" I told her that I would hold him," naively related the

entry, in a sprawling, childish hand, '* and I did hold him

until she was almost at the gate — ^but when I let him go I

gave him a little soimd advice and he took it."

There followed a vivid description, done into mirth-

provoking humor, of the somewhat strenuous events of

the next twenty or thirty seconds. A section of black

alpaca skirt remained with the dog as a memento.

" Of course," commented the writer, " I couldn't laugh

freely until I got back to the house, but I am laughing

now. She looked so absurd! As I came in I saw Him

ride by on horseback. I'm afraid he wouldn't approve."

The description of that teacher had reminded me

strongly of my good Aunt Sarah. The explanation that

the dog had been the child's friend merely because she

had refused to be afraid, was so convincingly put that I

found myself in guilty accord with her point of view. In

a dozen ways, despite this single instance, she showed that

her pity and tenderness were very genuine and sensitive,

and easily reached by any true appeal.

This going back to the beginning enabled me to meet,

on the occasion of his first appearance, the man who had

PEEMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES 63

exercised such a strong influence upon her subsequent

life. In this I was pleased, for it showed that however

imaginary may have been his aura of ideality, none the

less it had basis in something more substantial than a

glimpse of a football game. There was, too, an element

touching and almost pathetic in this earliest self-con-

fessed love. He was when she first saw him, eighteen or

nineteen, and she half as old. This disparity in age had

put a chasm between them which it did not occur to her

that the years would bridge. He was just at that self-

sufficient age, when he regarded himself as very much a

man and short-skirted, pigtailed females as very far

beneath his mature devotion. Yet, in his patronizing

way, he had been decently kind and had jeopardized his

standing as a man-of-the-world by impersonal courtesies

to a little girl. His influence had accordingly grown

strong and permanent, though he had not known of its

existence. She had enviously watched him with girls a

few years her senior and had admired his frank, sports-

manlike attitude and freedom from callow freshness — ^and

his courage. She said quite frankly in the diary that

she did not suppose he had remembered her at all.

And so, as I lay sleepless and oppressed by presenti-

ment of disaster, I read from childhood to young woman-

hood her chronicle of ideals until, under the soothing of

the document, I at last fell into a doze.

CHAPTER VI

THE END OF THE " WASTREL '^

WHEN sleep came to me it was fitful with a thou-

sand nightmare impossibilities, I saw, in my

dreams, the face of the stale sea and sky trans-

lated into a broad human visage paralyzed and smiling

unendingly in that hideous grin which stamps the tortured

teeth of the lockjaw victim. Then the monster of the

dream broke out of its fixity and with a shriek of hurri^

canes aimed a terrific blow at the prow of the WastreL

The ship shivered, trembled and collapsed. With a stifled

gasp I woke. Our sickly lantern was guttering in a

sooty stream of smoke. Young Mansfield stood in the

center of the cabin buckling his pistol belt. From some-

where came a sound of rushing water and a medley of

shouts and oaths and pistol shots. A dingy rat scuttled

wildly out from between my feet and whisked away

through the crack under our bolted door. While I stood

there stupidly inactive, hardly as yet untangling fact and

dream, Mansfield handed me my belt and revolver.

64

THE END OF THE « WASTREL '' 65

'* Slip on your shoes and fetch along a life-belt," he

commanded steadily. "It has come."

We jerked open the door and groped along the alley-

way in darkness, and, as we giiiJed our steps with hands

fumbling the walls, water washed about our ankles. The

lights there had gone out. With one guiding hand on

the wall and one on Mansfield's shoulder, I made my

labored way toward the deck ladder.

Without a word and as of right, the young Englishman,

who had heretofore lacked initiative, now assumed com-

mand of our affairs. We needed no explanation to tell

us that the pandemonium which reigned above was not

merely the result of mutiny. A hundred patent things

testified that this shambling tramp of the seas had

received a mortal hurt. The stench of bilge sickened us

as the rising water in her hull forced up the heavy and

fetid gases. The walls themselves were aslant under a

dizzy careening to starboard.

She must have steamed full front on to a submerged

reef and destruction. It was palpably no matter of an

opening seam. She had been torn and ripped in her

vitals. She was dying fast and in inanimate agony. In

the rickety engine-room something had burst loose under

the strain. Now as she sank and reeled there came a

hissing of steam; a gasping, coughing, hammering con-

66 THE POETAL OF DREAMS

vulsion of pistons, rods and driving shafts, suddenly

turned into a junk heap running amuck.

It is questionable whether there would have been time

to lower away boats had the most perfect discipline and

heroism prevailed. There was no discipline. There

were no available boats, except the two hanging from the

bridge davits, and about them, as we stumbled out on

the decks, raged a fierce battle of extermination, as men,

relapsed to brutes, fought for survival.

I have since that night often and vainly attempted to

go back over that holocaust and arrange its details in

some sort of chronology. I saw such ferocity and con-

fusion, turning the deck into a shambles in an incon-

ceivably short space, that even now I cannot say in what

sequence these things happened. I have a jumbled

picture in which certain unimportant details stand out

distinctly while great things are vague. I can still see,

in steel-black relief, the silhouetted superstructure, fun-

nels and stanchions ; the indigo shadows and ghostly spots

of white under a low-swinging half-moon and large softly-

glowing stars. The sky was clear and smiling, in the

risor sardonicus of my dream.

I have sometimes felt that all the difference between

the courageous and craven lies in the chance of the

instant with which the numbers fall on the dice of life.

To-day's coward may be to-morrow's hero. For an

THE END OF THE "WASTEEL'^ 67

instant, with an unspeakable babel in my ears and a pic-

ture of human battle in my eyes, I knew only the chaotic

confusion that comes of panic. Then I caught a glimpse

of one detail and all physical fear fell away from me. I

found myself conscious only of contempt for the strug-

gling, clawing terror of these men who were as reasonless

and ineffective as stampeding cattle. The detail which

steadied me like a cold shower was the calmness of yoimg

Mansfield as he waited at my side, his face as imperson-

ally puzzled as though he were studying in some museum

cabinet a new and strange specimen of anthropological

interest.

We both stood in the shadow of the forward superstruc-

ture as yet unseen. All the ferocity of final crisis swirled

and eddied about the bridge upon which we looked as men

in orchestra chairs might look across the footlights on a

stage set for melodrama. Apparently the crew had

already discovered to its own despair that Coulter's

inhuman orders for scuttling the boats had been carried

out, and that of all the emergency craft carried by the

Wastrel, only those ridiculously insufficient ones hanging

by the port and starboard lights of the bridge offered a

chance of escape. At all events, the other boats hung

neglected and unmanned. That the whole question was

one of minutes was an unescapable conclusion. One

could almost feel the settling of the crazy, ruptured hull

68 THE PORTAL OF DEEAMS

as the moments passed and each time I turned my head ,

to glance back with a fascinated impulse at the smoke-

stack I could see that its line tilted further from the ver-

tical.

HefFeman was in charge of the starboard boat, already

beginning to run down its lines, and over that on the

port side, Coulter himself held command.

It seemed that when the moment of final issue came,

a few of the foremast men had preferred entrusting

their chances to obeying the captain, whose effectiveness

had been proven, to casting their lots with their mates.

These were busy at the tackle. On the deck level howled

and fought the mutineers. Already corpses were clutter-

ing the space at the foot of the steep ladder that gave — •

and denied — ^access to the bridge. Probably the revolver

shots we had heard as we groped our way from our cabin

had been the chief officer's terse response to the first mad

rush for that stairway. Now as he awaited the lowering

away. Coulter stood above, looking down on the sicken-

ing confusion with a grim expression which was almost

amusement. The fighting went on below where the

frantic, terror-stricken fellows swarmed and grappled

and swayed and disabled each other in the effort to gain

the ladder. But when someone rose out of the mael-

strom and struggled upward it was only to be knocked

back by the ax, upon which, in the brief intervals

THE END OF THE " WASTREL '' 69

between assaults, Coulter leaned contemplating the battle-

royal. The revolver he had put back in his pocket. It

was not needed, and he was conserving its effectiveness

for another moment.

In telling it, the picture seems clear enough, but in the

seeing, it was a thing of horrible and tangled details,

enacted as swiftly as a moving-picture film run too

rapidly on its reel.

There were shouts and quick staccato orders piercing

the blending of terrorized voices — an oath snapped out —

a shriek — ^a struggling mass — a desperate run up the

ladder — hands straining aloft to pull down the climber

and clear the way — a swift blow from above, a thud on

the deck below — ^a sickening vision of slaughter. Over

it all pounded the hammering racket from the dis-

organized engines. Soon came the stench of smoke and

out of one of the after hatches mounted a thin tongue of

orange flame, snapping and sputtering vengefully for a

moment, then leaping up with a suddenly augmented

roar. The twin elements of destruction, water and fire,

were vying in the work of annihilation.

I turned my head for an instant to look back at the new

menace, and clutched Mansfield's arm. Aloof with

folded arms against the rail, making no effort to partic-

ipate in the riot, stood young Lawrence. The fast-

spreading flames lit up his face. His attitude and expres-

70 THE POETAL OF DBEAMS

sion were those of quiet disgust. His lips were set in

scorn for the superlative excitement of his fellows. He

was the stoic awaiting the end, with a smile of welcome

for the acid test which held, for him, no fear. It was

as though the rising rim of water brought a promise of

grateful rest. He saw ahead nothing except release from

all the wild turmoil and misery which had spoken itself

without words that evening when Coulter had silenced

the improvisation of his violin.

But if the end was a thing of quiet philosophy to Law-

rence, it was not so to others. The lurid flare, which

turned the impassioned picture in a moment from a sil-

houette of blacks and cobalts to a crimson hell, seemed to

inflame to greater madness men already mad. There

was a rush for the rails. We saw figures leaping into

the sea. There had been some hitch on the bridge, due

no doubt to the miserable condition of everything aboard

the disheveled tramp. The boats were not yet launched,

but now the men were embarking. Coulter himself was

the last to leap for the swinging boat, and a moment

before he did so Hoak appeared. He had miraculously

made his way alive out of the engine-room's inferno, and

his coming was that of a maniac. His huge body, bare

to the waist, sweat-streaked and soot-blackened and fire-

blistered, was also dark with blood. His voice was raised

in demented laughter and every vestige of reason had

THE END OP THE " WASTREL '' 71

deserted eyes that were now agleam only with homicidal

mania. From the companionway to the bridge, his

course was as swift and sure as a homeing pigeon's. He

brandished the shovel with which he had been shame-

fully forced to feed the maws of the furnaces. The

struggling men fell back before his onslaught. But

Hoak had no care for self-preservation. His sole mission

was reprisal.

The fight about the ladder's foot had waned. With a

leap that carried him half-way up and an agility that

knew no thwarting the madman made the upper level.

The tyrannical despot of the vessel, standing poised for

his swing to the boat raised the pistol which had already

halted other mad rushes during the last sanguinary min-

utes. At its bark Hoak staggered to his knees, but was

up again and charging forward with the impetus of a

wounded rhinoceros. He had one deed to do before

he died and would not be denied. The flying shovel

narrowly missed the captain's head as he jumped for the

boat, but the seaman with his lips parted over the snarl

of clenched teeth fought his painful way to the davit,

gripping a knife which he had brought in his belt. His

eyes glowed with the strange light that madness lends

and his muscles were tensed in the brief exaggerated

strength of a supreme effort. He hurled himself to the

out-swung support and seizing the stern line began hack-

72 THE POBTAL OP DBEAMS

ing at its tarred tautness as he bellowed ghastly laughter

and blasphemies. Coulter from his place below sent two

more bullets into the great hulk of flesh that hung tena-

ciously and menacingly above him, but, as the second

spat out, the rope, none too good at best, parted and the

boat, held only by its bow line, swung down with a mighty

snap, spilling its occupants into the sea like apples tossed

from an overturned plate. We had a momentary glimpse

of the captain clinging to the gunwale, his legs lashing out

flail-like. Then his hold loosened and he fell with a

splash into the phosphorus water where the sharks were

already gathering. And at the same moment, his mission

performed, Hoak slowly slid around the curving davit

and dropped limply after him.

Young Mansfield's voice came vaguely to my ear.

"TheyVe overlooked the life-raft," he said. "Let's

have a try at that. There's not much time now."

The starboard scuppers were letting in sea water and

the flames were creeping close, as we turned together,

holding to the shadows of the superstructure, and ran

forward.

We were tearing our fingers raw over stiffened knots

when a rush of feet interrupted us. The next instant I

saw my companion lashing out with the butt of his pistol,

and surrounded by a quartette of assailants. In the

moonlight he loomed gigantic and heroic of proportion.

THE END OF THE " WASTREL '' 73

I, too, was surrounded and conscious only of a wild new

elation and battle-lust, as I fought.

Suddenly there came a terrific shock, preceded by a

wildly screaming hiss in the bowels of the Wastrel's hull.

The torn shell quivered in an insensate death-rattle, and

under a detonation at once hollow and loud a mass of

timbers shot upward amidships. The boilers had let go

and we hung wavering for the final plunge, yet it did not

come at once. Then I suppose I was struck by falling

debris. With a dizzy sense of stars dancing as law-

lessly as rocket sparks and dying as quickly into black-

ness, I lost all hold on consciousness.

CHAPTER VII

IN STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES.

PONGEE pajamas and a revolver belt constitute a

light equipment even for the tropics, but that was

the least pressing of my concerns.

How long I had remained insensible I can only esti-

mate, but often there come back to me, from that time,

wraith-like shreds of memory in which I seem to have

drifted down the centuries. I recall for one thing a

stunned and throbbing aching back of the eyes and a half-

conscious gazing up at rocking stars.

At all events, when rational understanding returned

to me, the sun was glaring insufferably from a scorched

zenith. I began to patch together fragments of memory

and to call loudly for Mansfield. There was no answer,

and when I attempted to rise I found myself roughly

lashed to the life-raft by several turns of a line so tightly

drawn that the sensory nerves in my legs gave no

response to my movements.

My support was rocking in its lodgment between two

74

IN STBANGE CIBCUMSTANCES 76

weed-trailing boulders, stained like verdigris and licked

smooth by the lapping of the sea. Off to my front

stretched waters, so quiet that they seemed almost tide-

less, though at a distance I could hear the running of surf.

To look behind involved a painful twisting of my neck,

but I made the effort, and was rewarded with the sight of

land. A quarter of a mile away smooth reaches of white

sand met the water in a graciously inviting beach. Be-

yond it and mounting upward from palm fringe to snow-

cap rose the very respectable proportions of a volcanic

island. The coral rocks which had caught my raft were

outposts of many others that went trooping shoreward,

breaking, here and there, the surface of jade-green shal-

lows.

From the deep turquoise of the outer sea to the white

rim of the sands ran a gamut of colorful beauty. The

mountain, as symmetrically coned as Fuji-yama, stood

over it all in grave dominance. Off to the left sponge-

like cliffs broke steeply upward from the level of the

beach and about their clefts circled endless flights of gulls.

There I knew the rising tide would thunder and break

itself to pieces in a thousand plumes of spray.

But how had I reached this place and what had become

of Mansfield ? It must have been he who had lashed me

to the raft. From no one else on the Wastrel could I

have expected better treatment than " a cutlass swipe or

76 THE POBTAL OF DBEAMS

an ounce of lead." Palpably, he had emerged from the

battle victor, and, save for myself, sole survivor. I

conjectured that when he had floated the raft from the

partly submerged deck, he had found the spark of life

still lurking in my pulses and had made me fast upon its

timbers. Perhaps an over-trust in his ability to remain

afloat had made him less careful of himself. Possibly

he had lost consciousness as we drifted and had been

washed over-side, to fall prey to the prowling sharks. I

could not hope to know what his end had been, but I

wished that I might have shared it with him.

I fumbled at the soaked knots of my rope with fingers

that had grown numb. When, at last, I was free and had

to some extent restored the circulation in my stagnant

veins, I began the task of freeing my oarless craft from

its wedged position so that the insetting tide might carry

me to the shore.

In the pocket of my pajama jacket, soaked with salt

water and almost reduced to a pulp, I found the letter

which I stood charged to deliver to the girl in Sussex. I

laughed. I knew that I was not in reality the solitary

survivor of the Wastrel, I was merely the latest survivor.

I was to die more slowly than my fellows. This sun, at

the end of my lingering, would beat down on my bones,

whitened, disjointed and perhaps vulture-plucked. The

revolver in my belt was already clouding into red rust

IN STBANGE CIRCUMSTANCES 77

under the washing of the night's salt water. I experi-

mentally turned the cylinder and found that the corrosion

had not yet attacked the mechanism. One cartridge

could cheat my sentence of slow death, yet I did not fire

the shot.

Life had heretofore been a thing I would have willingly

surrendered. Now, I found myself standing precariously

on the narrow and very slippery edge of existence, and

with Death advancing on me I no longer wished to die.

The very odds against me brought a dogged desire to

cling until my feet should slip and my fingers could no

longer hold their life-grip. Meantime I should probably

go mad, but that lay hereafter. At present I had only

to wait for the tide. Since I could not hurry the ocean

pulse, I must lie there thinking.

From the sea I could look for rescue only by a miracle.

What had been Coulter's course or destination he had not

confided, but I knew that we had for days been in imper-

fectly charted waters where our screws had perhaps

kicked up a virgin wake. We had passed atolls marked,

on the chart, P. D. and even E. D. (" position doubtful "

and " existence doubtful "), and to hope that some other

wanderer might shortly follow would be taxing coinci-

dence too far.

Only God knew what type of human, animal and

reptilian life the island held. I could view it across the

78 THE POETAL OF DREAMS

«

accursedly beautiful waterway and speculate upon its

nature, but I could beat up no confidence in its treatment

of me. Its aspect would have been magnificent had its

lush greenery not wrapped and softened every command-

ing crag and angle, but it was a loveliness which suggested

treacherous menace ; the deceptive beauty of the panther

or of the soft-gliding snake that charms its prey to death.

Isolation here would sap my mental essence and

atrophy my brain, unless some device could be found by

which I could side-focus and divert my trend of thought.

Even had the young girl's diary remained to me, I might

by it have kept myself reminded of life in those civilized

spots which I could hardly hope to revisit ; and so I might

die sane. A single book would have helped. I had been

credited with a sense of the ludicrous so whimsical as to

be almost irresponsible. If now I could invoke that

facetious quality to my salvation I might hope to be

regarded as a consistent humorist.

At length I saw that the tide was setting in, carrying

my raft with it, and realized that I was hungry. When I

had once more under my feet the feel of solid earth, the

sun was hanging near the snow-capped crater of the

volcano. I left for to-morrow all problems of explora-

tion, and stripping to the skin, ran up and down the soft

sand of the beach until the blood was once more pulsing

regularly through my naked body. Then on hands and

IN STEANGE CIRCUMSTANCES 79

knees I pursued and devoured numbers of the unpalatable

crabs that scuttled to hiding under slimy tangles of sea

weed. My throat was hot and sticky with the parch of

thirst, but as night fell the jungle began to loom darkly,

a forbidding hinterland, and no fresh water came down

to my beach.

The melting snow was a guarantee of springs and a

man can endure three days without drinking if he must.

I stretched myself between two large rocks just upward

of the high-tide line, cursing stout Cortez and all those

perniciously active souls who insisted on discovering the

Pacific Ocean.

Sleep did not at once come to my relief. I saw the

stars, close and lustrous, parade across the night, and

instead of planning while I lay awake practical things for

the morrowj as a good woodsman might have done, I was

thinking futilely of the psychological features of my

predicament. Possibly the doctor's prediction of insanity

had lain dormant in some brain cell from which it was

now emerging to frighten me. I feared less for the hunger

of my body than for the impossibility of feeding my mind.

It occurred to me that keeping a record of my emotions

would at once serve to fight back atrophy and leave an

interesting record for those who might, but almost cer-

tainly would not, come in after days to the island. Then

I recalled that in my penless and paperless plight I was

80 THE POSTAL OP DBEAMS

as far from the possibility of writing as from the power

to ring for a taxicab and drive home.

Yet the idea of a diary fascinated me. I wished to

write in frankness what it felt like to die at the foot of

an undiscovered volcano. There came to my mind an

example I wished to emulate. I had come upon a

report made public by the Naval Department of Japan in

which was quoted a letter written by Lieutenant Sakuma,

from the bottom of Hiroshima Bay, where his submarine

had struck and failed to rise again.

Most of his crew lay dead in the sunken vessel, and he

himself was slowly and painfully succumbing to strangu-

lation. He devoted to a note of apology addressed to his

Emperor those hours spent in dying, and expressed the

hope that his message might, in future, be of value in the

avoidance of similar fatalities. He praised the gallantry

of his subordinates.

The letter, read in the Mikado's palace a week later,

when the 'submarine had been raised with its dead, was

in the stoic style of the race and severely official. It

culminated in a broken sentence.

" It is now 12 : 30 p. m. My breathing is so difficult

and painful — I thought I could blow out gasoline but I

am intoxicated with it — Captain Nakano — ^it is now 12 140

P. M.— I "

There it ended. It seemed to me that if I could busy

IN STRANGE CIBCITMSTANCES 81

myself in faint duplicate, with so hiunan a record of

approaching the ferry, I could be in a measure consoled.

Then gazing at the Southern Cross, before sleep brought

respite, I found myself thinking once more of the elusive

lady who had so often escaped my inquisitive glance and

whose face I should now never see.

CHAPTER VIII

NATURE INDULGES IN SATIRE

THOUGH I am not giving authorship to this nar-

rative with a view to its general perusal, I am

determined so to write it that if other eyes do

chance upon it they may read the true records of a man's

emotions under those circumstances.

I shall never be able to coax myself into any illusion

of heroism in my adventures and I shall set down my

most abject terrors in equal and impartial degree with

the few occasions in which the instinct of self-preserva-

tion enabled me to rise to the need and bluff magnifi-

cently.

The case of the submarine commander of Nippon was

different. He wished to leave behind him such a mes-

sage as an Emperor might read, and with exalted devotion

to his object, he left it. Still, had some miracle brought

his vessel to the surface before the end, who knows but

that, in the confessional of his own memory, he might

82

NATURE INDULGES IN SATIRE 83

have acknowledged a very delirium of terror? Who

knows but that between the period of one unflinching

paragraph and the capital of the next, there may have

been intervals of wallowing in the trough of physical

despair ?

At least with me there were many fears. The night

went by a road of nightmare and thirst which led to no

haven of rest. I slept fitfully and in terror, and awoke

at its end to a feeling of exhaustion. For a while I

dreaded to rise and face the possibilities of a new day.

It was only the burning torture of thirst that finally out-

weighed panic and drove me in search of water. I held

timidly to the shore, distrusting the jungle and dodging

furtively from rock to rock, with straining eyes and ears.

Climbing among the ragged boulders which were strewn

like fragments of fallen masonry at the foot of the cliff,

I shortly came upon a thread of clear water, where I lay

and slaked my thirst. After that came a renewed fresh-

ness and a sudden return of vigor. I began also to feel a

healthful hunger, and when, in clambering to the top of

a steep rock, I frightened a shrieking gull from her nest,

I fell avidly on the eggs she left behind.

As the sun climbed, a tepid humidity freighted the air,

but the trade-wind, rising steadily and freshly, tempered

it and stirred the delicate fronds of palm and fern.

The cliff was honeycombed with small irregular caverns

84 THE PORTAL OP DEEAM8

and rifts. Some were mere grottoes, but others went

back into somber recesses deeper than I, with no means

of lighting my steps, cared to explore. For my dwelling

place I selected one that broadened from a twisted and

narrow fissure to a crude chamber large enough for a

wolf's den, or at need a man's refuge. A fern-fringed

brooklet trickled across the opening.

For my door yard I had a small plateau with a sheer

wall of cliff at my back and a steep drop at the front.

One must climb to reach the place which is an advantage

where the tenant may desire to roll stones down upon the

heads of his visitors.

The Wastrel must have gone to the bottom near by, for

incoming tides from time to time deposited on my shore

strange and satirical scraps of flotsam. The sardonic

humor of the sea mocked me by delivering on my beach

a tattered fragment of old newspaper and an empty

biscuit tin.

It was two days after my arrival that I discovered

some bulky thing lodged, as my raft had been, upon the

near-by rocks. The two days had told upon me. My

pajamas were in ribbons ; my canvas shoes torn, and my

flesh bruised. My feet, too, were cut and blistered and

my hands raw. I had already tired of talking aloud to

myself and more and more often I caught myself

turning with a sudden start to peer apprehensively

NATUBE INDULGES IN SATIBE 86

at the fringe ot the forest. To my growing morbid-

ness it seemed that over the beauty of the place hung

an impalpable but certain curse. I waded out eagerly to

the fresh bit of salvage and found a seaman's chest with

quaintly knotted handles of tarred rope. It was of

stout workmanship and its heavy locks and hinges had

endured without injury the buffeting of the sea. The

name of J. H. Lawrence still legible upon one end brought

back with startling vividness the memory of a man wait-

ing with stoical amusement the coming of death. Labor-

iously enough I dragged it in, halting often to pant and

wipe the sweat out of my eyes with my forearm.

The sun was sinking over the shoulder of the mountain

when I at last arrived, exhausted but still tugging at my

prize, upon the plateau of my cliff apartment. I lay a

long while, my heart pounding with exertion, before I was

equal to the task of attacking its lock with a stone and my

sheath knife, and after that it was some moments before

the lock yielded and I raised the heavy lid. First there

met my eyes a scattered collection of souvenir postcards,

much discolored and faded, but sufficiently preserved to

awaken a clamor of protest and longing. There were

tantalizing pictures of the Cafe de Paris and Trafalgar

Square and the bund at Hong Kong.

Young Mr. Lawrence must have been a confirmed

souvenir-buyer. I could trace his odyssey by trivial things

i

86 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

he had picked up here and there. Two curved daggers

with turquoise settings in the hilt had come from the

bazaars of Damascus or Jerusalem. A copper incense-

burner with a package of scented tapers had been brought

from Tokio or Nagasaki. Equally useless things fiUed

package after package.

No mission chest piously outfitted at home ever carried

to the remote heathen a more useless assortment of unnec-

essaries than this one brought to me. There was not a

shirt, not an article of utility, only trinkets as serviceable

as doll-babies to a prizefighter. At last, however, I came

upon two packages carefully wrapped in sail-cloth. So

painstaking and secure had been their packing that when

I took off the first covering and the second, I found that

the contents had suffered no wetting.

The first bundle contained the violin which had

incensed the captain and several packages of extra

strings. As I took it out, I seemed to hear again its

plaintive, wordless song and I laid it down reverently.

It seemed a part of the dead man's soul — ^something inti-

mate and wonderful which had outlasted his mortality.

In the second package was something wrapped in tissue

paper and very soft to the touch. I opened it and spread

out on the sand a gorgeously wrought Mandarin kimono.

Its silk was of the heaviest and richest quality and its

design flamed with the un3tinted opulence of Chinese

NATURE INDULGES IN SATIBE 87

embroidery. On the flowing sleeves and bordered panels

were storks of blue and silver flying among poppy-like

flowers of crimson purple. There were also deli-

cately worked streams and reeds and moons, all tangled

up with ranting dragons of gold, gazing fiercely out from

eyes of inset jade. Gold thread, silver thread, silk thread,

cunningly combined to the making of its dazzling pattern.

Some celestial dignitary had once ordered its embroid-

ering and, perhaps, had ridden upon his palanquin garbed

in its splendor with the pride of a peacock in his narrow,

slanting eyes. It seemed to me, kneeling there in my torn

pajamas,my knees and elbows bruised, my stomach rebell-

ing against rank food, that I could see the whole picture

of which this garment had once been a brilliant detail.

There were shouting coolies running ahead with huge

bamboo staves to clear the way. The grandee's chair,

crusted with carving, was borne along in state. I could

picture paper lanterns swinging from slender poles and

plum blossoms awave and smell the heavy reek of burn-

ing incense, and at the thought of all this arrogant luxury

I suffered as though I were struggling through a night-

mare. The yotmg derelict of the Wastrel had, in all like-

lihood, bargained for it and haggled over its cost in an

Oriental shop. He had finally bought it for a gift to a

wife or sweetheart, and even with capable bargaining it

must have been a purchase beyc«id his means. Now in

88 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

futile magnificence it lay outspread before me who was

sea-wrecked and fighting hunger. In the same package,

however, I found my first useful articles : a small block of

those miniature matches that one may buy in the China-

town sections of San Francisco or New York, which bum

with an odious reek of sulphur. It was doubtless because

they partook of the quality of a curiosity that he had pre-

served them.

There was also one of those slung-shots such as may be

bought along water fronts where seamen foregather: a

small leather sack, loaded with shot and suspended from

a wrist-strap.

At the extreme bottom of the package, carefully pre-

served between two sheets of thick cardboard, lay a page

torn from a newspaper. It was on that heavy, glossed

paper which s<xne journals use for their pictorial sections

and was covered with miscellaneous illustrations.

I was on the point of throwing the thing away, when

some impulse led me to turn it over. What I saw altered

and remoulded all my life from that moment forward.

A curtain of dusk was beginning to fall upon the

hinterland at the edge of the forest. The fringe of cane

and palm was filling up with shadow and the peak of the

volcano was brooding against a sky of burnished copper.

When I turned the sheet it was as though I had come

face to face with an actual personality where a moment

NATUEE INDULGES IN SATIBE 89

ago there had been nothing animate. Of course it was

only because the art of photographer and engraver had

ably abetted each other, but the portrait which worthily

filled the seven columns of glazed paper was a marvel of

life-like presentment — ^and of indescribable loveliness.

There are authenticated cases, in plenty, of men who

have loved a face seen only in a picture. The Mona Lisa

of da Vinci has laid over many beholders the hypnotic

spell of the long-dead woman immortalized upon its

canvas. Pygmalion loved his Galatea. I fancy that, if

the truth were told, I loved in that first flash of view the

lady who smiled out at me from the lifelessness of ink

and paper. The margins of the sheet had been so close

trimmed at the top that no date or caption remained, but

beneath, the scissors had left two words : " Miss

Frances — " and with these two words I must content

myself.

But for the picture itself.

I have already confessed my passionate reverence for

beauty. Here before me was beauty of the purest type

I have ever been privileged to see. It was not the brush

magic of a gifted painter who has caught from a lovely

model the charm of line and color and canonized them

with idealization. It lacked all the fire with which the

palette might have kindled it. It recorded nothing more

90 THE POSTAL OP DREAMS

than the lens had seen, yet its flawlessness required no aid

of art and asked no odds of color.

Her clear, young eyes smiled out at me with a miracle

of graciousness. Her perfectly curving lips were graver,

and if possible sweeter than her eyes. Her chin and

throat were exquisitely modeled. Her hair was abund-

antly massed and heavy. I could guess from the photo-

graphic tones that its coils and escaping tendrils of curl,

varied in shifting lights between the red warmth of gold

and the amber of clear honey.

But what most made this a remarkable photograph was

its living quality. So vital was the effect as one looked,

that it seemed a palpitant personality of breath and soul.

The lips might be trembling on the verge of speech and in

the quiet smile hovered a delightful hint of whimsical

humor. The whole bearing was queenly with that gra-

cious pride which we characterize as royal when we speak

of royalty as something inherently noble. For the acco-

lade of a smile from those lips, in the flesh, a man might

undertake all manner of folly. The young woman was in

evening dress and at her throat hung a rope of pearls.

Suddenly a transport of rage and a bitterness of con-

trast possessed me. My hair was matted, my arms and

hands raw and blackened with blood and grime. I was

the picture of abandoned misery. The satirical gods now

set Tantalus-wise before my eyes a picture of beauty and

NATUBE INDULGES IN SATIRE 91

ease and shelter — 2l pretty woman in the charming frip-

peries of evening dress.

But while I scowled, her eyes smiled back into my own,

challenging in me the vagabond spirit of the whimsical,

until I too smiled.

I bowed to the picture.

" You are quite right," I said aloud. " Since it is

impossible to alter the situation, the only sane course is to

recognize its hiunor. While we are together here, I shall

regard you as a living person. It shall be our effort to

turn this poor jest on the high gods who are its authors."

It almost seemed to me that the lips parted and the

eyes danced approvingly.

" Frances," I added, " I may call you Frances, may I

not, in view of the informaHty of our circumstances? —

you are gorgeous. It was good of you to come to keep

me company. I needed you."

The air held a twilight stillness upon which my words

fell clamorously. I realized that I had not before spoken

aloud for more than a day. Into the ensuing silence came

a new and alarming sound. It was half human and

incoherent, like a number of voices at a distance. I felt

my muscles grow rigid and choked off a half-animal growl

that rose involuntarily in my throat. Instinctively I was

whipping the revolver from its holster and slipping for-

ward, crouched in the protection of a rock, my eyes turned

92 THE POBTAL OF DREAMS

toward the jungle. Vaguely lurking in the gathering fog

of shadow, where the palms began, were some eight or

ten figures. It was impossible in the waning light to

make out what sort of creatures they were, but they

moved with a soft prowling tread that was disquieting.

After a little while they melted out of sight, but until past

midnight I sat my eyes alertly fixed on the tangled dark,

while the low-hung stars paraded across the sky.

CHAPTER IX

A PORTRAIT AND A TEMPLE

THE night, however, passed without event and

morning came bathing the empty edge of the

forest with crystal freshness. The scene I still

had to myself. My morning journey down to the water's

edge for food and bathing was mad;e with the most pain-

ful caution and I ate without relish.

My world had altered overnight. I was no longer

merely shipwrecked but shipwrecked among savages who

might adhere to that perverted epicureanism which

esteems human fare for its flesh pots. Stories of canni-

balism had been plentiful at the captain's table on the

Wastrel — ^the value of white heads for decorating native

huts had been touched upon. My defense was limited to

the six cartridges in the chambers of my revolver and the

newly discovered slung-shot.

Meantime I was hideously lonely. I turned the chest

on end near the opening of my cavern and spread the

d3

94 THE POSTAL OF DBEAMS

newspaper portrait upon it for full inspection. The

two upper comers I fastened with the curved and jewelled

daggers from Jerusalem.

The days which immediately followed marched slowly

and were much alike. It was only in my own state of

mind that there was any element of change or develop-

ment.

The lurking figures did not reappear at the edge of the

jungle and I began to hope that they were members of

some itinerant band from the opposite side of the island

who had chanced upon this locality in their wanderings

and might not again return. I was not even positive

that they had seen me.

Slowly, weirdly, while I dwelt in tmcertainty and

suspense the influence of the lady in the picture grew

upon me and compelled me. It* may have been at first,

and doubtless was, a form of auto-hypnosis. Already

the seed for such an influence had been planted in the

dependence which young Mansfield and myself came to

feel for the unknown girl's diary. Now, in utter isola-

tion, I was doubly in need of something to avert my

thoughts from channels which go down to madness and

despair. The lifelike quality of the portrait made it

easier to talk aloud, and as the spell grew I found myself

talking with the softness of the lover.

There is a power in the spoken word. The mere act

A PORTEAIT AND A TEMPLE 95

of giving audible expression is a spur to thought. Sitting

alone and debating how uncertainly the wretched spark

of life sputtered at the wick of my being, I was the craven.

When I talked to the picture whose lips smiled as though

all the world were brave, I grew ashamed of my terror.

Leaving my cave in the morning to forage and recon-

noiter with the pistol at my belt, I would carry with me,

as a fragrant memory, the gracious smile of her lips and

the royal fearlessness of her eyes. Her image nerved

me to endurance ; gave me a shoulder touch on normal

thought, and enabled me to hold in memory the world for

which her evening gown and pearls were symbols — ^and

in deeply morbid moments this saved me from losing my

grip. Certainly, it was all an artificial stay — a, ludicrous

pretense — ^but it served — ^and that is the final test of any

love or any creed. It served.

As these forces worked, I, at times, forgot that the

picture was that of an unknown. Its reality was so

strong that it came to stand for some one I had left behind,

whom I must live to rejoin ; some one inexpressibly dear

whose love hung over me and safeguarded me like a

powerful talisman. Often, in my broken sleep, I would

dream that I was sore beset by a thousand dangers and

had fled to my cave as animals have fled to caves since

the world began, and that I stood huddling there miser-

ably, awaiting the end. Then, in the dream, she would

96 THE POSTAL OP DBEAMS

come out of the picture, as Galatea stepped down from

the lifelessness of granite into rosy and animated warmth.

My assailants always fell back before her coming and I,

despite my terror, would attempt to meet her gallantly.

She would open a hidden door in the side of the rock, and

lead me through it. And always, in this repeated and

tmvarying dream, beyond the door we stepped into a

brilliantly lighted room where men and women chatted

carelessly in evening dress and danced to the tinkle of

stringed instruments.

By these degrees the illusion grew until my pretense

became a vagary and obsession and to me ceased to be a

pretense. I fell back on occultism and told myself that

I had succeeded by mere concentration of mind in forc-

ing her to project her astral self across the world, until I

had with me her picture and her essence of soul.

Many of life's most sacred and permanent institutions

are only fictions, long entertained. My fiction became so

real to me that for periods I forgot to question it — ^then

sometimes, at a moment when the illusion was strongest,

some impulse of reason would strike in upon and chill

me, like a sluicing from a cold bucket. It would come

upon me to think of myself as I should have appeared to

any unwarned stranger, who had found me talking, even

lovemaking, with a sheet of lifeless paper. And from

that impersonal viewpoint I would wonder if my brain

A POBTBAIT AND A TEMPLE 97

had already crumbled to madness and imbecility. The

cold sweat would bead my forehead. My finger would

creep to the trigger of my pistol and linger there, twitch-

ing with the itch of self-destruction. But soon the smil-

ing lips would reassure me; the mood would pass and

again I would surrender myself to the pretense which was

grateful where the truth was austere and desolate.

I discovered in my tramps about the island's edge that

this spot seemed to be the most favored home of the

orchid. This monarch of flowers bloomed at the jungle's

margin, in an infinite variety of flaimting petals, soft

colors and deeply glowing life. No other flower is so

ethereal and illusively lovely. None could be more fitted

for a tribute to as impalpable a love as I acknowledged. It

became a part of my daily program to bring back with me

as I returned to the cave, masses of these splendid blos-

soms which I heaped before her shrine.

I had reached the age of. thirty-five and had heretofore

been immune to feminine fascinations. I had even been

characterized as a woman-hater, though this was an

injustice. This new obsession, bewitching — iwhatever

you may choose to term it — ^was not momentary. In

defense of my consistency I declare that the thing re-

quired two weeks at least for its accomplishment. And

in those two weeks other affairs were developing.

Of course, I had been told, as has every traveler in

98 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

the south seas, that there is not an atoll or island left for

discovery. I had been informed that on every coral

speck in the reef-strewn ocean, there is or has been, a

white man. I knew now that this was a fallacy. My

island was marked by a volcano tall enough to proclaim

itself as far as a glass could sweep the horizon from a

ship's lookout, and if no pearl shell or beche-de-mer

trader, no blackbirder of the old days, no windswept

vessel of the present had hitherto sighted that peak, it

must lie too far off the course of rambling traffic, to

expect a visit now. I knew that we had dropped down-

world for days before the wreck, and I had heard

grumbling, because of the mysterious course being

steered. I was the firstcomer — -and yet the faint and

struggling instinct of hope urged the setting up of a

tattered flag or two of sail cloth along the beetling heights.

From my eyrie in the rocks, the coast line went away in

a succession of broken and porous cliffs which I had ex-

plored for a distance of perhaps two miles. That two

miles held all I had learned to know of this island which

was clearly a large one. What the interior had behind

its curtain of palm and moss and cane — ^back in the

impenetrable jungle — ^belonged to the mystery of an

unopened book. I did know that off to the left as one

faced the sea, separated from me by four or five miles of

precipitous coast line, loomed a headland from which a

A PORTEAIT AND A TEMPLE 99

flag waving by day would be observable — ^if ever a vessel

came across the shoulder of the world. To reach the

point and return would be a day's journey, for the path

I must take led over a trail more suited to a mountain

goat than a man who had until lately been civilized.

One morning I set out carrying tightly wrapped one of

the pieces of sail-cloth which had come out of the mate's

chest. My resolution to set my flag flying had filled me

with a sort of specious exaltation. The venomous beauty

of the place was beyond description, and in a measure I

yielded to its lure and walked almost buoyantly. The

sea to its skyline was blue with a depth of sapphire. The

tangle of the jungle was aflash with vivid and sparkling

color. Small, harmless snakes slid brightly aside, as

multi-hued as shreds of rainbow. I had climbed* and

crawled for several hours, and was beginning to suffer

keenly from weariness and stone bruises on my poorly

protected feet, when I came to a sort of path running

upward. This led me to a more commanding eminence

than I had before reached and gave me a view inland

over an endless blanket of green, unbroken forest.

Ahead of me was a still greater height, and after a short

rest I made my way to the point from which I could look

across its crest. Then I halted dead in my tracks and

stood fingering my revolver. A cold sweat came out on

my forehead and my knees trembled, threatening to fail

100 THE PORTAL OP DREAMS

me. It was as though a curtain had risen on a stage

set to terrify the beholder.

The high ground fell steeply away into a basin whose

slopes were roughly broken into rising tiers. These tiers

commanded a sort of amphitheatre two hundred yards in

diameter, through which ran a small thread of water

cascading from the interior elevation. A quarter of a

mile away began the background of timber and tangle.

The bottom of the basin had been worn smooth by

much treading. A boulder some four feet tall and prob-

ably of an equal thickness rose, pulpit like, at the center.

Its top was hollowed out into a bowl and its sides were

inscribed with crude hieroglyphics. Near it were a half-

dozen upright poles, surmounted by what seemer to be

cocoanuts. In a dozen places under rude stone ovens

were the ashes of dead fires. Scattering piles of human

bones — ^but nowhere a skull — ^told me that I had stumbled

on a kai-kai temple — ^a place of cannibal observances and

feasting. I did not at once venture into the hollow for

closer scrutiny. It was not such an institution as one

would care to invade carelessly. Over the whole place

htmg a horrible stench. Flies buzzed about it in noisy,

filthy swarms. After a long interval of listening and

reconnoitering I became convinced that this place of

special observance was to-day as neglected as are many

churches iq Christian lands on v^eek days,

A POBTEAIT AND A TEMPLE 101

I crept tremblingly down into the abominable pit and

made my way toward the stone altar prepared now for

any atrocious sight. But the climax of discovery came

when I had crawled half way and the cocoanuts on the

poles resolved themselves into withered, htmian heads,

sun dried and yellow fringed.

These mummied skulls were for the most part trophies

of old battles, but lying at the top of the rock was another

which must have surmounted its living shoulders only a

few days ago. The frizzled hair was tied into dozens of

kinky knots. The facial angle was low and slanting and

the coarse lips were hideously twisted in a snarl of death

and defiance. On the scalp, which a war club had crushed,

sat a very beautiful head-dress of gull feathers, brilliantly

dyed in green and crimson and orange. The victim had

worn to his obsequies such a decoration as might have

crowned a princess of the Incas. He had been a warrior

of rank and now, as befitted his station, his head lay dry-

ing out on a mat of yellow and brown wood pulp.

A stifling nausea assaulted the pit of my stomach. My

retreating steps reeled drunkenly, and when, near the rim

of the basin, I turned for a final gaze in the fascination of

horror, I no longer had the place to myself.

Two human figures stood at the farther rim of the

amphitheater, silently regarding me. Both were thin,

pigmy-built men with long arms and low foreheads.

102 THE POETAL OF DEEAMS

Their faces, grotesquely disfigured with bone and shell

ornaments spiked through noses and ears, were bestial

yet not stupid. Their eyes were beady and sharp, and

just now their thick lips hung pendulous with wonder-

ment. For an instant I was incapable of motion ; then, as

they stood in equal petrification, I remembered and acted

on the counsel of an east-side gang member whom I had

once been privileged to know in New York. I had incon-

sequently inquired whether, in his acrimonious career,

he never came eye to eye with fear.

" Sure thing," he had promptly replied, " but when a

guy gets your goat — stall. If you makes de play strong

enough it's a cinch you gets his goat too."

By that rule this was my moment to " stall." I drew

myself up to the limit of stature and threw out my chest

in the best semblance of arrogance I could assume.

They were decked like the head of their sacrificial

victim, in brilliant feather work, beautifully and harmoni-

ously wrought. Their flint-tipped spears were elabor-

ately carved and their necklaces were fashioned of shells

and teeth. Some of the teeth were human. For perhaps

thirty seconds we held the strained tableau, then I

glanced over my shoulder. Between me and retreat

stood a third figure. Compared to his gaudiness of

decking, the raiment of the others was mean and sober.

One bare shoulder and arm was covered with festering

A PORTRAIT AND A TEMPLE 103

ulcers. His monkey-like face had the same slant of brow

and heaviness of lip, but it worked constantly with a keen

and twitching play of expression which argued speculative

thought. As I turned he was leaning on a knotted war-

club, and regarding me with profound gravity.

CHAPTER X

I SEEK ORCHIDS

INTERNALLY I was quaking, and thinking very

fast. The first shock of their astonishment was

dissipating, and two of the three faces were cloud-

ing into a glowering scrutiny which augured darkly for

my escape. The gaze of the third held a grave per-

plexity, touched with awe, and in the interval of over-

charged silence the other eyes dwelt questioningly on his.

I knew from their spell-bound attitudes that I was the

first white man they had seen and an apparition. Meas-

ured by their pigmy standards, I was a gigantic being of a

new type and order, possibly I was even immortal.

As a man they had no fear of me. The revolver which

I had slipped from its holster and cocked had not

impressed them. They knew nothing of its death-dealing

quality. That was a point in my favor. It would afford,

if need be, six miracles of mortality, but the jungle that

had disgorged them could disgorge hundreds of others

104

I SEEK OBCHIDS 105

like thenir— perhaps thousands. Gods must carry them-

selves, when they walk among men, with a godlike scorn

of mundane dangers. I turned to the one man who was

above the others, exposing my back to the two spears, as

though safe in my consciousness of immunity. I extended

one arm with a gesture intended to epitomize great

majesty. It was a pose borrowed from some old sculp-

tor's conception of the Olympian Zeus — albeit shamefully

exaggerated.

It was an anxious moment. Should he, to whom I

made my commanding plea, lift his finger in signal, the

spears from behind, poisoned spears perhaps, would strike

me down. But as I strode forward, with one hand still

pointing heavenward, I commanded him in a mighty voice

to stand aside.

He on his part eyed me dubiously, never shifting his

attitude or raising his club from the earth, but he per-

mitted me to pass from the amphitheatre unmolested. I

went, deliberately, holding my gaze rigidly to the front and

using every ounce of self-control to curb the impulse of

my feet to run, and the impulse of my neck to crane. A

vestige of misgiving, a note of human anxiety, would have

destroyed me.

My peril was superlative, and yet as I look back on the

occasion, I can see that it overdid cc«nedy and became

pure farce. I was defending my life with burlesque. My

106 THE POETAL OP DBEAMS

audience would not be impressed by finesse, and impress-

ing it was a matter of life and death. In the words of

the east-side bruiser, I was " makin' it strong."

At all events my bearing, in a situation without prece-

dent of etiquette, found sufficient favor to cover my retreat

and I went down to the sea unfoUowed. I had none the

less seen enough to set me thinking and thought brought

little solace. Were I accepted on the basis of my own

divine assumption, and regarded as a being from another

world, the story would travel fast among their villages.

Its wonder would be promulgated and men would bum

with curiosity to behold me. Among those who came as

pilgrims would be some demanding proofs and miracles.

I was now committed to a permanent policy of bluff. I

had always been regarded as a facetious individual. Now

my life depended on attaining a supreme flippancy of

attitude on pain of sacrifice to rites for which I had no

reverence. When at simdown I reached the place where

the portrait smiled whimsically at me from its post of

honor, I sat for a while looking into the comprehending

eyes and my thoughts took more cheerful color. Before

me lay a situation in which I was to pit my legacy of

human development against the brute odds of minds

lighted only to the mistiness of dawn.

" Frances," I said, " you smile. Of course since you

are fixed in print, you can't do otherwise than smile. I

I SEEK OECHIDS 107

wonder — " I broke off and became suddenly and

unaccountably serious. " I wonder if you would smile,

were you here with me in the flesh as well as merely in

the spirit. I wonder if you would."

Then with a feeling which was tremendously real,

I added fervently and aloud, " Thank Grod you are not

here in the flesh — ^but I am grateful for your smiling.

Somehow I find it reassuring."

After a little reflection I summarized the entire situa-

tion to the lady with whom I discussed my affairs.

" You see, my dear," I informed her, " to their untu-

tored and man-eating minds I present a dilemma. I am

either a great immortal, whom it would be most unwise

to heckle — or I am very good eating, in which case it is

a pity to let me grow thinner."

" It shall be our care, dear lady," I added, " to main-

tain this status of godship and to that end we must

arrange a little program of simple miracles from time to

time. You see," I explained, " it won't be long before

they will be coming here and demanding what manner

of deity I am, and what is my immortal name. Do you

know what I shall tell them?"

I paused and grinned into the smiling eyes and the

lips that seemed trembling on the verge of speech.

"I shall tell them," I assured her, "that in me they

behold the great god Four-flush."

108 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

If I concede to the cold logic of material reasoning

that this dependable companionship and love of a man

for a portrait washed up by the sea was merely the

aberration of a brain unseated by solitude, I must also

believe that a series of totally incredible coincidences sub*

sequently befell me. But if it be that certain things are

written in the stars and certain passions are irrevocably

decreed, my life is freed of grotesqueness and becomes

logical.

While I lived under the sword of the problematical

to-morrow, suspended by the hair of an uncertain to-day,

my dependence upon her grew greater. The brave man

is said to die once and the coward often, but the line

between the courage and cowardice is not absolute.

There were periods when I felt that I could play the

game and die if I must, with the detached philosophy of a

Socrates. At other times I wallowed in the pit of fore-

boding and died several times a day. In these moods I

wished for the moment of crisis which should put my res-

olution to the touch, and end the matter.

The savages did not approach my cave, but sometimes

when evening fell and the jungle spread itself in a fringed

blanket against the moonlight, I could make out skulking

patches of shadow at its edge. In my rambles too I had

a sense of being endlessly watched by unseen eyes, and

once bending over a sunlit pool to drink, I was startled by

I SEEK ORCHIDS 109

the haggard face which looked up from it with streaks of

white in its long, tangled hair. Each day I brought fresh

orchids from the jungle's edge and heaped them before

my intangible lady.

" They are more beautiful, Frances," I told her, " than

any I could buy you along the Champs Elysees or Fifth

Avenue — and all they cost is a ship and crew and cargo."

One morning I discovered that where the growth of

cane and moss and vines had formerly been thick and

unbroken there were now several clearly defined alley-

ways, made by the coming and going of the blacks, bent

on observing me. A few inquisitive steps into one of

these trails revealed, at a little distance, a pool of water.

Its basin was of mossy rock, and its edges were choked

with ferns. A slender waterfall fed it, and through the

cloistered half-light of the forest interior fell a few fervid

dashes of stmlight like gold leaf on the somber tones of

greenery. The air htmg wet and steamy like the atmos-

phere of a hot house. But the marvel of it was the

orchids. They climbed and trailed and illumined the

place with a dozen varieties of weird and subtle beauty.

One could understand why men take their lives into their

hands and penetrate fever-infested jungles in search of

newer types. Their delicacy was unearthly and splendid.

They were not, it seemed, flowers growing on dirt-fed

stems, but blossoms of the gods. Each one was like the

110 THE POBTAL OF DBEAMS

blcxxning of some Human soul freed from the grossness

of the flesh. Here was a bloom as ethereally pure and

pale as the reincarnation of some flawless virgin spirit ;

there were flaming petals of such magnificent color as

might have sprung from the heart of a conqueror. I saw

epitomized in petal and stamen, all the poetry of the

world's dead dreams. I took as many as I could carry

back to the portrait, and on the following morning I

returned for more.

They lured me strangely with their fox fire of sheer

beauty, until I had penetrated the jungle to the distance

of a quarter of a mile and stood in a small opening

where I plucked an armful of their blossoms.

Suddenly, as I started back, I felt a biting pang in

my left shoulder, and knew that I had been speared,

though the tangle of the jungle revealed no human

form, and its silence remained unbroken. The spear,

which had come from nowhere, as it seemed, fell to

the ground, but not before it had gashed my flesh and

left upon the tattered remnants of my jacket a tell*

tale smear of blood.

I believed myself to have been mortally poisoned by

the javelin, and my one wish now was to escape, with the

semblance of greatness still upon me, and die unseen*

I went with as much dignity as possible toward the beach,

backing through the tangle to keep my flow of blood

I SEEK OECHIDS 111

concealed. I had no doubt that many unseen eyes fol-

lowed my exit and even if it were for a brief time, I

wished to go with the seeming of divine invulnerability.

I even forced a loud and derisive shout of laughter which

rang weirdly through the silences. Wicked pains shot

in white-hot currents through my blood and racked my

muscles. I was weak with nauseating pain and dizzi-

ness swam in my brain. At last the merciful rocks gave

me concealment. I dropped on my knees, my teeth

gritted, and dragged myself back to my cave where I

turned my face to the rock wall to die.

CHAPTER XI

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD

YET I did not die. While I lay waiting to do so

the insistent ache of my bones, the racking of

my wound and the sodden numbness of my brain,

slowly blurred me into apathy. That passed and the

delirium came on a swelling tide of temperature. Cen-

turies trampled roughshod over me and demons of

pain scourged me through the seven hells of fever.

Scorching wastes of time were broken at long intervals

by little oases of lucidity when I crawled to the opening

and drank, but even these were clouded by shreds of

nightmare horror, and remembered hallucinations.

Once, waking to momentary sensibility, I found the

narrow cave still ringing with the echoes of my tor-

tured and delirious shrieks.

When, at last, I came fully to myself, painfully weak

and scalded with the fever, but sane, I could see the

stars spangling my scrap of sky. My adventure had

112

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD 113

occurred in the morning, but whether hours or days

had played out their scores I did not know. I drank

and slept again. I next woke to the glare of forenoon.

The clouds in my brain had been swept away, and the

hand I lifted fell weakly back on a forehead which was

cool and moist. The battling life spark had triumphed

over the native poison. But when I tried to drag myself

to the mouth of my grotto, my weak head began ram-

bling again, so that real and unreal things wandered

strangely together. My side was lacerated by the pistol

which had been at my belt as I tossed in the fever. A

twist in the fissure brought me to the point where I,

still concealed in the dark shadow, could see the prim-

itive terrace of my plateau, and there were such things as

brought back upon me an avalanche of terror, rage and

violence.

The lady still smiled from her post of honor with her

gracious and fearless eyes. The curved damascus dag-

gers still held the enamelled sheet in place, but beyond

her I saw death. Against a background of intense sea

and sky under the glare of a fiercely brilliant sun, stood

grouped a human ensemble of indescribable color and

savagery. Upon scores of black and sweating torsos;

upon gorgeously dyed feather work and shell ornaments,

the light fell in color gone mad. They stood massed and

silent, their spears and bows and clubs for the moment

114 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

idle. Their faces mutilated with spiked ears and nose

ornaments and dyed teeth, were unspeakably hideous.

Every eye was just now intent on the portrait of my

lady. At the f rc«it stood the three whom I had supposed

to be priests at the amphitheatre, and with them was a

man very aged and white haired, but erect and gor-

geously appareled.

Slowly one of the priests approached the portrait and

put out an ulcerous hand to touch the face. A tidal wave

of unspeakable fury caught me up and swept me back

into the realm of insanity. I was transplanted in an

instant to the nightmares of my deliriimi. I saw instead

of a lifeless picture the slender, breathing figure of the

woman I worshiped contaminated by this profane touch.

I attempted to rush out and die like some Mad Mullah

devotee in fanatical battle with her assailants, but my

strength was not equal to my impulse. I stumbled to my

knees and my right hand fell upon the hilt of my pistol.

I whipped it out and fired. In my agued hand it should

have been harmless enough, but the range was short and

I had once been a marksman. I saw the man crumple

forward with a short, strangled groan. I saw those at

the back crowding one another over the cliff in the panic

of their disordered flight. They had not seen me. They

knew only that bolts of death were striking them down.

I heard endless thunders as the pistol report sent its

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD 116

echoes beating and rebounding against the confined walls

of the fissure. Blue and slender lines of spiraling smoke

went drifting out into the air. I caught a glimpse of two

bolder spirits stopping to drag away their dead. Then

I collapsed and lay for hours where I had fallen.

Once more I awoke with a moist forehead and a hun-

ger which gnawed at the pit of my stomach. Only the

gods knew how long I had been without food. The air

fanned me with the soft, reviving breath of night. The

moon, riding up the east made an irregular diagram of

silvered light across the ledge, and fell with a reassur-

ing touch of ivoried white, on the newspaper sheet and

the portrait.

I was too famished and spent to stand, but I made

the journey down to the beach on hands and knees,

and when I had eaten my fill of unsavory crabs I lay

for a time in the grateful coolness of the wet sand and

drew new strength from its healing. My sickness was

ended. The pitiable weakness that had made the down-

ward journey a torture was the heritage of hunger. I

had needed no medicine but food, and now I found

myself able to walk back upright. That night I slept

sweetly and dreamed once again of the familiar door

beyond which lay luxury and security.

The sun was high when I awoke with a sense of

great refreshment and recovery. The slit of sky framed

116 THE PORTAL OF DREAMS

in the rift was not yet hot, but tenderly blue with a

color of promise. The fronds of fern and palm stirred

to the land breeze. I went down to my surf bath and

breakfast with an almost buoyant step. A half-hour after

my return, when I turned to look at the jungle edge a

sight greeted me which demonstrated the decision of

the natives that our intercourse was not so soon to become

a closed incident.

This time, however, their coming was characterized

by a more gratif)ring element of respect. They swarmed

out of the bush, not in paltry dozens nor scores, but in

their panoplied htmdreds. Gorgeously decked chiefs

and the club-bearing warriors smeared with indigo halted

in the open, leaving a satisfying interval between their

position and mine. With great and conspicuous show of

peace the warriors discarded their spears and shields

and raised their weaponless hands for me to behold as

I looked down from my high place. The white-haired

king broke a spear, gazing up at me the while, then

dropping the pieces knelt and bowed his slanting forehead

to the sands. At his back bent the priests, trailing their

bright feathers in the dust. No one could misunder-

stand their pantomime. Men of their tribe had offended

the deities. A nation had come in humility and suppli-

cation for forgiveness.

While they made obeisance in relays a group of young

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD 117

men approached the priests, bearing armfuls of orchids.

The king and priests and orchid-bearers moved forward

for a few steps and halted, gazing up inquiringly at me.

This performance was several times repeated before I

understood that they were seeking my consent to

approach nearer. Then I bowed and pointed inward. A

rigorous order of precedence was observed, the aged

king keeping his place at their head and his followers

their positions of relative rank. The weight of his years

made the royal steps so slow that the colorful pageant

crept like an army of snails.

Suddenly it dawned upon me that if I were to be a

god receiving a delegation of mortals, I should receive

it in some suitable degree of state. They were sending

to me the mightiest men of their villages. The kinky

head of their king was abased. Aged Merlins were

coming on their marrow bones, resplendently trailing

their feathered finery along the white and flaring sands.

I stood awaiting them in a raveled, mud-smeared suit

of pajamas which at their best had never been ostenta-

tious. The thing seemed unfit. Evidently these folk

inclined to the splendor of pomp. Jeffersonian sim-

plicity would be lost on them. Their pageant should

be met with pageantry. There had been some who had

doubted and denied me. Of a surety if I .were to play

this nabob from the skies ; if I were to turn the averted

118 THE POETAL OF DREAMS

tragedy into a screaming and cheerful farce, it was my

duty to dress the part.

With a signal of raised hands, I signified that they

were to await my reappearance. Then I bowed with

profotmd dignity, and stepping from their view, dis-

appeared.

A few minutes later I emerged from my cave, a

transmogrified being. I was no longer the derelict of

rags and tatters. Mine was the opulent splendor of a

High Mandarin of China. About my fever-wasted frame

fell and flapped the gorgeous folds of the embroidered

kimono. In my hands I carried a violin and bow. It is

true I was unshaven, and through holes in my canvas

shoes protruded eight or ten toes, but what mortal can

assume to criticise such eccentricities as may be the part

of godhood?

When I took my stand once more on my pedestal of

mountain, I found them patiently awaiting the nod of

deity. The sun fell resplendently on my silver storks

and gold dragons and silk poppies. The lessening land

breeze fluttered the embroidery-crusted folds and splin-

tered light from my person. I listened with satisfaction

to the incoherent sound that went up from many throats ;

a chorused gasp of profound awe and admiration and

wonderment.

I signaled my immortal readiness to receive them. As

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD 119

the ludicrousness of the farce broke over me I had to

bite back unsolemn roars of laughter. A spirit of deviltry

and vaudeville possessed me. As their high priests in

deadly earnest marched on all fours with faces as rapt

and fanatically sober as those of Mecca pilgrims, I drew

the bow across the catgut and, lifting my voice, pro-

claimed myself in ragtime.

I informed them in the words which were new only

to them and solemn only to them that I had rings on my

fingers and bells on my toes, and as I sung they became

hushed with awe and approached with a deeply moved

sense of their great honor and responsibility.

When they were only a little way off, I went down

to meet them, aHd with a condescension which I trusted

would not injure my prestige, lifted the aged chieftain to

his feet and permitted him to walk. He, however,

remained deferentially two paces in my rear. It was

evident from their straining upward gazes, that deeply

as they were moved to reverence by my own exalted

spectacle, there was some greater revelation which they

awaited above. This disquieted me since I had in reserve

no added climax to offer. I had given them a display

savoring of the circus but I had no grand spectacle to

advertise in the main tent after the regular performance.

When we had reached the plateau, however, I under-

stood and was relieved. To me they had come kneeling, but

120 THE POKTAL OF DREAMS

before Her portrait they threw themselves on their faces

and groveled. They sprinkled sand and pebbles upon

their hair and their voices, even to me who understood no

syllable, carried such depth of humility and supplication

as filled me with wonder.

They would rise from their suppliance oniy ^ong

enough to glance at the face of the picture, then fall again

and renew their paroxysms of ungainly prayer. From

the hands of the orchid-bearers they took the heaps of

blooms, and piled them at a distance from the shrine. The

young men who had been so signally honored withdrew

from the holy of holies. Only the high priests and the

king were left with me in the sacred arena.

For a time I stood dumbly looking on, then the idea

percolated into my confused understanding. I realized

that at best I was only a demi-god, perhaps a sort of super-

high-priest, but no god. These ambassadors extraordi-

nary had come not to me but to The Lady of the Portrait.

I lifted up my voice for attention, and from their

kneeling postures they regarded me with grave reverence.

I took my place, with bowed head, before the portrait

and addressed the lady in tones of deep solemnity. It

seemed to me that her delicate mouth line quivered with

amusement, as though she and I had between us a deli-

cious secret.

" Frances ! Frances ! Frances ! " I declaimed with the

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD 121

deep profundity of a ritual. " I have failed totally and

signally at the god job. There is in all this world of sky

and sea and of my heart but one deity. It was you who

struck down with a thunderbolt the sacrilegious, false

priest. It was you who saved me from death and raised

me to the high estate of your vicegerent." I paused and

went on more seriously : " It is you whom these people

worship with idolatry — and of them all, none worships

you so wholly as I, your priest ! " And though I was

declaiming before a lifeless image to impress ignorant

cannibals, I meant it. When I had finished there rose

a devout murmur from the blacks, and with a motion to

them to remain, I went into the cave and came out again

with the small Japanese burner and a taper of incense.

As the heavy fragrance of the burning stuff spread itself

upon the air, their wonder grew.

At length I wheeled and pointed back to the jungle.

Slowly, reluctantly, but with perfect obedience, the wild

bush men took up their backward journey to relate the

unbelievable tale of their reception.

. », .1

CHAPTER XII

PORT AND STARBOARD LIGHTS

THERE are men whose lives develop in gradations

of gentle growth. Decade merges into decade by

unstartling evolution. Variations of thread and

color run smoothly into the life-pattern. With me it has

been otherwise. The constantly recurring dream of the

portal in the cliflf was in a fashion symbolical of my life.

The dreamed-of rescue never came by degrees, but by the

abrupt opening of a door where there had been no door

before and by the sudden changing of worlds in a step

across the threshold. For me epoch had followed epoch

with sudden breaks and few connecting threads. One

day I was a bored tourist lounging under the striped

awnings of Shepheard's Hotel. The next day found me

on a disreputable ocean tramp bound for the Ultima Thule.

That voyage had ended as suddenly as it began — ^with