THE 
 
 MD OTHER SKETCHES 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 and Other Sketches 
 
The 
 
 Twilight 
 Drummers 
 
 and Other Sketches 
 By Ashley Gibson 
 
 London : GEORGE ALLEN &. UNWIN Ltd. 
 Ruskin House 40 Museum Street, W.C. i 
 
Published locally in Ceylon May 1914 
 
 So previous issue in the 
 
 United Kingdom 
 

 £0/5 
 
 $35 3 1 
 
 TO 
 MARJORIE 
 
 WHO CENSURED ONE 
 
 AND WILL NEVER READ THE OTHERS 
 
 THESE SKETCHES ARE 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
The majority of these fugitive papers have 
 for occult reasons (not clear but in the 
 result none the less pleasing to the author) 
 escaped rejection at one time or another by 
 the editors of some half a dozen periodicals. 
 
 vii 
 
List of Contents 
 
 The Twilight Drummers - - - I 
 
 An African Night 8 
 
 Green Havens - - - - 17 
 
 El Dorado - - - - 27 
 
 The Resthouse - - - - 39 
 
 Wilson - - - - - 53 
 
 Bal Masque - - - - 65 
 
 The Butcher - - - - - 89 
 
 The City of Dreadful Noise - 107 
 
 The Dissawe's Daughter - 115 
 
 IX 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 XI 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 OMEWHERE down by the Line 
 there is a grove of palm trees 
 clustered about a little tumbling 
 stream. One reaches it by a 
 rambling path of red earth, beaten flat and 
 polished by countless native feet. Right 
 up above the path hangs the sun, and 
 to travel by that road is a great weariness, so 
 that it is pleasant to find one's self, as the day 
 draws to its close, treading the cool, green 
 aisles of the grove. Some of the palms are 
 tall and slender, like the women of that coun- 
 try, but the dwarf, damp-loving kind grows 
 thickly in many spots about the margin of the 
 brook. Silk cottonwoods and bananas are 
 there, too, and curious exotic plants for which 
 the unlearned have no names, and a tangle of 
 brushwood, strangely green ; and all about are 
 
 i 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 creeping parasitic growths spun hither and 
 thither, a verdant cobweb, linking up a thou- 
 sand points of the grove. 
 
 Those who are skilled in wood lore will 
 be aware that the path runs through the grove, 
 but it is hard indeed to follow, Like many 
 an African track, it is more easily felt than 
 seen, and the wanderer's feet will lead him in 
 safety where his eyes would play him false. 
 ****** 
 
 When I first came upon the grove I traced 
 the path, after many divagations, as far as the 
 brook. Here, on its bank, were vestiges of a 
 track, repeated on the further side. Here, 
 too, the pebbly bed of the brook was visible 
 throughout its width, for this was a ford that 
 the black people had used for generations. 
 Beyond, where a tree had fallen half athwart 
 it, the channel twisted suddenly, and the 
 swirling flood grew opaque and forbidding. I 
 turned towards the corner when halfway 
 across the ford, where the stream came barely 
 
 2 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 to my knees, and quickly the waters piled 
 themselves about me to the waist. 
 
 There was something menacing in the 
 embrace of the current, which was very cold, 
 and I pressed back to the ford and climbed 
 out upon the farther bank. The stream, here 
 at its widest, was no more than six yards 
 across, an inconsiderable obstacle enough. 
 
 From this point the fretful noise of water 
 pulling and sucking at the roots of the fallen 
 tree seemed louder. 
 
 It chanced that here a great rock of 
 granite jutted from the soft rich earth, and on 
 one corner of this I sat and rested. At my 
 feet a large butterfly fluttered indolently from 
 one dead branch to another. Its wings were 
 of a shade closely akin to that of the decaying 
 wood over which it hovered, a brownish 
 yellow, with patches of pale nacreous blue. 
 
 It was while I rested that I heard the 
 drummers. 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 Grove and forest in the tropics know 
 few sounds till after sunset. At midday you 
 may hear a leaf falling, if you should halt to 
 listen. At times there will be a rustling in 
 the branches high above you, a half-caught 
 glimpse of goblin forms swinging through the 
 tree-tops, a half-heard echo of sibilant 
 querulous chattering. Or you may be startled 
 by the harsh, metallic call of an unseen bird, 
 like the clanging of a barbaric gong. Sound 
 of any kind is so unusual that when it comes it 
 is necessarily disturbing. After sundown, as 
 is known, things are otherwise, 
 
 I say that it was by the brook that I first 
 became conscious of the drums. It was 
 possible, of course, that they had been sound- 
 ing their warning— or was it, perhaps, their 
 invitation — ever since I had entered the 
 shadowy cloister of the grove. One knows 
 how the consciousness will leap suddenly 
 to recognition of the ticking of the clock 
 above the hearth, or the far-away thunder of 
 breakers on a sea coast. 
 
 4 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 — — — — mSSSSSSSSSm — m^SSm — mSSSS^SSm ■— ■ — — — — — 
 
 Who these hidden drummers might be, 
 I was not able then or afterwards to judge. 
 They were ahead of me, so much was certain, 
 but the path faded away to nothingness almost 
 at my feet, and try as I might I could not win 
 through the matted thicket that confronted 
 me. Intinctively I felt that their drumming 
 was in some way connected with myself. 
 They had chosen, perhaps, this means to draw 
 me to them, and when I, having with unimag- 
 inable struggles reached the further edge of the 
 grove, should meet them face to face, they 
 would become silent on the instant, or their 
 drumming would perhaps rise in a rhythmic 
 and terrible crescendo to a climax ot diabolic 
 sound. Again, that drumming might have 
 a message for me which it was beyond my 
 power to interpret. It had already occured 
 to me that these hidden ones might be 
 striving to prevent my going farther, lest some 
 great mischance befel me. Or, again, their 
 
 5 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 drumming might be merely an attempt to 
 thwart me on the brink of an immense 
 discovery. 
 
 But I could not find the path, and so 
 journeyed homewards in the dusk. Before me 
 flew one of those ghostly russet-hued birds, 
 relatives, I think, of our night]ar, that flit 
 along every African path at sunset. What 
 seemed a stick or a stone rises at your feet, 
 flutters a dozen yards along the track, and 
 settles in the dust, rises again and settles, in 
 
 exasperating repetition. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Twice or thrice afterwards I visited the 
 grove, and when I had forded the stream and 
 found the rock it was always close upon sun- 
 set. And the drummers were always at their 
 task. 
 
 Once only I saw a man in the grove. 
 He was a native of meek aspect, bearing a 
 a basket of roots upon his head. He was 
 following by the path I had taken, and when 
 
 6 
 
The Twilight Drummers 
 
 he saw me seated on the rock he was so 
 surprised that he fell into the stream. He 
 scrambled backed to safety, smiled a shy, 
 meek smile, and was absorbed again into 
 the green gloom of the trees. But he went 
 back, not forward. 
 
 I walked away from the grove the last 
 time with the sound of drums reverberating 
 in my ears more loudly, more insistently than 
 before. 
 
 And they were still beating there on the 
 day when I set my face resolutely westward, 
 towards the great river and the coast. 
 
An African Night 
 
An African Night 
 
 E talked not at all, my friend and I, 
 as we ate our evening meal in 
 an island of light set upon a sea 
 of darkness that, though silent, 
 was none the less alive. Yet it was not an 
 utter darkness, for circumscribing us, nearer 
 the ground, only to be discerned by a 
 concentrated staring through the surrounding 
 envelope of gloom, a myriad points caught the 
 light, intermittently, and for the fraction of a 
 second. We were not alone. These tiny 
 reflectors were a thousand human eyes. It 
 was a little disquieting, this thought that we 
 should be feeding, performing necessary but 
 absurd antics with knives and forks and glasses 
 beneath the quiet scrutiny of a whole urban 
 population. Once, from far back, there came 
 a shrill high-pitched cackle of laughter that 
 
 ii 
 
An African Night 
 
 was almost derisive, but ere we fully realized 
 that someone had laughed the night had caught 
 the sound, enveloped it and smothered it. 
 
 We essayed, as I have said, no conver- 
 sation, my companion having foreknowledge 
 that in an hour or so he would be lying with 
 hot eyes beneath mosquito nets unfiuttered by 
 any breeze, wrapped tightly in all the blankets 
 that our scanty kit could furnish, yet shivering 
 from head to foot. Had I spoken I knew 
 that he would not have answered, save with 
 an oath. On the table at his elbow stood a 
 little squre bottle of glass that held quinine 
 tablets. 
 
 The small clear flame of the lamp, burn- 
 ing with steadiness though unshielded by 
 shade or chimney, seemed the pivot upon 
 which this sinister world of the African night 
 hung poised. One's ears, pieternaturally 
 acute, sensed the faint whir of the clockwork 
 apparatus which fed that tiny cone of light 
 with air. There was a louder and more sibi- 
 
 12 
 
An African Night 
 
 lant whirring, the plop of a small object strik- 
 ing an obstacle, and the flame, hitherto 
 impassive, immovable, flickered to the blind 
 flutterings of some maimed creature of the 
 darkness. It fell to the table, whatever it 
 was, a hideous nightmare huddle of lobster 
 claws, bloated body, and shrivelled glistening 
 wings. It was but the forerunner of a horde 
 of hellish things. Fantastic demons of faery, 
 out of the blackness they hurled themselves 
 by scores to immolation in that calm and 
 deadly pyramid of fire. Over the whole com- 
 pass of the table they crawled and wriggled 
 with obscene crippled movements. At the 
 sight I was filled with a deadly nausea. 
 
 A black shadow hovered at my compan- 
 ion's side, offering a cup. He took it, tasted 
 the coffee, and dashed what remained to the 
 ground. Gripping the arms of his chair, h e 
 snarled and made as if to rise, but the shadow 
 was gone, suddenly and mysteriously, as it 
 had appeared. The tired eyes of the figure 
 
 13 
 
An African Night 
 
 in the chair glared like those of a predatory 
 animal. 
 
 Still neither of us spoke, The silence 
 seemed unbroken till one listened intently, 
 
 when it became evident that all the night was 
 filled with an unholy concert of subdued 
 sound. Far off beyond the huts a million 
 cicadas were shrilling in every patch of bush ; 
 out of the reeds came the fluting of tree-frogs; 
 and from the water beyond, a quarter of a 
 mile away, was borne the sonorous and fore- 
 boding music of the bull-frogs Mosquitoes 
 filled the air immediately about us with their 
 thin trumpeting. The lamp-light fell on my 
 compainion's wrist, and I saw him look on 
 with apathy while one of them settled there 
 and slowly, with fiendish deliberation, worked 
 its poison-laden spear through the skin to the 
 pulsing vein beneath. 
 
 I reached over for the square glass bottle. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Another light appeared, tossing upon the 
 back-ground of gloom. It was the hurricane- 
 
 14 
 
An African Night 
 
 lamp carried by my boy, who now sought to 
 guide me to the hut where he had set up my 
 bed. My friend had gone, cursing the fright- 
 ened youth who led him. In ten minutes I 
 was prone on my camp mattress, in thin 
 pyjamas and bare of any blanket. I lay and 
 gazed towards the doorless aperture of my 
 
 hut. Through the veil of mosquito-netting I 
 could perceive against the sky the fretted out- 
 line of a mango tree whose dry leaves never 
 rustled, for there was still no faintest sugges- 
 tion of wind. Sleep was impossibly, infinitely, 
 remote. 
 
 With a suddenness that sent a stab of 
 pain racing along my nerves, a wailing un- 
 earthly cry rose to heaven from some 
 distant quarter of the town. One of the Faith- 
 ful was calling on his God, and as the 
 modulations of h ; s praying rose and fell in 
 mournful gradations of sound I pictured the 
 white-clad swaying figure rhythmically 
 
 15 
 
An African Night 
 
 prostrating and uprearing itself like a pallid 
 wave of the sea. 
 
 ****** 
 
 A single star glimmered above the mango 
 tree. 
 
 The Mussulman's prayer had died away 
 long ago in a last ululation of agonized self- 
 abasement. Sometimes a bat or a lizard 
 rustled in the thatch. Once a week-old 
 kidling, straying from its dam, tottered through 
 the doorway, and wandered round the hut 
 bleating faintly and piteously till it blundered 
 into freedom again. The minutes, or 
 hours — I knew not which — went by. 
 
 My eyes were on the star winking above 
 the mango tree, when it went out. The tree 
 itself, the neighbouring hut, a row of water 
 jars, stole into definition. Somewhere near a 
 faint hissing sound became audible. 
 ****** 
 
 The boys had lit my stove. 
 
 16 
 
Green HaVens 
 
Green HaVens 
 
 |INE proved to be a big canoe 
 with high squared ends, roughly 
 carved, and fairly water-tight 
 for all its score of old leaks 
 that had been patched and cobbled and 
 then finished with rude native rivets of 
 iron and copper. Suleiman and Adamu 
 were straight, long-limbed lads, whose 
 shoulder-muscles flickered and rippled as 
 they strove against the Niger current ; 
 Suleiman, who was singing when he was 
 not laughing, with a twenty-foot pole ; 
 Adamu, who was a little the elder and 
 of a turn inclined to melancholy, with a 
 paddle whose blade was fashioned like a 
 spear-head. 
 
 Our rate of progression up-stream was, I 
 take it, between one and two miles an hour, 
 certainly no more. To attempt the open water 
 
 19 
 
Green Havens 
 
 would have been impossible, and our best 
 results were achieved by wriggling, like some 
 strange amphibian, through the thin belt of 
 reeds that fringed the river's eastern boundary. 
 When there were no reeds we clung to the 
 branches of those trees that lifted their crests 
 above the flood, and pulled ourselves along 
 hand-over-hand. Because the rains had not 
 yet come to an end there were many such 
 trees. Where both these and the reeds failed 
 us, we indulged in wild bursts of frantic pad- 
 dling. Suleiman, shipping his pole hastily 
 with much splashing and commotion, would 
 snatch up the second paddle, and Adamu and 
 he together would grapple with and overcome, 
 inch by inch, the inimical expanse of moving 
 water that struggled ever to push us back from 
 the next green haven. 
 
 ****** 
 
 It had been the appearance of these two 
 boys on the river bank that led me ultimately 
 to engage them. They were tall and nobly 
 
 20 
 
Green Havens 
 
 built ; their gestures were as easy and grace- 
 ful as the movements of wild animals; they 
 had the regular features of the majority of 
 their tribe. Their eyes and teeth were mag- 
 nificent, and the rich chocolate of each face 
 was in admirable contrast with the snow-white 
 of the new-washed Phrygian cap and flowing 
 burnous. After his tussle with an eddy 
 beyond a fallen tree, Suleiman shed that emi- 
 nently becoming robe. Here also he began 
 to sing that ballad of his native land whose 
 only words were, or seemed to be, 
 
 " Ah tete yang bala'hur." 
 This ditty, which to judge by its intonation 
 was a mournful one, for the singer managed 
 to convey a haunting and delicate note of 
 sadness into every repetition of it, was pitched 
 in a high but not shrill falsetto, repeated with 
 infinite variations in a minor key. The 
 vocalist relieved the dolour of his singing by 
 bursting from time to time into half-unconscious 
 gurgles of merriment, like those of a young 
 
 21 
 
Green Havens 
 
 child. This would happen when anything 
 essentially ridiculous took place, as when the 
 breaking of a branch lost us, with a jerk, ten 
 yards of our hard-won passage, or again when 
 a large bird that I had foolishly shot at fell 
 fluttering clumsily into the tide and could not 
 be retrieved. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Without his burnous Suleiman appeared 
 to even better advantage. He was a bronze 
 gladiator come to life. The touch of the sun 
 on my own forearm, already tanned to maho- 
 gany, set me wondering at his hardihood. 
 Yet what seemed brown satin was surely more 
 like leather, and now the excessively becoming 
 little cap of liberty was doffed as well, dis- 
 closing a chocolate pate that was shaved as 
 cleanly as my chin. Could a native, I pon- 
 dered, have sunstroke in any conceivable cir- 
 cumstances ? Apparently not, or in any case 
 there seemed to be a preventive remedy, as 
 demonstrated by the behaviour of Suleiman, 
 
 22 
 
Green Havens 
 
 who now bent to snatch a paimful of river 
 water wherewith to splash his shining crown. 
 Which done, he emitted a grunt of satisfaction, 
 a sotto voce grunt, restrained to the point of 
 genteelness, and resumed his song. 
 
 Then, with nothing visible or audible 
 around and ahead of us but the reeds whis- 
 pering in the sun, we stopped. We seemed 
 not to have grounded, we merely ceased from 
 going on, as might be in surrender to some 
 occult natural force that forbade our advancing 
 farther. Adamu, roused from his melancholy 
 dream, intimated respectfully that I should 
 step overboard and proceed to that village 
 where I wished to lodge. It lay, if not pre- 
 cisely near at hand, at least not so far but that 
 we might reach it by nightfall. I asked him 
 how this should be managed, and he suggested 
 that I might find it convenient to ride upon 
 his own broad shoulders. I did so, and in five 
 minutes we found a path of hard red earth, at 
 whose extremity hovered several brown and 
 
 23 
 
Green Havens 
 
 shameless children and an old woman, equally 
 shameless, but of a corporeal hue that was 
 rather grey than brown. 
 
 ****** 
 It was decided that this dame, who now 
 revealed herself as the mother of Suleiman's 
 brother, should go forward with her relative 
 and my loads to make ready a hut and prepare 
 food in the village against my coming, and that 
 I, attended by Adamu, should follow at my 
 leisure. So by a little creek I rested me under 
 a grove of red bananas, and watched the 
 passage of a string of native girls, who carried 
 on their heads grass baskets filled with the 
 produce of the neighbouring yam field. They 
 walked with the supple ease of panthers, and as 
 they came upon me suddenly at the bend in 
 the path they shied like frightened wild things, 
 throwing back to their fellows timid little 
 half cries of surprise. 
 
 Then I passed on, and came at last to the 
 clustered huts of red mud. One was bigger 
 
 24 
 
Green Havens 
 
 than the rest, and before it stood Suleiman 
 smiling a welcome, and a bowing figure that 
 seemed to carry more clothes than were al- 
 together suitable. Suleiman explained, defer- 
 entially, that I was in luck. White men 
 seldom came here now, but long ago they had 
 built this God-palaver house, whose native 
 sacristan, still in charge, was anxious to do 
 all the honours. The clothed figure came for- 
 ward, still bowing. Its English was almost 
 intelligible. I was ushered courteously into 
 the cool, dark interior of the mission hut. 
 
 On its main wall were exhibited three 
 European pictures. That in the middle was a 
 crude German oleograph depicting the apostle 
 John attired in a red dressing-gown. His 
 supporters, I noticed, were two well-known 
 actresses of the Gaiety Theatre. 
 
 25 
 
El Dorado 
 
El Dorado 
 
 |F it was there at all the reef lay 
 somewhere within the stretch 
 of country between the blue 
 hills and the river, a tract, I 
 should say, twenty miles long by ten broad. 
 Just about where we stood the swamp began 
 and the river ended, though there was no 
 definite line of separation. Behind us that 
 immense bulk of brown water swirled away 
 westwards. It was two miles wide, and 
 because of the long tongues of sandbank that 
 broke up its oily surface it had taken us three 
 hours to cross. 
 
 In getting thus far we had spent many 
 weary weeks. We had waded through creeks 
 and sweated along scorched bush-paths ; we 
 had kept ourselves alive on bad food and bad 
 water. We had ceased to regard any of the 
 amenities of life. Secretly each one of us had 
 
 29 
 
£1 Dorado 
 
 grown to suspect his comrades. And the 
 Government at headquarters had wired fran- 
 tically to forbid our entering this province at 
 all. They had thought we should be more 
 troublesome in our deaths than in our lives. 
 But we had laughed at the telegrams. 
 
 Having passed many days in that tract of 
 country I have cause to remember it very 
 vividly. So, I imagine, have Dale and Hewitt, 
 if they are alive. 
 
 All I can tell you about Dale is that he 
 was a long, lean, bronzed adventurer. Hewitt 
 called himself a mining engineer, but I do not 
 think that describes him very well. 
 
 Between us and the blue cliffs on the 
 horizon the land undulated in a succession 
 of rocky ridges and grey-green valleys. I 
 remember that distances were immensely 
 deceptive there. You could perceive a clump 
 of trees hours before you reached it. One reedy 
 crest held you from the desired shade of those 
 green boughs, but, having topped that, there 
 
 30 
 
£1 Dorado 
 
 fell away before you another long and weary 
 dip of yellow path rising ultimately to a further 
 ridge, and beyond that yet another. And it 
 was a thirsty land. I have never craved for 
 water as I craved for it there, never dragged 
 heavy feet along tracks so shadeless and so 
 cruel, never rushed so eagerly to throw myself 
 beside some sluggish trickle and swallow pint 
 after pint of water that was more than half 
 mud. 
 
 Yet there were many prospects of that 
 country that were pleasant to the eye. Even 
 now I can conjure up at will the vision of a 
 path that sloped away from one's feet to a 
 crystal streamlet creeping musically among 
 granite rocks, beneath an overhanging tangle 
 of twisted palms and luscious fern-like growths. 
 Beyond was rolling grassy ground scattered 
 with mimosa bush, and through the shimmering 
 air that danced above it in the heat the far-off 
 hills showed more richly blue than before, 
 a blue that was almost lapis- lazuli. The sands 
 
 31 
 
El Dorado 
 
 of the stream were all golden, and the little 
 fish that hung and darted there had large 
 golden eyes. And the sun was everywhere, 
 so strong and bright that the colours of all 
 objects seemed alive and glowing with a strange 
 inward fire. 
 
 In the branches of a tree by the stream 
 sat a bright green bird. At intervals it 
 screamed harshly. 
 
 By a little reed-fringed gully Dale and I 
 sat on an outcrop of some basaltic rock and 
 listened to the words of Hewitt, who read 
 from a paper on his knee. The man who 
 wrote it is dead, and this story is not con- 
 cerned with the manner of its coming into our 
 possession. 
 
 Three hundred yards E. of the village of 
 Ongbe I struck a reef of conglomerate running 
 N.-E. and S.-W. A week's surveying showed 
 that it was traceable for five miles, from the 
 ridge of low hills to the point where it strikes 
 the river. The reef crops out again on an 
 
 32 
 
£1 Dorado 
 
 Island in the main channel, where I found the 
 natives wearing gold ornaments on the wrists 
 and ankles. Samples of rock panned by me 
 on the spot showed a proportionate yield of 
 15 to 20 dwts. 
 
 All that day and the next we three 
 tramped steadily beneath the blazing sun. 
 Before us strode an impassive negro youth, 
 balancing on his head two iron pans, a score 
 of white canvas bags with numbers on them, 
 and a small sampling pick. A younger lad, 
 almost an infant, bore a heavy pestle and 
 mortar of wrought-iron. 
 
 From time to time we came to spots 
 where the rock thrust its jagged teeth up 
 through the soil. They were of all kinds and 
 colours, and the dry channels about were 
 strewn with gravel. There were quartz peb- 
 bles, white, yellow, and an exquisite rose-pink. 
 There was a hard greenish stone like fine 
 granite, and another that Hewitt said was 
 porphyry. There was gneiss and sandstone. 
 
 33 
 
El Dorado 
 
 Scattered here and there on the ground were 
 small crystalline formations of black stone that 
 reminded me of sugar-candy. Hewitt tapped 
 busily with the little pick, and soon all the 
 canvas bags were full. 
 
 When we got back to our camp by the 
 stream we set the boys going with the pestle 
 and mortar. " Beating stones" they found 
 not altogether unattractive, though it was folly 
 on our part to have come so far when excellent 
 stones abounded on the other side of the 
 river. 
 
 Afterwards, perhaps a dozen times, we 
 made pilgrimages to the stream, to watch 
 Hewitt swirling the water and the powdered 
 rock round and about in the pan. But at the 
 end there was never a gleam of yellow. 
 
 At our meal that second night Hewitt 
 grumbled rather more than we did. We had 
 all grumbled equally up to now, but that 
 evening for some reason Dale and I felt almost 
 cheerful. After all, we had got to the place at 
 
 34 
 
El Dorado 
 
 last. And really two days' disappointment 
 signified nothing. It might take months. 
 
 " You chaps," snarled Hewitt, "what do 
 you know ? Nothing. Don't you try to teach 
 me. If anything pulls this business through 
 its going to be my expert knowledge. And 
 don't you forget it." 
 
 And he lit his pipe and went out in the 
 dusk and sulked. 
 
 The next morning there was a far-away 
 look in his eyes. His manner was a little con- 
 strained. He suggested that we should all 
 now strike out in different directions and 
 bring back in the evening those samples that 
 we had collected. Dale and I got back with 
 our boys staggering under the chippings we 
 had amassed. Hewitt seemed not to have 
 done very much. His expert knowledge had 
 at least saved him from carting rubbish about. 
 The pilgrimages to the stream were repeated, 
 and there was no glint of yellow yet. 
 
 Dale and I collected, in the course of the 
 
 35 
 
£1 Dorado 
 
 following day, enough samples to ballast a 
 liner. But it appeared that Hewitt had taken 
 a gun and gone out shooting guinea-fowl. He 
 now sat in the open door-way of the hut with 
 his mouth half open, gazing at the setting sun 
 with lack-lustre eyes. They had the same 
 far-away look in them. I do not know what 
 he saw, but I think it was his people's home 
 at Sydenham, or a girl perhaps. 
 
 We hoped he had not got fever. 
 
 " No," he said, "but I've had enough of 
 this, you chaps. I've spent too many years of 
 my life roughing it and putting up with hard- 
 ships — all this sort of thing. I'm older than 
 you. And — I've got no faith in this rotten 
 mine." 
 
 "Do you want to go home ? " I asked, 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 Then Dale, who had always a hot temper 
 and a fiery tongue, stood up and cursed him, 
 elaborately and at very great length, The 
 intensity of his anger turned the tan of his 
 
 36 
 
El Dorado 
 
 face to grey, and brought a sob into his voice. 
 His outburst was so sudden, so unexpected, 
 that when he ceased it was difficult to be certain 
 that someone had been speaking. Yet a faint 
 echo of those lashing, searing words seemed 
 still to be ringing in the air about us. 
 
 Hewitt gasped, and his jaw dropped. 
 He stood up and walked out of the hut. 
 Before dawn he had gone. 
 ****** 
 
 I have never seen him since. 
 
 37 
 
The Resthouse 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 WAS not a little glad when the 
 narrow path turned sharply, 
 and the conical thatched roots 
 and mud walls of Keren lay 
 revealed, nestling at the foot of a high sandstone 
 bluff. Beyond Kerefi, I knew, lay the great 
 river, and eight hours' canoeing on the down 
 current would take me to the big station, big in 
 the sense that three and sometimes four white 
 men of the Government services were gathered 
 there together ; and fairly on my way home 
 from a year's tour in which ill-health and the 
 strange depression of spirit that weighs upon 
 every white man whose work keeps him 
 twelve consecutive months in West Africa 
 had left their mark. 
 
 The grass, if grass it could be called that 
 was three times my own height, ceased at the 
 edge of a meagre patch of cultivation. Beyond 
 
 41 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 the strip of yams and mealies, vocal with the 
 muffled stridence of calling guinea-fowl, the 
 bush encroached again, throwing forward 
 skirmishers, isolated tussocks of tall dry grass 
 that coalesced and ran together up the out- 
 lying spur of the bluff crowned by the old 
 Government resthouse. 
 
 There it was that I meant to lay my head 
 that night. 
 
 Even as the carriers, panting from the 
 final short ascent, set down their loads in the 
 end of its wide verandah, there was a flicker 
 in the sky and the dusk had come. In the 
 fifteen minutes in which the boys had put up 
 my bed with its mosquito net and the cook 
 had contrived to dish up chop in a corner of 
 the neglected compound, where a fire now 
 blazed dimly, the very outlines of the building 
 had grown vague and indistinct. Outside the 
 circle of light shed by my small travelling 
 lamp all was blackness, for there was no 
 moon, neither was there any sound in the 
 
 42 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 darkness save the shrilling of innumerable 
 crickets. But that high shrilling, audible 
 background of all African nights, was 
 incessant. 
 
 The lodging I had chanced upon was, so 
 far as I could perceive, the usual long low 
 bungalow containing three "rooms entirely 
 separated one from the other, with a broad 
 stoep or verandah running completely round 
 it. There was no need to seek for the key 
 of the end room, where my loads were lodged, 
 and outside which, under the wide eaves, my 
 bed had been set up, for the door had been 
 eaten through and through by white ants, 
 and the lock was gone. 
 
 I dined, smoked one short pipe, retired 
 within the semi-privacy of mosquito curtains, 
 and tried vainly to sleep. My boys stole 
 away, black shadows that vanished as they 
 stepped out of the charmed circle of lamp-light, 
 to rest in a tumbledown shelter at the 
 lower end of the compound. I tossed on my 
 
 43 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 blanket, hot and feverish, tortured by the 
 mosquitoes that the net failed to keep 
 altogether away, thankful a little for the 
 friendly lamplight that battled, if feebly, 
 against the darkness that was to-night actively 
 oppressive, inimical. 
 
 There should have been a full moon, but 
 the sky was covered with black and threaten- 
 ing cloud, though the wind of the tornado 
 threatening since the afternoon had not risen. 
 A prowling hyasna howled within twenty 
 yards of where I lay, and I started and trem- 
 bled, though such devil's laughter was no new 
 sound to me. My nerves seemed all on edge, 
 and I looked for another bout of fever with 
 the morning. 
 
 Thoughts, like evil-winged imps, chased 
 each other through my consciousness, half- 
 formed thoughts, strangely terrifying, borne of 
 ill-health and of the darkness. I knew myself 
 for an unwelcome, unfriended stranger in a 
 land where evil stalked abroad more overtly 
 
 44 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 than in other countries of the world, where 
 the powers of darkness displayed themselves 
 as less intangible and more active. Details of 
 my late host's talk came back to me, stories of 
 the wave of devil-worship that had passed over 
 the very district in whose heart I lay. He had 
 spoken of that priest of darkness whose cun- 
 ning wit had set the stone of revolution rolling, 
 an old man, hideous in body as in soul, tor- 
 tured by leprosy into a grotesque caricature of 
 the humanity that he had forsworn. Those 
 grim and terrible scars, so his followers believed* 
 were but the traces of his struggles with lesser 
 devils whom he had encountered and over- 
 come. 
 
 Every black man, I thought, worshipped 
 the devil in his heart, for he knew that in this 
 land evil was paramount. Men of the troop 
 led by a young English officer whose name I 
 had forgotten had fled down river terrified 
 when their chief, in his delirium, had rushed 
 from a bed of fever to tragic death by drown- 
 
 45 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 ing in the waters of the great river. This 
 had happend here, at Kerefi, the town that 
 lay a quarter of a mile below me under the 
 hill. And one man had told wild stories of 
 a ju-ju that the witch-doctor, caught and 
 beheaded, had put upon his executioner. I 
 remembered that in the East they would 
 call that a Sending. 
 
 From beyond this chaotic jumble of 
 thoughts some outer influence gave my 
 consciousness a sudden rap. My brain cleared 
 in a second, and I found myself sitting up in 
 bed with all my faculties on the alert. I was 
 listening. 
 
 The sound that had caught my attention 
 was that of a fairly large animal moving 
 uncertainly and restlessly, as if its freedom 
 were in some way hampered. It was here 
 in the compound, whatever it was, almost 
 at my elbow. Then a breath of wind, 
 forerunner of the coming tornado, tore the 
 cloud from the face of the moon. 
 
 46 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 Before me, in the resthouse compound, 
 stood a hobbled pony. 
 
 I looked at it fixedly, and saw that it was 
 assuredly a very real pony. Then there was 
 another traveller who was sharing the 
 hospitality of the resthouse with me. It was 
 odd that I had noticed no traces of him before, 
 but I remembered that it had grown dark 
 almost as soon as I had reached the building, 
 and the thought of examining the other two 
 rooms had not even occurred to me. I looked 
 along the verandah, lit clearly, now by the 
 moon, and saw indeed that another visitor 
 occupied the further end. His bed, like 
 mine, had been put up in the verandah itself 
 and his baggage had been piled against the 
 bungalow wall On the side of one box there 
 stood out clearly in the moonlight the initials 
 E. M. " Edward Machen," I ejaculated, and 
 then I wondered why, for I knew no one 
 of that name. Whereupon it came to me in a 
 flash that Edward Machen was the name of 
 
 47 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 the young English subaltern that I had been 
 trying hard to recall. That the initials should 
 be the same was a curious coincidence 
 enough. 
 
 My unknown companion lay twenty yards 
 away from me, at the least, yet through 
 the half-veil of his mosquito-net I could see 
 that he was as restless as I was myself. He 
 lay quietly for perhaps half a minute, and 
 then started up from his pillow with a violent 
 jerk. Afterwards I heard him muttering — 
 broken, disconnected words and phrases. It 
 was fever, obviously, and he was semi-delirious 
 even now. It was a shame, I thought, that 
 his boys were not watching him, And then 
 the moon was veiled again, and the blackness 
 grew thick as before. 
 
 The sounds of restless tossing and 
 muttering died away, and I must have dozed 
 again. I do not know how long it was before 
 I awoke. When I did open my eyes again I 
 found that I was gazing at — a face. 
 
 48 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 When I say that I was looking at a face I 
 must add that it was a face that I have never 
 tried to describe and never could describe. I 
 can say indeed that it was white, loathly white, 
 and that I knew it to be utterly and abominably 
 evil. It looked, not, thank God, at me, but 
 towards the stranger, I know that if it had 
 looked at me I should have gone mad. And 
 I watched it move towards the other bed till 
 it seemed to pass through the curtain and rest 
 beside the head of that other figure. And I 
 saw my fellow-traveller spring wildly up with 
 a more heart-rending cry of anguish than I 
 had ever imagined in my dreams, though I 
 have often heard it since. 
 
 Even as the face of the moon was cleared 
 for a second time the stranger had dashed his 
 mosquito-net aside and leapt from the 
 verandah on to the path that ran down through 
 Keren. And as that piteous fugitive fled 
 down the rocky path with something white 
 and loathsome at its shoulder which seemed 
 
 49 
 
The Resthouse. 
 
 striving to peer into its face, the tornado burst. 
 Through a gap in the mantle of cloud shone 
 the pale moon, glimmering behind the driving 
 rain that dashed the tangled grasses in the 
 
 compound to the earth and beat a devil's 
 tattoo on the resthouse roof. 
 
 Then I was filled with an immense pity 
 for that fleeing figure, so that I ran out into 
 
 the rain just as I was and followed it. The 
 stranger half ran, half jumped, down the 
 
 rocky path to Kerefi, while I scrambled 
 behind. We reached the sleeping town and 
 were through it. Any noise we made was 
 
 drowned by the rushing of the mighty rain 
 and the roar of that great wind. And at the 
 
 bend before we reached the river the figure 
 before me passed out of my sight. A minute, 
 and that cry of horror that had rung out on 
 the resthouse verandah was repeated, and its 
 pitiful echoes died away down the roaring 
 wind. And when I got to the bend I saw 
 
 50 
 
The Resthouse 
 
 the river before me, and beyond the river, 
 nothing. 
 ****** 
 Half an hour later, drenched, shivering, 
 and almost out of my wits, I reached the 
 resthouse compound. I thought of the 
 stranger's pony, but when I looked for it it 
 was not there. I saw the ruin of my own 
 storm-wrecked bed with its broken poles and 
 curtains flapping in wet tatters, and then I 
 stumbled towards the other end of the 
 verandah. There was no sign of a second 
 bed, nor of any baggage, and I saw that the 
 whole of this part of the building had been 
 for months a crumbled ruin, upon which the 
 rain now beat pitilessly. 
 
 5i 
 
Wilson 
 
Wilson 
 
 HAD become aware that a small 
 negro boy was walking down 
 the sun-scorched path linking 
 the resthouse with the half- 
 dozen sheds of galvanized iron that represented 
 the Ivory Coast Trading Co.'s station. On 
 his shaven head a white envelope, of the 
 shape known as " business note," was balanced 
 adroitly. Without seeming to notice me the 
 child advanced to within two paces of my 
 chair, and held the letter out in my 
 direction. I opened it. 
 
 "Dear Sir," it ran, in a flowing clerkly hand, 
 " hearing you are wishful to dispose of 600 I2-bore 
 cartridges (mixed 2's, 3's and 4's) I have pleasure 
 in making you an offer for same, Shall be pleased 
 to purchase goods (as per your description) for £2 
 10s. (two pounds ten shillings). Should you agree 
 
 55 
 
Wilson 
 
 -_ z= . — 
 
 to terms kindly notifiy me at the depot, or should 
 be pleased to see you if you care to call. 
 Yours ffy, R. Wilson." 
 
 I wanted to sell those cartridges badly. 
 There were quite a number of odds and ends 
 which, though they had once seemed neces- 
 sities, I was indubitably " wishful to dispose 
 of ' just at present : two sporting rifles, a 
 shot gun, a camera, and several ingenious 
 electro-plated contrivances that an expensive 
 Piccadilly outfitter had juggled into my 
 possession. They had cost a small fortune 
 six months before. That they now represented 
 the equivalent of a second-class passage home 
 was a matter of grave doubt. I was hard up, 
 and the half-dozen yellow-faced compatriots 
 of mine who now sprawled listlessly on the 
 verandahs of those galvanized iron bungalows 
 knew it. The missionary had been 
 sympathetic, but shooting was not one of his 
 recreations. The Government Agent had a 
 brand-new sporting outfit, but might possibly 
 
 56 
 
Wilson 
 
 relieve me of the camera if I cared to wait 
 till to-morrow, when he hoped to have time 
 to look at it. There remained the traders. 
 The store-clerk, a weedy Liverpool youth, 
 had no acquaintance with arms of precision, 
 was more than a little frightened of them in 
 fact, but rather fancied that his colleague, 
 Mr. Wilson of the shipping department, had 
 lately acquired a second-hand scatter-gun. 
 No, he believed the bargain had not included 
 cartridges, and Mr. Wilson might conceivably 
 be happy to do business with me. 
 
 Two pounds ten for the cartridges would 
 be a beginning, if a modest one, Mr. Wilson, 
 or a syndicate of himself and his tl colleagues," 
 might even take a fancy to the rifles as well. 
 I slipped half-a-dozen soft-nosed '404's into 
 my pocket, and resolved that they should, 
 hear that yarn about the big sable buck. 
 
 I told my boy to bring along the three 
 heavy foil-covered cases — " 2's, 3's and 4's — 
 as per your description." He vouchsafed a 
 
 57 
 
Wilson 
 
 sullen obedience, sensing his master's trouble 
 as a dog would sense it. For the last week, 
 I knew, he had been ready to bolt at the first 
 opportunity with as much of my portable 
 property as might constitute a generous 
 recompense for his unpaid wages. His pay 
 was two weeks overdue, so I owed him seven 
 and six. A dog, I meditated, would not have 
 wanted to bolt. 
 
 A small figure rose from one of the deck- 
 chairs on the depot verandah. Mr. Wilson 
 had a long body and very short legs. Legs 
 and body were encased in a much- 
 washed and consequently ill-fitting suit of 
 ready-made ducks of which the original hue 
 might have been either white or khaki. On 
 his bullet head was a huge sun-hat, whose 
 exterior had been recently made dazzling with 
 a coat of white lead. His accent and diction 
 were those of the London office boy, 
 
 He was genuinely anxious that my chair 
 should be of the most comfortable and my 
 
 58 
 
Wilson 
 
 drink of the longest and best. He wanted 
 the cartridges — yes — I should be doing him 
 a great favour by letting him have them. He 
 chatted, of palm-oil, of fever and mosquitoes, 
 of Home, which last he visioned, I was to 
 learn, as a doll's-house villa down 
 Bermondsey way, peopled by a mother and 
 sisters whom I could picture tiding over the 
 intervals between mails by enlarging to the 
 neighbours upon the many excellencies of the 
 absent Bob, and by the meticulous dusting, 
 with a sense as of the performance of some 
 religious rite, of the spears and the paddles 
 and the squat idol of black wood that made 
 the Wilson's best parlour a shrine for the spirit 
 of Romance. 
 
 " Nuts on curios, the women-folk," he 
 observed. " Pleases 'em more when you 
 smuggle through a box of egret-feathers than 
 to 'ear the company 've risen you ten quid a 
 year." 
 
 We talked for an hour. There was no 
 
 59 
 
Wilson 
 
 need to impress Mr. Wilson with a glimpse 
 of the big -404 cartridges, or even to relate 
 the yarn of the sable buck. He would buy 
 all the guns, if twenty-five quid would cover 
 the lot. 
 
 " Six months' screw I've got," he insisted, 
 il lyin' idle. An' 'appen the big blighter kicks 
 too much for a little'un like meself, what 
 price my selling 'er at a profit to the first 
 trader 'oo comes through." 
 
 " Orns," he murmured, " 'orns over the 
 parlour mantle-shelf. Fair nuts on 'em, 
 they'll be." 
 
 He grew so enthusiastic over this vision 
 of himself as a big-game hunter that at the 
 time the fact that he was doing the generous 
 thing towards a fellow-countryman in 
 difficulties hardly occurred to me. His 
 delicacy in handling a rather embarassing 
 situation could not have been excelled. Not 
 once did he betray the slightest sign of any 
 curiosity as to the wherefore of my being at 
 
 60 
 
Wilson 
 
 such a pass, or even of my original reasons 
 for having visited this benighted country. 
 
 I liked him, and that in spite of the fact 
 that he was placing me under an obligation to 
 
 himself. He was a humourist, too, in his 
 own Cockney way, frequently dropping into 
 little droll jokes, breaking into a double 
 shuffle in his wanderings about the verandah, 
 and juggling with imaginary billiard balls. 
 
 He escorted me over the premises. In 
 the compound the air was heavy with the 
 sickly odour of palm-oil, and great barrels of 
 it lay in a hundred rows. 
 
 That night I dined with Wilson, and he 
 did me remarkably well. And in the* 
 morning I knew that I could take the next 
 
 boat after all, for the Government Agent had 
 decided, on reflection, that the camera might 
 be useful to him. He hardly made a bad 
 bargain, for it had cost me four times what he 
 gave for it. 
 
 I took formal leave of Wilson as soon as 
 the fussy little stern-wheeler had churned 
 
 61 
 
Wilson 
 
 herself alongside the trading wharf, and 
 busied myself with getting on board what 
 kit the Fates had left me. But five minutes 
 before the black skipper let the whistle go 
 Wilson's big sun-hat bobbed up from the 
 companion that led to the lower deck, His 
 small retainer followed, bearing an armful of 
 native ivory ornaments, a beautiful pair of 
 carved paddles that I had admired, and a big 
 brass bowl that had been hammered in 
 " bloody Benin." There was also a bottle of 
 whisky from the store, and two tins of tobacco. 
 " Jist a few curios," he ejaculated, breath- 
 less. " You got women-folk, somewhere, I 
 reckon, Fair nuts they are on them bracelets, 
 take it from me. Well, good luck. When 
 you walk up the Strand and spot the Nelson 
 monyiment you'll forgit what a mosquito looks 
 
 like." 
 
 ****** 
 
 A week after landing at Plymouth I 
 received a letter from the Government Agent. 
 
 62 
 
Wilson 
 
 Would I mind ordering some more films for 
 him ? " You will be sorry to hear," he added, 
 " that young Wilson has pegged out. He 
 went down with fever the night you left, and 
 it proved such a bad dose that his heart 
 wouldn't stand it. A decent little chap." 
 
 63 
 
Bo/ Masque 
 
BaZ Masque 
 
 IANCELOT WILKINS felt the 
 keen air of the Northern 
 Heights on his cheek as the 
 gates of the Tube lift clanged 
 behind him. From afar the pilot of a 
 prowling taxi sensed the opulent gleam of 
 patent leather and corded silk, and in five 
 seconds a shadowy W. & G. panted invitingly 
 at the curb. 
 
 " Holbein Studios," said Lancelot, as he 
 arranged his swallow-tails with a meticulous, 
 precision that came naturally to him. 
 
 The car shot uphill for a hundred yards, 
 turned sharply to the left, hummed along a 
 gentle gradient through an avenue of elms, 
 huge and indefinite in the gloom, turned again 
 and crawled slowly and uncertainly along a 
 half-made road flanked by piles of loose 
 
 67 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 timber and building materials. A low, 
 huddled mass of buildings loomed suddenly 
 at one side of the track. The glare of the 
 headlights disclosed an agent's notice-board 
 emerging unsteadily from a tangle of shrubs. 
 " Studios to Let," it said, and seemed, its 
 mission thus accomplished, on the point of 
 sinking, like Pheidippides, to the earth. The 
 car stopped. 
 
 After a careful scrutiny of the register, 
 Lancelot descended, bestowed a shilling on 
 the driver, who received it in absolute silence, 
 and picked his way over various obstructions 
 towards a dark alley that ran lengthwise along 
 the block of studios, whose entrance was 
 revealed by the light of a dim gas-lamp. 
 Lancelot stopped before No. 3. 
 
 The hall door, the little window at the 
 side, the great roof-light, betrayed no single 
 hospitable glimmer. 
 
 A little puzzled, Lancelot drew a piece of 
 pasteboard from the inside breast pocket of a 
 
 68 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 natty frock overcoat, and glanced at it closely 
 in the uncertain light. 
 
 The card was oblong in shape, with 
 rounded corners and gilt edges. An 
 inscription ran — 
 
 Mr. Lancelot Wilkins. 
 
 On Friday next. 
 At half-past eight, 
 There will be Dancing, 
 Don't be late. 
 
 Mrs. Bindon-Smith, 
 3, Holbein Studios, 
 Hampstead. 
 " Heavens ! " thought Lancelot ; " and 
 to-night's Thursday." 
 
 It must be admitted that Lancelot, 
 though very young, betrayed in the ordinary 
 relations of life a precision of action and 
 behaviour that his friends regarded with 
 admiration. Having no experience to speak 
 of, he yet possessed a natural savoit /aire 
 that few mortals attain to even at thirty-five. 
 In any transaction involving finance he 
 
 69 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 revealed a certain canniness, though he was 
 neither Scotchman nor Jew. Cab-drivers and 
 crossing-sweepers, to say nothing of husky- 
 voiced gentlemen whose candid lips had 
 sampled neither bite nor sup for three, five or 
 ten days, found him adamant, and though he 
 lent money willingly to his friends he 
 invariably made a note of the occurrence in a 
 neat little morocco-covered note-book, ruled 
 in red ink. It was understood that the book 
 contained no record of a bad debt. Which is 
 all by the way. 
 
 Almost for the first time in his young 
 life, Lancelot stood undecided how to act. 
 The fact that he did not look a fool at the 
 present moment was solely due to the 
 absence of spectators. 
 
 " My parents," though Lancelot, "live at 
 Wimbledon. This I take to be Hampstead. 
 It is impossible that I should go straight home 
 without either rest or refreshment. But yet, 
 should I discover myself to the Bindon- 
 
 70 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 Smiths in this condition, I shall indubitably 
 look a fool, if I admit the truth. It occurs to 
 me that I am on my way to a musical evening 
 at my rich aunt's at Highgate, and that I am 
 uncertain whether I ought to come at half- 
 past eight or nine to-morrow." 
 
 He was confronted by the face of some 
 small animal, simulated in beaten copper, and 
 screwed to the Bindon-Smiths' front door. 
 From the lower point of its countenance 
 depended a copper ring, with which Lancelot 
 beat upon a conveniently disposed plate of 
 the same metal. There was no opening of 
 doors within, no inner illumination, nor any 
 movement, 
 
 Lancelot checked an oath. 
 
 The small copper animal detached itself 
 from the woodwork and lay quiescent in 
 Lancelot's hand. He allowed the oath free 
 passage. 
 
 His better nature triumphing, he slipped 
 the ring-nosed creature through the letter-box 
 
 n 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 and walked towards the end of the alley, 
 where the gas-lamp flickered. 
 
 • 4 1 will go," said Lancelot, " to the 
 1 Empire.' " From which you will under- 
 stand that he was very young indeed. 
 
 A black and vibrant bulk, whose gleaming 
 eyes revealed the half-made road and the 
 distant avenue of trees, still quivered under 
 the lee of the shrubbery, 
 
 " Good," said Lancelot ; " he hasn't gone 
 yet." 
 
 He opened the door and sank into the 
 corner seat. Even as he leant out to direct 
 the figure at the steering-wheel, the car leapt 
 forward. 
 
 ''Well," said a clear little voice from the 
 opposite corner, " you didn't ask if you might, 
 but you look rather nice, and now you're here 
 you may as well come." 
 
 " Good God ! " ejaculated Lancelot. 
 
 " Oh, then it was your old taxi," said the 
 voice. " I wondered what it was doing here, 
 
 72 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 1 knew the Bindon-Smiths were out to-night, 
 and mine's the only other studio that's let. 
 But he belongs to me now, because he was 
 just vanishing when I found him. And now 
 he's going to Chelsea." 
 
 ".As you wish, of course — and — I suppose 
 I ought to tell you — my name is Lancelot 
 Wilkins." 
 
 " Is it ? You needn't have done. Mine 
 isn't Dinah. But you don't look a bit like it. 
 Lancelot, I mean. I do. Mine's Melisande." 
 
 And she did. They were already in the 
 avenue, and by the light of the street lamps 
 Lancelot could discern a tiny, almost elfin, 
 figure, draped in a curious gown of gauzy 
 green. She had red-brown hair, and the 
 bearing of a princess from some strange dream- 
 country. Her eyes were red-brown too, and 
 
 if Lancelot had studied Maeterlinck (whom 
 he had not heard of) he would have visioned 
 her little frail hands as dabbling idly in the 
 waters of a forest pool. At her girdle she 
 wore one damask rose. 
 
 71 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 " You were never at the Slade, were 
 you ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," said Lancelot ; " I'm in a 
 Government office. I've been there three 
 months. I, at least my department, administer 
 the Ecclesiastical Dilapidations Act, you 
 know." 
 
 " No, I don't. Yes, I do, though. The 
 Homes for Decayed Curates, of course. 
 What a pity you aren't in fancy dress. 
 Couldn't you come as a Decayed Curate, 
 don't you think ?" 
 
 " I fear not. And really — I don't quite 
 know where you're going, but, you know, I 
 haven't been asked." 
 
 "Rats! And if you're so fearfully keen 
 ■on rinding out, I'll tell you. We're going to a 
 dance in the great man's studio. There's 
 room for everybody — it's as big as a church." 
 
 " What great man ? " 
 
 " Why, the greatest, of course." She 
 leant forward and breathed, reverentially, a 
 name. 
 
 74 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 " What's his other name ? " asked 
 Lancelot. ". I " 
 
 " Oh dear ! " she murmured, as her red- 
 brown eyebrows lifted;. " and I suppose 
 you've never heard of him." 
 
 But they talked, nevertheless, while the 
 car sped south and westward, by Euston 
 Road, Edgware Road, Park Lane, Sloane 
 Street and the King's Road. At the gate of 
 what seemed a builder's yard it stopped. A 
 ragged urchin sprang to open the door, 
 Lancelot jumped out, a tiny hand fluttered for 
 a second in his, and Melisande was beside 
 him. Lancelot gave the driver Itis legal fare, 
 plus threepence, and declined to recognise the 
 urchin's presence. 
 
 " What a dear little ragamuffin," 
 
 " Was it ? Those chaps are a beastly 
 nuisance. And I don't believe in reckless 
 charity." 
 
 Don't you ?" she said. 
 
 Another taxi, hard on their heels, dis- 
 
 75 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 charged quite half-a-dozen surprising figures. 
 There was a sheikh, a hunchback, a dreamily 
 handsome Noureddin, two girls in Turkish 
 trousers, Sumurun in an orange veil. She 
 hailed Melisande in the voice of comradeship. 
 
 " Shame on you, Pixie, for countenancing 
 shirt-fronts." 
 
 " Shut up, Lola. This is Mr. Villikins." 
 
 Sumurun nodded. "Ask me for one 
 after supper," she threw over her shoulder to 
 Lancelot, and, flashing black eyes above her 
 veil upon the young merchant, she sped 
 hot-foot up the passage, pausing a dozen yards 
 away to twirl on the toes of tiny slippers before 
 the pursuing Noureddin, kneeling, his arms 
 outstretched in supplication. 
 
 " Keep her to that," said Melisande. 
 " Hers is the kind of dancing that you dream 
 about." 
 
 They came to a great door, with heavy 
 curtains beyond, between which the light came 
 streaming. Melisande vanished, some one 
 
 76 
 
Bai Masque 
 
 seized Lancelot's hat and overcoat, and he 
 found himself in a huge room, almost bare of 
 furniture. It was indeed nearly as big as a 
 church, Two great arc-lamps hissed overhead, 
 there was a piano in the far corner, a gypsy 
 violinist, and a Spaniard with a guitar. 
 Leaning with their faces to the wall were 
 pictures, scores of them, and a table by the 
 door was littered with hundreds of drawings. 
 On a model throne piled with Kelim rugs 
 sprawled half-a-dozen men and women in 
 strange dresses, with wild hair and eyes. A 
 bearded man, who seemed to Lancelot the 
 wildest and maddest-looking of the group, rose 
 and greeted him with grave courtesy. 
 
 " I hope," thought Lancelot, " he doesn't 
 know I never heard of him before to-night." 
 
 Melisande appeared, her arm linked in 
 Sumurun's. She was surrounded immediately 
 by a clamorous crowd of youths that included 
 Noureddin and his companions, a band of 
 Beardsley Pierrots, several Apaches, and a 
 
 77 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 beautiful Greek in a leopard-skin and sandals. 
 
 u A minute, please," she said, " I have 
 responsibilities. What have you done with 
 Mr. Villikins ? " 
 
 Lancelot advanced. 
 
 ''Villikins — Everybody," she announced, 
 and the company beamed upon Lancelot, 
 who executed a general obeisance. 
 
 Some one signalled to the orchestra in 
 the corner, and the lilting rhythm of Godin's 
 " Septembre " rose on the air. Lancelot, who 
 danced very well, found himself floating down 
 the room with a blue-eyed shepherdess. His 
 face grew flushed, his limbs buoyant. He 
 danced " A Thousand Kisses " with a priestess 
 of Isis, and two-stepped " Ghosts " with an 
 extraordinarily sinuous mermaid. Twice he 
 sought for Melisande, but on both occasions 
 she proved to be dancing with the great man. 
 
 Just before supper Lancelot found her. 
 The great man had left Melisande's side, to 
 gabble directions in Romany to the gypsy 
 
 78 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 with the violin. The good-looking Greek was 
 bearing down upon her, but Lancelot dashed 
 in and won. 
 
 Afterwards he could never conjure up 
 any very definite recollections of that dance. 
 He had a hazy remembrance of floating 
 through space with extraordinary ease and 
 lightness, of the touch of a tiny hand on his 
 shoulder, of the dream-perfume of red-brown 
 hair, and the gleam of red-brown eyes that 
 were more than half veiled. 
 
 The music stopped, 
 
 Lancelot was a little dazed, and by the 
 time he had regained his customary alertness 
 it was not Melisande, but Sumurun, who stood 
 before him. 
 
 " I watched you," she said. " Get 
 something cool in glasses, and we'll have the 
 next one if you like." 
 
 They drank Spanish wine from a long- 
 necked bottle, and Sumurun's black eyes 
 glittered over her veil. The music had begun 
 again. 
 
 79 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 " Come," she said. 
 
 They danced together once, twice, again 
 and again. The dreamy Noureddin languished 
 in corners, shooting reproachful glance at his 
 mistress when, from time to time, her flashing 
 eyes met his. She laughed, and clung more 
 tightly to Lancelot's shoulder. 
 
 The three musicians had left their 
 instruments, and were drinking and chattering 
 volubly to the great man and one or two 
 others. But the spirit of this wild frolic had 
 got well into the veins of most of the youths 
 and maidens present. They danced frantic 
 tarantellas, unaccompanied, and vied one with 
 another in grotesque pas seuls. In the middle 
 of the room whirled a dancing dervish, A 
 man and a girl were giving a vigorous and 
 realistic performance of the danse des Apaches. 
 The madness infected Lancelot too. He had 
 consumed much Spanish wine, and now 
 extemporised an eccentric measure that met 
 with general approval. There was much 
 
 80 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 clapping of hands, and a burnoused Arab leapt 
 to the piano-stool and thumped " Villikins and 
 his Dinah " in time with Lancelot's caperings. 
 
 The musicians took up their instruments 
 again, and it seemed to Lancelot that the 
 revel went on for hours. He danced every 
 dance, many of them with Sumurun. 
 
 Not till the confusion of the general 
 departure did he encounter Melisande again. 
 Weary but still excited figures were disen- 
 tangling ulsters and cloaks, and two amiable, 
 rather frightened policemen, beguiled from 
 the dulness of point duty in the Kings' Road 
 by some adventurous spirit, were bringing 
 cups of coffee from the nearest coffee-stall. 
 Lancelot seized two, and halted in front of a 
 little figure in green. 
 
 " I thought Lola must have carried you 
 off," she said. " Let's go. I'm tired, 
 Villikins." 
 
 While she drank her coffee, Lancelot 
 sallied forth and returned triumphantly with 
 
 81 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 a captured taxi. She settled herself into a 
 corner with a little tired sigh. 
 
 Lancelot felt a strange thumping beneath 
 his ribs. 
 
 " D'you know," he said, "you only gave 
 me one dance ? " 
 
 " Never mind ; this is a sort of sitting 
 out, isn't it?" 
 
 "And you haven't even told me what 
 your other name is," 
 
 She leaned back, and tipped up her 
 little elfish chin. Those wonderful eyes, like 
 a moon-fairy's, gleamed between half-closed 
 lids. 
 
 " I was born on Sunday," she crooned, 
 " on a Sunday at noon. And I bet you don't 
 know where thai comes from, do you, 
 Villikins ? " 
 
 Tiny fingers toyed with the rose at her 
 girdle. It was faded now, 
 
 A great wave of blood seemed to rush to 
 Lancelot's temples. 
 
 82 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 "Give me, oh, give me the rose! " he 
 pleaded. 
 
 Melisande shook her head. " I don't 
 believe in — reckless charity," she said. 
 
 They were very silent until, somewhere 
 in the region of Covent Garden, the taxi 
 stopped with a jerk. The driver tugged at 
 
 levers and nuts, and descended, muttering. 
 
 Lancelot's head was out of the window. 
 " What's up ? " he asked. 
 
 " Matter of ten minutes or so, sir. Very 
 sorry. 'Ave 'er all right by then." 
 
 Melisande yawned, as fairies would yawn. 
 " Villikins," she began. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " D'you know what the quality in you 
 that I most deprecate is ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Your essential respectability. I won't 
 accept your cake-walk as characteristic, 
 because you were carousing disgracefully just 
 before you did it." 
 
 83 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 "Watch this," said Lancelot, 
 
 Two yards away an electric standard 
 reared its head twenty feet and more above 
 the curb, Lancelot leapt from the taxi and 
 began to swarm up it. Two or three cabmen 
 and a market porter drew near, curiously. 
 Slowly Lancelot nearedthe dazzing globe at its 
 summit. Arrived there, the brilliant rays 
 reflected from his irreproachable shirt and 
 waist-coat, he doffed his opera-hat and waved 
 it round his head. " Three cheers for his 
 gracious Majesty King George the Fifth ! " he 
 shouted, and his young voice rang like a 
 clarion. 
 
 Appreciative plaudits rose from the night 
 birds gathered below, and Lancelot slipped 
 gracefully to earth. 
 
 There was a quality in Melisande s smile 
 that marked approval. 
 
 " But that," she added, " is not your only 
 fault." 
 
 84 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 Lancelot blushed. On the outskirts of 
 the little crowd that had collected he descried 
 a greybeard mounting guard over a hand-cart 
 laden with cabbages. 
 
 " My good fellow," remarked Lancelot, 
 " yonder cabbages seem to be your property. 
 At what do you appraise their value ? " 
 
 11 That 'ere cart, sir, I've wheeled 'un ten 
 mile to-night. Them cabbages, sir, they'll 
 bring in all o' thirty shillings, or should do." 
 
 " I desire to acquire them immediately. 
 Here are two sovereigns. Stay — here is my 
 card. If you care to wheel them a further 
 three miles and plant them all in the front 
 garden of 3, Holbein Studios, Hamp- 
 stead, before the arrival of the milkman, 
 you shall have another sovereign when you 
 call at my rooms. After all, I owe the Bindon- 
 Smiths something for the knocker." 
 
 " Good Villikins," murmured Melisande. 
 The driver had effected some mechanical 
 conjuration, and once more the throbbing of 
 the engine shook the car. 
 
 85 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 All too soon, it seemed to Lancelot, they 
 were gliding silently along the dark avenue of 
 elms. Then the half-made road, the untidy 
 piles of planking, the drooping notice-board, 
 reminded him that the end of his adventure 
 was in sight. 
 
 The taxi stopped. He stood beside 
 Melisande, and over their heads the gas-lamp 
 flickered, ghostly and ineffectual in the 
 gathering dawn. 
 
 Again he felt the rush of hot blood, the 
 thumping at his ribs. His eyes were very 
 bright, his voice uncertain. His native caution 
 had departed from him utterly. 
 
 " Melisande," he stammered, " you wont 
 even tell me your real name, but — will you 
 marry me ? " 
 
 "No," she said. "At least, I don't 
 expect so. But I'll meet you at the Bindon- 
 Smiths."' 
 
 " To-morrow ? " 
 
 "No. To-night." 
 
 86 
 
Bal Masque 
 
 Her fingers touched his hand, lingered 
 there for an imperceptible fraction of a second, 
 and she was gone. 
 
 Before Lancelot's eyes the roofs and 
 chimneys of Holbein Studios grew suddenly 
 into clear definition against a sky of palest, 
 coldest blue. The leafless trees of the avenue, 
 half-a-mile away, stood out black and vivid, 
 with the sharpness of outline that no object 
 wears save at dawn. The faint pipings of 
 half-awakened birds were carried to Lancelot's 
 
 ear. 
 
 A petal of the rose in his hand fluttered 
 slowly to the ground. 
 
 87 
 
The 'Butcher 
 
The 'Butcher 
 
 HE first visual impression of the 
 episode that I retain is of a 
 slanting white thread drawn 
 taut against the grey-green 
 background of wooded hills, marking where a 
 stretch of the main road gleamed through the 
 jungle half a mile away. As it caught the eye 
 a low humming, suggesting the flight of some 
 distant insect, obtruded itself upon the 
 noonday hush, and as if to further the 
 illusion something large and yellow slid over 
 the crest and dropped, straight as a bee in 
 flight, to be lost among the nearer trees. A 
 motor car turned almost noiselessly into the 
 enclosure before the travellers' bungalow and 
 drew up below the verandah. Its helmeted 
 and khaki-clad occupant jumped lightly to the 
 ground and walked, with a curiously supple 
 
 91 
 
The Butcher 
 
 yet deliberate gait that reminded me somehow 
 of the larger felidae, to the empty room 
 beyond mine, shooting a lowering glance and 
 muttered greeting towards me in passing. 
 
 A few quick directions were audible, 
 supplemented by a running commentary of 
 acquiescence in the liquid vernacular of the 
 rest-house keeper, and two servants busied 
 themselves in unloading from the car a kit-bag, 
 an oblong " air-tight," the long bolster of 
 weathered green canvas that suggested a 
 camping outfit, and gun-cases, so many that 
 to observe their portage grew wearisome- 
 Relieved of its freight, the big car was backed 
 into the adjoining stable and I reapplied 
 myself to the report whose leaves had fluttered 
 idly beside my chair during the distraction of 
 these happenings. 
 
 An hour of work, and bare feet pattered 
 behind me, while my honour gathered that 
 tiffin awaited his coming. His honour would, 
 as had doubtless been observed, have 
 company. 
 
 92 
 
The Butcher 
 
 During the few days in which he was my 
 only companion I was led more perhaps by 
 circumstances than by inclination to regard 
 Sir John Kesteven not so much in the popular 
 and much abused sense of that cliche as a 
 psychological study, but rather as a subject 
 of mental distraction that offered singular and 
 intriguing possibilities of difference from the 
 types of humanity to whose welfare fate had 
 arranged that I should minister. I met few 
 Englishmen, and none on any terms of 
 intimacy. In my experience his type, if it 
 was a type, was new. Once or twice meals 
 found us together, and every evening, I think, 
 we talked from neighbouring long chairs in the 
 verandah. I believe that in those conversa- 
 tions I had hoped to arrive, as far as was 
 perhaps possible, at a fairly reasonable 
 estimate of his character, but am forced to 
 admit frankly that the end found me baffled. 
 There was much in it of the primitive and 
 
 93 
 
The Butcher 
 
 much that was nothing of the kind. 
 Acquaintances doubtless knew him as the 
 essential Hunter, but therein they were wrong. 
 The cave-men slew for life, and the means of 
 life. Had he liked Kesteven could have 
 financed a garden city or played Maecenas to 
 a hundred starving geniuses, his father had 
 seen to that. Neither did his tastes incline, 
 so far as I could gather from his talk, towards 
 trophies, emblems of mortality clamant that it 
 was once life. He stood outside the collecting 
 mania, the accumulation of pelts and horns' 
 would, I should imagine, have bored him, and 
 the galleries of Cromwell Road quickened in 
 him no faintest stir of emulation. Something 
 there was in the brawny sleekness of his 
 whole person, in the brutish line of jowl and 
 forehead, that might lead one in an idle 
 moment of imagination to figure him with 
 apron of blue and dangling steel superimposed 
 upon his everyday habiliments of greenish 
 khaki. It was perhaps this fancy, and the 
 
 94 
 
The Butcher 
 
 consciousness that search for the exact word 
 was unavailing, that decided the characteristic 
 by which I grew to think of him. 
 
 I was to learn from infrequent and almost 
 monosyllabic confidences that could be 
 adduced upon no other topic that his lust for 
 taking life, though it presented itself less as 
 any vulgar passion than as some high quest or 
 misson embarked upon perchance with grave 
 and circumstantial ceremony, was partly 
 congenital. Long before the reference books 
 had taken cognizance of the first John 
 Kesteven, his name and figure were entwined 
 with local myths told and retold over the 
 camp fires of three continents. Yet, in the 
 beginning at least, it seemed that the end and 
 purpose of his slaying had been material. 
 His fortunes, at the period when his multiply- 
 ing herds had not yet set them, in the fat years 
 before rinderpest and redwater, beyond any 
 risks of an ebbing tide, were based 
 upon a gleaming pile of ivory tusks. Debrett 
 
 95 
 
The Butcher 
 
 had laid no curb upon his mania, and the 
 acquaintances of his later life were doubtless 
 led to approve a trait that, through familiarity, 
 they could welcome in one who by betraying 
 more bizarre inclinations might have drawn 
 public attention to the fact that another 
 interloper had thrust within the jealously 
 guarded portals of their order. 
 
 This one could arrive at a certain measure 
 of understanding of the younger man, absorb- 
 ing what little Eton and King's had to give to 
 one of his mentality in place of the initial 
 fight for bread in the wilderness that had 
 helped to stamp a something faintly epic upon 
 the figure of his father. That I who knew 
 him should shrink from any further discussion 
 of his personality is due partly to the fact that 
 occasion allowed me few further hints to go 
 upon and partly that to do so would, I am 
 convinced, call into being an unexplainable 
 impression of being unfair to him. 
 
 A memory I have of his walking quietly 
 into the bungalow like a cat after a morning 
 
 96 
 
The Butcher 
 
 punctuated at five minute intervals by double 
 reports that came from the direction of the 
 neighbouring tank. I guessed the nature of 
 his quarry when a triangle of black dots had 
 come cleaving over the far tree-tops and three 
 teal, with necks at full stretch, cut a bee-line 
 across the sky to the next water five miles 
 away. All that was left of them, perhaps. 
 In any case there was a kind of hard joy in 
 Kesteven's eyes as he dropped into a chair 
 and took his gun to pieces. Here and there a 
 little fluffy feather adhered to his rough shirt, 
 his putties, and to the thick fell of hair on the 
 backs of his hands. There was blood on one 
 of his boots. 
 
 Always his talk was anecdotal, after a 
 fashion, and apart from enquiries as to the 
 possibilities of achievement that might be open 
 to him in the neighbourhood, consisted almost 
 entirely in gruff and lifeless descriptions of 
 former " bags." Here and there his 
 monosyllabic confidences were touched with 
 
 97 
 
The Butcher 
 
 a nebulous romance, though only so, I was 
 keen to note, in the secondhand recital of 
 adventures that had befallen his father. One 
 of " the old man's " yarn I have remembered. 
 "Another time it was an elephant. Not 
 Africa I think — here very likely. Been 
 tracking since dawn, and about noon ran into 
 a funny little cup among the hills. Waterhole. 
 Path between two big rocks. Rounded the 
 nearest — and there stood three elephants, 
 tusker, cow and a calf. Just flapping their 
 ears. The calf was playing with a big jak- 
 fruit. Seen them ? Like kittens, or— babies. 
 And just flapping their ears. Then the cow 
 smelt danger and went off up a little ravine 
 like a locomotive. Then the calf, then the 
 bull. Sort of shepherding it. The old man 
 did the devil of a sprint, and took a running 
 shoulder-shot at the tusker. He was a better 
 shot than I am, but the beast was going full 
 tilt, and the bullet, they used miniature 
 cannon balls you know, must have hit one of 
 
 98 
 
The Butcher 
 
 his tusks, glanced off, and hit the calf, for the 
 little brute toppled over clear in its tracks. 
 
 The bull lumbered round and came for 
 him with ears and trunk at full stretch, 
 trumpeting like the last day. The old man 
 was pretty slick on his feet, and by the time 
 he was out of that cup place and behind a 
 rock the beast had lost him. Stand still and 
 they can't tell you from a tree at fifty yards. 
 If the wind's all right." 
 
 I made the comment apparently expected 
 of me, and remarked that it seemed to have 
 been a near thing. 
 
 Sir John forcibly concurred, adding, for qn 
 this occasion alone he grew loquacious of 
 detail, that the old man admitted having 
 shirked going back for another shot. 
 Something in the air of that retreat among 
 the immemorial hills had spoiled his nerve 
 for the day. " Seemed to sort of belong to 
 the brutes, so it struck him," he explained in 
 extenuation of this single lapse from the 
 
 99 
 
The Butcher 
 
 heroic on the part of the old man. " Before 
 Adam, and all that." 
 
 ****** 
 
 It was barely dawn when I was awakened 
 by movements in the verandah whose cause 
 revealed itself as Sir John, making discrimi- 
 nating choice among his battery of destructive 
 engines. 
 
 11 License be blowed," he said. " Haven't 
 you spotted this proclamation ? " He flashed 
 a hurricane lamp upon a white paper, tacked 
 to the wall, which bore the Government 
 Agent's signature. The public was informed 
 that a male elephant was destroying life and 
 property in the vicinity of the villages therein- 
 below enumerated, that the said elephant was 
 thereby certified a "rogue," and that any 
 European resident or native, or any European 
 visitor holding a licence under sub-section D, 
 might essay the destruction of the said rogue 
 elephant without let or hindrance. 
 
 I had remembered, and forgotten. 
 
 ioo 
 
The Butcher 
 
 *' Why don't you come along ?" he said. 
 '• Take that 450. Two's safer than one at this 
 sort of game." 
 
 I hesitated, and agreed, 
 
 ****** 
 
 We took two native trackers, and the 
 bungalow was far behind us when the sun 
 topped the hills. For two hours and more we 
 stumbled along the semblance of a path that 
 wound through steamy matted brakes with an 
 occasional clearing, these last a greater 
 weariness to the limbs in that our feet sank at 
 every step over ankle deep into a floor of 
 rotting twigs that snapped with a muffled 
 crackling which was continuous. For myself, 
 to sniff the air of these glades was to call up 
 old pictures of a perspiring child, his memory 
 tingling with treasured passages of Bates and 
 Kingston, treading the glamorous aisles of Kew 
 with hushed and wary feet. We had been 
 mounting slowly, and before the burning rays 
 had shifted their impact from shoulders to 
 
 101 
 
The Butcher 
 
 more guarded heads we had worked our path 
 by degrees into a more open country. The 
 
 sun had climbed high, and the air though 
 hotter was dryer and less exigent of vitality. 
 The tangle of soaring trunks and knotted 
 creepers gave place to a low scrub with here 
 and there a jutting crag of rock, though fifty 
 yards or so was still the limit of our vision # 
 As this horizon widened with our progress I 
 learnt suddenly that we were in the hills, high 
 above our starting point, their great scarps 
 towering up all about us tree-clad almost to 
 the summits. Here and there as we passed a 
 leafy covert where the shade still lingered one 
 saw the swathes of coarse grass bent and 
 flattened, about such spots hanging a musky 
 taint in the air, faint yet penetrating enough, a 
 half-suggested warning to intruding man that 
 here some wild unhuman thing had lately 
 lain couched, to be gone without noise or 
 commotion at his approach. 
 
 A bout of stiff rock-climbing brought us 
 
 102 
 
The Butcher 
 
 to an easier gradient, where at a corner the 
 path broke away between two rude monoliths 
 of granitic rock. We stood on the brink of a 
 depression, roughly circular, a natural 
 amphitheatre around which grey cliffs sprang 
 to what seemed a great and menacing height. 
 The level floor before us was dotted with 
 loose rocks and covered for the most part with 
 a dry longish grass that appeared to draw 
 little nutriment from its arid bed, It gave a 
 ground-note of a dull ashen colour rather than 
 any shade of green. Faint indications of 
 paths, jungle trackways that instinct told me 
 the coming and going of men had borne no 
 part in fashioning, converged to a tiny pool 
 lying like a dark mirror under the lea of a 
 boulder that some age-old convulsion had 
 flung far out into the centre of the cnp. 
 Facing us was a blur of jungle that seemed to 
 mask a fault or cleavage in the circumference of 
 cliff. 
 
 The tracker who led our little procession 
 
 103 
 
The Butcher 
 
 stopped with a suddenness that made me 
 jump. The man seemed to quiver where he 
 stood, reminding of the vibrant poise of a 
 pointer. Kesteven held up a deterrent hand 
 and crept forward, clutching his rifle. I 
 gathered that my part for the moment was one 
 merely of watchfulness, of attention. Kesteven, 
 a crouching, grey-green figure, stole nearer to 
 the dark blur of vegetation. A branch cracked 
 somewhere, and there was a just discernible 
 movement in the gloom of leaves a stone's 
 throw away. An effort that strained the eyes 
 served to shift my focus of vision. A vague 
 bulk, suggested by parts only of a seen outline, 
 grew into definition on the shadowy back- 
 ground as if a gauze screen had been there and 
 had been withdrawn. Two huge fans flapped 
 slowly, a great trunk curled up like a plesiosaur 
 uncoiling from the primeval slime. Again 
 there came the sound of a cracking branch. 
 
 There was a report whose echoes in that 
 walled space stunned the ears, and Kesteven 
 
 104 
 
The Butcher 
 
 had fired. In a second as it seemed he had 
 fired again, whereat he became a little 
 greenish-grey figure that came running, 
 running, towards me and past me, straight for 
 the sentinels of rock that marked the only exit 
 from the amphitheatre where some kind of 
 drama, as it would appear, was being enacted 
 for my benefit, 
 
 I was only withdrawn from contemplation 
 of the pathetic absurdity of that little grey- 
 green figure, fugitive from a lumbering bulk 
 that held great fans of ears and twitching 
 trunk aloft and emitted a continuous high and 
 terrible cry — "Trumpets of Michael and 
 Azrael," I murmured — by remembering that 
 some one had called or spoken in my ear. 
 
 That was it. I must shoot. 
 
 There was a third report, but its echoes 
 were still ringing when Kesteven, who had 
 reached to within arm's length of the rocky 
 threshold, caught his foot in some obstacle 
 hidden in the dry grass, and stumbled. 
 
 105 
 
The Butcher 
 
 The grey bulk of what suggested itself to 
 me in that moment as some dread monster-god 
 of old Assyria lurched forward, and limbs like 
 granite pillars pounded with a horrid kneading 
 motion upon an untidy huddle of grey-green 
 and crimson pulp. 
 
 As a scream that began by being human 
 fluttered off into a strange little whinnying 
 sound that seemed to come from somewhere 
 infinitely far away, and which I took to be 
 Kesteven's soul beating its way up and beyond 
 those craggy heights, I became violently sick, 
 though my eyes were now fascinated by the 
 little wisp of smoke which, scarcely percep- 
 tible, curled snakily from the barrel of my 
 dropped rifle. 
 
 1 06 
 
The City of Dreadful 
 
 Noise 
 
The City of Dreadful Noise 
 
 |HE East, we were once informed 
 by a literary acquaintance of 
 equal insight and fancy, was an 
 invention of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, an expression, not of philosophy, of 
 geography, but of temperament, a dream, in 
 short, that had led many to leave their people 
 for its people, their homes for its desert tents, 
 in an effort, it might be, to turn its conventions 
 into realities. It was a dream, he would 
 have it, made possible by the discovery 
 of local colour. Vulgarized by the rude 
 touches of many fingers, its glamour has 
 all but departed, but not before it has 
 caught some of us and whisked us out 
 of our proper orbit, leaving us writhing, like 
 jettisoned starfish, in hot discomfort beneath 
 alien rays. 
 
 109 
 
The City of Dreadful Noise 
 
 Bastard Orient though it may be, 
 Colombo, chief city of the Serendib whose 
 beauties were detailed of yore by no less a 
 chronicler than the Princess Scheherazade, 
 has its sights, its scents, its sounds, of which, 
 albeit we contemned them before they had 
 time to become familiar, the memory will be 
 always with us. Of these, sights have in an 
 age of picture post-cards lost their essential 
 quality, and the cinema has established the 
 matter beyond recall. Scents will speak only 
 to the crude and barbaric spirit, their devotees 
 haunt the half-world and the hair-dresser's 
 shop. It is the ear that is the gateway to the 
 inner courts of the soul, and only the sounds 
 of our exile that will ever remind us of it. It 
 is only in the watches of the night moreover 
 that they become really manifest, only from a 
 wakeful couch that one can savour their true 
 essence. London or Paris with the very 
 sounds of the night are wont to lull their 
 citizens to slumber. It is with the near-by 
 
 no 
 
The City of Dreadfnl Noise 
 
 drone of the motor-bus and the taxi and the 
 far-away subterranean purr of the "tube'' 
 train that these stony-hearted step-mothers 
 sing their sons to sleep. 
 
 The paths by which we fare to the land 
 of Nod lie, however, through other and less 
 pleasant places. We like it may be to get to 
 our office (if we have an office) early in the 
 morning, wherefore we spread our tent beside 
 one of the main thoroughfares that radiate from 
 the Fort. Each eve, a short hour or two after 
 sundown, we seek our well-earned pillow. 
 Sleep, the jade, eludes us for a spell, hovers 
 irresolute, trembles on the verge of surrender — 
 then starts and flees in horror. A shrieking 
 sisterhood of grass coolies have plunged 
 without a moment's warning into the eldritch 
 music of a Witches' Sabbath, and that at our 
 compound gate. As souls not wholly lost they 
 quaver off into silence after a brief hour or so. 
 Thereafter a respite, broken only by Ramasamy, 
 good jovial wight, who joins with his mates in 
 
 in 
 
The City of Dreadful Noise 
 
 a corroboree held in the centre of the highway. 
 His song, albeit it lasts a little longer than 
 that of his aunts and grandmothers, is less 
 inhuman if slightly more alcoholic. He 
 concludes with the Tamil National Anthem, 
 But the entertainment is not over, and the 
 next turn reveals itself as a troupe of highly 
 trained pariahs who, squatting in a half circle, 
 beguile the listening ear with the sad songs of 
 their own native plains. There is peace 
 again even for another half hour, when a 
 stealthy footstep crunching the gravel beneath 
 our window draws us silent-footed to that 
 coign of vantage. Good, 'tis Ramlan, our 
 favourite constable, faithful fellow, though 
 opportunity does betimes cheat him of an 
 arrest by a bare live minutes or so. Yet he 
 and his minions have our welfare at heart, 
 signing a book that rests upon the stable shelf 
 in witness thereof three times between sunset 
 and cock-crow. He is gone, and a gecko 
 chirps blithely from the rafters to cheer him 
 
 112 
 
The City of Dreadful Noise 
 
 on his way. A bandicoot drops softly to the 
 wash-stand, removes the lid of the soap-dish, 
 and daintily regales himself with a light supper 
 of Brown Windsor. On the ledge outside the 
 window a ridiculous monster that boasts two 
 rusty fretsaws as hind legs gently scrapes one 
 upon the other as a love-song to his mate. 
 He sleeps at length, the world sleeps, we 
 sleep, until a soft patter on the roof grows to a 
 roar, a warning plop on one corner of the 
 matting is taken up and reechoed, once, twice, 
 many times, and a sequence of drops rushes 
 through a crescendo to a cascade that impinges 
 relentlessly upon seven points of our only 
 authentic Persian carpet. 
 
 113 
 
The DissaWe's Daughter 
 
The DissaWe's Daughter 
 
 |T was Christmas Eve. 
 
 But how different in Ceylon 
 from in the old homeland. 
 
 No snow, no frost, no holly 
 and mistletoe, no dear old Santa Claus to steal 
 into your bedroom at dead of night and fill 
 your stocking with sweeties, dollies, puff- 
 puffs and rocking-horses. 
 
 So although it was Christmas Eve 
 Podinona, the Dissawe's lovely daughter, was 
 not rubbing her dainty little nose on a frosted 
 window-pane and listening for the postman's 
 knock. Far otherwise was the scene, for, in a 
 secluded chamber of her father's old-world 
 mud palace, the dusky daughter of a long line 
 of Kandyan kings sat gazing idly from her 
 unglazed window upon the rolling acres of 
 golden paddy fields that swept up well-nigh 
 to the walls of the Dissawe's stronghold. 
 
 117 
 
TheDissawe's Daughter 
 
 From one soft brown hand depended a. 
 shining disc of white metal, dexterously 
 fashioned by some cunning native artificer 
 from an old corned-beef tin, and curiously 
 wrought and graved upon the reverse surface 
 with runes and mottoes from the legends of 
 her race. It was Podinona's mirror, and ever 
 and anon she raised it from her lap and looked 
 long and lingeringly into its depths. What 
 did she see there I wonder ? Was it ought 
 but the ravishing image of her own half- 
 laughing, half petulant little face ? Or was 
 some dim presage of the future mirrored 
 there ? 
 
 It was a charming picture that the 
 Dissawe's daughter made, as she sat cross- 
 legged in an exquisitely oriental pose, the soft 
 contours of her girlish figure, unrestrained 
 by any Western monstrosity of steel or 
 whalebone, swathed gracefully in a gorgeous 
 saraband (shirt-waist) of flamingo-coloured 
 silk. Her thick black tresses, delicately 
 
 118 
 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 fragrant with the faint yet languorous aroma 
 of the coconut, were sleeked neatly back to be 
 coiled in a demure but shapely knot at the 
 nape of her slender neck. Priceless necklaces 
 and bracelets of uncut rubies, emeralds, 
 sapphires, and topazes, were clasped about the 
 same little neck and wrists of equal slender- 
 ness. 
 
 Podinona trifled idly with the mechanism 
 of a huge gramophone that stood at her elbow 
 upon the floor of the apartment, and the 
 strains of a favourite Western melody filled 
 the room, striking an oddly incongruous but 
 not unpleasant note in a setting that was 
 typically Eastern. 
 
 " Itchy-ku, Itchy ku," echoed Podinona. 
 
 " But no, I cannot like these European 
 love-songs. I do not understand them." 
 
 And with a wilful movement the haunting 
 music was stilled. 
 
 Once again she sought her mirror. 
 
 119 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 " They tell me I am beautiful," she 
 murmured, " and yet I — I have no lover. 
 True, there is Punchi Sinho, the Ratemahat- 
 maya's nephew, but I hate him, he is so ugly 
 and so rough. I fear my father wills that I 
 should wed him, but I will never, never do it. 
 Nor shall I ever, methinks, behold a man of 
 my father's people upon whom I could look 
 with favour. Strange, strange would it be, if 
 fate should give me a lover from the race of 
 white men who rule our land, and of whom I 
 have heard tell that they are bold, brave and 
 beautiful above the common run of mortals. 
 It shall be, I will it. The man of my heart 
 shall be of these Englishmen ! " And 
 Podinona clapped her little hands with glee. 
 
 The curtain before the door was lifted, 
 and a wizened old ayah sidled into the 
 apartment. 
 
 " Aiyo } aiyo f little one," she croaked, 
 " what has pleased thy sweet heart that thou 
 shouldest sing and exult for the joy that is 
 
 120 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 upon thee ? See, I have, cooked for thee a 
 dish of the little coconut kutiies (fairy cakes) 
 that thou lovest." 
 
 " I thank thee, for all that I am no longer 
 a child to fix my desires upon such trifles. 
 But listen then, Alicehamy. It has come to 
 me that I shall meet a white man of the race 
 that rules our people such as thou hast told 
 me of, and that he shall love me and that we 
 marry. Then shall my English lover take me 
 far over the sea to those strange cities that my 
 father speaks of, and I will learn to sing the 
 English love-songs such as this engine holds, 
 but which I do not as yet fully understand. 
 Is it not a good thought, old Alicehamy ? ' 
 
 " Tchi, tchi, little one, it is a bad thought 
 and not becoming to thee. Evil is wrought 
 from such idle dreaming. Let not thy father 
 hear aught of this foolish tale. Punchi 
 Sinho— " 
 
 " Enough ! " broke in the indignant 
 damsel, " Leave me. I would be alone," 
 
 121 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 Rising with a swish of gorgeous 
 draperies, the high-born daughter of Lanka 
 followed her dismissed duenna through the 
 curtained doorway, tripped along the 
 corridors of the Dissawe's palace to the crude 
 but massive gateway of baked mud, and 
 thence along the hundred yards or so of 
 rough cart-track that lay between the palace 
 and the great tank, whose waters fed her 
 father's fruitful domain. Upon a rock, shaded 
 by a giant mango tree whose mammoth trunk 
 towered two hundred feet and more into the 
 air, she sat and dreamed, gazing into the 
 deep pool beneath, that was dappled with 
 purple lotuses, 
 
 Her favourite haunt in moments such as 
 these, Podinona would sit here for hours, 
 telling all her secrets to the lotus buds. 
 
 It was a fitting shrine for the birth of 
 Romance. 
 
 Even as Podinona dreamed, a noise far 
 down the path brought her wandering 
 
 122 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 thoughts back from the fairy-land of imagina- 
 tion with disconcerting suddenness. Startled 
 from her reverie, she gazed down the track 
 and beheld, approaching at a rapid gallop, a 
 a bullock cart from the box seat of which the 
 driver handled with airy nonchalance the 
 reins of a four-in-hand team of fiery bulls. 
 
 Even before Podinona could take in the 
 details of the stranger's figure, the vehicle 
 was upon her, and its owner, reining back the 
 spirited animals upon their foam-flecked 
 haunches, sprang lightly to the ground, 
 sweeping an immaculate pith helmet from a 
 carefully brushed head of golden curls in 
 courtly obeisance. 
 
 Podinona clenched tiny hands against her 
 beating heart. The stranger was surely none 
 other than the hero of her dream. Tall and 
 willowy, his curly hair as brightly yellow as 
 the ripe paddy-fields of her father's totum 
 (farm), his bold yet kindly eyes of a bewitching 
 china-blue, faultlessly attired in pink shirt, 
 
 123 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 crimson cummer-bund, stripped flannel 
 trousers, and spotless tennis shoes, he smiled 
 down upon her, a very demigod. 
 
 " Say, kid," asked Jack Hargreaves (for 
 he it was, the young official whose short but 
 brilliant career of some eighteen months in 
 the service had focussed all eyes at the 
 Colonial Office upon him), " hast seen a 
 podian (page-boy) pass this way ? I told the 
 little devil to meet me here, what." 
 
 " Nay, dorai (Mr.)," came the shy 
 response, " but if it chance that thy servants 
 have failed thee sure am I that my father, the 
 good Dissawe, will esteem it an honour to 
 extend thee every hospitality. And I (she 
 wriggled a chubby little foot) — will beguile 
 thee so that the hours of thy visit shall not 
 seem long. I will show thee my pet tortoise. 
 And stay, thou wilt even expound to me the 
 English love-songs with w T hich my singing-box 
 makes music. But why hast thou left the 
 city for this jungle village ? " 
 
 124 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 " A shootin' trip, little girl. No use 
 being a heaven-born if you can't get a week's 
 leave, what." Smiling, the young administra- 
 tor tapped the breach of the heavy double- 
 barrelled rifle which he carried jauntily in the 
 hollow of his arm. 
 
 High above them a large snipe circled 
 
 slowly in the air. 
 
 With the ease borne of long practice, 
 Hargreaves brought his gun to the ready and 
 discharged both barrels simultaneously, a trick 
 he had excelled in since his college days. 
 Wounded in a vital spot, the great bird 
 fluttered to their feet. 
 
 " Maho Mahondi ! (Bravo ! Bravissimo !)'' 
 exclaimed Podinona, and clapped her little 
 
 hands. 
 
 " Tis nothing," ejaculated the young 
 official. " In my country — But see, here 
 comes the old chief. You must introduce 
 
 me, what." 
 
 * * * * * « 
 
 A week had passed. 
 
 125 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 A week that for Podinona had seemed 
 but one brief hour of exquisite delight, and 
 even for Jack Hargreaves, who knows, 
 may have vanished all to quickly. Not 
 only snipes but many other denizens of the 
 neighbouring jungle had fallen to Jack's gun 
 during the daylight hours, while in the even- 
 ings the old Dissawe, who seemed to have 
 taken an immense fancy to his guest, played 
 pitch and toss or nap with the erstwhile 
 haughty young civilian, and Podinona 
 worked the gramophone, hung upon the 
 occasional smiles of her lover, and was happy, 
 happy as the day was long. Even the grim 
 old aristocrat her father was not ill-pleased, 
 finding the open-handed devil-may-care young 
 Englishman an easy prey at the gaming table. 
 Steadily the pile of his winnings mounted, 
 from five to ten, from ten to twenty and, by 
 the last night but one, even to twenty-five 
 rupees. Night after night the old Dissawe 
 had dropped off at last into slumber, his lean 
 
 126 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 fingers clutching the pile of I. O. U's and 
 cheques which his visitor had tossed over the 
 table with such insouciant recklessness. And 
 then, what walks beneath the moon, what 
 sweet whisperings in the shadow of the mango 
 beside the lotus pool. 
 
 Yes, Podinona had been happy. 
 
 And Hargreaves, what of him ? 
 
 Who can doubt that happiness had been 
 his after a fashion, marred perchance by 
 fleeting memories of another figure with whom 
 he had cavorted, how often was it, surely not 
 too often, upon the tennis courts of 
 Colombo ? And yet- — 
 
 It was a week since Podinona had dream- 
 ed by the lotus pool, and had wakened from 
 that dream to what seemed another life. 
 
 As on those other days he had sallied out, 
 gun in hand, at noon, but since then long 
 hours had passed and now the moon's face 
 was mirrored in the lotus pool, and still he 
 came not. 
 
 127 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 Shunning even the old chieftain's 
 companionship, she had stolen out to be alone 
 by the pool with her grief. Perchance he 
 was dead, slain by some savage beast. 
 Perhaps, an alternative equally terrible, he 
 had wearied of her and passed out of her life 
 as suddenly as he had come. 
 
 " Aiyo" she sighed, " Aiyo ! " 
 
 A harsh voice croaked from the path 
 above, and sent Podinona's heart into her 
 mouth. 
 
 " Well may'st thou mourn " — the rasping 
 voice was her father's — " Well may'st thou 
 mourn for a lover false, fleeting, perjured, 
 and white-faced as this accursed one whose 
 countenance thou shalt never see again." 
 
 " Father, father ! " she cried. " What 
 has happened ? " 
 
 " See, the faithless one," snarled the old 
 man, stretching forth a lean hand in which a 
 crumpled paper was discernible. " His smile 
 was false, and from the first I suspected the 
 
 128 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 mockery in his heart. The very cheque that 
 thou mayst have marked he threw over the 
 table so airily six nights ago, when, by skill 
 alone, I had vanquished him in fair combat, 
 I sent not eight hours later by a swift runner 
 to the bank. See now, the self-same cheque : 
 there is written, ' Not provided for.' See for 
 thyself." 
 
 14 It is not true, it is not true ! " moaned 
 Podinona. " He has not, cannot, have left 
 me thus. Thy money was naught, and 
 methinks thou knowest the backs of those 
 cards too well, for hast thou not told me our 
 ancestors were wont often to play therewith, 
 even for three generations," 
 
 11 Wicked and shameless one, thou hast 
 loved the accursed stranger, and thou must 
 die ! " snarled the infuriated old man, whip- 
 ping from his belt even as he spoke a heavy 
 cadgan (bowie-knife), and flourishing the 
 glittering blade above his daughter's head. 
 
 " Death indeed shall be my lot," cried 
 
 129 
 
The Dissawe's Daughter 
 
 the daughter of kings, " but not at thy hands, 
 
 O cruellest of fathers !" 
 
 " A second, and the old chief stood alone 
 
 upon the rock, while from the pool below 
 
 came a dull, sickening splash. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 And even as the wily crocodile trailed 
 
 sluggishly to his lair beneath the lotuses to 
 digest his Christmas dinner, Podinona's white 
 lover crouched, with a look upon his hand- 
 some features that was half nervousness and 
 half relief, upon a corner seat in the Colombo 
 night mail. Kicking an expensive kit-bag 
 into place beneath him, he disappeared 
 behind an outspread copy of the Times of 
 Ceylon, 
 
 130 
 
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