第 8 页

As a matter of accuracy, my yacht-mate was far more guilty than I. He had gone a-fishing one day in his shirt, and had spent eight hours sandwiched in between wind and water, and had naturally returned with his legs bitten red raw by the sun. He developed a temper in consequence that would have made him shunned in the Pit, and I was driven into a deed of temporary separation.

But first, as I am standing here on my defence, let it be clearly understood that I found Atcheson before I knew Miss Wilcoxn was yachting with the Van Sciaks in Mobile Bay, before, in fact, I knew that the lady was in America at all. I had seen her last in a West Kensington drawing-room, and (if the complete truth be told) had slipped her from my thoughts with a perfunctory hand shake. One meets so many people.

Moreover, Atcheson was introduced by the Fates. Being ignorant of the man's existence, I naturally did not seek for him specially. He lived two days deep in swampy country, which is not yet charted in the United States maps.

Our yacht was then in the Bayou of Bon Secours (which opens off Mobile Bay), and the Man with the Sunburnt Legs said, with many adjectives, that movement for him was out of the question. He remarked that he would stay on the sloop and fish for gaff-tops'ls (as they call the cat-fish), and cavallos, and sheep-heads, and sharks, and haply for tarpon, and indeed whatever else he could get; and said that polite conversation was a strain to him. He stated that our crew (of one negro) would make a suitable butt for his future remarks, and put forward the suggestion that I should take myself off. " Go and hunt alligators up the lagoons, and live like a savage in the swamps, and eat crackers and trout, and catch fever if there's any throwing about," said the Man with the Sunburnt Legs; " that'll be about your form." So I pitied the nigger and went off in pale pink pyjamas, and the ten-foot yawl-boat.

The sail to the head of the bayou was simple.

Then there were two miles to be punted to the long, narrow sliver of lagoon which lies inside the sand-dunes of the Mexican Gulf. The cypresses, and the black pines, and the magnolias arched above the cut, and fronds of palmetto which grew on clumps of soil, slashed at one like knives. The atmosphere was a hot, moist stew, and there was a smell about it half-way between rotten eggs and the Harrogate pump-room. Also there were flies in all abundance, which fancied themselves masterless dogs, and bit accordingly.

The subsequent sail down the lagoon, under a brazen torrent of sunshine, came as one of the seven pleasures of life. There was a great wall of trees on the landward side, rearing itself from the water's lip in a hedge of undergrowth. To south ward, from over the rambling line of dunes, with their fringes of scrub-grass and palmetto, came the dim bellow of the surf as it creamed and crumbled on the white Gulf sand. And down the silver ripples of the lagoon there blew an air, faintly salt, which chilled the wet cotton against one's spine, and pushed the yawl-boat on with the tinkle of fountains under her stem.

The lagoon bayed to an end, and there opened out another channel to be punted through a narrow, winding canal of twirls and branches, through quaking marsh land, a waterway rustling with fish and ablaze with yellow lilies. Cardinalbirds peered at one from the bushes, and purple herons thrust out curious beaks from the grassclumps. It was all very peaceful, and extremely hot.

Then there came a lake with islands, a lake of water called by courtesy fresh, which was lemonyellow to look through, and black to look upon. It swarmed with fish, which took the hook, and were supped upon for their sins; and because there was no whisky in the yawl-boat for dilution, it served as a beverage in all its sulphurous nastiness. Then the sun dipped behind the for ests at the back, and night followed like the shut ting down of a box. One mounted a bull's-eye lantern on the hat-band, which would shine down a rifle's sights, and put out again in the boat, paddling stealthily. It is not always easy to distinguish between a firefly and the gleam from an alligator's eye, and shots are apt to be wasted and the neighbourhood scared. But on that night for tune helped, and the lead went home six several times. Then the dead were made more safely dead with the axe, and their slayer laid him down to sleep on the boat's floor, with his head beside the centreboard trunk.

So passed my first night away from the sloop. The morning was occupied in the process of skin ning, and then once more on towards the east. There were more lakes and more canals all full of their own new wonders; and ever away in the distance, on the starboard hand, was the noise of the surf as it broke where the logs from the Gulf rivers bristle in the milky sand. In late afternoon I came to a lagoon with a wooded island in it, and amongst the trees of the island, when they grew distinct from one another, I saw a man.

I bore down to him under sail (for there was a spanking breeze coming in from the sea), and when we were within hailing distance, the boat grounded.

"Do you want to land here?" he shouted.

"I don't mind if I do."

"Then shove off again and drop down to the tail of the island, and luff up sharp where you see a barked tree on the beach. There's no deep water till you come to there."

I did as he told me, put the boat's nose on a small beach of pebbles, and waited, smoking. I waited half an hour maybe, and then he strolled up very leisurely with his thumbs in the waistbelt of his trousers. I can't say he seemed over pleased to see me. He asked with point what I had come for.

I told him, and then said, " By the way, you're a 'Varsity man, aren't you?"

"Yes, Oxford: the House. You are, too, I've a notion?"

"From over the way: Clare."

"Well, if you've nothing better on, leave your boat and come up to my place. Sorry I didn't tumble to you at first, but then you don't look over respectable just now. Are you much down on your luck?"

"Oh, I'm not hunting alligators professionally. I'm here for amusement."

I concluded he was there because he had got into trouble with the Law of the Land elsewhere, but I did not suggest this, because it is consid ered rude to touch upon family matters uninvited. But after a minute he broached the topic him self. " I'm here for amusement my self," he said. "I'm here permanently."

By this time we had got into a bit of a clearing inside the wall of trees a patch of sorghum, another of sweet potatoes, another of corn with stalks that stood ten feet high, and a goodly planting of green tobacco plants, with a sham bling palmetto shack at the back.

"Faith," I said, you've queer notions of a pleasure resort."

"I'm a man," he said, " with an imagination. Consequently I make a most comfortable hermit. Come in and take a hammock. Where's our eight on the river?"

I told him, and we went on hard at boating shop till the sun went out. It was wonderful what a lot of men we knew in common when we began to talk things over, and it turned out that we had rowed against one another at Henley for two events. " Of course," he broke out at once; " you are the M'Cray who swam down from Marsh lock to Henley bridge in your clothes the last night of the races, because you said you hadn't been allowed a decent dip all through the training." And " By Jove!" I said, you are Atcheson of the Leander who steered their Stewards' four from bow, and ran five feet of her through the side of an oak dinghy." Whereat we both laughed, and knew one another extremely well. After this I asked him if he ever ate.

"Why, yes," he said, " I'd forgotten. What'll you have? There's some boiled fish, and sweet spuds and molasses. The fish is on the floor in the far corner there, and the rest is mixed ready in the saucepan. There are no plates. Help yourself."

"Candles?" I suggested.

"Haven't such a thing; or lamp. Can't you feed in the dark? There will be a moon above the tree-tops directly, if you want a light."

"I say, am I to ladle up this stuff with my fingers?"

Atcheson laughed. " I'm not going to lend you mine," he said. " Why, what a luxurious sybarite you must be. Climb back, M'Cray, down the centuries, and enjoy yourself as Primi tive Man. Feast and be filled, and then come to your hammock again and talk intellectually. There's a tin down there somewhere with some water in it, or coffee, I forget which. Drink when you're dry."

I began to have a strong idea that the man was mad; but I stopped my hunger on his victuals for all that; and then relit my pipe and went on with the talk.

From the other side of the clearing came the noises of the night the chatter of katydids and the rustle of jarflies, the love-song of tree crickets and toads, the deep reed notes of frogs in their patches of marsh; and through all mingled the heavy diapason of the surf, from across the dunes, and the forest, and the black water of the lake, mellowed by its passage through the purple night. I am the most practi cal and unpoetical creature in the world, as a general thing, but the influence of it was too heavy for me. I started on to chat again about the boats, and about women, and yachts, and books, and the other interests of the outer world; but the things fell flat, and presently the talk died out of us altogether. We lay there, hung in silence, and sensuously drinking in what the night gave up. We must have spent hours with out throwing down a word.

Then Atcheson spoke. That is my usual concert," he said. " One gets to like it."

I did not answer at once. I could not, although his words came clearly enough to my ears. A sort of mesmeric doze pinned me down.

When I managed to rouse, I felt angry with myself for weakness, and spoke with a sneer. "You must find it mighty monotonous," I said.

"A mistake, an utter mistake. It is full of infinite variety: it never repeats itself; and I know, because I have listened to it now for three years, in calm, in cyclone, in every kind of night which God will give. It is His orchestra, but until the taste has grown, one does not know this."

Another pause. Then, "Are you going to write about this Walden Pond of yours?" I asked.

"I am no Thoreau with a pen. Besides, I am selfish, and if I could set this down, I would not. One man in ten thousand might understand, some wild fellow, who had lived in the air, with the things that grow in the air away from the pes tilence of cities, and Tie would never lift a book; but the others would either yawn or deride, and I take it this is no matter to be profaned. And yet there is nothing new in it all: only the old things changed. I have rambled over the world, and seen and tried most pleasures; the sounds here give it all back to me again, only here it is idealised."

"I hardly understand."

"Listen to the Gulf surf rumbling on those beaches."

"It is like the roar of the Prater, or the Strand, or the Rambla, or Broadway, as it comes to an upper window."

"You can hear that: I can make out more, be cause my ear is trained. I can hear the voices and what they say the tales of love, and hope, and hate; the merry laugh, the curses, the wild and bitter laugh; and in the tree-tops yonder I can see these people who move and live, and follow them as they pass along, with their skirts rustling, and their shoulders jostling one another. The place is full of life to me and full of com pany, and I can revel in it all without being mixed in the dirt and the pains and the squalor. And it is very beautiful also. What picture did you ever see like that?"

He flung a hand to where the red moon and a patch of purple sky hung framed in a black arch of the pines. In the foreground the lake lay twinkling beyond a great fan of palms. On the flank was spread a thick magnolia tree, full of scented blossom, and splashed with cones of coral pink.

I looked, and hung on my gaze; and once more the silence grew between us.

The spell of the place was closing down again and pinning me. I raised myself with an effort, and swore for relief. " Atcheson," I said, " I be lieve you are either the devil, or Circe, with a changed sex. Be merciful and speak no more, and let me sleep. If I listen on, I shall forget the place from whence I am come, and stay here, and become as one of the swine."

"I am sorry," Atcheson said, " and because I do not want converts or companions I will say no more. Therefore sleep you."

II

The miasma of the lotus was in my veins, and I knew it and feared. I woke sullen and suspicious with the first lift of day, and got down to my boat. Atcheson came after and cried a pleasant auf wiedersehen, and I answered with a scowl and threw out the sculls. I was very angry with myself, and still more frightened. I had been in that kind of temptation before, and knew what it was afterwards to wish that I had fallen. Consequently I made up my mind to get back to the yacht without a halt, and so put in a day of savage toil; and because the sun above burned like a kettle of molten brass, and the air baked, the material pains of the body gave me other matters to think about. And when I made out the sloop's riding-light dancing on her forestay, I knew there was another antidote close at hand. The Man with the Sunburnt Legs was a very carnal and practical sort of person.

He received me affably. He fed me first with sumptuousness, referred to the decrease of his own affliction, and then told me that we and the oysterman no longer had the bayou to ourselves.

"The Van Sciaks have come in with their schooner," he said; " and they've a girl on board who says she knows you a Miss Wilcoxn."

"Ah," I said, " I know her well enough. We used to see a goodish deal of one another once."

"If you mean that you were spoons on the lady," said the Man with the Sunburnt Legs, " I guess you'd better forget that. She's engaged to a Yankee man from Massachusetts now, a person with culture and dollars heaps of dollars about ten million of 'em, so I believe. And being cmno aetatis suae twenty-eight, she knows what is a soft thing, and is not likely to chuck it up. Take off those rags and put on something respec table, and we'll make the nigger scull us across. She said I was to bring you when you turned up."

"Not now. At present I am going to turn in to sleep. Probably I shall die in the course of the night. It will save me the trouble and pain of kicking myself if I do."