The Red One Read online

there was where he had made his mistake. Thinking that he hadpassed beyond it and that, therefore, it was between him and the beach ofRingmanu, he had worked back toward it when in reality he was penetratingdeeper and deeper into the mysterious heart of the unexplored island.That night, crawling in among the twisted roots of a banyan tree, he hadslept from exhaustion while the mosquitoes had had their will of him.

  Followed days and nights that were vague as nightmares in his memory.One clear vision he remembered was of suddenly finding himself in themidst of a bush village and watching the old men and children fleeinginto the jungle. All had fled but one. From close at hand and abovehim, a whimpering as of some animal in pain and terror had startled him.And looking up he had seen her—a girl, or young woman rather, suspendedby one arm in the cooking sun. Perhaps for days she had so hung. Herswollen, protruding tongue spoke as much. Still alive, she gazed at himwith eyes of terror. Past help, he decided, as he noted the swellings ofher legs which advertised that the joints had been crushed and the greatbones broken. He resolved to shoot her, and there the vision terminated.He could not remember whether he had or not, any more than could heremember how he chanced to be in that village, or how he succeeded ingetting away from it.

  Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett’s mind as he reviewedthat period of his terrible wanderings. He remembered invading anothervillage of a dozen houses and driving all before him with his shot-gunsave, for one old man, too feeble to flee, who spat at him and whined andsnarled as he dug open a ground-oven and from amid the hot stones draggedforth a roasted pig that steamed its essence deliciously through itsgreen-leaf wrappings. It was at this place that a wantonness of savageryhad seized upon him. Having feasted, ready to depart with a hind-quarterof the pig in his hand, he deliberately fired the grass thatch of a housewith his burning glass.

  But seared deepest of all in Bassett’s brain, was the dank and noisomejungle. It actually stank with evil, and it was always twilight. Rarelydid a shaft of sunlight penetrate its matted roof a hundred feetoverhead. And beneath that roof was an aerial ooze of vegetation, amonstrous, parasitic dripping of decadent life-forms that rooted in deathand lived on death. And through all this he drifted, ever pursued by theflitting shadows of the anthropophagi, themselves ghosts of evil thatdared not face him in battle but that knew that, soon or late, they wouldfeed on him. Bassett remembered that at the time, in lucid moments, hehad likened himself to a wounded bull pursued by plains’ coyotes toocowardly to battle with him for the meat of him, yet certain of theinevitable end of him when they would be full gorged. As the bull’shorns and stamping hoofs kept off the coyotes, so his shot-gun kept offthese Solomon Islanders, these twilight shades of bushmen of the islandof Guadalcanal.

  Came the day of the grass lands. Abruptly, as if cloven by the sword ofGod in the hand of God, the jungle terminated. The edge of it,perpendicular and as black as the infamy of it, was a hundred feet up anddown. And, beginning at the edge of it, grew the grass—sweet, soft,tender, pasture grass that would have delighted the eyes and beasts ofany husbandman and that extended, on and on, for leagues and leagues ofvelvet verdure, to the backbone of the great island, the toweringmountain range flung up by some ancient earth-cataclysm, serrated andgullied but not yet erased by the erosive tropic rains. But the grass!He had crawled into it a dozen yards, buried his face in it, smelled it,and broken down in a fit of involuntary weeping.

  And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed forth—if by _peal_, hehad often thought since, an adequate description could be given of theenunciation of so vast a sound melting sweet. Sweet it was, as no soundever heard. Vast it was, of so mighty a resonance that it might haveproceeded from some brazen-throated monster. And yet it called to himacross that leagues-wide savannah, and was like a benediction to hislong-suffering, pain racked spirit.

  He remembered how he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but no longersobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he had been able tohear it on the beach of Ringmanu. Some freak of air pressures and aircurrents, he reflected, had made it possible for the sound to carry sofar. Such conditions might not happen again in a thousand days or tenthousand days, but the one day it had happened had been the day he landedfrom the _Nari_ for several hours’ collecting. Especially had he been inquest of the famed jungle butterfly, a foot across from wing-tip towing-tip, as velvet-dusky of lack of colour as was the gloom of the roof,of such lofty arboreal habits that it resorted only to the jungle roofand could be brought down only by a dose of shot. It was for thispurpose that Sagawa had carried the ten-gauge shot-gun.

  Two days and nights he had spent crawling across that belt of grass land.He had suffered much, but pursuit had ceased at the jungle-edge. And hewould have died of thirst had not a heavy thunderstorm revived him on thesecond day.

  And then had come Balatta. In the first shade, where the savannahyielded to the dense mountain jungle, he had collapsed to die. At firstshe had squealed with delight at sight of his helplessness, and was forbeating his brain out with a stout forest branch. Perhaps it was hisvery utter helplessness that had appealed to her, and perhaps it was herhuman curiosity that made her refrain. At any rate, she had refrained,for he opened his eyes again under the impending blow, and saw herstudying him intently. What especially struck her about him were hisblue eyes and white skin. Coolly she had squatted on her hams, spat onhis arm, and with her finger-tips scrubbed away the dirt of days andnights of muck and jungle that sullied the pristine whiteness of hisskin.

  And everything about her had struck him especially, although there wasnothing conventional about her at all. He laughed weakly at therecollection, for she had been as innocent of garb as Eve before thefig-leaf adventure. Squat and lean at the same time, asymmetricallylimbed, string-muscled as if with lengths of cordage, dirt-caked frominfancy save for casual showers, she was as unbeautiful a prototype ofwoman as he, with a scientist’s eye, had ever gazed upon. Her breastsadvertised at the one time her maturity and youth; and, if by nothingelse, her sex was advertised by the one article of finery with which shewas adorned, namely a pig’s tail, thrust though a hole in her leftear-lobe. So lately had the tail been severed, that its raw end stilloozed blood that dried upon her shoulder like so much candle-droppings.And her face! A twisted and wizened complex of apish features,perforated by upturned, sky-open, Mongolian nostrils, by a mouth thatsagged from a huge upper-lip and faded precipitately into a retreatingchin, by peering querulous eyes that blinked as blink the eyes ofdenizens of monkey-cages.

  Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and the ancient andhalf-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the slightest thegrotesque hideousness of her. When he had eaten weakly for a space, heclosed his eyes in order not to see her, although again and again shepoked them open to peer at the blue of them. Then had come the sound.Nearer, much nearer, he knew it to be; and he knew equally well, despitethe weary way he had come, that it was still many hours distant. Theeffect of it on her had been startling. She cringed under it, withaverted face, moaning and chattering with fear. But after it had livedits full life of an hour, he closed his eyes and fell asleep with Balattabrushing the flies from him.

  When he awoke it was night, and she was gone. But he was aware ofrenewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated by the mosquitopoison to suffer further inflammation, he closed his eyes and slept anunbroken stretch till sun-up. A little later Balatta had returned,bringing with her a half-dozen women who, unbeautiful as they were, werepatently not so unbeautiful as she. She evidenced by her conduct thatshe considered him her find, her property, and the pride she took inshowing him off would have been ludicrous had his situation not been sodesperate.

  Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, when hecollapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow of thebreadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the matter ofretaining possession of him. Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know afterwardas the devil-devil
doctor, priest, or medicine man of the village, hadwanted his head. Others of the grinning and chattering monkey-men, allas stark of clothes and bestial of appearance as Balatta, had wanted hisbody for the roasting oven. At that time he had not understood theirlanguage, if by _language_ might be dignified the uncouth sounds theymade to represent ideas. But Bassett had thoroughly understood thematter of debate, especially when the men pressed and prodded and felt ofthe flesh of him as if he were so much commodity in a butcher’s stall.

  Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accident happened.One of the men, curiously examining Bassett’s shot-gun, managed to cockand pull a trigger. The recoil of the butt into the pit of the man’sstomach had not been the most sanguinary result, for the charge of shot,at a distance of a yard, had blown the head of one of the debaters intonothingness.

  Even Balatta joined the others in flight, and, ere they returned, hissenses already reeling from the oncoming fever-attack,