Part 6 (2/2)

Two human figures stood at the farther rim of the amphitheater, silently regarding me. Both were thin, pigmy-built men with long arms and low foreheads. Their faces, grotesquely disfigured with bone and sh.e.l.l ornaments spiked through noses and ears, were b.e.s.t.i.a.l yet not stupid.

Their eyes were beady and sharp, and just now their thick lips hung pendulous with wonderment. For an instant I was incapable of motion; then, as they stood in equal petrification, I remembered and acted on the counsel of an east-side gang member whom I had once been privileged to know in New York. I had inconsequently inquired whether, in his acrimonious career, he never came eye to eye with fear.

”Sure thing,” he had promptly replied, ”but when a guy gets your goat--stall. If you makes de play strong enough it's a cinch you gets his goat too.”

By that rule this was my moment to ”stall.” I drew myself up to the limit of stature and threw out my chest in the best semblance of arrogance I could a.s.sume.

They were decked like the head of their sacrificial victim, in brilliant feather work, beautifully and harmoniously wrought. Their flint-tipped spears were elaborately carved and their necklaces were fas.h.i.+oned of sh.e.l.ls and teeth. Some of the teeth were human. For perhaps thirty seconds we held the strained tableau, then I glanced over my shoulder.

Between me and retreat stood a third figure. Compared to his gaudiness of decking, the raiment of the others was mean and sober. One bare shoulder and arm was covered with festering ulcers. His monkey-like face had the same slant of brow and heaviness of lip, but it worked constantly with a keen and twitching play of expression which argued speculative thought. As I turned he was leaning on a knotted war-club, and regarding me with profound gravity.

CHAPTER X

I SEEK ORCHIDS

Internally I was quaking, and thinking very fast. The first shock of their astonishment was dissipating, and two of the three faces were clouding into a glowering scrutiny which augured darkly for my escape.

The gaze of the third held a grave perplexity, touched with awe, and in the interval of overcharged silence the other eyes dwelt questioningly on his.

I knew from their spell-bound att.i.tudes that I was the first white man they had seen and an apparition. Measured by their pigmy standards, I was a gigantic being of a new type and order, possibly I was even immortal.

As a man they had no fear of me. The revolver which I had slipped from its holster and c.o.c.ked had not impressed them. They knew nothing of its death-dealing quality. That was a point in my favor. It would afford, if need be, six miracles of mortality, but the jungle that had disgorged them could disgorge hundreds of others like them--perhaps thousands.

G.o.ds must carry themselves, when they walk among men, with a G.o.dlike scorn of mundane dangers. I turned to the one man who was above the others, exposing my back to the two spears, as though safe in my consciousness of immunity. I extended one arm with a gesture intended to epitomize great majesty. It was a pose borrowed from some old sculptor's conception of the Olympian Zeus--albeit shamefully exaggerated.

It was an anxious moment. Should he, to whom I made my commanding plea, lift his finger in signal, the spears from behind, poisoned spears perhaps, would strike me down. But as I strode forward, with one hand still pointing heavenward, I commanded him in a mighty voice to stand aside.

He on his part eyed me dubiously, never s.h.i.+fting his att.i.tude or raising his club from the earth, but he permitted me to pa.s.s from the amphitheatre unmolested. I went, deliberately, holding my gaze rigidly to the front and using every ounce of self-control to curb the impulse of my feet to run, and the impulse of my neck to crane. A vestige of misgiving, a note of human anxiety, would have destroyed me.

My peril was superlative, and yet as I look back on the occasion, I can see that it overdid comedy and became pure farce. I was defending my life with burlesque. My audience would not be impressed by finesse, and impressing it was a matter of life and death. In the words of the east-side bruiser, I was ”makin' it strong.”

At all events my bearing, in a situation without precedent of etiquette, found sufficient favor to cover my retreat and I went down to the sea unfollowed. I had none the less seen enough to set me thinking and thought brought little solace. Were I accepted on the basis of my own divine a.s.sumption, and regarded as a being from another world, the story would travel fast among their villages. Its wonder would be promulgated and men would burn with curiosity to behold me. Among those who came as pilgrims would be some demanding proofs and miracles. I was now committed to a permanent policy of bluff. I had always been regarded as a facetious individual. Now my life depended on attaining a supreme flippancy of att.i.tude on pain of sacrifice to rites for which I had no reverence. When at sundown I reached the place where the portrait smiled whimsically at me from its post of honor, I sat for a while looking into the comprehending eyes and my thoughts took more cheerful color. Before me lay a situation in which I was to pit my legacy of human development against the brute odds of minds lighted only to the mistiness of dawn.

”Frances,” I said, ”you smile. Of course since you are fixed in print, you can't do otherwise than smile. I wonder--” I broke off and became suddenly and unaccountably serious. ”I wonder if you would smile, were you here with me in the flesh as well as merely in the spirit. I wonder if you would.”

Then with a feeling which was tremendously real, I added fervently and aloud, ”Thank G.o.d you are not here in the flesh--but I am grateful for your smiling. Somehow I find it rea.s.suring.”

After a little reflection I summarized the entire situation to the lady with whom I discussed my affairs.

”You see, my dear,” I informed her, ”to their untutored and man-eating minds I present a dilemma. I am either a great immortal, whom it would be most unwise to heckle--or I am very good eating, in which case it is a pity to let me grow thinner.”

”It shall be our care, dear lady,” I added, ”to maintain this status of G.o.ds.h.i.+p and to that end we must arrange a little program of simple miracles from time to time. You see,” I explained, ”it won't be long before they will be coming here and demanding what manner of deity I am, and what is my immortal name. Do you know what I shall tell them?”

I paused and grinned into the smiling eyes and the lips that seemed trembling on the verge of speech.

”I shall tell them,” I a.s.sured her, ”that in me they behold the great G.o.d Four-flush.”

If I concede to the cold logic of material reasoning that this dependable companions.h.i.+p and love of a man for a portrait washed up by the sea was merely the aberration of a brain unseated by solitude, I must also believe that a series of totally incredible coincidences subsequently befell me. But if it be that certain things are written in the stars and certain pa.s.sions are irrevocably decreed, my life is freed of grotesqueness and becomes logical.

<script>