Part 1 (1/2)
Where the Pavement Ends
by John Russell
THE FOURTH MAN
The rafttangle of roots as it slid out of the shadowy river round swell But while the sky brightened and the breeze ca shoals and swampy islets with purpose and direction, and when at last the sun leaped up and cleared his bright eye of themist it had passed the wide entrance to the bay and stood to open sea
It was a curious craft for such a venture, of a type that survives here and there in the obscure corners of the world The coraclepithecanthrope built nearly as ith his log and bush A mat of pandanus leaves served for its sail and a paddle of niaouli wood for its helle point of real seaworthiness Its twin floats, paired as a catamaran, oven of reed bundles and baht as a bladder itself, elastic, fit to ride any weather One other quality this raft possessed which recommended it beyond all comfort and all safety to its present crew It was very nearly invisible They had only to unstep its y platform and they could not be spied half a mile away
Four men occupied the raft Three of them hite Their bodies had been scored with brambles and blackened with dried blood, and on wrist and ankle they bore the dark and wrinkled stain of the gyves The hair upon thes of blue canvas uniforms But they hites, hly superior race according to those philosophers who rate the crienius
The fourth was theit
There was nothing superior about hinathous jaw carried out the angle of a low forehead No line of beauty redeemed his lean limbs and knobby joints Nature had set upon him her plainest stamp of inferiority, and his only attempts to relieve it were the twist of bark about his e of his nose Altogether a very ordinary specimen of one of the lowest branches of the human family--the Canaques of New Caledonia
The three whites sat together well forward, and so they had sat in silence for hours But at sunrise, as if soong in the east, they stirred and breathed deep of the salt air and looked at one another with hope in their haggard faces, and then back toward the land which was now no e behind them ”Friends,” said the eldest, whose temples were bound with a scrap of criesture like conjuring he produced froarettes, fresh and round, and offered theht ”True nippers--naood man! And here? Doctor, I always said you were a marvel See if they be not new from the box!”
Dr Dubosc smiled Those who had known him in very different circumstances about the boulevards, the lobbies, the clubs, would have known hiurement by that smile And here, at the bottom of the earth, it had set his of a coiven to mirth Many a crowded lecture hall at Montpellier had seen him touch some intellectual fireith just such a twinkle behind his bristly gray broith just such a thin curl of lip
”By way of celebration,” he explained ”Consider There are seventy-five evasions from Noumea every six ures myself from Dr Pierre at the infirmary He is not much of a physician, but a very honest fellow Could anybody win on that percentage without dissipating? I ask you”
”Therefore you prepared for this?”
”It is now three weeks since I bribed the night guard to get these saarded him with admiration Sentiuid, but overdraith eyes too large and soft and oval too long It was one of those faces faht serve as el were it not associated with so piece of deviltry Fenayrou hiible
”Is not our doctor a wonder?” he inquired as he handed a cigarette along to the third white rumble See--we are free, after all Free!”
The third was a gross, pock-marked man with hairless lids known so copains as Perroquet--a name derived perhaps from his beaked nose, or froarroter by profession, accustoe of ae a fancy and Fenayrou seek to carry it as a pose, but The Parrot reentleman of strictly serious turn There is perhaps a tribute to the practical spirit of penal aderous of these three and Fenayrou the most depraved, Perroquet was the one with the official reputation, whose escape would be signaled first alad to get it, but he said nothing until Dubosc passed a tin box of s
”Wait till you've got your two feet on a pave, my boy That will be the time to talk of freedom What? Suppose there came a storm”
”It is not the season of storiven them a check Such spirits as these, to whom the land had been a horror, would be slow to feel the terror of the sea Back there they had left the festering limbo of a convict colony, oblivion Out here they had reached the rosy threshold of the big round world again They were ed with all the furious appetites of lost years, with the savor of life strong and sweet on their lips And yet they paused and looked about in quickened perception, with the clutch at the throat that takes the lands waters The spaces were so wide and ee and murmurous There was a threat in each wave that came from the depths, a sinister vibration None of theht play, what traps it le
The raft was running now before a brisk chop with alternate spring and hile the froth bubbled in over the prow and ran down a them as they sat ”Where is that cursed shi+p that was to meet us here?”
deh” Dubosc spoke carelessly, though behind the bloisp of his cigarette he had been searching the outer horizon with keen glance ”This is the day, as agreed We will be picked up off the rowled Perroquet ”But where is any river now? Or any mouth?
Sacred name! this ill blow us to China if we keep on”