IV

Launce dreamed in the early dawn that he was on board ship, and that the little faun of the garden had the wheel, and was steering the ship through a sea of dried rose-leaves. When Mrs. Annerley came in to wake him, he realized that Great House was creaking and straining like a ship in the battle of heavy seas. But the battle was of the winds.

“Is it a storm, Mrs. Annerley?” Launce sat up in bed awestruck. He could see the leaded panes of the window all blurred with driven sand, but he could not hear it. There was no lull in the wind.

“Come up this last hour, it has, my lamb.” The old lady looked very pale and troubled. “Such a tempest I never did see in so short a while. ’Twas gusty, so to say, all night, and this gale came up with the sun.”

“Which way is it blowing?”

“Straight in from the sea, oh dear, and driving the waves before it like the roaring lions seeking what they may devour in the Scriptures.”

“But there’s nothing to devour here, Mrs. Annerley.”

“There’s Great House and the lives of it, my lamb. You pick up white shells in the onion-beds, don’t you, dearie? Where the sea has been once, the sea will be again. And they two—my lovely ladyship and him I used to give jam to for love of his fair face when he shouldn’t have had it, and he two feet high—oh dear, oh dear. I hope I know my place, but tides may deal the judgments of the Almighty no less than thunderbolts.”

Launce dressed quickly and ran downstairs, wild with excitement. At the door of the breakfast-room he stopped. It was empty save for his uncle, who sat at the head of the table, staring out of the window into the grey fury of the day. He moved no more than a man of stone, and his face had the bleak colour of stone.

Launce slipped silently into his place. A pale servant attended to him, but the man’s eyes were all the time covertly on his master.

Presently Uncle Will spoke, without turning his head. “Send for Simmons again,” he said, in a dead voice.

Old Simmons was there so quickly he must have been waiting outside. He was very wet. His eyes also were on his master with that look Launce could not read, nor see without fear.

“What time did you say they started?” Was that indeed Uncle Will’s voice?

“Soon after daylight, sir, quite early. Mr. Geoffrey, he had the horses ready, and her ladyship came down the side stairs.”

“And you heard them say nothing—as to where they were going?”

“Nothing at all, sir. Mr. Geoffrey said nothing. They turned down the beach road—”

A sound of despair was in the room, yet the master had not spoken.

“—down the beach road. The weather was not near so bad then, but, such as it was, they gave no heed to it.”

“I see. They gave no heed to it. Could they shelter in the dunes?”

“Hardly, sir. Mr. Geoffrey would not risk her ladyship near the quicksands, and the dunes will be moving.”

“Could they shelter anywhere?”

“No, sir. Old Bassey, the shepherd, is downstairs, and he says the North road and the Marshcotes road are not to be passed. The walls and the dyke at Cotes will be gone by this, and the roads swept away.” He and the waiting servant exchanged a look so swift it was almost imperceptible.

“Well?” Uncle Will did not move nor turn his head. A carving-fork lay on the table, and he picked it up idly, snapping the spring-guard with the click of a trigger.

“The best thing to do will be to run back for it, sir.”

“Run back?”

“Yes. Gallop for home before the sea gets over the beach. And that’s what Master Geoff’s doing, I’ll wager.” Simmons’ face was that of the well-trained servant, but his voice betrayed it. It broke at “Master Geoff.” “You can trust Master Geoff, sir,” he went on.

“Trust him?” repeated Uncle Will, snapping the guard. “Thank you, Simmons, that will do. You had better change your wet coat.” He got up and strode out of the room; they heard him open the outer door, heard the wind leap in like a waiting enemy.

“He’s gone to the terraces,” said Simmons quickly to the other man, and followed him.

Launce ran and thrust his hand into the old man’s. “I must go too,” he said piteously.

Simmons wrapped a shawl round him and they went out into the gardens.

The wind and the sand were almost more than sight and breath could bear. Launce felt that the life must be blown out of his body. Another old man, Bassey, the shepherd, staggered up to them, caught his other arm, and the three struggled to the lower terrace where nearly all the household were gathered. Uncle Will was standing at the head of the stone steps; the others stayed apart from him. Only their eyes never left him, except to look along the lost and blinded road for Geoffrey and Lucia.

Sheltered by the other, Launce could catch breath and think. He longed to go to his uncle, but dared not. He was so sorry for Uncle Will, so fond of him. But oh, the others, the others—

“D’ye think he’ll bring her back?” shouted one of the grooms. He shouted, but it came as a whisper.

“There’ll be naught else to do—”

“Nay, I didn’t mean that. Will he get her through?”

“If Master Geoffrey had the mind, Simmons, he’d get her through hell.”

The cook broke in angrily. “Bad luck to you, and Master Launce at your very gaiters, and he but a child.”

“The surf’s at the edge of the road.”

“And the tide far from the full. Never was such a sea, Simmons. The whole garden’ll go, and the terraces. Looky. There’s the drive gone—”

The long drive that wound down by easy levels to the beach road ended now in a crumbling little cliff of gravel. Cries broke out from the group of servants.

“The shake of the waves—”

“ ’Tis like as if the land were falling of itself.”

“Lord ha’ mercy on them.”

Uncle Will strode over to the group. “Is it any good going out?”

“Not any use, sir. What two can’t do, twenty couldn’t do. And there’s not a horse in the stables that’s devil enough to fight with this except the old blood-mare and Monseigneur, and that’s the truth, sir.”

“Yes, sir, that’s the truth.”

William turned in silence and went back to his post

One of the maids broke into a keening cry, shrill and wild as a gull’s, but the wind whipped it from her lips.

A great wave broke in thunder on the beach. They could scarcely hear it: they felt the shock in the earth they stood on. The wind snatched the foam from the crest, tore the foam into mist, and drove the mist through the garden. When they cleared the salt from their eyes they saw a young fir-seedling, growing just outside the lower terrace, heel over in a slow arc and vanish.

The old shepherd turned a white face to Simmons. “Th’ water’s o’er the beach road.”

“Lord ha’ mercy on ’em.”

Gradually they one and all drew to the head of the stone steps where the master stood, and huddled behind him, silent now. He did not heed them. He was as still as the little faun, who lay smiling and sleeping in the storm; the pale light gleamed on the marble till it had the likeness of a body from which the life had gone like a flown bird.

Launce looked at his uncle fearfully, and his face, colourless and streaming with spray, was like the face of a drowned man. The child looked away trembling, and would not look back. And he it was at last who pointed and screamed: “I see them! They’re there—”

“Where, then?”

“The boy’s dreaming. ’Tis too late—”

“There’s naught but the scud and the driving weed.”

But William stooped his face to the child’s. “Where did you see them, laddie?” His face was torn with pain and dripping with foam, but it was no longer dead. The boy did not fear it.

“There—oh, Uncle Will, quite close—for a minute—when the spindrift cleared—”

They all surged forward. His uncle was down on the lower step with a leap, and as he stood the sea broke to his knee. There was nothing but the flying spray and the sting of the sand.

“He saw naught at all.”

“Back, I tell ye. Keep hold of the child. He’s all crazy-like—”

Launce was sobbing and screaming to follow his uncle. “I saw them, I tell you—quite close—”

The maid who had cried before tossed her arms and shrieked against the wind, her face white and wild. “Master Geoffrey—he’s there—”

“What’s got the silly wench?”

“Maybe she’s right. And her ladyship, you fool?”

“Aye, there’s two—”

And in a moment they saw them, clear and close under the wall of the lower terrace, fighting forward foot by foot. The horses huddled so near together they could not see one from the other, but Geoffrey rode on the outside, sheltering Lucia, and it seemed that his arm was round her, either to hold her in the saddle or to catch her from it if need were. Then the scud hid them.

Another great wave rose, and the wild-eyed maid shrieked terribly. The cook laid a hand over her mouth, but she suddenly slid down in a heap on the gravel and was quiet. But no one heeded her. The younger men were down on the lowest step with their master, their arms interlaced. And the great wave broke and buried them to the waist.

“Where are they to get up?”

“The drive’s gone and the road’s gone, and the surf breaks on the wall. ’Tis all sliding sand—”

“Here, here.” Suddenly as an apparition, the riders showed from the gloom but a few yards from the steps. Geoffrey had the mare by the bridle, and the waves broke on the great bay. Both horses were reeling on their legs, the surf creaming at their withers and the sand sucking under their hooves. Monseigneur’s nostrils were blood-bright, his eyes dreadful. On the steps, the men were holding their master back by main force.

“Wait an instant, sir—”

“Give Mr. Geoffrey a chance, sir. He knows what he’s doing—”

“Ah, look!” Monseigneur’s shoulder, Geoffrey’s strength were thrusting the mare at the steps. Her head was almost within their reach. She saw safety and flung forward, with the last of her strength, up and away from the water. A dozen hands were at her bridle. They had her up four steps before she crumpled forward and fell, and William leaped back with Lucia.

He gave no more than a look at the life in her beautiful dazed face, and let them take her, and turned to his friend. But it was long enough.

Heard even above the storm, there was a great cry.

The men on the steps, waiting with arms locked for Monsiegneur as they had waited for the mare, were up to the waist in surf. But a dozen strong hands were ready for the bridle as the horse rose pawing for an instant at the lowest stair. Someone screamed: “Jump for it, Master Geoff.” But Geoffrey stayed in the saddle, the backwash scoured the sand from beneath Monseigneur’s hooves, and somehow the ready hands fell short. Half the sea seemed to raise itself and hang poised above the beach and the gardens, a grey wall curbed and ramparted with running white. They saw them an instant clear—the dreadful straining head of the great horse; Geoffrey with his hand up and his face raised. It was not pale or lost, but flushed with the very fulness of life, the face of one who looks on a thing that is good. His lips moved. It seemed that something went past them on the wind, a voice and a cry—“Lucia—”

Then the great wave fell.

Launce flung face down on the gravel like the kitchen-maid. The world went out. Voices and wild words passed him.

“He reined him back, I tell you, as I’m a living man!”

“What d’ye mean?”

“There, at the foot of the steps. We’d a’ had Monseigneur as we had the mare. Sim’s hand was on the bridle. But Master Geoff reined him back.”

“For God’s sake, don’t say so to the master, then. He’s like mad down there. We had to hold him, or he’d have killed Sim that caught him out of the rush.”

“He reined Monsiegneur back, or we’d a’ had him up the steps before the wave fell. We’d a’ saved him.” The groom seemed to be sobbing.

“Not against his will, lad. He’s al’ays took his will, has our Master Geoff—”

“And her ladyship—?”

“Hush. None’ll know that—”

Someone picked Launce up, and carried him indoors and put him to bed; but the world did not come back. The house was silently astir. Mrs. Annerley, weeping, sat by the child all day, her prayer-book in her hand. The storm was full of voices—the voice of a man who walked up and down the terrace calling openly for his friend, and the voice that cried for ever in the wind, would cry for evermore—“Lucia, Lucia—”

At night the wind lulled and he could hear Mrs. Annerley reading softly—“Graciously look upon our afflictions. Pitifully behold the sorrows of our hearts. Mercifully forgive the sins of Thy people.” He fell asleep, and awoke to the world again. But it was a changed world.

The wind was still, the sky blown cold and clear. A great swell broke in silver on the beach. All the wall and the lower terrace was gone, the flowers and the young larches were gone, and the sleeping faun was gone also, swept away and buried in the ruin of the sand. All along the line of the breakers, men moved quietly, searching.

Launce took the white mice and ran to the stables. He found old Simmons sitting on a bucket in Monseigneur’s empty stall, his hands over his ears, and Launce knew that both listened to the same thing. He would have no need to explain. He spoke with a sob. “I can’t bear it any more. Take me home, Simmons, take me home.”

So the old man took him home, to the dove-house and the brown rabbit and Pansy and the kind, mild faces he knew best, which should presently heal him and set him at rest.

But he was a child no more.

I

There were four bunks in the shanty, and three of them were filled.

Ohlsen lay in one, a great bulk under the Hudson Bay Company blankets, breathing like a bull; in the next was Forbes, with eyes as quick as a mink’s, and now red rimmed from snow blindness, twinkling from time to time over his yellowish furs. Nearest the door was Lajeune, singing in his sleep. In one corner an old Indian cowered, as little regarded as the rags and skins in which he was hidden; and Desmond sat by the stove, drinking to his luck, fingering it and folding it.

It was all there in a bag—raw gold, pure gold, the food of joy. At the weight of it in his rough palm, Desmond chattered and chuckled with delight. He had sat there talking and laughing for hours, while the glow of the stove grew darker and the cold crept in. Little blots of snow from the snow-shoes, first melting, had turned again to dark ice on the floor; the red light clung to them until each little circle seemed to be one of blood. Outside the world trembled under the shafts of the bitter stars; but Desmond, with the very fuel of life in his hand, was warm.

Dreams ran in his brain like a tide and dripped off his tongue in words. They were strangely innocent dreams of innocent things; sunlight on an old wall, honey, a girl with sandy eyebrows, and yellow ducklings.

“And maybe there’ll be a garden, with fruit you can pick off the bushes. ’Twas under a thorn-bush she used to stand, with the wind snapping her print gown. Or maybe I’ll see more of the world first in an easy fashion, never a drink scarce, and no man my better at it. I know how a gentleman should behave. Are you hearing me, boys?”

Ohlsen breathed as slowly and deeply as a bull. Forbes blinked a moment over the greasy furs and said, “I’m hearing you.” Lajeune gave a sudden little call in his sleep, like a bird.

“They’re all asleep, like so many hogs,” said Desmond, with a maudlin wonder; “they don’t care. Two years we’ve struggled and starved together in this here freezing hell, and now my luck’s come, and they don’t care. Well, well.”

He stared resentfully at the bunks. He could see nothing of Ohlsen but blanket, yet Ohlsen helped him to a new outfit when he lost everything in a snow-slide. Forbes was only an unheeding head of grimy fur, yet once he had pulled Desmond out of a log-jam. And Lejeune had nursed him laughingly when he hurt his foot with a pick. Yet now Lejeune cared nothing; he was asleep, his head flung back, showing his smooth, lean throat and a scar that ran across it, white on brown. Desmond felt hurt. He took another drink, strode over to the bunk, and shook him petulantly.

“Don’t ye hear when a friend talks t’ ye?”

Lajeune did not move, yet he was instantly awake. His eyes, so black that they showed no pupil, stared suddenly into Desmond’s muddled blue ones. His right hand gripped and grew rigid.

Desmond, leaning over him, was sobered by something in the breathless strain of that stare. He laughed uneasily.

“It’s only me, Jooney. Was you asleep? I’m sorry.”

He backed off bewildered, but young Lajeune smiled and yawned, showing his red tongue curled like a wolf’s.

“Still the gold, my friend?” he asked, drowsily.

“I—I can’t seem to get used to it, like,” explained Desmond; “I have to talk of it. I know I’m a fool, but a man’s luck takes him all ways. You go to sleep, young Jooney. I won’t talk to you no more.”

“Nor before your old savage in the corner, hein?”

Desmond glanced at the heap of rags in the corner.

“Hom? What’s the matter? Think he’ll steal it? Why, there’s four of us, and even an Injun can have a corner of my shack for an hour or two to-night. I reckon,” finished Desmond, with a kind of gravity, “as my luck is making me soft. It takes a man all ways.”

Lajeune yawned, grinned, flung up his left arm, and was instantly asleep again. He looked so young in his sleep, that Desmond was suddenly moved to draw the blanket over him. In the dim light he saw Forbes worn and grizzled, the wariness gone out of him, a defeated old man with horrible eyes. Ohlsen’s hand lay over the edge of the bunk, his huge fingers curved helplessly, like a child’s. Desmond felt inarticulately tender to the three who had toiled by his side and missed their luck. He piled wood on the stove, saying, “I must do something for the boys. They’re good boys.”

At the freshened roar of the stove the old Indian in the corner stirred and lifted his head, groping like an old turtle in the sunlight. He had a curious effect of meaningless blurs and shadows. Eye and memory could hold nothing of his insignificance. Only under smoked and puckered lids the flickering glitter of his eyes pricked in a meaning unreadable. Desmond looked at him with the wide good nature born of his luck.

“I ain’t going to turn ye out, Old Bones,” he said.

The eyes steadied on him an instant, and the old shadow spoke fair English in the ghost of a voice.

“Thanks. You give grub. I eat, I warm, I rest. Now I go.”

“Jest as ye like. But have a drink first.” He pushed over the dregs of the whiskey bottle.

The old man seized it; seemed to hold it to his heart. While he could get whiskey he might drink and forget; when he could get it no more, he must remember and die. He drank, Lethe and Paradise in one, and handed back the bottle.

“How,” he said. “You good man. Once I had things to give, now nothing. Nothing but dreams.”

“Dreams, is it, Old Bones?”

The eyes were like cunning sparks.

“Dreams, yes,” he said with a stealthy indrawing of breath. “You good man. I give you three dreams. See.”

With a movement so swift the eye could hardly follow it, he caught three hot wood-coals from the ash under the stove and flung them on the floor at Desmond’s feet. He bent forward, and under his breath they woke to a moment’s flame. The strangeness of his movements held Desmond, and he also bent forward, watching. He had an instant’s impression that the coals were burning him fiercely somewhere between the eyes, that the bars of personality were breaking, that he was falling into some darkness that was the darkness of death. Before his ignorance could find words for his fear, the old Indian leaned back, the fire fled, and the spent coals were no more than rounds of empty ash, which the old man took in his hands.

“Dreams,” he said, with something that might have been a laugh. He blew the ash like little grey feathers toward the sleeping men in the bunks. His eyes were alive, fixed on Desmond with a meaning unreadable. He thrust his face close. “You good man. You give me whiskey. I give you three dreams, little dreams—for luck.”

Desmond was staring at the little floating feathers of wood ash. As they slowly sank and settled, he heard the door close and felt a sharp stab of cold. The old Indian had gone; Desmond could hear his footsteps dragging over the frozen crust of the snow for a little while. He got up and shook himself. The drink had died out of him; he felt himself suddenly and greatly weary of body and mind. The fire would last till morning. “Dreams—dreams, for luck!” he muttered, as he rolled into the fourth bunk. He was ready for sleep. And as he lay down and yielded to the oncoming of sleep, as a weed yields to the tide, he knew of a swift, clear, certainty that he would dream.

II

He opened his eyes to the pale flood of day; Lajeune was cooking pork and making coffee; Ohlsen was mending snow shoes; Forbes bent over his bunk, black against the blind square of the frozen window, feeling blindly with his hands, and snuffling a little as he spoke:

“We’d ha’ let you sleep on, but we wanted to know what you’d be doing. Will ye stay here with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

Desmond stretched, grunted, and hesitated. He felt curiously unwilling to decide. But Forbes was waiting, his yellow fingers twitching on the end of the bunk.

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “What’s the hurry? Well—I guess I’ll try the pass with Ohlsen.”

“Right.” Ohlsen nodded his heavy head, for he seldom spoke. He had the physique men always associate with a kind and stupid fidelity. Desmond said of him, “Them that talks most ain’t the best at heart.” Desmond said it to himself as he rolled out of the bunk for breakfast.

Forbes stayed in his bunk, and made little moaning animal noises while he fed. Lajeune bubbled over with quick laughter. Desmond beamed on everyone and talked of his luck. Ohlsen sat immovable, working his jaws like an ox, watching Desmond with his small, pale eyes.

He did not speak as they drew on their furs and packed the gold; nor as they turned out of the shack, shutting the door swiftly behind them, and faced the stinging splendour of the windy winter day. The cold had lessened with the sunrise, but what cold there was the wind took and drove to the bone. The air was filled with a glittering mist of blown snow, and all the lower slopes of the hills and the climbing spruce forests were hidden. Above the poudre the mountains lifted like iron in the unpitying day, and every snowfield and glacier was crowned with a streaming feather of white against a hard turquoise sky.

“You think we’ll get through?” asked Desmond, doubtfully.

“Ay t’ank so.” Ohlsen was striding heavily, tirelessly, just behind his shoulder. His grey eyes, still fixed on Desmond, were like little bits of glacier ice inset above his high cheek bones.

“We may.”

“We may. It ain’t far.” Desmond was talkative. “This gold weighs heavy. I like the colour o’gold. Ohlsen, you got any children?”

“Ay, got two kids.”

“Wisht I had. Maybe I will, though—little boy ’n’ gal, with kind o’ gold hair. See here, you ever had a garden?”

“No.”

“I’ve me garden on me back here, hey? With them blue things that smell, and hens. You come and see me, Ohlsen, and you’ll have the best there is.”

“T’anks. Ay like fresh eggs.”

“So do I. And apples. Say, Ohlsen, I’m sorry this luck ain’t for you.”

Ohlsen did not answer or slacken his heavy, stooping stride against the wind. The curved hills opened slowly, swung aside. The spruce stood up, came nearer, and closed in around them like the outposts of a waiting army. The wind roared through the trees like a flood of which the surf was snow.

“Do you think we’ll do it?” shouted Desmond again and Ohlsen answered:

“Ay t’ank so.”

In a little while the trees were a dark mass beneath them, and they were out on the bare heights, fighting with the wind for every foothold. Desmond staggered under it, but Ohlsen seemed untiring, climbing very close at his shoulder. The glare of the sun seared their eyes, but they had no heat of it. In all the vast upheaval of the hills, in all the stark space of the sky, there was no warmth, no life.

Something took Desmond by the throat.

“We’ll not do it,” he cried, to Ohlsen. “Let’s turn back.”

For answer Ohlsen unstrapped the heavy pack of gold, fastened it on his shoulders, and went on. This time he was ahead, and his huge body sheltered Desmond from the wind.

“I been drinking too much,” thought Desmond; “and here’s Ohlsen having to do my work for me. It ain’t right.”

They were on a high ridge, and the wind was at its worst. On the left lay a precipice, and the dark masses of the spruce. On the right the depths were veiled with glittering silver, now and then shot through with the blue-green gleam of a glacier. It was fair going for a steady head, but the wind was dangerous. It took Desmond, as with hands, and thrust him to his knees at the narrowing of the ledge. He slipped a little. The dark-grey ice, white veined, gave him no hold. He lost his head, slipped a little farther, and the white driven foam of snow and cloud above the glacier was suddenly visible. He called to Ohlsen.

Ohlsen could not have heard, yet he turned and came slowly back. Desmond could have raged at him for his slowness if his lips had not been so stiff and dry. Inside his fur mitts his hands were suddenly wet. Gently he slid a little farther, and the wind-driven white below was plainer, cut through with turquoise as with a sword. He shut his eyes. And when he opened them Ohlsen had stopped and was standing quietly watching him.

Desmond shrieked hoarsely, for he understood. Between the two drove the torrent of the wind, shutting slayer and all but slain into a separate prison of silence. But even the wind did not stir Ohlsen; he stood like a gray rock, watching Desmond. Presently he leaned forward, hands on knees, his back humped grotesquely under the pack, as the cruel or the curious might watch the struggles of a drowning kitten. Desmond was shaken to his fingers by the terrible thudding of his heart. He could not make a sound. Earth and sky flashed away. There remained only the gray inhuman shape beyond the barrier of the wind.

Presently that also flashed away. Yet, as Desmond fell, he was aware of light, a great swift relief, for he knew that he dreamed.

Then came darkness.

III

It was a darkness glittering with stars. Such stars as the men of the South, the men of the cities, never see. Each was a blazing world hung in nothingness, rayed with sapphire and rose. Now and then the white ice-blink ran over and died beyond them in the spaces where even stars were not. Desmond was lying on his back, staring at them through a cranny in his sleeping-bag. He knew where he was, yet in his brain was a sort of cold confusion. He seemed to hear Forbes speaking.

“Will ye stay here with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

“And here I am, half-way to the fort, and sleeping out with Jooney and the dogs,” Desmond muttered; “but I can’t remember coming.”

Yet, as he turned in his sleeping-bag, his knowledge of his whereabouts was exact. He was in a stony little gully beyond Fachette, where high banks cut off the wind and ground willows gave firing. The huskies were asleep and warm in deep drift under the bank, after a full meal of dried salmon.

“I’ll say this for young Jooney,” said Desmond, drowsily, “he’s got some sense with dogs.”

Lajeune was beside him, asleep in another bag. Between them was the pack of gold and the sledge harness. And the great plain, he knew, ran north and south of the very lip of the gully, silver under the stars, ridged and rippled by the wind, like white sand of the sea. The wind was now still. The earth was again a star, bright, silent, and alone, akin to her sisters of the infinite heavens.

“There ain’t so much gold in a place like this here,” Desmond whispered, resentfully, to the night, “but jest you wait till I get south-east again.” He was filled with blind longing for red brick, asphalt, and crowded streets; even the hens and ducklings were not enough. He hungered in this splendour of desolation for the little tumults of mankind. It seemed as if the stars laughed.

“There ain’t nothing my gold won’t get me,” said Desmond more loudly. His breath hung in little icicles on the edges of his spy-hole. It was cruelly cold. He drew his hood closer round his head, and thrust it out of the bag.

Lajeune was gone.

He did not feel afraid; only deadly cold and sick as he struggled to his feet. Under their shelter of canvas and snow he was alone; everything else was gone. He fell on his hands and knees, digging furiously in the trodden snow, like a dog.

The gold was gone also.

“My luck,” whispered Desmond, stupidly, “My luck.”

He was still on his knees, shaping a little rounded column of snow; suppose it might be Lajeune’s throat, and he with his hands on each side of it—so. Lajeune’s dark face seemed to lie beneath him, but it was not touched with fear, but with laughter. He was laughing, as the stars had laughed, at Desmond and his luck. Desmond dashed the snow away with a cry.

He scrambled out of the gully. The dog-trail was easy to read, running straight across the silvery plain. He began to run along it.

As he ran he admired Lajeune very much. With what deadly quietness and precision he must have worked! The gully and the deserted camp were a gray streak behind him, were gone. He was running in Lajeune’s very footprints, and he was sure he ran at an immense speed. The glittering levels reeled away behind him. A star flared and fell, staining the world with gold. Desmond had forgotten his gold. He had forgotten food and shelter, life and death. He could think of nothing but Lajeune’s brown throat with the scar across it. That throat, his own hands on each side of it, and an end for ever to the singing and the laughter.

He thought Lajeune was near at hand, laughing at him. He felt the trail, and searched. The dark face was everywhere, and the quick laughter; but silence was waiting.

Again he knelt and groped in the snow; but he could feel nothing firm and living. He tore off his mitts, and groped again, but there was only the snow, drifting in his fingers like dust. Lajeune was near at hand, yet he could not find him. He got up and began to run in circles. His feet and hands were heavy and as cold as ice, and his breath hurt; but Lajeune was alive and warm and lucky and laughing.

He fell, got up, and fell again. The third time he did not get up, for he had caught young Lajeune at last. The brown throat was under his hands, and the stricken face. He, Desmond, was doing all the laughing, for Lajeune was dead.

“My luck, Jooney, my luck,” chuckled Desmond.

His head fell forward, and the dry snow was like dust in his mouth. Darkness covered the stars.

IV

In the darkness and the shadow something moved. Desmond was in his own bunk at the shack. There seemed to be an echo of words in the air, yet he knew that he had slept for some time. He was not asleep now, yet sleep lay on him like a weight, and he could not move.

Forbes was silent, too. He was quite clear that he was alone with Forbes, and that the other two had gone prospecting beyond Fachette. Forbes had asked him, “Will ye stay here with me and rest,—I’m all but blind the day,—or will ye go in to Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?” And he knew he had chosen to stay in the shack with Forbes.

It was night. The shack was dark, save for the red glow of the stove, and something moved very softly in the dusk and the shadow.

Desmond, weighted with sleep, could not move; but he listened. Someone was shuffling very softly and slowly round the wall of the shack, pausing at the bunks. It was Forbes. He was snuffling to himself, as some little soft-nosed animal might snuffle, and feeling in his blind way with one yellowed hand.

Desmond was amused. “If I was to yell out, old Scotty’d have a fit,” he thought. He decided to wait until Forbes was quite near, and then yell, and hear the old man curse. Old Forbes’ cursing was the admiration of the camps. Desmond lay very still and listened.

Forbes was coming nearer, feeling his way as if over unseen ground, and whimpering to himself very softly. Desmond could hear the scratch, scratch of his long-clawed fingers as he slipped his hand over the empty bunk near the door. He was silent and still for a minute, then the shuffling came again.

“I’ll wait till he’s at the foot o’ my bunk,” thought Desmond, grinning foolishly, “and then I’ll bark like a dog. Used to do it in school when I was a kid and scare the teacher. Lord! how a bit of luck does raise a man’s spirits!” He lay very quiet, grinning to himself in the dark.

Forbes’ blind, bent head showed, swaying slightly, against the dull, red glow of the farther wall. A tremulous touch, as light as a falling leaf, fell on Desmond’s foot, and suddenly he was stricken with the black, dumb terror of dreams; for he knew there was death in the touch of that hand.

The walls reeled about him, shot with streaks of red. He could feel the hand hovering lightly at his knee. The blind man’s soft, whimpering breathing sounded close above him. But he could not move. His whole life was centred in the quivering nerves which recorded the touch of the blind man’s hand.

It travelled very slowly and lightly up his body, and lingered above his heart. His life gathered there also like a cold flame. And he could not move.

Visions rose before him. The gold was under his head; and he heard again the sound of wind in a garden among tall flowers, and thud of ripe apples falling, soft croons, and cluckings of hens, a whirring of the wings of doves. He saw a straight girl in a stiff print dress, with very blue eyes under brows and lashes the colour of sea-sand. He saw two children with hair the colour of gold.

The blind man moaned and bent waveringly near, his right hand gathered to his breast.

The flowers of the hollyhocks were gold, and the little ducks were gold, and gold sunlight lay on the gold hair of the children. “Gold,” said Desmond, faintly—“gold; my luck.” The blind hand crept upward. Like a blown flame, the golden visions flickered and went out.

Desmond awoke, fighting upward out of darkness and the dreams of the night. He felt reality coming back to him as a tide comes back to a beach, and opened his eyes on a glad world. His terrors fell away from him. He came near to thanking God. Dark words he had dreamed, dark deeds, but they were not true. Thank God! they were only dreams. He stirred in the bunk, sat up, and brushed a white feather of wood-ash from his sleeve. Only dreams!

Lajeune was cooking pork and making coffee; Ohlsen was mending snow shoes; Forbes bent over his bunk, black against the frozen window, feeling blindly with his hands and snuffling a little as he spoke:

“We’d ha’ let you sleep on, but we wanted to know what you’d be doing. Will ye stay with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

He stopped suddenly. Desmond shrank back slowly against the wall of the bunk, his eyes staring on them as a man stares on death, a fleck of froth on his lips. There was no sound in the shack but the quick breathing of four men.

Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage, white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty, he always said without further inquiry, “It’s Henkel’s house you’re looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if God knew what went on under these trees, He’d have mercy on you. . . . .”

The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You won’t find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel, and in a season or two the forest swamped it as the sea swamps a child’s boat on the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose round it like a fog, too, and that’s why Henkel got it so cheap. No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of servants—Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down from accident or disease—wrecks that no one else would employ. He got them very cheap. When they died he got more.

Henkel was a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, “I don’t mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft, in reason, but when he shines too, I draw the line.” Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large brown eyes. He was a Hollander Jew, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn’t drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought things cheap.

He was very clever. He always knew the precise moment, the outmost low-water mark, of a bargain. His house was full of things he’d bought cheap from wrecked companies or dying men, from the mahogany logs in the patio to the coils of telegraph wire in the loft. His clothes never fitted for they belonged to men whom the fever had met on the way up the Mazzaron, and who had, therefore, no further use for clothes. The only things Henkel ever paid a fair price for were butterflies.

“I went to his house once,” said Ransome. “Had to. A lame Indian in a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old ‘Lily Grant,’ and I saw along the seams the smokemarks of the fire that had burnt her inwards out . . . . . Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand like a bundle of brown twigs, and the light shone through green leaves on the walls of the room. From ceiling to floor they flashed as if they were jewelled, only there are no jewels with just that soft bloom of colour. They were cases full of Henkel’s butterflies.

“The Indian limped out, and Henkel came in. He was limping, too. I looked at his feet, and I saw that they were in a pair of someone else’s tan shoes.

“That, and the whiff of the servants’ quarter, made me feel a bit sick. I wanted to say what I had to say, and get out as quick as I could. But Henkel would show me his butterflies. Most of us in that place were a little mad on some point. I was myself. Henkel, he was mad on his butterflies. He told me the troubles he’d had, getting them from Indians and negroes, and how his men cheated him. He took it very much to heart, and snuffled as he spoke. ‘And there’s one I haven’t got,’ he said, ‘one I’ve heard of, but can’t find, and my lazy hounds of hombres can’t find it either, it seems. It’s one of the clear-wings—transparent. Here’s a transparent silver one. But this new one is gold, transparent gold, and the spots are opaque gold.’ His mouth fairly watered. ‘I tell you, I will spend anything, anything, to get that gold butterfly. And if the natives can’t or won’t find it for me, my friend, I’ll send for someone who can and will.’

“I quite believed him, though I was no friend of his. I didn’t know much about butterflies, but I guessed that in Paris or London his collection would be beyond price. But I wasn’t prepared, two months later, for Scott and his friend. . . . .

“Derek Scott. Ever meet him? A very ordinary kind of young Northerner. He was only remarkable in having everything a little in excess of his type—a little squarer in jaw and shoulder, a little longer in nose and leg, a little keener of eye and slower of tongue. I’d never have looked at him twice as he landed from the dirty steamer with a lot of tin boxes, if it hadn’t been that he was hale and sound, with hope in his eyes. Health and hope, at Herares . . . .

“Then little Daurillac ran up the gangway, laughing. I looked at him—everyone did—and wondered. And then, to cap the wonder, they two came up to me with their friendly, confident young faces, and asked for Henkel’s house.

“ ‘Turn to the left,’ I said. And then I said, ‘You’ll excuse me, but what does Henkel want of you?’

“Scott didn’t answer at first, but looked me over with his considering eyes, and I remembered a collarless shirt and a four days’ beard. But Daurillac said, ‘He wants butterflies of us, Monsieur. I am an entomologist, and my friend, he assists me.’ He drew up very straight, but his eyes were laughing at himself. Then we exchanged names and shook hands, and I watched them going along the path to Henkel’s . . . . .

“Next day, Scott came down to the jetty. He sat on a stump and stared at everything. He was ready enough to talk, in his guarded way. Yes, he was new to the tropics; in some ways they were not what he had expected, but he was not disappointed. He was here for the novelty, the experience. But his friend, Louis Daurillac, had been in the Indies, and with some of Meyer’s men in Burma, after orchids. Louis’ father was a great naturalist, and Louis was very clever. Yes, Henkel had got hold of him through Meyer. He wanted someone to find this butterfly for him, this golden butterfly at the headwaters of the Mazzaron—someone whose name was yet in the making, someone he could get cheap . . . . . So Louis had come. He was very keen on it. Henkel was to bear all costs, to supply food, ammunition, trade-goods, etc., and pay them according to the number of the new specimens that they found. ‘So you see,’ said Scott, with his clean smile, ‘Louis and I can’t lose by it.’ . . . .

“We talked a bit more, and then young Scott said to me, suddenly, ‘Henkel has everything ready, and we start in the morning. You seem to be the only white man about here. Come and see us off, will you?’ I said yes; afterwards it struck me as curious that he should not have counted Henkel as a white man. He laughed, and apologised for the touch of sentiment. ‘It’s like plunging head first into a very deep sea,’ he explained, ‘and one likes to have someone on the shore. You’ll be here when we come back?’ And I said, ‘Yes, either unloading on the jetty or in the new cemetery by the canal.’ But he didn’t smile. His light northern eyes were gravely considering this land, where life was held on a short lease, and he looked at me as if he were sorry for me.

“I saw them off the next day. There were six or eight men of Henkel’s, loaded with food and trade-goods, and I saw that two of them were sickening where they stood. I looked in Daurillac’s brilliant young face, and I hadn’t the courage to say anything but ‘Have you plenty of quinine?’ He tapped a big tin case, and I nodded. ‘And what are you taking the Indianos?’ I asked.

“He fairly bubbled over with laughter. ‘You would never guess, Monsieur, but we take clocks, little American clocks. The Indianos of the Mazzaron desire nothing but little clocks, they like the tick.’

“Their men had turned down one of the jungle paths. They shook hands with me, and Scott met my eyes with his grave smile. ‘Just drawing breath for the plunge,’ he said, with a glance at the forest beyond the last white roof. Daurillac slipped his arm through Scott’s, and drew him after their slow-going hombres. At the bend of the path they turned and waved to me; Scott with a quick lift of the hand. But little Daurillac swept off his hat and stood half-turned for a minute; the sun splashed on his dark head, on his Frenchified belt and puttees, on his white breeches, and on an outrageous pink shirt Henkel seemed to have supplied him with. He looked suddenly brilliant and insubstantial, a light figure poised on the edge of the dark. One gets curious notions in Herares. The next moment they were gone. The jungle had shut down on them, swallowed them up. They were instantly lost in it, as a bubble is lost in the sea.

“Two days before I hadn’t known of their existence. But I was there to see them off, and I was there when Scott came back.

“It was well on into the rainy season, and I was down with fever. I was in my house, in my hammock, and the wind was swinging it. It was probably the hammock that did all the swinging, but I thought it was the house, and I had one foot on the floor to try and steady it. But it was no use. The walls lifted and sank all in one rush, like the side of a ship at sea. Outside I could see a pink roof, a white roof, a tin roof, and then the forest, with the opening of a path like the black mouth of a tunnel. I wanted to watch this tunnel, because I had an idea I’d seen something crawl along it a good while before. But I couldn’t manage it; I had to shut my eyes. And then I felt the scratching on my boot . . .

“I caught hold of the sides of the hammock, but it was some time before I could manage to pull myself up. Then I looked down.

“A man was lying along on his face on the floor, just as he had crawled into my hut and fallen. The yellowed fingers of one hand clawed on my boot, and that was the only sign that he was alive. He lay quite quiet, except for the slow working of his fingers. And I sat quite quiet, staring down on him with the infinite leisure that follows a temperature of one hundred and five. It was only by slow degrees I realized that this was Derek Scott come back, and that he was probably dying.

“I got to my feet, and bent over him, but I couldn’t raise him, of course. I was afraid he’d die before anyone came. So I took my revolver and aimed as well as I could at that tin roof beneath which my man Pedro was eating his dinner. The barrel went up and down with the walls of the hut, but I must have hit the roof, for the next thing I knew was a lot of smoke and noise, and Pedro’s face, eyes and mouth open, rushing out of it. There seemed no interval before I found myself sitting in the hammock, and saying over and over again, ‘But where’s the little chap? Where’s the little French chap?’

“Scott was still on the floor, but his head was on my man’s shoulder, and Pedro was gently feeding him with sips of brandy and condensed milk. He turned and looked at me, and his eyes were clear and considering as ever, though his answer didn’t sound quite sane. He said, ‘The clocks wouldn’t tick.’

“He said it as if it explained everything. Then he unstrapped a tin case from his belt, laid his head on it, and was instantly asleep.

“I cried out, ‘Is it the fever, Pedro?’ But my man said, ‘No, Senor, it is the hunger.’ He rolled Scott up very cleverly in a blanket. ‘This Senor has had the fever, but it is not upon him now. Without doubt he is a little mad from being in the forest so long. But when he wakes he will be stronger. So much I heard, and no more. Unconsciousness came down on me like a wave. But into the dark heart of that wave I carried the certainty that Pedro knew all about the matter and that he hated Henkel. How or why I was certain of this I don’t know. But I was.

“I woke in the cool of the evening. The fresh breeze off the river was like the breath of life, and Pedro’s face, thrust close to mine, no longer grew large and small by fits. I noticed that it was quite grey, and that his lips twitched as he muttered, ‘Senor, Senor . . .’

“I said, ‘Where is the Senor Scott?’

“ ‘He woke a little while ago and called for water to wash in and a clean coat, and he used the hair-brush. Then he went out—went out—’

“I got to my feet, threw an arm over Pedro’s shoulder, and he ran with me out into the moonlit street. The track to the fountain lay like a ribbon of silver, the houses were like blocks of silver; and every house was shuttered and silent—breathless. Not a man lounged under the shade of the walls, not a girl went late to draw water, not a dog barked. The little place was deserted in the hold of the forest. It lay like a lonely raft of silver in the midst of a black sea. Only ahead of me a man stumbled slowly in the middle of the road, and his shadow staggered beside him. I have said there was no other living thing visible. Yet as this man stumbled past the shuttered houses, the very blades of grass, the very leaves on the wall, seemed to have conscious life and to be aware of him. When the wind moved the trees, every branch seemed straining to follow him as Pedro and I followed.

“We followed, but we could not gain on him. It was like the dreams of fever. Pedro and I seemed to be struggling through the silence of Herares as if it were something heavy and resistant, and Scott reeled from side to side, but always kept the same distance ahead. We were still behind when we turned into Henkel’s garden, and the scent of the flowers beat in our faces like heat. At the foot of the verandah steps we met the man who had admitted Scott.

“The man was running away. He was a cripple. He came down the steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone. Somewhere a door clashed open. There was no other sound. But in a moment the garden seemed full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged. They melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they took no notice of us. I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly. But when a light flared up in one of the rooms, it showed no more than Scott talking with Henkel.

“They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was dark leaves about the window, which was open. I leaned against the side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as if he were at a cockfight. I did not know just why I was there. Henkel sat at a table, wagging his head backwards and forwards. Scott was sitting opposite him; and he looked as Lazarus might have looked when first he heard the Voice, and stirred . . . .

“Henkel was saying, ‘Dear me, dear me, but why should this have happened?’ And Scott answered him as he had answered me, in that strange, patient voice,

“ ‘The clocks wouldn’t tick.’

“ ‘But they were good clocks,’ cried Henkel.

“Scott shook his head. ‘No, they were not good clocks, he explained gently, ‘they were too cheap. They would not go at all in the jungle. An Indian of the Mazzaron does not care what time his clock tells, but he likes it to tick. These were no good. And the food was not good. The things in the tins were bad when we opened them.’

“ ‘Mismanagement, mismanagement,’ said Henkel, but Scott went on as if he had not heard.

“ ‘We followed the river for two days and then turned east. In a week after that, two of your men were dead. They died of fever. No, the quinine was no good. There was a lot of flour in it. Two days more, and another man died, but he would have died anyhow. It was very hard to see them die and to be able to do nothing.

“ ‘The men who were left went so slowly that nearly all our food was gone when we reached the country of the Indios. We made our camp, and I shot a pig. That made us stronger, but Louis was very bad then with the fever.

“ ‘The Indios came down, and we spoke with their head-men. They thought we were mad, but the clocks pleased them. They sat round our tents and shook them to make them tick louder, until Louis cried out in his fever that all the world was a great clock that ticked. They gave us leave to hunt in their country for butterflies, and the head-men told off six to help us. One was very clever. He used to wear his net on his head with the stick hanging down behind, and he snared the butterflies with a loop of grass, as if they had been birds.

“ ‘Our tents were of cheap cotton stuff that would not keep the rain out, and the wet came in on Louis and made him worse. But he was young, and I saw to it that he had food, and your men loved him. I do not think he would have died if the clocks had ticked properly.’

“ ‘I do not understand,’ said Henkel, blinking his heavy brown eyes.

“ ‘No? They were so cheap that they broke at the first winding. The Indios brought them back, and asked for better ones. I had no better ones.’

“ ‘Still, I do not understand,’ said Henkel, smoothly, and blinked in the lamplight.

“Scott’s tired voice went on. ‘The Indios were very angry. They brought us no more butterflies and no more food. And presently, as we went about the camp, or the paths of the forest, the little arrows began to fall in front of us and behind, though we never saw who shot at us.’

“ ‘The little arrows?’ asked Henkel, heavily. ‘I do not understand. Go on.’

“ ‘There is very little to tell. Only a nightmare of hunger, of wet, of fever, of silence, and the little poisoned arrows quivering everywhere . . . . And one day a little dart flickered through a rent in the rotten cotton tenting and struck Louis. He died in five minutes. Then I and the men who were left broke through and came down to the Mazzaron. The Indios followed us, and I am the only one left. It is a pity the clocks wouldn’t tick, Mister Henkel.’

“ ‘Ya, ya,’ said Henkel, leaning over the table, ‘but the butterfly? The golden butterfly? You have found it?’

“Scott opened the tin case slowly and clumsily, drew out the perfect insect, and laid it on the table. But it is wrong to speak of that wide-winged loveliness as an insect. Henkel sat staring at its glittering and transparent gold, one big yellowish hand curved on either side of it, too happy to speak. His lips moved, and I fancied he was saying to himself, ‘Cheap, cheap . . . .’

“ ‘It is very good,’ he said at last, cunningly, ‘but I am sorry there is only one. I do not know that it is worth very much. But now I will pay you as I promised. There was no agreement that you should receive the other young man’s share, and there is only one specimen. But I will pay you.’

“Scott was fumbling in his belt. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you will pay me,’ and he leaned forward with something in his hand. We saw Henkel’s face turn to yellow wax, and he tried to stand up, but he was too stout to lift himself quickly. He had no time to turn before Scott shot him through the heart.

“When I broke through the vines, Scott was moving the butterfly out of the way . . . . . He looked up at me with his old considering look, his old clean smile. ‘It was cheap at the price,’ he said, touching one golden wing with his finger.”