SESTRINA

A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

SESTRINA

A ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEAS

BY

A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

AUTHOR OF “SOUTH SEA FOAM.”

Life is our death: We dream reality.

Imagination is Omnipotence,

Some image of a bright eternity

Flashed on Time’s mirror from the Mind Immense:

’Twill be reshaped from all that madness seems

Into immortal beauty of new dreams!

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SESTRINA

CHAPTER I

A dusky maid stood ’neath a lone palm tree

Down Makewayo beach, on Savaii Isles;

A perfect shape and curved lips had she

As stared her bright eyes o’er the lone sea miles;

Maids have grown old, brave men seen their best day,

But she was made of terra-cotta clay—

In beauty by the sea still stands and smiles!

“O SWEET is woman clad in modest smiles and grass!”

The speaker, Royal Clensy, was an ardent dreamer, romanticist and mystic. He did not wear a flowing robe or seer’s beard, he was simply a handsome young Englishman attired in a serge suit, wearing a topee as he leaned against the stem of a palm tree. And had our hero have been able to express his opinions in distinguished poetic style, instead of in the crude phrase which opens this chapter, it is an extremely dubious point as to whether he would ever have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Vers Libre. However, though Clensy was ambitious, he was quite devoid of pretence, which was as well since competition seems keen wherever one goes.

“Cah! Cah! Cah! Too whoo Ha He!” said a second voice. It was the voice of wisdom, the philosophy of the ages was expressed on the wrinkled brow, in the solemn bright eyes and on the shining grey and crimson striped homespun suit, as away, in its own private aeroplane, it sailed over the palms—out of this story! It was a full-blooded native of the Marquesas Isles—a cockatoo!

The first speaker, who still stood under a palm by the lagoons, swished his hand and scattered the swarm of sandflies that buzzed before his eyes obstructing his curious gaze at the pretty, symmetrical brown maid who glided under the palms and then vanished! It was a common enough sight to see a modest maid or youth clad only in smallest green attire stitched on by invisible stiff grass thread, run from the village doorways into another hut opposite. It was a sight to sweep a dreamer’s reflective mind into the golden age of Eden’s fountains before the Tree of Knowledge upset the innocence and beauty of the first sylvan shades. And oh, the prevailing terrific heat, and the coolness suggested by such artless attire. True enough the glowing tropic heat had its drawbacks on those Isles. But Old Dame Nature toiled on, patiently and artlessly for art’s sake, devising suitable clothes, mysteriously sewing and stitching wonderfully hued patterns and greenest, cheapest materials for her artless children. And what a fascinating code of morals was hers! An ill-timed sneeze before the altar, and the dusky bride’s wedding-robe—her mass of shining hair—lo, became disarranged, and made the amorous chiefs sigh. How awful!

No wonder the young Englishman meditated profoundly and continued his preposterous reflections: “Who knows, I may have been happier had I have been born here, in Temeroka village, within sounds of the tribal drums instead of the chimes of Bow Bells.” He gazed down on his much worn boots and wondered what would happen when they fell off! “How on earth can I ever get them re-soled and heeled here, on Isles where men and women wipe their noses on sweet-scented leaves, where the highest social society discuss morals and politics as they somersault in these shore lagoons. Truly, a sylvan utopia of fierce happiness and clotheless modesty. God’s finest sculptural art done in smooth terra-cotta clays, sun-varnished, finished off with muscular curves, and, to say the least, picturesque feminine outlines as folk roam under these coco-palms.” Our hero’s reflections did him credit, nothing was truer. Even the first wonder over creation seemed to gleam in the eyes of those wild peoples. Only one odious odour disturbed the rich scents of tropic flowers. It came from the copra sheds round the bend of the bay, by the primitive wharf where a fore-and-aft schooner lay. It was at that spot where beggared tattooed chiefs and melancholy kings and queens of fallen dynasties cracked nuts ready for the extraction of suspicious looking fats to smear on the artificial breadfruit and well-combed smooth hair of civilised Man! O world of inscrutable mystery!

“‘Ow gloryhus is rum, woman and coco-nuts!” grunted a third voice. Our hero was not startled. It was the voice of one of a noble lineage, that presumably dated back to Bacchus down in Thebes. It was none other than Beer de Beer Adams who spoke thus. It’s a crying shame to have to introduce such a character to polite society. He would never have entered these pages, but for the fact that he stood by Royal Clensy that day. Adams was a derelict sailorman. Even as he spoke he conclusively proved how unfit he was to enter the society of the humblest pages of polite literature, except, perhaps, as a character of the most menial position—lo, he pursed his vulgar lips and sent a stream of filthy tobacco-juice across the line of Clensy’s vision. But what cared our hero? He was young! twenty years of age!

As this script will probably be the only serious, authentic record of Clensy’s life from that time when he left Hiva-oa on a schooner for the South American coast, to arrive eventually at Port-au-Prince, Hayti, it will be as well to let the uninformed know something about his mode of life at the date when he met Adams. It will be sufficient to say that Clensy had been roaming about the various isles of the Marquesan group for three months before he decided to go farther afield. Adams was a destitute drunken reprobate—and he looked it. To be seen in his company was sufficient to exclude one from any decent society that might exist between Terra del Fuego and the Coral Sea. Probably that is why Clensy cottoned to Adams like a shot when he first ran across him in Taiohae. Clensy was out to see the world and enjoy the vigorous novelty of roughing it; and Adams was out to cadge from unsophisticated young men. (Adams is not to be taken as a specimen of an honest South Sea shellback.) As for Royal Clensy, he was physically perfect. He had a fine brow, and eyes that shone with the light of a gay personality. His mind was in the spongy state that readily absorbs good and bad influences; but his belief in the goodness of human nature sent the mud to the bottom of the living-waters to nourish and help the roots of the lilies grow in the summer of his days. His temperament was, under sunny conditions, sanguine and decidedly amorous. Anyone who knew him well was not likely to die of shock were they suddenly informed that he had eloped with a princess or a pretty serving maid. However, he did neither of these things, and they are only suggested to help explain that which is so difficult to explain—temperament. Like all men who have good in them, he was his own godly priest, and instinctively knelt at the altar of his own secret faith to confess his sins to a remorseful conscience. Consequently his religion was sincere and quite devoid of hypocrisy. He was bound to improve with time, as the mud settled down, and the lilies took firm root. So much for Clensy’s embryo sins and virtues. This gay young Englishman was of good birth; that was certain. Earlier incidents connected with his life cannot be given. Whether on first entering into the light of mundane things he was bottle or breast-fed, or was reared in suitable surroundings for so erratic a temperament, is immaterial. It can, however, be relied upon that he was born as he was, inheriting all those peculiarities which made him solely responsible for the drama of passion that put his life out of joint before he was twenty-one years of age. All wise men agree that temperament is the ruling passion that controls man’s actions, all impulses good or bad, be they successfully curbed or blazed before an admiring or shocked world, as the case may be. Adams swallowing rum or gassing Royal Clensy with smoke from his filthy clay pipe, was Adams proper; and Clensy standing beneath the coco palms staring with serious eyes, wondering what would become of him should his people not soon send his remittance, was, and, without a libellous statement on the reputation of his great natural mother, Dame Nature, none other than the legitimate, handsome, sun-tanned inconsequential Royal Clensy.

Instead of Clensy being shocked over Adams’s wicked yarns and disgusted to see a man squirt tobacco-juice with such marvellous precision over his shoulder, he stared his admiration of such vulgarity, and then roared with laughter.

“So yer wants ter git to ther coast of Sarth America, do yer?” said Adams. Then he added. “Look ye here, Myster Clensy, you’re a young gent, anyone can spot that by the cut of yer jib. And anyones who knows me, knows I’m ther man ter be an honest fren’ and guide ter yer.”

“You really do seem a good sort,” responded Clensy as he tugged the little tip of his virgin moustache and looked critically at Adams’s wrinkled, semi-humorous, rum-stricken countenance. Then Clensy, summing up his inward thoughts, murmured to himself: “You look like a hardened old sinner to me, blessed if you don’t.”

Adams who only saw the distinct surface of things, thought he had made a fine impression. He rolled his solitary eye (he had lost his right eye during a brawl in a heathen seraglio, New Guinea) and said: “So you’re a remittance man, and want ter git ter a plyce wheres yer can ’ave the spondulicks sent?”

Clensy nodded, and said, “I want to get to Acapulco, on the South American coast, my uncle’s British Consul there.”

“‘Is E indyed!” gasped Adams as he at once obsequiously began to brush an imaginary speck of dust from Clensy’s shoulder. Visions of coming affluence loomed before his solitary eye.

“How can it be managed? I must leave this place soon or I’ll be dead broke,” said Clensy. Thereupon Adams immediately informed the young Englishman that the French tramp steamer, La Belle France, was leaving Hiva-oa for the South American coast with a cargo of copra in a few days. “She puts into Acapulco, so the thing’s done—if yer’ve got the cash for passages?”

“I have,” said Clensy, then he handed the sailorman a sovereign on account.

“Leave it all to me, I’ll get passages for about ten quid each,” said the old reprobate as he spat on the golden coin for luck. So was the matter settled between them. Two days after that, Adams informed Clensy that he had managed to secure berths as deck passengers at twelve pounds apiece. He watched Clensy’s face, and then smiled his inward delight, for he had made five pounds over the deal with the skipper of the La Belle France. Clensy, who guessed that he had secured berths for less money than he said, made no remark.

“She’s sailing day after termorrer, so we’d better go and say good-bye to our fren’s on the islets tother side; agreed?”

And so Clensy agreed to go to the neighbouring isle to say good-bye to Adams’s old friend, the widowed queen, Mara Le Vakamoa. “You must see heathen royalty afore you leaves these islands,” said Adams.

That same night Adams paddled Clensy in a canoe across the narrow strip of ocean that divided them from the isle where dwelt several pagan kings and much-married queens. When Clensy arrived at the unpalatial-looking wooden building which was the residence of Queen Mara Le Vakamoa, much of the glamour which Adams’s description of native royalty had conjured up in his mind faded. They only stopped one night and day in the royal village. True enough the queen and high chiefs were extremely courteous and paid great homage to the noble papalagai’s (white men). But though Adams was in his element when in the company of full-blooded South Sea royalty, Clensy soon sickened of the ceaseless chattering and royal display of limbs. The fact is, that the queens and princesses belonged to an ancient dynasty, and had long since passed the zenith of their beauty. Even Adams screwed up his lean, humorous-looking mouth and took in a deep breath when the Queen Vakamoa opened her enormous thick-lipped mouth and gave him a smacking farewell kiss. Then Clensy, too, bowed before the inevitable, took a large nip of Hollands gin from Adams’s flask, and saluted the queen likewise. It was only when the pretty native girls took flowers from their hair, and handed them to Clensy as they murmured, “Aloah, papalagi”; that he really took an interest in the farewell ceremonies. Then they trekked down to the beach and paddled away in their canoe. It all seemed like some weird dream to Clensy as Adams chewed tobacco plug and diligently paddled back for the shore lagoons of the mainland. Night had swept the lovely tropic stars over the dusky skies, and they could faintly hear the musical cries of “Aloah, e mako, papalagi,” as they faded away into the ocean’s silence.

Next day Adams and Clensy went aboard the La Belle France which sailed in the afternoon. They both felt quite depressed as they watched the Marquesan Isles fade like blue blotches far away on the western horizon. Clensy was every bit as depressed as his comrade. He had thoroughly enjoyed his three months’ sojourn in the beautiful archipelago of golden-skinned men, palms and sylvan valleys shaded by breadfruits and coco-palms. He had also been well liked by the rough traders and shellbacks whom he had come in contact with, for he had often gained the respect and affection of sunburnt men from the seas who hated snobs.

The voyage to the South American coast was extremely monotonous to Clensy. Adams’s constant companionship and swashbuckling deportment on the dreary passage across tropic seas gave Clensy bad intellectual spasms. But still, he patiently tolerated his presence. He probably well knew that Adams too had his place in this scheme of intelligent things, and that one change of a footstep at the beginning of Adams’s career might have made him a splendid Government official or Controller, and well respected by all who didn’t know him! The fact is, that Clensy was by nature a genuine democrat. He was well bred, and so, carelessly unconscious of his worldly advantages over the uneducated men with whom he so readily consorted. He had proper pride, but it was humble enough. His head did not swell overmuch. He could not realise that when he was wealthy, and still dined side by side with penniless shellbacks, he was doing something that should be vigorously blown from the highest peak on democracy’s brass bugle so that it might reverberate and echo down the halls of boasted brotherhood. His nature had no kinship with the great boast of a democracy that shouts: “See how our millionaires sit by the side of the wage-earning cowboy and dine on beans and corn-cobs.” Thus pointing out to all who can see and hear, how wide a gulf really divides the poor man from the eternal boast of the democratic brotherhood. In short, Clensy was a splendid specimen of the democratic-aristocrat Englishman dwelling under the great socialistic government of the human heart. His intellect was fair: he knew that kings could feel humble, and a pope be really religious. He was a gentleman.

Clensy breathed a sigh of relief when he sighted the coast of South America, and the La Belle France eventually entered the ancient bay of Acapulco. But he was greatly disappointed when he discovered that his uncle had left the consulate and had returned to England two months before his arrival. “We’re done!” said Clensy as he realised that he would have to wait quite three months before his remittance money arrived from England. For a long while he and Adams were on their “beam-ends.” Clensy had a few pounds which was augmented by Adams’s musical accomplishments. For the derelict reprobate would go off on his own and perform on his wretched accordion, playing to the Mexican storekeepers. Sometimes he wrapped an old silk robe about him, and putting on a Spanish hidalgo mein, would go busking outside the old-fashioned homesteads of Vera Domingo. So did he help Clensy out of his predicament.

In due course Royal Clensy’s remittance arrived. Acapulco was a quiet, lazy town in those days. The inhabitants were mostly Spaniards, Mexicans and niggers. Consequently Clensy made up his mind to clear out of the place and make for the larger states. What really happened after Clensy received his remittance whilst in Acapulco can only be guessed at. Clensy was as improvident and reckless with money as Adams, so it is possible that they had a pretty good time while the bulk of the money lasted. The only thing that can be recorded with certainty is, that they left Acapulco and made their way to Vera Cruz, and eventually arrived by steamer at Port-au-Prince, Hayti.

“It’s no use you grousing, Myster Clensy,” said Adams.

“I suppose not,” replied the young Englishman as he gazed mournfully on the dark faced population of the semi-barbarian city of the Black Republic, Port-au-Prince. “Reminds me of what I’ve read about ancient Babylon and the Assyrian cities,” said Clensy as he watched the swarthy Haytian chiefs and handsome mulatto women, clad in yellow and blue silken robes, as they shuffled along the stone pavements in their loose sandals. Many of the quaintly robed folk stood by the doorways of their verandahed weatherboard homes conversing, making a hushed kind of hubbub as they muttered and stared with large dark eyes at Clensy and Adams.

“What’s Babylony and Asyery ter do with it? It b— well reminds me of hell, and of being damned ’ard up, it do!” responded the unpoetical ex-sailor.

“What on earth shall we do? We’re dead broke till my remittance arrives again,” reiterated Clensy as he wiped his perspiring brow and smiled wearily as the pretty Haytian girl passed by and gave him a languishing glance.

“Don’t you worry, myster, the only thing ter do, is ter take up ter the buskin’ again, but I can’t play alone in this ’ell of a ’ole, I’ll p’raps get shot by one of these smut-faced devils.”

“Can’t play alone! What do you mean?” said Clensy.

“I simply means thet you must stand by me, and see that I’m unmolysted by these ere b— ’eathens.”

“Good heavens, have I come to this!” moaned our hero as he once again wiped his brow and made a thousand good resolutions as to how careful he would be when the next remittance came! But withal Royal Clensy was game. He brushed his misgivings away and smiled, and thought, “Well, I suppose I must adapt myself to circumstances in this world of woe and tears.” Then he came to the sensible conclusion that it was best to cast one’s pride aside when the digestive apparatus made pathetic appeals to the higher senses.

That same afternoon, to Clensy’s extreme mortification, he found himself standing just outside the presidential palace at Port-au-Prince. “It’s best ter ply before people who ’as got money,” Adams had said, and so there they stood as Adams opened his villainous mouth and wailed out “Little Annie Rooney’s My Sweetheart” to his vile accordion accompaniment. Clensy gnashed his teeth and hid his perspiring face in his silk handkerchief of other days when the chorus came. It was then that Adams shuffled his feet and, doubling the tempo of the song, danced a hideous jig. “God our help in ages past,” murmured Clensy in an insane way, as the ebony-hued population swarmed around them, and gazed in astonishment at the one-eyed sailorman as he played on, quite unconcerned and careless of Clensy’s anguished feelings. “What! you have the infernal cheek to think I’ll go round with your coco-nut shell and collect!” said Clensy, when Adams calmly stood on one leg, stopped dancing, and intimated that Clensy might make a “whip round.” “Not I. I’d sooner get a ship! Why, it’s bad enough to hear you make that damned row,” said Clensy angrily. Consequently Adams went round himself with the shell. To Clensy’s surprise, when Adams had passed among the crowd of onlookers, and had come back, the coco-nut shell was nearly full of peculiar-looking coins that neither knew the exact value of.

The Haytians and mulattoes are a naturally unostentatious folk in their likes and dislikes, a peculiar kind of calmness pervading their most deliberate acts. One cynical-looking Haytian chief gazed critically into Adams’s collecting calabash as he once more went round, and dropped a dead putrid rat inside! The Haytian chief was evidently not feeling exactly partial towards white men, and chose that way of showing his resentment.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t get ratty!” whispered Clensy as he pulled his comrade’s coat-tail and gave a warning glance. Fortunately for them both, Adams swiftly realised that Clensy was generally right, and so he cooled down and soothed his outraged feelings by swearing at the Haytian chief in the choicest Billingsgate English. With that marvellous precision which brings envy to the hearts of foreign sailormen throughout the world, Adams squirted a stream of tobacco-juice—splash! it had sent a dark stain down the length of the chief’s yellow robe as he stalked majestically away. Then once more the Cockney sailorman began to play and sing.

“Wish I’d never written home from Acapulco and given an address at this hole for my remittance to be sent to,” thought Clensy. His heart quaked in the thought that he had to exist by aid of Adams’s musical accomplishments for nearly two months. It was dreadful! But it was only a momentary spasm of deepest gloom that afflicted our hero. Fate is kind, in a way, to mortals. The silver lining generally appears on the cloud when the day seems darkest; and though the cloud may be charged with the thunders and lightnings of undreamed-of future storms to break over the sanguine wayfarer’s head, it does look silvery for a time, and so cheers the despondent soul. In fact, Royal Clensy’s thoughts had already suddenly leapt into another channel, had become charged with warm, sensuous feelings that had blazed into existence by the magic gleam of beautiful eyes! Adams had just finished his last song, and was hand-pedalling his accordion into a thrilling wail, when a beautiful Haytian girl ran out of the open gate of the presidential palace and stared with evident admiration straight in Royal Clensy’s sun-tanned handsome face. Then she stared in astonishment at Adams’s accordion. (Accordions were great novelties in Hayti in those days.) Clensy blushed to the ears. Her eyes shone like baby stars; her hair tumbled in a glittering mass around her neck, rippling below her waist, floating in artless confusion over her neglige attire—a pale blue sarong. Her complexion was of an olive hue, delicately tinted with the rosy blush of health, like the complexion of a fair Italian girl.

“What cursed luck! Travelled the world over only to meet her at this dire moment, outside a palace busking with a reprobate like Adams playing a wretched accordion.” In that swift realisation of his degradation, Clensy felt atheistical. He could have turned round and screwed Adams’s neck till the scoundrel’s spine snapped! For the first time in his career he became a child of modern democracy. A great wave of snobbishness overwhelmed his senses. He longed to turn round and shout into the Haytian girl’s ear: “Behold Me! the son of wealthy parents, the blood of great ancestors flowing in my veins, yet here I stand, happy in the society of this drunken old reprobate and his damnable accordion.” Swiftly recovering from his embarrassment, he made a courtly bow. The girl’s lips parted in a delicious smile as she daintily imitated Clensy’s salutation. It was most fascinating. The palace and the surrounding weatherboard houses seemed to fall on top of Clensy’s head as the girl placed a coin in the collection-box. Then, looking into Adams’s rum-stricken face, as he still sang, she said, “Oh, monsieur, you have gotter voice!”

Clensy whipped his handkerchief out and wiped his sweating brow, then stared again and gave the maid the benefit of the doubt. “That can be taken as the reverse of a compliment; the girl must have a sense of humour,” he thought. As for Adams, he bit the coin with his blackened teeth to assure himself that it was gold, then he made himself look as awkward as a frog. He wasn’t going to be outdone by a whippersnapper like Clensy. Arching his back as though the world of chivalry weighted it he bowed too! The next moment an elderly negress poked her frizzy head round the rim of the palace gateway and said in a squeaky voice, “Oh, Madamselle Sestrina, ze president, your father, wish to zee you.” At hearing this, the girl who had so impressed Royal Clensy gave a silvery peal of laughter and ran back within the palace gates. Clensy was not so much to blame for his sudden infatuation for the girl who had appeared before him and had then vanished like a dream! She did have red lips that looked like smashed pomegranates formed to charm men to taste. The beautiful morn of maidenhood shone on her brow; the first golden streak of creation’s first sunrise seemed to twinkle in the ocean-like depths of her eyes. Yes, Clensy saw her as woman standing on the threshold of the temple of Beauty, her loveliness unconsciously inviting some one to come and worship at her altar as she stared over those visionary seas, seas where the shadows of the unborn children sit on the shore reefs, singing their luring, plaintive, sunrise songs till sad, wandering men pass along! Sounds sentimental and poetic? Well, Clensy had suddenly become strangely endowed with the poetic instinct. And so, the girl’s maiden beauty had presented itself to his mind in a highly imaginative form. Beautiful Sestrina, President Gravelot’s daughter, for such she was, had fired Clensy’s brain with an undying passion, had unknowingly made the first fateful footstep down the path of destiny that was to lead to the sad drama, the terrible catastrophe that is alone responsible for this story.

CHAPTER II

O mystery that made the frenzied thug,

And winds to beat the frozen sheep:

O fates that did conspire to make a bug

To haunt sad mortals in their sleep!

“NICE gal, that!” mumbled Adams, as he and Clensy hurried away from the crowd that still loitered before the presidential palace. They quickly made their way towards the palm-sheltered portion of the dusty, heat-stricken city.

“Yes, very nice,” responded Clensy, as he gazed vacantly ahead, hurrying Adams along as though he sought to escape from his own embarrassment.

“I’d loike ter marry a bootiful crawture like ’er. Only one fault ter find about ’er—she ain’t fat!” said the sailorman, as he glanced up at Clensy, squinting his solitary eye sideways, like a curious cockatoo.

“Hem!” was Clensy’s rejoinder, as he threw his shoulders back and looked the other way to hide his cynical disgust from Adams’s eye, as that materialistic worthy still expressed several opinions about Sestrina’s face and figure. Anything of a subtle nature in Clensy’s manner or talk was naturally lost to such an intellect as Adams possessed, and so the sailorman at once changed the conversation. “’E’s gone off agin, in one of ’is balmy moods!” the reprobate murmured to himself, then he added aloud, “Hawful ’ot,” and pulled his whiskers.

“Thank God it’s shady here,” said Clensy, as they arrived in the shades of the beautiful mahogany trees. “Let’s see the sights of the town,” said Adams, as they stood under the trees and gazed on the little streets and the long, irregular rows of quaint wooden houses.

“I’m done up, nearly dead for want of sleep,” replied Clensy.

“Why, I feel as fresh as a two-year-old!” growled Adams. The true facts are, that Adams was case-hardened and hadn’t spent a wretched night in attempting to distract the attention of enormous fleas from his person as poor Clensy had done in the low lodging-house bed the night before. The Haytians love company in bed, and, from what Clensy could see, the price of a bed in Hayti was increased if the fleas were lively and plentiful. In fact, the inhabitants were kind-hearted, bohemian folk and believed in the merciful creed of live and let live! A fact that was well illustrated by the state of the streets in Port-au-Prince. Adams said the streets were worse than the streets in Shanghai and Hum-kow, Tokio. The Haytians do their washing in a tub before their front door, and hang their clothes on lines that are spread from one side of the street to the other, tied on to the stems of the palm-trees that usually grow on the pavement side. It was a quaint, semi-poetic sight to Clensy as he gazed at the yellow, crimson and white lingerie and garments of both sexes fluttering to the caresses of the hot winds: wonderful drapery placed side by side without any nice discrimination as to the modest feelings and sensibilities of those who passed by! Adams looked quite jovial as he gazed at the clothes-lines and made critical remarks. The undemocratic Clensy simply looked at the filthy streets and held a large lump of camphor to his nostrils, and often rubbed some on his moustache. Royal Clensy always carried “Keating’s,” a small tooth-comb, and lump of camphor during his travels. He was a wise fellow. Along the kerb-sides were innumerable dustbins, for the Haytians throw all their house refuse into the highway, right opposite their front door. And there it stood, incubating in the hot sunlight, heaving and buzzing, thousands of tiny worlds populated with happy life, green and sapphire-winged insects, worlds upon worlds inhabited by bright-plumaged beings that feed on the offal of their sphere as they sang and danced in their youth and grew old in their universe of inscrutable mystery. Even as Clensy and Adams watched, they saw clouds of bright, gauzy wings arise, millions of God’s humblest beings emigrating as they swarmed away, hissing and singing till they found another constellation of shining hot worlds in front of the stores farther down the great highway of their heavens! As for the black-faced population, they might have been the dead Pharaohs shuffling along in some mysterious holiday, rewakened from the tomb. On they shuffled, apparently oblivious to everything; dusky faces, yellowish faces, greenish faces and copper-coloured faces. A picturesque sight they made. The warm-coloured women and girls were clad in sarongs and scanty semi-European attire as they slouched or shuffled under the palms of the street’s side, laughing and babbling together, girls and youths of all types laughing or yawning as they swallowed the astonished insects as they migrated from one heap of refuse to another, and sometimes fell into the abyss of those open thick-lipped negro and negress mouths!

“Don’t fink much of this ’ere plyce!” mumbled Adams.

“All right in its way; good for insect collectors,” replied Clensy.

“Mulatters and niggers ain’t civilised like we are,” was Adams’s sententious remark, as he removed a cork and sniffed the shellback’s sal volatile—his rum-flask!

“Not they!” said Clensy, shaking his head with superb acquiescence. With all the drawbacks of Haytian ways, Clensy admitted that the city had its picturesque, poetic side. The half-caste girls and negresses with heads adorned with wonderful chignons, the dusky, bright-eyed youths and the musical patois they babbled, greeted Clensy’s ears and eyes in a pleasing way. Far away he saw the palm-clad mountain slopes disappearing into rugged, dreamy blue distances, and on the other side of the city stretched the dim wide plains of Gonaives. “What mahogany trees!” exclaimed Clensy, as they stood before several giant, sombre trees, the last members of the great forests that had once surrounded Port-au-Prince.

“Damn yer trees!” said Adams, who was more interested in watching several Haytian maids and negresses perform a peculiar dance, the bamboula, the steps of which gave a bold exhibition of the dancer’s physical charms. Adams, being very religious and modest by nature, said, “‘Ow can they do sich fings before civilised men like hus! It’s terryble!”

“Don’t break down; all our health is wanted to meet the trials of adversity before us,” said Clensy in a soothing voice, as Adams hung his blushing face and the maids still danced on. Then the sailorman lifted his shocked countenance and, as his solitary eye gave a merry blue twinkle, he murmured, “Let’s git out of it and go back to our lodgings.”

The fact is that it was getting late, and the stars were already shining over the plains of Gonaives. In half an hour Clensy and Adams had arrived back at their cheap lodging-house that was situated by the Sing-Song Café, in La Selle Street.

“By God’s grace I’ll sleep to-night,” said Clensy, as he took his tin of Keating’s flea powder forth and began to well pepper his bunk bed. Then he opened his baize bag (he had pawned his portmanteau), and, taking out his special bit of ship’s sheeting, he pitched the lodging-house sheet out of the window and remade the bed. “You’re too aristocratic, too ’tickler ter travel. You orter stopped ’ome with yer pa and ma,” said Adams, as he picked up a wriggling fat green lizard from his bed and tossed it out of the window.

“Maybe I am too particular,” replied Clensy, as he glanced through the window at the stars, and wondered how long the mingy oil-lamp, that swung from the ceiling, would last before the oil was exhausted. Then his heart gave a thump and nearly stopped! Adams dropped his pipe in his astonishment. They both thought the roof had fallen on top of them.

But it wasn’t as bad as that. A huge settee-pillow had been thrown, had struck Clensy on top of the head, and smashed into Adams’s back. A tremendous peal of laughter shook the room. “Flea powder! By the gods of my fathers, flea powder!” yelled a voice. They turned their heads, and there, in a bunk right opposite their own, they saw two large blue eyes staring at them from beneath a giant of a brow. They saw a great body slowly uplift from the bunk. Then the figure’s wide-open mouth gave vent to a vibrant peal of renewed laughter. The man who had so boisterously introduced himself to Clensy and Adams was a new arrival in Hayti, had only the day before left a steamer in the bay at Port-au-Prince.

Clensy and Adams still stared on the man with their mouths wide open.

“Give us some flea powder, youngster!”

Just for a moment Clensy continued to stare at those sombre yet humorous-looking eyes, then he picked up the tin of powder and courteously handed it to the big man.

“Got any baccy? Don’t stand there with yer goddamned mouths open; hand the weed up!”

At this new demand, Adams and Clensy, like two obedient children, felt quickly in their pockets and handed their giant-like bedroom companion their pouches. They couldn’t help it! The strange eyes were magnetic, the light in them not only compelled Clensy and Adams to accede to their owner’s request, but also gave them pleasure at being able to supply his wants!

“And who may you be?” asked Clensy quietly as he recovered his composure.

“I’m Samuel Bartholomew Biglow! that’s my handle!” roared the boisterous stranger. Then he half emptied their pouches, threw them on the floor, and carefully pressed his thumb into his corn-cob pipe.

“So that’s your name, and it’s a suitable one,” Clensy ventured to say; then he smiled, for he vaguely realised that a man had a right to call himself by any name he wished, especially one with such a commanding personality and giant-like proportions.

“I like the look of ye both, damned if I don’t,” said the stranger; then he well sprinkled his bunk with the flea powder and tossed Clensy back the tin.

“And what might your name be?” he said, as he gave Adams a mighty languishing glance.

“My nyme’s Adams,” mumbled that worthy in humble tones.

“And my name is Jonathan Canton Solomon Clensy,” said the young Englishman, in a voice which intimated that he too could call himself names.

For a moment the big man surveyed Clensy with a glance of admiration, then he yelled out, “Solomon Clensy and Isaac Adams, I’ve cottoned to ye both, so I’ll see more of ye both in the morning.” The next moment he had tucked his immense silken scarf about his throat, and placing two huge, wonderfully white feet over the bunk’s side, settled himself for sleep.

When Clensy and Adams awoke in the morning the new-comer was already up and dressed.

“God damn it, rise and shine, lying in bed, ye lazy loafers,” he yelled.

They lifted their tired heads and gazed vacantly on the boisterous disturber of their late slumber. For a moment a look of resentment over the man’s impertinent manner leapt into Adams’s eye. Clensy also gave Biglow a look which plainly said, “Who the devil are you that you have the cheek to order us to rise?” But when Bartholomew Biglow laid his massive hand on his velvet waistcoat and burst into a song that told of the horn of the hunters on the English hills, of grey dawns and the skylark’s melodious trills to the sunrise, Clensy and Adams rose, and, looking rather sheepish, commenced to dress. Then Biglow took them both into the big dining-room where lodgers assembled for their meals, and treated them both to a glorious breakfast.

“Get it down ye!” he yelled, as Adams and Clensy munched their toast and poached eggs and bacon. Adams nudged Clensy in the ribs, and chuckled over their sudden luck. After breakfast, the three man went outside their lodging shanty and stood under the shading mahogany trees near Selle Place. Then Samuel Biglow, for such we will call him, told Clensy and his comrade, that though he had been the paramour of queens and the confidant of kings, he reckoned he was well off to have met such a one as Adams. Adams took the big man’s hand and said in almost respectful tones, “Same ter you, Myster Samuel Bartholomew Biglow.” Then Samuel tendered them his credentials in the shape of voluminous verbal reminiscences, telling them of mighty deeds he had performed. If the man’s own accounts could be relied upon, he had been a wonder in his time.

Then Samuel listened to Adams, for that worthy also started to blow his own trumpet. Samuel Biglow bent his giant form and roared with laughter as he listened. Then Adams said he was “a man of honour,” that he would “sooner die than do unto another that which he would not like to be done to him.”

“So, so!” murmured Samuel Biglow soothingly, as he gave Adams a kindly, mother-like look, which plainly told Clensy, who thoroughly enjoyed the play, that he, Samuel, didn’t believe one word that the sailorman said, and that he was doubtlessly as big a rogue as himself. “Ye’ve got honesty written on yer mug!” he said, and Adams felt pleased.

The fact is, that circumstances were running as near dire disaster as could possibly be when two men like Samuel Biglow and Adams met in Hayti, where catastrophes were of hourly occurrence. And it can only be put down to extraordinary good luck that Royal Clensy never got his head into at least a noose of difficulties through associating with such characters. However, let it be said, that all that happened afterwards was not the fault of either Samuel Biglow or Adams; if anything, Samuel Biglow was Royal Clensy’s saviour when the hour arrived, and they had to flee, the three of them, from Hayti.

CHAPTER III

SAMUEL BIGLOW was a blessing to Clensy and Adams.

As well as possessing enormous cheek, he possessed plenty of money. That which surprised Clensy most about Biglow was his refined demeanour when he entered Haytian society. It seemed to come natural to the man. He had certainly never been well educated or reared amongst courtly people, yet his self-possession and gallant manners outrivalled the polite deportment of men and women who moved in the best social circle of Port-au-Prince. It must be admitted that the highest Haytian social circle, in those days, was not easily shocked over moral lapses or by those acts which would be considered breaches of etiquette in European society; but still, the Mexican and Spanish-French element of gallant manners and pretty politenesses among the wealthy classes existed in a large degree. These classes were made up of Haytian chiefs, mulattoes and Mexicans, and lusty-looking men who appeared to have a large strain of negro blood in their veins. The government of Hayti was in form republican, the democratic element being especially noticeable when the court officials and lustrous-eyed Haytian maids of the lower classes came together. When Congress met at the chambers, the swarthy ministers discussed public matters with great deliberation, each member holding a drawn sword in his hand and a revolver lying fully loaded on the bench in front of him. In fact, the Haytian Government constitution was up to date, nothing to excel its laws—on paper! And the honest aspect of the officials par excellence. All that was really required was an honest Napoleonic Controller of Controllers to help responsible members of the Republic from falling before the lure of bribery and lustrous-eyed beauties of the Court.

Such was the state of Haytian affairs in Clensy’s youth, in the grand days when Samuel Bartholomew Biglow smacked the President of the Republic in genial comradeship on the back and patronised the cynical Haytian chiefs by his august presence. Samuel Biglow was not an enigma, he was simply royalty in the raw state. He had the personality and the cool cheek that raises men to eminence amongst primitive or even civilised peoples when they mourn a lost leader. Had Biglow lived in old Britain in the days of Boadicea, he would have been heard of. School-children would to-day have been compelled to memorise the date of his birth and when and how he died. Antiquated, worn monuments to his ancient fame would adorn the old bridges of our cities. But he was born too late. When he arrived on earth, the moral codes of the heroic ages had become reversed; consequently, it required all his astuteness to save himself from being elected for the gallows or life-long meditation in Wormwood Scrubbs or Sing-Sing. Such is the irony of fame and changeful circumstance. However, Samuel was happy enough. His handsome face would flush with the light of his amorous imagination when the dusky ladies who attended the presidential balls gave him languishing glances; and gallantly did he return them! He had not been in Hayti more than a week before he managed to enter the palace and make the acquaintance of President Gravelot. Adams and Clensy were astonished when one night he came back to his lodgings and informed them that he had had a busy day, being honoured as the special guest of the president of the Black Republic.

“Borrow anyfing from ’im?” said Adams, staring at the big man in hopeful surprise.

“No need to borrow. I’ve found out that the President is me long-lost father. He’s recognised the strawberry mark on me back, and I’m to receive an allowance from the Government exchequer,” replied Bartholomew Biglow with his usual jovial mendacity. The truth of the whole business was, that Samuel was doing a bit of gun-running for the U.S. firearm and munition factories. And President Gravelot was anxious to purchase as many Snider rifles and as much ammunition as he could possibly get hold of. A revolution occurred in Hayti every year or so, when a rival for the presidency appeared and was backed up by rebels and sometimes Government soldiers. And so the Government officials and the rebel officials, who dwelt by thousands in the mountains about Hayti, were for ever competing with each other in buying arms and ammunition, and the United States firms were ever ready to supply the aforesaid arms for cash down. In fact, while Biglow was getting the best terms from President Gravelot, an American steamer was lying in the bay off Port-au-Prince with a cargo of antiquated old stock guns and explosives on board. This steamer had carried a most enterprising super cargo and shore agent, and this super-cargo was eminently suitable for the position—his nom de plume was Samuel Bartholomew Biglow! So it will be easy to see why Biglow was welcomed by President Gravelot.

Biglow’s cheek and convivial ways pleased the President and all the officials whom he came in contact with. Though the national emblem of Hayti was the feathery cabbage palm, and suggested “Peace on Earth, Truth and Beauty,” the true emblem should have been daggers and knives and a human skull, with the motto, “Live and be Merry, for To-morrow we lose power or die!” For, as has been said, revolutions came like the punctuality of the seasons, and generally ended in the reigning president being shot and the officials having to flee for their lives. No doubt, Gravelot was immensely pleased to meet such a one as Biglow when he was already feeling uneasy about his waning power. For the Cacaos insurgents had already taken to warfare in the Black Mountains, and day by day rumours were reaching Gravelot which hinted that his presidency was nearing its close. Indeed, during his office Hayti had been in arms, in one long civil war. Gravelot held the highest prestige in the eyes of the British and French Consuls, and so Biglow knew what he was about when he got in friendly touch with Gravelot. It was hard, in the interminable squabbles between the negro, mulatto and Mexican portion of the population, to know which was really the greatest power. All that can be positively asserted is that no chance was lost by the Haytians and mulattoes to thoroughly enjoy their lives according to their tastes. So Biglow was received with open arms at the presidential balls, where he astonished the lustrous-eyed maids of the passionate south by his magnificent effrontery, in days of old when passions ran riot in Hayti. When Clensy got wind of the truth, heard that Biglow was in with the President, his heart beat with a great hope. Not for one moment had he forgotten the beautiful girl who had spoken to them when he and Adams had stood, two humble troubadours, outside the palace gates. He saw his chance. He had already made inquiries, and discovered that the girl who had so impressed him was the beautiful Sestrina, President Gravelot’s daughter. At the earliest possible moment Clensy had informed Bartholomew Biglow that he would feel more than kindly towards that worthy if he would use his influence to get him introduced into the palace.

“You can accomplish anything you wish to accomplish,” said Clensy.

“Possibly so,” was Biglow’s brief reply; then he added, “You see, lad, my business at the palace is peculiarly secret, and I don’t stand on safe ground when I commence to introduce white men into the Court of the Black Republic.”

Clensy looked glum at hearing this, but he looked more cheerful when Biglow ended up by saying, “I’ll think the matter over; p’raps I can see a way of doing the thing.”

That same night Biglow happened to hear Adams performing on a banjo at the Sing-Song Café, hard by their lodgings (Adams was a decent banjo player), and Clensy strumming out melodies and dance-tunes on a derelict piano. So when Biglow met Clensy next day he gave the young Englishman a most contemptuous look, and said, “You! You play the piano like that and yet ask me to get you introduced into the palace society!”

“What on earth has the piano to do with it? How? Why?” said Clensy, mystified.

“Lad, you’re a mug, and though you can’t see farther than the tip of yer nose, you may consider yourself engaged on the spot as Pianist to the President of the Black Republic.”

Clensy, with his usual lack of confidence, began to expostulate and bring forward a hundred reasons to show why such a procedure would be a failure. But Biglow simply gave him another contemptuous glance, and then, pushing his mass of curls from his massive brow, turned on his heel and walked away. Next day, when Clensy returned from a stroll in the town back to his lodgings, Biglow smacked him on the back and informed him that he was engaged as piano-player for the coming presidential ball. The next moment Biglow had handed Clensy twenty Mexican dollars.

“What’s this for?” gasped the astonished Clensy.

“Why, you looney, it’s your advance, a bit on account of your wages!” Then Biglow explained that he had told the President that he, Clensy, was a great musician, the chief Musical Director of the Conservatoire in New York, and that it was a relentless rule of Yankee virtuosos to demand an advance note.

“But I’m not a professional player at all. I can’t play well enough,” said Clensy, as he recovered from his surprise, and looked at the money. “I’m only a strummer on the piano, and they’ll expect to hear some of the classics performed, won’t they?” said Clensy.

“Can’t play well enough! Classics, by God!” yelled Biglow, giving the young Englishman a withering, pitying glance, then he added, “By heavens, if you refuse the job, I’ll take it on! Do you think these half-caste niggers know what music is? It’s Bartholomew Biglow who knows what melody is; he’ll show ’em!” So saying, Biglow immediately opened his mouth and began to sing some weird heathen melody which made the Haytian maids rush from their doorways to see who sang so well and with such vibrant feeling. Clensy at once bowed to the inevitable, and agreed to accept the engagement, and play at the palace ball on the following night.

Royal Clensy discovered that Biglow’s assurance that no one in Hayti knew what real music was, was admirably exemplified by himself when he sat the next night in the sumptuously furnished ball-room of the palace and banged away on the imported Erard pianoforte. True enough he had been well primed up for the occasion by Biglow, who had enticed him to swallow much cognac. And so the young Englishman felt that he was seeing tropical life in its most vigorous, romantic stage, as the richly-attired Haytian chiefs and voluptuous-eyed mulatto women, clad in picturesque sarongs, did wonderful dances that had been introduced into Hayti by the old-time West African negro emigrants. As the happy guests drank their host’s rich, heady wines, the strain of negro blood, which is in the veins of almost all the Haytians, asserted itself. The romantically clad half-caste girls undid their chignons and allowed their shining, dusky tresses to fall in wanton abandonment about their bare shoulders. And, as their softly-sandalled feet tripped and glided across the wide polished floor of the dancing-room, their dark eyes sparkled in the light of the innumerable hanging lamps. Clensy almost forgot to play the tricky syncopated time of the dances, for just by the side of the piano was a large mirror wherein the shadowy forms of the wine-warmed dusky beauties gave misty yet vivid demonstrative exhibitions of their delicate charms, as they did the heart-rending steps of the bamboula and the old barbarian chica dances! Even Biglow gave a ponderous wink and modestly arched his hand over his eyes as his big dancing feet swerved by the piano, and Clensy looked sideways at him. That ball-room was a seraglio of smouldering frenzied passion. The semi-diaphanous robes of the women seemed to have been cut out of material that was specially suitable for revealing the shapely limbs of the wearers. The lustrous eyes of those dusky beauties of southern climes gave deliberate, long languishing glances, and so fired the blood of dark, fierce men who had their origin away back in the ancient primitive life of Africa and Arabia.

When the interval arrived, Clensy rose from the piano and strolled about, as he sought to find some trace of pretty Sestrina, she whom he had dreamed so much about. He was almost pleased to find that she was not to be found in that passionate, riotous, high Haytian society. The reason Sestrina was absent was because the president would not allow his daughter to enter the festival rooms when the fetish dances were on. Instead of Clensy being disappointed at not seeing the girl at all, he blessed his luck, for everything turned out beautifully unexpected. The heat was terrific, and so Clensy, after having a cooling drink, pulled the wide heavily-draped curtains of the ball-room aside and passed into the outer corridors. Then he stood by the tropical flowers which grew in pots in the large palace rooms, and breathed in the scented zephyrs which floated through the open windows. The sight of the picturesque grounds that surrounded the presidential residence tempted him to pass out into the open air. As he approached the mahogany groves and lit a cigarette, he was startled at hearing a voice say, “Suva, monsieur, ’tis you again! Why this pleasure?”

Clensy turned round and found himself face to face with President Gravelot’s daughter, Sestrina! Her rich tresses were ornamented with hibiscus blossoms. And as she stood smiling before Clensy, she did look as perfect as a young man’s dream of woman.

“So you are here in the palace, Suvam kari, Engleesman?” the girl said, speaking in a land of Haytian patois in an undecided way, as though she was uncertain as to which language Clensy would understand the best.

“Yes, I am here,” replied Clensy, hardly knowing what else to say, as he gazed into the girl’s dark, beautiful eyes as she laughed like a happy child. And as he gazed, he heard the buzz and weird hum of the native orchestra’s stringed instruments playing in the ball-room. Those sounds meant that his absence from the piano would not be missed, for the dancing had commenced to the strains of the four Haytian musicians, who had sat silent in the ball-room when Clensy had presided at the piano. Though it was night, the trees, the fountains, and even the colour of the flowers, were distinctly visible. Every hanging bough sparkled with the steady lights of the hundreds of hanging garden lamps. The mystery of night and the stars and the dark orange groves was in perfect harmony with Sestrina’s type of beauty. Perhaps Sestrina knew this, for she stood perfectly still under the mahogany tree’s branches, staring earnestly at Clensy as the warm scented winds drifted her tresses in confusion over her shoulder. The young Englishman could hardly believe his luck as the girl took his arm and walked away with him into the shadows as though he was a very, very old acquaintance! Though she had made a great impression on his mind when he had first seen her, he had endeavoured to thrust her from his memory as something quite unattainable, beyond his hopes and the ordinary possibilities of his humble position in Hayti. But there he stood, Sestrina holding his arm, gazing into his face with a childlike expression in her eyes. Yes, it was all true enough. Fate had thrown them together, some immutable law had decreed that it should be, that all that was to happen in their lives afterwards, had been carefully planned out and sighed over by destiny. Clensy’s heart thumped with happiness, no premonition of coming sorrow in far-off days came to dispel his unbounded joy as they both, in mutual secrecy, stole away by the tropical fuchsia trees so that they could get away from the prying eyes of the stragglers near the palace.

“Have you come to stay in Hayti, Engleesman?” whispered Sestrina, as she gave Clensy a swift bright glance.

“I don’t know yet,” responded Clensy. And as he gazed down the moonlit orange groves he fancied he could see the happy phantoms of his imagination dancing in impish delight on the footpath. The rich odours from decaying pineapples and the hanging overripe lemons and limes made a perfect atmosphere for Clensy’s romantic meditations. And Sestrina?—her heart fluttered, it was almost like a dream to her, too!

“Oh, how different are the sun-tanned flushed faces of the handsome Englishmen to the yellow-skinned Haytian men,” she thought as she sighed and looked at Clensy again. Everything in nature seemed to feel kindly disposed towards them both. The moon intensified the dark loveliness of Sestrina’s eyes as the scented warm zephyrs lifted her tresses and tumbled them in artless confusion about her neck and shoulders.

“I am only in Hayti for a holiday, I’m travelling. I’m a tourist, you know,” said Clensy. Then he remembered under what circumstances Sestrina had first seen him, and added with excusable mendacity. “I’ve been most unfortunate, I lost all my money in a shipwreck just before I arrived in Hayti.”

“Oh, how sad!” exclaimed Sestrina, then she gave a low, merry peal of hushed laughter. Clensy wondered why the girl should laugh so, and cursed the very memory of Adams. For, if ever he had wanted to appear refined and gentle, and one who loved delicate associations, it was at that moment in his life. However, Clensy was wrong in his suspicions, the girl had believed every word he uttered. Sestrina was unworldly. She was Gravelot’s only daughter. Her mother was an inmate of an asylum at Rio Grande, a fact of which Sestrina was not aware, she having been brought up to think that her mother was dead. She had led a secluded life in the palace since her father had been made President of the Black Republic. Her father had had her reared with jealous care. The girl’s constant companion had been and was still, an aged negress nurse named Claircine. Claircine had ever watched over the girl with that affection which is characteristic in the coloured people when they become attached to those who are placed in their care. This negress had cultivated Sestrina’s imagination by telling her pretty legends and, as Gravelot had wished, had kept her mind childlike, quite ignorant of the world and ways of men and women. The only knowledge of the world that she had acquired had come to her through the medium of the sensational French novels which she obtained and read in secret. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say, that Sestrina, like many Haytian maids, had educated herself and obtained her knowledge of the great world around her, from French novels. Of course, the girl did not realise the meaning of a deal that she read. And so, to her mind, the words—“Passion, and passionate,” only conveyed some idea that the hero or heroine possessed bad tempers, or were endowed with a poetic passion which resembled the wild moanings of the mahogany trees when the fierce tornadoes broke over Hayti. And whenever she asked the negress uncomfortable questions, Claircine adroitly changed the conversation or misinformed the girl. And so Sestrina went every day with great punctiliousness to confess to the aged Catholic priest, Père Chaco, also knelt every night by her bedside to pray with absolute faith over the goodness of men and the boundless mercy of God.

Such was the simple wisdom of Sestrina’s mind. And Royal Clensy, as he stood in the palace gardens with Sestrina that night, did not misunderstand her when she boldly intimated that she was supremely happy in his company. A girl’s character is generally clearly imaged in the mirrors of her soul—her eyes. And Clensy’s mind was not the kind that gives a distorted view of the truth. When she took a flower from her hair, touched it with her lips, and then placed it in the lapel of his coat, he realised that it was all innocent enough. And he was happy as they both walked up and down in the moonlit shades of the orange groves. “Adams’s wretched accordion-music has its compensations,” he thought as he realised that had he not gone off busking with Adams he might never have met Sestrina. “It’s fate, Sestrina was destined to come into my life like this,” he mused as Sestrina stumbled, and nearly fell over the cactus hedge. Sestrina gave a little cry of distress.

“Destiny!” was his mental ejaculation as he leaned forward, and with an apologetic look in his eyes, said “Allow me!”

Ah, the girl’s innocent manner made a fascinating picture as she lifted her pretty ankle a few inches from the ground. How tenderly Clensy examined it so that he might staunch the tiny flow of blood—a thorn had torn the soft flesh! His solicitude eased the pain! Only a born artist could have pulled the brown stocking down as he did! It was perfect art, a subtle poem in curves, maiden artlessness, and the impertinence of passionate youth. But all was well. Royal Clensy was in Hayti! Hayti, the land of flowers and song. Hayti where the passions ran riot, where pretty maids had a strange golden gleam in their large dark eyes, and all their actions were inspired by the romance and glamour of flamboyant French novels!

“And how, and when shall I see you again, Mademoiselle Sestrina?” said Clensy as he gazed in an insane way into her face. Poor Clensy, it was a case. However, his malady had its compensations, for Sestrina also seemed beautifully insane as they both held each other’s hands, loth to part! Only the cry of the blue-winged Haytian owl disturbed the silence of the giant mahogany trees that stood like mighty sentinels around the palace walls. The sounds of revelry by night had ceased, for quite an hour had passed since they had heard the last wails coming from the violins and weird Haytian musical instruments played in the Presidential ball-room. Clensy had forgotten the flight of time. Sestrina was the more practical of the two in the matter of time, since she dwelt within walking distance of the paternal halls. She knew that her father would raise the roof, so to speak, if he discovered that she was absent from her chamber at such an hour. “Monsieur Royal, I will see you again, fear not,” said Sestrina.

“But—how? And when?” said Clensy as he glanced about him in desperation. Had not Sestrina told him a few moments before that she was not allowed away from the palace precincts without old Claircine?

“Ah, foolish Engleesman,” said Sestrina as she fell back on her fascinating patois, and placing her finger to her lips as though in deep meditation, gave Clensy a roguish glance. Ah, how swift-witted is woman in comparison with dull-witted man? Sestrina had solved the problem as to the means of their meeting again. She well remembered how Dumas’ heroes and heroines managed such delicate matters as lovers’ meetings when a parent stood in the pathway of happiness.

“I will tell mon père that I wish to learn to play the pianoforte, and you whom I wish to see again may easily be the favoured one to give me those lessons, and the harmony be the sweeter for the strange though happy coincidence that you of all men should be the chosen teacher!”

Before the young Englishman had realised the full import of Sestrina’s remarks and her pretty wit, he was alone. Sestrina had passed away like some shadowy form of a dream. He was still standing under the orange trees that fronted Sestrina’s palatial residence. Then he moved away and hurried home, his footsteps walking on air as he recalled the lovely light of Sestrina’s eyes.

That same night Clensy’s life seemed to have become extra valuable to him. For the first time he began to realise what a waste of his days he was making by associating with men like Adams.

“By Jove! she’s a beautiful girl, well educated and poetic too,” he muttered, as he pulled off his boots and recalled Sestrina’s pretty phrases and those poetic sayings which she had memorised from the pages of her beloved French novels. Then, and for the first time for many a long day, Clensy said his prayers, and asked God to give him Sestrina and make him really happy. He lay for quite an hour in his humble bed in the lodging-house at Port-au-Prince, thinking and thinking. His mind roamed far away into the realms of romance as he stared through the window at the stars, a bright constellation that shone just over the mountains, inland from Gonaives. And as he reflected on Sestrina’s beauty and the deep impression she had made on his mind, he began to realise what it all meant to him. His thoughts eventually became entangled in dire confusion as the possibilities of the future presented themselves to his mind. Would she really accept his hand in marriage? Was she earnest, and did she really understand what a man’s love for a woman meant? Why did her eyes look so childlike when he had whispered those words of love in her pretty ears? What would the President think when he became aware that a humble pianist had the infernal cheek to aspire for his daughter’s hand? And what would his people in England think if they heard that he had married an olive-hued Haytian girl? And could he take her back to England with him—if she was willing to go? And as he continued to reflect and conventional obstacles presented themselves to his mind, all to be brushed ruthlessly aside as they came to him, he realised that his personality had come under the complete domination of a passion. He tried to sleep, but only closed his eyes to find his imagination became more lively than ever. Then, opening his eyes again, he drifted into a philosophical vein of thought.

“I am what I am! I cannot change myself. To attempt to control one’s nature is as ridiculous and as hopeless as to attempt to revise and reform the work of God Himself, and all that is written on that strange manuscript—the human heart!”

Clensy fell into a fatalistic mood. He lit his pipe, and pitching his tobacco pouch across the room, murmured, “I’m done for! Royal Clensy of yesterday, Mr. No. 1 of myself died of a passionate spasm before the palace gates at Port-au-Prince on October 14th, 18—, was ruthlessly slain by the magic of a Haytian maid’s eyes. Alas! what is man but a wandering bundle of dreams and vague desires? A scarecrow of himself wrapt in old rags, standing in the lonely field of his imagination, his thoughts fluttering like starving crows about his fleshly skeleton. Where’s the corn and the oil that maketh glad the heart of man?—It exists only in the golden sheaves of dreams, and the sickle that ever reaps is the wide sweep of our hopes being borne back into the dust, scattered by each inevitable disillusionment.”

Ah, Clensy, you had indeed got into a sadly morbid state.

As the young Englishman continued to reflect over the careless, inconsequential splendour of his life up to the time when he met Sestrina, he realised that his passion for the girl was as deep as his own interest in himself, and, knowing this, he saw the brighter side of his strange reflections and was cheered up. “I shall be happy even though I fail, so long as Sestrina loves me,” he thought. Then he turned over on his rickety bed and joined Bartholomew Biglow and Adams in the calm, deep bass measure of their respective snores.

CHAPTER IV

AFTER Sestrina had taken her sudden departure from the infatuated Clensy, she ran down the pathway by the fuchsia trees so that she might enter her home unobserved. She did not fear meeting a stray servant who might be abroad in the cool of the night, but she knew that her father had been absent from the Presidential ball since six o’clock. His absence was an ominous sign for Sestrina—when her parent returned from his mysterious nocturnal visits into the mountains he usually behaved like a frenzied maniac.

“I do hope I shall not see father to-night,” she thought, as she entered the little doorway by the wine vaults, and then peered in fright down the corridor. She was no longer the gay, inconsequential Sestrina whom Clensy had parted from a few moments before. The Englishman had dispelled all the heart-aching fear that had worried Sestrina’s mind for the last few weeks. Clensy little dreamed of the skeleton in the cupboard of the Haytian girl’s home, how it haunted her soul with a fearful wonder and terror when it roamed about before her eyes! Even as she peered along the silent corridor she gave a startled jump that made her shadow leap down the whole length of the white wall. A sigh of relief escaped her lips—it was only the shuffling footsteps of the old negro, Charoco; he was putting out the lights in the large rooms from which the festival guests had lately departed. The next moment Sestrina had slipped down the corridor, and had run across the large drawing-room where she had to pass through ere she could reach her chamber.

“Garou! nate! What’s that!” said a hushed, hoarse voice, speaking first in Creole and then in English.

Sestrina gave an instinctive crouch in her fright, and then swiftly turned round—a dark cloaked figure was standing behind her—it was her father, President Gravelot.

“I’ve been out on the verandas, it was so hot inside the palace,” said the girl quickly, for her parent’s face looked like the face of a fiend. It was not the calm, handsome President that the Haytians knew by daylight, but a demented, bloodthirsty fanatic who stared at Sestrina with burning eyes. Sestrina gazed on the man in horror. She had seen her father in a state of frenzy before, but that night he hardly resembled a human being at all. The bigotry and heathenish lust of his Southern blood shone in the brilliant cruel gaze of his eyes. It was not the juice of the grape that had fired the man’s brain, transmuting him from a human being into a devil of cruelty and lust, it was the living hot blood mixed with white rum he had swallowed that made him look like that. It was the blood of The Goat without Horns!—the symbolical term for the blood of little children and men and women who had been sacrificed at the terrible altars of the vaudoux!

Yes, and not far off either, for the altars were in the secret fetish temples near the mountains of Port-au-Prince. President Gravelot was a devotee to the vaudoux worship! It was a terrible creed, and though the French and Haytian authorities had taken drastic measures to put down the horrors indulged in by its worshippers (the negro adherents often indulged in cannibalistic orgies after they had slain the sacrificial victims), children were missing from their homes every week, were kidnapped and taken away to the temples of the terrible papaloi.

It seemed incredible that such a creed should be, but Sestrina’s trembling form, and the blood-frenzied man who stood before her in the dark corridor of her home, was sufficient evidence of the terrible truth. It was a cruel creed, and had been introduced into Hayti by the first negro emigrants from the West Coast of Africa. Hundreds of “high class” Haytians were staunch adherents to the vaudoux sacrificial altars and the monstrous demands of its deity—The Goat without Horns. These altars were situated as near as La Coupé, not more than five miles from Port-au-Prince. And the fury of the strange paroxysms that transformed the vaudoux devotees into fiends of blood and indescribable lust was exemplified by the distorted face and the burning eyes of the soul-powerless man who stood before Sestrina. The reeking atmosphere of the worship clung about its devotees like an evil spirit, the warm blood of the victims they had sacrificed gleaming in their eyes. The frenzied bigotry and uncontrollable lust of the vaudoux papaloi (head priests) stopped at nothing to satisfy their terrible desires. No man, woman or child was sacred enough to stay the knife and the bloody libations when once in the papalois’ merciless grip. Even graves were desecrated in the secrecy of the night.[^[1]]

[1]. Several Haytian men and women were arrested for the murder of children whom they had kidnapped and then offered up to the Vaudoux on the fetish altars somewhere in the mountains near Port-au-Prince. One of the prisoners, a negress, turned informer and told how the papaloi bribed men to dig up the newly buried dead from the cemeteries, where many graves had been found disturbed.—See “Memoirs of Moreau de St. Mery.”

“Father!” whispered Sestrina in her terror. She saw a wild look in his eyes that horrified her. She lifted her hands as though she would ward off a terrible blow. The gleam of the fevered eyes sent a death-like chill to the girl’s heart. She instinctively realised that the personality of the man before her was lost in some deadly sleep, though she did not dream that the fumes that had done this thing to her father were the fumes of human blood and white rum. Though Sestrina had heard the word “vaudoux” whispered in awestruck tones by the negresses and negroes of the palace, she had no idea as to what it really meant. All she knew was, that it caused madness among many people, for the blood and rum drinking, and the strain on the vaudoux worshippers’ frenzied imagination, generally ended in paralysis and idiocy, and often in violent madness.

“Vaudoux, loup garou!” whispered the man as he stared at the girl. Then he seemed slightly to recover himself.

“It’s you! you! Sestrina!” he murmured as the girl took his hand very gently, and in pathetic, mute appeal looked up into her father’s face. Her heart thumped violently as she watched the expression of his eyes. Then she gave a sigh of relief. And still she fawned before him, caressed his bloodstained hands, delight on her troubled face as she saw the gleam of reason stealing back into his bloodshot eyes.

“It’s me! me!” she whispered, as she once more caressed that hand in her terrifying eagerness to press her advantage. She saw the look of recognition leap into his eyes.

“Sestrina, what did I do? What have I said? help me!” he moaned, as he leaned forward and gazed into the terrified eyes of his daughter. What had he said? What had the devil that possessed him muttered for the girl’s hearing?

Gravelot’s stupefied brain had begun to realise the relationship and the wickedness of his own terrible nature as he threw off the vile spell that vaudoux worship had cast over him. The change in his manner was swift; already the fever of his eyes had changed to a look of tenderness. “Go to bed at once, Sestrina,” he muttered in a hoarse voice that Sestrina hardly recognised. He reeled about like a drunken man as he began to take off his flowing cloak, which he wore as a disguise whenever he stole away to the fetish temples in the mountains.

Sestrina fled. In a moment she had run along the corridor. Entering her room she had begun to cry. For a long time she could think of nothing else but the terrible expression which she had seen on her father’s face. After a while her heart ceased to thump, and her thoughts strayed into more pleasant channels. She began to think of the young Englishman. “Oh, if only I could fly from here with him, elope just as I have read folks do,” she murmured to herself as she rose and stared at her image in the large mirror. Then she turned away and pushed the settee against the door. Of late she had been very nervous at night, and this nervousness was due to her father’s strange madness, which was becoming worse of late. “What does it all mean? Why does he want me to go to the mountains with him? Is not Père Chaco, the Catholic priest, a good man? Did he not bless me with holy water and say beautiful things about the world? And yet he flung me from him, yes, only a week before, and raved like a madman when I refused to leave holy Père Chaco, and go away into the mountains to pray before strange priests.”

As Sestrina mused on, she began to remove her picturesque attire; first she cast aside the loose sarong; then she loosened her under-bodice. Her hair fell in confusion down to her shoulders, tumbling in shining ripples about her bosom, that was the whiter for being untouched by the hot rays of the tropical sunlight. She was fast leaving her girlhood behind; her footsteps, so to speak, were already on the threshold of womanhood, the rose of beauty and innocence on her lips and shining in her eyes. She half forgot the horror of her father’s distorted face as she gazed at her image in the mirror. Though her mind was naturally refined, the romantic passion of her Southern ancestry began to sigh in its sleep; and Sestrina’s lips echoed the sigh, though she knew not why they did so. She thought of the handsome Englishman, and of the sweet things he had whispered into her ears. She thought of the rapture of love, of the meeting of lips, and the romantic sorrows of parted lovers, and all those things which had influenced her mind as she poured over her French novels. “Ah me!” she sighed, then a startled look leapt into her eyes. She looked towards the window in fright. It was only the “Too-whoo-hee!” of the blue-winged Haytian owl that watched her from its perch in the mahogany tree just outside. She opened the vine-clad, latticed casement wide, and then stared out on the loveliness of the tropic night. She could just see the dark, palm-clad slopes of the mountains, faintly outlined by the moon’s pale light. “Ah, if he were only here, how happy I should be!” she murmured as she watched the swarms of fireflies dancing in the glooms of the bamboos, and then looked across the plains where she could see the twinkling lights of the homesteads near Gonaives. After that, she opened a little door that divided her chamber from another small room. It was where Claircine, the negress, slept.

“Oui, Madamselle Sessy!” said the ebony-hued negress servant as she sat up in bed and rubbed her large, sleepy eyes, wondering why her mistress should disturb her at so late an hour.

“Claircine, I feel so unhappy.”

“Why so, mamselles, there am nothings to be misleraable ‘bout, is there?”

Sestrina responded by giving a deep sigh. Then the old negress started to gabble away, as Sestrina sat on her bed for companionship. The woman’s inconsequential chatter cheered Sestrina.

“You look so beautiful nows you be coming womans,” said Claircine as she touched her mistress’s mass of glittering hair and ran the shining tresses through her dark fingers, and sighed in the thought that her own locks were so short and woolly. “Ah, Sessy, you ams like your mother,” said Claircine, who had been her mother’s maid from the time of Sestrina’s birth. Then the old negress continued: “She too had nicer hair and white flesh, for she had a father who was a real handsome white mans!”

After a while the conversation changed. Sestrina and the negress began whispering. Several times they glanced as though in some fright towards the bedroom door as a moan came to their ears. It was only the noise of the wind sighing down the orange groves that murmured like sad phantoms just outside the open casement as the girl and negress talked on. There was something eerie and dreadful sounding in the slightest noise that night! Claircine had also seen President Gravelot come home under the terrible influence of the vaudoux fetish. The old negress had seen the President behave like a maniac, and had then seen the after effects as he came round, laid his head on the table, and moaned in remorseful despair.

“’Tis the terrible, but wonderful papaloi who he see at the secret mountain temples where they do drink ze blood and rum; yes, dey make your father look like dat!” said Claircine. Then the negress added: “I no tell you such tings, Madamselle Sessy, but I now tink it be best dat you know such tings since dat you be getting older.”

“Do you really believe in such things, that the papaloi are the chosen priests of the heavens?” whispered Sestrina, as she heard such things as she had never heard before or dreamed of. Claircine had spoken to the girl in an awestruck, reverent way, about the terrible vaudoux priests.

“No, madamselle, it am no good me believing, I am only low-caste, and so am not allowed to attend great vaudoux worships.” Then the old negress sighed, and added: “If I’d been good enough, I would have marry handsome Chaicko, for you know that women who am vaudoux worshippers are watched over by ze god of the Goat without Horns, and am always happy in dere love affairs.”

“Surely you don’t mean that, or believe that my father would drink human blood?” whispered Sestrina, as she looked despairingly into the negress’s eyes. Her face looked pallid, almost death-like, dark rings about her eyes.

“Ah, Madamselle Sessy, this chile does believe in the greatness of ze papaloi. I do often see ze zombis (ghosts) creep ’bout under de mahogany trees when the great papaloi chant in ze forest.”

“But what about my father? Do you think that he really does visit these awful places which you have just described to me?”

“P’raps not; I may be wrongs, madamselle,” said the old negress, who felt upset to think she had told her innocent charge so much about the vaudoux. And though Claircine rambled on, telling Sestrina many things about the cruelty of the fetish worshippers and the attendant superstitions of the bigoted adherents, she adroitly made it appear to Sestrina that she spoke of a far-off time.

“’Tis not like that now. Oh, no! ze officials did shoot mens and womens for drinking ze sacred wines from the Goat without Horns, and so ’tis long past!”

So did Claircine attempt to undo the harm she had done by making Sestrina feel so miserable and ashamed. But though the negress had chatted on till the night grew old, the girl was still full of trouble and fear over her own thoughts.

Bewildered over all she had heard, Sestrina crept back to her chamber to dream of the dark papaloi who chanted somewhere up in the black mountains. For a long time she could not sleep. She thought of the terrible look she had seen in her parent’s eyes, and, wondering what was really the matter with him, forgot all else. For Sestrina, deep down in her heart, had a great love and reverence for her father. “He looks so different, so good and kind when the evil spirit does not possess him,” she thought, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she thought of the young Englishman, of his blue eyes, his manly ways, and wondered what he would have thought had he seen her father that night! Then her reflections ran into a calmer channel, and with the pretty words that Clensy had whispered that night still lingering in her ears, she at last fell asleep.

CHAPTER V

A WEEK after the events of the preceding chapter, Royal Clensy found himself standing by the Erard pianoforte in President Gravelot’s home. Sestrina had suddenly developed a passionate desire to play and sing. And President Gravelot, who was always eager to please the girl when he was in his sane moods, had agreed to hire a teacher. Sestrina’s face had looked very troubled when she had approached her father on the matter, for she did not like the idea of deceiving him. But she easily overcame her delicate scruples, and so, looking her parent straight in the face, she had said, “I much prefer a white man as a teacher; the white men are better educated, more simple and refined in their manners.” And so the great coincidence which usually comes when the opposite sexes seek a chance to meet each other, came about. Clensy, of all men in the world, received a note from President Gravelot in which he was asked if he would accept a position as Sestrina’s teacher for singing and pianoforte playing! The terms offered were good too! When Bartholomew Biglow heard that Clensy was teaching Sestrina to sing and play, he smacked our hero on the back and gazed on him with splendid admiration. “Couldn’t have done it better myself!” he had roared, and that was the greatest compliment the big man could pay anyone. And so, there sat pretty Sestrina, her heart bubbling with delight as her hands ran along the ivory keys, diligently going through the five-finger exercises! She had also arranged that Clensy should teach her to sing from the tonic sol-fa system.

“No, no! like this,” said Clensy, as he forced a serious look into his eyes and struck the pianoforte keys.

“Ah, monsieur, I see!” murmured the beautiful, guileless Sestrina, as Clensy wondered what she would think of the contents of the note which she had slipped into the folds of her pretty blue sarong a second before! They both had to be very careful! Old Gravelot kept walking into the room and went shuffling about as though he was suspicious. His brilliant eyes certainly did stare in a critical manner at the handsome music teacher, as that sanguine worthy leaned over his daughter and guided her fingers along the keyboard, rippling out the scales! Clensy knew that the president was all-powerful in Hayti, and that, were his suspicions aroused, he would be shot. True enough, the worst construction possible would be put on Clensy’s reason for seeking Sestrina’s society. Sestrina trembled inwardly, but, like most women, she was a born actress—she struck the pianoforte keys, just so! and looked as solemn as a nun. Then her father walked out of the room. Oh, the change in Sestrina’s face and manner when the heavily-draped curtains divided, and the president disappeared, leaving them alone again. It was magnificent! The discordant strumming of the scales resolved into the perfect harmony of living music that shone from Sestrina’s eyes and thrilled Clensy’s soul with unbounded happiness. Then our hero took an unwarrantable liberty; he leaned forward, struck a delicious chord on the piano, and kissed Sestrina’s pretty ear! Ah, parents of all countries, beware of music teachers! Yes, Royal Clensy was making good headway. He knew that there was much wisdom in the old saying, “Faint heart never won fair lady.” It was a pretty picture as he stood there by the side of the seated Sestrina; her hands still rested on the keys as she looked up into his face. Her beauty was the beauty of the tropic starry night, and Clensy was as fair as sunrise on the morning mountains. His fine blue eyes charmed Sestrina the same as he was charmed by the starry darkness of her own.

“I dreamed of you last night, sweet Sestrina.” Saying this, Clensy rippled out a tender cadenza.

“And I of you, monsieur!” sighed the lovely pupil, as she dropped her gaze and gently twiddled her fingers over the scales.

“Really? and what did you dream? pleasant, I would—!”

They heard the tasselled curtains, ornamented with brass, tinkle as they were hastily divided—the president had entered the room again!

“No! No! Mademoiselle, twice have I told you—like this!” Once again Sestrina’s shining tresses tossed as she warbled the notes of the tonic sol-fa system, and ran her fingers down the pianoforte keys! The president lit a cigar, then shuffled about. Clensy smelt the richly-scented odour of the smoke drifting about the room, for old Gravelot had opened the window wide to let the cool airs drift in from the orange groves. And though the president watched with wary eyes, the calm expression of his handsome wrinkled face did not change. He was outwitted. Sestrina’s voice sounded sincere, and the expression on Clensy’s serious face told of the phlegmatic, unromantic Englishman! So did Clensy find means of furthering his happy courtship with the beautiful Sestrina, though it must be admitted that the happy result was brought about more through Sestrina’s brilliant wit than Clensy’s superb nerve.

As the days went by, Royal Clensy became deeper in love, and so did Sestrina. And it must be admitted that greater progress was made in their secret courtship at the piano than in Sestrina’s music-lessons.

Adams and Biglow saw very little of Clensy at that period, for he would go strolling about Hayti seeing the sights and, presumably, dreaming of Sestrina. Indeed, Adams got a bit jealous when Clensy hired separate lodgings just down the town, and gave his reason for doing so by saying that he was suffering from insomnia.

“He’s getting ’igh-toned, I fink, since he got in wif the presydent’s darter. Damned if she won’t git all ‘is money when ’is remittance arrives.” So spake the derelict sailorman to Bartholomew Biglow. But Biglow knew human nature better than Adams did.

“The young whippersnapper’s true enough. You haven’t been in love like him, or like I have. It’s a terrible complaint, something stronger than rum fumes!” said Biglow, as he gave his fascinating smile and patted Adams on the shoulder. And Biglow was right, for when the mail came in, a few days after, bringing Clensy’s remittance, Adams got a fair share and had a regular “bust up.” The reprobate sailorman felt remorseful when Clensy behaved so generously, and while he was drunk, kept patting Clensy on the back, and saying, “You’re an honest youth, and, by God, you’ve been a father and a son. It’s fact that Gawd sent yer to comfort me in me ole age.” Adams wasn’t all bad, for he did mean what he said. He couldn’t help being a cadger. He reminded Clensy of the Australian gentry who are sometimes called larrikins, individuals who make cadging a fine art and always carry lumps of blue-metal in their pocket to throw if the stranger will not part with his loose cash or resents their appearance in any way whatsoever.

Though Clensy was a bit rash with his remittance money, he took good care to keep a needful supply of cash in hand. His affection for Sestrina had made him less improvident. Biglow refused to take one penny of Clensy’s money. The fact was that he had plenty of cash in hand himself. Indeed, he was busy, and would go off on private business for a whole week sometimes. Clensy and Adams couldn’t make out where he went to. All they knew was, that he seemed very flush of cash and mightily pleased with himself when he returned. The fact was, that Biglow was in league with the Black Mountain insurgents, as well as being in league with the Haytian government officials, for he was supplying the insurgents with Snider rifles and ammunition, which had arrived at Port-au-Prince on suspicious-looking schooners. However, Biglow’s commercial enterprises have little to do with all that happened when the revolution broke out in Hayti some time afterwards, and which was a serious matter for all concerned. For, as has already been hinted, the insurgents always razed the towns by fire and murdered half the population, sparing neither women nor children.

One night Clensy and Biglow were sitting playing cards with a half-caste Frenchman, a Monsieur de Cripsny, a government official, when Adams suddenly walked in the room and said, “Heard the noos?”

“What news?” exclaimed Biglow and Clensy, as they looked up from their cards. Then Adams, with an awestruck look in his eye, proceeded, “Why, these ’ere damned Hoytians are blasted cannibals; got a kinder relygion that they call Voody-worship on ther brain.”

“What’s that to do with us?” said Clensy quietly, as he puffed his cigarette and reshuffled the cards. Bartholomew Biglow’s ears were alert at once; he lifted his hand and, smashing at a fly that had settled on Adams’s sweating bald head, said, “What have ye heard to make ye so excited, man?”

Thereupon, Adams loosened his red neckcloth, and swallowed the proffered glass of cognac, began to gesticulate and tell his comrades all which he had heard. It appeared that Adams had that same day heard how thousands of the Haytians were adherents to the vaudoux-worship. Some one had told him how the vaudoux folk went in for bloodthirsty orgies, drank human blood and sacrificed children on the fetish altars, doing such revolting, blood-curdling things as would have made a pre-Christian South-Sea islander shiver with disgust.

De Cripsny, who sat curling the tips of his moustachios while Adams narrated all that he had heard when visiting some grog-shanty in the lower quarter of the town, astounded Clensy and Biglow by calmly corroborating all that Adams had told them. “’Tis nothing new to me, monsieurs,” said the half-caste Frenchman. Then he calmly sat there and told the wondering Englishmen how many of the Haytians were staunch devotees to vaudoux worship, secretly attending the orgy temples, which were situated somewhere by the mountains, a few miles away. De Cripsny, who was a friend of Biglow’s and had some connection with that worthy’s successful exploits in the gun-running line, pulled his moustache and told Adams to shut the door. Then the Frenchman calmly informed the three men that they were liable to be strangled and offered up as sacrifices to the deities of the vaudoux if they went into the forest near Port-au-Prince after dark!

Adams opened his one eye and his mouth wide. Then he hitched his trousers up and said he had been seriously thinking of taking to the sea again; “nothing like the open seas!” he said, as he looked with fright at the door.

“Don’t you worry, monsieurs; I tink you are quite safe; you are Angleseman, and p’r’aps it would not be good for you to die on the vaudoux sacrificial altars.”

“Thank Gawd for that much,” exclaimed Adams, as he took another drink.

Then de Cripsny told them that the authorities had lately discovered that many children were missing each week from the villages round Port-au-Prince.

“What do you think has become of them?” exclaimed Clensy and Biglow.

“Why, monsieurs, they have surely been caught while strolling or playing in the jungle and taken away to the mountain temples to the papaloi, who do strangle them and drink blood—like so.”

Saying this, de Cripsny put his hands out, and, to the Englishmen’s horror, squeezed an imaginary throat, made a pass with his knife, and, lifting an empty goblet, illustrated to the astonished listeners how the papaloi slit the victim’s throat and drank their blood!

“’Tis mixed with rum and called the wine from the Goat without Horns.”

“Surely it’s not possible in these enlightened times?” said Clensy.

De Cripsny gave a grim smile, and, taking the Haytian Press from his pocket, translated the following:

“Anyone giving information which would lead to the discovery of the hiding-place or temples of the Vaudoux worshippers will receive a reward of £500.”

On hearing this, Biglow brought his big fist down on the table, crash! and yelled, “By the gods of heathen lands, we’re saved! Vaudoux worship; splendid thing; we’re saved!”

“Saved? what jer mean?” said Adams, as Clensy looked up and wondered why the horror that they had just heard about should appeal to that capacious intellect as a blessing instead of a curse.

“Five hundred pounds reward! It’s mine!” reiterated Biglow.

“Yours! Ours!” gasped Adams and Clensy, as they both realised that their sanguine, uproarious comrade had got an idea in his head that he could discover the vaudoux miscreants and receive the reward.

“Yes, mine!” replied Biglow, as he swallowed his grog. Then he burst into song. His hilarity was contagious. Adams lost his woebegone expression. In less than ten minutes they all felt assured that they were not only safe from the terrors of the vaudoux, but were likely to receive a portion of the reward that Biglow seemed so certain of obtaining.

It was at this moment that de Cripsny looked up and said, “It is mostly the high-class Haytians and negroes who are adherents to the vaudoux.”

“Not surprising,” replied Biglow, as he rubbed his hands, his face flushed through the intense enthusiasm of his thoughts.

Then de Cripsny stared hard at his three companions, and continued, “Would you be surprised to hear that President Gravelot is King of the vaudoux worshippers?”

Clensy visibly paled. In a flash he realised that he was in Hayti, and nothing in the way of surprises was impossible. Bartholomew Biglow, on hearing the last bit of information, behaved in his usual boisterous manner; de Cripsny dodged his head, and Adams and Clensy fell under the table, but by a miracle none of them were hurt. Biglow, who had suddenly knocked the table over to emphasise his surprise, immediately grabbed it and stood it up on its legs again. De Cripsny looked quite spiteful as he rose to his feet and stared about him with his brilliant small eyes.

“I speak truth only, and then you go and knock table over and nearly kills me. Why so? You Englishman are too rude and noisy to speak to.”

“Beg pardon, Crippy, old pal,” said Biglow, as he patted the incensed Frenchman on the back and soon soothed his ruffled feelings. Once more the four seated themselves. Then de Cripsny began to tell them a lot about the vaudoux horrors, and hinted that many of the high officials of the government were adherents to the fetish creed and cannibals. He even hinted that many of the Haytian ladies were in with the papaloi and attended the fetish dances, giving themselves up to all the abandonment that the rites of the fetish demanded. When the Frenchman leaned across the table and hinted that President Gravelot’s daughter, Sestrina, was possibly a vaudoux worshipper, Clensy had great difficulty in controlling himself.

“Have you proof of such things?” he demanded, his voice quite hoarse-sounding.

“No, monsieur, but I say ’tis possible, dat is all.”

This admission eased Clensy’s mind considerably. Then de Cripsny, who seemed to love to illustrate the horrors of all that he was telling the Englishmen, said, “If I do not speak truth, then I cut mines throat like dis”—thereupon he drew an imaginary knife across his skinny throat.

As the conversation proceeded, Biglow tried to get information from de Cripsny as to where he thought the vaudoux temples were. The Frenchman only shook his head and seemed to be unable to give Biglow any useful information. It is quite possible that de Cripsny was ignorant as to where such temples existed. Though de Cripsny had been a government official for many years, he knew very little about the doings of the people or of Haytian politics proper. He had been superintendent of the burial of the dead in the great malaria plague of nineteen years before, when an official had to be appointed to see that the death-carts called at the homes of the victims and gave the dead immediate burial in the cemeteries. And though the plague had long since passed away—indeed, had become a dim, grim memory to the Haytians—de Cripsny had still remained in office till about three weeks before Clensy met him. De Cripsny might have been a splendid example of the latest thing in government officials of civilised lands had he not have been dismissed, only three weeks before, because he had omitted to attend to his duties. For years and years he had drawn up his weekly report on the blue government forms, filling them in so—“Deaths from malaria, none. All buried according to Act 9, Statute 14. Disinfected death-carts and burnt victims’ clothing.” But through illness he had not filled in the usual form, and this, having been noticed by some alert official, had been the means of his dismissal from office. Even Bartholomew gave a loud guffaw when de Cripsny, after giving him the aforesaid information about his own private affairs, suddenly said, “But, monsieurs, I care not that I am dismissed from office.”

“How’s that, Crippy, old chum?” exclaimed Biglow.

Then the Frenchman informed them that his grandfather had been sanitary inspector of the high-roads in Hayti for thirty years, and though he had been dead twenty-one years, he, de Cripsny, his grandson, still received the old man’s salary, no one having missed his grandfather, or noticed any neglect of his duties as inspector of roads in Port-au-Prince. Ask Haytians why they do not clean or mend their streets, they answer, “Bon Dieu, gâté li; bon Dieu paré li” (“God spoilt them, and God will mend them”). So de Cripsny was not a man of deep integrity, neither did he trouble himself to delve deeply into the mysteries of the vaudoux. His information was something that could have been given to Biglow and Clensy by any negro in Hayti. Only a few days before, a nurse had been out walking on the Champs de Mars when a huge negro, who had presumably been prowling about on watch, suddenly snatched a white child from her arms and ran off with it into the forest. The child was never seen again. And more: It was known that human flesh, dried and salted in tubs, was for sale in the markets of Port-au-Prince! When Clensy and Biglow were given these unappetising bits of information about the revolting practices of the lower orders of the vaudoux, they thought more than their tongues could adequately express on the matter.

When Clensy arrived back at his lodgings that night, he turned about and tossed on his bed, and could not sleep. De Cripsny’s hint that many of the Haytian ladies went in for fetish dancing and the terrible debauchery of the vaudoux, had upset his mind. He thought of President Gravelot’s jealous care over his daughter’s life, and how Sestrina was seldom allowed out without being accompanied by the negress servant.

“A man who is particular like that is not likely to persuade his daughter to attend cannibal fetishes!—impossible!” Then he thought of Sestrina’s eyes, her innocent ways, her girlish laughter and tears, for sometimes she had wept while in his company. “Never! the last girl in the world to succumb to the temptations of her father, however much she respected his wishes.” So thought Royal Clensy in the final summing up of his haunting thoughts about Sestrina and the possibility of her being an adherent to the vaudoux. “She’s too wide-minded, too pure in heart and soul to kneel before the altars of cruelty and lust!” Then the young Englishman pulled the mosquito curtain together and settled himself for sleep, happy in the thought that Sestrina was innocent. And he was right.

CHAPTER VI

TWO nights after de Cripsny had given the three Englishmen the information about vaudoux worship, Clensy, who had been haunting the vicinity of the presidential palace grounds, met Sestrina. She had managed to slip out of the palace unobserved. She was trembling in her delight.

“Away, Monsieur Royal, away from here, or we be seen!” she whispered as she gazed appealingly up into Clensy’s face.

“Where shall we go, Sestrina?” said the young Englishman, as he tenderly gripped the Haytian girl’s arm and stared about him.

“Away to the forest, the orange groves at H—; anywhere away from here!” said Sestrina, as she looked around with frightened eyes, waved her arms, and then pointed towards the big mahogany trees in the direction of Gonaives. The aftermath of the sunset had left a blue twilight in the skies, which were faintly dazzled with the gleams of a thousand stars. In a moment they had passed away into the shadows.

“Oh, glad am I to be away from the palace walls. You be killed, monsieur, if they see you there!” said Sestrina, as she fondly pressed Clensy’s arm over the thought that harm should come to him through her.

In less than half an hour Clensy and Sestrina sat in the seclusion of the mahogany trees. He felt happy. He had long since banished all ideas of the vaudoux from his head. If the remotest suspicion over the possibilities of Sestrina being interested in the fetish creeds remained in his head, one glance from her eyes dispelled it. He was in an emotional, poetic mood, and so he made passionate love to the girl beside him. Love is a contagious complaint when the first afflicted is handsome and tenderly persuasive. Could anyone have seen Sestrina and Clensy, as they sat on the dead palm stem that night, it would have been hard to tell which one was in the most advanced stage of the romantic malady. Sestrina’s eyes sparkled like diamonds, and Clensy’s surely rivalled those lovely gems of warm, living light, when he gazed into her face and sighed.

“Ah, you do not mean these nice things you say,” murmured Sestrina.

“’Tis true! I should never be happy again if we were parted,” replied the enraptured Clensy. And then he softly slipped one arm about her waist, and drew her face near to his own, and in the rapture of a strong man’s—But why pry into the secret, insane, but innocent actions of these lovers? No vulgar inquisitiveness stained the purity of their wonderful belief in each other.

“Ah, Sestrina, you are more beautiful than I dreamed, even when I first saw you,” he said in a reflective way, as he thought how the girl’s merry manner at the pianoforte had slightly led his thoughts astray. It was not boldness at all, it was only the boisterous innocence of the girl’s warm heart that made her respond so readily to his impassioned advances. As she sat there, under the mahogany tree, chatting about her pet parrots, the characters in her novels, and confiding little domestic matters to him, he discovered how really innocent and romantic her mind was.

“This beautiful creature a vaudoux worshipper! Oh, traitor to her memory! to have had such dreadful suspicions,” muttered his mental remorse. “You are the loveliest woman on earth!” he exclaimed.

Poor Clensy, there’s no doubt he was feeling badly in love to say such things. But he meant what he said, the same as thousands of men have meant the same strange things. The girl’s personality enchanted him, had appealed to the best that was in him, and so had made him a child again.

“Have you never seen nice girls, like me, Monsieur Royal?” murmured Sestrina, as she gazed in wonder on his face.

“No, I never have, never!” was Clensy’s emphatic reply, as he pressed his advantage. Sestrina had taken a flower from her hair and was fastening it on to the lapel of his coat, and, as she leaned forward, he kissed her brow and touched her shining tresses with his lips.

“But surely there are beautiful girls in Angleterre! I’ve read about them in books,” murmured the pretty Haytian maid as she looked up into Clensy’s face in a wistful way.

“Ah, Sestrina, but the authors of those books, which you say you have read, have never been to Hayti and sat beneath the starlit mahogany trees with you!”

Sestrina seemed to like that explanation immensely. Her eyes shone with delight, as the pale gleams from the rising moon dripped like silver through the overhanging boughs and tropical loveliness of the mahogany trees. It was easy enough to see that the girl was deeply in love with the young Englishman. She opened her eyes and stared like a pleased, wondering child, and then she did exactly that which Clensy asked her to do—lifted one pretty sandalled foot up so that he might kiss her ankle. It was a pretty ankle, no mistake about that. But, oh, propriety! Oh, self-respecting maidenhood, alas! where wert thou at that moment?

“It’s not wrong, Monsieur Royal, to do that, is it?” she whispered as she quickly dropped her foot and arranged the delicate fringe of her sarong. She looked Clensy straight in the eyes. He made no reply. The first rapture that followed his impulsive act and the sudden serious stare of Sestrina’s eyes as she asked that question, rendered him speechless. In a flash he had realised that his mind, compared with the girl’s beside him, was full of sin.

“I always go and confess everything to kind Père Chaco, the priest, so I must be careful, you know,” murmured Sestrina in a meditative way, as though addressing her own reflections.

“Do you really?” said Clensy, as he turned his eyes away and stared thoughtfully into the shadows of the forest. Then as he sighed and gazed at the girl again, she placed her finger to her lips and gave Clensy a coquettish glance.

“Why do you dream?” said Sestrina softly, as she noticed how quiet he had suddenly become.

“I cannot help dreaming while in your presence, Sestrina.”

“My father will be very angry if he discovers that I have been out so late,” said the girl.

“Is your father religious and good like you, Sestrina?” said Clensy swiftly, taking advantage of the opportunity to get Sestrina’s private opinion of her parent.

“Yes, he is very religious, but he does not go to kind Père Chaco as he once did,” replied the girl, as she swung her foot and sighed.

Clensy did not press his advantage. He saw by the girl’s manner that, whatever her father’s sins were, she was not a party to them. As they sat there conversing, Clensy tried to probe the Haytian girl’s mind. He asked her many questions, and found that she was a child so far as her knowledge of the world was concerned. Her manner and her girlish views charmed him. She had not gripped him by the arm and, in fierce accents, tense with emotion, started to declaim materialistic mad views on social questions. She did not jump to her feet and, with flashing eyes and chin thrust towards his face in magnificent female aggressiveness, reveal some bitterness which rankled in her irate soul over some peculiar notion that resembled a kink in the brain. She had simply let Clensy touch her brow with his lips, and had said, “I know so little about the world and these things which you ask me; all I really know is, that you have made me feel happy.” Then she had looked quietly into his face for a moment and added: “It’s so good of God to let me meet you like this, and I’m sure Père Chaco won’t mind.” And so the fragile girl had conquered. With the almighty power of her own innocence she had accomplished that which a thousand designing, worldly women could never have accomplished. She held Clensy’s life in the rapture of a merciless grip. The young Englishman was doomed! He at once robed the girl in all the religious glamour that his mind was capable of conjuring up. She sat there beneath the mahogany trees, clothed in those lovely symbols of wistful beauty that come to the minds of men who aspire to find the world’s best in woman; his mind exalted her from the ruck of mere woman into some goddess-creature, possessing attributes divine. Sestrina did not realise her great victory over Clensy.

“Wonderful! beautiful! clever too.” Though Royal Clensy had never heard Sestrina make one remark that could be construed as “clever” by a worldly or deadly sane man, she had set her magic seal on his soul. From that moment it was Sestrina’s advice and views that would impress him more than the advice of great philosophers. Had he been writing a book or building a new kind of house, he would have yearned to plan the book’s plot or build the house according to Sestrina’s views on the matter. Old men who took snuff and weighed their words well and wisely before they spoke, would tug their beards of wisdom—in vain! Clensy would have none of them! And, in the inscrutable wonder of simple things, it is quite possible that Sestrina’s advice would have been the wisest of all! And so, when Sestrina once more reminded Clensy of the swift flight of time, he at once realised that she was the wiser of the two. The next moment he was gallantly fastening the pin of the pretty ornament that kept the folds of her sarong in place. Then, without any undue argument, he obediently began to brush the green fern spores and leaves from her tresses.

“Ah, ’twould be most awful should they see me return home so late with moss in my hair and grass and leaves on my sarong,” murmured Sestrina.

“It would indeed,” said dull-witted Clensy, as he brushed the girl down, his hands gliding over her as though she were some misty wraith standing in the pale moonlight of the forest gloom. Then they hastened away under the tall trees, and stole down the orange groves by Selle gully. When they arrived near the palace, they stood under the palms and whispered insane farewells. Again Clensy bowed before the wisdom of Sestrina’s advice.

“Ah, monsieur, we may not stand here for ever saying good night.”

And so they parted. In a few moments Sestrina had slipped unobserved into the silent palace, and Royal Clensy walked away under the mahogany trees, and seemed to tread on air.

“Ah, Claircine, he is indeed beautiful, and there is no need for such alarm.”

So spake Sestrina, for when she had run along the corridor and entered her chamber, she found the old negress Claircine anxiously awaiting her. Sestrina, who had just told the negress that she had been in the palace grounds singing to herself and gazing at the moon, hung her head in shame.

“Alas, madamselle, here ams another—and yet another! ’Tis as plain as ze plainest ting can be!” said the shocked Claircine as she held another small fern leaf and bits of dead grass up to the light of the hanging oil-lamp and examined it critically with her large dark eyes. Oh, infatuated, dull-witted Clensy! careless betrayer of innocent woman, such was thy handiwork! And what did poor betrayed Sestrina do at this incriminating evidence of her guilt? She threw her arms about the negress and wailed:

“Sweet, dear Claircine, you will never, never tell on poor Sestrina?”

Claircine rolled her eyes for very joy, and then shook her head in a kind, chiding way. Though Claircine was an inveterate scandal-monger, she loved Sestrina and secretly yearned to hear that which she expected to hear at that moment. Claircine lifted her hands to the ceiling and looked terribly shocked when Sestrina had finished telling her the truth. Then Sestrina, finding that Claircine was sympathetic with her, went into ecstasies over Clensy’s perfections.

“But all ze maids do tink that each man who dey know, and who say nicer tings ’bout them, is de one best mans, and full of nobblyness,” reiterated Claircine as she rolled her eyes till the whites expressed her scepticism over the virtues of mankind.

“Ah, you will see him some day, and then you will surely believe me when you see for yourself,” said Sestrina, as she stood before her mirror and swerved slightly so as to convince herself that Clensy had really meant all he had said about her hair and her beauty. Sestrina was really modest, and, being really pretty, was dubious about her good looks.

“Ah, madamselle, you am bootiful’s enough,” said the negress, then she put her dark skinny hand against her chin in a meditative way, and said: “This young Englishmans may be one really nice mans; de good God must surely ’ave made one good white mans to walk ze earth,” said Claircine, then she solemnly added: “Yet it would be most strange if he should come here, to Hayti.”

The expression on the cynical old negress’s face was utterly lost on Sestrina, who, suddenly remembering, burst out: “Oh, how foolish of me to forget; why, Claircine, he has seen you and you have seen him!”

“And de debil wheres?” exclaimed Claircine.

“Why, it is Monsieur Clensy!”

“Ze gods in heaven! You do not mean the music-teacher?” gasped the astounded Claircine.

“Him and no other!” exclaimed Sestrina. Then the girl swiftly added, for she was anxious that Claircine should feel friendly towards Clensy, “Why, he said to me, only this night, ‘Ah, I remember her whom you call Claircine; she has kind, beautiful eyes and a face that tells me she might be a good friend to you and me.’”

Claircine, at hearing this, opened her mouth and revealed all her white teeth in one broad grin.

“P’r’aps he is one good mans. I somehow tink that he is good mans,” she said, and then she too turned and gazed into the mirror.

After that Sestrina and Claircine talked over the matter till far into the night. Then the negress kissed her mistress’s hand and, opening the small door that led from the chamber, crept into her own room to sleep.

Sestrina retired to bed, feeling very happy in the thought that Claircine had promised to be a friend to her and Clensy.

And Clensy? Immediately he arrived back in his lodgings after leaving Sestrina, he stole away into a vast, solitary dream-world of his own, a world whereon only one other than himself breathed—and that was Sestrina. And as he dreamed by the musical fountains, Sestrina came back to him in shadowy form. She tempted his soul with the magical fruit from the Tree of Knowledge—not the forbidden fruit, but the rosy, wine-scented apples that hung from the phantom branches of beauty and romance. Clensy seemed to come under some mystical spell as he dreamed on. He fancied he could hear and see Sestrina as she stole down some memory on sandalled feet, singing by a murmuring sea-shore, the light of the stars in her eyes, the rose of beauty on her lips. It was not so strange that he should have such wild fancies, for Clensy was a believer in the reincarnation theory and in anything that seemed more hopeful than the dubious possibility of the resurrection of dead bones. He had also come across a book in Acapulco which had greatly impressed him, since it told him that five hundred millions of mortals who dwelt in the wise East, believed in the reincarnation and transmigration of souls. Adams had wondered what on earth our hero was reading about when he had sat up all night dipping into the pages of magic that told the mysteries of old Japan and the ancient Eastern creeds. It was no trouble for Clensy to reverse the mythical significance of Greek sculptural art, such as the god Hypnus with his two children, sleep and death, holding inverted torches in their hands. Clensy felt assured that he had known the oblivion of Lethe’s dark stream, and yet could remember a life across the ages where he had eaten the golden apples of the Hesperides.

“It’s better to think the Fates have honoured me with the immortality of mortality, so that I can at least feel assured of the mortality that dreams immortality, far better than believing in the dubious things people seem to believe in,” he mused.

And as he sat there, indulging in strange metaphysics, hobnobbing with Semiramis and a few Assyrian kings and queens he had known somewhere away in the background of his creed, he dropped his pipe from his listless fingers—crash! on the floor, and the sound rumbled like an avalanche down the corridors of his dreaming mind. The visions vanished. Adams’s solitary eye loomed before him; back came the fetid smells and wretchedness of a present existence, making Clensy shiver as though with cold.

“God forbid that this is the great reality of life, and not the illusive dream!” he muttered, as he silently cursed the dab of that great sponge of reality which had swept across the mirror and had shown him such beautiful dreams.

It was only natural that Clensy’s metaphysical speculations should give him kaleidoscopic glimpses of physical beauty and not glimpses of visionary beauty, which men associate with the heavens. For to believe in the incarnation of the soul is to believe in the immortality of the flesh. Clensy realised this, and often tried to explore the depths of his own mind, but invariably returned to the upper regions with a sigh, convinced that he was his own heaven and hell. “It’s no good, I’m a sinner; the beauty of that which I can see and feel is greater than that which I must imagine.” So he mused in his foolishness, unable to read his own soul. But do not condemn Clensy. He was young; the fires of youth ran molten in his veins. The great alchemist, Sorrow, had not yet knocked at his door, bringing those phials and magic potions that transmute men and women into their older, other selves—sometimes changing them into Angels and sometimes Devils.

CHAPTER VII

“HULLO, boy! how’s the wind blowing?” said the boisterous Bartholomew Biglow when he met Clensy a week after the young Englishman had betrayed Sestrina, through so carelessly brushing the fern and dead leaf from her sarong.

“I wish the wind would blow a bit cooler,” replied Clensy as he fanned his perspiring face with his silk handkerchief.

“Thank God you’re alive and up where the wind blows!” said Biglow as, to Clensy’s great relief, he released his vigorous grip from his hand.

“You might lift your hat or blow me a friendly kiss when we meet,” said Clensy, as he spread his tingling fingers out and made a wry face.

“Would you like to come with me on a splendid adventure, something that will interest you, a sight to please the gods while the Haytian ladies exhibit their dusky charms as they do the chica dance before dear, nice, religious old men.”

“What do you mean? It sounds interesting, I admit,” said Clensy, as he looked calmly into the handsome flushed face of his strange comrade.

“I mean that I’ve got a pretty good idea where at least one of the vaudoux temples is situated.”

Then Biglow told Clensy that he had received certain information, and meant to go off into the mountains without delay to try and get a glimpse of the terrible papaloi and see what really happened when they attended the rites of their creed.

“We’ll see a sight, as well as receiving the reward that’s offered!” said Biglow, giving one of his magnificent winks.

“Isn’t it a bit risky?” said Clensy, as he thought of all he had heard about the vaudoux horrors, and imagined what desperate characters men must be who attended such revolting orgies.

Biglow pooh-poohed Clensy’s misgivings.