THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS

BY HENRY C. ROWLAND

To Windward

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“I see that you go in for heads a bit yourself,” said Lynch.
––[Page 99]

The Mountain

of Fears

By

Henry C. Rowland

Author of “The Wanderers”, “To Windward”

and “Sea Scamps”.

Illustrated

New York

A. S. Barnes & Co.

1905

Copyright, 1905, by

A. S. BARNES & CO.

Published October, 1905

TO

DOCTOR LEYDEN

WHOSE ILLUMINATING PERSONALITY

AND STRANGE EXPERIENCES I HAVE

VENTURED TO INTERPRET IN THE

HOPE THAT WHEN HE RETURNS FROM

HIS QUEST IN THE “FORBIDDEN LAND”

HE WILL PARDON MY PRESUMPTION.

CONTENTS

THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS

THE MOUNTAIN OF FEARS

“DOCTOR,” said my shipmate, Dr. Leyden, “have you ever made any especial study of nervous diseases—central nervous diseases—morbid conditions resulting from a derangement of the central cells?”

I told him that I had done only such work in this branch as a general practice would require, but that I had observed some few cases of especial interest during a military surgical service in the East, and proceeded to cite one or two instances of mental vagaries resulting from gunshot wounds in the head.

Leyden leaned both elbows on the taffrail and listened restlessly. Our little ship swashed through the short sling of the Spanish Main, the Pole star gleaming ahead, the Southern Cross blazing astern, and all about the white, flashing crests of the phosphorescent sea. Usually Leyden was a good listener, but this night he seemed impatient, restive, to such an extent that I finally paused, annoyed, for nothing is so irritating as lack of attention to a solicited reply.

“Ach! but those cases are in the line of the ordinary!” he exclaimed.

“Pardon me,” I replied, “but the last case I have given was distinctly out of the ordinary.”

“I am awkward, Doctor,” said Leyden, apologetically. “I mean that the relations of cause and effect follow the usual course—the histological changes in the cell produced impaired function of the organ and these primary changes were the result of trauma. But have you ever had occasion to observe the reverse of this condition—the action of the organ on the center—like a nightmare, where one has the liver poisoning the central cells——”

I interrupted in my turn. Leyden was no doubt a skilled naturalist, a close observer and a man of deep power of thought and analysis, but he was not a physician, had never made a regular study of physiological chemistry, and was, therefore, scarcely in a position to argue with a person who had.

“Such cases are not infrequent,” I answered. “The ancient Greeks understood that much, as we see from their terms. ‘Hypochondria’; under the ribs—the liver probably poisoning the brain, if you like; then there is the condition of hysteria often accompanying a movable kidney; the action of certain drugs on special centers——”

“Such as cannabis indica?” interrupted Leyden, “which affects the sense of elapsed time and makes the subject happy—or—what is that principle, Doctor, which produces xanthopsia, or yellow vision, and makes one sluggish and depressed?”

“Xanthopsia is an early symptom of santonin poisoning,” I answered. “The alkaloid is obtained from the unexpanded flower-heads of the——”

“Artemisia maritima—yes—I know the plant—but the active principle might occur elsewhere?”

“Possibly——”

“It is wonderful,” mused Leyden, in the self-communicative tone that was often difficult to follow—“the microscopic filament that makes or unmakes a man; the minute neurons which carry such a potent impulse—like the flash crossing a continent on a tiny wire to send two great nations to war. The wire is short-circuited, the nation disgraced; the neuron short-circuited, the individual disgraced. Such a thing once happened to me, Doctor.

“This was in Papua, an awesome country which holds in its dark recesses many of the things one wants—and most of those which one does not. I had gone there with two other white men to look for gold. It is a marvelous country, Doctor; I do not think there is any other like it; such a country as was pictured in the old imaginative school of painting; a valley, through which winds a mist river flowing intangibly from a mirage through a canyon bridged by a rainbow; travelers’ palms, tree-ferns, lianas, dream-trees heavy with strange fruits and brilliant blossoms, in the distance mystic mountains rising as they recede, green yet forbidding, the homes of genii; their summits fantastic—the whole a beautiful, impossible, frightfully fascinating fairyland. This was that place where we went to look for gold.

“My two companions were failures—most gold-seekers are. I was not old enough to be a failure myself. No matter what the faults of these others, one did not deny their virtues. One was a Hollander, Vinckers, an engineer, a brilliant man, but one ready to step over the edge of heaven in sheer restlessness and a desire to see what was held by the abyss; the other was a Scotchman, disagreeable, morose, taciturn, harsh of speech and visage. Both held hearts of steel; they were the most quietly courageous men that I have ever known. I ask you to remember this, Doctor, in consideration of what came later. Their courage had been tried and proved in many desperate situations.... Ach!”—Leyden began to mutter again, shaping his thoughts with his tongue until I could with difficulty catch this thought—“the filament—the neuron—cut the sympathetic nerve in the neck of a horse and the animal begins to sweat upon the affected side; puncture the floor of the fourth ventricle of a dog—diabetes.” He raised his voice. “There is a little center of thermogenesis, is there not, Doctor, the irritation of which will raise the temperature——

“We wandered through this shadow-land, this illusory place of promise whose inhabitants were ofttimes starving. Cannibals?—yes; many white men have been that through acute starvation; chronic only tends to confirm the vice. They were a strange, shy, kindly people—to us, who understood such. The ‘Barbary Coast’ in San Francisco, the parks in Melbourne, or the water-front in Hong Kong, are all more dangerous than Papua. We wandered through these people, accompanied by kindness, a whole tribe sometimes bearing our burdens until they reached a district dangerous to them, but where we made new friends. We wandered through this dreamland unmolested, walked with its fantastic peoples, black and brown and piebald; strayed in and out to the click-click-click of our little hammers, meeting dangers, it is true—the dangers which might confront a child walking blindfolded through a botanical garden filled with perils to its ignorance—and we tap-tap-tapped with our little hammers—right up to the slopes of the Malang-o-mor—the ‘Mountain of Fears’—and we tap-tap-tapped on its slopes of quartz and basalt, little thinking that we knocked at the door of an evil spirit.”

The bluff bows of our little ship smashed the short seas into a flat track of phosphoresence, and against the pale background I saw a tremor of some sort shake Leyden’s square shoulders, and it seemed to me that his voice was slightly breathless.

“‘The Mountain of Fears,’ so our Papuans called it, and threw down their burdens at the edge of the stream and refused point-blank to stir another step; more than that, they implored us to go no farther ourselves, and a girl given to MacFarlane by a chief threw her arms around the knees of the rough old Gael and wailed like a stricken soul. An odd thing, that, Doctor, this cannibal girl given to the Scotchman a month before by this chief, to whom MacFarlane had given a harmonica on which he had first rendered ‘The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’ in a manner which should, by right, have got him speared. The girl had fancied him, slaved for him, followed him everywhere like a dog, and had ended by softening him—to such an extent that he ceased to curse and his manner was less harsh—the elevating effect of a cannibal upon a Covenanter!—another inversion in this hallucinating country where the only actuality seemed the rapping of our little hammers.

“This girl, as I say, implored MacFarlane not to go on; for Vinckers and me she did not care; none of the women had much fancied us, while MacFarlane’s lack of comeliness was almost bizarre; they were obedient, of course—but that was about all.

“MacFarlane leered up at the great forbidding mountain as it thrust against the dome of the sky its summit of snowy quartz, a-glisten in the bright sunlight thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.

“‘A cauld slope yon—too cauld for a lass in naething but a kiltie. Ye’d best bide here ’til I come.’ He spoke to her in the vernacular, with which we were all three familiar, and told her to await his return.

“It was hot in that valley—a stewpan, withering, stifling with the equatorial reek which wilts one to the bone; the nights stunk of fever. It was the southeast slope of the mountain which presented to us; and as we gazed up toward it from the little nest of trees where we had made our camp, the late sun blazed against its worn flank, and suddenly the broad, barren belt between the forest and the formation of quartz above the timber belt seemed to burst into flame and shone and sparkled and glittered as if flecked with scales of gold.

“‘An omen!’ cried Vinckers. ‘The Mountain of Hope—not the Mountain of Fears! Something tells me that we shall find gold there—veins of it, knuckles of it—perhaps the bones of the mountain are solid gold; why not, in such a country as this?’

“The sun dropped behind the high hills to the westward, swiftly, as it does on the equator, and even more swiftly the gray shadow ran from the foot to the summit of the great mountain. It was as if one saw the color fade in the face of a dying man, and it seemed to me that a cold draught struck down from the heights.

“‘The Mountain of Fears,’ said I—‘the Mountain of Fears,’ and as I stared at the monster on whose bristling hide we planned to crawl, parasites, searching for a spot to lodge our stings, the first shadow of foreboding swept over my spirits, just as the swift shadow had risen to throw its cold, blue light across the snowy quartz-field.

“In the valley we found the first signs of plenty; there were fruit and game and a sort of wild yam in abundance; and here we decided to rest for several days on the edge of the stream, for MacFarlane had a suppurating heel where he had trod upon a thorn, and Vinckers was suffering from a great nettle-rash upon his body. All three of us were hungry and our blood ran too thin to encounter the cold nights higher up the slope.

“We camped in a grove of trees which looked like the papaya and bore a fruit unlike any I have ever seen. It was shaped like an avocado, had a pulp like wax, or bone-marrow, which was greasy to the touch, oily, and held a faint flavor of sandal-wood. At first we tried it with caution, for our native friends would not eat anything which grew in the shadow of the Malang-o-mor; neither would they sleep in the narrow valley, but retired each evening to the edge of the forest on the farther slope.

“We rested and we slept, and we ate of the fruit, which I called myela, because I did not think that it had ever been described, and I called it so from its resemblance to marrow; also, we drank of the stream, which was a deep ruby, spring-cooled and fragrant, but of which none of the Papuans would drink excepting the girl, Tomba, given to MacFarlane by the chief. She ate and drank and shuddered and watched her lord narrowly, as if waiting for the curse to fall and wishful to avert it.

“In the early morning we hunted the game or clicked with our little hammers on the crumbling quartz through which the river gnawed its way. There was gold in the country, gold in the stream; one could pan enough dust in a light day’s work to pay highly for the labor. But we wanted more than dust—we wanted the pure metal which none doubted we should find on the virgin breast of the mountain, and our fancy saw us winding back to the sea with our native tribe deep-laden with the wealth of buccaneers—winding out through defiles of mountain and forest, heavy with the plunder of the dread Malang-o-mor.

“Odd, Doctor; gold and dreams and sweat and death—how they all mixed together to strike the average which maintains the trim of the world——” Leyden’s voice had sunk to muttering again, and he shivered, despite the humid warmth of the night.

“Daytimes we dwelt in Paradise and at night lay down to sleep, having first drunk of the stream, which we christened ‘Lethe,’ because on its banks we forgot the hardship and hunger of our long journey to the valley. A Lethe it must have been, because each morning, when the late sun looked over the shoulder of the mountain and whipped up the blanket of mist stretched like a tent from the slope to the hills beyond, we forgot the miasmas of the night and the fetid fever smells and spores that spawned through the hours of hot darkness, and all of the while we ate more of the fat, oily fruit and less of other and more wholesome things, for this fruit of itself appeared to satisfy all needs, and we looked at each other and laughed at the physical changes of the few days, for we were growing fat and flabby as paretics. We slept a great deal, too, days as well as nights, and the sleep was at first of that delicious kind which one enjoys in the moments between waking and rising—a conscious sleep, in which one feels the myriad renovative changes of tissue, when each little cell seems to stretch and tingle and feed against the waste of the coming day. Feed they did, for the flesh came back, full and soft, to our gaunt frames, and we looked at one another and laughed fat, gurgling laughs, and lay and smoked with our heads in the laps of the girls, and the tapping of our little hammers was heard but seldom on the flinty foot of the Mountain of Fears.

“The tribe had camped, as I have said, across the valley on the edge of the forest, but each day they came to see us, and we laughed at their surprise when they saw that all was well. We held them with beads and baubles and food and friendliness—chiefly the latter, for natives, like dogs, love to place allegiance with the higher mentality. One was puzzled that physical need had not run counter to superstition, for despite the plenty of the valley we found no trace of other inhabitants.

“Perhaps, we had been three weeks in the valley, when one night I awoke dripping with perspiration and with a sense of nameless ill. ‘A nightmare,’ thought I, ‘of which the color is lost and only the depression remains.’ It held me broad awake—and then for the first time I fully realized the nauseous reek of the fever-fog. One smelled odors which seemed to emanate from the entrails of the earth. You know, Doctor, the nauseous, charnel stench of rotting insects and vegetation, with the fetid breath of the flower that issues from the mouth of a great, carnivorous plant? You have seen these trap-like flowers, if one may call them such, which grow in the botanical gardens of Demerara? Br’r’r’rgh! And as I lay, hot and cold and clammy, with a heavy weight upon my chest, and thought of how we had lain and breathed that thin effluvium, the vehicle for myriad infusoria and plasmodiæ, this hypochondriac fear became reasonable, and I marveled that we were still alive.

“Vinckers and MacFarlane slept heavily, torpidly, and their breathing was the stertorous gasping of drunkards. We lay in hammocks of plaited grass under a shelter of thatch; the girl’s hammock was beside MacFarlane; and as I lay there, broad awake and still depressed, my lungs half drowned in the dense humor of the valley and my ears ringing from the clamorous insect mob without, I heard a stifled, whimpering cry—the moan of a little child who has been whipped for inheriting nerves. It struck a chill—there was a great deal that was chill in that place of hot fears, cold passions, joyless content and light-hearted sloth—a place where one’s skin crept clammily while the bones were burning.

“‘Who is that?’ I asked, quite loudly, for I did not care if the others awoke.

“There came in answer the whimper of one too frightened to speak. Did you ever, as a child, Doctor, waken with the nightmare, afraid to cry out, afraid to move, tortured by the whimpers wrung out in reasonless terror? It was that kind of a sound.

“‘What is it?’ I asked.

“‘It is Tomba.’

“‘What is the matter with you?’ said I.

“‘I am afraid.’

“‘And what are you afraid of?’

“She found her voice then and began to tell me, but there my limited knowledge of the dialect failed, for I had no such linguistic scope as to-day, when one dialect more or less is simply a matter of ear and comparison. There was something in her speech of devils and death, and she kept repeating this and I do not know what besides—and then, as I was trying to reassure her as one might a child or a horse, less through the reason than the senses, the soothing of primitive sounds, a startling thing occurred. MacFarlane, whose breathing had become more labored, like that of a man rapidly climbing the ladder of consciousness from deep oblivion, gasped once or twice and awoke with a scream. Vinckers, roused with the echo ringing in his ears, awoke with a muffled shout—a strangled, bleating shout such as might come from a slaughtered animal. MacFarlane, but half awake, screamed again. At this Tomba’s breathless terror found outlet in a shriek that swept out under the low mist, struck the mountain-side and quavered away in countless reverberations.

“Vinckers shouted again and leaped from his hammock.

“‘Be still, you fool!’ I cried, roughly.

“‘Wha—wha—wha——’ quavered MacFarlane.

“‘What’s the matter with you?’ I cried, impatiently. ‘Are you a couple of girls just out of a convent?’

“‘What is the matter?’ asked Vinckers, thickly. Tomba was sobbing hysterically.

“‘MacFarlane wakes up with a nightmare!’ said I, ‘and sets you howling like a maniac.’ My own fright made me irritable.

“‘Odd,’ muttered Vinckers; ‘odd—I had a nightmare, too.’

“‘Ye hag-ridden fule,’ snarled MacFarlane, ‘bawlin’ and yammerin’ like a bull! I had no nightmare mysel’!’ He rolled heavily in his hammock. ‘Fetch me a drink o’ water, lass—water!’ he added, in the vernacular.

“Vinckers sat up in his hammock, let his feet hang over the side and, dropping his head between his heavy shoulders, stared down the valley. There was a moon somewhere behind the mist; this mist, diaphanous, vague, of any depth, yet lifted well above our heads, shone, not white, or colorless, as a vapor should, but a golden yellow; everything seemed golden, was becoming more golden daily the longer we stayed in that place of mockeries, and the reason of this was based on something more solid than a sentiment. What was the name of that drug, Doctor, which when ingested gives the yellow tinge to the vision? Santonica?—yes, perhaps that was it; perhaps its alkaloids were contained in that fatty fruit; perhaps it was only that the moon was one of those ripe, luscious, golden moons one sees on the equator. At any rate, the light came not pale and ghastly, as it should have been, but a luscious golden yellow; and that made it the more unearthly, as it illumined and gave a golden color to these dream objects—the fan-palms, the vague rock-heaps, the vistas between which should have been ethereal, but, because of this succulent, sickly yellow light, were too material; and the aroma, which should have been dank, no doubt, but elusive, was a physical stench. Ach! a witch-fire would have burned in that place like a fat pine torch; one would have scorched one’s hands near a feu-follet; there was a ponderosity to this place of ghosts. Can you conceive a fat ghost, Doctor—a fat, unclean ghost, who has clanked around, dragging his ball and chain until the sweat pours down his fat face—a malodorous sweat—a sweat that physically offends while it frightens? Once in my youth, in Leipsic, I went into the anatomical laboratory, and there was on the table a fat subject—a woman—and she still wore some gold-washed rings and had some baubles in her ears of too mean value to appeal to the cupidity of whoever had fetched her there. Br’r’r’rgh! She was pathetic, of course, but I was not old enough to feel that then. I can never forget how much more awful she was to me than were the thin, meager, attenuated subjects who were consistent with the place. It was such a ripe, rotten ghastliness as this that was held in that valley which glimmered away at the foot of the Mountain of Fears.”

Leyden paused, quivering, shuddering. One did not need to see him silhouetted against the phosphorescence to see that he shuddered; he was in a tremor, and the light from the rook kamer striking his strong, keen, nervous face showed that it was damp, wet, viscid with a moisture other than the humor of the Gulf Stream. He was living the thing over again with all of his high-strung, Teuton nervousness; and suddenly it struck me that it was hardly decent to let him go on—that it was my duty to interrupt him, just as it has been my duty at times to interrupt the unpleasant indulgences of other morbid impulses. But, on the other hand, speech is the safety valve of the mind; also, it is just to sit passively and watch for the symptom which states the case.

“Vinckers observed this thing,” continued Leyden. “Vinckers was an unimaginative man, and consequently the impression on him was as it would have been upon a dry plate, or the tracings of a seismograph, or any other machine which records automatically without contributing anything of its own. Vinckers was rather low in the animal scale—by low I mean primitive; as a man he was a splendid specimen, but he was animal enough to get rather more from his instincts than from his reasoning—like most women. He watched this thing, this yellow light coming through the mist and touching with its sickly yellow tinge all of the fantastic objects in the picture that belonged to the imaginative school of painting. He looked quite steadily at the dream-trees, too symmetrical to be real; the fantastic rock shapes, too fancifully grotesque to be the work of nature; he observed the yellow light upon the sluggish stream, which flowed like molasses, and looked rather like it, too; the fringe of the forest—in fact, all of the component parts of the picture just as some morbid painting genius would have placed them—and Vinckers growled like a dog who sees something moving about the camp-fire invisible to his master.”

Leyden turned to me insistently, claiming my corroboration of all this that he had worked out through hypertrophied recollection. “Is it not true, Doctor, that logic supplants instinct; that as soon as we learned how to tell by deduction where the person we sought had gone we were no longer able to lay our noses to the ground and decide the matter?” He began to maunder again—his auto-philosophy which was so hard to follow. “There are plenty of plants in nature which would poison the animals of the section if instinct did not prompt them to avoid these; a man will often eat of something and subsequently wonder at the cause of his derangement; the animal will know and avoid this thing. At that time I was conscious of a morbid physical condition, but was unable to trace its source. Vinckers, lacking imagination, knew at once. ‘Heaven,’ I heard him mutter, ‘was there ever such a mockery! We come to look for gold and we land in—quarantine!’ It struck me as a new idea and I almost laughed. Gold and death, sickness and disease! How appropriate that they should be unichromatic! But it was Vinckers’ next words which struck me. ‘It is that accursed corpse-wax!’ he muttered, ‘that greasy stuff that we have been growing fat on!’ Ugh! You see, Doctor, he was able to link physically cause and effect.

“MacFarlane began to mutter. Tomba brought him some water and he drank thirstily, swallowing with the audible gulps of a horse.

“‘I’m feverish,’ he said, panting from the long draught, ‘verra nervous and feverish. ’Tis a feverish place, this.’

“‘It’s rotten with fever!’ growled Vinckers, who, like myself, spoke English better than the Scotchman. ‘It stinks of fever—smell it! We were fools to stay here so long.’

“‘We are a pack of lotus-eaters,’ said I. ‘You are right, Vinckers; it is this accursed stuff we have been eating—this adiposcere! We will get out of here to-morrow.’

“‘Do you feel as if your inside was filled with lead, Leyden?’ asked Vinckers.

“‘It is worse than that,’ said I—‘molten lead.’

“You see, Doctor, we had been living on this rich, fatty stuff, which certainly contained a great deal of oil and I do not know what else besides—narcotics, no doubt. You know the richness of an avocado? They will tell you in some places that this fruit produces biliousness, but I have never heard that it had a soporific effect, as undoubtedly had the myela fruit. Then we had taken no exercise.

“I think that night was hotter than most; we could not sleep, so up we got and smoked and discussed our plans for the future—at least, we started to discuss them, but even as we argued a lethargy came over us, and one by one we fell asleep, though dreading to do so and striving to keep awake through fear of another nightmare. An odd condition, Doctor, this drowsy fearsomeness; no doubt like a patient narcotized before an operation; dread fighting a drug until the latter triumphs and the patient whimpers off into fear-filled somnolence.

“The sun came to suck away the fever-mist and with it much of our dread. We laughed at the fears of the night and awaited the coming of the Papuans, but awaited in vain. I think, Doctor, that Tomba’s scream had floated across the valley, telephonic beneath the mist to reach the listeners in the hills. At any rate, no human thing came near us that day. Later, when the shadows began to lengthen again, we wandered out, Vinckers and I, prospecting towards the native camp—I with a rifle, watchful for game, Vinckers humming to himself an old Dutch tune, careless in the full force of the sunlight, wandering behind me and clicking on the rocks with his little hammer.

“I was strangely lacking in breath as I climbed the hillside; as for Vinckers, he halted at the end of a hundred steps and would go up no further. Back at our camp MacFarlane lay smoking, with his head in the lap of the girl. I alone toiled up the slope, soft in heart and fibre, the sweat pouring from me in streams, sodden, with the spring gone out of my ankles and everything about me of a strange, sickly yellow hue which darkened as my breath came faster.

“I found the Papuans departed, so back I went, blubbering with breathlessness, muttering, fatigued, depressed, sluggish with sleep. Vinckers I found with his back against a rock, sleeping heavily. As I bent to rouse him my eyes fell upon a specimen which lay between his knees, and I saw that the little hammer had cleft it open to lay bare a thick band of virgin gold. Vinckers had tapped at the door of Fortune and she had opened, and Vinckers had looked within and—fallen asleep! Had the goddess ever a more loutish lover? He was sweating, too, in his sleep, and I saw where the sweat had left a yellow stain upon his neckerchief, and as the late sun struck him it seemed to me that his skin also was of a chromish tint. You know the flabby pallor of the clay-eater? It was like that, fat and flabby, but yellow rather than pale.

“Back we went to the camp, where MacFarlane still lay and smoked or slept with his ugly, shaggy head in the lap of Tomba.

“‘Gold!’ I said, ‘the mountain is full of it. It lies about loose here on the hillside, think of what it must be yonder where the mountain springs have done our hydraulic mining and washing in the same formation!’ I pointed above us to the flank of the Malang-o-mor; the late sun struck it aslant, throwing sharp, purple shadows into the numberless seams and fissures eroded in the crumbling crust; it flashed as it had each evening and glowed redly; high above, as the sun sank lower, the quartz beds threw back the deepening azure of the sky.

“‘Perhaps it is gold,’ said I, ‘that bright stuff which glitters so; at any rate there is gold to be had for the taking, while we lie here and bloat and rot and waken screaming in the night. To-morrow we must go up.’

“‘I’m no fit mysel’, lad,’ said MacFarlane. ‘I hae the fever; I maun rest.’

“‘You will rest here through eternity,’ said I, ‘if you do not come away at once. You are yellow as a Chinaman and there’s not a line left in your face.’ And with the aid of the girl I set about preparing a meal.”

Leyden sucked in his breath sharply—filled his deep lungs like a man coming out of the dense, polluted atmosphere of a crowded car or clinic.

“That night I awoke thrice, and each time a cold terror was clamping my heart, until I seemed to shrivel in the utter obliteration of all else. The dread was featureless; there was no dream, only this crushing, numbing, withering fear which froze sound and motion; and I lay and listened to the quick, faint tick-tick-tick of my heart-beats and waited to die—and, instead, I slept again, even while sweating with fear. The last time I remained awake; and as conscience dawned fuller this fear sat upon the distorted objects of the place, the swinging bulks of my companions, the dark roof, and as I looked out into the lambent, mellow-lighted valley fear walked beneath the vague, symmetrical palms and the shimmering umbrella-trees and lurked in the recesses of the fantastic rocks. Fear walked on the water of the oily, sluggish river that flowed with the sheen of molten gold through raw, eroded banks where the lips of the rocks protruded like the ragged edge of an ulcer.

“I lay inert, paralyzed, and presently heard a faint, shuddering sigh; presently a moan, deep, hopeless, almost expiring.

“‘Are you awake, Vinckers?’ I managed to whisper, and my tongue could hardly articulate the words.

“‘Yes—are you, MacFarlane?’

“‘Ou aye, ou aye—what is it—oh, what is it, man?’

“‘Have you had the nightmare?’ I asked.

“‘Yes—without the dream—only the fear—what is it?’

“‘Ou, lads, we maun leave this place as soon as ’tis light——’

“‘Hush!—ah, hush!’ whispered Vinckers. ‘I am burning up—come over here, Leyden—I am afraid to move—I was never afraid before—never in my life—ah—what was that!’

“‘Ah, tush, man!’ MacFarlane’s rough voice choked. ‘D’ye want to drive the heart of a man from his body? Tomba, lass, Tomba!’ There was no reply.

“‘Tomba!’ said I, sharply. ‘Tomba—Tomba!’

“‘Hush!—ah, hush!’ whispered Vinckers.

“‘Why shall I hush?’ said I, and my voice was shaking. ‘Waken her, MacFarlane.’

“The Scotchman thrust out his great arm slowly, and in the faint yellow light I saw him snatch it quickly away; heard the choking rattle in his throat; felt my own heart flickering like a candle burned low.

“‘Ou—ou—ou——’

“‘Hush—hush—s’h’hh!’ whispered Vinckers.

“And then, Doctor”—Leyden’s voice had sunk until one scarce caught the bitter mockery—“I did the bravest act of my life. I slid out of my hammock.” Leyden laughed in a way that sent a chill through me.

“Can you understand, Doctor? Do you know what fear is? Did you ever awake suddenly from a dreamless sleep with a devitalizing fear crushing the very blood out of your heart? No dream—no recollection—only the fear sometimes hung like a black mantle over the nearest object, no matter how familiar. Purely reasonless—the organ acting on the cell; an inversion of effect on cause. In our own case, if one presumed that our diet, or water, or the fever, or any other extrinsic cause had deranged the organ—perhaps the liver—and thus poisoned the cell—the single center of Fear—as some drugs affect other centers—murderous—erotic—as Charcot, I believe it is, demonstrates that the odor of certain perfumes will throw the hypnotized patient into paroxysms of fear——

“I never did a thing so difficult as to get on my feet and walk to the hammock of that poor girl. She was quite dead—and the wet frost of the fear which had killed her lay moist and chill on face and breast. I did not dare to light a match to look at her; there is a limit, Doctor, to the courage of every man. I was never really frightened before; I can never remember being really frightened since; and my profession is one of countless risks to life. This was something far, far worse—the reason stampeding with the will——

“Then the lethargy crept on again. I crawled back to my hammock and, still fighting the fear, fell asleep. The others slept before I—and I could hear them whining and whimpering like young puppies taken from the litter.

“I was the first to awaken when the light came. My fear was gone and I lay drenched in perspiration, yet comfortable, unwilling to rouse myself.

“‘Oh, the awfu’ nicht!’ moaned MacFarlane, and covered his face with his gnarled hands. Vinckers did not speak, but shouldered his kit.

“‘Let us go,’ he said, and we filed away from the place without looking back at the cannibal girl in the plaited hammock, her drawn face covered with the Scotchman’s only neckerchief.

“We wandered down the valley looking for a place to ford the stream and begin the ascent. We had no carriers, no goods, no especial hopes, but these things did not trouble us. We wandered along the banks of the dream-river and beneath the symmetrical trees, and filed between the fantastic rocks, which, from habit alone, we tapped with our little hammers; and still the sun had not looked over the edge of the eastern rampart of the valley, and we journeyed in the shadow of the Mountain of Fears. The Mountain of Fears—the Mountain of Fears—and nothing but peace on every hand! Nothing of harm—no danger of man or beast, nothing of heat, nothing of cold—a misty, dreamy peace; the dreads of the night supplanted by an apathetic shame which forbade discussion of these things. As for Tomba—why, she died of fever, poor girl—what else?

“We wandered down the valley and soon we came to a ford; there we crossed and toiled on up the slope of the mountain—up, up, up, panting, sweating, breathless, not clear as to purpose, but struggling to get up because—we did not know! As we climbed we tapped at the stones, because we were used to tapping and chipping with our little hammers, and when we halted for the night we were high up on a wooded plateau, and the air was fine and thin and sweet with healthy odors of moss and fern and clean flowers. We were on the hip of the Mountain of Fears.

“We crouched on the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley as the sun slipped over the crest of the opposite hills and drew after it the curtain of mist which hid the greasy river and the unreal trees and the jumping rocks, which from above looked like Titan children frozen at play. The mist hid all of these things, but now we were above instead of beneath it. Before it grew denser it formed a thin, flat pale through which one might look and see these objects, symmetrical and bizarre, fantastic and uncouth, which lay beneath, as one looks down through the thin water-line of a clear but stagnant pool and sees the fairy-like structures of an alien element. ‘To-night,’ thought I, ‘we shall not slumber in that cistern.’ It seemed to me in that thin, bracing air, that we had wriggled to the surface like the larvæ of mosquitoes, and, after incessantly gyrating up and down, had crawled clear and grown our wings in the drier medium. But even while thinking these things the sun slipped down behind the opposite hills, the mist thickened, a cold draught sucked around the side of the mountain, and I heard Vinckers let out his breath with a shudder. I had noticed that each evening we grew depressed as soon as the sun was gone.

“‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, God!’ he shuddered. ‘Don’t you see that it is all getting yellow again—a nasty, greenish yellow?’

“‘Ou aye,’ said MacFarlane, ‘but it has been yellow all day!’

“It had a yellowish tinge to me, Doctor, but I had tried to persuade myself that it was something in the spectrum of that equatorial sun and the vivid greens which filled the valley. There was no denying that as the sunrays left the air the yellows came out with frightful intensity, and to my imagination it seemed as if we were cursed with the curse of Midas—a curse because we had profaned the Malang-o-mor, except that it was not necessary to touch a thing to turn it into gold. Of course, at that time I knew nothing of such things as xanthopsia, and my mind rebelled at aught of a superstitious character. The result was that I became worried and confused—like a dog listening at the receiver of a telephone to a sourceless voice. With Vinckers and MacFarlane it was different; they were of the unimaginative type which goes at one leap from stubborn disbelief to frenzied superstition—and just because everything was turning yellow they would not raise their voices above a whisper.

“We had practically nothing wherewith to camp; in fact, we had come to wandering through that dream-country with only dream-needs—the needs of an opium-eater or any other slave of the lamp. Of course, we had some of the fruit—the stuff that grew on the Mountain of Fears—I have never seen it anywhere else. We made a shelter and crept in to sleep.

“I suppose that it was hot enough, but for a month we had dwelt in the steam-room of a Turkish bath. Being younger and stronger, I had given my poncho to Vinckers, who had felt the chill of the higher air. Perhaps it was this circumstance which brought me through the night with my reason, for the cold wakened me before that moment of low-ebbing vitality which comes between midnight and dawn. I awoke shivering, dew-damp with the terror of the night before, and as I lay there waiting I heard the other two twitching and muttering. I suppose that I should have awakened them.

“The moonlight, which should have been clear on the mountain, was yellow as in the valley below; the moon was still high, and we lay in the shadow, but as I waited it passed the zenith and began its swift descent, and soon the lower rim was cut by the edge of our leafy roof. For an hour no sound had come from the others, no stir; they had lain like dead men; and in my abject nervelessness I was afraid to investigate, but waited until the moon should sink lower and look directly into the place. MacFarlane was nearest me, and as the moon sank lower the yellow light crept up his body, which was motionless, as if carved in stone. It reached a hand lying palm downward on his thigh, and I saw that the back glistened with moisture. The sharp, golden moon-ray crept higher, and I watched breathlessly for his face, my own still in the shadow. His straggling beard turned golden; I saw his yellow teeth gleaming, the bristling lips drawn up and the breath hissing between in quick gasps. ‘He is having the nightmare,’ I thought, and might have found courage to awaken him, but at that moment the light shone full in his face, and I saw that his eyes were wide open, fixed, staring, brimming with an anguish of dread before which my soul shrank. He was staring straight in front of him at Vinckers, who was stretched out at his side, and as I watched, the moonlight fell on his face and showed his eyes also wide open and staring straight into those of MacFarlane.

“For perhaps five minutes—five hours it seemed to me—these two lay inert, stricken paralytic from dread, gazing each one into the crazed eyes of the other, motionless, soundless—while I, watching from the shadow, saw the water trickle down their yellow faces in little, golden drops. Then, with a consciousness of the danger of this thing, I tried to break the spell—and did!

“‘Vinckers!’ I croaked, and before the sound of my voice had died away Vinckers screamed—a rasping, throat-splitting scream, straight into MacFarlane’s face. MacFarlane gurgled and his eyes opened and shut rapidly. Vinckers screamed again—and at this something inside me which I was striving to hold in check, some irresistible impulse, seemed suddenly to tear away—and sweep my will before it—at least, this is a nice way of putting it, Doctor——”

Into Leyden’s voice there had crept again that biting mockery which was almost jaunty in tone.

“It is so,” he continued, “that one auto-analytic—a student of psychology—his own—might refer to these subjective symptoms. The brutal stranger watching this phenomenon would spell it in five letters—P-A-N-I-C—an elemental emotion which can be the source of much learned argumentation—and stamp the lives out of women and little children—and grab all of the lifeboats—and has! Yet it is an emotion quite common to certain low types of humanity, the kind who do their thinking with their spinal cord—and it is one of those lovely primitive, primordial, brutal, unregenerate and degraded emotions of which certain others of its type, such as ungoverned lust and anger and revenge, are much admired by many modern devotees, the bestial primitive—to my mind all of these things sweep together through the same sluice.”

There are no words which will convey the bitterness of Leyden’s tone; mockery soared high in comparison.

“B’r’r’rrgh! how I loathe all such unicellular impulses in a man—a finished animal product! And that night on that mountain I yelped and howled in fear with those other two hairy animals—and I think that we fought and bit and struggled, for the next morning we were masses of minor wounds. Yet so far had we harked back on the trail of our savage forbears, driven screaming before that primitive and degraded passion of fear, that none of us was badly hurt!—which was even more shameful. I suppose, Doctor, that our terror was too elemental and reasonless to lead us to use weapons, whereas our limbs lacked the strength to enable us to kill each other with our naked hands; so that, instead of digging out each other’s hearts with our finger-nails, we suffered most from skin-scratches, upon which the flies settled. Ach!—I should like to say an obscene word, Doctor! Let’s smoke!—let’s have a drink!

“Oh, yes—we all came away the next day. Nothing happened to us—just as there was nothing to be afraid of. Please tell me that it was all due to a toxic action on the center of Fear—that is what I tell myself—and what a savant of Leipsic was good enough to tell me. Nevertheless, when I met MacFarlane in Sydney four years ago I crossed to the other side of the street—and he looked once and then away. There are some things in a man’s past difficult to face; most difficult in mine is that last night on the broad hip of the Mountain of Fears.”

OIL AND WATER

WE were skirting the Island of Margherita, which belongs to Venezuela and produces pearls of small size but excellent quality. I was smoking an after-dinner cigar with Dr. Leyden, the collector, who earns his living by supplying museums and professors with specimens from the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds.

“Did you ever notice, Doctor,” he asked, suddenly, “how African blood is curdled by being mixed with Anglo-Saxon?”

“I had always thought,” said I, “that African blood mixes badly with any other.”

“No. With Latin blood it will combine like whisky and soda, but the Anglo-Saxon plasma exerts upon it an action like that of alcohol upon albumen——” He paused and absently followed the course of a school of flying-fish that flickered suddenly from the swash alongside and skittered away across the dancing waves.

“What suggested this topic to your mind?” I asked, curiously, for we had been discussing the relative naval strength of Germany and the United States.

“That island.” He nodded toward Margherita as it rose, rough in outline, but with the misty softness of distance, from the quiet, pink and purple sea. The sun was resting on the rim of the sky-line, and its late rays bathed the lavender slopes of the mountains, that rose in tumbling confusion, their summits blazing with high-lights and their feet already clothed in slanting shadows.

Almost as we watched, the sun slipped under the sea; a multi-colored breeze rippled the face of the water; opalescent flashes sparkled here and there from the sails of the little Portuguese men-of-war, and then the day-light began to wane, as it seemed, in rhythmic beats.

“Odd,” continued Leyden, clinging with Teutonic persistency to his theory, conscious but unaffected by his exquisite surroundings. “The popular idea is that an individual having a drop of African blood is more negro than white, even though the white predominates, as in the case of a quadroon or octoroon. This is wrong, Doctor. The white is by far the more potent strain, but, because it is more apt to color the mind than the skin, it is not recognized as such.”

“Primitive organizations are usually more virile,” I began.

“It is not of the physical but of the mental that I speak!” he interrupted, a bit testily. “It is an undeserved compliment to the negro and an unjust insult to the white to claim that a man having an equal amount of both strains is more black than white, but if the white strain is Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian, then he is both white and black, and all of each, for they will mix no more than oil and water.”

He was silent again, and I waited, for I knew that he would presently back his theory by an illustration.

“You know Margherita?” I asked, presently, to help him get under way.

“Better than is necessary,” he replied, and was silent again. The swift tropic twilight had almost faded; the slopes of the mountains were somber with mysterious shadows; a huge cumulus cloud, still crimson about its edges, was stranded on the highest peaks, and above it a dainty crescent moon was swiftly growing brighter.

“Let us go aft,” muttered Leyden. “These cattle make too much noise!”

He was quite right, for that part of the deck was infested by our fellow-passengers; the Venezuelans were chattering like a band of apes; naked babies lived and moved and had their unclean little beings where they listed; near us a British engineer was arguing in Spanish with a German coffee planter, and behind him an Austrian Jew who had been buying pearls in Margherita was showing his wares to the wife of a Dutch officer returning to Curaçao from a visit to relatives in Surinam, and the two were chattering away in voluble French. Our captain, a fine specimen of a Hollander, was playing chess with an Italian, and the latter was winning, having no ship on the coast and his brain unfilled with plans regarding the securing of a cargo for Havre or Amsterdam. Through the crowd came a stolid Dutch quartermaster, picking his way along the deck to read the taffrail-log, which he did, and returned oblivious to all but the number in his head, as I could see from the moving of his lips as he muttered it over to himself.

Leyden led the way aft to the grating beside the hand steering-gear—the place where we usually held our sessions of swapping experiences. I drew out a fresh cigar and the German lit his big porcelain pipe, an apparatus especially adapted to the needs of the raconteur, as one could take a puff or two and then bank the fire until the next stopping-place.

“It was several years ago,” he began. “I had been sent up the Orinoco by an American university, a new one in the Middle West, to which some sausage-maker had given a fortune to build and stock a museum of natural history. The president of the university sent for me; I can never sufficiently admire the capability of this young man for his position. He took me into the museum and showed me at least a kilometer of empty shelves.

“‘This place must be chock-a-block by commencement time,’ said he. ‘I have four men at work in North America, two in South America, four in Europe——’ and so on, all over the face of the earth. ‘I wish you to take charge of South America, north of the Amazon. There is a man in the Amazon Valley chasing up the fish and reptiles, and one in Peru, out for mammals. You are to get after the birds and insects; of course, if you should happen to run across anything rare that’s not in your line just gather it in, anyway.’ He glanced at some typewritten memoranda. ‘That ought to give us an A1 stock of South American goods, and before we get through if we don’t have Putney University bluffed off the boards I’ll go to h——’”

Leyden paused, and I heard his china stove splutter as he laughed softly.

“It was a good outfit, that of mine—the best I have ever had. There were four large boats, with a crew of five men in each. As quantity was required as well as quality, I stocked up as if for a trading expedition. You know, Doctor, natives are themselves born collectors; moreover, an observant savage knows a rare thing when he sees it. I have had a large experience with aborigines and know the capriciousness of their tastes. The objects which one would expect to attract them they often positively refuse to look at, while for something else they are ready to do murder. If a man is fortunate enough to strike a popular fancy he can buy a whole tribe. And that is what I proposed to do.

“There was a friend of mine in New York, a German, who had traded on the Orinoco, and from him I formed some ideas in regard to trade-stuffs, for, you see, it was my plan to subsidize some tribe and have them doing my collecting while I stopped in camp to pack and preserve specimens. Before leaving New York I went to one of the big wholesale ‘notion’ stores on Broadway and explained my needs to the superintendent. The first thing which he showed me—as a joke, I believe—was a consignment of fawn-colored opera hats which had been made for some minstrel company which went into the hands of the receiver before the goods were delivered. They were light and folded compactly, and you know how savages delight in elaborate head-gear. I bought three dozen for twenty dollars. Then I bought two dozen harmonicas and two dozen bright jew’s-harps. Of course, I got the usual stock goods—fishhooks, calico prints, aniline dyes—and finally the proprietor, who had a keen sense of humor, presented me with a case of four dozen old-fashioned iron spectacle frames which contained no glasses. As I wear spectacles myself, I decided that possibly I might set a fashion up in Orinoco, and accordingly took them along.”

Leyden paused to turn the forced draught on his tobacco crucible, and in the silence I caught odd snatches of conversation in at least five different tongues: “Tres pien marche—tres pien marche,” came the guttural voice of the pearl-buyer. “Cuanto por la picinia,” from the Venezuelans, followed by a snigger of that peculiar note that goes with an improper anecdote; a sort of falsetto giggle—everyone knows the kind. Then the captain got checkmated, and swore a good, hearty Dutch oath that sounded strangely clean and honest and wholesome as compared to the staccato fragments on all sides.

“I had my outfit towed up as far as Ciudad Bolivar,” Leyden continued. “There I found a German named Meyers, who had a big trading station. He told me in confidence that he was planning to call in his loans, as far as he was able, and leave the country, as the rapacity of the new government made it impossible to carry on a profitable trade. He was a man of about fifty, unmarried, and had lived at least half of his life on the river.

“It happened that my lieutenant, a young German-American named Lefferts, had contracted the fever on the way up the river. He was the son of an old friend of mine in New York, and I had promised to take care of him. You have had some experience in tropical malaria, Doctor. Or perhaps it is not malaria; at any rate, one dies in rather an indecent hurry, and quinine is about as efficient as so much flour. I sent the lad back on the steamer and asked Meyers if he knew of any one with whom to replace him—a white man, of course, as it is always well to have at least two white men when there are things to steal.

“When I asked the question it seemed to me that Meyers’ pale yellow face took on a more lifelike color.

“‘There is a young man in my employ whom you might persuade to go,’ said he. ‘At present he is keeping the store. I will send for him—but I beg of you not to say a word concerning what I have mentioned in regard to my returning to Germany.’

“‘Certainly not,’ said I. Meyers gave an order to a servant, and a few minutes later I saw a broad-shouldered young fellow walking toward the house. Even before he came within hail his striking resemblance to Meyers told me what he was.

“Few men could have told that he was not a German born, and still fewer that African blood flowed through his veins, but my calling is one which demands close powers of observation. His hair was of a light brown, straight, but utterly without lustre; his blue eyes had a muddy tinge, and his skin, although fair, had that peculiar purple tint of raw meat which one sees in blonds with African corpuscles.

“Meyers explained my needs, and the young man, whose name was Frederick, listened attentively, as I did also, for as the older man talked I became conscious of an odd accent of fear in his voice. Each time that his natural son turned his eyes in his direction Meyers would seem to recoil and his voice would grow faint and irresolute. It did not take me long to see that the trader was in mortal terror of his offspring.

“Frederick listened, as it seemed to me, a bit sulkily, and once or twice gave Meyers a sidelong glance of suspicion, as if he was trying to discover some ulterior motive—which indeed was not lacking, as I very well knew that Meyers would not be there when I returned, and I more than half suspected that Meyers would have left before had it not been for Frederick.

“‘What will you pay?’ he asked, suddenly, turning to me. I told him.

“‘It is not much,’ he observed, in a surly voice.

“‘I am not urging you to come,’ I replied, quietly. ‘There is the proposition; take it or leave it.’

“‘I will let you know in the morning,’ said he, and left us with no salutation.

“When he had gone Meyers turned to me with a weak and somewhat frightened smile.

“‘I think that he will go,’ said he. ‘He is fond of money. Of course’—he smiled in a way that made me want to kick him—‘you understand—the—eh—my position——’

“‘No’—I answered a bit brutally, I fear—‘I don’t. If you care enough about him to educate him as you appear to have done, why do you want to desert him?’

“He shrank as if I had struck him, and for a moment seemed on the verge of collapse, then recovered and clapped his hands feebly. A yellow girl, in an unclean pinafore which rather emphasized the nakedness beneath, flopped out of the house, holding her frock partly together with one hand, and asked what he wanted.

“‘Schiedam and bitters—and bring a water-monkey,’ he answered. Rather to my surprise, the wench did as she was bid, favoring me with a rather bold stare.

“It was intensely hot—just before the afternoon shower. We were sitting on the raised veranda of Meyers’ house, and down below us the river oozed along, viscid and brown and sticky-looking, like molasses flowing out of a stove-in vat. The clouds were banking up black and forbidding on the other side of the stream, and occasionally a rumble of thunder reached us.

“‘You do not know—do not understand,’ said Meyers, finally. He raised one skinny, mottled hand to his red, untidy beard, which was getting gray around his muzzle, like an old collie, which, in fact, he somewhat resembled. ‘Of course, you see the relationship.’ His fingers massaged his lips, a frequent gesture with people of vacillating character. ‘I was fond of him as a boy and flattered myself that his negro blood was in no way evident, though his mother was a mulatto—but it was only in process of incubation; it has since shown itself—not physically, but in more sinister manifestations: in the workings of his mind.’ He reached for his gin-and-bitters, slopping half of it down the front of his tunic. ‘My conscience demands that I should warn you,’ he went on, after gulping down his gin and wiping his gray muzzle on his sleeve. ‘He is intelligent, and when not crossed his disposition is cheerful and kind—when not crossed, you observe, because it is when his resentment is aroused that the black blood comes all to the surface. At such times he is a fiend incarnate—but there is no reason why in your case any such condition should arise.’ He glanced about him nervously, then hunched his chair closer to mine. ‘I will tell you something that you would never guess,’ said he, pushing his face toward mine until his gin-soaked bristles almost touched my cheek. ‘At times’—his voice dropped to a whisper—‘at times I am actually in fear of him!’

“‘Do you think that he will accept my offer?’ I asked, leaning backward, for the man was getting momentarily more repugnant to me.

“B’r’r’gh!” Leyden arose suddenly and, walking to the taffrail, spat into the water. “I can see the fellow yet, Doctor,” he said, turning to me apologetically. “He—and his unhealthy, exotic surroundings, that were partly luxurious, partly rotten, like one of those beautiful carnivorous orchids with their wonderful tints and charnel-house odor—mauve and carmine outside and inside full of decaying insects. Meyers was rich, and he had a fine house and a beautiful garden, and European delicacies, and books, and objets de vertu, but his setting was poisonous! Mangroves and fever and humid heat—and whenever you went in and out of his place you would catch a glimpse of slatternly, half-naked native women poking and prying and getting out of the way. Then he would receive you in a limp, unbuttoned sort of a way—you know the type.

“He was of exceptionally good family and a man of highest education, but I fancied that he had pretty well degenerated——”

Eight bells were struck forward, and Leyden paused to strike a match and hold it to the dial of the log. The Dutch captain came aft at the same moment and held the lighted end of his cigar against the dial. He paused to chat with us for a moment, then went forward to see if the youthful mate on the bridge was still awake, for the strain of work is terrific on the coast, and I doubt if the mates had averaged four hours’ sleep in the twenty-four for a week.

“Frederick finally decided to accept my offer,” Leyden went on, “and the next day we left Bolivar and proceeded up the river. I explained my project to Frederick, who told me that he knew of a tribe located near the head of one of the tributaries of the Orinoco, whom he had once visited on a trading expedition, and, as I judged that the district should be rich in the material of which I was in search, I decided to visit it.

“It was tedious working up that everlasting stream; hot, too, for there was seldom a breeze, and sometimes it seemed to me that the dome of humidity rising from that sluggish river acted as a lens, or burning glass, to focus upon us the rays of that withering sun. My crews turned out well; a few had the fever, but what surprised me was that Frederick seemed to suffer from the heat more than any of us. Yet he was a useful man—a good driver, although it seemed to me at times that he was unnecessarily abusive.

“Once we entered the tributary, the ——, it was much better, for there we could keep in the shade of the great forest which rose right from the banks. I had already secured quite a number of specimens, and was altogether much satisfied by the way in which things were going.

“One peculiarity of Frederick which I had several times noticed was his personal vanity, a trait which at times made him ridiculous. I had observed the covetousness with which he regarded some of my personal effects, and had given him several trifles, among them a pair of bright yellow leather puttee-leggins, at which his delight was like that of a child. That was the African. The contraptions were too hot for me, too hot for anybody, but Frederick wore them constantly.

“I had not said much about my trading junk, thinking that he might regard me as a business rival, but one evening when we were encamped on the edge of the river I had the case of hats opened, as I had noticed the ants coming out of the crevices and wanted to see if the goods were damaged. I drew one of them out, punched it open, and was examining it, when I happened to glance at Frederick, who was standing near. His eyes were fairly bulging and his loose mouth agape.

“‘Why have you those hats, Doctor?’ he gasped, in astonishment.

“‘Trading stuff,’ I answered. ‘Do you think that the natives will like them?’

“‘The natives! But they are far too good! They are beautiful hats, such as gentlemen wear in the United States, are they not?’

“I glanced at him curiously, and saw that he was looking at that hat as a starving man might look at a loaf of bread. Really, in spite of Meyers having given him what would be equal to a good high-school education, the man was simple as a savage, and he had never been away from the Orinoco.

“‘You appear to admire them,’ I answered, carelessly; ‘perhaps you might like one yourself. They are light, and should be cool.’

“His eyes glistened; he could hardly thank me, he was so pleased. I overhauled the lot until I found one that fitted him, and after that he wore it constantly, to the great admiration of the native crews.

“A few days later we found the tribe, with whom I immediately opened negotiations. They were remarkably quick in learning what was required of them, and they were pleased with my goods. Especially they admired Frederick, who went about clad in bright yellow puttees, moleskin trousers, a white drill tunic with a military collar, and a fawn-colored opera hat. It seemed to me that the elegance of his attire had some good effect, for he certainly had great authority with those red Indians—more than I.

“Things went on swimmingly for a while; the savages brought me in specimens of every description; my packing cases were becoming filled, and it looked as if, where my part of it was concerned, Billings University might yet have Putney University ‘bluffed off the boards.’ The interest of the natives had begun to flag slightly, but I had refreshed it by serving out the harmonicas and jew’s-harps—a step which I soon regretted, as my camp became a nightmare of sound. A fortnight later, business becoming slack again, I served out the opera hats, and whipped up their ardor still further by exhibiting the spectacle frames.”

Leyden paused and chuckled into his pipe until the sparks spouted from the big china bowl like a roman candle.

“Imagine, Doctor, such a spectacle! I had brought a lot of mosquito netting—pink, it was—and with that I had shown the savages how to make insect nets. Such a sight! Forty or fifty Indians and bush-niggers, some naked except for a fawn-colored opera hat and a pair of iron spectacles without the lenses; others swathed in flaming calico prints, sitting around my camp blowing into a harmonica or a jew’s-harp, or sneaking through the jungle with shrimp-pink butterfly net! The very crocodiles used to crawl out upon the banks and laugh! And the natives all so proud and pleased!

“Then one day a few of them came in and said that they had trapped a maipuri—a kind of water-tapir—over on the other bank. I took a few men and went over to superintend the skinning of the beast, and while so engaged two of the Indians came rushing up to say that a small steamer was coming up the river.

“It turned out to be a little gunboat. Shortly after we left Bolivar there had been one of the semi-annual revolutions, and the new governor of the district, knowing that I had gone up the river, had come up to see what could be made out of me. The matter could have been arranged peaceably enough had it not been for Frederick. On sighting the steamer the fool had promptly armed the boat crews, and when the people from the gunboat landed near the camp they were confronted by an array of twenty half-caste Caribs, armed with bored-out Springfields, and about two-score of Indians, gorgeously equipped with opera hats and spectacles, many of them blowing furiously into harmonicas and all armed with bows and spears.

“Those Indians, as you know, are the most harmless people in the world, but the Caribs will fight, and from all I could learn, for I was across the river at the time, that fool of a Frederick went roaring about, making frenzied orations and challenging the Venezuelans to try to land.

“They did land, and at the first volley Frederick rolled on his back, absolutely unhurt, and howled for mercy. The Caribs retreated firing, and managed to kill one of the people from the gunboat and wound three others. I started back the moment I heard the firing, but by that time my allies had been routed, and I was promptly arrested and put down below in double irons.

“They confiscated all of my specimens, stowing them away on the gunboat, took the boats in tow and down the river we went, leaving the Indians and boatmen in the bush. All of my protests were vain; I had been trading without a license from the government—which did not exist when I went up—in addition to which my people had fired upon government troops, killing a man and wounding others. No appeal to my consul would be permitted; I was no better than a pirate, etc.

“Frederick was chained up near me on the trip down, and he alternated between raving curses at our captors and whimpering like a pup when they cuffed him for it. You see, Doctor, the alien strains were always at work in that man. One minute he was white, the next black. Your French or Spanish or Italian half-caste would have had the cunning that is one of the compensations of the mongrel; but Frederick was in two layers, and sometimes one would be on top and sometimes the other, but they never mixed. It was even so with his personal appearance, for I noticed that when he was in charge of our men he looked the typical German; his features were aquiline, composed, dignified and showed character. On the other hand, when he was hurt or frightened the actual color of his skin was all that proclaimed him white. His eyes would bulge until the whites were visible all the way around, his forehead crept down, his nose would actually flatten and his lips rolled back in the typical African manner, showing their red linings and the big ivory teeth.

“Before we had reached the mouth of the river he was moping in the usual negro way, and I think that he would have died, as negroes will if their despondency lasts too long, had we been a week longer en voyage.”

Leyden ceased speaking and jerked his head irritably toward the fat Italian who had been playing chess with the captain. He had fallen asleep in his chair, and, being a large man, his head had rolled back over the cross-bar. A shaft of light from the “rook kamer” fell upon the expanse of pale, flabby throat, stretched tense by the weight of the pendant head, and as I glanced that way it vibrated with strangling, unwholesome noises.

“Humbert!” called Leyden, in a soft, feminine voice, then quickly turned his back. The sodden mass convoluted; the noises culminated in a strangling snort; one almost heard the vertebræ creak as the strain came upon them; then he sat up and stared about in bewilderment.

“Nothing like the sound of one’s name to wake one, especially in a strange place,” chuckled Leyden, softly. “I saw on the passenger list that his name was Humbert.” He walked to the taffrail and leaned upon it for a moment, watching the glowing disks of phosphorescence whirled to the surface by the screw. They glowed and faded and then glowed again, to merge finally into a broad band of luminous silver that formed the wake.

“They left my specimen cases at Bolivar,” he resumed, talking to the rudder, apparently, “and took us around to Cumana, where they lodged us in the nasty little jail which I will show you to-morrow, if we are permitted to land. After a month of it—fever and starvation and vermin” (he scratched his shoulder with a squirm)—“I itch yet when I think of it—after a month of all this I became ennuyé and decided to leave.” His voice grew ominously hard. “So one evening I took Frederick and we came away. Frederick was at pretty low ebb by that time, and it took about three days’ skillful jockeying to coax his German blood to the top; but eventually I got it there in sufficient volume to make me think that it would remain for an hour or two—and it did!—long enough to enable him to kill one of the devilish nigger guards with his naked hands. I crushed the skull of another with a jagged piece of rock, and then we wandered down the beach, found a rotten old canoe and paddled out to sea.

“The canoe was half waterlogged, and I knew that it would not carry us very far, so I decided to try and get to Margherita and take our chances on the rest. When the day broke I could just distinguish the outlines of the island, with the usual big cloud hanging over it. We paddled all day long, without seeming to get any nearer; then Frederick grew sulky all at once and threw down his paddle with the remark that he was going to die.

“‘You certainly will,’ said I, ‘unless you keep at work.’ I had filled a water-jug that I found in the canoe before we started, but we had nothing to eat since afternoon of the day before, and what we got then was not of a tissue-building character.

“‘I am going to die,’ Frederick repeated—and then, confound him, he lay down in the bottom of the canoe and did die!”

I grunted—for that seemed to me to be an adequate epitaph for such a person as I fancied Frederick to have been.

“I did not discover it at once,” Leyden went on, “but when I did I was rather relieved, as it is harder to share one’s nerve with another man than one’s food. I slid him over the side of the canoe and kept on with my paddling. Really, Doctor, that day is an absolute blank. About sunset I struck some of the outlying boats of the pearl divers and the next thing that I remember is waking up and finding myself lying in a nasty little hut covered with flies. I think that it was the smell of the shell-heaps on the beach that brought me to life again. But it was odd about that man Frederick, was it not?—and rather illustrates my theory, don’t you think?”

“Never mind your theory,” said I. “Tell me the rest of the story.”

“That was rather odd, too.” Leyden permitted himself a few reminiscent puffs. “The chap that rescued me was a French Jew who controlled quite a bit of the pearl-fishing industry on the island. He was clever enough to guess how I came to be floating about in that hollow log, but made no comment at the time. As soon as I was able to get about again, which was in a couple of days, he asked me if I wished to work for him. I declined with thanks, whereupon he said that in that case he felt that duty would compel his handing me over to the authorities. Practically, you see, I was his slave, but there seemed no help for it, so for the time being I took command of one of his larger boats and her crew. He gave me some clothes and my food and that was all.

“In the end I got even. One day, when I had landed my cargo of oysters on the beach and was about to begin opening—for you know the pearl fishers down here open the shells instead of rotting out, as they do in the East—an old native woman who had been squatting near the edge of the pile hobbled over to where I was standing and begged for one of the bivalves to eat. They are not bad, you know. I told her to help herself, expecting, naturally, that she would pick one up at her feet; but instead of that she went around to the other side of the heap and selected one there. This struck me as a bit odd; then, as she hobbled off, it seemed to me that she was in some haste to get away. Acting entirely upon impulse, and with no distinct idea of my motive, I picked up a couple of the oysters and ran after her.

“‘Here, mother,’ said I, ‘take these and give me that one which you have there.’

“She favored me with a look which actually reeked with malice, but, as there was no help for it, handed over the oyster. As I took it I saw my employer—or jailer, to be accurate—walking down the beach from his cabin—for he always superintended the opening of the shells, for very obvious reasons, and I had orders never to begin the work until his arrival. He was still some distance off, so, turning my back to him, I whipped out my knife and slit open the mollusk, and there, right on the very lip, was the largest pearl which I have ever seen on Margherita!

“You see, Doctor, when the oysters are thrown down on the beach the heat from the sun and the hot sand often causes them to open an inch or so. This old woman, who had come down, no doubt, with the purpose of begging an oyster to eat, was squatting in front of this especial one, and caught sight of the pearl through the slit between the two shells.”

Leyden turned to me suddenly. “What would you have done in such a case, Doctor?”

“Exactly what you did, I fancy,” I answered.

“Yes,” he replied, slowly; “I was justified. This Frenchman was detaining me through blackmail and forcing me to work like a dog for fear of being turned over to the Venezuelans. I kept the pearl and a week later managed to escape to Curaçao on a schooner. There I sold my pearl for eight hundred dollars, and as soon as I had the money I wrote to the gentleman who had broken up my expedition and offered him five hundred dollars for all my effects delivered to me at Curaçao. They came on the next Dutch steamer and were handed over to me by the captain upon my payment of the money. Three weeks later they were gracing the shelves of the new museum of Billings University and I was on my way to Mexico to collect Aztec relics for the same excellent institution.”

THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS

“WILL you please tell me why it is, Doctor,” said Leyden, “that when you and I are foregathered in this part of the ship at this hour of the evening we must immediately proceed to rake the lockers of our recollection for the morbid and anomalous?”

I told him that it was perhaps because the accent of a man’s mind was largely influenced by his profession, and that as the morbid was my source of livelihood and his the rare and sui generis of Nature, our interests touched these topics.

“Ach! there is something in that,” said Leyden, “but not all. It is that only in these violent upheavals do we get to see the hidden things of life, the more superficial of which are evident to a man who can translate the languages of his five senses and has perhaps a dialect or two in reserve.”

He was silent for a moment, letting his steady gray eyes rest upon the streaks of phosphorescent spume churned up about us by the stiff following trade. Abeam lay the moonlit isle of Curaçao, so near that one could see the towering yuccas standing sentinels upon the ridges of the broken hills—could almost see the yellow of their blossoms, for this moon gave color as well as perspective.

“This was in Borneo, Doctor,” he began abruptly. “I had been sent there on a head-hunting expedition. Odd, is it not, but appropriate! A countryman of mine who was writing a book on anthropology had sent me there to take photographs and notes and measurements and to collect specimens of skulls as I saw fit—attached or unattached, that was my lookout. You know, Doctor, that although the coast of Borneo is occupied by Malays, Bajaus, or Sea Gypsies, Bugis, Chinese and immigrants from Polynesia, very little is known of the interior, which is the exclusive domain of the great family of Dyaks, which is itself divided into several tribes. It was of the Punan and Olo-ot, who are fairly pure, that my employer wanted specious information.

“I had taken with me one white man, oddly enough a tourist, a New York lawyer named Lynch, whom I had met in Singapore—a gentleman who had inherited a little money and was taking a trip around the world. A great explorer was lost in that man, Doctor—and there are too many good lawyers already.

“As a rule, I prefer to go into a savage country with no other white man, as once or twice it has been my misfortune to have all of my work undone by the single careless or tactless act of a companion; in the present case I needed an assistant, as I had just come down from the Irawady and was running a temperature which I thought possible the hills of Borneo might develop into a sharp attack of fever.

“I will not attempt to describe our adventures, nor what we found inside the island, for all of that you can read in my patron’s book. Eventually we struck the head of a river which, according to my reckoning, would take us down to a little trading port called Bangan, and I had learned from a few friendly natives that there was a missionary station not far below us. I had not known that there were any missionaries in that section; but then, they are universal perennials which one is apt to encounter anywhere.

“We slipped down this rapid stream, and late upon the third day, as we turned into a long reach of the river, saw a clearing at the other end. I was heartily glad, for my fever, which had developed, as I feared, did not yield to medication as it should, and, to tell the truth, Doctor, I did not really believe that I would reach sea-water alive. Lynch was in perfect condition—hard, seasoned, alert—but then, you see, he was not chock full of Irawady microbes when we started, and the country through which we had passed was not unhealthy.

“He had been of the greatest value to me; three times I owed my life to him that trip. Often he made me laugh by the ease with which he adapted his ultra-modernism to his primitive surroundings, for he was not a man who was used to roughing it. He treated our half-wild Dyaks as if they were the bellboys of his club; appeared to have not the slightest notion in the world that they could so far forget their manners as to become insubordinate; would sometimes relax and joke with them a bit. He would turn his back upon the most dangerous, sleep with both eyes apparently shut, seemed contemptuous of danger or treachery; yet the twice that it did occur he had anticipated it. Between us we were an efficient combination, for I am governed by instinct, Doctor; Lynch acted only from coldly wrought logic.

“To continue: We arrived at this clearing and were surprised to find near the edge of the bank a new stockade; the gum was still oozing from the stakes. To the right were some long, low buildings, of which I did not like the look. These also were very new—in fact, still in process of construction—and as I examined them through my glass I discovered some bungling contrivances hanging from a projecting rafter.

“‘Neck-yokes,’ said I to Lynch. ‘We have stumbled on a slaver!’

“‘Here comes a white man,’ he replied. There were a few natives watching us from the top of the bank, and through these there came a man of huge stature, with a rough, red beard and dressed in a suit of embroidered silk pajamas. The people wilted away from him as he approached, then fell in behind, walking with the curious drop-kneed gait of bush-folk the world over when ill at ease. This giant strode to the edge of the bank and stood glaring down without a word.

“‘Good evening,’ observed Lynch, and shoved the canoe to the bank.

“‘Where are ye from?’ said the fellow, with a rough Caledonian accent, and staring down with his red beard thrust out and his small, pale eyes watching us suspiciously. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and his huge forearms, covered with shaggy hair, were folded across his bulging chest.

“‘From the other side of the island,’ said Lynch. He stepped out on the bank as if he had been invited and proceeded to moor the canoe.

“‘What’s this ye’re doin’?’ growled the red-bearded giant above him. His great arms had dropped to his side and one could see how the thick muscles held them with bent elbows.

“‘Hitching the boat,’ replied Lynch, indifferently. He did so, and walked to the top of the bank.

“‘Whose house is that?’ he asked.

“‘The hoos is mine,’ growled the man, and ’tis no tavern I’m keepin’—d’ye see?’

“‘Oh, I quite understand that,’ said Lynch, pleasantly. ‘Of course, you wish us to be your guests.’ He turned to me. ‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘this gentleman wishes us to stop the night with him.’ He turned to the other. ‘Very decent of you, I’m sure, especially as my friend has a touch of the fever and ought to rest up a bit.’ He proceeded to direct the unloading of the canoes, even calling some of the red man’s retainers to assist.

“The face of the fellow was purple, but it seemed as if Lynch’s assurance had robbed him of speech. He stood glowering like a great Guernsey bull, while Lynch went back and forth about him as if he had been an obstructing tree.

“‘You see, we are naturalists,’ Lynch began, talking as he worked. ‘Some of these boxes contain trade-stuffs, but most of them are full of heads—skulls, you know, very interesting—I will show you some if you like. I suppose your people are honest? I fancy this stuff will be safe right here where it is. Hi!’—he relapsed into the dialect, and before I knew what was going on two of the boys had me up the bank.

“‘Permit me to introduce Dr. Leyden; I am Mr. Lynch,’ said this extraordinary lieutenant of mine; ‘and now, sir, if you will lead the way——’

“‘Ye’re takin’ a deal for granted,’ began the man in a surly voice.

“‘I’m taking it for granted that you are the missionary,’ said Lynch, calmly. ‘If you are not, it really makes no difference. No white man could help being glad to accommodate two other white men in a place like this, and, although you do not keep a tavern, perhaps we can render you some service in return for your hospitality. We have more firearms than we will need——’

“‘Ye’re verra kind,’ growled the man, but I saw his pale, swinish eye lighten a bit, and guessed that Lynch, with his usual tact, had touched him. ‘Of course, I’ll gie ye a lodgin’ for the night, though I’ve little to offer strangers.’ He walked sullenly ahead, Lynch following him, and I noticed that, although my companion was a tall, well-built man, the other topped him by half a head and the breadth of a hand across the shoulders. I do not think that I have ever seen a more powerful brute—all bone and muscle, and something in the shiftiness of his pale, cunning eye told me that he was not without a corresponding share of guile.

“As we drew near to the stockade I saw that it was quite new, and then Lynch reached behind him and pinched my foot as I lay on the stretcher, and, would you believe it, Doctor, on every sharpened stake that formed the front of the stockade there was a human head! They had been there varying lengths of time, I judged, but the—eh—evidences of the recency of some were quite apparent.

“‘I see that you go in for heads a bit yourself, Mr. Cullen,’ said Lynch, in his pleasant voice, but hardly was the name between his lips when this hairy giant of ours wheeled on him like a boar. You know the stiff, muscle-bound motion, Doctor: the swift sling of the rigid body all on one axis, the great, brutish head swung on its thick neck, the mean little eyes slanting up evilly. That is what this hairy brute was, a boar, with all of the cunning and surly moroseness of this animal. There was something horribly brutish in the swing of his shock head between the hulking shoulders as he turned on Lynch, and something horribly sinister in the yellow glint of his teeth between the bristling, red mustache, which seemed to roll upwards like that which one sees on the headpieces of ancient Japanese armor. If he had turned to me like that I would have presented him with the muzzle of my pistol—Ach!—and very possibly the bullet as well, for the secret of long life in my profession is to take no chances. I could not see, however, that Lynch moved a muscle, except to smile.

“‘Where got ye that name?’ snarled the man. His beard was thrust almost into Lynch’s face, and I could see the twitching of his thick fingers.

“‘On the collar of your pajamas,’ said Lynch, calmly. ‘Do you observe, Doctor,’ he continued, turning to me, ‘that some of these skulls are quite different from any we have secured? Possibly our host might be willing to exchange——’ He turned to survey the exhibit with interest. ‘What a Golconda it is, to be sure!’ cried my New York lawyer, enthusiastically. ‘You are to be complimented on your collection, Mr.—eh—eh——’

“‘McAdoo,’ supplied the red man, sulkily, but with a strange quaver in his voice. I glanced up at him quickly, then looked away and at the stockade, for the glimpse I had of his face told me that the burly ruffian had received a fright. He could not have been pale, even if he had been dead, but there was a look in his eyes that meant fear, yes, and meant murder, too, for a beast of that sort cannot become frightened without becoming homicidal at the same time.

“‘Ye’re very obsairvin’,’ he managed to say, in a thick voice.

Lynch turned and regarded him benevolently.

“‘You are very modest, Mr. McAdoo,’ he replied, genially. ‘You really have a noteworthy collection here.’

“‘They were folk not wanted here,’ retorted McAdoo, with what I could see was a considerable effort. And then he gathered himself together for a supreme stroke—the one heavily delivered blow of this round; and yet, do you know, Doctor, in spite of the man’s overwhelming physical force and ominous aspect, there was something rather ridiculous in his manner of delivering this last menace—something of the lout of a schoolboy who defies his pedagogue, although he half believes that there may be a thrashing behind it; defies him because his nature is too churlish and too abundant in a swinish sort of courage, born of the sense of a potent vitality, to feel the fear of the result, appreciable to a creature of the same courage but a higher power of imagination.

“‘Maybe ye’d like to add to this same collection,’ he said, and he said it with one mental arm raised toward, in a manner of speaking.

“Lynch laughed outright. It might have been a part of his—what you Americans call bluff, but I believe that it was sheer amusement. I began to be convinced that Lynch possessed a very keen sense of a very dangerous sort of humor. He saw the thing just as I saw it; of course he would see it so, because, although I was a trifle slow in discovering it, he had put this man ‘McAdoo’ on the witness stand the very moment he heard him speak, and he was cross-examining him and deriving infinite amusement from the process. Moreover, McAdoo himself, while too coarse-grained to understand it, was beginning to feel it, and there grew to be in his manœuvres something of the sweating nervousness of a horse at the howl of a far-distant wolf; yet his ears were well back.

“‘That’s just exactly what we want to do, McAdoo,’ he answered, and it almost seemed as if he was going to pat the ruffian on the shoulder, ‘but we want to take a head or so in return.’ He smiled genially into the wicked face, and actually turned his back upon the man and walked in through the gate as if entering the compound of an old friend. Perhaps something told him that I had a hand on the butt of my revolver.

“Once inside the stockade Lynch pushed matters; in fact, he carried it to the verge of spoiling everything; but, you see, Doctor, if this McAdoo had possessed the wit of a cockroach, or had been a little more lacking in that hereditary feudal instinct which made him uncomfortable in spite of himself in the presence of a gentleman, he might easily have slipped away and arranged our assassination, and this was precisely what Lynch did not intend that he should do. He told me afterwards that, like Javert in ‘Les Miserables,’ he was born with an instinct for a criminal, but I do not credit this particularly, as I myself could deduct that this man McAdoo had more reason than mere surliness of disposition for not wishing us to stop at the mission-house. You see, it had to be a mission; it was either that or a fort; there was nothing there for which to trade.

“All of this had entered my mind, just as it had Lynch’s; but, although apparently careless, Lynch was in reality a painstaking man.