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IT

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES,"
"THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES," ETC.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1912


COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published March, 1912


TO ELSIE

                   I

     Crown the heads of better men
       With lilies and with morning-glories!
     I'm unworthy of a pen--
       These are Bread-and-Butter stories.
          Shall I tell you how I know?
          Strangers wrote and told me so.

                   II

     He who only toils for fame
       I pronounce a silly Billy.
     _I_ can't dine upon a name,
       Or look dressy in a lily.
          And--oh shameful truth to utter!--
          I _won't_ live on bread and butter.

                   III

     Sometimes now (and sometimes then)
       Meat and wine my soul requires.
     Satan tempted me--my pen
       Fills the house with open fires.
          I _must_ have a horse or two--
          Babies, oh my Love--and you!

G. M.

AIKEN, _February 10, 1912_.




CONTENTS

                                 PAGE
_It_                                1

_Two Business Women_               31

_The Trap_                         73

_Sapphira_                        119

_The Bride's Dead_                169

_Holding Hands_                   199

_The Claws of The Tiger_          235

_Growing Up_                      273

_The Battle of Aiken_             297

_An Idyl of Pelham Bay Park_      313

_Back There in the Grass_         337

_Asabri_                          363




IT


Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a
half circle of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black
morass, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But
the beach is good dry sand, and the wind keeps the bugs back in the
swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is a strip of loam and jungle,
where some <DW65>s live and a god.

I landed on Prana Beach because I'd heard--but it wasn't so and it
doesn't matter. Anyhow, I landed--all alone; the canoemen wouldn't come
near enough for me to land dry, at that. Said the canoe would shrivel
up, like a piece of hide in a fire, if it touched that beach; said
they'd turn white and be blown away like puffs of smoke. They nearly
backed away with my stuff; would have if I hadn't pulled a gun on them.
But they made me wade out and get it myself--thirty foot of rope with
knots, dynamite, fuses, primers, compass, grub for a week, and--well, a
bit of skin in a half-pint flask with a rubber and screw-down top. Not
nice, it wasn't, wading out and back and out and back. There was one
shark, I remember, came in so close that he grounded, snout out, and
made a noise like a pig. Sun was going down, looking like a bloody
murder victim, and there wasn't going to be any twilight. It's an
uncertain light that makes wading nasty. It might be salt-water soaking
into my jeans, but with that beastly red light over it, it looked like
blood.

The canoe backed out to the--you can't call 'em a nautical name. They've
one big, square sail of crazy-quilt work--raw silk, pieces of rubber
boots, rattan matting, and grass cloth, all colors, all shapes of
patches. They point into the wind and then go sideways; and they _don't_
steer with an oar that Charon discarded thousands of years ago, that's
painted crimson and raw violet; and the only thing they'd be good for
would be fancy wood-carpets. Mine, or better, ours, was made of
satinwood, and was ballasted with scrap-iron, rotten ivory, and ebony.
There, I've told you what she was like (except for the live
entomological collection aboard), and you may call her what you please.
The main point is that she took the canoe aboard, and then disobeyed
orders. Orders were to lie at anchor (which was a dainty thing of stone,
all carved) till further orders. But she'd gotten rid of me, and she
proposed to lie farther off, and come back (maybe) when I'd finished my
job. So she pointed straight in for where I was standing amid my duds
and chattels, just as if she was going to thump herself ashore--and then
she began to slip off sideways like a misbegotten crab, and backward,
too--until what with the darkness tumbling down, and a point o' palms, I
lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten, and jump up and
down?

Because I was alone on Prana Beach, between the sea and the swamp. And
because the god was beginning to get stirred up; and because now that
I'd gone through six weeks' fever and boils to get where I was, I wished
I hadn't gotten there. No, I wasn't scared. You wouldn't be if you were
alone on a beach, after sundown, deserted you may say, your legs shaky
with being wet, and your heart hot and mad as fire because you couldn't
digest the things you had to put into your stomach, and if you'd heard
that the beach was the most malodorous, ghoul-haunted beach of the seas,
and if just as you were saying to yourself that _you_ for one didn't
believe a word of it--if, I say, just then _It_ began to cut loose--back
of you--way off to the left--way off to the right--why you'd have been
scared.

It wasn't the noise it made so much as the fact that it could make any
noise at all.... Shut your mouth tight and hum on the letter
m-mmmmmmm--that's it exactly. Only It's was ten times as loud, and
vibrating. The vibrations shook me where I stood.

With the wind right, that humming must have carried a mile out to sea;
and that's how it had gotten about that there was a god loose on Prana
Beach. It was an It-god, the <DW65>s all agreed. You'll have seen 'em
carved on paddles--shanks of a man, bust of a woman, nose of a
snapping-turtle, and mouth round like the letter O. But the Prana Beach
one didn't show itself that first night. It hummed
awhile--m-m-m-m-m--oh, for maybe a minute--stopped and began
again--jumped a major fifth, held it till it must have been half burst
for breath, and then went down the scale an octave, hitting every note
in the middle, and giving the effect of one damned soul meeting another
out in eternity and yelling for pure joy and malice. The finish was a
whoop on the low note so loud that it lifted my hair. Then the howl was
cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've seen a Chinaman's head
struck from his body by the executioner at Canton--Big Wan--ever seen
him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what golfers call "the follow
through."

Yes. I sauntered into the nearest grove, whistling "Yankee Doodle,"
lighted a fire, cooked supper, and turned in for the night. Not!... I
took to the woods all right, but on my stomach. And I curled up so tight
that my knees touched my chin. Ever try it? It's the nearest thing to
having some one with you, when you're cold and alone. Adam must have
had a hard-shell back and a soft-shell stomach, like an armadillo--how
does it run?--"dillowing in his armor." Because in moments of real or
imaginary danger it's the first instinct of Adam's sons to curl up, and
of Eve's daughters. Ever touch a Straits Settlement Jewess on the back
of the hand with a lighted cigarette?...

As I'm telling you, I curled up good and tight, head and knees on the
grub sack, Colt and dynamite handy, hair standing perfectly straight up,
rope round me on the ground in a circle--I had a damn-fool notion that
It mightn't be allowed to cross knotted ropes, and I shook with chills
and nightmares and cramps. I could only lie on my left side, for the
boils on my right. I couldn't keep my teeth quiet. I couldn't do
anything that a Christian ought to do, with a heathen It-god strolling
around. Yes,... the thing came out on the beach, in full view of where
I was, but I couldn't see it, because of the pitch dark. It came out,
and made noises with its feet in the sand--up and down--up and
down--scrunch--scrunch--something like a man walking, and not in a
hurry. Something like it, but not exactly. The It's feet (they have
seven toes according to the <DW65> paddles) didn't touch the ground as
often as a man's would have done in walking the distance. There'd be one
scrunch and then quite a long pause before the next. It sounded like a
very, very big man, taking the very longest steps he could. But there
wasn't any more mouth work. And for that I'm still offering up prayers
of thanksgiving; for, if--say when it was just opposite where I lay, and
not fifty yards off--it had let off anything sudden and loud, I'd have
been killed as dead as by a stroke of lightning.

Well, I was just going to break, when day did. Broke so sweet, and calm,
and pretty; all pink landward over the black jungle, all smooth and
baby-blue out to sea. Till the sun showed, there was a land breeze--not
really a breeze, just a stir, a cool quiet moving of spicy smells from
one place to another--nothing more than that. Then the sea breeze rose
and swept the sky and ocean till they were one and the same blue, the
blue that comes highest at Tiffany's; and little puffs of shore birds
came in on the breeze and began to run up and down on the beach, jabbing
their bills into the damp sand and flapping their little wings. It was
like Eden--Eden-by-the-Sea--I wouldn't have been surprised if Eve had
come out of the woods yawning and stretching herself. And I wouldn't
have cared--if I'd been shaved.

I took notice of all this peacefulness and quiet, twenty grains of
quinine, some near food out of a can, and then had a good look around
for a good place to stop, in case I got started running.

I fixed on a sandy knoll that had a hollow in the top of it, and one
twisted beach ebony to shade the hollow. At the five points of a star
with the knoll for centre, but at safe blasting distance, I planted
dynamite, primed and short-fused. If anything chased me I hoped to have
time to spring one of these mines in passing, tumble into my hollow and
curl up, with my fingers in my ears.

I didn't believe in heathen gods when the sea and sky were that
exclusive blue; but I had learned before I was fifteen years old that
day is invariably followed by night, and that between the two there is a
time toward the latter end of which you can believe anything. It was
with that dusky period in view that I mined the approaches to my little
villa at Eden-by-the-Sea.

Well, after that I took the flask that had the slip of skin in it,
unscrewed the top, pulled the rubber cork, and fished the skin out, with
a salvage hook that I made by unbending and rebending a hair-pin....
Don't smile. I've always had a horror of _accidentally_ finding a
hair-pin in my pocket, and so I carry one on purpose.... See? Not an
airy, fairy Lillian, but an honest, hard-working Jane... good to clean
a pipe with. So I fished out the slip of skin (with the one I had then)
and spread it out on my knee, and translated what was written on it, for
the thousandth time.

Can you read that? The old-fashioned S's mix you up. It's straight
modern Italian. I don't know what the ink's made of, but the skin's the
real article--it's taken from just above the knee where a man can get at
himself best. It runs this way, just like a "personal" in the _Herald_,
only more so:


     Prisoner on Prana Beach will share treasure with rescuing party.
     Come at once.


Isn't that just like an oil-well-in-the-South-west-Company's prospectus?
"Only a little stock left; price of shares will be raised shortly to
thirteen cents."

I bit. It was knowing what kind of skin the ad. was written on that got
me. I'd seen cured human hide before. In Paris they've got a
Constitution printed on some that was peeled off an aristocrat in the
Revolution, and I've seen a seaman's upper arm and back, with the
tattoos, in a bottle of alcohol in a museum on Fourteenth Street, New
York--boys under fourteen not admitted. I wasn't a day over eight when I
saw those tattoos. However....

To get that prisoner loose was the duty that I owed to humanity; to
share the treasure was the duty that I owed to myself. So I got together
some <DW65>s, and the fancy craft I've described (on shares with a
Singapore Dutchman, who was too fat to come himself, and too much
married), and made a start.... You're bothered by my calling them
<DW65>s. Is that it? Well, the Mason and Dixon line ran plump through
my father's house; but mother's room being in the south gable, I was
born, as you may say, in the land of cotton, and consequently in my
bright Southern lexicon the word <DW65> is defined as meaning anything
black or brown. I think I said that Prana is on the west coast, and that
may have misled you. But Africa isn't the only God-forsaken place that
has a west coast; how about Staten Island?

Malaysian houses are built mostly of reed and thatch work standing in
shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to
alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a
man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to climb
out of. That's why I'd brought a length of knotted rope. The dynamite
was instead of men, which we hadn't means to hire or transport, and who
wouldn't have landed on that beach anyhow, unless drowned and washed up.
Now dynamite wouldn't be a pleasant thing to have round your club or
your favorite restaurant; but in some parts of the world it makes the
best company. It will speak up for you on occasion louder than your best
friend, and it gives you the feeling of being Jove with a handful of
thunderbolts. My plan was to find in what settlement there was the most
likely prisoner, drive the inhabitants off for two or three days--one
blast would do that, I calculated (especially if preceded and followed
by blowings on a pocket siren)--let my rope down into his well, lift the
treasure with him, and get away with it.

This was a straight ahead job--except for the god. And in daylight it
didn't seem as if It could be such an awful devil of a god. But It did
have the deuce of a funny spoor, as I made haste to find out. The thing
had five toes, like a man, which was a relief. But unlike <DW65> feet,
the thumb toe and the index weren't spread. The thumb bent sharply
inward, and mixed its pad mark with that of the index. Furthermore,
though the impress of the toes was very deep (down-slanting like a man
walking on tiptoe), the heel marks were also very deep, and between toe
and heel marks there were no other marks at all. In other words, the
thing's feet must have been arched like a croquet wicket. And It's heels
were not rounded; they were _perfectly_ round--absolute circles they
were, about the diameter of the smallest sized cans in which Capstan
tobacco is sold. If ever a wooden idol had stopped squatting and gone
out for a stroll on a beach, it would have left just such a track. Only
it might not have felt that it had to take such peculiarly long steps.

My knoll being near the south end of Prana Beach (pure patriotism I
assure you), my village hunts must be to the northward. I had one good
hunt, the first day, and I got near some sort of a village, a jungle
one built over a pool, as I found afterward. The reason I gave up
looking that day was because the god got between me and where I was
trying to get; burst out humming, you might say, right in my face,
though I couldn't see It, and directly I had turned and was tiptoeing
quietly away (I remember how the tree trunks looked like teeth in a
comb, or the nearest railroad ties from the window of an express train),
It set up the most passionate, vindictive, triumphant vocal fireworks
ever heard out of hell. It made black noises like Niagara Falls, and
white noises higher than Pike's Peak. It made leaps, lighting on tones
as a carpenter's hammer lights on nails. It ran up and down the major
and minor