Frederick Britten Austin

“ HE snatched up the hatchet, for which he had dived perilously many times that morning, strode off into the palm-grove. She walked at his side, silent through the interlaced and deepening shadows. He conned over one or two commonplace conversational openings in an awkwardly felt incumbency of speech, left them unsaid.
It was she who spoke first.
“Adam,” she said, smiling at him a little timidly, their new relationship unexplored between them, “we're like that, aren't we? Adam and Eve—alone—in a new beginning of the world.” ”

“ He had already darted into the blackness of the sotto portico. There was nothing to do but to follow him.
I did so, with the little qualm of trepidation natural at venturing into such an uninviting darkness. Groping my way in, I felt the wall bear round to the left and emerged unexpectedly on a narrow little quay, arched over with a colonnade picturesquely silhouetted against the misty moonlight of a side-canal. Antony was already at the further end. I rejoined him.
“What are you playing at?” I began again. He seemed not to hear me. ”

“ From what at first glance was a field of corpses commenced a deliberate rifle-fire. The machine-guns answered, viciously garrulous. His captain drew himself alongside Baretti, gave him instructions with a minimum of gesture.
A moment later he had passed an order along the remnant of his platoon. The men commenced to squirm themselves cautiously over to the left, while in front the rifles and machine-guns intensified their unequal duel. He followed, pulling himself over the loose stones that yielded under his clutch, moving behind the bodies of men who would move no more. ”

“ A wild attack of shadowy forms surging up out of the undergrowth beat against the parapet, ebbed back in an inferno of noise from the long line of countless stabs of flame, was hurled into the ravine under the reiterated crashes, the sudden livid flares of shrapnel from the battery behind.
Down in the ravine, at the highest window of the Chateau, the Countess stood looking out into the night, her lover's letter pressed close against her bosom. High above her flickered and spurted the endless rifle-flashes from his trenches, paling the stars above the dark hill. ”

“ He had seized her wrist, dragged her toward the door, and she had resisted, coldly, stubbornly, head-high, the damned aristocrat still—the implacability of her scornful hatred of him had insulted him in this moment of life or death; her words rang in him still, never to be forgotten: “Not with you!” He had triumphed, by brute force, dragged her out to the deck among the swarm of people, now high-voiced in an unnerving clamor, now hushed in a dreadful silence. ”

“ It was the stranger, back again!
“The white dog! The white dog!” he gasped in terror.
Mr. Gilchrist clutched at him and fought for breath to speak.
“But my dear sir—” he began irritably. This was absurd! Of course there was a dog—the harmless old white bull which was Williamson's invariable companion. He tried to explain, but the stranger, tugging frantically to get free, would listen to nothing. With the strength of a madman he wrenched himself from Gilchrist's detaining grasp and fled into the house. ”

“ An exultation leaped in me, the exultation of old days of peril in the air. I thought of Toby, with whom I had shared so many, with a sudden warming of the heart. Poor old Toby! He had died as after all he perhaps would have wished to die, high up in the infinite blue—dead of shock long before he reached the earth. I thrilled with the old-time sense of mastery over a fine machine, delicately sensitive to the controls, as that massed and pinnacled cloud-landscape grew large again beneath me. ”

“ And the noble Venetian ladies, each with her cicisbeo—that inseparable cavalier who rendered her all those petty intimate services which it was the worst of bad form for a husband to render to his own wife—went masked also, a little white or black satin visor over their laughing eyes, their identity yet more closely hidden by the long head-veil that reached to the puffed out pannier skirts. Naughty Venetian ladies! They danced out of existence forever with the Carnival itself, as the cannon smoke of Napoleon rolled over the obliterated eighteenth century. ”

“ He wondered if his captain had confidence in him, wondered— He threw introspections by a jump to the fire-step of the and gazed over the parapet.
The loose stones of the soil in front of him were now dimly visible in the first paling of the dawn when they relapsed from the brighter illumination of the leaping gun-flashes. The stars were fading in a sky that no longer was in such sharp contrast of darkness to the dazzling spasms of the bombardment and the soaring flares from the Austrian trenches. ”

“ He did not need the exasperated yell of the old seaman unstably erect against the half-stepped mast in the center of the boat to point the urgency of the effort. The danger announced itself as the clumsy boat rolled almost gunwale-under, rose again with a drenching scud of heavy spray flying from the bows that miraculously, for a moment, he held breasting the overcurling surge that rushed out of the blackness. Then he backed water with all his strength on the one oar to keep her straight, prevent that suicidal slew-round as she dived again. ”

“ We retraced our steps up that deserted calle, pushed through the double stream of people flowing to and from San Marco, and turned into the narrow Frezzaria. Here most of the shops were already shut and passers-by were few. We turned again at random into another dark and narrow cleft between the tall houses, and lost the Carnival entirely. In this labyrinth of gloomy alleys, scarcely wide enough for us to walk abreast, and lit only with diffused moonlight and a yellow lamp at the sharp corners, there was not a living soul save ourselves. ”

“ I could not have pushed a perambulator, let alone pilot an airplane.
And still we climbed, roaring up and up. The yellow canvas of the lower plane, gleaming in the sunshine, seemed curiously motionless against the unchanging blue that was all around us. The earth, the very clouds below us, seemed totally lost. I could not bring myself to venture a glance down to them. We seemed out of contact with everything that was normal life, suspended in the infinite void. And yet the engine roared, and I knew that we still climbed. ”

“ Its dreadful nature is bound to flare into publicity. It is useless, therefore, for me to attempt to conceal it. If you care to hear the true version of a tragedy which every newsboy will be shouting tomorrow morning,—a version stranger than the one counsel for defense and prosecution will adopt as a battle-ground for their wits,—I will do my best to gratify your curiosity. I may say that it will be some comfort to me to know that one fellow human being—especially so kind-hearted a one as yourself—is acquainted with the real facts.”
“My dear sir!” began Mr. Gilchrist. ”

“ The earth and air shook with the rolling thunders of two artilleries desperately at work, but neither barrage nor counter-barrage was observable. The near crashes were bewildering in their frequency. The plateau was sown with smoke-founts that rolled lazily from their eruption. Among them, ahead, men were advancing in ragged and unequal clumps. From far in front came a faint crackle of rifle-fire, the dread tapping of machine-guns, Through the haze the Lieutenant had a glimpse of the dark bulk of the Hermada, plumed with little wisps of smoke, towering over the plateau. ”

“ The company fell into fours, doubled out of the courtyard into the darkness to form a screen across the valley behind which the men above could seek safety. From the widening ravine the rifle-fire swelled in intensity, was a continuous loud, reëchoing clatter. Above, sharp, definite reports rang out, were rapidly multiplied. It was the grande garde, firing at will. He glanced to the other wall of the ravine and smiled in grim satisfaction. His orders were being obeyed. The long line of trenches he knew to be there lay in silence and darkness. ”

“ From far and near the tribesmen swarmed in, and men met face to face whose habitual encounter would have sent both dodging to cover, rifle to the shoulder. Blood-feuds were laid aside. Families that for months had lived in terror of their neighbors across the village street—quitting their domiciles stealthily by the back way when they had occasion to go out, while the sudden rifle-shot of the concealed marksman added steadily to the tale of vendetta-victims on both sides—mingled now with the throng, albeit cautiously. ”

“ Adela, white and silent, her face expressionless as she stared at the threatening sea, sitting against a thwart—himself, when they could abstain no longer for very faintness, doling out the water, the dry biscuit that was their ration. They had been spared the worst of sufferings. The boat had been provisioned upon the davits, contained a keg of water, two canisters of biscuits—of which this upon the beach was the second. ”

“ I chose an unoccupied carriage and settled myself in it—waiting, with throbbing anxiety, for the few remaining minutes to slip away before the train was due to start. Those minutes seemed vast spaces of time in which the movement of the world had stopped, waiting for some catastrophe. At last I heard the bell ring. For one wild, exultant moment I thought that I was safe.
“Then, just as the train commenced to move, I saw a man running along the platform, holding a dog in leash. The animal strained powerfully at the lead, his nose to the ground. On the instant, I recognized it—the white dog! ”

“ He found himself in a large, lofty hall, dimly illumined by the candle held by a little, bent old woman. “Par ici, monsieur!” she said.
She led him through salon after salon. In the flickering light he could only just discern that they were richly furnished. At last she stopped and tapped at a closed door.
He was admitted into an apartment of costly and tasteful comfort, lighted with warm, soft radiance from a shaded pedestal-lamp. Pine-logs were burning on the hearth of a high stone fireplace. To one side stood a grand piano. A great dog stretched before the hearth growled surlily. ”

“ Mr. Bryant smiled.
“Yes. We've met Jimmy before—haven't we, Sylvia?”
“He used to be an acquaintance of ours in London,” corroborated Sylvia imperturbably, delicately underlining the word acquaintance.
Toby probed me with a peculiar look, suddenly almost hostile. I could guess that he was asking himself whether I had come to Southbeach in pursuit of Sylvia. One did not need to be a detective to discover his own eager interest in her. It was patent, with no attempt at concealment. Those strange hungry restless eyes of his seemed to devour her. ”

“ Only occasionally, when we slackened pace on one of the numerous little high-arched bridges for a glance at the moldering front of some old palace, silent and mysterious above the stagnant water of a narrow side-canal, did a faint reverberation of distant clamor come to our ears. We walked in silence; I puzzling over the inexplicability of that incident of the Ridotto, Antony apparently equally disinclined for speech. ”