Henry C. Rowland

“ Chu-Chu, John, the danger to my life—all of this was nothing. Edith thought that I had broken my word to her. Edith thought that I had stolen her pearls.
My friend, have you ever been tempted? Not tempted by gold, or a woman or the lust for revenge—but by something that is far deeper than life or death, or the hope of heaven? Have you ever been tempted until your very soul is wrung and tortured and screaming in pain? Mere death is a joke to this; the love of life is the longing of a child for a stick of candy in comparison. Edith to lose faith in me? ”

“ The six doomed men were within fifty yards of the summit when the Sheik Izzat sprang suddenly to his feet and with a savage scream waved his yataghan aloft. His cry was lost in the crash of a volley, the detonation of which was whirled on high and swept away on the gusty winds. Down went horses and riders, a struggling heap. Up rose the Shkipetari, but even more quickly Ishmi Bey had sprung in front of them and was waving them back with frantic words and furious gestures.
For a moment they paused. Ishmi Bey, a mad, whirling figure in the moonlight, poured out a frenzied torrent of speech. ”

“ And so, with the flaming seas crumbling beneath the bows and the spill of wind from the close-hauled mainsail smiting soft, quick blows upon my bowed shoulders and the pale fire-flecked darkness all about, I felt her come, and looked up to see her rosy face smiling at me against the leeward murk. It was not as I had seen it last, a-writhe with the pain which pays the tithe of a new soul, but radiant and with red lips curving in a smile, and clear eyes looking joyously into mine. ”

“ She was more than lovely; she was positively radiant with a beauty of the most alluring type in a land where every one is weary and relaxed; glowing with youth and health and high vitality, she was as fresh in that sodden clime as a clear wind from the north—and yet, there was something beside, something less clear, more earthy, a lavishness of charm and form and feature; her type suggested a creature bred for the slave mart. It was evident that she was an American; the women of no other race possess that peculiar blending of subtlety, ignorance and audacity. ”

“ The fire became merely a lurid glow; glistening shapes, heaving bodies, swam about him; the gloom of the jungle was peopled with unreal hell shapes; they represented the concentrated lust from the earth from which they had been banished. The air was thick with black passions.
Something stirred at his side—a flutter, a gasp. A white figure passed between him and the palpitating glow of the fire, lightly, with the swirl of a wisp of smoke borne on a zephyr. A low laugh trilled above the guttural sighs springing from the glistening shapes seen dimly through the gloom. ”

“ But Avis, strangely excited, laughed also and in the same language; and then, suddenly the eyes of the sculptor met those of the girl and the color flamed into the faces of both. The conventional present arose to rebuke the naked past. Avis dropped her eyes, ashamed of the lawless emotion of the past moment as if it had been some flagrant act. Her beautiful face regained its classic purity—or coldness. But Randal had seen and heard and his heart was clashing joyful chords. ”

“ Standing there against the dark green background of the swamp, with the still water encircling her round, supple waist, and the wet blouse clinging to her superbly moulded figure, she was like some ravishing sea-nymph. Delphine might have been nude to the waist for all that the silken blouse concealed of her exquisite body, which combined in its subtle curves the suggestion of elastic strength, the rush of the free air, and the rich promises of womanly maturity. ”

“ Jim had wandered out after dinner to look for Margaret, who had not appeared at her customary table. It was a glorious night with a great moon nearly full, about on a level with the high palm fronds, the edges of which were silvered as the brilliant rays struck down from them. People, like lower animals, are never long in a place without having their particular haunts. Jim knew that Margaret's was at a certain turning of a path where, between the bolls of the big royal palms, one got a charming vista of the sea and was seldom disturbed by noisy groups. ”

“ The fire was almost dead, and beside the smoldering ashes lay Jordan Knapp, face downward, and sleeping heavily. His great shoulders were outlined against the moonlit sky, and as he breathed deeply and silently she could see them rise and fall against the white horizon. As she watched, too cold to move, a shudder shook the great frame; he turned partly on his side, and drew in his limbs to warm his body.
The Countess crept softly out, and threw a few sticks on the fire. As she slipped from beneath the edge of her coverlet a dark object across it caught her eye. ”

“ It was such a love as poets and painters and philosophers try so vainly to explain and which perhaps musicians come nearest to suggesting remotely. A sort of an ecstasy of soul which heavy mortal senses serve rather to hamper than to interpret. A divine fire; a glory of vibrating delight—words are impossible. How describe in speech something of which one has only the vaguest appreciation of the mere existence? ”

“ Your head must have reeled with the quick, swooping plunge from the crest of one great swell to the trough of the next; your face must have stung with the lash of the spray, and your ears rung with the scream of the wind aloft, while the salt brine trickles down into your mouth. Then you may carry away in your heart a picture that will make you famous with a fame that will live forever! ”

“ When the gravel crunched on the drive and the vaulted porte-cochère amplified sonorously the whir of the motor, the eyes of the two Englishwomen met—and Mrs. Forrest felt a swift, warm-hearted thrill of pride in her protégée. Prudence's face was pale, and her square little jaw firmly set, but mouth and eyes were steady and undismayed. A man could scarcely appreciate the cruelty of the ordeal which the girl was called upon to face, but any woman would be able to do so. Prudence had just turned twenty years of age; until her meeting with Payne, no man had ever stirred her girlish heart. ”

“ The Countess was quick to recover her poise; not through breeding nor modesty, but from sheer combativeness. She seemed suddenly to realize—and I have no doubt that it struck her as quite a new idea—that a man could be too familiar with his eyes alone. There was plenty of fight in her, as one could see from the flash of her dark blue eyes and the rounded squareness of her jaw. She promptly assumed so great an air of chilly condescension that Stewart stared again and then began to grin. ”

“ I watched him breathlessly as he let himself slip down the slanting deck and into the water, which washed about what was left of the companionway hatch. Even as he did so a big rounded dorsal fin appeared through the spume close alongside, and through a clear patch of water I saw a huge shape, mottled and banded with yellow, round of snout, and with a long tail, which undulated like a strip of algæ in an eddy. I knew the beast for the dread “tiger,” or “zebra shark,” the most rapacious of the species.
Silverside saw the great brute also, and glanced back at me with a faint smile. ”

“ And this, old friend, is why my life is the life of the gull and petrel, and the cut of my vessel’s canvas is known upon the Seven Seas. For every night when the sea is not too turbulent she comes to me and we hold long communions, while Yuba, at the wheel, glares away into the misty darkness and his old, old features writhe and twist and his pupils swell like those of a dog following Shapes which weave in the gloom beyond the crimson zone of the camp-fire. ”

“ To-day I am a believer in slavery for my entire race; it is a necessary step to civilization; it is kinder to the negro to lead him to civilization through the valley of the shadow than to knock off his fetters and leave him the victim of his own weaknesses, at the mercy of his own desires. The condition of the slave should be the care of the State; he must be protected from abuse. In my own country slavery no longer exists, in theory, but is it strange, my friends, that a strong, primitive people should be unable to support the extreme degree of a republic—a vote, in the place of leg irons? ”

“ In this moment of desperation the hatred he felt for John Force was even greater than that for David. Paul thought of the bleak winter ahead, and his imagination was tortured by pictures of his children with pinched faces and insufficient clothing, and the pitiful aspect of a barren Christmas, and his little Paul crying papers on some sleety corner. In his anguish of soul he remembered having once read in a book of travel that sometimes a Chinaman in straits would sell himself as a substitute for a man of means who had been convicted of crime, and suffer decapitation in his stead. ”

“ The little steamer, which they had encountered so sadly stricken, presented now an almost jaunty aspect, with bright paintwork glistening in the sunshine and the snowy steam contrasting with the black smoke pouring from her stack. She plunged up valiantly as closely as she dared and slightly to windward. Her reversed ensign had been reset, and from the groups clinging to her rail came the wavings of flags and handkerchiefs and hats and scarfs, anything at hand with which those so shortly redeemed from death might signal their glad deliverance and frenzied gratitude. ”

“ The desert had swallowed her, perhaps had assimilated her. She had passed out of the plain of Occidental possibilities into the vague, illusive atmosphere of the Orient. I covered my face with my hands.
Being possessed of the power of visualization, I could picture the scene as though gazing into a crystal globe. I could see this cool, contemptuous beauty ushered into the spacious harem, with its Persian tiles and its soft, rich, Oriental hangings, with great blacks guarding the door and slave women fluttering forward to serve her. ”

“ Quietly I stole away, and ten minutes later had brought Boles with me to the spot. Silently he approached the pool and carefully studied the prints in the sand; then as silently pointed to what my startled eyes had failed to see, the heavy marks of hob-nailed sea boots on the other side of the pool.
Hark!—what was that? From up on the slope above us there rose a scream that clove the hoarse babel of the thundering surf as the cry of an eagle pierces the rumble of the coming storm. Again it rose clear and quavering, then sobbed into silence. ”