Henry Oyen

“ Beyond was Indian country, the bleak, barren Dead Lands, a wilderness too bare of timber to tempt the logger, a land of ridge upon ridge of ragged rock, unexplored by white man, save for a rare mining prospector, and uninhabited save for the half-starved camp of the people of Tillie, the Chippewa, Reivers’ slave, by the power of the love she bore him.
White men shunned the white wastes of the Dead Lands as, in warmer climes, they shun the unwatered sands of the desert. ”

“ In the shadow of the palm Payne and Higgins began to retreat guiltily.
"No use your sticking round, Payne," whispered the engineer. "You're too late; she's took. You heard what she said."
"Sh-h!"
"I love you," repeated the girl with the same ecstatic tone and pose.
"Ah! How I love you!"
From the arch over the path there dropped with a swish and crash the ten-foot branch of a coco palm, falling without warning or apparent reason, as the overripe branches of coco palms do fall. The girl whirled round; and Payne was shocked and chilled to the marrow by the sight of her as she faced toward them. ”

“ Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.
The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in Brack the big man from the saloon. ”

“ XXXV Hours later Roger found himself on the bank of the river far below Garman's house. He had wandered wildly, avoiding paths, dodging clearings, holding to dark, shaded jungle-land, like a hurt animal seeking to hide its wounds from the light of day. The joy of victory over Garman glowed steadily in his bosom, yet though he knew that Garman now was a broken man and that he no longer would attempt to play king in the district, he also knew that the fruits of the victory were like ashes upon his tongue. He felt old and defeated, like a man suddenly robbed of his illusions. ”

“ The complete lack of spirit evinced by the men irritated Toppy. Was Reivers right after all? Were they nothing but clods, undeserving of fair and intelligent treatment?
“Hey! Wake up there! You look like a bunch of corpses. Show some life!” cried Toppy, in whom the bitter morning air was sending the red blood tingling.
The men did not raise their heads. They quickened their stumbling steps a little, as a heavy horse shambles forward a little under the whip. One or two looked back, beyond where Toppy was walking at the side of the line. Treplin with curiosity followed their glances. ”

“ Her grave, gray eyes were looking far out over the fiord. “It has become a part of our lives. It has all become a part of our lives—our new lives, Gardy, dear. We’ll not forget any of it. Oh, dearest! Maybe sometime we can come back here, and camp here, and remember all these wonderful days. You’ll never forget them, and what they’ve meant to us, will you, dear?”
“We will neither of us forget as long as we live!”
“Yes. I feel that, too. We’ll look back, and we’ll never forget any of it, not even Captain Brack.” ”

“ Garman struck his paddle in the bottom and held the canoe motionless. His eyes, usually lazy and indifferent, now blazed beneath the fleshy brows with the madness of rage. He glared full in the eyes above the rifle barrel and bellowed:
"Where's Annette! —— you, Payne, give her up!"
Roger's heart leaped at the words. He felt an impulse to jump up and shout; but he kept his cheek to the rifle butt and responded:
"Keep to your own side of those stakes, Garman, or I'll sink your canoe."
"Answer me!" hissed Garman. "Answer me, or by God! the alligators will make a meal of you!" ”

“ By the whining note in the growls of the dogs, Reivers judged that the latter was the case this evening; and when he moved forward and stood listening outside the flap of the big tepee he knew that it was so. Within, an old squaw’s treble rose faintly in a whining chant, of which Reivers caught the despairing motif:
Black is the face of the sun, Ah wo!
The time has come for the old to die. Ah wo, ah wo!
There is meat only to keep alive the young. Ah wo!
We who are old must die. ”

“ And we were hanging so, against the yacht’s sides, when Betty’s voice called softly from the shore beyond the stern:
“Oh, Captain Brack! Quick, please. I’m tired and afraid. Hurry, hurry! Take me aboard at once!”
XXXVI
A moment of silence followed, silence as complete as the darkness of the night. On the ladder Pierce and I hung as if frozen to the rungs. The tone of Betty’s call seemed to permeate the air; its pleading, compelling notes lingered like a perfume. Oh, the power of woman! The might of so slight a part of her as the nuances of her speech! For the call of Betty was a command. ”

“ One moment they were in the grasp of the jungle, the next they had broken through and stood panting and wide-eyed on the edge of a realized paradise of dreams. It was a tiny lake bordered by a small, grass-grown prairie dotted with small clean clumps of palmetto, pine and cypress. The water of the lakelet was clear blue, and the grass round it waved softly. The palmettos grew in small circles and with the pines and cypress seemed like islands in a gentle sea; and each island held in its center a spring of cold clear water seeping up through a limestone bottom. ”

“ Reivers smiled a quick smile that showed a mouthful of teeth as clean and white as a hound’s.
“Let’s have your opinion on the subject, Treplin,” he said. “New opinions are always interesting, and Scotty repeats the same thing over and over again. What do you think of it? Do you think I can maintain my rule over those hundred and fifty clods out there in the stockade as I am ruling them, through the law of strength over weakness? Do you think one superior mind can dominate a hundred and fifty inferior organisms? Or do you think, with Scotty here, that the dregs can drag me down?” ”

“ But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without prejudice, with scientific calmness.
It was not fair, it was not human. ”

“ Payne! Garman."
"Palm Island?" repeated Willy High Pockets. "Garman got house on Palm
Island. Yes."
"Do you know where it is?" asked Roger.
It was night, and he had called Willy High Pockets away from the camp to ask him the question. The time intervening from the receipt of the note at Garman's and the present had been like a nightmare. He had wandered in the jungle and laughed aloud at himself for a sentimental fool. Garman was right: dreams, ideals, high hopes were only illusions, only lies, fairy-like mirages to lead a man into the barren desert of experience. ”

“ Pitt,” Brack said, turning to me. “What do you say now—is not life raw and crawling?”
“As an exhibition of the primal instinct of greed the spectacle was quite worth seeing,” I replied. “Now tell me what it was all about?”
“This!” said he, striking the bag of gold in his pocket. “All about this. For this the man whom we picked up in an open boat a short time ago risked and all but lost his life. For this the men of the crew are ready to cut the throats of any one who opposes them. And why? Because it is gold. ”

“ With a snarl the great dog leaped again, his bared 294 fangs flashing in the night. The snarl died in a choke. Reivers’ long arms flashed out and his fingers caught the dog by the throat so swiftly and surely that not another sound came from between its teeth. It was a big, strong dog and it died hard, but out there on the sand Reivers sat, silently keeping his hold till the last sign of life had gone from the brute’s body. Not a sound rose to attract attention from the larger dugout. ”

“ Out on the narrow wharf Payne caught his foot on the painter of a rowboat moored near the Swastika's stern, and found the soft blue haze of the subtropical night still undisturbed save for the first ray of dawn.
The tree growth on the key was jungle-like in density. A path had been cut through to the eastern shore. It was almost a tunnel, for the fronds of the coco palms and the branches of the red-trunked gumbo limbo, and of live oak formed an arch overhead, from which hung long, listless streamers of Spanish moss. ”

“ Life—we can make it a free, glorious thing, or a gray, trapped affair, just as we choose. It is all a matter of courage. There is still much room in the world. It is not crowded except in spots. If we choose to remain in one of those crowded spots, or rather, if we are afraid to leave them, we must, of necessity, become one of the gray, trapped crowd, existing through a certain span of years without ever knowing what it is to be truly alive. But in the great open spaces people live—they are alive. ”

“ The brow-bones came down and half hid the small eyes; the nose was small, but a pair of great nostrils ran back in the skull; the mouth was huge, yet it seemed small, and there was more of the head below it than above.
Iron Hair was well nicknamed. His hair was probably three inches long, and it stood out straight from his head—black, wiry, menacing. Reivers, with his foolish grin growing larger on his face, appraised Moir with considerable admiration. Here was the real thing, the pure, unadulterated man-animal, unweakened, untouched by effeminising civilisation. ”

“ A huge heron flapped grotesquely up from the top of a mangrove bush as the sun struck it; a flamingo flapped by, matching its dainty pink with the sun's best tints; a dolphin's fin broke the dark purple water near shore.
Then the eastern horizon became a flare of flame and fire, and the sea grew rosy. Beyond its brim a great conflagration seemed to be raging, throwing its flames of gold, of red and of uncountable tints high into the sky. Higher it rose, its rays more insistent; and then, as with a clashing of brazen cymbals, the full-blown dawn was upon the world. ”

“ Toppy had felt it before, too often to be mistaken; and the youth in his veins responded warmly. The respect of these men was a harder thing to win than the other. He thought of how he had arrived in camp, shaky from Harvey Duncombe’s champagne, with no purpose in life, no standing among men who were doing men’s work. Grimly also he thought of how Miss Pearson, that first evening, had called him a “nice boy.” Would she call him that now, he wondered, if she could see how these rough, tired men looked up to him? Would Reivers treat him as a thing to experiment with after this? ”

“ Can you imagine anything more impotent than an unworshiped god? Man creates gods; not gods man. Men are absolutely indispensable to gods; but men can do very well without gods if it pleases them to do so.”
“Has it pleased you to do so, Captain Brack?” I asked.
“Decidedly so. I sail light. Men make a slavery of this job of existence because they encumber themselves with laws, gods, and so on. I decided long ago not to be a slave to gods or anything.” He turned upon me with his devilish smile. “Now, Mr. Pitt, it is easy to see, is a slave to his gods.” ”