“ Again Amado and Ponciana passed by, Ponciana smiling and dimpling. She wore a white mantilla, while on her finger there was a genuine ring of gold, set with a white stone that sparkled in the moonlight. It was the ring of betrothal, that day given. Amado, being poor, had secured it cheaply from a pawnshop. But Ponciana did not know.
As she gayly flitted by, Bendita noted the sparkle of the ring. “It is like the little glass jewels,” she pondered. “How Amado seems to like it! I might—I might wear those at home. They sparkle, too.” ”

“ The snow, unbroken save by his horse’s footfall, stretched away mile after mile in every direction, with here and there a pine through whose branches the wind seemed to sob and sigh, making the only noise that broke the stillness of the wintry afternoon. It added to this feeling. Not a thing in sight. He began to depict in his own mind the manner of man they were pursuing. He had almost forgotten his name. After all, what had the man done that he, Frank Crandall, should be seeking his blood? ”

“ Martas, “it is an old, wide-spreading tree on the very edge of the water, and is glorious with just such splendid blossoms as these. There must be more than three hundred clusters, some that I could not reach being much larger and finer than this one.”
“And you say,” answered Mrs. Martas, “that the air is still, and that the perfume broods all around the tree? Oh, how sweet!”
“Yes,” said Celia, “it is so strong that you can taste as well as smell the wonderful perfume. ”

“ Imagine my indescribable horror when I found that Neranya’s teeth were buried in the rajah’s throat! With a fierce clutch I tore the wretch away, but the blood was pouring out in torrents from the frightfully lacerated throat, the chest was crushed in, and the rajah was gasping in the death agony. People came running in, terrified. I turned to Neranya. He lay upon his back, his face hideously smeared with blood. Murder, and not escape, was his intention from the beginning ”

“ A triangle of cloud in the sky cast upon the earth a triangle of shadow, in the midst of which Robert Glen’s home lay as if it were entranced. No sign of happy life met me; but, as I turned aside to look at a certain bench in the shrubbery, a black-and-white snake ran over my foot.
I went no further. A woman was seated upon the bench—a fair woman, with hair like dull copper reflecting sullen fire, with a face and form perfect as those of the goddesses of old, a face which betokened an indomitable soul which knew the secret of the power wielded by the gods. ”

“ It was the blood stampede that makes half-wild cattle wholly demons. A clap of lightning, a sudden shot, even the appearance of a dismounted man, will send the mercurial herd rushing in panic fear; but let them once scent blood, and all hell is loosed in them. No pack of wolves follows with the relentless fury of range cattle on the trail of blood. Huddled by the barn, still showing his teeth, but half in fright, at the box of demons that he had opened, the man who laid the trail knew all this. ”

“ The mate saw the chance of mishap. His whistle piped a sharp, quick order to hoist. The lancheros cowered, their arms over their heads—all but Stanwood. He stood watching a chance. The stack swung and whirled, gigantic and awful, not a foot above his reach. But the rope had been just too short. The ship heaved back, and with a reverberation of metal thunder as it struck against the hull, the cylinder swung up again.
Courage came back to the capitan of the lighter then, and with it all his powers of mean impertinence. He shouted up curses at the first-officer. ”

“ It was not loud, but had in it some sort of penetrating quality that cut through the waves of horrid sounds about us, as the snake-carved prow of a Viking galley might have cut its way through the tumbling eddies of a tide-rip.
At the second repetition the lions paused. None better than they knew what was the meaning of that hiss. They had heard it before in their native hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer, when the first heat lay close over all the jungle like the hollow of the palm of an angry god. ”

“ Wilcox was staring at him, half in horror, half in fascination. “And men can talk that way in the twentieth century,” he murmured.
The captain smiled again. “The only way to carry on war with this people is to do to them as they first did to us. As long as we spare them, they’re going to think we’re weaklings, and grow bolder by result. They haven’t any honor; you can’t treat them as white men. Their own methods are what they expect, and their own methods are the only means by which this fighting will ever be stopped. ”

“ It was in a sportive mood, and played with its prey, as a cat plays with a mouse. Inch by inch the man pulled himself along, leaving a trail of blood. At last, within a few feet of the ledge, he stopped; he could go no further. The puma, too, paused.
At this moment Pat McCann, a blazing pine-brand in his hand, looked over the ledge. Bob saw him and faintly warned him back. The puma saw him too. The purring ceased, and the lithe muscles tightened under the skin. The game was over. The animal was preparing to make its spring.
It did not occur to the little Irishman’s fighting soul to retreat. ”

“ I think that so long as I shall live I shall not forget the sound of the tamer’s screams. He did not scream as a woman would have done, from the head, but from the chest, which sounded so much worse that I was sick from it in a second with that sickness that weakens one at the pit of the stomach and along the muscles at the back of the legs. He did not pause for a second. Every breath was a scream, and every scream was alike, and one heard through it all the long snarls of satisfied hate and revenge, muffled by the man’s clothes and the rip, rip of the cruel, blunt claws. ”

“ To the heavy, punk-laden atmosphere of the room was added an odor of burning flesh.
Quong Lung rose from his seat and crossed the room to where his victim was being electrocuted. “Ho, ho, ho!” he laughed softly; “excellent Jim, most excellent Jim!”
As he watched the grim murder enacting before him, he saw, reflected in the mirror behind the chair of doom, the door that led into the room slowly open, and James Ray and a detective well known to Quong Lung entered swiftly. ”

“ Oh, the desperate, insane thirst for revenge which consumed the impotent, miserable Neranya! Even though he should accomplish the impossible feat of climbing over the railing of his cage and falling to the stone floor below (for how could he slide down the rope?) , he would in all probability be killed or stunned; and even if he should escape these dangers it would be impossible for him to climb upon the cot without rousing the rajah, and impossible even though the rajah were dead! A man without arms or legs might descend by falling, he never could ascend by climbing. ”

“ Few people could bear to stand immediately beneath the shade; it is so sweet as to be almost overpowering.”
“Oh, how I wish I could see it! How far is it, Celia?”
“Only four miles. You can go. It is deep in the swamp: but the pony can follow the ridge all the way. You can go, and get home before dusk. I would like you to see it before a rain makes the road too bad, or the winds come and scatter the delicious perfume that now hangs as heavy as dew all around the glorious tree for yards and yards away.”
“I will go,” she cried. “Tell Toby to bring out Selim, and you can take a horse. ”

“ The beads of sweat plowed deep courses through the grime on his cheeks. Slowly, with infinite deliberation, he reloaded his revolver and strode to where the troopers held the insurrecto on the ground. As he went, he muttered, like a man searching for some forgotten thought, “The measures used are adopted as circumstances arise, and must be cruel or barbarous as the necessity calls for ... as the necessity calls for....”
Three times he fired into the prostrate body. “One for Brady, one for Wright, and one for Ellard!” and then he began to laugh. ”

“ As you can readily imagine, the life of a ship’s crew, ice-bound, during the long, dark, northern winter is not an enviable one. Suffice it to say that we got through it with probably less than the ordinary amount of hardship, and were very glad to catch a glimpse of the sun about the beginning of April, as it looked like a sign of release, though the captain did not think the ice would break up for at least six weeks longer. ”

“ Why dwell on the mad scramble? That night was the culmination. Disgraceful as was the thing in itself, it pales before the disgrace incident to a mood of reckless confession which seized the company. Somebody blurted out that she’d win that two hundred or die. Then a nigh insane man in a corner shouted across the room, to the shocking of all: “Let’s make it poker!”
The laugh that greeted this was spasmodic; and all at once right before Mrs. Hummel on the central table, Mr. Stoker, as though he had lost his mind, and grown wild and cynical, began to deal out—ten-dollar bills from his deck. ”

“ He came, and, fastening his canoe, swung himself aboard the casco. Her arms were about his neck in an instant, and her beautiful tresses escaped the comb again.
They sat in the shade of the nipa thatch talking in low tones. His arm was round her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder. He puffed with deep breaths of enjoyment a cigarette that she had daintily lit for him. The intoxication of the country was in his brain—the devil that whispers, “There is nothing but pleasure, and no time but now.” ”

“ She went on without heeding my astonishment. “Every negro on the plantation, except Lucas, is mortally afraid of her. My birds cower in a corner of their cage if she approaches them, the gentlest horse we have will rear and kick at sight of her, and if she goes into the poultry-yard the hens cover up their chicks as if night had come. She has affected others as she did you. She has done worse. When I first came here, she was given to me for a maid; but, not liking her, I took a little mulatto girl who was bright and smart then, but who is now idiotic through fear of Asenath.” ”

“ But there was no checking that mass; when a steer flinched before the heavy whip, he was pushed on from behind. And ever they bellowed, with a note of tigers in their voices.
A moment Belle ran before the herd; then calling to the roan, who understood as only a cow-horse can understand, she cut an oblique course across the herd’s face. She gained the road; the herd was behind her, and the roan, gathering his nerve for a final spurt, made for the wagon. She shouted, but the roar behind drowned her voice, and so she reached for the holster, where Emilio kept his knife. ”

“ Through the thin atmosphere came a muffled rumble, and then a few dots, followed at an interval by another, heaved out of the mass.
“Cattle!” said Dudley. “That’s jolly. I always wanted to see one of those big droves on the foot. Shall we wait for them to pass?”
“I think not,” said the Hon. Justin. “Not until we get to the next ranch. They say that those wild range cattle do singular things.” But still they stood and watched, fascinated by the shimmering, shifting, red cloud, the distant rumble, the glint of a blazing sun on the sabred heads of a thousand Texas long-horns. ”

“ Hosselkus clambered to his seat, and as soon as the express-train had cleared the switch it was opened by the brakeman, and the special was once more under way.
Leaning uncomfortably now to this side, now to that, and with angry grinding of flange on rail, it swept around the curves with ever-increasing speed. A crashing roar, a flare of yellow sunset light reflected from rocky walls, told of a cutting safely passed, while bridge, and culvert, and trestle bellowed again as the engine cleared them at a bound. ”

“ Why do we not like him? And we do not know why; we only know that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse.
What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse him! Ah! how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh myself—before I met John Claverhouse. ”

“ Bendito was not to be found in his usual haunts. Neither the “Caballitos” nor the “Haven of Peaceful Men” cantine knew him, and he was not listening to the music in the plaza. These things being so, the baleful eye of his spouse lit up fiercely.
“The disgraceful old devil,” she muttered to Bendita, “is, without doubt, in the great garden, which is sufficiently retired and convenient for flirtations. We will find him there, doubtless, with the wife of Pepe.”
And there they found him, very dead, but not with the wife of Pepe! Instead, his companion was the equally dead Andrés. ”

“ While the widow and daughter of Bendito considered the “glass jewels” of no value, for all the world wore gold and silver trinkets, they were nevertheless afraid to speak or even hint of them, lest they be suspected of complicity in the murder. Therefore, the box was kept hidden in a secret place, and for a while the widow kept her mouth closed, though she dearly loved to gossip. But the custody of the box, and the consequent secrecy entailed upon her, were entirely too much for poor Juana. She sickened and began to pine for her country, as the Indians so quaintly call their birthplaces. ”