Beatrice Grimshaw

“ The noise of the dance was dying down: it was almost quiet.
Under the marea, in the space among the piles, that doglike whimper went on. But the Marquis and I were too excited to notice it. Afterward, I remembered how we had heard it.
“It's bigger than the Kohinoor, but not near so big as the Cullinan,” I said, when we were out of earshot.
“Nevertheless, it is a king's fortune,” affirmed the Marquis. He was quite pale, and almost trembling. “And this sorcerer is using it to make charms!”
“If we can get it—” I began.
“Where shall there be any difficulty? It is only to buy.” ”

“ The fire was low in the marea, but it cast up a deep red glow toward the roof, giving light enough to see the contents of the wonderful bag, as Mo tumbled them out on the floor beside us. The salt had been too much for him; he accepted it eagerly, and was eating it like sugar, smearing his paint all to bits, and nearly choking himself as he sucked it down. These inland natives hardly ever see salt, and they are as keen for it as an alligator for fish, once they get the chance of a little.
Everything that was in the bag the Marquis handled, weighed, even smelt. ”

“ Salt is precious in the interior of New Guinea, and I was not minded to throw any of it away.
The Marquis was almost ready to cry—he had been looking forward to an immediate satisfaction of his curiosity, and he was like a child when disappointed.
“Ask him something,” he demanded. “Ask him at least what it is that he has in his bamboo, and why he carries a human hand round his neck, and what is in that string bag of his. Not to hear anything to-night, my Flint, that would indeed be the long lane that breaks the camel's back, I'm not made of patience!” ”

“ Slung on his breast was a large, hollow piece of bamboo, which he took some care to keep in a perpendicular position. His face, rather a fine one for a New Guinea native, showed clearly in the light of his torch: it was painted in stripes of black and scarlet, with a very fiendish effect. On his head was a magnificent head-dress of paradise and parrot feathers, rising fully three or four feet above his mat of hair. He had no clothes except a bark belt, and did not wear the bead and shell necklaces affected by most of the other people. ”

“ There are many things in a New Guinea inland town which you had better not inquire into, unless you are prepared to put up a fight. But some how I felt I wanted to look into this, and I told the Marquis so.
“Is it not a dog?” he asked, surprised.
“I don't think it is,” I said. “Anyhow, give me your box of matches, and we'll go back and see. It gets me, somehow.”
The marea was dark and empty when we returned; the sorcerer was gone. The dance was taking new life—it roared like a forest fire, down there at the end of the village. ”

“ By and by he stopped, opened his eyes, and took something out of his bag. The dance still thundered on; through all its far-off roar, we could hear the dog that cried under the house—if it was a dog.
Mo had taken a crystal out of his bag—the biggest one—and unwrapped it from its covering of leaves. It was a pretty thing, like the end off a chandelier luster, and just about the same size, only it was double-ended, with two points. The lizard lay still and dead upon the ground. Mo pointed the crystal at it, and began stroking the air just above the little corpse, without actually touching it. ”

“ Still—many years in New Guinea have given me an instinct for danger that has nothing at all to do with sight or hearing; and it was stirring, ever so slightly, now. I watched the sorcerer's face as I talked.
It was still a blank; you could no more have read it than you could read a stone wall. Mo replied to my address that he had been making magic all day, and was tired. Another day, he said, he would show us some. To-night we could give him that tobacco and salt he saw, and he would in the village, think and prepare himself. Magic, he explained, took much preparation. ”

“ He gave it to us to handle. We both saw that it was dead and beginning to grow stiff; it seemed to have died naturally, as there were no marks upon it. Mo squatted down on the floor, and motioned us to keep quiet. He laid the lizard out upon a banana-leaf, shut his eyes, and began to chant something in a low, monotonous voice. We could not hear very clearly, for the drums throbbed on and on in the village, and the distant dance had risen to a thundering chorus of feet and voices, like the beat of the trade-wind surf on the long beaches of Papua. ”

“ They say they can kill any one by wishing, and bring him to life again by making spells. If you listened to what they say——”
“But the lizard, he was dead,” said the Marquis, in a solemn voice.
“Hang the lizard! It's the diamond we are after now. First to get it, and then to find out where it came from—if that's possible.”
“Flint, my friend, I am not rich—you know that,” said the Marquis, with something like tears in his fat voice. “I have strained myself—have, what is it you say? bust—have bust my resources, to make this voyage in New Guinea. ”

“ She is the master story-teller of the South Seas. Each story is complete in itself—you can read any one alone, with satisfaction; yet the quest of the Sorcerer's Stone holds them together with unrelieved suspense until the end.
IT WAS dark in the marea, yet not so dark but that the Marquis and I could see about us. We had been inside this New Guinea temple, or club-house, or Parliament building—you might call it a little of all three, and not go very far wrong—for over half an hour, and our eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. ”

“ I have not mentioned it—being unaccustomed to writing, and apt to lose my way—but I ought to have said that the Marquis had two special fads, and they were sorcery and dancing. He knew all about every dance that had ever been danced in the history of the world, from David's fandango before the ark, down to Genée's latest pirouette at the Empire. And, in spite of his height and weight, he could dance them all himself, more or less, but mostly more.
You might have thought he would look ridiculous when he danced, but he did not: no man looks ridiculous doing that which he does supremely well. ”

“ The Marquis, on hearing that the Kata-Kata people were not cannibals, had insisted on sleeping in the marea instead of in our tents. It would be better for his purpose of studying the natural man and his connection with the occult—so he said. I thought it might turn out in his seeing a little more natural man than he wanted, since the Kata-Kata folk were by reputation a nasty lot, and had been man-eaters ten years ago, though the Government had sent punitive expeditions in often enough to reform them since then. ”

“ The ugly little man beat the air with his hands, thumped himself in the ribs, jumped up and down till the feathers on his head waved like cocoanut leaves in a hurricane, and all the time yelled, chattered, gasped, and choked. ”

“ The Marquis was looking at the marea, where the sorcerer, no doubt, was coolly sleeping.
“Blood—blood!” he said. “Always, where there is a great diamond, there shall be blood. The stone is blooded now, my Flint. ”

“ I could tell him about most of the things. I did not know the Kata-Kata country, but quite a lot of the charms were familiar enough. This stone, I said, was meant to make the yam crops grow. This one was used for charming down rain. ”