John Masefield

“ The sea was not yet breaking with any violence upon the beach. It was white as far as the eye could see, as though the heads of every wave had been whipped off and flogged into foam which shone as though with moonlight from the phosphorescence. Washes of breaker burst and rushed up the sand to Sard’s feet, like washes of fire in which all the marvellous shells of which the beach was composed, were lit up like jewels. Far away to the right, out at sea on the edge of the sky, there was, as it were, a shaking wall of white from the sea already running upon the Rip-Raps. ”

“ Sard said.
“No?” Sagrado said. “Yet I stand free, while you are bound, you and your romantic one. Which of us has the power, Margarita?”
“He has,” she answered. “And you know it.”
“I do not know it,” he said, “nor do events show it. I wanted you in my hands by a certain day: there was nothing that you wanted less. Yet you came to my hands, to the very moment planned. This sailor, or second mate, if I understand him, has wanted you for fifteen years: there was nothing that you wanted more, if I overheard correctly. Are you in his hands, or arms, or in mine? Which of us has the power over you?” ”

“ The train was going along a waterless land which was sometimes a scrub of chaparral and mezquite and sometimes a desert, with cactus and prickly pear. Over all this expanse the accursed norther came down like a devil pelting sand, never in any great volume, but in a drift which never ceased. Sard noticed that the side of the next truck to his had already had a kind of polish given to it by the never-ceasing pitting of the pellets.
He knew that the “norther” being as cold as it was, must be blowing from within three points of north. This gave him the train’s course as roughly north-west. ”

“ There came a crash both behind and in front of Sard: there was a deafening bang: someone fell over the brazier, which upset. All the stinking and smouldering carib leaf rolled from its metal pot. The room at the instant filled with men: they were all in green and silver. Sagrado whirled about to face them: one of them with a rifle beat the sword out of his hand: it broke below the hilt and fell in two pieces. After the crash, there came a silence so great that the double tinkle and clatter of the broken sword was memorable. ”

“ Sard rose, returned the salute and waited.
“Captain Chisholm Harker?” one of the men said.
“I am Harker, not Captain,” Sard answered.
“His Excellency, Don Manuel, the Dictator, desires to speak with you.” They jingled, clicked, saluted and went. A great man stepped from the stairs into the Plaza. Sard knew him at once; indeed no one could fail to know him; there being only one such man alive. He was a grand man, with beauty and power in every line and gesture. He was dressed in spotless white and girt with a green sash. He wore the great white Santa Barbara hat of white macilento straw. ”

“ When I say two minutes, I do not tie myself to a second, but to two minutes, which the world knows to be a space of time. It was a space of time since the negro rode past. I am not one, as it is well known, like these giglots and inglesas and ayankiadas, whom one sees in Las Palomas, may the Lord have vengeance on them, shameless as they are, even as Jezebel, always painting and purple-powdering and making their eyes to shine with poison; I am not one, I say, like these, to spend my time in noticing each male who passes and in endeavouring to ensnare his soul. ”

“ The worst thing about the gale was the cold. Far south as it was, the wind came down directly from the northern icefields. To Sard, who was thinly clad and wet through, it was piercing. He stumbled along against it, keeping his direction by the pale flame of the breakers which roared at his side and flung their fire at his feet.
When he had gone about a mile, he saw the stretch of the salt-pans like a patch of white heather away ahead, distant he knew not how far. It might be a mile, or it might be two miles; no man could judge distance on a sand so flat. ”

“ The train pounded and jangled on across the desert, in the ceaseless pelting and pitting of the sand. The train presently reached a part of the desert where the wind for some reason had more scope. Perhaps the line there crossed the mouth of some great gut in the distant Sierra. The wind suddenly rose in strength and voice, lifting the sand so that it looked like a smoke into which the train had to butt. “Ai, ai!” it cried, just as it cries in rigging, while the sand came over like sprays. Sard kept well ducked down under a tarpaulin. ”

“ On a rise, the forest hove in sight, stretching across Sard’s track from the sea to the mountains. Clumps of forest stood out in the savannah like bull-bisons in advance of the herd: the sun was in their tops in a way which told Sard that he had not a moment to lose. “Still,” he said to himself, “I am going to Los Xicales, to her. Time will not matter beyond a certain point.” ”

“ He cried aloud upon the evil of the ages and of the day and of the hour to descend upon him. It seemed to Sard that the house filled with a murmur as though the evil obeyed his call. He heard, as it were, wings, and, as it were, voices, and knew that death came with them.
“I feel you,” Sagrado cried, “I know you, I obey you. I offer you this beast in . . .”
The murmur of wings and voices grew louder. In their greed for blood the devils beat upon the door: their teeth snapped like shaking chains. The Indians laughed, clapped their hands and moaned: “Ahi! ahi! ”

“ Now while the deepness of a tenor bell was toning, there came, from Cachopos, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the exquisite song of the nuns of Santa Alba at their midnight office. Sard was spellbound. All the night had ceased to be of men and folly: it had become suddenly a thing of stars and flowers and of the joy of the soul in her God. ”

“ Sard said.
“Do you not?” Sagrado answered. “No; perhaps not yet. But you will.”
“A butcher’s sponge, like you, won’t make me.”
“We shall see.”
“A man would be unclean,” Sard said, “even for spitting at you.”
“Unclean?” Sagrado answered. “There are various conceptions of cleanliness, but all have to do with consecrations and devotions. I am called unclean by you, who serve men, who are a servant in a ship. Other flunkeys serve the state. I am myself, unspotted from these flunkeydoms and slaveries. If I serve, I serve evil, the master of this world.” ”

“ Sagrado said.
“So, it is Rafael Hirsch returned; one more who has not yet paid me for Carlotta. Are you not Rafael Hirsch?”
“If I were fifty Rafael Hirsches,” Sagrado answered, “you would not be paid for Carlotta. You will carry that wound to your death, and no son of yours will carry on your work here. Killing her has kept you sterile at least.”
“Good work is fruitful of itself,” the Dictator answered. “My work is my son and my daughter. My people will inherit from me. So, Rafael Hirsch, we who once talked of magic together, see where our magics have led us.” ”

“ He looked up suddenly and found a tall old proud-looking negress within a few feet of him. She was dressed in black, she wore a mantilla over her shoulders, and a big straw Gainsborough hat upon her head. She wore very heavy old silver earrings in her ears, which were small. Her nose was small; her face was sharply and cleanly cut; she walked like an empress; she had race in every line of her. She carried a small basket, which Sard judged to contain eggs or meat. She seemed at once both to resent and to ignore Sard’s presence there. ”

“ Once again Sard had the impression that something evil flowed into the man to make him bigger: he seemed to dilate and glow with an increase of personality.
“Take now the oil and the wine of evil,” Sagrado said, “and anoint me to the worship of evil.”
The negro anointed and asperged Sagrado, with some intoned words of ritual which were in no tongue known to Sard. The Indians had heaped carib leaf upon the brazier, which poured forth stupefying smoke. The negro began to chant a hymn with a rhythm which seemed to go between the marrow and the bone. Whatever it was, it stirred the Indians. ”

“ Beyond the trucks, both in front and behind, were the high, closed, yellow, wooden Occidental freight-cars, marked with capacity marks in dull red. The train lurched and jangled along the desert in a ceaseless pelt of sand. The sand was merciless and pitiless, a little and a little and a little. The chaparral bowed a little to it, the cactus seemed to put back its ears. Everything was dry with it, gritty, cracked, burnished. The persistence of its small annoyance told on all things. As the dropping of water wears the stone, so the pelting of the sand wore the spirit. ”

“ Behind it, far away, were the mountains, peak upon peak, some of them forested, some snowy; one, with a brow of crag, streaked with cataracts.
The Dictator pointed towards the sea, now shut from sight by many snowy branches. “That is shut from you now, Harker mio,” he said; “but when one door shuts another opens. Here is all this land waiting for you. To me, this land has only given work; to you, I see, it has already given all things; let me then add work to those.”
“When my arm is mended,” Sard said. ”

“ Sard said.
“It’s the finest life on earth. That dam’ terrier is an ambitious swine, but even he can’t spoil it. I count all my life just wasted till I began rousting rum. I’ve been at it seven years.”
“You’ve got a ticket, haven’t you?”
“Ticket, hell. Yes, I’ve got a dam’ fine second mate’s ticket, for which I could get four pounds a month and find my own tobacco. Ticket, hell! Watch and watch, when it isn’t all hands, boxing another man’s yards around. Ticket, hell! At this job I’m pretty well my own master; sleep when I like, get drunk when I like, and see my girl when I like.” ”

“ The drunkard went down on hands and knees, diffusing a warm breath of peppermint liqueur and aniseed brandy. Sard felt as though he was to leeward of one of the Spice Islands. The man began to grope for the box of matches, patting with his great hands and breathing with difficulty. “I know the box of matches isn’t far,” he said. “It’s very stormy to-night. In a wind like this one has to go miles out of one’s way. Oh, the wind’s roaring, the wind’s roaring! And well it might roar, for I’m not Pappa Peppy, I’m the Day of Judgment. ”

“ The northern section of the heaven was covered with intense darkness. Over the blackness a sort of copper-coloured wisp, like smoke, was driving at a great speed. The blackness was lit up continually by lightning, which burned sometimes in steady glows, sometimes in sharp stabs of light. The wind had risen; directly Sard crossed the sandy spit, it struck him with fury, driving sand and fragments of shell against his face and down his neck. ”

“ Flowers like enormous flags shot up on firm fleshy stalks among the morass. Some, which were very tall, had whitish blossoms as big as faces, splotched with darkness like faces; these seemed to lean forward and mow at Sard; they were like ghosts, lean and intense, but very beautiful.
All that place of death, thick as death, sickly with the forms and the smell of death, with that evil, low, over-abundant life which brings death, had a sort of weltering chuckle as though it exulted in its rottenness. ”

“ Sard saw before him the Father Garsinton who had asked for a passage in the Pathfinder. It was he, unmistakably, but changed indeed. He now wore a scarlet robe wrought with symbols, which gave him the appearance of a cardinal of the Middle Ages. He gave to Sard the impression of an overwhelming power devoted resolutely to the practice of evil. There was cruelty in every line, with enormous strength (and grace) to give the cruelty its part in the world. ”

“ Harker,” Margarita said. “Then, when the lights went on, I saw him lying dead on the floor; the Indians dragged him out.”
“Correct,” the Holy One said. “He is dead. And you are helpless. Your fleet can’t help you, nor your Minister, nor your Consul, nor your State, nor any other of those things you believe in. You are in the hands of power. You are elements for power to sacrifice. You, man, are bread; you, woman, are wine; and I shall sacrifice your bread and wine, your blood and honour, your life and your chastity.”
“I knew a dirty talker like you once before,” Sard said. ”