Porlock

“ That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the flat swampy foreshore of Sulyma [157] grow small in the distance. The gap in the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. ”

“ That night, as they were sitting at their fire, Pollock again tried to draw Waterhouse out on the subject of Porroh methods. “Better get to sleep,” said Waterhouse, when Pollock’s bent became apparent; “we start early to-morrow. You may want all your nerve about you.”
“But what line will he take?”
“Can’t say. They’re versatile people. They know a lot of rum dodges. You’d better get that copper-devil, Shakespear, to talk.”
There was a flash and a heavy bang out of the darkness behind the huts, and a clay bullet came whistling close to Pollock’s head. ”

“ The women of that country are famous for their good looks—they are Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of Vasco da Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too, was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition. (It’s a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At any rate, the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. ”

“ But Pollock, using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man in the hand.
He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the sunlight, and then the Englishman [143] was alone, sick and trembling with the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all happened in less time than it takes to read about it. ”

“ But the Porroh man had vanished. Pollock clutched his revolver nervously in his hand.
One of his men came to meet him, and as he came, pointed to the bushes behind the hut in which the Porroh man had disappeared. Pollock had an irritating persuasion of having made an absolute fool of himself; he felt bitter, savage, at the turn things had taken. At the same time, he would have to tell Waterhouse—the moral, exemplary, cautious Waterhouse—who would inevitably take the matter seriously. Pollock cursed bitterly at his luck, at Waterhouse, and especially at the West Coast of [144] Africa. ”

“ But when an inverted head suddenly comes bouncing, like an india-rubber ball, between your legs, leaving distinct smears of blood every time it touches the ground, you can scarcely hope to avoid an accident. Pollock lifted his feet convulsively to avoid it, and then kicked at the thing furiously. Then something hit him violently in the back, and a hot pain ran up his arm.
He had been hit by the pole of an omnibus, and three of the fingers of his left hand smashed by the hoof of one of the horses,—the very fingers, as it happened, that he shot from the Porroh man. ”

“ Monday, October 5th.
Porchon brings me some news. When the quartermaster came to announce that the relief would take place this evening, he confided in him that we were going to change our position. Porchon hums gaily:
"We go no more to the woods,
For we have dined!"
"You will perceive," he cries, "that my latest effort as an improviser is more conspicuous than ever. Those words do none the less adequately express my meaning because they were sung. The woods bore one; they suffocate one; one can see nothing; soon now we shall have a plain before us. ”

“ Pollock is the confidential repository of all their secrets: nothing in their lives is hidden from him; he knows all of comic and tragic in their lowly careers. Along with his wife, he visits every house in the place, and from intimate knowledge can tell you, nodding his head to this or that house as he walks along, the worth or worthlessness of every native of the village. ”

“ Beany himself had in some way fastened it on the old woman. Porky decided to obey the summons as he imagined them to have been sent. By hook or crook, he would follow the old woman, sly and crafty as he now believed her to be. By hook or crook, he would find his brother. Starting towards the old woman, he waited until she stooped over the General's table, wiping off the papers with a careful, shaking old hand. Porky, suspicious of everything now, fancied that she swiftly read the words on the uppermost pages, but he was busy with deft fingers unfastening the fob from the tattered skirt. ”

“ The canoe itself had not come off so well. It had a great rent in the bottom, and Horace stamped another hole through the bow. Then the boys examined their new outfit. From their own former store they had a kettle, a frying-pan, a box of rifle-cartridges, and a sack of tea. They had taken from the trappers' supplies half a sack of flour, a lump of salt pork, two blankets, and two rifles.
The half-breed had recovered his wits by this time; sitting on the bank, he glared savagely at them.
"You'll find your partners waiting for you up the river," Horace said to him. ”

“ Then Pollock remembered that he first noticed them the night after the fight in the hut. “It’s my opinion he don’t want to kill you,” said Perera—“at least not yet. I’ve heard deir idea is to scare and worry a man wid deir spells, and narrow misses, and rheumatic pains, and bad dreams, and all dat, until he’s sick of life. Of course, it’s all talk, you know. You mustn’t worry about it.... But I wonder what he’ll be up to next.”
“I shall have to be up to something first,” said Pollock, staring gloomily at the greasy cards that Perera was putting on the table. ”

“ Then, on the second evening, Pollock had a disagreeable intimation of the arrival of the Porroh man in Sulyma by getting a flesh-wound in the shoulder from a lump of filed iron. It was a long shot, and the missile had nearly spent its force when it hit him. Still it conveyed its message plainly enough. Pollock sat up in his hammock, revolver in hand, all that night, and next morning confided, to some extent, in the Anglo-Portuguese.
Perera took the matter seriously. He knew the local customs pretty thoroughly. “It is a personal question, you must know. It is revenge. ”

“ I wonder if Porroh hokey-pokey upsets your luck at cards.”
He looked at Perera suspiciously.
“Very likely it does,” said Perera, warmly, shuffling. “Dey are wonderful people.”
That afternoon Pollock killed two snakes in his hammock, and there was also an extraordinary increase in the number of red ants that swarmed over the place; and these annoyances put him in a fit temper to talk over business with a certain Mendi rough he had interviewed before. The Mendi rough showed Pollock a little iron dagger, and demonstrated where one struck in the neck, in a way that made Pollock shiver ”

“ This is the third time in a month that you have come crossways-on with a native, and this time you’re in for it with a vengeance. Porroh, too! They’re down upon you enough as it is, about that idol you wrote your silly name on. And they’re the most vindictive devils on earth! You make a man ashamed of civilisation. To think you come of a decent family! If ever I cumber myself up with a vicious, stupid young lout like you again—”
“Steady on, now,” snarled Pollock, in the tone that always exasperated Waterhouse ”

“ He had expected that. He drew Eva aside into the shelter of a dense cedar shrub. A figure grew in the fog, growing to a slim, boyish form, running so as to pass directly where Lang stood. He stepped suddenly out.
“Is that you, Carroll?” exclaimed the runner. “What was that shooting? Hell!”
Lang’s rifle was already swinging, but the gunman was so swift that he already had his revolver clear of his pocket when the steel rifle barrel crashed down on his skull. He dropped limply, flinging his arms wide. Lang picked up the pistol and stood listening. No sound came from landward. ”

“ He saw him from a distance, and with such a shock that he half raised the rifle. But Carroll’s posture was reassurance enough.
He hastened up. Carroll was lying face down at the edge of a clump of cedar, his hat off, his limbs sprawling. He looked dead, but there was life in his pulse when Lang touched his wrist.
The emeralds! Lang felt his pockets, turned him over. They were empty. He ran his hands all over the man’s body. There was no bulging package anywhere, no loose stones about his clothing. ”

“ Let's get out of this!"
"No special hurry," said Porky wearily. He could not recover at once from the shock, but Beany was chipper as a cricket.
"Well, I don't know," he said, "I have not grown so fond of this little old dungeon that I want to reside here long. Besides, perhaps you don't know the old lady who sweeps upstairs as well as I do. She is apt to be up to almost any trick."
"Not if the Court knows himself, and he thinks he does," said Porky positively. "I left her under the bed in the other room with about a mile of flossy curtain cord twined around her. ”

“ They had escaped the trappers, indeed, and they had the foxes; but except the canoe, a blanket, the guns, and the light axe that Mac had at his belt, they had nothing else. "I guess this settles our prospecting, boys," said Horace. "What are we to do now? Shall we go on, or—"
"Or what?" Fred asked, as his brother stopped.
"I hardly know. But here we are, without supplies, and at least a hundred and fifty miles from any place where we can get them. We all know what a hard road it is, and going back it'll be up-stream all the way, after we leave this river." ”

“ He buried it before sunset on the north side of the shed he occupied, so that he should not have to pass the grave after dark when he was returning from Perera’s. He killed two snakes before he went to sleep. In the darkest part of the night he awoke with a start, and heard a pattering sound and something scraping on the floor. He sat up noiselessly, and felt under his pillow for his revolver. A mumbling growl followed, and Pollock fired at the sound. There was a yelp, and something dark passed for a moment across the hazy blue of the doorway. “A dog!” said Pollock, lying down again. ”

“ Waterhouse took one canoe, and Pollock, in spite of a friendly desire to chat with Waterhouse, had to take the other. He was left all alone in the front part of the canoe, and he had the greatest trouble to make the men—who did not love him—keep to the middle of the river, a clear hundred yards or more from either shore. However, he made Shakespear, the Freetown half-breed, come up to his own end of the canoe and tell him about Porroh, which Shakespear, failing in his attempts to leave Pollock alone, presently did with considerable freedom and gusto. ”

“ After shelling the ‘sungahs’ for some time, Sale with much courage dispersed the enemy, and Pollock pushed on his troops, rejecting the advice of Sale to give the men rest after the fatigues of the day and to spare the cattle. He wisely deemed it best to give the enemy no time to rally, even at the cost of some of the baggage animals. Captain Troup, who was at this time at Kábul, a captive with Akbar Khan, subsequently told Pollock that, had he not pushed on, the sirdar would have sallied out of Kábul with twenty thousand men. ”

“ Not until then did Porky slash the cords which bound his brother, and as Beany shook himself free, with many faces to ease his tired jaw where the gag had pressed it, Porky dropped limply into a chair and mopped his brow.
"The sword of Damocles!" was all he said.
"Don't know the gent," said Beany huskily. "Did some guy play this trick on him! If he felt as nervous as I did before you came, I feel good and sorry for him. Gosh, I have been sitting all trussed up there for about a year! ”

“ The great cotton wharves lay up the river, beyond the Row; and when the cotton season was on, he loved to sit in the dusk and see the drays go by. They would sweep into view with a loud thunder of wheels on the cobbles; and from his low seat they loomed huge and mysterious in the gathering dark. Sometimes there would be twenty of them in a row, with great swiftly-stepping mules, crouched figures of drivers, and bales piled toweringly above them. Always Porgy experienced a vague and not unpleasant fear when the drays swung past. ”

“ I'd leave it till all the stuff is vaporized—say, a couple of hours. The only thing I dread is that some one may wake up; but then, he wouldn't know what the smell was, and the spirit flame is so pale that it's almost invisible."
They watched the cabin intently. All remained deathly quiet. It was very cold as they crouched there in the snow. Horace kept his rifle ready, but finally his vigilance slackened. They walked about to keep from freezing, talked in whispers, and still watched the silent hut.
Suddenly Horace clutched Fred's arm.
"Look!" he cried. "The cabin's on fire!" ”

“ Pollock is—-er—-a most estimable citizen, and a useful man in the community. Yet Mr. Pollock is—-er—-Cantwell—-er—-that is, a bit 'touchy.' No matter if Pollock's reporter is a schoolboy, if we treated the boy with any lack of consideration, then Pollock would most certainly take umbrage at what he would choose to consider a slight upon himself, received through his representative. So at these Board meetings, young Prescott will have to be treated with as much courtesy as though he were really a man, for Pollock's hostility would be most disastrous to us—-er—-to some of us, possibly, I mean. ”