Outrigger

“ The wind has been blowing, and the rushes and young plants bowing and bending to it, lest it should do them harm, the cowards—and Grip—ha ha ha!—brave Grip, who cares for nothing, and when the wind rolls him over in the dust, turns manfully to bite it—Grip, bold Grip, has quarrelled with every little bowing twig—thinking, he told me, that it mocked him—and has worried it like a bulldog. ”

“ My first movement, on coming to the surface again, was to put my hand to my neck to make sure of the safety of the precious locket which had been placed there by my dear little countrywoman.
My second was to strike out for a big spar which I saw floating amid a mass of tangled cordage and splinters a few yards in front of me.
Strange as it may seem, only when my arms were resting safely on the spar, and I had time to look about me and take stock of the situation, did I realize the extreme peril I had been in.
Most dangers and disasters are worse to read about than to go through. ”

“ I need not explain my career as an outlaw, a career that has been gorgeously colored with fiction. To me the word outlaw is a living coal of fire. The past is a tragedy—a tragedy wherein danger lurks in every trail. I may be pardoned for hurrying over a few wild, relentless years that led up to a career of outlawry—a memory that cuts like the sword blades of a squadron of cavalry. The outlaw is like a big black bird, from which every passerby feels licensed to pluck a handful of feathers. ”

“ Was the outcast or the world to blame for the inevitable result? The outcast, no doubt; outcasts always are.
"Look—look, Josephine!" cried Grace, bursting into the library, where most of the party were assembled that evening. Josephine, with her foot on the sofa, being the nucleus. "Ella, and Phil, and I have just come from rowing on the lake, and see what we found, up by the pine trees at the other end of the lake, floating on the water." ”

“ Through the snow beginning to drive the deck grew small beneath me, until a fall meant a broken back or death, unless one landed in the sea, in which case the result would be frigid drowning. And still Margaret climbed. Without pause she went out under the overhanging platform of the top, shifted her holds to the rigging that went aloft from it, and swung around this rigging, easily, carelessly, timing the action to the roll, and stood safely upon the top. ”

“ Like yourself, A'tim, they killed only when they were hungry. It's the many-breathed Fire-stick of the Paleface that has destroyed us, A'tim; but like you, Brother, I, who am but an Outcast because of my great age, and because my horns have become stubs, care not overmuch. Why should I lament over my own people who have driven me forth—made of me an Outcast?"
"There is to be a big Run to-morrow—a mighty Kill," said A'tim, growing tired of the old Bull's reminiscent wail. ”

“ A'tim answered nothing as they journeyed down along the steep, heavily wooded river bank, its soft shale sides slid into mighty terraces, but in his heart was a murder thought, as he eyed the great bulk of his Brother Outcast, that he would also eat him. ”

“ We repeatedly begged our guards to loosen a little the cords which bound us, but the noise of the cannon had thrown them into such paroxysms of terror that they took no notice whatever of our entreaties, but kept looking back, and urging us to go on faster. Life, at this moment, appeared to me a most intolerable burden, and I made up my mind to get rid of it, by leaping into the next stream of water we came to. ”

“ For it was not only the nervousness of creeping along the boom itself, or the extreme difficulty of afterwards seizing on and sliding down by the rope that we had to dread, and that had occasioned the loss of some valuable lives by deterring men from adopting this mode of escape ”

“ Beneath the ruins of the spars, the coils of rigging, and the enormous folds of canvas, might lie crushed many of the best hands, who, from being always the foremost to spring forward in such seasons of danger, are surest to be sacrificed. ”

“ The matter-of-fact manner in which the outlaw, who was, even as he spoke, being hunted by hundreds of men, talked of eluding his pursuers and fulfilling his promise, gave the scouts an idea of his absolute fearlessness which they could not but admire, while at the same time his contempt for the Service galled them. ”

“ Strong, active, used to hand-to-hand fights, the outlaw showered his blows like hail; but all in vain. Some of his strokes were avoided with a nimbleness quite amazing in a man of the stranger’s thickset, clumsy build, and others were warded with a strength that made the assailant reflect with inward dismay how terrible in attack must be that surpassing force which, even in defence, made itself so formidably felt. ”

“ Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept—not with any uniform movement—but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible. ”

“ Strange, formless instincts and yearnings began to stir within him. He glanced curiously to right and left as he walked along, down dark, narrow turnings with narrower courts and alleys leading out of them, and the impulse grew upon him to throw off the ways and hampering conventions of his class, and mingle in the mysterious, half-naked life of this underground world of which he seemed to catch glimpses all around him.
“There are adventures to be met with here!” he whispered to himself. “There are men who commit crimes!” ”

“ The rigging on that side was as full of men as a bare garden-tree might be of sparrows, and all along the lee bulwarks they sat and crouched like sea-birds on a line of rock. Suddenly we rolled, down went the leeside, and I with it, but I caught hold of the lowest step of the forecastle ladder and sat fast. Then as we dipped I saw all that they were seeing from the masts and rigging—the yet restless sea with fast-running waves, alternately inky black, and of a strange bright metallic lead-colour, on which the scud as it drove across the moon made queer racing shadows. ”

“ The barrier they had set up with so much toil was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the frantic haste of desperate men. ”

“ Boxes and barrels, sections of fences squeezed upright into the drift, even a telegraph-pole, still erect, with wires dangling,—went by without causing comment. In a gray gust of rain the watchers saw a shanty-boat drifting down, turning around and around.
"Them shanty-boaters don’t care what they do, or where they go!" ”

“ Being no climbist, as might be expected from an urchin born and bred in London streets, getting used to the rigging was unpleasant at first; but that was mastered in its turn, until nothing remained unlearned but the helm. The one aim, apparently, of every man forrard was to so fit me for the work I might be called upon to do, as that no excuse might be found for cruelty of any sort. ”

“ The soft-voiced passion of her tenderness thrilled him. “You go to exile,” he went on, “to an alien place—”
“There is no exile, except from you, nor alien place where you are! The world that disowns you may cast me out—ah, I shall be glad!”
He laughed a low laugh of utter content. Lightly as if she had been a child, he lifted her into the saddle. Supporting her at first, he led the horse over the turf and into the driveway where his own waited. ”

“ Once more the easy wind brought him that odor of the far south, whether reality or fancy he could not say. But he turned to another window and looked toward the north. Away from the others and away from a subtle persuasiveness that had been in the air, some of his doubts returned. It would not all be so easy. ”

“ Presently a man swarmed up her rigging in order to look down on our decks, and as he went up, my father bade our men crawl over to windward, so that he should see all one gunwale lined with men, and so think that both were, and deem that we were setting a trap for them in order to entice them alongside by pretending to be hardly manned. ”

“ Here it is: first, I travel around the country and collect a hundred names; the names of usurpers whose human shells have had more or less spectacular careers. Not those born to the purple, but those who've come up like rockets, self-made men who've climbed to posts of importance in politics, the law, and elsewhere. I've seen a number of big shots of that sort who are nothing really but robots moved by slimy misshapen blobs ... ”

“ I made a desperate clutch at the rigging with my disengaged right hand, and it was well for me that I secured the hold so quickly, for the same instant, I was wrenched at with a brutal ferocity that appalled me. ”

“ Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we're going deeper down Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming, Yet we'll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming — While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down. ”

“ Leaping for the axe which is always kept near the bitt, so the rigging can be quickly cut away if need be, I struck down another man; then, with a back stroke, nearly cut off the arm of a man who was rushing upon me, sabre in hand. All this occurred almost in the twinkling of an eye. Taking advantage of the sort of stupor that had seized the crew, and feeling much calmer after this explosion of long-suppressed rage, I could see better where I was, or take my bearings a little, as the saying is. ”

“ Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation. ”

“ Very few "Scientists" of any candour could have looked at Grip, when prepared for battle (with his ears pricked up, and his neck on the rasp, and his tail set with stiffening bulges) without finding a nobler result of evolution, and a likelier survival, than their own. ”

“ The outrider fills his saddle-bags, and most likely a belt which he wears around his waist, with gold coin to the amount of tens of thousands of dollars, for in the section of country he visits there are no banks; and, taking a few trusty companions, all well mounted and armed, sets out on his long journey, beset by constant danger from lurking Indians and white outlaws who infest this wild country. ”

“ The rigging when I came on deck presented a strange sight. All the great sails had filled again, but the lighter ones were flying in lumbering streamers from every yard-arm like ribbands from a tattered cap; while booms and blocks went swinging through the confusion, knocking against the standing spars, and adding at every stroke some new disaster to the ruinous uproar. ”

“ Such particularity might have been possible for several officers and a draft of men from a ship of war, accompanied by an experienced secretary with a knowledge of shorthand. For two plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the broad-axe and consumed with an impatient greed of the result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare of exertion, heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face like rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes. ”

“ I’m sure there would be no danger of losing the spars by the stretching of the rigging.”
“They would be strong to bear an up-and-down strain, as strong as rope, but would be liable to be broken by anything striking them, when set up taut: suppose the boom should happen to strike them, or the yards, anchor-stock, or jib-boom of 191 another vessel hauling by in the dock? ”

“ Very soon they realised that whether they jumped or not, there was nothing but death before them, for the ship, buffeted by the waves, rolled dangerously on the rocks, and seemed as if about to heel over.
One man, taking his fate in his hands, watched his opportunity, and, fully dressed in oilskins as he was, suddenly let go of the rigging and jumped. Luckily he jumped wide enough, and plunged into the boiling surf below; had he fallen on to the deck he would have been smashed to pieces. His friends in the rigging gasped, staggered at the risk he took ”

“ And then, as the groan became louder, so did the motion become more violent, till the whole body heaved backwards and forwards with the regularity of a pendulum and the voice of a steam-engine. As the excitement became strong, the head of the dervishes walked along the inner circle, exciting those to more violence who already seemed the most violent. ”

“ While the voice that was hard grows husky deep,
And the face is a-tremble as if to weep?
The Chains on the brink of the cliff are lined;
The living are bowed o'er the dead—they rise
And they face the rifles with burning eyes ”

“ As the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering down it, hurried at once home—dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the staircase were the Frenchman’s exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the rod, just before the breaking of the door. ”