This Fortune you speak of, tell me, what sort of creature is she, to have the good things of the world so in her hands?—The Inferno of Dante Alighieri.
The second of my Argonauts was of quite another sort. Whatever graces of body and mind Nature has to give, she had given him—and he had wasted them. With his invincible and dauntless youth he might have been a companion for Cortez and stout Bernal Diaz, a Crusader, almost anything he chose, and he was—I borrow the phrase of a better man than I—a Camp-Follower of Fortune, a wasted man. The outskirts of the world are full of them. That such things can be, that men can be born so strong, so lovable, and then be wasted, seems to me the most inexplicable of the caprices of that Fortune which puzzled Dante Alighieri long ago.
Mid-heaven high, the morning sun blazed above the forlorn little lumber-port, calling the inhabitants thereof to arise and make hay diligently during the few weeks it still had to shine before the change of monsoons and the rainy season blotted the world in mist. The call seemed to arouse little enthusiasm. Over the channel, where the Rio Bagalayag winds out by the bar, a pair of gulls wheeled aimlessly, plunging into the yellow water now and then, and rising with harsh cries. Out beyond them in the distance, where Point Bagalayag wavered in the heat, a lorcha drifted with limp sails, becalmed in the lee of Mount Bagalayag. In the one street of Bagalayag itself, the grassy lane which follows the curve of the shore, two Chinamen with a long whip-saw were gnawing a plank from a four-foot log of molave, sawing steadily with the patient endurance of their race, brown arms swinging in and out, brown bodies swaying. At the end of each stroke, they grunted rhythmically, and the music of their industry—Ugh! Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh! Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh!—was the only sound in Bagalayag that morning, save the raucous complaint of the distant gulls.
As a matter of fact, Bagalayag was waiting in hushed expectancy for something inevitable to happen. On the shady side of the nipa church, which still manages to rear its rickety walls at the corner of the brown and weedy plaza, the populace was gathered—forty-one men, fifty-two women, fifty-two babes in arms, and seventy-three children of varying sex and age, speechless for once, with the smoke of their cigarettes dissolving above them like unfragrant incense. And the gaze of all that multitude was fixed unwinkingly on a tin-roofed house—the only one in town—which stands on the other side of the street, close to the water's edge.
In that pretentious dwelling an unprecedented event seemed likely to happen, for in its upper chamber one of the lords of the earth lay deathly sick of a fever. Bagalayag as yet recorded no death of a white man in its simple annals, therefore it sat and smoked and waited, all except its stolid, alien Chinamen, who cared nothing for life or death or anything but planks.
Occasionally a voice floated out from the Tin-Roofed House, weak and thin but full of helpless rage, and at the sound the inhabitants of Bagalayag wagged their heads and spoke softly. "The Se?or Ess-soffti is not dead—yet," they murmured.
In Hamburg, far enough from Bagalayag in miles, there is a house which sells anything, from elephants to orchids. Every product of the animal or vegetable kingdom from one pole to the other, 'round with the equator and back again, is included in the complete line which the Hamburgische Gesellschaft carries, for this body is a true body whose busy nerve-ends net the round world. Men on grimy ships whose battered fore feet are set across uncharted leagues of sea, men who rot in unheard-of towns—yet continue to live and trade in defiance of every hygienic law—men who plod untracked continents and unknown, sleeping islands with savage followers, are the organs by which it acts.
Set above all these is the good Right Eye of the Company, the man who, by virtue of wild-wood lore and craftsmanship, and first-hand knowledge of the far nooks and byways of the earth, by right of energy and perseverance, outranks the army of traders and collectors and stands next the Brain. Herr Felix Schrofft is his name, always spoken with respect and envy by his associates and rivals in his strong man's calling. And now, become the Se?or Ess-soffti on liquid Malay tongues, he lay alone at bay in the Tin-Roofed House, and held the breathless attention of the populace of Bagalayag in Mindoro.
The arena where he fought, that small, bare, upper chamber, was very simply furnished with a round table, a couple of chairs, a camphor-wood chest, a bamboo cage imprisoning a parrot, and a folding cot upholstered in the severest taste with dingy gray canvas. The table held the fly- and lizard-bitten remnants of a meal, the chairs were draped with the muddy garments their owner had flung there hastily three days before, a litter of other clothing sprawled from beneath the lid of the chest, and on the cot, which stood before a seaward-facing window, was stretched the redoubtable Se?or Ess-soffti himself, not at all in the mental attitude which our Christian convention prescribes for those in articulo mortis. Despite the pallor of the cheeks beneath the smut of the newly sprouted beard and the yellow gleam of the eyeballs and the leaden inertness of the shrunken limbs which barely hollowed the taut canvas where they lay, the shaggy, wizened monkey of a man was plainly beset by the very worst of tempers, which only his extreme weakness kept from violent expression.
So he lay chafing there that morning, just as he had lain for days. Occasionally his restless eyes met the beady ones of the parrot, and the imprisoned bird shrieked with silly laughter. On such occasions the Se?or Ess-soffti shook his fist, a menace which showed mostly in the convulsions of his face, and muttered weakly, "Sing, you deffel, sing!" falling thereafter into a murmured torrent of words, as he consigned the Philippine Islands and all things in them to everlasting torment.
Even a hidebound moralist, knowing all the circumstances, might have found some palliation for Herr Schrofft's unspiritual estate. Fever had stricken him at an inopportune season, and, for the first time in his life, he faced a possibility of failure with which he could not cope. Even now the freighter Sarstoon had turned her stubby nose Mindoro-ward at Schrofft's suggestion. In ten days she would be lying off Bagalayag, waiting for the cargo he had promised her, and even when one has no fever, ten days are little time in which to fell and trim a hundred cubic meters of a wood so dense that it eats an axe like granulated metal, and float it down the miles of oozing mud they call the Rio Bagalayag, and load it before the northeast monsoon—already threatening in the clouds—comes to lash the open roadstead into a fury of spume and breaking rollers.
He could foresee it all, the excessive sympathy of the Sarstoon's skipper, the meek explanation of the House to the impatient customer, the commiseration and sly elation of his acquaintances and rivals that he had failed at last, the universal grunt of "Hard luck, Schrofft"—hard luck in a trade whose frankly brutal creed discredits a man for one adverse stroke of fortune as for any other sign of personal weakness and unfitness. All that must come, unless he could find some means of thwarting Dame Fate. And so, not finding the means, he cursed the officious beldame heartily.
Suddenly he noticed that the drone of the saw had ceased. Doubtless the coolies had stopped to wipe their streaming faces, but Schrofft was in no mood to seek excuses for them. "Loaf, you deffels, loaf!" he shouted venomously.
As if in response to his taunt, the music of the saw began again, but mingled with it came the chatter of many voices and the soft flop, flop of many padding feet. Raising his head a wearisome half-inch to peer from his window, Herr Schrofft saw, with supreme disgust, the sprung masts and frowsy rigging of the monthly packet from Batangas in the river. Somehow or other the hours had dragged by uncounted; it was afternoon, and the crazy lorcha had drifted to her haven in spite of calm and childish seamanship; while he, Herr Schrofft the indomitable, had one day less in which to do his work. For the first time in his illness, the hard-pressed little man groaned for sympathy, and pitying, sentimental, Teutonic tears burned his eyes. "If I only had just one white man with me," he muttered.
The confusion without came nearer, drawing down the street, and presently the stairs of the Tin-Roofed House clattered under booted feet and its fabric trembled slightly. The invalid's face brightened with curiosity. No native of the Philippines has the combined weight and energy necessary to make a house shake when he walks. Deus ex Machina! That was a favorite phrase of Schrofft's, almost the only Latin of Gymnasium days that had stuck. Perhaps the Man had come with the Hour. Schrofft watched the door with feverish intentness.
It opened and a white man entered, white at least in fundamental coloring, although his skin was a raw, beefy red from newly acquired sunburn, tall, broad-shouldered, clad serviceably in sombrero, the relic of an army shirt, the ruins of khaki riding-breeches and, most incongruously, a pair of handsome riding-boots, whose russet leather was cleaned and polished till it glittered. So far all was well, but the face—the hollowed cheeks, the dark puffy rims beneath the eyes, the wavering glance of the bright blue eyes themselves, the nervous twitching of the full red lips, set in a smile of deprecating impudence, the keen, high-bred features blunted and battered by dissipation, all spoke of one thing. Schrofft sized up his visitor with narrowed lids, and spoke his opinion briefly. "I haf no use for bums," he said.
Like a mask, the wheedling smirk dropped from the newcomer's face. "Hock the Kaiser, a wandering Dutchman!" he cried airily, advancing to the cot.
Schrofft's little eyes burned red. "I am Herr Felix Schrofft, Explorer for the Hamburgische Gesellschaft," he said with dignity, "and I haf no use for bums. Get out."
"'Tis a certain matter of delayed remittances," the stranger explained, as he unceremoniously dumped the encumbering garments from a chair, and sat down by the table. "I must identify myself, Herr Softy. I am Richard Roe, Esquire, ward of the famous John Doe, of whom you may have heard. While the remittances delay, I wander, seeking whom and what I may devour." Mr. Richard Roe gazed ruefully at the dusty viands before him. "As usual, I seem to have come to the wrong shop," he murmured. "But here at least are cigarettes. I will not stand on ceremony."
While the match flared, Schrofft stared at his tormentor with at least as much of bewilderment as of wrath. "If I could hold my revolver," he said at last, "I think I would shoot you. I haf no use for bums."
Through a cloud of smoke, Mr. Richard Roe gazed whimsically at the invalid. "The question seems to be," he suggested mildly, "whether the bum has a use for you. And I rather think he has." He crossed one leg over the other and became pleasantly didactic. "I am not always what you see me now, Herr Softy. One short week ago I sat in Don Miguel Rafferty's establishment in Batangas, wooing fickle Fortune at the wheel. The jade stripped me, I was sold out, up against it; so I became a thorough bum, in manners, morals, and in dress. The boots," he digressed, glancing complacently at his well-shod feet, "are somewhat out of character, I admit. Otherwise I am a bum pure and simple, as you have three times observed, but a bum of a quality of which you never dreamed, a masterless man reduced to his primal elements, three appetites and a sense of humor. Herr Softy, beware of me. I am a dangerous character, I warn you frankly at the start."
Mr. Richard Roe approached the cot once more. "Speaking of revolvers," he remarked, "reminds me that I left my own in Batangas, in care of Uncle Monte de Piedad." He drew Schrofft's weapon from beneath the pillow, and inspected it rapidly. "A poor thing, but a Colt's," he muttered. "Calibre 41, of course. How European!"
Herr Schrofft, his eyes still closed, groaned weakly. It was hard that his respectable and well-ordered brain should conjure up a nightmare of vagabondage like this, and supply fitting words for the figure.
"I came southward to Mindoro," the drawling voice went on, "and at the first stroke I am half a man again. I have a gun. Here is a Tin-Roofed House in which to sleep; here is tobacco to smoke; through the chinks in the floor I perceive sleeping chickens which promise food. Best of all, I find here a companion for my solitude. Herr Softy, you may need an heir before long. Behold him here in me."
"Herr Gott!" Schrofft groaned again, "I am going crazier every minute." Suddenly he opened his eyes, for the door swung on its hinges and a head surmounted by a shock of coarse black hair was thrust within. At the sight of it, all his aggressiveness returned. "Son of fifty fathers!" he screamed. "Because you think I am dying you run away, and now you have the shamelessness to come back! Go and be a muchacho for the deffel! I shall not die; in two days I shall be strong enough to kill you."
"It was only his canny Filipino way," Mr. Richard Roe broke in, coming to the rescue of the unfaithful servant. "He wanted an alibi for the inquest. Slave," he announced sternly, "I have saved your life. Fetch more cigarettes and a bottle of whatever burning water the market offers. Then kill three chickens and cook them with plenty rice—and no grease. The Se?or Softy and I will have a mucho grande chow-chow to celebrate my home-coming. I am his heir. Sigue! Pronto! Madili!"
Schrofft glared hopelessly at Mr. Richard Roe. "Then you are real!" he cried. "That boy, he sees you also, he hears you, he obeys! Mein Gott! You are a bum. You haf no home, you haf no money, you haf no grub, you haf no chob. And I would gif a hundert dollars for just one man!"
"Alas," said Mr. Richard Roe hollowly, "I am not a man, and the hundred is unclaimed. I am the stuff that dreams are made of, bad dreams. But I have my better impulses, and I feel them stirring at the prospect of food. I will be a ministering angel to you, an airy, fairy, army nurse, pressing my cool hand softly on your fevered brow." He suited the action to the word, save that the hand was hot and gritty. "Herr Softy, your pulse is rapid, your temperature is rising, you tremble on the verge of a paroxysm of fever. Where is the quinine?"
The recurrent hot stage of his disease had indeed seized the patient, and as it grew upon him he lost more and more his grip of reality under the mad contradictions of Mr. Richard Roe's speech and conduct, and the potent spell of the drug which he administered with a lavish hand. Dimly, as in a dream, the room stretched wider and higher about him, and as the pulse boomed and roared in his ears, he saw in the distance a phantasm which he knew was called Mr. Richard Roe, sitting at a table and going through the motions of a real man. It drank thirstily from a bottle which a frightened muchacho brought; it smoked endless cigarettes; it dismembered a steaming chicken with its fingers, and ate it daintily, ate another, stretched back in its chair and grunted with content. Phantom or reality, Mr. Richard Roe began to be a comfort, he made himself so much at home. Schrofft closed his eyes and dozed.
Suddenly through his slumber cut a well-remembered sound: Ugh! Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh! Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh! He woke to a moment of clear-headedness and the sense of his predicament. It was almost sunset; only eight days were left. "My trees, my trees!" he quavered, trying weakly to sit up. "I must go and get them."
Instantly the "cool hand" rested on his forehead and, not unkindly, he was shoved back on his pillows. "You've been dozing," the voice of Mr. Richard Roe explained soothingly. "What's the matter?"
Brokenly, still as in a dream, Schrofft heard his own voice go croaking on, speaking ramblingly of trees, always of trees. The clump of iron-woods that grow at the corner where the mangroves are thickest on the bank, thirty miles up-stream. The twelve huge trees that stand up so high and have their tops pleached together. Those were the ones; they must be cut without delay. He must start at once, because, you see, the Sarstoon would be in on the 18th, and, if she didn't get the trees, the monsoon would change. And then her voyage would be wasted, and the customer would not have for six more months the wood of unique density which he wanted for non-magnetic gears, and the House would have to bear the blame, when it was all the fault of a fool named Schrofft, who lay around with fever when there was work to do.
At a great distance he saw Mr. Richard Roe sitting with crossed legs, smoking in long, meditative purr's, and inspecting him narrowly with keen, unwavering blue eyes.
"You're a rather game little man," said Mr. Richard Roe approvingly. After a long time he spoke again. "Thirty miles up, you say. Is there any one around who knows an iron-wood when he sees one?"
There was a new, a compelling quality in the voice, which Schrofft had not heard before. "That coward muchacho, that Juan, he knows. He has been there with me," said Schrofft.
"And the tools, where are they?" asked the compelling tones.
"In the canoes, all ready," Schrofft answered obediently.
"I can't understand his getting so excited about a few trees," Mr. Richard Roe muttered. "I never could. But he's a game little man, and if he wants his trees as bad as all this, by Jove, he's got to have 'em." He rose lazily, and stood towering above the cot. "It's all right, Schrofft. Go to sleep. I'll have your trees here by the eighteenth."
"You can't," Schrofft objected sleepily, with the unmalicious frankness of one who states a well-established fact. "You're nothing but a bum."
"Go to sleep," Mr. Richard Roe repeated soothingly. "Perhaps, since there's so much hurry, I'd better start to-night. There's a lovely moon now, like a Swiss cheese. Last night it made me think of beer."
"Those trees on the right bank," Schrofft muttered, trying to rise once more.
Strong hands pressed him back and held him there. "Schrofft," Mr. Richard Roe said slowly and impressively, "pay attention just one minute, and then you can go to sleep. When I want anything I go and get it, sabe? Same as I came here and got grub. Same as I'd go to the devil for a drink, when I want that. I never happened to want trees, but I'll get some for you. Now go to sleep."
Under the spell of the assuring voice and the comforting grip of the strong hands on his shoulders, Schrofft's eyelids drooped lower and lower, till even the clatter of energetic feet descending the stairs did not cause them to flutter.
He must have dreamed still more then, for strange things happened. Outside in the village, even in peaceful Bagalayag, a riot rose, voices of men angry and protesting, voices of women tearful and imploring, voices of children shrill with excitement, and, dominating all, a languid, vibrant voice speaking sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in crude but vigorous Bisayan, threatening, cajoling, domineering. Gradually all the others died away into a murmur of resignation, and then, suddenly, the song of the saw stopped with a spluttering drawl not unlike the squawk of a frightened hen. "Come along, you chaps," said the masterful voice. "Got a job for you other place, sabe?"
The response slid in falsetto semitones from a Mongolian tongue. "Got plenty worl-luk this side," it said sullenly. "No can do."
"Sure can do," said the master. "Got to do, sabe? Come along, you beggars, before I tie your pigtails together."
Then gradually all the tumu............