PAGE 3
It
by
I took notice of all this peacefulness and quiet, twenty grains of quinine, some near food out of a can, and then had a good look around for a good place to stop, in case I got started running.
I fixed on a sandy knoll that had a hollow in the top of it, and one twisted beach ebony to shade the hollow. At the five points of a star with the knoll for centre, but at safe blasting distance, I planted dynamite, primed and short-fused. If anything chased me I hoped to have time to spring one of these mines in passing, tumble into my hollow and curl up, with my fingers in my ears.
I didn’t believe in heathen gods when the sea and sky were that exclusive blue; but I had learned before I was fifteen years old that day is invariably followed by night, and that between the two there is a time toward the latter end of which you can believe anything. It was with that dusky period in view that I mined the approaches to my little villa at Eden-by-the-Sea.
Well, after that I took the flask that had the slip of skin in it, unscrewed the top, pulled the rubber cork, and fished the skin out, with a salvage hook that I made by unbending and rebending a hair-pin…. Don’t smile. I’ve always had a horror of accidentally finding a hair-pin in my pocket, and so I carry one on purpose…. See? Not an airy, fairy Lillian, but an honest, hard-working Jane … good to clean a pipe with. So I fished out the slip of skin (with the one I had then) and spread it out on my knee, and translated what was written on it, for the thousandth time.
Can you read that? The old-fashioned S’s mix you up. It’s straight modern Italian. I don’t know what the ink’s made of, but the skin’s the real article–it’s taken from just above the knee where a man can get at himself best. It runs this way, just like a “personal” in the Herald, only more so:
Prisoner on Prana Beach will share treasure with rescuing party.
Come at once.
Isn’t that just like an oil-well-in-the-South-west-Company’s prospectus? “Only a little stock left; price of shares will be raised shortly to thirteen cents.”
I bit. It was knowing what kind of skin the ad. was written on that got me. I’d seen cured human hide before. In Paris they’ve got a Constitution printed on some that was peeled off an aristocrat in the Revolution, and I’ve seen a seaman’s upper arm and back, with the tattoos, in a bottle of alcohol in a museum on Fourteenth Street, New York–boys under fourteen not admitted. I wasn’t a day over eight when I saw those tattoos. However….
To get that prisoner loose was the duty that I owed to humanity; to share the treasure was the duty that I owed to myself. So I got together some niggers, and the fancy craft I’ve described (on shares with a Singapore Dutchman, who was too fat to come himself, and too much married), and made a start…. You’re bothered by my calling them niggers. Is that it? Well, the Mason and Dixon line ran plump through my father’s house; but mother’s room being in the south gable, I was born, as you may say, in the land of cotton, and consequently in my bright Southern lexicon the word nigger is defined as meaning anything black or brown. I think I said that Prana is on the west coast, and that may have misled you. But Africa isn’t the only God-forsaken place that has a west coast; how about Staten Island?
Malaysian houses are built mostly of reed and thatch work standing in shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to climb out of. That’s why I’d brought a length of knotted rope. The dynamite was instead of men, which we hadn’t means to hire or transport, and who wouldn’t have landed on that beach anyhow, unless drowned and washed up. Now dynamite wouldn’t be a pleasant thing to have round your club or your favorite restaurant; but in some parts of the world it makes the best company. It will speak up for you on occasion louder than your best friend, and it gives you the feeling of being Jove with a handful of thunderbolts. My plan was to find in what settlement there was the most likely prisoner, drive the inhabitants off for two or three days–one blast would do that, I calculated (especially if preceded and followed by blowings on a pocket siren)–let my rope down into his well, lift the treasure with him, and get away with it.