The magnetic tiles for 5 year oldsJacket

(The Star-Rover)

by Jack London

Contents

CHAPTER I.

All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have beenaware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my readerthat is to be. Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness Ispeak of will be remembered as an experience of your childhood. You were thennot fixed, not crystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousnessand an identity in the process of forming—ay, of forming and forgetting.

You have forgotten much, my reader, and yet, as you read these lines, youremember dimly the hazy vistas of other times and places into which your childeyes peered. They seem dreams to you to-day. Yet, if they were dreams, dreamedthen, whence the substance of them? Our dreams are grotesquely compounded ofthe things we know. The stuff of our sheerest dreams is the stuff of ourexperience. As a child, a wee child, you dreamed you fell great heights; youdreamed you flew through the air as things of the air fly; you were vexed bycrawling spiders and many-legged creatures of the slime; you heard othervoices, saw other faces nightmarishly familiar, and gazed upon sunrises andsunsets other than you know now, looking back, you ever looked upon.

Very well. These child glimpses are of other-worldness, of other-lifeness, ofthings that you had never seen in this particular world of your particularlife. Then whence? Other lives? Other worlds? Perhaps, when you have read allthat I shall write, you will have received answers to the perplexities I havepropounded to you, and that you yourself, ere you came to read me, propoundedto yourself.

Wordsworth knew. He was neither seer nor prophet, but just ordinary man likeyou or any man. What he knew, you know, any man knows. But he most aptly statedit in his passage that begins “Not in utter nakedness, not in entireforgetfulness. . .”

Ah, truly, shades of the prison-house close about us, the new-born things, andall too soon do we forget. And yet, when we were new-born we did remember othertimes and places. We, helpless infants in arms or creeping quadruped-like onthe floor, dreamed our dreams of air-flight. Yes; and we endured the tormentand torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrous things. We new-borninfants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of fear; andmemory is experience.

As for myself, at the beginnings of my vocabulary, at so tender a period that Istill made hunger noises and sleep noises, yet even then did I know that I hadbeen a star-rover. Yes, I, whose lips had never lisped the word“king,” remembered that I had once been the son of a king.More—I remembered that once I had been a slave and a son of a slave, andworn an iron collar round my neck.

Still more. When I was three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I.I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mould of myparticular flesh and time and place. In that period all that I had ever been inten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in theeffort to incorporate itself in me and become me.

Silly, isn’t it? But remember, my reader, whom I hope to have travel farwith me through time and space—remember, please, my reader, that I havethought much on these matters, that through bloody nights and sweats of darkthat lasted years-long, I have been alone with my many selves to consult andcontemplate my many selves. I have gone through the hells of all existences tobring you news which you will share with me in a casual comfortable hour overmy printed page.

So, to return, I say, during the ages of three and four and five, I was not yetI. I was merely becoming as I took form in the mould of my body, and all themighty, indestructible past wrought in the mixture of me to determine what theform of that becoming would be. It was not my voice that cried out in the nightin fear of things known, which I, forsooth, did not and could not know. Thesame with my childish angers, my loves, and my laughters. Other voices screamedthrough my voice, the voices of men and women aforetime, of all shadowy hostsof progenitors. And the snarl of my anger was blended with the snarls of beastsmore ancient than the mountains, and the vocal madness of my child hysteria,with all the red of its wrath, was chorded with the insensate, stupid cries ofbeasts pre-Adamic and progeologic in time.

And there the secret is out. The red wrath! It has undone me in this, mypresent life. Because of it, a few short weeks hence, I shall be led from thiscell to a high place with unstable flooring, graced above by a well-stretchedrope; and there they will hang me by the neck until I am dead. The red wrathalways has undone me in all my lives; for the red wrath is my disastrouscatastrophic heritage from the time of the slimy things ere the world wasprime.

It is time that I introduce myself. I am neither fool nor lunatic. I want youto know that, in order that you will believe the things I shall tell you. I amDarrell Standing. Some few of you who read this will know me immediately. Butto the majority, who are bound to be strangers, let me exposit myself. Eightyears ago I was Professor of Agronomics in the College of Agriculture of theUniversity of California. Eight years ago the sleepy little university town ofBerkeley was shocked by the murder of Professor Haskell in one of thelaboratories of the Mining Building. Darrell Standing was the murderer.

I am Darrell Standing. I was caught red-handed. Now the right and the wrong ofthis affair with Professor Haskell I shall not discuss. It was purely a privatematter. The point is, that in a surge of anger, obsessed by that catastrophicred wrath that has cursed me down the ages, I killed my fellow professor. Thecourt records show that I did; and, for once, I agree with the court records.

No; I am not to be hanged for his murder. I received a life-sentence for mypunishment. I was thirty-six years of age at the time. I am now forty-fouryears old. I have spent the eight intervening years in the California StatePrison of San Quentin. Five of these years I spent in the dark. Solitaryconfinement, they call it. Men who endure it, call it living death. But throughthese five years of death-in-life I managed to attain freedom such as few menhave ever known. Closest-confined of prisoners, not only did I range the world,but I ranged time. They who immured me for petty years gave to me, allunwittingly, the largess of centuries. Truly, thanks to Ed Morrell, I have hadfive years of star-roving. But Ed Morrell is another story. I shall tell youabout him a little later. I have so much to tell I scarce know how to begin.

Well, a beginning. I was born on a quarter-section in Minnesota. My mother wasthe daughter of an immigrant Swede. Her name was Hilda Tonnesson. My father wasChauncey Standing, of old American stock. He traced back to Alfred Standing, anindentured servant, or slave if you please, who was transported from England tothe Virginia plantations in the days that were even old when the youthfulWashington went a-surveying in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

A son of Alfred Standing fought in the War of the Revolution; a grandson, inthe War of 1812. There have been no wars since in which the Standings have notbeen represented. I, the last of the Standings, dying soon without issue,fought as a common soldier in the Philippines, in our latest war, and to do soI resigned, in the full early ripeness of career, my professorship in theUniversity of Nebraska. Good heavens, when I so resigned I was headed for theDeanship of the College of Agriculture in that university—I, thestar-rover, the red-blooded adventurer, the vagabondish Cain of the centuries,the militant priest of remotest times, the moon-dreaming poet of ages forgottenand to-day unrecorded in man’s history of man!

And here I am, my hands dyed red in Murderers’ Row, in the State Prisonof Folsom, awaiting the day decreed by the machinery of state when the servantsof the state will lead me away into what they fondly believe is thedark—the dark they fear; the dark that gives them fearsome andsuperstitious fancies; the dark that drives them, drivelling and yammering, tothe altars of their fear-created, anthropomorphic gods.

No; I shall never be Dean of any college of agriculture. And yet I knewagriculture. It was my profession. I was born to it, reared to it, trained toit; and I was a master of it. It was my genius. I can pick the high-percentagebutter-fat cow with my eye and let the Babcock Tester prove the wisdom of myeye. I can look, not at land, but at landscape, and pronounce the virtues andthe shortcomings of the soil. Litmus paper is not necessary when I determine asoil to be acid or alkali. I repeat, farm-husbandry, in its highest scientificterms, was my genius, and is my genius. And yet the state, which includes allthe citizens of the state, believes that it can blot out this wisdom of mine inthe final dark by means of a rope about my neck and the abruptive jerk ofgravitation—this wisdom of mine that was incubated through themillenniums, and that was well-hatched ere the farmed fields of Troy were everpastured by the flocks of nomad shepherds!

Corn? Who else knows corn? There is my demonstration at Wistar, whereby Iincreased the annual corn-yield of every county in Iowa by half a milliondollars. This is history. Many a farmer, riding in his motor-car to-day, knowswho made possible that motor-car. Many a sweet-bosomed girl and bright-browedboy, poring over high-school text-books, little dreams that I made that highereducation possible by my corn demonstration at Wistar.

And farm management! I know the waste of superfluous motion without studying amoving picture record of it, whether it be farm or farm-hand, the layout ofbuildings or the layout of the farm-hands’ labour. There is my handbookand tables on the subject. Beyond the shadow of any doubt, at this presentmoment, a hundred thousand farmers are knotting their brows over its spreadpages ere they tap out their final pipe and go to bed. And yet, so far was Ibeyond my tables, that all I needed was a mere look at a man to know hispredispositions, his co-ordinations, and the index fraction of hismotion-wastage.

And here I must close this first chapter of my narrative. It is nineo’clock, and in Murderers’ Row that means lights out. Even now, Ihear the soft tread of the gum-shoed guard as he comes to censure me for mycoal-oil lamp still burning. As if the mere living could censure the doomed todie!

CHAPTER II.

I am Darrell Standing. They are going to take me out and hang me pretty soon.In the meantime I say my say, and write in these pages of the other times andplaces.

After my sentence, I came to spend the rest of my “natural life” inthe prison of San Quentin. I proved incorrigible. An incorrigible is a terriblehuman being—at least such is the connotation of“incorrigible” in prison psychology. I became an incorrigiblebecause I abhorred waste motion. The prison, like all prisons, was a scandaland an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. The criminalityof wastefulness irritated me. Why should it not? Elimination of waste motionwas my speciality. Before the invention of steam or steam-driven looms threethousand years before, I had rotted in prison in old Babylon; and, trust me, Ispeak the truth when I say that in that ancient day we prisoners wove moreefficiently on hand-looms than did the prisoners in the steam-poweredloom-rooms of San Quentin.

The crime of waste was abhorrent. I rebelled. I tried to show the guards ascore or so of more efficient ways. I was reported. I was given the dungeon andthe starvation of light and food. I emerged and tried to work in the chaos ofinefficiency of the loom-rooms. I rebelled. I was given the dungeon, plus thestrait-jacket. I was spread-eagled, and thumbed-up, and privily beaten by thestupid guards whose totality of intelligence was only just sufficient to showthem that I was different from them and not so stupid.

Two years of this witless persecution I endured. It is terrible for a man to betied down and gnawed by rats. The stupid brutes of guards were rats, and theygnawed the intelligence of me, gnawed all the fine nerves of the quick of meand of the consciousness of me. And I, who in my past have been a most valiantfighter, in this present life was no fighter at all. I was a farmer, anagriculturist, a desk-tied professor, a laboratory slave, interested only inthe soil and the increase of the productiveness of the soil.

I fought in the Philippines because it was the tradition of the Standings tofight. I had no aptitude for fighting. It was all too ridiculous, theintroducing of disruptive foreign substances into the bodies of little blackmen-folk. It was laughable to behold Science prostituting all the might of itsachievement and the wit of its inventors to the violent introducing of foreignsubstances into the bodies of black folk.

As I say, in obedience to the tradition of the Standings I went to war andfound that I had no aptitude for war. So did my officers find me out, becausethey made me a quartermaster’s clerk, and as a clerk, at a desk, I foughtthrough the Spanish-American War.

So it was not because I was a fighter, but because I was a thinker, that I wasenraged by the motion-wastage of the loom-rooms and was persecuted by theguards into becoming an “incorrigible.” One’s brain workedand I was punished for its working. As I told Warden Atherton, when myincorrigibility had become so notorious that he had me in on the carpet in hisprivate office to plead with me; as I told him then:

“It is so absurd, my dear Warden, to think that your rat-throttlers ofguards can shake out of my brain the things that are clear and definite in mybrain. The whole organization of this prison is stupid. You are a politician.You can weave the political pull of San Francisco saloon-men and ward heelersinto a position of graft such as this one you occupy; but you can’t weavejute. Your loom-rooms are fifty years behind the times. . . .”

But why continue the tirade?—for tirade it was. I showed him what a foolhe was, and as a result he decided that I was a hopeless incorrigible.

Give a dog a bad name—you know the saw. Very well. Warden Atherton gavethe final sanction to the badness of my name. I was fair game. More than oneconvict’s dereliction was shunted off on me, and was paid for by me inthe dungeon on bread and water, or in being triced up by the thumbs on mytip-toes for long hours, each hour of which was longer than any life I haveever lived.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel. The guards and themen over me, from the Warden down, were stupid monsters. Listen, and you shalllearn what they did to me. There was a poet in the prison, a convict, aweak-chinned, broad-browed, degenerate poet. He was a forger. He was a coward.He was a snitcher. He was a stool—strange words for a professor ofagronomics to use in writing, but a professor of agronomics may well learnstrange words when pent in prison for the term of his natural life.

This poet-forger’s name was Cecil Winwood. He had had prior convictions,and yet, because he was a snivelling cur of a yellow dog, his last sentence hadbeen only for seven years. Good credits would materially reduce this time. Mytime was life. Yet this miserable degenerate, in order to gain several shortyears of liberty for himself, succeeded in adding a fair portion of eternity tomy own lifetime term.

I shall tell what happened the other way around, for it was only after a wearyperiod that I learned. This Cecil Winwood, in order to curry favour with theCaptain of the Yard, and thence the Warden, the Prison Directors, the Board ofPardons, and the Governor of California, framed up a prison-break. Now notethree things: (a) Cecil Winwood was so detested by his fellow-convicts thatthey would not have permitted him to bet an ounce of Bull Durham on a bed-bugrace—and bed-bug racing was a great sport with the convicts; (b) I wasthe dog that had been given a bad name: (c) for his frame-up, Cecil Winwoodneeded the dogs with bad names, the lifetimers, the desperate ones, theincorrigibles.

But the lifers detested Cecil Winwood, and, when he approached them with hisplan of a wholesale prison-break, they laughed at him and turned away withcurses for the stool that he was. But he fooled them in the end, forty of thebitterest-wise ones in the pen. He approached them again and again. He told ofhis power in the prison by virtue of his being trusty in the Warden’soffice, and because of the fact that he had the run of the dispensary.

“Show me,” said Long Bill Hodge, a mountaineer doing life for trainrobbery, and whose whole soul for years had been bent on escaping in order tokill the companion in robbery who had turned state’s evidence on him.

Cecil Winwood accepted the test. He claimed that he could dope the guards thenight of the break.

“Talk is cheap,” said Long Bill Hodge. “What we want is thegoods. Dope one of the guards to-night. There’s Barnum. He’s nogood. He beat up that crazy Chink yesterday in Bughouse Alley—when he wasoff duty, too. He’s on the night watch. Dope him to-night an’ makehim lose his job. Show me, and we’ll talk business with you.”

All this Long Bill told me in the dungeons afterward. Cecil Winwood demurredagainst the immediacy of the demonstration. He claimed that he must have timein which to steal the dope from the dispensary. They gave him the time, and aweek later he announced that he was ready. Forty hard-bitten lifers waited forthe guard Barnum to go to sleep on his shift. And Barnum did. He was foundasleep, and he was discharged for sleeping on duty.

Of course, that convinced the lifers. But there was the Captain of the Yard toconvince. To him, daily, Cecil Winwood was reporting the progress of thebreak—all fancied and fabricated in his own imagination. The Captain ofthe Yard demanded to be shown. Winwood showed him, and the full details of theshowing I did not learn until a year afterward, so slowly do the secrets ofprison intrigue leak out.

Winwood said that the forty men in the break, in whose confidence he was, hadalready such power in the Prison that they were about to begin smuggling inautomatic pistols by means of the guards they had bought up.

“Show me,” the Captain of the Yard must have demanded.

And the forger-poet showed him. In the Bakery, night work was a regular thing.One of the convicts, a baker, was on the first night-shift. He was a stool ofthe Captain of the Yard, and Winwood knew it.

“To-night,” he told the Captain, “Summerface will bring in adozen ’44 automatics. On his next time off he’ll bring in theammunition. But to-night he’ll turn the automatics over to me in thebakery. You’ve got a good stool there. He’ll make you his reportto-morrow.”

Now Summerface was a strapping figure of a bucolic guard who hailed fromHumboldt County. He was a simple-minded, good-natured dolt and not aboveearning an honest dollar by smuggling in tobacco for the convicts. On thatnight, returning from a trip to San Francisco, he brought in with him fifteenpounds of prime cigarette tobacco. He had done this before, and delivered thestuff to Cecil Winwood. So, on that particular night, he, all unwitting, turnedthe stuff over to Winwood in the bakery. It was a big, solid, paper-wrappedbundle of innocent tobacco. The stool baker, from concealment, saw the packagedelivered to Winwood and so reported to the Captain of the Yard next morning.

But in the meantime the poet-forger’s too-lively imagination ran awaywith him. He was guilty of a slip that gave me five years of solitaryconfinement and that placed me in this condemned cell in which I now write. Andall the time I knew nothing about it. I did not even know of the break he hadinveigled the forty lifers into planning. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing.And the rest knew little. The lifers did not know he was giving them the cross.The Captain of the Yard did not know that the cross was being worked on him.Summerface was the most innocent of all. At the worst, his conscience couldhave accused him only of smuggling in some harmless tobacco.

And now to the stupid, silly, melodramatic slip of Cecil Winwood. Next morning,when he encountered the Captain of the Yard, he was triumphant. His imaginationtook the bit in its teeth.

“Well, the stuff came in all right as you said,” the captain of theYard remarked.

“And enough of it to blow half the prison sky-high,” Winwoodcorroborated.

“Enough of what?” the Captain demanded.

“Dynamite and detonators,” the fool rattled on. “Thirty-fivepounds of it. Your stool saw Summerface pass it over to me.”

And right there the Captain of the Yard must have nearly died. I can actuallysympathize with him—thirty-five pounds of dynamite loose in the prison.

They say that Captain Jamie—that was his nickname—sat down and heldhis head in his hands.

“Where is it now?” he cried. “I want it. Take me to it atonce.”

And right there Cecil Winwood saw his mistake.

“I planted it,” he lied—for he was compelled to lie because,being merely tobacco in small packages, it was long since distributed among theconvicts along the customary channels.

“Very well,” said Captain Jamie, getting himself in hand.“Lead me to it at once.”

But there was no plant of high explosives to lead him to. The thing did notexist, had never existed save in the imagination of the wretched Winwood.

In a large prison like San Quentin there are always hiding-places for things.And as Cecil Winwood led Captain Jamie he must have done some rapid thinking.

As Captain Jamie testified before the Board of Directors, and as Winwood alsoso testified, on the way to the hiding-place Winwood said that he and I hadplanted the powder together.

And I, just released from five days in the dungeons and eighty hours in thejacket; I, whom even the stupid guards could see was too weak to work in theloom-room; I, who had been given the day off to recuperate—from tooterrible punishment—I was named as the one who had helped hide thenon-existent thirty-five pounds of high explosive!

Winwood led Captain Jamie to the alleged hiding-place. Of course they found nodynamite in it.

“My God!” Winwood lied. “Standing has given me the cross.He’s lifted the plant and stowed it somewhere else.”

The Captain of the Yard said more emphatic things than “My God!”Also, on the spur of the moment but cold-bloodedly, he took Winwood into hisown private office, looked the doors, and beat him up frightfully—all ofwhich came out before the Board of Directors. But that was afterward. In themeantime, even while he took his beating, Winwood swore by the truth of what hehad told.

What was Captain Jamie to do? He was convinced that thirty-five pounds ofdynamite were loose in the prison and that forty desperate lifers were readyfor a break. Oh, he had Summerface in on the carpet, and, although Summerfaceinsisted the package contained tobacco, Winwood swore it was dynamite and wasbelieved.

At this stage I enter or, rather, I depart, for they took me away out of thesunshine and the light of day to the dungeons, and in the dungeons and in thesolitary cells, out of the sunshine and the light of day, I rotted for fiveyears.

I was puzzled. I had only just been released from the dungeons, and was lyingpain-racked in my customary cell, when they took me back to the dungeon.

“Now,” said Winwood to Captain Jamie, “though we don’tknow where it is, the dynamite is safe. Standing is the only man who does know,and he can’t pass the word out from the dungeon. The men are ready tomake the break. We can catch them red-handed. It is up to me to set the time.I’ll tell them two o’clock to-night and tell them that, with theguards doped, I’ll unlock their cells and give them their automatics. If,at two o’clock to-night, you don’t catch the forty I shall namewith their clothes on and wide awake, then, Captain, you can give me solitaryfor the rest of my sentence. And with Standing and the forty tight in thedungeons, we’ll have all the time in the world to locate thedynamite.”

“If we have to tear the prison down stone by stone,” Captain Jamieadded valiantly.

That was six years ago. In all the intervening time they have never found thatnon-existent explosive, and they have turned the prison upside-down a thousandtimes in searching for it. Nevertheless, to his last day in office WardenAtherton believed in the existence of that dynamite. Captain Jamie, who isstill Captain of the Yard, believes to this day that the dynamite is somewherein the prison. Only yesterday, he came all the way up from San Quentin toFolsom to make one more effort to get me to reveal the hiding-place. I know hewill never breathe easy until they swing me off.

CHAPTER III.

All that day I lay in the dungeon cudgelling my brains for the reason of thisnew and inexplicable punishment. All I could conclude was that some stool hadlied an infraction of the rules on me in order to curry favour with the guards.

Meanwhile Captain Jamie fretted his head off and prepared for the night, whileWinwood passed the word along to the forty lifers to be ready for the break.And two hours after midnight every guard in the prison was under orders. Thisincluded the day-shift which should have been asleep. When two o’clockcame, they rushed the cells occupied by the forty. The rush was simultaneous.The cells were opened at the same moment, and without exception the men namedby Winwood were found out of their bunks, fully dressed, and crouching justinside their doors. Of course, this was verification absolute of all the fabricof lies that the poet-forger had spun for Captain Jamie. The forty lifers werecaught in red-handed readiness for the break. What if they did unite,afterward, in averring that the break had been planned by Winwood? The PrisonBoard of Directors believed, to a man, that the forty lied in an effort to savethemselves. The Board of Pardons likewise believed, for, ere three months wereup, Cecil Winwood, forger and poet, most despicable of men, was pardoned out.

Oh, well, the stir, or the pen, as they call it in convict argot, is a trainingschool for philosophy. No inmate can survive years of it without having hadburst for him his fondest illusions and fairest metaphysical bubbles. Truthlives, we are taught; murder will out. Well, this is a demonstration thatmurder does not always come out. The Captain of the Yard, the late WardenAtherton, the Prison Board of Directors to a man—all believe, right now,in the existence of that dynamite that never existed save in theslippery-geared and all too-accelerated brain of the degenerate forger andpoet, Cecil Winwood. And Cecil Winwood still lives, while I, of all menconcerned, the utterest, absolutist, innocentest, go to the scaffold in a fewshort weeks.

And now I must tell how entered the forty lifers upon my dungeon stillness. Iwas asleep when the outer door to the corridor of dungeons clanged open andaroused me. “Some poor devil,” was my thought; and my next thoughtwas that he was surely getting his, as I listened to the scuffling of feet, thedull impact of blows on flesh, the sudden cries of pain, the filth of curses,and the sounds of dragging bodies. For, you see, every man was man-handled allthe length of the way.

Dungeon-door after dungeon-door clanged open, and body after body was thrustin, flung in, or dragged in. And continually more groups of guards arrived withmore beaten convicts who still were being beaten, and more dungeon-doors wereopened to receive the bleeding frames of men who were guilty of yearning afterfreedom.

Yes, as I look back upon it, a man must be greatly a philosopher to survive thecontinual impact of such brutish experiences through the years and years. I amsuch a philosopher. I have endured eight years of their torment, and now, inthe end, failing to get rid of me in all other ways, they have invoked themachinery of state to put a rope around my neck and shut off my breath by theweight of my body. Oh, I know how the experts give expert judgment that thefall through the trap breaks the victim’s neck. And the victims, likeShakespeare’s traveller, never return to testify to the contrary. But wewho have lived in the stir know of the cases that are hushed in the prisoncrypts, where the victim’s necks are not broken.

It is a funny thing, this hanging of a man. I have never seen a hanging, but Ihave been told by eye-witnesses the details of a dozen hangings so that I knowwhat will happen to me. Standing on the trap, leg-manacled and arm-manacled,the knot against the neck, the black cap drawn, they will drop me down untilthe momentum of my descending weight is fetched up abruptly short by thetautening of the rope. Then the doctors will group around me, and one willrelieve another in successive turns in standing on a stool, his arms passedaround me to keep me from swinging like a pendulum, his ear pressed close to mychest, while he counts my fading heart-beats. Sometimes twenty minutes elapseafter the trap is sprung ere the heart stops beating. Oh, trust me, they makemost scientifically sure that a man is dead once they get him on a rope.

I still wander aside from my narrative to ask a question or two of society. Ihave a right so to wander and so to question, for in a little while they aregoing to take me out and do this thing to me. If the neck of the victim bebroken by the alleged shrewd arrangement of knot and noose, and by the allegedshrewd calculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, thenwhy do they manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable toanswer this question. But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in alynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and easethe throttle of the noose about his neck so that he might breathe.

Another question I will ask of the smug, cotton-wooled member of society, whosesoul has never strayed to the red hells. Why do they put the black cap over thehead and the face of the victim ere they drop him through the trap? Pleaseremember that in a short while they will put that black cap over my head. So Ihave a right to ask. Do they, your hang-dogs, O smug citizen, do these yourhang-dogs fear to gaze upon the facial horror of the horror they perpetrate foryou and ours and at your behest?

Please remember that I am not asking this question in the twelve-hundredth yearafter Christ, nor in the time of Christ, nor in the twelve-hundredth yearbefore Christ. I, who am to be hanged this year, thenineteen-hundred-and-thirteenth after Christ, ask these questions of you whoare assumably Christ’s followers, of you whose hang-dogs are going totake me out and hide my face under a black cloth because they dare not lookupon the horror they do to me while I yet live.

And now back to the situation in the dungeons. When the last guard departed andthe outer door clanged shut, all the forty beaten, disappointed men began totalk and ask questions. But, almost immediately, roaring like a bull in orderto be heard, Skysail Jack, a giant sailor of a lifer, ordered silence while acensus could be taken. The dungeons were full, and dungeon by dungeon, in orderof dungeons, shouted out its quota to the roll-call. Thus, every dungeon wasaccounted for as occupied by trusted convicts, so that there was no opportunityfor a stool to be hidden away and listening.

Of me, only, were the convicts dubious, for I was the one man who had not beenin the plot. They put me through a searching examination. I could but tell themhow I had just emerged from dungeon and jacket in the morning, and withoutrhyme or reason, so far as I could discover, had been put back in the dungeonafter being out only several hours. My record as an incorrigible was in myfavour, and soon they began to talk.

As I lay there and listened, for the first time I learned of the break that hadbeen a-hatching. “Who had squealed?” was their one quest, andthroughout the night the quest was pursued. The quest for Cecil Winwood wasvain, and the suspicion against him was general.

“There’s only one thing, lads,” Skysail Jack finally said.“It’ll soon be morning, and then they’ll take us out and giveus bloody hell. We were caught dead to rights with our clothes on. Winwoodcrossed us and squealed. They’re going to get us out one by one and messus up. There’s forty of us. Any lyin’s bound to be found out. Soeach lad, when they sweat him, just tells the truth, the whole truth, so helphim God.”

And there, in that dark hole of man’s inhumanity, from dungeon cell todungeon cell, their mouths against the gratings, the two-score lifers solemnlypledged themselves before God to tell the truth.

Little good did their truth-telling do them. At nine o’clock the guards,paid bravoes of the smug citizens who constitute the state, full of meat andsleep, were upon us. Not only had we had no breakfast, but we had had no water.And beaten men are prone to feverishness. I wonder, my reader, if you canglimpse or guess the faintest connotation of a man beaten—“beatup,” we prisoners call it. But no, I shall not tell you. Let it sufficeto know that these beaten, feverish men lay seven hours without water.

At nine the guards arrived. There were not many of them. There was no need formany, because they unlocked only one dungeon at a time. They were equipped withpick-handles—a handy tool for the “disciplining” of ahelpless man. One dungeon at a time, and dungeon by dungeon, they messed andpulped the lifers. They were impartial. I received the same pulping as therest. And this was merely the beginning, the preliminary to the examinationeach man was to undergo alone in the presence of the paid brutes of the state.It was the forecast to each man of what each man might expect in inquisitionhall.

I have been through most of the red hells of prison life, but, worst of all,far worse than what they intend to do with me in a short while, was theparticular hell of the dungeons in the days that followed.

Long Bill Hodge, the hard-bitten mountaineer, was the first man interrogated.He came back two hours later—or, rather, they conveyed him back, andthrew him on the stone of his dungeon floor. They then took away Luigi Polazzo,a San Francisco hoodlum, the first native generation of Italian parentage, whojeered and sneered at them and challenged them to wreak their worst upon him.

It was some time before Long Bill Hodge mastered his pain sufficiently to becoherent.

“What about this dynamite?” he demanded. “Who knows anythingabout dynamite?”

And of course nobody knew, although it had been the burden of the interrogationput to him.

Luigi Polazzo came back in a little less than two hours, and he came back awreck that babbled in delirium and could give no answer to the questionsshowered upon him along the echoing corridor of dungeons by the men who wereyet to get what he had got, and who desired greatly to know what things hadbeen done to him and what interrogations had been put to him.

Twice again in the next forty-eight hours Luigi was taken out and interrogated.After that, a gibbering imbecile, he went to live in Bughouse Alley. He has astrong constitution. His shoulders are broad, his nostrils wide, his chest isdeep, his blood is pure; he will continue to gibber in Bughouse Alley longafter I have swung off and escaped the torment of the penitentiaries ofCalifornia.

Man after man was taken away, one at a time, and the wrecks of men were broughtback, one by one, to rave and howl in the darkness. And as I lay there andlistened to the moaning and the groaning, and all the idle chattering ofpain-addled wits, somehow, vaguely reminiscent, it seemed to me that somewhere,some time, I had sat in a high place, callous and proud, and listened to asimilar chorus of moaning and groaning. Afterwards, as you shall learn, Iidentified this reminiscence and knew that the moaning and the groaning was ofthe sweep-slaves manacled to their benches, which I heard from above, on thepoop, a soldier passenger on a galley of old Rome. That was when I sailed forAlexandria, a captain of men, on my way to Jerusalem . . . but that is a storyI shall tell you later. In the meanwhile . . . .

CHAPTER IV.

In the meanwhile obtained the horror of the dungeons, after the discovery ofthe plot to break prison. And never, during those eternal hours of waiting, wasit absent from my consciousness that I should follow these other convicts out,endure the hells of inquisition they endured, and be brought back a wreck andflung on the stone floor of my stone-walled, iron-doored dungeon.

They came for me. Ungraciously and ungently, with blow and curse, they haled meforth, and I faced Captain Jamie and Warden Atherton, themselves arrayed withthe strength of half a dozen state-bought, tax-paid brutes of guards wholingered in the room to do any bidding. But they were not needed.

“Sit down,” said Warden Atherton, indicating a stout arm-chair.

I, beaten and sore, without water for a night long and a day long, faint withhunger, weak from a beating that had been added to five days in the dungeon andeighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of human fate,apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen happen to theothers—I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile professor ofagronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept the invitation to sitdown.

Warden Atherton was a large man and a very powerful man. His hands flashed outto a grip on my shoulders. I was a straw in his strength. He lifted me clear ofthe floor and crashed me down in the chair.

“Now,” he said, while I gasped and swallowed my pain, “tellme all about it, Standing. Spit it out—all of it, if you knowwhat’s healthy for you.”

“I don’t know anything about what has happened . . .”, Ibegan.

That was as far as I got. With a growl and a leap he was upon me. Again helifted me in the air and crashed me down into the chair.

“No nonsense, Standing,” he warned. “Make a clean breast ofit. Where is the dynamite?”

“I don’t know anything of any dynamite,” I protested.

Once again I was lifted and smashed back into the chair.

I have endured tortures of various sorts, but when I reflect upon them in thequietness of these my last days, I am confident that no other torture was quitethe equal of that chair torture. By my body that stout chair was battered outof any semblance of a chair. Another chair was brought, and in time that chairwas demolished. But more chairs were brought, and the eternal questioning aboutthe dynamite went on.

When Warden Atherton grew tired, Captain Jamie relieved him; and then the guardMonohan took Captain Jamie’s place in smashing me down into the chair.And always it was dynamite, dynamite, “Where is the dynamite?” andthere was no dynamite. Why, toward the last I would have given a large portionof my immortal soul for a few pounds of dynamite to which I could confess.

I do not know how many chairs were broken by my body. I fainted times withoutnumber, and toward the last the whole thing became nightmarish. I washalf-carried, half-shoved and dragged back to the dark. There, when I becameconscious, I found a stool in my dungeon. He was a pallid-faced, littledope-fiend of a short-timer who would do anything to obtain the drug. As soonas I recognized him I crawled to the grating and shouted out along thecorridor:

“There is a stool in with me, fellows! He’s Ignatius Irvine! Watchout what you say!”

The outburst of imprecations that went up would have shaken the fortitude of abraver man than Ignatius Irvine. He was pitiful in his terror, while all abouthim, roaring like beasts, the pain-racked lifers told him what awful thingsthey would do to him in the years that were to come.

Had there been secrets, the presence of a stool in the dungeons would have keptthe men quiet. As it was, having all sworn to tell the truth, they talkedopenly before Ignatius Irvine. The one great puzzle was the dynamite, of whichthey were as much in the dark as was I. They appealed to me. If I knew anythingabout the dynamite they begged me to confess it and save them all from furthermisery. And I could tell them only the truth, that I knew of no dynamite.

One thing the stool told me, before the guards removed him, showed how seriouswas this matter of the dynamite. Of course, I passed the word along, which wasthat not a wheel had turned in the prison all day. The thousands ofconvict-workers had remained locked in their cells, and the outlook was thatnot one of the various prison-factories would be operated again until after thediscovery of some dynamite that somebody had hidden somewhere in the prison.

And ever the examination went on. Ever, one at a time, convicts were draggedaway and dragged or carried back again. They reported that Warden Atherton andCaptain Jamie, exhausted by their efforts, relieved each other every two hours.While one slept, the other examined. And they slept in their clothes in thevery room in which strong man after strong man was being broken.

And hour by hour, in the dark dungeons, our madness of torment grew. Oh, trustme as one who knows, hanging is an easy thing compared with the way live menmay be hurt in all the life of them and still live. I, too, suffered equallywith them from pain and thirst; but added to my suffering was the fact that Iremained conscious to the sufferings of the others. I had been an incorrigiblefor two years, and my nerves and brain were hardened to suffering. It is afrightful thing to see a strong man broken. About me, at the one time, wereforty strong men being broken. Ever the cry for water went up, and the placebecame lunatic with the crying, sobbing, babbling and raving of men indelirium.

Don’t you see? Our truth, the very truth we told, was our damnation. Whenforty men told the same things with such unanimity, Warden Atherton and CaptainJamie could only conclude that the testimony was a memorized lie which each ofthe forty rattled off parrot-like.

From the standpoint of the authorities, their situation was as desperate asours. As I learned afterward, the Board of Prison Directors had been summonedby telegraph, and two companies of state militia were being rushed to theprison.

It was winter weather, and the frost is sometimes shrewd even in a Californiawinter. We had no blankets in the dungeons. Please know that it is very cold tostretch bruised human flesh on frosty stone. In the end they did give us water.Jeering and cursing us, the guards ran in the fire-hoses and played the fiercestreams on us, dungeon by dungeon, hour after hour, until our bruised flesh wasbattered all anew by the violence with which the water smote us, until we stoodknee-deep in the water which we had raved for and for which now we raved tocease.

I shall skip the rest of what happened in the dungeons. In passing I shallmerely state that no one of those forty lifers was ever the same again. LuigiPolazzo never recovered his reason. Long Bill Hodge slowly lost his sanity, sothat a year later, he, too, went to live in Bughouse Alley. Oh, and othersfollowed Hodge and Polazzo; and others, whose physical stamina had beenimpaired, fell victims to prison-tuberculosis. Fully 25 per cent. of the fortyhave died in the succeeding six years.

After my five years in solitary, when they took me away from San Quentin for mytrial, I saw Skysail Jack. I could see little, for I was blinking in thesunshine like a bat, after five years of darkness; yet I saw enough of SkysailJack to pain my heart. It was in crossing the Prison Yard that I saw him. Hishair had turned white. He was prematurely old. His chest had caved in. Hischeeks were sunken. His hands shook as with palsy. He tottered as he walked.And his eyes blurred with tears as he recognized me, for I, too, was a sadwreck of what had once been a man. I weighed eighty-seven pounds. My hair,streaked with gray, was a five-years’ growth, as were my beard andmoustache. And I, too, tottered as I walked, so that the guards helped to leadme across that sun-blinding patch of yard. And Skysail Jack and I peered andknew each other under the wreckage.

Men such as he are privileged, even in a prison, so that he dared an infractionof the rules by speaking to me in a cracked and quavering voice.

“You’re a good one, Standing,” he cackled. “You neversquealed.”

“But I never knew, Jack,” I whispered back—I was compelled towhisper, for five years of disuse had well-nigh lost me my voice. “Idon’t think there ever was any dynamite.”

“That’s right,” he cackled, nodding his head childishly.“Stick with it. Don’t ever let’m know. You’re a goodone. I take my hat off to you, Standing. You never squealed.”

And the guards led me on, and that was the last I saw of Skysail Jack. It wasplain that even he had become a believer in the dynamite myth.

Twice they had me before the full Board of Directors. I was alternately bulliedand cajoled. Their attitude resolved itself into two propositions. If Idelivered up the dynamite, they would give me a nominal punishment of thirtydays in the dungeon and then make me a trusty in the prison library. If Ipersisted in my stubbornness and did not yield up the dynamite, then they wouldput me in solitary for the rest of my sentence. In my case, being a lifeprisoner, this was tantamount to condemning me to solitary confinement forlife.

Oh, no; California is civilized. There is no such law on the statute books. Itis a cruel and unusual punishment, and no modern state would be guilty of sucha law. Nevertheless, in the history of California I am the third man who hasbeen condemned for life to solitary confinement. The other two were JakeOppenheimer and Ed Morrell. I shall tell you about them soon, for I rotted withthem for years in the cells of silence.

Oh, another thing. They are going to take me out and hang me in a littlewhile—no, not for killing Professor Haskell. I got life-imprisonment forthat. They are going to take me out and hang me because I was found guilty ofassault and battery. And this is not prison discipline. It is law, and as lawit will be found in the criminal statutes.

I believe I made a man’s nose bleed. I never saw it bleed, but that wasthe evidence. Thurston, his name was. He was a guard at San Quentin. He weighedone hundred and seventy pounds and was in good health. I weighed under ninetypounds, was blind as a bat from the long darkness, and had been so long pent innarrow walls that I was made dizzy by large open spaces. Really, mime was awell-defined case of incipient agoraphobia, as I quickly learned that day Iescaped from solitary and punched the guard Thurston on the nose.

I struck him on the nose and made it bleed when he got in my way and tried tocatch hold of me. And so they are going to hang me. It is the written law ofthe State of California that a lifetimer like me is guilty of a capital crimewhen he strikes a prison guard like Thurston. Surely, he could not have beeninconvenienced more than half an hour by that bleeding nose; and yet they aregoing to hang me for it.

And, see! This law, in my case, is ex post facto. It was not a law atthe time I killed Professor Haskell. It was not passed until after I receivedmy life-sentence. And this is the very point: my life-sentence gave me mystatus under this law which had not yet been written on the books. And it isbecause of my status of lifetimer that I am to be hanged for battery committedon the guard Thurston. It is clearly ex post facto, and, therefore,unconstitutional.

But what bearing has the Constitution on constitutional lawyers when they wantto put the notorious Professor Darrell Standing out of the way? Nor do I evenestablish the precedent with my execution. A year ago, as everybody who readsthe newspapers knows, they hanged Jake Oppenheimer, right here in Folsom, for aprecisely similar offence . . . only, in his case of battery, he was not guiltyof making a guard’s nose bleed. He cut a convict unintentionally with abread-knife.

It is strange—life and men’s ways and laws and tangled paths. I amwriting these lines in the very cell in Murderers’ Row that JakeOppenheimer occupied ere they took him out and did to him what they are goingto do to me.

I warned you I had many things to write about. I shall now return to mynarrative. The Board of Prison Directors gave me my choice: a prison trustyshipand surcease from the jute-looms if I gave up the non-existent dynamite; lifeimprisonment in solitary if I refused to give up the non-existent dynamite.

They gave me twenty-four hours in the jacket to think it over. Then I wasbrought before the Board a second time. What could I do? I could not lead themto the dynamite that was not. I told them so, and they told me I was a liar.They told me I was a hard case, a dangerous man, a moral degenerate, thecriminal of the century. They told me many other things, and then they carriedme away to the solitary cells. I was put into Number One cell. In Number Fivelay Ed Morrell. In Number Twelve lay Jake Oppenheimer. And he had been therefor ten years. Ed Morrell had been in his cell only one year. He was serving afifty-years’ sentence. Jake Oppenheimer was a lifer. And so was I alifer. Wherefore the outlook was that the three of us would remain there for along time. And yet, six years only are past, and not one of us is in solitary.Jake Oppenheimer was swung off. Ed Morrell was made head trusty of San Quentinand then pardoned out only the other day. And here I am in Folsom waiting theday duly set by Judge Morgan, which will be my last day.

The fools! As if they could throttle my immortality with their clumsy device ofrope and scaffold! I shall walk, and walk again, oh, countless times, this fairearth. And I shall walk in the flesh, be prince and peasant, savant and fool,sit in the high place and groan under the wheel.

CHAPTER V.

It was very lonely, at first, in solitary, and the hours were long. Time wasmarked by the regular changing of the guards, and by the alternation of day andnight. Day was only a little light, but it was better than the all-dark of thenight. In solitary the day was an ooze, a slimy seepage of light from thebright outer world.

Never was the light strong enough to read by. Besides, there was nothing toread. One could only lie and think and think. And I was a lifer, and it seemedcertain, if I did not do a miracle, make thirty-five pounds of dynamite out ofnothing, that all the years of my life would be spent in the silent dark.

My bed was a thin and rotten tick of straw spread on the cell floor. One thinand filthy blanket constituted the covering. There was no chair, notable—nothing but the tick of straw and the thin, aged blanket. I wasever a short sleeper and ever a busy-brained man. In solitary one grows sick ofoneself in his thoughts, and the only way to escape oneself is to sleep. Foryears I had averaged five hours’ sleep a night. I now cultivated sleep. Imade a science of it. I became able to sleep ten hours, then twelve hours, and,at last, as high as fourteen and fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. Butbeyond that I could not go, and, perforce, was compelled to lie awake and thinkand think. And that way, for an active-brained man, lay madness.

I sought devices to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours. I squaredand cubed long series of numbers, and by concentration and will carried on mostastonishing geometric progressions. I even dallied with the squaring of thecircle . . . until I found myself beginning to believe that that possibilitycould be accomplished. Whereupon, realizing that there, too, lay madness, Iforwent the squaring of the circle, although I assure you it required aconsiderable sacrifice on my part, for the mental exercise involved was asplendid time-killer.

By sheer visualization under my eyelids I constructed chess-boards and playedboth sides of long games through to checkmate. But when I had become expert atthis visualized game of memory the exercise palled on me. Exercise it was, forthere could be no real contest when the same player played both sides. I tried,and tried vainly, to split my personality into two personalities and to pit oneagainst the other. But ever I remained the one player, with no planned ruse orstrategy on one side that the other side did not immediately apprehend.

And time was very heavy and very long. I played games with flies, with ordinaryhouse-flies that oozed into solitary as did the dim gray light; and learnedthat they possessed a sense of play. For instance, lying on the cell floor, Iestablished an arbitrary and imaginary line along the wall some three feetabove the floor. When they rested on the wall above this line they were left inpeace. The instant they lighted on the wall below the line I tried to catchthem. I was careful never to hurt them, and, in time, they knew as precisely asdid I where ran the imaginary line. When they desired to play, they lightedbelow the line, and often for an hour at a time a single fly would engage inthe sport. When it grew tired, it would come to rest on the safe territoryabove.

Of the dozen or more flies that lived with me, there was only one who did notcare for the game. He refused steadfastly to play, and, having learned thepenalty of alighting below the line, very carefully avoided the unsafeterritory. That fly was a sullen, disgruntled creature. As the convicts wouldsay, it had a “grouch” against the world. He never played with theother flies either. He was strong and healthy, too; for I studied him long tofind out. His indisposition for play was temperamental, not physical.

Believe me, I knew all my flies. It was surprising to me the multitude ofdifferences I distinguished between them. Oh, each was distinctly anindividual—not merely in size and markings, strength, and speed offlight, and in the manner and fancy of flight and play, of dodge and dart, ofwheel and swiftly repeat or wheel and reverse, of touch and go on the dangerwall, or of feint the touch and alight elsewhere within the zone. They werelikewise sharply differentiated in the minutest shades of mentality andtemperament.

I knew the nervous ones, the phlegmatic ones. There was a little undersized onethat would fly into real rages, sometimes with me, sometimes with its fellows.Have you ever seen a colt or a calf throw up its heels and dash madly about thepasture from sheer excess of vitality and spirits? Well, there was onefly—the keenest player of them all, by the way—who, when it hadalighted three or four times in rapid succession on my taboo wall and succeededeach time in eluding the velvet-careful swoop of my hand, would grow so excitedand jubilant that it would dart around and around my head at top speed,wheeling, veering, reversing, and always keeping within the limits of thenarrow circle in which it celebrated its triumph over me.

Why, I could tell well in advance when any particular fly was making up itsmind to begin to play. There are a thousand details in this one matter alonethat I shall not bore you with, although these details did serve to keep mefrom being bored too utterly during that first period in solitary. But onething I must tell you. To me it is most memorable—the time when the onewith a grouch, who never played, alighted in a moment of absent-mindednesswithin the taboo precinct and was immediately captured in my hand. Do you know,he sulked for an hour afterward.

And the hours were very long in solitary; nor could I sleep them all away; norcould I while them away with house-flies, no matter how intelligent. Forhouse-flies are house-flies, and I was a man, with a man’s brain; and mybrain was trained and active, stuffed with culture and science, and alwaysgeared to a high tension of eagerness to do. And there was nothing to do, andmy thoughts ran abominably on in vain speculations. There was my pentose andmethyl-pentose determination in grapes and wines to which I had devoted my lastsummer vacation at the Asti Vineyards. I had all but completed the series ofexperiments. Was anybody else going on with it, I wondered; and if so, withwhat success?

You see, the world was dead to me. No news of it filtered in. The history ofscience was making fast, and I was interested in a thousand subjects. Why,there was my theory of the hydrolysis of casein by trypsin, which ProfessorWalters had been carrying out in his laboratory. Also, Professor Schleimer hadsimilarly been collaborating with me in the detection of phytosterol inmixtures of animal and vegetable fats. The work surely was going on, but withwhat results? The very thought of all this activity just beyond the prisonwalls and in which I could take no part, of which I was never even to hear, wasmaddening. And in the meantime I lay there on my cell floor and played gameswith house-flies.

And yet all was not silence in solitary. Early in my confinement I used tohear, at irregular intervals, faint, low tappings. From farther away I alsoheard fainter and lower tappings. Continually these tappings were interruptedby the snarling of the guard. On occasion, when the tapping went on toopersistently, extra guards were summoned, and I knew by the sounds that menwere being strait-jacketed.

The matter was easy of explanation. I had known, as every prisoner in SanQuentin knew, that the two men in solitary were Ed Morrell and JakeOppenheimer. And I knew that these were the two men who tapped knuckle-talk toeach other and were punished for so doing.

That the code they used was simple I had not the slightest doubt, yet I devotedmany hours to a vain effort to work it out. Heaven knows—it had to besimple, yet I could not make head nor tail of it. And simple it proved to be,when I learned it; and simplest of all proved the trick they employed which hadso baffled me. Not only each day did they change the point in the alphabetwhere the code initialled, but they changed it every conversation, and, often,in the midst of a conversation.

Thus, there came a day when I caught the code at the right initial, listened totwo clear sentences of conversation, and, the next time they talked, failed tounderstand a word. But that first time!

“Say—Ed—what—would—you—give—right—now—for—brown—papers—and—a—sack—of—Bull—Durham!”asked the one who tapped from farther away.

I nearly cried out in my joy. Here was communication! Here was companionship! Ilistened eagerly, and the nearer tapping, which I guessed must be EdMorrell’s, replied:

“I—would—do—twenty—hours—strait—in—the—jacket—for—a—five—cent—sack—”

Then came the snarling interruption of the guard: “Cut that out,Morrell!”

It may be thought by the layman that the worst has been done to men sentencedto solitary for life, and therefore that a mere guard has no way of compellingobedience to his order to cease tapping.

But the jacket remains. Starvation remains. Thirst remains. Man-handlingremains. Truly, a man pent in a narrow cell is very helpless.

So the tapping ceased, and that night, when it was next resumed, I was all atsea again. By pre-arrangement they had changed the initial letter of the code.But I had caught the clue, and, in the matter of several days, occurred againthe same initialment I had understood. I did not wait on courtesy.

“Hello,” I tapped

“Hello, stranger,” Morrell tapped back; and, from Oppenheimer,“Welcome to our city.”

They were curious to know who I was, how long I was condemned to solitary, andwhy I had been so condemned. But all this I put to the side in order first tolearn their system of changing the code initial. After I had this clear, wetalked. It was a great day, for the two lifers had become three, although theyaccepted me only on probation. As they told me long after, they feared I mightbe a stool placed there to work a frame-up on them. It had been done before, toOppenheimer, and he had paid dearly for the confidence he reposed in WardenAtherton’s tool.

To my surprise—yes, to my elation be it said—both myfellow-prisoners knew me through my record as an incorrigible. Even into theliving grave Oppenheimer had occupied for ten years had my fame, or notoriety,rather, penetrated.

I had much to tell them of prison happenings and of the outside world. Theconspiracy to escape of the forty lifers, the search for the alleged dynamite,and all the treacherous frame-up of Cecil Winwood was news to them. As theytold me, news did occasionally dribble into solitary by way of the guards, butthey had had nothing for a couple of months. The present guards on duty insolitary were a particularly bad and vindictive set.

Again and again that day we were cursed for our knuckle talking by whateverguard was on. But we could not refrain. The two of the living dead had becomethree, and we had so much to say, while the manner of saying it wasexasperatingly slow and I was not so proficient as they at the knuckle game.

“Wait till Pie-Face comes on to-night,” Morrell rapped to me.“He sleeps most of his watch, and we can talk a streak.”

How we did talk that night! Sleep was farthest from our eyes. Pie-Face Joneswas a mean and bitter man, despite his fatness; but we blessed that fatnessbecause it persuaded to stolen snatches of slumber. Nevertheless our incessanttapping bothered his sleep and irritated him so that he reprimanded usrepeatedly. And by the other night guards we were roundly cursed. In themorning all reported much tapping during the night, and we paid for our littleholiday; for, at nine, came Captain Jamie with several guards to lace us intothe torment of the jacket. Until nine the following morning, for twenty-fourstraight hours, laced and helpless on the floor, without food or water, we paidthe price for speech.

Oh, our guards were brutes! And under their treatment we had to harden tobrutes in order to live. Hard work makes calloused hands. Hard guards make hardprisoners. We continued to talk, and, on occasion, to be jacketed forpunishment. Night was the best time, and, when substitute guards chanced to beon, we often talked through a whole shift.

Night and day were one with us who lived in the dark. We could sleep any time,we could knuckle-talk only on occasion. We told one another much of the historyof our lives, and for long hours Morrell and I have lain silently, whilesteadily, with faint, far taps, Oppenheimer slowly spelled out his life-story,from the early years in a San Francisco slum, through his gang-training,through his initiation into all that was vicious, when as a lad of fourteen heserved as night messenger in the red light district, through his first detectedinfraction of the laws, and on and on through thefts and robberies to thetreachery of a comrade and to red slayings inside prison walls.

They called Jake Oppenheimer the “Human Tiger.” Some cub reportercoined the phrase that will long outlive the man to whom it was applied. Andyet I ever found in Jake Oppenheimer all the cardinal traits of righthumanness. He was faithful and loyal. I know of the times he has takenpunishment in preference to informing on a comrade. He was brave. He waspatient. He was capable of self-sacrifice—I could tell a story of this,but shall not take the time. And justice, with him, was a passion. Theprison-killings done by him were due entirely to this extreme sense of justice.And he had a splendid mind. A lifetime in prison, ten years of it in solitary,had not dimmed his brain.

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who amabout to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge ofimmodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were thethree that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days,reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion thatstrong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the menungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship—these arethe men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, EdMorrell, and I were not model prisoners.

CHAPTER VI.

There is more than the germ of truth in things erroneous in the child’sdefinition of memory as the thing one forgets with. To be able to forget meanssanity. Incessantly to remember, means obsession, lunacy. So the problem Ifaced in solitary, where incessant remembering strove for possession of me, wasthe problem of forgetting. When I gamed with flies, or played chess withmyself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot. What I desired wasentirely to forget.

There were the boyhood memories of other times and places—the“trailing clouds of glory” of Wordsworth. If a boy had had thesememories, were they irretrievably lost when he had grown to manhood? Could thisparticular content of his boy brain be utterly eliminated? Or were thesememories of other times and places still residual, asleep, immured in solitaryin brain cells similarly to the way I was immured in a cell in San Quentin?

Solitary life-prisoners have been known to resurrect and look upon the sunagain. Then why could not these other-world memories of the boy resurrect?

But how? In my judgment, by attainment of complete forgetfulness of present andof manhood past.

And again, how? Hypnotism should do it. If by hypnotism the conscious mind wereput to sleep, and the subconscious mind awakened, then was the thingaccomplished, then would all the dungeon doors of the brain be thrown wide,then would the prisoners emerge into the sunshine.

So I reasoned—with what result you shall learn. But first I must tellhow, as a boy, I had had these other-world memories. I had glowed in the cloudsof glory I trailed from lives aforetime. Like any boy, I had been haunted bythe other beings I had been at other times. This had been during my process ofbecoming, ere the flux of all that I had ever been had hardened in the mould ofthe one personality that was to be known by men for a few years as DarrellStanding.

Let me narrate just one incident. It was up in Minnesota on the old farm. I wasnearly six years old. A missionary to China, returned to the United States andsent out by the Board of Missions to raise funds from the farmers, spent thenight in our house. It was in the kitchen just after supper, as my mother washelping me undress for bed, and the missionary was showing photographs of theHoly Land.

And what I am about to tell you I should long since have forgotten had I notheard my father recite it to wondering listeners so many times during mychildhood.

I cried out at sight of one of the photographs and looked at it, first witheagerness, and then with disappointment. It had seemed of a sudden mostfamiliar, in much the same way that my father’s barn would have been in aphotograph. Then it had seemed altogether strange. But as I continued to lookthe haunting sense of familiarity came back.

“The Tower of David,” the missionary said to my mother.

“No!” I cried with great positiveness.

“You mean that isn’t its name?” the missionary asked.

I nodded.

“Then what is its name, my boy?”

“It’s name is . . .” I began, then concluded lamely,“I, forget.”

“It don’t look the same now,” I went on after a pause.“They’ve ben fixin’ it up awful.”

Here the missionary handed to my mother another photograph he had sought out.

“I was there myself six months ago, Mrs. Standing.” He pointed withhis finger. “That is the Jaffa Gate where I walked in and right up to theTower of David in the back of the picture where my finger is now. Theauthorities are pretty well agreed on such matters. El Kul’ah, as it wasknown by—”

But here I broke in again, pointing to rubbish piles of ruined masonry on theleft edge of the photograph.

“Over there somewhere,” I said. “That name you just spoke waswhat the Jews called it. But we called it something else. We called it . . . Iforget.”

“Listen to the youngster,” my father chuckled. “You’dthink he’d ben there.”

I nodded my head, for in that moment I knew I had been there, though all seemedstrangely different. My father laughed the harder, but the missionary thought Iwas making game of him. He handed me another photograph. It was just a bleakwaste of a landscape, barren of trees and vegetation, a shallow canyon witheasy-sloping walls of rubble. In the middle distance was a cluster of wretched,flat-roofed hovels.

“Now, my boy, where is that?” the missionary quizzed.

And the name came to me!

“Samaria,” I said instantly.

My father clapped his hands with glee, my mother was perplexed at my anticconduct, while the missionary evinced irritation.

“The boy is right,” he said. “It is a village in Samaria. Ipassed through it. That is why I bought it. And it goes to show that the boyhas seen similar photographs before.”

This my father and mother denied.

“But it’s different in the picture,” I volunteered, while allthe time my memory was busy reconstructing the photograph. The general trend ofthe landscape and the line of the distant hills were the same. The differencesI noted aloud and pointed out with my finger.

“The houses was about right here, and there was more trees, lots oftrees, and lots of grass, and lots of goats. I can see ’em now, an’two boys drivin’ ’em. An’ right here is a lot of menwalkin’ behind one man. An’ over there”—I pointed towhere I had placed my village—“is a lot of tramps. They ain’tgot nothin’ on exceptin’ rags. An’ they’re sick. Theirfaces, an’ hands, an’ legs is all sores.”

“He’s heard the story in church or somewhere—you remember,the healing of the lepers in Luke,” the missionary said with a smile ofsatisfaction. “How many sick tramps are there, my boy?”

I had learned to count to a hundred when I was five years old, so I went overthe group carefully and announced:

“Ten of ’em. They’re all wavin’ their arms an’yellin’ at the other men.”

“But they don’t come near them?” was the query.

I shook my head. “They just stand right there an’ keepa-yellin’ like they was in trouble.”

“Go on,” urged the missionary. “What next? What’s theman doing in the front of the other crowd you said was walking along?”

“They’ve all stopped, an’ he’s sayin’ somethingto the sick men. An’ the boys with the goats ’s stopped to look.Everybody’s lookin’.”

“And then?”

“That’s all. The sick men are headin’ for the houses. Theyain’t yellin’ any more, an’ they don’t look sick anymore. An’ I just keep settin’ on my horse a-lookin’on.”

At this all three of my listeners broke into laughter.

“An’ I’m a big man!” I cried out angrily.“An’ I got a big sword!”

“The ten lepers Christ healed before he passed through Jericho on his wayto Jerusalem,” the missionary explained to my parents. “The boy hasseen slides of famous paintings in some magic lantern exhibition.”

But neither father nor mother could remember that I had ever seen a magiclantern.

“Try him with another picture,” father suggested.

“It’s all different,” I complained as I studied thephotograph the missionary handed me. “Ain’t nothin’ hereexcept that hill and them other hills. This ought to be a country road alonghere. An’ over there ought to be gardens, an’ trees, an’houses behind big stone walls. An’ over there, on the other side, inholes in the rocks ought to be where they buried dead folks. You see thisplace?—they used to throw stones at people there until they killed’m. I never seen ’m do it. They just told me about it.”

“And the hill?” the missionary asked, pointing to the central partof the print, for which the photograph seemed to have been taken. “Canyou tell us the name of the hill?”

I shook my head.

“Never had no name. They killed folks there. I’ve seem ’mmore ’n once.”

“This time he agrees with the majority of the authorities,”announced the missionary with huge satisfaction. “The hill is Golgotha,the Place of Skulls, or, as you please, so named because it resembles a skull.Notice the resemblance. That is where they crucified—” He broke offand turned to me. “Whom did they crucify there, young scholar? Tell uswhat else you see.”

Oh, I saw—my father reported that my eyes were bulging; but I shook myhead stubbornly and said:

“I ain’t a-goin’ to tell you because you’relaughin’ at me. I seen lots an’ lots of men killed there. Theynailed ’em up, an’ it took a long time. I seen—but Iain’t a-goin’ to tell. I don’t tell lies. You ask dadan’ ma if I tell lies. He’d whale the stuffin’ out of me if Idid. Ask ’m.”

And thereat not another word could the missionary get from me, even though hebaited me with more photographs that sent my head whirling with a rush ofmemory-pictures and that urged and tickled my tongue with spates of speechwhich I sullenly resisted and overcame.

“He will certainly make a good Bible scholar,” the missionary toldfather and mother after I had kissed them good-night and departed for bed.“Or else, with that imagination, he’ll become a successfulfiction-writer.”

Which shows how prophecy can go agley. I sit here in Murderers’ Row,writing these lines in my last days, or, rather, in Darrell Standing’slast days ere they take him out and try to thrust him into the dark at the endof a rope, and I smile to myself. I became neither Bible scholar nor novelist.On the contrary, until they buried me in the cells of silence for half adecade, I was everything that the missionary forecasted not—anagricultural expert, a professor of agronomy, a specialist in the science ofthe elimination of waste motion, a master of farm efficiency, a preciselaboratory scientist where precision and adherence to microscopic fact areabsolute requirements.

And I sit here in the warm afternoon, in Murderers’ Row, and cease fromthe writing of my memoirs to listen to the soothing buzz of flies in the drowsyair, and catch phrases of a low-voiced conversation between Josephus Jackson,the negro murderer on my right, and Bambeccio, the Italian murderer on my left,who are discussing, through grated door to grated door, back and forth past mygrated door, the antiseptic virtues and excellences of chewing tobacco forflesh wounds.

And in my suspended hand I hold my fountain pen, and as I remember that otherhands of me, in long gone ages, wielded ink-brush, and quill, and stylus, Ialso find thought-space in time to wonder if that missionary, when he was alittle lad, ever trailed clouds of glory and glimpsed the brightness of oldstar-roving days.

Well, back to solitary, after I had learned the code of knuckle-talk and stillfound the hours of consciousness too long to endure. By self-hypnosis, which Ibegan successfully to practise, I became able to put my conscious mind to sleepand to awaken and loose my subconscious mind. But the latter was anundisciplined and lawless thing. It wandered through all nightmarish madness,without coherence, without continuity of scene, event, or person.

My method of mechanical hypnosis was the soul of simplicity. Sitting withfolded legs on my straw-mattress, I gazed fixedly at a fragment of bright strawwhich I had attached to the wall of my cell near the door where the most lightwas. I gazed at the bright point, with my eyes close to it, and tilted upwardtill they strained to see. At the same time I relaxed all the will of me andgave myself to the swaying dizziness that always eventually came to me. Andwhen I felt myself sway out of balance backward, I closed my eyes and permittedmyself to fall supine and unconscious on the mattress.

And then, for half-an-hour, ten minutes, or as long as an hour or so, I wouldwander erratically and foolishly through the stored memories of my eternalrecurrence on earth. But times and places shifted too swiftly. I knewafterward, when I awoke, that I, Darrell Standing, was the linking personalitythat connected all bizarreness and grotesqueness. But that was all. I couldnever live out completely one full experience, one point of consciousness intime and space. My dreams, if dreams they may be called, were rhymeless andreasonless.

Thus, as a sample of my rovings: in a single interval of fifteen minutes ofsubconsciousness I have crawled and bellowed in the slime of the primeval worldand sat beside Haas—further and cleaved the twentieth century air in agas-driven monoplane. Awake, I remembered that I, Darrell Standing, in theflesh, during the year preceding my incarceration in San Quentin, had flownwith Haas further over the Pacific at Santa Monica. Awake, I did not rememberthe crawling and the bellowing in the ancient slime. Nevertheless, awake, Ireasoned that somehow I had remembered that early adventure in the slime, andthat it was a verity of long-previous experience, when I was not yet DarrellStanding but somebody else, or something else that crawled and bellowed. Oneexperience was merely more remote than the other. Both experiences were equallyreal—or else how did I remember them?

Oh, what a fluttering of luminous images and actions! In a few short minutes ofloosed subconsciousness I have sat in the halls of kings, above the salt andbelow the salt, been fool and jester, man-at-arms, clerk and monk; and I havebeen ruler above all at the head of the table—temporal power in my ownsword arm, in the thickness of my castle walls, and the numbers of my fightingmen; spiritual power likewise mine by token of the fact that cowled priests andfat abbots sat beneath me and swigged my wine and swined my meat.

I have worn the iron collar of the serf about my neck in cold climes; and Ihave loved princesses of royal houses in the tropic-warmed and sun-scentednight, where black slaves fanned the sultry air with fans of peacock plumes,while from afar, across the palm and fountains, drifted the roaring of lionsand the cries of jackals. I have crouched in chill desert places warming myhands at fires builded of camel’s dung; and I have lain in the meagreshade of sun-parched sage-brush by dry water-holes and yearned dry-tongued forwater, while about me, dismembered and scattered in the alkali, were the bonesof men and beasts who had yearned and died.

I have been sea-cuny and bravo, scholar and recluse. I have pored overhand-written pages of huge and musty tomes in the scholastic quietude andtwilight of cliff-perched monasteries, while beneath on the lesser slopes,peasants still toiled beyond the end of day among the vines and olives anddrove in from pastures the blatting goats and lowing kine; yes, and I have ledshouting rabbles down the wheel-worn, chariot-rutted paves of ancient andforgotten cities; and, solemn-voiced and grave as death, I have enunciated thelaw, stated the gravity of the infraction, and imposed the due death on men,who, like Darrell Standing in Folsom Prison, had broken the law.

Aloft, at giddy mastheads oscillating above the decks of ships, I have gazed onsun-flashed water where coral-growths iridesced from profounds of turquoisedeeps, and conned the ships into the safety of mirrored lagoons where theanchors rumbled down close to palm-fronded beaches of sea-pounded coral rock;and I have striven on forgotten battlefields of the elder days, when the sunwent down on slaughter that did not cease and that continued through thenight-hours with the stars shining down and with a cool night wind blowing fromdistant peaks of snow that failed to chill the sweat of battle; and again, Ihave been little Darrell Standing, bare-footed in the dew-lush grass of springon the Minnesota farm, chilblained when of frosty mornings I fed the cattle intheir breath-steaming stalls, sobered to fear and awe of the splendour andterror of God when I sat on Sundays under the rant and preachment of the NewJerusalem and the agonies of hell-fire.

Now, the foregoing were the glimpses and glimmerings that came to me, when, inCell One of Solitary in San Quentin, I stared myself unconscious by means of aparticle of bright, light-radiating straw. How did these things come to me?Surely I could not have manufactured them out of nothing inside my pent wallsany more than could I have manufactured out of nothing the thirty-five poundsof dynamite so ruthlessly demanded of me by Captain Jamie, Warden Atherton, andthe Prison Board of Directors.

I am Darrell Standing, born and raised on a quarter section of land inMinnesota, erstwhile professor of agronomy, a prisoner incorrigible in SanQuentin, and at present a death-sentenced man in Folsom. I do not know, ofDarrell Standing’s experience, these things of which I write and which Ihave dug from out my store-houses of subconsciousness. I, Darrell Standing,born in Minnesota and soon to die by the rope in California, surely never loveddaughters of kings in the courts of kings; nor fought cutlass to cutlass on theswaying decks of ships; nor drowned in the spirit-rooms of ships, guzzling rawliquor to the wassail-shouting and death-singing of seamen, while the shiplifted and crashed on the black-toothed rocks and the water bubbled overhead,beneath, and all about.

Such things are not of Darrell Standing’s experience in the world. Yet I,Darrell Standing, found these things within myself in solitary in San Quentinby means of mechanical self-hypnosis. No more were these experiences DarrellStanding’s than was the word “Samaria” DarrellStanding’s when it leapt to his child lips at sight of a photograph.

One cannot make anything out of nothing. In solitary I could not so makethirty-five pounds of dynamite. Nor in solitary, out of nothing in DarrellStanding’s experience, could I make these wide, far visions of time andspace. These things were in the content of my mind, and in my mind I was justbeginning to learn my way about.

CHAPTER VII.

So here was my predicament: I knew that within myself was a Golconda ofmemories of other lives, yet I was unable to do more than flit like a madmanthrough those memories. I had my Golconda but could not mine it.

I remembered the case of Stainton Moses, the clergyman who had been possessedby the personalities of St. Hippolytus, Plotinus, Athenodorus, and of thatfriend of Erasmus named Grocyn. And when I considered the experiments ofColonel de Rochas, which I had read in tyro fashion in other and busier days, Iwas convinced that Stainton Moses had, in previous lives, been thosepersonalities that on occasion seemed to possess him. In truth, they were he,they were the links of the chain of recurrence.

But more especially did I dwell upon the experiments of Colonel de Rochas. Bymeans of suitable hypnotic subjects he claimed that he had penetrated backwardsthrough time to the ancestors of his subjects. Thus, the case of Josephinewhich he describes. She was eighteen years old and she lived at Voiron, in thedepartment of the Isère. Under hypnotism Colonel de Rochas sent heradventuring back through her adolescence, her girlhood, her childhood,breast-infancy, and the silent dark of her mother’s womb, and, stillback, through the silence and the dark of the time when she, Josephine, was notyet born, to the light and life of a previous living, when she had been achurlish, suspicious, and embittered old man, by name Jean-Claude Bourdon, whohad served his time in the Seventh Artillery at Besançon, and who diedat the age of seventy, long bedridden. Yes, and did not Colonel deRochas in turn hypnotize this shade of Jean-Claude Bourdon, so that headventured farther back into time, through infancy and birth and the dark ofthe unborn, until he found again light and life when, as a wicked old woman, hehad been Philomène Carteron?

But try as I would with my bright bit of straw in the oozement of light intosolitary, I failed to achieve any such definiteness of previous personality. Ibecame convinced, through the failure of my experiments, that only throughdeath could I clearly and coherently resurrect the memories of my previousselves.

But the tides of life ran strong in me. I, Darrell Standing, was so stronglydisinclined to die that I refused to let Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie killme. I was always so innately urged to live that sometimes I think that is why Iam still here, eating and sleeping, thinking and dreaming, writing thisnarrative of my various me’s, and awaiting the incontestable rope thatwill put an ephemeral period in my long-linked existence.

And then came death in life. I learned the trick, Ed Morrell taught it me, asyou shall see. It began through Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie. They musthave experienced a recrudescence of panic at thought of the dynamite theybelieved hidden. They came to me in my dark cell, and they told me plainly thatthey would jacket me to death if I did not confess where the dynamite washidden. And they assured me that they would do it officially without any hurtto their own official skins. My death would appear on the prison register asdue to natural causes.

Oh, dear, cotton-wool citizen, please believe me when I tell you that men arekilled in prisons to-day as they have always been killed since the firstprisons were built by men.

I well knew the terror, the agony, and the danger of the jacket. Oh, the menspirit-broken by the jacket! I have seen them. And I have seen men crippled forlife by the jacket. I have seen men, strong men, men so strong that theirphysical stamina resisted all attacks of prison tuberculosis, after a prolongedbout with the jacket, their resistance broken down, fade away, and die oftuberculosis within six months. There was Slant-Eyed Wilson, with an unguessedweak heart of fear, who died in the jacket within the first hour while theunconvinced inefficient of a prison doctor looked on and smiled. And I haveseen a man confess, after half an hour in the jacket, truths and fictions thatcost him years of credits.

I had had my own experiences. At the present moment half a thousand scars markmy body. They go to the scaffold with me. Did I live a hundred years to comethose same scars in the end would go to the grave with me.

Perhaps, dear citizen who permits and pays his hang-dogs to lace the jacket foryou—perhaps you are unacquainted with the jacket. Let me describe, it, sothat you will understand the method by which I achieved death in life, became atemporary master of time and space, and vaulted the prison walls to rove amongthe stars.

Have you ever seen canvas tarpaulins or rubber blankets with brass eyelets setin along the edges? Then imagine a piece of stout canvas, some four andone-half feet in length, with large and heavy brass eyelets running down bothedges. The width of this canvas is never the full girth of the human body it isto surround. The width is also irregular—broadest at the shoulders, nextbroadest at the hips, and narrowest at the waist.

The jacket is spread on the floor. The man who is to be punished, or who is tobe tortured for confession, is told to lie face-downward on the flat canvas. Ifhe refuses, he is man-handled. After that he lays himself down with a will,which is the will of the hang-dogs, which is your will, dear citizen, who feedsand fees the hang-dogs for doing this thing for you.

The man lies face-downward. The edges of the jacket are brought as nearlytogether as possible along the centre of the man’s back. Then a rope, onthe principle of a shoe-lace, is run through the eyelets, and on the principleof a shoe-lacing the man is laced in the canvas. Only he is laced more severelythan any person ever laces his shoe. They call it “cinching” inprison lingo. On occasion, when the guards are cruel and vindictive, or whenthe command has come down from above, in order to insure the severity of thelacing the guards press with their feet into the man’s back as they drawthe lacing tight.

Have you ever laced your shoe too tightly, and, after half an hour, experiencedthat excruciating pain across the instep of the obstructed circulation? And doyou remember that after a few minutes of such pain you simply could not walkanother step and had to untie the shoe-lace and ease the pressure? Very well.Then try to imagine your whole body so laced, only much more tightly, and thatthe squeeze, instead of being merely on the instep of one foot, is on yourentire trunk, compressing to the seeming of death your heart, your lungs, andall the rest of your vital and essential organs.

I remember the first time they gave me the jacket down in the dungeons. It wasat the beginning of my incorrigibility, shortly after my entrance to prison,when I was weaving my loom-task of a hundred yards a day in the jute-mill andfinishing two hours ahead of the average day. Yes, and my jute-sacking was farabove the average demanded. I was sent to the jacket that first time, accordingto the prison books, because of “skips” and “breaks” inthe cloth, in short, because my work was defective. Of course this wasridiculous. In truth, I was sent to the jacket because I, a new convict, amaster of efficiency, a trained expert in the elimination of waste motion, hadelected to tell the stupid head weaver a few things he did not know about hisbusiness. And the head weaver, with Captain Jamie present, had me called to thetable where atrocious weaving, such as could never have gone through my loom,was exhibited against me. Three times was I thus called to the table. The thirdcalling meant punishment according to the loom-room rules. My punishment wastwenty-four hours in the jacket.

They took me down into the dungeons. I was ordered to lie face-downward on thecanvas spread flat upon the floor. I refused. One of the guards, Morrison,gulletted me with his thumbs. Mobins, the dungeon trusty, a convict himself,struck me repeatedly with his fists. In the end I lay down as directed. And,because of the struggle I had vexed them with, they laced me extra tight. Thenthey rolled me over like a log upon my back.

It did not seem so bad at first. When they closed my door, with clang and clashof levered boltage, and left me in the utter dark, it was eleven o’clockin the morning. For a few minutes I was aware merely of an uncomfortableconstriction which I fondly believed would ease as I grew accustomed to it. Onthe contrary, my heart began to thump and my lungs seemed unable to drawsufficient air for my blood. This sense of suffocation was terrorizing, andevery thump of the heart threatened to burst my already bursting lungs.

After what seemed hours, and after what, out of my countless succeedingexperiences in the jacket I can now fairly conclude to have been not more thanhalf-an-hour, I began to cry out, to yell, to scream, to howl, in a verymadness of dying. The trouble was the pain that had arisen in my heart. It wasa sharp, definite pain, similar to that of pleurisy, except that it stabbedhotly through the heart itself.

To die is not a difficult thing, but to die in such slow and horrible fashionwas maddening. Like a trapped beast of the wild, I experienced ecstasies offear, and yelled and howled until I realized that such vocal exercise merelystabbed my heart more hotly and at the same time consumed much of the littleair in my lungs.

I gave over and lay quiet for a long time—an eternity it seemed then,though now I am confident that it could have been no longer than a quarter ofan hour. I grew dizzy with semi-asphyxiation, and my heart thumped until itseemed surely it would burst the canvas that bound me. Again I lost control ofmyself and set up a mad howling for help.

In the midst of this I heard a voice from the next dungeon.

“Shut up,” it shouted, though only faintly it percolated to me.“Shut up. You make me tired.”

“I’m dying,” I cried out.

“Pound your ear and forget it,” was the reply.

“But I amdying,” I insisted.

“Then why worry?” came the voice. “You’ll be deadpretty quick an’ out of it. Go ahead and croak, but don’t make somuch noise about it. You’re interruptin’ my beauty sleep.”

So angered was I by this callous indifference that I recovered self-control andwas guilty of no more than smothered groans. This endured an endlesstime—possibly ten minutes; and then a tingling numbness set up in all mybody. It was like pins and needles, and for as long as it hurt like pins andneedles I kept my head. But when the prickling of the multitudinous dartsceased to hurt and only the numbness remained and continued verging intogreater numbness I once more grew frightened.

“How am I goin’ to get a wink of sleep?” my neighbourcomplained. “I ain’t any more happy than you. My jacket’sjust as tight as yourn, an’ I want to sleep an’ forget it.”

“How long have you been in?” I asked, thinking him a new-comercompared to the centuries I had already suffered.

“Since day before yesterday,” was his answer.

“I mean in the jacket,” I amended.

“Since day before yesterday, brother.”

“My God!” I screamed.

“Yes, brother, fifty straight hours, an’ you don’t hear meraisin’ a roar about it. They cinched me with their feet in my back. I amsome tight, believe me. You ain’t the only one that’s gottroubles. You ain’t ben in an hour yet.”

“I’ve been in hours and hours,” I protested.

“Brother, you may think so, but it don’t make it so. I’m justtellin’ you you ain’t ben in an hour. I heard ’m lacin’you.”

The thing was incredible. Already, in less than an hour, I had died a thousanddeaths. And yet this neighbour, balanced and equable, calm-voiced and almostbeneficent despite the harshness of his first remarks, had been in the jacketfifty hours!

“How much longer are they going to keep you in?” I asked.

“The Lord only knows. Captain Jamie is real peeved with me, an’ hewon’t let me out until I’m about croakin’. Now, brother,I’m going to give you the tip. The only way is shut your face an’forget it. Yellin’ an’ hollerin’ don’t win you no moneyin this joint. An’ the way to forget is to forget. Just get torememberin’ every girl you ever knew. That’ll eat up hours for you.Mebbe you’ll feel yourself gettin’ woozy. Well, get woozy. Youcan’t beat that for killin’ time. An’ when the girlswon’t hold you, get to thinkin’ of the fellows you got it in for,an’ what you’d do to ’em if you got a chance, an’ whatyou’re goin’ to do to ’em when you get that samechance.”

That man was Philadelphia Red. Because of prior conviction he was serving fiftyyears for highway robbery committed on the streets of Alameda. He had alreadyserved a dozen of his years at the time he talked to me in the jacket, and thatwas seven years ago. He was one of the forty lifers who were double-crossed byCecil Winwood. For that offence Philadelphia Red lost his credits. He ismiddle-aged now, and he is still in San Quentin. If he survives he will be anold man when they let him out.

I lived through my twenty-four hours, and I have never been the same man since.Oh, I don’t mean physically, although next morning, when they unlaced me,I was semi-paralyzed and in such a state of collapse that the guards had tokick me in the ribs to make me crawl to my feet. But I was a changed manmentally, morally. The brute physical torture of it was humiliation and affrontto my spirit and to my sense of justice. Such discipline does not sweeten aman. I emerged from that first jacketing filled with a bitterness and apassionate hatred that has only increased through the years. My God—whenI think of the things men have done to me! Twenty-four hours in the jacket!Little I thought that morning when they kicked me to my feet that the timewould come when twenty-four hours in the jacket meant nothing; when a hundredhours in the jacket found me smiling when they released me; when two hundredand forty hours in the jacket found the same smile on my lips.

Yes, two hundred and forty hours. Dear cotton-woolly citizen, do you know whatthat means? It means ten days and ten nights in the jacket. Of course, suchthings are not done anywhere in the Christian world nineteen hundred yearsafter Christ. I don’t ask you to believe me. I don’t believe itmyself. I merely know that it was done to me in San Quentin, and that I livedto laugh at them and to compel them to get rid of me by swinging me off becauseI bloodied a guard’s nose.

I write these lines to-day in the Year of Our Lord 1913, and to-day, in theYear of Our Lord 1913, men are lying in the jacket in the dungeons of SanQuentin.

I shall never forget, as long as further living and further lives be vouchsafedme, my parting from Philadelphia Red that morning. He had then beenseventy-four hours in the jacket.

“Well, brother, you’re still alive an’ kickin’,”he called to me, as I was totteringly dragged from my cell into the corridor ofdungeons.

“Shut up, you, Red,” the sergeant snarled at him.

“Forget it,” was the retort.

“I’ll get you yet, Red,” the sergeant threatened.

“Think so?” Philadelphia Red queried sweetly, ere his tones turnedto savageness. “Why, you old stiff, you couldn’t get nothin’.You couldn’t get a free lunch, much less the job you’ve got now, ifit wasn’t for your brother’s pull. An’ I guess we allain’t mistaken on the stink of the place where your brother’s pullcomes from.”

It was admirable—the spirit of man rising above its extremity, fearlessof the hurt any brute of the system could inflict.

“Well, so long, brother,” Philadelphia Red next called to me.“So long. Be good, an’ love the Warden. An’ if you see’em, just tell ’em that you saw me but that you didn’t see mesaw.”

The sergeant was red with rage, and, by the receipt of various kicks and blows,I paid for Red’s pleasantry.

CHAPTER VIII.

In solitary, in Cell One, Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie proceeded to put meto the inquisition. As Warden Atherton said to me:

“Standing, you’re going to come across with that dynamite, orI’ll kill you in the jacket. Harder cases than you have come acrossbefore I got done with them. You’ve got your choice—dynamite orcurtains.”

“Then I guess it is curtains,” I answered, “because Idon’t know of any dynamite.”

This irritated the Warden to immediate action. “Lie down,” hecommanded.

I obeyed, for I had learned the folly of fighting three or four strong men.They laced me tightly, and gave me a hundred hours. Once each twenty-four hoursI was permitted a drink of water. I had no desire for food, nor was foodoffered me. Toward the end of the hundred hours Jackson, the prison doctor,examined my physical condition several times.

But I had grown too used to the jacket during my incorrigible days to let asingle jacketing injure me. Naturally, it weakened me, took the life out of me;but I had learned muscular tricks for stealing a little space while they werelacing me. At the end of the first hundred hours’ bout I was worn andtired, but that was all. Another bout of this duration they gave me, after aday and a night to recuperate. And then they gave one hundred and fifty hours.Much of this time I was physically numb and mentally delirious. Also, by aneffort of will, I managed to sleep away long hours.

Next, Warden Atherton tried a variation. I was given irregular intervals ofjacket and recuperation. I never knew when I was to go into the jacket. Thus Iwould have ten hours’ recuperation, and do twenty in the jacket; or Iwould receive only four hours’ rest. At the most unexpected hours of thenight my door would clang open and the changing guards would lace me. Sometimesrhythms were instituted. Thus, for three days and nights I alternated eighthours in the jacket and eight hours out. And then, just as I was growingaccustomed to this rhythm, it was suddenly altered and I was given two days andnights straight.

And ever the eternal question was propounded to me: Where was the dynamite?Sometimes Warden Atherton was furious with me. On occasion, when I had enduredan extra severe jacketing, he almost pleaded with me to confess. Once he evenpromised me three months in the hospital of absolute rest and good food, andthen the trusty job in the library.

Dr. Jackson, a weak stick of a creature with a smattering of medicine, grewsceptical. He insisted that jacketing, no matter how prolonged, could neverkill me; and his insistence was a challenge to the Warden to continue theattempt.

“These lean college guys ’d fool the devil,” he grumbled.“They’re tougher ’n raw-hide. Just the same we’ll wearhim down. Standing, you hear me. What you’ve got ain’t a caution towhat you’re going to get. You might as well come across now and savetrouble. I’m a man of my word. You’ve heard me say dynamite orcurtains. Well, that stands. Take your choice.”

“Surely you don’t think I’m holding out because I enjoyit?” I managed to gasp, for at the moment Pie-Face Jones was forcing hisfoot into my back in order to cinch me tighter, while I was trying with mymuscle to steal slack. “There is nothing to confess. Why, I’d cutoff my right hand right now to be able to lead you to any dynamite.”

“Oh, I’ve seen your educated kind before,” he sneered.“You get wheels in your head, some of you, that make you stick to any oldidea. You get baulky, like horses. Tighter, Jones; that ain’t half acinch. Standing, if you don’t come across it’s curtains. I stick bythat.”

One compensation I learned. As one grows weaker one is less susceptible tosuffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt. And the manalready well weakened grows weaker more slowly. It is of common knowledge thatunusually strong men suffer more severely from ordinary sicknesses than dowomen or invalids. As the reserves of strength are consumed there is lessstrength to lose. After all superfluous flesh is gone what is left is stringyand resistant. In fact, that was what I became—a sort of string-likeorganism that persisted in living.

Morrell and Oppenheimer were sorry for me, and rapped me sympathy and advice.Oppenheimer told me he had gone through it, and worse, and still lived.

“Don’t let them beat you out,” he spelled with his knuckles.“Don’t let them kill you, for that would suit them. And don’tsqueal on the plant.”

“But there isn’t any plant,” I rapped back with the edge ofthe sole of my shoe against the grating—I was in the jacket at the timeand so could talk only with my feet. “I don’t know anything aboutthe damned dynamite.”

“That’s right,” Oppenheimer praised. “He’s thestuff, ain’t he, Ed?”

Which goes to show what chance I had of convincing Warden Atherton of myignorance of the dynamite. His very persistence in the quest convinced a manlike Jake Oppenheimer, who could only admire me for the fortitude with which Ikept a close mouth.

During this first period of the jacket-inquisition I managed to sleep a greatdeal. My dreams were remarkable. Of course they were vivid and real, as mostdreams are. What made them remarkable was their coherence and continuity. OftenI addressed bodies of scientists on abstruse subjects, reading aloud to themcarefully prepared papers on my own researches or on my own deductions from theresearches and experiments of others. When I awakened my voice would seem stillringing in my ears, while my eyes still could see typed on the white paperwhole sentences and paragraphs that I could read again and marvel at ere thevision faded. In passing, I call attention to the fact that at the time I notedthat the process of reasoning employed in these dream speeches was invariablydeductive.

Then there was a great farming section, extending north and south for hundredsof miles in some part of the temperate regions, with a climate and flora andfauna largely resembling those of California. Not once, nor twice, butthousands of different times I journeyed through this dream-region. The point Idesire to call attention to was that it was always the same region. Noessential feature of it ever differed in the different dreams. Thus it wasalways an eight-hour drive behind mountain horses from the alfalfa meadows(where I kept many Jersey cows) to the straggly village beside the big drycreek, where I caught the little narrow-gauge train. Every land-mark in thateight-hour drive in the mountain buckboard, every tree, every mountain, everyford and bridge, every ridge and eroded hillside was ever the same.

In this coherent, rational farm-region of my strait-jacket dreams the minordetails, according to season and to the labour of men, did change. Thus on theupland pastures behind my alfalfa meadows I developed a new farm with the aidof Angora goats. Here I marked the changes with every dream-visit, and thechanges were in accordance with the time that elapsed between visits.

Oh, those brush-covered slopes! How I can see them now just as when the goatswere first introduced. And how I remembered the consequent changes—thepaths beginning to form as the goats literally ate their way through the densethickets; the disappearance of the younger, smaller bushes that were not tootall for total browsing; the vistas that formed in all directions through theolder, taller bushes, as the goats browsed as high as they could stand andreach on their hind legs; the driftage of the pasture grasses that followed inthe wake of the clearing by the goats. Yes, the continuity of such dreaming wasits charm. Came the day when the men with axes chopped down all the tallerbrush so as to give the goats access to the leaves and buds and bark. Came theday, in winter weather, when the dry denuded skeletons of all these bushes weregathered into heaps and burned. Came the day when I moved my goats on to otherbrush-impregnable hillsides, with following in their wake my cattle, pasturingknee-deep in the succulent grasses that grew where before had been only brush.And came the day when I moved my cattle on, and my plough-men went back andforth across the slopes’ contour—ploughing the rich sod under torot to live and crawling humous in which to bed my seeds of crops to be.

Yes, and in my dreams, often, I got off the little narrow-gauge train where thestraggly village stood beside the big dry creek, and got into the buckboardbehind my mountain horses, and drove hour by hour past all the old familiarlandmarks of my alfalfa meadows, and on to my upland pastures where my rotatedcrops of corn and barley and clover were ripe for harvesting and where Iwatched my men engaged in the harvest, while beyond, ever climbing, my goatsbrowsed the higher slopes of brush into cleared, tilled fields.

But these were dreams, frank dreams, fancied adventures of my deductivesubconscious mind. Quite unlike them, as you shall see, were my otheradventures when I passed through the gates of the living death and relived thereality of the other lives that had been mine in other days.

In the long hours of waking in the jacket I found that I dwelt a great deal onCecil Winwood, the poet-forger who had wantonly put all this torment on me, andwho was even then at liberty out in the free world again. No; I did not hatehim. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough todescribe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire forvengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds oflanguage. I shall not tell you of the hours I devoted to plans of torture onhim, nor of the diabolical means and devices of torture that I invented forhim. Just one example. I was enamoured of the ancient trick whereby an ironbasin, containing a rat, is fastened to a man’s body. The only way outfor the rat is through the man himself. As I say, I was enamoured of this untilI realized that such a death was too quick, whereupon I dwelt long andfavourably on the Moorish trick of—but no, I promised to relate nofurther of this matter. Let it suffice that many of my pain-maddening wakinghours were devoted to dreams of vengeance on Cecil Winwood.

CHAPTER IX.

One thing of great value I learned in the long, pain-weary hours ofwaking—namely, the mastery of the body by the mind. I learned to sufferpassively, as, undoubtedly, all men have learned who have passed through thepost-graduate courses of strait-jacketing. Oh, it is no easy trick to keep thebrain in such serene repose that it is quite oblivious to the throbbing,exquisite complaint of some tortured nerve.

And it was this very mastery of the flesh by the spirit which I so acquiredthat enabled me easily to practise the secret Ed Morrell told to me.

“Think it is curtains?” Ed Morrell rapped to me one night.

I had just been released from one hundred hours, and I was weaker than I hadever been before. So weak was I that though my whole body was one mass ofbruise and misery, nevertheless I scarcely was aware that I had a body.

“It looks like curtains,” I rapped back. “They will get me ifthey keep it up much longer.”

“Don’t let them,” he advised. “There is a way. Ilearned it myself, down in the dungeons, when Massie and I got ours good andplenty. I pulled through. But Massie croaked. If I hadn’t learned thetrick, I’d have croaked along with him. You’ve got to be prettyweak first, before you try it. If you try it when you are strong, you make afailure of it, and then that queers you for ever after. I made the mistake oftelling Jake the trick when he was strong. Of course, he could not pull it off,and in the times since when he did need it, it was too late, for his firstfailure had queered it. He won’t even believe it now. He thinks I amkidding him. Ain’t that right, Jake?”

And from cell thirteen Jake rapped back, “Don’t swallow it,Darrell. It’s a sure fairy story.”

“Go on and tell me,” I rapped to Morrell.

“That is why I waited for you to get real weak,” he continued.“Now you need it, and I am going to tell you. It’s up to you. Ifyou have got the will you can do it. I’ve done it three times, and Iknow.”

“Well, what is it?” I rapped eagerly.

“The trick is to die in the jacket, to will yourself to die. I know youdon’t get me yet, but wait. You know how you get numb in thejacket—how your arm or your leg goes to sleep. Now you can’t helpthat, but you can take it for the idea and improve on it. Don’t wait foryour legs or anything to go to sleep. You lie on your back as comfortable asyou can get, and you begin to use your will.

“And this is the idea you must think to yourself, and that you mustbelieve all the time you’re thinking it. If you don’t believe, thenthere’s nothing to it. The thing you must think and believe is that yourbody is one thing and your spirit is another thing. You are you, and your bodyis something else that don’t amount to shucks. Your body don’tcount. You’re the boss. You don’t need any body. And thinking andbelieving all this you proceed to prove it by using your will. You make yourbody die.

“You begin with the toes, one at a time. You make your toes die. You willthem to die. And if you’ve got the belief and the will your toes willdie. That is the big job—to start the dying. Once you’ve got thefirst toe dead, the rest is easy, for you don’t have to do any morebelieving. You know. Then you put all your will into making the rest of thebody die. I tell you, Darrell, I know. I’ve done it three times.

“Once you get the dying started, it goes right along. And the funny thingis that you are all there all the time. Because your toes are dead don’tmake you in the least bit dead. By-and-by your legs are dead to the knees, andthen to the thighs, and you are just the same as you always were. It is yourbody that is dropping out of the game a chunk at a time. And you are just you,the same you were before you began.”

“And then what happens?” I queried.

“Well, when your body is all dead, and you are all there yet, you justskin out and leave your body. And when you leave your body you leave the cell.Stone walls and iron doors are to hold bodies in. They can’t hold thespirit in. You see, you have proved it. You are spirit outside of your body.You can look at your body from outside of it. I tell you I know because I havedone it three times—looked at my body lying there with me outside ofit.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” Jake Oppenheimer rapped his laughter thirteen cellsaway.

“You see, that’s Jake’s trouble,” Morrell went on.“He can’t believe. That one time he tried it he was too strong andfailed. And now he thinks I am kidding.”

“When you die you are dead, and dead men stay dead,” Oppenheimerretorted.

“I tell you I’ve been dead three times,” Morrell argued.

“And lived to tell us about it,” Oppenheimer jeered.

“But don’t forget one thing, Darrell,” Morrell rapped to me.“The thing is ticklish. You have a feeling all the time that you aretaking liberties. I can’t explain it, but I always had a feeling if I wasaway when they came and let my body out of the jacket that I couldn’t getback into my body again. I mean that my body would be dead for keeps. And Ididn’t want it to be dead. I didn’t want to give Captain Jamie andthe rest that satisfaction. But I tell you, Darrell, if you can turn the trickyou can laugh at the Warden. Once you make your body die that way itdon’t matter whether they keep you in the jacket a month on end. Youdon’t suffer none, and your body don’t suffer. You know there arecases of people who have slept a whole year at a time. That’s the way itwill be with your body. It just stays there in the jacket, not hurting oranything, just waiting for you to come back.

“You try it. I am giving you the straight steer.”

“And if he don’t come back?” Oppenheimer, asked.

“Then the laugh will be on him, I guess, Jake,” Morrell answered.“Unless, maybe, it will be on us for sticking round this old dump when wecould get away that easy.”

And here the conversation ended, for Pie-Face Jones, waking crustily fromstolen slumber, threatened Morrell and Oppenheimer with a report next morningthat would mean the jacket for them. Me he did not threaten, for he knew I wasdoomed for the jacket anyway.

I lay long there in the silence, forgetting the misery of my body while Iconsidered this proposition Morrell had advanced. Already, as I have explained,by mechanical self-hypnosis I had sought to penetrate back through time to myprevious selves. That I had partly succeeded I knew; but all that I hadexperienced was a fluttering of apparitions that merged erratically and werewithout continuity.

But Morrell’s method was so patently the reverse of my method ofself-hypnosis that I was fascinated. By my method, my consciousness went firstof all. By his method, consciousness persisted last of all, and, when the bodywas quite gone, passed into stages so sublimated that it left the body, leftthe prison of San Quentin, and journeyed afar, and was still consciousness.

It was worth a trial, anyway, I concluded. And, despite the sceptical attitudeof the scientist that was mine, I believed. I had no doubt I could do whatMorrell said he had done three times. Perhaps this faith that so easilypossessed me was due to my extreme debility. Perhaps I was not strong enough tobe sceptical. This was the hypothesis already suggested by Morrell. It was aconclusion of pure empiricism, and I, too, as you shall see, demonstrated itempirically.

CHAPTER X.

And above all things, next morning Warden Atherton came into my cell on murderintent. With him were Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, Pie-Face Jones, and AlHutchins. Al Hutchins was serving a forty-years’ sentence, and was inhopes of being pardoned out. For four years he had been head trusty of SanQuentin. That this was a position of great power you will realize when I tellyou that the graft alone of the head trusty was estimated at three thousanddollars a year. Wherefore Al Hutchins, in possession of ten or twelve thousanddollars and of the promise of a pardon, could be depended upon to do theWarden’s bidding blind.

I have just said that Warden Atherton came into my cell intent on murder. Hisface showed it. His actions proved it.

“Examine him,” he ordered Doctor Jackson.

That wretched apology of a creature stripped from me my dirt-encrusted shirtthat I had worn since my entrance to solitary, and exposed my poor wasted body,the skin ridged like brown parchment over the ribs and sore-infested from themany bouts with the jacket. The examination was shamelessly perfunctory.

“Will he stand it?” the Warden demanded.

“Yes,” Doctor Jackson answered.

“How’s the heart?”

“Splendid.”

“You think he’ll stand ten days of it, Doc.?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe it,” the Warden announced savagely.“But we’ll try it just the same.—Lie down, Standing.”

I obeyed, stretching myself face-downward on the flat-spread jacket. The Wardenseemed to debate with himself for a moment.

“Roll over,” he commanded.

I made several efforts, but was too weak to succeed, and could only sprawl andsquirm in my helplessness.

“Putting it on,” was Jackson’s comment.

“Well, he won’t have to put it on when I’m done withhim,” said the Warden. “Lend him a hand. I can’t waste anymore time on him.”

So they rolled me over on my back, where I stared up into WardenAtherton’s face.

“Standing,” he said slowly, “I’ve given you all therope I am going to. I am sick and tired of your stubbornness. My patience isexhausted. Doctor Jackson says you are in condition to stand ten days in thejacket. You can figure your chances. But I am going to give you your lastchance now. Come across with the dynamite. The moment it is in my handsI’ll take you out of here. You can bathe and shave and get clean clothes.I’ll let you loaf for six months on hospital grub, and then I’llput you trusty in the library. You can’t ask me to be fairer with youthan that. Besides, you’re not squealing on anybody. You are the onlyperson in San Quentin who knows where the dynamite is. You won’t hurtanybody’s feelings by giving in, and you’ll be all to the good fromthe moment you do give in. And if you don’t—”

He paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly.

“Well, if you don’t, you start in the ten days right now.”

The prospect was terrifying. So weak was I that I was as certain as the Wardenwas that it meant death in the jacket. And then I remembered Morrell’strick. Now, if ever, was the need of it; and now, if ever, was the time topractise the faith of it. I smiled up in the face of Warden Atherton. And I putfaith in that smile, and faith in the proposition I made to him.

“Warden,” I said, “do you see the way I am smiling? Well, if,at the end of the ten days, when you unlace me, I smile up at you in the sameway, will you give a sack of Bull Durham and a package of brown papers toMorrell and Oppenheimer?”

“Ain’t they the crazy ginks, these college guys,” CaptainJamie snorted.

Warden Atherton was a choleric man, and he took my request for insultingbraggadocio.

“Just for that you get an extra cinching,” he informed me.

“I made you a sporting proposition, Warden,” I said quietly.“You can cinch me as tight as you please, but if I smile ten days fromnow will you give the Bull Durham to Morrell and Oppenheimer?”

“You are mighty sure of yourself,” he retorted.

“That’s why I made the proposition,” I replied.

“Getting religion, eh?” he sneered.

“No,” was my answer. “It merely happens that I possess morelife than you can ever reach the end of. Make it a hundred days if you want,and I’ll smile at you when it’s over.”

“I guess ten days will more than do you, Standing.”

“That’s your opinion,” I said. “Have you got faith init? If you have you won’t even lose the price of the two five-cents sacksof tobacco. Anyway, what have you got to be afraid of?”

“For two cents I’d kick the face off of you right now,” hesnarled.

“Don’t let me stop you.” I was impudently suave. “Kickas hard as you please, and I’ll still have enough face left with which tosmile. In the meantime, while you are hesitating, suppose you accept myoriginal proposition.”

A man must be terribly weak and profoundly desperate to be able, under suchcircumstances, to beard the Warden in solitary. Or he may be both, and, inaddition, he may have faith. I know now that I had the faith and so acted onit. I believed what Morrell had told me. I believed in the lordship of the mindover the body. I believed that not even a hundred days in the jacket could killme.

Captain Jamie must have sensed this faith that informed me, for he said:

“I remember a Swede that went crazy twenty years ago. That was beforeyour time, Warden. He’d killed a man in a quarrel over twenty-five centsand got life for it. He was a cook. He got religion. He said that a goldenchariot was coming to take him to heaven, and he sat down on top the red-hotrange and sang hymns and hosannahs while he cooked. They dragged him off, buthe croaked two days afterward in hospital. He was cooked to the bone. And tothe end he swore he’d never felt the heat. Couldn’t get a squealout of him.”

“We’ll make Standing squeal,” said the Warden.

“Since you are so sure of it, why don’t you accept myproposition?” I challenged.

The Warden was so angry that it would have been ludicrous to me had I not beenin so desperate plight. His face was convulsed. He clenched his hands, and, fora moment, it seemed that he was about to fall upon me and give me a beating.Then, with an effort, he controlled himself.

“All right, Standing,” he snarled. “I’ll go you. Butyou bet your sweet life you’ll have to go some to smile ten days fromnow. Roll him over, boys, and cinch him till you hear his ribs crack. Hutchins,show him you know how to do it.”

And they rolled me over and laced me as I had never been laced before. The headtrusty certainly demonstrated his ability. I tried to steal what little space Icould. Little it was, for I had long since shed my flesh, while my muscles wereattenuated to mere strings. I had neither the strength nor bulk to steal morethan a little, and the little I stole I swear I managed by sheer expansion atthe joints of the bones of my frame. And of this little I was robbed byHutchins, who, in the old days before he was made head trusty, had learned allthe tricks of the jacket from the inside of the jacket.

You see, Hutchins was a cur at heart, or a creature who had once been a man,but who had been broken on the wheel. He possessed ten or twelve thousanddollars, and his freedom was in sight if he obeyed orders. Later, I learnedthat there was a girl who had remained true to him, and who was even thenwaiting for him. The woman factor explains many things of men.

If ever a man deliberately committed murder, Al Hutchins did that morning insolitary at the Warden’s bidding. He robbed me of the little space Istole. And, having robbed me of that, my body was defenceless, and, with hisfoot in my back while he drew the lacing light, he constricted me as no man hadever before succeeded in doing. So severe was this constriction of my frailframe upon my vital organs that I felt, there and then, immediately, that deathwas upon me. And still the miracle of faith was mine. I did not believe that Iwas going to die. I knew—I say I knew—that I was not goingto die. My head was swimming, and my heart was pounding from my toenails to thehair-roots in my scalp.

“That’s pretty tight,” Captain Jamie urged reluctantly.

“The hell it is,” said Doctor Jackson. “I tell you nothingcan hurt him. He’s a wooz. He ought to have been dead long ago.”

Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefingerbetween the lacing and my back. He brought his foot to bear upon me, with theweight of his body added to his foot, and pulled, but failed to get anyfraction of an inch of slack.

“I take my hat off to you, Hutchins,” he said. “You know yourjob. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”

They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them with bulging eyes. This Iknow: Had they laced me in such fashion the first time I went into the jacket,I would surely have died in the first ten minutes. But I was well trained. Ihad behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket, and, plus that, I had faithin what Morrell had told me.

“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the Warden to me. “Startthat smile you’ve been bragging about.”

So, while my lungs panted for a little air, while my heart threatened to burst,while my mind reeled, nevertheless I was able to smile up into theWarden’s face.

CHAPTER XI.

The door clanged, shutting out all but a little light, and I was left alone onmy back. By the tricks I had long since learned in the jacket, I managed towrithe myself across the floor an inch at a time until the edge of the sole ofmy right shoe touched the door. There was an immense cheer in this. I was notutterly alone. If the need arose, I could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.

But Warden Atherton must have left strict injunctions on the guards, for,though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying the experiment,he was prevented by the guards from replying. Me they could only curse, for, inso far as I was in the jacket for a ten days’ bout, I was beyond allthreat of punishment.

I remember remarking at the time my serenity of mind. The customary pain of thejacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I was no more aware ofthe pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Neverwas a man in better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Ofcourse, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there was more to it.I had long schooled myself to be oblivious to pain. I had neither doubts norfears. All the content of my mind seemed to be an absolute faith in theover-lordship of the mind. This passivity was almost dream-like, and yet, inits way, it was positive almost to a pitch of exaltation.

I began my concentration of will. Even then my body was numbing and pricklingthrough the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of myright foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. Iwilled that toe to die—to die so far as I, its lord, and a differentthing entirely from it, was concerned. There was the hard struggle. Morrell hadwarned me that it would be so. But there was no flicker of doubt to disturb myfaith. I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint byjoint it had died under the compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow, I will admit. Joint by joint, toe by toe, all thetoes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the process went on.Came the time when my flesh below the ankles had ceased. Came the time when allbelow my knees had ceased.

Such was the pitch of my perfect exaltation, that I knew not the slightest prodof rejoicing at my success. I knew nothing save that I was making my body die.All that was I was devoted to that sole task. I performed the work asthoroughly as any mason laying bricks, and I regarded the work as just about ascommonplace as would a brick-mason regard his work.

At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips, and from the hips up, jointby joint, I continued to will the ascending death.

It was when I reached the level of my heart that the first blurring anddizzying of my consciousness occurred. For fear that I should loseconsciousness, I willed to hold the death I had gained, and shifted myconcentration to my fingers. My brain cleared again, and the death of my armsto the shoulders was most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, so far as I was concerned, save my head anda little patch of my chest. No longer did the pound and smash of my compressedheart echo in my brain. My heart was beating steadily but feebly. The joy ofit, had I dared joy at such a moment, would have been the cessation ofsensations.

At this point my experience differs from Morrell’s. Still willingautomatically, I began to grow dreamy, as one does in that borderland betweensleeping and waking. Also, it seemed as if a prodigious enlargement of my brainwas taking place within the skull itself that did not enlarge. There wereoccasional glintings and flashings of light as if even I, the overlord, hadceased for a moment and the next moment was again myself, still the tenant ofthe fleshly tenement that I was making to die.

Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. Without having passedthrough the wall of skull, nevertheless it seemed to me that the periphery ofmy brain was already outside my skull and still expanding. Along with this wasone of the most remarkable sensations or experiences that I have everencountered. Time and space, in so far as they were the stuff of myconsciousness, underwent an enormous extension. Thus, without opening my eyesto verify, I knew that the walls of my narrow cell had receded until it waslike a vast audience-chamber. And while I contemplated the matter, I knew thatthey continued to recede. The whim struck me for a moment that if a similarexpansion were taking place with the whole prison, then the outer walls of SanQuentin must be far out in the Pacific Ocean on one side and on the other sidemust be encroaching on the Nevada desert. A companion whim was that sincematter could permeate matter, then the walls of my cell might well permeate theprison walls, pass through the prison walls, and thus put my cell outside theprison and put me at liberty. Of course, this was pure fantastic whim, and Iknew it at the time for what it was.

The extension of time was equally remarkable. Only at long intervals did myheart beat. Again a whim came to me, and I counted the seconds, slow and sure,between my heart-beats. At first, as I clearly noted, over a hundred secondsintervened between beats. But as I continued to count the intervals extended sothat I was made weary of counting.

And while this illusion of the extension of time and space persisted and grew,I found myself dreamily considering a new and profound problem. Morrell hadtold me that he had won freedom from his body by killing his body—or byeliminating his body from his consciousness, which, of course, was in effectthe same thing. Now, my body was so near to being entirely dead that I knew inall absoluteness that by a quick concentration of will on the yet-alive patchof my torso it, too, would cease to be. But—and here was the problem, andMorrell had not warned me: should I also will my head to be dead? If I did so,no matter what befell the spirit of Darrell Standing, would not the body ofDarrell Standing be for ever dead?

I chanced the chest and the slow-beating heart. The quick compulsion of my willwas rewarded. I no longer had chest nor heart. I was only a mind, a soul, aconsciousness—call it what you will—incorporate in a nebulous brainthat, while it still centred inside my skull, was expanded, and was continuingto expand, beyond my skull.

And then, with flashings of light, I was off and away. At a bound I had vaultedprison roof and California sky, and was among the stars. I say“stars” advisedly. I walked among the stars. I was a child. I wasclad in frail, fleece-like, delicate-coloured robes that shimmered in the coolstarlight. These robes, of course, were based upon my boyhood observance ofcircus actors and my boyhood conception of the garb of young angels.

Nevertheless, thus clad, I trod interstellar space, exalted by the knowledgethat I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I would find all thecosmic formulæ and have made clear to me the ultimate secret of theuniverse. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. It was borne in upon me thatwith the tip of this wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in allabsoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated into someunplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt.

Long I pursued my starry quest. When I say “long,” you must bear inmind the enormous extension of time that had occurred in my brain. Forcenturies I trod space, with the tip of my wand and with unerring eye and handtapping each star I passed. Ever the way grew brighter. Ever the ineffable goalof infinite wisdom grew nearer. And yet I made no mistake. This was no otherself of mine. This was no experience that had once been mine. I was aware allthe time that it was I, Darrell Standing, who walked among the stars and tappedthem with a wand of glass. In short, I knew that here was nothing real, nothingthat had ever been nor could ever be. I knew that it was nothing else than aridiculous orgy of the imagination, such as men enjoy in drug dreams, indelirium, or in mere ordinary slumber.

And then, as all went merry and well with me on my celestial quest, the tip ofmy wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew I had been guilty of a greatcrime. And on the instant a knock, vast and compulsive, inexorable andmandatory as the stamp of the iron hoof of doom, smote me and reverberatedacross the universe. The whole sidereal system coruscated, reeled and fell inflame.

I was torn by an exquisite and disruptive agony. And on the instant I wasDarrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in solitary. AndI knew the immediate cause of that summons. It was a rap of the knuckle by EdMorrell, in Cell Five, beginning the spelling of some message.

And now, to give some comprehension of the extension of time and space that Iwas experiencing. Many days afterwards I asked Morrell what he had tried toconvey to me. It was a simple message, namely: “Standing, are youthere?” He had tapped it rapidly, while the guard was at the far end ofthe corridor into which the solitary cells opened. As I say, he had tapped themessage very rapidly. And now behold! Between the first tap and the second Iwas off and away among the stars, clad in fleecy garments, touching each staras I passed in my pursuit of the formulæ that would explain the lastmystery of life. And, as before, I pursued the quest for centuries. Then camethe summons, the stamp of the hoof of doom, the exquisite disruptive agony, andagain I was back in my cell in San Quentin. It was the second tap of EdMorrell’s knuckle. The interval between it and the first tap could havebeen no more than a fifth of a second. And yet, so unthinkably enormous was theextension of time to me, that in the course of that fifth of a second I hadbeen away star-roving for long ages.

Now I know, my reader, that the foregoing seems all a farrago. I agree withyou. It is farrago. It was experience, however. It was just as real to me as isthe snake beheld by a man in delirium tremens.

Possibly, by the most liberal estimate, it may have taken Ed Morrell twominutes to tap his question. Yet, to me, æons elapsed between the firsttap of his knuckle and the last. No longer could I tread my starry path withthat ineffable pristine joy, for my way was beset with dread of the inevitablesummons that would rip and tear me as it jerked me back to my strait-jackethell. Thus my æons of star-wandering were æons of dread.

And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruellyheld me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease. But sothoroughly had I eliminated my body from my consciousness that I was unable toresurrect it. My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still inhabited theskull. In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message to Morrell. Ireasoned I had a foot. And yet, so thoroughly had I carried out the experiment,I had no foot.

Next—and I know now that it was because Morrell had spelled his messagequite out—I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back. Afterthat, and in the course of it, I was aware, drowsily, that I was fallingasleep, and that it was delicious sleep. From time to time, drowsily, Istirred—please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—I STIRRED. Imoved my legs, my arms. I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin. Iwas aware of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious! As thirsting men on thedesert dream of splashing fountains and flowing wells, so dreamed I of easementfrom the constriction of the jacket, of cleanliness in the place of filth, ofsmooth velvety skin of health in place of my poor parchment-crinkled hide. ButI dreamed with a difference, as you shall see.

I awoke. Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not open my eyes. Andplease know that in all that follows I knew no surprise whatever. Everythingwas the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure of that. But I was notDarrell Standing. Darrell Standing had no more to do with the being I wasthan did Darrell Standing’s parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do withthe cool, soft skin that was mine. Nor was I aware of any DarrellStanding—as I could not well be, considering that Darrell Standing was asyet unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you shall see.

I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. From without came the clacking ofmany hoofs moving orderly on stone flags. From the accompanying jingle of metalbits of man-harness and steed-harness I knew some cavalcade was passing by onthe street beneath my windows. Also, I wondered idly who it was. Fromsomewhere—and I knew where, for I knew it was from the innyard—came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an impatient neigh that Irecognized as belonging to my waiting horse.

Came steps and movements—steps openly advertised as suppressed with theintent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret intentof rousing me if I still slept. I smiled inwardly at the rascal’s trick.

“Pons,” I ordered, without opening my eyes, “water, coldwater, quick, a deluge. I drank over long last night, and now my gulletscorches.”

“And slept over long to-day,” he scolded, as he passed me thewater, ready in his hand.

I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both myhands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I spoke inFrench. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when I remembered what I amnarrating, did I know that I had spoken in French—ay, and spoken well. Asfor me, Darrell Standing, at present writing these lines in Murderers’Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know only high school French sufficient to enableme to read the language. As for my speaking it—impossible. I can scarcelyintelligibly pronounce my way through a menu.

But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in ourhouse—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day Iam describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and,despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was veryalert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was impudently familiar. This wasbecause he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father’sservant before I could toddle, and after my father’s death (Pons and Italked of it this day) he became my servant. The limp he had acquired on astricken field in Italy, when the horsemen charged across. He had just draggedmy father clear of the hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown,and trampled. My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds, witnessedit all. And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to impudent familiaritythat at least there was no gainsaying him by my father’s son.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.

“Did you hear it boil?” I laughed, as I handed back the emptytankard.

“Like your father,” he said hopelessly. “But your fatherlived to learn better, which I doubt you will do.”

“He got a stomach affliction,” I devilled, “so that onemouthful of spirits turned it outside in. It were wisdom not to drink whenone’s tank will not hold the drink.”

While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the day.

“Drink on, my master,” he answered. “It won’t hurt you.You’ll die with a sound stomach.”

“You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?” I wilfully misunderstoodhim.

“I mean—” he began with a quick peevishness, then broke offas he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my newsable cloak upon a chair-back. “Eight hundred ducats,” he sneered.“A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm. Ascore of farms on my gentleman’s fine back.”

“And in that a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to saynothing, perhaps, of a palace,” I said, reaching out my hand and touchingthe rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on the chair.

“So your father won with his good right arm,” Pons retorted.“But what your father won he held.”

Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin doublet—awondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.

“Sixty ducats for that,” Pons indicted. “Your father’dhave seen all the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in hell beforehe’d a-paid such a price.”

And while we dressed—that is, while Pons helped me to dress—Icontinued to quip with him.

“It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news,” I saidslyly.

Whereat up pricked his ears like the old gossip he was.

“Late news?” he queried. “Mayhap from the EnglishCourt?”

“Nay,” I shook my head. “But news perhaps to you, but oldnews for all of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece werewhispering it nigh two thousand years ago. It is because of that news that Iput twenty fat farms on my back, live at Court, and am become a dandy. You see,Pons, the world is a most evil place, life is most sad, all men die, and, beingdead . . . well, are dead. Wherefore, to escape the evil and the sadness, menin these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and the madnesses ofdalliance.”

“But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so longago?”

“That God was dead, Pons,” I replied solemnly. “Didn’tyou know that? God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms onmy back.”

“God lives,” Pons asserted fervently. “God lives, and hiskingdom is at hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later thanto-morrow that the earth shall pass away.”

“So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to lighthis sports.”

Pons regarded me pityingly.

“Too much learning is a sickness,” he complained. “I wasalways opposed to it. But you must have your will and drag my old body aboutwith you—a-studying astronomy and numbers in Venice, poetry and all theItalian fol-de-rolsin Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and God knowswhat in that madman country of Germany. Pish for the philosophers! I tell you,master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows not a letter from apike-staff—I tell you God lives, and the time you shall appear before himis short.” He paused with sudden recollection, and added: “He ishere, the priest you spoke of.”

On the instant I remembered my engagement.

“Why did you not tell me before?” I demanded angrily.

“What did it matter?” Pons shrugged his shoulders. “Has henot been waiting two hours as it is?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

“And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, ‘Sing cucu,sing cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, singcucu.’”

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto. Withoutdoubt I had bawled the nonsense out on my way to bed.

“You have a good memory,” I commented drily, as I essayed a momentto drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to putaside. He shook his head sourly.

“No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandthtime till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit you for the sleep-killeryou were. And when I had you decently in the bed, did you not call me to youand command, if the devil called, to tell him my lady slept? And did you notcall me back again, and, with a grip on my arm that leaves it bruised and blackthis day, command me, as I loved life, fat meat, and the warm fire, to call younot of the morning save for one thing?”

“Which was?” I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess what Icould have said.

“Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by nameMartinelli—whoever he may be—for the heart of Martinelli smoking ona gold platter. The platter must be gold, you said; and you said I must callyou by singing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’ Whereat youbegan to teach me how to sing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, singcucu.’”

And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the priest, Martinelli,who had been knocking his heels two mortal hours in the room without.

When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me by title and name,I knew at once my name and all of it. I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure.(You see, only could I know then, and remember afterward, what was in myconscious mind.)

The priest was Italian, dark and small, lean as with fasting or with a wastinghunger not of this world, and his hands were as small and slender as awoman’s. But his eyes! They were cunning and trustless, narrow-slittedand heavy-lidded, at one and the same time as sharp as a ferret’s and asindolent as a basking lizard’s.

“There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure,” he beganpromptly, when Pons had left the room at a glance from me. “He whom Iserve grows impatient.”

“Change your tune, priest,” I broke in angrily. “Remember,you are not now in Rome.”

“My august master—” he began.

“Rules augustly in Rome, mayhap,” I again interrupted. “Thisis France.”

Martinelli shrugged his shoulders meekly and patiently, but his eyes, gleaminglike a basilisk’s, gave his shoulders the lie.

“My august master has some concern with the doings of France,” hesaid quietly. “The lady is not for you. My master has other plans. ..” He moistened his thin lips with his tongue. “Other plans for thelady . . . and for you.”

Of course, by the lady I knew he referred to the great Duchess Philippa, widowof Geoffrey, last Duke of Aquitaine. But great duchess, widow, and all,Philippa was a woman, and young, and gay, and beautiful, and, by my faith,fashioned for me.

“What are his plans?” I demanded bluntly.

“They are deep and wide, Count Sainte-Maure—too deep and wide forme to presume to imagine, much less know or discuss with you or any man.”

“Oh, I know big things are afoot and slimy worms squirmingunderground,” I said.

“They told me you were stubborn-necked, but I have obeyedcommands.”

Martinelli arose to leave, and I arose with him.

“I said it was useless,” he went on. “But the last chance tochange your mind was accorded you. My august master deals more fairly thanfair.”

“Oh, well, I’ll think the matter over,” I said airily, as Ibowed the priest to the door.

He stopped abruptly at the threshold.

“The time for thinking is past,” he said. “It is decision Icame for.”

“I will think the matter over,” I repeated, then added, asafterthought: “If the lady’s plans do not accord with mine, thenmayhap the plans of your master may fruit as he desires. For remember, priest,he is no master of mine.”

“You do not know my master,” he said solemnly.

“Nor do I wish to know him,” I retorted.

And I listened to the lithe, light step of the little intriguing priest go downthe creaking stairs.

Did I go into the minutiæ of detail of all that I saw this half a day andhalf a night that I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, not ten books the sizeof this I am writing could contain the totality of the matter. Much I shallskip; in fact, I shall skip almost all; for never yet have I heard of acondemned man being reprieved in order that he might complete hismemoirs—at least, not in California.

When I rode out in Paris that day it was the Paris of centuries agone. Thenarrow streets were an unsanitary scandal of filth and slime. But I must skip.And skip I shall, all of the afternoon’s events, all of the ride outsidethe walls, of the grand fête given by Hugh de Meung, of the feasting andthe drinking in which I took little part. Only of the end of the adventure willI write, which begins with where I stood jesting with Philippaherself—ah, dear God, she was wondrous beautiful. A great lady—ay,but before that, and after that, and always, a woman.

We laughed and jested lightly enough, as about us jostled the merry throng; butunder our jesting was the deep earnestness of man and woman well advancedacross the threshold of love and yet not too sure each of the other. I shallnot describe her. She was small, exquisitely slender—but there, I amdescribing her. In brief, she was the one woman in the world for me, and littleI recked the long arm of that gray old man in Rome could reach out half acrossEurope between my woman and me.

And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered:

“One who desires to speak.”

“One who must wait my pleasure,” I answered shortly.

“I wait no man’s pleasure,” was his equally short reply.

And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and the grayold man at Rome. The thing was clear. It was deliberate. It was the long arm.Fortini smiled lazily at me while I thus paused for the moment to debate, butin his smile was the essence of all insolence.

This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool. But the old red angerbegan to kindle in me. This was the work of the priest. This was the Fortini,poverished of all save lineage, reckoned the best sword come up out of Italy inhalf a score of years. To-night it was Fortini. If he failed the gray oldman’s command to-morrow it would be another sword, the next day another.And, perchance still failing, then might I expect the common bravo’ssteel in my back or the common poisoner’s philter in my wine, my meat, orbread.

“I am busy,” I said. “Begone.”

“My business with you presses,” was his reply.

Insensibly our voices had slightly risen, so that Philippa heard.

“Begone, you Italian hound,” I said. “Take your howling frommy door. I shall attend to you presently.”

“The moon is up,” he said. “The grass is dry and excellent.There is no dew. Beyond the fish-pond, an arrow’s flight to the left, isan open space, quiet and private.”

“Presently you shall have your desire,” I muttered impatiently.

But still he persisted in waiting at my shoulder.

“Presently,” I said. “Presently I shall attend to you.”

Then spoke Philippa, in all the daring spirit and the iron of her.

“Satisfy the gentleman’s desire, Sainte-Maure. Attend to him now.And good fortune go with you.” She paused to beckon to her her uncle,Jean de Joinville, who was passing—uncle on her mother’s side, ofthe de Joinvilles of Anjou. “Good fortune go with you,” sherepeated, and then leaned to me so that she could whisper: “And my heartgoes with you, Sainte-Maure. Do not be long. I shall await you in the bighall.”

I was in the seventh heaven. I trod on air. It was the first frank admittanceof her love. And with such benediction I was made so strong that I knew I couldkill a score of Fortinis and snap my fingers at a score of gray old men inRome.

Jean de Joinville bore Philippa away in the press, and Fortini and I settledour arrangements in a trice. We separated—he to find a friend or so, andI to find a friend or so, and all to meet at the appointed place beyond thefish-pond.

First I found Robert Lanfranc, and, next, Henry Bohemond. But before I foundthem I encountered a windlestraw which showed which way blew the wind and gavepromise of a very gale. I knew the windlestraw, Guy de Villehardouin, a rawyoung provincial, come up the first time to Court, but a fiery little cockerelfor all of that. He was red-haired. His blue eyes, small and pinched closetogether, were likewise red, at least in the whites of them; and his skin, ofthe sort that goes with such types, was red and freckled. He had quite aparboiled appearance.

As I passed him by a sudden movement he jostled me. Oh, of course, the thingwas deliberate. And he flamed at me while his hand dropped to his rapier.

“Faith,” thought I, “the gray old man has many and strangetools,” while to the cockerel I bowed and murmured, “Your pardonfor my clumsiness. The fault was mine. Your pardon, Villehardouin.”

But he was not to be appeased thus easily. And while he fumed and strutted Iglimpsed Robert Lanfranc, beckoned him to us, and explained the happening.

“Sainte-Maure has accorded you satisfaction,” was his judgment.“He has prayed your pardon.”

“In truth, yes,” I interrupted in my suavest tones. “And Ipray your pardon again, Villehardouin, for my very great clumsiness. I prayyour pardon a thousand times. The fault was mine, though unintentioned. In myhaste to an engagement I was clumsy, most woful clumsy, but withoutintention.”

What could the dolt do but grudgingly accept the amends I so freely profferedhim? Yet I knew, as Lanfranc and I hastened on, that ere many days, or hours,the flame-headed youth would see to it that we measured steel together on thegrass.

I explained no more to Lanfranc than my need of him, and he was littleinterested to pry deeper into the matter. He was himself a lively youngster ofno more than twenty, but he had been trained to arms, had fought in Spain, andhad an honourable record on the grass. Merely his black eyes flashed when helearned what was toward, and such was his eagerness that it was he who gatheredHenry Bohemond in to our number.

When the three of us arrived in the open space beyond the fish-pond Fortini andtwo friends were already waiting us. One was Felix Pasquini, nephew to theCardinal of that name, and as close in his uncle’s confidence as was hisuncle close in the confidence of the gray old man. The other was Raoul deGoncourt, whose presence surprised me, he being too good and noble a man forthe company he kept.

We saluted properly, and properly went about the business. It was nothing newto any of us. The footing was good, as promised. There was no dew. The moonshone fair, and Fortini’s blade and mine were out and at earnest play.

This I knew: good swordsman as they reckoned me in France, Fortini was abetter. This, too, I knew: that I carried my lady’s heart with me thisnight, and that this night, because of me, there would be one Italian less inthe world. I say I knew it. In my mind the issue could not be in doubt. And asour rapiers played I pondered the manner I should kill him. I was not mindedfor a long contest. Quick and brilliant had always been my way. And further,what of my past gay months of carousal and of singing “Sing cucu, singcucu, sing cucu,” at ungodly hours, I knew I was not conditioned for along contest. Quick and brilliant was my decision.

But quick and brilliant was a difficult matter with so consummate a swordsmanas Fortini opposed to me. Besides, as luck would have it, Fortini, always thecold one, always the tireless-wristed, always sure and long, as report had it,in going about such business, on this night elected, too, the quick andbrilliant.

It was nervous, tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his intention ofbriefness, just as surely had he sensed mine. I doubt that I could have donethe trick had it been broad day instead of moonlight. The dim light aided me.Also was I aided by divining, the moment in advance, what he had in mind. Itwas the time attack, a common but perilous trick that every novice knows, thathas laid on his back many a good man who attempted it, and that is so fraughtwith danger to the perpetrator that swordsmen are not enamoured of it.

We had been at work barely a minute, when I knew under all his darting,flashing show of offence that Fortini meditated this very time attack. Hedesired of me a thrust and lunge, not that he might parry it but that he mighttime it and deflect it by the customary slight turn of the wrist, his rapierpoint directed to meet me as my body followed in the lunge. A ticklishthing—ay, a ticklish thing in the best of light. Did he deflect afraction of a second too early, I should be warned and saved. Did he deflect afraction of a second too late, my thrust would go home to him.

“Quick and brilliant is it?” was my thought. “Very well, myItalian friend, quick and brilliant shall it be, and especially shall it bequick.”

In a way, it was time attack against time attack, but I would fool him on thetime by being over-quick. And I was quick. As I said, we had been at workscarcely a minute when it happened. Quick? That thrust and lunge of mine wereone. A snap of action it was, an explosion, an instantaneousness. I swear mythrust and lunge were a fraction of a second quicker than any man is supposedto thrust and lunge. I won the fraction of a second. By that fraction of asecond too late Fortini attempted to deflect my blade and impale me on his. Butit was his blade that was deflected. It flashed past my breast, and I wasin—inside his weapon, which extended full length in the empty air behindme—and my blade was inside of him, and through him, heart-high, fromright side of him to left side of him and outside of him beyond.

It is a strange thing to do, to spit a live man on a length of steel. I sithere in my cell, and cease from writing a space, while I consider the matter.And I have considered it often, that moonlight night in France of long ago,when I taught the Italian hound quick and brilliant. It was so easy a thing,that perforation of a torso. One would have expected more resistance. Therewould have been resistance had my rapier point touched bone. As it was, itencountered only the softness of flesh. Still it perforated so easily. I havethe sensation of it now, in my hand, my brain, as I write. A woman’shat-pin could go through a plum pudding not more easily than did my blade gothrough the Italian. Oh, there was nothing amazing about it at the time toGuillaume de Sainte-Maure, but amazing it is to me, Darrell Standing, as Irecollect and ponder it across the centuries. It is easy, most easy, to kill astrong, live, breathing man with so crude a weapon as a piece of steel. Why,men are like soft-shell crabs, so tender, frail, and vulnerable are they.

But to return to the moonlight on the grass. My thrust made home, there was aperceptible pause. Not at once did Fortini fall. Not at once did I withdraw theblade. For a full second we stood in pause—I, with legs spread, andarched and tense, body thrown forward, right arm horizontal and straight out;Fortini, his blade beyond me so far that hilt and hand just rested lightlyagainst my left breast, his body rigid, his eyes open and shining.

So statuesque were we for that second that I swear those about us were notimmediately aware of what had happened. Then Fortini gasped and coughedslightly. The rigidity of his pose slackened. The hilt and hand against mybreast wavered, then the arm drooped to his side till the rapier point restedon the lawn. By this time Pasquini and de Goncourt had sprung to him and he wassinking into their arms. In faith, it was harder for me to withdraw the steelthan to drive it in. His flesh clung about it as if jealous to let it depart.Oh, believe me, it required a distinct physical effort to get clear of what Ihad done.

But the pang of the withdrawal must have stung him back to life and purpose,for he shook off his friends, straightened himself, and lifted his rapier intoposition. I, too, took position, marvelling that it was possible I had spittedhim heart-high and yet missed any vital spot. Then, and before his friendscould catch him, his legs crumpled under him and he went heavily to grass. Theylaid him on his back, but he was already dead, his face ghastly still under themoon, his right hand still a-clutch of the rapier.

Yes; it is indeed a marvellous easy thing to kill a man.

We saluted his friends and were about to depart, when Felix Pasquini detainedme.

“Pardon me,” I said. “Let it be to-morrow.”

“We have but to move a step aside,” he urged, “where thegrass is still dry.”

“Let me then wet it for you, Sainte-Maure,” Lanfranc asked of me,eager himself to do for an Italian.

I shook my head.

“Pasquini is mine,” I answered. “He shall be firstto-morrow.”

“Are there others?” Lanfranc demanded.

“Ask de Goncourt,” I grinned. “I imagine he is already layingclaim to the honour of being the third.”

At this, de Goncourt showed distressed acquiescence. Lanfranc looked inquiry athim, and de Goncourt nodded.

“And after him I doubt not comes the cockerel,” I went on.

And even as I spoke the red-haired Guy de Villehardouin, alone, strode to usacross the moonlit grass.

“At least I shall have him,” Lanfranc cried, his voice almostwheedling, so great was his desire.

“Ask him,” I laughed, then turned to Pasquini.“To-morrow,” I said. “Do you name time and place, and I shallbe there.”

“The grass is most excellent,” he teased, “the place is mostexcellent, and I am minded that Fortini has you for company this night.”

“’Twere better he were accompanied by a friend,” I quipped.“And now your pardon, for I must go.”

But he blocked my path.

“Whoever it be,” he said, “let it be now.”

For the first time, with him, my anger began to rise.

“You serve your master well,” I sneered.

“I serve but my pleasure,” was his answer. “Master I havenone.”

“Pardon me if I presume to tell you the truth,” I said.

“Which is?” he queried softly.

“That you are a liar, Pasquini, a liar like all Italians.”

He turned immediately to Lanfranc and Bohemond.

“You heard,” he said. “And after that you cannot deny mehim.”

They hesitated and looked to me for counsel of my wishes. But Pasquini did notwait.

“And if you still have any scruples,” he hurried on, “thenallow me to remove them . . . thus.”

And he spat in the grass at my feet. Then my anger seized me and was beyond me.The red wrath I call it—an overwhelming, all-mastering desire to kill anddestroy. I forgot that Philippa waited for me in the great hall. All I knew wasmy wrongs—the unpardonable interference in my affairs by the gray oldman, the errand of the priest, the insolence of Fortini, the impudence ofVillehardouin, and here Pasquini standing in my way and spitting in the grass.I saw red. I thought red. I looked upon all these creatures as rank and noisomegrowths that must be hewn out of my path, out of the world. As a netted lionmay rage against the meshes, so raged I against these creatures. They were allabout me. In truth, I was in the trap. The one way out was to cut them down, tocrush them into the earth and stamp upon them.

“Very well,” I said, calmly enough, although my passion was suchthat my frame shook. “You first, Pasquini. And you next, de Goncourt? Andat the end, de Villehardouin?”

Each nodded in turn and Pasquini and I prepared to step aside.

“Since you are in haste,” Henry Bohemond proposed to me, “andsince there are three of them and three of us, why not settle it at the onetime?”

“Yes, yes,” was Lanfranc’s eager cry. “Do you take deGoncourt. De Villehardouin for mine.”

But I waved my good friends back.

“They are here by command,” I explained. “It is I they desireso strongly that by my faith I have caught the contagion of their desire, sothat now I want them and will have them for myself.”

I had observed that Pasquini fretted at my delay of speech-making, and Iresolved to fret him further.

“You, Pasquini,” I announced, “I shall settle with in shortaccount. I would not that you tarried while Fortini waits your companionship.You, Raoul de Goncourt, I shall punish as you deserve for being in such badcompany. You are getting fat and wheezy. I shall take my time with you untilyour fat melts and your lungs pant and wheeze like leaky bellows. You, deVillehardouin, I have not decided in what manner I shall kill.”

And then I saluted Pasquini, and we were at it. Oh, I was minded to be rarelydevilish this night. Quick and brilliant—that was the thing. Nor was Iunmindful of that deceptive moonlight. As with Fortini would I settle with himif he dared the time attack. If he did not, and quickly, then I would dare it.

Despite the fret I had put him in, he was cautious. Nevertheless I compelledthe play to be rapid, and in the dim light, depending less than usual on sightand more than usual on feel, our blades were in continual touch.

Barely was the first minute of play past when I did the trick. I feigned aslight slip of the foot, and, in the recovery, feigned loss of touch withPasquini’s blade. He thrust tentatively, and again I feigned, this timemaking a needlessly wide parry. The consequent exposure of myself was the baitI had purposely dangled to draw him on. And draw him on I did. Like a flash hetook advantage of what he deemed an involuntary exposure. Straight and true washis thrust, and all his will and body were heartily in the weight of the lungehe made. And all had been feigned on my part and I was ready for him. Justlightly did my steel meet his as our blades slithered. And just firmly enoughand no more did my wrist twist and deflect his blade on my basket hilt. Oh,such a slight deflection, a matter of inches, just barely sufficient to sendhis point past me so that it pierced a fold of my satin doublet in passing. Ofcourse, his body followed his rapier in the lunge, while, heart-high, rightside, my rapier point met his body. And my outstretched arm was stiff andstraight as the steel into which it elongated, and behind the arm and the steelmy body was braced and solid.

Heart-high, I say, my rapier entered Pasquini’s side on the right, but itdid not emerge, on the left, for, well-nigh through him, it met a rib (oh,man-killing is butcher’s work!) with such a will that the forcingoverbalanced him, so that he fell part backward and part sidewise to theground. And even as he fell, and ere he struck, with jerk and wrench I clearedmy weapon of him.

De Goncourt was to him, but he waved de Goncourt to attend on me. Not soswiftly as Fortini did Pasquini pass. He coughed and spat, and, helped by deVillehardouin, propped his elbow under him, rested his head on hand, andcoughed and spat again.

“A pleasant journey, Pasquini,” I laughed to him in my red anger.“Pray hasten, for the grass where you lie is become suddenly wet and ifyou linger you will catch your death of cold.”

When I made immediately to begin with de Goncourt, Bohemond protested that Ishould rest a space.

“Nay,” I said. “I have not properly warmed up.” And tode Goncourt, “Now will we have you dance and wheeze—Salute!”

De Goncourt’s heart was not in the work. It was patent that he foughtunder the compulsion of command. His play was old-fashioned, as any middle-agedman’s is apt to be, but he was not an indifferent swordsman. He was cool,determined, dogged. But he was not brilliant, and he was oppressed withforeknowledge of defeat. A score of times, by quick and brilliant, he was mine.But I refrained. I have said that I was devilish-minded. Indeed I was. I worehim down. I backed him away from the moon so that he could see little of mebecause I fought in my own shadow. And while I wore him down until he began towheeze as I had predicted, Pasquini, head on hand and watching, coughed andspat out his life.

“Now, de Goncourt,” I announced finally. “You see I have youquite helpless. You are mine in any of a dozen ways. Be ready, brace yourself,for this is the way I will.”

And, so saying, I merely went from carte to tierce, and as he recovered wildlyand parried widely I returned to carte, took the opening, and drove homeheart-high and through and through. And at sight of the conclusion Pasquini letgo his hold on life, buried his face in the grass, quivered a moment, and laystill.

“Your master will be four servants short this night,” I assured deVillehardouin, in the moment just ere we engaged.

And such an engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school of fencehe had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright clownish.“Short work and simple” was my judgment, while his red hair seemeda-bristle with very rage and while he pressed me like a madman.

Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him andlaughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was, he becameso angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew. With an arm-widesweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled itthrough the air and rapped it down on my crown. I was in amaze. Never had soabsurd a thing happened to me. He was wide open, and I could have run himthrough forthright. But, as I said, I was in amaze, and the next I knew was thepang of the entering steel as this clumsy provincial ran me through and chargedforward, bull-like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.

As I fell I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc and Bohemond and theglut of satisfaction in the face of de Villehardouin as he pressed me.

I was falling, but I never reached the grass. Came a blurr of flashing lights,a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light slowly dawning, awrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and then I heard the voice ofone who said:

“I can’t feel anything.”

I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew myself for DarrellStanding, just returned across the centuries to the jacket hell of San Quentin.And I knew the touch of finger-tips on my neck was Warden Atherton’s. AndI knew the finger-tips that displaced his were Doctor Jackson’s. And itwas Doctor Jackson’s voice that said:

“You don’t know how to take a man’s pulse from the neck.There—right there—put your fingers where mine are. D’ye getit? Ah, I thought so. Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer.”

“It’s only twenty-four hours,” Captain Jamie said, “andhe was never in like condition before.”

“Putting it on, that’s what he’s doing, and you can stack onthat,” Al Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.

“I don’t know,” Captain Jamie insisted. “When aman’s pulse is that low it takes an expert to find it—”

“Aw, I served my apprenticeship in the jacket,” Al Hutchinssneered. “And I’ve made you unlace me, Captain, when you thought Iwas croaking, and it was all I could do to keep from snickering in yourface.”

“What do you think, Doc?” Warden Atherton asked.

“I tell you the heart action is splendid,” was the answer.“Of course it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchinsis right. The man is feigning.”

With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I opened my other eyeand gazed up at the group bending over me.

“What did I tell you?” was Doctor Jackson’s cry of triumph.

And then, although it seemed the effort must crack my face, I summoned all thewill of me and smiled.

They held water to my lips, and I drank greedily. It must be remembered thatall this while I lay helpless on my back, my arms pinioned along with my bodyinside the jacket. When they offered me food—dry prison bread—Ishook my head. I closed my eyes in advertisement that I was tired of theirpresence. The pain of my partial resuscitation was unbearable. I could feel mybody coming to life. Down the cords of my neck and into my patch of chest overthe heart darting pains were making their way. And in my brain the memory wasstrong that Philippa waited me in the big hall, and I was desirous to escapeaway back to the half a day and half a night I had just lived in old France.

So it was, even as they stood about me, that I strove to eliminate the liveportion of my body from my consciousness. I was in haste to depart, but WardenAtherton’s voice held me back.

“Is there anything you want to complain about?” he asked.

Now I had but one fear, namely, that they would unlace me; so that it must beunderstood that my reply was not uttered in braggadocio but was meant toforestall any possible unlacing.

“You might make the jacket a little tighter,” I whispered.“It’s too loose for comfort. I get lost in it. Hutchins is stupid.He is also a fool. He doesn’t know the first thing about lacing thejacket. Warden, you ought to put him in charge of the loom-room. He is a moreprofound master of inefficiency than the present incumbent, who is merelystupid without being a fool as well. Now get out, all of you, unless you canthink of worse to do to me. In which case, by all means remain. I invite youheartily to remain, if you think in your feeble imaginings that you havedevised fresh torture for me.”

“He’s a wooz, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool wooz,” DoctorJackson chanted, with the medico’s delight in a novelty.

“Standing, you area wonder,” the Warden said.“You’ve got an iron will, but I’ll break it as sure as Godmade little apples.”

“And you’ve the heart of a rabbit,” I retorted.“One-tenth the jacketing I have received in San Quentin would havesqueezed your rabbit heart out of your long ears.”

Oh, it was a touch, that, for the Warden did have unusual ears. They would haveinterested Lombroso, I am sure.

“As for me,” I went on, “I laugh at you, and I wish no worsefate to the loom-room than that you should take charge of it yourself. Why,you’ve got me down and worked your wickedness on me, and still I live andlaugh in your face. Inefficient? You can’t even kill me. Inefficient? Youcouldn’t kill a cornered rat with a stick of dynamite—realdynamite, and not the sort you are deluded into believing I have hiddenaway.”

“Anything more?” he demanded, when I had ceased from my diatribe.

And into my mind flashed what I had told Fortini when he pressed his insolenceon me.

“Begone, you prison cur,” I said. “Take your yapping from mydoor.”

It must have been a terrible thing for a man of Warden Atherton’s stripeto be thus bearded by a helpless prisoner. His face whitened with rage and hisvoice shook as he threatened:

“By God, Standing, I’ll do for you yet.”

“There is only one thing you can do,” I said. “You cantighten this distressingly loose jacket. If you won’t, then get out. AndI don’t care if you fail to come back for a week or for the whole tendays.”

And what can even the Warden of a great prison do in reprisal on a prisonerupon whom the ultimate reprisal has already been wreaked? It may be that WardenAtherton thought of some possible threat, for he began to speak. But my voicehad strengthened with the exercise, and I began to sing, “Sing cucu, singcucu, sing cucu.” And sing I did until my door clanged and the bolts andlocks squeaked and grated fast.

CHAPTER XII.

Now that I had learned the trick the way was easy. And I knew the way was boundto become easier the more I travelled it. Once establish a line of leastresistance, every succeeding journey along it will find still less resistance.And so, as you shall see, my journeys from San Quentin life into other liveswere achieved almost automatically as time went by.

After Warden Atherton and his crew had left me it was a matter of minutes towill the resuscitated portion of my body back into the little death. Death inlife it was, but it was only the little death, similar to the temporary deathproduced by an anæsthetic.

And so, from all that was sordid and vile, from brutal solitary and jackethell, from acquainted flies and sweats of darkness and the knuckle-talk of theliving dead, I was away at a bound into time and space.

Came the duration of darkness, and the slow-growing awareness of other thingsand of another self. First of all, in this awareness, was dust. It was in mynostrils, dry and acrid. It was on my lips. It coated my face, my hands, andespecially was it noticeable on the finger-tips when touched by the ball of mythumb.

Next I was aware of ceaseless movement. All that was about me lurched andoscillated. There was jolt and jar, and I heard what I knew as a matter ofcourse to be the grind of wheels on axles and the grate and clash of iron tyresagainst rock and sand. And there came to me the jaded voices of men, in curseand snarl of slow-plodding, jaded animals.

I opened my eyes, that were inflamed with dust, and immediately fresh dust bitinto them. On the coarse blankets on which I lay the dust was half an inchthick. Above me, through sifting dust, I saw an arched roof of lurching,swaying canvas, and myriads of dust motes descended heavily in the shafts ofsunshine that entered through holes in the canvas.

I was a child, a boy of eight or nine, and I was weary, as was the woman,dusty-visaged and haggard, who sat up beside me and soothed a crying babe inher arms. She was my mother; that I knew as a matter of course, just as I knew,when I glanced along the canvas tunnel of the wagon-top, that the shoulders ofthe man on the driver’s seat were the shoulders of my father.

When I started to crawl along the packed gear with which the wagon was laden mymother said in a tired and querulous voice, “Can’t you ever bestill a minute, Jesse?”

That was my name, Jesse. I did not know my surname, though I heard my mothercall my father John. I have a dim recollection of hearing, at one time oranother, the other men address my father as Captain. I knew that he was theleader of this company, and that his orders were obeyed by all.

I crawled out through the opening in the canvas and sat down beside my fatheron the seat. The air was stifling with the dust that rose from the wagons andthe many hoofs of the animals. So thick was the dust that it was like mist orfog in the air, and the low sun shone through it dimly and with a bloody light.

Not alone was the light of this setting sun ominous, but everything about meseemed ominous—the landscape, my father’s face, the fret of thebabe in my mother’s arms that she could not still, the six horses myfather drove that had continually to be urged and that were without any sign ofcolour, so heavily had the dust settled on them.

The landscape was an aching, eye-hurting desolation. Low hills stretchedendlessly away on every hand. Here and there only on their slopes wereoccasional scrub growths of heat-parched brush. For the most part the surfaceof the hills was naked-dry and composed of sand and rock. Our way followed thesand-bottoms between the hills. And the sand-bottoms were bare, save for spotsof scrub, with here and there short tufts of dry and withered grass. Waterthere was none, nor sign of water, except for washed gullies that told ofancient and torrential rains.

My father was the only one who had horses to his wagon. The wagons went insingle file, and as the train wound and curved I saw that the other wagons weredrawn by oxen. Three or four yoke of oxen strained and pulled weakly at eachwagon, and beside them, in the deep sand, walked men with ox-goads, who proddedthe unwilling beasts along. On a curve I counted the wagons ahead and behind. Iknew that there were forty of them, including our own; for often I had countedthem before. And as I counted them now, as a child will to while away tedium,they were all there, forty of them, all canvas-topped, big and massive, crudelyfashioned, pitching and lurching, grinding and jarring over sand and sage-brushand rock.

To right and left of us, scattered along the train, rode a dozen or fifteen menand youths on horses. Across their pommels were long-barrelled rifles. Wheneverany of them drew near to our wagon I could see that their faces, under thedust, were drawn and anxious like my father’s. And my father, like them,had a long-barrelled rifle close to hand as he drove.

Also, to one side, limped a score or more of foot-sore, yoke-galled, skeletonoxen, that ever paused to nip at the occasional tufts of withered grass, andthat ever were prodded on by the tired-faced youths who herded them. Sometimesone or another of these oxen would pause and low, and such lowing seemed asominous as all else about me.

Far, far away I have a memory of having lived, a smaller lad, by the tree-linedbanks of a stream. And as the wagon jolts along, and I sway on the seat with myfather, I continually return and dwell upon that pleasant water flowing betweenthe trees. I have a sense that for an interminable period I have lived in awagon and travelled on, ever on, with this present company.

But strongest of all upon me is what is strong upon all the company, namely, asense of drifting to doom. Our way was like a funeral march. Never did a laugharise. Never did I hear a happy tone of voice. Neither peace nor ease marchedwith us. The faces of the men and youths who outrode the train were grim, set,hopeless. And as we toiled through the lurid dust of sunset often I scanned myfather’s face in vain quest of some message of cheer. I will not say thatmy father’s face, in all its dusty haggardness, was hopeless. It wasdogged, and oh! so grim and anxious, most anxious.

A thrill seemed to run along the train. My father’s head went up. So didmine. And our horses raised their weary heads, scented the air with long-drawnsnorts, and for the nonce pulled willingly. The horses of the outridersquickened their pace. And as for the herd of scarecrow oxen, it broke into aforthright gallop. It was almost ludicrous. The poor brutes were so clumsy intheir weakness and haste. They were galloping skeletons draped in mangy hide,and they out-distanced the boys who herded them. But this was only for a time.Then they fell back to a walk, a quick, eager, shambling, sore-footed walk; andthey no longer were lured aside by the dry bunch-grass.

“What is it?” my mother asked from within the wagon.

“Water,” was my father’s reply. “It must beNephi.”

And my mother: “Thank God! And perhaps they will sell us food.”

And into Nephi, through blood-red dust, with grind and grate and jolt and jar,our great wagons rolled. A dozen scattered dwellings or shanties composed theplace. The landscape was much the same as that through which we had passed.There were no trees, only scrub growths and sandy bareness. But here were signsof tilled fields, with here and there a fence. Also there was water. Down thestream ran no current. The bed, however, was damp, with now and again awater-hole into which the loose oxen and the saddle-horses stamped and plungedtheir muzzles to the eyes. Here, too, grew an occasional small willow.

“That must be Bill Black’s mill they told us about,” myfather said, pointing out a building to my mother, whose anxiousness had drawnher to peer out over our shoulders.

An old man, with buckskin shirt and long, matted, sunburnt hair, rode back toour wagon and talked with father. The signal was given, and the head wagons ofthe train began to deploy in a circle. The ground favoured the evolution, and,from long practice, it was accomplished without a hitch, so that when the fortywagons were finally halted they formed a circle. All was bustle and orderlyconfusion. Many women, all tired-faced and dusty like my mother, emerged fromthe wagons. Also poured forth a very horde of children. There must have been atleast fifty children, and it seemed I knew them all of long time; and therewere at least two score of women. These went about the preparations for cookingsupper.

While some of the men chopped sage-brush and we children carried it to thefires that were kindling, other men unyoked the oxen and let them stampede forwater. Next the men, in big squads, moved the wagons snugly into place. Thetongue of each wagon was on the inside of the circle, and, front and rear, eachwagon was in solid contact with the next wagon before and behind. The greatbrakes were locked fast; but, not content with this, the wheels of all thewagons were connected with chains. This was nothing new to us children. It wasthe trouble sign of a camp in hostile country. One wagon only was left out ofthe circle, so as to form a gate to the corral. Later on, as we knew, ere thecamp slept, the animals would be driven inside, and the gate-wagon would bechained like the others in place. In the meanwhile, and for hours, the animalswould be herded by men and boys to what scant grass they could find.

While the camp-making went on my father, with several others of the men,including the old man with the long, sunburnt hair, went away on foot in thedirection of the mill. I remember that all of us, men, women, and even thechildren, paused to watch them depart; and it seemed their errand was of graveimport.

While they were away other men, strangers, inhabitants of desert Nephi, cameinto camp and stalked about. They were white men, like us, but they werehard-faced, stern-faced, sombre, and they seemed angry with all our company.Bad feeling was in the air, and they said things calculated to rouse thetempers of our men. But the warning went out from the women, and was passed oneverywhere to our men and youths, that there must be no words.

One of the strangers came to our fire, where my mother was alone, cooking. Ihad just come up with an armful of sage-brush, and I stopped to listen and tostare at the intruder, whom I hated, because it was in the air to hate, becauseI knew that every last person in our company hated these strangers who werewhite-skinned like us and because of whom we had been compelled to make ourcamp in a circle.

This stranger at our fire had blue eyes, hard and cold and piercing. His hairwas sandy. His face was shaven to the chin, and from under the chin, coveringthe neck and extending to the ears, sprouted a sandy fringe of whiskerswell-streaked with gray. Mother did not greet him, nor did he greet her. Hestood and glowered at her for some time, he cleared his throat and said with asneer:

“Wisht you was back in Missouri right now I bet.”

I saw mother tighten her lips in self-control ere she answered:

“We are from Arkansas.”

“I guess you got good reasons to deny where you come from,” he nextsaid, “you that drove the Lord’s people from Missouri.”

Mother made no reply.

“. . . Seein’,” he went on, after the pause accorded her,“as you’re now comin’ a-whinin’ an’a-beggin’ bread at our hands that you persecuted.”

Whereupon, and instantly, child that I was, I knew anger, the old, red,intolerant wrath, ever unrestrainable and unsubduable.

“You lie!” I piped up. “We ain’t Missourians. Weain’t whinin’. An’ we ain’t beggars. We got the moneyto buy.”

“Shut up, Jesse!” my mother cried, landing the back of her handstingingly on my mouth. And then, to the stranger, “Go away and let theboy alone.”

“I’ll shoot you full of lead, you damned Mormon!” I screamedand sobbed at him, too quick for my mother this time, and dancing away aroundthe fire from the back-sweep of her hand.

As for the man himself, my conduct had not disturbed him in the slightest. Iwas prepared for I knew not what violent visitation from this terriblestranger, and I watched him warily while he considered me with the utmostgravity.

At last he spoke, and he spoke solemnly, with solemn shaking of the head, as ifdelivering a judgment.

“Like fathers like sons,” he said. “The young generation isas bad as the elder. The whole breed is unregenerate and damned. There is nosaving it, the young or the old. There is no atonement. Not even the blood ofChrist can wipe out its iniquities.”

“Damned Mormon!” was all I could sob at him. “Damned Mormon!Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon!”

And I continued to damn him and to dance around the fire before mymother’s avenging hand, until he strode away.

When my father, and the men who had accompanied him, returned, camp-workceased, while all crowded anxiously about him. He shook his head.

“They will not sell?” some woman demanded.

Again he shook his head.

A man spoke up, a blue-eyed, blond-whiskered giant of thirty, who abruptlypressed his way into the centre of the crowd.

“They say they have flour and provisions for three years, Captain,”he said. “They have always sold to the immigration before. And now theywon’t sell. And it ain’t our quarrel. Their quarrel’s withthe government, an’ they’re takin’ it out on us. Itain’t right, Captain. It ain’t right, I say, us with our womenan’ children, an’ California months away, winter comin’ on,an’ nothin’ but desert in between. We ain’t got the grub toface the desert.”

He broke off for a moment to address the whole crowd.

“Why, you-all don’t know what desert is. This around hereain’t desert. I tell you it’s paradise, and heavenly pasture,an’ flowin’ with milk an’ honey alongside what we’regoin’ to face.”

“I tell you, Captain, we got to get flour first. If they won’t sellit, then we must just up an’ take it.”

Many of the men and women began crying out in approval, but my father hushedthem by holding up his hand.

“I agree with everything you say, Hamilton,” he began.

But the cries now drowned his voice, and he again held up his hand.

“Except one thing you forgot to take into account, Hamilton—a thingthat you and all of us must take into account. Brigham Young has declaredmartial law, and Brigham Young has an army. We could wipe out Nephi in theshake of a lamb’s tail and take all the provisions we can carry. But wewouldn’t carry them very far. Brigham’s Saints would be down uponus and we would be wiped out in another shake of a lamb’s tail. You knowit. I know it. We all know it.”

His words carried conviction to listeners already convinced. What he had toldthem was old news. They had merely forgotten it in a flurry of excitement anddesperate need.

“Nobody will fight quicker for what is right than I will,” fathercontinued. “But it just happens we can’t afford to fight now. Ifever a ruction starts we haven’t a chance. And we’ve all got ourwomen and children to recollect. We’ve got to be peaceable at any price,and put up with whatever dirt is heaped on us.”

“But what will we do with the desert coming?” cried a woman whonursed a babe at her breast.

“There’s several settlements before we come to the desert,”father answered. “Fillmore’s sixty miles south. Then comes CornCreek. And Beaver’s another fifty miles. Next is Parowan. Then it’stwenty miles to Cedar City. The farther we get away from Salt Lake the morelikely they’ll sell us provisions.”

“And if they won’t?” the same woman persisted.

“Then we’re quit of them,” said my father. “Cedar Cityis the last settlement. We’ll have to go on, that’s all, and thankour stars we are quit of them. Two days’ journey beyond is good pasture,and water. They call it Mountain Meadows. Nobody lives there, and that’sthe place we’ll rest our cattle and feed them up before we tackle thedesert. Maybe we can shoot some meat. And if the worst comes to the worst,we’ll keep going as long as we can, then abandon the wagons, pack what wecan on our animals, and make the last stages on foot. We can eat our cattle aswe go along. It would be better to arrive in California without a rag to ourbacks than to leave our bones here; and leave them we will if we start aruction.”

With final reiterated warnings against violence of speech or act, the impromptumeeting broke up. I was slow in falling asleep that night. My rage against theMormon had left my brain in such a tingle that I was still awake when my fathercrawled into the wagon after a last round of the night-watch. They thought Islept, but I heard mother ask him if he thought that the Mormons would let usdepart peacefully from their land. His face was turned aside from her as hebusied himself with pulling off a boot, while he answered her with heartyconfidence that he was sure the Mormons would let us go if none of our owncompany started trouble.

But I saw his face at that moment in the light of a small tallow dip, and in itwas none of the confidence that was in his voice. So it was that I fell asleep,oppressed by the dire fate that seemed to overhang us, and pondering uponBrigham Young who bulked in my child imagination as a fearful, malignant being,a very devil with horns and tail and all.

And I awoke to the old pain of the jacket in solitary. About me were thecustomary four: Warden Atherton, Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, and AlHutchins. I cracked my face with my willed smile, and struggled not to losecontrol under the exquisite torment of returning circulation. I drank the waterthey held to me, waved aside the proffered bread, and refused to speak. Iclosed my eyes and strove to win back to the chain-locked wagon-circle atNephi. But so long as my visitors stood about me and talked I could not escape.

One snatch of conversation I could not tear myself away from hearing.

“Just as yesterday,” Doctor Jackson said. “No change one wayor the other.”

“Then he can go on standing it?” Warden Atherton queried.

“Without a quiver. The next twenty-four hours as easy as the last.He’s a wooz, I tell you, a perfect wooz. If I didn’t know it wasimpossible, I’d say he was doped.”

“I know his dope,” said the Warden. “It’s that cursedwill of his. I’d bet, if he made up his mind, that he could walk barefootacross red-hot stones, like those Kanaka priests from the South Seas.”

Now perhaps it was the word “priests” that I carried away with methrough the darkness of another flight in time. Perhaps it was the cue. Moreprobably it was a mere coincidence. At any rate I awoke, lying upon a roughrocky floor, and found myself on my back, my arms crossed in such fashion thateach elbow rested in the palm of the opposite hand. As I lay there, eyesclosed, half awake, I rubbed my elbows with my palms and found that I wasrubbing prodigious calluses. There was no surprise in this. I accepted thecalluses as of long time and a matter of course.

I opened my eyes. My shelter was a small cave, no more than three feet inheight and a dozen in length. It was very hot in the cave. Perspiration noduledthe entire surface of my body. Now and again several nodules coalesced andformed tiny rivulets. I wore no clothing save a filthy rag about the middle. Myskin was burned to a mahogany brown. I was very thin, and I contemplated mythinness with a strange sort of pride, as if it were an achievement to be sothin. Especially was I enamoured of my painfully prominent ribs. The very sightof the hollows between them gave me a sense of solemn elation, or, rather, touse a better word, of sanctification.

My knees were callused like my elbows. I was very dirty. My beard, evidentlyonce blond, but now a dirt-stained and streaky brown, swept my midriff in atangled mass. My long hair, similarly stained and tangled, was all about myshoulders, while wisps of it continually strayed in the way of my vision sothat sometimes I was compelled to brush it aside with my hands. For the mostpart, however, I contented myself with peering through it like a wild animalfrom a thicket.

Just at the tunnel-like mouth of my dim cave the day reared itself in a wall ofblinding sunshine. After a time I crawled to the entrance, and, for the sake ofgreater discomfort, lay down in the burning sunshine on a narrow ledge of rock.It positively baked me, that terrible sun, and the more it hurt me the more Idelighted in it, or in myself rather, in that I was thus the master of my fleshand superior to its claims and remonstrances. When I found under me aparticularly sharp, but not too sharp, rock-projection, I ground my body uponthe point of it, rowelled my flesh in a very ecstasy of mastery and ofpurification.

It was a stagnant day of heat. Not a breath of air moved over the river valleyon which I sometimes gazed. Hundreds of feet beneath me the wide river ransluggishly. The farther shore was flat and sandy and stretched away to thehorizon. Above the water were scattered clumps of palm-trees.

On my side, eaten into a curve by the river, were lofty, crumbling cliffs.Farther along the curve, in plain view from my eyrie, carved out of the livingrock, were four colossal figures. It was the stature of a man to their anklejoints. The four colossi sat, with hands resting on knees, with arms crumbledquite away, and gazed out upon the river. At least three of them so gazed. Ofthe fourth all that remained were the lower limbs to the knees and the hugehands resting on the knees. At the feet of this one, ridiculously small,crouched a sphinx; yet this sphinx was taller than I.

I looked upon these carven images with contempt, and spat as I looked. I knewnot what they were, whether forgotten gods or unremembered kings. But to methey were representative of the vanity of earth-men and earth-aspirations.

And over all this curve of river and sweep of water and wide sands beyondarched a sky of aching brass unflecked by the tiniest cloud.

The hours passed while I roasted in the sun. Often, for quite decent intervals,I forgot my heat and pain in dreams and visions and in memories. All this Iknew—crumbling colossi and river and sand and sun and brazensky—was to pass away in the twinkling of an eye. At any moment the trumpsof the archangels might sound, the stars fall out of the sky, the heavens rollup as a scroll, and the Lord God of all come with his hosts for the finaljudgment.

Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event. That waswhy I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness. I was meek and lowly, and Idespised the frail needs and passions of the flesh. And I thought withcontempt, and with a certain satisfaction, of the far cities of the plain I hadknown, all unheeding, in their pomp and lust, of the last day so near at hand.Well, they would see soon enough, but too late for them. And I should see. ButI was ready. And to their cries and lamentations would I arise, reborn andglorious, and take my well-earned and rightful place in the City of God.

At times, between dreams and visions in which I was verily and before my timein the City of God, I conned over in my mind old discussions and controversies.Yes, Novatus was right in his contention that penitent apostates should neveragain be received into the churches. Also, there was no doubt that Sabellianismwas conceived of the devil. So was Constantine, the arch-fiend, thedevil’s right hand.

Continually I returned to contemplation of the nature of the unity of God, andwent over and over the contentions of Noetus, the Syrian. Better, however, didI like the contentions of my beloved teacher, Arius. Truly, if human reasoncould determine anything at all, there must have been a time, in the verynature of sonship, when the Son did not exist. In the nature of sonship theremust have been a time when the Son commenced to exist. A father must be olderthan his son. To hold otherwise were a blasphemy and a belittlement of God.

And I remembered back to my young days when I had sat at the feet of Arius, whohad been a presbyter of the city of Alexandria, and who had been robbed of thebishopric by the blasphemous and heretical Alexander. Alexander theSabellianite, that is what he was, and his feet had fast hold of hell.

Yes, I had been to the Council of Nicea, and seen it avoid the issue. And Iremembered when the Emperor Constantine had banished Arius for his uprightness.And I remembered when Constantine repented for reasons of state and policy andcommanded Alexander—the other Alexander, thrice cursed, Bishop ofConstantinople—to receive Arius into communion on the morrow. And thatvery night did not Arius die in the street? They said it was a violent sicknessvisited upon him in answer to Alexander’s prayer to God. But I said, andso said all we Arians, that the violent sickness was due to a poison, and thatthe poison was due to Alexander himself, Bishop of Constantinople anddevil’s poisoner.

And here I ground my body back and forth on the sharp stones, and mutteredaloud, drunk with conviction:

“Let the Jews and Pagans mock. Let them triumph, for their time is short.And for them there will be no time after time.”

I talked to myself aloud a great deal on that rocky shelf overlooking theriver. I was feverish, and on occasion I drank sparingly of water from astinking goatskin. This goatskin I kept hanging in the sun that the stench ofthe skin might increase and that there might be no refreshment of coolness inthe water. Food there was, lying in the dirt on my cave-floor—a few rootsand a chunk of mouldy barley-cake; and hungry I was, although I did not eat.

All I did that blessed, livelong day was to sweat and swelter in the sun,mortify my lean flesh upon the rock, gaze out of the desolation, resurrect oldmemories, dream dreams, and mutter my convictions aloud.

And when the sun set, in the swift twilight I took a last look at the world sosoon to pass. About the feet of the colossi I could make out the creeping formsof beasts that laired in the once proud works of men. And to the snarls of thebeasts I crawled into my hole, and, muttering and dozing, visioning feveredfancies and praying that the last day come quickly, I ebbed down into thedarkness of sleep.

Consciousness came back to me in solitary, with the quartet of torturers aboutme.

“Blasphemous and heretical Warden of San Quentin whose feet have fasthold of hell,” I gibed, after I had drunk deep of the water they held tomy lips. “Let the jailers and the trusties triumph. Their time is short,and for them there is no time after time.”

“He’s out of his head,” Warden Atherton affirmed.

“He’s putting it over on you,” was Doctor Jackson’ssurer judgment.

“But he refuses food,” Captain Jamie protested.

“Huh, he could fast forty days and not hurt himself,” the doctoranswered.

“And I have,” I said, “and forty nights as well. Do me thefavour to tighten the jacket and then get out of here.”

The head trusty tried to insert his forefinger inside the lacing.

“You couldn’t get a quarter of an inch of slack with block andtackle,” he assured them.

“Have you any complaint to make, Standing?” the Warden asked.

“Yes,” was my reply. “On two counts.”

“What are they?”

“First,” I said, “the jacket is abominably loose. Hutchins isan ass. He could get a foot of slack if he wanted.”

“What is the other count?” Warden Atherton asked.

“That you are conceived of the devil, Warden.”

Captain Jamie and Doctor Jackson tittered, and the Warden, with a snort, ledthe way out of my cell.

Left alone, I strove to go into the dark and gain back to the wagon circle atNephi. I was interested to know the outcome of that doomed drifting of ourforty great wagons across a desolate and hostile land, and I was not at allinterested in what came of the mangy hermit with his rock-roweled ribs andstinking water-skin. And I gained back, neither to Nephi nor the Nile, butto—

But here I must pause in the narrative, my reader, in order to explain a fewthings and make the whole matter easier to your comprehension. This isnecessary, because my time is short in which to complete my jacket-memoirs. Ina little while, in a very little while, they are going to take me out and hangme. Did I have the full time of a thousand lifetimes, I could not complete thelast details of my jacket experiences. Wherefore I must briefen the narrative.

First of all, Bergson is right. Life cannot be explained in intellectual terms.As Confucius said long ago: “When we are so ignorant of life, can we knowdeath?” And ignorant of life we truly are when we cannot explain it interms of the understanding. We know life only phenomenally, as a savage mayknow a dynamo; but we know nothing of life noumenonally, nothing of the natureof the intrinsic stuff of life.

Secondly, Marinetti is wrong when he claims that matter is the only mystery andthe only reality. I say and as you, my reader, realize, I speak withauthority—I say that matter is the only illusion. Comte called the world,which is tantamount to matter, the great fetich, and I agree with Comte.

It is life that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different frommere chemic matter fluxing in high modes of notion. Life persists. Life is thethread of fire that persists through all the modes of matter. I know. I amlife. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. Ihave possessed many bodies. I, the possessor of these many bodies, havepersisted. I am life. I am the unquenched spark ever flashing and astonishingthe face of time, ever working my will and wreaking my passion on the cloddyaggregates of matter, called bodies, which I have transiently inhabited.

For look you. This finger of mine, so quick with sensation, so subtle to feel,so delicate in its multifarious dexterities, so firm and strong to crook andbend or stiffen by means of cunning leverages—this finger is not I. Cutit off. I live. The body is mutilated. I am not mutilated. The spirit that is Iis whole.

Very well. Cut off all my fingers. I am I. The spirit is entire. Cut off bothhands. Cut off both arms at the shoulder-sockets. Cut off both legs at thehip-sockets. And I, the unconquerable and indestructible I, survive. Am I anythe less for these mutilations, for these subtractions of the flesh? Certainlynot. Clip my hair. Shave from me with sharp razors my lips, my nose, myears—ay, and tear out the eyes of me by the roots; and there, mewed inthat featureless skull that is attached to a hacked and mangled torso, there inthat cell of the chemic flesh, will still be I, unmutilated, undiminished.

Oh, the heart still beats. Very well. Cut out the heart, or, better, fling theflesh-remnant into a machine of a thousand blades and make mincemeat ofit—and I, I, don’t you understand, all the spirit and themystery and the vital fire and life of me, am off and away. I have notperished. Only the body has perished, and the body is not I.

I believe Colonel de Rochas was correct when he asserted that under thecompulsion of his will he sent the girl Josephine, while she was in hypnotictrance, back through the eighteen years she had lived, back through the silenceand the dark ere she had been born, back to the light of a previous living whenshe was a bedridden old man, the ex-artilleryman, Jean-Claude Bourdon. And Ibelieve that Colonel de Rochas did truly hypnotize this resurrected shade ofthe old man and, by compulsion of will, send him back through the seventy yearsof his life, back into the dark and through the dark into the light of day whenhe had been the wicked old woman, Philomène Carteron.

Already, have I not shown you, my reader, that in previous times, inhabitingvarious cloddy aggregates of matter, I have been Count Guillaume deSainte-Maure, a mangy and nameless hermit of Egypt, and the boy Jesse, whosefather was captain of forty wagons in the great westward emigration. And, also,am I not now, as I write these lines, Darrell Standing, under sentence of deathin Folsom Prison and one time professor of agronomy in the College ofAgriculture of the University of California?

Matter is the great illusion. That is, matter manifests itself in form, andform is apparitional. Where, now, are the crumbling rock-cliffs of old Egyptwhere once I laired me like a wild beast while I dreamed of the City of God?Where, now, is the body of Guillaume de Sainte-Maure that was thrust through onthe moonlit grass so long ago by the flame-headed Guy de Villehardouin? Where,now, are the forty great wagons in the circle at Nephi, and all the men andwomen and children and lean cattle that sheltered inside that circle? All suchthings no longer are, for they were forms, manifestations of fluxing matter erethey melted into the flux again. They have passed and are not.

And now my argument becomes plain. The spirit is the reality that endures. I amspirit, and I endure. I, Darrell Standing, the tenant of many fleshlytenements, shall write a few more lines of these memoirs and then pass on myway. The form of me that is my body will fall apart when it has beensufficiently hanged by the neck, and of it naught will remain in all the worldof matter. In the world of spirit the memory of it will remain. Matter has nomemory, because its forms are evanescent, and what is engraved on its formsperishes with the forms.

One word more ere I return to my narrative. In all my journeys through the darkinto other lives that have been mine I have never been able to guide anyjourney to a particular destination. Thus many new experiences of old liveswere mine before ever I chanced to return to the boy Jesse at Nephi. Possibly,all told, I have lived over Jesse’s experiences a score of times,sometimes taking up his career when he was quite small in the Arkansassettlements, and at least a dozen times carrying on past the point where I lefthim at Nephi. It were a waste of time to detail the whole of it; and so,without prejudice to the verity of my account, I shall skip much that is vagueand tortuous and repetitional, and give the facts as I have assembled them outof the various times, in whole and part, as I relived them.

CHAPTER XIII.

Long before daylight the camp at Nephi was astir. The cattle were driven out towater and pasture. While the men unchained the wheels and drew the wagons apartand clear for yoking in, the women cooked forty breakfasts over forty fires.The children, in the chill of dawn, clustered about the fires, sharing places,here and there, with the last relief of the night-watch waiting sleepily forcoffee.

It requires time to get a large train such as ours under way, for its speed isthe speed of the slowest. So the sun was an hour high and the day was alreadyuncomfortably hot when we rolled out of Nephi and on into the sandy barrens. Noinhabitant of the place saw us off. All chose to remain indoors, thus makingour departure as ominous as they had made our arrival the night before.

Again it was long hours of parching heat and biting dust, sage-brush and sand,and a land accursed. No dwellings of men, neither cattle nor fences, nor anysign of human kind, did we encounter all that day; and at night we made ourwagon-circle beside an empty stream, in the damp sand of which we dug manyholes that filled slowly with water seepage.

Our subsequent journey is always a broken experience to me. We made camp somany times, always with the wagons drawn in circle, that to my child mind aweary long time passed after Nephi. But always, strong upon all of us, was thatsense of drifting to an impending and certain doom.

We averaged about fifteen miles a day. I know, for my father had said it wassixty miles to Fillmore, the next Mormon settlement, and we made three camps onthe way. This meant four days of travel. From Nephi to the last camp of which Ihave any memory we must have taken two weeks or a little less.

At Fillmore the inhabitants were hostile, as all had been since Salt Lake. Theylaughed at us when we tried to buy food, and were not above taunting us withbeing Missourians.

When we entered the place, hitched before the largest house of the dozen housesthat composed the settlement were two saddle-horses, dusty, streaked withsweat, and drooping. The old man I have mentioned, the one with long, sunburnthair and buckskin shirt and who seemed a sort of aide or lieutenant to father,rode close to our wagon and indicated the jaded saddle-animals with a cock ofhis head.

“Not sparin’ horseflesh, Captain,” he muttered in a lowvoice. “An’ what in the name of Sam Hill are they hard-riding forif it ain’t for us?”

But my father had already noted the condition of the two animals, and my eagereyes had seen him. And I had seen his eyes flash, his lips tighten, and haggardlines form for a moment on his dusty face. That was all. But I put two and twotogether, and knew that the two tired saddle-horses were just one more addedtouch of ominousness to the situation.

“I guess they’re keeping an eye on us, Laban,” was myfather’s sole comment.

It was at Fillmore that I saw a man that I was to see again. He was a tall,broad-shouldered man, well on in middle age, with all the evidence of goodhealth and immense strength—strength not alone of body but of will.Unlike most men I was accustomed to about me, he was smooth-shaven. Severaldays’ growth of beard showed that he was already well-grayed. His mouthwas unusually wide, with thin lips tightly compressed as if he had lost many ofhis front teeth. His nose was large, square, and thick. So was his face square,wide between the cheekbones, underhung with massive jaws, and topped with abroad, intelligent forehead. And the eyes, rather small, a little more than thewidth of an eye apart, were the bluest blue I had ever seen.

It was at the flour-mill at Fillmore that I first saw this man. Father, withseveral of our company, had gone there to try to buy flour, and I, disobeyingmy mother in my curiosity to see more of our enemies, had tagged alongunperceived. This man was one of four or five who stood in a group with themiller during the interview.

“You seen that smooth-faced old cuss?” Laban said to father, afterwe had got outside and were returning to camp.

Father nodded.

“Well, that’s Lee,” Laban continued. “I seen’m inSalt Lake. He’s a regular son-of-a-gun. Got nineteen wives and fiftychildren, they all say. An’ he’s rank crazy on religion. Now,what’s he followin’ us up for through this God-forsakencountry?”

Our weary, doomed drifting went on. The little settlements, wherever water andsoil permitted, were from twenty to fifty miles apart. Between stretched thebarrenness of sand and alkali and drought. And at every settlement our peacefulattempts to buy food were vain. They denied us harshly, and wanted to know whoof us had sold them food when we drove them from Missouri. It was useless onour part to tell them we were from Arkansas. From Arkansas we truly were, butthey insisted on our being Missourians.

At Beaver, five days’ journey south from Fillmore, we saw Lee again. Andagain we saw hard-ridden horses tethered before the houses. But we did not seeLee at Parowan.

Cedar City was the last settlement. Laban, who had ridden on ahead, came backand reported to father. His first news was significant.

“I seen that Lee skedaddling out as I rid in, Captain. An’there’s more men-folk an’ horses in Cedar City than the size of theplace ’d warrant.”

But we had no trouble at the settlement. Beyond refusing to sell us food, theyleft us to ourselves. The women and children stayed in the houses, and thoughsome of the men appeared in sight they did not, as on former occasions, enterour camp and taunt us.

It was at Cedar City that the Wainwright baby died. I remember Mrs. Wainwrightweeping and pleading with Laban to try to get some cow’s milk.

“It may save the baby’s life,” she said. “Andthey’ve got cow’s milk. I saw fresh cows with my own eyes. Go on,please, Laban. It won’t hurt you to try. They can only refuse. But theywon’t. Tell them it’s for a baby, a wee little baby. Mormon womenhave mother’s hearts. They couldn’t refuse a cup of milk for a weelittle baby.”

And Laban tried. But, as he told father afterward, he did not get to see anyMormon women. He saw only the Mormon men, who turned him away.

This was the last Mormon outpost. Beyond lay the vast desert, with, on theother side of it, the dream land, ay, the myth land, of California. As ourwagons rolled out of the place in the early morning I, sitting beside my fatheron the driver’s seat, saw Laban give expression to his feelings. We hadgone perhaps half a mile, and were topping a low rise that would sink CedarCity from view, when Laban turned his horse around, halted it, and stood up inthe stirrups. Where he had halted was a new-made grave, and I knew it for theWainwright baby’s—not the first of our graves since we had crossedthe Wasatch mountains.

He was a weird figure of a man. Aged and lean, long-faced, hollow-checked, withmatted, sunburnt hair that fell below the shoulders of his buckskin shirt, hisface was distorted with hatred and helpless rage. Holding his long rifle in hisbridle-hand, he shook his free fist at Cedar City.

“God’s curse on all of you!” he cried out. “On yourchildren, and on your babes unborn. May drought destroy your crops. May you eatsand seasoned with the venom of rattlesnakes. May the sweet water of yoursprings turn to bitter alkali. May . . .”

Here his words became indistinct as our wagons rattled on; but his heavingshoulders and brandishing fist attested that he had only begun to lay thecurse. That he expressed the general feeling in our train was evidenced by themany women who leaned from the wagons, thrusting out gaunt forearms and shakingbony, labour-malformed fists at the last of Mormondom. A man, who walked in thesand and goaded the oxen of the wagon behind ours, laughed and waved his goad.It was unusual, that laugh, for there had been no laughter in our train formany days.

“Give ’m hell, Laban,” he encouraged. “Them’s mysentiments.”

And as our train rolled on I continued to look back at Laban, standing in hisstirrups by the baby’s grave. Truly he was a weird figure, with his longhair, his moccasins, and fringed leggings. So old and weather-beaten was hisbuckskin shirt that ragged filaments, here and there, showed where proudfringes once had been. He was a man of flying tatters. I remember, at hiswaist, dangled dirty tufts of hair that, far back in the journey, after ashower of rain, were wont to show glossy black. These I knew were Indianscalps, and the sight of them always thrilled me.

“It will do him good,” father commended, more to himself than tome. “I’ve been looking for days for him to blow up.”

“I wish he’d go back and take a couple of scalps,” Ivolunteered.

My father regarded me quizzically.

“Don’t like the Mormons, eh, son?”

I shook my head and felt myself swelling with the inarticulate hate thatpossessed me.

“When I grow up,” I said, after a minute, “I’mgoin’ gunning for them.”

“You, Jesse!” came my mother’s voice from inside the wagon.“Shut your mouth instanter.” And to my father: “You ought tobe ashamed letting the boy talk on like that.”

Two days’ journey brought us to Mountain Meadows, and here, well beyondthe last settlement, for the first time we did not form the wagon-circle. Thewagons were roughly in a circle, but there were many gaps, and the wheels werenot chained. Preparations were made to stop a week. The cattle must be restedfor the real desert, though this was desert enough in all seeming. The same lowhills of sand were about us, but sparsely covered with scrub brush. The flatwas sandy, but there was some grass—more than we had encountered in manydays. Not more than a hundred feet from camp was a weak spring that barelysupplied human needs. But farther along the bottom various other weak springsemerged from the hillsides, and it was at these that the cattle watered.

We made camp early that day, and, because of the programme to stay a week,there was a general overhauling of soiled clothes by the women, who planned tostart washing on the morrow. Everybody worked till nightfall. While some of themen mended harness others repaired the frames and ironwork of the wagons. Themwas much heating and hammering of iron and tightening of bolts and nuts. And Iremember coming upon Laban, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon andsewing away till nightfall on a new pair of moccasins. He was the only man inour train who wore moccasins and buckskin, and I have an impression that he hadnot belonged to our company when it left Arkansas. Also, he had neither wife,nor family, nor wagon of his own. All he possessed was his horse, his rifle,the clothes he stood up in, and a couple of blankets that were hauled in theMason wagon.

Next morning it was that our doom fell. Two days’ journey beyond the lastMormon outpost, knowing that no Indians were about and apprehending nothingfrom the Indians on any count, for the first time we had not chained our wagonsin the solid circle, placed guards on the cattle, nor set a night-watch.

My awakening was like a nightmare. It came as a sudden blast of sound. I wasonly stupidly awake for the first moments and did nothing except to try toanalyze and identify the various noises that went to compose the blast thatcontinued without let up. I could hear near and distant explosions of rifles,shouts and curses of men, women screaming, and children bawling. Then I couldmake out the thuds and squeals of bullets that hit wood and iron in the wheelsand under-construction of the wagon. Whoever it was that was shooting, the aimwas too low. When I started to rise, my mother, evidently just in the act ofdressing, pressed me down with her hand. Father, already up and about, at thisstage erupted into the wagon.

“Out of it!” he shouted. “Quick! To the ground!”

He wasted no time. With a hook-like clutch that was almost a blow, so swift wasit, he flung me bodily out of the rear end of the wagon. I had barely time tocrawl out from under when father, mother, and the baby came down pell-mellwhere I had been.

“Here, Jesse!” father shouted to me, and I joined him in scoopingout sand behind the shelter of a wagon-wheel. We worked bare-handed and wildly.Mother joined in.

“Go ahead and make it deeper, Jesse,” father ordered,

He stood up and rushed away in the gray light, shouting commands as he ran. (Ihad learned by now my surname. I was Jesse Fancher. My father was CaptainFancher).

“Lie down!” I could hear him. “Get behind the wagon wheelsand burrow in the sand! Family men, get the women and children out of thewagons! Hold your fire! No more shooting! Hold your fire and be ready for therush when it comes! Single men, join Laban at the right, Cochrane at the left,and me in the centre! Don’t stand up! Crawl for it!”

But no rush came. For a quarter of an hour the heavy and irregular firingcontinued. Our damage had come in the first moments of surprise when a numberof the early-rising men were caught exposed in the light of the campfires theywere building. The Indians—for Indians Laban declared them tobe—had attacked us from the open, and were lying down and firing at us.In the growing light father made ready for them. His position was near to whereI lay in the burrow with mother so that I heard him when he cried out:

“Now! all together!”

From left, right, and centre our rifles loosed in a volley. I had popped myhead up to see, and I could make out more than one stricken Indian. Their fireimmediately ceased, and I could see them scampering back on foot across theopen, dragging their dead and wounded with them.

All was work with us on the instant. While the wagons were being dragged andchained into the circle with tongues inside—I saw women and little boysand girls flinging their strength on the wheel spokes to help—we tooktoll of our losses. First, and gravest of all, our last animal had been runoff. Next, lying about the fires they had been building, were seven of our men.Four were dead, and three were dying. Other men, wounded, were being cared forby the women. Little Rish Hardacre had been struck in the arm by a heavy ball.He was no more than six, and I remember looking on with mouth agape while hismother held him on her lap and his father set about bandaging the wound. LittleRish had stopped crying. I could see the tears on his cheeks while he staredwonderingly at a sliver of broken bone sticking out of his forearm.

Granny White was found dead in the Foxwell wagon. She was a fat and helplessold woman who never did anything but sit down all the time and smoke a pipe.She was the mother of Abby Foxwell. And Mrs. Grant had been killed. Her husbandsat beside her body. He was very quiet. There were no tears in his eyes. Hejust sat there, his rifle across his knees, and everybody left him alone.

Under father’s directions the company was working like so many beavers.The men dug a big rifle pit in the centre of the corral, forming a breastworkout of the displaced sand. Into this pit the women dragged bedding, food, andall sorts of necessaries from the wagons. All the children helped. There was nowhimpering, and little or no excitement. There was work to be done, and all ofus were folks born to work.

The big rifle pit was for the women and children. Under the wagons, completelyaround the circle, a shallow trench was dug and an earthwork thrown up. Thiswas for the fighting men.

Laban returned from a scout. He reported that the Indians had withdrawn thematter of half a mile, and were holding a powwow. Also he had seen them carrysix of their number off the field, three of which, he said, were deaders.

From time to time, during the morning of that first day, we observed clouds ofdust that advertised the movements of considerable bodies of mounted men. Theseclouds of dust came toward us, hemming us in on all sides. But we saw no livingcreature. One cloud of dirt only moved away from us. It was a large cloud, andeverybody said it was our cattle being driven off. And our forty great wagonsthat had rolled over the Rockies and half across the continent stood in ahelpless circle. Without cattle they could roll no farther.

At noon Laban came in from another scout. He had seen fresh Indians arrivingfrom the south, showing that we were being closed in. It was at this time thatwe saw a dozen white men ride out on the crest of a low hill to the east andlook down on us.

“That settles it,” Laban said to father. “The Indians havebeen put up to it.”

“They’re white like us,” I heard Abby Foxwell complain tomother. “Why don’t they come in to us?”

“They ain’t whites,” I piped up, with a wary eye for theswoop of mother’s hand. “They’re Mormons.”

That night, after dark, three of our young men stole out of camp. I saw themgo. They were Will Aden, Abel Milliken, and Timothy Grant.

“They are heading for Cedar City to get help,” father told motherwhile he was snatching a hasty bite of supper.

Mother shook her head.

“There’s plenty of Mormons within calling distance of camp,”she said. “If they won’t help, and they haven’t shown anysigns, then the Cedar City ones won’t either.”

“But there are good Mormons and bad Mormons—” father began.

“We haven’t found any good ones so far,” she shut him off.

Not until morning did I hear of the return of Abel Milliken and Timothy Grant,but I was not long in learning. The whole camp was downcast by reason of theirreport. The three had gone only a few miles when they were challenged by whitemen. As soon as Will Aden spoke up, telling that they were from the FancherCompany, going to Cedar City for help, he was shot down. Milliken and Grantescaped back with the news, and the news settled the last hope in the hearts ofour company. The whites were behind the Indians, and the doom so longapprehended was upon us.

This morning of the second day our men, going for water, were fired upon. Thespring was only a hundred feet outside our circle, but the way to it wascommanded by the Indians who now occupied the low hill to the east. It wasclose range, for the hill could not have been more than fifteen rods away. Butthe Indians were not good shots, evidently, for our men brought in the waterwithout being hit.

Beyond an occasional shot into camp the morning passed quietly. We had settleddown in the rifle pit, and, being used to rough living, were comfortableenough. Of course it was bad for the families of those who had been killed, andthere was the taking care of the wounded. I was for ever stealing away frommother in my insatiable curiosity to see everything that was going on, and Imanaged to see pretty much of everything. Inside the corral, to the south ofthe big rifle pit, the men dug a hole and buried the seven men and two womenall together. Only Mrs. Hastings, who had lost her husband and father, mademuch trouble. She cried and screamed out, and it took the other women a longtime to quiet her.

On the low hill to the east the Indians kept up a tremendous powwowing andyelling. But beyond an occasional harmless shot they did nothing.

“What’s the matter with the ornery cusses?” Laban impatientlywanted to know. “Can’t they make up their minds what they’regoin’ to do, an’ then do it?”

It was hot in the corral that afternoon. The sun blazed down out of a cloudlesssky, and there was no wind. The men, lying with their rifles in the trenchunder the wagons, were partly shaded; but the big rifle pit, in which were overa hundred women and children, was exposed to the full power of the sun. Here,too, were the wounded men, over whom we erected awnings of blankets. It wascrowded and stifling in the pit, and I was for ever stealing out of it to thefiring-line, and making a great to-do at carrying messages for father.

Our grave mistake had been in not forming the wagon-circle so as to inclose thespring. This had been due to the excitement of the first attack, when we didnot know how quickly it might be followed by a second one. And now it was toolate. At fifteen rods’ distance from the Indian position on the hill wedid not dare unchain our wagons. Inside the corral, south of the graves, weconstructed a latrine, and, north of the rifle pit in the centre, a couple ofmen were told off by father to dig a well for water.

In the mid-afternoon of that day, which was the second day, we saw Lee again.He was on foot, crossing diagonally over the meadow to the north-west just outof rifle-shot from us. Father hoisted one of mother’s sheets on a coupleof ox-goads lashed together. This was our white flag. But Lee took no notice ofit, continuing on his way.

Laban was for trying a long shot at him, but father stopped him, saying that itwas evident the whites had not made up their minds what they were going to dowith us, and that a shot at Lee might hurry them into making up their minds thewrong way.

“Here, Jesse,” father said to me, tearing a strip from the sheetand fastening it to an ox-goad. “Take this and go out and try to talk tothat man. Don’t tell him anything about what’s happened to us. Justtry to get him to come in and talk with us.”

As I started to obey, my chest swelling with pride in my mission, Jed Dunhamcried out that he wanted to go with me. Jed was about my own age.

“Dunham, can your boy go along with Jesse?” father askedJed’s father. “Two’s better than one. They’ll keep eachother out of mischief.”

So Jed and I, two youngsters of nine, went out under the white flag to talkwith the leader of our enemies. But Lee would not talk. When he saw us cominghe started to sneak away. We never got within calling distance of him, andafter a while he must have hidden in the brush; for we never laid eyes on himagain, and we knew he couldn’t have got clear away.

Jed and I beat up the brush for hundreds of yards all around. They hadn’ttold us how long we were to be gone, and since the Indians did not fire on uswe kept on going. We were away over two hours, though had either of us beenalone he would have been back in a quarter of the time. But Jed was bound tooutbrave me, and I was equally bound to outbrave him.

Our foolishness was not without profit. We walked, boldly about under our whiteflag, and learned how thoroughly our camp was beleaguered. To the south of ourtrain, not more than half a mile away, we made out a large Indian camp. Beyond,on the meadow, we could see Indian boys riding hard on their horses.

Then there was the Indian position on the hill to the east. We managed to climba low hill so as to look into this position. Jed and I spent half an hourtrying to count them, and concluded, with much guessing, that there must be atleast a couple of hundred. Also, we saw white men with them and doing a greatdeal of talking.

North-east of our train, not more than four hundred yards from it, wediscovered a large camp of whites behind a low rise of ground. And beyond wecould see fifty or sixty saddle-horses grazing. And a mile or so away, to thenorth, we saw a tiny cloud of dust approaching. Jed and I waited until we saw asingle man, riding fast, gallop into the camp of the whites.

When we got back into the corral the first thing that happened to me was asmack from mother for having stayed away so long; but father praised Jed and mewhen we gave our report.

“Watch for an attack now maybe, Captain,” Aaron Cochrane said tofather. “That man the boys seen has rid in for a purpose. The whites areholding the Indians till they get orders from higher up. Maybe that man brungthe orders one way or the other. They ain’t sparing horseflesh,that’s one thing sure.”

Half an hour after our return Laban attempted a scout under a white flag. Buthe had not gone twenty feet outside the circle when the Indians opened fire onhim and sent him back on the run.

Just before sundown I was in the rifle pit holding the baby, while mother wasspreading the blankets for a bed. There were so many of us that we were packedand jammed. So little room was there that many of the women the night beforehad sat up and slept with their heads bowed on their knees. Right alongside ofme, so near that when he tossed his arms about he struck me on the shoulder,Silas Dunlap was dying. He had been shot in the head in the first attack, andall the second day was out of his head and raving and singing doggerel. One ofhis songs, that he sang over and over, until it made mother frantic nervous,was:

“Said the first little devil to the second little devil,
‘Give me some tobaccy from your old tobaccy box.’
Said the second little devil to the first little devil,
‘Stick close to your money and close to your rocks,
An’ you’ll always have tobaccy in your old tobaccybox.’”

I was sitting directly alongside of him, holding the baby, when the attackburst on us. It was sundown, and I was staring with all my eyes at Silas Dunlapwho was just in the final act of dying. His wife, Sarah, had one hand restingon his forehead. Both she and her Aunt Martha were crying softly. And then itcame—explosions and bullets from hundreds of rifles. Clear around fromeast to west, by way of the north, they had strung out in half a circle andwere pumping lead in our position. Everybody in the rifle pit flattened down.Lots of the younger children set up a-squalling, and it kept the women busyhushing them. Some of the women screamed at first, but not many.

Thousands of shots must haven rained in on us in the next few minutes. How Iwanted to crawl out to the trench under the wagons where our men were keepingup a steady but irregular fire! Each was shooting on his own whenever he saw aman to pull trigger on. But mother suspected me, for she made me crouch downand keep right on holding the baby.

I was just taking a look at Silas Dunlap—he was stillquivering—when the little Castleton baby was killed. Dorothy Castleton,herself only about ten, was holding it, so that it was killed in her arms. Shewas not hurt at all. I heard them talking about it, and they conjectured thatthe bullet must have struck high on one of the wagons and been deflected downinto the rifle pit. It was just an accident, they said, and that except forsuch accidents we were safe where we were.

When I looked again Silas Dunlap was dead, and I suffered distinctdisappointment in being cheated out of witnessing that particular event. I hadnever been lucky enough to see a man actually die before my eyes.

Dorothy Castleton got hysterics over what had happened, and yelled and screamedfor a long time and she set Mrs. Hastings going again. Altogether such a rowwas raised that father sent Watt Cummings crawling back to us to find out whatwas the matter.

Well along into twilight the heavy firing ceased, although there werescattering shots during the night. Two of our men were wounded in this secondattack, and were brought into the rifle pit. Bill Tyler was killed instantly,and they buried him, Silas Dunlap, and the Castleton baby, in the darkalongside of the others.

All during the night men relieved one another at sinking the well deeper; butthe only sign of water they got was damp sand. Some of the men fetched a fewpails of water from the spring, but were fired upon, and they gave it up whenJeremy Hopkins had his left hand shot off at the wrist.

Next morning, the third day, it was hotter and dryer than ever. We awokethirsty, and there was no cooking. So dry were our mouths that we could noteat. I tried a piece of stale bread mother gave me, but had to give it up. Thefiring rose and fell. Sometimes there were hundreds shooting into the camp. Atother times came lulls in which not a shot was fired. Father was continuallycautioning our men not to waste shots because we were running short ofammunition.

And all the time the men went on digging the well. It was so deep that theywere hoisting the sand up in buckets. The men who hoisted were exposed, and oneof them was wounded in the shoulder. He was Peter Bromley, who drove oxen forthe Bloodgood wagon, and he was engaged to marry Jane Bloodgood. She jumped outof the rifle pit and ran right to him while the bullets were flying and led himback into shelter. About midday the well caved in, and there was lively workdigging out the couple who were buried in the sand. Amos Wentworth did not cometo for an hour. After that they timbered the well with bottom boards from thewagons and wagon tongues, and the digging went on. But all they could get, andthey were twenty feet down, was damp sand. The water would not seep.

By this time the conditions in the rifle pit were terrible. The children werecomplaining for water, and the babies, hoarse from much crying, went on crying.Robert Carr, another wounded man, lay about ten feet from mother and me. He wasout of his head, and kept thrashing his arms about and calling for water. Andsome of the women were almost as bad, and kept raving against the Mormons andIndians. Some of the women prayed a great deal, and the three grown Demdikesisters, with their mother, sang gospel hymns. Other women got damp sand thatwas hoisted out of the bottom of the well, and packed it against the barebodies of the babies to try to cool and soothe them.

The two Fairfax brothers couldn’t stand it any longer, and, with pails intheir hands, crawled out under a wagon and made a dash for the spring. Gilesnever got half way, when he went down. Roger made it there and back withoutbeing hit. He brought two pails part-full, for some splashed out when he ran.Giles crawled back, and when they helped him into the rifle pit he was bleedingat the mouth and coughing.

Two part-pails of water could not go far among over a hundred of us, notcounting the men. Only the babies, and the very little children, and thewounded men, got any. I did not get a sip, although mother dipped a bit ofcloth into the several spoonfuls she got for the baby and wiped my mouth out.She did not even do that for herself, for she left me the bit of damp rag tochew.

The situation grew unspeakably worse in the afternoon. The quiet sun blazeddown through the clear windless air and made a furnace of our hole in the sand.And all about us were the explosions of rifles and yells of the Indians. Onlyonce in a while did father permit a single shot from the trench, and at thatonly by our best marksmen, such as Laban and Timothy Grant. But a steady streamof lead poured into our position all the time. There were no more disastrousricochets, however; and our men in the trench, no longer firing, lay low andescaped damage. Only four were wounded, and only one of them very badly.

Father came in from the trench during a lull in the firing. He sat for a fewminutes alongside mother and me without speaking. He seemed to be listening toall the moaning and crying for water that was going up. Once he climbed out ofthe rifle pit and went over to investigate the well. He brought back only dampsand, which he plastered thick on the chest and shoulders of Robert Carr. Thenhe went to where Jed Dunham and his mother were, and sent for Jed’sfather to come in from the trench. So closely packed were we that when anybodymoved about inside the rifle pit he had to crawl carefully over the bodies ofthose lying down.

After a time father came crawling back to us.

“Jesse,” he asked, “are you afraid of the Indians?”

I shook my head emphatically, guessing that I was to be sent on another proudmission.

“Are you afraid of the damned Mormons?”

“Not of any damned Mormon,” I answered, taking advantage of theopportunity to curse our enemies without fear of the avenging back ofmother’s hand.

I noted the little smile that curled his tired lips for the moment when heheard my reply.

“Well, then, Jesse,” he said, “will you go with Jed to thespring for water?”

I was all eagerness.

“We’re going to dress the two of you up as girls,” hecontinued, “so that maybe they won’t fire on you.”

I insisted on going as I was, as a male human that wore pants; but Isurrendered quickly enough when father suggested that he would find some otherboy to dress up and go along with Jed.

A chest was fetched in from the Chattox wagon. The Chattox girls were twins andof about a size with Jed and me. Several of the women got around to help. Theywere the Sunday dresses of the Chattox twins, and had come in the chest all theway from Arkansas.

In her anxiety mother left the baby with Sarah Dunlap, and came as far as thetrench with me. There, under a wagon and behind the little breastwork of sand,Jed and I received our last instructions. Then we crawled out and stood up inthe open. We were dressed precisely alike—white stockings, white dresses,with big blue sashes, and white sunbonnets. Jed’s right and my left handwere clasped together. In each of our free hands we carried two small pails.

“Take it easy,” father cautioned, as we began our advance.“Go slow. Walk like girls.”

Not a shot was fired. We made the spring safely, filled our pails, and lay downand took a good drink ourselves. With a full pail in each hand we made thereturn trip. And still not a shot was fired.

I cannot remember how many journeys we made—fully fifteen or twenty. Wewalked slowly, always going out with hands clasped, always coming back slowlywith four pails of water. It was astonishing how thirsty we were. We lay downseveral times and took long drinks.

But it was too much for our enemies. I cannot imagine that the Indians wouldhave withheld their fire for so long, girls or no girls, had they not obeyedinstructions from the whites who were with them. At any rate Jed and I werejust starting on another trip when a rifle went off from the Indian hill, andthen another.

“Come back!” mother cried out.

I looked at Jed, and found him looking at me. I knew he was stubborn and hadmade up his mind to be the last one in. So I started to advance, and at thesame instant he started.

“You!—Jesse!” cried my mother. And there was more than asmacking in the way she said it.

Jed offered to clasp hands, but I shook my head.

“Run for it,” I said.

And while we hotfooted it across the sand it seemed all the rifles on Indianhill were turned loose on us. I got to the spring a little ahead, so that Jedhad to wait for me to fill my pails.

“Now run for it,” he told me; and from the leisurely way he wentabout filling his own pails I knew he was determined to be in last.

So I crouched down, and, while I waited, watched the puffs of dust raised bythe bullets. We began the return side by side and running.

“Not so fast,” I cautioned him, “or you’ll spill halfthe water.”

That stung him, and he slacked back perceptibly. Midway I stumbled and fellheadlong. A bullet, striking directly in front of me, filled my eyes with sand.For the moment I thought I was shot.

“Done it a-purpose,” Jed sneered as I scrambled to my feet. He hadstood and waited for me.

I caught his idea. He thought I had fallen deliberately in order to spill mywater and go back for more. This rivalry between us was a seriousmatter—so serious, indeed, that I immediately took advantage of what hehad imputed and raced back to the spring. And Jed Dunham, scornful of thebullets that were puffing dust all around him, stood there upright in the openand waited for me. We came in side by side, with honours even in ourboys’ foolhardiness. But when we delivered the water Jed had only onepailful. A bullet had gone through the other pail close to the bottom.

Mother took it out on me with a lecture on disobedience. She must have known,after what I had done, that father wouldn’t let her smack me; for, whileshe was lecturing, father winked at me across her shoulder. It was the firsttime he had ever winked at me.

Back in the rifle pit Jed and I were heroes. The women wept and blessed us, andkissed us and mauled us. And I confess I was proud of the demonstration,although, like Jed, I let on that I did not like all such making-over. ButJeremy Hopkins, a great bandage about the stump of his left wrist, said we werethe stuff white men were made out of—men like Daniel Boone, like KitCarson, and Davy Crockett. I was prouder of that than all the rest.

The remainder of the day I seem to have been bothered principally with the painof my right eye caused by the sand that had been kicked into it by the bullet.The eye was bloodshot, mother said; and to me it seemed to hurt just as muchwhether I kept it open or closed. I tried both ways.

Things were quieter in the rifle pit, because all had had water, though strongupon us was the problem of how the next water was to be procured. Coupled withthis was the known fact that our ammunition was almost exhausted. A thoroughoverhauling of the wagons by father had resulted in finding five pounds ofpowder. A very little more was in the flasks of the men.

I remembered the sundown attack of the night before, and anticipated it thistime by crawling to the trench before sunset. I crept into a place alongside ofLaban. He was busy chewing tobacco, and did not notice me. For some time Iwatched him, fearing that when he discovered me he would order me back. Hewould take a long squint out between the wagon wheels, chew steadily a while,and then spit carefully into a little depression he had made in the sand.

“How’s tricks?” I asked finally. It was the way he alwaysaddressed me.

“Fine,” he answered. “Most remarkable fine, Jesse, now that Ican chew again. My mouth was that dry that I couldn’t chew from sun-up towhen you brung the water.”

Here a man showed head and shoulders over the top of the little hill to thenorth-east occupied by the whites. Laban sighted his rifle on him for a longminute. Then he shook his head.

“Four hundred yards. Nope, I don’t risk it. I might get him, andthen again I mightn’t, an’ your dad is mighty anxious about thepowder.”

“What do you think our chances are?” I asked, man-fashion, for,after my water exploit, I was feeling very much the man.

Laban seemed to consider carefully for a space ere he replied.

“Jesse, I don’t mind tellin’ you we’re in a damned badhole. But we’ll get out, oh, we’ll get out, you can bet your bottomdollar.”

“Some of us ain’t going to get out,” I objected.

“Who, for instance?” he queried.

“Why, Bill Tyler, and Mrs. Grant, and Silas Dunlap, and all therest.”

“Aw, shucks, Jesse—they’re in the ground already. Don’tyou know everybody has to bury their dead as they traipse along? They’veben doin’ it for thousands of years I reckon, and there’s just asmany alive as ever they was. You see, Jesse, birth and death go hand-in-hand.And they’re born as fast as they die—faster, I reckon, becausethey’ve increased and multiplied. Now you, you might a-got killed thisafternoon packin’ water. But you’re here, ain’t you,a-gassin’ with me an’ likely to grow up an’ be the father ofa fine large family in Californy. They say everything grows large inCaliforny.”

This cheerful way of looking at the matter encouraged me to dare suddenexpression of a long covetousness.

“Say, Laban, supposin’ you got killed here—”

“Who?—me?” he cried.

“I’m just sayin’ supposin’,” I explained.

“Oh, all right then. Go on. Supposin’ I am killed?”

“Will you give me your scalps?”

“Your ma’ll smack you if she catches you a-wearin’them,” he temporized.

“I don’t have to wear them when she’s around. Now if you gotkilled, Laban, somebody’d have to get them scalps. Why not me?”

“Why not?” he repeated. “That’s correct, and why notyou? All right, Jesse. I like you, and your pa. The minute I’m killed thescalps is yourn, and the scalpin’ knife, too. And there’s TimothyGrant for witness. Did you hear, Timothy?”

Timothy said he had heard, and I lay there speechless in the stifling trench,too overcome by my greatness of good fortune to be able to utter a word ofgratitude.

I was rewarded for my foresight in going to the trench. Another general attackwas made at sundown, and thousands of shots were fired into us. Nobody on ourside was scratched. On the other hand, although we fired barely thirty shots, Isaw Laban and Timothy Grant each get an Indian. Laban told me that from thefirst only the Indians had done the shooting. He was certain that no white hadfired a shot. All of which sorely puzzled him. The whites neither offered usaid nor attacked us, and all the while were on visiting terms with the Indianswho were attacking us.

Next morning found the thirst harsh upon us. I was out at the first hint oflight. There had been a heavy dew, and men, women, and children were lapping itup with their tongues from off the wagon-tongues, brake-blocks, andwheel-tyres.

There was talk that Laban had returned from a scout just before daylight; thathe had crept close to the position of the whites; that they were already up;and that in the light of their campfires he had seen them praying in a largecircle. Also he reported from what few words he caught that they were prayingabout us and what was to be done with us.

“May God send them the light then,” I heard one of the Demdikesisters say to Abby Foxwell.

“And soon,” said Abby Foxwell, “for I don’t know whatwe’ll do a whole day without water, and our powder is about gone.”

Nothing happened all morning. Not a shot was fired. Only the sun blazed downthrough the quiet air. Our thirst grew, and soon the babies were crying and theyounger children whimpering and complaining. At noon Will Hamilton took twolarge pails and started for the spring. But before he could crawl under thewagon Ann Demdike ran and got her arms around him and tried to hold him back.But he talked to her, and kissed her, and went on. Not a shot was fired, norwas any fired all the time he continued to go out and bring back water.

“Praise God!” cried old Mrs. Demdike. “It is a sign. Theyhave relented.”

This was the opinion of many of the women.

About two o’clock, after we had eaten and felt better, a white manappeared, carrying a white flag. Will Hamilton went out and talked to him, cameback and talked with father and the rest of our men, and then went out to thestranger again. Farther back we could see a man standing and looking on, whomwe recognized as Lee.

With us all was excitement. The women were so relieved that they were cryingand kissing one another, and old Mrs. Demdike and others were hallelujahing andblessing God. The proposal, which our men had accepted, was that we would putourselves under the flag of truce and be protected from the Indians.

“We had to do it,” I heard father tell mother.

He was sitting, droop-shouldered and dejected, on a wagon-tongue.

“But what if they intend treachery?” mother asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“We’ve got to take the chance that they don’t,” hesaid. “Our ammunition is gone.”

Some of our men were unchaining one of our wagons and rolling it out of theway. I ran across to see what was happening. In came Lee himself, followed bytwo empty wagons, each driven by one man. Everybody crowded around Lee. He saidthat they had had a hard time with the Indians keeping them off of us, and thatMajor Higbee, with fifty of the Mormon militia, were ready to take us undertheir charge.

But what made father and Laban and some of the men suspicious was when Lee saidthat we must put all our rifles into one of the wagons so as not to arouse theanimosity of the Indians. By so doing we would appear to be the prisoners ofthe Mormon militia.

Father straightened up and was about to refuse when he glanced to Laban, whoreplied in an undertone: “They ain’t no more use in our hands thanin the wagon, seein’ as the powder’s gone.”

Two of our wounded men who could not walk were put into the wagons, and alongwith them were put all the little children. Lee seemed to be picking them outover eight and under eight. Jed and I were large for our age, and we were ninebesides; so Lee put us with the older bunch and told us we were to march withthe women on foot.

When he took our baby from mother and put it in a wagon she started to object.Then I saw her lips draw tightly together, and she gave in. She was agray-eyed, strong-featured, middle-aged woman, large-boned and fairly stout.But the long journey and hardship had told on her, so that she washollow-cheeked and gaunt, and like all the women in the company she wore anexpression of brooding, never-ceasing anxiety.

It was when Lee described the order of march that Laban came to me. Lee saidthat the women and the children that walked should go first in the line,following behind the two wagons. Then the men, in single file, should followthe women. When Laban heard this he came to me, untied the scalps from hisbelt, and fastened them to my waist.

“But you ain’t killed yet,” I protested.

“You bet your life I ain’t,” he answered lightly.

“I’ve just reformed, that’s all. This scalp-wearin’ isa vain thing and heathen.” He stopped a moment as if he had forgottensomething, then, as he turned abruptly on his heel to regain the men of ourcompany, he called over his shoulder, “Well, so long, Jesse.”

I was wondering why he should say good-bye when a white man came riding intothe corral. He said Major Higbee had sent him to tell us to hurry up, becausethe Indians might attack at any moment.

So the march began, the two wagons first. Lee kept along with the women andwalking children. Behind us, after waiting until we were a couple of hundredfeet in advance, came our men. As we emerged from the corral we could see themilitia just a short distance away. They were leaning on their rifles andstanding in a long line about six feet apart. As we passed them I could nothelp noticing how solemn-faced they were. They looked like men at a funeral. Sodid the women notice this, and some of them began to cry.

I walked right behind my mother. I had chosen this position so that she wouldnot catch sight of my scalps. Behind me came the three Demdike sisters, two ofthem helping the old mother. I could hear Lee calling all the time to the menwho drove the wagons not to go so fast. A man that one of the Demdike girlssaid must be Major Higbee sat on a horse watching us go by. Not an Indian wasin sight.

By the time our men were just abreast of the militia—I had just lookedback to try to see where Jed Dunham was—the thing happened. I heard MajorHigbee cry out in a loud voice, “Do your duty!” All the rifles ofthe militia seemed to go off at once, and our men were falling over and sinkingdown. All the Demdike women went down at one time. I turned quickly to see howmother was, and she was down. Right alongside of us, out of the bushes, camehundreds of Indians, all shooting. I saw the two Dunlap sisters start on therun across the sand, and took after them, for whites and Indians were allkilling us. And as I ran I saw the driver of one of the wagons shooting the twowounded men. The horses of the other wagon were plunging and rearing and theirdriver was trying to hold them.

It was when the little boy that was I was running after the Dunlap girls thatblackness came upon him. All memory there ceases, for Jesse Fancher thereceased, and, as Jesse Fancher, ceased for ever. The form that was JesseFancher, the body that was his, being matter and apparitional, like anapparition passed and was not. But the imperishable spirit did not cease. Itcontinued to exist, and, in its next incarnation, became the residing spirit ofthat apparitional body known as Darrell Standing’s which soon is to betaken out and hanged and sent into the nothingness whither all apparitions go.

There is a lifer here in Folsom, Matthew Davies, of old pioneer stock, who istrusty of the scaffold and execution chamber. He is an old man, and his folkscrossed the plains in the early days. I have talked with him, and he hasverified the massacre in which Jesse Fancher was killed. When this old liferwas a child there was much talk in his family of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.The children in the wagons, he said, were saved, because they were too young totell tales.

All of which I submit. Never, in my life of Darrell Standing, have I read aline or heard a word spoken of the Fancher Company that perished at MountainMeadows. Yet, in the jacket in San Quentin prison, all this knowledge came tome. I could not create this knowledge out of nothing, any more than could Icreate dynamite out of nothing. This knowledge and these facts I have relatedhave but one explanation. They are out of the spirit content of me—thespirit that, unlike matter, does not perish.

In closing this chapter I must state that Matthew Davies also told me that someyears after the massacre Lee was taken by United States Government officials tothe Mountain Meadows and there executed on the site of our old corral.

CHAPTER XIV.

When, at the conclusion of my first ten days’ term in the jacket, I wasbrought back to consciousness by Doctor Jackson’s thumb pressing open aneyelid, I opened both eyes and smiled up into the face of Warden Atherton.

“Too cussed to live and too mean to die,” was his comment.

“The ten days are up, Warden,” I whispered.

“Well, we’re going to unlace you,” he growled.

“It is not that,” I said. “You observed my smile. Youremember we had a little wager. Don’t bother to unlace me first. Justgive the Bull Durham and cigarette papers to Morrell and Oppenheimer. And forfull measure here’s another smile.”

“Oh, I know your kind, Standing,” the Warden lectured. “Butit won’t get you anything. If I don’t break you, you’ll breakall strait-jacket records.”

“He’s broken them already,” Doctor Jackson said. “Whoever heard of a man smiling after ten days of it?”

“Well and bluff,” Warden Atherton answered. “Unlace him,Hutchins.”

“Why such haste?” I queried, in a whisper, of course, for so lowhad life ebbed in me that it required all the little strength I possessed andall the will of me to be able to whisper even. “Why such haste? Idon’t have to catch a train, and I am so confounded comfortable as I amthat I prefer not to be disturbed.”

But unlace me they did, rolling me out of the fetid jacket and upon the floor,an inert, helpless thing.

“No wonder he was comfortable,” said Captain Jamie. “Hedidn’t feel anything. He’s paralysed.”

“Paralysed your grandmother,” sneered the Warden. “Get him upon his feat and you’ll see him stand.”

Hutchins and the doctor dragged me to my feet.

“Now let go!” the Warden commanded.

Not all at once could life return into the body that had been practically deadfor ten days, and as a result, with no power as yet over my flesh, I gave atthe knees, crumpled, pitched sidewise, and gashed my forehead against the wall.

“You see,” said Captain Jamie.

“Good acting,” retorted the Warden. “That man’s gotnerve to do anything.”

“You’re right, Warden,” I whispered from the floor. “Idid it on purpose. It was a stage fall. Lift me up again, and I’ll repeatit. I promise you lots of fun.”

I shall not dwell upon the agony of returning circulation. It was to become anold story with me, and it bore its share in cutting the lines in my face that Ishall carry to the scaffold.

When they finally left me I lay for the rest of the day stupid andhalf-comatose. There is such a thing as anæsthesia of pain, engendered by paintoo exquisite to be borne. And I have known that anæsthesia.

By evening I was able to crawl about my cell, but not yet could I stand up. Idrank much water, and cleansed myself as well as I could; but not until nextday could I bring myself to eat, and then only by deliberate force of my will.

The programme, as given me by Warden Atherton, was that I was to rest up andrecuperate for a few days, and then, if in the meantime I had not confessed tothe hiding-place of the dynamite, I should be given another ten days in thejacket.

“Sorry to cause you so much trouble, Warden,” I had said in reply.“It’s a pity I don’t die in the jacket and so put you out ofyour misery.”

At this time I doubt that I weighed an ounce over ninety pounds. Yet, two yearsbefore, when the doors of San Quentin first closed on me, I had weighed onehundred and sixty-five pounds. It seems incredible that there was another ounceI could part with and still live. Yet in the months that followed, ounce byounce I was reduced until I know I must have weighed nearer eighty than ninetypounds. I do know, after I managed my escape from solitary and struck the guardThurston on the nose, that before they took me to San Rafael for trial, while Iwas being cleaned and shaved I weighed eighty-nine pounds.

There are those who wonder how men grow hard. Warden Atherton was a hard man.He made me hard, and my very hardness reacted on him and made him harder. Andyet he never succeeded in killing me. It required the state law of California,a hanging judge, and an unpardoning governor to send me to the scaffold forstriking a prison guard with my fist. I shall always contend that that guardhad a nose most easily bleedable. I was a bat-eyed, tottery skeleton at thetime. I sometimes wonder if his nose really did bleed. Of course he swore itdid, on the witness stand. But I have known prison guards take oath to worseperjuries than that.

Ed Morrell was eager to know if I had succeeded with the experiment; but whenhe attempted to talk with me he was shut up by Smith, the guard who happened tobe on duty in solitary.

“That’s all right, Ed,” I rapped to him. “You and Jakekeep quiet, and I’ll tell you about it. Smith can’t prevent youfrom listening, and he can’t prevent me from talking. They have donetheir worst, and I am still here.”

“Cut that out, Standing!” Smith bellowed at me from the corridor onwhich all the cells opened.

Smith was a peculiarly saturnine individual, by far the most cruel andvindictive of our guards. We used to canvass whether his wife bullied him orwhether he had chronic indigestion.

I continued rapping with my knuckles, and he came to the wicket to glare in atme.

“I told you to out that out,” he snarled.

“Sorry,” I said suavely. “But I have a sort of premonitionthat I shall go right on rapping. And—er—excuse me for asking apersonal question—what are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll—” he began explosively, proving, by his inabilityto conclude the remark, that he thought in henids.

“Yes?” I encouraged. “Just what, pray?”

“I’ll have the Warden here,” he said lamely.

“Do, please. A most charming gentleman, to be sure. A shining example ofthe refining influences that are creeping into our prisons. Bring him to me atonce. I wish to report you to him.”

“Me?”

“Yes, just precisely you,” I continued. “You persist, in arude and boorish manner, in interrupting my conversation with the other guestsin this hostelry.”

And Warden Atherton came. The door was unlocked, and he blustered into my cell.But oh, I was so safe! He had done his worst. I was beyond his power.

“I’ll shut off your grub,” he threatened.

“As you please,” I answered. “I’m used to it. Ihaven’t eaten for ten days, and, do you know, trying to begin to eatagain is a confounded nuisance.

“Oh, ho, you’re threatening me, are you? A hunger strike,eh?”

“Pardon me,” I said, my voice sulky with politeness. “Theproposition was yours, not mine. Do try and be logical on occasion. I trust youwill believe me when I tell you that your illogic is far more painful for me toendure than all your tortures.”

“Are you going to stop your knuckle-talking?” he demanded.

“No; forgive me for vexing you—for I feel so strong a compulsion totalk with my knuckles that—”

“For two cents I’ll put you back in the jacket,” he broke in.

“Do, please. I dote on the jacket. I am the jacket baby. I get fat in thejacket. Look at that arm.” I pulled up my sleeve and showed a biceps soattenuated that when I flexed it it had the appearance of a string. “Areal blacksmith’s biceps, eh, Warden? Cast your eyes on my swellingchest. Sandow had better look out for his laurels. And my abdomen—why,man, I am growing so stout that my case will be a scandal of prisonoverfeeding. Watch out, Warden, or you’ll have the taxpayers afteryou.”

“Are you going to stop knuckle-talk?” he roared.

“No, thanking you for your kind solicitude. On mature deliberation I havedecided that I shall keep on knuckle-talking.”

He stared at me speechlessly for a moment, and then, out of sheer impotency,turned to go.

“One question, please.”

“What is it?” he demanded over his shoulder.

“What are you going to do about it?”

From the choleric exhibition he gave there and then it has been an unceasingwonder with me to this day that he has not long since died of apoplexy.

Hour by hour, after the warden’s discomfited departure, I rapped on andon the tale of my adventures. Not until that night, when Pie-Face Jones came onduty and proceeded to steal his customary naps, were Morrell and Oppenheimerable to do any talking.

“Pipe dreams,” Oppenheimer rapped his verdict.

Yes, was my thought; our experiences arethe stuff of our dreams.

“When I was a night messenger I hit the hop once,” Oppenheimercontinued. “And I want to tell you you haven’t anything on me whenit came to seeing things. I guess that is what all the novel-writersdo—hit the hop so as to throw their imagination into the highgear.”

But Ed Morrell, who had travelled the same road as I, although with differentresults, believed my tale. He said that when his body died in the jacket, andhe himself went forth from prison, he was never anybody but Ed Morrell. Henever experienced previous existences. When his spirit wandered free, itwandered always in the present. As he told us, just as he was able to leave hisbody and gaze upon it lying in the jacket on the cell floor, so could he leavethe prison, and, in the present, revisit San Francisco and see what wasoccurring. In this manner he had visited his mother twice, both times findingher asleep. In this spirit-roving he said he had no power over material things.He could not open or close a door, move any object, make a noise, nor manifesthis presence. On the other hand, material things had no power over him. Wallsand doors were not obstacles. The entity, or the real thing that was he, wasthought, spirit.

“The grocery store on the corner, half a block from where mother lived,changed hands,” he told us. “I knew it by the different sign overthe place. I had to wait six months after that before I could write my firstletter, but when I did I asked mother about it. And she said yes, it hadchanged.”

“Did you read that grocery sign?” Jake Oppenheimer asked.

“Sure thing I did,” was Morrell’s response. “Or howcould I have known it?”

“All right,” rapped Oppenheimer the unbelieving. “You canprove it easy. Some time, when they shift some decent guards on us that willgive us a peep at a newspaper, you get yourself thrown into the jacket, climbout of your body, and sashay down to little old ’Frisco. Slide up toThird and Market just about two or three a.m. when they are running the morningpapers off the press. Read the latest news. Then make a swift sneak for SanQuentin, get here before the newspaper tug crosses the bay, and tell me whatyou read. Then we’ll wait and get a morning paper, when it comes in, froma guard. Then, if what you told me is in that paper, I am with you to afare-you-well.”

It was a good test. I could not but agree with Oppenheimer that such a proofwould be absolute. Morrell said he would take it up some time, but that hedisliked to such an extent the process of leaving his body that he would notmake the attempt until such time that his suffering in the jacket became tooextreme to be borne.

“That is the way with all of them—won’t come across with thegoods,” was Oppenheimer’s criticism. “My mother believed inspirits. When I was a kid she was always seeing them and talking with them andgetting advice from them. But she never come across with any goods from them.The spirits couldn’t tell her where the old man could nail a job or finda gold-mine or mark an eight-spot in Chinese lottery. Not on your life. Thebunk they told her was that the old man’s uncle had had a goitre, or thatthe old man’s grandfather had died of galloping consumption, or that wewere going to move house inside four months, which last was dead easy, seeingas we moved on an average of six times a year.”

I think, had Oppenheimer had the opportunity for thorough education, he wouldhave made a Marinetti or a Haeckel. He was an earth-man in his devotion to theirrefragable fact, and his logic was admirable though frosty.“You’ve got to show me,” was the ground rule by which heconsidered all things. He lacked the slightest iota of faith. This was whatMorrell had pointed out. Lack of faith had prevented Oppenheimer fromsucceeding in achieving the little death in the jacket.

You will see, my reader, that it was not all hopelessly bad in solitary. Giventhree minds such as ours, there was much with which to while away the time. Itmight well be that we kept one another from insanity, although I must admitthat Oppenheimer rotted five years in solitary entirely by himself, ere Morrelljoined him, and yet had remained sane.

On the other hand, do not make the mistake of thinking that life in solitarywas one wild orgy of blithe communion and exhilarating psychological research.

We had much and terrible pain. Our guards were brutes—your hang-dogs,citizen. Our surroundings were vile. Our food was filthy, monotonous,innutritious. Only men, by force of will, could live on so unbalanced a ration.I know that our prize cattle, pigs, and sheep on the University DemonstrationFarm at Davis would have faded away and died had they received no morescientifically balanced a ration than what we received.

We had no books to read. Our very knuckle-talk was a violation of the rules.The world, so far as we were concerned, practically did not exist. It was morea ghost-world. Oppenheimer, for instance, had never seen an automobile or amotor-cycle. News did occasionally filter in—but such dim,long-after-the-event, unreal news. Oppenheimer told me he had not learned ofthe Russo-Japanese war until two years after it was over.

We were the buried alive, the living dead. Solitary was our tomb, in which, onoccasion, we talked with our knuckles like spirits rapping at a séance.

News? Such little things were news to us. A change of bakers—we couldtell it by our bread. What made Pie-face Jones lay off a week? Was it vacationor sickness? Why was Wilson, on the night shift for only ten days, transferredelsewhere? Where did Smith get that black eye? We would speculate for a weekover so trivial a thing as the last.

Some convict given a month in solitary was an event. And yet we could learnnothing from such transient and ofttimes stupid Dantes who would remain in ourinferno too short a time to learn knuckle-talk ere they went forth again intothe bright wide world of the living.

Still, again, all was not so trivial in our abode of shadows. As example, Itaught Oppenheimer to play chess. Consider how tremendous such an achievementis—to teach a man, thirteen cells away, by means of knuckle-raps; toteach him to visualize a chessboard, to visualize all the pieces, pawns andpositions, to know the various manners of moving; and to teach him it all sothoroughly that he and I, by pure visualization, were in the end able to playentire games of chess in our minds. In the end, did I say? Another tribute tothe magnificence of Oppenheimer’s mind: in the end he became my master atthe game—he who had never seen a chessman in his life.

What image of a bishop, for instance, could possibly form in his mind when Irapped our code-sign for bishop?In vain and often I asked him this veryquestion. In vain he tried to describe in words that mental image of somethinghe had never seen but which nevertheless he was able to handle in such masterlyfashion as to bring confusion upon me countless times in the course of play.

I can only contemplate such exhibitions of will and spirit and conclude, as Iso often conclude, that precisely there resides reality. The spirit only isreal. The flesh is phantasmagoria and apparitional. I ask you how—Irepeat, I ask you howmatter or flesh in any form can play chess on animaginary board with imaginary pieces, across a vacuum of thirteen cellsspanned only with knuckle-taps?

CHAPTER XV.

I was once Adam Strang, an Englishman. The period of my living, as near as Ican guess it, was somewhere between 1550 and 1650, and I lived to a ripe oldage, as you shall see. It has been a great regret to me, ever since Ed Morrelltaught me the way of the little death, that I had not been a more thoroughstudent of history. I should have been able to identify and place much that isobscure to me. As it is, I am compelled to grope and guess my way to times andplaces of my earlier existences.

A peculiar thing about my Adam Strang existence is that I recollect so littleof the first thirty years of it. Many times, in the jacket, has Adam Strangrecrudesced, but always he springs into being full-statured, heavy-thewed, afull thirty years of age.

I, Adam Strang, invariably assume my consciousness on a group of low, sandyislands somewhere under the equator in what must be the western Pacific Ocean.I am always at home there, and seem to have been there some time. There arethousands of people on these islands, although I am the only white man. Thenatives are a magnificent breed, big-muscled, broad-shouldered, tall. Asix-foot man is a commonplace. The king, Raa Kook, is at least six inches abovesix feet, and though he would weigh fully three hundred pounds, is so equitablyproportioned that one could not call him fat. Many of his chiefs are as large,while the women are not much smaller than the men.

There are numerous islands in the group, over all of which Raa Kook is king,although the cluster of islands to the south is restive and occasionally inrevolt. These natives with whom I live are Polynesian, I know, because theirhair is straight and black. Their skin is a sun-warm golden-brown. Theirspeech, which I speak uncommonly easy, is round and rich and musical,possessing a paucity of consonants, being composed principally of vowels. Theylove flowers, music, dancing, and games, and are childishly simple and happy intheir amusements, though cruelly savage in their angers and wars.

I, Adam Strang, know my past, but do not seem to think much about it. I live inthe present. I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident,uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy.Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed—a full stomach—and I amcontent. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, not evenAbba Taak, who is highest over the priest. No man dare lift hand or weapon tome. I am taboo—sacred as the sacred canoe-house under the floor of whichrepose the bones of heaven alone knows how many previous kings of RaaKook’s line.

I know all about how I happened to be wrecked and be there alone of all myship’s company—it was a great drowning and a great wind; but I donot moon over the catastrophe. When I think back at all, rather do I think farback to my childhood at the skirts of my milk-skinned, flaxen-haired, buxomEnglish mother. It is a tiny village of a dozen straw-thatched cottages inwhich I lived. I hear again blackbirds and thrushes in the hedges, and seeagain bluebells spilling out from the oak woods and over the velvet turf like acreaming of blue water. And most of all I remember a great, hairy-fetlockedstallion, often led dancing, sidling, and nickering down the narrow street. Iwas frightened of the huge beast and always fled screaming to my mother,clutching her skirts and hiding in them wherever I might find her.

But enough. The childhood of Adam Strang is not what I set out to write.

I lived for several years on the islands which are nameless to me, and uponwhich I am confident I was the first white man. I was married to Lei-Lei, theking’s sister, who was a fraction over six feet and only by that fractiontopped me. I was a splendid figure of a man, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,well-set-up. Women of any race, as you shall see, looked on me with a favouringeye. Under my arms, sun-shielded, my skin was milk-white as my mother’s.My eyes were blue. My moustache, beard and hair were that golden-yellow such asone sometimes sees in paintings of the northern sea-kings. Ay—I must havecome of that old stock, long-settled in England, and, though born in acountryside cottage, the sea still ran so salt in my blood that I early foundmy way to ships to become a sea-cuny. That is what I was—neither officernor gentleman, but sea-cuny, hard-worked, hard-bitten, hard-enduring.

I was of value to Raa Kook, hence his royal protection. I could work in iron,and our wrecked ship had brought the first iron to Raa Kook’s land. Onoccasion, ten leagues to the north-west, we went in canoes to get iron from thewreck. The hull had slipped off the reef and lay in fifteen fathoms. And infifteen fathoms we brought up the iron. Wonderful divers and workers underwater were these natives. I learned to do my fifteen fathoms, but never could Iequal them in their fishy exploits. On the land, by virtue of my Englishtraining and my strength, I could throw any of them. Also, I taught themquarter-staff, until the game became a very contagion and broken heads anythingbut novelties.

Brought up from the wreck was a journal, so torn and mushed and pulped by thesea-water, with ink so run about, that scarcely any of it was decipherable.However, in the hope that some antiquarian scholar may be able to place moredefinitely the date of the events I shall describe, I here give an extract. Thepeculiar spelling may give the clue. Note that while the letter sisused, it more commonly is replaced by the letter ſ.

The wind being favourable, gave us an opportunity of examining and dryingsome of our proviſion, particularly, ſome Chineſe hams and dry fiſh, whichconſtituted part of our victualling. Divine service alſo was performed on deck.In the afternoon the wind was ſoutherly, with freſh gales, but dry, ſo that wewere able the following morning to clean between decks, and alſo to fumigatethe ſhip with gunpowder.

But I must hasten, for my narrative is not of Adam Strang the shipwreckedsea-cuny on a coral isle, but of Adam Strang, later named Yi Yong-ik, theMighty One, who was one time favourite of the powerful Yunsan, who was loverand husband of the Lady Om of the princely house of Min, and who was long timebeggar and pariah in all the villages of all the coasts and roads of Cho-Sen.(Ah, ha, I have you there—Cho-Sen. It means the land of the morning calm.In modern speech it is called Korea.)

Remember, it was between three and four centuries back that I lived, the firstwhite man, on the coral isles of Raa Kook. In those waters, at that time, thekeels of ships were rare. I might well have lived out my days there, in peaceand fatness, under the sun where frost was not, had it not been for theSparwehr. The Sparwehrwas a Dutch merchantman daring theuncharted seas for Indies beyond the Indies. And she found me instead, and Iwas all she found.

Have I not said that I was a gay-hearted, golden, bearded giant of anirresponsible boy that had never grown up? With scarce a pang, when theSparwehrs’ water-casks were filled, I left Raa Kook and hispleasant land, left Lei-Lei and all her flower-garlanded sisters, and withlaughter on my lips and familiar ship-smells sweet in my nostrils, sailed away,sea-cuny once more, under Captain Johannes Maartens.

A marvellous wandering, that which followed on the old Sparwehr. We werein quest of new lands of silk and spices. In truth, we found fevers, violentdeaths, pestilential paradises where death and beauty kept charnel-housetogether. That old Johannes Maartens, with no hint of romance in that stolidface and grizzly square head of his, sought the islands of Solomon, the minesof Golconda—ay, he sought old lost Atlantis which he hoped to find stillafloat unscuppered. And he found head-hunting, tree-dwelling anthropophagiinstead.

We landed on strange islands, sea-pounded on their shores and smoking at theirsummits, where kinky-haired little animal-men made monkey-wailings in thejungle, planted their forest run-ways with thorns and stake-pits, and blewpoisoned splinters into us from out the twilight jungle bush. And whatsoeverman of us was wasp-stung by such a splinter died horribly and howling. And weencountered other men, fiercer, bigger, who faced us on the beaches in openfight, showering us with spears and arrows, while the great tree drums and thelittle tom-toms rumbled and rattled war across the tree-filled hollows, and allthe hills were pillared with signal-smokes.

Hendrik Hamel was supercargo and part owner of the Sparwehradventure,and what he did not own was the property of Captain Johannes Maartens. Thelatter spoke little English, Hendrik Hamel but little more. The sailors, withwhom I gathered, spoke Dutch only. But trust a sea-cuny to learnDutch—ay, and Korean, as you shall see.

Toward the end we came to the charted country of Japan. But the people wouldhave no dealings with us, and two sworded officials, in sweeping robes of silkthat made Captain Johannes Maartens’ mouth water, came aboard of us andpolitely requested us to begone. Under their suave manners was the iron of awarlike race, and we knew, and went our way.

We crossed the Straits of Japan and were entering the Yellow Sea on our way toChina, when we laid the Sparwehron the rocks. She was a crazy tub theold Sparwehr, so clumsy and so dirty with whiskered marine-life on herbottom that she could not get out of her own way. Close-hauled, the closest shecould come was to six points of the wind; and then she bobbed up and down,without way, like a derelict turnip. Galliots were clippers compared with her.To tack her about was undreamed of; to wear her required all hands and half awatch. So situated, we were caught on a lee shore in an eight-point shift ofwind at the height of a hurricane that had beaten our souls sick forforty-eight hours.

We drifted in upon the land in the chill light of a stormy dawn across aheartless cross-sea mountain high. It was dead of winter, and between smokingsnow-squalls we could glimpse the forbidding coast, if coast it might becalled, so broken was it. There were grim rock isles and islets beyondcounting, dim snow-covered ranges beyond, and everywhere upstanding cliffs toosteep for snow, outjuts of headlands, and pinnacles and slivers of rockupthrust from the boiling sea.

There was no name to this country on which we drove, no record of it everhaving been visited by navigators. Its coast-line was only hinted at in ourchart. From all of which we could argue that the inhabitants were asinhospitable as the little of their land we could see.

The Sparwehrdrove in bow-on upon a cliff. There was deep water to itssheer foot, so that our sky-aspiring bowsprit crumpled at the impact andsnapped short off. The foremast went by the board, with a great snapping ofrope-shrouds and stays, and fell forward against the cliff.

I have always admired old Johannes Maartens. Washed and rolled off the highpoop by a burst of sea, we were left stranded in the waist of the ship, whencewe fought our way for’ard to the steep-pitched forecastle-head. Othersjoined us. We lashed ourselves fast and counted noses. We were eighteen. Therest had perished.

Johannes Maartens touched me and pointed upward through cascading salt-waterfrom the back-fling of the cliff. I saw what he desired. Twenty feet below thetruck the foremast ground and crunched against a boss of the cliff. Above theboss was a cleft. He wanted to know if I would dare the leap from the mast-headinto the cleft. Sometimes the distance was a scant six feet. At other times itwas a score, for the mast reeled drunkenly to the rolling and pounding of thehull on which rested its splintered butt.

I began the climb. But they did not wait. One by one they unlashed themselvesand followed me up the perilous mast. There was reason for haste, for at anymoment the Sparwehrmight slip off into deep water. I timed my leap, andmade it, landing in the cleft in a scramble and ready to lend a hand to thosewho leaped after. It was slow work. We were wet and half freezing in thewind-drive. Besides, the leaps had to be timed to the roll of the hull and thesway of the mast.

The cook was the first to go. He was snapped off the mast-end, and his bodyperformed cart-wheels in its fall. A fling of sea caught him and crushed him toa pulp against the cliff. The cabin boy, a bearded man of twenty-odd, losthold, slipped, swung around the mast, and was pinched against the boss of rock.Pinched? The life squeezed from him on the instant. Two others followed the wayof the cook. Captain Johannes Maartens was the last, completing the fourteen ofus that clung on in the cleft. An hour afterward the Sparwehrslippedoff and sank in deep water.

Two days and nights saw us near to perishing on that cliff, for there was wayneither up nor down. The third morning a fishing-boat found us. The men wereclad entirely in dirt white, with their long hair done up in a curious knot ontheir pates—the marriage knot, as I was afterward to learn, and also, asI was to learn, a handy thing to clutch hold of with one hand whilst youclouted with the other when an argument went beyond words.

The boat went back to the village for help, and most of the villagers, most oftheir gear, and most of the day were required to get us down. They were a poorand wretched folk, their food difficult even for the stomach of a sea-cuny tocountenance. Their rice was brown as chocolate. Half the husks remained in it,along with bits of chaff, splinters, and unidentifiable dirt which made onepause often in the chewing in order to stick into his mouth thumb andforefinger and pluck out the offending stuff. Also, they ate a sort of millet,and pickles of astounding variety and ungodly hot.

Their houses were earthen-walled and straw-thatched. Under the floors ran fluesthrough which the kitchen smoke escaped, warming the sleeping-room in itspassage. Here we lay and rested for days, soothing ourselves with their mildand tasteless tobacco, which we smoked in tiny bowls at the end of yard-longpipes. Also, there was a warm, sourish, milky-looking drink, heady only whentaken in enormous doses. After guzzling I swear gallons of it, I got singingdrunk, which is the way of sea-cunies the world over. Encouraged by my success,the others persisted, and soon we were all a-roaring, little recking of thefresh snow gale piping up outside, and little worrying that we were cast awayin an uncharted, God-forgotten land. Old Johannes Maartens laughed andtrumpeted and slapped his thighs with the best of us. Hendrik Hamel, acold-blooded, chilly-poised dark brunette of a Dutchman with beady black eyes,was as rarely devilish as the rest of us, and shelled out silver like anydrunken sailor for the purchase of more of the milky brew. Our carrying-on wasa scandal; but the women fetched the drink while all the village that couldcrowd in jammed the room to witness our antics.

The white man has gone around the world in mastery, I do believe, because ofhis unwise uncaringness. That has been the manner of his going, although, ofcourse, he was driven on by restiveness and lust for booty. So it was thatCaptain Johannes Maartens, Hendrik Hamel, and the twelve sea-cunies of usroystered and bawled in the fisher village while the winter gales whistledacross the Yellow Sea.

From the little we had seen of the land and the people we were not impressed byCho-Sen. If these miserable fishers were a fair sample of the natives, we couldunderstand why the land was unvisited of navigators. But we were to learndifferent. The village was on an in-lying island, and its headmen must havesent word across to the mainland; for one morning three big two-masted junkswith lateens of rice-matting dropped anchor off the beach.

When the sampans came ashore Captain Johannes Maartens was all interest, forhere were silks again. One strapping Korean, all in pale-tinted silks ofvarious colours, was surrounded by half a dozen obsequious attendants, alsoclad in silk. Kwan Yung-jin, as I came to know his name, was a yang-ban,or noble; also he was what might be called magistrate or governor of thedistrict or province. This means that his office was appointive, and that hewas a tithe-squeezer or tax-farmer.

Fully a hundred soldiers were also landed and marched into the village. Theywere armed with three-pronged spears, slicing spears, and chopping spears, withhere and there a matchlock of so heroic mould that there were two soldiers to amatchlock, one to carry and set the tripod on which rested the muzzle, theother to carry and fire the gun. As I was to learn, sometimes the gun went off,sometimes it did not, all depending upon the adjustment of the fire-punk andthe condition of the powder in the flash-pan.

So it was that Kwan-Yung-jin travelled. The headmen of the village werecringingly afraid of him, and for good reason, as we were not overlong infinding out. I stepped forward as interpreter, for already I had the hang ofseveral score of Korean words. He scowled and waved me aside. But what did Ireck? I was as tall as he, outweighed him by a full two stone, and my skin waswhite, my hair golden. He turned his back and addressed the head man of thevillage while his six silken satellites made a cordon between us. While hetalked more soldiers from the ship carried up several shoulder-loads ofinch-planking. These planks were about six feet long and two feet wide, andcuriously split in half lengthwise. Nearer one end than the other was a roundhole larger than a man’s neck.

Kwan Yung-jin gave a command. Several of the soldiers approached Tromp, who wassitting on the ground nursing a felon. Now Tromp was a rather stupid,slow-thinking, slow-moving cuny, and before he knew what was doing one of theplanks, with a scissors-like opening and closing, was about his neck andclamped. Discovering his predicament, he set up a bull-roaring and dancing,till all had to back away to give him clear space for the flying ends of hisplank.

Then the trouble began, for it was plainly Kwan Yung-jin’s intention toplank all of us. Oh, we fought, bare-fisted, with a hundred soldiers and asmany villagers, while Kwan Yung-jin stood apart in his silks and lordlydisdain. Here was where I earned my name Yi Yong-ik, the Mighty. Long after ourcompany was subdued and planked I fought on. My fists were of the hardness oftopping-mauls, and I had the muscles and will to drive them.

To my joy, I quickly learned that the Koreans did not understand a fist-blowand were without the slightest notion of guarding. They went down like tenpins,fell over each other in heaps. But Kwan Yung-jin was my man, and all that savedhim when I made my rush was the intervention of his satellites. They wereflabby creatures. I made a mess of them and a muss and muck of their silks erethe multitude could return upon me. There were so many of them. They clogged myblows by the sheer numbers of them, those behind shoving the front ones uponme. And how I dropped them! Toward the end they were squirming three-deep undermy feet. But by the time the crews of the three junks and most of the villagewere on top of me I was fairly smothered. The planking was easy.

“God in heaven, what now!” asked Vandervoot, another cuny, when wehad been bundled aboard a junk.

We sat on the open deck, like so many trussed fowls, when he asked thequestion, and the next moment, as the junk heeled to the breeze, we shot downthe deck, planks and all, fetching up in the lee-scuppers with skinned necks.And from the high poop Kwan Yung-jin gazed down at us as if he did not see us.For many years to come Vandervoot was known amongst us as “What-NowVandervoot.” Poor devil! He froze to death one night on the streets ofKeijo with every door barred against him.

To the mainland we were taken and thrown into a stinking, vermin-infestedprison. Such was our introduction to the officialdom of Cho-Sen. But I was tobe revenged for all of us on Kwan Yung-jin, as you shall see, in the days whenthe Lady Om was kind and power was mine.

In prison we lay for many days. We learned afterward the reason. Kwan Yung-jinhad sent a dispatch to Keijo, the capital, to find what royal disposition wasto be made of us. In the meantime we were a menagerie. From dawn till dark ourbarred windows were besieged by the natives, for no member of our race had theyever seen before. Nor was our audience mere rabble. Ladies, borne in palanquinson the shoulders of coolies, came to see the strange devils cast up by the sea,and while their attendants drove back the common folk with whips, they wouldgaze long and timidly at us. Of them we saw little, for their faces werecovered, according to the custom of the country. Only dancing girls, low women,and granddams ever were seen abroad with exposed faces.

I have often thought that Kwan Yung-jin suffered from indigestion, and thatwhen the attacks were acute he took it out on us. At any rate, without rhyme orreason, whenever the whim came to him, we were all taken out on the streetbefore the prison and well beaten with sticks to the gleeful shouts of themultitude. The Asiatic is a cruel beast, and delights in spectacles of humansuffering.

At any rate we were pleased when an end to our beatings came. This was causedby the arrival of Kim. Kim? All I can say, and the best I can say, is that hewas the whitest man I ever encountered in Cho-Sen. He was a captain of fiftymen when I met him. He was in command of the palace guards before I was donedoing my best by him. And in the end he died for the Lady Om’s sake andfor mine. Kim—well, Kim was Kim.

Immediately he arrived the planks were taken from our necks and we were lodgedin the best inn the place boasted. We were still prisoners, but honourableprisoners, with a guard of fifty mounted soldiers. The next day we were underway on the royal highroad, fourteen sailormen astride the dwarf horses thatobtain in Cho-Sen, and bound for Keijo itself. The Emperor, so Kim told me, hadexpressed a desire to gaze upon the strangeness of the sea devils.

It was a journey of many days, half the length of Cho-Sen, north and south asit lies. It chanced, at the first off-saddling, that I strolled around towitness the feeding of the dwarf horses. And what I witnessed set me bawling,“What now, Vandervoot?” till all our crew came running. As I am aliving man what the horses were feeding on was bean soup, hot bean soup atthat, and naught else did they have on all the journey but hot bean soup. Itwas the custom of the country.

They were truly dwarf horses. On a wager with Kim I lifted one, despite hissqueals and struggles, squarely across my shoulders, so that Kim’s men,who had already heard my new name, called me Yi Yong-ik, the Mighty One. Kimwas a large man as Koreans go, and Koreans are a tall muscular race, and Kimfancied himself a bit. But, elbow to elbow and palm to palm, I put his arm downat will. And his soldiers and the gaping villagers would look on and murmur“Yi Yong-ik.”

In a way we were a travelling menagerie. The word went on ahead, so that allthe country folk flocked to the roadside to see us pass. It was an unendingcircus procession. In the towns at night our inns were besieged by multitudes,so that we got no peace until the soldiers drove them off with lance-pricks andblows. But first Kim would call for the village strong men and wrestlers forthe fun of seeing me crumple them and put them in the dirt.

Bread there was none, but we ate white rice (the strength of which resides inone’s muscles not long), a meat which we found to be dog (which animal isregularly butchered for food in Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but whichone learns to like exceeding well. And there was drink, real drink, not milkyslush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would killa weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-hoI put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on thetable, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots inmy hams for the thousandth time. And again all muttered “YiYong-ik,” and the word of my prowess passed on before even to Keijo andthe Emperor’s Court.

I was more an honoured guest than a prisoner, and invariably I rode byKim’s side, my long legs near reaching the ground, and, where the goingwas deep, my feet scraping the muck. Kim was young. Kim was human. Kim wasuniversal. He was a man anywhere in any country. He and I talked and laughedand joked the day long and half the night. And I verily ate up the language. Ihad a gift that way anyway. Even Kim marvelled at the way I mastered the idiom.And I learned the Korean points of view, the Korean humour, the Korean softplaces, weak places, touchy places. Kim taught me flower songs, love songs,drinking songs. One of the latter was his own, of the end of which I shall giveyou a crude attempt at translation. Kim and Pak, in their youth, swore a pactto abstain from drinking, which pact was speedily broken. In old age Kim andPak sing:

“No, no, begone! The merry bowl
Again shall bolster up my soul
Against itself. What, good man, hold!
Canst tell me where red wine is sold?
Nay, just beyond yon peach-tree? There?
Good luck be thine; I’ll thither fare.”

Hendrik Hamel, scheming and crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my anticcourse that brought Kim’s favour, not alone to me, but through me toHendrik Hamel and all our company. I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser,for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning ofYunsan’s favour, the Lady Om’s heart, and the Emperor’stolerance. I had the will and the fearlessness for the game I played, and someof the wit; but most of the wit I freely admit was supplied me by HendrikHamel.

And so we journeyed up to Keijo, from walled city to walled city across a snowymountain land that was hollowed with innumerable fat farming valleys. And everyevening, at fall of day, beacon fires sprang from peak to peak and ran alongthe land. Always Kim watched for this nightly display. From all the coasts ofCho-Sen, Kim told me, these chains of fire-speech ran to Keijo to carry theirmessage to the Emperor. One beacon meant the land was in peace. Two beaconsmeant revolt or invasion. We never saw but one beacon. And ever, as we rode,Vandervoot brought up the rear, wondering, “God in heaven, whatnow?”

Keijo we found a vast city where all the population, with the exception of thenobles or yang-bans, dressed in the eternal white. This, Kim explained, was anautomatic determination and advertisement of caste. Thus, at a glance, couldone tell the status of an individual by the degrees of cleanness or offilthiness of his garments. It stood to reason that a coolie, possessing butthe clothes he stood up in, must be extremely dirty. And to reason it stoodthat the individual in immaculate white must possess many changes and commandthe labour of laundresses to keep his changes immaculate. As for the yang-banswho wore the pale, vari-coloured silks, they were beyond such common yardstickof place.

After resting in an inn for several days, during which time we washed ourgarments and repaired the ravages of shipwreck and travel, we were summonedbefore the Emperor. In the great open space before the palace wall werecolossal stone dogs that looked more like tortoises. They crouched on massivestone pedestals of twice the height of a tall man. The walls of the palace werehuge and of dressed stone. So thick were these walls that they could defy abreach from the mightiest of cannon in a year-long siege. The mere gateway wasof the size of a palace in itself, rising pagoda-like, in many retreatingstories, each story fringed with tile-roofing. A smart guard of soldiers turnedout at the gateway. These, Kim told me, were the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-yang,the fiercest and most terrible fighting men of which Cho-Sen could boast.

But enough. On mere description of the Emperor’s palace a thousand pagesof my narrative could be worthily expended. Let it suffice that here we knewpower in all its material expression. Only a civilization deep and wide and oldand strong could produce this far-walled, many-gabled roof of kings.

To no audience-hall were we sea-cunies led, but, as we took it, to afeasting-hall. The feasting was at its end, and all the throng was in a merrymood. And such a throng! High dignitaries, princes of the blood, swordednobles, pale priests, weather-tanned officers of high command, court ladieswith faces exposed, painted ki-sangor dancing girls who rested fromentertaining, and duennas, waiting women, eunuchs, lackeys, and palace slaves amyriad of them.

All fell away from us, however, when the Emperor, with a following ofintimates, advanced to look us over. He was a merry monarch, especially so foran Asiatic. Not more than forty, with a clear, pallid skin that had never knownthe sun, he was paunched and weak-legged. Yet he had once been a fine man. Thenoble forehead attested that. But the eyes were bleared and weak-lidded, thelips twitching and trembling from the various excesses in which he indulged,which excesses, as I was to learn, were largely devised and pandered by Yunsan,the Buddhist priest, of whom more anon.

In our sea-garments we mariners were a motley crew, and motley was the cue ofour reception. Exclamations of wonder at our strangeness gave way to laughter.The ki-sanginvaded us, dragging us about, making prisoners of us, twoor three of them to one of us, leading us about like so many dancing bears andputting us through our antics. It was offensive, true, but what could poorsea-cunies do? What could old Johannes Maartens do, with a bevy of laughinggirls about him, tweaking his nose, pinching his arms, tickling his ribs tillhe pranced? To escape such torment Hans Amden cleared a space and gave aclumsy-footed Hollandish breakdown till all the Court roared its laughter.

It was offensive to me who had been equal and boon companion of Kim for manydays. I resisted the laughing ki-sang. I braced my legs and stoodupright with folded arms; nor could pinch or tickle bring a quiver from me.Thus they abandoned me for easier prey.

“For God’s sake, man, make an impression,” Hendrik Hamel, whohad struggled to me with three ki-sangdragging behind, mumbled.

Well might he mumble, for whenever he opened his mouth to speak they crammed itwith sweets.

“Save us from this folly,” he persisted, ducking his head about toavoid their sweet-filled palms. “We must have dignity, understand,dignity. This will ruin us. They are making tame animals of us, playthings.When they grow tired of us they will throw us out. You’re doing the rightthing. Stick to it. Stand them off. Command respect, respect for all ofus—”

The last was barely audible, for by this time the ki-sanghad stuffedhis mouth to speechlessness.

As I have said, I had the will and the fearlessness, and I racked my sea-cunybrains for the wit. A palace eunuch, tickling my neck with a feather frombehind, gave me my start. I had already drawn attention by my aloofness andimperviousness to the attacks of the ki-sang, so that many were lookingon at the eunuch’s baiting of me. I gave no sign, made no move, until Ihad located him and distanced him. Then, like a shot, without turning head orbody, merely by my arm I fetched him an open, back-handed slap. My knuckleslanded flat on his cheek and jaw. There was a crack like a spar parting in agale. He was bowled clean over, landing in a heap on the floor a dozen feetaway.

There was no laughter, only cries of surprise and murmurings and whisperings of“Yi Yong-ik.” Again I folded my arms and stood with a fineassumption of haughtiness. I do believe that I, Adam Strang, had among otherthings the soul of an actor in me. For see what follows. I was now the mostsignificant of our company. Proud-eyed, disdainful, I met unwavering the eyesupon me and made them drop, or turn away—all eyes but one. These were theeyes of a young woman, whom I judged, by richness of dress and by thehalf-dozen women fluttering at her back, to be a court lady of distinction. Intruth, she was the Lady Om, princess of the house of Min. Did I say young? Shewas fully my own age, thirty, and for all that and her ripeness and beauty aprincess still unmarried, as I was to learn.

She alone looked me in the eyes without wavering until it was I who turnedaway. She did not look me down, for there was neither challenge nor antagonismin her eyes—only fascination. I was loth to admit this defeat by onesmall woman, and my eyes, turning aside, lighted on the disgraceful rout of mycomrades and the trailing ki-sangand gave me the pretext. I clapped myhands in the Asiatic fashion when one gives command.

“Let be!” I thundered in their own language, and in the form oneaddressee underlings.

Oh, I had a chest and a throat, and could bull-roar to the hurt of ear-drums. Iwarrant so loud a command had never before cracked the sacred air of theEmperor’s palace.

The great room was aghast. The women were startled, and pressed toward oneanother as for safety. The ki-sangreleased the cunies and shrank awaygiggling apprehensively. Only the Lady Om made no sign nor motion but continuedto gaze wide-eyed into my eyes which had returned to hers.

Then fell a great silence, as if all waited some word of doom. A multitude ofeyes timidly stole back and forth from the Emperor to me and from me to theEmperor. And I had wit to keep the silence and to stand there, arms folded,haughty and remote.

“He speaks our language,” quoth the Emperor at the last; and Iswear there was such a relinquishment of held breaths that the whole room wasone vast sigh.

“I was born with this language,” I replied, my cuny wits runningrashly to the first madness that prompted. “I spoke it at mymother’s breast. I was the marvel of my land. Wise men journeyed far tosee me and to hear. But no man knew the words I spoke. In the many years sinceI have forgotten much, but now, in Cho-Sen, the words come back like long-lostfriends.”

An impression I certainly made. The Emperor swallowed and his lips twitched erehe asked:

“How explain you this?”

“I am an accident,” I answered, following the wayward lead my withad opened. “The gods of birth were careless, and I was mislaid in a farland and nursed by an alien people. I am Korean, and now, at last, I have cometo my home.”

What an excited whispering and conferring took place. The Emperor himselfinterrogated Kim.

“He was always thus, our speech in his mouth, from the time he came outof the sea,” Kim lied like the good fellow he was.

“Bring me yang-ban’sgarments as befits me,” Iinterrupted, “and you shall see.” As I was led away in compliance,I turned on the ki-sang. “And leave my slaves alone. They havejourneyed far and are weary. They are my faithful slaves.”

In another room Kim helped me change, sending the lackeys away; and quick andto the point was the dress-rehearsal he gave me. He knew no more toward what Idrove than did I, but he was a good fellow.

The funny thing, once back in the crowd and spouting Korean which I claimed wasrusty from long disuse, was that Hendrik Hamel and the rest, toostubborn-tongued to learn new speech, did not know a word I uttered.

“I am of the blood of the house of Koryu,” I told the Emperor,“that ruled at Songdo many a long year agone when my house arose on theruins of Silla.”

Ancient history, all, told me by Kim on the long ride, and he struggled withhis face to hear me parrot his teaching.

“These,” I said, when the Emperor had asked me about my company,“these are my slaves, all except that old churl there”—Iindicated Johannes Maartens—“who is the son of a freed man.”I told Hendrik Hamel to approach. “This one,” I wantoned on,“was born in my father’s house of a seed slave who was born therebefore him. He is very close to me. We are of an age, born on the same day, andon that day my father gave him me.”

Afterwards, when Hendrik Hamel was eager to know all that I had said, and whenI told him, he reproached me and was in a pretty rage.

“The fat’s in the fire, Hendrik,” quoth I. “What I havedone has been out of witlessness and the need to be saying something. But doneit is. Nor you nor I can pluck forth the fat. We must act our parts and makethe best of it.”

Taiwun, the Emperor’s brother, was a sot of sots, and as the night woreon he challenged me to a drinking. The Emperor was delighted, and commanded adozen of the noblest sots to join in the bout. The women were dismissed, and wewent to it, drink for drink, measure for measure. Kim I kept by me, and midwayalong, despite Hendrik Hamel’s warning scowls, dismissed him and thecompany, first requesting, and obtaining, palace lodgment instead of the inn.

Next day the palace was a-buzz with my feast, for I had put Taiwun and all hischampions snoring on the mats and walked unaided to my bed. Never, in the daysof vicissitude that came later, did Taiwun doubt my claim of Korean birth. Onlya Korean, he averred, could possess so strong a head.

The palace was a city in itself, and we were lodged in a sort of summer-housethat stood apart. The princely quarters were mine, of course, and Hamel andMaartens, with the rest of the grumbling cunies, had to content themselves withwhat remained.

I was summoned before Yunsan, the Buddhist priest I have mentioned. It was hisfirst glimpse of me and my first of him. Even Kim he dismissed from me, and wesat alone on deep mats in a twilight room. Lord, Lord, what a man and a mindwas Yunsan! He made to probe my soul. He knew things of other lands and placesthat no one in Cho-Sen dreamed to know. Did he believe my fabled birth? I couldnot guess, for his face was less changeful than a bowl of bronze.

What Yunsan’s thoughts were only Yunsan knew. But in him, this poor-clad,lean-bellied priest, I sensed the power behind power in all the palace and inall Cho-Sen. I sensed also, through the drift of speech, that he had use of me.Now was this use suggested by the Lady Om?—a nut I gave Hendrik Hamel tocrack. I little knew, and less I cared, for I lived always in the moment andlet others forecast, forfend, and travail their anxiety.

I answered, too, the summons of the Lady Om, following a sleek-faced,cat-footed eunuch through quiet palace byways to her apartments. She lodged asa princess of the blood should lodge. She, too, had a palace to herself, amonglotus ponds where grow forests of trees centuries old but so dwarfed that theyreached no higher than my middle. Bronze bridges, so delicate and rare thatthey looked as if fashioned by jewel-smiths, spanned her lily ponds, and abamboo grove screened her palace apart from all the palace.

My head was awhirl. Sea-cuny that I was, I was no dolt with women, and I sensedmore than idle curiosity in her sending for me. I had heard love-tales ofcommon men and queens, and was a-wondering if now it was my fortune to provesuch tales true.

The Lady Om wasted little time. There were women about her, but she regardedtheir presence no more than a carter his horses. I sat beside her on deep matsthat made the room half a couch, and wine was given me and sweets to nibble,served on tiny, foot-high tables inlaid with pearl.

Lord, Lord, I had but to look into her eyes—But wait. Make no mistake.The Lady Om was no fool. I have said she was of my own age. All of thirty shewas, with the poise of her years. She knew what she wanted. She knew what shedid not want. It was because of this she had never married, although allpressure that an Asiatic court could put upon a woman had been vainly put uponher to compel her to marry Chong Mong-ju. He was a lesser cousin of the greatMin family, himself no fool, and grasping so greedily for power as to perturbYunsan, who strove to retain all power himself and keep the palace and Cho-Senin ordered balance. Thus Yunsan it was who in secret allied himself with theLady Om, saved her from her cousin, used her to trim her cousin’s wings.But enough of intrigue. It was long before I guessed a tithe of it, and thenlargely through the Lady Om’s confidences and Hendrik Hamel’sconclusions.

The Lady Om was a very flower of woman. Women such as she are born rarely,scarce twice a century the whole world over. She was unhampered by rule orconvention. Religion, with her, was a series of abstractions, partly learnedfrom Yunsan, partly worked out for herself. Vulgar religion, the publicreligion, she held, was a device to keep the toiling millions to their toil.She had a will of her own, and she had a heart all womanly. She was abeauty—yes, a beauty by any set rule of the world. Her large black eyeswere neither slitted nor slanted in the Asiatic way. They were long, true, butset squarely, and with just the slightest hint of obliqueness that was all forpiquancy.

I have said she was no fool. Behold! As I palpitated to the situation, princessand sea-cuny and love not a little that threatened big, I racked mycuny’s brains for wit to carry the thing off with manhood credit. Itchanced, early in this first meeting, that I mentioned what I had told all theCourt, that I was in truth a Korean of the blood of the ancient house of Koryu.

“Let be,” she said, tapping my lips with her peacock fan. “Nochild’s tales here. Know that with me you are better and greater than ofany house of Koryu. You are . . .”

She paused, and I waited, watching the daring grow in her eyes.

“You are a man,” she completed. “Not even in my sleep have Iever dreamed there was such a man as you on his two legs upstanding in theworld.”

Lord, Lord! and what could a poor sea-cuny do? This particular sea-cuny, Iadmit, blushed through his sea tan till the Lady Om’s eyes were twinpools of roguishness in their teasing deliciousness and my arms were all butabout her. And she laughed tantalizingly and alluringly, and clapped her handsfor her women, and I knew that the audience, for this once, was over. I knew,also, there would be other audiences, there must be other audiences.

Back to Hamel, my head awhirl.

“The woman,” said he, after deep cogitation. He looked at me andsighed an envy I could not mistake. “It is your brawn, Adam Strang, thatbull throat of yours, your yellow hair. Well, it’s the game, man. Playher, and all will be well with us. Play her, and I shall teach you how.”

I bristled. Sea-cuny I was, but I was man, and to no man would I be beholden inmy way with women. Hendrik Hamel might be one time part-owner of the oldSparwehr, with a navigator’s knowledge of the stars and deepversed in books, but with women, no, there I would not give him better.

He smiled that thin-lipped smile of his, and queried:

“How like you the Lady Om?”

“In such matters a cuny is naught particular,” I temporized.

“How like you her?” he repeated, his beady eyes boring into me.

“Passing well, ay, and more than passing well, if you will haveit.”

“Then win to her,” he commanded, “and some day we will getship and escape from this cursed land. I’d give half the silks of theIndies for a meal of Christian food again.”

He regarded me intently.

“Do you think you can win to her?” he questioned.

I was half in the air at the challenge. He smiled his satisfaction.

“But not too quickly,” he advised. “Quick things are cheapthings. Put a prize upon yourself. Be chary of your kindnesses. Make a value ofyour bull throat and yellow hair, and thank God you have them, for they are ofmore worth in a woman’s eyes than are the brains of a dozenphilosophers.”

Strange whirling days were those that followed, what of my audiences with theEmperor, my drinking bouts with Taiwun, my conferences with Yunsan, and myhours with the Lady Om. Besides, I sat up half the nights, by Hamel’scommand, learning from Kim all the minutiæ of court etiquette andmanners, the history of Korea and of gods old and new, and the forms of politespeech, noble speech, and coolie speech. Never was sea-cuny worked so hard. Iwas a puppet—puppet to Yunsan, who had need of me; puppet to Hamel, whoschemed the wit of the affair that was so deep that alone I should havedrowned. Only with the Lady Om was I man, not puppet . . . and yet, and yet, asI look back and ponder across time, I have my doubts. I think the Lady Om, too,had her will with me, wanting me for her heart’s desire. Yet in this shewas well met, for it was not long ere she was my heart’s desire, and suchwas the immediacy of my will that not her will, nor Hendrik Hamel’s, norYunsan’s, could hold back my arms from about her.

In the meantime, however, I was caught up in a palace intrigue I could notfathom. I could catch the drift of it, no more, against Chong Mong-ju, theprincely cousin of the Lady Om. Beyond my guessing there were cliques andcliques within cliques that made a labyrinth of the palace and extended to allthe Seven Coasts. But I did not worry. I left that to Hendrik Hamel. To him Ireported every detail that occurred when he was not with me; and he, withfurrowed brows, sitting darkling by the hour, like a patient spider unravelledthe tangle and spun the web afresh. As my body slave he insisted upon attendingme everywhere; being only barred on occasion by Yunsan. Of course I barred himfrom my moments with the Lady Om, but told him in general what passed, withexception of tenderer incidents that were not his business.

I think Hamel was content to sit back and play the secret part. He was toocold-blooded not to calculate that the risk was mine. If I prospered, heprospered. If I crashed to ruin, he might creep out like a ferret. I amconvinced that he so reasoned, and yet it did not save him in the end, as youshall see.

“Stand by me,” I told Kim, “and whatsoever you wish shall beyours. Have you a wish?”

“I would command the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-Yang, and so command thepalace guards,” he answered.

“Wait,” said I, “and that will you do. I have said it.”

The how of the matter was beyond me. But he who has naught can dispense theworld in largess; and I, who had naught, gave Kim captaincy of the palaceguards. The best of it is that I did fulfil my promise. Kim did come to commandthe Tiger Hunters, although it brought him to a sad end.

Scheming and intriguing I left to Hamel and Yunsan, who were the politicians. Iwas mere man and lover, and merrier than theirs was the time I had. Picture itto yourself—a hard-bitten, joy-loving sea-cuny, irresponsible, unawareever of past or future, wining and dining with kings, the accepted lover of aprincess, and with brains like Hamel’s and Yunsan’s to do allplanning and executing for me.

More than once Yunsan almost divined the mind behind my mind; but when heprobed Hamel, Hamel proved a stupid slave, a thousand times less interested inaffairs of state and policy than was he interested in my health and comfort andgarrulously anxious about my drinking contests with Taiwun. I think the Lady Omguessed the truth and kept it to herself; wit was not her desire, but, as Hamelhad said, a bull throat and a man’s yellow hair.

Much that passed between us I shall not relate, though the Lady Om is dear dustthese centuries. But she was not to be denied, nor was I; and when a man andwoman will their hearts together heads may fall and kingdoms crash and yet theywill not forgo.

Came the time when our marriage was mooted—oh, quietly, at first, mostquietly, as mere palace gossip in dark corners between eunuchs andwaiting-women. But in a palace the gossip of the kitchen scullions will creepto the throne. Soon there was a pretty to-do. The palace was the pulse ofCho-Sen, and when the palace rocked, Cho-Sen trembled. And there was reason forthe rocking. Our marriage would be a blow straight between the eyes of ChongMong-ju. He fought, with a show of strength for which Yunsan was ready. ChongMong-ju disaffected half the provincial priesthood, until they pilgrimaged inprocessions a mile long to the palace gates and frightened the Emperor into apanic.

But Yunsan held like a rock. The other half of the provincial priesthood washis, with, in addition, all the priesthood of the great cities such as Keijo,Fusan, Songdo, Pyen-Yang, Chenampo, and Chemulpo. Yunsan and the Lady Om,between them, twisted the Emperor right about. As she confessed to meafterward, she bullied him with tears and hysteria and threats of a scandalthat would shake the throne. And to cap it all, at the psychological moment,Yunsan pandered the Emperor to novelties of excess that had been longpreparing.

“You must grow your hair for the marriage knot,” Yunsan warned meone day, with the ghost of a twinkle in his austere eyes, more nearly facetiousand human than I had ever beheld him.

Now it is not meet that a princess espouse a sea-cuny, or even a claimant ofthe ancient blood of Koryu, who is without power, or place, or visible symbolsof rank. So it was promulgated by imperial decree that I was a prince of Koryu.Next, after breaking the bones and decapitating the then governor of the fiveprovinces, himself an adherent of Chong Mong-ju, I was made governor of theseven home provinces of ancient Koryu. In Cho-Sen seven is the magic number. Tocomplete this number two of the provinces were taken over from the hands of twomore of Chong Mong-ju’s adherents.

Lord, Lord, a sea-cuny . . . and dispatched north over the Mandarin Road withfive hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back! I was a governor of sevenprovinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me. Life, death, and torture, Icarried at my disposal. I had a treasury and a treasurer, to say nothing of aregiment of scribes. Awaiting me also was a full thousand of tax-farmers; whosqueezed the last coppers from the toiling people.

The seven provinces constituted the northern march. Beyond lay what is nowManchuria, but which was known by us as the country of the Hong-du, or“Red Heads.” They were wild raiders, on occasion crossing the Yaluin great masses and over-running northern Cho-Sen like locusts. It was saidthey were given to cannibal practices. I know of experience that they wereterrible fighters, most difficult to convince of a beating.

A whirlwind year it was. While Yunsan and the Lady Om at Keijo completed thedisgrace of Chong Mong-ju, I proceeded to make a reputation for myself. Ofcourse it was really Hendrik Hamel at my back, but I was the fine figure-headthat carried it off. Through me Hamel taught our soldiers drill and tactics andtaught the Red Heads strategy. The fighting was grand, and though it took ayear, the year’s end saw peace on the northern border and no Red Headsbut dead Red Heads on our side the Yalu.

I do not know if this invasion of the Red Heads is recorded in Western history,but if so it will give a clue to the date of the times of which I write.Another clue: when was Hideyoshi the Shogun of Japan? In my time I heard theechoes of the two invasions, a generation before, driven by Hideyoshi throughthe heart of Cho-Sen from Fusan in the south to as far north as Pyeng-Yang. Itwas this Hideyoshi who sent back to Japan a myriad tubs of pickled ears andnoses of Koreans slain in battle. I talked with many old men and women who hadseen the fighting and escaped the pickling.

Back to Keijo and the Lady Om. Lord, Lord, she was a woman. For forty years shewas my woman. I know. No dissenting voice was raised against the marriage.Chong Mong-ju, clipped of power, in disgrace, had retired to sulk somewhere onthe far north-east coast. Yunsan was absolute. Nightly the single beaconsflared their message of peace across the land. The Emperor grew moreweak-legged and blear-eyed what of the ingenious deviltries devised for him byYunsan. The Lady Om and I had won to our hearts’ desires. Kim was incommand of the palace guards. Kwan Yung-jin, the provincial governor who hadplanked and beaten us when we were first cast away, I had shorn of power andbanished for ever from appearing within the walls of Keijo.

Oh, and Johannes Maartens. Discipline is well hammered into a sea-cuny, and,despite my new greatness, I could never forget that he had been my captain inthe days we sought new Indies in the Sparwehr. According to my talefirst told in Court, he was the only free man in my following. The rest of thecunies, being considered my slaves, could not aspire to office of any sortunder the crown. But Johannes could, and did. The sly old fox! I little guessedhis intent when he asked me to make him governor of the paltry little provinceof Kyong-ju. Kyong-ju had no wealth of farms or fisheries. The taxes scarcepaid the collecting, and the governorship was little more than an empty honour.The place was in truth a graveyard—a sacred graveyard, for on TabongMountain were shrined and sepultured the bones of the ancient kings of Silla.Better governor of Kyong-ju than retainer of Adam Strang, was what I thoughtwas in his mind; nor did I dream that it was except for fear of loneliness thatcaused him to take four of the cunies with him.

Gorgeous were the two years that followed. My seven provinces I governed mainlythough needy yang-bansselected for me by Yunsan. An occasionalinspection, done in state and accompanied by the Lady Om, was all that wasrequired of me. She possessed a summer palace on the south coast, which wefrequented much. Then there were man’s diversions. I became patron of thesport of wrestling, and revived archery among the yang-bans. Also, there wastiger-hunting in the northern mountains.

A remarkable thing was the tides of Cho-Sen. On our north-east coast there wasscarce a rise and fall of a foot. On our west coast the neap tides ran as highas sixty feet. Cho-Sen had no commerce, no foreign traders. There was novoyaging beyond her coasts, and no voyaging of other peoples to her coasts.This was due to her immemorial policy of isolation. Once in a decade or a scoreof years Chinese ambassadors arrived, but they came overland, around the YellowSea, across the country of the Hong-du, and down the Mandarin Road to Keijo.The round trip was a year-long journey. Their mission was to exact from ourEmperor the empty ceremonial of acknowledgment of China’s ancientsuzerainty.

But Hamel, from long brooding, was ripening for action. His plans grew apace.Cho-Sen was Indies enough for him could he but work it right. Little heconfided, but when he began to play to have me made admiral of the Cho-Sen navyof junks, and to inquire more than casually of the details of the store-placesof the imperial treasury, I could put two and two together.

Now I did not care to depart from Cho-Sen except with the Lady Om. When Ibroached the possibility of it she told me, warm in my arms, that I was herking and that wherever I led she would follow. As you shall see it was truth,full truth, that she uttered.

It was Yunsan’s fault for letting Chong Mong-ju live. And yet it was notYunsan’s fault. He had not dared otherwise. Disgraced at Court,nevertheless Chong Mong-ju had been too popular with the provincial priesthood.Yunsan had been compelled to hold his hand, and Chong Mong-ju, apparentlysulking on the north-east coast, had been anything but idle. His emissaries,chiefly Buddhist priests, were everywhere, went everywhere, gathering in eventhe least of the provincial magistrates to allegiance to him. It takes the coldpatience of the Asiatic to conceive and execute huge and complicatedconspiracies. The strength of Chong Mong-ju’s palace clique grew beyondYunsan’s wildest dreaming. Chong Mong-ju corrupted the very palaceguards, the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-Yang whom Kim commanded. And while Yunsannodded, while I devoted myself to sport and to the Lady Om, while Hendrik Hamelperfected plans for the looting of the Imperial treasury, and while JohannesMaartens schemed his own scheme among the tombs of Tabong Mountain, the volcanoof Chong Mong-ju’s devising gave no warning beneath us.

Lord, Lord, when the storm broke! It was stand out from under, all hands, andsave your necks. And there were necks that were not saved. The springing of theconspiracy was premature. Johannes Maartens really precipitated thecatastrophe, and what he did was too favourable for Chong Mong-ju not toadvantage by.

For, see. The people of Cho-Sen are fanatical ancestor-worshippers, and thatold pirate of a booty-lusting Dutchman, with his four cunies, in far Kyong-ju,did no less a thing than raid the tombs of the gold-coffined, long-buried kingsof ancient Silla. The work was done in the night, and for the rest of the nightthey travelled for the sea-coast. But the following day a dense fog lay overthe land and they lost their way to the waiting junk which Johannes Maartenshad privily outfitted. He and the cunies were rounded in by Yi Sun-sin, thelocal magistrate, one of Chong Mong-ju’s adherents. Only Herman Trompescaped in the fog, and was able, long after, to tell me of the adventure.

That night, although news of the sacrilege was spreading through Cho-Sen andhalf the northern provinces had risen on their officials, Keijo and the Courtslept in ignorance. By Chong Mong-ju’s orders the beacons flared theirnightly message of peace. And night by night the peace-beacons flared, whileday and night Chong Mong-ju’s messengers killed horses on all the roadsof Cho-Sen. It was my luck to see his messenger arrive at Keijo. At twilight,as I rode out through the great gate of the capital, I saw the jaded horse falland the exhausted rider stagger in on foot; and I little dreamed that that mancarried my destiny with him into Keijo.

His message sprang the palace revolution. I was not due to return untilmidnight, and by midnight all was over. At nine in the evening the conspiratorssecured possession of the Emperor in his own apartments. They compelled him toorder the immediate attendance of the heads of all departments, and as theypresented themselves, one by one, before his eyes, they were cut down. Meantimethe Tiger Hunters were up and out of hand. Yunsan and Hendrik Hamel were badlybeaten with the flats of swords and made prisoners. The seven other cuniesescaped from the palace along with the Lady Om. They were enabled to do this byKim, who held the way, sword in hand, against his own Tiger Hunters. They cuthim down and trod over him. Unfortunately he did not die of his wounds.

Like a flaw of wind on a summer night the revolution, a palace revolution ofcourse, blew and was past. Chong Mong-ju was in the saddle. The Emperorratified whatever Chong Mong-ju willed. Beyond gasping at the sacrilege of theking’s tombs and applauding Chong Mong-ju, Cho-Sen was unperturbed. Headsof officials fell everywhere, being replaced by Chong Mong-ju’sappointees; but there were no risings against the dynasty.

And now to what befell us. Johannes Maartens and his three cunies, after beingexhibited to be spat upon by the rabble of half the villages and walled citiesof Cho-Sen, were buried to their necks in the ground of the open space beforethe palace gate. Water was given them that they might live longer to yearn forthe food, steaming hot and savoury and changed hourly, that was placetemptingly before them. They say old Johannes Maartens lived longest, notgiving up the ghost for a full fifteen days.

Kim was slowly crushed to death, bone by bone and joint by joint, by thetorturers, and was a long time in dying. Hamel, whom Chong Mong-ju divined asmy brains, was executed by the paddle—in short, was promptly andexpeditiously beaten to death to the delighted shouts of the Keijo populace.Yunsan was given a brave death. He was playing a game of chess with the jailer,when the Emperor’s, or, rather, Chong Mong-ju’s, messenger arrivedwith the poison-cup. “Wait a moment,” said Yunsan. “Youshould be better-mannered than to disturb a man in the midst of a game ofchess. I shall drink directly the game is over.” And while the messengerwaited Yunsan finished the game, winning it, then drained the cup.

It takes an Asiatic to temper his spleen to steady, persistent, life-longrevenge. This Chong Mong-ju did with the Lady Om and me. He did not destroy us.We were not even imprisoned. The Lady Om was degraded of all rank and divestedof all possessions. An imperial decree was promulgated and posted in the lastleast village of Cho-Sen to the effect that I was of the house of Koryu andthat no man might kill me. It was further declared that the eight sea-cunieswho survived must not be killed. Neither were they to be favoured. They were tobe outcasts, beggars on the highways. And that is what the Lady Om and Ibecame, beggars on the highways.

Forty long years of persecution followed, for Chong Mong-ju’s hatred ofthe Lady Om and me was deathless. Worse luck, he was favoured with long life aswell as were we cursed with it. I have said the Lady Om was a wonder of awoman. Beyond endlessly repeating that statement, words fail me, with which togive her just appreciation. Somewhere I have heard that a great lady once saidto her lover: “A tent and a crust of bread with you.” In effectthat is what the Lady Om said to me. More than to say it, she lived the lastletter of it, when more often than not crusts were not plentiful and the skyitself was our tent.

Every effort I made to escape beggary was in the end frustrated by ChongMong-ju. In Songdo I became a fuel-carrier, and the Lady Om and I shared a hutthat was vastly more comfortable than the open road in bitter winter weather.But Chong Mong-ju found me out, and I was beaten and planked and put out uponthe road. That was a terrible winter, the winter poor “What-Now”Vandervoot froze to death on the streets of Keijo.

In Pyeng-yang I became a water-carrier, for know that that old city, whosewalls were ancient even in the time of David, was considered by the people tobe a canoe, and that, therefore, to sink a well inside the walls would be toscupper the city. So all day long thousands of coolies, water-jars yoked totheir shoulders, tramp out the river gate and back. I became one of these,until Chong Mong-ju sought me out, and I was beaten and planked and set uponthe highway.

Ever it was the same. In far Wiju I became a dog-butcher, killing the brutespublicly before my open stall, cutting and hanging the carcasses for sale,tanning the hides under the filth of the feet of the passers-by by spreadingthe hides, raw-side up, in the muck of the street. But Chong Mong-ju found meout. I was a dyer’s helper in Pyonhan, a gold-miner in the placers ofKang-wun, a rope-maker and twine-twister in Chiksan. I plaited straw hats inPadok, gathered grass in Whang-hai, and in Masenpo sold myself to a rice farmerto toil bent double in the flooded paddies for less than a coolie’s pay.But there was never a time or place that the long arm of Chong Mong-ju did notreach out and punish and thrust me upon the beggar’s way.

The Lady Om and I searched two seasons and found a single root of the wildmountain ginseng, which is esteemed so rare and precious a thing by the doctorsthat the Lady Om and I could have lived a year in comfort from the sale of ourone root. But in the selling of it I was apprehended, the root confiscated, andI was better beaten and longer planked than ordinarily.

Everywhere the wandering members of the great Peddlers’ Guild carriedword of me, of my comings and goings and doings, to Chong Mong-ju at Keijo.Only twice, in all the days after my downfall, did I meet Chong Mong-ju face toface. The first time was a wild winter night of storm in the high mountains ofKang-wun. A few hoarded coppers had bought for the Lady Om and me sleepingspace in the dirtiest and coldest corner of the one large room of the inn. Wewere just about to begin on our meagre supper of horse-beans and wild garliccooked into a stew with a scrap of bullock that must have died of old age, whenthere was a tinkling of bronze pony bells and the stamp of hoofs without. Thedoors opened, and entered Chong Mong-ju, the personification of well-being,prosperity and power, shaking the snow from his priceless Mongolian furs. Placewas made for him and his dozen retainers, and there was room for all withoutcrowding, when his eyes chanced to light on the Lady Om and me.

“The vermin there in the corner—clear it out,” he commanded.

And his horse-boys lashed us with their whips and drove us out into the storm.But there was to be another meeting, after long years, as you shall see.

There was no escape. Never was I permitted to cross the northern frontier.Never was I permitted to put foot to a sampan on the sea. The Peddlers’Guild carried these commands of Chong Mong-ju to every village and every soulin all Cho-Sen. I was a marked man.

Lord, Lord, Cho-Sen, I know your every highway and mountain path, all yourwalled cities and the least of your villages. For two-score years I wanderedand starved over you, and the Lady Om ever wandered and starved with me. Whatwe in extremity have eaten!—Leavings of dog’s flesh, putrid andunsaleable, flung to us by the mocking butchers; minari, a water-cressgathered from stagnant pools of slime; spoiled kimchithat would revoltthe stomachs of peasants and that could be smelled a mile. Ay—I havestolen bones from curs, gleaned the public road for stray grains of rice,robbed ponies of their steaming bean-soup on frosty nights.

It is not strange that I did not die. I knew and was upheld by two things: thefirst, the Lady Om by my side; the second, the certain faith that the timewould come when my thumbs and fingers would fast-lock in the gullet of ChongMong-ju.

Turned always away at the city gates of Keijo, where I sought Chong Mong-ju, wewandered on, through seasons and decades of seasons, across Cho-Sen, whoseevery inch of road was an old story to our sandals. Our history and identitywere wide-scattered as the land was wide. No person breathed who did not knowus and our punishment. There were coolies and peddlers who shouted insults atthe Lady Om and who felt the wrath of my clutch in their topknots, the wrath ofmy knuckles in their faces. There were old women in far mountain villages wholooked on the beggar woman by my side, the lost Lady Om, and sighed and shooktheir heads while their eyes dimmed with tears. And there were young womenwhose faces warmed with compassion as they gazed on the bulk of my shoulders,the blue of my eyes, and my long yellow hair—I who had once been a princeof Koryu and the ruler of provinces. And there were rabbles of children thattagged at our heels, jeering and screeching, pelting us with filth of speechand of the common road.

Beyond the Yalu, forty miles wide, was the strip of waste that constituted thenorthern frontier and that ran from sea to sea. It was not really waste land,but land that had been deliberately made waste in carrying out Cho-Sen’spolicy of isolation. On this forty-mile strip all farms, villages and citieshad been destroyed. It was no man’s land, infested with wild animals andtraversed by companies of mounted Tiger Hunters whose business was to kill anyhuman being they found. That way there was no escape for us, nor was there anyescape for us by sea.

As the years passed my seven fellow-cunies came more to frequent Fusan. It wason the south-east coast where the climate was milder. But more than climate, itlay nearest of all Cho-Sen to Japan. Across the narrow straits, just fartherthan the eye can see, was the one hope of escape, Japan, where doubtlessoccasional ships of Europe came. Strong upon me is the vision of those sevenageing men on the cliffs of Fusan yearning with all their souls across the seathey would never sail again.

At times junks of Japan were sighted, but never lifted a familiar topsail ofold Europe above the sea-rim. Years came and went, and the seven cunies andmyself and the Lady Om, passing through middle life into old age, more and moredirected our footsteps to Fusan. And as the years came and went, now one, nowanother failed to gather at the usual place. Hans Amden was the first to die.Jacob Brinker, who was his road-mate, brought the news. Jacob Brinker was thelast of the seven, and he was nearly ninety when he died, outliving Tromp ascant two years. I well remember the pair of them, toward the last, worn andfeeble, in beggars’ rags, with beggars’ bowls, sunning themselvesside by side on the cliffs, telling old stories and cackling shrill-voiced likechildren. And Tromp would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens andthe cunies robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his goldencoffin with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proudones crumbled to dust within the hour while the cunies cursed and sweated atjunking the coffins.

As sure as loot is loot, old Johannes Maartens would have got away and acrossthe Yellow Sea with his booty had it not been for the fog next day that losthim. That cursed fog! A song was made of it, that I heard and hated through allCho-Sen to my dying day. Here run two lines of it:

“Yanggukeni chajin anga
    Wheanpong tora deunda,
The thick fog of the Westerners
    Broods over Whean peak.”

For forty years I was a beggar of Cho-Sen. Of the fourteen of us that were castaway only I survived. The Lady Om was of the same indomitable stuff, and weaged together. She was a little, weazened, toothless old woman toward the last;but ever she was the wonder woman, and she carried my heart in hers to the end.For an old man, three score and ten, I still retained great strength. My facewas withered, my yellow hair turned white, my broad shoulders shrunken, and yetmuch of the strength of my sea-cuny days resided in the muscles left me.

Thus it was that I was able to do what I shall now relate. It was a springmorning on the cliffs of Fusan, hard by the highway, that the Lady Om and I satwarming in the sun. We were in the rags of beggary, prideless in the dust, andyet I was laughing heartily at some mumbled merry quip of the Lady Om when ashadow fell upon us. It was the great litter of Chong Mong-ju, borne by eightcoolies, with outriders before and behind and fluttering attendants on eitherside.

Two emperors, civil war, famine, and a dozen palace revolutions had come andgone; and Chong Mong-ju remained, even then the great power at Keijo. He musthave been nearly eighty that spring morning on the cliffs when he signalledwith palsied hand for his litter to be rested down that he might gaze upon uswhom he had punished for so long.

“Now, O my king,” the Lady Om mumbled low to me, then turned towhine an alms of Chong Mong-ju, whom she affected not to recognize.

And I knew what was her thought. Had we not shared it for forty years? And themoment of its consummation had come at last. So I, too, affected not torecognize my enemy, and, putting on an idiotic senility, I, too, crawled in thedust toward the litter whining for mercy and charity.

The attendants would have driven me back, but with age-quavering cackles ChongMong-ju restrained them. He lifted himself on a shaking elbow, and with theother shaking hand drew wider apart the silken curtains. His withered old facewas transfigured with delight as he gloated on us.

“O my king,” the Lady Om whined to me in her beggar’s chant;and I knew all her long-tried love and faith in my emprise were in that chant.

And the red wrath was up in me, ripping and tearing at my will to be free.Small wonder that I shook with the effort to control. The shaking, happily,they took for the weakness of age. I held up my brass begging bowl, and whinedmore dolefully, and bleared my eyes to hide the blue fire I knew was in them,and calculated the distance and my strength for the leap.

Then I was swept away in a blaze of red. There was a crashing of curtains andcurtain-poles and a squawking and squalling of attendants as my hands closed onChong Mong-ju’s throat. The litter overturned, and I scarce knew whetherI was heads or heels, but my clutch never relaxed.

In the confusion of cushions and quilts and curtains, at first few of theattendants’ blows found me. But soon the horsemen were in, and theirheavy whip-butts began to fall on my head, while a multitude of hands clawedand tore at me. I was dizzy, but not unconscious, and very blissful with my oldfingers buried in that lean and scraggly old neck I had sought for so long. Theblows continued to rain on my head, and I had whirling thoughts in which Ilikened myself to a bulldog with jaws fast-locked. Chong Mong-ju could notescape me, and I know he was well dead ere darkness, like that of ananæsthetic, descended upon me there on the cliffs of Fusan by the YellowSea.

CHAPTER XVI.

Warden Atherton, when he thinks of me, must feel anything but pride. I havetaught him what spirit is, humbled him with my own spirit that roseinvulnerable, triumphant, above all his tortures. I sit here in Folsom, inMurderers’ Row, awaiting my execution; Warden Atherton still holds hispolitical job and is king over San Quentin and all the damned within its walls;and yet, in his heart of hearts, he knows that I am greater than he.

In vain Warden Atherton tried to break my spirit. And there were times, beyondany shadow of doubt, when he would have been glad had I died in the jacket. Sothe long inquisition went on. As he had told me, and as he told me repeatedly,it was dynamite or curtains.

Captain Jamie was a veteran in dungeon horrors, yet the time came when he brokedown under the strain I put on him and on the rest of my torturers. Sodesperate did he become that he dared words with the Warden and washed hishands of the affair. From that day until the end of my torturing he never setfoot in solitary.

Yes, and the time came when Warden Atherton grew afraid, although he stillpersisted in trying to wring from me the hiding-place of the non-existentdynamite. Toward the last he was badly shaken by Jake Oppenheimer. Oppenheimerwas fearless and outspoken. He had passed unbroken through all their prisonhells, and out of superior will could beard them to their teeth. Morrell rappedme a full account of the incident. I was unconscious in the jacket at the time.

“Warden,” Oppenheimer had said, “you’ve bitten off morethan you can chew. It ain’t a case of killing Standing. It’s a caseof killing three men, for as sure as you kill him, sooner or later Morrell andI will get the word out and what you have done will be known from one end ofCalifornia to the other. You’ve got your choice. You’ve either gotto let up on Standing or kill all three of us. Standing’s got your goat.So have I. So has Morrell. You are a stinking coward, and you haven’t gotthe backbone and guts to carry out the dirty butcher’s work you’dlike to do.”

Oppenheimer got a hundred hours in the jacket for it, and, when he was unlaced,spat in the Warden’s face and received a second hundred hours on end.When he was unlaced this time, the Warden was careful not to be in solitary.That he was shaken by Oppenheimer’s words there is no doubt.

But it was Doctor Jackson who was the arch-fiend. To him I was a novelty, andhe was ever eager to see how much more I could stand before I broke.

“He can stand twenty days off the bat,” he bragged to the Warden inmy presence.

“You are conservative,” I broke in. “I can stand forty days.Pshaw! I can stand a hundred when such as you administer it.” And,remembering my sea-cuny’s patience of forty years’ waiting ere Igot my hands on Chong Mong-ju’s gullet, I added: “You prison curs,you don’t know what a man is. You think a man is made in your owncowardly images. Behold, I am a man. You are feeblings. I am your master. Youcan’t bring a squeal out of me. You think it remarkable, for you know howeasily you would squeal.”

Oh, I abused them, called them sons of toads, hell’s scullions, slime ofthe pit. For I was above them, beyond them. They were slaves. I was freespirit. My flesh only lay pent there in solitary. I was not pent. I hadmastered the flesh, and the spaciousness of time was mine to wander in, whilemy poor flesh, not even suffering, lay in the little death in the jacket.

Much of my adventures I rapped to my two comrades. Morrell believed, for he hadhimself tasted the little death. But Oppenheimer, enraptured with my tales,remained a sceptic to the end. His regret was naïve, and at times reallypathetic, in that I had devoted my life to the science of agriculture insteadof to fiction writing.

“But, man,” I reasoned with him, “what do I know of myselfabout this Cho-Sen? I am able to identify it with what is to-day called Korea,and that is about all. That is as far as my reading goes. For instance, howpossibly, out of my present life’s experience, could I know anythingabout kimchi? Yet I know kimchi. It is a sort of sauerkraut. Whenit is spoiled it stinks to heaven. I tell you, when I was Adam Strang, I atekimchithousands of times. I know good kimchi, bad kimchi,rotten kimchi. I know the best kimchiis made by the women ofWosan. Now how do I know that? It is not in the content of my mind, DarrellStanding’s mind. It is in the content of Adam Strang’s mind, who,through various births and deaths, bequeathed his experiences to me, DarrellStanding, along with the rest of the experiences of those various other livesthat intervened. Don’t you see, Jake? That is how men come to be, togrow, how spirit develops.”

“Aw, come off,” he rapped back with the quick imperative knuckles Iknew so well. “Listen to your uncle talk now. I am Jake Oppenheimer. Ialways have been Jake Oppenheimer. No other guy is in my makings. What I know Iknow as Jake Oppenheimer. Now what do I know? I’ll tell you one thing. Iknow kimchi. Kimchiis a sort of sauerkraut made in a countrythat used to be called Cho-Sen. The women of Wosan make the best kimchi,and when kimchiis spoiled it stinks to heaven. You keep out of this,Ed. Wait till I tie the professor up.

“Now, professor, how do I know all this stuff about kimchi? It isnot in the content of my mind.”

“But it is,” I exulted. “I put it there.”

“All right, old boss. Then who put it into your mind?”

“Adam Strang.”

“Not on your tintype. Adam Strang is a pipe-dream. You read itsomewhere.”

“Never,” I averred. “The little I read of Korea was the warcorrespondence at the time of the Japanese-Russian War.”

“Do you remember all you read?” Oppenheimer queried.

“No.”

“Some you forget?”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s all, thank you,” he interrupted, in the manner of alawyer abruptly concluding a cross-examination after having extracted a fataladmission from a witness.

It was impossible to convince Oppenheimer of my sincerity. He insisted that Iwas making it up as I went along, although he applauded what he called my“to-be-continued-in-our-next,” and, at the times they were restingme up from the jacket, was continually begging and urging me to run off a fewmore chapters.

“Now, professor, cut out that high-brow stuff,” he would interruptEd Morrell’s and my metaphysical discussions, “and tell us moreabout the ki-sangand the cunies. And, say, while you’re about it,tell us what happened to the Lady Om when that rough-neck husband of herschoked the old geezer and croaked.”

How often have I said that form perishes. Let me repeat. Form perishes. Matterhas no memory. Spirit only remembers, as here, in prison cells, after thecenturies, knowledge of the Lady Om and Chong Mong-ju persisted in my mind, wasconveyed by me into Jake Oppenheimer’s mind, and by him was reconveyedinto my mind in the argot and jargon of the West. And now I have conveyed itinto your mind, my reader. Try to eliminate it from your mind. You cannot. Aslong as you live what I have told will tenant your mind. Mind? There is nothingpermanent but mind. Matter fluxes, crystallizes, and fluxes again, and formsare never repeated. Forms disintegrate into the eternal nothingness from whichthere is no return. Form is apparitional and passes, as passed the physicalforms of the Lady Om and Chong Mong-ju. But the memory of them remains, shallalways remain as long as spirit endures, and spirit is indestructible.

“One thing sticks out as big as a house,” was Oppenheimer’sfinal criticism of my Adam Strang adventure. “And that is thatyou’ve done more hanging around Chinatown dumps and hop-joints than wasgood for a respectable college professor. Evil communications, you know. Iguess that’s what brought you here.”

Before I return to my adventures I am compelled to tell one remarkable incidentthat occurred in solitary. It is remarkable in two ways. It shows theastounding mental power of that child of the gutters, Jake Oppenheimer; and itis in itself convincing proof of the verity of my experiences when in thejacket coma.

“Say, professor,” Oppenheimer tapped to me one day. “When youwas spieling that Adam Strang yarn, I remember you mentioned playing chess withthat royal souse of an emperor’s brother. Now is that chess like our kindof chess?”

Of course I had to reply that I did not know, that I did not remember thedetails after I returned to my normal state. And of course he laughedgood-naturedly at what he called my foolery. Yet I could distinctly rememberthat in my Adam Strang adventure I had frequently played chess. The trouble wasthat whenever I came back to consciousness in solitary, unessential andintricate details faded from my memory.

It must be remembered that for convenience I have assembled my intermittent andrepetitional jacket experiences into coherent and consecutive narratives. Inever knew in advance where my journeys in time would take me. For instance, Ihave a score of different times returned to Jesse Fancher in the wagon-circleat Mountain Meadows. In a single ten-days’ bout in the jacket I have goneback and back, from life to life, and often skipping whole series of lives thatat other times I have covered, back to prehistoric time, and back of that todays ere civilization began.

So I resolved, on my next return from Adam Strang’s experiences, wheneverit might be, that I should, immediately, on resuming consciousness, concentrateupon what visions and memories I had brought back of chess playing. As luckwould have it, I had to endure Oppenheimer’s chaffing for a full monthere it happened. And then, no sooner out of jacket and circulation restored,than I started knuckle-rapping the information.

Further, I taught Oppenheimer the chess Adam Strang had played in Cho-Sencenturies agone. It was different from Western chess, and yet could not but befundamentally the same, tracing back to a common origin, probably India. Inplace of our sixty-four squares there are eighty-one squares. We have eightpawns on a side; they have nine; and though limited similarly, the principle ofmoving is different.

Also, in the Cho-Sen game, there are twenty pieces and pawns against oursixteen, and they are arrayed in three rows instead of two. Thus, the ninepawns are in the front row; in the middle row are two pieces resembling ourcastles; and in the back row, midway, stands the king, flanked in order oneither side by “gold money,” “silver money,”“knight,” and “spear.” It will be observed that in theCho-Sen game there is no queen. A further radical variation is that a capturedpiece or pawn is not removed from the board. It becomes the property of thecaptor and is thereafter played by him.

Well, I taught Oppenheimer this game—a far more difficult achievementthan our own game, as will be admitted, when the capturing and recapturing andcontinued playing of pawns and pieces is considered. Solitary is not heated. Itwould be a wickedness to ease a convict from any spite of the elements. Andmany a dreary day of biting cold did Oppenheimer and I forget that and thefollowing winter in the absorption of Cho-Sen chess.

But there was no convincing him that I had in truth brought this game back toSan Quentin across the centuries. He insisted that I had read about itsomewhere, and, though I had forgotten the reading, the stuff of the readingwas nevertheless in the content of my mind, ripe to be brought out in anypipe-dream. Thus he turned the tenets and jargon of psychology back on me.

“What’s to prevent your inventing it right here in solitary?”was his next hypothesis. “Didn’t Ed invent the knuckle-talk? Andain’t you and me improving on it right along? I got you, bo. You inventedit. Say, get it patented. I remember when I was night-messenger some guyinvented a fool thing called Pigs in Clover and made millions out of it.”

“There’s no patenting this,” I replied. “Doubtlesslythe Asiatics have been playing it for thousands of years. Won’t youbelieve me when I tell you I didn’t invent it?”

“Then you must have read about it, or seen the Chinks playing it in someof those hop-joints you was always hanging around,” was his last word.

But I have a last word. There is a Japanese murderer here in Folsom—orwas, for he was executed last week. I talked the matter over with him; and thegame Adam Strang played, and which I taught Oppenheimer, proved quite similarto the Japanese game. They are far more alike than is either of them like theWestern game.

CHAPTER XVII.

You, my reader, will remember, far back at the beginning of this narrative,how, when a little lad on the Minnesota farm, I looked at the photographs ofthe Holy Land and recognized places and pointed out changes in places. Also youwill remember, as I described the scene I had witnessed of the healing of thelepers, I told the missionary that I was a big man with a big sword, astride ahorse and looking on.

That childhood incident was merely a trailing cloud of glory, as Wordsworthputs it. Not in entire forgetfulness had I, little Darrell Standing, come intothe world. But those memories of other times and places that glimmered up tothe surface of my child consciousness soon failed and faded. In truth, as isthe way with all children, the shades of the prison-house closed about me, andI remembered my mighty past no more. Every man born of woman has a past mightyas mine. Very few men born of women have been fortunate enough to suffer yearsof solitary and strait-jacketing. That was my good fortune. I was enabled toremember once again, and to remember, among other things, the time when I satastride a horse and beheld the lepers healed.

My name was Ragnar Lodbrog. I was in truth a large man. I stood half a headabove the Romans of my legion. But that was later, after the time of my journeyfrom Alexandria to Jerusalem, that I came to command a legion. It was a crowdedlife, that. Books and books, and years of writing could not record it all. So Ishall briefen and no more than hint at the beginnings of it.

Now all is clear and sharp save the very beginning. I never knew my mother. Iwas told that I was tempest-born, on a beaked ship in the Northern Sea, of acaptured woman, after a sea fight and a sack of a coastal stronghold. I neverheard the name of my mother. She died at the height of the tempest. She was ofthe North Danes, so old Lingaard told me. He told me much that I was too youngto remember, yet little could he tell. A sea fight and a sack, battle andplunder and torch, a flight seaward in the long ships to escape destructionupon the rocks, and a killing strain and struggle against the frosty,foundering seas—who, then, should know aught or mark a stranger woman inher hour with her feet fast set on the way of death? Many died. Men marked theliving women, not the dead.

Sharp-bitten into my child imagination are the incidents immediately after mybirth, as told me by old Lingaard. Lingaard, too old to labour at the sweeps,had been surgeon, undertaker, and midwife of the huddled captives in the openmidships. So I was delivered in storm, with the spume of the cresting seas saltupon me.

Not many hours old was I when Tostig Lodbrog first laid eyes on me. His was thelean ship, and his the seven other lean ships that had made the foray, fled therapine, and won through the storm. Tostig Lodbrog was also called Muspell,meaning “The Burning”; for he was ever aflame with wrath. Brave hewas, and cruel he was, with no heart of mercy in that great chest of his. Erethe sweat of battle had dried on him, leaning on his axe, he ate the heart ofNgrun after the fight at Hasfarth. Because of mad anger he sold his son,Garulf, into slavery to the Juts. I remember, under the smoky rafters ofBrunanbuhr, how he used to call for the skull of Guthlaf for a drinking beaker.Spiced wine he would have from no other cup than the skull of Guthlaf.

And to him, on the reeling deck after the storm was past, old Lingaard broughtme. I was only hours old, wrapped naked in a salt-crusted wolfskin. Now ithappens, being prematurely born, that I was very small.

“Ho! ho!—a dwarf!” cried Tostig, lowering a pot of meadhalf-drained from his lips to stare at me.

The day was bitter, but they say he swept me naked from the wolfskin, and by myfoot, between thumb and forefinger, dangled me to the bite of the wind.

“A roach!” he ho-ho’d. “A shrimp! A sea-louse!”And he made to squash me between huge forefinger and thumb, either of which,Lingaard avers, was thicker than my leg or thigh.

But another whim was upon him.

“The youngling is a-thirst. Let him drink.”

And therewith, head-downward, into the half-pot of mead he thrust me. And mightwell have drowned in this drink of men—I who had never known amother’s breast in the briefness of time I had lived—had it notbeen for Lingaard. But when he plucked me forth from the brew, Tostig Lodbrogstruck him down in a rage. We rolled on the deck, and the great bear hounds,captured in the fight with the North Danes just past, sprang upon us.

“Ho! ho!” roared Tostig Lodbrog, as the old man and I and thewolfskin were mauled and worried by the dogs.

But Lingaard gained his feet, saving me but losing the wolfskin to the hounds.

Tostig Lodbrog finished the mead and regarded me, while Lingaard knew betterthan to beg for mercy where was no mercy.

“Hop o’ my thumb,” quoth Tostig. “By Odin, the women ofthe North Danes are a scurvy breed. They birth dwarfs, not men. Of what use isthis thing? He will never make a man. Listen you, Lingaard, grow him to be adrink-boy at Brunanbuhr. And have an eye on the dogs lest they slobber him downby mistake as a meat-crumb from the table.”

I knew no woman. Old Lingaard was midwife and nurse, and for nursery werereeling decks and the stamp and trample of men in battle or storm. How Isurvived puling infancy, God knows. I must have been born iron in a day ofiron, for survive I did, to give the lie to Tostig’s promise ofdwarf-hood. I outgrew all beakers and tankards, and not for long could hehalf-drown me in his mead pot. This last was a favourite feat of his. It washis raw humour, a sally esteemed by him delicious wit.

My first memories are of Tostig Lodbrog’s beaked ships and fighting men,and of the feast hall at Brunanbuhr when our boats lay beached beside thefrozen fjord. For I was made drink-boy, and amongst my earliest recollectionsare toddling with the wine-filled skull of Guthlaf to the head of the tablewhere Tostig bellowed to the rafters. They were madmen, all of madness, but itseemed the common way of life to me who knew naught else. They were men ofquick rages and quick battling. Their thoughts were ferocious; so was theireating ferocious, and their drinking. And I grew like them. How else could Igrow, when I served the drink to the bellowings of drunkards and to the skaldssinging of Hialli, and the bold Hogni, and of the Niflung’s gold, and ofGudrun’s revenge on Atli when she gave him the hearts of his children andhers to eat while battle swept the benches, tore down the hangings raped fromsouthern coasts, and littered the feasting board with swift corpses.

Oh, I, too, had a rage, well tutored in such school. I was but eight when Ishowed my teeth at a drinking between the men of Brunanbuhr and the Juts whocame as friends with the jarl Agard in his three long ships. I stood at TostigLodbrog’s shoulder, holding the skull of Guthlaf that steamed and stankwith the hot, spiced wine. And I waited while Tostig should complete hisravings against the North Dane men. But still he raved and still I waited, tillhe caught breath of fury to assail the North Dane woman. Whereat I rememberedmy North Dane mother, and saw my rage red in my eyes, and smote him with theskull of Guthlaf, so that he was wine-drenched, and wine-blinded, andfire-burnt. And as he reeled unseeing, smashing his great groping clutchesthrough the air at me, I was in and short-dirked him thrice in belly, thigh andbuttock, than which I could reach no higher up the mighty frame of him.

And the jarl Agard’s steel was out, and his Juts joining him as heshouted:

“A bear cub! A bear cub! By Odin, let the cub fight!”

And there, under that roaring roof of Brunanbuhr, the babbling drink-boy of theNorth Danes fought with mighty Lodbrog. And when, with one stroke, I was flung,dazed and breathless, half the length of that great board, my flying bodymowing down pots and tankards, Lodbrog cried out command:

“Out with him! Fling him to the hounds!”

But the jarl would have it no, and clapped Lodbrog on the shoulder, and askedme as a gift of friendship.

And south I went, when the ice passed out of the fjord, in Jarl Agard’sships. I was made drink-boy and sword-bearer to him, and in lieu of other namewas called Ragnar Lodbrog. Agard’s country was neighbour to the Frisians,and a sad, flat country of fog and fen it was. I was with him for three years,to his death, always at his back, whether hunting swamp wolves or drinking inthe great hall where Elgiva, his young wife, often sat among her women. I waswith Agard in south foray with his ships along what would be now the coast ofFrance, and there I learned that still south were warmer seasons and softerclimes and women.

But we brought back Agard wounded to death and slow-dying. And we burned hisbody on a great pyre, with Elgiva, in her golden corselet, beside him singing.And there were household slaves in golden collars that burned of a plenty therewith her, and nine female thralls, and eight male slaves of the Angles thatwere of gentle birth and battle-captured. And there were live hawks so burned,and the two hawk-boys with their birds.

But I, the drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven, and unafraid,and had never worn woven cloth on my body. And as the flames sprang up, andElgiva sang her death-song, and the thralls and slaves screeched theirunwillingness to die, I tore away my fastenings, leaped, and gained the fens,the gold collar of my slavehood still on my neck, footing it with the houndsloosed to tear me down.

In the fens were wild men, masterless men, fled slaves, and outlaws, who werehunted in sport as the wolves were hunted.

For three years I knew never roof nor fire, and I grew hard as the frost, andwould have stolen a woman from the Juts but that the Frisians by mischance, ina two days’ hunt, ran me down. By them I was looted of my gold collar andtraded for two wolf-hounds to Edwy, of the Saxons, who put an iron collar onme, and later made of me and five other slaves a present to Athel of the EastAngles. I was thrall and fighting man, until, lost in an unlucky raid far tothe east beyond our marches, I was sold among the Huns, and was a swineherduntil I escaped south into the great forests and was taken in as a freeman bythe Teutons, who were many, but who lived in small tribes and drifted southwardbefore the Hun advance.

And up from the south into the great forests came the Romans, fighting men all,who pressed us back upon the Huns. It was a crushage of the peoples for lack ofroom; and we taught the Romans what fighting was, although in truth we were noless well taught by them.

But always I remembered the sun of the south-land that I had glimpsed in theships of Agard, and it was my fate, caught in this south drift of the Teutons,to be captured by the Romans and be brought back to the sea which I had notseen since I was lost away from the East Angles. I was made a sweep-slave inthe galleys, and it was as a sweep-slave that at last I came to Rome.

All the story is too long of how I became a freeman, a citizen, and a soldier,and of how, when I was thirty, I journeyed to Alexandria, and from Alexandriato Jerusalem. Yet what I have told from the time when I was baptized in themead-pot of Tostig Lodbrog I have been compelled to tell in order that you mayunderstand what manner of man rode in through the Jaffa Gate and drew all eyesupon him.

Well might they look. They were small breeds, lighter-boned and lighter-thewed,these Romans and Jews, and a blonde like me they had never gazed upon. Allalong the narrow streets they gave before me but stood to stare wide-eyed atthis yellow man from the north, or from God knew where so far as they knewaught of the matter.

Practically all Pilate’s troops were auxiliaries, save for a handful ofRomans about the palace and the twenty Romans who rode with me. Often enoughhave I found the auxiliaries good soldiers, but never so steadily dependable asthe Romans. In truth they were better fighting men the year round than were wemen of the North, who fought in great moods and sulked in great moods. TheRoman was invariably steady and dependable.

There was a woman from the court of Antipas, who was a friend of Pilate’swife and whom I met at Pilate’s the night of my arrival. I shall call herMiriam, for Miriam was the name I loved her by. If it were merely difficult todescribe the charm of women, I would describe Miriam. But how describe emotionin words? The charm of woman is wordless. It is different from perception thatculminates in reason, for it arises in sensation and culminates in emotion,which, be it admitted, is nothing else than super-sensation.

In general, any woman has fundamental charm for any man. When this charmbecomes particular, then we call it love. Miriam had this particular charm forme. Verily I was co-partner in her charm. Half of it was my own man’slife in me that leapt and met her wide-armed and made in me all that she wasdesirable plus all my desire of her.

Miriam was a grand woman. I use the term advisedly. She was fine-bodied,commanding, over and above the average Jewish woman in stature and in line. Shewas an aristocrat in social caste; she was an aristocrat by nature. All herways were large ways, generous ways. She had brain, she had wit, and, aboveall, she had womanliness. As you shall see, it was her womanliness thatbetrayed her and me in the end. Brunette, olive-skinned, oval-faced, her hairwas blue-black with its blackness and her eyes were twin wells of black. Neverwere more pronounced types of blonde and brunette in man and woman met than inus.

And we met on the instant. There was no self-discussion, no waiting, wavering,to make certain. She was mine the moment I looked upon her. And by the sametoken she knew that I belonged to her above all men. I strode to her. Shehalf-lifted from her couch as if drawn upward to me. And then we looked withall our eyes, blue eyes and black, until Pilate’s wife, a thin, tense,overwrought woman, laughed nervously. And while I bowed to the wife and gavegreeting, I thought I saw Pilate give Miriam a significant glance, as if tosay, “Is he not all I promised?” For he had had word of my comingfrom Sulpicius Quirinius, the legate of Syria. As well had Pilate and I beenknown to each other before ever he journeyed out to be procurator over theSemitic volcano of Jerusalem.

Much talk we had that night, especially Pilate, who spoke in detail of thelocal situation, and who seemed lonely and desirous to share his anxieties withsome one and even to bid for counsel. Pilate was of the solid type of Roman,with sufficient imagination intelligently to enforce the iron policy of Rome,and not unduly excitable under stress.

But on this night it was plain that he was worried. The Jews had got on hisnerves. They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive. And further, they weresubtle. The Romans had a straight, forthright way of going about anything. TheJews never approached anything directly, save backwards, when they were drivenby compulsion. Left to themselves, they always approached by indirection.Pilate’s irritation was due, as he explained, to the fact that the Jewswere ever intriguing to make him, and through him Rome, the catspaw in thematter of their religious dissensions. As was well known to me, Rome did notinterfere with the religious notions of its conquered peoples; but the Jewswere for ever confusing the issues and giving a political cast to purelyunpolitical events.

Pilate waxed eloquent over the diverse sects and the fanatic uprisings andriotings that were continually occurring.

“Lodbrog,” he said, “one can never tell what little summercloud of their hatching may turn into a thunderstorm roaring and rattling aboutone’s ears. I am here to keep order and quiet. Despite me they make theplace a hornets’ nest. Far rather would I govern Scythians or savageBritons than these people who are never at peace about God. Right now there isa man up to the north, a fisherman turned preacher, and miracle-worker, who aswell as not may soon have all the country by the ears and my recall on its wayfrom Rome.”

This was the first I had heard of the man called Jesus, and I little remarkedit at the time. Not until afterward did I remember him, when the little summercloud had become a full-fledged thunderstorm.

“I have had report of him,” Pilate went on. “He is notpolitical. There is no doubt of that. But trust Caiaphas, and Hanan behindCaiaphas, to make of this fisherman a political thorn with which to prick Romeand ruin me.”

“This Caiaphas, I have heard of him as high priest, then who is thisHanan?” I asked.

“The real high priest, a cunning fox,” Pilate explained.“Caiaphas was appointed by Gratus, but Caiaphas is the shadow and themouthpiece of Hanan.”

“They have never forgiven you that little matter of the votiveshields,” Miriam teased.

Whereupon, as a man will when his sore place is touched, Pilate launched uponthe episode, which had been an episode, no more, at the beginning, but whichhad nearly destroyed him. In all innocence before his palace he had affixed twoshields with votive inscriptions. Ere the consequent storm that burst on hishead had passed the Jews had written their complaints to Tiberius, who approvedthem and reprimanded Pilate.

I was glad, a little later, when I could have talk with Miriam. Pilate’swife had found opportunity to tell me about her. She was of old royal stock.Her sister was wife of Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanæa. Nowthis Philip was brother to Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa, andboth were sons of Herod, called by the Jews the “Great.” Miriam, asI understood, was at home in the courts of both tetrarchs, being herself of theblood. Also, when a girl, she had been betrothed to Archelaus at the time hewas ethnarch of Jerusalem. She had a goodly fortune in her own right, so thatmarriage had not been compulsory. To boot, she had a will of her own, and wasdoubtless hard to please in so important a matter as husbands.

It must have been in the very air we breathed, for in no time Miriam and I wereat it on the subject of religion. Truly, the Jews of that day battened onreligion as did we on fighting and feasting. For all my stay in that countrythere was never a moment when my wits were not buzzing with the endlessdiscussions of life and death, law, and God. Now Pilate believed neither ingods, nor devils, nor anything. Death, to him, was the blackness of unbrokensleep; and yet, during his years in Jerusalem, he was ever vexed with theinescapable fuss and fury of things religious. Why, I had a horse-boy on mytrip into Idumæa, a wretched creature that could never learn to saddleand who yet could talk, and most learnedly, without breath, from nightfall tosunrise, on the hair-splitting differences in the teachings of all the rabbisfrom Shemaiah to Gamaliel.

But to return to Miriam.

“You believe you are immortal,” she was soon challenging me.“Then why do you fear to talk about it?”

“Why burden my mind with thoughts about certainties?” I countered.

“But are you certain?” she insisted. “Tell me about it. Whatis it like—your immortality?”

And when I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the giant Ymirfrom the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir and Loki and thefrozen Jötuns—as I say, when I had told her of all this, and of Thorand Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her hands and cried out, withsparkling eyes:

“Oh, you barbarian! You great child! You yellow giant-thing of the frost!You believer of old nurse tales and stomach satisfactions! But the spirit ofyou, that which cannot die, where will it go when your body is dead?”

“As I have said, Valhalla,” I answered. “And my body shall bethere, too.”

“Eating?—drinking?—fighting?”

“And loving,” I added. “We must have our women in heaven,else what is heaven for?”

“I do not like your heaven,” she said. “It is a mad place, abeast place, a place of frost and storm and fury.”

“And your heaven?” I questioned.

“Is always unending summer, with the year at the ripe for the fruits andflowers and growing things.”

I shook my head and growled:

“I do not like your heaven. It is a sad place, a soft place, a place forweaklings and eunuchs and fat, sobbing shadows of men.”

My remarks must have glamoured her mind, for her eyes continued to sparkle, andmine was half a guess that she was leading me on.

“My heaven,” she said, “is the abode of the blest.”

“Valhalla is the abode of the blest,” I asserted. “For lookyou, who cares for flowers where flowers always are? In my country, after theiron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the first blossomstwinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy, and we look, and lookagain.

“And fire!” I cried out. “Great glorious fire! A fine heavenyours where a man cannot properly esteem a roaring fire under a tight roof withwind and snow a-drive outside.”

“A simple folk, you,” she was back at me. “You build a roofand a fire in a snowbank and call it heaven. In my heaven we do not have toescape the wind and snow.”

“No,” I objected. “We build roof and fire to go forth frominto the frost and storm and to return to from the frost and storm. Man’slife is fashioned for battle with frost and storm. His very fire and roof hemakes by his battling. I know. For three years, once, I knew never roof norfire. I was sixteen, and a man, ere ever I wore woven cloth on my body. I wasbirthed in storm, after battle, and my swaddling cloth was a wolfskin. Look atme and see what manner of man lives in Valhalla.”

And look she did, all a-glamour, and cried out:

“You great, yellow giant-thing of a man!” Then she added pensively,“Almost it saddens me that there may not be such men in my heaven.”

“It is a good world,” I consoled her. “Good is the plan andwide. There is room for many heavens. It would seem that to each is given theheaven that is his heart’s desire. A good country, truly, there beyondthe grave. I doubt not I shall leave our feast halls and raid your coasts ofsun and flowers, and steal you away. My mother was so stolen.”

And in the pause I looked at her, and she looked at me, and dared to look. Andmy blood ran fire. By Odin, this was a woman!

What might have happened I know not, for Pilate, who had ceased from his talkwith Ambivius and for some time had sat grinning, broke the pause.

“A rabbi, a Teutoberg rabbi!” he gibed. “A new preacher and anew doctrine come to Jerusalem. Now will there be more dissensions, andriotings, and stonings of prophets. The gods save us, it is a mad-house.Lodbrog, I little thought it of you. Yet here you are, spouting and fuming aswildly as any madman from the desert about what shall happen to you when youare dead. One life at a time, Lodbrog. It saves trouble. It savestrouble.”

“Go on, Miriam, go on,” his wife cried.

She had sat entranced during the discussion, with hands tightly clasped, andthe thought flickered up in my mind that she had already been corrupted by thereligious folly of Jerusalem. At any rate, as I was to learn in the days thatfollowed, she was unduly bent upon such matters. She was a thin woman, as ifwasted by fever. Her skin was tight-stretched. Almost it seemed I could lookthrough her hands did she hold them between me and the light. She was a goodwoman, but highly nervous, and, at times, fancy-flighted about shades and signsand omens. Nor was she above seeing visions and hearing voices. As for me, Ihad no patience with such weaknesses. Yet was she a good woman with no heart ofevil.

I was on a mission for Tiberius, and it was my ill luck to see little ofMiriam. On my return from the court of Antipas she had gone into Batanæato Philip’s court, where was her sister. Once again I was back inJerusalem, and, though it was no necessity of my business to see Philip, who,though weak, was faithful to Roman will, I journeyed into Batanæa in thehope of meeting with Miriam.

Then there was my trip into Idumæa. Also, I travelled into Syria inobedience to the command of Sulpicius Quirinius, who, as imperial legate, wascurious of my first-hand report of affairs in Jerusalem. Thus, travelling wideand much, I had opportunity to observe the strangeness of the Jews who were somadly interested in God. It was their peculiarity. Not content with leavingsuch matters to their priests, they were themselves for ever turning priestsand preaching wherever they could find a listener. And listeners they founda-plenty.

They gave up their occupations to wander about the country like beggars,disputing and bickering with the rabbis and Talmudists in the synagogues andtemple porches. It was in Galilee, a district of little repute, the inhabitantsof which were looked upon as witless, that I crossed the track of the manJesus. It seems that he had been a carpenter, and after that a fisherman, andthat his fellow-fishermen had ceased dragging their nets and followed him inhis wandering life. Some few looked upon him as a prophet, but the mostcontended that he was a madman. My wretched horse-boy, himself claimingTalmudic knowledge second to none, sneered at Jesus, calling him the king ofthe beggars, calling his doctrine Ebionism, which, as he explained to me, wasto the effect that only the poor should win to heaven, while the rich andpowerful were to burn for ever in some lake of fire.

It was my observation that it was the custom of the country for every man tocall every other man a madman. In truth, in my judgment, they were all mad.There was a plague of them. They cast out devils by magic charms, cureddiseases by the laying on of hands, drank deadly poisons unharmed, and unharmedplayed with deadly snakes—or so they claimed. They ran away to starve inthe deserts. They emerged howling new doctrine, gathering crowds about them,forming new sects that split on doctrine and formed more sects.

“By Odin,” I told Pilate, “a trifle of our northern frost andsnow would cool their wits. This climate is too soft. In place of buildingroofs and hunting meat, they are ever building doctrine.”

“And altering the nature of God,” Pilate corroborated sourly.“A curse on doctrine.”

“So say I,” I agreed. “If ever I get away with unaddled witsfrom this mad land, I’ll cleave through whatever man dares mention to mewhat may happen after I am dead.”

Never were such trouble makers. Everything under the sun was pious or impiousto them. They, who were so clever in hair-splitting argument, seemed incapableof grasping the Roman idea of the State. Everything political was religious;everything religious was political. Thus every procurator’s hands werefull. The Roman eagles, the Roman statues, even the votive shields of Pilate,were deliberate insults to their religion.

The Roman taking of the census was an abomination. Yet it had to be done, forit was the basis of taxation. But there it was again. Taxation by the State wasa crime against their law and God. Oh, that Law! It was not the Roman law. Itwas their law, what they called God’s law. There were the zealots, whomurdered anybody who broke this law. And for a procurator to punish a zealotcaught red-handed was to raise a riot or an insurrection.

Everything, with these strange people, was done in the name of God. There werewhat we Romans called the thaumaturgi. They worked miracles to provedoctrine. Ever has it seemed to me a witless thing to prove the multiplicationtable by turning a staff into a serpent, or even into two serpents. Yet thesethings the thaumaturgidid, and always to the excitement of the commonpeople.

Heavens, what sects and sects! Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees—a legion ofthem! No sooner did they start with a new quirk when it turned political.Coponius, procurator fourth before Pilate, had a pretty time crushing theGaulonite sedition which arose in this fashion and spread down from Gamala.

In Jerusalem, that last time I rode in, it was easy to note the increasingexcitement of the Jews. They ran about in crowds, chattering and spouting. Somewere proclaiming the end of the world. Others satisfied themselves with theimminent destruction of the Temple. And there were rank revolutionists whoannounced that Roman rule was over and the new Jewish kingdom about to begin.

Pilate, too, I noted, showed heavy anxiety. That they were giving him a hardtime of it was patent. But I will say, as you shall see, that he matched theirsubtlety with equal subtlety; and from what I saw of him I have little doubtbut what he would have confounded many a disputant in the synagogues.

“But half a legion of Romans,” he regretted to me, “and Iwould take Jerusalem by the throat . . . and then be recalled for my pains, Isuppose.”

Like me, he had not too much faith in the auxiliaries; and of Roman soldiers wehad but a scant handful.

Back again, I lodged in the palace, and to my great joy found Miriam there. Butlittle satisfaction was mine, for the talk ran long on the situation. There wasreason for this, for the city buzzed like the angry hornets’ nest it was.The fast called the Passover—a religious affair, of course—wasnear, and thousands were pouring in from the country, according to custom, tocelebrate the feast in Jerusalem. These newcomers, naturally, were allexcitable folk, else they would not be bent on such pilgrimage. The city waspacked with them, so that many camped outside the walls. As for me, I could notdistinguish how much of the ferment was due to the teachings of the wanderingfisherman, and how much of it was due to Jewish hatred for Rome.

“A tithe, no more, and maybe not so much, is due to this Jesus,”Pilate answered my query. “Look to Caiaphas and Hanan for the main causeof the excitement. They know what they are about. They are stirring it up, towhat end who can tell, except to cause me trouble.”

“Yes, it is certain that Caiaphas and Hanan are responsible,”Miriam said, “but you, Pontius Pilate, are only a Roman and do notunderstand. Were you a Jew, you would realize that there is a greaterseriousness at the bottom of it than mere dissension of the sectaries ortrouble-making for you and Rome. The high priests and Pharisees, every Jew ofplace or wealth, Philip, Antipas, myself—we are all fighting for verylife.

“This fisherman may be a madman. If so, there is a cunning in hismadness. He preaches the doctrine of the poor. He threatens our law, and ourlaw is our life, as you have learned ere this. We are jealous of our law, asyou would be jealous of the air denied your body by a throttling hand on yourthroat. It is Caiaphas and Hanan and all they stand for, or it is thefisherman. They must destroy him, else he will destroy them.”

“Is it not strange, so simple a man, a fisherman?” Pilate’swife breathed forth. “What manner of man can he be to possess such power?I would that I could see him. I would that with my own eyes I could see soremarkable a man.”

Pilate’s brows corrugated at her words, and it was clear that to theburden on his nerves was added the overwrought state of his wife’snerves.

“If you would see him, beat up the dens of the town,” Miriamlaughed spitefully. “You will find him wine-bibbing or in the company ofnameless women. Never so strange a prophet came up to Jerusalem.”

“And what harm in that?” I demanded, driven against my will to takethe part of the fisherman. “Have I not wine-guzzled a-plenty and passedstrange nights in all the provinces? The man is a man, and his ways aremen’s ways, else am I a madman, which I here deny.”

Miriam shook her head as she spoke.

“He is not mad. Worse, he is dangerous. All Ebionism is dangerous. Hewould destroy all things that are fixed. He is a revolutionist. He woulddestroy what little is left to us of the Jewish state and Temple.”

Here Pilate shook his head.

“He is not political. I have had report of him. He is a visionary. Thereis no sedition in him. He affirms the Roman tax even.”

“Still you do not understand,” Miriam persisted. “It is notwhat he plans; it is the effect, if his plans are achieved, that makes him arevolutionist. I doubt that he foresees the effect. Yet is the man a plague,and, like any plague, should be stamped out.”

“From all that I have heard, he is a good-hearted, simple man with noevil in him,” I stated.

And thereat I told of the healing of the ten lepers I had witnessed in Samariaon my way through Jericho.

Pilate’s wife sat entranced at what I told. Came to our ears distantshoutings and cries of some street crowd, and we knew the soldiers were keepingthe streets cleared.

“And you believe this wonder, Lodbrog?” Pilate demanded. “Youbelieve that in the flash of an eye the festering sores departed from thelepers?”

“I saw them healed,” I replied. “I followed them to makecertain. There was no leprosy in them.”

“But did you see them sore?—before the healing?” Pilateinsisted.

I shook my head.

“I was only told so,” I admitted. “When I saw them afterward,they had all the seeming of men who had once been lepers. They were in a daze.There was one who sat in the sun and ever searched his body and stared andstared at the smooth flesh as if unable to believe his eyes. He would notspeak, nor look at aught else than his flesh, when I questioned him. He was ina maze. He sat there in the sun and stared and stared.”

Pilate smiled contemptuously, and I noted the quiet smile on Miriam’sface was equally contemptuous. And Pilate’s wife sat as if a corpse,scarce breathing, her eyes wide and unseeing.

Spoke Ambivius: “Caiaphas holds—he told me but yesterday—thatthe fisherman claims that he will bring God down on earth and make here a newkingdom over which God will rule—”

“Which would mean the end of Roman rule,” I broke in.

“That is where Caiaphas and Hanan plot to embroil Rome,” Miriamexplained. “It is not true. It is a lie they have made.”

Pilate nodded and asked:

“Is there not somewhere in your ancient books a prophecy that the priestshere twist into the intent of this fisherman’s mind?”

To this she agreed, and gave him the citation. I relate the incident toevidence the depth of Pilate’s study of this people he strove so hard tokeep in order.

“What I have heard,” Miriam continued, “is that this Jesuspreaches the end of the world and the beginning of God’s kingdom, nothere, but in heaven.”

“I have had report of that,” Pilate said. “It is true. ThisJesus holds the justness of the Roman tax. He holds that Rome shall rule untilall rule passes away with the passing of the world. I see more clearly thetrick Hanan is playing me.”

“It is even claimed by some of his followers,” Ambiviusvolunteered, “that he is God Himself.”

“I have no report that he has so said,” Pilate replied.

“Why not?” his wife breathed. “Why not? Gods have descendedto earth before.”

“Look you,” Pilate said. “I have it by creditable report,that after this Jesus had worked some wonder whereby a multitude was fed onseveral loaves and fishes, the foolish Galileans were for making him a king.Against his will they would make him a king. To escape them he fled into themountains. No madness there. He was too wise to accept the fate they would haveforced upon him.”

“Yet that is the very trick Hanan would force upon you,” Miriamreiterated. “They claim for him that he would be king of theJews—an offence against Roman law, wherefore Rome must deal withhim.”

Pilate shrugged his shoulders.

“A king of the beggars, rather; or a king of the dreamers. He is no fool.He is visionary, but not visionary of this world’s power. All luck gowith him in the next world, for that is beyond Rome’sjurisdiction.”

“He holds that property is sin—that is what hits thePharisees,” Ambivius spoke up.

Pilate laughed heartily.

“This king of the beggars and his fellow-beggars still do respectproperty,” he explained. “For, look you, not long ago they had evena treasurer for their wealth. Judas his name was, and there were words in thathe stole from their common purse which he carried.”

“Jesus did not steal?” Pilate’s wife asked.

“No,” Pilate answered; “it was Judas, the treasurer.”

“Who was this John?” I questioned. “He was in trouble upTiberias way and Antipas executed him.”

“Another one,” Miriam answered. “He was born near Hebron. Hewas an enthusiast and a desert-dweller. Either he or his followers claimed thathe was Elijah raised from the dead. Elijah, you see, was one of our oldprophets.”

“Was he seditious?” I asked.

Pilate grinned and shook his head, then said:

“He fell out with Antipas over the matter of Herodias. John was amoralist. It is too long a story, but he paid for it with his head. No, therewas nothing political in that affair.”

“It is also claimed by some that Jesus is the Son of David,” Miriamsaid. “But it is absurd. Nobody at Nazareth believes it. You see, hiswhole family, including his married sisters, lives there and is known to all ofthem. They are a simple folk, mere common people.”

“I wish it were as simple, the report of all this complexity that I mustsend to Tiberius,” Pilate grumbled. “And now this fisherman is cometo Jerusalem, the place is packed with pilgrims ripe for any trouble, and Hananstirs and stirs the broth.”

“And before he is done he will have his way,” Miriam forecast.“He has laid the task for you, and you will perform it.”

“Which is?” Pilate queried.

“The execution of this fisherman.”

Pilate shook his head stubbornly, but his wife cried out:

“No! No! It would be a shameful wrong. The man has done no evil. He hasnot offended against Rome.”

She looked beseechingly to Pilate, who continued to shake his head.

“Let them do their own beheading, as Antipas did,” he growled.“The fisherman counts for nothing; but I shall be no catspaw to theirschemes. If they must destroy him, they must destroy him. That is theiraffair.”

“But you will not permit it,” cried Pilate’s wife.

“A pretty time would I have explaining to Tiberius if Iinterfered,” was his reply.

“No matter what happens,” said Miriam, “I can see you writingexplanations, and soon; for Jesus is already come up to Jerusalem and a numberof his fishermen with him.”

Pilate showed the irritation this information caused him.

“I have no interest in his movements,” he pronounced. “I hopenever to see him.”

“Trust Hanan to find him for you,” Miriam replied, “and tobring him to your gate.”

Pilate shrugged his shoulders, and there the talk ended. Pilate’s wife,nervous and overwrought, must claim Miriam to her apartments, so that nothingremained for me but to go to bed and doze off to the buzz and murmur of thecity of madmen.

Events moved rapidly. Over night the white heat of the city had scorched uponitself. By midday, when I rode forth with half a dozen of my men, the streetswere packed, and more reluctant than ever were the folk to give way before me.If looks could kill I should have been a dead man that day. Openly they spat atsight of me, and, everywhere arose snarls and cries.

Less was I a thing of wonder, and more was I the thing hated in that I wore thehated harness of Rome. Had it been any other city, I should have given commandto my men to lay the flats of their swords on those snarling fanatics. But thiswas Jerusalem, at fever heat, and these were a people unable in thought todivorce the idea of State from the idea of God.

Hanan the Sadducee had done his work well. No matter what he and the Sanhedrimbelieved of the true inwardness of the situation, it was clear this rabble hadbeen well tutored to believe that Rome was at the bottom of it.

I encountered Miriam in the press. She was on foot, attended only by a woman.It was no time in such turbulence for her to be abroad garbed as became herstation. Through her sister she was indeed sister-in-law to Antipas for whomfew bore love. So she was dressed discreetly, her face covered, so that shemight pass as any Jewish woman of the lower orders. But not to my eye could shehide that fine stature of her, that carriage and walk, so different from otherwomen’s, of which I had already dreamed more than once.

Few and quick were the words we were able to exchange, for the way jammed onthe moment, and soon my men and horses were being pressed and jostled. Miriamwas sheltered in an angle of house-wall.

“Have they got the fisherman yet?” I asked.

“No; but he is just outside the wall. He has ridden up to Jerusalem on anass, with a multitude before and behind; and some, poor dupes, have hailed himas he passed as King of Israel. That finally is the pretext with which Hananwill compel Pilate. Truly, though not yet taken, the sentence is alreadywritten. This fisherman is a dead man.”

“But Pilate will not arrest him,” I defended. Miriam shook herhead.

“Hanan will attend to that. They will bring him before the Sanhedrim. Thesentence will be death. They may stone him.”

“But the Sanhedrim has not the right to execute,” I contended.

“Jesus is not a Roman,” she replied. “He is a Jew. By the lawof the Talmud he is guilty of death, for he has blasphemed against thelaw.”

Still I shook my head.

“The Sanhedrim has not the right.”

“Pilate is willing that it should take that right.”

“But it is a fine question of legality,” I insisted. “Youknow what the Romans are in such matters.”

“Then will Hanan avoid the question,” she smiled, “bycompelling Pilate to crucify him. In either event it will be well.”

A surging of the mob was sweeping our horses along and grinding our kneestogether. Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse recoil and halfrear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man screaming and the snarlingmenace from all about rising to a roar. But my head was over my shoulder as Icalled back to Miriam:

“You are hard on a man you have said yourself is without evil.”

“I am hard upon the evil that will come of him if he lives,” shereplied.

Scarcely did I catch her words, for a man sprang in, seizing my bridle-rein andleg and struggling to unhorse me. With my open palm, leaning forward, I smotehim full upon cheek and jaw. My hand covered the face of him, and a hearty willof weight was in the blow. The dwellers in Jerusalem are not used toman’s buffets. I have often wondered since if I broke the fellow’sneck.

Next I saw Miriam was the following day. I met her in the court ofPilate’s palace. She seemed in a dream. Scarce her eyes saw me. Scarceher wits embraced my identity. So strange was she, so in daze and amaze andfar-seeing were her eyes, that I was reminded of the lepers I had seen healedin Samaria.

She became herself by an effort, but only her outward self. In her eyes was amessage unreadable. Never before had I seen woman’s eyes so.

She would have passed me ungreeted had I not confronted her way. She paused andmurmured words mechanically, but all the while her eyes dreamed through me andbeyond me with the largeness of the vision that filled them.

“I have seen Him, Lodbrog,” she whispered. “I have seenHim.”

“The gods grant that he is not so ill-affected by the sight of you,whoever he may be,” I laughed.

She took no notice of my poor-timed jest, and her eyes remained full withvision, and she would have passed on had I not again blocked her way.

“Who is this he?” I demanded. “Some man raised from the deadto put such strange light in your eyes?”

“One who has raised others from the dead,” she replied.“Truly I believe that He, this Jesus, has raised the dead. He is thePrince of Light, the Son of God. I have seen Him. Truly I believe that He isthe Son of God.”

Little could I glean from her words, save that she had met this wanderingfisherman and been swept away by his folly. For surely this Miriam was not theMiriam who had branded him a plague and demanded that he be stamped out as anyplague.

“He has charmed you,” I cried angrily.

Her eyes seemed to moisten and grow deeper as she gave confirmation.

“Oh, Lodbrog, His is charm beyond all thinking, beyond all describing.But to look upon Him is to know that here is the all-soul of goodness and ofcompassion. I have seen Him. I have heard Him. I shall give all I have to thepoor, and I shall follow Him.”

Such was her certitude that I accepted it fully, as I had accepted theamazement of the lepers of Samaria staring at their smooth flesh; and I wasbitter that so great a woman should be so easily wit-addled by a vagrantwonder-worker.

“Follow him,” I sneered. “Doubtless you will wear a crownwhen he wins to his kingdom.”

She nodded affirmation, and I could have struck her in the face for her folly.I drew aside, and as she moved slowly on she murmured:

“His kingdom is not here. He is the Son of David. He is the Son of God.He is whatever He has said, or whatever has been said of Him that is good andgreat.”

“A wise man of the East,” I found Pilate chuckling. “He is athinker, this unlettered fisherman. I have sought more deeply into him. I havefresh report. He has no need of wonder-workings. He out-sophisticates the mostsophistical of them. They have laid traps, and He has laughed at their traps.Look you. Listen to this.”

Whereupon he told me how Jesus had confounded his confounders when they broughtto him for judgment a woman taken in adultery.

“And the tax,” Pilate exulted on. “‘To Cæsar whatis Cæsar’s, to God what is God’s,’ was his answer tothem. That was Hanan’s trick, and Hanan is confounded. At last has thereappeared one Jew who understands our Roman conception of the State.”

Next I saw Pilate’s wife. Looking into her eyes I knew, on the instant,after having seen Miriam’s eyes, that this tense, distraught woman hadlikewise seen the fisherman.

“The Divine is within Him,” she murmured to me. “There iswithin Him a personal awareness of the indwelling of God.”

“Is he God?” I queried, gently, for say something I must.

She shook her head.

“I do not know. He has not said. But this I know: of such stuff gods aremade.”

“A charmer of women,” was my privy judgment, as I leftPilate’s wife walking in dreams and visions.

The last days are known to all of you who read these lines, and it was in thoselast days that I learned that this Jesus was equally a charmer of men. Hecharmed Pilate. He charmed me.

After Hanan had sent Jesus to Caiaphas, and the Sanhedrim, assembled inCaiaphas’s house, had condemned Jesus to death, Jesus, escorted by ahowling mob, was sent to Pilate for execution.

Now, for his own sake and for Rome’s sake, Pilate did not want to executehim. Pilate was little interested in the fisherman and greatly interested inpeace and order. What cared Pilate for a man’s life?—for manymen’s lives? The school of Rome was iron, and the governors sent out byRome to rule conquered peoples were likewise iron. Pilate thought and acted ingovernmental abstractions. Yet, look: when Pilate went out scowling to meet themob that had fetched the fisherman, he fell immediately under the charm of theman.

I was present. I know. It was the first time Pilate had ever seen him. Pilatewent out angry. Our soldiers were in readiness to clear the court of its noisyvermin. And immediately Pilate laid eyes on the fisherman Pilate wassubdued—nay, was solicitous. He disclaimed jurisdiction, demanded thatthey should judge the fisherman by their law and deal with him by their law,since the fisherman was a Jew and not a Roman. Never were there Jews soobedient to Roman rule. They cried out that it was unlawful, under Rome, forthem to put any man to death. Yet Antipas had beheaded John and come to nogrief of it.

And Pilate left them in the court, open under the sky, and took Jesus aloneinto the judgment hall. What happened therein I know not, save that when Pilateemerged he was changed. Whereas before he had been disinclined to executebecause he would not be made a catspaw to Hanan, he was now disinclined toexecute because of regard for the fisherman. His effort now was to save thefisherman. And all the while the mob cried: “Crucify him! Crucifyhim!”

You, my reader, know the sincerity of Pilate’s effort. You know how hetried to befool the mob, first by mocking Jesus as a harmless fool; and secondby offering to release him according to the custom of releasing one prisoner attime of the Passover. And you know how the priests’ quick whisperings ledthe mob to cry out for the release of the murderer Bar-Abba.

In vain Pilate struggled against the fate being thrust upon him by the priests.By sneer and jibe he hoped to make a farce of the transaction. He laughinglycalled Jesus the King of the Jews and ordered him to be scourged. His hope wasthat all would end in laughter and in laughter be forgotten.

I am glad to say that no Roman soldiers took part in what followed. It was thesoldiers of the auxiliaries who crowned and cloaked Jesus, put the reed ofsovereignty in his hand, and, kneeling, hailed him King of the Jews. Althoughit failed, it was a play to placate. And I, looking on, learned the charm ofJesus. Despite the cruel mockery of his situation, he was regal. And I wasquiet as I gazed. It was his own quiet that went into me. I was soothed andsatisfied, and was without bewilderment. This thing had to be. All was well.The serenity of Jesus in the heart of the tumult and pain became my serenity. Iwas scarce moved by any thought to save him.

On the other hand, I had gazed on too many wonders of the human in my wild andvaried years to be affected to foolish acts by this particular wonder. I wasall serenity. I had no word to say. I had no judgment to pass. I knew thatthings were occurring beyond my comprehension, and that they must occur.

Still Pilate struggled. The tumult increased. The cry for blood rang throughthe court, and all were clamouring for crucifixion. Again Pilate went back intothe judgment hall. His effort at a farce having failed, he attempted todisclaim jurisdiction. Jesus was not of Jerusalem. He was a born subject ofAntipas, and to Antipas Pilate was for sending Jesus.

But the uproar was by now communicating itself to the city. Our troops outsidethe palace were being swept away in the vast street mob. Rioting had begun thatin the flash of an eye could turn into civil war and revolution. My own twentylegionaries were close to hand and in readiness. They loved the fanatic Jews nomore than did I, and would have welcomed my command to clear the court withnaked steel.

When Pilate came out again his words for Antipas’ jurisdiction could notbe heard, for all the mob was shouting that Pilate was a traitor, that if helet the fisherman go he was no friend of Tiberius. Close before me, as I leanedagainst the wall, a mangy, bearded, long-haired fanatic sprang up and downunceasingly, and unceasingly chanted: “Tiberius is emperor; there is noking! Tiberius is emperor; there is no king!” I lost patience. Theman’s near noise was an offence. Lurching sidewise, as if by accident, Iground my foot on his to a terrible crushing. The fool seemed not to notice. Hewas too mad to be aware of the pain, and he continued to chant: “Tiberiusis emperor; there is no king!”

I saw Pilate hesitate. Pilate, the Roman governor, for the moment was Pilatethe man, with a man’s anger against the miserable creatures clamouringfor the blood of so sweet and simple, brave and good a spirit as this Jesus.

I saw Pilate hesitate. His gaze roved to me, as if he were about to signal tome to let loose; and I half-started forward, releasing the mangled foot undermy foot. I was for leaping to complete that half-formed wish of Pilate and tosweep away in blood and cleanse the court of the wretched scum that howled init.

It was not Pilate’s indecision that decided me. It was this Jesus thatdecided Pilate and me. This Jesus looked at me. He commanded me. I tell youthis vagrant fisherman, this wandering preacher, this piece of driftage fromGalilee, commanded me. No word he uttered. Yet his command was there,unmistakable as a trumpet call. And I stayed my foot, and held my hand, for whowas I to thwart the will and way of so greatly serene and sweetly sure a man asthis? And as I stayed I knew all the charm of him—all that in him hadcharmed Miriam and Pilate’s wife, that had charmed Pilate himself.

You know the rest. Pilate washed his hands of Jesus’ blood, and therioters took his blood upon their own heads. Pilate gave orders for thecrucifixion. The mob was content, and content, behind the mob, were Caiaphas,Hanan, and the Sanhedrim. Not Pilate, not Tiberius, not Roman soldierscrucified Jesus. It was the priestly rulers and priestly politicians ofJerusalem. I saw. I know. And against his own best interests Pilate would havesaved Jesus, as I would have, had it not been that no other than Jesus himselfwilled that he was not to be saved.

Yes, and Pilate had his last sneer at this people he detested. In Hebrew,Greek, and Latin he had a writing affixed to Jesus’ cross which read,“The King of the Jews.” In vain the priests complained. It was onthis very pretext that they had forced Pilate’s hand; and by thispretext, a scorn and insult to the Jewish race, Pilate abided. Pilate executedan abstraction that had never existed in the real. The abstraction was a cheatand a lie manufactured in the priestly mind. Neither the priests nor Pilatebelieved it. Jesus denied it. That abstraction was “The King of theJews.”

The storm was over in the courtyard. The excitement had simmered down.Revolution had been averted. The priests were content, the mob was satisfied,and Pilate and I were well disgusted and weary with the whole affair. And yetfor him and me was more and most immediate storm. Before Jesus was taken awayone of Miriam’s women called me to her. And I saw Pilate, summoned by oneof his wife’s women, likewise obey.

“Oh, Lodbrog, I have heard,” Miriam met me. We were alone, and shewas close to me, seeking shelter and strength within my arms. “Pilate hasweakened. He is going to crucify Him. But there is time. Your own men areready. Ride with them. Only a centurion and a handful of soldiers are with Him.They have not yet started. As soon as they do start, follow. They must notreach Golgotha. But wait until they are outside the city wall. Then countermandthe order. Take an extra horse for Him to ride. The rest is easy. Ride awayinto Syria with Him, or into Idumæa, or anywhere so long as He besaved.”

She concluded with her arms around my neck, her face upturned to mine andtemptingly close, her eyes greatly solemn and greatly promising.

Small wonder I was slow of speech. For the moment there was but one thought inmy brain. After all the strange play I had seen played out, to have this comeupon me! I did not misunderstand. The thing was clear. A great woman was mineif . . . if I betrayed Rome. For Pilate was governor, his order had gone forth;and his voice was the voice of Rome.

As I have said, it was the woman of her, her sheer womanliness, that betrayedMiriam and me in the end. Always she had been so clear, so reasonable, socertain of herself and me, so that I had forgotten, or, rather, I there learnedonce again the eternal lesson learned in all lives, that woman is ever woman .. . that in great decisive moments woman does not reason but feels; that thelast sanctuary and innermost pulse to conduct is in woman’s heart and notin woman’s head.

Miriam misunderstood my silence, for her body moved softly within my arms asshe added, as if in afterthought:

“Take two spare horses, Lodbrog. I shall ride the other . . . with you .. . with you, away over the world, wherever you may ride.”

It was a bribe of kings; it was an act, paltry and contemptible, that wasdemanded of me in return. Still I did not speak. It was not that I was inconfusion or in any doubt. I was merely sad—greatly and suddenly sad, inthat I knew I held in my arms what I would never hold again.

“There is but one man in Jerusalem this day who can save Him,” sheurged, “and that man is you, Lodbrog.”

Because I did not immediately reply she shook me, as if in impulse to clarifywits she considered addled. She shook me till my harness rattled.

“Speak, Lodbrog, speak!” she commanded. “You are strong andunafraid. You are all man. I know you despise the vermin who would destroy Him.You, you alone can save Him. You have but to say the word and the thing isdone; and I will well love you and always love you for the thing you havedone.”

“I am a Roman,” I said slowly, knowing full well that with thewords I gave up all hope of her.

“You are a man-slave of Tiberius, a hound of Rome,” she flamed,“but you owe Rome nothing, for you are not a Roman. You yellow giants ofthe north are not Romans.”

“The Romans are the elder brothers of us younglings of the north,”I answered. “Also, I wear the harness and I eat the bread of Rome.”Gently I added: “But why all this fuss and fury for a mere man’slife? All men must die. Simple and easy it is to die. To-day, or a hundredyears, it little matters. Sure we are, all of us, of the same event in theend.”

Quick she was, and alive with passion to save as she thrilled within my arms.

“You do not understand, Lodbrog. This is no mere man. I tell you this isa man beyond men—a living God, not of men, but over men.”

I held her closely and knew that I was renouncing all the sweet woman of her asI said:

“We are man and woman, you and I. Our life is of this world. Of theseother worlds is all a madness. Let these mad dreamers go the way of theirdreaming. Deny them not what they desire above all things, above meat and wine,above song and battle, even above love of woman. Deny them not theirhearts’ desires that draw them across the dark of the grave to theirdreams of lives beyond this world. Let them pass. But you and I abide here inall the sweet we have discovered of each other. Quickly enough will come thedark, and you depart for your coasts of sun and flowers, and I for the roaringtable of Valhalla.”

“No! no!” she cried, half-tearing herself away. “You do notunderstand. All of greatness, all of goodness, all of God are in this man whois more than man; and it is a shameful death to die. Only slaves and thieves sodie. He is neither slave nor thief. He is an immortal. He is God. Truly I tellyou He is God.”

“He is immortal you say,” I contended. “Then to die to-day onGolgotha will not shorten his immortality by a hair’s breadth in the spanof time. He is a god you say. Gods cannot die. From all I have been told ofthem, it is certain that gods cannot die.”

“Oh!” she cried. “You will not understand. You are only agreat giant thing of flesh.”

“Is it not said that this event was prophesied of old time?” Iqueried, for I had been learning from the Jews what I deemed their subtletiesof thinking.

“Yes, yes,” she agreed, “the Messianic prophecies. This isthe Messiah.”

“Then who am I,” I asked, “to make liars of the prophets? tomake of the Messiah a false Messiah? Is the prophecy of your people so feeble athing that I, a stupid stranger, a yellow northling in the Roman harness, cangive the lie to prophecy and compel to be unfulfilled—the very thingwilled by the gods and foretold by the wise men?”

“You do not understand,” she repeated.

“I understand too well,” I replied. “Am I greater than thegods that I may thwart the will of the gods? Then are gods vain things and theplaythings of men. I am a man. I, too, bow to the gods, to all gods, for I dobelieve in all gods, else how came all gods to be?”

She flung herself so that my hungry arms were empty of her, and we stood apartand listened to the uproar of the street as Jesus and the soldiers emerged andstarted on their way. And my heart was sore in that so great a woman could beso foolish. She would save God. She would make herself greater than God.

“You do not love me,” she said slowly, and slowly grew in her eyesa promise of herself too deep and wide for any words.

“I love you beyond your understanding, it seems,” was my reply.“I am proud to love you, for I know I am worthy to love you and am worthall love you may give me. But Rome is my foster-mother, and were I untrue toher, of little pride, of little worth would be my love for you.”

The uproar that followed about Jesus and the soldiers died away along thestreet. And when there was no further sound of it Miriam turned to go, withneither word nor look for me.

I knew one last rush of mad hunger for her. I sprang and seized her. I wouldhorse her and ride away with her and my men into Syria away from this cursedcity of folly. She struggled. I crushed her. She struck me on the face, and Icontinued to hold and crush her, for the blows were sweet. And there she ceasedto struggle. She became cold and motionless, so that I knew there was nowoman’s love that my arms girdled. For me she was dead. Slowly I let goof her. Slowly she stepped back. As if she did not see me she turned and wentaway across the quiet room, and without looking back passed through thehangings and was gone.

I, Ragnar Lodbrog, never came to read nor write. But in my days I have listenedto great talk. As I see it now, I never learned great talk, such as that of theJews, learned in their law, nor such as that of the Romans, learned in theirphilosophy and in the philosophy of the Greeks. Yet have I talked in simplicityand straightness, as a man may well talk who has lived life from the ships ofTostig Lodbrog and the roof of Brunanbuhr across the world to Jerusalem andback again. And straight talk and simple I gave Sulpicius Quirinius, when Iwent away into Syria to report to him of the various matters that had been atissue in Jerusalem.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Suspended animation is nothing new, not alone in the vegetable world and in thelower forms of animal life, but in the highly evolved, complex organism of manhimself. A cataleptic trance is a cataleptic trance, no matter how induced.From time immemorial the fakir of India has been able voluntarily to inducesuch states in himself. It is an old trick of the fakirs to have themselvesburied alive. Other men, in similar trances, have misled the physicians, whopronounced them dead and gave the orders that put them alive under the ground.

As my jacket experiences in San Quentin continued I dwelt not a little on thisproblem of suspended animation. I remembered having read that the far northernSiberian peasants made a practice of hibernating through the long winters justas bears and other wild animals do. Some scientist studied these peasants andfound that during these periods of the “long sleep” respiration anddigestion practically ceased, and that the heart was at so low tension as todefy detection by ordinary layman’s examination.

In such a trance the bodily processes are so near to absolute suspension thatthe air and food consumed are practically negligible. On this reasoning,partly, was based my defiance of Warden Atherton and Doctor Jackson. It wasthus that I dared challenge them to give me a hundred days in the jacket. Andthey did not dare accept my challenge.

Nevertheless I did manage to do without water, as well as food, during myten-days’ bouts. I found it an intolerable nuisance, in the deeps ofdream across space and time, to be haled back to the sordid present by adespicable prison doctor pressing water to my lips. So I warned Doctor Jackson,first, that I intended doing without water while in the jacket; and next, thatI would resist any efforts to compel me to drink.

Of course we had our little struggle; but after several attempts Doctor Jacksongave it up. Thereafter the space occupied in Darrell Standing’s life by ajacket-bout was scarcely more than a few ticks of the clock. Immediately I waslaced I devoted myself to inducing the little death. From practice it becamesimple and easy. I suspended animation and consciousness so quickly that Iescaped the really terrible suffering consequent upon suspending circulation.Most quickly came the dark. And the next I, Darrell Standing, knew was thelight again, the faces bending over me as I was unlaced, and the knowledge thatten days had passed in the twinkling of an eye.

But oh, the wonder and the glory of those ten days spent by me elsewhere! Thejourneys through the long chain of existences! The long darks, the growings ofnebulous lights, and the fluttering apparitional selves that dawned through thegrowing light!

Much have I pondered upon the relation of these other selves to me, and of therelation of the total experience to the modern doctrine of evolution. I cantruly say that my experience is in complete accord with our conclusions ofevolution.

I, like any man, am a growth. I did not begin when I was born nor when I wasconceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads ofmillenniums. All these experiences of all these lives, and of countless otherlives, have gone to the making of the soul-stuff or the spirit-stuff that is I.Don’t you see? They are the stuff of me. Matter does not remember, forspirit is memory. I am this spirit compounded of the memories of my endlessincarnations.

Whence came in me, Darrell Standing, the red pulse of wrath that has wrecked mylife and put me in the condemned cells? Surely it did not come into being, wasnot created, when the babe that was to be Darrell Standing was conceived. Thatold red wrath is far older than my mother, far older than the oldest and firstmother of men. My mother, at my inception, did not create that passionate lackof fear that is mine. Not all the mothers of the whole evolution of menmanufactured fear or fearlessness in men. Far back beyond the first men werefear and fearlessness, love, hatred, anger, all the emotions, growing,developing, becoming the stuff that was to become men.

I am all of my past, as every protagonist of the Mendelian law must agree. Allmy previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. My every modeof action, heat of passion, flicker of thought is shaded, toned,infinitesimally shaded and toned, by that vast array of other selves thatpreceded me and went into the making of me.

The stuff of life is plastic. At the same time this stuff never forgets. Mouldit as you will, the old memories persist. All manner of horses, from ton Shiresto dwarf Shetlands, have been bred up and down from those first wild poniesdomesticated by primitive man. Yet to this day man has not bred out the kick ofthe horse. And I, who am composed of those first horse-tamers, have not hadtheir red anger bred out of me.

I am man born of woman. My days are few, but the stuff of me is indestructible.I have been woman born of woman. I have been a woman and borne my children. AndI shall be born again. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born; and yetthe stupid dolts about me think that by stretching my neck with a rope theywill make me cease.

Yes, I shall be hanged . . . soon. This is the end of June. In a little whilethey will try to befool me. They will take me from this cell to the bath,according to the prison custom of the weekly bath. But I shall not be broughtback to this cell. I shall be dressed outright in fresh clothes and be taken tothe death-cell. There they will place the death-watch on me. Night or day,waking or sleeping, I shall be watched. I shall not be permitted to put my headunder the blankets for fear I may anticipate the State by choking myself.

Always bright light will blaze upon me. And then, when they have well weariedme, they will lead me out one morning in a shirt without a collar and drop methrough the trap. Oh, I know. The rope they will do it with is well-stretched.For many a month now the hangman of Folsom has been stretching it with heavyweights so as to take the spring out of it.

Yes, I shall drop far. They have cunning tables of calculations, like interesttables, that show the distance of the drop in relation to the victim’sweight. I am so emaciated that they will have to drop me far in order to breakmy neck. And then the onlookers will take their hats off, and as I swing thedoctors will press their ears to my chest to count my fading heart-beats, andat last they will say that I am dead.

It is grotesque. It is the ridiculous effrontery of men-maggots who think theycan kill me. I cannot die. I am immortal, as they are immortal; the differenceis that I know it and they do not know it.

Pah! I was once a hangman, or an executioner, rather. Well I remember it! Iused the sword, not the rope. The sword is the braver way, although all waysare equally inefficacious. Forsooth, as if spirit could be thrust through withsteel or throttled by a rope!

CHAPTER XIX.

Next to Oppenheimer and Morrell, who rotted with me through the years ofdarkness, I was considered the most dangerous prisoner in San Quentin. On theother hand I was considered the toughest—tougher even than Oppenheimerand Morrell. Of course by toughness I mean enduringness. Terrible as were theattempts to break them in body and in spirit, more terrible were the attemptsto break me. And I endured. Dynamite or curtains had been WardenAtherton’s ultimatum. And in the end it was neither. I could not producethe dynamite, and Warden Atherton could not induce the curtains.

It was not because my body was enduring, but because my spirit was enduring.And it was because, in earlier existences, my spirit had been wrought tosteel-hardness by steel-hard experiences. There was one experience that forlong was a sort of nightmare to me. It had neither beginning nor end. Always Ifound myself on a rocky, surge-battered islet so low that in storms the saltspray swept over its highest point. It rained much. I lived in a lair andsuffered greatly, for I was without fire and lived on uncooked meat.

Always I suffered. It was the middle of some experience to which I could get noclue. And since, when I went into the little death I had no power of directingmy journeys, I often found myself reliving this particularly detestableexperience. My only happy moments were when the sun shone, at which times Ibasked on the rocks and thawed out the almost perpetual chill I suffered.

My one diversion was an oar and a jackknife. Upon this oar I spent much time,carving minute letters and cutting a notch for each week that passed. Therewere many notches. I sharpened the knife on a flat piece of rock, and no barberwas ever more careful of his favourite razor than was I of that knife. Nor didever a miser prize his treasure as did I prize the knife. It was as precious asmy life. In truth, it was my life.

By many repetitions, I managed to bring back out of the jacket the legend thatwas carved on the oar. At first I could bring but little. Later, it greweasier, a matter of piecing portions together. And at last I had the thingcomplete. Here it is:

This is to acquaint the person into whose hands this Oar may fall, that DanielFoss, a native of Elkton, in Maryland, one of the United States of America, andwho sailed from the port of Philadelphia, in 1809, on board the brigNegociator, bound to the Friendly Islands, was cast upon this desolate islandthe February following, where he erected a hut and lived a number of years,subsisting on seals—he being the last who survived of the crew of saidbrig, which ran foul of an island of ice, and foundered on the 25th Nov. 1809.

There it was, quite clear. By this means I learned a lot about myself. Onevexed point, however, I never did succeed in clearing up. Was this islandsituated in the far South Pacific or the far South Atlantic? I do not knowenough of sailing-ship tracks to be certain whether the brig Negociatorwould sail for the Friendly Islands via Cape Horn or via the Cape of Good Hope.To confess my own ignorance, not until after I was transferred to Folsom did Ilearn in which ocean were the Friendly Islands. The Japanese murderer, whom Ihave mentioned before, had been a sailmaker on board the Arthur Sewall ships,and he told me that the probable sailing course would be by way of the Cape ofGood Hope. If this were so, then the dates of sailing from Philadelphia and ofbeing wrecked would easily determine which ocean. Unfortunately, the sailingdate is merely 1809. The wreck might as likely have occurred in one ocean asthe other.

Only once did I, in my trances, get a hint of the period preceding the timespent on the island. This begins at the moment of the brig’s collisionwith the iceberg, and I shall narrate it, if for no other reason, at least togive an account of my curiously cool and deliberate conduct. This conduct atthis time, as you shall see, was what enabled me in the end to survive alone ofall the ship’s company.

I was awakened, in my bunk in the forecastle, by a terrific crash. In fact, aswas true of the other six sleeping men of the watch below, awaking and leapingfrom bunk to floor were simultaneous. We knew what had happened. The otherswaited for nothing, rushing only partly clad upon deck. But I knew what toexpect, and I did wait. I knew that if we escaped at all, it would be by thelongboat. No man could swim in so freezing a sea. And no man, thinly clad,could live long in the open boat. Also, I knew just about how long it wouldtake to launch the boat.

So, by the light of the wildly swinging slush-lamp, to the tumult on deck andto cries of “She’s sinking!” I proceeded to ransack mysea-chest for suitable garments. Also, since they would never use them again, Iransacked the sea chests of my shipmates. Working quickly but collectedly, Itook nothing but the warmest and stoutest of clothes. I put on the four bestwoollen shirts the forecastle boasted, three pairs of pants, and three pairs ofthick woollen socks. So large were my feet thus incased that I could not put onmy own good boots. Instead, I thrust on Nicholas Wilton’s new boots,which were larger and even stouter than mine. Also, I put on JeremyNalor’s pea jacket over my own, and, outside of both, put on SethRichard’s thick canvas coat which I remembered he had fresh-oiled only ashort while previous.

Two pairs of heavy mittens, John Robert’s muffler which his mother hadknitted for him, and Joseph Dawes’ beaver cap atop my own, both bearingear-and neck-flaps, completed my outfitting. The shouts that the brig wassinking redoubled, but I took a minute longer to fill my pockets with all theplug tobacco I could lay hands on. Then I climbed out on deck, and not a momenttoo soon.

The moon, bursting through a crack of cloud, showed a bleak and savage picture.Everywhere was wrecked gear, and everywhere was ice. The sails, ropes, andspars of the mainmast, which was still standing, were fringed with icicles; andthere came over me a feeling almost of relief in that never again should I haveto pull and haul on the stiff tackles and hammer ice so that the frozen ropescould run through the frozen shivs. The wind, blowing half a gale, cut with thesharpness that is a sign of the proximity of icebergs; and the big seas werebitter cold to look upon in the moonlight.

The longboat was lowering away to larboard, and I saw men, struggling on theice-sheeted deck with barrels of provisions, abandon the food in their haste toget away. In vain Captain Nicholl strove with them. A sea, breaching acrossfrom windward, settled the matter and sent them leaping over the rail in heaps.I gained the captain’s shoulder, and, holding on to him, I shouted in hisear that if he would board the boat and prevent the men from casting off, Iwould attend to the provisioning.

Little time was given me, however. Scarcely had I managed, helped by the secondmate, Aaron Northrup, to lower away half-a-dozen barrels and kegs, when allcried from the boat that they were casting off. Good reason they had. Down uponus from windward was drifting a towering ice-mountain, while to leeward, closeaboard, was another ice-mountain upon which we were driving.

Quicker in his leap was Aaron Northrup. I delayed a moment, even as the boatwas shoving away, in order to select a spot amidships where the men werethickest, so that their bodies might break my fall. I was not minded to embarkwith a broken member on so hazardous a voyage in the longboat. That the menmight have room at the oars, I worked my way quickly aft into the sternsheets.Certainly, I had other and sufficient reasons. It would be more comfortable inthe sternsheets than in the narrow bow. And further, it would be well to benear the afterguard in whatever troubles that were sure to arise under suchcircumstances in the days to come.

In the sternsheets were the mate, Walter Drake, the surgeon, Arnold Bentham,Aaron Northrup, and Captain Nicholl, who was steering. The surgeon was bendingover Northrup, who lay in the bottom groaning. Not so fortunate had he been inhis ill-considered leap, for he had broken his right leg at the hip joint.

There was little time for him then, however, for we were labouring in a heavysea directly between the two ice islands that were rushing together. NicholasWilton, at the stroke oar, was cramped for room; so I better stowed thebarrels, and, kneeling and facing him, was able to add my weight to the oar.For’ard, I could see John Roberts straining at the bow oar. Pulling onhis shoulders from behind, Arthur Haskins and the boy, Benny Hardwater, addedtheir weight to his. In fact, so eager were all hands to help that more thanone was thus in the way and cluttered the movements of the rowers.

It was close work, but we went clear by a matter of a hundred yards, so that Iwas able to turn my head and see the untimely end of the Negociator. Shewas caught squarely in the pinch and she was squeezed between the ice as asugar plum might be squeezed between thumb and forefinger of a boy. In theshouting of the wind and the roar of water we heard nothing, although the crackof the brig’s stout ribs and deckbeams must have been enough to waken ahamlet on a peaceful night.

Silently, easily, the brig’s sides squeezed together, the deck bulged up,and the crushed remnant dropped down and was gone, while where she had been wasoccupied by the grinding conflict of the ice-islands. I felt regret at thedestruction of this haven against the elements, but at the same time was wellpleased at thought of my snugness inside my four shirts and three coats.

Yet it proved a bitter night, even for me. I was the warmest clad in the boat.What the others must have suffered I did not care to dwell upon over much. Forfear that we might meet up with more ice in the darkness, we bailed and heldthe boat bow-on to the seas. And continually, now with one mitten, now with theother, I rubbed my nose that it might not freeze. Also, with memories lively inme of the home circle in Elkton, I prayed to God.

In the morning we took stock. To commence with, all but two or three hadsuffered frost-bite. Aaron Northrup, unable to move because of his broken hip,was very bad. It was the surgeon’s opinion that both of Northrup’sfeet were hopelessly frozen.

The longboat was deep and heavy in the water, for it was burdened by the entireship’s company of twenty-one. Two of these were boys. Benny Hardwater wasa bare thirteen, and Lish Dickery, whose family was near neighbour to mine inElkton, was just turned sixteen. Our provisions consisted of threehundred-weight of beef and two hundred-weight of pork. The half-dozen loaves ofbrine-pulped bread, which the cook had brought, did not count. Then there werethree small barrels of water and one small keg of beer.

Captain Nicholl frankly admitted that in this uncharted ocean he had noknowledge of any near land. The one thing to do was to run for more clementclimate, which we accordingly did, setting our small sail and steeringquartering before the fresh wind to the north-east.

The food problem was simple arithmetic. We did not count Aaron Northrup, for weknew he would soon be gone. At a pound per day, our five hundred pounds wouldlast us twenty-five days; at half a pound, it would last fifty. So half a poundhad it. I divided and issued the meat under the captain’s eyes, andmanaged it fairly enough, God knows, although some of the men grumbled from thefirst. Also, from time to time I made fair division among the men of the plugtobacco I had stowed in my many pockets—a thing which I could not butregret, especially when I knew it was being wasted on this man and that who Iwas certain could not live a day more, or, at best, two days or three.

For we began to die soon in the open boat. Not to starvation but to the killingcold and exposure were those earlier deaths due. It was a matter of thesurvival of the toughest and the luckiest. I was tough by constitution, andlucky inasmuch as I was warmly clad and had not broken my leg like AaronNorthrup. Even so, so strong was he that, despite being the first to beseverely frozen, he was days in passing. Vance Hathaway was the first. We foundhim in the gray of dawn crouched doubled in the bow and frozen stiff. The boy,Lish Dickery, was the second to go. The other boy, Benny Hardwater, lasted tenor a dozen days.

So bitter was it in the boat that our water and beer froze solid, and it was adifficult task justly to apportion the pieces I broke off with Northrup’sclaspknife. These pieces we put in our mouths and sucked till they melted.Also, on occasion of snow-squalls, we had all the snow we desired. All of whichwas not good for us, causing a fever of inflammation to attack our mouths sothat the membranes were continually dry and burning. And there was no allayinga thirst so generated. To suck more ice or snow was merely to aggravate theinflammation. More than anything else, I think it was this that caused thedeath of Lish Dickery. He was out of his head and raving for twenty-four hoursbefore he died. He died babbling for water, and yet he did not die for need ofwater. I resisted as much as possible the temptation to suck ice, contentingmyself with a shred of tobacco in my cheek, and made out with fair comfort.

We stripped all clothing from our dead. Stark they came into the world, andstark they passed out over the side of the longboat and down into the darkfreezing ocean. Lots were cast for the clothes. This was by CaptainNicholl’s command, in order to prevent quarrelling.

It was no time for the follies of sentiment. There was not one of us who didnot know secret satisfaction at the occurrence of each death. Luckiest of allwas Israel Stickney in casting lots, so that in the end, when he passed, he wasa veritable treasure trove of clothing. It gave a new lease of life to thesurvivors.

We continued to run to the north-east before the fresh westerlies, but ourquest for warmer weather seemed vain. Ever the spray froze in the bottom of theboat, and I still chipped beer and drinking water with Northrup’s knife.My own knife I reserved. It was of good steel, with a keen edge and stoutlyfashioned, and I did not care to peril it in such manner.

By the time half our company was overboard, the boat had a reasonably highfreeboard and was less ticklish to handle in the gusts. Likewise there was moreroom for a man to stretch out comfortably.

A source of continual grumbling was the food. The captain, the mate, thesurgeon, and myself, talking it over, resolved not to increase the daily whackof half a pound of meat. The six sailors, for whom Tobias Snow made himselfspokesman, contended that the death of half of us was equivalent to a doublingof our provisioning, and that therefore the ration should be increased to apound. In reply, we of the afterguard pointed out that it was our chance forlife that was doubled did we but bear with the half-pound ration.

It is true that eight ounces of salt meat did not go far in enabling us to liveand to resist the severe cold. We were quite weak, and, because of ourweakness, we frosted easily. Noses and cheeks were all black with frost-bite.It was impossible to be warm, although we now had double the garments we hadstarted with.

Five weeks after the loss of the Negociatorthe trouble over the foodcame to a head. I was asleep at the time—it was night—when CaptainNicholl caught Jud Hetchkins stealing from the pork barrel. That he was abettedby the other five men was proved by their actions. Immediately Jud Hetchkinswas discovered, the whole six threw themselves upon us with their knives. Itwas close, sharp work in the dim light of the stars, and it was a mercy theboat was not overturned. I had reason to be thankful for my many shirts andcoats which served me as an armour. The knife-thrusts scarcely more than drewblood through the so great thickness of cloth, although I was scratched tobleeding in a round dozen of places.

The others were similarly protected, and the fight would have ended in no morethan a mauling all around, had not the mate, Walter Dakon, a very powerful man,hit upon the idea of ending the matter by tossing the mutineers overboard. Thiswas joined in by Captain Nicholl, the surgeon, and myself, and in a trice fiveof the six were in the water and clinging to the gunwale. Captain Nicholl andthe surgeon were busy amidships with the sixth, Jeremy Nalor, and were in theact of throwing him overboard, while the mate was occupied with rapping thefingers along the gunwale with a boat-stretcher. For the moment I had nothingto do, and so was able to observe the tragic end of the mate. As he lifted thestretcher to rap Seth Richards’ fingers, the latter, sinking down low inthe water and then jerking himself up by both hands, sprang half into the boat,locked his arms about the mate and, falling backward and outboard, dragged themate with him. Doubtlessly he never relaxed his grip, and both drownedtogether.

Thus left alive of the entire ship’s company were three of us: CaptainNicholl, Arnold Bentham (the surgeon), and myself. Seven had gone in thetwinkling of an eye, consequent on Jud Hetchkins’ attempt to stealprovisions. And to me it seemed a pity that so much good warm clothing had beenwasted there in the sea. There was not one of us who could not have managedgratefully with more.

Captain Nicholl and the surgeon were good men and honest. Often enough, whentwo of us slept, the one awake and steering could have stolen from the meat.But this never happened. We trusted one another fully, and we would have diedrather than betray that trust.

We continued to content ourselves with half a pound of meat each per day, andwe took advantage of every favouring breeze to work to the north’ard. Notuntil January fourteenth, seven weeks since the wreck, did we come up with awarmer latitude. Even then it was not really warm. It was merely not sobitterly cold.

Here the fresh westerlies forsook us and we bobbed and blobbed about indoldrummy weather for many days. Mostly it was calm, or light contrary winds,though sometimes a burst of breeze, as like as not from dead ahead, would lastfor a few hours. In our weakened condition, with so large a boat, it was out ofthe question to row. We could merely hoard our food and wait for God to show amore kindly face. The three of us were faithful Christians, and we made apractice of prayer each day before the apportionment of food. Yes, and each ofus prayed privately, often and long.

By the end of January our food was near its end. The pork was entirely gone,and we used the barrel for catching and storing rainwater. Not many pounds ofbeef remained. And in all the nine weeks in the open boat we had raised no sailand glimpsed no land. Captain Nicholl frankly admitted that after sixty-threedays of dead reckoning he did not know where we were.

The twentieth of February saw the last morsel of food eaten. I prefer to skipthe details of much that happened in the next eight days. I shall touch only onthe incidents that serve to show what manner of men were my companions. We hadstarved so long, that we had no reserves of strength on which to draw when thefood utterly ceased, and we grew weaker with great rapidity.

On February twenty-fourth we calmly talked the situation over. We were threestout-spirited men, full of life and toughness, and we did not want to die. Noone of us would volunteer to sacrifice himself for the other two. But we agreedon three things: we must have food; we must decide the matter by casting lots;and we would cast the lots next morning if there were no wind.

Next morning there was wind, not much of it, but fair, so that we were able tolog a sluggish two knots on our northerly course. The mornings of thetwenty-sixth and twenty-seventh found us with a similar breeze. We werefearfully weak, but we abided by our decision and continued to sail.

But with the morning of the twenty-eighth we knew the time was come. Thelongboat rolled drearily on an empty, windless sea, and the stagnant, overcastsky gave no promise of any breeze. I cut three pieces of cloth, all of a size,from my jacket. In the ravel of one of these pieces was a bit of brown thread.Whoever drew this lost. I then put the three lots into my hat, covering it withCaptain Nicholl’s hat.

All was ready, but we delayed for a time while each prayed silently and long,for we knew that we were leaving the decision to God. I was not unaware of myown honesty and worth; but I was equally aware of the honesty and worth of mycompanions, so that it perplexed me how God could decide so fine-balanced anddelicate a matter.

The captain, as was his right and due, drew first. After his hand was in thehat he delayed for some time with closed eyes, his lips moving a last prayer.And he drew a blank. This was right—a true decision I could not but admitto myself; for Captain Nicholl’s life was largely known to me and I knewhim to be honest, upright, and God-fearing.

Remained the surgeon and me. It was one or the other, and, according toship’s rating, it was his due to draw next. Again we prayed. As I prayedI strove to quest back in my life and cast a hurried tally-sheet of my ownworth and unworth.

I held the hat on my knees with Captain Nicholl’s hat over it. Thesurgeon thrust in his hand and fumbled about for some time, while I wonderedwhether the feel of that one brown thread could be detected from the rest ofthe ravel.

At last he withdrew his hand. The brown thread was in his piece of cloth. I wasinstantly very humble and very grateful for God’s blessing thus extendedto me; and I resolved to keep more faithfully than ever all of Hiscommandments. The next moment I could not help but feel that the surgeon andthe captain were pledged to each other by closer ties of position andintercourse than with me, and that they were in a measure disappointed with theoutcome. And close with that thought ran the conviction that they were suchtrue men that the outcome would not interfere with the plan arranged.

I was right. The surgeon bared arm and knife and prepared to open a great vein.First, however, he spoke a few words.

“I am a native of Norfolk in the Virginias,” he said, “whereI expect I have now a wife and three children living. The only favour that Ihave to request of you is, that should it please God to deliver either of youfrom your perilous situation, and should you be so fortunate as to reach oncemore your native country, that you would acquaint my unfortunate family with mywretched fate.”

Next he requested courteously of us a few minutes in which to arrange hisaffairs with God. Neither Captain Nicholl nor I could utter a word, but withstreaming eyes we nodded our consent.

Without doubt Arnold Bentham was the best collected of the three of us. My ownanguish was prodigious, and I am confident that Captain Nicholl sufferedequally. But what was one to do? The thing was fair and proper and had beendecided by God.

But when Arnold Bentham had completed his last arrangements and made ready todo the act, I could contain myself no longer, and cried out:

“Wait! We who have endured so much surely can endure a little more. It isnow mid-morning. Let us wait until twilight. Then, if no event has appeared tochange our dreadful destiny, do you Arnold Bentham, do as we haveagreed.”

He looked to Captain Nicholl for confirmation of my suggestion, and CaptainNicholl could only nod. He could utter no word, but in his moist and frostyblue eyes was a wealth of acknowledgment I could not misread.

I did not, I could not, deem it a crime, having so determined by fair drawingof lots, that Captain Nicholl and myself should profit by the death of ArnoldBentham. I could not believe that the love of life that actuated us had beenimplanted in our breasts by aught other than God. It was God’s will, andwe His poor creatures could only obey and fulfil His will. And yet, God waskind. In His all-kindness He saved us from so terrible, though so righteous, anact.

Scarce had a quarter of an hour passed, when a fan of air from the west, with ahint of frost and damp in it, crisped on our cheeks. In another five minutes wehad steerage from the filled sail, and Arnold Bentham was at the steeringsweep.

“Save what little strength you have,” he had said. “Let meconsume the little strength left in me in order that it may increase yourchance to survive.”

And so he steered to a freshening breeze, while Captain Nicholl and I laysprawled in the boat’s bottom and in our weakness dreamed dreams andglimpsed visions of the dear things of life far across the world from us.

It was an ever-freshening breeze of wind that soon began to puff and gust. Thecloud stuff flying across the sky foretold us of a gale. By midday ArnoldBentham fainted at the steering, and, ere the boat could broach in the tidy seaalready running, Captain Nicholl and I were at the steering sweep with all thefour of our weak hands upon it. We came to an agreement, and, just as CaptainNicholl had drawn the first lot by virtue of his office, so now he took thefirst spell at steering. Thereafter the three of us spelled one another everyfifteen minutes. We were very weak and we could not spell longer at a time.

By mid-afternoon a dangerous sea was running. We should have rounded the boatto, had our situation not been so desperate, and let her drift bow-on to asea-anchor extemporized of our mast and sail. Had we broached in those great,over-topping seas, the boat would have been rolled over and over.

Time and again, that afternoon, Arnold Bentham, for our sakes, begged that wecome to a sea-anchor. He knew that we continued to run only in the hope thatthe decree of the lots might not have to be carried out. He was a noble man. Sowas Captain Nicholl noble, whose frosty eyes had wizened to points of steel.And in such noble company how could I be less noble? I thanked God repeatedly,through that long afternoon of peril, for the privilege of having known twosuch men. God and the right dwelt in them and no matter what my poor fate mightbe, I could but feel well recompensed by such companionship. Like them I didnot want to die, yet was unafraid to die. The quick, early doubt I had had ofthese two men was long since dissipated. Hard the school, and hard the men, butthey were noble men, God’s own men.

I saw it first. Arnold Bentham, his own death accepted, and Captain Nicholl,well nigh accepting death, lay rolling like loose-bodied dead men in theboat’s bottom, and I was steering when I saw it. The boat, foaming andsurging with the swiftness of wind in its sail, was uplifted on a crest, when,close before me, I saw the sea-battered islet of rock. It was not half a mileoff. I cried out, so that the other two, kneeling and reeling and clutching forsupport, were peering and staring at what I saw.

“Straight for it, Daniel,” Captain Nicholl mumbled command.“There may be a cove. There may be a cove. It is our only chance.”

Once again he spoke, when we were atop that dreadful lee shore with no coveexistent.

“Straight for it, Daniel. If we go clear we are too weak ever to win backagainst sea and wind.”

He was right. I obeyed. He drew his watch and looked, and I asked the time. Itwas five o’clock. He stretched out his hand to Arnold Bentham, who metand shook it weakly; and both gazed at me, in their eyes extending that samehand-clasp. It was farewell, I knew; for what chance had creatures so feeble aswe to win alive over those surf-battered rocks to the higher rocks beyond?

Twenty feet from shore the boat was snatched out of my control. In a trice itwas overturned and I was strangling in the salt. I never saw my companionsagain. By good fortune I was buoyed by the steering-oar I still grasped, and bygreat good fortune a fling of sea, at the right instant, at the right spot,threw me far up the gentle slope of the one shelving rock on all that terribleshore. I was not hurt. I was not bruised. And with brain reeling from weaknessI was able to crawl and scramble farther up beyond the clutching backwash ofthe sea.

I stood upright, knowing myself saved, and thanking God, and staggering as Istood. Already the boat was pounded to a thousand fragments. And though I sawthem not, I could guess how grievously had been pounded the bodies of CaptainNicholl and Arnold Bentham. I saw an oar on the edge of the foam, and atcertain risk I drew it clear. Then I fell to my knees, knowing myself fainting.And yet, ere I fainted, with a sailor’s instinct I dragged my body on andup among the cruel hurting rocks to faint finally beyond the reach of the sea.

I was near a dead man myself, that night, mostly in stupor, only dimly aware attimes of the extremity of cold and wet that I endured. Morning brought meastonishment and terror. No plant, not a blade of grass, grew on that wretchedprojection of rock from the ocean’s bottom. A quarter of a mile in widthand a half mile in length, it was no more than a heap of rocks. Naught could Idiscover to gratify the cravings of exhausted nature. I was consumed withthirst, yet was there no fresh water. In vain I tasted to my mouth’sundoing every cavity and depression in the rocks. The spray of the gale socompletely had enveloped every portion of the island that every depression wasfilled with water salt as the sea.

Of the boat remained nothing—not even a splinter to show that a boat hadbeen. I stood possessed of my garments, a stout knife, and the one oar I hadsaved. The gale had abated, and all that day, staggering and falling, crawlingtill hands and knees bled, I vainly sought water.

That night, nearer death than ever, I sheltered behind a rock from the wind. Aheavy shower of rain made me miserable. I removed my various coats and spreadthem to soak up the rain; but, when I came to wring the moisture from them intomy mouth, I was disappointed, because the cloth had been thoroughly impregnatedwith the salt of the ocean in which I had been immersed. I lay on my back, mymouth open to catch the few rain-drops that fell directly into it. It wastantalizing, but it kept my membranes moist and me from madness.

The second day I was a very sick man. I, who had not eaten for so long, beganto swell to a monstrous fatness—my legs, my arms, my whole body. With theslightest of pressures my fingers would sink in a full inch into my skin, andthe depressions so made were long in going away. Yet did I labour sore in orderto fulfil God’s will that I should live. Carefully, with my hands, Icleaned out the salt water from every slight hole, in the hope that succeedingshowers of rain might fill them with water that I could drink.

My sad lot and the memories of the loved ones at Elkton threw me into amelancholy, so that I often lost my recollection for hours at a time. This wasa mercy, for it veiled me from my sufferings that else would have killed me.

In the night I was roused by the beat of rain, and I crawled from hole to hole,lapping up the rain or licking it from the rocks. Brackish it was, butdrinkable. It was what saved me, for, toward morning, I awoke to find myself ina profuse perspiration and quite free of all delirium.

Then came the sun, the first time since my stay on the island, and I spreadmost of my garments to dry. Of water I drank my careful fill, and I calculatedthere was ten days’ supply if carefully husbanded. It was amazing howrich I felt with this vast wealth of brackish water. And no great merchant,with all his ships returned from prosperous voyages, his warehouses filled tothe rafters, his strong-boxes overflowing, could have felt as wealthy as did Iwhen I discovered, cast up on the rocks, the body of a seal that had been deadfor many days. Nor did I fail, first, to thank God on my knees for thismanifestation of His ever-unfailing kindness. The thing was clear to me: Godhad not intended I should die. From the very first He had not so intended.

I knew the debilitated state of my stomach, and I ate sparingly in theknowledge that my natural voracity would surely kill me did I yield myself toit. Never had sweeter morsels passed my lips, and I make free to confess that Ished tears of joy, again and again, at contemplation of that putrefied carcass.

My heart of hope beat strong in me once more. Carefully I preserved theportions of the carcass remaining. Carefully I covered my rock cisterns withflat stones so that the sun’s rays might not evaporate the precious fluidand in precaution against some upspringing of wind in the night and the suddenflying of spray. Also I gathered me tiny fragments of seaweed and dried them inthe sun for an easement between my poor body and the rough rocks whereon I mademy lodging. And my garments were dry—the first time in days; so that Islept the heavy sleep of exhaustion and of returning health.

When I awoke to a new day I was another man. The absence of the sun did notdepress me, and I was swiftly to learn that God, not forgetting me while Islumbered, had prepared other and wonderful blessings for me. I would have fainrubbed my eyes and looked again, for, as far as I could see, the rocksbordering upon the ocean were covered with seals. There were thousands of them,and in the water other thousands disported themselves, while the sound thatwent up from all their throats was prodigious and deafening. I knew it when Isaw it—meat lay there for the taking, meat sufficient for a score ofships’ companies.

I directly seized my oar—than which there was no other stick of wood onthe island—and cautiously advanced upon all that immensity of provender.It was quickly guessed by me that these creatures of the sea were unacquaintedwith man. They betrayed no signals of timidity at my approach, and I found it aboy’s task to rap them on the head with the oar.

And when I had so killed my third and my fourth, I went immediately andstrangely mad. Indeed quite bereft was I of all judgment as I slew and slew andcontinued to slay. For the space of two hours I toiled unceasingly with the oartill I was ready to drop. What excess of slaughter I might have been guilty ofI know not, for at the end of that time, as if by a signal, all the seals thatstill lived threw themselves into the water and swiftly disappeared.

I found the number of slain seals to exceed two hundred, and I was shocked andfrightened because of the madness of slaughter that had possessed me. I hadsinned by wanton wastefulness, and after I had duly refreshed myself with thisgood wholesome food, I set about as well as I could to make amends. But first,ere the great task began, I returned thanks to that Being through whose mercy Ihad been so miraculously preserved. Thereupon I laboured until dark, and afterdark, skinning the seals, cutting the meat into strips, and placing it upon thetops of rocks to dry in the sun. Also, I found small deposits of salt in thenooks and crannies of the rocks on the weather side of the island. This Irubbed into the meat as a preservative.

Four days I so toiled, and in the end was foolishly proud before God in that noscrap of all that supply of meat had been wasted. The unremitting labour wasgood for my body, which built up rapidly by means of this wholesome diet inwhich I did not stint myself. Another evidence of God’s mercy; never, inthe eight years I spent on that barren islet, was there so long a spell ofclear weather and steady sunshine as in the period immediately following theslaughter of the seals.

Months were to pass ere ever the seals revisited my island. But in the meantimeI was anything but idle. I built me a hut of stone, and, adjoining it, astorehouse for my cured meat. The hut I roofed with many sealskins, so that itwas fairly water-proof. But I could never cease to marvel, when the rain beaton that roof, that no less than a king’s ransom in the London fur marketprotected a castaway sailor from the elements.

I was quickly aware of the importance of keeping some kind of reckoning oftime, without which I was sensible that I should soon lose all knowledge of theday of the week, and be unable to distinguish one from the other, and not knowwhich was the Lord’s day.

I remembered back carefully to the reckoning of time kept in the longboat byCaptain Nicholl; and carefully, again and again, to make sure beyond any shadowof uncertainty, I went over the tale of the days and nights I had spent on theisland. Then, by seven stones outside my hut, I kept my weekly calendar. In oneplace on the oar I cut a small notch for each week, and in another place on theoar I notched the months, being duly careful indeed, to reckon in theadditional days to each month over and beyond the four weeks.

Thus I was enabled to pay due regard to the Sabbath. As the only mode ofworship I could adopt, I carved a short hymn, appropriate to my situation, onthe oar, which I never failed to chant on the Sabbath. God, in His all-mercy,had not forgotten me; nor did I, in those eight years, fail at all proper timesto remember God.

It was astonishing the work required, under such circumstances, to supplyone’s simple needs of food and shelter. Indeed, I was rarely idle, thatfirst year. The hut, itself a mere lair of rocks, nevertheless took six weeksof my time. The tardy curing and the endless scraping of the sealskins, so asto make them soft and pliable for garments, occupied my spare moments formonths and months.

Then there was the matter of my water supply. After any heavy gale, the flyingspray salted my saved rainwater, so that at times I was grievously put to livethrough till fresh rains fell unaccompanied by high winds. Aware that acontinual dropping will wear a stone, I selected a large stone, fine and tightof texture and, by means of smaller stones, I proceeded to pound it hollow. Infive weeks of most arduous toil I managed thus to make a jar which I estimatedto hold a gallon and a half. Later, I similarly made a four-gallon jar. It tookme nine weeks. Other small ones I also made from time to time. One, that wouldhave contained eight gallons, developed a flaw when I had worked seven weeks onit.

But it was not until my fourth year on the island, when I had become reconciledto the possibility that I might continue to live there for the term of mynatural life, that I created my masterpiece. It took me eight months, but itwas tight, and it held upwards of thirty gallons. These stone vessels were agreat gratification to me—so much so, that at times I forgot my humilityand was unduly vain of them. Truly, they were more elegant to me than was everthe costliest piece of furniture to any queen. Also, I made me a small rockvessel, containing no more than a quart, with which to convey water from thecatching-places to my large receptacles. When I say that this one-quart vesselweighed all of two stone, the reader will realize that the mere gathering ofthe rainwater was no light task.

Thus, I rendered my lonely situation as comfortable as could be expected. I hadcompleted me a snug and secure shelter; and, as to provision, I had always onhand a six months’ supply, preserved by salting and drying. For thesethings, so essential to preserve life, and which one could scarcely haveexpected to obtain upon a desert island, I was sensible that I could not be toothankful.

Although denied the privilege of enjoying the society of any human creature,not even of a dog or a cat, I was far more reconciled to my lot than thousandsprobably would have been. Upon the desolate spot, where fate had placed me, Iconceived myself far more happy than many, who, for ignominious crimes, weredoomed to drag out their lives in solitary confinement with conscience everbiting as a corrosive canker.

However dreary my prospects, I was not without hope that that Providence,which, at the very moment when hunger threatened me with dissolution, and whenI might easily have been engulfed in the maw of the sea, had cast me upon thosebarren rocks, would finally direct some one to my relief.

If deprived of the society of my fellow creatures, and of the conveniences oflife, I could not but reflect that my forlorn situation was yet attended withsome advantages. Of the whole island, though small, I had peaceable possession.No one, it was probable, would ever appear to dispute my claim, unless it werethe amphibious animals of the ocean. Since the island was almost inaccessible,at night my repose was not disturbed by continual apprehension of the approachof cannibals or of beasts of prey. Again and again I thanked God on my kneesfor these various and many benefactions.

Yet is man ever a strange and unaccountable creature. I, who had asked ofGod’s mercy no more than putrid meat to eat and a sufficiency of waternot too brackish, was no sooner blessed with an abundance of cured meat andsweet water than I began to know discontent with my lot. I began to want fire,and the savour of cooked meat in my mouth. And continually I would discovermyself longing for certain delicacies of the palate such as were part of thecommon daily fare on the home table at Elkton. Strive as I would, ever my fancyeluded my will and wantoned in day-dreaming of the good things I had eaten andof the good things I would eat if ever I were rescued from my lonely situation.

It was the old Adam in me, I suppose—the taint of that first father whowas the first rebel against God’s commandments. Most strange is man, everinsatiable, ever unsatisfied, never at peace with God or himself, his daysfilled with restlessness and useless endeavour, his nights a glut of vaindreams of desires wilful and wrong. Yes, and also I was much annoyed by mycraving for tobacco. My sleep was often a torment to me, for it was then thatmy desires took licence to rove, so that a thousand times I dreamed myselfpossessed of hogsheads of tobacco—ay, and of warehouses of tobacco, andof shiploads and of entire plantations of tobacco.

But I revenged myself upon myself. I prayed God unceasingly for a humble heart,and chastised my flesh with unremitting toil. Unable to improve my mind, Idetermined to improve my barren island. I laboured four months at constructinga stone wall thirty feet long, including its wings, and a dozen feet high. Thiswas as a protection to the hut in the periods of the great gales when all theisland was as a tiny petrel in the maw of the hurricane. Nor did I conceive thetime misspent. Thereafter I lay snug in the heart of calm while all the air fora hundred feet above my head was one stream of gust-driven water.

In the third year I began me a pillar of rock. Rather was it a pyramid,four-square, broad at the base, sloping upward not steeply to the apex. In thisfashion I was compelled to build, for gear and timber there was none in all theisland for the construction of scaffolding. Not until the close of the fifthyear was my pyramid complete. It stood on the summit of the island. Now, when Istate that the summit was but forty feet above the sea, and that the peak of mypyramid was forty feet above the summit, it will be conceived that I, withouttools, had doubled the stature of the island. It might be urged by someunthinking ones that I interfered with God’s plan in the creation of theworld. Not so, I hold. For was not I equally a part of God’s plan, alongwith this heap of rocks upjutting in the solitude of ocean? My arms with whichto work, my back with which to bend and lift, my hands cunning to clutch andhold—were not these parts too in God’s plan? Much I pondered thematter. I know that I was right.

In the sixth year I increased the base of my pyramid, so that in eighteenmonths thereafter the height of my monument was fifty feet above the height ofthe island. This was no tower of Babel. It served two right purposes. It gaveme a lookout from which to scan the ocean for ships, and increased thelikelihood of my island being sighted by the careless roving eye of any seaman.And it kept my body and mind in health. With hands never idle, there was smallopportunity for Satan on that island. Only in my dreams did he torment me,principally with visions of varied foods and with imagined indulgence in thefoul weed called tobacco.

On the eighteenth day of the month of June, in the sixth year of my sojourn onthe island, I descried a sail. But it passed far to leeward at too great adistance to discover me. Rather than suffering disappointment, the veryappearance of this sail afforded me the liveliest satisfaction. It convinced meof a fact that I had before in a degree doubted, to wit: that these seas weresometimes visited by navigators.

Among other things, where the seals hauled up out of the sea, I builtwide-spreading wings of low rock walls that narrowed to a cul de sac,where I might conveniently kill such seals as entered without exciting theirfellows outside and without permitting any wounded or frightening seal toescape and spread a contagion of alarm. Seven months to this structure alonewere devoted.

As the time passed, I grew more contented with my lot, and the devil came lessand less in my sleep to torment the old Adam in me with lawless visions oftobacco and savoury foods. And I continued to eat my seal meat and call itgood, and to drink the sweet rainwater of which always I had plenty, and to begrateful to God. And God heard me, I know, for during all my term on thatisland I knew never a moment of sickness, save two, both of which were due tomy gluttony, as I shall later relate.

In the fifth year, ere I had convinced myself that the keels of ships did onoccasion plough these seas, I began carving on my oar minutes of the moreremarkable incidents that had attended me since I quitted the peaceful shoresof America. This I rendered as intelligible and permanent as possible, theletters being of the smallest size. Six, and even five, letters were often aday’s work for me, so painstaking was I.

And, lest it should prove my hard fortune never to meet with the long-wishedopportunity to return to my friends and to my family at Elkton, I engraved, ornitched, on the broad end of the oar, the legend of my ill fate which I havealready quoted near the beginning of this narrative.

This oar, which had proved so serviceable to me in my destitute situation, andwhich now contained a record of my own fate and that of my shipmates, I sparedno pains to preserve. No longer did I risk it in knocking seals on the head.Instead, I equipped myself with a stone club, some three feet in length and ofsuitable diameter, which occupied an even month in the fashioning. Also, tosecure the oar from the weather (for I used it in mild breezes as a flagstaffon top of my pyramid from which to fly a flag I made me from one of my preciousshirts) I contrived for it a covering of well-cured sealskins.

In the month of March of the sixth year of my confinement I experienced one ofthe most tremendous storms that was perhaps ever witnessed by man. It commencedat about nine in the evening, with the approach of black clouds and afreshening wind from the south-west, which, by eleven, had become a hurricane,attended with incessant peals of thunder and the sharpest lightning I had everwitnessed.

I was not without apprehension for the safety of the island. Over every partthe seas made a clean breach, except of the summit of my pyramid. There thelife was nigh beaten and suffocated out of my body by the drive of the wind andspray. I could not but be sensible that my existence was spared solely becauseof my diligence in erecting the pyramid and so doubling the stature of theisland.

Yet, in the morning, I had great reason for thankfulness. All my savedrainwater was turned brackish, save that in my largest vessel which wassheltered in the lee of the pyramid. By careful economy I knew I had drinksufficient until the next rain, no matter how delayed, should fall. My hut wasquite washed out by the seas, and of my great store of seal meat only awretched, pulpy modicum remained. Nevertheless I was agreeably surprised tofind the rocks plentifully distributed with a sort of fish more nearly like themullet than any I had ever observed. Of these I picked up no less than twelvehundred and nineteen, which I split and cured in the sun after the manner ofcod. This welcome change of diet was not without its consequence. I was guiltyof gluttony, and for all of the succeeding night I was near to death’sdoor.

In the seventh year of my stay on the island, in the very same month of March,occurred a similar storm of great violence. Following upon it, to myastonishment, I found an enormous dead whale, quite fresh, which had been castup high and dry by the waves. Conceive my gratification when in the bowels ofthe great fish I found deeply imbedded a harpoon of the common sort with a fewfathoms of new line attached thereto.

Thus were my hopes again revived that I should finally meet with an opportunityto quit the desolate island. Beyond doubt these seas were frequented bywhalemen, and, so long as I kept up a stout heart, sooner or later I should besaved. For seven years I had lived on seal meat, so that at sight of theenormous plentitude of different and succulent food I fell a victim to myweakness and ate of such quantities that once again I was well nigh to dying.And yet, after all, this, and the affair of the small fish, were mereindispositions due to the foreignness of the food to my stomach, which hadlearned to prosper on seal meat and on nothing but seal meat.

Of that one whale I preserved a full year’s supply of provision. Also,under the sun’s rays, in the rock hollows, I tried out much of the oil,which, with the addition of salt, was a welcome thing in which to dip my stripsof seal-meat whilst dining. Out of my precious rags of shirts I could even havecontrived a wick, so that, with the harpoon for steel and rock for flint, Imight have had a light at night. But it was a vain thing, and I speedilyforwent the thought of it. I had no need for light when God’s darknessdescended, for I had schooled myself to sleep from sundown to sunrise, winterand summer.

I, Darrell Standing, cannot refrain from breaking in on this recital of anearlier existence in order to note a conclusion of my own. Since humanpersonality is a growth, a sum of all previous existences added together, whatpossibility was there for Warden Atherton to break down my spirit in theinquisition of solitary? I am life that survived, a structure builded upthrough the ages of the past—and such a past! What were ten days andnights in the jacket to me?—to me, who had once been Daniel Foss, and foreight years learned patience in that school of rocks in the far South Ocean?

At the end of my eighth year on the island in the month of September, when Ihad just sketched most ambitious plans to raise my pyramid to sixty feet abovethe summit of the island, I awoke one morning to stare out upon a ship withtopsails aback and nearly within hail. That I might be discovered, I swung myoar in the air, jumped from rock to rock, and was guilty of all manner oflivelinesses of action, until I could see the officers on the quarter-decklooking at me through their spyglasses. They answered by pointing to theextreme westerly end of the island, whither I hastened and discovered theirboat manned by half a dozen men. It seems, as I was to learn afterward, theship had been attracted by my pyramid and had altered its course to make closerexamination of so strange a structure that was greater of height than the wildisland on which it stood.

But the surf proved to be too great to permit the boat to land on myinhospitable shore. After divers unsuccessful attempts they signalled me thatthey must return to the ship. Conceive my despair at thus being unable to quitthe desolate island. I seized my oar (which I had long since determined topresent to the Philadelphia Museum if ever I were preserved) and with itplunged headlong into the foaming surf. Such was my good fortune, and mystrength and agility, that I gained the boat.

I cannot refrain from telling here a curious incident. The ship had by thistime drifted so far away, that we were all of an hour in getting aboard. Duringthis time I yielded to my propensities that had been baffled for eight longyears, and begged of the second mate, who steered, a piece of tobacco to chew.This granted, the second mate also proffered me his pipe, filled with primeVirginia leaf. Scarce had ten minutes passed when I was taken violently sick.The reason for this was clear. My system was entirely purged of tobacco, andwhat I now suffered was tobacco poisoning such as afflicts any boy at the timeof his first smoke. Again I had reason to be grateful to God, and from that dayto the day of my death, I neither used nor desired the foul weed.

I, Darrell Standing, must now complete the amazingness of the details of thisexistence which I relived while unconscious in the strait-jacket in San Quentinprison. I often wondered if Daniel Foss had been true in his resolve anddeposited the carved oar in the Philadelphia Museum.

It is a difficult matter for a prisoner in solitary to communicate with theoutside world. Once, with a guard, and once with a short-timer in solitary, Ientrusted, by memorization, a letter of inquiry addressed to the curator of theMuseum. Although under the most solemn pledges, both these men failed me. Itwas not until after Ed Morrell, by a strange whirl of fate, was released fromsolitary and appointed head trusty of the entire prison, that I was able tohave the letter sent. I now give the reply, sent me by the curator of thePhiladelphia Museum, and smuggled to me by Ed Morrell:

“It is true there is such an oar here as you have described. But fewpersons can know of it, for it is not on exhibition in the public rooms. Infact, and I have held this position for eighteen years, I was unaware of itsexistence myself.

“But upon consulting our old records I found that such an oar had beenpresented by one Daniel Foss, of Elkton, Maryland, in the year 1821. Not untilafter a long search did we find the oar in a disused attic lumber-room of oddsand ends. The notches and the legend are carved on the oar just as you havedescribed.

“We have also on file a pamphlet presented at the same time, written bythe said Daniel Foss, and published in Boston by the firm of N. Coverly, Jr.,in the year 1834. This pamphlet describes eight years of a castaway’slife on a desert island. It is evident that this mariner, in his old age and inwant, hawked this pamphlet about among the charitable.

“I am very curious to learn how you became aware of this oar, of theexistence of which we of the museum were ignorant. Am I correct in assumingthat you have read an account in some diary published later by this DanielFoss? I shall be glad for any information on the subject, and am proceeding atonce to have the oar and the pamphlet put back on exhibition.

“Very truly yours,
“HOSEASALSBURTY.”^[1]

[1]Since the execution of Professor Darrell Standing, at which time the manuscriptof his memoirs came into our hands, we have written to Mr. Hosea Salsburty,Curator of the Philadelphia Museum, and, in reply, have received confirmationof the existence of the oar and the pamphlet.—THEEDITOR.

CHAPTER XX.

The time came when I humbled Warden Atherton to unconditional surrender, makinga vain and empty mouthing of his ultimatum, “Dynamite or curtains.”He gave me up as one who could not be killed in a strait-jacket. He had had mendie after several hours in the jacket. He had had men die after several days inthe jacket, although, invariably, they were unlaced and carted into hospitalere they breathed their last . . . and received a death certificate from thedoctor of pneumonia, or Bright’s disease, or valvular disease of theheart.

But me Warden Atherton could never kill. Never did the urgency arise of cartingmy maltreated and perishing carcass to the hospital. Yet I will say that WardenAtherton tried his best and dared his worst. There was the time when hedouble-jacketed me. It is so rich an incident that I must tell it.

It happened that one of the San Francisco newspapers (seeking, as everynewspaper and as every commercial enterprise seeks, a market that will enableit to realize a profit) tried to interest the radical portion of the workingclass in prison reform. As a result, union labour possessing an importantpolitical significance at the time, the time-serving politicians at Sacramentoappointed a senatorial committee of investigation of the state prisons.

This State Senate committee investigated(pardon my italicized sneer)San Quentin. Never was there so model an institution of detention. The convictsthemselves so testified. Nor can one blame them. They had experienced similarinvestigations in the past. They knew on which side their bread was buttered.They knew that all their sides and most of their ribs would ache very quicklyafter the taking of their testimony . . . if said testimony were adverse to theprison administration. Oh, believe me, my reader, it is a very ancient story.It was ancient in old Babylon, many a thousand years ago, as I well remember ofthat old time when I rotted in prison while palace intrigues shook the court.

As I have said, every convict testified to the humaneness of WardenAtherton’s administration. In fact, so touching were their testimonialsto the kindness of the Warden, to the good and varied quality of the food andthe cooking, to the gentleness of the guards, and to the general decency andease and comfort of the prison domicile, that the opposition newspapers of SanFrancisco raised an indignant cry for more rigour in the management of ourprisons, in that, otherwise, honest but lazy citizens would be seduced intoseeking enrolment as prison guests.

The Senate Committee even invaded solitary, where the three of us had little tolose and nothing to gain. Jake Oppenheimer spat in its faces and told itsmembers, all and sundry, to go to hell. Ed Morrell told them what a noisomestews the place was, insulted the Warden to his face, and was recommended bythe committee to be given a taste of the antiquated and obsolete punishmentsthat, after all, must have been devised by previous Wardens out of necessityfor the right handling of hard characters like him.

I was careful not to insult the Warden. I testified craftily, and as ascientist, beginning with small beginnings, making an art of my exposition,step by step, by tiny steps, inveigling my senatorial auditors on intowillingness and eagerness to listen to the next exposure, the whole fabric sowoven that there was no natural halting place at which to drop a period orinterpolate a query . . . in this fashion, thus, I got my tale across.

Alas! no whisper of what I divulged ever went outside the prison walls. TheSenate Committee gave a beautiful whitewash to Warden Atherton and San Quentin.The crusading San Francisco newspaper assured its working-class readers thatSan Quentin was whiter than snow, and further, that while it was true that thestrait-jacket was still a recognized legal method of punishment for therefractory, that, nevertheless, at the present time, under the present humaneand spiritually right-minded Warden, the strait-jacket was never, under anycircumstance, used.

And while the poor asses of labourers read and believed, while the SenateCommittee dined and wined with the Warden at the expense of the state and thetax payer, Ed Morrell, Jake Oppenheimer, and I were lying in our jackets, lacedjust a trifle more tightly and more vindictively than we had ever been lacedbefore.

“It is to laugh,” Ed Morrell tapped to me, with the edge of thesole of his shoe.

“I should worry,” tapped Jake.

And as for me, I too capped my bitter scorn and laughter, remembered the prisonhouses of old Babylon, smiled to myself a huge cosmic smile, and drifted offand away into the largeness of the little death that made me heir of all theages and the rider full-panoplied and astride of time.

Yea, dear brother of the outside world, while the whitewash was running off thepress, while the august senators were wining and dining, we three of the livingdead, buried alive in solidarity, were sweating our pain in the canvas torture.

And after the dinner, warm with wine, Warden Atherton himself came to see howfared it with us. Me, as usual, they found in coma. Doctor Jackson for thefirst time must have been alarmed. I was brought back across the dark toconsciousness with the bite of ammonia in my nostrils. I smiled into the facesbent over me.

“Shamming,” snorted the Warden, and I knew by the flush on his faceand the thickness in his tongue that he had been drinking.

I licked my lips as a sign for water, for I desired to speak.

“You are an ass,” I at last managed to say with cold distinctness.“You are an ass, a coward, a cur, a pitiful thing so low that spittlewould be wasted on your face. In such matter Jake Oppenheimer is over-generouswith you. As for me, without shame I tell you the only reason I do not spitupon you is that I cannot demean myself nor so degrade my spittle.”

“I’ve reached the limit of my patience!” he bellowed.“I will kill you, Standing!”

“You’ve been drinking,” I retorted. “And I would adviseyou, if you must say such things, not to take so many of your prison curs intoyour confidence. They will snitch on you some day, and you will lose yourjob.”

But the wine was up and master of him.

“Put another jacket on him,” he commanded. “You are a deadman, Standing. But you’ll not die in the jacket. We’ll bury youfrom the hospital.”

This time, over the previous jacket, the second jacket was put on from behindand laced up in front.

“Lord, Lord, Warden, it is bitter weather,” I sneered. “Thefrost is sharp. Wherefore I am indeed grateful for your giving me two jackets.I shall be almost comfortable.”

“Tighter!” he urged to Al Hutchins, who was drawing the lacing.“Throw your feet into the skunk. Break his ribs.”

I must admit that Hutchins did his best.

“You willlie about me,” the Warden raved, the flush of wineand wrath flooding ruddier into his face. “Now see what you get for it.Your number is taken at last, Standing. This is your finish. Do you hear? Thisis your finish.”

“A favour, Warden,” I whispered faintly. Faint I was. Perforce Iwas nearly unconscious from the fearful constriction. “Make it a triplejacketing,” I managed to continue, while the cell walls swayed and reeledabout me and while I fought with all my will to hold to my consciousness thatwas being squeezed out of me by the jackets. “Another jacket . . . Warden. . . It . . . will . . . be . . . so . . . much . . . er . . . warmer.”

And my whisper faded away as I ebbed down into the little death.

I was never the same man after that double-jacketing. Never again, to this day,no matter what my food, was I properly nurtured. I suffered internal injuriesto an extent I never cared to investigate. The old pain in my ribs and stomachis with me now as I write these lines. But the poor, maltreated machinery hasserved its purpose. It has enabled me to live thus far, and it will enable meto live the little longer to the day they take me out in the shirt without acollar and stretch my neck with the well-stretched rope.

But the double-jacketing was the last straw. It broke down Warden Atherton. Hesurrendered to the demonstration that I was unkillable. As I told him once:

“The only way you can get me, Warden, is to sneak in here some night witha hatchet.”

Jake Oppenheimer was responsible for a good one on the Warden which I mustrelate:

“I say, Warden, it must be straight hell for you to have to wake up everymorning with yourself on your pillow.”

And Ed Morrell to the Warden:

“Your mother must have been damn fond of children to have raisedyou.”

It was really an offence to me when the jacketing ceased. I sadly missed thatdream world of mine. But not for long. I found that I could suspend animationby the exercise of my will, aided mechanically by constricting my chest andabdomen with the blanket. Thus I induced physiological and psychological statessimilar to those caused by the jacket. So, at will, and without the oldtorment, I was free to roam through time.

Ed Morrell believed all my adventures, but Jake Oppenheimer remained scepticalto the last. It was during my third year in solitary that I paid Oppenheimer avisit. I was never able to do it but that once, and that one time was whollyunplanned and unexpected.

It was merely after unconsciousness had come to me that I found myself in hiscell. My body, I knew, lay in the jacket back in my own cell. Although neverbefore had I seen him, I knew that this man was Jake Oppenheimer. It was summerweather, and he lay without clothes on top his blanket. I was shocked by hiscadaverous face and skeleton-like body. He was not even the shell of a man. Hewas merely the structure of a man, the bones of a man, still cohering, strippedpractically of all flesh and covered with a parchment-like skin.

Not until back in my own cell and consciousness was I able to mull the thingover and realize that just as was Jake Oppenheimer, so was Ed Morrell, so wasI. And I could not but thrill as I glimpsed the vastitude of spirit thatinhabited these frail, perishing carcasses of us—the three incorrigiblesof solitary. Flesh is a cheap, vain thing. Grass is flesh, and flesh becomesgrass; but the spirit is the thing that abides and survives. I have no patiencewith these flesh-worshippers. A taste of solitary in San Quentin would swiftlyconvert them to a due appreciation and worship of the spirit.

But to return to my experience in Oppenheimer’s cell. His body was thatof a man long dead and shrivelled by desert heat. The skin that covered it wasof the colour of dry mud. His sharp, yellow-gray eyes seemed the only part ofhim that was alive. They were never at rest. He lay on his back, and the eyesdarted hither and thither, following the flight of the several flies thatdisported in the gloomy air above him. I noted, too, a scar, just above hisright elbow, and another scar on his right ankle.

After a time he yawned, rolled over on his side, and inspected an angry-lookingsore just above his hip. This he proceeded to cleanse and dress by the crudemethods men in solitary must employ. I recognized the sore as one of the sortcaused by the strait-jacket. On my body, at this moment of writing, arehundreds of scars of the jacket.

Next, Oppenheimer rolled on his back, gingerly took one of his front upperteeth—an eye tooth—between thumb and forefinger, andconsideratively moved it back and forth. Again he yawned, stretched his arms,rolled over, and knocked the call to Ed Morrell.

I read the code as a matter of course.

“Thought you might be awake,” Oppenheimer tapped. “How goesit with the Professor?”

Then, dim and far, I could hear Morrell’s taps enunciating that they hadput me in the jacket an hour before, and that, as usual, I was already deaf toall knuckle talk.

“He is a good guy,” Oppenheimer rapped on. “I always wassuspicious of educated mugs, but he ain’t been hurt none by hiseducation. He is sure square. Got all the spunk in the world, and you could notget him to squeal or double cross in a million years.”

To all of which, and with amplification, Ed Morrell agreed. And I must, righthere, ere I go a word further, say that I have lived many years and many lives,and that in those many lives I have known proud moments; but that the proudestmoment I have ever known was the moment when my two comrades in solitary passedthis appraisal of me. Ed Morrell and Jake Oppenheimer were great spirits, andin all time no greater honour was ever accorded me than this admission of me totheir comradeship. Kings have knighted me, emperors have ennobled me, and, asking myself, I have known stately moments. Yet of it all nothing do I adjudgeso splendid as this accolade delivered by two lifers in solitary deemed by theworld as the very bottom-most of the human cesspool.

Afterwards, recuperating from this particular bout with the jacket, I broughtup my visit to Jake’s cell as a proof that my spirit did leave my body.But Jake was unshakable.

“It is guessing that is more than guessing,” was his reply, when Ihad described to him his successive particular actions at the time my spirithad been in his cell. “It is figuring. You have been close to three yearsin solitary yourself, Professor, and you can come pretty near to figuring whatany guy will do to be killing time. There ain’t a thing you told me thatyou and Ed ain’t done thousands of times, from lying with your clothesoff in hot weather to watching flies, tending sores, and rapping.”

Morrell sided with me, but it was no use.

“Now don’t take it hard, Professor,” Jake tapped. “Iain’t saying you lied. I just say you get to dreaming and figuring in thejacket without knowing you’re doing it. I know you believe what you say,and that you think it happened; but it don’t buy nothing with me. Youfigure it, but you don’t know you figure it—that is something youknow all the time, though you don’t know you know it until you get intothem dreamy, woozy states.”

“Hold on, Jake,” I tapped. “You know I have never seen youwith my own eyes. Is that right?”

“I got to take your word for it, Professor. You might have seen me andnot known it was me.”

“The point is,” I continued, “not having seen you with yourclothes off, nevertheless I am able to tell you about that scar above yourright elbow, and that scar on your right ankle.”

“Oh, shucks,” was his reply. “You’ll find all that inmy prison description and along with my mug in the rogues’ gallery. Theyis thousands of chiefs of police and detectives know all that stuff.”

“I never heard of it,” I assured him.

“You don’t remember that you ever heard of it,” he corrected.“But you must have just the same. Though you have forgotten about it, theinformation is in your brain all right, stored away for reference, onlyyou’ve forgot where it is stored. You’ve got to get woozy in orderto remember.”

“Did you ever forget a man’s name you used to know as well as yourown brother’s? I have. There was a little juror that convicted me inOakland the time I got handed my fifty-years. And one day I found I’dforgotten his name. Why, bo, I lay here for weeks puzzling for it. Now, justbecause I could not dig it out of my memory box was no sign it was not there.It was mislaid, that was all. And to prove it, one day, when I was not eventhinking about it, it popped right out of my brain to the tip of my tongue.‘Stacy,’ I said right out loud. ‘Joseph Stacy.’ Thatwas it. Get my drive?

“You only tell me about them scars what thousands of men know. Idon’t know how you got the information, I guess you don’t knowyourself. That ain’t my lookout. But there she is. Telling me what manyknows buys nothing with me. You got to deliver a whole lot more than that tomake me swallow the rest of your whoppers.”

Hamilton’s Law of Parsimony in the weighing of evidence! So intrinsicallywas this slum-bred convict a scientist, that he had worked out Hamilton’slaw and rigidly applied it.

And yet—and the incident is delicious—Jake Oppenheimer wasintellectually honest. That night, as I was dozing off, he called me with thecustomary signal.

“Say, Professor, you said you saw me wiggling my loose tooth. That hasgot my goat. That is the one thing I can’t figure out any way you couldknow. It only went loose three days ago, and I ain’t whispered it to asoul.”

CHAPTER XXI.

Pascal somewhere says: “In viewing the march of human evolution, thephilosophic mind should look upon humanity as one man, and not as aconglomeration of individuals.”

I sit here in Murderers’ Row in Folsom, the drowsy hum of flies in myears as I ponder that thought of Pascal. It is true. Just as the human embryo,in its brief ten lunar months, with bewildering swiftness, in myriad forms andsemblances a myriad times multiplied, rehearses the entire history of organiclife from vegetable to man; just as the human boy, in his brief years ofboyhood, rehearses the history of primitive man in acts of cruelty andsavagery, from wantonness of inflicting pain on lesser creatures to tribalconsciousness expressed by the desire to run in gangs; just so, I, DarrellStanding, have rehearsed and relived all that primitive man was, and did, andbecame until he became even you and me and the rest of our kind in a twentiethcentury civilization.

Truly do we carry in us, each human of us alive on the planet to-day, theincorruptible history of life from life’s beginning. This history iswritten in our tissues and our bones, in our functions and our organs, in ourbrain cells and in our spirits, and in all sorts of physical and psychicatavistic urgencies and compulsions. Once we were fish-like, you and I, myreader, and crawled up out of the sea to pioneer in the great, dry-landadventure in the thick of which we are now. The marks of the sea are still onus, as the marks of the serpent are still on us, ere the serpent became serpentand we became we, when pre-serpent and pre-we were one. Once we flew in theair, and once we dwelt arboreally and were afraid of the dark. The vestigesremain, graven on you and me, and graven on our seed to come after us to theend of our time on earth.

What Pascal glimpsed with the vision of a seer, I have lived. I have seenmyself that one man contemplated by Pascal’s philosophic eye. Oh, I havea tale, most true, most wonderful, most real to me, although I doubt that Ihave wit to tell it, and that you, my reader, have wit to perceive it whentold. I say that I have seen myself that one man hinted at by Pascal. I havelain in the long trances of the jacket and glimpsed myself a thousand livingmen living the thousand lives that are themselves the history of the human manclimbing upward through the ages.

Ah, what royal memories are mine, as I flutter through the æons of thelong ago. In single jacket trances I have lived the many lives involved in thethousand-years-long Odysseys of the early drifts of men. Heavens, before I wasof the flaxen-haired Aesir, who dwelt in Asgard, and before I was of thered-haired Vanir, who dwelt in Vanaheim, long before those times I havememories (living memories) of earlier drifts, when, like thistledown before thebreeze, we drifted south before the face of the descending polar ice-cap.

I have died of frost and famine, fight and flood. I have picked berries on thebleak backbone of the world, and I have dug roots to eat from the fat-soiledfens and meadows. I have scratched the reindeer’s semblance and thesemblance of the hairy mammoth on ivory tusks gotten of the chase and on therock walls of cave shelters when the winter storms moaned outside. I havecracked marrow-bones on the sites of kingly cities that had perished centuriesbefore my time or that were destined to be builded centuries after my passing.And I have left the bones of my transient carcasses in pond bottoms, andglacial gravels, and asphaltum lakes.

I have lived through the ages known to-day among the scientists as thePaleolithic, the Neolithic, and the Bronze. I remember when with ourdomesticated wolves we herded our reindeer to pasture on the north shore of theMediterranean where now are France and Italy and Spain. This was before theice-sheet melted backward toward the pole. Many processions of the equinoxeshave I lived through and died in, my reader . . . only that I remember and thatyou do not.

I have been a Son of the Plough, a Son of the Fish, a Son of the Tree. Allreligions from the beginnings of man’s religious time abide in me. Andwhen the Dominie, in the chapel, here in Folsom of a Sunday, worships God inhis own good modern way, I know that in him, the Dominie, still abide theworships of the Plough, the Fish, the Tree—ay, and also all worships ofAstarte and the Night.

I have been an Aryan master in old Egypt, when my soldiers scrawled obscenitieson the carven tombs of kings dead and gone and forgotten aforetime. And I, theAryan master in old Egypt, have myself builded my two burial places—theone a false and mighty pyramid to which a generation of slaves could attest;the other humble, meagre, secret, rock-hewn in a desert valley by slaves whodied immediately their work was done. . . . And I wonder me here in Folsom,while democracy dreams its enchantments o’er the twentieth century world,whether there, in the rock-hewn crypt of that secret, desert valley, the bonesstill abide that once were mine and that stiffened my animated body when I wasan Aryan master high-stomached to command.

And on the great drift, southward and eastward under the burning sun thatperished all descendants of the houses of Asgard and Vanaheim, I have been aking in Ceylon, a builder of Aryan monuments under Aryan kings in old Java andold Sumatra. And I have died a hundred deaths on the great South Sea drift ereever the rebirth of me came to plant monuments, that only Aryans plant, onvolcanic tropic islands that I, Darrell Standing, cannot name, being too littleversed to-day in that far sea geography.

If only I were articulate to paint in the frail medium of words what I see andknow and possess incorporated in my consciousness of the mighty driftage of theraces in the times before our present written history began! Yes, we had ourhistory even then. Our old men, our priests, our wise ones, told our historyinto tales and wrote those tales in the stars so that our seed after us shouldnot forget. From the sky came the life-giving rain and the sunlight. And westudied the sky, learned from the stars to calculate time and apportion theseasons; and we named the stars after our heroes and our foods and our devicesfor getting food; and after our wanderings, and drifts, and adventures; andafter our functions and our furies of impulse and desire.

And, alas! we thought the heavens unchanging on which we wrote all our humbleyearnings and all the humble things we did or dreamed of doing. When I was aSon of the Bull, I remember me a lifetime I spent at star-gazing. And, laterand earlier, there were other lives in which I sang with the priests and bardsthe taboo-songs of the stars wherein we believed was written our imperishablerecord. And here, at the end of it all, I pore over books of astronomy from theprison library, such as they allow condemned men to read, and learn that eventhe heavens are passing fluxes, vexed with star-driftage as the earth is by thedrifts of men.

Equipped with this modern knowledge, I have, returning through the little deathfrom my earlier lives, been able to compare the heavens then and now. And thestars do change. I have seen pole stars and pole stars and dynasties of polestars. The pole star to-day is in Ursa Minor. Yet, in those far days I haveseen the pole star in Draco, in Hercules, in Vega, in Cygnus, and in Cepheus.No; not even the stars abide, and yet the memory and the knowledge of themabides in me, in the spirit of me that is memory and that is eternal. Onlyspirit abides. All else, being mere matter, passes, and must pass.

Oh, I do see myself to-day that one man who appeared in the elder world,blonde, ferocious, a killer and a lover, a meat-eater and a root-digger, agypsy and a robber, who, club in hand, through millenniums of years wanderedthe world around seeking meat to devour and sheltered nests for his younglingsand sucklings.

I am that man, the sum of him, the all of him, the hairless biped who struggledupward from the slime and created love and law out of the anarchy of fecundlife that screamed and squalled in the jungle. I am all that that man was anddid become. I see myself, through the painful generations, snaring and killingthe game and the fish, clearing the first fields from the forest, making rudetools of stone and bone, building houses of wood, thatching the roofs withleaves and straw, domesticating the wild grasses and meadow-roots, fatheringthem to become the progenitors of rice and millet and wheat and barley and allmanner of succulent edibles, learning to scratch the soil, to sow, to reap, tostore, beating out the fibres of plants to spin into thread and to weave intocloth, devising systems of irrigation, working in metals, making markets andtrade-routes, building boats, and founding navigation—ay, and organizingvillage life, welding villages to villages till they became tribes, weldingtribes together till they became nations, ever seeking the laws of things, evermaking the laws of humans so that humans might live together in amity and byunited effort beat down and destroy all manner of creeping, crawling, squallingthings that might else destroy them.

I was that man in all his births and endeavours. I am that man to-day, waitingmy due death by the law that I helped to devise many a thousand years ago, andby which I have died many times before this, many times. And as I contemplatethis vast past history of me, I find several great and splendid influences,and, chiefest of these, the love of woman, man’s love for the woman ofhis kind. I see myself, the one man, the lover, always the lover. Yes, also wasI the great fighter, but somehow it seems to me as I sit here and evenlybalance it all, that I was, more than aught else, the great lover. It wasbecause I loved greatly that I was the great fighter.

Sometimes I think that the story of man is the story of the love of woman. Thismemory of all my past that I write now is the memory of my love of woman. Ever,in the ten thousand lives and guises, I loved her. I love her now. My sleep isfraught with her; my waking fancies, no matter whence they start, lead mealways to her. There is no escaping her, that eternal, splendid,ever-resplendent figure of woman.

Oh, make no mistake. I am no callow, ardent youth. I am an elderly man, brokenin health and body, and soon to die. I am a scientist and a philosopher. I, asall the generations of philosophers before me, know woman for what sheis—her weaknesses, and meannesses, and immodesties, and ignobilities, herearth-bound feet, and her eyes that have never seen the stars. But—andthe everlasting, irrefragable fact remains: Her feet are beautiful, her eyesare beautiful, her arms and breasts are paradise, her charm is potent beyondall charm that has ever dazzled men; and, as the pole willy-nilly draws theneedle, just so, willy-nilly, does she draw men.

Woman has made me laugh at death and distance, scorn fatigue and sleep. I haveslain men, many men, for love of woman, or in warm blood have baptized ournuptials or washed away the stain of her favour to another. I have gone down todeath and dishonour, my betrayal of my comrades and of the stars black upon me,for woman’s sake—for my sake, rather, I desired her so. And I havelain in the barley, sick with yearning for her, just to see her pass and glutmy eyes with the swaying wonder of her and of her hair, black with the night,or brown or flaxen, or all golden-dusty with the sun.

For woman isbeautiful . . . to man. She is sweet to his tongue, andfragrance in his nostrils. She is fire in his blood, and a thunder of trumpets;her voice is beyond all music in his ears; and she can shake his soul that elsestands steadfast in the draughty presence of the Titans of the Light and of theDark. And beyond his star-gazing, in his far-imagined heavens, Valkyrie orhouri, man has fain made place for her, for he could see no heaven without her.And the sword, in battle, singing, sings not so sweet a song as the woman singsto man merely by her laugh in the moonlight, or her love-sob in the dark, or byher swaying on her way under the sun while he lies dizzy with longing in thegrass.

I have died of love. I have died for love, as you shall see. In a little whilethey will take me out, me, Darrell Standing, and make me die. And that deathshall be for love. Oh, not lightly was I stirred when I slew Professor Haskellin the laboratory at the University of California. He was a man. I was a man.And there was a woman beautiful. Do you understand? She was a woman and I was aman and a lover, and all the heredity of love was mine up from the black andsqualling jungle ere love was love and man was man.

Oh, ay, it is nothing new. Often, often, in that long past have I given lifeand honour, place and power for love. Man is different from woman. She is closeto the immediate and knows only the need of instant things. We know honourabove her honour, and pride beyond her wildest guess of pride. Our eyes arefar-visioned for star-gazing, while her eyes see no farther than the solidearth beneath her feet, the lover’s breast upon her breast, the infantlusty in the hollow of her arm. And yet, such is our alchemy compounded of theages, woman works magic in our dreams and in our veins, so that more thandreams and far visions and the blood of life itself is woman to us, who, aslovers truly say, is more than all the world. Yet is this just, else would mannot be man, the fighter and the conqueror, treading his red way on the face ofall other and lesser life—for, had man not been the lover, the royallover, he could never have become the kingly fighter. We fight best, and diebest, and live best, for what we love.

I am that one man. I see myself the many selves that have gone into theconstituting of me. And ever I see the woman, the many women, who have made meand undone me, who have loved me and whom I have loved.

I remember, oh, long ago when human kind was very young, that I made me a snareand a pit with a pointed stake upthrust in the middle thereof, for the takingof Sabre-Tooth. Sabre-Tooth, long-fanged and long-haired, was the chiefestperil to us of the squatting place, who crouched through the nights over ourfires and by day increased the growing shell-bank beneath us by the clams wedug and devoured from the salt mud-flats beside us.

And when the roar and the squall of Sabre-Tooth roused us where we squatted byour dying embers, and I was wild with far vision of the proof of the pit andthe stake, it was the woman, arms about me, leg-twining, who fought with me andrestrained me not to go out through the dark to my desire. She was part-clad,for warmth only, in skins of animals, mangy and fire-burnt, that I had slain;she was swart and dirty with camp smoke, unwashed since the spring rains, withnails gnarled and broken, and hands that were calloused like footpads and weremore like claws than like hands; but her eyes were blue as the summer sky is,as the deep sea is, and there was that in her eyes, and in her clasped armsabout me, and in her heart beating against mine, that withheld me . . . thoughthrough the dark until dawn, while Sabre-Tooth squalled his wrath and hisagony, I could hear my comrades snickering and sniggling to their women in thatI had not the faith in my emprise and invention to venture through the night tothe pit and the stake I had devised for the undoing of Sabre-Tooth. But mywoman, my savage mate held me, savage that I was, and her eyes drew me, and herarms chained me, and her twining legs and heart beating to mine seduced me frommy far dream of things, my man’s achievement, the goal beyond goals, thetaking and the slaying of Sabre-Tooth on the stake in the pit.

Once I was Ushu, the archer. I remember it well. For I was lost from my ownpeople, through the great forest, till I emerged on the flat lands and grasslands, and was taken in by a strange people, kin in that their skin was white,their hair yellow, their speech not too remote from mine. And she was Igar, andI drew her as I sang in the twilight, for she was destined a race-mother, andshe was broad-built and full-dugged, and she could not but draw to the manheavy-muscled, deep-chested, who sang of his prowess in man-slaying and inmeat-getting, and so, promised food and protection to her in her weaknesswhilst she mothered the seed that was to hunt the meat and live after her.

And these people knew not the wisdom of my people, in that they snared andpitted their meat and in battle used clubs and stone throwing-sticks and wereunaware of the virtues of arrows swift-flying, notched on the end to fit thethong of deer-sinew, well-twisted, that sprang into straightness when releasedto the spring of the ask-stick bent in the middle.

And while I sang, the stranger men laughed in the twilight. And only she, Igar,believed and had faith in me. I took her alone to the hunting, where the deersought the water-hole. And my bow twanged and sang in the covert, and the deerfell fast-stricken, and the warm meat was sweet to us, and she was mine thereby the water-hole.

And because of Igar I remained with the strange men. And I taught them themaking of bows from the red and sweet-smelling wood like unto cedar. And Itaught them to keep both eyes open, and to aim with the left eye, and to makeblunt shafts for small game, and pronged shafts of bone for the fish in theclear water, and to flake arrow-heads from obsidian for the deer and the wildhorse, the elk and old Sabre-Tooth. But the flaking of stone they laughed at,till I shot an elk through and through, the flaked stone standing out andbeyond, the feathered shaft sunk in its vitals, the whole tribe applauding.

I was Ushu, the archer, and Igar was my woman and mate. We laughed under thesun in the morning, when our man-child and woman-child, yellowed likehoney-bees, sprawled and rolled in the mustard, and at night she lay close inmy arms, and loved me, and urged me, because of my skill at the seasoning ofwoods and the flaking of arrow-heads, that I should stay close by the camp andlet the other men bring to me the meat from the perils of hunting. And Ilistened, and grew fat and short-breathed, and in the long nights, unsleeping,worried that the men of the stranger tribe brought me meat for my wisdom andhonour, but laughed at my fatness and undesire for the hunting and fighting.

And in my old age, when our sons were man-grown and our daughters were mothers,when up from the southland the dark men, flat-browed, kinky-headed, surged likewaves of the sea upon us and we fled back before them to the hill-slopes, Igar,like my mates far before and long after, leg-twining, arm-clasping, unseeingfar visions, strove to hold me aloof from the battle.

And I tore myself from her, fat and short-breathed, while she wept that nolonger I loved her, and I went out to the night-fighting and dawn-fighting,where, to the singing of bowstrings and the shrilling of arrows, feathered,sharp-pointed, we showed them, the kinky-heads, the skill of the killing andtaught them the wit and the willing of slaughter.

And as I died there at the end of the fighting, there were death songs andsinging about me, and the songs seemed to sing as these the words I havewritten when I was Ushu, the archer, and Igar, my mate-woman, leg-twining,arm-clasping, would have held me back from the battle.

Once, and heaven alone knows when, save that it was in the long ago when manwas young, we lived beside great swamps, where the hills drew down close to thewide, sluggish river, and where our women gathered berries and roots, and therewere herds of deer, of wild horses, of antelope, and of elk, that we men slewwith arrows or trapped in the pits or hill-pockets. From the river we caughtfish in nets twisted by the women of the bark of young trees.

I was a man, eager and curious as the antelope when we lured it by waving grassclumps where we lay hidden in the thick of the grass. The wild rice grew in theswamp, rising sheer from the water on the edges of the channels. Each morningthe blackbirds awoke us with their chatter as they left their roosts to fly tothe swamp. And through the long twilight the air was filled with their noise asthey went back to their roosts. It was the time that the rice ripened. Andthere were ducks also, and ducks and blackbirds feasted to fatness on the riperice half unhusked by the sun.

Being a man, ever restless, ever questing, wondering always what lay beyond thehills and beyond the swamps and in the mud at the river’s bottom, Iwatched the wild ducks and blackbirds and pondered till my pondering gave mevision and I saw. And this is what I saw, the reasoning of it:

Meat was good to eat. In the end, tracing it back, or at the first, rather, allmeat came from grass. The meat of the duck and of the blackbird came from theseed of the swamp rice. To kill a duck with an arrow scarce paid for the labourof stalking and the long hours in hiding. The blackbirds were too small forarrow-killing save by the boys who were learning and preparing for the takingof larger game. And yet, in rice season, blackbirds and ducks were succulentlyfat. Their fatness came from the rice. Why should I and mine not be fat fromthe rice in the same way?

And I thought it out in camp, silent, morose, while the children squabbledabout me unnoticed, and while Arunga, my mate-woman, vainly scolded me andurged me to go hunting for more meat for the many of us.

Arunga was the woman I had stolen from the hill-tribes. She and I had been adozen moons in learning common speech after I captured her. Ah, that day when Ileaped upon her, down from the over-hanging tree-branch as she padded therunway! Fairly upon her shoulders with the weight of my body I smote her, myfingers wide-spreading to clutch her. She squalled like a cat there in therunway. She fought me and bit me. The nails of her hands were like the claws ofa tree-cat as they tore at me. But I held her and mastered her, and for twodays beat her and forced her to travel with me down out of the canyons of theHill-Men to the grass lands where the river flowed through the rice-swamps andthe ducks and the blackbirds fed fat.

I saw my vision when the rice was ripe. I put Arunga in the bow of thefire-hollowed log that was most rudely a canoe. I bade her paddle. In the sternI spread a deerskin she had tanned. With two stout sticks I bent the stalksover the deerskin and threshed out the grain that else the blackbirds wouldhave eaten. And when I had worked out the way of it, I gave the two stoutsticks to Arunga, and sat in the bow paddling and directing.

In the past we had eaten the raw rice in passing and not been pleased with it.But now we parched it over our fire so that the grains puffed and exploded inwhiteness and all the tribe came running to taste.

After that we became known among men as the Rice-Eaters and as the Sons of theRice. And long, long after, when we were driven by the Sons of the River fromthe swamps into the uplands, we took the seed of the rice with us and plantedit. We learned to select the largest grains for the seed, so that all the ricewe thereafter ate was larger-grained and puffier in the parching and theboiling.

But Arunga. I have said she squalled and scratched like a cat when I stole her.Yet I remember the time when her own kin of the Hill-Men caught me and carriedme away into the hills. They were her father, his brother, and her two ownblood-brothers. But she was mine, who had lived with me. And at night, where Ilay bound like a wild pig for the slaying, and they slept weary by the fire,she crept upon them and brained them with the war-club that with my hands I hadfashioned. And she wept over me, and loosed me, and fled with me, back to thewide sluggish river where the blackbirds and wild ducks fed in the riceswamps—for this was before the time of the coming of the Sons of theRiver.

For she was Arunga, the one woman, the eternal woman. She has lived in alltimes and places. She will always live. She is immortal. Once, in a far land,her name was Ruth. Also has her name been Iseult, and Helen, Pocahontas, andUnga. And no stranger man, from stranger tribes, but has found her and willfind her in the tribes of all the earth.

I remember so many women who have gone into the becoming of the one woman.There was the time that Har, my brother, and I, sleeping and pursuing in turn,ever hounding the wild stallion through the daytime and night, and in a widecircle that met where the sleeping one lay, drove the stallion unrestingthrough hunger and thirst to the meekness of weakness, so that in the end hecould but stand and tremble while we bound him with ropes twisted of deer-hide.On our legs alone, without hardship, aided merely by wit—the plan wasmine—my brother and I walked that fleet-footed creature into possession.

And when all was ready for me to get on his back—for that had been myvision from the first—Selpa, my woman, put her arms about me, and raisedher voice and persisted that Har, and not I, should ride, for Har had neitherwife nor young ones and could die without hurt. Also, in the end she wept, sothat I was raped of my vision, and it was Har, naked and clinging, thatbestrode the stallion when he vaulted away.

It was sunset, and a time of great wailing, when they carried Har in from thefar rocks where they found him. His head was quite broken, and like honey froma fallen bee-tree his brains dripped on the ground. His mother strewedwood-ashes on her head and blackened her face. His father cut off half thefingers of one hand in token of sorrow. And all the women, especially the youngand unwedded, screamed evil names at me; and the elders shook their wise headsand muttered and mumbled that not their fathers nor their fathers’fathers had betrayed such a madness. Horse meat was good to eat; young coltswere tender to old teeth; and only a fool would come to close grapples with anywild horse save when an arrow had pierced it, or when it struggled on the stakein the midst of the pit.

And Selpa scolded me to sleep, and in the morning woke me with her chatter,ever declaiming against my madness, ever pronouncing her claim upon me and theclaims of our children, till in the end I grew weary, and forsook my farvision, and said never again would I dream of bestriding the wild horse to flyswift as its feet and the wind across the sands and the grass lands.

And through the years the tale of my madness never ceased from being told overthe camp-fire. Yet was the very telling the source of my vengeance; for thedream did not die, and the young ones, listening to the laugh and the sneer,redreamed it, so that in the end it was Othar, my eldest-born, himself a sheerstripling, that walked down a wild stallion, leapt on its back, and flew beforeall of us with the speed of the wind. Thereafter, that they might keep up withhim, all men were trapping and breaking wild horses. Many horses were broken,and some men, but I lived at the last to the day when, at the changing ofcamp-sites in the pursuit of the meat in its seasons, our very babes, inbaskets of willow-withes, were slung side and side on the backs of our horsesthat carried our camp-trappage and dunnage.

I, a young man, had seen my vision, dreamed my dream; Selpa, the woman, hadheld me from that far desire; but Othar, the seed of us to live after, glimpsedmy vision and won to it, so that our tribe became wealthy in the gains of thechase.

There was a woman—on the great drift down out of Europe, a weary drift ofmany generations, when we brought into India the shorthorn cattle and theplanting of barley. But this woman was long before we reached India. We werestill in the mid-most of that centuries-long drift, and no shrewdness ofgeography can now place for me that ancient valley.

The woman was Nuhila. The valley was narrow, not long, and the swift slope ofits floor and the steep walls of its rim were terraced for the growing of riceand of millet—the first rice and millet we Sons of the Mountain hadknown. They were a meek people in that valley. They had become soft with thefarming of fat land made fatter by water. Theirs was the first irrigation wehad seen, although we had little time to mark their ditches and channels bywhich all the hill waters flowed to the fields they had builded. We had littletime to mark, for we Sons of the Mountain, who were few, were in flight beforethe Sons of the Snub-Nose, who were many. We called them the Noseless, and theycalled themselves the Sons of the Eagle. But they were many, and we fled beforethem with our shorthorn cattle, our goats, and our barleyseed, our women andchildren.

While the Snub-Noses slew our youths at the rear, we slew at our fore the folkof the valley who opposed us and were weak. The village was mud-built andgrass-thatched; the encircling wall was of mud, but quite tall. And when we hadslain the people who had built the wall, and sheltered within it our herds andour women and children, we stood on the wall and shouted insult to theSnub-Noses. For we had found the mud granaries filled with rice and millet. Ourcattle could eat the thatches. And the time of the rains was at hand, so thatwe should not want for water.

It was a long siege. Near to the beginning, we gathered together the women, andelders, and children we had not slain, and forced them out through the wallthey had builded. But the Snub-Noses slew them to the last one, so that therewas more food in the village for us, more food in the valley for theSnub-Noses.

It was a weary long siege. Sickness smote us, and we died of the plague thatarose from our buried ones. We emptied the mud-granaries of their rice andmillet. Our goats and shorthorns ate the thatch of the houses, and we, ere theend, ate the goats and the shorthorns.

Where there had been five men of us on the wall, there came a time when therewas one; where there had been half a thousand babes and younglings of ours,there were none. It was Nuhila, my woman, who cut off her hair and twisted itthat I might have a strong string for my bow. The other women did likewise, andwhen the wall was attacked, stood shoulder to shoulder with us, in the midst ofour spears and arrows raining down potsherds and cobblestones on the heads ofthe Snub-Noses.

Even the patient Snub-Noses we well-nigh out-patienced. Came a time when of tenmen of us, but one was alive on the wall, and of our women remained very few,and the Snub-Noses held parley. They told us we were a strong breed, and thatour women were men-mothers, and that if we would let them have our women theywould leave us alone in the valley to possess for ourselves and that we couldget women from the valleys to the south.

And Nuhila said no. And the other women said no. And we sneered at theSnub-Noses and asked if they were weary of fighting. And we were as dead menthen, as we sneered at our enemies, and there was little fight left in us wewere so weak. One more attack on the wall would end us. We knew it. Our womenknew it. And Nuhila said that we could end it first and outwit the Snub-Noses.And all our women agreed. And while the Snub-Noses prepared for the attack thatwould be final, there, on the wall, we slew our women. Nuhila loved me, andleaned to meet the thrust of my sword, there on the wall. And we men, in thelove of tribehood and tribesmen, slew one another till remained only Horda andI alive in the red of the slaughter. And Horda was my elder, and I leaned tohis thrust. But not at once did I die. I was the last of the Sons of theMountain, for I saw Horda, himself fall on his blade and pass quickly. Anddying with the shouts of the oncoming Snub-Noses growing dim in my ears, I wasglad that the Snub-Noses would have no sons of us to bring up by our women.

I do not know when this time was when I was a Son of the Mountain and when wedied in the narrow valley where we had slain the Sons of the Rice and theMillet. I do not know, save that it was centuries before the wide-spreadingdrift of all us Sons of the Mountain fetched into India, and that it was longbefore ever I was an Aryan master in Old Egypt building my two burial placesand defacing the tombs of kings before me.

I should like to tell more of those far days, but time in the present is short.Soon I shall pass. Yet am I sorry that I cannot tell more of those earlydrifts, when there was crushage of peoples, or descending ice-sheets, ormigrations of meat.

Also, I should like to tell of Mystery. For always were we curious to solve thesecrets of life, death, and decay. Unlike the other animals, man was for evergazing at the stars. Many gods he created in his own image and in the images ofhis fancy. In those old times I have worshipped the sun and the dark. I haveworshipped the husked grain as the parent of life. I have worshipped Sar, theCorn Goddess. And I have worshipped sea gods, and river gods, and fish gods.

Yes, and I remember Ishtar ere she was stolen from us by the Babylonians, andEa, too, was ours, supreme in the Under World, who enabled Ishtar to conquerdeath. Mitra, likewise, was a good old Aryan god, ere he was filched from us orwe discarded him. And I remember, on a time, long after the drift when webrought the barley into India, that I came down into India, a horse-trader,with many servants and a long caravan at my back, and that at that time theywere worshipping Bodhisatwa.

Truly, the worships of the Mystery wandered as did men, and between filchingsand borrowings the gods had as vagabond a time of it as did we. As theSumerians took the loan of Shamashnapishtin from us, so did the Sons of Shemtake him from the Sumerians and call him Noah.

Why, I smile me to-day, Darrell Standing, in Murderers’ Row, in that Iwas found guilty and awarded death by twelve jurymen staunch and true. Twelvehas ever been a magic number of the Mystery. Nor did it originate with thetwelve tribes of Israel. Star-gazers before them had placed the twelve signs ofthe Zodiac in the sky. And I remember me, when I was of the Assir, and of theVanir, that Odin sat in judgment over men in the court of the twelve gods, andthat their names were Thor, Baldur, Niord, Frey, Tyr, Bregi, Heimdal, Hoder,Vidar, Ull, Forseti, and Loki.

Even our Valkyries were stolen from us and made into angels, and the wings ofthe Valkyries’ horses became attached to the shoulders of the angels. Andour Helheim of that day of ice and frost has become the hell of to-day, whichis so hot an abode that the blood boils in one’s veins, while with us, inour Helheim, the place was so cold as to freeze the marrow inside the bones.And the very sky, that we dreamed enduring, eternal, has drifted and veered, sothat we find to-day the scorpion in the place where of old we knew the goat,and the archer in the place of the crab.

Worships and worships! Ever the pursuit of the Mystery! I remember the lame godof the Greeks, the master-smith. But their vulcan was the Germanic Wieland, themaster-smith captured and hamstrung lame of a leg by Nidung, the kind of theNids. But before that he was our master-smith, our forger and hammerer, whom wenamed Il-marinen. And him we begat of our fancy, giving him the bearded sun-godfor father, and nursing him by the stars of the bear. For, he, Vulcan, orWieland, or Il-marinen, was born under the pine tree, from the hair of thewolf, and was called also the bear-father ere ever the Germans and Greekspurloined and worshipped him. In that day we called ourselves the Sons of theBear and the Sons of the Wolf, and the bear and the wolf were our totems. Thatwas before our drift south on which we joined with the Sons of the Tree-Groveand taught them our totems and tales.

Yes, and who was Kashyapa, who was Pururavas, but our lame master-smith, ouriron-worker, carried by us in our drifts and re-named and worshipped by thesouth-dwellers and the east-dwellers, the Sons of the Pole and of the FireDrill and Fire Socket.

But the tale is too long, though I should like to tell of the three-leaved Herbof Life by which Sigmund made Sinfioti alive again. For this is the verysoma-plant of India, the holy grail of King Arthur, the—but enough!enough!

And yet, as I calmly consider it all, I conclude that the greatest thing inlife, in all lives, to me and to all men, has been woman, is woman, and will bewoman so long as the stars drift in the sky and the heavens flux eternalchange. Greater than our toil and endeavour, the play of invention and fancy,battle and star-gazing and mystery—greatest of all has been woman.

Even though she has sung false music to me, and kept my feet solid on theground, and drawn my star-roving eyes ever back to gaze upon her, she, theconserver of life, the earth-mother, has given me my great days and nights andfulness of years. Even mystery have I imaged in the form of her, and in mystar-charting have I placed her figure in the sky.

All my toils and devices led to her; all my far visions saw her at the end.When I made the fire-drill and fire-socket, it was for her. It was for her,although I did not know it, that I put the stake in the pit for oldSabre-Tooth, tamed the horse, slew the mammoth, and herded my reindeer south inadvance of the ice-sheet. For her I harvested the wild rice, tamed the barley,the wheat, and the corn.

For her, and the seed to come after whose image she bore, I have died intree-tops and stood long sieges in cave-mouths and on mud-walls. For her I putthe twelve signs in the sky. It was she I worshipped when I bowed before theten stones of jade and adored them as the moons of gestation.

Always has woman crouched close to earth like a partridge hen mothering heryoung; always has my wantonness of roving led me out on the shining ways; andalways have my star-paths returned me to her, the figure everlasting, thewoman, the one woman, for whose arms I had such need that clasped in them Ihave forgotten the stars.

For her I accomplished Odysseys, scaled mountains, crossed deserts; for her Iled the hunt and was forward in battle; and for her and to her I sang my songsof the things I had done. All ecstasies of life and rhapsodies of delight havebeen mine because of her. And here, at the end, I can say that I have known nosweeter, deeper madness of being than to drown in the fragrant glory andforgetfulness of her hair.

One word more. I remember me Dorothy, just the other day, when I still lecturedon agronomy to farmer-boy students. She was eleven years old. Her father wasdean of the college. She was a woman-child, and a woman, and she conceived thatshe loved me. And I smiled to myself, for my heart was untouched and layelsewhere.

Yet was the smile tender, for in the child’s eyes I saw the womaneternal, the woman of all times and appearances. In her eyes I saw the eyes ofmy mate of the jungle and tree-top, of the cave and the squatting-place. In hereyes I saw the eyes of Igar when I was Ushu the archer, the eyes of Arunga whenI was the rice-harvester, the eyes of Selpa when I dreamed of bestriding thestallion, the eyes of Nuhila who leaned to the thrust of my sword. Yes, therewas that in her eyes that made them the eyes of Lei-Lei whom I left with alaugh on my lips, the eyes of the Lady Om for forty years my beggar-mate onhighway and byway, the eyes of Philippa for whom I was slain on the grass inold France, the eyes of my mother when I was the lad Jesse at the MountainMeadows in the circle of our forty great wagons.

She was a woman-child, but she was daughter of all women, as her mother beforeher, and she was the mother of all women to come after her. She was Sar, thecorn-goddess. She was Isthar who conquered death. She was Sheba and Cleopatra;she was Esther and Herodias. She was Mary the Madonna, and Mary the Magdalene,and Mary the sister of Martha, also she was Martha. And she was Brünnhildeand Guinevere, Iseult and Juliet, Héloïse and Nicolette. Yes, andshe was Eve, she was Lilith, she was Astarte. She was eleven years old, and shewas all women that had been, all women to be.

I sit in my cell now, while the flies hum in the drowsy summer afternoon, and Iknow that my time is short. Soon they will apparel me in the shirt without acollar. . . . But hush, my heart. The spirit is immortal. After the dark Ishall live again, and there will be women. The future holds the little womenfor me in the lives I am yet to live. And though the stars drift, and theheavens lie, ever remains woman, resplendent, eternal, the one woman, as I,under all my masquerades and misadventures, am the one man, her mate.

CHAPTER XXII.

My time grows very short. All the manuscript I have written is safely smuggledout of the prison. There is a man I can trust who will see that it ispublished. No longer am I in Murderers Row. I am writing these lines in thedeath cell, and the death-watch is set on me. Night and day is this death-watchon me, and its paradoxical function is to see that I do not die. I must be keptalive for the hanging, or else will the public be cheated, the law blackened,and a mark of demerit placed against the time-serving warden who runs thisprison and one of whose duties is to see that his condemned ones are duly andproperly hanged. Often I marvel at the strange way some men make their livings.

This shall be my last writing. To-morrow morning the hour is set. The governorhas declined to pardon or reprieve, despite the fact that theAnti-Capital-Punishment League has raised quite a stir in California. Thereporters are gathered like so many buzzards. I have seen them all. They arequeer young fellows, most of them, and most queer is it that they will thusearn bread and butter, cocktails and tobacco, room-rent, and, if they aremarried, shoes and schoolbooks for their children, by witnessing the executionof Professor Darrell Standing, and by describing for the public how ProfessorDarrell Standing died at the end of a rope. Ah, well, they will be sicker thanI at the end of the affair.

As I sit here and muse on it all, the footfalls of the death-watch going up anddown outside my cage, the man’s suspicious eyes ever peering in on me,almost I weary of eternal recurrence. I have lived so many lives. I weary ofthe endless struggle and pain and catastrophe that come to those who sit in thehigh places, tread the shining ways, and wander among the stars.

Almost I hope, when next I reinhabit form, that it shall be that of a peacefulfarmer. There is my dream-farm. I should like to engage just for one whole lifein that. Oh, my dream-farm! My alfalfa meadows, my efficient Jersey cattle, myupland pastures, my brush-covered slopes melting into tilled fields, while everhigher up the slopes my angora goats eat away brush to tillage!

There is a basin there, a natural basin high up the slopes, with a generouswatershed on three sides. I should like to throw a dam across the fourth side,which is surprisingly narrow. At a paltry price of labour I could impoundtwenty million gallons of water. For, see: one great drawback to farming inCalifornia is our long dry summer. This prevents the growing of cover crops,and the sensitive soil, naked, a mere surface dust-mulch, has its humus burnedout of it by the sun. Now with that dam I could grow three crops a year,observing due rotation, and be able to turn under a wealth of green manure. . ..

I have just endured a visit from the Warden. I say “endured”advisedly. He is quite different from the Warden of San Quentin. He was verynervous, and perforce I had to entertain him. This is his first hanging. Hetold me so. And I, with a clumsy attempt at wit, did not reassure him when Iexplained that it was also my first hanging. He was unable to laugh. He has agirl in high school, and his boy is a freshman at Stanford. He has no incomeoutside his salary, his wife is an invalid, and he is worried in that he hasbeen rejected by the life insurance doctors as an undesirable risk. Really, theman told me almost all his troubles. Had I not diplomatically terminated theinterview he would still be here telling me the remainder of them.

My last two years in San Quentin were very gloomy and depressing. Ed Morrell,by one of the wildest freaks of chance, was taken out of solitary and made headtrusty of the whole prison. This was Al Hutchins’ old job, and it carrieda graft of three thousand dollars a year. To my misfortune, Jake Oppenheimer,who had rotted in solitary for so many years, turned sour on the world, oneverything. For eight months he refused to talk even to me.

In prison, news will travel. Give it time and it will reach dungeon andsolitary cell. It reached me, at last, that Cecil Winwood, the poet-forger, thesnitcher, the coward, and the stool, was returned for a fresh forgery. It willbe remembered that it was this Cecil Winwood who concocted the fairy story thatI had changed the plant of the non-existent dynamite and who was responsiblefor the five years I had then spent in solitary.

I decided to kill Cecil Winwood. You see, Morrell was gone, and Oppenheimer,until the outbreak that finished him, had remained in the silence. Solitary hadgrown monotonous for me. I had to do something. So I remembered back to thetime when I was Adam Strang and patiently nursed revenge for forty years. Whathe had done I could do if once I locked my hands on Cecil Winwood’sthroat.

It cannot be expected of me to divulge how I came into possession of the fourneedles. They were small cambric needles. Emaciated as my body was, I had tosaw four bars, each in two places, in order to make an aperture through which Icould squirm. I did it. I used up one needle to each bar. This meant two cutsto a bar, and it took a month to a cut. Thus I should have been eight months incutting my way out. Unfortunately, I broke my last needle on the last bar, andI had to wait three months before I could get another needle. But I got it, andI got out.

I regret greatly that I did not get Cecil Winwood. I had calculated well oneverything save one thing. The certain chance to find Winwood would be in thedining-room at dinner hour. So I waited until Pie-Face Jones, the sleepy guard,should be on shift at the noon hour. At that time I was the only inmate ofsolitary, so that Pie-Face Jones was quickly snoring. I removed my bars,squeezed out, stole past him along the ward, opened the door and was free . . .to a portion of the inside of the prison.

And here was the one thing I had not calculated on—myself. I had beenfive years in solitary. I was hideously weak. I weighed eighty-seven pounds. Iwas half blind. And I was immediately stricken with agoraphobia. I wasaffrighted by spaciousness. Five years in narrow walls had unfitted me for theenormous declivity of the stairway, for the vastitude of the prison yard.

The descent of that stairway I consider the most heroic exploit I everaccomplished. The yard was deserted. The blinding sun blazed down on it. ThriceI essayed to cross it. But my senses reeled and I shrank back to the wall forprotection. Again, summoning all my courage, I attempted it. But my poor bleareyes, like a bat’s, startled me at my shadow on the flagstones. Iattempted to avoid my own shadow, tripped, fell over it, and like a drowningman struggling for shore crawled back on hands and knees to the wall.

I leaned against the wall and cried. It was the first time in many years that Ihad cried. I remember noting, even in my extremity, the warmth of the tears onmy cheeks and the salt taste when they reached my lips. Then I had a chill, andfor a time shook as with an ague. Abandoning the openness of the yard as tooimpossible a feat for one in my condition, still shaking with the chill,crouching close to the protecting wall, my hands touching it, I started toskirt the yard.

Then it was, somewhere along, that the guard Thurston espied me. I saw him,distorted by my bleared eyes, a huge, well-fed monster, rushing upon me withincredible speed out of the remote distance. Possibly, at that moment, he wastwenty feet away. He weighed one hundred and seventy pounds. The strugglebetween us can be easily imagined, but somewhere in that brief struggle it wasclaimed that I struck him on the nose with my fist to such purpose as to makethat organ bleed.

At any rate, being a lifer, and the penalty in California for battery by alifer being death, I was so found guilty by a jury which could not ignore theasseverations of the guard Thurston and the rest of the prison hang-dogs thattestified, and I was so sentenced by a judge who could not ignore the law asspread plainly on the statute book.

I was well pummelled by Thurston, and all the way back up that prodigiousstairway I was roundly kicked, punched, and cuffed by the horde of trusties andguards who got in one another’s way in their zeal to assist him. Heavens,if his nose did bleed, the probability is that some of his own kind were guiltyof causing it in the confusion of the scuffle. I shouldn’t care if I wereresponsible for it myself, save that it is so pitiful a thing for which to hanga man. . . .

I have just had a talk with the man on shift of my death-watch. A little lessthan a year ago, Jake Oppenheimer occupied this same death-cell on the road tothe gallows which I will tread to-morrow. This man was one of the death-watchon Jake. He is an old soldier. He chews tobacco constantly, and untidily, forhis gray beard and moustache are stained yellow. He is a widower, with fourteenliving children, all married, and is the grandfather of thirty-one livinggrandchildren, and the great-grandfather of four younglings, all girls. It waslike pulling teeth to extract such information. He is a queer old codger, of alow order of intelligence. That is why, I fancy, he has lived so long andfathered so numerous a progeny. His mind must have crystallized thirty yearsago. His ideas are none of them later than that vintage. He rarely says morethan yes and no to me. It is not because he is surly. He has no ideas to utter.I don’t know, when I live again, but what one incarnation such as hiswould be a nice vegetative existence in which to rest up ere I go star-rovingagain. . . .

But to go back. I must take a line in which to tell, after I was hustled andbustled, kicked and punched, up that terrible stairway by Thurston and the restof the prison-dogs, of the infinite relief of my narrow cell when I foundmyself back in solitary. It was all so safe, so secure. I felt like a lostchild returned home again. I loved those very walls that I had so hated forfive years. All that kept the vastness of space, like a monster, from pouncingupon me were those good stout walls of mine, close to hand on every side.Agoraphobia is a terrible affliction. I have had little opportunity toexperience it, but from that little I can only conclude that hanging is a fareasier matter. . . .

I have just had a hearty laugh. The prison doctor, a likable chap, has justbeen in to have a yarn with me, incidentally to proffer me his good offices inthe matter of dope. Of course I declined his proposition to “shootme” so full of morphine through the night that to-morrow I would notknow, when I marched to the gallows, whether I was “coming orgoing.”

But the laugh. It was just like Jake Oppenheimer. I can see the lean keennessof the man as he strung the reporters with his deliberate bull which theythought involuntary. It seems, his last morning, breakfast finished, incased inthe shirt without a collar, that the reporters, assembled for his last word inhis cell, asked him for his views on capital punishment.

—Who says we have more than the slightest veneer of civilization coatedover our raw savagery when a group of living men can ask such a question of aman about to die and whom they are to see die?

But Jake was ever game. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I hope to liveto see the day when capital punishment is abolished.”

I have lived many lives through the long ages. Man, the individual, has made nomoral progress in the past ten thousand years. I affirm this absolutely. Thedifference between an unbroken colt and the patient draught-horse is purely adifference of training. Training is the only moral difference between the manof to-day and the man of ten thousand years ago. Under his thin skin ofmorality which he has had polished onto him, he is the same savage that he wasten thousand years ago. Morality is a social fund, an accretion through thepainful ages. The new-born child will become a savage unless it is trained,polished, by the abstract morality that has been so long accumulating.

“Thou shalt not kill”—piffle! They are going to kill meto-morrow morning. “Thou shalt not kill”—piffle! In theshipyards of all civilized countries they are laying to-day the keels ofDreadnoughts and of Superdreadnoughts. Dear friends, I who am about to die,salute you with—“Piffle!”

I ask you, what finer morality is preached to-day than was preached by Christ,by Buddha, by Socrates and Plato, by Confucius and whoever was the author ofthe “Mahabharata”? Good Lord, fifty thousand years ago, in ourtotem-families, our women were cleaner, our family and group relations morerigidly right.

I must say that the morality we practised in those old days was a finermorality than is practised to-day. Don’t dismiss this thought hastily.Think of our child labour, of our police graft and our political corruption, ofour food adulteration and of our slavery of the daughters of the poor. When Iwas a Son of the Mountain and a Son of the Bull, prostitution had no meaning.We were clean, I tell you. We did not dream such depths of depravity. Yea, soare all the lesser animals of to-day clean. It required man, with hisimagination, aided by his mastery of matter, to invent the deadly sins. Thelesser animals, the other animals, are incapable of sin.

I read hastily back through the many lives of many times and many places. Ihave never known cruelty more terrible, nor so terrible, as the cruelty of ourprison system of to-day. I have told you what I have endured in the jacket andin solitary in the first decade of this twentieth century after Christ. In theold days we punished drastically and killed quickly. We did it because we sodesired, because of whim, if you so please. But we were not hypocrites. We didnot call upon press, and pulpit, and university to sanction us in ourwilfulness of savagery. What we wanted to do we went and did, on our legsupstanding, and we faced all reproof and censure on our legs upstanding, anddid not hide behind the skirts of classical economists and bourgeoisphilosophers, nor behind the skirts of subsidized preachers, professors, andeditors.

Why, goodness me, a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, five years ago, inthese United States, assault and battery was not a civil capital crime. Butthis year, the year of Our Lord 1913, in the State of California, they hangedJake Oppenheimer for such an offence, and to-morrow, for the civil capitalcrime of punching a man on the nose, they are going to take me out and hang me.Query: Doesn’t it require a long time for the ape and the tiger to diewhen such statutes are spread on the statute book of California in thenineteen-hundred-and-thirteenth year after Christ? Lord, Lord, they onlycrucified Christ. They have done far worse to Jake Oppenheimer and me. . . .

As Ed Morrell once rapped to me with his knuckles: “The worst possibleuse you can put a man to is to hang him.” No, I have little respect forcapital punishment. Not only is it a dirty game, degrading to the hang-dogs whopersonally perpetrate it for a wage, but it is degrading to the commonwealththat tolerates it, votes for it, and pays the taxes for its maintenance.Capital punishment is so silly, so stupid, so horribly unscientific.“To be hanged by the neck until dead” is society’s quaintphraseology . . .

Morning is come—my last morning. I slept like a babe throughout thenight. I slept so peacefully that once the death-watch got a fright. He thoughtI had suffocated myself in my blankets. The poor man’s alarm was pitiful.His bread and butter was at stake. Had it truly been so, it would have meant ablack mark against him, perhaps discharge and the outlook for an unemployed manis bitter just at present. They tell me that Europe began liquidating two yearsago, and that now the United States has begun. That means either a businesscrisis or a quiet panic and that the armies of the unemployed will be largenext winter, the bread-lines long. . . .

I have had my breakfast. It seemed a silly thing to do, but I ate it heartily.The Warden came with a quart of whiskey. I presented it to Murderers Row withmy compliments. The Warden, poor man, is afraid, if I be not drunk, that Ishall make a mess of the function and cast reflection on his management . . .

They have put on me the shirt without a collar. . .

It seems I am a very important man this day. Quite a lot of people are suddenlyinterested in me. . . .

The doctor has just gone. He has taken my pulse. I asked him to. It is normal.. . .

I write these random thoughts, and, a sheet at a time, they start on theirsecret way out beyond the walls. . . .

I am the calmest man in the prison. I am like a child about to start on ajourney. I am eager to be gone, curious for the new places I shall see. Thisfear of the lesser death is ridiculous to one who has gone into the dark sooften and lived again. . . .

The Warden with a quart of champagne. I have dispatched it down Murderers Row.Queer, isn’t it, that I am so considered this last day. It must be thatthese men who are to kill me are themselves afraid of death. To quote JakeOppenheimer: I, who am about to die, must seem to them something God-awful. . ..

Ed Morrell has just sent word in to me. They tell me he has paced up and downall night outside the prison wall. Being an ex-convict, they have red-taped himout of seeing me to say good-bye. Savages? I don’t know. Possibly justchildren. I’ll wager most of them will be afraid to be alone in the darkto-night after stretching my neck.

But Ed Morrell’s message: “My hand is in yours, old pal. I knowyou’ll swing off game.” . . .

The reporters have just left. I’ll see them next, and last time, from thescaffold, ere the hangman hides my face in the black cap. They will be lookingcuriously sick. Queer young fellows. Some show that they have been drinking.Two or three look sick with foreknowledge of what they have to witness. Itseems easier to be hanged than to look on. . . .

My last lines. It seems I am delaying the procession. My cell is quite crowdedwith officials and dignitaries. They are all nervous. They want it over.Without a doubt, some of them have dinner engagements. I am really offendingthem by writing these few words. The priest has again preferred his request tobe with me to the end. The poor man—why should I deny him that solace? Ihave consented, and he now appears quite cheerful. Such small things make somemen happy! I could stop and laugh for a hearty five minutes, if they were notin such a hurry.

Here I close. I can only repeat myself. There is no death. Life is spirit, andspirit cannot die. Only the flesh dies and passes, ever a-crawl with the chemicferment that informs it, ever plastic, ever crystallizing, only to melt intothe flux and to crystallize into fresh and diverse forms that are ephemeral andthat melt back into the flux. Spirit alone endures and continues to build uponitself through successive and endless incarnations as it works upward towardthe light. What shall I be when I live again? I wonder. I wonder. . . .