No Hand of Man.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 25, 19 June 1912, Page 42

No Hand of Man.

J

RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD.

HE had the largest, softest, most trusting eyes I ever saw. - ’ Pindar Rowe sometimes will say this, and then, if it is evening and supper is over and his corncob pipe is glowing, rumbling and bubbling like an asthmatic engine, and if the stars are thick in the tropic sky and eea birds scream in Hawk Channel, and a soft breeze, blowing across Spongecake Key, stirs the palms of sound that suggest silk petticoats, the old man will reach up to a shelf attached to the outside wall of his shanty and feel around for something. This something is nearly six inches long. In the uncertain light of dusk it looks flexible. “When I sit alone and look at that thing,’’ said Pindar, taking off one o£ his inevitable shabby derby hats, ‘T think. Being alone here on this Key ever since my wife died and I gave up wrecking, 1 get time for it. And 1 think of what mosquitoes was made for and I think of this thing and him that used to wear it, and why God made death in two needles. Now —{Listen!” With a strange .tremulous motion of his knotted, salt-bleached, weatherroughened old hand, he moves the thing toward you. It makes no difference whether or not you have ever heard it before; instinct screams within you, instinct jerks your muscles taught and like a chilly fluid creeps along your skin. The sound ie a warning! You recognise in it danger, agony and death. Then this old rascal, who has a long record of filibustering, wrecking, and inciting revolutions in South America, will explain. There's a time in a man’s life for action and then a time when joints are beginning to get stiff, and there’s a time to think it over. I sometimes wonder why it wasn’t arranged so a man could think first and avoid the mistakes. Never mind. Here I am, living alone on Spongecake, cooking my own meals, and I’ve got a partner and that partner is solitude. But solitude speaks most ideas ito human beings. Solitude is morel talkative than running for office and it whispers ideas to you as if it was a person. It’s convincing, too. And one thing it told me 1 can’t no way disbelieve. That’s about sin. A hundred times I've heard a voice coming out of the acres of stars at night ox from that jungle of cacti and prickly pears baking in the sun. It says that there is a squaring of accounts. It says that Something watt-nee and wiien it sees a bill of sin that’s growing too big and ain't paid, it reaches out across land or sea. and—strikes! There’s mutineers on ships and mutineers on land and mutineers standing out against the orders of the Big Skipper. But the belaying pin comes to ’em. Sometimes in front, .sometimes behind. A man stands laughing ami spitting in the sunlight ami then it comes —erack! And the bitt is pa hl.

So I'll tell you about this thing- I’ve, got in my hand, mate, and about him who grew it on himself and what fie did for Lenora Gonzalez.

Yon see this elump of eoeoanut palms •ide of my camp here. They were planted ■by a poor skipjack of an iee-ereain maker from Pennsylvania who eame down here to raise tropical fruit. Ami now the brush has grown up so thick among some of them that a man couldn’t stick a machete into it. It's nature laughing at what man tries to do, and it will always ♦>e that way. Ami the brush is a world ■itself. I tell you. I. who have been always on the water, was surprised what life there could be-in a tliicket like that

—full of the nonpareil birds a nd yellow Spiders as big as your hand and lizards With I eady eyes an<l seorpi<uw> as black ».s shoe polish, ami big red ants waving (heir feelers. It’s a world. I used to sit here in the sun a-dreaming ami a watching it.

And one slay there came out of that clump a snake. He came out slow, the ■way tar will move when it’s hot. The cunlight was .boating down on thia coral •end, and he moved like things that arc

well fed and deliberate and satisfied. Mate, his head looked almost as large as a dog's. I’ve seen those diamond-back rattle'rs before. They’re a pretty colour—prettier than the tint of a man’s skin — and there isn’t a motion in their bodies I don’t envy. But I reached up onto that shelf and took down my revolver and I was sighting along the barrel of it with my arm crooked like this, when 1 saw that snake draw his whole length out of the brush. And, mate, he was more than eight feet long! I had my finger on the trigger. 1 •reckon I was ready to kill. But somehow, just then, I thought of his size and his bright markings and how clean he kept himself and how God made him for some purpose. He was stretched out. most full length on the sand’ and his head was turned toward me. His eyes seemed half-shut and happy, and just then he lifted his head in one ~of those curves as pretty as the rounding in and out of a young girl’s neck. . He raised his head and opened his jaws, and inside, except for his black tongue, it was pink as a bleached conch shell, He. trembled a little, too, and, just as if it was for practice, he darted his head forward an! I saw the two white needles. ’, Those fangs moved down for a second from the roof of his mouth. They were more than two inches long! And I put the revolver back on the shelf. _ “Friend,” said I, “I’ve seen a. lot of rattlers in my day, but you are more of a rattlesnake than I’ever saw before. Youj're perfect and handsome. The Lor 1 made you for something and 1 .shan’t do you any harin’.’’ " I suppose the sound of my voice startled him. . I could. see his niu.seles move under his skin like liquid—like quicksilver. He drew his eight feet into a eoil and stuck his tail up into the air, and all the buttons were rattling, .till it sounded like a Venezuelan revolution half a mile away. His head had.flattened and swayed back and forth as he looked for the thing that meant fight. “Easy, son,” I said. “Nobody intends you any- harm. Lie there in the heat and sleep for all of me.”

I’ve wondered . sometimes if he understood me, because he stopped . swaying head and seemed to lie ’ looking at me. And then he pulled himself out of his eoil, which means a. rattler is satisfied and trustful. I liked him for that. 1 lighted my pipe and I watched him for that day, on and off, till the red sun went down into the Gulf yonder. And 1 named the snake. 1 named, him Gus. He came often.’ I used to wonder what he did the days when he didn't crawl out of that thicket there. ißfitt he never warned me again. I got to like him, I say. Maybe that sounds funny-. Yet when a man’s alone.he gets fond of friendly things, the way’ I took a notion once for a man-o’-war bird that followed me when I was sailing a bad trip by myself in the hurricane season from Havana to Progreso. And when Gus looked dusty, and his hide was peeling and scaly, or when he'd drop his head heavy on the sand ami act uncomfortable, I used to worry about him as if he was an old pal. And then some day, about that time, I’d see him running along against the stems of little bushes and afterward he’d cast his skin and come out as perfect and handsome as ever, with his hide with its diamond marks as bright as polished mahogany and the ’liquid muscles showing through. Sometimes a hawk would swing a curve over the tops of those palms, and Qus would remember when he was a little feller and had to watch out for I those birds, and just out of habit, he’d raise the rattles and shake ’em for a hint.

I’ve poured out many a saucer of condensed milk for that snake. Things that are alive— are alive. And both me and Gus had that between us. anyhow. Aiyd-whatever you ean say of snakes, I'm going to tell you that this big diamond hack never, from first till last, rattled at me again. He knew me, I tell you. And I knew him.

I reckon I never, had a bigger surprise than when Gus brought back the girl. He'Jiad' been gone' five'days; mate, and the \vind had'blown and ruffed up the hollow he’d made in the sand._ I went on my trip down . the East Coast after provisions and’ the Florida newspapers, and when I got-home I. could see that even then he hadn’t come back. I pictured how he used to look, curled up in the sun there, waving his head now and then as if looking for beach mice, or something, or asking me to open another ean of milk, or sleeping so peaceful with his sides flattened out. and his skin so near the colour of the eoral riffraff and dried coeanut husks that you could hardly tell that eight feet of a big rattler was there, I wondered if I wouldn’t

ever see him again. But the next day, he ; crawled out among prickly pears and she was with him. s -- : wr.

1 might as well say I never thought! much of her. .She wasn't any- such snake as Gus. But he'd been away ami got her. Maybe she was the best he could find on Spongecake Key here. Il he liked her, it wasn’t any of my business. I only say, I wouldn’t have picked her as a helpmeet for him nowise. But > I am prejudiced because she never got over being nervous when I was around*, and sometimes she’d forget her manners and coil and rattle if I met her down the shore, and that used to worry him, I reckon, because he liked mo. She was shorter than him, and her Tread was narrower, and she was daintier and fussier with the milk in the saucer, and she was very faithful to him, I’n» bound to say that .if her. Slic’d crawl along behind him. He was always leading the way. She was affectionate, tod. She’d often lay her head across hi* when he was resting. But the one thing that opened my heart, to her to little was the way she’d stay awake and coil herself and watch whenever he was sleeping stretched out and unable to spring, and she’d keep that way no matter how long he slept or how tired she might be. They were happy’, I reckoir. And Gus knew’ I wouldn’t do her any harm. I named her Bess.

She ami Gus was company for me. It was the first year I'd spent here alone on Spongecake, and the nights was stiff. I'd wake and feel around for a wheel or" a tiller as if it was in the old days—the days when I’d dropped off into a doze sailing a calm night under a sky full of stars, with the Water running off the! stern, smelling warm and oily. By day I’d find myself looking around for some! sailor who’d done something wrong —tqi abuse hint. I reckon I read "Pilgrim'sl Progress” a half a dozen times. I wad lonesome. My wife

It seemed pretty good to me when al flip of chance threw the little Gonzales girl and the man who was with her up onto Rib Rock Bar and I had to.take 'em oft and bring ’em in through the night ta this camp. They were in a thirty-foots launch when they struck, and though -it. was. calm weather there was a falling tide. I couldn’t move her oft’. A bottom of a boat will stick to that coral aa if it had grown there. I got the man and the girl back to my wharf, and I thought I'd take a chance at getting their boat off on the morning tide. It was as dark as a ship’s bilge thati night, and the water was alive and burning with phosphorus a hundred different colours. I suppose I might have known a norther was going to set in fot a blow and rough weather in Hawk Channel. And I noticed how the soundl of my engines stirred up the vulture** on the little keys. They- were sleep*n" I'ght, and they and the pelicans andl white cranes would whir up till ifi sounded like thunder. I might have! known. — - ii

But somehow, I didn’t think of anjj way to get that launch off. I ean recollect how I put it out of my mind on the way up the pier.

I hadn’t had a ehame till then id see who my passengers were or what* they looked like. But just then, in the dark, with only the swing of th© lantern moving around, I came up elosd to the girl. I just saw’ one thing about her. It was her eves.

It was. her eyes, mate. Dead men’* fingers! I never say such eyes before! on any living thing—animal or woman. They were nearly black. with long lashes, and the eyebrows was like a; picture and the flesh between those erows and the lashes was full ami curved and rounded and soft and smooth. And then there were thosd eyes. They were a mile deep, mate, like the clear water of Nassau. Reef. There was just that flick of light thati showed ’em to me, and they were big and trusting and perfect like no eye* you ever saw. They belonged with at child’s heart. 1 seen it in that second. And when I got up to my camp, I made up my lied fresh for her and took my lantern outside and put the latch on the door as if she'd been my own daughter. I. saw when I got outside that the storm had pounced down on us like a hawk. 1 heard the palms whistle and tattle in the wind. It was cold. The title in the channel had liegun to tumble and the norther had shut off the star* like you'd wipe out sparks with a sweep of a wet mop. I called to the feller who’d come with the girl. lie hadn't said much and he came ’ to the door of that other shack there I use for a kitchen and'stood wait-

fug white I vra.H trying to tight fTte. Tamp. “Stranger,” 1 said, ”you’ve lost your boat.” ‘T reckon so.” he said, calm and cool as a fresh kingfish in the ice barrel. “But you needn’t call me stranger.’* When he spoke like that, I looked at his figure—thin and graceful. “If this is Spongecake Key. then yofi're Pindar Bowe,” he said. “You old reprobate. Hold up the lamp. Now look at me!’* “Young Joe Kitchell!” I roared. It was him. just" as I’m telling you. It was -Joe Kitchell, with his’palaver and cigarettes and his insinuating ways and his slouchy, easy clothes and his diamond scarf pin. He looked just as he used to look in Havana when he was in the sugar trade and later, too. I knew about him. I knew h«>w they’d put him out of the North American Club. and how an army officer's wif»* Ind cut him up one Sunday on those-grassy banks of Moro. and how he’d been caught < heating in a game of poker in the Machado Hotel, and how he had left a girl in Xew York and what whining ways he had with all women — even ■ the best. . - So 1 leaned across the table and I said sharp. "Who’s this girl?” Me smoothed his brown hair and smiled. “Well. Pindar, I. reckon you know enough about mo and my adventures. I’ll tell you. She’s a prize. A Cuban.”. Maybe he saw me look at him, because he said right afterwards: “She’s an orphan. She’s just over twenty-one and you’ll think it pretty comic, but she’s been so carefully raised she won’t even let me hold her hand. And money? Mr. iltowe ? believe me, I’ve suffered grief about money so long that 1 can't believe it’s true. Why, just before we left Key West, she sold an American broker who met her there a third interest in the Vista Hermosa plantation and machinery and cane mill. I’m going to be married. Mr. Rowe.” *Umph,” I said. “You’ve been going io get married fifty different times, I •reckon . “Women take a fancy to me,” he whispered. “They still do. She loves me. 1 don't like her to sit and look at me alt day. There's such a thing as too much. But ibis time I’m going to be married all right. I’ve got to be married. There’s no getting the money without it.” Somehow as he spoke, I thought of my ■wife.' There was a bread knife on the iablehairid I could have killed him. The norther had come up. It was howling -■outside like a r pack of dogs. The light flickered;’. It showed me his grin. I wanted; to kill him. I wanted to see him fall forward over the kitchen table. ‘'What’s this runaway business?’’ I asked him. "Why did you have to start up among these keys alone with her?”

/'My -dear old Pindar,” said he, “that is too plain. W hen a girl like that goes off alone on a trip like this, she must go back married or not at all. It just cinches the matter. Do you see?” “Yep,” 1 said, "I do.- But have you told this girl you’ve had a wife?” "No,” he answered, licking his cigarette. “That would scarcely do. This young lady is religious and in her religion they don't marry men who’ve been divorced, especially when the man wasn’t the one who brought the suit. Oh. no. On the contrary, it is much better to ileny ever loving anybody before. I’ve done that. It's comical, isn’t it?” “Will you stick to this one?" I asked, looking at the bread knife. “Will you Mick to her?” “Oh, as long as I have to. Just sec how plain 1 am with you. Mr. Rowe!” isaid he. “Personally, I don’t faney undersized Cubans. A pretty little thing? Oh, yes. But delicate. Almost nothing. Possibly 1 am spoiled.” I leaned over tile table again toward the rat and I said, “Suppose, Kitchell, 1 hate you like a scorpion. Suppose 1 hate your ways and suppose I'm going to stop wour game. Suppose 1 tell her what I know of you.” lie just- sat back in his chair and laughed. He laughed ami laughed and kept on trying to laugh so as to show me how cocksure he was. “Go ahead.” he said, grinning at me. “Go ahead. Others tried it. They tried it in Havana. That's one reason why I had to get away with her so fast. You ran try it. Do you think she’ll believe you? Oh, I’m not fool enough to risk anything by talking to you. »She •wouldn’t believe vou. Tell her! Swear. .Take oaths. Cut up all the fuss you want, old feller. She’ll hate you for it. tWliy? Because she believes me?” I tell you, mate, the man had mo ready to do murder. I've seen necessity in my day atid I’ve brought men down with lead. It seemed to me then 1 never had bo much necessity before.

“Kitchen,”' I said quiet, between the roars of the wind, “you have lived some thirty-eight years. You’ve done a tot of damage. Somewhere there is more women than I can count oh my fingerr. that owes you a heap of evil. I don’t suppose they’ll ever pay.it. It ain’t liV O ’em. Kitehell, I wish I was going to pay it. Kitchell,' I ‘give you warning, man to man. There’s a sail-boat belonging to me down at my pier there. When till weather clears, you’re going to take if and go'to Key West and leave this girl here." lie brushed back some of that silky hair of his. then, and looked at me good nat’ared and shook his head. “Nothing like that," he said. “You’re mistaken." “If you don't." said 1. “look out for yourself.” But he shook his head again. “You wouldn’t kill me. Pindar,” he said with his smooth, sure way. He ’ stopped to think it over to be certain, and then he laughed. “You wouldn't kill me. I know

the cards you hold, my old friend, and it isn’t a winning hand." He sat there for a while, listening to the cracking of the boards when the wind drove against the walls of the shack. I saw the yellow light on his face and it was an evil face, too, for all its even features. .

“No," he said, by and by. “I know when I’m going to win. 1 can feel fate just like a man feels warm or cold. I can tell by the feeling -how the ball on a roulette wheel is going to drop. I know whether a card is good or bad without turning it over. Some things is certain. They're marked out beforehand. I feel ’em. I feel a confidence, and that confidence accomplishes anything. Nothing can stop me. And this is one of those times. No man can interfere. It wav written down beforehand. This is a wild night—a night for strange things. See the light dance on the wall there. Look. Do you see letters written there—big, red letters?” , -

I looked, mate, and I hope' to drop dead if I didn’t sec writing on the boards. It was dim at first and danced, and then it settled down and got clearer and clearer like a ship's name through a glass when the fog’is blowing away. I couldn't read it yet, but I knew that Something had come into the room and was writing there with its finger!

a. could see the words growing clearer

and I felt my blood pounding in my ears. The writing was done. And there it was on the wall. It was his name! “What's it mean?" I’ whispers to him. “What?” he said. “That writing." “1 don’t see any writing." he said. “I was just joking. I meant that things was marked out beforehand. What ails you?" He looked a little seared then. “Did you see anything?" he said. I looked again and the writing was gone. “Speak up.” said he. “What did you see ?” "Nothing,” I sail!. “You looked as if you saw something.” he roars at me. "What was it?" It came to me like a flash what it all meant. "You said that sometimes things that happened was marked out beforehand," ( said to him. “You was right. Something steered you onto Rib Rock Bar. Kitchell Something brought you onto Spongecake Key. Something has been watching you.

Kitchell. Something has a bill against you that's been standing long enough. Something has marked you, Kitchell. Something will reach out and you will never dodge its fingers. Kitchell, you have come to the end of your rope!" “You——” he said, and then he stopped. “It ain't me,” I said. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “You've lived alone too much, Pindar. You're seeing things’. Confound you! What did you see?" I never answered him, nowise. I got up-and threw a mattress in the corner by the old music cabinet that used to belong to my wife. He looked at me for a long time and then he got up and walked over to it and stretched out. There wasn’t any Sound but the wind and the ticking of my clock. Towards morning the weather broke again and the light that came in through the cracks was pink. 1 got up out of my chair and I looked at the wall where I’d seen (he words and wondered if I'd dreamed ’em. After I’d gone outside and looked at the sun coming up and the water in the channel all filled and coloured with the white mud brought up from the bottom by the dry norther, 1 took up my glass ami sighted it out toward Rib Rock Bar and I saw the launch was gone. I searched the passes between the Keys for her,

but she wasn’t there. And I was standing looking when I began to feel as if somebody was watching me from behind.

I turned around and 1 couldn’t s<e anybody. It was so calm I could have heard a step on the coral gravel a hundred yards away. And nobody was there. And then all of a sudden I saw who was watching me. It was Gus! He had sited his skin agin and he'd crawled out into his hollow in the sand just this side of that thicket. Only about half of his eight feet was coiled, but his big flat head was up. in the a r as if ho was smelling or listening. It waved to and fro. easy and soft and thmuscles in his body were rolling under the skin, looking as it they were travel ling down in slow waves from his nock to his tail. He opened his jaws and just, dropped those two long white fangs enough to show ’em. And he seemed to be watching me. "Gus," I said, "where’s Hess?" - He pulled himself out into the sunlight. then, and flattened out his sides and laid his chin on the coeoanul husks, “You want some condensed milk?" I said. “Wait till I've got some breakfast. Lie still there." So I went back and put some coffee on, and Kitehell got up off the mattress and stretched himself. “Has Lenora got up yet?" he askel. yawning and pulling his clothes ini ' shape. I didn't answer and he went out, I wished later I'd stopped him. . - • I'm telling it just as it happened. Let's see. I was turning some cakes in the frying pan when I heard a voice behind me and I turned and looked and saw the gjrl standing in the door. She seecmed like one of those little birds that come there ami hop around for crumb, a timid, pretty little thing. And her eyes were so much eyes! They were so Oil and black and round and trusting. “I—senor—l am Lenora Gonzalez," she said, so soft you could hardly hear her. “I may help you wiz the cafe? I auk. where ess Senor Kitehell?" I shan't forget her. 1 tell you—a little thing with a wilted Hower in her black hair, and a skin not white or brown 'or yellow or pink, but only like a few of the Cubans have, so-thin and.delicate you can see into it the way you can see. into a piece of polished ,shell. "He's outside. Miss." I said to her, flapping over a jack. "Hid you sleep through the storm,.’’’ . . “Vera leetle, senor." she answered, all I looked at me put of her big eyes. . It was just at that second there came the pistol shot. 'The air was so still that vou might say that the noise tore, a hole, out of the morning. I thought at Just he’d put a bullet into Lenora Gonzplez,, She jumped like a sandpiper that's boon hit and came down on her knees holding on to the edge of the door, frightened and shaking like a palmetto. 1 picked her up on to her feet. She was a grown girl, but she felt like a child. “(th, senoVf” she cried. “I do not like! I do not like!" “i know." said I. “But lie hasn't shot himself. Not Joe Kitchell. Don’t worry. We heard him coming just as 1 spoke. He came and stood in the door and he held up something and shook it and : a drop of blood spattered on the floor; The something he shook, mate, was these rattles that. I hold in my hand now. And these rattles belonged to Gus. He d killed my snake! “Mr. Howe," lie said., “come out here! •I’ve just shot the biggest diamond !>:v k I’ve ever saw.” “Yes," said I. holding myself back from springing at him. "You killed him. (He never diid you any harm. But you killed him. He was happy. But you killed him. lie was lying asleep there in ‘the coral sand and cocoanut busies and his back was turned. But you killed him.? The miserable cuss began t-o laugh and shake the rattles at the little Cuban. She screamed and shrank back. And ha laughed again. "Kitchell.” I said. “You were meant to destroy. But. Kitchell, you are ma r >.- ed out, iatsl night when the wind was a-shrieking, around this shack you asked me to see letters on the tmaid-. Now. Kitehell, it in bright and sunny. H’s not the night It’s the day. Ixiok on Die wall there!” The feller turned. He turned and he dropped the rattles out of his hand. The breath squeaked in his throat. “What do you see?" 1 roared. “Confound it.” he whispered, looking around al me. "It was inj imagination. I haven't had any sleep." “VVhud did you see?" I said, for I knew Nixnetliing bad come into my shack again.’ '

lie laughed then—laughed without any fun in it. “1 didn’t see anything,” he said. "1 thought at first 1 saw letters—my name. It’s my stomach. I’m hungry.” But he never picked up the rattles or stopped to get breakfast. He walked out into the sun and 1 saw him with his hands behind hits back and his head bent down as if he was thinking, walking down on to the beach. . . . There’s plenty of people below here that will tell you that I’m a liar. Plenty of ’em don’t believe I steered the tug ‘Moss Rose loaded with guns under the walls of iMorro and landed the whole cargo in Havana without showing my papers. But, mate, I say there is strange things amongst these keys, and what I’m telling is so-help-me truth, as I saw it. 'lt taught me that no bill of sin goes too long unpaid, nor a poor living creature needing help that isn’t seen in its struggles. ■And I say Kitchell went off down on to the shore and ibegan picking up those seashells and throwing ’em into the water. ’Mio you love that man?” I said to Lenora. She nodded and began to call to him —like a child. She called to him and when he roader back for her to go ahead and eat her breakfast she sat down. She sat down at the table I’d set outside the shack door, as meek and silent as if she’d been punished. I think she was a child and didn’t know what love meant. I sat there drinking my coffee and looking at Bus. Eight feet of him was lying over there in the hollow under the cocoanut palms. There weren’t any life in him any more. The bullet had torn a hole in his neck. His head wasn’t raised and it wasn’t swaying, and his muscles weren’t moving under his skin. His colour wasn’t bright. Home of his blood was drying on the white sand. He was the most perfect snake 1 ever saw. And he was dead. 'I looked at him and then I saw the grass move beyond where he lay. I could look right over Lenora’s shoulder and see the grass move. A head came out of the grass into the sun and then the body, moving slow like a trickle of hot tar. It was her! It wa ; Bess! Hhe saw him lying there, then —her mate. And she threw her head back an 1 held it stink up in the air. She had seen him—seen him dead! She went to him and laid her head across his body and he didn't move. An she darted her tongue out and touched him and lie didn’t move. And she threw her head up again. Oh, II tell you, mate, it was cruel to see grief so silent—to see her crawl around him and stop and raise her hea<t and shake along her ibody and then drop her neck across his. And he never moved because he was dead and wouldn’t ever move again. She was a rattler. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t talk. And finally she dropped her head on the sand as if there wasn’t any more strength in her body. She half turned over and the sun shone on the white scales of her belly, it was then that Kitchell, whu was down on the beach, stretched his aims and gave a loud yawn. She heard him and she seemed to know. I saw her eoil and raise her neck: up and up and up to where she could look over the top of the clumps of grass on the slope. Her head was swaying to and fro like a swinging bracket. And then she rattled. “What ees that, senor?” asked the little Cuban, catching the folds of her white dress in her little hands. “Nothing,” I said, for I was watching Bess. The snake had seen Kitchell. 1 knew she’d seen him. He had stuck his. hand in those flannel jeans of his amt he was still moving off by the water’s edge, and Bess uncoiled and began to crawl in the same direction. “We have lost our boat,” said Lenora. "That so?” I says. I wasn’t thinking sf what she said at all. I might have answered anything. 1 was watching for Bess to come out on the other side of that patch of pridkly pears. In a minute I saw her. She stopped on a Ir.ire spot and though she win some distance away by that time I saw that i«>or dumb thing coil herself again ami curve her neck and raise her .head. Then she dro|>)M'd it and crawled along. “You, senor, are vera kind,” said the girl then. "You have been kind to us.' Pardon, senor- what you look at?” 1 was afraid the little Cuban would turn around. I was afraid she’d interfi re. I could see how Something had mapped out what was to happen. It wan working surer than deathl Everything was marked out.

”Miss',” I said, “J often look around Spongecake Key.” It seemed to satisfy her, so I took down my glass and wiped the lens and put it to my eye. I could sec a heap plainer. I could see Bess crawl out on to that white limestone point that stands np there now over the water. It’s white

by moonlight now. It was white by sunlight then. She stretched herself right near the crest of it, and on that surface she looked as black as a wriggle of ink on writing paper. Kitehell was still walking along the shore toward the point. He was still ■picking up shells and pebbles and throwing ’em into the water. >1 could see how slick and brown his hair was. 1 was looking through the glass. He was mov-

ing toward the limestone rock. He was being moved there. Something was moving him with Its hand. I saw him when he got to the rock itself. I saw him look up at it and then look out into the channel with the white cranes wading on those yellow sandbars. Then he looked up at the ledge

again. It wae steep there for six or eight feet, as you can see. But he was moved up. I saw Bess coil. I watched to see if she’d rattle. But she never used it. She never gave any warning. She was thinking of Bus, maybe. No man can tell. I tried to keep the glass steady. I reckon I succeeded. I saw her wait till his face showed over the edge of that table of lime-

stone. She never rattled. She Waite® for his face. Her long body came outl of its coil like a steel spring. She wentl her length—a heavy black streak in thq air. She struck him with her head bent) back and her jaws wide. She must havq driven those two white needles cleaii through his cheek. She fell back an® squirmed on the ground till I could se® her white belly. Kitchell never shouted. He jumped; backward. His foot caught, He went? head downwards over the rock. I think! he struck on his forehead. Because h* rolled over and over, then, as if ther® was no life in him, and fell into th® ■water.

I watched him float off that shallow, where I catch mullet. When he was ini deeper water he turned face downward., I saw the tide catch him and then JI thought he was going to sink. He didn’t? just then. An eddy shot him around th<s point out of sight. “What you look at now?” asked Len* ora, with her big eyes on mine. "Umph,” said I. “I was dreaming.” 5 I was planning already how I was go* ing to let her think that Kitchell hadi gone off with one of my boats and de* serted her. These waters and passes never tell what they know. I was plan* ning how I'd let her think he’d run away] from her, and how I’d take her backl to her home. She was a child. She hadn’t learned yet what love meant. “Senor,” said she, with her head on on® side and that smile, “you make vena; nice—what you call them, senor?” “Flapjacks,” said I.

And then I whistled "The Last Rosel of Summer.” It's one of my favourite! tunes. I always whistle it when I’m ai little off my bearings. And I felt just; then as if Lenora Gonzalez and Joe Kit* ebell and 'I hadn’t been alone on Sponge* eake that night. I felt as though Some* thing else—the thing with the long arm: —had been there, too.