Dragon's blood Part 13

The doctor recoiled, flung up a trembling arm, and as quickly dropped it. His handsome face burned darker, then faded with a mortal pallor, and for one rigid moment, took on such a strange beauty as though it were about to be translated into bronze. His brown fingers twitched, became all nerves and sinews and white knuckles. Then, stepping backward, he withdrew from the circle.

"Very well," he said lightly. "Since we are all so--irregular. I will take the subst.i.tute."

Rudolph gave a choking cry, and would have come forward; but Sturgeon clung to the wounded arm, and bound on his bandage.

"Hold still, there!" he scolded, as though addressing a horse; then growled in Heywood's ear, "Why did _you_ go lose your temper?"

"Didn't. We can't let him walk over us, though." The young man held the sword across his throat, and whispered, "Only angry up to here!"

And indeed, through the anxious preliminary silence, he stood waiting as cool and ready as a young centurion.

His adversary, turning back the sleeves of the unfortunate white linen, picked up the other sword, and practiced his fingering on the silver hilt, while the blade answered as delicately as the bow to a violinist.

At last he came forward, with thin lips and hard, thoughtful eyes, like a man bent upon dispatch. Both men saluted formally, and sprang on guard.

From the first twitter of the blades, even Rudolph knew the outcome.

Heywood, his face white and anxious in the failing light, fought at full stretch, at the last wrench of skill. Chantel, for the moment, was fencing; and though his attacks came ceaseless and quick as flame, he was plainly prolonging them, discarding them, repeating, varying, whether for black-hearted merriment, or the vanity of perfect form, or love of his art. Graceful, safe, easy, as though performing the grand salute, he teased and frolicked, his bright blade puzzling the sight, scattering like quicksilver in the endless whirl and clash.

Teppich was gaping foolishly, Sturgeon shaking his head, the c.o.c.kney, with narrow body drawn together, watching, shivering, squatting on toes and finger-tips, like a runner about to spring from a mark. Rudolph, dizzy with pain and suspense, nursed his forearm mechanically. The hurried, silver ring of the hilts dismayed him, the dust from the garden path choked him like an acrid smoke.

Suddenly Chantel, dropping low like a deflected arrow, swooped in with fingers touching the ground. On "three feet," he had delivered the blow so long withheld.

The watchers shouted. Nesbit sprang up, released. But Heywood, by some desperate sleight, had parried the certainty, and even tried a riposte.

Still afoot and fighting, he complained testily above the sword-play:--

"Don't shout like that! Fair field, you chaps!"

Above the sword-play, too, came gradually a murmur of voices. Through the dust, beyond the lunging figures, Rudolph was distantly aware of crowded bodies, of yellow faces grinning or agape, in the breach of the compound wall. Men of the neighboring hamlet had gathered, to watch the foreign monsters play at this new, fantastic game. Shaven heads bobbed, saffron arms pointed, voices, sharp and guttural, argued scornfully.

The hilts rang, the blades grated faster. But now it was plain that Heywood could do no more, by luck or inspiration. Fretted by his clumsy yet strong and close defense, Chantel was forcing on the end. He gave a panting laugh. Instantly, all saw the weaker blade fly wide, the stronger swerve, to dart in victorious,--and then saw Doctor Chantel staggering backward, struck full in the face by something round and heavy. The brown missile skipped along the garden path.

Another struck a bottle-end, and burst into milk-white fragments, like a bomb. A third, rebounding from Teppich's girdle, left him bent and gasping. Strange yells broke out, as from a tribe of apes. The air was thick with hurtling globes. Cocoanuts rained upon the company, tempestuously, as though an invisible palm were shaken by a hurricane.

Among them flew sticks, jagged lumps of sun-dried clay, thick scales of plaster.

"Aow!" cried Nesbit, "the bloomin' coolies!" First to recover, he skipped about, fielding and hurling back cocoanuts.

A small but raging phalanx crowded the gap in the wall, throwing continually, howling, and exhorting one another to rush in.

"A riot!" cried Heywood, and started, sword in hand. "Come on, stop 'em!"

But it was Nesbit who, wrenching a pair of loose bottles from the path, brandishing them aloft like clubs, and shouting the unseemly battle-cries of a street-fighter, led the white men into this deadly breach. At the first shock, the rioters broke and scattered, fled round corners of the wall, crashed through bamboos, went leaping across paddy-fields toward the river. The tumult--except for lonely howls in the distance--ended as quickly as it had risen. The little band of Europeans returned from the pursuit, drenched with sweat, panting, like a squad of triumphant football players; but no one smiled.

"That explains it," grumbled Heywood. He pointed along the path to where, far off, a tall, stooping figure paced slowly toward the town, his long robe a moving strip of color, faint in the twilight. "The Sword-Pen dropped some remarks in pa.s.sing."

The others nodded moodily, too breathless for reply. Nesbit's forehead bore an ugly cut, Rudolph's bandage was red and sopping. Chantel, more rueful than either, stared down at a bleeding hand, which held two shards of steel. He had fallen, and snapped his sword in the rubble of old masonry.

"No more blades," he said, like a child with a broken toy; "there are no more blades this side of Saigon."

"Then we must postpone." Heywood mopped his dripping and fiery cheeks.

He tossed a piece of silver to one who wailed in the ditch,--a forlorn stranger from Hai-nan, lamenting the broken sh.e.l.ls and empty baskets of his small venture.--"Contribution, you chaps. A bad day for imported cocoanuts. Wish I carried some money: this chit system is d.a.m.nable.--Meanwhile, doctor, won't you forget anything I was rude enough to say? And come join me in a peg at the club? The heat is excessive."

CHAPTER X

THREE PORTALS

Not till after dinner, that evening, did Rudolph rouse from his stupor.

With the clerk, he lay wearily in the upper chamber of Heywood's house.

The host, with both his long legs out at window, sat watching the smoky lights along the river, and now and then cursing the heat.

"After all," he broke silence, "those cocoanuts came time enough."

"Didn't they just?" said Nesbit, jauntily; and fingering the plaster cross on his wounded forehead, drawled: "You might think I'd done a bit o' dueling myself, by the looks.--But I had _some_ part. Now, that accident trick. Rather neat, what? But for me, you might never have thought o' that--"

"Idiot!" snapped Heywood, and pulling in his legs, rose and stamped across the room.

A gla.s.s of ice and tansan smashed on the floor. Rudolph was on foot, clutching his bandaged arm as though the hurt were new.

"You!" he stammered. "You did that!" He stood gaping, thunderstruck.

Felt soles scuffed in the darkness, and through the door, his yellow face wearing a placid and lofty grin, entered Ah Pat, the compradore.

"One coolie-man hab-got chit."

He handed a note to his master, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it as though glad of the interruption, bent under the lamp, and scowled.

The writing was in a crabbed, antique German character:--

"Please to see bearer, in bad clothes but urgent. We are all in danger.

_Um Gottes willen_--" It straggled off, illegible. The signature, "Otto Wutzler," ran frantically into a blot.

"Can do," said Heywood. "You talkee he, come topside."

The messenger must have been waiting, however, at the stairhead; for no sooner had the compradore withdrawn, than a singular little coolie shuffled into the room. Lean and shriveled as an opium-smoker, he wore loose clothes of dirty blue,--one trousers-leg rolled up. The brown face, thin and comically small, wore a mask of inky shadow under a wicker bowl hat. His eyes were cast down in a strange fashion, unlike the bold, inquisitive peering of his countrymen,--the more strange, in that he spoke harshly and abruptly, like a racer catching breath.

"I bring news." His dialect was the vilest and surliest form of the colloquial "Clear Speech."--"One pair of ears, enough."

"You can speak and act more civilly," retorted Heywood, "or taste the bamboo."

The man did not answer, or look up, or remove his varnished hat. Still downcast and hang-dog, he sidled along the verge of the shadow, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the table the paper and a pencil, and choosing the darkest part of the wall, began to write. The lamp stood between him and the company: Heywood alone saw--and with a shock of amazement--that he did not print vertically as with a brush, but scrawled horizontally. He tossed back the paper, and dodged once more into the gloom.

The postscript ran in the same shaky hand:--

"Send way the others both."

"What!" cried the young master of the house; and then over his shoulder, "Excuse us a moment--me, I should say."

He led the dwarfish coolie across the landing, to the deserted dinner-table. The creature darted past him, blew out one candle, and thrust the other behind a bottle, so that he stood in a wedge of shadow.