“The coral waxes, the palm
grows, but man departs.”
Tahitian
proverb.
Ah Cho did not understand French.
He sat in the crowded court room, very weary and bored,
listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now
one official and now another uttered. It was just
so much gabble to Ah Cho, and he marvelled at the
stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long to find
out the murderer of Chung Ga, and who did not find
him at all. The five hundred coolies on the plantation
knew that Ah San had done the killing, and here was
Ah San not even arrested. It was true that all
the coolies had agreed secretly not to testify against
one another; but then, it was so simple, the Frenchmen
should have been able to discover that Ah San was
the man. They were very stupid, these Frenchmen.
Ah Cho had done nothing of which to
be afraid. He had had no hand in the killing.
It was true he had been present at it, and Schemmer,
the overseer on the plantation, had rushed into the
barracks immediately afterward and caught him there,
along with four or five others; but what of that?
Chung Ga had been stabbed only twice. It stood
to reason that five or six men could not inflict two
stab wounds. At the most, if a man had struck
but once, only two men could have done it.
So it was that Ah Cho reasoned, when
he, along with his four companions, had lied and blocked
and obfuscated in their statements to the court concerning
what had taken place. They had heard the sounds
of the killing, and, like Schemmer, they had run to
the spot. They had got there before Schemmer that
was all. True, Schemmer had testified that, attracted
by the sound of quarrelling as he chanced to pass by,
he had stood for at least five minutes outside; that
then, when he entered, he found the prisoners already
inside; and that they had not entered just before,
because he had been standing by the one door to the
barracks. But what of that? Ah Cho and his
four fellow-prisoners had testified that Schemmer
was mistaken. In the end they would be let go.
They were all confident of that. Five men could
not have their heads cut off for two stab wounds.
Besides, no foreign devil had seen the killing.
But these Frenchmen were so stupid. In China,
as Ah Cho well knew, the magistrate would order all
of them to the torture and learn the truth. The
truth was very easy to learn under torture. But
these Frenchmen did not torture bigger
fools they! Therefore they would never find out
who killed Chung Ga.
But Ah Cho did not understand everything.
The English Company that owned the plantation had
imported into Tahiti, at great expense, the five hundred
coolies. The stockholders were clamouring for
dividends, and the Company had not yet paid any; wherefore
the Company did not want its costly contract labourers
to start the practice of killing one another.
Also, there were the French, eager and willing to impose
upon the Chinagos the virtues and excellences of French
law. There was nothing like setting an example
once in a while; and, besides, of what use was New
Caledonia except to send men to live out their days
in misery and pain in payment of the penalty for being
frail and human?
Ah Cho did not understand all this.
He sat in the court room and waited for the baffled
judgment that would set him and his comrades free to
go back to the plantation and work out the terms of
their contracts. This judgment would soon be
rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close.
He could see that. There was no more testifying,
no more gabble of tongues. The French devils
were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the judgment.
And as he waited he remembered back in his life to
the time when he had signed the contract and set sail
in the ship for Tahiti. Times had been hard in
his sea-coast village, and when he indentured himself
to labour for five years in the South Seas at fifty
cents Mexican a day, he had thought himself fortunate.
There were men in his village who toiled a whole year
for ten dollars Mexican, and there were women who
made nets all the year round for five dollars, while
in the houses of shopkeepers there were maidservants
who received four dollars for a year of service.
And here he was to receive fifty cents a day; for
one day, only one day, he was to receive that princely
sum! What if the work were hard? At the
end of the five years he would return home that
was in the contract and he would never have
to work again. He would be a rich man for life,
with a house of his own, a wife, and children growing
up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house
he would have a small garden, a place of meditation
and repose, with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind
bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would
be a high wall all around so that his meditation and
repose should be undisturbed.
Well, he had worked out three of those
five years. He was already a wealthy man (in
his own country) through his earnings, and only two
years more intervened between the cotton plantation
on Tahiti and the meditation and repose that awaited
him. But just now he was losing money because
of the unfortunate accident of being present at the
killing of Chung Ga. He had lain three weeks
in prison, and for each day of those three weeks he
had lost fifty cents. But now judgment would soon
be given, and he would go back to work.
Ah Cho was twenty-two years old.
He was happy and good-natured, and it was easy for
him to smile. While his body was slim in the Asiatic
way, his face was rotund. It was round, like
the moon, and it irradiated a gentle complacence and
a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual among
his countrymen. Nor did his looks belie him.
He never caused trouble, never took part in wrangling.
He did not gamble. His soul was not harsh enough
for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He
was content with little things and simple pleasures.
The hush and quiet in the cool of the day after the
blazing toil in the cotton field was to him an infinite
satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at
a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries
and riddles of being. A blue heron on a tiny
crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying
fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon,
could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession
of wearisome days and of the heavy lash of Schemmer.
Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute,
a brutish brute. But he earned his salary.
He got the last particle of strength out of the five
hundred slaves; for slaves they were until their term
of years was up. Schemmer worked hard to extract
the strength from those five hundred sweating bodies
and to transmute it into bales of fluffy cotton ready
for export. His dominant, iron-clad, primeval
brutishness was what enabled him to effect the transmutation.
Also, he was assisted by a thick leather belt, three
inches wide and a yard in length, with which he always
rode and which, on occasion, could come down on the
naked back of a stooping coolie with a report like
a pistol-shot. These reports were frequent when
Schemmer rode down the furrowed field.
Once, at the beginning of the first
year of contract labour, he had killed a coolie with
a single blow of his fist. He had not exactly
crushed the man’s head like an egg-shell, but
the blow had been sufficient to addle what was inside,
and, after being sick for a week, the man had died.
But the Chinese had not complained to the French devils
that ruled over Tahiti. It was their own look
out. Schemmer was their problem. They must
avoid his wrath as they avoided the venom of the centipedes
that lurked in the grass or crept into the sleeping
quarters on rainy nights. The Chinagos such
they were called by the indolent, brown-skinned island
folk saw to it that they did not displease
Schemmer too greatly. This was equivalent to rendering
up to him a full measure of efficient toil. That
blow of Schemmer’s fist had been worth thousands
of dollars to the Company, and no trouble ever came
of it to Schemmer.
The French, with no instinct for colonization,
futile in their childish playgame of developing the
resources of the island, were only too glad to see
the English Company succeed. What matter of Schemmer
and his redoubtable fist? The Chinago that died?
Well, he was only a Chinago. Besides, he died
of sunstroke, as the doctor’s certificate attested.
True, in all the history of Tahiti no one had ever
died of sunstroke. But it was that, precisely
that, which made the death of this Chinago unique.
The doctor said as much in his report. He was
very candid. Dividends must be paid, or else
one more failure would be added to the long history
of failure in Tahiti.
There was no understanding these white
devils. Ah Cho pondered their inscrutableness
as he sat in the court room waiting the judgment.
There was no telling what went on at the back of their
minds. He had seen a few of the white devils.
They were all alike the officers and sailors
on the ship, the French officials, the several white
men on the plantation, including Schemmer. Their
minds all moved in mysterious ways there was no getting
at. They grew angry without apparent cause, and
their anger was always dangerous. They were like
wild beasts at such times. They worried about
little things, and on occasion could out-toil even
a Chinago. They were not temperate as Chinagos
were temperate; they were gluttons, eating prodigiously
and drinking more prodigiously. A Chinago never
knew when an act would please them or arouse a storm
of wrath. A Chinago could never tell. What
pleased one time, the very next time might provoke
an outburst of anger. There was a curtain behind
the eyes of the white devils that screened the backs
of their minds from the Chinago’s gaze.
And then, on top of it all, was that terrible efficiency
of the white devils, that ability to do things, to
make things go, to work results, to bend to their
wills all creeping, crawling things, and the powers
of the very elements themselves. Yes, the white
men were strange and wonderful, and they were devils.
Look at Schemmer.
Ah Cho wondered why the judgment was
so long in forming. Not a man on trial had laid
hand on Chung Ga. Ah San alone had killed him.
Ah San had done it, bending Chung Ga’s head
back with one hand by a grip of his queue, and with
the other hand, from behind, reaching over and driving
the knife into his body. Twice had he driven it
in. There in the court room, with closed eyes,
Ah Cho saw the killing acted over again the
squabble, the vile words bandied back and forth, the
filth and insult flung upon venerable ancestors, the
curses laid upon unbegotten generations, the leap
of Ah San, the grip on the queue of Chung Ga, the
knife that sank twice into his flesh, the bursting
open of the door, the irruption of Schemmer, the dash
for the door, the escape of Ah San, the flying belt
of Schemmer that drove the rest into the corner, and
the firing of the revolver as a signal that brought
help to Schemmer. Ah Cho shivered as he lived
it over. One blow of the belt had bruised his
cheek, taking off some of the skin. Schemmer had
pointed to the bruises when, on the witness-stand,
he had identified Ah Cho. It was only just now
that the marks had become no longer visible. That
had been a blow. Half an inch nearer the centre
and it would have taken out his eye. Then Ah
Cho forgot the whole happening in a vision he caught
of the garden of meditation and repose that would
be his when he returned to his own land.
He sat with impassive face, while
the magistrate rendered the judgment. Likewise
were the faces of his four companions impassive.
And they remained impassive when the interpreter explained
that the five of them had been found guilty of the
murder of Chung Ga, and that Ah Chow should have his
head cut off, Ah Cho serve twenty years in prison in
New Caledonia, Wong Li twelve years, and Ah Tong ten
years. There was no use in getting excited about
it. Even Ah Chow remained expressionless as a
mummy, though it was his head that was to be cut off.
The magistrate added a few words, and the interpreter
explained that Ah Chow’s face having been most
severely bruised by Schemmer’s strap had made
his identification so positive that, since one man
must die, he might as well be that man. Also,
the fact that Ah Cho’s face likewise had been
severely bruised, conclusively proving his presence
at the murder and his undoubted participation, had
merited him the twenty years of penal servitude.
And down to the ten years of Ah Tong, the proportioned
reason for each sentence was explained. Let the
Chinagos take the lesson to heart, the Court said
finally, for they must learn that the law would be
fulfilled in Tahiti though the heavens fell.
The five Chinagos were taken back
to jail. They were not shocked nor grieved.
The sentences being unexpected was quite what they
were accustomed to in their dealings with the white
devils. From them a Chinago rarely expected more
than the unexpected. The heavy punishment for
a crime they had not committed was no stranger than
the countless strange things that white devils did.
In the weeks that followed, Ah Cho often contemplated
Ah Chow with mild curiosity. His head was to be
cut off by the guillotine that was being erected on
the plantation. For him there would be no declining
years, no gardens of tranquillity. Ah Cho philosophized
and speculated about life and death. As for himself,
he was not perturbed. Twenty years were merely
twenty years. By that much was his garden removed
from him that was all. He was young,
and the patience of Asia was in his bones. He
could wait those twenty years, and by that time the
heats of his blood would be assuaged and he would be
better fitted for that garden of calm delight.
He thought of a name for it; he would call it The
Garden of the Morning Calm. He was made happy
all day by the thought, and he was inspired to devise
a moral maxim on the virtue of patience, which maxim
proved a great comfort, especially to Wong Li and
Ah Tong. Ah Chow, however, did not care for the
maxim. His head was to be separated from his
body in so short a time that he had no need for patience
to wait for that event. He smoked well, ate well,
slept well, and did not worry about the slow passage
of time.
Cruchot was a gendarme. He had
seen twenty years of service in the colonies, from
Nigeria and Senegal to the South Seas, and those twenty
years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind.
He was as slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant
days in the south of France. He knew discipline
and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant
of gendarmes the only difference to him was the
measure of slavish obedience which he rendered.
In point of fact, the sergeant bulked bigger in his
mind than God, except on Sundays when God’s mouthpieces
had their say. God was usually very remote, while
the sergeant was ordinarily very close at hand.
Cruchot it was who received the order
from the Chief Justice to the jailer commanding that
functionary to deliver over to Cruchot the person
of Ah Chow. Now, it happened that the Chief Justice
had given a dinner the night before to the captain
and officers of the French man-of-war. His hand
was shaking when he wrote out the order, and his eyes
were aching so dreadfully that he did not read over
the order. It was only a Chinago’s life
he was signing away, anyway. So he did not notice
that he had omitted the final letter in Ah Chow’s
name. The order read “Ah Cho,” and,
when Cruchot presented the order, the jailer turned
over to him the person of Ah Cho. Cruchot took
that person beside him on the seat of a wagon, behind
two mules, and drove away.
Ah Cho was glad to be out in the sunshine.
He sat beside the gendarme and beamed. He beamed
more ardently than ever when he noted the mules headed
south toward Atimaono. Undoubtedly Schemmer had
sent for him to be brought back. Schemmer wanted
him to work. Very well, he would work well.
Schemmer would never have cause to complain. It
was a hot day. There had been a stoppage of the
trades. The mules sweated, Cruchot sweated, and
Ah Cho sweated. But it was Ah Cho that bore the
heat with the least concern. He had toiled three
years under that sun on the plantation. He beamed
and beamed with such genial good nature that even
Cruchot’s heavy mind was stirred to wonderment.
“You are very funny,” he said at last.
Ah Cho nodded and beamed more ardently.
Unlike the magistrate, Cruchot spoke to him in the
Kanaka tongue, and this, like all Chinagos and all
foreign devils, Ah Cho understood.
“You laugh too much,”
Cruchot chided. “One’s heart should
be full of tears on a day like this.”
“I am glad to get out of the jail.”
“Is that all?” The gendarme shrugged his
shoulders.
“Is it not enough?” was the retort.
“Then you are not glad to have your head cut
off?”
Ah Cho looked at him in abrupt perplexity, and said
“Why, I am going back to Atimaono
to work on the plantation for Schemmer. Are you
not taking me to Atimaono?”
Cruchot stroked his long moustaches
reflectively. “Well, well,” he said
finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule,
“so you don’t know?”
“Know what?” Ah Cho was
beginning to feel a vague alarm. “Won’t
Schemmer let me work for him any more?”
“Not after to-day.”
Cruchot laughed heartily. It was a good joke.
“You see, you won’t be able to work after
to-day. A man with his head off can’t work,
eh?” He poked the Chinago in the ribs, and chuckled.
Ah Cho maintained silence while the
mules trotted a hot mile. Then he spoke:
“Is Schemmer going to cut off my head?”
Cruchot grinned as he nodded.
“It is a mistake,” said
Ah Cho, gravely. “I am not the Chinago that
is to have his head cut off. I am Ah Cho.
The honourable judge has determined that I am to stop
twenty years in New Caledonia.”
The gendarme laughed. It was
a good joke, this funny Chinago trying to cheat the
guillotine. The mules trotted through a coconut
grove and for half a mile beside the sparkling sea
before Ah Cho spoke again.
“I tell you I am not Ah Chow.
The honourable judge did not say that my head was
to go off.”
“Don’t be afraid,”
said Cruchot, with the philanthropic intention of
making it easier for his prisoner. “It is
not difficult to die that way.” He snapped
his fingers. “It is quick like
that. It is not like hanging on the end of a
rope and kicking and making faces for five minutes.
It is like killing a chicken with a hatchet. You
cut its head off, that is all. And it is the
same with a man. Pouf! it is over.
It doesn’t hurt. You don’t even think
it hurts. You don’t think. Your head
is gone, so you cannot think. It is very good.
That is the way I want to die quick, ah,
quick. You are lucky to die that way. You
might get the leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a
finger at a time, and now and again a thumb, also
the toes. I knew a man who was burned by hot water.
It took him two days to die. You could hear him
yelling a kilometre away. But you? Ah! so
easy! Chck! the knife cuts your neck
like that. It is finished. The knife may
even tickle. Who can say? Nobody who died
that way ever came back to say.”
He considered this last an excruciating
joke, and permitted himself to be convulsed with laughter
for half a minute. Part of his mirth was assumed,
but he considered it his humane duty to cheer up the
Chinago.
“But I tell you I am Ah Cho,”
the other persisted. “I don’t want
my head cut off.”
Cruchot scowled. The Chinago
was carrying the foolishness too far.
“I am not Ah Chow ” Ah Cho
began.
“That will do,” the gendarme
interrupted. He puffed up his cheeks and strove
to appear fierce.
“I tell you I am not ” Ah Cho
began again.
“Shut up!” bawled Cruchot.
After that they rode along in silence.
It was twenty miles from Papeete to Atimaono, and
over half the distance was covered by the time the
Chinago again ventured into speech.
“I saw you in the court room,
when the honourable judge sought after our guilt,”
he began. “Very good. And do you remember
that Ah Chow, whose head is to be cut off do
you remember that he Ah Chow was
a tall man? Look at me.”
He stood up suddenly, and Cruchot
saw that he was a short man. And just as suddenly
Cruchot caught a glimpse of a memory picture of Ah
Chow, and in that picture Ah Chow was tall. To
the gendarme all Chinagos looked alike. One face
was like another. But between tallness and shortness
he could differentiate, and he knew that he had the
wrong man beside him on the seat. He pulled up
the mules abruptly, so that the pole shot ahead of
them, elevating their collars.
“You see, it was a mistake,”
said Ah Cho, smiling pleasantly.
But Cruchot was thinking. Already
he regretted that he had stopped the wagon. He
was unaware of the error of the Chief Justice, and
he had no way of working it out; but he did know that
he had been given this Chinago to take to Atimaono
and that it was his duty to take him to Atimaono.
What if he was the wrong man and they cut his head
off? It was only a Chinago when all was said,
and what was a Chinago, anyway? Besides, it might
not be a mistake. He did not know what went on
in the minds of his superiors. They knew their
business best. Who was he to do their thinking
for them? Once, in the long ago, he had attempted
to think for them, and the sergeant had said:
“Cruchot, you are a fool? The quicker you
know that, the better you will get on. You are
not to think; you are to obey and leave thinking to
your betters.” He smarted under the recollection.
Also, if he turned back to Papeete, he would delay
the execution at Atimaono, and if he were wrong in
turning back, he would get a reprimand from the sergeant
who was waiting for the prisoner. And, furthermore,
he would get a reprimand at Papeete as well.
He touched the mules with the whip
and drove on. He looked at his watch. He
would be half an hour late as it was, and the sergeant
was bound to be angry. He put the mules into
a faster trot. The more Ah Cho persisted in explaining
the mistake, the more stubborn Cruchot became.
The knowledge that he had the wrong man did not make
his temper better. The knowledge that it was
through no mistake of his confirmed him in the belief
that the wrong he was doing was the right. And,
rather than incur the displeasure of the sergeant,
he would willingly have assisted a dozen wrong Chinagos
to their doom.
As for Ah Cho, after the gendarme
had struck him over the head with the butt of the
whip and commanded him in a loud voice to shut up,
there remained nothing for him to do but to shut up.
The long ride continued in silence. Ah Cho pondered
the strange ways of the foreign devils. There
was no explaining them. What they were doing with
him was of a piece with everything they did.
First they found guilty five innocent men, and next
they cut off the head of the man that even they, in
their benighted ignorance, had deemed meritorious
of no more than twenty years’ imprisonment.
And there was nothing he could do. He could only
sit idly and take what these lords of life measured
out to him. Once, he got in a panic, and the
sweat upon his body turned cold; but he fought his
way out of it. He endeavoured to resign himself
to his fate by remembering and repeating certain passages
from the “Yin Chih Wen” ("The Tract of
the Quiet Way"); but, instead, he kept seeing his dream-garden
of meditation and repose. This bothered him, until
he abandoned himself to the dream and sat in his garden
listening to the tinkling of the windbells in the
several trees. And lo! sitting thus, in the dream,
he was able to remember and repeat the passages from
“The Tract of the Quiet Way.”
So the time passed nicely until Atimaono
was reached and the mules trotted up to the foot of
the scaffold, in the shade of which stood the impatient
sergeant. Ah Cho was hurried up the ladder of
the scaffold. Beneath him on one side he saw
assembled all the coolies of the plantation.
Schemmer had decided that the event would be a good
object-lesson, and so he called in the coolies from
the fields and compelled them to be present.
As they caught sight of Ah Cho they gabbled among
themselves in low voices. They saw the mistake;
but they kept it to themselves. The inexplicable
white devils had doubtlessly changed their minds.
Instead of taking the life of one innocent man, they
were taking the life of another innocent man.
Ah Chow or Ah Cho what did it matter which?
They could never understand the white dogs any more
than could the white dogs understand them. Ah
Cho was going to have his head cut off, but they,
when their two remaining years of servitude were up,
were going back to China.
Schemmer had made the guillotine himself.
He was a handy man, and though he had never seen a
guillotine, the French officials had explained the
principle to him. It was on his suggestion that
they had ordered the execution to take place at Atimaono
instead of at Papeete. The scene of the crime,
Schemmer had argued, was the best possible place for
the punishment, and, in addition, it would have a
salutary influence upon the half-thousand Chinagos
on the plantation. Schemmer had also volunteered
to act as executioner, and in that capacity he was
now on the scaffold, experimenting with the instrument
he had made. A banana tree, of the size and consistency
of a man’s neck, lay under the guillotine.
Ah Cho watched with fascinated eyes. The German,
turning a small crank, hoisted the blade to the top
of the little derrick he had rigged. A jerk on
a stout piece of cord loosed the blade and it dropped
with a flash, neatly severing the banana trunk.
“How does it work?” The
sergeant, coming out on top the scaffold, had asked
the question.
“Beautifully,” was Schemmer’s
exultant answer. “Let me show you.”
Again he turned the crank that hoisted
the blade, jerked the cord, and sent the blade crashing
down on the soft tree. But this time it went no
more than two-thirds of the way through.
The sergeant scowled. “That will not serve,”
he said.
Schemmer wiped the sweat from his
forehead. “What it needs is more weight,”
he announced. Walking up to the edge of the scaffold,
he called his orders to the blacksmith for a twenty-five-pound
piece of iron. As he stooped over to attach the
iron to the broad top of the blade, Ah Cho glanced
at the sergeant and saw his opportunity.
“The honourable judge said that
Ah Chow was to have his head cut off,” he began.
The sergeant nodded impatiently.
He was thinking of the fifteen-mile ride before him
that afternoon, to the windward side of the island,
and of Berthe, the pretty half-caste daughter of Lafiere,
the pearl-trader, who was waiting for him at the end
of it.
“Well, I am not Ah Chow.
I am Ah Cho. The honourable jailer has made a
mistake. Ah Chow is a tall man, and you see I
am short.”
The sergeant looked at him hastily
and saw the mistake. “Schemmer!” he
called, imperatively. “Come here.”
The German grunted, but remained bent
over his task till the chunk of iron was lashed to
his satisfaction. “Is your Chinago ready?”
he demanded.
“Look at him,” was the answer. “Is
he the Chinago?”
Schemmer was surprised. He swore
tersely for a few seconds, and looked regretfully
across at the thing he had made with his own hands
and which he was eager to see work. “Look
here,” he said finally, “we can’t
postpone this affair. I’ve lost three hours’
work already out of those five hundred Chinagos.
I can’t afford to lose it all over again for
the right man. Let’s put the performance
through just the same. It is only a Chinago.”
The sergeant remembered the long ride
before him, and the pearl-trader’s daughter,
and debated with himself.
“They will blame it on Cruchot if
it is discovered,” the German urged. “But
there’s little chance of its being discovered.
Ah Chow won’t give it away, at any rate.”
“The blame won’t lie with
Cruchot, anyway,” the sergeant said. “It
must have been the jailer’s mistake.”
“Then let’s go on with
it. They can’t blame us. Who can tell
one Chinago from another? We can say that we
merely carried out instructions with the Chinago that
was turned over to us. Besides, I really can’t
take all those coolies a second time away from their
labour.”
They spoke in French, and Ah Cho,
who did not understand a word of it, nevertheless
knew that they were determining his destiny. He
knew, also, that the decision rested with the sergeant,
and he hung upon that official’s lips.
“All right,” announced
the sergeant. “Go ahead with it. He
is only a Chinago.”
“I’m going to try it once
more, just to make sure.” Schemmer moved
the banana trunk forward under the knife, which he
had hoisted to the top of the derrick.
Ah Cho tried to remember maxims from
“The Tract of the Quiet Way.” “Live
in concord,” came to him; but it was not applicable.
He was not going to live. He was about to die.
No, that would not do. “Forgive malice” yes,
but there was no malice to forgive. Schemmer and
the rest were doing this thing without malice.
It was to them merely a piece of work that had to
be done, just as clearing the jungle, ditching the
water, and planting cotton were pieces of work that
had to be done. Schemmer jerked the cord, and
Ah Cho forgot “The Tract of the Quiet Way.”
The knife shot down with a thud, making a clean slice
of the tree.
“Beautiful!” exclaimed
the sergeant, pausing in the act of lighting a cigarette.
“Beautiful, my friend.”
Schemmer was pleased at the praise.
“Come on, Ah Chow,” he said, in the Tahitian
tongue.
“But I am not Ah Chow ” Ah
Cho began.
“Shut up!” was the answer.
“If you open your mouth again, I’ll break
your head.”
The overseer threatened him with a
clenched fist, and he remained silent. What was
the good of protesting? Those foreign devils always
had their way. He allowed himself to be lashed
to the vertical board that was the size of his body.
Schemmer drew the buckles tight so tight
that the straps cut into his flesh and hurt.
But he did not complain. The hurt would not last
long. He felt the board tilting over in the air
toward the horizontal, and closed his eyes. And
in that moment he caught a last glimpse of his garden
of meditation and repose. It seemed to him that
he sat in the garden. A cool wind was blowing,
and the bells in the several trees were tinkling softly.
Also, birds were making sleepy noises, and from beyond
the high wall came the subdued sound of village life.
Then he was aware that the board had
come to rest, and from muscular pressures and tensions
he knew that he was lying on his back. He opened
his eyes. Straight above him he saw the suspended
knife blazing in the sunshine. He saw the weight
which had been added, and noted that one of Schemmer’s
knots had slipped. Then he heard the sergeant’s
voice in sharp command. Ah Cho closed his eyes
hastily. He did not want to see that knife descend.
But he felt it for one great fleeting instant.
And in that instant he remembered Cruchot and what
Cruchot had said. But Cruchot was wrong.
The knife did not tickle. That much he knew before
he ceased to know.