Son of Power. Will Levington Comfort

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СКАЧАТЬ her mystery. But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his own birthright, in the paralysis of perfect fear.

      A part of her mystery is this forgetting—while she reveals canvas after canvas of life—uncovers layer beneath layer of her deeper marvels. Skag was involved with his animals—and interests peculiarly personal—till it all came to seem like a dream. Yet underneath his surface consciousness it was working in him, as the glamour of India always does, to colour his entire future—as the magic of India always will.

      After their night in the tiger pit-trap, Cadman and Skag had wandered southeast-ward—still searching for the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater Ruins—and had become lost to the world and the ways of civilisation in the mazes of the Mahadeo mountains. They had found a dozen jungles full of monkeys, but none of them looked to Cadman like his dream. The monkeys were all so melted-in to everything else; and there was so much too much of everything else.

      As for Ruins, the thing they found was too old. It was like an exposure of the sins of first men—alive with bats and smaller vermin. The monkeys there had preserved from age to age the germs of all depravity. Without words the two Americans turned away from that spot, to forget it.

      Skag was learning that his training in the circus had been but a mere beginning in the study of wild animals. It seemed impossible that there could be a jungle anywhere with more beasts or greater variety, than they heard at night.

      It was as hard to come in good view of any wild creature—excepting monkeys—as it had been hard at first to sleep, on account of the voices of all creation after sundown. To approach undiscovered, and to lie out and watch undiscovered, taxed and developed all their faculties; the fascination and excitement of it stretched their powers; and their successes enriched them both for a life-time.

      After the first eagerness to get twenty different positions of a tigress playing with her kittens, Cadman had become a miser of material and an adept in noiseless movement. Finding that he was in danger of going short on sketching paper, he used it more and more as if it were fine gold, till his outlines were not larger than miniatures. Also, he learned to glance for the flash of approval in Skag's eye.

      The two men had grown into a rare comradeship. This time of year, sleeping in the open was luxury. They had not suffered for food, excepting in the memory of such things as had once been most common. Well above fever-line, no ailment had touched them. So, eating simply, sleeping deeply and working hard, they toughened in body and keened in mind—the days all full of quickening interests, every next minute due to develop surprise.

      It was by a little headlong mountain stream, that the revelation came. Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife. The accident was a calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb out of khuds, and this was all they had left to serve such a purpose.

      "That settles it, we must go," said Cadman, looking ruefully at the stump of his old blade. "Our nearest kin wouldn't know us, but we are still recognisable to each other, and I'm not exactly ready to quit—are you?"

      "No," Skag answered absently—unwilling to realise the necessity.

      Cadman studied the crestfallen face—they had loved this life together and equally.

      "But do you realise, my son," he asked, "that others will have to see us, before we can ever again be clothed and groomed properly?"

      Now Skag looked at his friend with seeing eyes and blushed.

      "It's not the clothes, so much as—" Skag stopped.

      Cadman focused on Skag's face through his queer spectacles, then he laughed as only Cadman could laugh.

      So they climbed down and took train for Bombay. Like fugitives they dodged the sight of correctly dressed Englishmen all the way; stopping over more than seven hours at Kullian—so as to reach the great city at night.

      Next morning two clean-faced and very much alive Americans arrived at the Polo Club for late breakfast. Indeed they were good to look at, being in the finest kind of health and full of initiative. That breakfast was royal in every flavour; they felt like young spendthrifts squandering their patrimony. Just as they were finishing, a distinguished looking Englishman came across the room and greeted Cadman:

      "Now this is my own proverbial good luck! Come away up to the house and give account of yourself. Where are the pictures? We'll take 'em along."

      Cadman presented Skag to Doctor Murdock of the University, explained that it was imperative for them to do some general outfitting, but promised to bring his friend in the afternoon.

      "Doctor Murdock is an extraordinary man, Skag," said Cadman, as the Englishman hurried away. "Beside his chair in the University, he is said to be top surgeon of Bombay. Barring none, he has more of different kinds of knowledge than any man I know; becomes master of whatever he takes up—authority, past question."

      "I wondered why you promised to take me along," Skag put in.

      "You'll be glad to have met him. He'll be interested in you," Cadman answered. "He's quite likely to take us to see some of the Indian nautch-girls. They're one of his fads—for their beauty. He has specialties in art as well as in science; but he's clean stuff—nothing rotten in him."

      They forgot time in the Bombay bazaars; first looking for bags, to be easily carried on their own persons; and then giving themselves to quality and workmanship in things designed for their special uses. There was no hurry. All life stretched before them, in widening vistas.

      Doctor Murdock's house was high on Malabar Hill. Their hired carriage came in behind his trim little brougham, as it turned on the driveway into his compound.

      "My fortune again!" the Doctor called. "I've been detained by a case and properly sweating for fear you'd reach my den first."

      Tea was served on a verandah entirely foreign and tropical and strange looking to Skag. A field of palm-tops stretched away from their feet to the sea. They told him the city of Bombay was hidden under those fronds.

      "And now you understand, Cadman," the Doctor was saying, "there's your own room and one next for your friend Hantee. Your traps will be up before you sleep, which may not be early, for I've a tamasha on for you this night—you remember, I enjoy dinner in the morning?"

      That tamasha was a maze of strange colour, strange motion and stranger perfume to Skag; not penetrating his conscious nature at all—feeling unreal to him.

      "I've been watching you without shame this night, young man," the Doctor said to him, as they finished the after-midnight meal. "My entertainment fell dead with you. Sir. You've been 'way off somewhere else. I'm simply consumed to know what you have found in life, to make your eyes blind and your ears deaf to the lure of human beauty. You're not to be distressed by my impudence—it's innocent."

      The Doctor's eyes widened for seconds; then they gloomed as he spoke:

      "Between you, you challenge modern manhood. We have not conceived that 'clean glamour' since men were young—forgotten ages past. No, there was no human beauty to-night to make a man forget those tigresses. … She was not there. I am one of many who miss her, but I would give—" The Doctor broke off, searching their faces before he spoke again: "There is no hope you will know the depth of the calamity; the bitterness СКАЧАТЬ