The Adventure MEGAPACK ®. Уильям Хоуп Ходжсон

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СКАЧАТЬ the message you meant to convey. So I sought out the Rajah and bade him farewell. He gave me a pass for myself and men. Then I gave a purse of gold to the slave for a key to the garden gate, ostensibly to bid a last farewell to you. After that I waited for the Rajah to bring you to me.”

      “Suppose he had chosen another?” breathed Talfa.

      Her lover laughed. “He could not have, my beautiful! I had my men ready to overpower the guards, but when I heard them dismissed, I sent my men back to the horses, and waited. The rest you know.”

      “Where are we going?” Talfa asked; not that it mattered, now that she was in her lover’s arms. Not even the fact that he was the Black Adder made any difference to her.

      “To my home in the Hills. We are quite safe. The Rajah will never know you are Boud Ali’s, and together we will find happiness.”

      “And wealth,” added Talfa, remembering the Rajah’s jewels. “Only, I shall be afraid when you are off on your expeditions.”

      “I shall never leave you, now that you are really mine,” he promised.

      Her laughter rang out like tinkling silver bells. “Then there is the end of the Black Adder!”

      Boud Ali shrugged, “Why?”

      “If you go forth no more—”

      His own mirth drowned hers, “Oh foolish, one, I but played a part for one night, and borrowed a name to gain my love. If I had taken you, the Rajah would have found us out and death would have been our lot. But for the Black Adder he will not look. For my part, I shall think kindly of the bandit that all so abuse.”

      “And I shall ever bless his name!” cried Talfa as she raised her lips for her lover’s kiss.

      A MEAL FOR THE DEVIL, by K. Christopher Barr

      Yen Sing, his oily black queue slapping his back at every jounce, climbed to the top of the mast. From its height, he surveyed dazedly this harbor of the white man, full of bustle, full of excitement, fringed by the irregular wharves and piers of busy San Francisco. Yen Sing’s slanting eyes noted everything—the plying ferry, the host of small boats, the green slime on the base of the wharf, whence rose a queer pungent odor to his sniffing nostrils.

      The ship rose and fell gently on the bosom of the water. Yen Sing liked the lulling sensation. He liked the sparkle of the sun on the ocean. He liked the tang of the salt breeze in his mouth and nose, its crisp caresses on his face.

      Most of all he liked his position, high above the rest of the crew. He was exalted, a god, surveying the pitiful human world, spread in a panorama at his feet. Yen Sing shivered. He had no gods. He had foresworn his gods, called them vile names, and thumbed his nose at their crafty wiles, shaken his fist at their images, and then fled, quaking, from their wrath. Why not? What had his gods done for him, save to drive him from place to place, showering upon his rebellious head distress and misery, taking from him all that life held of joy and happiness? Small wonder that he had cursed the gods of his fathers, and fled to strange lands to ease his miseries.

      But they had sent after him devils, two chief devils and a number of subordinate and subservient devils. Chief among those was Mazpa, the boa constrictor, who undulated gently in his cage and darted his wicked fangs at the yellow, wizened Chinaman every time he passed him by. Yen Sing had no delusions about Mazpa. Whatever the little round bald Englishman, with the gold-rimmed spectacles said of Mazpa and the other creatures of the jungle which were being transported to England for some strange unfathomable purpose, Yen Sing knew better.

      * * * *

      It was not for nothing that the boa constrictor had been added to the cargo last of all, when Yen Sing himself had already signed his papers to go to foreign lands as a sailor on the jungle-ship. Mazpa was a devil—a fierce, and inplacable devil—sent by Yen Sing’s outraged gods to kill their defiant ex-worshiper, and to conduct his blackened soul to its particular hell. Yen Sing had to be very wary of Mazpa. Sometimes he could stand the worry and the terror no longer and had to escape up the mast into the fresh sweet air of the outside world, to think and rest and gather courage to face again those coal-black, hard eyes, the darting fangs, the snapping jaws, the hostile hiss of the arch-devil, Mazpa.

      Nor was Mazpa alone in his glory. There were at least a half dozen other serpents on the ship. These, to Yen Sing’s tortured brain, were satellites of the big devil, Mazpa. They were his attendants, lesser beings of the same world, lesser emissaries of his own enraged and avenging gods.

      There were monkeys on the ship, too—friendly, chattering little beasts, who held out small hairy hands to Yen Sing, and smiled at him mockingly with their bright, canny eyes. He would stand before their cage whenever He could snatch a moment from his work, jabbering at them in language which the other sailors said was either their own or a kindred tongue, laying his yellow cheeks against the bars, giving them his pigtail to play with.

      The monkeys he didn’t fear, nor the one lion, the two tigers, and the other large beasts of the jungle. He even liked the screaming, disapproving, gaudy tropical birds that flew excitedly from side to side of their barred home when he approached them. But Mazpa and his snakes—there was a different story.

      * * * *

      One other devil there was on board the ship, in league with Mazpa, perhaps, but certainly sent to the ship for the same purpose—to run down the Chinaman soul and body, and deliver him to the grasp of his pursuing gods. That was the devil with the thin, wailing voice, who lived in a long black reed, and talked to Sally, the red-headed sailor, whenever that blue-eyed, freckled-faced booze-loving son of the sea put his lips to the reed, and whispered to its inmates. Flute, they called this devil, and whenever he heard the sweet, shrill notes, Yen Sing cowered and hid his face in his hands. He would seek the farthermost corner of the ship, and there remain in fierce and brooding terror until the notes were stilled, and the devil had retired. Then and then only, would he return to his work.

      Sally, however, Yen Sing admired nightly. He was fond of this husky sailor in his own queer, Oriental way. He often longed to tell Sally that he was not the priest of a god, as he undoubtedly must think himself, but instead the guardian of a devil, relentless, persecuting, vicious, who would turn upon his own votary when once his way was gained, and rend him limb from limb. But he never could make Sally understand, so he finally gave up trying, and wore himself to a shadow longing for the day of release from the daily nightmare of Mazpa’s baleful eyes and the Flute’s shrill, pursuing voice.

      Up in the sky, clinging to the mast, while the boat rocked gently to and fro in the arms of the water, Yen Sing forgot everything except the busy city spread out before his slanting eyes. He watched the smoke-wreathing itself from countless chimneys to spread its dark haze over the horizon; he marveled at the bustle about the waterfront.

      The myriad noises of the city came to him as a subdued roar, like the, sound of distant thunder in the hills in summertime. Especially he admired the white shaft of the Customs House tower, rising from the lesser buildings surrounding it like a maiden above her worshipers. Tall and slim and white it stood, serene in the midst of turmoil.

      What was that dark streak coiled about its slenderness? Yen Sing shut his eyes in terror, for he seemed to discern a flat head, two yawning jaws, and the steady gleam of narrow, jetty eyes, Mazpa writhed and swayed on the tower’s body. With a shudder, Yen Sing turned away.

      Now Mazpa had ideas of his own concerning this jungle-ship. He detested his barred and bolted cage; he hated the motion of the ship. Back in his native jungles, the earth had remained steady, motionless. СКАЧАТЬ