From The Four Winds/The Running Amok of Synge Sahib
THE RUNNING AMOK OF
SYNGE SAHIB
A yellow stain is a yellow stain,
Though the heart is white and the brain is white;
And a lonely man is a lonely man,
That's reason eno' for me.
—Doggerel Meditations of John Hay.
...........
'You lucky beggars Oh! You lucky beggars!'
The speaker rose, and stood stretching a languid length against the railing of the verandah, his tall figure outlined in its white clothes against the overhanging foliage.
'Well, I don't know,' said Clemenson, 'you fellows don't seem to have such a bad time out here; only wish I were going to stay, instead of toddling back to the beautiful and salubrious climate of the British Isles which you seem to covet so much; what d'you say, Taplin?'
He waved the end of his cigarette, glowing in the dark, towards another recumbent figure.
'Um—um,' the second globe-trotter lay back, looking curiously at the face of the man standing, and offered no further reply.
'I can't stay up to see you off,' said the first speaker—'I should go cracked. "You can 'ear their paddles chunkin!"'—he broke into the air of 'Mandalay,' and shook his hand with an almost menacing gesture towards the lagoon.
'Well! Saiandra, you fellows, you've cheered us up amazingly; don't forget to look in on me if you're ever fools enough to come back to this forsaken paradise. Send me that new magazine if you can get it in Sydney, Clemenson. Good-night, Mrs Hay; I know you won't think me rude for making tracks. Look after them, Hay; see you up in court to-morrow afternoon, I suppose? Got to go round the coolie quarters in the morning. Bon soir, la compagnie.' He shook hands with the globe-trotters, swung himself over the verandah rails, and walked uncertainly down the narrow path that threaded the grove of shadowy palms. For a minute nobody spoke; then Clemenson said with a sigh:
'Poor old Synge, how down he is to-night. He is a good chap. I wish he'd stayed to see us off. I hate saying good-bye before it's necessary.' He flicked off a mosquito, and bent down to adjust the bath-towel wrapped round his feet and ankles.
'Barring mosquitoes and flies, this is heaven, I believe,' he went on, lying back to look up at the sky gleaming with stars through the fern-like tracery of the flamboyante trees.
'Pardon me, under certain circumstances it's hell,' said a fourth voice.
'Hay, you're an unsentimental brute, you've no poetry in your carcase; ask Taplin and Mrs Hay what they think. Wake up, Taplin, old chap; hanged if you're not sleeping away the last chance of heaven you'll ever get.'
'Am I?' grunted the latter. He was gazing intently from under the broad brim of his hat at Mrs Hay. Sitting forward in her chair, her face ashy white, she was looking with an intent, scared expression at her husband.
'I must go, too, I'm afraid,' she said, 'the infant will want me; little wretch, she always cries on hot nights if she's left long. Good- bye, Mr Clemenson; good-bye, Mr Taplin; bon voyage; come and see me in England when I come home next year.'
Her manner was nervous and hurried, and her face, still turned towards her husband, had not lost its scared expression.
'You won't be long. Jack, will you?' With a wave of her hand she disappeared into the house. The men had all risen, their bath-towel armour, dislodged, lay in heaps on the verandah floor, and the increasing 'Ping! Ping!' announced a winged attack along the line.
'I say, this is a sell. I thought you and Mrs Hay were coming out to see us off; it was to have been an all-night sitting for the last, you know, and now here you are one by one deserting, and leaving us to face this abominable melancholy departure alone.' Thus Clemenson, ruefully. Taplin lit a cigarette.
'What's wrong, Hay?' he said, and pointed with it down the path.
'Oh! It's all right. Nothing, nothing; my wife's tired, and the infant's not well; that's all.'
'Nonsense, man, I saw Synge's face, and I saw your wife's, that's enough; I say again, what's wrong?'
Hay leant silently against the rail, a cloud gathering upon his face.
'Upon my honour I believe there's nothing wrong,' he said slowly, as though weighing a thought within himself, 'only my wife's rather given to nervous fits, you know.' This apologetically.
'Ummm..... Well, if you won't tell us you won't—beg your pardon for asking; are we keeping you up?'
Again a silence, then Hay said to himself:
'Oh! Dn it, it can't be.'
He turned to the other two.
'Look here, you fellows,' he said, 'you're gentlemen, and you're both of you fond of old Synge; what I say to you now, whatever you may think of it, goes no further?'
'Certainly not,' from Clemenson. Taplin shook his head; he was nothing if not brief.
'Well! It's a longish yarn, and I think I'll just go in and speak to my wife before I begin.'
He turned and went into the house.
The two globe-trotters, left to themselves on the verandah, looked at each other without a word. Through the darkness and stillness of the tropical night the humming of mosquitoes was waning, and the silence was only broken by an occasional cry, or the barking of a dog from the coolie quarters. A table covered with drinks and packs of cards was pushed aside, and the dying lamp cast a flickering glow on the two recumbent figures. The fragrance of lime and pepper trees came floating gently in on the warm night air. Clemenson sat flicking restlessly and distractedly at the now sleepy mosquitoes with his handkerchief, and Taplin, smoking quietly, looked down the path where Synge had disappeared. Both were relieved when Hay reappeared from the house, and sinking into a long chair, took up the word.
'I'm going to tell you chaps one of the most extraordinary yarns you'll ever hear. I don't attempt to explain it—I don't know anything about heredity—thank heaven I'm not a doctor—but I've been in the Strait Settlements, and I've seen things there that—Still I don't understand, and I don't care to,—all I know is, the thing happened.'
He paused a minute to concoct himself a drink, and then went on:
'You fellows have been here three weeks—jolly glad we've been to have you—and you've seen a lot of Synge. I suppose you've both noticed that somewhere or other about him there's blood that isn't white?' Nods from his listeners.
'Yes; there's not much of it, it hardly shows, but there's no doubt it's there. What it is I've never asked him, of course. I believe he's very sensitive about it,—why, I don't know, I'm sure—I only mention this, you know, because it hits off my theory of the why of what I'm going to tell you; besides,' he muttered half to himself, 'one mustn't talk to him about the Strait Settlements. Well,' he lighted a cigar, and pulled deeply at it for some minutes before going on, 'when I first came to the Fijis they sent me up as Commissioner to a small island about a hundred miles north of this, called Luma. Why in heaven's name they wanted a Commissioner there, the Colonial Office only knows. I went up with the wife and the infant, and for six months we were the only white people on the island; then the measles came, and they sent up a doctor—for his sins, poor old Synge. That place was a paradise for beauty, but a regular hell for loneliness. We had Judy (whom you know we brought over from Singapore with us), and another coolie, for servants, and Synge abode in a large native hut about a quarter of a mile away. Barring a ship's calling, perhaps once in three months, with mails, not a soul ever came near that blessed place; solitary confinement was a joke to it.'
He paused, and drew a long whiff from his cigar; a breeze growing amongst the palm leaves sighed thro' the verandah and blew the smoke into a wreath around his head. Clemenson shivered; the spirit of desolation seemed to have got into the tone of Hay's voice.
'Those beastly measles! Synge worked like a horse; the unfortunate devils of natives did their level best to die, and it was the work of two average men and a boy to save the life of any one of them—stupid beggars—but he pulled a lot of 'em through somehow. Then my infant got 'em, only a year old, and had a roughish time; there again Synge did the trick, and then—hanged if, to put the finishing touch, he didn't go and get 'em himself—and badly too. Measles in a climate like this aren't any kind of a joke, and the poor old chap nearly turned up his toes: but he came round at last—mainly thanks to Judy's cooking. They left him awfully weak and depressed; I used to go and sit with him a lot, and he was fearfully down, always talking about the misery of dying in a dog's hole of a prison, as he called the place, and pining for home. He had a fox-terrier called Wasp, that he was awfully fond of, and when we weren't with him he used to lie and talk to her by the hour about his people at home and a certain girl, and Cambridge, and the cursedness of things generally, and the poor little beggar would sit up at the end of the bed, catching flies, and blink her eyes at him, and let on to understand the whole caboodle. I often heard him yarning away when I was coming in; you can hear anything in those native houses. He had a sort of double one—one for a bedroom and one for a sitting-room. Well, he got better by degrees, but the stronger he got physically, the more gloomy and depressed he seemed to grow; it was like having a funeral in your coat-tail pocket to be with him; it didn't cheer matters up for us, and to make things worse, the mail missed—through a hurricane or some misbegotten reason—and we didn't see a ship, except at a distance, for nearly six months.'
Hay paused and shook himself, as if to free his mind from the recollection. Clemenson muttered, 'Lively!' Taplin bit his forefinger sympathetically.
'Well,' Hay went on rapidly, 'one morning Synge came down to us at breakfast, and said in his sarcastic way, "Something's gone wrong with the works of Providence; there's actually a ship in." So there was; she brought the mails; Synge had some letters; and she went away that afternoon. I remember Judy saying to me at tiffin, "Wasp hab had five chickens, in honour ob de ship. Synge Sahib dip dem in de big punch-bowl and call dem names—say he chrisey dem. Will de Sahib hab gravy wid de blue man?" Judy's information is always dished up with some cookery—he meant blanc-mange—but good Lord! How infernally long-winded I am! In the afternoon I went over to see Synge; he'd gone asleep in his chair—it was beastly hot weather. His letters and papers were all strewn about the place, and a big Malay kriss that he'd been cutting papers with was lying beside him. Wasp, licking those five blessed puppies, was sitting at his feet. He looked so tired that I went away without waking him; perhaps if I had, things would have been different.'
Hay paused again, and turned with a shiver to look over his shoulder down the path, listening intently; the other two noticed for the first time that the butt of a revolver was sticking out of his coat pocket.
'Well, my boys, I expect I've bored you so far, but I shan't with the rest of my yarn.' He turned to them again, speaking hurriedly and low.
'That night I was sitting in the dining-room pretty late, writing up my Commissioner's log. The wife had gone to bed; it was a mighty hot night, and the infant had been making herself felt. I was smoking, and not over and above busy—the Luma Commissioner isn't given that way. There was a bright moon, and it was very still and peaceful, much the same as this. It happened I was just thinking what rummy noises one hears at night, when I heard quite the rummiest noise I've ever heard or ever want to; it was the cry as of a creature that had lost it's soul and "couldn't tell whe—ere to find it." He broke into the old tune, which came on the top of the intense solemnity of the last few words with a weird effect that sent a shudder through his listeners.
'By George! You fellows may just "lift up your hearts" that you've never heard a sound like that; it sent the blue creeps through me—I sat there wondering what the deuce it was, till, looking through the window, I saw in a bright patch of moonlight in front of the house a naked figure, dancing a kind of fantastic dance, and brandishing a streak of silver above its head; then I heard that awful cry again, and the figure darted forward and disappeared. I sat there rubbing my eyes, and wishing for a drink, when the door opened with a crash, and Judy almost fell into the room, his eyes starting out of his head with fright, and his teeth chattering. "Sahib! quick! quick! Synge Sahib kill Wasp, and kill de chickens; Synge Sahib run amok! Synge Sahib run amok!" and the beggar fell on the floor, and grovelled underneath the table. "What the devil!" I began—then suddenly came that cry again, quite close this time. I dashed out of the room, and made down the landing for my wife's room. My God! What do you think I saw?'
In his intensity he leaned forward, staring straight at the opposite wall, with his hand gripping the butt of the pistol, and in his eyes they could almost read the words that followed.
'Over the child's cot stood that naked figure, with that devilish streak in its hand. My wife, in her nightdress, stood shrieking and clutching at the figure's arm with both hands. I reeled back, then I picked up the first thing that came handy, a knob of sorts, or a boot-jack—I don't know—and threw it with all my force. Praise the Lord! I hit it; it turned, and by all the great and awful powers, it was Synge—Synge transfigured—a Malay,—you chaps make no mistake—a Malay, if ever there was one, in every line of his face and figure. Barring a towel wound round him, he was stark naked, and his flesh was yellow, not white; and whether my eyes went wrong or not I don't know, but his hair seemed to hang down his naked back, instead of being cropped short, as it always is. His eyes were blazing and glaring with a sort of green light like a wild cat's. That devilish silver streak was his Malay kriss, and he brandished it like one possessed. I've seen Malays run amok twice—once in Bangkok, and once in Sumatra—and if Synge wasn't at that moment a Malay, and a Malay amok, I'm a German Jew. He didn't look mad, only mad murderous. But there wasn't much time for psychological speculation, I can tell you; I just had that one look from him, and then he came for me. It flashed through me, there was only one chance, and that was tracks away from the house. I took that chance, and went through the window—which I concluded afterwards must have been shut—and made those tracks. There was a straight path from the house through the native village, leading out beyond on to a long stretch of hard white sand. We went through the village—what a funk the natives were in! They scattered on each side for us—the cry had drawn them, as it had me. I remember thinking—just shows how little the mind is in hand—how amusing it must have been for them to see their revered Commissioner hunted by their respected doctor in a state of nature, and wondering if they had humour enough to appreciate the situation; we were the only white men in the island, you know. I used to be a bit of a sprinter at school, and in the ordinary course of things could give Synge about 30 yards in the 100, but that night I could only just keep away, if it can be called keeping away from a man whose breath you can feel on your neck, and whose hand you can see coming over your shoulder. It wasn't the sort of seclusion I could have wished for. Twice he grabbed at me and missed, and then we got on to the sand, and, for some reason or other, I drew away a yard or two—perhaps my wind was better than his, though for that matter I don't believe he had a wind, or legs either, that night.' Hay spoke in a meditative voice that was half comic.
'But altogether,' he went on, 'it was a rum business. Well, I knew that what I had to do was to hold on ahead till we got to a creek about 100 yards wide that ran from the lagoon, inland. If I could get there first I was safe; I was a good swimmer, and in those days old Synge couldn't swim more than a few strokes. Still, if murder-madness could make a man run half as fast again, it could probably make him swim. However, it was the only chance. That was a ghastly run, and a ghostly one, too. The moon was full, and the sea gleamed in silver and black ridges, and that blessed sand shone in the bright moon- light like burnished plate, and we two white figures fled over it like disembodied spirits, with the whole of Nature—sea, sky, and land—looking on and mocking at what was meant to be as grim a tragedy as ever came about. And yet all the time, you know, I couldn't help seeing the comic side—the only two white men on the island—sworn pals, you beggars! sworn pals—and the one chasing the other for dear life, and no mortal reason—it appealed to me very much, that is, as much as the discomfort of the blamed thing would allow. All things come to an end, and so did that run. I must have made record time, but it seemed like a couple of hours. I never got more than about two yards away—it varied from that to about two inches—and I can tell you I was all out at the end of that half mile, when we came to the creek. There wasn't time or space to dive, and I went in plum bang—anyhow. I could see or feel the whirr of the kriss in the air as he came after me. When I came up and struck out, he was a yard or so behind, swimming desperately for me, with the kriss still in his hand. "Good Lord!" I thought, "it's all over now; the beggar can swim, and I'm about done." Quick as lightning I turned on my back and kicked out with all my might, and, as luck would have it, I caught him on the head with my foot, and down he went. I twisted round and drew myself out on to the bank—phew! I was done. In a minute or so he came to the surface panting and gasping, and turned himself round and round, looking for me, with that wolfish glare still in his eyes, and the kriss still grasped firm. When he saw me, I sang out from the bank, "Drop it, old man, the game's up." He gave that hideous cry again, and tried to swim ashore, but in a stroke or two he threw up his hands and went down. I lay still, trying to get my wind, and watching for him to come up again. In a minute he did, almost black in the face, but still with that murderous light in his eyes and the kriss in his hand. I called out—"Synge, dear old chap, easy on, that'll do," but just as I sang out he went down the third time, and this time he stayed there.'
Hay stopped short with a shiver. The dawn was breaking in a long grey streak over the distant reef, and with it came a wave of chill air. The faces of all three men looked almost haggard in the growing light, and Taplin said, 'Go on, man,' in a voice that sounded harsh and strange.
'There was only one thing to be done,' continued Hay, slowly, 'and I can tell you I didn't care about doing it one little bit. Diving for a madman with a kriss in his hand in twelve feet of water, even if he has gone down three times, is no sort of a pastime. Well, I found him at the second go, quite motionless at the bottom, and pulled him up ashore. He was unconscious all right, but I had the devil's own trouble to get that silver streak out of his paw. Then I sat on my haunches, and rubbed him, and prayed the gods to send me help. Presently they did, in the shape of my wife and Judy, on horseback, with brandy and pistols. Judy wouldn't come anywhere near, though he could see him lying like a log; but my wife, who, like most women where there's illness, is an angel, helped me to get him on to a horse. Poor old chap, he was mighty limp and light, and the madness had clean gone out of him; his skin was white again, and his hair shorn—I suppose I must have been a bit mixed there. We held him on, and got him back somehow, and gave him brandy, and gradually he came back to life; but he had brain fever and was delirious for days. Then I got to know how fearfully the loneliness had weighed on him, and bitten into his marrow. At last he came round, and got all right again by degrees. He's never had the faintest idea of what happened that night; the fever seemed to have wiped it clean out of his memory, and of course we've never told him. We got shifted here soon afterwards, and this place is chalks better than Luma, if it isn't exactly the vortex of society. The saddest thing, as it turned out, over that business, was poor little Wasp. After we got back with him I went over to his quarters to fetch away his things, and there, lying on his bed, was that poor little beggar and four of the pups dead as door-nails, with kriss stabs right through them. The fifth pup was alive and whining piteously; we took her home and dragged her up somehow, and here she is.'
Hay touched a sleepy fox-terrier with his foot.
'We had to tell Synge a yarn about Wasp's death. I've forgotten how it went now, but I remember it was very artistic and untrue, and the whitest sort of a lie. Well, I'm tired of yarning, and that's the whole show, and now perhaps you understand why my wife looked so queer to-night, and why'—he broke off, and tapped the butt end of the revolver. There was a long silence, which Clemenson broke with:
'You don't mean to say that you can go on living here with the possibility of that happening again?'
'Oh! This is different; Luma was specially designed by a beneficent Providence for lone madness. Personally I don't admit the possibility—wouldn't do, you know,' he shuddered,—'and forewarned is forearmed; besides, these things are with the Fates, and if it should come about, it's better with us than with people who don't know and wouldn't understand, and—we're fond of Synge.'
Clemenson lay back and whistled softly, and the three sat on in silence and watched the grey turn to red, and the glow steal from over the lagoon, flecking the green growing things with light, and chasing the sentinel stars back into their boxes; and they listened to the murmurs of the wakening island world, till the splash of oars in the narrow winding river hard by warned the globe-trotters that the time for departure was come.
'Time's up,' said Hay, 'there's Missa Tanner and his boat,' and he pointed through the red clusters of the flamboyante trees to the tall figure of a Fijian coming up the bank of the stream towards the house. Taplin rose and stretched himself, then he walked over to Hay and shook him hard by the hand.
'You're a good chap,' he said, 'a thundering good chap; and your wife's a brick—tell her so.'
'Thanks,' said Hay.
Half an hour later, the boat, held in the stream by the oars of the convict crew, waited, while from the stern-sheets the two globe-trotters said good-bye to their host.
'Remember, you fellows, nobody's ever heard a word of that yarn—you won't forget that?'
'All right, old chap,' said Clemenson; 'but I say, just one thing: how do you account for it? Wasn't it temporary insanity, pure and simple?'
'Certainly not; that I'll take my solemn Dick—but I don't account for it, and I don't try to; all I know is, as Judy says: "Synge Sahib run amok."'
••••••
The boat drifted away down the stream to join the steamer lying out beyond the line of white reef. The globe-trotters lay back in the stern silently, and from across the lagoon as they watched, the group of houses grew smaller and smaller through the palm-groves, and the sugar plantations, beginning to teem with working life and labour, faded into a blurr.
Presently Clemenson, still looking backward, said, with a sigh, 'By gum!'
Taplin nodded.