by Otto Penzler
Behind us the Negroes made a little shuffling noise and began to whisper among themselves. I turned toward them. “What sort of place is Saba?” I asked.
They continued to shuffle uneasily. At last one said, “You sailors?”
“We’re sailing that schooner,” I answered.
The Negro said, “Sailors don’t go ’shore in Saba.”
John Wayne’s triangular-shaped blond eyebrows went up. “Why?”
“Well, they—they …” The Negro hesitated.
“They scared of Bill Wales,” another of them blurted suddenly.
That was all we could get out of them, that sailors were afraid of Bill Wales. But the place sounded interesting and we decided to go.
Reaching Saba, we found Fort Bay, the only anchorage, wasn’t really a bay at all. The whole island rises sheer out of the water and the Bay was merely a place where it was possible to drag a small boat ashore. We could see a pathway leading up the mountain, circling along the edge of a deep gorge. There was one small house at the foot of the path, but no sign of life. “The other houses must be hidden back in the mountain somewhere,” Mary said.
We anchored about a hundred and fifty yards off shore. There was an unusually heavy swell and the schooner dipped and rolled. Hammer and Wayne had gone forward to lower our one boat, when I saw the man on the shore. He was standing almost at the water’s edge looking out at us. I can’t explain it, but the instant I saw him I knew that something was wrong. I felt as if the wind had suddenly turned colder and I shivered.
At first I couldn’t tell what there was strange about him. He seemed to be dressed in blue denim work clothes such as sailors or the natives on the islands often wear. It was too far to see his face, yet looking at him I found myself swallowing hard and my lips working. The sun was still an hour high, hot and intense. It made the water a glittering blue and where it lashed about the rocky shore the foam was startlingly white. I hardly noticed these things, however, looking at the man.
And then, all at once, I knew what was wrong with him. I could see straight through him! He was standing there looking out at us, and yet I had the impression I could see the rocks directly behind him. It was like a thick mist which has body and substance but which you can look through and on the other side of which you can see things.
Mary’s heels made a clicking sound on the deck behind me and I turned quickly. “Come here,” I said. “Look!”
She stared at me and began to smile. “What’s the trouble? Seen a ghost?”
“I don’t know. You look.” I turned and pointed toward the shore where the man had been. He was gone.
Mary said, “I don’t see anything but a lot of rocks. I don’t even see how we’re going to get ashore.”
I took a deep breath, searching the shore. The man might have ducked behind one of the rocks or he might have reached the little house by running, but where he had stood there was only warm sunlight. “It must have been some trick of light and shadow that made him look that way,” I thought.
“All right,” John Wayne called. “You two come forward if you’re going to the isle of Saba.”
Pete, the Negro cook, was standing amidships as we went toward the small boat. “Would you like to go ashore and climb that mountain?” Mary asked him.
He said, “No, ma’am. Hit looks too steep fer me.”
Mary laughed. “Well, you can guard the schooner,” she said. I helped her over the side and followed her into the small boat with Carl Hammer and John Wayne.
It was a strange crew we had on the Sink or Swim, our dilapidated old two-masted schooner. I had often wondered how John Wayne, Carl Hammer, and I ever got together and just what the common bond was that made us such close friends. We didn’t have much in common except a desire to ramble; yet for five years we had been together almost constantly and any one of us would have gladly gone through hell for the other two.
Hammer—it was an odd trick we had of calling each other by the last name—was an artist whose pictures brought him in just enough money to let him keep moving. They were strange pictures, going deep into metaphysics, and the man himself was strange. He was thin and dark, with glittering black eyes, sharp features, a thin mouth, and long, slim fingers that moved quickly and nervously. Sometimes when he was painting one of those strange, physic pictures of his the light in his black eyes wasn’t human. Wayne and I had often said his mind was set on a hair trigger and he was likely to go crazy very suddenly, breaking the way a stretched cord may break.
John Wayne was the biggest man in the group. Tall, heavy shouldered, and blond, sunburned but with a slight redness to his nose caused by almost constant attention to the bottle, he was one of the best-natured men I have ever known.
And one of the most worthless, from the world’s point of view. He had never done a day’s work in his life, except on hunting and fishing trips and things of that sort. There had never been any need for him to work otherwise. He had several million dollars, I don’t think he knew exactly how much. He was the man who had actually bought the Sink or Swim, though Hammer and I had contributed and had insisted, therefore, on the ship being a cheap one. You would have known Wayne anywhere because he always had a bottle in one hand—or very close to it—and a big grin on his face.
Mary was Wayne’s sister and the one thing I had ever cared enough about to try for—and the one thing which always had seemed utterly impossible of attainment. She had been very much in love with some fellow in New York and he’d thrown her over just before we left for the West Indies. She’d been pretty badly broken up about it and Wayne had suggested we bring her along.
I had never understood how anybody could help but be in love with her. She wasn’t tall, but she gave that impression until you were close to her. She was slim, with high, round breasts and a waist that curved as delicately as a flower into full thighs, and her legs were long and slim and well turned. Her hair was almost as blond as her brother’s but with a trace of gold in it. Here eyes were wide set and very blue. Her mouth was a little too big to be classical, but to me it had always seemed the perfect mouth for kissing, though I had never kissed it.
Carl Hammer often said there was only one more worthless man in the world than John Wayne, and that was I. I had been left enough income to live on if I lived cheaply, so I spent my life moving from one cheap part of the world to another.
There you have the four of us who rowed ashore. Hammer was at the tiller, Wayne and I at the oars. He had to slide right in between two boulders to the small, rocky beach, but we made it.
I still had my back to the shore when I saw that strange look come over Hammer’s face. Without asking, I knew what he had seen. His black eyes had suddenly grown very wide in his lean face. His thin, dark lips had parted. For a moment he stopped breathing; then over the beat of the surf I heard the air hiss through his nostrils. I believe he could see, even then, with that almost mystic power of his, what was coming. During that long minute he sat in the stern and stared, he must have recognized the thing at which he was looking.
Wayne noticed the expression on his face and said, “What the hell, Hammer? What the hell?”
He went over the side then, without waiting for an answer, and began to tug the boat onto the shore. The surf was heavy and I should have gone to help him, but for some reason I couldn’t.
I had shipped the oars and I began to turn slowly. The muscles in my neck seemed very cold. I heard Wayne’s voice, sounding far away. “Damn it, get out and give me a hand.”
Then I was looking at the shore and at the man standing there. As I looked he moved, caught the prow of the boat and tugged. I knew that he was the same man I had seen from the ship. He was tall, in his early thirties, and very sunburned; yet under the darkness of his skin there was a strange pallor. It was the shade of thin brown paper held up to the sun. I thought, suddenly, of a well-embalmed corpse and of the pallor beneath the paint on its cheeks. I had got the impression of seeing through the man when I looked at hi
m from the ship, but now, while he kept moving and tugging at the boat, I lost that impression. In that first moment I saw nothing strange about him except the color of his skin. His face was dirty and with little wrinkles around the corners of his eyes as if from looking into the sun. He wore an old cap so that I couldn’t see the color of his hair and with his face half turned I couldn’t look into his eyes.
I went over the side then and helped them tug the boat onto the shore. Mary clambered out, threw back her head and looked up at the mountain which towered over us. Hammer was still sitting in the stern, staring at the man, but his breathing was more natural. Slowly he came forward and got out.
Wayne turned toward the man who had helped him beach the boat. “Where’s the town?” he asked.
The man kept moving, stepping from rock to rock and back again, yet he did it with a slow calmness that did not seem at all nervous. I wondered then why he kept moving. As he stepped from one rock to another he nodded toward the path which led upward. “Up the hill about half a mile,” he said. He talked with a distinctly English accent.
From directly behind me Hammer spoke. His voice was breathless, rapid. “What’s your name?”
The man turned quickly and looked at Hammer. When he did I saw his eyes and instinctively I stepped to one side. His eyes were like those of a fish, an utterly lifeless blue. Like those of a corpse, I thought. And in the second that he stood motionless, staring at Hammer, I once more had the weird impression that I was looking through a figure made of mist and that directly beyond it I could see the rocks of the shore.
Then the man moved sideways, calmly. He grinned and said, “My name’s Bill—just Bill—to sailors like yourselves.”
Wayne said, “Well, Bill, we’ll find the town if we go right up this path?”
“I’ll show you,” Bill said. “Got nothing else to do myself.” He turned and started up the path.
Wayne made a quick duck into the prow of the rowboat and pulled out a bottle of red wine. “It looks like a long climb to go thirsty,” he said. He started up the mountain. Mary went next and I followed her. Where the path was wide enough I stepped up beside her. Carl Hammer brought up the rear.
I was thinking that the name Bill on this island should have some special significance, but I couldn’t remember what. I kept staring at the man, wondering what had given me the impression of seeing through him, but now he was moving steadily up the mountain and most of the time both Mary and Wayne stood between us. Watching the liquid movement of Mary’s white linen skirt across her hips I forgot about the man called Bill …
We had climbed for nearly ten minutes when Bill began to hum. The sun was low now, but it was still hot and the climb and the heat had the rest of us panting heavily; yet there was no hint of exhaustion in Bill’s breathing. After a moment his humming changed to a low singing. At first I couldn’t understand what he was singing, then, as his voice grew louder, I began to catch the words.
“Oh, the first man died in a fall from the cliff,
And the second man died the same.
The third man went to a watery grave.
And the woman died from shame.”
It had the swing of a sea chantey and he sang the same lines over and over, his voice gradually getting louder. We kept climbing.
The path rose sharply, clinging to the canyon wall. On our right the sheer drop grew deeper and deeper. The mountain above us was matted with big rocks, a thick wide-bladed grass I had never seen before, and mango trees. Small goats wandered about among the rocks and bleated mournfully. I noticed that when we came near one he would whirl, stare at us for a moment, and then go bounding away in terror.
“It’s odd,” I said to Mary. “Those goats shouldn’t be that wild.”
Behind us Hammer said, “It’s not us they stare at. It’s Bill.” His voice sounded strange.
We both turned to look at him and it was in that second that it happened. Bill’s voice had risen high and booming on the final line, “And the woman died from shame.” As he had started the stanza again his tone changed, dropped and took on a weird tenseness, “Oh, the first man died in a fall from the cliff.” That one line and no more. His voice went out as sharply as a light and left a silence thick as darkness.
Wayne made a choked, half-screaming sound.
“You—you—” Mary and I were spinning to look at him.
He was at the very edge of the cliff, reeling backward. The bottle of wine was held stiffly in front of him as if to guard himself from the thing he had seen. His eyes were bulging, his mouth twisted with incredulous fear. His left hand was chest high, and shaking. I couldn’t see Bill and I thought that he must have rounded the sharp curve ahead.
The whole thing happened in a half second. Wayne went reeling backward while the three of us stared, spellbound. Then his left foot went over the cliff’s edge and he toppled. Mary screamed, “John!” and leaped. I went past her in a rush.
It was too late. Wayne was falling, his face still upward—and I could see the fear-twisted mouth, the bulging eyes. Then he was out of sight below the brink of the cliff. I heard the crash of underbrush, the sickening thud as his body struck. There was a rattling, rumbling sound as rocks and body tumbled downward.
I was still kneeling at the edge of the cliff, my right hand stretched out over it helplessly, and Mary was standing close behind me, body rigid, face blank with amazement, when Carl Hammer passed us. He reached the bend in the path moving fast, and ripped around it. I heard the skid of his shoes as he stopped.
He came back just as I was getting slowly to my feet. Mary was still motionless, looking out over the canyon where Wayne had fallen. Hammer said dully, “Bill Wales has vanished.”
Chapter Two
“The First Man Died in a Fall from the Cliff”
The dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
—HOUSMAN
I looked at him blankly. “Who?” I asked.
He said, “Bill Wales.” His voice sounded hopeless, beaten.
Even then I didn’t remember. Perhaps I would have, had not Mary suddenly begun to sob. I caught her quickly in my arms. “Don’t worry,” I said, knowing even at the moment how foolish I sounded.
I turned to Hammer. “We’ve got to get him, quick!”
Hammer nodded, but his black eyes held that wild, spiritual look I had seen in them when he was painting. I don’t believe he knew exactly what I said.
The cliff was too steep where Wayne had fallen for us to go over. We had to run back a hundred yards or more, then work our way down gradually. It was hard going, but we found Wayne lying half between a huge stone and a mango tree. He was on his back, his face bleeding from two long gashes and a bad bruise on his right cheek. He still held the neck of the broken bottle in his right hand.
When I knelt beside him I saw that his eyes were wide open and he was still breathing. He recognized me and tried to grin, but there was more than pain twisting his mouth. There was fear and a dull groping for understanding. His voice was a whisper. “He never touched me. He was just there and then—then I—I was afraid. But he never touched—”
“That’s all right,” I said. “You just keep steady. You’ll be all right. You’ll be—”
I had to stop. I was about to cry. I wasn’t ashamed but I didn’t want Wayne to see me.
Hammer and I made a stretcher of our linen coats and our shirts, using a couple of limbs we tore from the mango trees. As we worked I could see Hammer’s thin lips twisting, see him blinking his dark eyes to keep back the tears; for one look at Wayne had shown us both that he was badly injured. The mystic, frightened expression had gone from Hammer’s face, though he must have known then what lay in store for him and how utterly impossible it was to avoid.
It wasn’t easy to carry Wayne up the cliff side. Before we reached the path we heard the excited voices, the pounding of shoes.
“Mary must have gone to the village for help,” Hammer said.
F
rom the cot Wayne whispered, “I’m hurting deep in my belly. I’d sure like a drink.” He paused, then the whispering started again. “He never touched me, just—”
“Don’t talk, fellow,” I said. “Just take it easy.”
“I’d like a drink.”
“You damned sot,” Hammer said. There was a little sob in his voice.
Then, all at once, men were around us and helping us lift the stretcher to the path, and carrying it up the mountain to a little village cuddled in what must have been the crater of an old volcano. A doctor had cut Wayne’s clothes from him and set a broken leg and several ribs and put him to bed in the small government hospital. There weren’t any other patients.
Wayne was still under the ether and Mary was sitting beside the cot, her thin brown hands holding one of his, her blond head bowed, when the doctor called Hammer and me outside. The doctor was a Negro, the only doctor on the island but his work had seemed very competent. Now he looked from Hammer to me.
“Well?” I asked.
The doctor spoke softly. “He may come through. There’s a chance, but a small one. He’ll have to be kept very quiet. Any exertion …” He made a short gesture.
“We’ll keep him still,” Hammer said.
The doctor hesitated. His very white teeth slid out over his lower lip. “While he was under the ether he kept saying, ‘He never touched me. He just turned around and—I was afraid.’ I think you two had best come down to the police station and explain how this happened.”
“We’ll come,” Hammer said. That strange look was in his black eyes again and his dark lips were very thin across his teeth.
We finished our report. There wasn’t much we could say. The Brigadier, as they call the chief of the five-man police force, was a sleek, very black Negro. He stood beside his desk looking at us and we looked at him. Almost suddenly Carl Hammer said, “Tell us about Bill Wales.”