Fine men all, with big chests and fierce independent eyes, armed with shark-tooth sword and stone club, sling, or bow and arrow. The going of a man along those jungle paths made no slightest sound; his tread was noiseless as that of a wary panther; every pert bird twittering upon a creeper made far more noise than he, and often did not hear when man passed directly below. Neither did man cast any betraying shadow within the green gloom.
The track meandered down to a shingly beach, where upon a black rock sat crouched what seemed to be the carving of a witch, only blacker than the stone and as moveless, but alive, with bones like knobs stretching the skin, and breasts like skinny bags sagging to the rock! Scraggy arms clasped bony knees upon which the chin rested. Her hair drooped like the tail of an old grey horse, matted with the neglect of years. Jakara paused. A fellow-feeling made him sorry for old Sasowari, the mad one, lonely in her hopeless mourning. From this spot years ago, on another such sunlit morning, her daughter, Gareeb, fairest of all Las, had laughingly paddled away in a fishing canoe and never returned.
Jakara patted her shoulder. “I wish you comfort for your lonely heart, Sasowari,” he said kindly. “Why not go into the village and watch the preparations for the feasting? Forget, in the joy of others.”
The face, a maze of wrinkles, turned to him; bleared but shrewd old eyes peered towards his: “Does Jakara forget – in the joy of others?” she added quietly, then patted the man’s hand while her eyes smiled. “Jakara has always understood another’s troubles and is selfishly lonely in his own. Jakara the Lonely, but Jakara of the Understanding Heart! Friend Jakara, you are luckier than you know, in that you have youth as a comforter. Why not seize the happiness of youth and forget in the arms of joy?” And her trembling hand pointed to the track ahead disappearing among the palms.
Jakara smiled. “Those same arms that would caress my neck might well bring it to the bamboo knife,” he answered grimly; “the joys of forgetfulness often forget to awake.”
“You are a fool, Jakara the Wise,” replied the old woman, sharply. “Joys to the ready come often, death but once, and death can well be the greatest joy of all. Oh, Jakara, she is coming back!”
Expectancy quivered upon the shrunken face, so pitiful in its forlorn age. Her eyes grew bright as a snake’s. “You do not believe,” she hissed; “you think that her spirit has long since flown to Boigu, Isle of the Blest, but I speak truly. Gareeb, my Lily of Las, is coming; even now she flies to me before the wings of death.”
Jakara soothed the hot old brow. “I wish you peace, mother,” he comforted, “and hope with all my heart that your daughter brings you happiness untold.” He walked a little unhappily across the shingly beach; then, shaking off depression, strode more briskly up the path that wound among the shadowed trees. From them the Pretty Lamar stepped before him, and her face was radiant.
Jakara smiled, pleased despite himself. “Why, croton girl, you are as pretty as the sunbird: why such a gay face this morning?”
“And why, Jakara,” answered the soft voice, “are you striding with head and shoulders braced? And for whom is your smile this morning?”
Jakara’s smile broadened. “Whisper me your secret,” he parried, “and I will tell you mine.”
“Needless for either to tell,” flashed back the answer. “Jakara awaits Eyes of the Sea, and I await Jakara.” His smile disappeared. She returned him stare for stare, aggravatingly attractive in her defiant poise, her big dark eyes in startling contrast to the almost olive skin – Jakara could hardly resist touching it.
And she was so obviously his for the taking!
Such, outwardly, was the Pretty Lamar, fairest of the Las girls since the going of Gareeb. And now her movement seemed a caress, as she whispered pleadingly: “Why be angry, Jakara? Am I not fair to look upon? Am I not desirable?”
Jakara’s heart thumped. Imperceptibly, she leaned towards him, her lips sweet with invitation. He whispered urgently: “Pretty Lamar, you are lovely, a woman a man might die for; but I am a Lamar proper – we can never love. Stick to Beizam! If you persist in playing with me, we shall lose our heads – on the Sarokag pole!”
All Eve beckoned in the girl’s smile, as she twined an arm round his neck, caressing him with touch, and looks and words. Her body was scented with the kerakera.
“Nay, Jakara the Wise,” she whispered, lingeringly; “Beizam is a mud shark – you are lord of all the Islands, if only you will! Nothing then could say us nay. We—”
He gripped the firm warm shoulders as she clung to him the more. “Pretty Lamar,” he hissed, “you are a chief’s daughter! Forget not the custom of your people – Death! Or else I must marry you—”
Her hair touched his cheek while her lips came warmly to his. “Would that–be–very hard?”
He crushed her to him and she kissed passionately; she would have given him her life, this fierce wild thing born under an unhappy star. By the banyan-tree they were when C’Zarcke came along and for the first time in his life gazed down into eyes which blazed back hate unabashed – the eyes of the Pretty Lamar. Jakara turned as he felt that awful sensation at the base of his skull, even while his arms clasped the girl. C’Zarcke, giant among big men, walked noiselessly down the path. Softly the seconds passed. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers: the silence shouted tragedy. The girl clung desperately for dread of losing him – but she had lost, the hair was bristling at the base of his skull. He sprang erect, and in cold fear he forced her arms away.
On the third morning after, with his back comfortably warmed against the big black rock of his Lookout, Jakara lazed away time, smoking the zoob, and occasionally picking up the telescope to gaze over the deep blue of a tumbling sea. The zoob was a bamboo about two feet long, a smoke-cylinder with carvings burnt upon it, simply the native pipe. Jakara loved his zoob, and had often wondered that these savages should be growing tobacco and understanding how to cure it, centuries before Sir Walter Raleigh found its solace.
The Zogo-le had developed the knowledge, of course. The great majority of the people lived away their lives in an atmosphere of ignorance and superstition, only those men who of right could cluster around the Zogo-le being taught to understand things. Jakara’s musing gaze rested on a flat rock bottom swept clear by the outgoing tide. The sea had churned out little circular pools in that floor-like rock, and in his last bath sat Ramu. Ramu had been a promising young warrior, until his indiscretion outstripped his ambition. Consequently, while he slept, he had been made to breathe of the “Flower of Death.” Jakara knew that this was an extraordinarily fine, perfumed powder, blown across a person’s nostrils from a long tapering reed. One puff meant everlasting sleep for the body. And now Ramu sat in his salt bath, very quiet, right up to his neck. At long intervals an attendant unceremoniously dipped the warrior’s head under water.
For Ramu was undergoing mummification. Jakara often wondered. Some of these people had Egyptian names even. Their huge war canoes, too, with the tall stern and arrogant – often beaked – bow, their barbaric decorations reminded him of prints of old-time galleys of the Nile which in his boyhood days he had seen in books.
Dreamily he turned his eyes away from Ramu, sitting down there in his last bath, picked up his telescope, and gazed away out to sea. He sat up straight, fully alert, stared hard for a while, then hurriedly hid his telescope and with a smile sprang up and ran like a man in the pink of condition down the long winding path that disappeared towards the sea-shore villages.
So Jakara spread the news that the sail of Kebisu was in sight. Always careful was Jakara not to prophesy himself; he merely
