Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories онлайн

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I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was passing.

“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y, last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,—one of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s teeth,—and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”

“I won’t forget her,” I answered pretty quietly. “Nor you either, you little cur.”

“Cur!” he repeated, edging away from me.

I don’t know what possessed me, but the memory of my wrongs, wasted money, lost time, the man’s egregious cynicism and selfishness, suddenly set my long-tried temper flaming, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I had the creature by the throat and was pounding him with all my force against a tree. I was twice his size and twice his strength, but I fought him regardless of all the decencies of personal combat in a lawless and primeval manner, even as one of our hairy ancestors might have revenged himself (after extraordinary provocation) upon another. I shook and kicked him, and I pulled out whole handfuls of frowsy red hair and whisker, and when at last he lay limp before me in the dirt, whimpering aloud for mercy, I beat him for ten minutes with a cocoanut branch that happened, by the best of fortunes, to be at hand. When I at length desisted, it was from no sense of pity for him, but rather in concern for myself and my interrupted voyage. I did turn him over once or twice to assure myself that none of his bones were broken, and that my punishment had not gone too far; and as I did so, he executed some hollow groans, and went through with an admirable stage-play of impending dissolution. I could plainly see that he was shamming, and had an eye to damages and financial consolation, as well as the obvious intention of wringing my bosom with remorse. I left him sitting up in the path, rubbing his fiery curls and surveying the cocoanut branch with which he had made such a painful acquaintance, a figure so mournful, changed, and dejected that Pingalap would scarce have known him for her Beautiful Man.