Where the Pavement Ends Part 37

Thus he pursued us with rude outcry, but at the end lapsed and blew us along with a final vernacular blast: "_Va-se'mbora_!"

We arrived with speed at the Praca da Const.i.tuicao, the main square.

Angus Jones was somewhat winded but unsubdued.

"How could I know a wretched exile had returned to contaminate the soil with foreign vulgarity?" he inquired. "Give me a native inst.i.tution."

Then with an evil humor I pointed out to him the Golden Gate, hospitably open to all vagrant airs that stirred among the plane trees.

"That is the social heart and center of Funchal," I told him, quite truly.

The hairy and muscular proprietor of the Golden Gate was nodding over the great porcelain handles of his beer pumps like a switchman in his tower.

"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I see you have no billiard marker.

'Tis a great pity, but soon mended."

The proprietor rolled out with a formidable roar, rubbing his eyes.

"_Pedro, my gla.s.ses!_ Billiar'? On the minute, mos' honorable sir. How stupid am I that a s.h.i.+p should be in and I catched in a sleeping! We have a ver' fine table of billiar', French or English, if you please should look. _Pedro, my gla.s.ses!_ Is it a Castle Liner you arrive by, mos' honorable? Will you have beer or wheesky-sod'?" He bobbed and leered, blind as an owl. I might have warned Angus Jones, but I did not.

I only stood where I had a clear s.p.a.ce to the door.

"All in good time," said Angus Jones. "I speak of a marker. In billiards, if you mark me, the marking is a proper art. Now, there I meet you as an expert. Give me charge of your billiard room, and I'll double your business."

"Billiar'? Yes, yes; only wait.... Pedro!"

Pedro appeared as from a trap, with a pair of spectacles.

"Do I get the job?" asked Angus Jones.

"Jobe!" exclaimed the proprietor. "What jobe?" He put on his gla.s.ses and eyed the applicant up and down. "Ah-h-h! You wish--? ... What is here?"

he bellowed, and fell back on his bar.

"I seek a place as billiard marker," said Angus Jones.

"_Sagrada Familia!_ Pig spy of a monarchist!"

The Portuguese equivalent of bungstarter whiffed Angus Jones by an eyelash. The rafters shook. We had a start to the door, and needed it.

Jones cleared the sill with the aid of a ponderous foot. In the driving hail of oaths and beer mugs we tore across the Praca. A little soldier in blue linen started up from, somewhere. Two others ran out of a doorway. A crippled beggar threw his crutch at us with a curse.

Loungers, ragam.u.f.fins, street cars, joined the chase with clamorous glee as we turned up an alley. All Funchal joined in the chorus behind us.

"_Va-se'mbora! Va-se'mbora_!"

And so consigned we fled at last to safety among suburban gardens and burst panting through a cane brake.

I said nothing to Angus Jones. Comment was too obvious. Angus Jones said nothing to me. Comment was inadequate. But I made such amends as lay with me. At a little change house by the sugar fields I spent my one coin for a bottle of wine. The wink and gasp of Angus Jones as that flagrant vintage seared his throat ended the gentle j.a.pe as far as I was concerned. He knew more about Madeira now and he no longer condescended to me....

We regained the water front by a devious route and came down toward the quay among odorous fis.h.i.+ng smacks and tangled nets. Hotter, more desolate than ever, lay that black griddle of the foresh.o.r.e on which Angus Jones was now condemned to wander with me. Nothing moved along its pebbly waste but heat waves and boiling surf and hopping insects in clouds.

Off the jetty lay the Siamese tramp, still heaving in the ground swell, and we came down to the edge to stare across at her. As pariahs before a vision of paradise we stood and yearned toward that disreputable hulk.

They had almost finished with her cargo. At this moment they held a clumsy crate balanced over the side in a sling, seeking to lower it upon a sh.o.r.e boat about the size of a dinghy. The crew swarmed like furious ants, and a white officer in dirty ducks flailed amid the riot. As the chain swung we saw the crate was really a clumsy cage in which ramped a huge and tawny form.

"The circus," I murmured.

"Ha!" said Angus Jones.

"Not the kind of circus you mean," I a.s.sured him. "No clowns, no rings, no sh.e.l.l games. It's a kind of fifth-cla.s.s traveling menagerie, from what I hear, backed as a new venture by his excellency the governor himself. They'll house it in that round barn up the promenade where the cinema lives, and anon those natives who have the price will sit around on the benches and tremble and scratch themselves."

"But why should it be thus?" asked Angus Jones.

"Well, those who carry fleas--"

"No, but why should they tremble?"

"This is a far island. No one hereabouts has ever seen any animals more savage than a goat."

"True," said Angus Jones, with a grimace as if he had bitten into a sour fruit. "It is their simplicity. I had almost forgot."

Strange that he should have taken the word in defeat and disillusionment at that moment, for just then the thing happened. There burst a shrill screaming from the tramp, and its knot of toilers flew apart like bits of a bomb. Men leaped into the rigging, climbed the spars, shot down the hatchways. The hanging cage sagged and cracked, and overside flashed, with an arching spring, some great body all lithe and tawny in the sunlight. It plunged, and presently reappeared, surging for sh.o.r.e.

I felt suddenly conspicuous on that beach. We stood far from shelter.

Nor are cobbles good to run upon....

"I think we'd better be going," I suggested, and caught sight of my companion, and stopped.

He still wore his wool cap, and it occurred to me even then that he had not turned a hair throughout our flight. But now his face was curiously splotched red and white and his eyes blazed seaward in fixity. He did not budge.

"Tell me," said Angus Jones--"tell me what was that word with which they harried us a while back? I seemed to spy a meaning. The one word they had for us alike?"

"_Va-se'mbora?_" I said, fidgeting. "Oh, it's the common repulse to beggars and nuisances. You say it when you want to be rid of some one.

_Va-se'mbora!_ Which means in the vernacular: Chase yourself."

"Chase yourself," repeated Angus Jones softly. "Think of that now! They seek to tax us. They refuse us dole. They beat us here and yon. They will not let us go, though we would only leave their country for their country's good.... Withal they tell us: Chase yourself! And they are, as you say, a simple people, living on a far island."

The tawny head was close in.

"It's time to move," I urged.

But Angus Jones picked up an oar and cut the painter from a fis.h.i.+ng boat and went down to the water's edge. He made a singular figure on Funchal beach, drawn to all his lean height, with the clothes flapping on him as he struck a n.o.ble pose. For myself I retreated among the boats where I might hide in some cuddy.

"Observe the epic grandeur of the scene," declaimed Angus Jones. "Here I stand on a rock in mid-Atlantic to meet the raging monarch of the midmost jungle. 'Tis lofty, incredible--in a sense, miraculous."

The man was mad.... I called to him again.

"For Heaven's sake, come away!"