Big Mary

MACLISE, at his office desk, dropped his pen, swung his chair, and turned upon the street without a distant, ruminative gaze. Clad in his fresh tan linens, with his sturdy form, his ruddy, hearty, fine-featured face, his silver hair, his clear and kind blue eyes, he made a pleasant picture, to which the window view gave background well in harmony. Paramaribo is unique among South American towns, and the Heernstraat, at the early morning hour of peace and cool and freshness, displayed it at its comeliest.

But Maclise’s eyes, for once, took no note of outward things. That afternoon he should set forth, with a heavily laden expedition, by river, by creek, and by jungle-trail, for his placer, far back in the gold-bush. His mind was absorbed in the business of it. Every detail of organization had received his personal care. Now the great ‘fishboats ’ rode at the riverside, ready laden since the night before. All the miscellany of supplies for men, beasts, and machinery needed at the mine for three months to come, lay packed in perfect trim and balance beneath their broad tarpaulins. The crews were contracted and safe corralled under the police’s hand.

Maclise’s own launch, the Cottica, tested, stored, and in perfect order, rocked at her moorings. The lists had been reviewed and supplemented till further care seemed useless. And still Maclise pondered.

‘Cornelis!’ said he.

‘Ja, mynheer?’ The office porter, a slender, spaniel-eyed mulatto, darted forward at attention.

‘Cornelis, I ’ll take three more woodchoppers. Get Moses, and a couple of good Para men, if you can find them. But be sure you get Moses.’

‘Ja, mynheer, — but —’ The humble voice trailed and faded in reluctant deprecation.

‘Well?’ — Cornelis’s trepidations were among the minor thorns of Maclise’s life; yet he took them with that humorous understanding and indulgence that, coupled with a generous hand and sharp authority, wins the Negro’s heart, respect, and unquestioning obedience. ‘Well, Cornelis?’

‘I shall do my best, mynheer, but last night I saw Moses in a Portuguese shop on the Waterkant, and he was drinking — too much drinking, mynheer.’

Maclise considered. Moses was the best wood-chopper in the colony — a Demeraran, pure black, with the strength and patience of an ox; also, with an ox’s intelligence. Moses’ arms chopped cord-wood in the beauty of perfection, but the brain of Moses did nothing at all; whence it happened that, like an ox, Moses was led by whoever pulled on his nose-ring. Drunk, however, — drunk and ugly, — he would surely be no subject for the gentle Cornelis to tackle, and the boats must be off by three o’clock. Maclise’s eyes signaled a conceit that jumped with his fancy.

‘Cornelis, find Big Mary. Say I want to take Moses to the placer, and that I look to her to send him here by noon. Find Big Mary, tell her simply that, and then hurry on about the Para men.’

An hour later, over the iced papaia that prefaced breakfast, Maclise recurred to the subject. ‘Nora,’ said he to the presence behind the coffee-pot, — and told the story. ‘ It would stump half the police force in the town to move Moses against his will,’he concluded. ‘If Big Mary sends him, will you thank her for me? It would please her.’

‘Surely I will. But how far do you really suppose she is vulnerable, on the human side — that huge primeval thing — that great black buffalo? One can’t but wonder.’

The morning at the office passed rapidly, with its press of last details. Loose ends were tied. The Para men were caught and duly contracted; and when from Fortress Zeelandia, down by the river, the noon gun sounded, all was in shape.

‘All except Moses,’ thought Maclise. ‘The rascal was evidently too far gone to listen to — why, Mary!'

For the side window, at which laborers reported to the office, suddenly framed the head and shoulders of a burly Negress.

It was indeed an aboriginal type — pure Negro, thin-lipped, but flat-nosed, ape-eared, slant-chinned, broad-jawed, and with the little eyes of an intelligent bush animal.

‘Yes, mahster, mahnin’, mahster. Ah hope mahster quite well.'

’Howdy, Mary. Where’s that villain Moses? Could n’t find him, eh?’

Turning silently, Mary reached into space. One heave of her brawny arm, a scramble, and a giant figure lurched beside her, darkening the window with sheer bulk. It was Moses, but Moses dejected, spiritless, with drooping head and abject gaze. Moses, moreover, with one eye closed, a great fresh cut across his ebony jaw, and his right hand bandaged. With honest pride his helpmate pointed to her work. ‘Here he, mahster. He done come mighty hard, but Ah fotch he.'

Maclise considered the pair briefly, in quiet enjoyment; then, with the gesture natural to the moment, slid his hand into his trousers pocket. ‘All right, Mary. Good girl. Here you are. Now go tell the Mistress howdy.’

Nora looked up in surprise as Mary loomed before her, and the contrast of her slight little figure, her blonde hair, and her climate-blanched face, with the rough-hewn form of the great Negress, was the contrast of the Twentieth Century with the Age of Stone.

‘And did you bring Moses? Oh, Mary, I am so pleased with you! The Master particularly wanted him.’ With a sudden impulse a small white hand went out and rested upon the huge blue-black one. ‘Mary, I like to feel that we can trust you! ’

The giantess looked down upon the slim white fingers that lay upon the great seamed fist, with visible wonder, as though they had been snowflakes from the equatorial sky. A slow, vague wave of something like emotion ebbed across her face, making it, in passing, more formless. Then an earlier preoccupation resumed control. She seized a corner of her apron, and began torturing it into knots, while her unstockinged feet shuffled dubiously in their flinty feast-day slippers.

‘Is something troubling you, Mary?'

‘Lil’ Mistress,’ — Mary’s voice came oddly small and husky, — ‘Mahster ain’t never ’low no womens on the placer, is he?’

‘You know he does not, Mary.'

‘Lil’ Mistress, Moses ain’t want to come. Dat mek Ah ’bliged to mash he up. Ah glad ef Mahster want leff me go, des dis one time, fo’ look po’ Moses.’

Nora regarded the timid Amazon with the wider comprehension of experience. ‘I will see what the Master says,’ she replied. And so it happened that Big Mary, against all precedents, that day was allowed to embark with her dilapidated partner upon the long journey to the gold-bush.

The run that followed Maclise’s arrival at the placer surpassed anything in its history. For three glorious weeks the whole affair worked as by charm, without an accident or a drawback, and the ‘clean-ups’ were beautiful. Then came the eternal unexpected. The ‘Directors at Home,’ those foginspired bugaboos of colonial enterprise, cabled a foolishness. Maclise, would he or would he not, must drop all and go to town to answer it. With wrath in his heart, therefore, he foreguided his beloved work as best he might, and addressed himself to the downward journey.

And here, again, a fresh vexation met him: the Cottica’s picked and trusty crew failed. Duurvoort, best engineer on the river, was down with the fever. Jacobus, the faithful stoker, had taken to his hammock with snakebite. Only old Adriaan, the steersman, remained. Adriaan, to be sure, knew his river, hoek by hoek, and, with the fine sense of a wild beast, distinguished landmarks where others saw naught but unfeatured stretches of leaves and water and mud. Yet Adriaan’s faculties were like the launch’s engine — of no use unless a hand and brain compelled them. Given Duurvoort behind him to keep him alive and alert, he managed his wheel with perfect skill. But Adriaan unwatched, alone? — Hendrick, the untried substitute engineer, had the reputation of a good man. To him Fate added Willy, a hair-lipped Barbadian mulatto, and the scrub crew was complete as the journey began.

It was sunset-time, of the last afternoon of the trip. The Cottica, despite her handicap, had thus far made her distance without delays or accidents. By midnight she should reach her mooring before the town. Maclise, who had finished supper, lay on his cabin couch watching the shore slip by and thinking opprobriums. A vague physical discomfort fumbled at the door of his consciousness, and from moment to moment he tossed and twisted restlessly. He tried to calm himself. Nora, at least, he reflected, would be pleased. He had managed to send her warning of his coming and —

Maclise slowly sat up, with a face of pure dismay. The door of his consciousness had opened at last, to admit a sensation no longer vague but all too sure and familiar. Again the aching tremor shot through his body, with increased force. ‘Bless my soul!’ said Maclise, quite gently, ‘did I need this now?’

He rose and went forward to the engine-room, knowing he had no time to lose. He spoke to the engineer in short, sharp words, saying the same three sentences over and over, to the punctuation of the Negro’s ‘ Ja, mynheer,’ and ‘ Ja, mynheer.’ Then he moved on toward the wheel. The steersman had heard the voice behind him, and sat erect as duty’s self, eyes straight forward on the river and the rosy sky.

‘Adriaan —’ A fresh rigor seized the speaker and he laid hold of the rail to steady himself. Maclise would never learn the colonial Negro-language, the ‘taki-taki ’ ; but a pidgin of his own seldom failed to carry its meaning, and the gesture replaced the word. ‘Adriaan, fever catch me. No can watch Adriaan. Duurvoort no here. Jacobus no here. Adriaan must run boat. No must sleep. No must sleep. Hear ?’

The little Negro’s wrinkled face beamed limitless good-will and sympathy and confidence. ‘Poti, mynheer! Mino sa slibi. (Too bad! I will not sleep.) Mynheer need not fear. Mynheer must go lie down, and Adriaan will carry him safe. Ja, mynheer, ee-ja, mynheer!’

Maclise looked down upon his willing servitor with little faith. But help there was none. ‘No must sleep,’ he repeated, ‘and count the hoeks.' Stumbling back to his cabin, he stretched on his couch. The fever, curse of the country, gathered him into her grip, gradually effacing all thought and understanding. And the shadows deepened into night.

‘Thud-thud, thud-thud,’the engine beat on, smoothly. Smoothly the launch clove her way over the darkening waters; and ‘tinkle-tinkle, tinkletinkle,’ the little ripples sang around the nose of her tow. The tow was only a ‘fish-boat,’ going back to town for repairs. And in it was nothing in particular, — only its oars, and, curled up asleep in the stern, under a cotton blanket to keep out the dark and the Jumbies, — Big Mary.

Three weeks in the bush had more than exhausted her fancy for sylvan life. Moses’ wounds had promptly healed, depriving him, thereby, of a sentimental interest. In fact, in such daily proximity he palled upon her. ‘Ah close ’pon sick ’n’ suffik o’ de sight o’ dat man,’ she explained. ‘Ef Ah ain’t get some relievement soon Ah gwine loss’ ma tas’e fo’ he.’ The news of Maclise’s sudden sortie, and of the fish-boat tow with its possibilities of conveyance, had therefore come to her as a godsend, for whose realization she had begged too earnestly to be denied.

‘Thud-thud,’ hummed the engine. Hendrik, singly intent upon his immediate job, hung above it, the intermittent gleam of the fires making strange masques of his black and dripping face. The ministering Willy, like a hair-lipped, banana-colored goblin, hovered in and out, or slumbered profoundly in the doorway; and forward at the wheel, alone in the dark, old Adriaan struggled with the Adversary.

‘ Granmasra taki, mi no sa slibi,' he muttered aloud from time to time.

‘ Granmasra siki. Adriaan wawan de vo tjari hem boen na foto. Fa mi sa slibi! ’ (How should I sleep, with Granmasra sick and Adriaan the only one to take him safe to town!)

And yet, with the soft, cool fingers of the silky night pressing his eyelids down and down, with the river singing her silver, rhythmic undertone, endless, changeless, with no human governance to sustain and spur him, the task was very hard — too hard. Slowly the small bright eyes grew dim, the woolly head sank forward, the body swayed against the wheel, and the hands on the spokes hung lax. Easily, swiftly, the Cottica slid from her course and made for the shadows of the eastern bank. On she sped, unheeded, — on till a branch of brush, caught in the deep-sunk top of a drifting tree, struck her a spattering blow across the bows. The shower of water upon his face awoke the steersman with a jump. He sprang to place, peering forward into the misty dark.

‘Mi Gado! Mi Gado!' he shivered. But there was yet time. With a sharp veer he put the launch upon her course again, and soon had rediscovered his familiar bearings. ‘ Pikinso moro, ala wi dede na boesi,' Adriaan reproached his inward tormentor. ‘A little more, and we were all killed in the bush. What makes you trouble me so, you!’

He sat very erect now, facing his duty determinedly. But the night was so still and soft, the wind so small and sweet, the river’s song so lulling! The woolly head nodded, then recovered with a jerk. ‘Sleep kills me, for true,’ muttered poor Adriaan, pulling at his pipe fiercely. For a moment it served; then again the quick and heavy slumber of his race descended upon him, claiming its own. Slowly, an inert, crumpled heap, the steersman collapsed upon his seat, and the boat swept on.

The noise was like the noise of a volley of musketry, and like the breaking of a great sea on a liner’s deck, and like the sucking and rending of the roots of the world. Out in the tow Big Mary sprang to her knees, flinging aside her covering before any conscious thought could paralyze her muscles with the image of Jumbies. Close above her rose the broad stern of the Cottica. But the Cottica’s body, like Daphne of old, was transformed into bush. For an instant Big Mary stared, collecting her wits. Then grim understanding dawned. With a haul on the slack tow-line she brought herself close, and swarmed up over the stern. Peering into the cabin, she made out Maclise, lying on his couch quietly.

‘Mahster!’ she called, alarmed at the inexplicable sight. ‘Mahster!’

Through the craze of his dreams Maclise heard, subconsciously, and answered with incoherent mumblings. Mary laid her finger gently on his head.

‘The fever!’ she groaned. ‘ Now who gwine he’p we!’ But the fiercely faithful spirit of the good old-time Negro even then possessed her. Her hour had come.

Turning, she started forward. The moko-moko, dense withy growth of the border waters, had buckled and bent and twisted in its violent displacement, and crowded across the decks in an almost solid mass. On all fours, burrowing through it like a bush beast, she made the engine-room. Hendrik and Willy stared out at her with helpless, panic faces. Through the tangle on the other side protruded Adriaan’s ghastly visage, wrinkled in a thousand seams of terror, his goatheard twitching, his wild eyes rolling like jetsam by a rudderless wreck. The engine-room light caught upon the broad, lustrous surfaces of the moko-moko leaves that framed him in, making them spear-heads of false and lurid green. Mary gazed upon the speechless three in a scorn that, despite her attitude, became magnificent.

‘Well, niggers?’

A palpable shiver was the only answer.

‘ You ! Ah ain’ want neider wise man fo’ mek me know what you is done. Wha’ you gwine do now ? Wha fo’ you isn’ wukkin’ ? ’

It was the wretched Adriaan, from his lurid ambush, like a sacrificial ram, that first essayed an answer. ‘Sissa, don’t be too hard on us,’ he bleated in his native tongue. ‘Night is black. Boat too much full of bush. Must wait for day. Can’t see to cut a path to my wheel till day comes.’

‘True, true, sissa, don’t be hard on us,’ echoed Hendrik. ‘The propeller is wound tight into the moko-moko, ’way down below. Can’t cut her loose till day comes.’

‘Too true,’ urged the fatuous Willy, ’mus’ wait ’pon day.’

Yet they shriveled before the glittering eyes of the great Negress.

‘Mens, less yo’ noise. Don’ mek me sin dis night. Mahster lie down sick, eh? Lil’ Mistress watchin’ fo’ he comin’, eh? You t’ink Ah’s gwine leff Mahster dead on de ribber an’ lil’ Mistress wring she lil’ white hands off ’cause a pa’cel o’ wufless black trash ain’ wan’ wuk in de dark ? You, Adriaan, back to yo’ wheel. Has’y, now,’ as the steersman hesitated, ‘has’y! You t’ink Ah foolin’?’

Dominated, Adriaan slunk back, and the straining and crackling of wood bespoke the ardor of his obedience.

‘You, Hendrik, you gwine sot right wha’ you is, wuk yo’ engines, till dis boat a-movin’, hear? Willy, tek dat cutlass behime you on de wall, an’ come outside to me.'

Hypnotized by her imperiousness and by the example of the others, Willy followed the leader, creeping painfully to the free space about the stern. But rebellion dared in his heart, for he was a new hand, and knew not Mary. On the open deck she arose and faced him in the dark.

‘Willy,’ she said, pointing over the side, ‘you, now, dive, an’ cut dat compeller clean clear.'

Willy stared with sincere surprise. ‘Woman, you is mad?’

‘Ain’ Ah tole you, dive? Ah ain’ foolin’, man.’

Willy laughed a laugh of ugly meaning. Big Mary’s bulk seemed to rise and broaden. With a lunge she sprang for him. The mulatto drew back, quick as a cat, and, swinging his cutlass over his head, brought it down viciously. They clinched, for a moment rocked in each other’s grip, and then the greater strength triumphed. The cutlass rattled upon the deck, the giant Negress, lifting her victim bodily, flung him over the rail, and the inky waters closed above him.

Hanging over the side Mary watched. In a moment a head appeared on the surface, and Willy’s strangled voice bellowed for mercy.

‘Tek dis,’ shouted Mary, thrusting into the upstretched, grasping hand the cutlass. ‘Tek dis, boy, go down an’ do lak Ah tole you. You try to bo’d dis boat befo’ you is clear dat compellor, an’ Ah gwine bus’ you wi-ide open!’ She flourished a crowbar over the swimmer’s head, bringing it down with a crash on the launch’s side.

Willy needed no more. ‘Don’ hit me!’ he shrieked, ‘Ah ’se gwine’; and, half-amphibian that he was, like all

Barbadians, disappeared to his horrid work. In a moment the black head bobbed up again.

‘She loose!’ it sputtered. But Mary knew it lied.

‘Boy, go back down!’

The head again vanished, and a tremor along the boat’s frame told of the force of the attack on her entanglement. Once more he emerged.

‘Ah loose she fo’ true dis time, Miss Mary. Le’ me up, in Gaad’s name!'

‘You, Hendrik, dis boat loosed?’ Mary shouted to the engine-room.

‘No-no,’ Hendrik called back; ‘propeller fast yet.’

Mary addressed herself to the round thing bobbing in the water. ‘You dirty — black — Nigger ! You black Nigger!’ she howled, ‘you go back down, an’ ef ma eyes cotch you once mo’ befo’ dis boat loose, Ah — ’

Willy sank beneath the whistling sweep of the crowbar. The launch quivered and quivered again with the snap of breaking bonds. One final tug, and the thing was done. The Cottica backed away into her natural element.

At two o’clock that morning, only two hours behind schedule, the Cottica made her moorings off the Waterkant. Then it was Mary who, brushing aside all other aid, half-lifted Maclise into the small boat. It was she, too, who helped him from the boat to the waiting carriage. And it was she who, through the dark streets of the town, stalked at the carriage step, all the way to the house door.

The door flung open wide at the sound of approaching wheels. In the light stood Nora, her women about her. Maclise was quite himself now, and could walk alone, though weakly.

‘Mary fotch me,’ he said, with his whimsical smile, as he stopped to rest in the hall. ‘ Ah done come mighty hard, but she fotch me.’