THE BLACK PARROT

A Tale of the Golden Chersonese

BY HARRY HERVEY

AUTHOR OF "CARAVANS BY NIGHT," ETC.

"... You perceive, then, it is by the grace of Romance that man has been exalted above the other animals...."

James Branch Cabell

F. D. GOODCHILD TORONTO 1923

Copyright, 1923, by The Century Co.

Printed in U. S. A.

TO CHARLES BEDELL HERVEY

Do you remember? I told you of the Khmers, the ancient Brahmans, who, with elephants and war-chariots, with legions of mailed swordsmen and archers, crashed through Manipur and Arakan, to the Lake of Tonle Sap, and there built an empire; built the long cloisters, the tremendous towers and stairways that now mourn beside the drowned forests of Angkor. I said that were you to go there some night when a full moon hangs over the jungle, you would hear the tread of perished armies (fierce, arrogant warriors, drunken with power and conquest) and see the Tevadas come down from the walls and dance about Naga, the Seven-Headed Cobra. And you said, "Put it into a story!" Do you remember?

CHAPTER I

THE MAN FROM GUIANA

He had come up from that necklace of islands that trails its emeralds over the Pacific, which is to say, he stepped out of Nowhere.

Perhaps he was a planter. Or a trader. Or a shell-hunter. Or an agent from one of those brazen ports where white men turn brown like bricks in a kiln. Certainly he was not a tourist.

This the proprietor of the Hotel Oost-Indie—one da Vargas, a Portuguese from Malacca—told himself as he sat in the stern-sheets of his launch alongside the newly arrived mail-packet and gazed at the man by the rail. The latter, his features shadowed by a topee, stood near the top of the ladder, a black bag in one hand and a bird-cage in the other. He wore a white silk suit, and the sunlight seemed to take refuge in it and give it a golden sheen. A blue slendong, such as Javanese women wear, was bound carelessly about his middle, its fringed ends rippling in the wind. Behind him, across the low, flat deck-house and through the web of rigging, the straights spread out like a purple map, contoured with rich gleams; the west was peach-red, its bloom reflected on the canvas.

A plaintive whistle, audible above the creaks and squelches, drifted down to Mr. da Vargas, and he focused upon the occupant of the bird-cage: a large white cockatoo.

A man who wore a slendong and carried a bird!

To Mr. da Vargas, it suggested the quixotic. A naturalist? Many of these fellows—a gregarious lot—came and went among the toy archipelagos strung between Singapore and the Coral Sea. At least, thought the Portuguese by way of justification, they never left accounts unpaid.

A signal from the white-clad figure cut short these reflections, and Mr. da Vargas brought his craft nearer the ladder; launches of other hotels hovered about.

"Oost-Indie?" asked the man perfunctorily, preparing to descend.

"Yes, mynheer," replied Mr. da Vargas, using the form of address current in Dutch possessions; if one kept a hotel in a Javanese port, why not contribute to the atmosphere? "Excellent cuisine," he added; "tarriff reasonable."

He of the slendong passed his bag to the Portuguese, then, cage in hand, stepped into the launch and seated himself in the stern-sheets. The cockatoo, frightened by the sudden violent pop-pop of the engine, raised its crest and shrieked. A magnificent creature: feathers deepening to coral on the wings and tail, crest jetting up to a golden tip.

"A beautiful bird, mynheer," observed Mr. da Vargas by way of opening conversation as the launch cleft the water quayward.

The other nodded indifferently and removed his helmet, thus offering the proprietor, who considered himself a keen judge of physiognomy, a better opportunity for study.

He was a person of inscrutable age, with skin brown as sandalwood and crinkled at the corners of the eyes. His hands, lithe, slender hands, moved incessantly, one moment fingering his lapel, the next, drumming on the gunwhale or tugging at his short, well trimmed beard; a beard that was reddish in one light and dark gold in another.

"Do you have many guests now?" he demanded abruptly, speaking with a perfect enunciation that suggested that English was not his native tongue.

His eyes, green as the shallows off Madoera, had an insolent expression. This, Mr. da Vargas perceived, was due to his right eyebrow, which slanted toward a scar that made a pale crescent on his temple.

The Portuguese took on a distressed air. "It is not the season yet," he answered.

The bearded one turned and for a moment gazed out toward the horizon, where the water melted imperceptibly into a belt of dusk. The mail-packet, gilded by the glow in the west, seemed to hang in the welded globe of sea and sky like a toy ship in a bottle.

Presently he spoke again.

"Are any of your recently arrived guests from Macassar?"

Was it an accent that Mr. da Vargas detected—in his pronunciation of Macassar? A foreigner? Russian? Spanish? French?

He wrinkled his forehead as though the question caused him thought. Something of an actor, this da Vargas, with his exaggerated eyebrows and mustache.

"Macassar?" he repeated; and drew from his pocket some of those black cheroots that seem rolled exclusively for men in the tropics. "Macassar? No—no, I think not. Were you expecting some one, a friend?"—proffering a smoke.

The stranger nodded; placed the cheroot in his coat pocket. Then, abstractedly, he thrust a finger between the bars of the cage and poked at the cockatoo. His indifference challenged the Portuguese to probe deeper behind the veil of obscurity which, from the very first, had surrounded him.

"You live in Macassar?" he persisted after a few seconds.

The man of the slendong smiled, an elusive, rather impudent expression, and shook his head.

"A filthy place——" thus Mr. da Vargas. "No decent hotels, no...." The sentence expired suddenly, like a gramophone that is shut off without warning. A shrug; then, with a sigh, he delivered himself over to silence and supineness.

Shortly before they reached the quay the man from the mail-packet came out of his abstraction to ask:

"Has there been a message left at your hotel for me?" As an afterthought he added, "My name is Garon."

Mr. da Vargas half shut one eye: a habit which he considered quite effective. Meanwhile, his brain repeated the name. Garon. French. An officer from up Saigon way. Or from Hué. Or Hai Fong. Or from one of those sweltering towns along the coast of Indo-China. He was so absorbed that for a moment he forgot the other's question.

"N-no," he replied slowly. "No, monsieur"—the "monsieur" rather pleased him—"there has been no message."

Presently the launch touched the quay, a great antenna feeling out into a wilderness of masts and spars, and he of the slendong sprang out with the bird-cage. The cockatoo, almost losing its balance, spread its crest and scolded. Its owner started toward a kossong but paused and turned back to Mr. da Vargas, who was still in the launch.

"When is there a boat to Singapore?"

"Singapore?"—one eye half closed. "Day after to-morrow. But if you wish to stay longer...."

"Thank you." And the bearded man got into the carriage, leaving the Portuguese to bring his bag.

A moment later when another launch came alongside the quay Mr. da Vargas recognized in it a Eurasian whom he had noticed by the rail of the mail-packet. Upon an impulse he hailed him.

"Did you see the gentleman I brought ashore?" he interrogated. "The one who wore the blue slendong? Do you know if he came aboard at Macassar?"

He did, the Eurasian replied. He himself had seen the gentleman walk out on the pier: and he was quite drunk.

At this information Mr. da Vargas half shut his eye again. Drunk. Undoubtedly, he concluded, the man of the blue slendong was an officer from French Indo-China. But what—as he signaled for his sado—was he doing in Surabaya? And with that bird!

Mr. da Vargas did not know, would never know; but had he known he would have been more interested in the man with the scarred wrists.

2

At that particular moment he who called himself Garon also was conjecturing—but upon a subject quite different. He had been conjecturing for many days. Many weeks. And now, as he rode toward the hotel, his brain seemed atrophied; hung, withered, in his skull.

He lighted the cheroot that da Vargas had given him, and the bitter, acrid tobacco (black leaves from Trichinopoli) burned his tongue. But he enjoyed it fiercely, for it stimulated him, like strong drink. At that thought he smiled—smiled insolently, as a man smiles at an antagonist. Drink. Flint on tinder. It ignited a spark. Fool. He had slipped at Macassar. Perhaps it was the town: the crooning surf, the white roadways unrolling in the dusk like paths to adventure; something lazy and loose and amorous about it....

"Name of a name!" he muttered, half aloud. "Cities and women are alike: angels or devils—positive or negative—no compromise. And seaports are bad."

A habit, that. And a good one, he assured himself. Ah, if he could be sure that he had talked only to himself! Confound that slip at Macassar——

"Too much introspection, my zig," he announced sharply, breaking in upon himself.

Whereupon he delivered his attention to the pattern of sounds and colors that wove about the carriage. Lamps were beginning to appear—hot moons in the already humid dusk—and the roadway was a torrid, dusty world; a world that swarmed with life. Perspiring white men in linens, helmeted soldiers, coolies with bent carrying-poles, and bronze Chinese, Arabs, and Javanese. On the right ran a canal, seeming crowded with boats as it reflected the many craft moored by its banks. This, he told himself, was not the picturesque confusion of the Straits Settlement or the towns of the China coast—towns whose names inflame the dreams of youth. There was a sense of order, of cleanliness and activity, that was not eastern.

"Tropical Netherlands," he soliloquized ironically, "well regulated and organized—even in their vices!"

The carriage rattled across a bridge and came to a street of Chinese houses—rows of dim bazaars and shops. Large signs hung over the doors, flamboyant with ideographs. And numbers. Great gilded numbers——

Numbers! They seemed to spring out and strike him. Numbers! To the devil with them! But to the devil they would not go; they persisted and developed a series of negatives, pictures that unreeled like a film. Cayenne, lost in forests of silence ... Cayenne, with its Caribs and tropic-tired surveillants ... white-helmeted warders, libérés and déportés in drab burlap ... men who were numbered. Five months of it! Five months in that brazen hush, that awful hush: superheated days, nights that dropped like black flannel. And no one knew. Not a soul. Alone he had worked. Alone he had waited. Alone he had endured the strain. Alone—until his release from Ile Diable, until the night at the house of Finot, the libéré. A muffled lantern; whispers, a ring of obscure faces; then a file of silhouettes stealing back into town. Followed other nights at the house of Finot, the libéré; and a last night when the silhouettes did not steal back into town. Black forests; torment of heat and hunger. How they suffered! these men who were

numbered. At length, a river, a raft of mocomoco. Came then a chain of breathless days, of bitter days. Smell of swamps and rotting jungle; odors that tainted. They fought among themselves, these men who were numbered. Finally, the raft glided from river-gloom into the glare of the sea; glided to the side of the waiting ship....

He was put ashore on Thursday Island, one of those sun-scorched outposts where men, believing in destiny, sit on the beach to wait for it. Without regret he watched the ship melt into the horizon. He was alone—yet he felt that a shadow clung to his heels. It haunted him. And there were three days before the next boat left! Three days on Thursday Island, with its molten sky, its monotonous dazzle of sand and sea. He took his cue from a pallid youngster sprawled on a fishnet, in the shadow of a warehouse. Suddenly, as one who sees a revelation, he perceived the way. For the next three days he drank just enough to sink his thoughts in a golden haze and keep his tongue still. Then he departed, without sorrow, from that port of derelicts.

Macassar. To his surprise the shadowy tracker did not materialize. But he understood. The time was not ripe. Perhaps the realization made him careless. Ensued that indefinite, foggy period: yellow faces and the smell of bilge-water. He returned to complete cognizance on the ship.

And now Surabaya. (This as he gazed at the numbers.) So far he had won—alone. He who had always ridden alone! At this thought he clamped his teeth tighter on the cheroot; drew a deep breath. Ruthless? Yes, he had been. Trampling men as if they were husks. But never uselessly, always with a purpose. Hard? Perhaps. For he never reckoned the cost. A cold man with but one passion, achievement. An adventurer, riding alone toward a star. That was it. Some day he would ride out beyond life, still following his star. And then——

"Thousand thunders!" he exclaimed, interrupting his own thoughts. "Sentimentalism! It is this climate—nothing but coffee thrives!"

He smiled derisively, which is to say bitterly; passed one hand over his forehead. For a moment he looked very young, very tired, like a boy aroused from a dream. Something cold uncoiled in his heart and struck him, an emotion cruel as a scalpel. Sentiment! It had withered. Only the roots remained, dead things. Pluck them out—ride on—alone—trampling men—toward the star—a ruthless adventurer——

A soft note, uttered by the cockatoo, broke into his introspection. His eyes swerved to the cage. After a few seconds he chuckled, without humor. Even this creature fitted into his scheme, his callous sacrifice of man for motive. Indeed, it had been acquired for a purpose and when that was fulfilled it would pass as his every friendship had done, this feathery companion of his solitude.

Thus he was musing when he came at length to the hotel. Sunset had furled its geranium petals, and the long white main building, set back in an inclosure in the midst of trees and gardens, gleamed coolly in the darkness. A few stars had broken out like white heat on the torrid sky.

He paid the driver; moved up the steps, swinging the bird-cage. As he crossed the veranda he noticed several linen-clad figures sitting around a table, and the sudden flare of a match, as one of the men lighted a cheroot, reclaimed from the dark a pair of lean wrists—wrists that were ringed with scars.

3

The sudden black night of the tropics settled. A black, limitless sea was the firmament, a black reef the somber horizon where the tide of stars surged up and broke. A breeze blew in from the straits, tepid and briny; it wandered across the city, acquiring the scent of warm soil and over-ripe fruit; and drifted lazily into the gardens of the Oost-Indie, where trees and men alike shivered as it whispered of fever and worse.

Dinner being over, the usual groups collected on the veranda. (You will find them at any caravansary along the equator soon after nightfall, men who probably have nothing in common except a desire to talk.) Cigar-ends smoldered. Ice clinked as "boys" moved back and forth with trays; this augmented by the drone of voices and mosquitos.

The man of the blue slendong, emerging from the lighted interior, glanced right and left at the gleaming cheroots and likened them whimsically to the cones of distant volcanoes. After a pause he strolled toward a table at the end of the veranda, quite aware that a man had followed him from the billiard-room. He sat down, not even glancing at the white figure that passed. The latter paused a few feet beyond, then turned.

"May I share your table?"—a genial British voice.

He who called himself Garon nodded; made a gesture. The other seated himself and tapped the bell for a "boy."

"Won't you join me?" he inquired. "A man has to keep his liver afloat somehow down here, and the Oost-Indie has just the proper mixture—a pale-green, frosty drink, with a slice of orange floating in it, for all the world like a swollen goldfish." He laughed, frankly pleased with his own simile. "That reminds me of those fighting-fish in Siam. Ever see the little beggars?"

"Yes"; thus Garon, smiling to himself with grim satisfaction.

A "boy" approached silently and took their order.

"You're a stranger in Surabaya, aren't you?" came from the man whose face formed a pale oval above the dead white of his linens.

Garon murmured affirmatively and drew out cigarettes, passing them, not without a purpose. The man took one and lighted it. A flickering glow upon long, narrow features; a glimpse of scars on the wrists.

"I noticed you when you arrived," went on the voice from the pale oval; an oval that advanced from the gloom and receded as the man drew on his cigarette. "Does your cockatoo perform?"

"I do not train birds," Garon answered. "I collect them. I bought that one on Thursday Island."

"Collect them?—to stuff and exhibit in museums?"

The Frenchman was still smiling to himself. "I buy and sell them."

"I see. A broker of birds. Novel business."

Garon laughed; no humor in it.

"It is not a business; it is a precaution. Wherever I go I carry some sort of bird; then, if there rises any emergency, I sell it."

"But don't you grow attached to them?"

Attached! Garon almost laughed again. He said, "Sentiment does not enter into business."

"Birds, eh?" mused the other. He chuckled. "Thursday Island.... Hm-m.... Ghastly place. You didn't by any chance run across the Black Parrot down there, did you?"

Garon smiled, an expression unobserved in the darkness, and restlessly fingered the lapel of his coat.

"A black parrot?"—simulating thoughtfulness. "Is there such a bird? I know of the great black cockatoo which naturalists call——"

"Surely," interrupted the other, "surely you've heard of the Black Parrot!"

"I confess ignorance. You see," he lied, "I have just come up from the New Cumberlands. I have been buried for ... for five months."

The "boy" came then with the drinks. The rattle of ice sounded cool, for the breeze had gone. In the breathless hush the voices from the several groups along the veranda melted into a languorous murmur. Even the trees sighed faintly, as though oppressed by the heat and the stillness.

After a moment the man of the scarred wrists resumed.

"Le Perroquet Noir; that's what he's called at Cayenne. The Black Parrot. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? Fancy anything being romantic in this day!"

"But who is he?" pressed Garon. "Why is he called that?"

A chuckle. "May as well ask who the devil is." A pause, then: "Perhaps he is the devil sojourning among mortals for a spell. Recruiting. If so, he began near home; Guiana's just across from Hades, you know. But, devil or not, he's raising particular hell in the penal colony. The officials believe he's an escaped relégué from Ile Diable, a fellow named Letourneau, a garroter. They think he's helping others....

"But you asked why he's called the Black Parrot, didn't you? Well, I've heard one version. A French officer from St.-Laurent told me the story; used to belong to the Corps Militaire des Surveillants. There was a murderer, a swarthy brute, son of an Annamite woman and a merchant of Hai Fong, who was sent to Guiana. The prisoners dubbed him the Black Parrot. Don't know why; perhaps he looked like one. Soon after he reached the colony he killed a chantier with a machete. Horrible affair. It didn't take the Tribunal Maritime Special long to decide to introduce him to Madame Guillotine. Picture the scene...."

He gestured, and sparks fell from his cheroot like meteors from a comet. Garon was staring at his glass.