With great shouting and song, the pretty teak-built yacht was towed in by the long canoes and beached close to where Jerry lay just beyond the confines of the coral-stone walls. Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted1 and stripped. Everything portable was taken ashore2, from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails. No one in Somo slept that night. Even the tiniest of children toddled3 about the feasting fires or sprawled4 surfeited5 on the sands. At two in the morning, at Bashti’s command, the shell of the boat was fired. And Jerry, thirsting for water, having whimpered and wailed6 himself to exhaustion7, lying helpless, leg-tied, on his side, saw the floating world he had known so short a time go up in flame and smoke.
And by the light of her burning, old Bashti apportioned8 the loot. No one of the tribe was too mean to receive nothing. Even the wretched bush-slaves, who had trembled through all the time of their captivity9 from fear of being eaten, received each a clay pipe and several sticks of tobacco. The main bulk of the trade goods, which was not distributed, Bashti had carried up to his own large grass house. All the wealth of gear was stored in the several canoe houses. While in the devil devil houses the devil devil doctors set to work curing the many heads over slow smudges; for, along with the boat’s crew there were a round dozen of No-ola return boys and several Malu boys which Van Horn had not yet delivered.
Not all these had been slain10, however. Bashti had issued stern injunctions against wholesale11 slaughter12. But this was not because his heart was kind. Rather was it because his head was shrewd. Slain they would all be in the end. Bashti had never seen ice, did not know it existed, and was unversed in the science of refrigeration. The only way he knew to keep meat was to keep it alive. And in the biggest canoe house, the club house of the stags, where no Mary might come under penalty of death by torture, the captives were stored.
Tied or trussed like fowls13 or pigs, they were tumbled on the hard-packed earthen floor, beneath which, shallowly buried, lay the remains14 of ancient chiefs, while, overhead, in wrappings of grass mats, swung all that was left of several of Bashti’s immediate15 predecessors16, his father latest among them and so swinging for two full generations. Here, too, since she was to be eaten and since the taboo17 had no bearing upon one condemned18 to be cooked, the thin little Mary from the lazarette was tumbled trussed upon the floor among the many blacks who had teased and mocked her for being fattened19 by Van Horn for the eating.
And to this canoe house Jerry was also brought to join the others on the floor. Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, had stumbled across him on the beach, and, despite the protestations of the boy who claimed him as personal trove20, had ordered him to the canoe house. Carried past the fires of the feasting, his keen nostrils21 had told him of what the feast consisted. And, new as the experience was, he had bristled22 and snarled23 and struggled against his bonds to be free. Likewise, at first, tossed down in the canoe house, he had bristled and snarled at his fellow captives, not realizing their plight25, and, since always he had been trained to look upon niggers as the eternal enemy, considering them responsible for the catastrophe26 to the Arangi and to Skipper.
For Jerry was only a little dog, with a dog’s limitations, and very young in the world. But not for long did he throat his rage at them. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that they, too, were not happy. Some had been cruelly wounded, and kept up a moaning and groaning27. Without any clearness of concept, nevertheless Jerry had a realization28 that they were as painfully circumstanced as himself. And painful indeed was his own circumstance. He lay on his side, the cords that bound his legs so tight as to bite into his tender flesh and shut off the circulation. Also, he was perishing for water, and panted, dry-tongued, dry-mouthed, in the stagnant29 heat.
A dolorous30 place it was, this canoe house, filled with groans31 and sighs, corpses32 beneath the floor and composing the floor, creatures soon to be corpses upon the floor, corpses swinging in aerial sepulchre overhead, long black canoes, high-ended like beaked33 predatory monsters, dimly looming34 in the light of a slow fire where sat an ancient of the tribe of Somo at his interminable task of smoke-curing a bushman’s head. He was withered35, and blind, and senile, gibbering and mowing36 like some huge ape as ever he turned and twisted, and twisted back again, the suspended head in the pungent37 smoke, and handful by handful added rotten punk of wood to the smudge fire.
Sixty feet in the clear, the dim fire occasionally lighted, through shadowy cross-beams, the ridge-pole that was covered with sennit of coconut38 that was braided in barbaric designs of black and white and that was stained by the smoke of years almost to a monochrome of dirty brown. From the lofty cross-beams, on long sennit strings39, hung the heads of enemies taken aforetime in jungle raid and sea foray. The place breathed the very atmosphere of decay and death, and the imbecile ancient, curing in the smoke the token of death, was himself palsiedly shaking into the disintegration40 of the grave.
Toward daylight, with great shouting and heaving and pull and haul, scores of Somo men brought in another of the big war canoes. They made way with foot and hand, kicking and thrusting dragging and shoving, the bound captives to either side of the space which the canoe was to occupy. They were anything but gentle to the meat with which they had been favoured by good fortune and the wisdom of Bashti.
For a time they sat about, all pulling at clay pipes and chirruping and laughing in queer thin falsettos at the events of the night and the previous afternoon. Now one and now another stretched out and slept without covering; for so, directly under the path of the sun, had they slept nakedly from the time they were born.
Remained awake, as dawn paled the dark, only the grievously wounded or the too-tightly bound, and the decrepit41 ancient who was not so old as Bashti. When the boy who had stunned42 Jerry with his paddle-blade and who claimed him as his own stole into the canoe house, the ancient did not hear him. Being blind, he did not see him. He continued gibbering and chuckling43 dementedly, to twist the bushman’s head back and forth44 and to feed the smudge with punk-wood. This was no night-task for any man, nor even for him who had forgotten how to do aught else. But the excitement of cutting out the Arangi had been communicated to his addled45 brain, and, with vague reminiscent flashes of the strength of life triumphant46, he shared deliriously47 in this triumph of Somo by applying himself to the curing of the head that was in itself the concrete expression of triumph.
But the twelve-year-old lad who stole in and cautiously stepped over the sleepers48 and threaded his way among the captives, did so with his heart in his mouth. He knew what taboos50 he was violating. Not old enough even to leave his father’s grass roof and sleep in the youths’ canoe house, much less to sleep with the young bachelors in their canoe house, he knew that he took his life, with all of its dimly guessed mysteries and arrogances, in his hand thus to trespass51 into the sacred precinct of the full-made, full-realized, full-statured men of Somo.
But he wanted Jerry and he got him. Only the lean little Mary, trussed for the cooking, staring through her wide eyes of fear, saw the boy pick Jerry up by his tied legs and carry him out and away from the booty of meat of which she was part. Jerry’s heroic little heart of courage would have made him snarl24 and resent such treatment of handling had he not been too exhausted52 and had not his mouth and throat been too dry for sound. As it was, miserably53 and helplessly, not half himself, a puppet dreamer in a half-nightmare, he knew, as a restless sleeper49 awakening54 between vexing55 dreams, that he was being transported head-downward out of the canoe house that stank56 of death, through the village that was only less noisome57, and up a path under lofty, wide-spreading trees that were beginning languidly to stir with the first breathings of the morning wind.
该作者的其它作品
《The Sea-Wolf海狼》《白牙 White Fang》
《The Iron Heel 铁蹄》
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1
gutted
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| adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏 | |
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2
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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3
toddled
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| v.（幼儿等）东倒西歪地走( toddle的过去式和过去分词 )；蹒跚行走；溜达；散步 | |
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4
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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5
surfeited
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| v.吃得过多( surfeit的过去式和过去分词 )；由于过量而厌腻 | |
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6
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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8
apportioned
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| vt.分摊，分配（apportion的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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9
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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10
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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12
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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13
fowls
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| 鸟( fowl的名词复数 )； 禽肉； 既不是这； 非驴非马 | |
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14
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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17
taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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18
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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19
fattened
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| v.喂肥( fatten的过去式和过去分词 )；养肥（牲畜）；使（钱）增多；使（公司）升值 | |
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20
trove
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| n.被发现的东西，收藏的东西 | |
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21
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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22
bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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23
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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24
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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25
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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26
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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27
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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28
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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29
stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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30
dolorous
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| adj.悲伤的；忧愁的 | |
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31
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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32
corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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33
beaked
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| adj.有喙的，鸟嘴状的 | |
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34
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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35
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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36
mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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37
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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38
coconut
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| n.椰子 | |
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39
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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40
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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41
decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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42
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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43
chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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44
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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45
addled
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| adj.（头脑）糊涂的，愚蠢的；（指蛋类）变坏v.使糊涂( addle的过去式和过去分词 )；使混乱；使腐臭；使变质 | |
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46
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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47
deliriously
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| adv.谵妄（性）；发狂；极度兴奋/亢奋；说胡话 | |
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48
sleepers
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| n.卧铺（通常以复数形式出现）；卧车( sleeper的名词复数 )；轨枕；睡觉（呈某种状态）的人；小耳环 | |
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49
sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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50
taboos
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| 禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为） | |
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51
trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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52
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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53
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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54
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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55
vexing
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| adj.使人烦恼的，使人恼火的v.使烦恼( vex的现在分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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56
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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57
noisome
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| adj.有害的，可厌的 | |
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