Furthermore, when the expense of the maintenance of armed guards over the pest-house, day and night, throughout the years, is considered, Walter Merritt Emory could have saved many thousands of dollars to the tax-payers of the city and county of San Francisco, which thousands of dollars, had they been spent otherwise, could have been diverted to the reduction of the notorious crowding in school-rooms, to purer milk for the babies of the poor, or to an increase of breathing-space in the park system for the people of the stifling5 ghetto6. But had Walter Merritt Emory been thus considerate, not only would Daughtry and Kwaque have sailed out and away over the sea, but with them would have sailed Michael.
Never was a reception-roomful of patients rushed through more expeditiously7 than was Doctor Emory’s the moment the door had closed upon the two policemen who brought up Daughtry’s rear. And before he went to his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his machine and down into the Barbary Coast to the door of the Bowhead Lodging8 House. On the way, by virtue9 of his political affiliations10, he had been able to pick up a captain of detectives. The addition of the captain proved necessary, for the landlady11 put up a stout12 argument against the taking of the dog of her lodger13. But Milliken, captain of detectives, was too well known to her, and she yielded to the law of which he was the symbol and of which she was credulously14 ignorant.
As Michael started out of the room on the end of a rope, a plaintive15 call of reminder16 came from the window-sill, where perched a tiny, snow-white cockatoo.
“Cocky,” he called. “Cocky.”
Walter Merritt Emory glanced back and for no more than a moment hesitated. “We’ll send for the bird later,” he told the landlady, who, still mildly expostulating as she followed them downstairs, failed to notice that the captain of the detectives had carelessly left the door to Daughtry’s rooms ajar.
* * * * *
But Walter Merritt Emory was not the only base one abased by desire of possession of Michael. In a deep leather chair, his feet resting in another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht Club, Harry17 Del Mar18 yielded to the somniferous digestion19 of lunch, which was for him breakfast as well, and glanced through the first of the early editions of the afternoon papers. His eyes lighted on a big headline, with a brief five lines under it. His feet were instantly drawn20 down off the chair and under him as he stood up erect21 upon them. On swift second thought, he sat down again, pressed the electric button, and, while waiting for the club steward22, reread the headline and the brief five lines.
In a taxi, and away, heading for the Barbary Coast, Harry Del Mar saw visions that were golden. They took on the semblance23 of yellow, twenty-dollar gold pieces, of yellow-backed paper bills of the government stamping of the United States, of bank books, and of rich coupons24 ripe for the clipping—and all shot through the flashings of the form of a rough-coated Irish terrier, on a galaxy26 of brilliantly-lighted stages, mouth open, nose upward to the drops, singing, ever singing, as no dog had ever been known to sing in the world before.
Cocky himself was the first to discover that the door was ajar, and was looking at it with speculation27 (if by “speculation” may be described the mental processes of a bird, in some mysterious way absorbing into its consciousness a fresh impression of its environment and preparing to act, or not act, according to which way the fresh impression modifies its conduct). Humans do this very thing, and some of them call it “free will.” Cocky, staring at the open door, was in just the stage of determining whether or not he should more closely inspect that crack of exit to the wider world, which inspection28, in turn, would determine whether or not he should venture out through the crack, when his eyes beheld29 the eyes of the second discoverer staring in.
The eyes were bestial30, yellow-green, the pupils dilating31 and narrowing with sharp swiftness as they sought about among the lights and glooms of the room. Cocky knew danger at the first glimpse—danger to the uttermost of violent death. Yet Cocky did nothing. No panic stirred his heart. Motionless, one eye only turned upon the crack, he focused that one eye upon the head and eyes of the gaunt gutter-cat whose head had erupted into the crack like an apparition32.
Alert, dilating and contracting, as swift as cautious, and infinitely33 apprehensive34, the pupils vertically36 slitted in jet into the midmost of amazing opals of greenish yellow, the eyes roved the room. They alighted on Cocky. Instantly the head portrayed37 that the cat had stiffened38, crouched39, and frozen. Almost imperceptibly the eyes settled into a watching that was like to the stony41 stare of a sphinx across aching and eternal desert sands. The eyes were as if they had so stared for centuries and millenniums.
No less frozen was Cocky. He drew no film across his one eye that showed his head cocked sideways, nor did the passion of apprehension42 that whelmed him manifest itself in the quiver of a single feather. Both creatures were petrified43 into the mutual44 stare that is of the hunter and the hunted, the preyer46 and the prey45, the meat-eater and the meat.
It was a matter of long minutes, that stare, until the head in the doorway47, with a slight turn, disappeared. Could a bird sigh, Cocky would have sighed. But he made no movement as he listened to the slow, dragging steps of a man go by and fade away down the hall.
Several minutes passed, and, just as abruptly49 the apparition reappeared—not alone the head this time, but the entire sinuous50 form as it glided51 into the room and came to rest in the middle of the floor. The eyes brooded on Cocky, and the entire body was still save for the long tail, which lashed52 from one side to the other and back again in an abrupt48, angry, but monotonous53 manner.
Never removing its eyes from Cocky, the cat advanced slowly until it paused not six feet away. Only the tail lashed back and forth54, and only the eyes gleamed like jewels in the full light of the window they faced, the vertical35 pupils contracting to scarcely perceptible black slits55.
And Cocky, who could not know death with the clearness of concept of a human, nevertheless was not altogether unaware56 that the end of all things was terribly impending57. As he watched the cat deliberately58 crouch40 for the spring, Cocky, gallant59 mote60 of life that he was, betrayed his one and forgivable panic.
“Cocky! Cocky!” he called plaintively61 to the blind, insensate walls.
It was his call to all the world, and all powers and things and two-legged men-creatures, and Steward in particular, and Kwaque, and Michael. The burden of his call was: “It is I, Cocky. I am very small and very frail62, and this is a monster to destroy me, and I love the light, bright world, and I want to live and to continue to live in the brightness, and I am so very small, and I’m a good little fellow, with a good little heart, and I cannot battle with this huge, furry63, hungry thing that is going to devour64 me, and I want help, help, help. I am Cocky. Everybody knows me. I am Cocky.”
This, and much more, was contained in his two calls of: “Cocky! Cocky!”
And there was no answer from the blind walls, from the hall outside, nor from all the world, and, his moment of panic over, Cocky was his brave little self again. He sat motionless on the window-sill, his head cocked to the side, with one unwavering eye regarding on the floor, so perilously65 near, the eternal enemy of all his kind.
The human quality of his voice had startled the gutter-cat, causing her to forgo66 her spring as she flattened67 down her ears and bellied68 closer to the floor.
And in the silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling transparency from the bright world that blazed so immediately beyond.
Nor was the gutter-cat without her ill and hurt of life. Hunger hurt her, and hurt her meagre breasts that should have been full for the seven feeble and mewing little ones, replicas69 of her save that their eyes were not yet open and that they were grotesquely70 unsteady on their soft, young legs. She remembered them by the hurt of her breasts and the prod71 of her instinct; also she remembered them by vision, so that, by the subtle chemistry of her brain, she could see them, by way of the broken screen across the ventilator hole, down into the cellar in the dark rubbish-corner under the stairway, where she had stolen her lair72 and birthed her litter.
And the vision of them, and the hurt of her hunger stirred her afresh, so that she gathered her body and measured the distance for the leap. But Cocky was himself again.
“Devil be damned! Devil be damned!” he shouted his loudest and most belligerent73, as he ruffled74 like a bravo at the gutter-cat beneath him, so that he sent her crouching75, with startlement, lower to the floor, her ears wilting76 rigidly77 flat and down, her tail lashing25, her head turning about the room so that her eyes might penetrate78 its obscurest corners in quest of the human whose voice had so cried out.
All of which the gutter-cat did, despite the positive evidence of her senses that this human noise had proceeded from the white bird itself on the window-sill.
The bottle fly bumped once again against its invisible prison wall in the silence that ensued. The gutter-cat prepared and sprang with sudden decision, landing where Cocky had perched the fraction of a second before. Cocky had darted79 to the side, but, even as he darted, and as the cat landed on the sill, the cat’s paw flashed out sidewise and Cocky leaped straight up, beating the air with his wings so little used to flying. The gutter-cat reared on her hind-legs, smote80 upward with one paw as a child might strike with its hat at a butterfly. But there was weight in the cat’s paw, and the claws of it were outspread like so many hooks.
Struck in mid-air, a trifle of a flying machine, all its delicate gears tangled81 and disrupted, Cocky fell to the floor in a shower of white feathers, which, like snowflakes, eddied82 slowly down after, and after the plummet-like descent of the cat, so that some of them came to rest on her back, startling her tense nerves with their gentle impact and making her crouch closer while she shot a swift glance around and overhead for any danger that might threaten.
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1
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| 使谦卑( abase的第三人称单数 )； 使感到羞耻； 使降低（地位、身份等）； 降下 | |
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abased
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| 使谦卑( abase的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到羞耻； 使降低（地位、身份等）； 降下 | |
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3
segregated
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| 分开的； 被隔离的 | |
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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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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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expeditiously
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| adv.迅速地，敏捷地 | |
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8
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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10
affiliations
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| n.联系( affiliation的名词复数 )；附属机构；亲和性；接纳 | |
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landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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lodger
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| n.寄宿人，房客 | |
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14
credulously
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| adv.轻信地，易被瞒地 | |
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15
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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16
reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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mar
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| vt.破坏，毁坏，弄糟 | |
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19
digestion
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| n.消化，吸收 | |
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20
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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21
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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23
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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coupons
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| n.礼券( coupon的名词复数 )；优惠券；订货单；参赛表 | |
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25
lashing
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| n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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26
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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29
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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30
bestial
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| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
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31
dilating
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| v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的现在分词 ) | |
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32
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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33
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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39
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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41
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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42
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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43
petrified
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| adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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44
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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45
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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46
preyer
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| 猛兽，猛禽 | |
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47
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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48
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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49
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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50
sinuous
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| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
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51
glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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52
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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53
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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54
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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55
slits
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| n.狭长的口子，裂缝( slit的名词复数 )v.切开，撕开( slit的第三人称单数 )；在…上开狭长口子 | |
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56
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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60
mote
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| n.微粒；斑点 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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perilously
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| adv.充满危险地，危机四伏地 | |
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forgo
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| v.放弃，抛弃 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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bellied
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| adj.有腹的，大肚子的 | |
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replicas
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| n.复制品( replica的名词复数 ) | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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prod
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| vt.戳，刺；刺激，激励 | |
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lair
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| n.野兽的巢穴；躲藏处 | |
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belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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76
wilting
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| 萎蔫 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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81
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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82
eddied
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| 起漩涡，旋转( eddy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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