Tain Dirk’s fingers drummed. His head commenced to sway.
_II._
Bimi Tal danced barefooted on the glazed umber tiles of the Roof.
Her dark red hair was free on her naked shoulders. _Stamp! stamp! stamp!_ her feet struck flatly on the tiles. Her head was bent back almost to the level of her waist. Bracelets jangled on her wrists and ankles.
“_I am the daughter of the morning! I shout, I dance, I laugh away...._”
Shaking her clump of red hair; her strong muscled limbs weaving; laughing at me with all her eyes. How like she looked to a man dead long years before! How like her glances to the glances of Red Roane! On her breasts two glittering shields of spangles. About her waist a kirtle seemingly woven of long strands of marsh grass, rustling, shivering with whispers. The sinews of her trunk and limbs rippled beneath her clear brown skin.
The head of Tain Dirk swayed sideways, slowly. The drumming of his fingers on the table was a reiterative rattle. His eyes--liquid, subtle--dulled with a look near to stupidity, then blazed to golden fire. Thin and wide were his unsmiling lips. His tongue flicked them. _Tat! tat! tat!_
“She’s a beauty!” whispered Dirk.
His terrible eyes seemed to call Bimi Tal as they had called other women. Mesmerism--what was it? Singing, she pranced toward the den of potted palms where we were sitting. Her skirt rustled like the marshes. Wind of summer.
Little searchlights, playing colored lights on Bimi Tal, grew darker. Red and violet deepened to brown and green. Still the hot stars above us. In that artificial paper Palm Grove, with the silky puffy women and the beefsteak-guzzling men looking stupidly, was born the mystery of the great savannahs.
Dirk’s head nodding. Dirk’s thin lips slowly opening. Dirk’s golden eyes glimmering. _Tat! tat! tat!_ Dirk’s steady fingers.
The great savannahs and the tropic marshes. Bimi Tal dancing. Stealthily, the music softened from that brass and cymbal tune. It rustled. It crawled. It reared fanged heads.
For a little while I did not see Bimi Tal nor Dirk, but the steamy Everglades. Winter noon. Grass leaves silvered by sea-wind; puddles stirring at the roots of the grasses. Silence booming like the loud silence of death.
Bimi Tal was dancing her snake dance. Dirk’s lips quivered.
The marsh wind makes a little stir (it is the whispering flute.) The marsh waters make a little moan (it is the violin).
_III._
Where was the soul of Bimi Tal dwelling that tropic winter so many years ago? On her mother’s breast, a little bud of love, crooned over with the song of sleep? Or meshed in bleeding poinsettia or rose? Or a soul yet unborn?
I close my eyes. The vision does not fade. Florida; the marshlands; winter noon. January’s first day, 1899. Where was lovely Bimi Tal on that stifling day we saw the fanged thing coil, and death struck us there by Okechobee?
Your eyes, Bimi Tal, are the laughing eyes of Red Roane!...
Now the snake dance. The piccolo screams.
Life immortal in your glistening lips, Bimi Tal; in your deep bosom promise of everlasting fecundity. Passion and power of the earth! Life is immortal. Your laughing eyes, Bimi Tal, will never dull. Yet I saw Red Roane die....
Beneath the shifting lights, Bimi Tal leaped and spun, scarcely treading the floor. Her eyes sparkled at me. She did not see Tain Dirk. _Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!_ Her bare feet struck the tiles, tightening the muscles of her calves. Her bangles rang.
I could not keep my eyes from Dirk. His broad brown-and-golden head swayed continually. His thin lips worked, and I caught the flash of his teeth. His eyes drowsed, then flashed open with sudden flame. _Tat! tat! tat!_ The rattling of his fingers was never still.
That swaying head! It was loaded with the wisdom of the serpent that harkens to the wind, swaying with the marsh grass, winding its golden coils, curving its neck to the sun--_Hark! The rattle!_
... Red is the sun. Two men plow through the marshes. O endless pain (the harsh viol quivers), a life struggles in the womb. Who will die, and what will die, that this new life may be born? Whimpering agony. And an old crone singing a song....
All people who sat within the Palm Grove were hushed, watching Bimi Tal. Fat hands fanning powdered breasts; silk handkerchiefs wiping ox necks; sweat beneath armpits. Still heat. Far away thunder. The stars going by.
Music swelled. Beneath its discord sounded a steady drumming rhythm. The arms of Bimi Tal waved about her head. She shouted for joy of life.
The pale eyes of Dirk, basking in mystery, gleamed into fire, blazed up in fury and hate undying! His dry lips opened. I saw his teeth.
... Through the breast-high grasses surge on the two marching men. Their boots sough in the muck. (Softly strums the bass viol.) Something waiting in the marshes! Something with golden eyes and swaying head. _Hark! The rattle!_ Beware, for death is in the path!...
Bimi Tal was close to Dirk, not seeing him. She laughed and waved her jangling arms at me. Dirk’s eyes sparkled with madness, his lips were tightened terribly. Bimi Tal was almost over him. His fingers drummed. Louder played the music.
... _Hark! The rattle!_ Gaily the two men plow through the bladed grasses. The coiled thing waits, hate within its eyes. They are nearer--nearer! (Drums begin to beat)....
In an avalanche of sound, crashed viol and violin, and stammering drum. Dirk’s drawn head lunged upward with his shoulders, his lips opened and lifted.
Venomous his look. Deathly his intensity.
_IV._
Strong and young, fresh from the Cuban wars, Red Roane and I went north from the keys through the Everglades of Florida.
Through the fens as in God’s first day. Through the reptile age, alive yet and crawling. Through strangling vegetation, which steams and rots beneath eternal suns. Through the everlasting Everglades, with their fern and frond and sorrowful, hoary cypress, Red Roane and I went north. Onward with laughter. What joy lay in our hearts! We sang many songs.
Fern and flower embracing in fecundity. Grasses thick with sap. Blossoms wilting at a touch. Mire teeming with creeping life. Above all, the gay sun. Beneath all, the coiling serpent eyes and the opened fangs. _Hark! The rattle!_
We sailed lagoons in crazy craft; dreamt on shady shores through sultry noons; shouted to the dead logs on river banks till they took fear, and dived and splashed away. We pitched our tents by black waters. We beat brave trails through the fens.
“I’d like to stay here forever,” said Red Roane.
By what way I go, with what drinks I drink, in what bed I lie down, I remember you who got your prayer, Red Roane--you who are in the swamp grass and swamp water forever.
Beating our way slow and heavily, at high noon, of the new year’s first day in 1899, near Okechobee in the marshes, came we two on a hidden hut. It was fashioned of the raff of the slough--dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death. Better the naked swamp. Better the clean quagmire for bed.
An old crone, moaning within that dreary hut, drowned out the sharp, short gasps of another woman. Red Roane came up singing, slapping his deep chest, swinging his muscular arms. Sunlight on his brown face, and sunlight in his red hair. At the hut’s door, facing us, lounged a man with yellow eyes. Poor white trash. A gun was in his arm’s crook. He spat tobacco juice at the earth. There was loathing, murder venom in his face!
Red Roane faltered back from that stare. He stopped short, and laughter left him. His brave eyes were troubled by that madman’s hate. Yellow eyes staring--eyes of a rattlesnake!
An old Indian crone peered out beneath the crooked elbow of the ruffian in the doorway, she who had been dolorously singing. With a scream, she thrust out her skinny old arm, pointing it at Red Roane.
“He dies!” she screamed. “We want his soul!”
Another woman, hidden, moaning within the hut; a woman in her travail. New life from the womb--a life must die! I grasped the arm of Red Roane.
“Come away!” I said, “Come away from these mad witches!”
In three steps that gray-green hovel was hidden in the cypresses. A dream it seemed. But we could yet hear the old witch woman singing. Something dragged at our heels, and it was not suction of the muck.
Toe to heel, Red Roane paced me, and we sang a song together. A crimson flower, short-stemmed, yellow-hearted, was almost beneath my boot. I stooped--who will not stoop to pick a crimson wild flower? A rattling, like the shaking of peas. A klirring like the drumming of a man’s fingertips. _Hark! The rattle!_
A yawning head flashed beneath my hand, striking too low. Heavy as a hard-flung stone, the snake’s head struck my ankle; yawning gullet, white-hooked fangs of the deathly rattlesnake. Out of the crimson flower that beast of gold and brown. Its yellow eyes flickered. Its thin lips were dry. How near I had touched to death!
“Thank God for those heavy boots, Jerry!”