章节正文
approached it from the rear.
"High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in
Boca. You know how an Indian is--the palefaces fixed his clock when
they introduced him to firewater. He'd brought a quart along with
him.
"'Hunky,' says he, 'we'll explore the ancient temple. It may be that
the storin that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report
Bureau of Ethnology,' says he, 'may yet profit by the vagaries of wind
and tide.'
"We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind of
alcove without bath. There was a granite davenport, and a stone wash-
stand without any soap or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs
drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that
furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel
like getting back home from an amateurvioloncello solo at an East
Side Settlement house.
"While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the wall that the
stone-masons must have made when their tools slipped, I stepped into
the front room. That was at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor,
six little windows like square port-holes that didn't let much light
in.
"I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack's face three feet
away.
"'High,' says I, 'of all the--'
"And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned around.
"He'd taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn't seem to hear
me. I touched him, and came near beating it. High Jack had turned to
stone. I had been drinking some rum myself.
"'Ossified!' I says to him, loudly. 'I knew what would happen if you
kept it up.'
"And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me
conversing with nobody, and we have a look at Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2.
It's a stone idol, or god, or revised statute or something, and it
looks as much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It's
got exactly his face and size and color, but it's steadier on its
pins. It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see
it's been there ten million years.
"'He's a cousin of mine,' sings High, and then he turns solemn.
"'Hunky,' he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the
statue's, 'I'm in the holy temple of my ancestors.'
"'Well, if looks goes for anything,' says I, 'you've struck a twin.
Stand side by side with buddy, and let's see if there's any
diff'erence.'
"There wasn't. You know an Indian can keep his face as still as an
iron dog's when he wants to, so when High Jack froze his features you
couldn't have told him from the other one.
"'There's some letters,' says I, 'on his nob's pedestal, but I can't
make 'em out. The alphabet of this country seems to be composed of
sometimes a, e, I, o, and u, but generally z's, l's, and t's.'
"High Jack's ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute,
and he investigates the inscription.
"'Hunky,' says he, 'this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most
powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.'
"'Glad to know him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds
me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say
about your friend:
"'Imperious what's-his-name, dead and tunied to stone--
No use to write or call him on the 'phone.'
"'Hunky,' says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you
believe in reincarnation?'
"'It sounds to me,' says I, 'like either a clean-up of the slaughter-
houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don't know.'
"'I believe,' says he, 'that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My
researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North
American tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud
Aztec race. That,' says he, 'was a favorite theory of mine and
Florence Blue Feather's. And she--what' if she--!'
"High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked
more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse.
"'Well,' says I, 'what if she, what if she, what if she? You're
drunk,' says I. 'Impersonating idols and believing in--what was it ?-
-recarnalization? Let's have a drink,' says I. 'It's as spooky here
as a Brooklyn artificial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned
down.'
"Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into the
bedless bedchamber. There was peep-holes bored through the wall, so
we could see the whole front part of the temple.
Major Bing told me afterward that the ancient priests in charge used
to rubber through them at the congregation.
"In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a' big oval earthen
dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front of
the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor a
few times, and then took a walk for herself.
"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over.
There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava,
and broiled land-crabs and mangoes--nothing like what you get at
Chubb's.
"We ate hearty--and had another round of rum.
"'It must be old Tecumseh's--or whatever you call him--birthday,' says
I. 'Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla
on Mount Catawampus.'
"Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their
aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip
back into Father Axletree's private boudoir. They came by ones, twos,
and threes, and left all sorts of offerings--there was enough grub for
Bingham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace
Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of
bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful
shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of
a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled
on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off
through the woods again.
"'I wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack.
"'Oh,' says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of
disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find
a god you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt
offerings.'
"And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor
front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on
the Palisades.
"And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and
sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was bare-footed
and had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her
hand. When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck
through her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High
Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the
floor; for the girl's face was as much like Florence Blue Feather's as
his was like old King Toxicology's.
"And then was when High Jack's booze drowned his system of ethnology.
He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says:
"'Lay hold of it, Hunky. We'll pack it into the other room. I felt
it all the time,' says he. 'I'm the reconsideration of the god
Locomotorataxia, and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand
years ago. She has come to seek me in the temple where I used to
reign.'
"'All right,' says I. 'There's no use arguing against the rum
question. You take his feet.'
"We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into the
back room of the cafe--the temple, I mean--and leaned him against the
wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all-
night Broadway joint on New-Year's Eve.
"Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk
shawls and began to undress himself.
"'Oh, figs!' says I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and
subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that's got
you ?'
"But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He
stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules,
and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and.
stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw.
And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to.
"In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged if
I wasn't knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so
exactly much like Florence Blue Feather. 'I wonder,' says I to
myself, 'if she has been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,' says I
to myself, 'whether she has a mole on her left--' But the next minute
I thought she looked one-eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but
she looked good at that. And High Jack hadn't drunk all the rum that
had been drank.
"The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and got down and
massaged her nose with the floor, like the rest did. Then she went
nearer and laid the flower wreath on the block of stone at High Jack's
feet. Rummy as I was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think
of offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions. Even
a stone god ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of
the fancy groceries they had piled up in front of him.
"And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions
a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the
walls of the ruin. The girl gives a little jump backward, and her
eyes fly open as big as doughnuts; but she don't beat it.
"Why didn't she? I'll tell you why I think why. It don't seem to a
girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone
god should come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them
snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would
be different--but her! I'll bet she said to herself:
'Well, goodness me! you've been a long time getting on your job. I've
half a mind not to speak to you.'
"But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple
together. By the time I'd had time to take another drink and enter
upon the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the
woods that the girl had come down. With the natural scenery already
in place, it was just like a play to watch 'em--she looking up at him,
and him giving her back the best that an Indian can hand, out in the
way of a goo-goo eye. But there wasn't anything in that
recarnification and revulsion to tintype for me.
"'Hey! Injun!' I yells out to High Jack.
'We've got a board-bill due in town, and you're leaving me without a
cent. Brace up and cut out the Neapolitan fisher-maiden, and let's go
back home.'
"But on the two goes; without looking once back until, as you might
say, the forest swallowed 'em up. And I never saw or heard of High
Jack Snakefeeder from that day to this. I don't know if the Cherokees
came from the Aspics; but if they did, one of 'em went back.
"All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place and panhandle
Major Bing. He detached himself from enough of his winnings to buy me
a ticket home. And I'm back again on the job at Chubb's, sir, and I'm
going to hold it steady. Come round, and you'll find the steaks as
good as ever."
I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I asked
him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrification
and such mysteries as he had touched upon.
"Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What ailed High Jack
was too much booze and education. They'll do an Indian up every
time."
"But what about Miss Blue Feather?" I persisted.
"Say," said Hunky, with a grin, "that little lady that stole High Jack
certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it
was only for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that
Miss Florence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago?
Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat
on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through--and
"High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in
Boca. You know how an Indian is--the palefaces fixed his clock when
they introduced him to firewater. He'd brought a quart along with
him.
"'Hunky,' says he, 'we'll explore the ancient temple. It may be that
the storin that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report
Bureau of Ethnology,' says he, 'may yet profit by the vagaries of wind
and tide.'
"We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind of
alcove without bath. There was a granite davenport, and a stone wash-
stand without any soap or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs
drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that
furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel
like getting back home from an amateurvioloncello solo at an East
Side Settlement house.
"While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the wall that the
stone-masons must have made when their tools slipped, I stepped into
the front room. That was at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor,
six little windows like square port-holes that didn't let much light
in.
"I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack's face three feet
away.
"'High,' says I, 'of all the--'
"And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned around.
"He'd taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn't seem to hear
me. I touched him, and came near beating it. High Jack had turned to
stone. I had been drinking some rum myself.
"'Ossified!' I says to him, loudly. 'I knew what would happen if you
kept it up.'
"And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me
conversing with nobody, and we have a look at Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2.
It's a stone idol, or god, or revised statute or something, and it
looks as much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It's
got exactly his face and size and color, but it's steadier on its
pins. It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see
it's been there ten million years.
"'He's a cousin of mine,' sings High, and then he turns solemn.
"'Hunky,' he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the
statue's, 'I'm in the holy temple of my ancestors.'
"'Well, if looks goes for anything,' says I, 'you've struck a twin.
Stand side by side with buddy, and let's see if there's any
diff'erence.'
"There wasn't. You know an Indian can keep his face as still as an
iron dog's when he wants to, so when High Jack froze his features you
couldn't have told him from the other one.
"'There's some letters,' says I, 'on his nob's pedestal, but I can't
make 'em out. The alphabet of this country seems to be composed of
sometimes a, e, I, o, and u, but generally z's, l's, and t's.'
"High Jack's ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute,
and he investigates the inscription.
"'Hunky,' says he, 'this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most
powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.'
"'Glad to know him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds
me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say
about your friend:
"'Imperious what's-his-name, dead and tunied to stone--
No use to write or call him on the 'phone.'
"'Hunky,' says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you
believe in reincarnation?'
"'It sounds to me,' says I, 'like either a clean-up of the slaughter-
houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don't know.'
"'I believe,' says he, 'that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My
researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North
American tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud
Aztec race. That,' says he, 'was a favorite theory of mine and
Florence Blue Feather's. And she--what' if she--!'
"High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked
more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse.
"'Well,' says I, 'what if she, what if she, what if she? You're
drunk,' says I. 'Impersonating idols and believing in--what was it ?-
-recarnalization? Let's have a drink,' says I. 'It's as spooky here
as a Brooklyn artificial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned
down.'
"Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into the
bedless bedchamber. There was peep-holes bored through the wall, so
we could see the whole front part of the temple.
Major Bing told me afterward that the ancient priests in charge used
to rubber through them at the congregation.
"In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a' big oval earthen
dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front of
the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor a
few times, and then took a walk for herself.
"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over.
There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava,
and broiled land-crabs and mangoes--nothing like what you get at
Chubb's.
"We ate hearty--and had another round of rum.
"'It must be old Tecumseh's--or whatever you call him--birthday,' says
I. 'Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla
on Mount Catawampus.'
"Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their
aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip
back into Father Axletree's private boudoir. They came by ones, twos,
and threes, and left all sorts of offerings--there was enough grub for
Bingham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace
Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of
bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful
shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of
a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled
on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off
through the woods again.
"'I wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack.
"'Oh,' says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of
disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find
a god you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt
offerings.'
"And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor
front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on
the Palisades.
"And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and
sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was bare-footed
and had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her
hand. When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck
through her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High
Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the
floor; for the girl's face was as much like Florence Blue Feather's as
his was like old King Toxicology's.
"And then was when High Jack's booze drowned his system of ethnology.
He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says:
"'Lay hold of it, Hunky. We'll pack it into the other room. I felt
it all the time,' says he. 'I'm the reconsideration of the god
Locomotorataxia, and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand
years ago. She has come to seek me in the temple where I used to
reign.'
"'All right,' says I. 'There's no use arguing against the rum
question. You take his feet.'
"We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into the
back room of the cafe--the temple, I mean--and leaned him against the
wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all-
night Broadway joint on New-Year's Eve.
"Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk
shawls and began to undress himself.
"'Oh, figs!' says I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and
subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that's got
you ?'
"But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He
stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules,
and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and.
stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw.
And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to.
"In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged if
I wasn't knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so
exactly much like Florence Blue Feather. 'I wonder,' says I to
myself, 'if she has been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,' says I
to myself, 'whether she has a mole on her left--' But the next minute
I thought she looked one-eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but
she looked good at that. And High Jack hadn't drunk all the rum that
had been drank.
"The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and got down and
massaged her nose with the floor, like the rest did. Then she went
nearer and laid the flower wreath on the block of stone at High Jack's
feet. Rummy as I was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think
of offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions. Even
a stone god ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of
the fancy groceries they had piled up in front of him.
"And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions
a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the
walls of the ruin. The girl gives a little jump backward, and her
eyes fly open as big as doughnuts; but she don't beat it.
"Why didn't she? I'll tell you why I think why. It don't seem to a
girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone
god should come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them
snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would
be different--but her! I'll bet she said to herself:
'Well, goodness me! you've been a long time getting on your job. I've
half a mind not to speak to you.'
"But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple
together. By the time I'd had time to take another drink and enter
upon the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the
woods that the girl had come down. With the natural scenery already
in place, it was just like a play to watch 'em--she looking up at him,
and him giving her back the best that an Indian can hand, out in the
way of a goo-goo eye. But there wasn't anything in that
recarnification and revulsion to tintype for me.
"'Hey! Injun!' I yells out to High Jack.
'We've got a board-bill due in town, and you're leaving me without a
cent. Brace up and cut out the Neapolitan fisher-maiden, and let's go
back home.'
"But on the two goes; without looking once back until, as you might
say, the forest swallowed 'em up. And I never saw or heard of High
Jack Snakefeeder from that day to this. I don't know if the Cherokees
came from the Aspics; but if they did, one of 'em went back.
"All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place and panhandle
Major Bing. He detached himself from enough of his winnings to buy me
a ticket home. And I'm back again on the job at Chubb's, sir, and I'm
going to hold it steady. Come round, and you'll find the steaks as
good as ever."
I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I asked
him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrification
and such mysteries as he had touched upon.
"Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What ailed High Jack
was too much booze and education. They'll do an Indian up every
time."
"But what about Miss Blue Feather?" I persisted.
"Say," said Hunky, with a grin, "that little lady that stole High Jack
certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it
was only for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that
Miss Florence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago?
Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat
on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through--and
- indian [´indiən]
a.印度的 n.印度人 (初中英语单词) - temple [´tempəl] n.庙宇；寺院；太阳穴 (初中英语单词)
- apartment [ə´pɑ:tmənt] n.一套房间 (初中英语单词)
- amateur [´æmətə, ,æmə´tə:] n.业余爱好者 (初中英语单词)
- alphabet [´ælfəbet] n.字母表 (初中英语单词)
- statue [´stætʃu:] n.塑像，雕像 (初中英语单词)
- shakespeare [´ʃeikspiə] n.莎士比亚 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- rubber [´rʌbə] n.(摩)擦的人；橡皮 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- vegetable [´vedʒtəbəl] a.&n.蔬菜(的)；植物 (初中英语单词)
- wherever [weər´evə] conj.无论在哪里 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- breeze [bri:z] n.微风；不费力的事 (初中英语单词)
- wreath [ri:θ] n.花圈；花环；圈状物 (初中英语单词)
- feather [´feðə] n.羽毛 (初中英语单词)
- system [´sistəm] n.系统，体系，制度 (初中英语单词)
- appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- sentiment [´sentimənt] n.情绪；多愁善感 (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- goodness [´gudnis] n.优良；美德；精华 (初中英语单词)
- explore [ik´splɔ:] v.勘探；探索；探查 (高中英语单词)
- minority [mai´nɔriti] n.少数(民族)；未成年 (高中英语单词)
- granite [´grænit] n.花岗岩 (高中英语单词)
- caesar [´si:zə] n.凯撒；暴君；独裁者 (高中英语单词)
- descent [di´sent] n.出身，家世 (高中英语单词)
- eminent [´eminənt] a.卓越的；杰出的 (高中英语单词)
- murderer [´mə:dərə] n.杀人犯，凶手 (高中英语单词)
- deputy [´depjuti] n.代理人；代表 (高中英语单词)
- broadway [´brɔ:dwei] n.&a.百老汇大街(的) (高中英语单词)
- offering [´ɔfəriŋ] n.提供；礼物；捐献 (高中英语单词)
- startling [´stɑ:tliŋ] a.惊人的 (高中英语单词)
- scenery [´si:nəri] n.舞台布景 (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- edifice [´edifis] n.大厦；(知识的)体系 (英语四级单词)
- violoncello [,vaiələn´tʃeləu] n.大提琴 (英语四级单词)
- statute [´stætʃu:t] n.法令；章程；规定 (英语四级单词)
- pedestal [´pedistl] n.垫座 vt.给...装上座 (英语四级单词)
- composed [kəm´pəuzd] a.镇静自若的 (英语四级单词)
- apiece [ə´pi:s] ad.每个，每件，每人 (英语四级单词)
- florence [´flɔrəns] n.佛罗伦萨 (英语四级单词)
- undress [ʌn´dres] v.(给)脱衣 (英语四级单词)
- manhattan [mæn´hætən] n.曼哈顿 (英语四级单词)
- hustle [´hʌsəl] v.猛挤；催促 n.乱堆 (英语四级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- platinum [´plætinəm] n.白金 (英语六级单词)
- unlikely [ʌn´laikli] a.不像的；未必可能的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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