The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell (1893-1949)

The Most Dangerous Game.

by Richard Connell (1893-1949)

"OFF THERE to the right--somewhere--is a large island," said Whitney." It's rather a mystery--"

"What island is it?" Rainsford asked.

"The old charts call it `Ship-Trap Island,"' Whitney replied." A suggestive name, isn't it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don't know why. Some superstition--"

"Can't see it," remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that was palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

"You've good eyes," said Whitney, with a laugh," and I've seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can't see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night."

"Nor four yards," admitted Rainsford. "Ugh! It's like moist black velvet."

"It will be light enough in Rio," promised Whitney. "We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting."

"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.

"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar."

"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?"

"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no understanding."

"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing--fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death."

"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we've passed that island yet?"

"I can't tell in the dark. I hope so."

"Why? " asked Rainsford.

"The place has a reputation--a bad one."

"Cannibals?" suggested Rainsford.

"Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn't live in such a God-forsaken place. But it's gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn't you notice that the crew's nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?"

"They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen--"

"Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who'd go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was `This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.' Then he said to me, very gravely, `Don't you feel anything?'--as if the air about us was actually poisonous. Now, you mustn't laugh when I tell you this--I did feel something like a sudden chill.

"There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We were drawing near the island then. What I felt was a- a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread."

"Pure imagination," said Rainsford.

"One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship's company with his fear."

"Maybe. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing--with wave lengths, just as sound and light have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyhow, I'm glad we're getting out of this zone. Well, I think I'll turn in now, Rainsford."

"I'm not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke another pipe up on the afterdeck."

"Good night, then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast."

"Right. Good night, Whitney."

There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him." It's so dark," he thought, "that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids--"

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.

Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea dosed over his head.

He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely by the night.

Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then--

Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror.

He did not recognize the animal that made the sound; he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam toward the sound. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

"Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

Ten minutes of determined effort brought another sound to his ears—the most welcome he had ever heard--the muttering and growling of the sea breaking on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters.

Jagged crags appeared to jut up into the opaqueness; he forced himself upward, hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of trees and underbrush might hold for him did not concern Rainsford just then. All he knew was that he was safe from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was on him. He flung himself down at the jungle edge and tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of his life.

When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigor; a sharp hunger was picking at him. He looked about him, almost cheerfully.

"Where there are pistol shots, there are men. Where there are men, there is food," he thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place? An unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore.

He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore, and Rainsford floundered along by the water. Not far from where he landed, he stopped.

Some wounded thing--by the evidence, a large animal--had thrashed about in the underbrush; the jungle weeds were crushed down and the moss was lacerated; one patch of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object not far away caught Rainsford's eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

"A twenty-two," he remarked. "That's odd. It must have been a fairly large animal too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It's clear that the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard was when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it."

He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find—the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose stone, but making headway; night was beginning to settle down on the island.

Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line; and his first thought was that be had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building--a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.

"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.

He lifted the knocker, and it creaked up stiffly, as if it had never before been used. He let it fall, and it startled him with its booming loudness. He thought he heard steps within; the door remained closed. Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall. The door opened then--opened as suddenly as if it were on a spring--and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The first thing Rainsford's eyes discerned was the largest man Rainsford had

ever seen--a gigantic creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist. In his hand the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford's heart.

Out of the snarl of beard two small eyes regarded Rainsford.

"Don't be alarmed," said Rainsford, with a smile which he hoped was disarming. "I'm no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City."

The menacing look in the eyes did not change. The revolver pointing as rigidly as if the giant were a statue. He gave no sign that he understood Rainsford's words, or that he had even heard them. He was dressed in uniform--a black uniform trimmed with gray astrakhan.

"I'm Sanger Rainsford of New York," Rainsford began again. "I fell off a yacht. I am hungry."

The man's only answer was to raise with his thumb the hammer of his revolver. Then Rainsford saw the man's free hand go to his forehead in a military salute, and he saw him click his heels together and stand at attention. Another man was coming down the broad marble steps, an erect, slender man in evening clothes. He advanced to Rainsford and held out his hand.

In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent that gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said, "It is a very great pleasure and honor to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home."

Automatically Rainsford shook the man's hand.

"I've read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet, you see," explained the man. "I am General Zaroff."

Rainsford's first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second was that there was an original, almost bizarre quality about the general's face. He was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and pointed military mustache were as black as the night from which Rainsford had come. His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had high cheekbones, a sharpcut nose, a spare, dark face--the face of a man used to giving orders, the face of an aristocrat. Turning to the giant in uniform, the general made a sign. The giant put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

"Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow," remarked the general, "but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A simple fellow, but, I'm afraid, like all his race, a bit of a savage."

"Is he Russian?"

"He is a Cossack," said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. "So am I."

"Come," he said, "we shouldn't be chatting here. We can talk later. Now you want clothes, food, rest. You shall have them. This is a most-restful spot."

Ivan had reappeared, and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.

"Follow Ivan, if you please, Mr. Rainsford," said the general. "I was about to have my dinner when you came. I'll wait for you. You'll find that my clothes will fit you, I think."

It was to a huge, beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed big enough for six men that Rainsford followed the silent giant. Ivan laid out an evening suit, and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor who ordinarily cut and sewed for none below the rank of duke.

The dining room to which Ivan conducted him was in many ways remarkable. There was a medieval magnificence about it; it suggested a baronial hall of feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its vast refectory tables where twoscore men could sit down to eat. About the hall were mounted heads of many animals--lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears; larger or more perfect specimens Rainsford had never seen. At the great table the general was sitting, alone.

"You'll have a cocktail, Mr. Rainsford," he suggested. The cocktail was surpassingly good; and, Rainsford noted, the table apointments were of the finest--the linen, the crystal, the silver, the china.

They were eating /borsch/, the rich, red soup with whipped cream so dear to Russian palates. Half apologetically General Zaroff said, "We do our best to preserve the amenities of civilization here. Please forgive any lapses. We are well off the beaten track, you know. Do you think the champagne has suffered from its long ocean trip?"

"Not in the least," declared Rainsford. He was finding the general a most thoughtful and affable host, a true cosmopolite. But there was one small trait of .the general's that made Rainsford uncomfortable. Whenever he looked up from his plate he found the general studying him, appraising him narrowly.

"Perhaps," said General Zaroff, "you were surprised that I recognized your name. You see, I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but one passion in my life, Mr. Rains. ford, and it is the hunt."

"You have some wonderful heads here," said Rainsford as he ate a particularly well-cooked filet mignon. "That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw."

"Oh, that fellow. Yes, he was a monster."

"Did he charge you?"

"Hurled me against a tree," said the general. "Fractured my skull. But I got the brute."

"I've always thought," said Rains{ord, "that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game."

For a moment the general did not reply; he was smiling his curious red-lipped smile. Then he said slowly, "No. You are wrong, sir. The Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous big game." He sipped his wine. "Here in my preserve on this island," he said in the same slow tone, "I hunt more dangerous game."

Rainsford expressed his surprise. "Is there big game on this island?"

The general nodded. "The biggest."

"Really?"

"Oh, it isn't here naturally, of course. I have to stock the island."

"What have you imported, general?" Rainsford asked. "Tigers?"

The general smiled. "No," he said. "Hunting tigers ceased to interest me some years ago. I exhausted their possibilities, you see. No thrill left in tigers, no real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford."

The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.

"We will have some capital hunting, you and I," said the general. "I shall be most glad to have your society."

"But what game--" began Rainsford.

"I'll tell you," said the general. "You will be amused, I know. I think I may say, in all modesty, that I have done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?"

"Thank you, general."

The general filled both glasses, and said, "God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger, my father said. He was a very rich man with a quarter of a million acres in the Crimea, and he was an ardent sportsman. When I was only five years old he gave me a little gun, specially made in

Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with. When I shot some of his prize turkeys with it, he did not punish me; he complimented me on my marksmanship. I killed my first bear in the Caucasus when I was ten. My whole life has been one prolonged hunt. I went into the army--it was expected of noblemen's sons--and for a time commanded a division of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was always the hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in every land. It would be impossible for me to tell you how many animals I have killed."

The general puffed at his cigarette.

"After the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay there. Many noble Russians lost everything. I, luckily, had invested heavily in American securities, so I shall never have to open a tearoom in Monte Carlo or drive a taxi in Paris. Naturally, I continued to hunt--grizzliest in your Rockies, crocodiles in the Ganges, rhinoceroses in East Africa. It was in Africa that the Cape buffalo hit me and laid me up for six months. As soon as I recovered I started for the Amazon to hunt jaguars, for I had heard they were unusually cunning. They weren't." The Cossack sighed. "They were no match at all for a hunter with his wits about him, and a high-powered rifle. I was bitterly disappointed. I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache one night when a terrible thought pushed its way into

my mind. Hunting was beginning to bore me! And hunting, remember, had been my life. I have heard that in America businessmen often go to pieces when they give up the business that has been their life."

"Yes, that's so," said Rainsford.

The general smiled. "I had no wish to go to pieces," he said. "I must do something. Now, mine is an analytical mind, Mr. Rainsford. Doubtless that is why I enjoy the problems of the chase."

"No doubt, General Zaroff."

"So," continued the general, "I asked myself why the hunt no longer fascinated me. You are much younger than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and have not hunted as much, but you perhaps can guess the answer."

"What was it?"

"Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call `a sporting proposition.' It had become too easy. I always got my quarry. Always. There is no greater bore than perfection."

The general lit a fresh cigarette.

"No animal had a chance with me any more. That is no boast; it is a mathematical certainty. The animal had nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I thought of this it was a tragic moment for me, I can tell you."

Rainsford leaned across the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.

"It came to me as an inspiration what I must do," the general went on.

"And that was?"

The general smiled the quiet smile of one who has faced an obstacle and surmounted it with success. "I had to invent a new animal to hunt," he said.

"A new animal? You're joking."

"Not at all," said the general. "I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this

island built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purposes--there are jungles with a maze of traits in them, hills, swamps--"

"But the animal, General Zaroff?"

"Oh," said the general, "it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting compares with it for an instant. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits."

Rainsford's bewilderment showed in his face.

"I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason."'

"But no animal can reason," objected Rainsford.

"My dear fellow," said the general, "there is one that can."

"But you can't mean--" gasped Rainsford.

"And why not?"

"I can't believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke."

"Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting."

"Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder."

The general laughed with entire good nature. He regarded Rainsfor quizzically. "I refuse to believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life. Surely your experiences in the war--"

"Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder," finished Rainsford stiffly.

Laughter shook the general. "How extraordinarily droll you are!" he said. "One does not expect nowadays to find a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say so, mid-Victorian point of view. It's like finding a snuffbox in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless you had Puritan ancestors. So many Americans appear to have had. I'll wager you'll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You've a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford."

"Thank you, I'm a hunter, not a murderer."

"Dear me," said the general, quite unruffled, "again that unpleasant word. But I think I can show you that your scruples are quite ill founded."

"Yes?"

"Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and, if needs be, taken by the strong. The weak of the world were put here to give the strong pleasure. I am strong. Why should I not use my gift? If I wish to hunt, why should I not? I hunt the scum of the earth: sailors from tramp ships--lassars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels--a thoroughbred horse or hound is worth more than a score of them."

"But they are men," said Rainsford hotly.

"Precisely," said the general. "That is why I use them. It gives me pleasure. They can reason, after a fashion. So they are dangerous."

"But where do you get them?"

The general's left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. "This island is called Ship Trap," he answered. "Sometimes an angry god of the high seas sends them to me. Sometimes, when Providence is not so kind, I help Providence a bit. Come to the window with me."

Rainsford went to the window and looked out toward the sea.

"Watch! Out there!" exclaimed the general, pointing into the night. Rainsford's eyes saw only blackness, and then, as the general pressed a button, far out to sea Rainsford saw the flash of lights.

The general chuckled. "They indicate a channel," he said, "where there's none; giant rocks with razor edges crouch like a sea monster with wide-open jaws. They can crush a ship as easily as I crush this nut." He dropped a walnut on the hardwood floor and brought his heel grinding down on it. "Oh, yes," he said, casually, as if in answer to a question, "I have electricity. We try to be civilized here."

"Civilized? And you shoot down men?"

A trace of anger was in the general's black eyes, but it was there for but a second; and he said, in his most pleasant manner, "Dear me, what a righteous young man you are! I assure you I do not do the thing you suggest. That would be barbarous. I treat these visitors with every consideration. They get plenty of good food and exercise. They get into splendid physical condition. You shall see for yourself tomorrow."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll visit my training school," smiled the general. "It's in the cellar. I have about a dozen pupils down there now. They're from thee had plunged along, spurred on by the sharp rowers of something very like panic. Now he had got a grip

on himself, had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the situation. He saw that straight flight was futile; inevitably it would bring him face to face with the sea. He was in a picture with a frame of water, and his operations, clearly, must take place within that frame.

"I'll give him a trail to follow," muttered Rainsford, and he struck off from the rude path he had been following into the trackless wilderness. He executed a series of intricate loops; he doubled on his trail again and again, recalling all the lore of the fox hunt, and all the dodges of the fox. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and face lashed by the branches, on a thickly wooded ridge. He knew it would be insane to blunder on through the dark, even if he had the strength. His need for rest was imperative and he thought, "I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable." A big tree with a thick trunk and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave not the slightest mark, he climbed up into the crotch, and, stretching out on one of the broad limbs, after a fashion, rested. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security. Even so zealous a hunter as General Zaroff could not trace him there, he told himself; only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after dark. But perhaps the general was a devil--

An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake and sleep did not visit Rainsford, although the silence of a dead world was on the jungle. Toward morning when a dingy gray was varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird focused Rainsford's attention in that direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, he watched. . . . That which was approaching was a man.

It was General Zaroff. He made his way along with his eyes fixed in utmost concentration on the ground before him. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the ground. Rainsford's impulse was to hurl himself down like a panther, but he saw that the general's right hand held something metallic--a small automatic pistol.

The hunter shook his head several times, as if he were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incenselike smoke floated up to Rainsford's nostrils.

Rainsford held his breath. The general's eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze there, every muscle tensed for a spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay; a smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away, back along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford's lungs. His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the woods at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had the Cossack failed to see his quarry.

Rainsford's second thought was even more terrible. It sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true, but the truth was as evident as the sun that had by now pushed through the morning mists. The general was playing with him! The general was saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror.

"I will not lose my nerve. I will not."

He slid down from the tree, and struck off again into the woods. His face was set and he forced the machinery of his mind to function. Three hundred yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one. Throwing off his sack of food, Rainsford took his knife from its sheath and began to work with all his energy.

The job was finished at last, and he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did not have to wait long. The cat was coming again to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark, no matter how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the general sensed his danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one, crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it fell; but for his alertness, he must have been smashed beneath it. He staggered, but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard the general's mocking laugh ring through the jungle.

"Rainsford," called the general, "if you are within sound of my voice, as I suppose you are, let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay mancatcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am going now to have my wound dressed; it's only a slight one. But I shall be back. I shall be

back."

When the general, nursing his bruised shoulder, had gone, Rainsford took up his flight again. It was flight now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still he pressed on. The ground grew softer under his moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser; insects bit him savagely.

Then, as he stepped forward, his foot sank into the ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the muck sucked viciously at his foot as if it were a giant leech. With a violent effort, he tore his feet loose. He knew where he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.

His hands were tight closed as if his nerve were something tangible that someone in the darkness was trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth had given him an idea. He stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet or so and, like some huge prehistoric beaver, he began to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in in France when a second's delay meant death. That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging now. The pit grew deeper; when it was above his shoulders, he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he planted in the bottom of the pit with the points sticking up. With flying fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it he covered the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a lightning-charred tree.

He knew his pursuer was coming; he heard the padding sound of feet on the soft earth, and the night breeze brought him the perfume of the general's cigarette. It seemed to Rainsford that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; he was not feeling his way along, foot by foot. Rainsford, crouching there, could not see the general, nor could he see the pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he felt an impulse to cry aloud with joy, for he heard the sharp crackle of the breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; he heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark. He leaped up from his place of concealment. Then he cowered back. Three feet from the pit a man was standing, with an electric torch in his hand.

"You've done well, Rainsford," the voice of the general called. "Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed one of my best dogs. Again you score. I think, Mr. Rainsford, Ill see what you can do against my whole pack. I'm going home for a rest now. Thank you for a most amusing evening."

At daybreak Rainsford, lying near the swamp, was awakened by a sound that made him know that he had new things to learn about fear. It was a distant sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it. It was the baying of a pack of hounds.

Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was and wait. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment he stood there, thinking. An idea that held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed away from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, then still nearer, nearer, ever nearer. On a ridge Rainsford climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, not a quarter of a mile away, he could see the bush moving. Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff; just ahead of him Rainsford made out another figure whose wide shoulders surged through the tall jungle weeds; it was the giant Ivan, and he seemed pulled forward by some unseen force; Rainsford knew that Ivan must be holding the pack in leash.

They would be on him any minute now. His mind worked frantically. He thought of a native trick he had learned in Uganda. He slid down the tree. He caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it he fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing down the trail; with a bit of wild grapevine he tied back the sapling. Then he ran for his life. The hounds raised their voices as they hit the fresh scent. Rainsford knew now how an animal at bay feels.

He had to stop to get his breath. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford's heart stopped too. They must have reached the knife.

He shinned excitedly up a tree and looked back. His pursuers had stopped. But the hope that was in Rainsford's brain when he climbed died, for he saw in the shallow valley that General Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Rainsford had hardly tumbled to the ground when the pack took up the cry again.

"Nerve, nerve, nerve!" he panted, as he dashed along. A blue gap showed between the trees dead ahead. Ever nearer drew the hounds. Rainsford forced himself on toward that gap. He reached it. It was the shore of the sea. Across a cove he could see the gloomy gray stone of the chateau. Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the sea. . . .

When the general and his pack reached the place by the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. He shrugged his shoulders. Then be sat down, took a drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a cigarette, and hummed a bit from /Madame Butterfly/.

General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his great paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of /Pol Roger/ an half a bottle of /Chambertin/. Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. One was the thought that it would be difficult to replace Ivan; the other was that his quarry had escaped him; of course, the American hadn't played the game--so thought the general as he taste his after-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went up to his bedroom. He was deliciously tired, he said to himself, as he locked himself in. There was a little moonlight, so, before turning on his light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he called, "Better luck another time," to them. Then he switched on the light.

A man, who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed, was standing there.

"Rainsford!" screamed the general. "How in God's name did you get here?"

"Swam," said Rainsford. "I found it quicker than walking through the jungle."

The general sucked in his breath and smiled. "I congratulate you," he said. "You have won the game."

Rainsford did not smile. "I am still a beast at bay," he said, in a low, hoarse voice. "Get ready, General Zaroff."

The general made one of his deepest bows. "I see," he said. "Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford." . . .

He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

Kamekaran Cacita Pondok (Sundanese Literature)

Kamekaran Cacita Pondok

                Carita pondok téh lain mangrupa karya sastra urang Sunda asli, tapi mangrupa tiruan ti bangsa deungeun nyaéta pangaruh Barat (Walanda) seperti anu ditepiken ku Sumarsono , (1989) nételaken yen “istilah cari pondok tehdina satra Sunda mangrupa istilah terjemahan tina bahasa Inggris ‘short story’. Ieu sastra Sunda the emang jolna ti bangsa Eropa.”

                Mimiti hadir dina pajeumuhan sastra Sunda dina majalah parahiangan, akhir tahu 1920-an. Ari kumpulan carita anu munggaran dina carita Sunda nyaéta dog-dogpang réwong karangan G.S anu medal tahun 1930. Jadi leuwih tihela genep tahun , upama dibandingkeun jeung buku carita pondok munggaran dina sastra Indonesia, Téman dukuk karangan M.Kasim, anu terbit tahun 1936. Ceeunah carita pondok dina sastra Sunda pangpangna sabada merdeka. Sumebarna umumna ngaliwatan majlah-majalah jeung surat kabar Sunda. Neupika kiwari henteu robah, umumna carita pondokmah sumebar ngaliwatan majalah-majalah jeung surat kabar. . upami aya buku kumpulan carita pondok anu medal, meh saratuss persen carita pondokna the kungsi dimuat dina salahsahiji majalah atawa suartkabar.

Minangkan carita sejan dina kamekaran carita pondok, diantarana, ébréh dina nuku kumpulan carita pondok. Geura urang tataan sawatara buku kumpulan carita pondok katut pangarangna atawa anu ngumpulkena. Contohna: Aam Amilai: “Panggung Wayang”, Abdul Mustappa: “Nu Teuing Kungsi Kalisankeun”, Ahmad Bakri: “Ki Marebot” jeung sajabina.

Salian ti eta, aya ontology carita pondok, nyaeta “kanjut kundang” (dihijikeun jeung puisi katut sempalan novel) beunang Ajib Rosidi jeung rusmana Sutisumarga, sawidak caritapondok dikumpulkeun ku Duduh Durahman, Abdullah Mustappa, jeung Karno Kartadibrata, Guguriang tujuh , kumpulan karya para pangarang wanita “patrem”, peutingan, beunang Duduh Durahman, salulumar sastra (dihijikeun jeung puisi katut  éséy), mangrupa kumpulan pinunjul “Hadia Sastra LBSS”.

Young Goodman Brown ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head
back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as
the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with
the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear,
"prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is
troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry
with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night
must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be
done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we
but three months married?"
"Then God bless youe!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well whn you
come back."
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no
harm will come to thee."
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the
meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such
an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a
dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill her to think it.
Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her
to heaven."
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more
haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees
of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed
immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a
solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the
thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen
multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he
glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!"
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld
the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at
Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came
through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone."
"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the
sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were
journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance
to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for
father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as
simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would
not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court, were it possible
that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as
remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought
that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must
have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a
journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by
meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the
matter thou wot'st of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless,
reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the
forest yet."
"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never
went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest
men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of
Brown that ever took this path and kept"
"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said,
Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the
Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the
Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a
pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war.
They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and
returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake."
"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters;
or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New
England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance
here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me;
the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General
Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state secrets."
"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed
companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own
ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how
should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would
make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day."
Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of irrepressible
mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in
sympathy.
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman
Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing."
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my
wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not
for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown
recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and
was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But
with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian
woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I
was going."
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced
softly along the road until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile,
was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some
indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched
her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning
on his writhing stick.
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the
very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is.
But--would your worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I
suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the
juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane"
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman
Brown.
"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying,
being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they
tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good
worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling."
"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here
is my staff, if you will."
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods
which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown
could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again,
beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited
for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and there was a world of
meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good
speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring
up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs,
which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely
withered and dried up as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace,
until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump
of a tree and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand.
What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to
heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?"
"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest
yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as
if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside,
applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what
calm sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely
and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal
himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him
thither, though now so happily turned from it.
On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly
as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of
the young man's hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular
spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small
boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint
gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown
alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head
as far as he durst without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he
could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and
Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination
or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination
dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the
Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.
Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion."
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we
shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on
through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.
Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young
Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint
and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting
whether there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it.
"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman
Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray,
a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The
blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping
swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and
doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of
towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met
at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct
were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the
sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a
young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some
favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and
sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the
forest mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through
the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his
breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices,
fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above
Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch
of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is
but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given."
And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his
staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to
walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length,
leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides
mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the
trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a
distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were
laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its
other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch,
come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You
may as well fear him as he fear you."
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of
Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied
gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own
shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his
course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks
and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at
the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard
the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many
voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The
verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the
sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried
out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one
extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some
rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines,
their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage
that had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully
illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light
arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and splendor,
appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others
which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded
pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there.
At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows,
a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who
trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the
obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church members of
Salem village famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and
waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with
these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy
virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all
mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good
shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among
their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native
forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined
to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the
chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final
peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the
howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and
according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines
threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth
and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it
spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
New England churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached the
congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked
in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him
to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of
despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat
one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized
his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female,
led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the
proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race. Ye have found
thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were seen;
the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed
them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of
righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded
elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how
many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers'
wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and
bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye
shall scent out all the places--whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime
has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty
blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than
human power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children,
look upon each other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and
the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its
despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now
are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome
again, my children, to the communion of your race."
"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of
wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water,
reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape
of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might
be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and
Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering
alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one."
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid calm
night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away through the forest. He
staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on
fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring
around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard
to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed,
on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon
Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open
window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who
had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith,
with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she
skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman
Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witchmeeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a
sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of
that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed
strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his
hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant
deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading
lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking
suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the
family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife,
and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse,
followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides
neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was
gloom.
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