Rutherford Mayne - "The Drone"

Moliere [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] - "Don Juan, ou le Festin de pierre"

Pierce Egan - "Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II."

Henry Woodcock - "The Hero of the Humber"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Mermaid

L >> Lily Dougall >> The Mermaid




"What is the matter? What are you turning off the road for?" Caius
shouted again, half dazed by his sleep and sudden awakening, and wholly
angry at the disagreeable situation. He was cold, his limbs almost numb,
and to his sleepy brain came the sudden remembrance of the round valleys
in the dune of which he had heard, and the person who lived in them.

His voice was inadequately loud. The ebullition of his rage evidently
amused O'Shea, for he laughed; and while Caius listened to his laughter
and succeeding words, it seemed to him that some spirit, not diabolic,
hovered near them in the air, for among the sounds of the rushing of the
wind and of the sea came the soft sound of another sort of laughter,
suppressed, but breaking forth, as if in spite of itself, with
irresistible amusement; and although Caius felt that it was indulged at
his own expense, yet he loved it, and would fain have joined in its
persuasive merriment. While the poetical part of him listened, trying to
catch this illusive sound, his more commonplace faculties were engaged
by the answer of O'Shea:

"It's just as ye loike, Mr. Doctor. You can go on towards The Cloud by
the beach if you've got cat's eyes, or if you can feel with your toes
where the quicksands loy; but the pony and me are going to take shelter
till the moon's up."

"Well, where are you going?" asked Caius. "Can't you tell me plainly? I
never heard of a horse that could climb a wall."

"And if the little beast is good-natured enough to do it for ye, it's as
shabby a trick as I know to keep him half-way up with the cart at his
back. He's a cliver little pony, but he's not a floy; and I never knew
that even a floy could stand on a wall with a cart and doctor's medicine
bags a-hanging on to it. G'tup!"

This last sound was addressed to the pony, which in the darkness began
once more its astonishing progress up the sand-hill.

The plea for mercy to the horse entered Caius' reason. The spirit-like
laughter had in some mysterious way soothed his heart. He stood still,
detaining O'Shea no longer, and dimly saw the horse and cart climb up
above him. O'Shea climbed first, for his tones were heard caressing and
coaxing the pony, which he led. Caius saw the cart, a black mass,
disappear over the top of the hill, which was here not more than twenty
feet high. When it was gone he could dimly descry a dark figure, which
he supposed to be the boy, standing on the top, as if waiting to see
what he would do; so, after holding short counsel with himself, he, too,
began to stagger upward, marvelling more and more at the feat of the
pony as he went, for though the precipice was not perpendicular, it had
this added difficulty, that all its particles shifted as they were
touched. There was, however, some solid substance underneath, for,
catching at the sand grasses, clambering rather than walking, he soon
found himself at the top, and would have fallen headlong if he had not
perceived that there was no level space by seeing the boy already
half-way down a descent, which, if it was unexpected, was less
precipitous, and composed of firmer ground. He heard O'Shea and the cart
a good way further on, and fancied he saw them moving. The boy, at
least, just kept within his sight; and so he followed down into a
hollow, where he felt crisp, low-growing herbage beneath his feet, and
by looking up at the stars he could observe that its sandy walls rose
all around him like a cup. On the side farthest from the sea the walls
of the hollow rose so high that in the darkness they looked like a
mountainous region.

They had gone down out of the reach of the gale; and although light airs
still blew about them, here the lull was so great that it seemed like
going out of winter into a softer clime.

When Caius came up with the cart he found that the traces had already
been unfastened and the pony set loose to graze.

"Is there anything for him to eat?" asked Caius curiously, glad also to
establish some friendly interchange of thought.

"One doesn't travel on these sands," said O'Shea, "with a horse that
can't feed itself on the things that grow in the sand. It's the first
necessary quality for a horse in these parts."

"What sort of things grow here?" asked Caius, pawing the ground with his
foot.

He could not quite get over the inward impression that the
mountainous-looking region of the dune over against them was towered
with infernal palaces, so weird was the place.

O'Shea's voice came out of the darkness; his form was hardly to be seen.

"Sit yourself down, Mr. Doctor, and have some bread and cheese--that is,
if ye've sufficiently forgotten the poies of the old maids. The things
that grow here are good enough to sit on, and that's all we want of
them, not being ponies."

The answer was once more an insult in its allusion to the pies (Caius
was again hungry), and in its refusal of simple information; but the
tone was more cheerful, and O'Shea had relaxed from his extreme brevity.
Caius sat down, and felt almost convivial when he found that a parcel of
bread and cheese and a huge bottle of cold tea were to be shared between
them. Either the food was perfect of its kind or his appetite good
sauce, for never had anything tasted sweeter than the meal. They all
three squatted in the darkness round the contents of the ample parcel,
and if they said little it was because they ate much.

Caius found by the light of a match that his watch told it was the hour
of seven; they had been at hard travel for more than four hours, and had
come to a bit of the beach which could not be traversed without more
light. In another hour the moon would be up and the horse rested.

When the meal was finished, each rested in his own way. O'Shea laid
himself flat upon his back, with a blanket over his feet. The boy
slipped away, and was not seen until the waving grass on the tops of the
highest dunes became a fringe of silver. Until then Caius paced the
valley, coming occasionally in contact with the browsing pony; but
neither his walk nor meditation was interrupted by more formidable
presence.

"Ay--ee--ho--ee--ho!" It was a rallying call, a shrill cry, from O'Shea.
It broke the silence the instant that the moon's first ray had touched
the dune. The man must have been lying looking at the highest head, for
when Caius heard the unexpected sound he looked round more than once
before he discovered its cause, and then knew that while he had been
walking the whole heaven and earth had become lighter by imperceptible
degrees. As he watched now, the momentary brightening was very
perceptible. The heights and shadows of the sand-hills stood out to
sight; he could see the line where the low herbage stopped and the
waving bent began. In the sky the stars faded in a pallid gulf of violet
light. The mystery of the place was less, its beauty a thousandfold
greater: and the beauty was still of the dream-exciting kind that made
him long to climb all its hills and seek in all its hollows, for there
are some scenes that, by their very contour, suggest more than they
display, and in which the human mind cannot rid itself of the notion
that the physical aspect is not all that there is to be seen. But
whatever the charm of the place, now that light had revealed it Caius
must leave it.

The party put themselves in line of march once more. The boy had gone on
up where the wall of the dell was lowest, and Caius tramped beside
O'Shea, who led the pony.

Once up from the hollow, their eyes were dazzled at first with the flash
of the moonlight upon the water. From the top of the sand ridge they
could see the sea out beyond the surf--a measureless purple waste on
which far breakers rose and blossomed for a moment like a hedge of
whitethorn in May, and sank again with a glint of black in the shadow of
the next uprising.

They went down once more where they could see nothing but the surf and
the sand-hills. The boy had walked far on; they saw his coated and
cowled figure swaying with the motion of his walk on the shining beach
in front. The tide was at its lowest. What the fishermen had said of it
was true: with the wind beating it up it had gone down but a third of
its rightful distance; and now the strip that it had to traverse to be
full again seemed alarmingly narrow, for a great part of their journey
was still to be made. The two men got up on the cart; the boy leaped up
when they reached him, before O'Shea could bring it to full stop for
him, and on they went. Even the pony seemed to realize that there was
need of haste.

They had travelled about two miles more when, in front of them, a cape
of rock was seen jutting across the beach, its rocky headland stretching
far into the sea. Caius believed that the end of their journey was near;
he looked eagerly at the new land, and saw that there were houses upon
the top of the cliff. It seemed unnecessary even to ask if this was
their destination. Secure in his belief, he willingly got off the cart
at the base of the cliff, and trudged behind it, while O'Shea drove up a
track in the sand which had the similitude of a road; rough, soft,
precipitous as it was, it still bore tracks of wheels and feet, where
too far inland to be washed by the waves. The sight of them was like the
sight of shore to one who has been long at sea. They went up to the back
of the cliff, and came upon its high grassy top; the road led through
where small houses were thickly clustered on either side. Caius looked
for candle, or fire, or human being, and saw none, and they had not
travelled far along the street of this lifeless village when he saw that
the road led on down the other side of the headland, and that the beach
and the dune stretched ahead of them exactly as they stretched behind.

"Is this a village of the dead?" he asked O'Shea.

The man O'Shea seemed to have in him some freak of perverseness which
made it hard for him to answer the simplest question. It was almost by
force that Caius got from him the explanation that the village was only
used during certain fishing seasons, and abandoned during the
winter--unless, indeed, its houses were broken into by shipwrecked
sailors, whose lives depended upon finding means of warmth.

The cart descended from the cliff by the same sandy road, and the pony
again trotted upon the beach; its trot was deceptive, for it had the
appearance of making more way than it did. On they went--on, on, over
this wonderful burnished highroad which the sea and the moonlight had
laid for their travel. Behind and before, look as they would, they could
see only the weird white hills of sand, treeless, almost shadowless now,
the seahorses foaming and plunging in endless line, and between them the
road, whose apparent narrowing in the far perspective was but an emblem
of the truth that the waves were encroaching upon it inch by inch.




CHAPTER V.

DEVILRY.


When the cart and its little company had travelled for almost another
hour, a dark object in the midst of the line of foam caught their sight.
It was the boy who first saw it, and he suddenly leaned forward,
clutching O'Shea's arm as if in fear.

The man looked steadily.

"She's come in since we passed here before."

The boy apparently said something, although Caius could not catch the
voice.

"No," said O'Shea; "there's cargo aboard of her yit, but the men are off
of her."

It was a black ship that, sailless and with masts pitifully aslant, was
fixed on the sand among the surf, and the movement of the water made her
appear to labour forward as if in dying throes making effort to reach
the shore.

The boy seemed to scan the prospect before him now far more eagerly than
before; but the wreck, which was, as O'Shea said, deserted, seemed to be
the only external object in all that gleaming waste. They passed on,
drawing up for a minute near her at the boy's instigation, and scanning
her decks narrowly as they were washed by the waves, but there was no
sign of life. Before they had gone further Caius caught sight of the
dark outline of another wreck; but this one was evidently of some weeks'
standing, for the masts were gone and the hulk half broken through.
There was still another further out. The mere repetition of the sad
story had effect to make the scene seem more desolate. It seemed as if
the sands on which they trod must be strewed with the bleached skeletons
of sailors, and as if they embedded newly-buried corpses in their
breast. The sandhills here were higher than they had been before, and
there were openings between them as if passages led into the interior
valleys, so that Caius supposed that here in storms or in flood-tides
the waves might enter into the heart of the dune.

They had not travelled far beyond the first and nearest wreck, when the
monotony of their journey was broken by a sudden strange excitement
which seized on them all, and which Caius, although he felt it, did not
at once understand.

The pony was jerked back by the reins which O'Shea held, then turned
staggering inland, and lashed forward by the whip, used for the first
time that day. Caius, jerked against the side of the cart, lifted up a
bruised head, gazing in wonder to see nothing in the path; but he saw
that the boy had sprung lightly from the cart, and was standing higher
up on the sand, his whole attitude betraying alarm as he gazed
searchingly at the ground.

In a moment the pony reared and plunged, and then uttered a cry almost
human in its fear. Then came the sensation of sinking, sinking with the
very earth itself. O'Shea had jumped from the cart and cut the traces.
Caius was springing out, and felt his spring guided by a hand upon his
arm. He could not have believed that the boy had so much strength, yet,
with a motion too quick for explaining words, he was guided to a certain
part of the sand, pushed aside like a child to be safe, while the boy
with his next agile movement tugged at the portmanteaus that contained
the medical stores, and flung them at Caius' feet.

It was a quicksand. The pony cried again--cried to them for help. Caius
next found himself with O'Shea holding the creature's head, and aiding
its mad plunging, even while his own feet sank deeper and deeper. There
was a moment when they all three plunged forward together, and then the
pony threw itself upon its side, by some wild effort extricating its
feet, and Caius, prone upon the quivering head, rolled himself and
dragged it forward. Then he felt strong hands lifting him and the horse
together.

What seemed strangest to Caius, when he could look about and think, was
that he had now four companions--the boy, O'Shea, and two other men,
coated and muffled--and that the four were all talking together eagerly
in a language of which he did not understand a word.

He shook the wet sand from his clothes; his legs and arms were wet. The
pony stood in an entrance to a gap in the sand-hills, quivering and
gasping, but safe, albeit with one leg hurt. The cart had sunk down till
its flat bottom lay on the top of the quicksand, and there appeared to
float, for it sunk no further. A white cloud that had winged its way up
from the south-west now drifted over the moon, and became black except
at its edges. The world grew much darker, and it seemed colder, if that
were possible.

It soon occurred to Caius that the two men now added to their party had
either met O'Shea by appointment, or had been lying in wait for the
cart, knowing that the quicksand was also waiting to engulf it. It
appeared to him that their motives must be evil, and he was not slow to
suspect O'Shea of being in some plot with them. He had, of course, money
upon him, enough certainly to attract the cupidity of men who could
seldom handle money, and the medical stores were also convertible into
money. It struck him now how rash he had been to come upon this lonely
drive without any assurance of O'Shea's respectability.

These thoughts came to him because he almost immediately perceived that
he was the subject of conversation. It seemed odd to stand so near them
and not understand a word they said. He heard enough now to know the
language they were speaking was the patois that, in those parts, is the
descendant of the Jersey French. These men, then, were Acadians--the boy
also, for he gabbled freely to them. Either they had sinister designs on
him, or he was an obstruction to some purpose that they wished to
accomplish. This was evident now from their tones and gestures. They
were talking most vehemently about him, especially the boy and O'Shea,
and it was evident that these two disagreed, or at least could not for
some time agree, as to what was to be his fate.

Caius was defenceless, for so peaceful was the country to which he was
accustomed that he carried no weapon. He took his present danger little
to heart. There was a strange buoyancy--born, no doubt, of the bracing
wind--in his spirit. If they were going to kill him--well, he would die
hard; and a man can but die once. A laugh arose from the men; it
sounded to him as strange a sound, for the time and place, as the almost
human cry of the horse a few minutes before. Then O'Shea came towards
him with menacing gestures. The two men went back into the gap of the
sand-hills from whence they must have come.

"Look here," said O'Shea roughly, "do ye value your life?"

"Certainly."

Caius folded his arms, and made this answer with well-bred contempt.

"And ye shall have your life, but on one condition. Take out of your
bags what's needed for dealing with the sick this noight, for there's a
dying man ye must visit before ye sleep, and the condition is that ye
walk on to The Cloud by yourself on this beach without once looking
behoind ye. Moind what I say! Ye shall go free--yerself, yer money, and
yer midicines--if ye walk from here to the second house that is a
loighthouse without once turning yer head or looking behoind ye." He
pointed to the bags with a gesture of rude authority. "Take out what ye
need, and begone!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort," replied Caius, his arms still folded.

The boy had come near enough to hear what was said, but he did not
interfere.

"And why not?" asked O'Shea, a jeer in his tones.

"Because I would not trust one of you not to kill me as soon as my back
was turned."

"And if your back isn't turned, and that pretty quick, too, ye'll not
live many hours."

"I prefer to die looking death in the face; but it'll be hard for the
man who attempts to touch me."

"Oh! ye think ye'll foight for it, do ye?" asked O'Shea lightly; "but
ye're mistaken there--the death ye shall doie will admit of no foighting
on your part."

"There is something more in all this business than I understand." Apart
from the question whether he should die or live, Caius was puzzled to
understand why his enemies had themselves fallen foul of the quicksand,
or what connection the accident could have with the attack upon his
life. "There is more in this than I understand," he repeated loudly.

"Just so," replied O'Shea, imperturbable; "there is more than ye can
understand, and I offer ye a free passage to a safe place. Haven't ye
wits enough about ye to take it and be thankful?"

"I will not turn my back." Caius reiterated his defiance.

"And ye'll stroike out with yer fist at whatever comes to harm ye? Will
ye hit in the face of the frost and the wind if ye're left here to
perish by cold, with your clothes wet as they are? or perhaps ye'll come
to blows with the quicksand if half a dozen of us should throw ye in
there."

"There are not half a dozen of you," he replied scornfully.

"Come and see." O'Shea did not offer to touch him, but he began to walk
towards the opening in the dune, and dragged Caius after him by mere
force of words. "Come and see for yourself. What are ye afraid of, man?
Come! if ye want to look death in the face, come and see what it is
ye've got to look at."

Caius followed reluctantly, keeping his own distance. O'Shea passed the
shivering pony, and went into the opening of the dune, which was now all
in shadow because of the black cloud in the sky. Inside was a small
valley. Its sand-banks might have been made of bleached bones, they
looked so gray and dead. Just within the opening was an unexpected
sight--a row of hooded and muffled figures stood upright in the sand.
There was something appalling in the sight to Caius. Each man was placed
at exactly the same distance from his fellow; they seemed to stand with
heads bowed, and hands clasped in front of their breasts; faces and
hands, like their forms, were hooded and muffled. Caius did not think,
or analyze his emotion. No doubt the regular file of the men, suggesting
discipline which has such terrible force for weal or woe, and their
attitudes, suggesting motives and thoughts of which he could form not
the faintest explanation, were the two elements which made the scene
fearful to him.

O'Shea stopped a few paces from the nearest figure, and Caius stopped a
few paces nearer the opening of the dune.

"Ye see these men?" said O'Shea.

Caius did not answer.

O'Shea raised his voice:

"I say before them what I have said, that if ye'll swear here before
heaven, as a man of honour, that ye'll walk from here to the loighthouse
on The Cloud--which ye shall find in the straight loine of the
beach--without once turning yer head or looking behoind ye, neither man
nor beast nor devil shall do ye any hurt, and yer properties shall be
returned to ye when a cart can be got to take them. Will ye swear?"

Caius made no answer. He was looking intently. As soon as the tones of
O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as
the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the
surf and the wind might have been sweeping the dunes alone.

"And if I will not swear?" asked Caius, in a voice that was loud enough
to reach to the last man in the long single rank.

O'Shea stepped nearer him, and, as if in pretence of wiping his face
with his gloved hand, he sent him a hissing whisper that gave a sudden
change of friendliness and confidence to his voice, "Don't be a fool!
swear it."

"Are these men, or are they corpses?" asked Caius.

The stillness of the forms before him became an almost unendurable
spectacle.

He had no sooner spoken than O'Shea appealed to the men, shouting words
in the queer guttural French. And Caius saw the first man slowly raise
his hand as if in an attitude of oath-taking, and the second man did
likewise. O'Shea turned round and faced him, speaking hastily. The
shadow of the cloud was sending dark shudderings of lighter and darker
shades across the sand hollow, and these seemed almost like a visible
body of the wind that with searching blast drifted loose sand upon them
all. With the sweep of the shadow and the wind, Caius saw the movement
of the lifted hand go down the line.

"I lay my loife upon it," said O'Shea, "that if ye'll say on yer honour
as a man, and as a gintleman, that ye'll not look behoind ye, ye shall
go scot-free. It's a simple thing enough; what harm's there in it?"

The boy had come near behind Caius. He said one soft word, "Promise!" or
else Caius imagined he said it. Caius knew at least what the boy wished
him to do.

The pony moved nearer, shivering with cold, and Caius realized that the
condition of wet and cold in which they were need not be prolonged.

"I promise," he shouted angrily, "and I'll keep the promise, whatever
infernal reason there may be for it; but if I'm attacked from
behind----" He added threats loud and violent, for he was very angry.

Before he had finished speaking--the thought might have been brought by
some movement in the shadow of the cloud, and by the sound of the wind,
or by his heated brain--but the thought came to him that O'Shea, under
his big fur-coat, had indulged in strange, harsh laughter.

Caius cared nothing. He had made his decision; he had given his word; he
had no thought now but to take what of his traps he could carry and be
gone on his journey.




CHAPTER VI.

THE SEA-MAID.


Caius understood that he had still three miles of the level beach to
tread. At first he hardly felt the sand under his feet, they were so
dead with cold. The spray from the roaring tide struck his face
sideways. He had time now to watch each variation, each in and out of
the dune, and he looked at them eagerly, as the only change that was
afforded to the monotony. Then for the first time he learned how
completely a man is shut out from all one half of the world by the
simple command not to look behind him, and all the unseen half of his
world became rife, in his thought, with mysterious creatures and their
works. At first he felt that he was courting certain death by keeping
the word he had given; in the clap of the waves he seemed to hear the
pistol-shot that was to be his doom, or the knife-like breath of the
wind seemed the dagger in the hand of a following murderer. But as he
went on and no evil fate befell, his fear died, and only curiosity
remained--a curiosity so lively that it fixed eagerly upon the stretch
of the surf behind him, upon his own footsteps left on the soft sand,
upon the sand-hills that he had passed, although they were almost the
same as the sand-hills that were before. It would have been a positive
joy to him to turn and look at any of these things. While his mind
dwelt upon it, he almost grudged each advancing step, because it put
more of the interesting world into the region from which he was shut out
as wholly as if a wall of separation sprang up between the behind and
before.

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