The Purple Pterodactyls

The Yellow Man

The yellow man said: "And what, Monsieur, are you doing, moving into my house?"

I had rented the station wagon in Fort-de-France and driven out to the place I had taken. I, my wife, and three children were carrying suitcases, dress bags, cameras, and other gear into the house when this man appeared in the driveway.

Something told me at once that he spelled trouble. He was about of my height, but slender, with a yellow-tan skin and curly rather than kinky hair. Before such people became hypersensitive about the term, we used to call them mulattoes.

"Your house?" I said, putting down the two suitcases. "Excuse me, Monsieur, but is this not the house of Marcel Argenton?"

"Technically, it is," he replied. My family, also, had put down their burdens to listen. "But Monsieur Argenton has rented it to me for the summer."

"There must be some mistake," I said. "Monsieur Argenton has rented the house to me for the next three weeks. I can show you the lease."

"Me also, I could show you the lease if I had it with me. I rented the house only the past week, through the agent Privas, in Fort-de-France."

"Ah," I said, "that explains it. I met Monsieur Argenton in the United States, three months past. I rented the house from him directly, and I suppose he forgot to cancel his listing with the local agent. I regret to cause you of the trouble."

"You will not cause me of the trouble, Monsieur. On the contrary, it is I who must excuse myself for dispossessing you."

This was going to be sticky. Luckily, I outweighed the man by twenty pounds and was in good condition for a man of sedentary occupation. I put on my fighting face.

"You will not dispossess me, Monsieur," I said. "I am here; my lease antedates yours; and here I stay."

The man started to say something, then jerked his head around as another appeared. This was a stocky, muscular, black Martiniquais in shabby shirt, pants, sandals, and a big straw hat with a wide, unbound brim. He parked his bicycle, looked from one to the other, and said:

"Which of you gentlemen is the Monsieur Nevuree?"

"I think that you mean me, Wilson Newbury," I said. "Are you Jacques Lecouvreur, from Schoelcher?"

"Yes, Monsieur. Monsieur Argenton arranged that I should work for you."

"That's good, Jacques. Please, help the family to carry this baggage into the house."

"Lecouvreur!" said the yellow man sharply. "Knowest thou who I am?" He used the familiar form.

Jacques Lecouvreur looked puzzled. "Are you—are you that Haitian gentleman, Monsieur Duchamps?"

"C'est moi, donc. Now tell Monsieur Newbury that, when I demand that he retire and leave the house to me, who has a valid lease on it, he would do better to comply."

Jacques's eyes grew large. "Oh, Monsieur Newbury, this is a bad business! He can make of the trouble for you."

"1 have known of the trouble before," I said. "Carry that baggage into the house, Jacques. Go on, Denise; go on, kids. Take the stuff in."

Duchamp's lips tightened; he took a step toward me, with a malevolent look in his eyes. I stood my ground. After a silent minute of confrontation, Duchamps said: "You will regret this, Monsieur." He turned and walked away down the drive.

As soon as we were settled, I called Jacques Lecouvreur aside. I had met Marcel Argenton, a white Martiniquais, at a banker's convention in New York. Learning that he was from Martinque, I expressed a wish to spend a vacation there. He explained that he planned to go to France for the month of June—something to do with exports of sugar — and that I might rent his house, near the shore between Fort-de-France and Schoelcher, during that time.

Argenton had also arranged for Jacques Lecouvreur to work for me. Jacques was a fisherman of Schoelcher, but he wanted the job to get money for an outboard motor. I asked Jacques:

"What's all this about Duchamps? Who or what is he?'

Jacques gave a little shiver. "I do not know, Monsieur. I know nothing at all."

"Oh yes, you know! Allons, open up."

With a little gentle arm-twisting, I got it out of him: "He is Oreste Duchamps, a big quimboiseur from Haiti."

"A what?" the word was strange to me.

"You know, Monsieur, a houngan; a bocor. What you would call a sorcier."

"Oh, a sorcerer! A priest of voodoo, hein?"

"Ah, no, Monsieur. Respectable followers of vodun will have nothing to do with him. Me, I am good Catholic; but not all partisans of vodun are so wicked as the priests would like us to think. But Monsieur Duchamps has his own following. He is trying to bring all the bourhousses of the island under his control. He is a bad one to mock oneself of."

I sighed. Although I am no more psychic than Paddy's pig, I seem to draw such people as garbage draws flies.

We spent the rest of the day at moving in and setting up. During this time, we drove Jacques to the village of Schoelcher, named for a man instrumental in freeing the slaves in 1848. Denise laid in a stock of food.

While she shopped, Jacques showed me his boat, the St. Timothee, drawn up on the beach with a score of others. They were narrow, sharp-ended craft, with the peculiar projectng keel found in Caribbean fishing boats. This keel sticks out beyond the stem like the ram of a battleship of 1900. Nearly all the boats had good Catholic names—St. Pierre, St. Jean, Sainte Famille—but one fisherman, evidently a Muslim, defiantly called his boat the Inchallah.

Jacques explained how he meant to attach the motor. He spoke volubly but mostly in such Strong Créole that the meaning passed me by. Denise claims to understand it, but she is a Frenchwoman born and thus familiar with at least some French dialects. Still, Jacques had given much thought to the motor, comparing models and taking measurements.

Having promised us a cook, he went away and came back with a huge, shapeless, scowling mass of black fat, with her belongings tied up in a flour sack. She wore one of those turbans they make by folding a bandana around a cap of newspaper, with the points sticking up. Jacques introduced her as Mme. Claudine Boussac. We squeezed her into the station wagon and drove back to Argenton's house.

I was not prepossessed by Claudine's looks. Nonetheless, after our servantless life in the land of the free, it seemed like an almost indecent luxury to have people to fetch and carry for very modest wages. I felt a little guilty about such economic imperialism. It was made possible by the fact that, despite some progress, most of the folk of these isles of the Spanish Main were still dirt poor. But then, if I did not hire Jacques and did the fetching and carrying myself, poor Jacques could not buy the outboard motor on which his heart was set.

When evening came, Claudine was rattling about the kitchen. Denise and I were enjoying daiquiris on the verandah; any liquor but rum is sky-high in Martinique. We were admiring the blaze of the hibiscus and bouganvillia, sniffing the aroma of a million blossoms, and watching the lizards scuttle, when the drumming began.

It was a dry, metallic tap-tap-tappety-tap, as if someone were hitting an empty kerosene can. It did not seem to come from any particular direction. I wondered if some of the locals had gotten up a steel band, on the Trinidadian model, and were practicing on their tuned oil drums.

Jacques came out on the porch to tell us that dinner was ready. The he froze, bug-eyed and slack-mouthed. If he could have turned pale, I am sure he would have.

"Come on, Jacques!" I said.

"Those drums," he said, almost in a whisper. "That is the deed of Monsieur Duchamps."

"Eh bien? No one has ever died of a little drumming."

"If that were all—" he said, and finished with a Créole sentence that I missed.

We had seen something of Fort-de-France; besides, that city, lying in a bowl of surrounding hills, gets uncomfortably hot in summer. So next day we drove in the other direction, to St. Pierre and Mt. Pelée. You cannot appreciate what a huge thing this mile-high "Bald Mountain" is until you have seen it looming, its summit hidden in condensation clouds.

We stopped at St. Pierre, a narrow, crescent-shaped town built on a slope arising from the shore. Clumps of pale-green banana trees grew on the adjacent slopes. Once the island's main city, St. Pierre is now hardly more than a village. There are still Pompeii-like ruins left over from the great eruption of 1902. We poked around these and went through the museum, viewing the samples of glassware and metallic objects fused into lumps by the heat of the death cloud.

"But," said daughter Héloise, "if the volcano was erupting for a week before the disaster, why didn't the people get away?"

"It was the governor, Louis Mouttet," I said. "Although he was appointed by Paris, they had a local legislature, and an election was coming up. The Liberals represented the white planter class, who had all the money; the Radicals were mostly Negroes, who had the numbers. The governor, who backed the Liberals, feared that any public disturbance might lose the election for them."

"You sound like a Communist," said little Priscille. "Bankers aren't supposed to talk that way."

"Never mind how bankers are supposed to talk. That's what happened. Anyway, those caste distinctions have pretty well broken down by now."

"So Mouttet opposed any plan for evacuation. He even posted soldiers on the road to Fort-de-France to turn back fugitives. Then, at eight o'clock on the morning of May eighth, 1902, off she went. Wiped out thirty-odd thousand people in a few minutes. The only survivor in the main part of town was a condemned murderer in an underground cell. Men didn't beat that record until they got the atomic bomb."

"What happened to the governor?" asked Stephen.

"Nobody knows. He was in St. Pierre at the time, but they never found his body."

We returned in the late afternoon. The roads were fairly good as to surface, having little heavy truck traffic and no freezing winters to tear them up. They are, however, the most hair-raising roads I have ever driven.

On the way back from St. Pierre, the road goes down a slope that calls for low gear to avoid burning your brakes. Then it turns sharply to the left. If you miss the turn, you go right on down into the blue Caribbean, hundreds of feet below. A heavy steel guard rail at the turn had been pushed over and squashed flat; somebody had not made it. I see why they have no roller coasters in Fort-de-France. With the local roads, who needs them?

At cocktail time, the drumming began again. Jacques came out in even greater agitation.

"Monsieur Newbury!" he said. "Look what I have found under the house!"

He held out the separated parts of a little bird: the head, the wings, and the legs.

"That's a lugubrious thing to show at meal time," I said. "What in the name of God is it?"

"It is a wanga, Monsieur."

"You mean some sort of bad-luck charm? What about it?"

"It appeared under the house. I do not know how it arrived there; I have been working around the place all day. But there it was."

"Eh bien, put it in the garbage can."

Jacques sighted. "I wish you well, Monsieur, but I do not know if—" The rest was Créole.

That night, I dreamed I was walking a street in St. Pierre as it was before the eruption. The sun had risen some time before, but the town was so blanketed with black smoke that it was almost as dark as night.

A few others were up and about. Their footsteps made no sound, because of a layer of dark-gray, powdery volcanic ash, several centimeters deep, which covered the streets. I doubt if I could have heard them anyway, over the roar of the volcano. It was eight kilometers away but loomed huge—such of it as could be seen through the murk—even at that distance. The roaring was punctuated by explosions; boulder-sized lava bombs crashed down on the houses.

Then the people in the street were crying out and pointing towards Pelee. An enormous cloud, distinct from the general pall of smoke, had appeared on the side of the mountain. It was a bright, incandescent red, and black around the edges. That is, the interior was red-hot and the surface black. One could see the redness, mottled and shifting, through this black integument.

This ameboid, fiery blob moved swiftly down the mountainside towards the city, flowing over intervening ridges and growing ever larger. I knew what it was: a mixture of incandescent gas and volcanic dust. The high temperature kept it churning, so that the dust could not settle out. At the same time, the dust gave the mass a specific gravity higher than that of air, so the cloud slid down the slope at turnpike speed.

In a few minutes, the red cloud reached the upper parts of the city. The heat became blistering. Buildings in the path of the cloud burst into flame, as if they were paper houses doused with gasoline and ignited.

The cloud slowed up as it reached the lower town, where the slope was less steep. All of a sudden, the streets were full of people running and screaming with their clothes afire. Some fell and lay writhing. Some, left naked by the burning of their garments, burst open. Can you imagine the sight of hundreds running and being burned alive at the same time? Their shrieks merged into a continuous ululation, audible even over the roar from the mountain. My own clothes smoldered and started to burn ...

"Wake up, Willy!" cried Denise, shaking me, "What is it?"

I groggily rubbed the sleep from my eyes and told her.

"No wonder you screamed!" she said. "Now go back to sleep, darling. You are safe here."

The appalling sight I had seen, however, kept me awake for an hour. When I did get to sleep, there I was, back in St. Pierre a few minutes before the eruption. Again the great red cloud of death oozed out of the mountain. While one part of me realized that this was a dream, the rest of me went through all the emotions of a victim, until my shrieks again led Denise to awaken me. I got no more sleep that night.

We spent the next day on Argenton's private little stretch of beach of black volcanic sand. I brought along a pocket timer to make sure that nobody stayed too long in one position in the bright Caribbean sun. But I got drowsy myself, went to sleep on my belly without setting the timer, and woke an hour later with a burned back.

That evening, the drums were at it again. I asked Jacques: "Any more wangas today?"

"No, Monsieur. But do you do well? I heard you call out in the night."

"Just a bad dream, from reading too much about Mt. Pelée."

Jacques looked sorrowful. "I tell you, Monsieur, that Duchamps is a bad man to cross."

"That's his problem."

"If you say it, Monsieur."

That night, I dreamed I was back in St. Pierre again, on that fatal morning in 1902.

"Willy," said Denise, "we must do something about this. A middle-aged man cannot go without sleeping, night after night."

"Okay; I'll see a doctor. We were going to Fort-de-France anyway."

We had one minor set-to with our undergraduate older daughter. She wanted to visit the city in what was then the new uniform of rebellious youth: ragged blue jeans and a man's shirt tied up to expose the midriff. (The youth revolt had just come to a boil in the United States.) Denise and I stood firm, insisting that such scruffy garb was unbecoming to foreigners in a French city.

"Even if they're black," I said, "these people are just as French as the white Frenchmen of France. Same virtues, same faults. One thing they don't like is for outsiders to come in and throw their weight around."

Héloise gave in, put on a dress, and sulked for a couple of hours.

Fort-de-France is a bustling, businesslike place, with little tropical languor. We took one another's pictures standing before the statue of the Empress Josephine; having been born there, she is the leading ikon of Martinique. We toured through the Museum of Fort St. Louis, ate a huge but delicious French restaurant lunch, and shopped. At least, the girls shopped. Stephen and I wearily stood or sat, save when Stephen bought one of those strange, cartwheel-shaped straw hats they wear on Guadeloupe.

After Denise had, with a few well-chosen French words, verbally beheaded a snippy black salesgirl in M. Alfred Reynard's perfumery shop, we hunted up a physician listed in the international medical directory. He gave me a phial of sleeping pills.

"If it marches not," he said, "come back and we will try something else."

We had a fine dinner at The Hippopotamus. I said: "If I eat here very often, I'll begin to look like a hippo myself."

Back at the Argenton house, Jacques had left, to bike back to Schoelcher and his family. The next day, Sunday, he had off.

Jacques Lecouvreur seemed a good man and not unintelligent, but Claudine left much to be desired. She was a sullen slattern, who drank a lot and cooked badly. When Denise, with the proper French reverence for food, gave her instructions, she listened dumbly and then went on doing exactly as before. Héloise, full of what she thought were advanced ideas, explained Claudine's behavior as a case of colonial neurosis, brought on by capitalistic exploitation. I, however, think Claudine would have been the same anywhere.

We had drums that evening, but, thanks to the pills of Monsieur le médecin, no more dreams. Nor did I suffer any Sunday night, either.

Monday morning, we were loading the car for an expedition to the church of Sacre' Coeur de Montmartre de Balata and to Morne Rouge, when Oreste Duchamps again materialized in our driveway. He gave a strained little smile and polite greeting.

"Does all go well with you, Monsieur?" he said.

"Very well, thank you."

"Have you decided to leave?"

"At the end of my three weeks, Monsieur; not before."

"You have not been incommoded by any—ah—psychic manifestations?"

"No, Monsieur, I have not. To what do you refer? Do you know something special?"

He shrugged. "There are rumors, such as the recent one of the phantom of Louis Mouttet. But we, as civilized men, dismiss them as the idle superstition. Still, I asked myself."

"Well, you may cease to concern yourself, Monsieur. All marches well."

He growled something about "batards blancs" and walked off.

That evening, Claudine came out on the porch with another wanga, made of parts of a rat.

"Bad place," she said. "I think you better go."

At least, that is what I think she said. Jacques could speak français ordinaire when he put his mind to it, but Claudine had only Créole.

That night, Denise and I were just going into our bedroom, when she said: "What is that on the floor? A piece of old rope—"

Her words were cut off as I grabbed her and swung her around behind me. In the gloom of Argenton's inadequate electric lighting, I saw the rope move. It whipped into a spiral coil and drew back its head to strike.

"Snake!" I said. "Get me a broom, quick!"

Then it was simply a matter of whacking the reptile with the broom handle until it was dead, despite its efforts to strike.

The snake was a fer-de-lance about a meter long, brown with black diamond-shaped markings like those of a rattlesnake. It had the wide, heart-shaped head of the rattlesnakes and all the other pit vipers.

"Monsieur Duchamps doesn't give up easily," I said. "I'll try the cops."

Next morning, I drove into Fort-de-France and stopped at the nearest police station. I brought the battered carcass of the fer-de-lance in a paper bag. The man on the desk referred me to a brigadier or sergeant of police, Hippolyte Frot.

Sergeant Frot was a big black man, as tall as I, younger, and heavier, with the beginnings of a paunch. I told him my tale, and he examined the snake in a relaxed and genial manner.

"They have become rare since the introduction of the mongoose," he said. "The only time we see them is when some peasant brings one down from the hills, to stage a snake-and-mongoose fight. Some like them better than cockfights."

That is not what my biologist friends at the Museum of Natural Science tell me. They say the mongoose generally avoids the pit vipers, whose strike is much faster than a cobra's. Instead, the mongoose have wrought such havoc among the West Indian birds, lizards, and other small game, not to mention the farmers' chickens, that on some islands the bounty has been taken off the snakes and put on the mongoose instead. Still, I was not going to argue the matter with Frot.

"About this Duchamps," he went on, "you understand, Monsieur Newbury, that we have the freedom of religion here. If Duchamps wants to proselyte his primitive polytheism, that is his affair, so long as he behaves himself. Such superstitions are all but extinct on this island, anyway."

West Indians like to deny that there is any voodoo left, at least on whatever island the speaker belongs to. Other islands may still have it, he says; but not his, which is much too advanced and cultured.

"On the other hand," continued Frot, "we must not forget the mission civilizatrice of France. This demands that things be done in an orderly, civilized manner. If the cult of Duchamps creates disturbances or introduces serpents into houses, we shall have to take stern action. But please remember that, from what you have told me, we have no evidence that the serpent did not crawl into your house on its own initiative. We could not arrest Duchamps on any such accusation.

"Permit me to suggest that you leave the remains of the serpent with me. I shall assign men to look in on the house of Monsieur Argenton from time to time. If there are any further manifestations, be sure to let me know. What is your telephone number?"

"There is no telephone. I came here to get away from such trammels of civilization."

Frot chuckled. "But now it seems a less admirable idea, hein? I have seen it before. We find that the oars of civilization raise blisters on our hands and cause our back muscles to ache. So we cast them away. Then we find that the current carries our little boat towards the cascade. So we try to snatch the oars back, if they nave not drifted out of reach. Anyway, you have an automobile, so keep me informed."

For several days, there were no more manifestations, save for the nightly serenades of the drummers. The children caught on, as children will, despite Denise's and my efforts not to discuss the matter before them. Stephen, who had been writing notes for a high-school paper on Martinque, which he meant to present next fall, said:

"If this Duchamps gives any more trouble, Dad, why don't you shoot him and claim self-defense?"

"First," I said, "because I don't have a gun; and second, because the law wouldn't recognize an attack by witchcraft as a legitimate excuse for killing anybody."

Héloise said: "They'd convict him of murder, stupid, and cut off his head with a guillotine."

"Gee!" cried Priscille. "Wouldn't that be something to see? Of course, we'd miss you, Dad."

"Thanks," I said. "Actually, they don't use the guillotine here. They hang miscreants."

"Why?" asked Stephen.

"They tried a guillotine during the French Revolution, but it didn't work. The dampness warped the wooden uprights, so the slicer tended to stick on the way down. Sometimes the poor fellow's head would be cut only half off."

"Nowadays you could use a steel or aluminum frame—" began Stephen.

"What a conversation for breakfast!" said Denise.

"Oh," said Priscille, "I like a little blood and gore with my meals."

At cocktail time, Denise said: "Willy, we must get rid of that Claudine. She does nothing right, and I cannot teach her. I had a hundred times rather cook myself than to spend hours trying to beat sense into her thick head."

Jacques Lecouvreur overheard. He said: "Pardon me, Monsieur and Madame. Please do not do that."

"And why not, if we choose?" said Denise with hauteur.

"She would put a curse on the house. She is in with the bourhousses."

"Oh?" said I. "Then why did you hire her for us, Jacques?"

"Please, Monsieur, I did not know then. I am very sorry. I found out later that she has the power. If she cursed the house, not even a good Catholic exorcism could lift it. You would have to hire a team of chango dancers to drive out the evil spirits, and all the troupes hereabouts are under the control of Monsieur Duchamps."

"She is hardly the species of person we want for our cook," I said. "She might poison us. In fact, I sometimes suspect that she has been trying to do just that."

"I know, Monsieur, I know. But, if you dismiss her, I must go, too."

"Why? We don't want to lose you, Jacques."

"You do not understand, Monsieur. If she put a curse on this house, the misfortunes of those who stayed would descend on me, also. I must consider my family."

"We'll think it over," I said.

As often happens, we thought it over so long that we finally decided, tacitly, that with only a week more to stay, there was no use in stirring up unpleasantness. Besides, we had taken to driving in to Fort-de-France for dinner at The Hippopotamus, the Chez Etienne, and other establishments.

The drumming continued, becoming ever louder and more insistent. One morning, Jacques said:

"Monsieur, I have a message from Monsieur Duchamps. It was circulated to me through Claudine."

"Well?"

"He says that this is your last chance. If you have not departed by the fall of the night, he will not be responsible for your safety."

"Kind of him," I said. "Tell him that, while I regret the withdrawal of his protection, I shall have to manage the best possible."

"He also spoke a Créole proverb: 'Fer couper fer.' Do you understand, Monsieur?"

"I think he meant: 'Iron to cut iron,' or 'Extreme cases demand extreme remedies.' Right?"

"Oui. And, oh, there is one more thing." Jacques fidgeted, then brought out the hand he had held behind him. It gripped a human skull, minus the mandible and most of the teeth. "I found this on the sill of the door this morning."

I examined the skull. "Another wanga?"

Jacques frowned thoughtfully. "Not exactly, Monsieur. A veritable wanga is made of the parts of a bird or an animal, according to a formula. It is sung and danced over in a certain way, to reduce the spirits to one's service. This is more a simple warning gesture. I think I know where it came from."

"Where?"

"There is a beach on Guadeloupe where, they say, long ago the English and French soldiers killed in fighting the Caribs are buried. Now the sea is eroding it, and one can find all the bones and skulls one wants."

"Put it on the mantelpiece," I said. "I may take it home with me."

Jacques departed, shaking his head at the whims of these crazy Americans.

I drove into Fort-de-France to see my philosophical sergeant. Frot said: "We still have nothing to go on. This obeah man has been careful not to utter legally actionable threats—"

"Obeah man?" I said. "I thought Obeah was the Jamaican variety of vodun."

Frot smiled. "You do not know that there has been an ecumenical movement among the Afro-Caribbean supernaturalists. The obeah men, the houngans, and the quimboiseurs assemble in councils, to debate whether Obboney or Damballah shall be considered the number one god, or whether they are but different names for the same being. They have the same trouble in finding common ground that Christians have had under similar circumstances. But, despite some fierce theological disputes, they seem to be hammering out some species of unity. So the old distinctions no longer apply.

"We will, however, try to keep your section under closer surveillance. Be sure to report to me anything that could form the ground of a formal complaint."

"Thank you, Sergeant," I said. "You're very kind."

"It's nothing. It is just that I am enchanted to meet an American who speaks the good French. You know, your compatriots come here, counting on everyone to know their own language; and when people do not, they shout at them in an uncivilized manner. Bonne chance, Monsieur."

We put in a strenuous day on the beach, swimming and playing games. When it was over, we ate one of Claudine's indifferent dinners. The kids were tired enough to go to bed early, but I felt full of life. The drumming had died away, so the only sound was the chirp of a million crickets. I said to Denise:

"Let's take a walk on the beach. The moon is full."

So we did. Our stroll ended in an impromptu swim, and then we made love on the sand.

We dressed and, hand in hand, started back for the house. We had climbed halfway up the steep path when a man stepped out of the shadow of a banana tree. The moon threw silvery spots on him, so that I could not clearly make him out. I had an impression that he was white of skin and stout, with curly hair and a little beard.

Without a word, the man came towards us, down the slope of the path.

"Who are you?" I said.

The man continued his silent advance. The moon gleamed upon a machete blade.

"Run, Denise!" I said in English. "I'll hold this guy off. Get the cops!"

When I glanced around, Denise had vanished. I heard faint, receding footfalls. Although she, like me, was no longer so young as once, she still could run like a deer.

The man with the knife came on. My thought was to get around him to the house to telephone. Then I remembered we had no 'phone. Perhaps, if I could get to the station wagon, I could lock myself in. I might even use it as a weapon, if I could catch him on the roadway in front of the vehicle. But that would leave our sleeping children ...

While these thoughts ran through my head, the man kept coming. Another step, and he would be within slashing distance. If I ran back to the beach, I should lead him on Denise's trail.

Instead, I cut off at right angles to the path, into the wild growth. I blundered into shrubs and trees, sounding like a herd of stampeding elephants. I felt like one of those characters in Fenimore Cooper who, whenever there is the utmost need for silence, always steps on a dry twig.

A glance back showed the man coming after me. When he encountered thick shrubbery, a slash sent it tumbling. The man was no insubstantial wraith or illusion. While I moved faster than he in the open, he got through the heavy stuff at least as fast as I did.

I tried to circle around him to get to the house, but he kept angling off to keep himself between me and it. I worried about getting lost. That would be no matter in daylight, when one could always tell direction by sun and sea. Night was something else.

The man got closer, herding me away from the Argenton house. Thinking that such a tubby fellow would get winded sooner than I, I led him straight up the slope. He plodded after, now losing a meter, now gaining one.

The distance to the Fort-de-France road seemed much farther than I remembered it. But then, I had not made the climb before on foot, at night, through tropical vegetation. After me came the man with the machete.

When I came out on the road, I was bushed. My pounding heart and laboring lungs reminded me that I was, after all, pushing fifty. My pursuer, too, emerged on the road. He did not seem to pant or labor at all.

As the man came out into full moonlight, I saw that his face bore a blank, unwinking stare. Tales of zombis ran through my head. Without a word or a cry, he trotted towards me, swinging the machete.

I thought that, even with my longer legs, I could not escape him along the road, since he did not seem to tire like normal mortals. On the other side was a stand of banana trees, once cultivated but now growing wild. Their huge, ragged leaves afforded easy cover, in which I might be able to lose him.

I plunged into the bananas. At first I thought I was gaining. I tried to throw him off by changing direction, but my woodcraft was not up to moving silently. Every time I looked back, there he was, plodding along. If I could only find a club, now, I could parry that slash and then clout him over the head or ram it into his belly ...

There were no clubs. I passed a clump of bamboo. A length of bamboo would do fine, but I needed time and my own machete to cut a stalk and shape it. I blundered on.

Then I could go no further. I had no idea where I was, and the man was still coming. I thought of lunging at him, head down in a football tackle. If I could duck beneath the swing of the cutlass ...

Panting, I crouched and spread my arms. On he came, the machete before him. Up it went. Someone shouted: "Halte-la!"

When my pursuer kept on, a flash and explosion deafened and blinded me. The man was whirled around. He fell, and I saw that one of his legs had been hit. The trouser leg was torn and darkening, and the leg had a bend where none should be.

Still, the fellow recovered and began hopping grotesquely towards me, dragging the wounded leg. A second report brought him down again.- Still he crawled nearer, using his arms alone, with both shattered legs trailing. He still gripped his machete.

A third shot spattered brains. The man lay still.

A man in uniform stepped into the moonlight, replacing the spent cartridges in a revolver. Although the peak of the kepi shadowed his shiny black face, I knew Hippolyte Frot.

"Well, Monsieur!" he said. "If you had not fled so fast and drawn this species of camel after you, the affair would have been finished long ago. My faith, I have never seen a man with gray hair run through the woods like you! Are you a retired Olympic champion?"

When I could get my breath, I said: "It is like the tale of the rabbit who escaped the fox: the rabbit ran faster for his life than the fox for his dinner. Where did you come from so a propos?"

"I told you we were going to watch this section more closely."

Frot holstered his pistol. I recognized it as one of those .44 magnums, which have almost the punch of an elephant gun and a recoil to match. I used to be a pretty good pistol shot, but if I had to shoot one of those things, I'd grip it in both hands to keep it from getting away from me.

Sergeant Frot shone a flashlight on the body. He said: "O mon Dieu!"

"What is it?"

He turned a face on which, even in shadow, I could see bewilderment. In a man as well-integrated and self-possessed as Hippolyte Frot, that was alarming. He said:

"Do you know who this is?"

"No. Who is it?"

"This is Louis Mouttet, the rascally governor who perished in the great eruption—or else someone made up to resemble him. I have seen photographs of the original Mouttet, and there is no error. Formidable!"

"That was over sixty years ago!"

"Exactly. But, you know, the body of Mouttet was never found, although the government made strenuous efforts to identify the victims."

"You mean some gang of bourhousses has been keeping Mouttet as a zombi all this time? And Duchamps borrowed the body to send against me?"

"Monsieur," said Frot heavily, "you may indulge in such speculations if you like. We have the freedom of opinion. But we also have the mission civilizatrice of France. For that reason, I cannot permit this explanation to enter the official records. It is undoubtedly a man, the mind of whom has been turned by the preachings of Duchamps and his like and who was chosen to accentuate a natural resemblance to the real Mouttet. Back, if you please!"

Frot drew the big revolver and fired one more shot into the corpse's head, at such an angle that the bullet came out the face. That face was instantly reduced to a gory ruin, which nobody could have identified.

"Now," he said, "there will be no more cause to spread these rumors that lend themselves to primitive superstition. As you know, Monsieur Newbury, the civilization is but a thin crust over our savage interiors, no matter if our skins be white or black. We must try to keep this shell of egg intact."

I heard a thrashing in the banana grove and a halloo.

"Oui, nous y sommes," called Frot. "Tout va bien."

It was Denise and two policement from Frot's station, drawn by the shots. She had circled around to the house. After the zombi and I had plunged into the banana grove, she got into the car and drove like mad to Fort-de-France. There they told her that Frot was out patrolling our area himself; but, in view of the seriousness of the situation, two of the flics had returned with her.

Jacques Lecouvreur got his motor. Having had engineering training in my youth, I helped him install it. Stephen and I lent a hand to the villagers of Schoelcher at hauling in the net on one of their seining operations. We incidentally learned that barracuda are good eating, although some are prejudiced against them.

The next time I saw Frot, I asked about Oreste Duchamps.

"Deported to his native Haiti," said the sergeant. "We cannot permit such primitive buffooneries to trouble the course of our civilization. And what of you, Monsieur?"

"All is tranquil, thank you, save that our cook has disappeared. I think she was in league with Duchamps. She was a terrible cook, anyhow; and we leave a few days hence."

"In that case, Monsieur, I think you need fear no further disturbances. Perhaps you would care to extend your sojourn? Really, you should give Martinique a chance to show how charming she can be, when she is not vexed by barbarous intriguers."

"I am tempted, but my job calls me back."

"Till next time, then."

"A coup sur, Monsieur Frot. But you may be certain that, if ever again I rent a house in a foreign land, I will make sure that I am the only one with a lease!"