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 ANS: F

10. IDLE is an alternative method to using a text editor to write, execute, and test a Python program.

ANS: T

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Programs are commonly referred to as

a. system software
b. software
c. application software
d. utility programs
ANS: B

2. Which of the following is considered to be the world's first programmable electronic computer?
a. IBM
b. Dell
c. ENIAC
d. Gateway
ANS: C

3. Where does a computer store a program and the data that the program is working with while the
program is running?
a. in main memory
b. in the CPU
c. in secondary storage
d. in the microprocessor
ANS: A

4. What type of volatile memory is usually used only for temporary storage while running a program?
a. ROM
b. TMM
c. RAM
d. TVM
ANS: C

5. Which of the following is not a microprocessor manufacturing company?

a. Intel
b. Dell
c. AMD
d. Motorola
ANS: B

6. Which computer language uses short words known as mnemonics for writing programs?
a. Assembly
 b. Java
c. Pascal
d. Visual Basic
ANS: A

7. The process known as the __________ cycle is used by the CPU to execute instructions in a program.
a. decode-fetch-execute
b. decode-execute-fetch
c. fetch-decode-execute
d. fetch-execute-decode
ANS: C

8. Which language is referred to as a low-level language?

a. C++
b. Assembly language
c. Java
d. Python
ANS: B

9. The following is an example of an instruction written in which computer language?

10110000
a. Assembly language
b. Java
c. machine language
d. C#
ANS: C

10. The encoding technique used to store negative numbers in the computer's memory is called
a. Unicode
b. ASCII
c. floating-point notation
d. two's complement
ANS: D

11. The __________ coding scheme contains a set of 128 numeric codes that are used to represent
characters in the computer's memory.
a. Unicode
b. ASCII
c. ENIAC
d. two's complement
ANS: B

12. The smallest storage location in a computer's memory is known as a

a. byte
b. ketter
c. switch
 d. bit
ANS: D

13. What is the largest value that can be stored in one byte?
a. 255
b. 128
c. 8
d. 65535
ANS: A

14. The disk drive is a secondary storage device that stores data by __________ encoding it onto a
spinning circular disk.
a. electrically
b. magnetically
c. digitally
d. optically
ANS: B

15. A __________ has no moving parts and operates faster than a traditional disk drive.
a. DVD drive
b. solid state drive
c. jumper drive
d. hyper drive
ANS: B

16. Which of the following is not a major component of a typical computer system?
a. the CPU
b. main memory
c. the operating system
d. secondary storage devices
ANS: C

17. Which type of error prevents the program from running?

a. syntax
b. human
c. grammatical
d. logical
ANS: A

18. What is the decimal value of the following binary number?

10011101
a. 157
b. 8
c. 156
d. 28
ANS: C
MULTIPLE RESPONSE

1. Select all that apply. To create a Python program you can use
a. a text editor
b. a word processor if you save your file as a .docx
c. IDLE
d. Excel
ANS: A, C

COMPLETION

1. A(n) ___________ is a set of instructions that a computer follows to perform a task.

ANS: program

2. The term ___________ refers to all the physical devices that make up a computer.

ANS: hardware

3. The __________ is the part of the computer that actually runs programs and is the most important
component in a computer.

ANS: central processing unit, CPU

4. A disk drive stores data by __________ encoding it onto a circular disk.

ANS: magnetically

5. __________ are small central processing unit chips.

ANS: Microprocessors

6. __________ is a type of memory that can hold data for long periods of time, even when there is no
power to the computer.

ANS: Secondary storage

7. Main memory is commonly known as __________.

ANS: random-access memory, RAM

8. USB drives store data using __________ memory.

ANS: flash

9. The Python __________ is a program that can read Python programming statements and execute them.

ANS: interpreter
10. In __________ mode, the interpreter reads the contents of a file that contains Python statements and
executes each statement.

ANS: script
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 Simpkins told him all he could.
“It’s interesting, most fascinating,” declared Fazz, “but it is a little
beyond me all the same. I am afraid, Simpkins, that you have been
deposited with me as if I were a bank and you were something not
negotiable, as you really are, I fear. But you mustn’t tell the Dean
about Evans-Antrobus, no, you mustn’t, it’s never done. Tell me, why
do you make bespoke boots? It’s an unusual taste to display.
Wouldn’t you rather come to college, for instance, and study ... er ...
anthropology—nothing at all about boots in anthropology?”
“No,” said Simpkins. He shuffled in his chair and felt uneasy. “I’d
be out of my depth.” Fazz glared at him, and Simpkins repeated:
“Out of my depth, that would be, sure.”
“This is very shameful,” commented the other, “but it’s interesting,
most fascinating. You brazenly maintain that you would rather study
boots than ... than books and brains!”
“A cobbler must stick to his last,” replied Simpkins, recalling a
phrase of his father’s.
“Bravo!” cried Fazz, “but not to an everlasting last!”
“And I don’t know anything about all this; there’s nothing about it
I’d want to know, it wouldn’t be any good to me. It’s no use mixing
things, and there’s a lot to be learnt about boots—you’d be
surprised. You got to keep yourself to yourself and not get out of
your depth—take a steady line and stick to it, and not get out of
your depth.”
“But, dearie, you don’t sleep with a lifebelt girt about your loins,
do you now? I’m not out of my depth; I shouldn’t be even if I
started to make boots....”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?” shouted Simpkins.
“I should find it rather a shallow occupation; mere business is the
very devil of a business; business would be a funny sort of life.”
 “Life’s a funny business; you look after your business and that will
look after you.”
“But what in the world are we in the world at all for, Simpkins?
Isn’t it surely to do just the things we most intensely want to do?
And you do boots and boots and boots. Don’t you ever get out and
about?—theatres—girls—sport—or do you insist on boot, the whole
boot, and nothing but boot?”
“No, none of them,” replied Simpkins. “Don’t care for theatres, I’ve
never been. Don’t care for girls, I like a quiet life. I keep myself to
myself—it’s safer, don’t get out of your depth then. I do go and have
a look at the football match sometimes, but it’s only because we
make the boots for some of your crack players, and you want to
know what you are making them for. Work doesn’t trouble me,
nothing troubles me, and I got money in the bank.”
“Damme, Simpkins, you have a terrible conviction about you; if I
listen to you much longer I shall bind myself apprentice to you. I feel
sure that you make nice, soft, watertight, everlasting boots, and
then we should rise in the profession together. Discourse, Simpkins;
you enchant mine ears—both of them.”
“What I say is,” concluded Simpkins, “you can’t understand
everything. I shouldn’t want to; I’m all right as it is.”
“Of course you are, you’re simply too true. This is a place flowing
with afternoon tea, tutors, and clap-trap. It’s a city in which
everything is set upon a bill. You’re simply too true, if we are not out
of our depth we are in up to our ears—I am. It’s most fascinating.”
Soon afterwards Simpkins left him. Descending the stairs to the
rooms of Evans-Antrobus he switched on the light. It was very quiet
and snug in those rooms, with the soft elegant couch, the reading-
lamp with the delicious violet shade, the decanter with whiskey, the
box of chocolate biscuits, and the gramophone. He sat down by the
fire, waiting and waiting. Simpkins waited so long that he got used
to the room, he even stole a sip of whiskey and some of the
chocolate biscuits. Then to show his independence, his contempt for
Mr. Evans-Antrobus and his trickery, he took still more of the whiskey
—a drink he had never tasted before—he really took quite a lot. He
heaped coal upon the fire, and stalked about the room with his
hands in his pockets or examined the books, most of which were
about something called Jurisprudence, and suchlike. Simpkins liked
books; he began reading:

That the Pleuronectidæ are admirably adapted by their

flattened and asymmetrical structure for their habits of life, is
manifest from several species, such as soles and flounders, etc.,
being extremely common.

He did not care much for science; he opened another:

It is difficult indeed to imagine that anything can oscillate so

rapidly as to strike the retina of the eye 831,479,000,000,000 in
one second, as must be the case with violet light according to
this hypothesis.

Simpkins looked at the light and blinked his eyes. That had a
violet shade. He really did not care for science, and he had an
inclination to put the book down as his head seemed to be swaying,
but he continued to turn the pages.

Snowdon is the highest mountain in England or Wales.

Snowdon is not so high as Ben Nevis.
Therefore the highest mountain in England or Wales is not so
high as Ben Nevis.

“Oh, my head!” mumbled Simpkins.

Water must be either warm or not warm, but it does not

follow that it must be warm or cold.
 Simpkins felt giddy. He dropped the book, and tottered to the
couch. Immediately the room spun round and something in his head
began to hum, to roar like an aeroplane a long way up in the sky. He
felt that he ought to get out of the room, quickly, and get some
water, either not or cold warm—he didn’t mind which! He clapped on
his hat and, slipping into his overcoat, he reached a door. It opened
into a bedroom, very bare indeed compared with this other room,
but Simpkins rolled in; the door slammed behind him, and in the
darkness he fell upon a bed, with queer sensations that seemed to
be dividing and subtracting in him.
When he awoke later—oh, it seemed much later—he felt quite
well again. He had forgotten where he was. It was a strange place
he was in, utterly dark; but there was a great noise sounding quite
close to him—a gramophone, people shouting choruses and dancing
about in the adjoining room. He could hear a lady’s voice too. Then
he remembered that he ought not to be in that room at all; it was,
why, yes, it was criminal; he might be taken for a burglar or
something! He slid from the bed, groped in the darkness until he
found his hat, unbuttoned his coat, for he was fearfully hot, and
stood at the bedroom door trembling in the darkness, waiting and
listening to that tremendous row. He had been a fool to come in
there! How was he to get out—how the deuce was he to get out?
The gramophone stopped. He could hear the voices more plainly. He
grew silently panic-stricken; it was awful, they’d be coming in to him
perhaps, and find him sneaking there like a thief—he must get out,
he must, he must get out; yes, but how?
The singing began again. The men kept calling out “Lulu! Lulu!”
and a lady’s gay voice would reply to a Charley or a George, and so
on, when all at once there came a peremptory knock at the outer
door. The noise within stopped immediately. Deep silence. Simpkins
could hear whispering. The people in there were startled; he could
almost feel them staring at each other with uneasiness. The lady
laughed out startlingly shrill. “Sh-s-s-sh!” the others cried. The loud
knocking began again, emphatic, terrible. Simpkins’ already quaking
heart began to beat ecstatically. Why, oh why, didn’t they open that
door?—open it! open it! There was shuffling in the room, and when
the knocking was repeated for the third time the outer door was
apparently unlocked.
“Fazz! Oh, Fazz, you brute!” cried the relieved voices in the room.
“You fool, Fazz! Come in, damn you, and shut the door.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the apparently deliberating Fazz,
“what is that?”
“Hullo, Rob Roy!” cried the lady, “it’s me.”
“Charmed to meet you, madame. How interesting, most
fascinating; yes, I am quite charmed, but I wish somebody would
kindly give me the loose end of it all. I’m suffering, as you see,
dearies, and I don’t understand all this, I’m quite out of my depth.
The noise you’ve been making is just crushing me.”
Several voices began to explain at once: “We captured her, Fazz,
yes—Rape of the Sabines, what!—from the Vaudeville. Had a rag,
glorious—corralled all the attendants and scene-shifters—rushed the
stage—we did! we did!—everybody chased somebody, and we
chased Lulu—we did! we did!”
“Oh, shut up, everybody!” cried out Fazz.
“Yes, listen,” cried the voice of Evans-Antrobus. “This is how it
happened: they chased the eight Sisters Victoria off the stage, and
we spied dear little Lulu—she was one of those eight Victorias—
bolting down a passage to the stage entrance. She fled into the
street just as she was—isn’t she a duck? There was a taxi standing
there, and Lulu, wise woman, jumped in—and we jumped in too.
(We did! We did!) ‘Where for?’ says taximan. ‘Saviour’s College,’ say
we, and here you are—Lulu—what do you think of her?”
“Charming, utterly charming,” replied Fazz. “The details are most
clarifying; but how did you manage to usher her into the college?”
 “My overcoat on,” explained one voice.
“And my hat,” cried another.
“And we dazzled the porter,” said a third. There were lots of other
jolly things to explain: Lulu had not resisted at all, she had enjoyed
it; it was a lark!
“Oh, beautiful! Most fascinating!” agreed Fazz. “But how you
propose to get her out of the college I have no more notion than
Satan has of sanctity—it’s rather late, isn’t it?”
Simpkins, in his dark room, could hear someone rushing up the
stairs with flying leaps that ceased at the outer door. Then a
breathless voice hissed out: “You fellows, scat, scat! Police are in the
lodge with the proctors and that taximan!”
In a moment Evans-Antrobus began to groan. “Oh, my God, what
can we do with her? We must get her out at once—over the wall, eh,
at once, quick! Johnstone, quick, go and find a rope, quick, a rope.”
And Fazz said: “It does begin to look a little foolish. Oh, I am
feeling so damn bad—but you can’t blame a fool for anything it
does, can you? But I am bad; I am going to bed instantly, I feel
quite out of my depth here. Oh, that young friend of yours, that
Simpkins, charming young person! Very blithe he was, dear Evans-
Antrobus!”
Everybody now seemed to rush away from the room except the
girl Lulu and Evans-Antrobus. He was evidently very agitated and in
a bad humour. He clumped about the room exclaiming, “Oh,
damnation, do hurry up, somebody. What am I to do with her, boozy
little pig! Do hurry up!”
“Who’s a pig? I want to go out of here,” shrilled Lulu, and
apparently she made for the door.
“You can’t go like that!” he cried; “you can’t, you mustn’t. Don’t be
a fool, Lulu! Lulu! Now, isn’t this a fearful mess?”
 “I’m not going to stop here with you, ugly thing! I don’t like it; I’m
going now, let go.”
“But you can’t go, I tell you, in these things, not like that. Let me
think, let me think, can’t you! Why don’t you let me think, you little
fool! Put something on you, my overcoat; cover yourself up. I shall
be ruined, damn you! Why the devil did you come here, you ...!”
“And who brought me here, Mr. Antibus? Oh yes, I know you; I
shall have something to say to the vicar, or whoever it is you’re
afraid of, baby-face! Let me go; I don’t want to be left here alone
with you!” she yelled. Simpkins heard an awful scuffle. He could wait
no longer; he flung open the door, rushed into the room, and caught
up a syphon, the first handy weapon. They saw him at once, and
stood apart amazed.
“Fine game!” said the trembling Simpkins to the man, with all the
sternness at his command. As nobody spoke he repeated, quite
contemptuously: “Fine game!”
Lulu was breathing hard, with her hands resting upon her bosom.
Her appearance was so startling to the boy that he nearly dropped
the syphon. He continued to face her, hugging it with both hands
against his body. She was clad in pink tights—they were of silk, they
glistened in the sharper light from under the violet shade—a soft
white tarlatan skirt that spread around her like a carnation, and a
rose-coloured bodice. She was dainty, with a little round head and a
little round face like a briar rose; but he guessed she was strong,
though her beauty had apparently all the fragility of a flower. Her
hair, of dull dark gold, hung in loose tidiness without pin or braid, the
locks cut short to her neck, where they curved in to brush the white
skin; a deep straight fringe of it was combed upon the childish brow.
Grey were her surprised eyes, and wide the pouting lips. Her lovely
naked arms—oh, he could scarcely bear to look at them. She stood
now, with one hand upon her hip and the other lying against her
cheek, staring at Simpkins. Then she danced delightfully up to him
and took the syphon away.
 “Look here,” said Evans-Antrobus to Lulu—he had recovered his
nerve, and did not express any astonishment at Simpkins’ sudden
appearance—“he is just your size, you dress up in his clothes, quick,
then it’s simple.”
“No,” said the girl.
“And no for me,” said Simpkins fiercely—almost.
Just then the door was thrust partly open and a rope was flung
into the room. The bringer of it darted away downstairs again.
“Hi! here!” called Evans-Antrobus, rushing to the door; but nobody
stayed for him, nobody answered him. He came back and picked up
the rope.
“Put on that coat,” he commanded Lulu, “and that hat. Now, look
here, not a word, not a giggle even, or we are done, and I might
just as well screw your blessed neck!”
“Would you?” snorted Simpkins, with not a little animosity.
“Yes, would you!” chimed Lulu, but nevertheless she obeyed and
followed him down the stairs. When she turned and beckoned,
Simpkins followed too. They crossed a dark quadrangle, passed
down a passage that was utter darkness, through another quad,
another passage, and halted in a gloomy yard behind the chapel,
where Evans-Antrobus struck a match, and where empty boxes,
bottles, and other rubbish had accumulated under a wall about ten
feet high.
“You first, and quiet, quiet,” growled Evans-Antrobus to Simpkins.
No one spoke again. Night was thickly dark, the stars were dim, the
air moist and chill. Simpkins, assisted by the other man, clambered
over rickety boxes and straddled the high thick wall. The rope was
hungover, too, and when the big man had jumped to earth again,
dragging his weight against it, Simpkins slid down on the other side.
He was now in a narrow street, with a dim lamp at one end that cast
no gleam to the spot where he had descended. There were dark
high-browed buildings looming high around him. He stood holding
the end of the rope and looking up at the stars—very faint they
were. The wall was much higher on this side, looked like a
mountain, and he thought of Ben Nevis again. This was out of your
depth, if you like, out of your depth entirely. It was all wrong
somehow, or, at any rate, it was not all right; it couldn’t be right.
Never again would he mess about with a lot of lunatics. He hadn’t
done any good, he hadn’t even got the money—he had forgotten it.
He had not got anything at all except a headache.
The rope tightened. Lulu was astride the wall, quarrelling with the
man on the other side.
“Keep your rotten coat!” She slipped it off and flung it down from
the wall. “And your rotten hat, too, spider-face!” She flung that down
from the wall, and spat into the darkness. Turning to the other side,
she whispered: “I’m coming,” and scrambled down, sliding into
Simpkins’ arms. And somehow he stood holding her so, embracing
her quite tightly. She was all softness and perfume, he could not let
her go; she had scarcely anything on—he would not let her go. It
was marvellous and beautiful to him; the glimmer of her white face
was mysterious and tender in the darkness. She put her arms
around his neck:
“Oh ... I rather love you,” she said.
 Simple Simon
This simple man lived lonely in a hut in the depths of a forest, just
underneath three hovering trees, a pine tree and two beeches. The
sun never was clear in the forest, but the fogs that rose in its
unshaken shade were neither sweet nor sour. Lonely was Simon, for
he had given up all the sweet of the world and had received none of
the sweet of heaven. Old now, and his house falling to ruin, he said
he would go seek the sweet of heaven, for what was there in the
mortal world to detain him? Not peace, certainly, for time growled
and scratched at him like a mangy dog, and there were no memories
to cherish; he had had a heavy father, a mother who was light, and
never a lay-by who had not deceived him. So he went in his tatters
and his simplicity to the lord of the manor.
“I’m bound for heaven, sir,” says Simon, “will you give me an old
coat, or an odd rag or so? There’s a hole in my shoe, sir, and good
fortune slips out of it.”
No—the lord of the manor said—he could not give him a decent
suit, nor a shoe, nor the rags neither. Had he not let him dwell all life
long in his forest? With not a finger of rent coming? Snaring the
conies—(May your tongue never vex you, sir!)—and devouring the
birds—(May God see me, sir!)—and cutting the fuel, snug as a bee
in a big white hive. (Never a snooze of sleep, with the wind howling
in the latch of it and the cracks gaping, sir!) What with the taxes and
the ways of women—said the lord—he had but a scrimping time of it
himself, so he had. There was neither malt in the kiln nor meal in
the hopper, and there were thieves in the parish. Indeed, he would
as lief go with Simon, but it was such a diggins of a way off.
So Simon went walking on until he came to the godly man who
lived in a blessed mansion, full of delights for the mind and eye as
well as a deal of comfort for his belly.
No—the godly man said—he would not give him anything, for the
Lord took no shame of a man’s covering.
“Ah, but your holiness,” said Simon, “I’ve a care to look decent
when I go to the King of All.”
“My poor man, how will you get there, my poor man?” he said.
“Maybe,” says Simon, “I’ll get a lift on my way.”
“You’ll get no lift,” the godly man said, “for it’s a hard and lonely
road to travel.”
“My sorrow! And I heard it was a good place to go to!”
“It is a good place, my simple man, but the road to it is difficult
and empty and hard. You will get no lift, you will lose your way, you
will be taken with a sickness.”
“Ah, and I heard it was a good kind road, and help in the end of it
and warmth and a snap of victuals.”
“No doubt, no doubt, but I tell you, don’t be setting yourself up
for to judge of it. Go back to your home and be at peace with the
world.”
“Mine’s all walk-on,” said Simon, and turning away he looked
towards his home. Distant or near there was nothing he could see
but trees, not a glint of sea, and little of sky, and nothing of a hill or
the roof of a friendly house—just a trap of trees as close as a large
hand held before a large face, beeches and beeches, pines and
pines. And buried in the middle of it was a tiny hut, sour and
broken; in the time of storms the downpour would try to dash it into
the ground, and the wind would try to tear it out. Well, he had had
his enough of it, so he went to another man, a scholar for learning,
and told him his intentions and his wishes.
 “To heaven!” said the scholar. “Well, it’s a fair day for that good-
looking journey.”
“It is indeed a fine day,” said Simon. As clear as crystal it was, yet
soft and mellow as snuff.
“Then content you, man Simon, and stay in it.”
“Ah, sir,” he says, “I’ve a mind and a will that makes me serve
them.”
“Cats will mouse and larks will sing,” the scholar said, “but you are
neither the one nor the other. What you seek is hidden, perhaps
hidden for ever; God remove discontent and greed from the world:
why should you look on the other side of a wall—what is a wall for?”
The old man was silent.
“How long has this notion possessed you?”
The old man quavered “Since ... since ...” but he could say no
more. A green bird flew laughing above them.
“What bird is that—what is it making that noise for?”
“It is a woodpecker, sir; he knows he can sing a song for
Sixpence.”
The scholar stood looking up into the sky. His boots were old—
well, that is the doom of all boots, just as it is of man. His clothes
were out of fashion, so was his knowledge; stripped of his gentle
dignity he was but dust and ashes.
“To travel from the world?” he was saying. “That is not wise.”
“Ah, sir, wisdom was ever deluding me, for I’m not more than half
done—like a poor potato. First, of course, there’s the things you
don’t know; then there’s the things you do know but can’t
understand; then there’s the things you do understand but which
don’t matter. Saving your presence, sir, there’s a heap of
understanding to be done before you’re anything but a fool.”
“He is not a fool who is happy; mortal pleasures decline as the
bubble of knowledge grows; that’s the long of it, and it’s the short of
it too.”
Simon was silent, adding up the buttons on the scholar’s tidy coat.
He counted five of them, they shone like gold and looked—oh, very
well they looked.
“I was happy once,” then he said. “Ah, and I remember I was
happy twice, yes, and three times I was happy in this world. I was
not happy since....”
“Yes, since what?” the scholar asked him: but the old man was
dumb.
“Tell me, Simon, what made you happy.”
“I was happy, sir, when I first dwelled in the wood and made with
my own hands a house of boards. Why—you’d not believe—but it
had a chimney then, and was no ways draughty then, and was not
creaky then, nor damp then; a good fine house with a door and a
half door, birds about it, magpies and tits and fine boy blackbirds! A
lake with a score of mallards on it! And for conies and cushats you
could take your oath of a meal any day in the week, and twice a day,
any day. But ’tis falling with age and weather now, I see it go; the
rain wears it, the moss rots it, the wind shatters it. The lake’s as dry
as a hen’s foot, and the forest changes. What was bushes is timber
now, and what was timber is ashes; the forest has spread around
me and the birds have left me and gone to the border. As for conies,
there’s no contriving with those foxes and weasels so cunning at
them; not the trace of a tail, sir, nothing but snakes and snails now.
I was happy when I built that house; that’s what I was; I was then.”
“Ah, so, indeed. And the other times—the second time?”
 “Why, that was the time I washed my feet in the lake and I
saw....”
“What, man Simon, what did you see?”
Simon passed his hand across his brow. “I see ... ah, well, I saw
it. I saw something ... but I forget.”
“Ah, you have forgotten your happiness,” said the scholar in a soft
voice: “Yes, yes.” He went on speaking to himself: “Death is a naked
Ethiope with flaming hair. I don’t want to live for ever, but I want to
live.”
He took off his coat and gave it to Simon, who thanked him and
put it on. It seemed a very heavy coat.
“Maybe,” the old man mumbled, “I’ll get a lift on the way.”
“May it be so. And good-bye to you,” said the scholar, “’Tis as fine
a day as ever came out of Eden.”
They parted so, and old Simon had not been gone an hour when
the scholar gave a great shout and followed after him frantic, but he
could not come up with him, for Simon had gone up in a lift to
heaven—a lift with cushions in it, and a bright young girl guiding the
lift, dressed like a lad, but with a sad stern voice.
Several people got into the lift, the most of them old ladies, but no
children, so Simon got in too and sat on a cushion of yellow velvet.
And he was near sleeping when the lift stopped of a sudden and a
lady who was taken sick got out. “Drugs and lounge!” the girl called
out, “Second to the right and keep straight on. Going up?”
But though there was a crowd of young people waiting nobody
else got in. They slid on again, higher and much higher. Simon
dropped into sleep until the girl stopped at the fourth floor:
“Refreshments,” she said, “and Ladies’ Cloak Room!” All the
passengers got out except Simon: he sat still until they came to the
floor of heaven. There he got out, and the girl waved her hand to
him and said “Good-bye.” A few people got in the lift. “Going down?”
she cried. Then she slammed the door and it sank into a hole and
Simon never laid an eye on it or her from that day for ever.
Now it was very pleasant where he found himself, very pleasant
indeed and in no ways different from the fine parts of the earth. He
went onwards and the first place he did come to was a farmhouse
with a kitchen door. He knocked and it was opened. It was a large
kitchen; it had a cracked stone floor and white rafters above it with
hooks on them and shearing irons and a saddle. And there was a
smoking hearth and an open oven with bright charred wood burning
in it, a dairy shelf beyond with pans of cream, a bed of bracken for a
dog in the corner by the pump, and a pet sheep wandering about. It
had the number 100 painted on its fleece and a loud bell was
tinkling round its neck. There was a fine young girl stood smiling at
him; the plait of her hair was thick as a rope of onions and as
shining with the glint in it. Simon said to her: “I’ve been a-walking,
and I seem to have got a bit dampified like, just a touch o’ damp in
the knees of my breeches, that’s all.”
The girl pointed to the fire and he went and dried himself. Then
he asked the girl if she would give him a true direction, and so she
gave him a true direction and on he went. And he had not gone far
when he saw a place just like the old forest he had come from, but
all was delightful and sunny, and there was the house he had once
built, as beautiful and new, with the shining varnish on the door, a
pool beyond, faggots and logs in the yard, and inside the white
shelves were loaded with good food, the fire burning with a sweet
smell, and a bed of rest in the ingle. Soon he was slaking his
hunger; then he hung up his coat on a peg of iron, and creeping into
the bed he went into the long sleep in his old happy way of sleeping.
But all this time the scholar was following after him, searching
under the sun, and from here to there, calling out high and low, and
questioning the travelling people: had they seen a simple man, an
old man who had been but three times happy?—but not a one had
seen him. He was cut to the heart with anxiety, with remorse, and
with sorrow, for in a secret pocket of the coat he had given to Simon
he had left—unbeknown, but he remembered it now—a wallet of
sowskin, full of his own black sins, and nothing to distinguish them
in any way from any other man’s. It was a dark load upon his soul
that the poor man might be punished with an everlasting
punishment for having such a tangle of wickedness on him and he
unable to explain it. An old man like that, who had been happy but
the three times! He enquired upon his right hand, and upon his left
hand he enquired, but not a walking creature had seen him and the
scholar was mad vexed with shame. Well, he went on, and on he
went, but he did not get a lift on the way. He went howling and
whistling like a man who would frighten all the wild creatures down
into the earth, and at last he came by a back way to the borders of
heaven. There he was, all of a day behind the man he was pursuing,
in a great wilderness of trees. It began to rain, a soft meandering
fall that you would hardly notice for rain, but the birds gave over
their whistling and a strong silence grew everywhere, hushing
things. His footfall as he stumbled through briars and the wild
gardens of the wood seemed to thump the whole earth, and he
could hear all the small noises like the tick of a beetle and the
gasping of worms. In a grove of raspberry canes he stood like a
stock with the wonder of that stillness. Clouds did not move, he
could but feel the rain that he could not see. Each leaf hung stiff as
if it was frozen, though it was summer. Not a living thing was to be
seen, and the things that were not living were not more dead than
those that lived but were so secret still. He picked a few berries from
the canes, and from every bush as he pulled and shook it a butterfly
or a moth dropped or fluttered away, quiet and most ghostly. “An old
bit of a man”—he kept repeating in his mind—“with three bits of joy,
an old bit of a man.”
Suddenly a turtle dove with clatter enough for a goose came to a
tree beside him and spoke to him! A young dove, and it crooed on
the tree branch, croo, croo, croo, and after each cadence it heaved
the air into its lungs again with a tiny sob. Well, it would be no good
telling what the bird said to the scholar, for none would believe it,
they could not; but speak it did. After that the scholar tramped on,
and on again, until he heard voices close ahead from a group of
frisky boys who were chasing a small bird that could hardly fly. As
the scholar came up with them one of the boys dashed out with his
cap and fell upon the fledgling and thrust it in his pocket.
Now, by God, that scholar was angry, for a thing he liked was the
notes of birds tossed from bush to bush like aery bubbles, and he
wrangled with the boy until the little lad took the crumpled bird out
of his pocket and flung it saucily in the air as you would fling a
stone. Down dropped the bird into a gulley as if it was shot, and the
boys fled off. The scholar peered into the gulley, but he could not
see the young finch, not a feather of it. Then he jumped into the
gulley and stood quiet, listening to hear it cheep, for sure a wing
would be broken, or a foot. But nothing could he see, nothing,
though he could hear hundreds of grasshoppers leaping among the
dead leaves with a noise like pattering rain. So he turned away, but
as he shifted his foot he saw beneath it the shattered bird: he had
jumped upon it himself and destroyed it. He could not pick it up, it
was bloody; he leaned over it, sighing: “Poor bird, poor bird, and is
this your road to heaven? Or do you never share the heaven that
you make?” There was a little noise then added to the leaping of the
grasshoppers—it was the patter of tears he was shedding from
himself. Well, when the scholar heard that he gave a good shout of
laughter, and he was soon contented, forgetting the bird. He was for
sitting down awhile but the thought of the old man Simon, with that
sinful wallet—a rare budget of his own mad joys—urged him on till
he came by the end of the wood, the rain ceasing, and beyond him
the harmony of a flock roaming and bleating. Every ewe of the flock
had numbers painted on it, that ran all the way up to ninety and
nine.
Soon he came to the farmhouse and the kitchen and the odd
sheep and a kind girl with a knot of hair as thick as a twist of bread.
He told her the thing that was upon his conscience.
 “Help me to come up with him, for I’m a day to the bad, and what
shall I do? I gave him a coat, an old coat, and all my sins were
hidden in it, but I’d forgotten them. He was an old quavering man
with but three spells of happiness in the earthly world.” He begged
her to direct him to the man Simon. The smiling girl gave him a
good direction, the joyful scholar hurried out and on, and in a score
of minutes he was peeping in the fine hut, with his hand on the latch
of the half door, and Simon snoring in bed, a quiet decent snore.
“Simon!” he calls, but he didn’t wake. He shook him, but he didn’t
budge. There was the coat hanging down from the iron peg, so he
went to it and searched it and took out the wallet. But when he
opened it—a black sowskin wallet it was, very strong with good
straps—his sins were all escaped from it, not one little sin left in the
least chink of the wallet, it was empty as a drum. The scholar knew
something was wrong, for it was full once, and quite full.
“Well, now,” thought he, scratching his head and searching his
mind, “did I make a mistake of it? Would they be by chance in the
very coat that is on me now, for I’ve not another coat to my name?”
He gave it a good strong search, in the patch pockets and the inside
pockets and in the purse on his belt, but there was not the scrap of
a tail of a sin of any sort, good or bad, in that coat, and all he found
was a few cachous against the roughening of his voice.
“Did I make another mistake of it,” he says again, “and put those
solemn sins in the fob of my fancy waistcoat? Where are they?” he
shouts out.
Simon lifted his head out of sleeping for a moment. “It was that
girl with the hair,” Simon said. “She took them from the wallet—they
are not allowed in this place—and threw them in the pigwash.”
With that he was asleep again, snoring his decent snore.
“Glory be to God,” said the scholar, “am I not a great fool to have
come to heaven looking for my sins!”
 He took the empty wallet and tiptoed back to the world, and if he
is not with the saints yet, it is with the saints he will be one day—
barring he gets another budget of sins in his eager joy. And that I
wouldn’t deny him.
 The Tiger
The tiger was coming at last; the almost fabulous beast, the
subject of so much conjecture for so many months, was at the docks
twenty miles away. Yak Pedersen had gone to fetch it, and Barnabe
Woolf’s Menagerie was about to complete its unrivalled collection by
the addition of a full-grown Indian tiger of indescribable ferocity,
newly trapped in the forest and now for the first time exhibited, and
so on, and so on. All of which, as it happened, was true. On the
previous day Pedersen the Dane and some helpers had taken a
brand new four-horse exhibition waggon, painted and carved with
extremely legendary tigers lapped in blood—even the bars were
gilded—to convey this unmatchable beast to its new masters. The
show had had to wait a long time for a tiger, but it had got a beauty
at last, a terror indeed by all accounts, though it is not to be
imagined that everything recorded of it by Barnabe Woolf was truth
and nothing but truth. Showmen do not work in that way.
Yak Pedersen was the tamer and menagerie manager, a tall,
blonde, angular man about thirty-five, of dissolute and savage blood
himself, with the very ample kind of moustache that bald men often
develop; yes, bald, intemperate, lewd, and an interminable smoker
of Cuban cigarettes, which seemed constantly to threaten a
conflagration in that moustache. Marie the Cossack hated him, but
Yak loved her with a fierce deep passion. Nobody knew why she was
called Marie the Cossack. She came from Canning Town—everybody
knew that, and her proper name was Fascota, Mrs. Fascota, wife of
Jimmy Fascota, who was the architect and carpenter and builder of
the show. Jimmy was not much to look at, so little in fact that you
couldn’t help wondering what it was Marie had seen in him when
she could have had the King of Poland, as you might say, almost for
the asking. But still Jimmy was the boss ganger of the show, and
even that young gentleman in frock coat and silk hat who paraded
the platform entrance to the arena and rhodomontadoed you into it,
often against your will, by the seductive recital of the seven ghastly
wonders of the world, all certainly to be seen, to be seen inside,
waiting to be seen, must be seen, roll up—even he was subject to
the commands of Jimmy Fascota when the time came to dismantle
and pack up the show, although the transfer of his activities involved
him temporarily in a change, a horrid change, of attire and
language. Marie was not a lady, but she was not for Pedersen
anyway. She swore like a factory foreman, or a young soldier, and
when she got tipsy she was full of freedoms. By the power of God
she was beautiful, and by the same gracious power she was
virtuous. Her husband knew it; he knew all about master Pedersen’s
passion, too, and it did not even interest him. Marie did feats in the
lion cages, whipping poor decrepit beasts, desiccated by captivity,
through a hoop or over a stick of wood and other kindergarten
disportings; but there you are, people must live, and Marie lived that
way. Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious
and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would
be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would
have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too
deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him
off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.
“God Almighty!” he would groan, “she is not good for me, this
Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the
Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I
do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes,
across the eyes.”
So you see the man really loved her.
When Pedersen returned from the docks the car with its captive
was dragged to a vacant place in the arena, and the wooden front
panel was let down from the bars. The marvellous tiger was
revealed. It sprung into a crouching attitude as the light surprised
the appalling beauty of its smooth fox-coloured coat, its ebony
stripes, and snowy pads and belly. The Dane, who was slightly
drunk, uttered a yell and struck the bars of the cage with his whip.
The tiger did not blench, but all the malice and ferocity in the world
seemed to congregate in its eyes and impress with a pride and
ruthless grandeur the colossal brutality of its face. It did not move its
body, but its tail gradually stiffened out behind it as stealthily as fire
moves in the forest undergrowth, and the hair along the ridge of its
back rose in fearful spikes. There was the slightest possible
distension of the lips, and it fixed its marvellous baleful gaze upon
Pedersen. The show people were hushed into silence, and even
Pedersen was startled. He showered a few howls and curses at the
tiger, who never ceased to fix him with eyes that had something of
contempt in them and something of a horrible presage. Pedersen
was thrusting a sharp spike through the bars when a figure stepped
from the crowd. It was an old negro, a hunchback with a white
beard, dressed in a red fez cap, long tunic of buff cotton, and blue
trousers. He laid both his hands on the spike and shook his head
deprecatingly, smiling all the while. He said nothing, but there was
nothing he could say—he was dumb.
“Let him alone, Yak; let the tiger alone, Yak!” cried Barnabe Woolf.
“What is this feller?”
Pedersen with some reluctance turned from the cage and said:
“He is come with the animal.”
“So?” said Barnabe. “Vell, he can go. Ve do not vant any black
feller.”
“He cannot speak—no tongue—it is gone,” Yak replied.
“No tongue! Vot, have they cut him out?”
“I should think it,” said the tamer. “There was two of them, a
white keeper, but that man fell off the ship one night and they do
not see him any more. This chap he feed it and look after it. No
information of him, dumb you see, and a foreigner; don’t
understand. He have no letters, no money, no name, nowheres to
go. Dumb, you see, he has nothing, nothing but a flote. The captain
said to take him away with us. Give a job to him, he is a
proposition.”
“Vot is he got you say?”
“Flote.” Pedersen imitated with his fingers and lips the actions of a
flute-player.
“O ya, a vloot! Vell, ve don’t want no vloots now; ve feeds our
own tigers, don’t ve, Yak?” And Mr. Woolf, oily but hearty—and well
he might be so for he was beautifully rotund, hair like satin,
extravagantly clothed, and rich with jewellery—surveyed first with a
contemplative grin, and then compassionately, the figure of the old
negro, who stood unsmiling with his hands crossed humbly before
him. Mr. Woolf was usually perspiring, and usually being addressed
by perspiring workmen, upon whom he bellowed orders and such
anathemas as reduced each recipient to the importance of a potato,
and gave him the aspect of a consumptive sheep. But to-day Mr.
Woolf was affable and calm. He took his cigar from his mouth and
poured a flood of rich grey air from his lips. “O ya, look after him a
day, or a couple of days.” At that one of the boys began to lead the
hunchback away as if he were a horse. “Come on, Pompoon,” he
cried, and thenceforward the unknown negro was called by that
name.
Throughout the day the tiger was the sensation of the show, and
the record of its ferocity attached to the cage received thrilling
confirmation whenever Pedersen appeared before the bars. The
sublime concentration of hatred was so intense that children
screamed, women shuddered, and even men held their breath in
awe. At the end of the day the beasts were fed. Great hacks of
bloody flesh were forked into the bottoms of the cages, the hungry
victims pouncing and snarling in ecstasy. But no sooner were they
served than the front panel of each cage was swung up, and the
inmate in the seclusion of his den slaked his appetite and slept.
When the public had departed the lights were put out and the doors
of the arena closed. Outside in the darkness only its great rounded
oblong shape could be discerned, built high of painted wood, roofed
with striped canvas, and adorned with flags. Beyond this matchbox
coliseum was a row of caravans, tents, naphtha flares, and buckets
of fire on which suppers were cooking. Groups of the show people
sat or lounged about, talking, cackling with laughter, and even
singing. No one observed the figure of Pompoon as he passed
silently on the grass. The outcast, doubly chained to his solitariness
by the misfortune of dumbness and strange nationality, was hungry.
He had not tasted food that day. He could not understand it any
more than he could understand the speech of these people. In the
end caravan, nearest the arena, he heard a woman quietly singing.
He drew a shining metal flute from his breast, but stood silently until
the singer ceased. Then he repeated the tune very accurately and
sweetly on his flute. Marie the Cossack came to the door in her
green silk tights and high black boots with gilded fringes; her black
velvet doublet had plenty of gilded buttons upon it. She was a big,
finely moulded woman, her dark and splendid features were burned
healthily by the sun. In each of her ears two gold discs tinkled and
gleamed as she moved. Pompoon opened his mouth very widely and
supplicatingly; he put his hand upon his stomach and rolled his eyes
so dreadfully that Mrs. Fascota sent her little daughter Sophy down
to him with a basin of soup and potatoes. Sophy was partly
undressed, in bare feet and red petticoat. She stood gnawing the
bone of a chicken, and grinning at the black man as he swallowed
and dribbled as best he could without a spoon. She cried out: “Here,
he’s going to eat the bloody basin and all, mum!” Her mother
cheerfully ordered her to “give him those fraggiments, then!” The
child did so, pausing now and again to laugh at the satisfied roll of
the old man’s eyes. Later on Jimmy Fascota found him a couple of
sacks, and Pompoon slept upon them beneath their caravan. The
last thing the old man saw was Pedersen, carrying a naphtha flare,
unlocking a small door leading into the arena, and closing it with a
slam after he had entered. Soon the light went out.

II
 After a week the show shifted and Pompoon accompanied it. Mrs.
Kavanagh, who looked after the birds, was, a little fortunately for
him, kicked in the stomach by a mule and had to be left at an
infirmary. Pompoon, who seemed to understand birds, took charge
of the parakeets, love birds, and other highly coloured fowl,
including the quetzal with green mossy head, pink breast, and
flowing tails, and the primrose-breasted toucans with bills like a
butcher’s cleaver.
The show was always moving on and moving on. Putting it up and
taking it down was a more entertaining affair than the exhibition
itself. With Jimmy Fascota in charge, and the young man of the frock
coat in an ecstasy of labour, half-clothed husky men swarmed up the
rigged frameworks, dismantling poles, planks, floors, ropes, roofs,
staging, tearing at bolts and bars, walking at dizzying altitudes on
narrow boards, swearing at their mates, staggering under vast
burdens, sweating till they looked like seals, packing and disposing
incredibly of it all, furling the flags, rolling up the filthy awnings, then
Right O! for a market town twenty miles away.
In the autumn the show would be due at a great gala town in the
north, the supreme opportunity of the year, and by that time Mr.
Woolf expected to have a startling headline about a new tiger act
and the intrepid tamer. But somehow Pedersen could make no
progress at all with this. Week after week went by, and the longer he
left that initial entry into the cage of the tiger, notwithstanding the
comforting support of firearms and hot irons, the more remote
appeared the possibility of its capitulation. The tiger’s hatred did not
manifest itself in roars and gnashing of teeth, but by its rigid
implacable pose and a slight flexion of its protruded claws. It
seemed as if endowed with an imagination of blood-lust, Pedersen
being the deepest conceivable excitation of this. Week after week
went by and the show people became aware that Pedersen, their
Pedersen, the unrivalled, the dauntless tamer, had met his match.
They were proud of the beast. Some said it was Yak’s bald crown
that the tiger disliked, but Marie swore it was his moustache, a really
remarkable piece of hirsute furniture, that he would not have parted
with for a pound of gold—so he said. But whatever it was—crown,
moustache, or the whole conglomerate Pedersen—the tiger
remarkably loathed it and displayed his loathing, while the
unfortunate tamer had no more success with it than he had ever had
with Marie the Cossack, though there was at least a good humour in
her treatment of him which was horribly absent from the attitude of
the beast. For a long time Pedersen blamed the hunchback for it all.
He tried to elicit from him by gesticulations in front of the cage the
secret of the creature’s enmity, but the barriers to their intercourse
were too great to be overcome, and to all Pedersen’s illustrative
frenzies Pompoon would only shake his sad head and roll his great
eyes until the Dane would cuff him away with a curse of disgust and
turn to find the eyes of the tiger, the dusky, smooth-skinned tiger
with bitter bars of ebony, fixed upon him with tenfold malignity. How
he longed in his raging impotence to transfix the thing with a sharp
spear through the cage’s gilded bars, or to bore a hole into its vitals
with a red-hot iron! All the traditional treatment in such cases,
combined first with starvation and then with rich feeding, proved
unavailing. Pedersen always had the front flap of the cage left down
at night so that he might, as he thought, establish some kind of
working arrangement between them by the force of propinquity. He
tried to sleep on a bench just outside the cage, but the horror of the
beast so penetrated him that he had to turn his back upon it. Even
then the intense enmity pierced the back of his brain and forced him
to seek a bench elsewhere out of range of the tiger’s vision.
Meanwhile, the derision of Marie was not concealed—it was even
blatant—and to the old contest of love between herself and the
Dane was now added a new contest of personal courage, for it had
come to be assumed, in some undeclarable fashion, that if Yak
Pedersen could not tame that tiger, then Marie the Cossack would.
As this situation crystallized daily the passion of Pedersen changed
to jealousy and hatred. He began to regard the smiling Marie in
much the same way as the tiger regarded him.
 “The hell-devil! May some lightning scorch her like a toasted fish!”
But in a short while this mood was displaced by one of anxiety; he
became even abject. Then, strangely enough, Marie’s feelings
underwent some modification. She was proud of the chance to
subdue and defeat him, but it might be at a great price—too great a
price for her. Addressing herself in turn to the dim understanding of
Pompoon she had come to perceive that he believed the tiger to be
not merely quite untamable, but full of mysterious dangers. She
could not triumph over the Dane unless she ran the risk he feared to
run. The risk was colossal then, and with her realization of this some
pity for Yak began to exercise itself in her; after all, were they not in
the same boat? But the more she sympathized the more she jeered.
The thing had to be done somehow.
Meanwhile Barnabe Woolf wants that headline for the big autumn
show, and a failure will mean a nasty interview with that gentleman.
It may end by Barnabe kicking Yak Pedersen out of his wild beast
show. Not that Mr. Woolf is so gross as to suggest that. He senses
the difficulty, although his manager in his pride will not confess to
any. Mr. Woolf declares that his tiger is a new tiger; Yak must watch
out for him, be careful. He talks as if it were just a question of giving
the cage a coat of whitewash. He never hints at contingencies; but
still, there is his new untamed tiger, and there is Mr. Yak Pedersen,
his wild beast tamer—at present.

III
One day the menagerie did not open. It had finished an
engagement, and Jimmy Fascota had gone off to another town to
arrange the new pitch. The show folk made holiday about the camp,
or flocked into the town for marketing or carousals. Mrs. Fascota was
alone in her caravan, clothed in her jauntiest attire. She was
preparing to go into the town when Pedersen suddenly came silently
in and sat down.
 “Marie,” he said, after a few moments, “I give up that tiger. To me
he has given a spell. It is like a mesmerize.” He dropped his hands
upon his knees in complete humiliation. Marie did not speak, so he
asked: “What you think?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and put her brown arms akimbo. She
was a grand figure so, in a cloak of black satin and a huge hat
trimmed with crimson feathers.
“If you can’t trust him,” she said, “who can?”
“It is myself I am not to trust. Shameful! But that tiger will do me,
yes, so I will not conquer him. It’s bad, very, very bad, is it not so?
Shameful, but I will not do it!” he declared excitedly.
“What’s Barnabe say?”
“I do not care, Mr. Woolf can think what he can think! Damn
Woolf! But for what I do think of my own self.... Ah!” He paused for
a moment, dejected beyond speech. “Yes, miserable it is, in my own
heart very shameful, Marie. And what you think of me, yes, that
too!”
There was a note in his voice that almost confounded her—why,
the man was going to cry! In a moment she was all melting
compassion and bravado.
“You leave the devil to me, Yak. What’s come over you, man? God
love us, I’ll tiger him!”
But the Dane had gone as far as he could go. He could admit his
defeat, but he could not welcome her all too ready amplification of
it.
“Na, na, you are good for him, Marie, but you beware. He is not a
tiger; he is beyond everything, foul—he has got a foul heart and a
thousand demons in it. I would not bear to see you touch him; no,
no, I would not bear it!”
 “Wait till I come back this afternoon—you wait!” cried Marie, lifting
her clenched fist. “So help me, I’ll tiger him, you’ll see!”
Pedersen suddenly awoke to her amazing attraction. He seized her
in his arms. “Na, na, Marie! God above! I will not have it.”
“Aw, shut up!” she commanded, impatiently, and pushing him from
her she sprang down the steps and proceeded to the town alone.
She did not return in the afternoon; she did not return in the
evening; she was not there when the camp closed up for the night.
Sophy, alone, was quite unconcerned. Pompoon sat outside the
caravan, while the flame of the last lamp was perishing weakly
above his head. He now wore a coat of shag-coloured velvet. He
was old and looked very wise, often shaking his head, not wearily,
but as if in doubt. The flute lay glittering upon his knees and he was
wiping his lips with a green silk handkerchief when barefoot Sophy in
her red petticoat crept behind him, unhooked the lamp, and left him
in darkness. Then he departed to an old tent the Fascotas had found
for him.
When the mother returned the camp was asleep in its darkness
and she was very drunk. Yak Pedersen had got her. He carried her
into the arena, and bolted and barred the door.

IV
Marie Fascota awoke next morning in broad daylight; through
chinks and rents in the canvas roof of the arena the brightness was
beautiful to behold. She could hear a few early risers bawling
outside, while all around her the caged beasts and birds were
squeaking, whistling, growling, and snarling. She was lying beside
the Dane on a great bundle of straw. He was already awake when
she became aware of him, watching her with amused eyes.
“Yak Pedersen! Was I drunk?” Marie asked dazedly in low husky
tones, sitting up. “What’s this, Yak Pedersen? Was I drunk? Have I
been here all night?”
He lay with his hands behind his head, smiling in the dissolute
ugliness of his abrupt yellow skull so incongruously bald, his
moustache so profuse, his nostrils and ears teeming with hairs.
“Can’t you speak?” cried the wretched woman. “What game do
you call this? Where’s my Sophy, and my Jimmy—is he back?”
Again he did not answer; he stretched out a hand to caress her.
Unguarded as he was, Marie smashed down both her fists full upon
his face. He lunged back blindly at her and they both struggled to
their feet, his fingers clawing in her thick strands of hair as she
struck at him in frenzy. Down rolled the mass and he seized it; it was
her weakness, and she screamed. Marie was a rare woman—a
match for most men—but the capture of her hair gave her utterly
into his powerful hands. Uttering a torrent of filthy oaths, Pedersen
pulled the yelling woman backwards to him and grasping her neck
with both hands gave a murderous wrench and flung her to the
ground. As she fell Marie’s hand clutched a small cage of fortune-
telling birds. She hurled this at the man, but it missed him; the cage
burst against a pillar and the birds scattered in the air.
“Marie! Marie!” shouted Yak, “listen! listen!”
Remorsefully he flung himself before the raging woman who
swept at him with an axe, her hair streaming, her eyes blazing with
the fire of a thousand angers.
“Drunk, was I!” she screamed at him. “That’s how ye got me, Yak
Pedersen? Drunk, was I!”
He warded the blow with his arm, but the shock and pain of it was
so great that his own rage burst out again, and leaping at the
woman he struck her a horrible blow across the eyes. She sunk to
her knees and huddled there without a sound, holding her hands to
her bleeding face, her loose hair covering it like a net. At the pitiful
sight the Dane’s grief conquered him again, and bending over her
imploringly he said: “Marie, my love, Marie! Listen! It is not true!
Swear me to God, good woman, it is not true, it is not possible!
Swear me to God!” he raged distractedly. “Swear me to God!”
Suddenly he stopped and gasped. They were in front of the tiger’s
cage, and Pedersen was as if transfixed by that fearful gaze. The
beast stood with hatred concentrated in every bristling hair upon its
hide, and in its eyes a malignity that was almost incandescent. Still
as a stone, Marie observed this, and began to creep away from the
Dane, stealthily, stealthily. On a sudden, with incredible agility, she
sprang up the steps of the tiger’s cage, tore the pin from the catch,
flung open the door, and, yelling in madness, leapt in. As she did so,
the cage emptied. In one moment she saw Pedersen grovelling on
his knees, stupid, and the next....
All the hidden beasts, stirred by instinctive knowledge of the
tragedy, roared and raged. Marie’s eyes and mind were opened to its
horror. She plugged her fingers into her ears; screamed; but her
voice was a mere wafer of sound in that pandemonium. She heard
vast crashes of someone smashing in the small door of the arena,
and then swooned upon the floor of the cage.
The bolts were torn from their sockets at last, the slip door swung
back, and in the opening appeared Pompoon, alone, old Pompoon,
with a flaming lamp and an iron spear. As he stepped forward into
the gloom he saw the tiger, dragging something in its mouth, leap
back into its cage.
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