“Ain’t it ’andsome?” he asked. “I marked the squares wid octopus ink, as you can see, and my men are black shells and white ones; only when I makes a king I turns ’im oyer instead of pilin’ one on top of tother, they being too round-like to stand. But I ain’t ’ad a game since my sad end, it bein’ against nature fer a ghost to move the men. Before my decease I played myself.”
“That must have been a tiresome game,” Seaside ventured.
“Strike me pink, but it was awful,” Perks said; “always winning from myself, one way or t’other! It got so discouragin’, never winning a game decisive-like, that I put an end to it all and done away wid myself!”
They sat with the slab between them and started a game, Seaside moving Perks’ men for him. One game after the other he lost to the ghost, sometimes no more than getting a single man to the king row. The night waned, but still they played. Perks became more and more excited over the game; he would scream like a banshee when he won, and an evil glint would come into his eyes when he jumped three men at once or slipped into a saddle between two of Seaside’s men. They were near the end of their twentieth game when dawn broke. Gradually Perks dissolved in the morning light, and his voice became fainter until it was lost in a scarcely audible moan which told Seaside of another game he had lost.
The old native looked up from the checkerboard. The sun was just breaking above the horizon; in the offing lay the Pirara, her boat over the side and not twenty yards from the reef.
Seaside told me there was the devil to pay when he met Captain Andy and tried to explain why he had no birds’ eggs and why he hadn’t been on the reef the evening before. He mentioned something about being delayed by a ghost; but at this the captain flew off the handle, cursing all superstitious sailors to Gehenna and back again. Seaside stood it as long as he could; then slunk forward and told his story to the sailors. They all knew it was true, and sympathized mightily.
But the strange thing was that, as soon as he came on deck the next night to stand his watch, there was Alexander Perks waiting for him, smiling and bowing and lifting his hat and suggesting a game of draughts. The old gentleman had stowed away, slipping into the ship’s boat under cover of daylight!
Seaside broke from his story, turned quickly and said: “All right, Perks, I’m coming.”
A cold shiver ran down my back. There, not six feet away, was a strange misty thing, bowing extravagantly and lifting his hat. I shook myself to dispel the illusion; then turned aft, refusing to glance toward the thing for several moments, for I don’t believe in ghosts and don’t want my convictions shaken by hallucinations. When I did turn, both Seaside and the imaginary Perks were gone.
IV
“Lackadaisy!” the old Pirara groaned while I was putting in my twelve-to-four watch below. “Death comes to old and young alike.”
“What a hackneyed thing to say!” I replied sharply — the old hooker had nearly wakened me. “You might be a little more original.”
“Patience, my son,” she went on, a note of true pathos in her voice. “You should be more considerate of the dying.”
“Dying?”
“Alas, yes; my day has come, and now I find myself so close to Christening Grooves that—”
“Christening Grooves! What’s that?”
“Such ignorance! It’s the paradise for dead ships, where every morning the ghost ships waken on the grooves of launching, stout, tight, shining with paint and varnish and polished brass. Every morning the crowds are there, watching fair maidens break bottles of champagne on the ghost ships’ bows. Then everybody cheers while the band plays ‘Life on the Ocean Wave,’ the cameras click, and; the ships slip gracefully into the water!”
“And every morning it happens all over again?”
“Every morning.”
“Why do you moan about dying, then?”
“Death is a sad thing,” the old lady sighed. “For instance, all of you, whom I have learned to love, will probably perish at sea! Alas! You shouldn’t have allowed Mr. Perks to go ashore!”
I shuddered in my sleep as I queried, “Perks ashore?”
“Of course,” she replied. “He’s back on Vostok Island again. He went ashore with Seaside this morning when the captain sent him after birds’ eggs. Why, even the rats were trying to jump into the boat!”
“Then we’re lost!” I cried in my sleep.
The old lady became sarcastic. “Don’t let that trouble you,” she murmured. “Fiddler’s Green is quite as good a paradise for sailors as is Christening Grooves for ships.”
She chuckled to herself.
“One bell! One bell! Ropati tané!” came Seaside’s senile whine, followed by the scratching on the cabin port.
I jumped from my berth and ran on deck. “Seaside, you old fool!” I shouted. “Is it true that Perks went ashore with you?”
The old sinner grinned and nodded his head in affirmation.
Twenty-four hours later we were all in the reef boat, watching the Pirara plunge to Christening Grooves before we started pulling the hundred and twenty miles back to Vostok Island.
The House
by André Maurois
Translated by Jacques Chambrun
“Five years ago, when I was so very ill,” she said, “I noticed I had the same dream every night. I would walk in the country and, from afar, would see a house, white, low, and long, surrounded by a grove of lindens. At the left of the house a meadow edged with poplars made a pleasing break in the symmetry of the background, and the tops of these trees, which could be seen from a distance, swayed above the lindens.
“In my dream I was drawn to this house and would walk towards it. At the entrance was a gate, painted white. Then I would follow a gracefully curving path, bordered by trees, under which I would find spring flowers, primroses, periwinkles, and anemones, which faded the moment I picked them. Then the path ended, and I was within a few steps of the house.
“In front of it was a large lawn, clipped like English turf, and almost hare, with only one long bed of violet, red, and white flowers, which produced a delightful effect in this green stretch. The house, of white stone, had a huge roof of blue slate. The door, of light colored oak, with carved panels, was at the head of a short flight of steps. I longed to go inside the house, but no one would answer me. I was greatly disappointed; I rang, I shouted, and at last I would awake.
“Such was my dream, and it was repeated month after month with such precision and fidelity that I ended by thinking I certainly must have seen this park and this château in my childhood. However, in my waking state I could not visualize it, and the quest for it became so strong an obsession that one summer, having learned to drive a small car, I decided to spend my vacation on the highways of France, seeking the house of my dream.
“I shall not tell you my travels in detail. I explored Normandy, Touraine, Poitou; but I found nothing. In October I returned to Paris, and all winter long I went on dreaming about the white house. Last spring I resumed my drives through the country about Paris. One day, while on a hill near Orleans, I suddenly felt an agreeable shock, that curious emotion one feels when recognizing after long absence people or places one has loved. Although I had never been in this region before, I recognized perfectly the country which lay at my right. The tops of poplars crowned a grove of linden trees. Through their foliage, still sparse, one sensed that there was a house.