CHAPTER VIII
ALAN MACGREGOR'S BROWN LEG
One whose presence aided in promoting a healthful mental atmosphereamong those so constrained to be together was a lady perhaps thirtyyears of age who bore herself with the air of a school-teacher, butdecidedly with the manner of one whom her pupils would more love thanfear. She laughingly alluded to herself as the Teacher and, by commonconsent, this had become her designation. It was she, most well-informedand reflective of ladies, who, after the applause following theStranger's song had barely died away, advanced a proposition involvingimmediately and deeply a tanned, good-looking man who, as was known, hadbeen engaged in the work of collecting rare orchids in South America.
"I have read somewhere," said she, "that people adrift for days at sea,and parched and half-crazed with thirst, either relieve or, possibly,aggravate their sufferings--I do not know how that may be--by all sortsof queer debate as to whether ice-water is good for the health or not,whether iced-claret is better than plain lemonade, in short in adiscussion as to the relative merits of all sorts of cooling drinks. AndI have read too, that people starving, like some of the Arcticexplorers, conduct themselves in almost the same way, imagining allsorts of magnificent repasts, each telling of some meal where his choiceamong foods was the principal dish or describing what he would firstorder should he ever reach civilization again.
"Now," she continued, "it seems to me," and she drew her cloak about hermore closely and with a shudder, "it seems to me that it would be agreat relief and comfort if some one were to tell a story of a tropicregion, a place where snow and ice are all unknown. I think we wouldenjoy it. I know I should myself. Mr. Explorer," and she turned to thatgentleman, "you have certainly at some time wandered about in thevicinity of the Equator, cannot you tell us a story, the scene of whichis laid in a region where it is always decently warm?" And she shudderedagain and cuddled down more closely in her seat.
The Explorer answered readily: "I've been in the vicinity of theEquator a great many times, but I do not remember any experience whichwould furnish material for a story." He hesitated a moment, "Ah, yes, Ido, it's a very curious story, too. I think we may call it
ALAN MACGREGOR'S BROWN LEG
Alan MacGregor was with us in South America. He was with us, but not ofus. He had money enough, and had come along just because I wanted himto, and he wanted to see what the tropics were like. We were asemi-scientific group, looking for orchids and caoutchouc and variousother things which could be transported down the Amazon and turned intogood dollars at any port on the Atlantic coast.
MacGregor was practically an outsider, but was generally regarded as oneof us. I think the only possible distinction which existed between himand any other man of the group was, that he was desperately in love witha young Scottish woman of Chicago, of whose intense clannishness andpatriotism he was everlastingly boasting and laughing the while. Infact, he became almost something of a bore to us, with his dreaming andhis tale-telling of this Miss Agnes Cameron, who, he declared was themost earnest Highlander on the face of the earth. She knew every clanand the coloring of any crisscross of tartan ever worn under snowflakeor under sunshine. He was most desperately in love, and what he seemedgreatly to admire in his sweetheart was her pure Scottish patriotism.She thought of, and he quoted, only "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," or"Up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee," or any other thing of that sortrelating to the exploits of the Highlanders of modernly classic times.
Well, MacGregor and I did a good deal of exploring and a good deal ofshooting, and enjoyed ourselves together. It is not necessary in thisaccount to mention the exact locality, because, to tell the truth, Icould not remember it distinctly myself. We were camped in the corner ofa little affluent of the Amazon, some hundreds of miles up from thedelta. It was a pleasant enough region, barring the fact that it wasfrightfully hot and that there seemed to be more jaguars and alligatorsand anacondas to the square mile than were really necessary. Of course,tastes differ as to the number of jaguars and alligators and anacondasthere should be to this mentioned area, but the consensus of opinion inour little party was that, in that latitude and altitude, the averagehad been a little overrun. Not only were they numerous--the animals thusindicated--but they seemed to be, in every instance, healthy andunnecessarily enterprising.
Lots of things happened, but the thing which has always remained bestfixed in my memory was the affair of MacGregor's brown leg. We had beenout shooting parrots together that very afternoon, and I remember thathe drove me nearly mad by his repetition of how good a Scotchwoman his"lassie" was, and how she boasted of the fact that she was a directdescendant of the reckless old riever, who, herding back into theHighlands stolen cattle from the Lowlands, and stopping for a few hoursabout midnight to let kine and clansmen rest, suddenly discovered thathis son, his eldest son, the pride of clan and family, had sodegenerated that, lying barelegged in the snow, he had rolled up asnowball for a pillow, and was there sleeping most luxuriously when hisfather found him. The old laird promptly kicked that snowball into theewigkeit, and wanted to know how far his family had become degenerateand degraded! Well, Miss Agnes Cameron boasted of this old laird as hergreat, great, and so on, ancestor. This will give some idea of theextent of her native pride in bare legs and Scottish blood.
It was, perhaps, four o'clock one afternoon when we were in camp in anopen glade in the very midst of the forest, that the whole companyscattered itself of its own impulse. I wanted to study the habits of asmall animal, a specimen of which I had seen among some rocks a mileaway--a sort of little armadillo. My scientific associate wanted to tryfor a jaguar, the growls of which our attendants had heard in theforest, a mile or so in the other direction. The natives whom we hademployed as guides and servants were themselves anxious to engage in alittle expedition of their own. They had seen a fruit of which they arefond--they are always gorging when they have opportunity, these almostsavage natives--and they wanted to go out and gather a great quantity ofit while the opportunity offered. Alan alone remained inactive. He hadworked hard the day before, had done a lot of shooting, and had need ofrest, and now, as he declared, he wanted to slip away and sleep all theafternoon. Sometimes Alan drank a little. I believe he had a flask withhim that day. At any rate, we all departed and left him lying stretchedout upon the ground beneath a giant tree, which kept him shaded as ifbeneath an umbrella, fifty feet, at least, in its diameter.
That is all there was to the situation. We drifted away into the forestin our several directions, and left Alan lying there sleeping like alump, for, poor fellow, he needed rest. "It would take a good deal todisturb that man," laughed one of the party as we departed. Now, as towhat followed, I can tell you only of what I did not see, but what, aswas made apparent later, was the absolute fact.
We were camped close beside a great creek which reached the affluent ofthe Amazon, and along these creeks, as along the river proper, weregigantic serpents. The anaconda is as much at home on land as in water.Those big constrictors of the southern part of this great hemisphere aredreadful. They prey upon the deer and upon a thousand other things. Theyare a terror everywhere, and, though we did not know it at the time,there was concealed in that tree beneath which poor Alan was lying, avery healthy specimen of this powerful reptile. That was what weconcluded afterward, although the great snake may not have been therewhen we left, and may have come afterward. Anyway, what happened musthave been just this: The great serpent saw the sleeping man, and lookedupon him as his prey. He saw what was his food breathing stertorously,and he dropped from the tree or came up from the river beside him. Hebegan to swallow the man.
"THE GREAT SNAKE BEGAN ITS WORK OF DEGLUTITION"]
It was unfortunate for this particular anaconda that the reptilia arenot great reasoners. He should have begun upon the man's head. Then itwould have been a simple thing. The man would have been engulfed, theserpent would have crawled sluggishly a hundred yards or so away andbegun his period of digestion, and that would have been t
he end of theincident. Instead of that, he started on a foot, and began swallowingfrom that point. Now, it is a well-known fact that this swallowing of abody by any of the constrictor family, except as to contraction andeventual suffocation, is harmless, because the jaws of this class ofserpents are unconnected. The upper jaw slips forward, hooks onto thebody with its fangs and draws it into an enormously distended throat.Then the under jaw slips forward in the same manner, hooks its fangs,and draws it back in the same way. So, inch by inch, a body isengulfed. Anything with a nonsensitive exterior can be swallowed by ananaconda, a boa, or a python without knowing about it until a lack ofair becomes apparent.
MacGregor wore a pair of very heavy leather trousers he had secured toguard him against the undergrowth with which we had to worry. So thegreat snake began his work of deglutition, and Alan lay there,unconscious of what was going on. Still that snake swallowed Alan asfast as he could. He swallowed him as far up as the leg went and thenstopped, from the simple fact that the rest of Alan lay at right anglesacross his mouth, and he could not swallow any further. But a snake doesnot reason much, and this particular anaconda lay there contented,perhaps in his dim way knowing that he had got something good as far asit went, and that he was satisfied. And the process of digestion wenton.
It was truly a coincidence that we all returned almost together thatevening. It must have been about seven o'clock. Malcolm came back fromhis particular quest without a jaguar. I had failed to find my littleanimal. The natives had found their fruit, and had gathered a largeload, or they would have been in long before us. Then we looked forAlan. To describe the scene that ensued when our poor friend wasdiscovered would be impossible. He was sleeping like a log. We thoughthim dead, at first, but some one gave him a spat upon the face andshouted, and he leaped, or tried to leap, to his feet, and when he sawwhat was the matter, he gave one of the most blood-curdling yells everemitted upon either the North or the South American continent. The snakebegan thrashing around, but was already in a semi-lethargic condition,and was promptly chopped in two a little below the point where the footof our poor friend was supposed to be. Then the remainder of the serpentwas cut away with much difficulty from the leg which it had enveloped,and a shocking spectacle was presented.
It is understood, generally, that the digestive organs of the anacondaare something most remarkable. Here was an illustration in fact. Notonly the leather trousers of our unfortunate friend had been digestedaway, but the digesting process had reached his skin and destroyed itutterly. The bare flesh was all exposed and the skin had followed thetrousers. Alan was unable to stand, and was so overcome with horror athis condition, as to be incapable of suggesting anything for relieffrom his immediate predicament or for his future restoration. The rawflesh attracted a myriad of insects, who added all their tantalizingpossibilities to the situation. Alan could not bear contact with anysort of covering, and none of us was provided with oiled silk oranything suitable for such an unheard-of emergency. I did not know whatto do. I called upon Dr. Jacobson, the eminent scientist of theexpedition. Hardly had I asked his advice, before there came the whirrand swish of arrows, and we were in a charming fight in no time. Theevent, in fact, became almost too interesting, but we managed to driveoff the natives and found half a dozen of them, dead or dying in theunderbrush. They had carried off most of their wounded.
To Jacobson came an inspiration, as he was looking curiously at one ofthe dead natives. He broke out excitedly:
"There's an insensible, dying Indian just about the size of MacGregor.If we work quickly enough, we can do the biggest job of skin graftingever heard of upon this or any other continent, or anywhere in stellarspace as far as you have a mind to go."
We did it all with a rush, under the scientist's direction. We skinnedthat half-way nigger's leg, and it was immediately and neatly inflected,adjusted, and stitched upon the leg which had loitered a shade too longin the maw of the anaconda. The dark skin fitted on, and grew to be apart of MacGregor in almost no time. Talk about the "hand-me-down" manwho assures the customer that the thing "fits shust like de paper on devall," well, neither he nor his customer could be counted in with ourscientist and MacGregor and a portion of the South American, so latelybut so permanently deceased.
That is about all there is to the tropical part of this episode. I waspresent when Alan met his sweetheart again. Soon came St. Andrew's day.MacGregor was to be a prominent figure, and his sweetheart awaited theoccasion with pride and hopefulness, and great enthusiasm. She waited,anxiously, until she should see her true love conspicuous, as shethought he ought to be, in the crack organization of those who made partof the parade of St. Andrew's day. There came a moment of intenseexcitement, both to her and to the somewhat overbearing Scottish groupabout her. When it was generally understood that the most vaunting,aristocratic, and full-blooded Scots company was about to pass, shewatched and watched, watched just for him, to see her great loverstalking nobly in the finest company. Time lagged. Never before had Timeso loafed and enjoyed himself in some nonsense by the wayside. Finally,a hundred yards away, came imposing and demanding on the ear-drums themusic of the pipes. There wasn't any slogan, because there wasn't anyfight, but something almost as appealing to the clean, stubborn,Scottish heart, be it in man or woman. They swung around the corner andinto the main street. She saw it all and she knew it all, and looked forAlan MacGregor among those coming barelegged to the fore with the weirdmusic which has for centuries meant ever pluck, and sometimes conquest.Her eyes turned this way and that way, and finally they lit upon hersweetheart. There was no doubt about it. There he was, marching aslieutenant or something of that sort, of the tartaned company, allbarelegged from below the kilt a little above the knee to thick stockingjust below the knee, all alike displaying this ancient Scottishendurance of field and flood and of anything else. The girl's statelyAlan walked grandly in his place, clad confidently in the tartan of hisclan, and showing his strip of leg about the knee as brazenly as did anyother man of the parading Scotsmen.
The girl saw him, looked upon him, first buoyant, excited and admiring,then appalled. She saw him lording it abroad among his minions, and, atthe same time, she noted that his legs were black and those of the othermen white. She could not understand it; it was something ghastly.
What had happened was this:
It was the morning of St. Andrew's day, and they were gathered in thearmory, the hundreds of enthusiastic Scots. The sun's rays shot slantingthrough the windows, lit upon bonnet, tartan, and sporan, and upon legsbare at the knee, "uncomely fair," as a veteran observed, which was notto be wondered at, as they were thus exposed but once a year, to theintense but concealed discomfort of their shivering but patrioticowners. Ringing-voiced and cheerful among them was Alan MacGregor. Hedressed himself in the retiring room, as did the others, and came out inall the kilted glory of his ancient clan. He was a fine figure of a manto look upon, but there was a howl when he appeared. The bare patchabout the knee of one leg showed white, and on the other, black!
"Ken ye what's the matter wi' your legs, mon?" roared a giant among thegroup; and MacGregor looked down, to realize in a moment his condition.It would never do to march through the streets with one leg black andthe other white. In desperation he told his story to his assembledcountrymen. There was a groan of sympathy and perplexity, until thetension was relieved by the cry of an inventive young whelp from theOrkneys:
"What's the matter with ink?"
The suggestion was received with a howl of applause, and, three minuteslater, the bare portion of MacGregor's white leg was made to correspondin color with the other.
To repeat, in a way, what has been already told, from the armory, thegallant Scotsmen swung upon the street in serried numbers, to marchimposingly through streets lined and flanked with thousands andthousands of their fellow-citizens of any birth. They made a spectaclewhich it was good to see. Each piper "screwed his pipes and garred themskirl," "The pibroch lent its maddening tone," and the pipes droned andclamored and yelpe
d for victory nearer and nearer all the time. Themarchers passed in gallant style. The moment came at last when, with adefiant howl of the pipes, MacGregor's company passed the stand, and itwas now that, as has been related, Agnes saw her lover, broadshouldered, cleanly built, and striding with the inherited gait of athousand chieftains. Eh! but he was fine! For one blissful moment Agnesgazed upon her lover's figure, before she saw his knees. She swooned,and the lady who sat next her applied her salts and led her gently fromthe scene.
It seemed to the Scotchwoman there was but one thing for her to do. Whenshe recovered sufficiently, she wrote this letter to her Alan:
Oh, Alan! Are ye no patriot, no product of the Scotsmen of the old time? And I, I thought your blood as blue as the water in the mountain lakes fresh tinted from the sky. Oh, Alan! my Alan! ye looked so braw, barrin' the black breeks ye wore to protect the single patch of ye from the raw weather. Oh, Alan! did our stern ancestors do the like of that? Cared they for squall or flurry or the frost rime? Oh, my Alan! I love ye. Ye ken it well, but we must not marry. Think ye I would tak pride in children of the man of the black breeks? I'm gey--sore gey!
Your AGNES.
Now note what happened! Now pity me! Alan was heart-riven and wild, andcame to me in his distress. I was the only person in the great city whocould give authoritatively the story of his brown leg. I was the onlyperson who could re-establish him in Agnes' mind as an ardent Scot.Imagine a mission like that. Imagine a man having to go and talk to ayoung lady about one of her lover's legs! I don't know how I did it, butcertainly I did it. I want to say here and now and frankly--and I don'tcare whether she reads it or not--that when I first met her, thetemperature was far more sultry than we had ever found it upon theAmazon. It dropped many degrees, though, before my story was concluded.
Well, they have a boy about two years old, and they have named him afterme. I don't know what I'll do to that boy. The little wretch hugs me sostrenuously that I believe he is part anaconda.
And this ended the story-telling for the day. Their imaginations hadbeen "stretched enough" commented kindly Mrs. Livingston.