Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/101

Rh fifty francs I purchased the most complete outfit in all the island. It consisted of a bedstead, four mats, a mortar for pounding rice, six earthenware platters and a cocoa-nut grater.

"I had already decided on the business I meant to follow; this was to buy European stuffs at Colombo and barter them with the Bedaths.

"I must now tell you who and what the Bedaths are. They are a race of savages who lurk in the woods, are independent, have no king, and live by the chase. The fellows have no need of houses, having neither town nor villages, nor even so much as a hut. Their bed is the foot of a tree, fenced with thorny branches; if an elephant, lion, or tiger tries to breakthrough the hedge they have built, the noise wakes them, they scramble up their tree, and from there make mock of tigers, lions, or elephants. As for snakes, whether cobra-di-capello, caravilla, tiipolonga, or bodru-pam, four scoundrelly reptiles that kill a man as if he were a fly, they don't care a hang for any of them, for they possess charms against their bites; so there is only the pembera, which is not poisonous certainly, but which swallows a man as we do an oyster, that they need fear; but you will understand reptiles of twenty-five to thirty feet long are not common. In a word, they have no houses, and do very well without them.

"This is the way you trade with them. When they require any manufactured article such as iron, or European stuffs, they creep up to the towns or villages and deposit in a spot agreed upon a quantity of wax, honey, or ivory; they write in broken Portuguese on a leaf what they want, and you supply them with it. So I put myself into communication with the Bedaths and bartered with them for ivory.

"Meanwhile, I had made acquaintance with some of my neighbours. I was particularly friendly with a worthy Cingalese trader, an inveterate draughtsplayer and a dealer in cinnamon. Ten times over he had ruined himself at play, and ten times over he had made another fortune, only to lose it again. He was the best judge of spices in all the island perhaps, and after merely glancing at a cinnamon tree, 'Right!' he would say, 'that's the real stuff, that's the best quality cinnamon.' I ought to tell you that in Ceylon there are ten different sorts of cinnamon trees, and that the most knowing are liable to mistake one for the other; but this man was infallible. How did he distinguish them? was it by the shape of the leaf, which is like that of the orange? was it by the scent of the flower? was it by its little yellow fruit, about as big as an olive? I have no notion. He would just pick out a cinnamon tree, strip off the outer bark, break up the inner, dry it, roll it up in cocoanut cloth, put his name on the parcel and the thing was done; buyers never even asked to look at a sample.

"The stuff sold and paid for, he made the money fly, I can tell you, and anybody who wanted a match at draughts knew where to find an adversary ready.

"Now you know, or perhaps you don't know, that the Cingalese are inveterate gamblers. When they have no money left, they stake their furniture; when they have no furniture left, they stake their houses; when they have no houses left; they stake a finger, two fingers, three fingers . . ."

"What do you mean, a finger, two fingers, three fingers?" I interrupted him to ask.

"It's perfectly simple! the loser lays his finger on a stone; the winner takes a little hatchet and chops it off very neatly at the joint agreed upon. You understand, a man is not obliged to stake the whole finger, he can stake one joint. The player who has lost dips his finger in boiling oil; this cauterises the wound, and he goes on playing. My neighbour Vampunivo had three fingers missing on the left hand: he had stopped at the thumb and the first finger, but I won't warrant that by this time they have not shared the fate of the others. Between Vampunivo and myself, you will understand, things did not go this length; I have too much respect for my person; I used to stake a pearl or an elephant's tooth against a parcel of cinnamon. I lost or won as the case might be, and there it ended.

"One evening when we were engaged on our game of draughts, suddenly I saw on the threshold a beautiful girl, who came forward and threw her arms round Vampunivo's neck. It was his daughter; she was sixteen and had only been married five times.

"I ought to explain that in Ceylon