Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/274

258 bamboo poles, undulated liquidly beneath the golden skin. Through the palm leaves covering the buckets a slight froth played like silver lace. They passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze; the creak of the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears; the pungent, sulphurous odour of the tuba stung our nostrils, and then they vanished in the kaleidoscopic colour-play of the market.

My eyes fell upon my companion. He was leaning forward, his shrivelled legs collapsed beneath the trunk, his whole weight upon his hands, his head straining ahead like that of a bird in flight, and in his eyes something strange and moving—a soft, regretful gleam, yes—God bless me, how strange it seemed in that sullen, stolid cripple!—a look of longing, longing infinite.

From this day I watched him, watched him as the tuba-carriers flashed into the pueblo, at high noon.

He was about forty years old, and above the waist he was beautiful. From the belt the body shot upward, broadening like a Greek urn into a deep chest, and wide, massive shoulders. Beneath the gleaming terra-cotta skin the muscle played in elastic bundles of power. His face was hatchet-carved, with a relentless jaw and eagle nose, and his straight black hair was ennobled by a sprinkle of gray.