Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/280

264 whispered in my heart that I should be home. And I was there almost as quick as if I had been still a man, and not a worm.

"Señor, the house was deserted. As I crawled about like a dog smelling tracks, there was not a trace of the woman I loved.

"Then all that my eyes had refused to see, all that my ears had refused to hear poured into me in a black tide. I knew why the pueblo had laughed. And throwing myself on my back I shivered all night with pain and lust to kill."

The man suddenly leaned forward and his eyes flamed. The mañangetes were rushing into the town. Smoothly they glided around the plaza, and then they passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze. The creaking of the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears, the pungent sulphurous odour of the tuba bit our nostrils, and long with a wistful look the cripple followed them till they were lost in the palpitating colour-play of the market.

Four miles from Cabancalan there is a lonely pile of rocks of evil repute. Heavy, cannon-like reports come from it at times, and a sickening smell of sulphur pinches the nostrils a quarter of a mile away.

I was passing the place at noon one day when I