Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/273

Rh that looked like a corpse’s in the moonlight. It was yellow, like his dress. As wicked a physiognomy as ever I set eyes upon. He was in a towering rage. When he got down to the shore we were in deep water, perhaps twenty yards away. He seemed so anxious to get at us I expected to see him start swimming after us. Not a bit of it. I rather imagine that the people just thereabouts were not fond of water in any form. He refused to allow the sea to damp so much as the tips of his toes. He screamed at us instead—to my surprise, in English—not bad English either.

“The Joss! The Great Joss! Give us back our Joss!”

“Wouldn’t you like it?” I returned.

I wasn’t over civil, not liking his looks. I wondered if he had had a hand in burning the girl’s mother. He looked that sort of man.

He raised his hands above his head and cursed us. He looked a quaint figure, standing there in the moon’s white rays. And ugly too. Dangerous if he had a chance. His voice was not a loud one, but he had a trick of getting it to travel.

“You dog! you thief! you accursed! you have stolen from us the Great Joss! But do not think that you can keep him. Wherever you may take him, though it be across the black water, to the land beyond the sun, we will follow. He shall be ours again. As for you, the flesh shall fall from off you; the foul waters shall rot your bones; you shall stink! Mocker of the gods!”

There was a good deal more of it. He continued his observations till we were out of hearing. Repeating that he would follow us pretty well everywhere before he would allow that Great Joss to be a bad debt. Though he was a barbarian and loose in his geography, it struck me that he meant what he said. If he could have laid his hands on me, and have had me