TROPIC DEATH
TROPIC
DEATH
By
ERIC WALROND
New York
BONI & LIVERIGHT
1926
COPYRIGHT 1926 :: BY
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
To
Casper Holstein
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| 1. | Drought | 11 |
| 2. | Panama Gold | 35 |
| 3. | The Yellow One | 61 |
| 4. | The Wharf Rats | 89 |
| 5. | The Palm Porch | 117 |
| 6. | Subjection | 139 |
| 7. | The Black Pin | 161 |
| 8. | The White Snake | 185 |
| 9. | The Vampire Bat | 211 |
| 10. | Tropic Death | 237 |
DROUGHT
TROPIC DEATH
I
The whistle blew for eleven o'clock. Throats parched, grim, sun-crazedblacks cutting stone on the white burning hillside dropped with a clangthe hot, dust-powdered drills and flew up over the rugged edges ofthe horizon to descent into a dry, waterless gut. Hunger—pricks atstomachs inured to brackish coffee and cassava pone—pressed on folk,joyful as rabbits in a grassy ravine, wrenching themselves free of thelure of the white earth. Helter-skelter dark, brilliant, black facesof West Indian peasants moved along, in pain—the stiff tails of bluedenim coats, the hobble of chigger-cracked [Pg 12]heels, the rhythm of astride ... dissipating into the sun-stuffed void the radiant forces ofthe incline.
The broad road—a boon to constabl