第28章 THE PRINCESS(1)

A FIRE burned cheerfully in the jungle camp, and beside the fire lolled a cheerful-seeming though horrible-appearing man.This was a hobo jungle, pitched in a thin strip of woods that lay between a railroad embankment and the bank of a river.But no hobo was the man.So deep-sunk was he in the social abyss that a proper hobo would not sit by the same fire with him.A gay-cat, who is an ignorant new-comer on the "Road," might sit with such as he, but only long enough to learn better.Even low down bindle-stiffs and stew-bums, after a once-over, would have passed this man by.A genuine hobo, a couple of punks, or a bunch of tender-yeared road- kids might have gone through his rags for any stray pennies or nickels and kicked him out into the darkness.Even an alki- stiff would have reckoned himself immeasurably superior.

For this man was that hybrid of tramp-land, an alki-stiff that has degenerated into a stew-bum, with so little self-respect that he will never "boil-up," and with so little pride that he will eat out of a garbage can.He was truly horrible-appearing.He might have been sixty years of age; he might have been ninety.His garments might have been discarded by a rag-picker.Beside him, an unrolled bundle showed itself as consisting of a ragged overcoat and containing an empty and smoke-blackened tomato can, an empty and battered condensed milk can, some dog-meat partly wrapped in brown paper and evidently begged from some butcher-shop, a carrot that had been run over in the street by a wagon-wheel, three greenish- cankered and decayed potatoes, and a sugar-bun with a mouthful bitten from it and rescued from the gutter, as was made patent by the gutter-filth that still encrusted it.

A prodigious growth of whiskers, greyish-dirty and untrimmed for years, sprouted from his face.This hirsute growth should have been white, but the season was summer and it had not been exposed to a rain- shower for some time.What was visible of the face looked as if at some period it had stopped a hand-grenade.The nose was so variously malformed in its healed brokenness that there was no bridge, while onenostril, the size of a pea, opened downward, and the other, the size of a robin's egg, tilted upward to the sky.One eye, of normal size, dim-brown and misty, bulged to the verge of popping out, and as if from senility wept copiously and continuously.The other eye, scarcely larger than a squirrel's and as uncannily bright, twisted up obliquely into the hairy scar of a bone-crushed eyebrow.And he had but one arm.

Yet was he cheerful.On his face, in mild degree, was depicted sensuous pleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs with his one hand.He pawed over his food-scraps, debated, then drew a twelve-ounce druggist bottle from his inside coat-pocket.The bottle was full of a colourless liquid, the contemplation of which made his little eye burn brighter and quickened his movements.Picking up the tomato can, he arose, went down the short path to the river, and returned with the can filled with not-nice river water.In the condensed milk can he mixed one part of water with two parts of fluid from the bottle.This colourless fluid was druggist's alcohol, and as such is known in tramp-land as "alki."Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad embankment, alarmed him ere he could drink.Placing the can carefully upon the ground between his legs, he covered it with his hat and waited anxiously whatever impended.

Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as he.The new- comer, who might have been fifty, and might have been sixty, was grotesquely fat.He bulged everywhere.He was composed of bulges.His bulbous nose was the size and shape of a turnip.His eyelids bulged and his blue eyes bulged in competition with them.In many places the seams of his garments had parted across the bulges of body.His calves grew into his feet, for the broken elastic sides of his Congress gaiters were swelled full with the fat of him.One arm only he sported, from the shoulder of which was suspended a small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry on the outer covering from the last place he had pitched his doss.He advanced with tentative caution, made sure of the harmlessness of the man beside the fire, and joined him.

"Hello, grandpa," the new-comer greeted, then paused to stare at the other's flaring, sky-open nostril."Say, Whiskers, how'd ye keep the nightdew out of that nose o' yourn?"

Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into the fire in token that he was not pleased by the question.

"For the love of Mike," the fat man chuckled, "if you got caught out in a rainstorm without an umbrella you'd sure drown, wouldn't you?""Can it, Fatty, can it," Whiskers muttered wearily."They ain't nothin' new in that line of chatter.Even the bulls hand it out to me.""But you can still drink, I hope"; Fatty at the same time mollified and invited, with his one hand deftly pulling the slip-knots that fastened his bundle.

From within the bundle he brought to light a twelve-ounce bottle of alki.Footsteps coming down the embankment alarmed him, and he hid the bottle under his hat on the ground between his legs.