This Side of Jordan Read online

  That explained the spicy odor Alvin had smelled when he sat down at the table.

  Putting a bean on his card, the ruddy-faced fellow said, “When I was with the First Nebraska at Manila in ’98, we seen mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. If you got bit by one of them, you were finished. It’s the sickliest place on earth.”

  “I detest mosquitoes of all sorts,” Margaret said, with a shiver. “They’re despicable pests.”

  “Well, thanks to the mosquito,” the dwarf said, trying to maneuver himself back into the conversation, “poor Uncle Augustus was virtually addicted to quinine for the final thirty-three years of his life. He never recovered from the recurring spells of malaria he contracted on a secret mission for Queen Victoria to Java.”

  “Where?” the farm boy asked, hoping to get under his skin. Whenever Alvin felt sick, he enjoyed sharing his misery with others. Easiest was making his sisters cry. Mary Ann acted like a baby whenever she got teased. Everyone in the family hated that.

  “The Dutch East Indies.”

  “Never heard of it,” Alvin said, with a practiced sneer and a fake giggle.

  The dwarf clucked his tongue. “Well, it’s very far away in the Java Sea, south of Borneo. You know, you really ought to consider studying geography some day.”

  “Says you.”

  “44, LADIES AND GENTS, 44.”

  Margaret shifted a bean onto her card, then told the dwarf, “My friends and I hope to travel around the world one day.”

  “We believe all roads lead to Rome,” said Bertha, winking again at Alvin.

  “You ever been to Borneo?” the ruddy fellow asked Rascal after a puff on his cigar.

  The dwarf shook his head. “No, but twice dear old Uncle Augustus circumnavigated the globe. He was the bravest man I ever knew. His photograph was taken on six continents and I saw each of them on the walls of his library when I was a boy. At every supper, he led us in a toast to the seven seas, ‘Sail and sail, with unshut eye / Round the world for ever and aye.’”

  “He ought to’ve been with me and Dewey at Manila in ’98. Now, there was something to sing about.”

  “I want to hear this little fellow’s story about Queen Victoria,” Bertha said, playing with her beans.

  “Yes,” Margaret agreed. “Let’s hear his story.”

  “Are you certain?” the dwarf asked. “It’s quite frightening.”

  “Are there ghosts involved?” asked Hazel, a slight tremble in her voice. Alvin almost laughed aloud. Now he knew these folks were dumbbells.

  “No,” Rascal replied, “but there’ll be many horrible deaths. I had nightmares for a month after I first heard the story myself.”

  “Oh, I adore a good nightmare!” said Alice. “Do tell your story.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” the ruddy fellow agreed.

  “All right.” The dwarf smiled. “Well, in April of 1883, my Uncle Augustus and a fellow from Stepney by the name of Louis Hurlburt hired onto a tramp steamer as firemen sailing to Java. Apparently, the Queen was quite worried about Dutch intentions concerning Singapore and wished to discover how earnest its colonial regents had become. Uncle Augustus said Java was a wonderful paradise of the most lovely orchids and ancient temples, yet also terribly dangerous in those years. Why, a grown man might be gored to death by a wild ox, drown into a dark mangrove swamp, or earn his fortune in oil and rubber according to the whims of fate.”

  “Gee, maybe I’d ought to go hunting there one day,” Alvin interrupted, as thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain had lightened to a steady drizzle, hissing in the cottonwoods nearby.

  “Oh, I should think you’d be fortunate not to be eaten by a royal tiger. It’s one of the most perilous jungles on earth.”

  “36, LADIES AND GENTS, 36!”

  “I wouldn’t be at all ascared. I shot a bear once from my bedroom window.”

  “Now, that takes some doing,” the ruddy fellow remarked, placing a bean on his card.

  “Sure it does.”

  “Well, having devoted considerable study of my own to the Dutch East Indies,” the dwarf continued, “I’ve always been astonished by the course Mother Nature took in that strange corner of the earth. Did you know there are wild fig trees in the forests of Java whose branches droop downward to become roots for even more trees? Its leaves are so large, the Javanese natives use them as plates for their meat. And there are great bats with wings five feet or more across. I’ve read authentic reports of sleeping babies snatched from their bamboo cradles and whisked away into the dark by those infernal creatures.”

  “My goodness!” Margaret exclaimed. “That isn’t true, is it?”

  Alvin shook his head. “’Course it ain’t. He’s just pulling your leg.”

  “Look it up in the Geographic,” Rascal said. “Only a month after sailing into Bantam Bay, Uncle Augustus saw lemurs hunting birds at night with eyes that glowed red as coals. Why, he personally killed a wild hog and six Java musks for food when he became lost in the jungle by the Vale of Poison at Butar, where he nearly perished in a fog of deadly carbonic acid gas after rescuing two hundred Javanese native children from Dutch slavery inside a secret diamond mine.”

  “Well, I’ll be switched,” said the ruddy fellow.

  “What a marvelous story!” Alice remarked.

  “56, LADIES AND GENTS, 56!”

  The dwarf studied his card for a moment. “Oh, it’s only the beginning. You see, Java is called the ‘Land of Fire’ because of its many volcanoes. Above the blue sea, in the Straits of Sunda, one of these fire towers, Mount Perboewatan on Krakatau, began spewing smoke and steam. Naturally, my uncle and Mr. Hurlburt were somewhat concerned, but after the Queen wired a secret message ordering them both to remain in Java, there could be no thought of departing. Posing as Pieter Van Dijk, a coffee and tobacco grader from Amsterdam, Uncle Augustus traveled all summer from port to port within the Straits, while hot volcanic ash rained down upon the sea and a huge black thundercloud of smoke spread out from Krakatau. In the meantime, Louis Hurlburt had secured a position as a stoker aboard the Dutch mail steamer Governor General Loudon, which was ferrying interested parties back and forth to the volcanic island for scientific observation.

  Uncle Augustus sailed there in late May and was quite astounded by the smoke clouds and the constant hail of stones and fire. He went ashore with a crew of engineers. The wide beach was buried under a foot of thick pumice and two feet of ash. All vegetation on Krakatau had disappeared, only bare stumps and a few leafless trees remained and the air smelled of sulfuric acid. Uncle Augustus gathered up a small collection of black pitchstones when he left Krakatau. In fact, I have one of them in my bedroom at home. It’s a wonderful souvenir.”

  “19, LADIES AND GENTS, 19!”

  “Oh, I’d love to see it one day,” Bertha said, then checked her card. She sighed.

  The dwarf smiled at her. “Perhaps you shall.”

  At another table, a woman rose with a child in her arms and walked off into the rainy dark toward the roadside stand. She was crying. Alvin saw a fellow in suspenders and a felt hat jump up and start after her. The pitchman left the podium and caught the fellow at the edge of the tent and had a few words with him. Some people at another table began hooting for the pitchman to go back to the podium.

  The dwarf said, “Well, by August, Mount Danan on Krakatau had also erupted and all the Straits were cast into utter darkness. On Sunday the twenty-sixth, Uncle Augustus crossed from Prinsen Island north to Telok Betong at Sumatra where he had a dinner appointment with a Dutch admiral who much admired good cigars. The admiral’s daughter, Elise Van Leeuwen, who also attended, negotiated a trade with my uncle involving a crate of South American coffee for a collection of lovely Java sparrows Miss Van Leeuwen had recently purchased at Katimbang. By now, ships had arrived from all over the world, maneuvering in the Straits to witness the great paroxysm. Lightning flashed in the black clouds over Krakatau. Earthquakes rumbled across the islands. The admiral’s daughte
r grew fearful and left dinner early for a steamer heading back east across the Straits to Anjer. After she had gone, Uncle Augustus began proposing a toast to the glory of Dutch rule in the East Indies when a tremendous explosion thundered across the Straits. Uncle Augustus rushed from the saloon with the admiral to watch a great black cloud rise into the dark heavens from Krakatau. He knew he ought to quit the port, as well, but a morning telegraph from Anjer had stated that the Loudon was already en route to Telok Betong, and Uncle Augustus felt duty bound to wait for Mr. Hurlburt. The admiral, however, decided to leave immediately aboard the gunboat Berouw to evacuate both his wife and daughter for Batavia on the northwestern coast of Java. After saying good-bye to his worried host, Uncle Augustus went to have one last glass of whiskey at the Bergen Hotel near the River Koeripan.”

  The pitchman quit arguing with the fellow in the felt hat and went back to the podium where he grabbed another disk. “71, LADIES AND GENTS, 71!”

  “An old soak, was he?” said the ruddy fellow, leaning back in his chair. He laughed out loud.

  Alvin saw a woman wearing a cotton dress and a blue Sunday bonnet join the pitchman at the podium. She spoke in his ear, which appeared to upset him, because he spilled the cigar box of disks into the mud.

  Rascal frowned. “I beg your pardon? Misusing liquor was very common in those days and I’m sure the volcanic rain had quite a lot to do with his intemperance that dark afternoon.”

  “You said it.”

  The pitchman climbed down off the podium to retrieve the disks while the woman in the Sunday bonnet shook a finger at him. A gust of wind rippled the string of lights.

  The dwarf scowled. “Look here, none of us can imagine in the least what it must’ve been like to feel the very earth tremble underfoot like Judgment Day. Now, as I was saying, when Uncle Augustus finally left the hotel, he found people dashing here and there, carrying their children and valuables away from the port. Another infernal blast thundered across the black waters from Krakatau and within the hour a rain of ash and stones began to fall. The wind was blowing fiercely from the northwest when Uncle Augustus stood on the pier looking across Lampong Bay for the Loudon and saw the first volcanic waves approaching from Krakatau. They rose from the sea much too quickly to permit escape by anyone on the shore. Having nowhere to go, Uncle Augustus ran to the end of the pier and dove into the bay just ahead of the first big sea wave. When he rose again from the deep, he saw the waves had swamped the pier and poured across the postal road into town, destroying the government offices and all the other buildings at sea level and chasing the survivors up to the District Hall on higher ground. The crew of a pilot boat that had ridden out the danger in deeper water found Uncle Augustus grasping a wooden crate. He was given dry clothing and a cup of hot tea and a biscuit and told to stay off the decks as large stones from Krakatau were falling now all across the Straits. Soon, the salt ship Marie anchored nearby and signaled the arrival of the Loudon from Anjer, and Uncle Augustus persuaded the captain of the pilot boat to ferry him over to the mail steamer.”

  Once the pitchman had collected the muddy disks, he climbed back up onto the podium and called out the next number: “18, LADIES AND GENTS, 18!” The woman in the Sunday bonnet scowled behind his back.

  “Oh, your uncle must’ve been awfully brave,” Bertha remarked. She found a place for another bean on her card. Alvin saw she had three now in a vertical column.

  “Of course he was,” Margaret said, clearly disgusted with her own card that had no more than two beans side by side anywhere across its surface. “Now, stop interrupting!”

  Suddenly, the woman in the Sunday bonnet snatched a handful of disks from the cigar box. The pitchman reached for them, but the woman refused to give them back. As the caller grabbed at them again, she backed away. Alvin heard cackling from another table.

  “The sea was rising and falling almost by the minute now. Lightning glowed in the smoke over the volcano and warm pumice littered the water. Aboard the Loudon, Uncle Augustus inquired as to Louis Hurlburt and was told he’d left the steamship at Anjer. His companion apparently intended to row north to a secret telegraph station in a sugar mill near the port of Merak to send a message to the Queen, informing her of the great cataclysm. However, the Loudon had already heard from the telegraph master at Anjer, reporting damage at the drawbridge there, boats smashed everywhere, and word that high waves had entirely destroyed the Chinese camp at Merak. Sometime after midnight, Uncle Augustus and the crew of the Loudon saw another great wave rise from Lampong Bay and sweep toward the port, destroying the harbor light and the warehouse and a coal storage on the pier and briefly capsizing the Marie, throwing the admiral’s gunboat Berouw from the east side of the pier clear over to the other.”

  Still lacking a handful of disks, the caller took one from the cigar box. “64, LADIES AND GENTS, 64!”

  Margaret scowled over her card. “Oh, fiddle-faddle!” Shuffling another bean onto his card, the ruddy fellow tapped ash off his cigar, then asked, “Didn’t no one there know how to drop an anchor?”

  “Yeah, how about that?” Alvin agreed, hoping to see Rascal squirm over this dumbbell story of his.

  “Of course,” the dwarf replied, adding another bean to his own card, “but the volcanic waves were so enormous, not even an anchor could hold the ships against their fury. Why, Uncle Augustus said he’d never been so frightened in all his life. Blue flames of St. Elmo’s fire flew about the sky and the wind that swept over the Loudon smelled of hot sulphur like Hades itself. The sea was so rough, Uncle Augustus was obliged to remain aboard the mail steamer until dawn, listening all night long to the explosions from Krakatau becoming louder and louder until half past five when a blast unlike anything Uncle Augustus had heard on this earth shook the Loudon and knocked out the ear drums on half the members of the ship’s crew. He saw the admiral’s gunboat beached high up on the shore and insisted the ship’s boat take him back across the bay to the Berouw to help his old Dutch friend. Well, of course, the journey was trying beyond faith. The sea was filled with masses of floating pumice, and lightning struck the mast conductor repeatedly, and a furious wind tore at the decks. When the first mate refused to bring the boat any closer than a quarter mile from the port, Uncle Augustus dove into the bay once again and swam alone to shore through the dangerous surf. All was chaos aboard the stranded Berouw. Several members of the gunboat’s crew had been swept overboard by the wave that had carried them onto the beach and the admiral had been struck in the head by a fallen cocoa-nut tree and knocked unconscious.”

  Alvin asked, “Were there any wild monkeys in the tree that hit him?”

  Bertha and Hazel both giggled.

  A scowl on his face, the pitchman took two disks from the cigar box. “58, LADIES AND GENTS, 58! DO WE HAVE A WINNER YET?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” replied the dwarf, sounding testy now. “Would you mind awfully not interrupting? Poor Uncle Augustus was in a terrible scrape. Why, it’s one of God’s greatest miracles that he came out alive.”

  “When does he get the malaria?” Alvin asked.

  “Soon!” growled the dwarf. “For heaven sakes, will you please keep quiet?”

  “Go on,” said the ruddy fellow, “finish the story.”

  “Thank you, sir. Now, where were we?”

  “A scrape in a cocoa-nut tree.”

  “17, LADIES AND GENTS, 17!”

  The dwarf shifted a bean onto the middle of his card, and continued with his story. “Oh, yes. Well, those fortunate souls at Telok Betong who survived the initial sea-waves returned to the village again to gather up their remaining possessions while Uncle Augustus labored furiously with the crew of the Berouw to get her back into the bay. More boats were washed ashore from the harbor and Uncle Augustus said the sky was blacker than the blackest night and hot pumice big as pumpkins rained down upon them as they worked. Of course, the effort was hopeless. Within the hour, four more volcanic waves rolled over the port, stranding the Berou
w farther up on the beach and drowning another half-dozen members of the crew, including the poor old admiral, the captain, and his first navigating officer. Uncle Augustus felt quite terrible. He advised everyone to abandon the gunboat and find safe shelter from the waves and the mud rains and the furious wind. The Marie had already pulled up anchor and left for deeper waters. Then came a sound Uncle Augustus described as God Himself clapping His hands together, and the black smoke clouds brightened to a fearsome crimson over Krakatau as the volcano gave a mighty roar and blew itself to heaven with the greatest explosion ever witnessed by mortal man! Within minutes, Uncle Augustus saw a gigantic wave emerge from the briny deep and rush toward the shore. Most of the crew ran in panic for the jungle. Knowing he had no chance to escape on foot, Uncle Augustus hid down alone in the captain’s cabin, closing himself in and awaiting his fate in the dark. When the huge sea wave struck the Berouw, Uncle Augustus was praying to the Lord for deliverance from the tempest. It washed completely over Telok Betong, leaving nothing but rough seas in its frightful wake.”

  “47, LADIES AND GENTS, 47!”

  “My heavens!” Alice cried. “How dreadful!”

  “Everybody was killed, weren’t they?” the ruddy fellow asked, looking over his card.

  The dwarf nodded, his voice somber now. “Nothing survived. Uncle Augustus recalled the gunboat tumbling over and over in the roaring water, himself hurled about the small cabin like a child’s toy until at last he lost consciousness. When he awoke, all was quiet. The great wave had receded, leaving the battered gunboat perched thirty-feet above sea level on the River Koeripan, more than a mile and a half inland. Uncle Augustus crawled from his hiding place and used a rope to climb down off the gunboat. Hot ash still rained from the dark sky. Where once fields of rice had grown, Uncle Augustus saw nothing but mud and boulders. So, too, had all the lovely Javanese villages been washed away. Not even the paroquets cackled in the jungle. When Uncle Augustus called out for help, no one answered. He was quite alone. Having little idea where he was, Uncle Augustus determined to stay put until the clouds broke, so he climbed back up onto the gunboat.”