"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the
trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within
the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.
Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the
place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were not enemies, they
were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now--nothing but black
shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish
gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality
of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar
food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl
away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air--and nearly as
thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees.
Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined
at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the
eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant,
a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out
slowly. The man seemed young--almost a boy--but you know with them it's
hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good
Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly
on it and held--there was no other movement and no other glance. He had
tied a bit of white worsted round his neck--Why? Where did he get it?
Was it a badge--an ornament--a charm--a propitiatory act? Was there any
idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck,
this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
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