Evening star., 1937-03-07

-HE beach at San Felix was black; black
volcanic sand, as black and dead looking
as dirty coal dust 1t was mean sand, too
soft to walk on and too hot. Being black
it absorbed the heat of the sun and held it like
personal grudge. Nor did the beach permit
swimming. Even if you felt desperate enough
to chance the sharks - and you didn't because
there was gang of them always in sight,
grimly cruising in the surf on the lookout for
refuse from the pier - the surf itself was a filth
of black volcanic dust. Here at San Felix even
the Pacific Ocean was an unfriendly and an un-
clean thing.
For time these unpleasant phenomena had
bothered Jimmy Smith but they didn't bother
him any more. Nothing bothered him any more.
He had put away his swimming trunks for lack
of swimming. He had put away his tennis
racket for lack of tennis court He had put
away his golf clubs because the jungle back of
the beach was srarl of brush and nothing but
brush for miles, The American tropics - this
part of them - had proved a dismal disillusion-
ment.
STILL in three years, Jimmy had learned. The
heat was constant, day and night, but it was
dependable. You could always fool the heat by
drinking couple of rum punches at noon and
then eating heavy meal. After that you slept,
the way the natives did. Then at five o'clock
you began the rum punches again. The system
was perfect because it worked. Once or twice
day, though sometimes oftener if you felt up to
it. you rambled over to the cable Office and took
the half-breed operator report. That was about
III L,<l IL
but routine messages anyway.
He had even stopped thinking about his
work in San Felix as prison sentence, which
was how he had thought about it at first. Then
he had been resentfL, because he had been
given a lot of soft soap by the cable company
be cable manager at San Felix for five years and
then be yanked back to San Francisco as big
shot; raise, private Office maybe, overlook
ing the Embarcadero and his name in gold let
tiers on his Office door.
That was how they had talked, and for time
he had believed them. but now he wasn't think
ing about such things any more The best plan
was never to think about anything. Just take it
easy, that was all - and set a sensible limit on
your drinks Best thing to do - always tick
them off on your cuff, sixteen ticks to the quart.
A king quart, 50 everybody said, was sensi-
bic mans limit for day. 1t was only when you
got up around two quarts that you would have
to begin to worry. Jimmy had Red MacPher-
sons word for that, and Red was an oldtimer.
Red was the engineer of the train, the one
train that pulled away from San Felix on Mon
days and Wednesdays and Fridays and came
coasting in from the mountains on Tuesdays
and Thursdays and Saturdays. Red was the
only white man, outside of hurrying inspectors,
and hurrying tourists, that Jimmy had sat
down with for three years. Oh, of course, few
of the natives were white - as white as the next
man - but that wasn't the same The natives
well, they never got friendly, sort of. They
well, they never opened up.
So Jimmy stuck to Red, and Reds limit for
years had been sixteen drinks at the bar, which
added to quart. That was how Red handled
it. Sundays didn't count, of course, because Red
didn't work on Sundays. Sometimes on Sun
days Red stopped adding But Red was all
right He was Jimmy's friend.
On Sundays Red would come out of his siesta
about four in the afternoon. And then, unless