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An Official Position
235
his whereabouts by the light it gave. Suddenly he stumbled against
something. He stopped dead. He was a brave man, with nerves of
steel, but on a sudden he felt sick with terror. It was something soft
and rather large that he had stumbled against, and he was pretty
sure what it was. He wore espadrilles, and with one foot he cau-
tiously felt the object on the ground before him. Yes, he was right.
It was one of his dogs. It was dead. He took a step backwards and
drew his knife. He knew it was no good to shout. The only house
in the neighbourhood was the prison governor's, it faced the clear-
ing just beyond the coconut grove; but they would not hear him,
or if they did would not stir. St Laurent de Maroni was not a place
where you went out in the dead of night when you heard a man
calling for help. If next day one of the freed convicts was found
lying dead, well, it was no great loss. Louis Remire saw in a flash
what had happened.
He thought rapidly. They had killed his dogs while he was sleep-
ing. They must have got them when he had put them out of his
compound after supper. They must have thrown them some poi-
soned meat and the brutes had snatched at it. If the one he had
stumbled over was near his house it was because it tried to crawl
home to die. Louis Remire strained his eyes. He could see nothing.
The night was pitch black. He could hardly see the trunks of the
coconut trees a yard away from him. His first thought was to make
a rush for his shack. If he got back to the safety of that he could
wait till the prison people, wondering why he did not come, sent to
fetch him. But he knew he could never get back. He knew they were
there in the darkness, the men who had killed his dogs; he would
have to fumble with the key to find the lock and before he found it
he would have a knife plunged in his back. He listened intently.
There was not a sound. And yet he felt that there were men there,
lurking behind the trees, and they were there to kill him. They
would kill him as they had killed his dogs. And he would die like a
dog. There was more than one certainly. He knew them, there were
three or four of them at least, there might be more, convicts in
service in private houses who were not obliged to get back to the
camp till a late hour, or desperate and starving freed men who had
nothing to lose. For a moment he hesitated what to do. He dared
not make a run for it, they might easily have put a rope across the
pathway that led from his house to the open, and if he tripped he
was done for. The coconut trees were loosely planted and among
236
W. Somerset Maugham
them his enemies would see him as little as he saw them. He
stepped over the dead dog and plunged into the grove. He stood
with his back to a tree to decide how he should proceed. The silence
was terrifying. Suddenly he heard a whisper and the horror of it
was frightful. Again a dead silence. He felt he must move on, but
his feet seemed rooted to the ground. He felt that they were peering
at him out of the darkness and it seemed to him that he was as
visible to them as though he stood in the broad light of day. Then
from the other side was a little cough. It came as such a shock that
Louis Remire nearly screamed. He was conscious now that they
were all round him. He could expect no mercy from those robbers
and murderers. He remembered the other executioner, his prede-
cessor, whom they had carried still alive into the jungle, whose eyes
they had gouged out, and whom they had left hanging for the vul-
tures to devour. His knees began to tremble. What a fool he had
been to take on the job! There were soft jobs he could have found
in which you ran no risk. It was too late to think of that. He pulled
himself together. He had no chance of getting out of the coconut
grove alive, he knew that; he wanted to be sure that he would be
dead. He tightened his grip on his knife. The awful part was that
he could hear no one, he could see no one, and yet he knew that
they were lurking there waiting to strike. For one moment he had
a mad idea, he would throw his knife away and shout out to them
that he was unarmed and they could come and kill him in safety.
But he knew them; they would never be satisfied merely to kill him.
Rage seized him. He was not the man to surrender tamely to a pack
of criminals. He was an honest man and an official of the state; it
was his duty to defend himself. He could not stay there all night. It
was better to get it over quickly. Yet that tree at his back seemed to
offer a sort of security, he could not bring himself to move. He
stared at the trunk of a tree in front of him and suddenly it moved
and he realized with horror that it was a man. That made up his
mind for him and with a huge effort he stepped forwards. He ad-
vanced slowly and cautiously. He could hear nothing, he could see
nothing. But he knew that as he advanced they advanced too. It
was as though he were accompanied by an invisible bodyguard. He
thought he could hear the sound of their naked feet on the ground.
His fear had left him. He walked on, keeping as close to the trees
as he could, so that they should have less chance of attacking him
from behind; a wild hope sprang up in his breast that they would
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