Appleby on Ararat Read Online Free PDF Page B

exploration into a magnificent multitudinousness, into a nasal splendour as of light cast through a spectroscope. Infinite beckoning labyrinths of scent, like a first-class grocer’s before Christmas. Sabean Odours from the spicie shoare of Arabie the blest. Fruits of pomegranate and peach. And all divinely new, like a first bringing the powers of manhood into play. The innocent nose… Appleby half sat up.
    Appleby half sat up and the movement brought him into a fresh olfactory stratum. There was a smell of charred aromatic wood; there was a further smell so primitive that it prickled at the roots of his hair and laid invisible fingers on his spine. Like roast pork. For a moment the universe contracted to a clamant square inch at the root of his tongue.
    He opened his eyes, or perhaps looked through eyes that were already open. And he saw Unumunu, ebon, vast, anointed, bare to the waist, turning a shapeless lump of flesh on a spit. The fingers on Appleby’s spine closed like a vice; his eyeballs refused their motion, transfixed on this sight; his memory worked…
    And then he painfully turned his whole head and saw Mrs Kittery, placidly seated in a Tahitan attitude on the farther side of a fire.
    Unumunu twisted his torso with a musclature remote as the Congo; spoke in a voice familiar as Isis or the Cam. “You are all right now, Appleby, my dear fellow? I gather the mast hit us both on the head.”
    “It was dreadful,” said Mrs Kittery, large-eyed and ardent. “Mr Hoppo insisted on administering the supreme junction.” She had a gourd in her lap and was sucking some pleasingly saccharine beverage through a cane.
    “The supreme junction?” Appleby got painfully to his knees. “Where are we now?”
    Unumunu’s teeth gleamed. “Not in Paradise – unless of the terrestrial sort. This is what the songs celebrate as a tropic isle.’’
    “There are yams,” breathed Mrs Kittery, “and coconuts and you can make a house of bamboos. You can – you can wear a sarong.”
    “Have some toasted terrapin.”
    “You can rub in coconut oil and go absolutely brown.”
    Appleby ate terrapin cautiously and became for a time absorbed in an astounding consciousness of his metabolic processes. It was like being a hysterical subject and seeing one’s own inside. “Are we the only survivors?” he asked presently.
    “Oh, no!” Mrs Kittery was slightly shocked. “There’s Miss Curricle, of course. She’s gone for a bathe round the point.”
    “And Glover and Hoppo,” said Unumunu, “have gone for a walk. It seems that the colonel has Anglo-Catholic tendencies and Hoppo is expostulating from the Low Church standpoint. On a mundane level they are looking for eggs.”
    “–For dinner,” added Mrs Kittery. “The colonel says that now we are properly settled we had better dine at eight. That” – she pointed to the terrapin – “is the end of lunch. And this” – she held up the gourd – “is afternoon tea – I mean, is tea.” She sucked again.
    Appleby felt a new dazedness come over his sense. It was so difficult to catch up. “Is the island, then, uninhabited?” he asked.
    Unumunu nodded regretfully. “I am afraid so – although there are still parts to explore. What an opportunity for fieldwork lost! Think if we had hit upon a matriarchy, or a new clan system! The Guggenberg Foundation–”
    The terrapin was stowed; Appleby closed his eyes, and with them his ears closed too. When he awoke it was to find his companions vanished and only the remains of the fire to assure him he had not been dreaming. Perhaps Mrs Kittery was applying coconut oil; perhaps Unumunu was hopefully seeking some Man Friday’s footsteps in the sand. He got to his feet and found his legs by no means shaky; he strolled about and examined his environment.
    It was exotic enough, a sub-tropical confusion tumbling to a sickle of beach with calm sea and a reef beyond. No doubt there were yams. Perhaps there would be mammee and manchineel