Night of the Jaguar Read Online Free PDF

like dead ants. Moie had seen Father Perrin do the same with the thing he called Bible, which was how he spoke to the dead of his people. Moie waited respectfully while Ezra spoke to the dead and then Ezra smiled and said that the freighter Guyana Castle would leave for Miami in two days with a load of sawn timber. He knew this ship and described it, so that Moie would know it, even at night. Moie thanked him, and Ezra said that it was he that should be grateful, for Moie was the most interesting thing that had happened in Fernandino since the last hurricane.He also said, when you get to Miami, you should get you some clothes, because they would arrest you looking like that. And he explained what arrest was.
    Two nights later, Moie was in his canoe looking up at the rusting black hull of the Guyana Castle . The ship was tied to a long street that went out into the water, and this street was lit with wai’ichura lights that were brighter than the moon at the full, and there were men there standing in front of a small street that led upward into the ship. But Moie was on the other side, on the black, oily water, nearly invisible in the shade of the ship itself. Five lengths of men above him there was a low place on the ship’s side, where he had to climb. No man could climb up that sheer wall, so Moie mixed some powders together from small skin sacks he took from his net bag, and sucked the powders through a tube into his nostrils, and began a low chant. While he chanted he wrapped everything he wanted to take with him in a rope and placed the end of the rope in his mouth. Now his senses changed, expanded, while the part of him that was Moie shrank away. He smelled and heard things humans could not sense. Through different eyes he stared up at the rail far above. A tension built in his hind limbs. There was a fading sensation of rising through the air before he quite vanished to himself.
    When he discovered he was Moie once more, he was in darkness deep in the belly of the ship, surrounded by the stink of oil and steam and the more familiar smell of cut wood. Hard shapes pressed against his back and the ship was no longer docked, but moving, her engines a constant throb in his ears and through his whole body. He was exhausted as he always was by such experiences, but he remembered to keep well hidden, and he had the suitcase and his other possessions at hand. After drinking some water from his water skin, he made himself as comfortable as he could amid the pallets of lumber and ate the herbs and started the ritual that would slow his body’s functions down to a level near to death, although he knew his spirit would keep lively enough in a different world.
    Silence awakened him, and the absence of motion. He opened his eyes to dim light. They had broken open the hatches at the bow of the ship, and shafts of sunlight made bright pillars there. Moie moved farther astern and lower down, so that the stacked boards were like a darkcliff above him. Machinery clanked and groaned and Moie waited for the night, as Ezra had advised. He was extremely hungry.
    The sunlight faded, the noises of unloading ceased, and the only sounds he heard were the fugitive rumbles and clankings of wai’ichura machines. Moie prised a two-by-twelve mahogany plank from its pallet and dragged it behind him as he climbed a ladder. His case was secured to his body with the rope. There was no one on deck. As in Trinidad, the ship was tied lengthwise to a dock, and the way off led past a guard. Moie moved silently to the other side, dropped the plank, and followed it into the warm water. He slid belly-first onto the plank and paddled away toward the lights of the city to the west.
    The night was perfectly clear and only a light sea breeze ruffled the surface of the bay. Above in the cloudless black sky Jaguar was waxing, returning from his voyage to Rain. Moie studied the sky and felt his heart seize in his breast. The friendly stars of his home were all gone.