Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/106
sensitive, masculine sincerity which comes sometimes so quickly from a native.
It was a little, rough round pot with protuberances.
“Look!” said the man, reaching again for the little pot. He turned it upside-down, and she saw cut-in eyes and the sticking-out ears of an animal’s head.
“A cat!” she exclaimed. “It is a cat.”
“Or a coyote!”
“A coyote!”
“Let’s look! “said Villiers. “Why how awfully interesting! Do you think it’s old?”
“It is old?” Kate asked.
“The time of the old gods,” said the boatman. Then with a sudden smile: “The dead gods don’t eat much rice, they only want little casseroles while they are bone under the water.” And he looked her in the eyes.
“While they are bone?” she repeated. And she realised he meant the skeletons of gods that cannot die.
They were at the landing stage; or rather, at the heap of collapsed masonry which had once been a landing stage. The boatman got out and held the boat steady while Kate and Villiers landed. Then he scrambled up with the bags.
The man in white trousers, and a mozo appeared. It was the hotel manager. Kate paid the boatman,
“Adios, Señorita!” he said with a smile. “May you go with Quetzacoatl.”
“Yes!” she cried. “Goodbye!
They went up the slope between the tattered bananas, whose ragged leaves were making a hushed, distant patter in the breeze. The green fruit curved out its bristly-soft bunch, the purple flower-bud depending stiffly.
The German manager came to talk to them: a young man of about forty, with his blue eyes going opaque and stony behind his spectacles, though the centres were keen. Evidently a German who had been many years out in Mexico—out in the lonely places. The rather stiff look, the slight look of fear in the soul—not physical fear—and the look of defeat, characteristic of the European who has long been subjected to the unbroken spirit of place! But the defeat was in the soul, not the will.
He showed Kate to her room in the unfinished quarter, and ordered her breakfast. The hotel consisted of an old