Cruchot stroked his long moustaches reflectively."Well, well," he said finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule, "so you don't know?""Know what?" Ah Cho was beginning to feel a vague alarm."Won't Schemmer let me work for him any more?""Not after to-day." Cruchot laughed heartily.It was a good joke."You see, you won't be able to work after to-day.A man with his head off can't work, eh?" He poked the Chinago in the ribs, and chuckled.
Ah Cho maintained silence while the mules trotted a hot mile.Then he spoke: "Is Schemmer going to cut off my head?"Cruchot grinned as he nodded.
"It is a mistake," said Ah Cho, gravely."I am not the Chinago that is to have his head cut off.I am Ah Cho.The honourable judge has determined that I am to stop twenty years in New Caledonia."The gendarme laughed.It was a good joke, this funny Chinago trying to cheat the guillotine.The mules trotted through a coconut grove and for half a mile beside the sparkling sea before Ah Cho spoke again.
"I tell you I am not Ah Chow.The honourable judge did not say that my head was to go off.""Don't be afraid," said Cruchot, with the philanthropic intention of making it easier for his prisoner."It is not difficult to die that way." He snapped his fingers."It is quick--like that.It is not like hanging on the end of a rope and kicking and making faces for five minutes.It is like killing a chicken with a hatchet.You cut its head off, that is all.
And it is the same with a man.Pouf!--it is over.It doesn't hurt.You don't even think it hurts.You don't think.Your head is gone, so you cannot think.It is very good.That is the way I want to die--quick, ah, quick.You are lucky to die that way.You might get the leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a finger at a time, and now and again a thumb, also the toes.I knew a man who was burned by hot water.It took him two days to die.You could hear him yelling a kilometre away.But you? Ah! so easy!
Chck!--the knife cuts your neck like that.It is finished.The knife may even tickle.Who can say? Nobody who died that way ever came back to say."He considered this last an excruciating joke, and permitted himself to be convulsed with laughter for half a minute.Part of his mirth was assumed, but he considered it his humane duty to cheer up the Chinago.
"But I tell you I am Ah Cho," the other persisted."I don't want my head cut off."Cruchot scowled.The Chinago was carrying the foolishness too far.
"I am not Ah Chow--" Ah Cho began.
"That will do," the gendarme interrupted.He puffed up his cheeks and strove to appear fierce.
"I tell you I am not--" Ah Cho began again.
"Shut up!" bawled Cruchot.
After that they rode along in silence.It was twenty miles from Papeete to Atimaono, and over half the distance was covered by the time the Chinago again ventured into speech.
"I saw you in the court room, when the honourable judge sought after our guilt," he began."Very good.And do you remember that Ah Chow, whose head is to be cut off--do you remember that he--Ah Chow--was a tall man?
Look at me."
He stood up suddenly, and Cruchot saw that he was a short man.And just as suddenly Cruchot caught a glimpse of a memory picture of Ah Chow, and in that picture Ah Chow was tall.To the gendarme all Chinagos looked alike.
One face was like another.But between tallness and shortness he could differentiate, and he knew that he had the wrong man beside him on the seat.He pulled up the mules abruptly, so that the pole shot ahead of them, elevating their collars.
"You see, it was a mistake," said Ah Cho, smiling pleasantly.
But Cruchot was thinking.Already he regretted that he had stopped the wagon.He was unaware of the error of the Chief Justice, and he had no way of working it out; but he did know that he had been given this Chinago to take to Atimaono and that it was his duty to take him to Atimaono.What if he was the wrong man and they cut his head off? It was only a Chinago when all was said, and what was a Chinago, anyway? Besides, it might not be a mistake.He did not know what went on in the minds of his superiors.They knew their business best.Who was he to do their thinking for them? Once, in the long ago, he had attempted to think for them, and the sergeant had said: "Cruchot, you are a fool? The quicker you know that, the better you will get on.You are not to think; you are to obey and leave thinking to your betters." He smarted under the recollection.Also, if he turned back to Papeete, he would delay the execution at Atimaono, and if he were wrong in turning back, he would get a reprimand from the sergeant who was waiting for the prisoner.And, furthermore, he would get a reprimand at Papeete as well.
He touched the mules with the whip and drove on.He looked at his watch.
He would be half an hour late as it was, and the sergeant was bound to be angry.He put the mules into a faster trot.The more Ah Cho persisted in explaining the mistake, the more stubborn Cruchot became.The knowledge that he had the wrong man did not make his temper better.The knowledge that it was through no mistake of his confirmed him in the belief that the wrong he was doing was the right.And, rather than incur the displeasure of the sergeant, he would willingly have assisted a dozen wrong Chinagos to their doom.
As for Ah Cho, after the gendarme had struck him over the head with the butt of the whip and commanded him in a loud voice to shut up, there remained nothing for him to do but to shut up.The long ride continued in silence.Ah Cho pondered the strange ways of the foreign devils.There was no explaining them.What they were doing with him was of a piece with everything they did.First they found guilty five innocent men, and next they cut off the head of the man that even they, in their benighted ignorance, had deemed meritorious of no more than twenty years'
