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Sounds, Ecologies, Musics
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics
Edited by
Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–754665–9 (pbk.)

ISBN 978–0–19–754664–2 (hbk.)
ISBN 978–0–19–754667–3 (epub.)

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197546642.001.0001
Cover photograph by Jeff Todd Titon
Contents

List of Editors and Contributors

About the Companion Website

1. Diverse Ecologies for Sound and Music Studies

Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon

PART I: MUSIC, SOUND, ECOLOGIES, AND THE NATURAL

ENVIRONMENT
2. Ecoörganology: Toward the Ecological Study of Musical
Instruments
Aaron S. Allen
3. “Like the Growth Rings of a Tree”: A Socio-ecological
Systems Model of Past and Envisioned Musical Change
in Okinawa, Japan
James Edwards and Junko Konishi
4. Bat City Limits: Music in the Human-Animal
Borderlands
Julianne Graper
5. Music, Ecology, and Atmosphere: Environmental
Feelings and Sociocultural Crisis in Contemporary
Finnish Classical Music
Juha Torvinen and Susanna Välimäki

PART II: MUSIC, SOUND, AND TRADITIONAL/INDIGENOUS

ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGES
6. Haiti, Singing for the Land, Sea, and Sky: Cultivating
Ecological Metaphysics and Environmental Awareness
through Music
 Rebecca Dirksen
7. Coyote Made the Rivers: Indigenous Ecology and the
Sacred Continuum in the Interior Northwest
Chad S. Hamill/čnaq’ymi
8. Resilient Sounds: Rakiura Stewart Island, Aotearoa
New Zealand
Jennifer C. Post
9. Relational Capacities, Musical Ecologies: Judith Shatin’s
Ice Becomes Water
Denise Von Glahn

PART III: MUSIC, SOUND, AND ECOLOGIES IN INTERDISCIPLINARY

PERSPECTIVE
10. Biologists, Musicians, and the Ecology of Variation
Robert Labaree
11. Recomposing the Sound Commons: The Southern
Resident Killer Whales of the Salish Sea
Mark Pedelty
12. The Audible Anthropocene: Sustainable Bridging of
Arts, Humanities, and Sciences Scholarship through
Sound
John E. Quinn, Michele Speitz, Omar Carmenates, and Matthew
Burtner
13. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”: Impacts of
Human Conflict on Musispheres
Huib Schippers and Gillian Howell
14. Eco-Trope or Eco-Tripe?: Music Ecology Today
Jeff Todd Titon
Index
Editors and Contributors

Editors
Aaron S. Allen is director of the Environment and Sustainability
Program and associate professor of musicology at UNC Greensboro.
He earned a PhD from Harvard University and a BA in music and BS
in ecological studies from Tulane University. He coedited Current
Directions in Ecomusicology (Routledge, 2016), which received the
2018 Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize from the Society for
Ethnomusicology.
Jeff Todd Titon is professor of music, emeritus at Brown University,
where he was director of the PhD program in ethnomusicology. A
former editor of Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for
Ethnomusicology, his most recent book is Toward a Sound Ecology:
New and Selected Essays (Indiana University Press, 2020).

Contributors
Matthew Burtner (www.matthewburtner.com) is a composer,
sound artist, and ecoacoustician from Alaska, Eleanor Shea Professor
of Music at the University of Virginia, co-director of the Coastal
Futures Conservatory, and founder of EcoSono™.
Omar Carmenates is the Charles Ezra Daniel Professor of Music at
Furman University, where he also serves as the founder and chair of
the Council for Equity and Inclusion in Music. Under his direction, the
Furman University Percussion Ensemble was named a winner of the
prestigious 2022 Percussive Arts Society International Percussion
Ensemble Competition and has given presentations and
performances of ecoacoustic music at interdisciplinary conferences
throughout the country.
Rebecca Dirksen is Laura Boulton professor of ethnomusicology
and associate professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the
author of After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy: Carnival, Politics,
and Musical Engagement in Haiti (Oxford University Press, 2020) and
coeditor of Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and
Ecological Change (University of Illinois Press, 2021). Dirksen is co-
founder and current director of the Diverse Environmentalisms
Research Team (DERT).
James Edwards is a senior researcher at SINUS Markt- und
Sozialforschung in Berlin. He is a co-principal investigator on several
transnational projects, including on the topic of environmental,
social, and governance sustainability in European music ecosystems.
Julianne Graper is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at
Indiana University, Bloomington, whose research focuses on sound
and bat-human relationality in Austin, TX. Her translation of The
Sweet Penance of Music (2020) won the Robert M. Stevenson award
from the American Musicological Society.
Chad S. Hamill/čnaq’ymi is professor of applied Indigenous
studies at Northern Arizona University and is executive director of
Indigenous arts and expression at California Institute of the Arts. He
is the author of Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau
(Oregon State University Press, 2012).
Gillian Howell is a Dean’s Research Fellow at the Faculty of Fine
Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, where she leads a portfolio
of research investigating the contributions of participatory music and
arts to postwar peace and reconciliation.
Junko Konishi is a professor in the Faculty of Music at Okinawa
Prefectural University of Arts, Japan; president of the Japan Musical
Expression Society; and vice president of the Japan Society of Island
Studies. Her research areas are the islands of Micronesia,
Ogasawara, and Okinawa.
Robert Labaree is an ethnomusicologist and performer specializing
in Turkish music, with writings on improvisation, music and biology,
and Ottoman-European musical interaction. He is a professor,
emeritus, in the Department of Musicology at the New England
Conservatory, and founder of the Conservatory’s Intercultural
Institute.
Mark Pedelty is professor of communication studies and fellow at
the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, and
the author of A Song to Save the Salish Sea (Indiana University
Press, 2016).
Jennifer C. Post is a member of the music faculty at the University
of Arizona. Her most recent book is the coedited volume Mongolian
Sound Worlds (University of Illinois Press, 2022).
John E. Quinn is associate professor of biology and director of the
CHESS lab at Furman University. As the author or coauthor of dozens
of scientific papers, his research addresses the conservation of
biodiversity in managed and novel ecosystems.
Huib Schippers, formerly director of Queensland Conservatorium
Research Centre and of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is
coeditor of two important volumes on cultural sustainability
Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures (Oxford University Press,
2016) and Music, Communities, Sustainability (Oxford University
Press, 2022), and is a senior consultant to academic and arts
organizations.
Michele Speitz is associate professor of English literature at
Furman University, where she is the founding director of the Furman
Humanities Center. She is editor of Romantic Circles Electronic
Editions and has published widely on Romantic poetry and
technology.
Juha Torvinen is senior lecturer in musicology in the Department
of Philosophy, History, and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki.
He is coeditor of Music as Atmosphere (Routledge, 2020).
Susanna Välimäki is associate professor of art research and head
of musicology in the Department of Philosophy, History, and Art
Studies at the University of Helsinki.
Denise Von Glahn is professor of musicology at Florida State
University. Her most recent book is Circle of Winners: How the
Guggenheim Foundation Shaped American Musical Culture
(University of Illinois Press, 2023). Her 2003 book The Sounds of
Place appeared in a new edition in 2021 (University of Illinois Press).
About the Companion Website

www.oup.com/us/SoundsEcologiesMusics
Oxford University Press has created a companion website to
accompany Sounds, Ecologies, Musics. This website provides
material not available in the print edition: full-color versions of
selected figures, and updated links to music, performances, and/or
films that authors discuss in detail. The reader is encouraged to
consult this resource in conjunction with the chapters and will have
the option of downloading the color versions for closer reference.
1
Diverse Ecologies for Sound and Music Studies
Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon

What does it mean to think ecologically about music and sound?

How do beings relate ecologically by means of music and sound?
What is ecological action regarding sound and music? How and why
do ecologies contribute to studies of sound and music? In this book,
nineteen authors illuminate challenges posed and opportunities
offered when we consider sound and music from ecological
perspectives as well as ecologies from sonic standpoints. Hence our
title: Sounds, Ecologies, Musics.
Scholars and practitioners approached music and sound
ecologically long before it appeared as a named and definable field
of study: ecomusicology. Ethnomusicologists and anthropologists
drew on ecological thought and environmental consciousness to
inspire efforts in music ecology (e.g., Archer 1964; Neuman 1980;
Feld [1982] 2012; Titon 1984, 9; Titon [1988] 2018; Seeger [1987]
2004; Roseman 1993). And musicologists, composers,
bioacousticians, and related scholars and practitioners have similarly
drawn on ideas of nature, ecology, and environmentalism to inform
historical and contemporary studies of music and sound (e.g.,
Gardiner [1832] 2009; Troup 1972; Schafer [1977] 1994; Cage and
Charles 1981; Krause 1998; Morris 1998; Clark and Rehding 2001;
Rothenberg and Ulvaeus 2001; Mellers 2001; Rehding 2002).
Nevertheless, it was only during the deepening environmental crisis
of the twenty-first century—a period of increasing global heating and
climate chaos, accelerated habitat loss and species extinctions, and
expansive pollution and health impacts, all with dire warnings about
the future—that those efforts and others coalesced into the new,
named, and theorized field of ecomusicology (see Pedelty et al.
2022). Allen and Dawe (2016, 2) offer the following concise
definition: “Ecomusicology is the coming together of music/sound
studies with environmental/ecological studies and sciences.”
Resulting from a collaborative community process to develop clarity
for the emerging field, Allen (2013) defined ecomusicology as “the
study of music, culture, and nature in all the complexities of those
terms,” which Titon ([2013] 2020, 224) elaborated as “the study of
music, culture, sound and nature in a period of environmental crisis.”
What is the place, and the role, of music and sound in this crisis of
the so-called Anthropocene? Might ecological thinking about music
and sound help us to understand, mitigate, and adapt to this crisis?
Beginning especially in the second decade of the twenty-first
century, a steady stream of scholarship has addressed these
questions. Ecomusicology attracts scientists, humanities scholars,
environmental activists, composers, and musicians to its publications
and gatherings. The majority come from musicology and
ethnomusicology, particularly via the special interest groups in the
American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology.
There is as yet no “Society for Ecomusicology,” and there may never
be. Many in this field prefer a more informal network, with
occasional conferences, symposia, and other special events, to yet
one more professional organization. This broad consensus
represents a preference for ecomusicology as an interdisciplinary
field, rather than as a new academic discipline that, needing to
establish a single identity, would define a subject area and
methodology for itself and, in so doing, would discourage
interdisciplinary connections. To ecomusicology, musicology
contributes historical, analytical, and literary ecocritical approaches.
Ethnomusicology brings comparative methods, interests in the
sciences, and a long-standing ethnographic focus on traditional and
Indigenous worldviews and lifeways, including what are now called
traditional and Indigenous ecological knowledges (TEK and IEK).
Ecological science and related fields such as bioacoustics,
soundscape ecology, behavioral ecology, conservation biology, and
environmental science have also contributed, with ecological
scientists attending ecomusicology conferences, conducting
experiments, and publishing research related to music, sound, and
the environmental crisis (e.g., Post and Pijanowski 2018; Quinn et al.
2018). Meanwhile, ecomusicologists are drawing on scholarship in
fields from the social sciences and humanities that owe a major debt
to ecological thought, such as ecological economics,
phenomenological ecology, cultural ecology, ecological psychology,
the anthropology of sound, political ecology, literary ecocriticism,
acoustic ecology, environmental philosophy, social ecology, sound
studies, and human ecology, while scholars in those fields and
disciplines who have an interest in music and sound are also making
important contributions to ecomusicology. The resulting scholarship
is vast and distributed in diverse sources, from print publications to
conferences to multimedia (for an extensive literature review, see
Pedelty et al. 2022).
One upshot of this inter- and cross-disciplinary ferment around
music, sound, and the environment is that ecomusicology is more
accurate as ecomusicologies, signaling the plurality of approaches
(Allen and Dawe 2016, 1–15; Pedelty et al. 2022). And while this
area of study has grown more diverse intellectually and practically, it
has also become more diffuse (e.g., Titon [2009] 2020, [2012] 2020;
Allen and Titon 2018). The prefix eco- in ecomusicology may now
refer to ecocriticism, ecology, and/or environment. In other words, it
may now entail a methodological approach to music and sound
inspired by literary study (ecocriticism) linking human creative
production with Earth processes. Ecocriticism, in turn, is a field that
is itself informed by TEK, IEK, and ecology, the biological science
that considers relationships among organisms and their contexts,
that is, the environment. In truth, just as in popular usage, many
artists and scholars confuse “ecology” with “environment,” using the
former term when they mean the latter. Our aim with this book is in
some instances to blur or collapse these distinctions but always to
clarify their meanings.
We have organized Sounds, Ecologies, Musics into three parts. In
the first, which includes four chapters by six authors, the overriding
concern is the natural environment and how, from an ecological
perspective, music and sound are woven into it, how the
environment enables music and sound, and how music and sound in
turn impact the environment, sometimes positively and sometimes
negatively. The four authors in the second part are concerned with
music, sound, and ecological knowledges that are outside of, or
marginal to, Western science—the place-based, traditional ecological
and environmental knowledges (TEK) of certain social groups within
larger regional and national units, as well as Indigenous ecological
and environmental knowledges (IEK) within Native, tribal, or
Indigenous social groups. (The boundaries and definitions of these
three categories, Native, traditional and Indigenous, remain under
debate today.) The nine authors in the third part all bring multi- and
interdisciplinary stances to their five chapters. Several are cross-
disciplinary collaborations among two or more scholars and
practitioners from different academic fields; the others show the
work of individual scholars who work interdisciplinarily in music,
sound studies, anthropology, policy, evolutionary biology, literature,
and ecological science. Such cross- and interdisciplinarity can be
both enriching, regarding connections and understanding, as well as
confounding, regarding our choices organizing this book. As in any
ecosystem—social, nonhuman, Earth-centered, intellectual, and even
within this volume—other organizational possibilities could provide
equal (or even improved) models for understanding. We have
chosen the present structure because we find it provides for
numerous resonances (many of which are signaled, inside each
chapter, with cross-references) among the chapters as they are
grouped. Yet we have ordered the chapters within each part
alphabetically by the first author’s last name, rather than follow any
thematic ordering. In this introduction, rather than march through
each chapter with an individual summary, we cut across the sections
and chapters of the book to make further linkages. We intend these
organizational and introductory efforts to help dispel any notion that
the structure of the book could be final in its explanatory powers.
Throughout the book we emphasize cross- and interdisciplinary
work, particularly in the coauthored chapters. A cross-disciplinary
project—in this case, a work of musical art inspired by knowledge
crossings between ornithological ecology and literary history—is
embodied in the chapter co-written by Quinn, Speitz, Carmenates,
and Burtner. The result was Burtner’s composition, Avian Telemetry,
for Carmenates’ percussion ensemble that paired traces of Romantic
poets’ descriptions of bird sounds (from Speitz’s ecocritical research)
with contemporary field recordings and ecological information about
bird vocalizations adapting to human sounds and noise (from Quinn’s
ecological fieldwork). The three collaborations between Schippers
and Howell, between Edwards and Konishi, and between Torvinen
and Välimäki reflect their authors’ interdisciplinarity: cultural policy,
musical institutions, and ecological sustainability in the first of the
three; conservation ecology, history, economics, and musical
instrument manufacture in the second; and philosophy and music
history and criticism in the third collaboration. Schippers and Howell
employ a cultural systems model to examine harm to musical life in
regions where armed conflict has ripped apart societies and
environments. Edwards and Konishi examine the music culture of the
Ryūkyūan/Okinawan sanshin (a three-stringed lute) in light of an
environmental and economic crisis occasioned by unsustainable
tonewood sourcing. Torvinen and Välimäki are especially interested
in “atmosphere” and affect as felt musical experience; they offer an
ecocritical examination of two contemporary Finnish classical music
compositions that foreground environmental concerns while
advancing atmospherology, a recent type of phenomenological
approach in the study of music.
Interdisciplinarity is also central to many of the single-authored
chapters. Some, including those by Labaree, Titon, Pedelty, Graper,
and Allen, draw on ecological science in their discussions of music
and sound. Labaree is attentive to variation and pattern in the
development of musical compositions and performances; he
proposes that “these complex systemic phenomena in music exhibit
the same characteristics of self-organized and emergent phenomena
as are found in nature” (this volume 201). Labaree’s chapter makes
use of an extensive music eco-trope, that is, an analogy between
music and nature; Titon’s chapter responds to a critique of music
ecology’s eco-trope. He reviews controversies surrounding self-
organization and emergent properties in nature, distinguishes
between ecological science and the philosophy of ecological holism,
teases apart balances in nature from the metaphorical “balance of
nature,” and elaborates on the concept of ecological rationality. Titon
also claims that ecomusicology expands the reach of political
activism from the diversity-equity-inclusion agenda of social justice
to embrace a yet more diverse and inclusive ecocentric region of
ecojustice, a topic that resonates throughout nearly all the other
chapters in this book. Pedelty’s chapter exemplifies such ecojustice-
oriented environmental-political activism in describing a successful
campaign, which he aided by making a documentary film, to restrain
the lucrative whale-watching industry in the US Pacific Northwest.
The noise of the tourist boats was harming orca whales by making it
difficult for them to communicate with one another and find food;
thus, limits on these human activities are necessary to allow the
orcas to survive. Graper’s chapter engages with the borderlands of
multispecies relationships in Austin, Texas, where a large colony of
bats has taken up residence under a major bridge and contributed to
the musical identities of the city. Here, conservation ecology played a
role in shifting conservation narratives that contributed to artistic
and cultural identities—also linking in complex ways with the racial
disputes along the nearby political borderlands between the United
States and Mexico. Allen’s chapter takes up industrial ecology (life
cycle analysis) alongside an ecocritical sustainability approach to
argue for “ecoörganology,” that is, a critical approach to the material
basis of human musical cultures from a perspective that is more
ecocentric and less anthropocentric. Allen is drawing on ecological
science and politically inspired sustainability activism to advocate an
environmentalism regarding musical instruments that considers the
places, lifeforms, and people impacted by music cultures—much as
ecological science has often been used in the service of more just
human-nature relationships.
Edwards and Konishi’s chapter on the sanshin is an
ecoörganological analysis in that the instrument is considered in light
of biophysical and socioeconomic contexts with a concern about
place and nonhuman species. In that sense, Edwards and Konishi
offer yet a third ecoörganological approach, the social-ecological
systems (SES) framework, which differs from Allen’s two
suggestions. The SES approach is also explicit in the chapter by
Post. As another illustration of interdisciplinary activity within
ecomusicologies today, SES follows on a history of environmental
advocates grounding their proposals in the findings of ecological
science. Systems theory in the form of cybernetics influenced E. P.
Odum’s influential unification of plant and animal ecological science
by means of Arthur Tansley’s ecosystem concept (Odum 1953). In
the 1970s and 1980s, E. P. Odum and his brother H. T. Odum
extended principles of biophysical ecosystem analysis to social-
economic systems, such as trade, and technological systems, such
as industry, while H. T. Odum was also pioneering in the
development of general systems theory (H. T. Odum 1970, 1994).
But in the last decades of the twentieth century, when population
ecologists were challenging the centrality of the ecosystem approach
and gradually reducing its importance in ecological science, an
ecosystemic approach was gaining ground in the social sciences,
particularly as embodied in the SES framework introduced by Berkes,
Folke, and Colding (1998) and later elaborated by Ostrom (2009)
and others. It is significant that Berkes (1989) and Ostrom
emphasized commons, local knowledge, and community-based
management, while in Sacred Ecology Berkes called attention to
both IEK and TEK (1999). Although Dirksen does not employ SES
explicitly for her chapter on the sacred ecology of Haitian Vodou, the
chapter’s focus on IEK nevertheless combines sociocultural local
knowledge with the environmental in productive ways. Indeed,
combining the sociocultural with the ecological has been key in the
literature of music ecology that predates the named field of
ecomusicology. SES advocates position their work squarely within
the realm of public policy, also a major concern of Titon ([2009]
2020), Schippers and Grant (2016), and Schippers and Howell’s
chapter in this volume. Dirksen’s chapter considers how TEK is
expressed within Haitian Vodou sacred ecology by means of songs
and interactions with the lwa (spirits), proposing that in this context
TEK displays human responsibility toward the environment. In his
chapter Hamill writes of Spokane Indigenous ecology, in which “all
living things (including those often labeled as inanimate) are … part
of a sacred continuum that connected the Spokane, individually and
collectively, to seen and unseen worlds around them” (this volume
133). Expressive culture, including stories and song, emanates from
the environment and contributes to the “resonant place-worlds”
(Basso 1996, 35) that fold the Spokane ancestral past into the
present. In her chapter Von Glahn considers the impact of glacier-
related Tlingit IEK, as reported by anthropologists Thomas F.
Thornton and Julie Cruikshank, upon Judith Shatin’s contemporary
musical composition Ice Becomes Water.
Edwards and Konishi’s chapter emphasizes the collective,
partnership-based managerial approach to cultural policy while
adapting SES concepts of adaptive management and resilience from
conservation ecology to music-culture sustainability (see Titon
[2015] 2020). Although one aim of the Kuruchi Island Network and
its allies is environmental restoration, for the policy to be successful
at the government level it must be instrumentalized by means of the
long-term “ecosystem services” provided to human beings in the
form of sustainable sanshin tonewood. There is a tension between
thinking of nature as community, that is, as the place in which
humans dwell among other beings, and thinking of nature as capital
and commodity, that is, in terms of the contributions—“ecosystem
services”—that its goods, such as food, fuel, and natural products,
make to human life (see Titon forthcoming). Nowhere is this tension
more apparent than in the most recent global assessment reports of
the United Nations–sponsored Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), where the
goal is assessment of “nature’s contribution to people” by means of
ecosystem services that range from “strongly utilitarian to strongly
relational.” The assessment attempts to consider knowledges from
the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, but also from
the “knowledge of practitioners and indigenous peoples and local
communities”—that is, from IEK and TEK (Brondizio et al. 2015, 6).
In her chapter Post suggests a way to integrate those Western,
university-based knowledges and practices with TEK and IEK. In
welcoming the SES model, Post emphasizes its recent expansion to
include expressive culture as she considers soundscapes and sonic
practices on Rakiura Stewart Island (Aotearoa New Zealand). Here
residents share, develop, and adapt integrated practices in realms
that include people, birds, plants, marine life, water, weather events,
as well as products of technology such as boats, planes, and other
vehicles. Close listening to changing sounds becomes a source for
knowledge about conservation needs and part of a narrative network
and collective discourse that support conservation measures that
blend Māori and European values.
As many Indigenous scholars have pointed out, Romantic
portrayals of traditional, tribal, Native, and Indigenous societies as
living in timeless harmony with nature overlook entirely the violence
wrought upon them by extractive colonial and settler societies. Such
problematic portrayals also minimize the practical necessities of
surviving in a damaged world. The Earth’s environmental conditions
and climate have for many thousands of years been inconstant and
mutable. Considering only the past millennium, the “Medieval
Warming Period” was followed by the “Little Ice Age” (White 2017).
For that reason it makes no sense to think of Indigenous peoples
living in a prehistory of harmonious equilibrium with the environment
in a “balance of nature” (Ross [1992] 2006). Rather, they developed
place-based adaptational strategies to live within the changing
climate, varying habitats, and fluctuating populations of plants and
animals (Whyte 2018). Thus, TEK and IEK embody practical,
problem-solving approaches to living in particular environments,
then and now: knowledge of local flora, fauna, foodways, and a
homegrown narrative ecology (Hufford 2021), as well as knowledge
of machines, electronic media, and navigation within urban
landscapes and modern bureaucracies—in addition to understanding
and communicating such knowledges sonically and musically.
Concomitantly there is the recognition that a particular solution in
one place may not be appropriate in another. TEK in Dirksen’s Haiti
(this volume) grows out of centuries of knowledge of life in those
particular Haitian habitats and is not the same as IEK among Post’s
Mongolian herders (Post 2021), which in turn is not the same as in
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hailstones. Instinctively dropping on my knees, I gripped an angle of
the rock, curled up like a young fern frond with my face pressed
against my breast, and in this attitude submitted as best I could to
my thundering bath. The heavier masses seemed to strike like
cobblestones, and there was a confused noise of many waters about
my ears—hissing, gurgling, clashing sounds that were not heard as
music. The situation was quickly realized. How fast one’s thoughts
burn in such times of stress! I was weighing chances of escape.
Would the column be swayed a few inches away from the wall, or
would it come yet closer? The fall was in flood and not so lightly
would its ponderous mass be swayed. My fate seemed to depend on
a breath of the “idle wind.” It was moved gently forward, the
pounding ceased, and I was once more visited by glimpses of the
moon. But fearing I might be caught at a disadvantage in making too
hasty a retreat, I moved only a few feet along the bench to where a
block of ice lay. I wedged myself between the ice and the wall, and
lay face downwards, until the steadiness of the light gave
encouragement to rise and get away. Somewhat nerve-shaken,
drenched, and benumbed, I made out to build a fire, warmed myself,
ran home, reached my cabin before daylight, got an hour or two of
sleep, and awoke sound and comfortable, better, not worse, for my
hard midnight bath.—From “The Yosemite.” Copyright by The
Century Co., New York, and used by their kind permission.

THE TORTURE OF THE STRAIT-JACKET

By Jack London
Have you ever seen canvas tarpaulins or rubber blankets with
brass eyelets set in along the edges? Then imagine a piece of stout
canvas, some four and one-half feet in length, with large and heavy
brass eyelets running down both edges. The width of this canvas is
never the full girth of the human body it is to surround. The width is
also irregular—broadest at the shoulders, next broadest at the hips,
and narrowest at the waist.
The jacket is spread on the floor. The man who is to be punished,
or who is to be tortured for confession, is told to lie face-downward
on the flat canvas. If he refuses, he is man-handled. After that he
lays himself down with a will, which is the will of the hang-dogs,
which is your will, dear citizen, who feeds and fees the hang-dogs for
doing this thing for you.
The man lies face-downward. The edges of the jacket are brought
as nearly together as possible along the center of the man’s back.
Then a rope, on the principle of a shoe-lace, is run through the
eyelets, and on the principle of shoe-lacing the man is laced in the
canvas. Only he is laced more severely than any person ever laces
his shoe. They call it “cinching” in prison lingo. On occasion, when
the guards are cruel and vindictive or when the command has come
down from above, in order to insure the severity of the lacing the
guards press with their feet into the man’s back as they draw the
lacing tight.
Have you ever laced your shoe too tightly, and, after half an hour
experienced that excruciating pain across the instep of the
obstructed circulation? And do you remember that after a few
minutes of such pain you simply could not walk another step and had
to untie the shoe-lace and ease the pressure? Very well. Then try to
imagine your whole body so laced, only much more tightly, and that
the squeeze, instead of being merely on the instep of one foot, is on
your entire trunk, compressing to the seeming of death your heart,
your lungs, and all the rest of your vital and essential organs.
I remember the first time they gave me the jacket down in the
dungeons. It was at the beginning of my incorrigibility, shortly after
my entrance to prison, when I was weaving my loom-task of a
hundred yards a day in the jute mill and finishing two hours ahead of
the average day. Yes, and my jute-sacking was far above the
average demanded. I was sent to the jacket that first time, according
to the prison books, because of “skips” and “breaks” in the cloth, in
short, because my work was defective. Of course this was ridiculous.
In truth, I was sent to the jacket because I, a new convict, a master
of efficiency, a trained expert in the elimination of waste motion, had
elected to tell the stupid head-weaver a few things he did not know
about his business. And the head-weaver, with Captain Jamie
present, had me called to the table where atrocious weaving, such
as could never have gone through my loom, was exhibited against
me. Three times was I thus called to the table. The third calling
meant punishment according to the loom-room rules. My punishment
was twenty-four hours in the jacket.
They took me down into the dungeon. I was ordered to lie face-
downward on the canvas spread flat upon the floor. I refused. One of
the guards, Morrison, gulleted me with his thumbs. Mobins, the
dungeon trusty, a convict himself, struck me repeatedly with his fists.
In the end I lay down as directed. And, because of the struggle I had
vexed them with, they laced me extra tight. Then they rolled me over
like a log upon my back.
It did not seem so bad at first. When they closed my door, with a
clang and clash of levered boltage, and left me in the utter dark, it
was eleven o’clock in the morning. For a few minutes I was aware
merely of an uncomfortable constriction which I fondly believed
would ease as I grew accustomed to it. On the contrary, my heart
began to thump and my lungs seemed unable to draw sufficient air
for my blood. This sense of suffocation was terrorizing, and every
thump of the heart threatened to burst my already bursting lungs.
After what seemed hours, and after what, out of my countless
succeeding experiences in that jacket I can now fairly conclude to
have been not more than half an hour, I began to cry out, to yell, to
scream, to howl, in a very madness of dying. The trouble was the
pain that had arisen in my heart. It was a sharp, definite pain, similar
to that of pleurisy, except that it stabbed hotly through the heart itself.
To die is not a difficult thing, but to die in such slow and horrible
fashion was maddening. Like a trapped beast of the wild, I
experienced ecstasies of fear, and yelled and howled until I realized
that such vocal exercise merely stabbed my heart more hotly and at
the same time consumed much of the little air in my lungs.
I gave over and lay quiet for a long time—an eternity it seemed
then though now I am confident that it could have been no longer
than a quarter of an hour. I grew dizzy with semi-asphyxiation, and
my heart thumped until it seemed surely it would burst the canvas
that bound me. Again I lost control of myself and set up a mad
howling for help.
In the midst of this I heard a voice from the next dungeon.
“Shut up,” it shouted, though only faintly it percolated to me. “Shut
up. You make me tired.”
“I’m dying,” I cried out.
“Pound your ear and forget it,” was the reply.
“But I am dying,” I insisted.
“Then why worry?” came the voice. “You’ll be dead pretty quick an’
out of it. Go ahead and croak, but don’t make so much noise about
it. You’re interruptin’ my beauty sleep.”
So angered was I by this callous indifference, that I recovered self-
control and was guilty of no more than smothered groans.—From
“The Star Rover.” Copyrighted by The Macmillan Co., New York, and
used with their kind permission.

A SON OF COPPER SIN

By Herman Whitaker
Within his bull’s-hide tepee, old Iz-le-roy lay and fed his little fire,
stick by stick. He was sick, very sick—sick with the sickness which is
made up of equal parts of hunger, old age, fever and despair. Just
one week before his tribe had headed up for Winnipegoos, where
the whitefish may be had for the taking and the moose winter in their
yards. But a sick man may not travel the long trail, so Iz-le-roy had
remained at White Man’s Lake. And Batiste, his son, stayed also.
Not that it was expected of him, for, according to forest law, the man
who cannot hunt had better die; but Batiste had talked with the
gentle priest of Ellice, and had chosen to depart from the custom of
his fathers.
And things had gone badly, very badly, since the tribe had
marched. North, south, east and west, the round of the plains, and
through the leafless woods, the boy had hunted without as much as
a jack-rabbit falling to his gun. For two days no food had passed their
lips, and now he was gone forth to do that which Iz-le-roy had almost
rather die than have him do—ask aid of the settlers.
“Yea, my son,” the old warrior had faltered, “these be they that
stole the prairies of our fathers. Yet it may be that Big Laugh, best of
an evil brood, will give us of his store of flour and bacon.”
So, after placing a plentiful stock of wood close to the old man’s
hand, Batiste had closed the tepee flap and laced it. At the end of an
hour’s fast walking, during which the northern sky grew dark with the
threat of still more cruel weather, he sighted through the drift a
spurting column of smoke.
The smoke marked the cabin of John Sterling, and also his
present occupation. Within, John sat and fired the stove, while Avis,
his daughter, set out the breakfast dishes, and his wife turned the
sizzling bacon in the pan.
“I declare,” exclaimed the woman, pausing, knife in hand, “if that
bread ain’t froze solid!”
“Cold last night,” commented Sterling. “Put it in the oven, Mary.”
As she stooped to obey, the door quietly opened and Batiste
slipped in. His moose moccasins made no noise, and he was
standing close beside her when she straightened. She jumped and
gasped:
“Lor’ ’a’ mercy! How you do scare one! Why don’t you knock?”
Batiste stared. It was the custom of his tribe thus to enter a house,
a custom established before jails were built or locks invented. His
eye therefore roamed questioningly from one to another until Sterling
asked:
“What d’ye want, young fellow?”
Batiste pointed to the frying pan. “Bakin!” he muttered. “The bakin
of Big Laugh, I want. Iz-le-roy sick, plenty sick. Him want flour, him
want ba-kin.”
 The thought of his father’s need flashed into his mind, and
realizing the impossibility of expressing himself in English, he broke
into a voluble stream of Cree, punctuating its rolling gutturals with
energetic signs. While he was speaking, Avis ceased rattling her
dishes.
“He looks awfully hungry, dad,” she whispered, as Batiste finished.
Now, though Sterling was a large-souled, generous man, and
jovial—as evidenced by his name of Big Laugh—it happened that,
during the past summer, a roving band of Sioux had camped hard by
and begged him out of patience. That morning, too, the threatening
weather had spoiled an intended trip to Russel and touched his
temper—of which he had a goodly share.
“Can’t help it, girl,” he snapped. “If we feed every hungry Injun that
comes along, we’ll soon be out of house and home. Can’t do
anything for you, boy.”
“Him want ba-kin,” Batiste said.
“Well, you can just want.”
“Iz-le-roy sick, him want ba-kin,” the boy pleaded.
His persistence irritated Sterling, and, crowding down the better
feeling which spoke for the lad, he sprang up, threw wide the door,
and shouted:
“Get, you son of copper sin! Get, now! Quick!”
“Father!” pleaded the girl.
But he took no heed, and held wide the door.
Into Batiste’s face flashed surprise, anger and resentment.
Surprise, because he had not believed all the things Iz-le-roy had
told him of the white men, but had preferred to think them all like
Father Francis. But now? His father was right. They were all cold
and merciless, their hearts hard as their steel ax-heads, their
tongues sharp as the cutting edge. With head held high he marched
through the door, away from the hot stove, the steaming coffee, and
the delicious smell of frying bacon, out into the cold storm.
 “Oh, father!” remonstrated his wife, as Sterling closed the door.
“Look here, Mary,” he answered testily, “we fed a whole tribe last
summer, didn’t we?”
“But this lad don’t belong to them,” she pleaded.
“All the worse,” he rejoined. “Do an Injun a good turn an’ he never
forgets. Give him his breakfast, an’ he totes his tribe along to dinner.”
“Well,” sighed the good woman, “I’m real sorry.”
For a few moments both were silent. And presently, as the man’s
kindly nature began to triumph over his irritation, he hitched uneasily
in his chair. Already he felt ashamed. Casting a sheepish glance at
his wife, he rose, walked to the door, and looked out. But a wall of
whirling white blocked his vision. Batiste was gone beyond recall.
“Where’s Avis?” he asked, returning to the stove.
“A-vis!” called her mother.
But there was no answer. For a moment man and wife stared each
other in the eye; then, moved by a common impulse, they walked
into the kitchen. There, on the table, lay the half of a fresh-cut side of
bacon; the bread-box was open and a crusty loaf missing; the girl’s
shawl was gone from its peg and her overshoes from their corner.
“Good God!” gasped the settler. “The child’s gone after him!”
They knew the risk. All the morning the storm had been brewing,
and now it thundered by, a veritable blizzard. The blizzard! King of
storms! It compels the settler to string a wire from house to stables, it
sets men to circling in the snow, it catches little children coming
home from school and buries them in its monstrous drifts.
Without another word Sterling wound a scarf about his neck,
grabbed his badger mitts, and rushed outside.
When Avis softly closed the kitchen door she could just see
Batiste rounding a bluff that lay a furlong west of her father’s stables.
She started after him; but by the time she had covered half the
distance a sea of white swept in between and blotted him from view.
 She struggled on, and on, and still on, until, in spite of the seventy
degrees of frost, the perspiration burst from every pore and the scud
melted on her glowing face. This was well enough—so long as she
kept moving; but when the time came that she must stop, she would
freeze all the quicker for her present warmth.
This, being born and bred of the prairie, Avis knew, and the
knowledge kept her toiling, toiling on, until her tired legs and leaden
feet compelled a pause in the shelter of a bluff. She was hungry, too.
All this time she carried the bread and meat, and now, unconscious
of a pair of slant eyes which glared from a willow thicket, she broke
the loaf and began to eat. While she ate, the green lights in the eyes
flared brighter, a long red tongue licked the drool from grinning jaws,
and forth from his covert stole a lank, gray wolf.
Avis uttered a startled cry. This was no coyote, to be chased with a
stick, but a wolf of timber stock, a great beast, heavy, prick-eared,
strong as a mastiff. His nose puckered in a wicked snarl as he slunk
in half-circles across her front. He was undecided. So, while he
circled, trying to make up his mind, drawing a little nearer at every
turn, Avis fell back—back towards the bluff, keeping her white face
always to the creeping beast.
It was a small bluff, lacking a tree large enough to climb, but
sufficient for her purpose. On its edge she paused, threw the bacon
to the wolf, and then ran desperately. Once clear of the scrub, she
ran on, plunging through drifts, stumbling, falling, to rise again and
push her flight. Of direction she took no heed; her only thought was
to place distance between herself and the red-mouthed brute. But
when, weary and breathless, she paused for rest, out of the drab drift
stole the lank, gray shadow.
The brute crouched a few yards away, licking his sinful lips,
winking his devil eyes. She still had the loaf. As she threw it, the wolf
sprang and snapped it in mid-air. Then she ran, and ran, and ran, as
the tired doe runs from the hounds. For what seemed to her an
interminable time, though it was less than five minutes, she held on;
then stopped, spent, unable to take another step. Looking back, she
saw nothing of the wolf; but just when she began to move slowly
forward, thinking he had given up the chase, a gray shape loomed
right ahead.
Uttering a bitter cry, she turned once more, tottered a few steps,
and fainted.
As, wildly calling his daughter’s name, Sterling rushed by his
stables, the wind smote him with tremendous power. Like a living
thing it buffeted him about the ears, tore at his breath, poured over
him an avalanche of snow. Still he pressed on and gained the bluff
which Avis missed.
As he paused to draw a free breath, his eye picked out a fresh-
made track. Full of a sudden hope, he shouted. A voice answered,
and as he rushed eagerly forward a dark figure came through the
drift to meet him. It was Batiste.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Sterling was cruelly disappointed, but he answered quickly: “You
see my girl? Yes, my girl,” he repeated, noting the lad’s look of
wonder. “Young white squaw, you see um?”
“Mooniah papoose?” queried Batiste.
“Yes, yes! She follow you. Want give you bread, want give you
bacon. All gone, all lost!” Sterling finished with a despairing gesture.
“Squaw marche to me? Ba-kin for me?” questioned Batiste.
“Yes, yes!” cried Sterling, in a flurry of impatience.
“I find um,” he said, softly.
Briefly Batiste laid down his plan, eking out his scanty English with
vivid signs. In snow, the white man rolls along like a clumsy buffalo,
planting his feet far out to the right and left. And because his right leg
steps a little further than the left, he always, when lost, travels in a
circle. Wherefore Batiste indicated that they should move along
parallel lines, just shouting distance apart, so as to cover the largest
possible ground.
“Young squaw marche slow. She there!” He pointed north and east
with a gesture. “Yes, there!”
 Batiste paused until Sterling got his distance; then, keeping the
wind slanting to his left cheek, he moved off north and east. Ever
and anon he stopped to give forth a piercing yell. If Sterling
answered, he moved on; if not—as happened twice—he traveled in
his direction until they were once more in touch. And so, shouting
and yelling, they bore off north and east for a long half-hour.
After that, Batiste began to throw his cries both east and west, for
he judged that they must be closing on the girl. And suddenly, from
the north, came a weird, tremulous answer. He started, and throwing
up his head, emitted the wolf’s long howl. Leaning forward, he waited
—his very soul in his ears—until, shrill yet deep-chested and
quivering with ferocity, came back the answering howl.
No coyote gave forth that cry, and Batiste knew it.
“Timber wolf!” he muttered.
Turning due north, he gave the settler a warning yell, then sped
like a hunted deer in the direction of the cry. He ran with the long,
lithe lope which tires down even the swift elk, and in five minutes
covered nearly a mile. Once more he gave forth the wolf howl. An
answer came close by, but as he sprang forward it ended with a
frightened yelp. Through a break in the drift he spied a moving
figure; then a swirl swept in and blotted it from view.
But he had seen the girl. A dozen leaps and he was close upon
her. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, she screamed and
plunged headlong.
When consciousness returned, Avis was lying on her own bed.
Her mother bent over her; Sterling stood near by. All around were
the familiar things of life, but her mind still retained a vivid picture of
her flight, and she sprang up screaming:
“The wolf; oh, the wolf!”
“Hush, dearie,” her mother soothed. “It wasn’t a wolf, but just the
Cree boy.”
Batiste had told how she screamed at the sight of his gray, snow-
covered blanket, and the cry had carried even to her father. But
when she recovered sufficiently to tell her story, the father shuddered
and the mother exclaimed:
“John, we owe that boy more than we can ever pay!”
“We do!” he fervently agreed.
Just then the latch of the other door clicked, and a cold blast
streamed into the bedroom. Jumping up, the mother cried:
“Run, John; he’s going!”
“Here, young fellow!” shouted the settler.
Batiste paused in the doorway, his hand on the latch, his slight
body silhouetted against the white of the storm.
“Where you going, boy?”
“To Iz-le-roy,” he answered. “Him sick. Bezhou!”
Sterling strode forward and caught him by the shoulder. “No, you
don’t,” he said, “not that way.” Then, turning, he called into the
bedroom: “Here, mother! Get out all your wraps while I hitch the
ponies. And fix up our best bed for a sick man.”—From “The
Probationer,” copyright and used by the kind permission of author
and publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York.

SOMBRE[7]
By William Wetmore Story
Long golden beams from the setting sun swept over the plains of
Andalusia, and fell upon the Geralda tower of the great cathedral of
Sevilla, many miles in the distance. In their path they illumined a
stretch of vast pastures enclosed by whitened stone walls, and
dotted with magnificent cattle. In a far corner of one of the
enclosures the figure of a young girl passed through an arched stone
gateway. As she paused to look upon the scattered groups of
grazing beasts, the level rays played in lights and shadows upon the
waving masses of dark chestnut hair, richly health-tinted young face,
creamy neck, and large, lustrous eyes now painfully dry, as if tears
were exhausted. She gazed from group to group, calling eagerly,
“Sombre! Sombre!”
A pair of long, gleaming horns rose abruptly amid the browsing
herd, and a magnificent bull came towards her at a brisk trot. The
sunbeams glinted upon his dark coat as it swelled and sank under
the play of powerful muscles. His neck and shoulders were leonine
in massive strength, the legs and hind-quarters as sleek and
symmetrical as those of a race-horse, but his ferociousness was
held in check by that devoted love dumb animals express for those
who love them.
In a moment the young girl’s white arms were thrown around the
animal’s dusky neck, and her cheek was lain against the silken skin.
“Oh, Sombre!” she murmured, “do you know what they are going to
do with you? Papa wants to send you to the Plaza de Toros! I have
begged him in vain to spare you. Does he think after Anita has
brought you from a tiny calf to be such a beautiful, dear toro that she
can give you to the cruel matador to be tortured, made crazy and
killed?”
She was sobbing bitterly, and the devoted beast was striving
vainly to turn his head far enough to lick the fair neck bending down
upon his. Presently the sobbing ceased, and she stroked the strong
shoulders with her small hand.
“Never fear, Sombre, if they take you to Sevilla Anita will find a
way to save you! Now, say good night.”
Sombre thrust out his huge tongue and licked the little hand and
arms. Then she bent forward and kissed him on the frowning, furry
forehead and departed.
Anita’s path homeward lay through another field where a herd of
cattle were being driven. A young herdsman, riding a strong horse at
a brisk canter, saw the young girl enter from the adjoining pasture.
With joyful exclamation in English he rode towards her calling,
“Anita, have you seen the posters?”
Waiting until he reached her side, with bated breath she asked, “Is
—is Sombre advertised?”
 “Yes, on the outer gateway. But here, I have a poster in my
pocket.”
Plaza de Toros de Sevilla
May 17.
Anniversary of the King’s Birthday,
Six Bulls to be killed,
The two magnificent brother bulls
Sol and Sombre,
and others very ferocious,
against
The intrepid Matadores,
Lariato, the American, and
Amador, of Sevilla.
“It is cruel of them, cruel! (Reading) ‘Lariato, the American.’ Why,
that is yourself! You will spare him! You will spare my Sombre!”
“They do not permit me to fight Don Alonzo’s bulls, for I raise them
and they would not fight me. Amador will fight Sombre.”
“No, no! You must fight Sombre. That wicked Amador will kill him!”
“But so would I, Anita, or be killed by him!”
Anita was silent for a time; suddenly she exclaimed: “Orlando, do
you love me well enough to put faith in a promise which will seem
impossible of fulfillment?”
“God knows I do!”
“Then listen; if Sombre goes to the Plaza de Toros, you must fight
him and spare him even though they hiss and jeer at you.”
“Death is easier. Perhaps the managers will let me fight him, for
you have raised him, and I can tell them that I have scarcely seen
him. I will fight him, Anita, and for your sake I will let him kill me!”
“No, no, Orlando, for this is my promise, even in the last extremity
Sombre shall not harm you!”
“And then, Anita!”
 “Then I will leave my father’s house and go with you. We will buy
Sombre and go to those plains in your country you love so to tell
about. You will become a ranch hero, and Sombre shall be the
patriarch of our herd!”
“I have tried that once and failed!”
“Ah, but you had neither Sombre nor Anita then!” And waving him
a kiss she ran off across the field.
On the 17th of May, in the Plaza de Toros, there was a murmur
from thousands of throats like the magnified hum of bees. Amador of
Sevilla had killed several bulls and now there was a short
intermission. In a stall of the lowest tier sat Anita alone. Presently a
band of music began a stately march, and under a high stone
archway a long procession advanced. First, gaudily caparisoned
picadors on blindfolded studs, two by two, separated and came to a
halt, facing the center, with long lances abreast. Then red-coated
toreadors carrying long barbs, with brilliant streamers of ribbon,
grouped themselves near the heavy closed doors of the bull-pen;
finally, the capeadors in yellow satin, carrying flaming red capes on
their arms, filed around like the mounted picadors and stood
between their studs.
The music ceased, the murmur of voices died away, and the gates
of the bull-pen were thrown open. At a quick trot, a great black bull
dashed in, receiving in his shoulders as he passed the toreador’s
two short barbs. Anita gripped her chair and gasped, “Sombre!”
Coming from a darkened pen, Sombre had trotted eagerly forward,
expecting to find himself once more in his loved pastures, but he
paused, bewildered in the glare of light. Hither and thither he turned
in nervous abruptness, his head raised high, his tail slowly lashing
his flanks. Then he lowered his grand head and sniffed the earth,
and then he smelled fresh, warm blood, the blood of his own kind.
With gathering rage he lowered his keen horns close to the ground
and gave a deep, hoarse bellow of defiance, flinging clod after clod
with his forefeet high above his back. Then there flaunted toward him
a red object at which he charged, but it swept aside, and a new sting
of pain was felt in his neck, and warm blood was trickling over his
glossy skin. Again and again he charged, but each time the red thing
vanished and there was more pain, more torturing barbs that
maddened him.
Presently a horseman advanced with lowered spear. Surely horse
and rider could not vanish. Ah, no! Sombre found that it was not
intended that they should. Rushing upon them he struck them with
such a blow that they were forced backwards twenty feet and both
gave a scream of pain. The picador was dragged away with a broken
leg, and the horse lay lifeless, for Sombre’s horn had pierced its
heart. Instantly a great cry went up from that crater of humanity,
“Bravo! Bravo, Toro! Bravo, Sombre!”
More than once he earned that grand applause, then his
tormentors disappeared and through one of the archways advanced
a young man tall and athletic. On his left arm hung a scarlet mantle,
and in his right hand he carried a long, keen sword. Passing under
the archway, the matador swept his sword in military salute, then
with lowered point he stepped into the arena and faced his
antagonist. Upon all fell an awful silence, for Lariato and Sombre
were met in a struggle to the death!
For a time the combatants stood motionless, eyeing each other
intently. Then came stealthy movements, hither and thither, then
thundering, desperate charges, and graceful, hair-breadth escapes.
At last in one great charge, Sombre’s horn tore the mantle from
Lariato’s arm and carrying it half around the ring, as a flaming
banner, the bull ground and trampled it in the dust. A slight hissing
was heard in the audience which turned to thundering applause
when Lariato contemptuously refused a new mantle! The audience
became breathless, the man alone was now the mad beast’s target!
Sombre, dripping with blood and perspiration, his flanks swelling
and falling in his great gasps for breath, his eyes half blinded by the
dust and glare of the arena, gave the matador one brief glance, then
with head low down, charged upon him. Lariato’s long keen blade
was lowered confidently to its death-dealing slant.
Just as the murderous sword-point seemed about to sink through
the bull’s shoulders, into his very heart, a despairing woman’s cry
reached the matador’s ears. Then a mighty hiss, interspersed with
hoots and jeers, went up from the exasperated spectators, for the
bull thundered on, with the sword scarcely penetrating the tough
muscles, standing upright between his shoulders, while Lariato stood
disarmed.
Coming to a standstill far beyond his antagonist, Sombre shook
his huge neck and the sword spun high into the air and fell toward
the center of the ring. Lariato took several steps toward it, but
tottered and fell upon the ground in a swoon, for he had been
severely bruised.
With an exultant roar, the bull rushed back to complete his victory;
the hissing and the hooting was hushed, and groans of horror filled
the air. Suddenly, just as the animal had gained full headway in his
murderous charge, a slight, white figure glided into the ring, and a
clear voice cried “Sombre!”
At the sound of that voice, the charging beast came strainingly to a
halt, threw up his head, and gazed eagerly about, then turned and
rushed toward the girl! Capeadors hurried forward flaunting their red
capes, but she waved them back.
“Go back! You shall torment him no more, my poor, tortured,
wounded Sombre!”
In a moment the great beast was beside her, licking her dress and
arms and hands. As she deftly extricated the barbs from his neck
and shoulders, the thousands of throats around them shrieked out a
vast pandemonium of bravos. Blood was covering her hands and
staining her dress, but Anita was blind to it. Meanwhile Lariato had
struggled to his feet and hurried towards her. “God bless you,” he
was saying, but she pushed past him with a glad smile, saying,
“Wait, I have something to say to them!”
Standing in the middle of the ring, Anita waited for silence.
Delaying until not a sound was heard, she said in a clear voice that
reached every ear:
“Jeer not at Lariato; he spared my pet, my Sombre, because he
loved me.”
 No matador ever gained such applause as followed. Bouquets,
sombreros, scarfs, and full purses showered into the ring, and as
that strange group stood facing the ovation, “Bravo, Lariato, Bravo,
la Señorita de Toros, Bravo, Sombre!” rang out and reëchoed over
the distant housetops.

A COMBAT IN THE ARENA

By George Croly
A portal of the arena opened, and the combatant, with a mantle
thrown over his face and figure, was led into the surroundery. The
lion roared and ramped against the bars of his den at the sight. The
guard put a sword and buckler into the hands of the Christian, and
he was left alone. He drew the mantle from his face, and bent a slow
and firm look around the amphitheater. His fine countenance and
lofty bearing raised a universal shout of admiration. He might have
stood for an Apollo encountering the Python. His eyes at last turned
on mine. Could I believe my senses? Constantius was before me.
All my rancour vanished. An hour past, I could have struck the
betrayer of the heart—I could have called on the severest
vengeance of man and heaven to smite the destroyer of my child.
But to see him hopelessly doomed, the man whom I had honored for
his noble qualities, whom I had even loved, whose crime was, at the
worst, but the crime of giving way to the strongest temptation that
can bewilder the heart of man; to see the noble creature flung to the
savage beast, dying in tortures, torn piecemeal before my eyes, and
his misery wrought by me, I would have supplicated earth and
heaven to save him. But my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.
My limbs refused to stir. I would have thrown myself at the feet of
Nero; but I sat like a man of stone—pale—paralyzed—the beating of
my pulse stopped—my eyes alone alive.
The gate of the den was thrown back, and the lion rushed in with a
roar and a bound that bore him half across the arena. I saw the
sword glitter in the air; when it waved again, it was covered with
blood. A howl told that the blow had been driven home. The lion, one
of the largest of Numidia, and made furious by thirst and hunger, an
animal of prodigious power, crouched for an instant, as if to make
sure of his prey, crept a few paces onward, and sprang at the
victim’s throat. He was met by a second wound, but his impulse was
irresistible. A cry of natural horror rang round the amphitheater. The
struggle was now for an instant, life or death. They rolled over each
other; the lion, reared upon his hind feet with gnashing teeth and
distended talons, plunged on the man; again they rose together.
Anxiety was now at its wildest height. The sword now swung round
the Christian’s head in bloody circles. They fell again, covered with
blood and dust. The hand of Constantius had grasped the lion’s
mane, and the furious bounds of the monster could not lose his hold;
but his strength was evidently giving way—he still struck his terrible
blows, but each was weaker than the one before; till, collecting his
whole force for a last effort, he darted one mighty blow into the lion’s
throat and sank. The savage beast yelled, and spouting out blood,
fled howling around the arena. But the hand still grasped the mane,
and the conqueror was dragged whirling through the dust at his
heels. A universal outcry now arose to save him, if he were not
already dead. But the lion, though bleeding from every vein, was still
too terrible, and all shrank from the hazard. At last, the grasp gave
way, and the body lay motionless on the ground.
What happened for some moments after, I know not. There was a
struggle at the portal; a female forced her way through the guards,
rushed in alone, and flung herself upon the victim. The sight of a new
prey roused the lion; he tore the ground with his talons; he lashed his
streaming sides with his tail; he lifted up his mane and bared his
fangs. But his approaching was no longer with a bound; he dreaded
the sword, and came sniffing the blood on the sand, and stealing
round the body in circuits still diminishing.
The confusion in the vast assemblage was now extreme. Voices
innumerable called for aid. Women screamed and fainted, men burst
into indignant clamors at this prolonged cruelty. Even the hard hearts
of the populace, accustomed as they were to the sacrifice of life,
were roused to honest curses. The guards grasped their arms, and
waited but for a sign from the emperor. But Nero gave no sign.
 I looked upon the woman’s face; it was Salome! I sprang upon my
feet. I called on her name; called on her, by every feeling of nature,
to fly from that place of death, to come to my arms, to think of the
agonies of all that loved her.
She had raised the head of Constantius on her knee, and was
wiping the pale visage with her hair. At the sound of my voice, she
looked up, and, calmly casting back the locks from her forehead,
fixed her eyes upon me. She still knelt; one hand supported the head
—with the other she pointed to it as her only answer. I again adjured
her. There was the silence of death among the thousands around
me. A fire dashed into her eye—her cheek burned—she waved her
hand with an air of superb sorrow.
“I am come to die,” she uttered, in a lofty tone. “This bleeding body
was my husband—I have no father. The world contains to me but
this clay in my arms. Yet,” and she kissed the ashy lips before her,
“yet, my Constantius, it was to save that father that your generous
heart defied the peril of this hour. It was to redeem him from the
hand of evil that you abandoned your quiet home!—Yes, cruel father,
here lies the noble being that threw open your dungeon, that led you
safe through the conflagration, that, to the last moment of his liberty,
only sought how he might preserve and protect you.” Tears at length
fell in floods from her eyes. “But,” said she, in tones of wild power,
“he was betrayed, and may the Power whose thunders avenge the
cause of his people, pour down just retribution upon the head that
dared—”
I heard my own condemnation about to be pronounced by the lips
of my own child. Wound up to the last degree of suffering, I tore my
hair, leaped upon the bars before me, and plunged into the arena by
her side. The height stunned me; I tottered a few paces and fell. The
lion gave a roar and sprang upon me. I lay helpless under him, I
heard the gnashing of his white fangs above me.
An exulting shout arose. I saw him reel as if struck—gore filled his
jaws. Another mighty blow was driven to his heart. He sprang high in
the air with a howl. He dropped; he was dead. The amphitheater
thundered with acclamations.
 With Salome clinging to my bosom, Constantius raised me from
the ground—the roar of the lion had roused him from his swoon, and
two blows saved me. The falchion had broken in the heart of the
monster.
The whole multitude stood up, supplicating for our lives in the
name of filial piety and heroism. Nero, devil as he was, dared not
resist the strength of popular feeling. He waved a signal to the
guards; the portal was opened, and my children, sustaining my
feeble steps, showered with garlands and ornaments from
innumerable hands, slowly led me from the arena.

KAWEAH’S RUN
By Clarence King
As I walked over to see Kaweah at the corral, I glanced down the
river, and saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile below, two horsemen ride
down our bank, spur their horses into the stream, swim to the other
side, and struggle up a steep bank, disappearing among bunches of
cottonwood trees near the river.
They were Spaniards—the same who had swum King’s River the
afternoon before, and, as it flashed on me finally, the two whom I had
studied so attentively at Visalia. Then I at once saw their purpose
was to waylay me, and made up my mind to give them a lively run.
I decided to strike across, and jumping into the saddle threw
Kaweah into a sharp trot.
I glanced at my girth and then at the bright copper upon my pistol,
and settled myself firmly.
By this time I had regained the road, which lay before me traced
over the blank, objectless plain in vanishing perspective. Fifteen
miles lay between me and a station; Kaweah and pistol were my only
defense, yet at that moment I felt a thrill of pleasure, a wild moment
of inspiration, almost worth the danger to experience.
I glanced over my shoulder and found that the Spaniards were
crowding their horses to their fullest speed; their hoofs, rattling on