The Little Gods illustrated by Charles Sarka

Charles Nicholas Sarka (1879 - 1960) American graphic artist, painter and illustrator.

"The Deputy Supervisor revealed to them the thrilling difference between a peach and an apple."

Of such women McGennis had no fear, and so it had come about, very gradually, that after all the others were gone, these little ones waited in the big room till McGennis came with a wonderfully colored book, and then, with shining eyes and tiny gurgles of excited laughter, they closed about him and wormed their warm little selves inside his arms and balanced precariously on his shoulders, steadying themselves by his hair, and lay piled, a heap of eager heads and forgotten arms and legs, on the big table where the book was, while the Deputy Supervisor revealed to them the thrilling difference between a peach and an apple, and the astonishing unlikeness of either to a violet. And any one who had come unseen on McGennis then, would hardly have known him for a Deputy Supervisor.

 

 "All I wanted was fayah show."

Fagan received his sentence with ominous lack of his former protestations, and went quietly to the guard-house. But being neither an accomplished thinker nor an expert in moral theory, he did not reflect. He merely sat there and brooded. "All I'm lookin' for is jus' a fayah show," he told himself, over and over again. "He use me right, an' I'll use him right. Ain't I the bes' fightin' man in the regiment, ain't the Kuhnel done said so, a whole plainty o' times? When they's fightin', I'll be there. But that little Lootenant—Lawszee, couldn' I smash him—all I want is jus' a straight deal."

 Fagan and Patricia

So Fagan and Patricia must needs leave the snug little house at the end of the sleepy, grass-grown street, and go out on the High Trail, the unknown of the people of the plains, a broad highway to things with hoofs and claws and wings, and to men little less wild than they, the men of the hills. At times the brown thread of the Trail was twined amid the giant roots of trees, and they wandered in a cool twilight, alone with the long creepers and the ferns and the bright birds which played about some opening in the matted roof, far above their heads, where the sun dropped through for a brief hour. Sometimes it clung to the massive walls of a cañon, where a river boiled so far below that the sound of its torment came to their ears like the babble of a brook. Sometimes it shot upward to the realm of the clouds, and from the bare, grassy heights they peered out through shifting mist wreaths over all the cities and fields of the plains to the blue hint of the distant sea.

"Adios, Senor Don Augusto"
"Oh, I told you that teniente of mine was a devil! He got up and shook the hand of Don Augusto, and he smiled and said: 'Adiós, Señor Don Augusto de los Reyes. We shall not meet again for some time, I think. I am getting very tired of it myself. But I will give you a trustworthy escort. José!'

"Fought with - dishes and - knives and forks."

"What's he saying?" somebody asked, but the operator didn't seem to hear him. Then all at once he began to talk in a voice that didn't belong to him.
"Balangiga," he read, "seven-ten A.M. Company—attacked by—bolomen—while at—breakfast. Rifles in quarters. Fought with—dishes and—knives and forks—but—no good—"

"Dolores gazed down on her little world as it went to sleep."

No one minded her much. Her husband sat with half-closed eyes and puffed at his cigarette, Dolores turned to her window and gazed down on her little world as it went to sleep, and Hazlitt's eyes persisted in wandering to the girlish figure, glowing in a belated, ruddy shaft of light. Decidedly, the talkative woman on the beach had shown some discrimination in placing Señorita Dolores on the pinnacle of beauty. Suddenly Hazlitt became aware that Doña Ceferina's tale was told, and that her talk had taken a more personal turn.

"With loose reins rode off to his house."

But McGennis did not smile at it. For an instant he stood, and then he turned and closed the door with fumbling fingers, and took the few steps to his horse stumblingly, and climbed heavily into his saddle, and with loose reins rode off to his house and went up to his ssla and sat down there, looking blindly out on Sicaba.