The Man Who Mastered Time by Cummings Ray

Author:Cummings, Ray [Cummings, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, NF, Horrid Coding
ISBN: 9781434491190
Amazon: 1434491196
Goodreads: 22711638
Publisher: A. C. McClurg & Co.
Published: 1924-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

A cordon of police stopped Fahn and his party at the edge of a grove of palms near the beach. A moment more and they were inside. It was dim under the palms; the white sand a lace pattern of shadow and moonlight. Gay figures were moving about, all the men masked now.

The grove covered perhaps a quarter of a mile. To the right lay the gleaming white beach with the surf rolling up upon it. A tremendous pile of scarlet and white blossoms stood near by under the palm trees. Figures rushed to it, gathered up armfuls and darted away, shouting and laughing.

“We must keep together,” Fahn warned. “Come this way.”

Half a dozen men had whirled up, pelting Azeela and Dee with flower blossoms, and, under cover of the laughing attack, tried to separate the girls from their escorts and carry them off.

They moved slowly forward, George gripping Dee’s arm tightly. They passed a huge, rectangular swimming pool, deserted as yet—glassy, moonlit water a foot or two below the surface of the ground, reflecting the dark outlines of the date palms that curved above it.

The whirling crowd constantly became thicker. There must have been several thousand people within the grove: the white shrouded figure of a woman flinging flowers against the attack of a man; a woman retreating, her ammunition exhausted, to the flower pile to replenish, and being caught in a smothering embrace before she could reach it; a group of laughing girls, their robes torn from them in the fray, pelting a defenseless man, flinging him finally into a huge pile of flower petals, burying him until some other quarry distracted their attention, or a stronger force of men separated them, sometimes carrying them off bodily.

And in nooks behind the hedges of flowers, couples stole silent embraces, alone until marauding bands of men or girls found them out and drove them from their seclusion.

The white sand was thick with trampled flowers. Music came drifting through the warm night air; music near at hand, but blurred by the shouts of the whirling throng. The rich contralto voice of a woman singing—a snatch cut off by laughter.

A large white pavilion lay ahead, brilliant with flashing colored lights—a kaleidoscope of shifting color. It seemed crowded with people, and Fahn now led his little party toward it.

They did not enter the pavilion, but stood in a group on its steps. The music came from within, music that welled and throbbed, unfamiliar in character, but with the age-old appeal to the senses—music sensuous, barbaric. And yet was it barbaric?

Rogers voiced the question in a whisper to Loto, who stood beside him. Was it not rather supermodern, with the centuries of decadence that had put into it that fire of the soul abandoned to the body?

The throng on the floor was battling with flowers, drinking wine from carved bowls of coconut shell, and dancing indiscriminately. The masked men were robed in black and women shrouded in white, but the swinging lights of vivid color stained everything, made the scene shift and blur into fantasy.

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