Ill-luck and some bitter trick had stranded the M'Kune Tragedy Company in this dreadful place. Night after night they played in a shingle hut with their useless scenery stacked outside; night after night M'Kune broke it to his scared company that they hadn't yet got their fares. Fear and a kind of superstition worked in their minds until they were seized with panic. In the daylight the men hung about the bar, muttering; and the women herded by themselves, packed like hens in a strange run, hysterically afraid. Prisoners in a desert, when night had fallen they wandered away to the railroad track and watched. Towards midnight would rise a red gleam on the far horizon, and they would hear a distant rumbling, gathering to a roar, till the darkness was split by a whizzing bar of light. By it went, the great, glaring thing full of life, terrible in its rush, and leaving the night immeasurably darker. Among the watchers the men would affect to whistle. If they couldn't board her to-night they might manage it to-morrow.... But the women caught each other's hands fast, and shuddered. Latterly they had felt as if the train were a devil that counted and kept them there.
But their desperate plight inspired them. Never in their lives had these poor mummers so hurled themselves into their parts; never again would they murder and cheat and punish with such passionate realism. Their fate hung upon it. Penniless and trapped, their solitary chance of rescue lay in witching all Paradise to stare at them and furnish the wherewithal.
"Keep it up," urged M'Kune when a tired actress flagged. The hut was full and airless, but a few men were sullenly hanging back in the doorway, drawn thither, but arguing if it was worth it to step inside. "Keep it up!" hissed M'Kune.
And the heroine flung herself between the hero and the villain's knife, slipped as she ran, and was hurt, but struggled up and cried out her tottering defiance, bringing the house down before she dropped on her face.
That was the last night of crazed endeavour. The curtain came rocking down, and the villain--M'Kune--cheated the gallows to run feverishly through his receipts. All Paradise was vociferating behind that flapping rag, but amidst the din the players had heard their manager's yell of triumph. They had made up their fares at last.