CHAPTER XIV
That woodman friend of mine proved so engaging it was difficult to getaway, and thus when, dusk upon us, and my object still a long distanceoff, he asked me to spend the night at his hut, I gladly assented.
We soon reached the cabin where the man lived by himself whilst workingin the forest. It was a picturesque little place on a tree-overhunglagoon, thatched, wattled, and all about were piles of apleasant-scented bark, collected for the purpose of tanning hides, andI could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practisedidentically on two sides of the universal ether. But as a matter offact the similarity of many details of existence here and there was themost striking of the things I learned whilst in the red planet.
Within the hut stood a hearth in the centre of the floor, whereon acomfortable blaze soon sparkled, and upon the walls hung variousimplements, hides, and a store of dried fruits of various novel kinds.My host, when he had somewhat disdainfully watched me wash in a rill ofwater close by, suggested supper, and I agreed with heartiest good will.
"Nothing wonderful! Oh, Mr. Blue-coat!" he said, prancing about as hemade his hospitable arrangements. "No fine meat or scented wine tounlock, one by one, all the doors of paradise, such as I have heardthey have in lands beyond the sea; but fare good enough for plain menwho eat but to live. So! reach me down yonder bunch of yellow arufruit, and don't upset that calabash, for all my funniest stories lurkat the bottom of it."
I did as he bid, and soon we were squatting by the fire toasting aruson pointed sticks, the doorway closed with a wattle hurdle, and theblack and gold firelight filling the hut with fantastic shadows. Thenwhen the banana-like fruit was ready, the man fetched from a recess aloaf of bread savoured with the dust of dried and pounded fish, put theforesaid calabash of strong ale to warm, and down we sat to supper withreal woodman appetites. Seldom have I enjoyed a meal so much, and whenwe had finished the fruit and the wheat cake my guide snatched up thegreat gourd of ale, and putting it to his lips called out:
"Here's to you, stranger; here's to your country; here's to your girl,if you have one, and death to your enemies!" Then he drank deep andlong, and, passed the stuff to me.
"Here's to you, bully host, and the missus, and the children, if thereare any, and more power to your elbow!"--the which gratified himgreatly, though probably he had small idea of my meaning.
And right merry we were that evening. The host was a jolly goodfellow, and his ale, with a pleasant savour of mint in it, was theheartiest drink I ever set lips to. We talked and laughed till thevery jackals yapped in sympathy outside. And when he had told a scoreof wonderful wood stories as pungent of the life of these fairy forestsas the aromatic scent of his bark-heaps outside, as iridescent with thecolours of another world as the rainbow bubbles riding down his starlitrill, I took a turn, and told him of the commonplaces of my world sofar away, whereat he laughed gloriously again. The greater thecommonplace the larger his joy. The humblest story, hardly calculatedto impress a griffin between watches on the main-deck, was amasterpiece of wit to that gentle savage; and when I "took off" thetricks and foibles of some of my superiors--Heaven forgive me for suchtreason!--he listened with the exquisite open-mouthed delight of onewho wanders in a brand-new world of mirth.
We drank and laughed over that strong beer till the little owls outsideraised their voice in combined accord, and then the woodman, shakingthe last remnant of his sleepy wits together, and giving a reproachfullook at me for finally passing him the gourd empty to the last drop,rose, threw a fur on a pile of dead grass at one side of the hut, andbid me sleep, "for his brain was giddy with the wonders of theincredible and ludicrous sphere which I had lately inhabited."
Slowly the fire died away; slowly the quivering gold and blackarabesques on the walls merged in a red haze as the sticks dropped intotinder, and the great black outline of the hairy monster who had thrownhimself down by the embers rose up the walls against that flush likethe outline of a range of hills against a sunset glow. I listeneddrowsily for a space to his snoring and the laughing answer of thebrook outside, and then that ambrosial sleep which is the gentleattendant of hardship and danger touched my tired eyelids, and I, too,slept.
My friend was glum the next morning, as they who stay over-long at thesupper flagon are apt to be. He had been at work an hour on hisbark-heaps when I came out into the open, and it was only by a gooddeal of diplomacy and some material help in sorting his faggots that hewas got into a better frame of mind. I could not, however, trust hismood completely, and as I did not want to end so jovial a friendshipwith a quarrel, I hurried through our breakfast of dry bread, withhard-boiled lizard eggs, and then settling my reckoning with one of thebrass buttons from my coat, which he immediately threaded, with everyevidence of extreme gratification, on a string of trinkets hanginground his neck, asked him the way to Ar-hap's capital.
"Your way is easy, friend, as long as you keep to the straight path andhave yonder two-humped mountain in front. To the left is the sea, andbehind the hill runs the canal and road by which all traffic comes orgoes to Ar-hap. But above all things pass not to the hills right, forno man goes there; there away the forests are thick as night, and intheir perpetual shadows are the ruins of a Hither city, a haunted fairytown to which some travellers have been, but whence none ever returnedalive."
"By the great Jove, that sounds promising! I would like to see thattown if my errand were not so urgent."
But the old fellow shook his shaggy head and turned a shade yellower."It is no place for decent folk," he growled. "I myself once passedwithin a mile of its outskirts at dusk, and saw the unholy littlepeople's lanterned processions starting for the shrine of Queen Yang,who, tradition says, killed herself and a thousand babies with her whenwe took this land."
"My word, that was a holocaust! Couldn't I drop in there to lunch? Itwould make a fine paper for an antiquarian society."
Again the woodman frowned. "Do as I bid you, son. You are too youngand green to go on ventures by yourself. Keep to the straight road:shun the swamps and the fairy forest, else will you never see Ar-hap."
"And as I have very urgent and very important business with him,comrade, no doubt your advice is good. I will call on Princess Yangsome other day. And now goodbye! Rougher but friendlier shelter thanyou have given me no man could ask for. I am downright sorry to partwith you in this lonely land. If ever we meet again--" but we neverdid! The honest old churl clasped me into his hairy bosom three times,stuffed my wallet with dry fruit and bread, and once more repeating hisdirections, sent me on my lonely way.
I confess I sighed while turning into the forest, and looked back morethan once at his retreating form. The loneliness of my position, thehopelessness of my venture, welled up in my heart after that goodcomradeship, and when the hut was out of sight I went forward down thegreen grass road, chin on chest, for twenty minutes in the deepestdejection. But, thank Heaven, I was born with a tough spirit, andpossess a mind which has learned in many fights to give brave counselto my spirit, and thus presently I shook myself together, setting myface boldly to the quest and the day's work.
It was not so clear a morning as the previous one, and a steamy wind onwhat at sea I should have called the starboard bow, as I pressedforward to the distant hill, had a curiously subduing effect on mythoughts, and filled the forest glades with a tremulous unreality liketo nothing on our earth, and distinctly embarrassing to a stranger in astrange land. Small birds in that quaint atmospheric haze looked likecondors, butterflies like giant fowl, and the simplest objects of theforest like the imaginations of a disordered dream. Behind that gauzyhallucination a fine white mist came up, and the sun spread out flatand red in the sky, while the pent-in heat became almost unendurable.
Still I plodded on, growling to myself that in Christian latitudes allthe evidences would have been held to betoken a storm before night,whatever they might do here, but for the most part lost in my owngloomy speculations. That was the more pity since,
in thinking thewalk over now, it seems to me that I passed many marvels, saw manyglorious vistas in those nameless forests, many spreads of colour, manyincidents that, could I but remember them more distinctly, would supplymaterial for making my fortune as a descriptive traveller. But whatwould you? I have forgotten, and am too virtuous to draw on myimagination, as it is sometimes said other travellers have done whenpicturesque facts were deficient. Yes, I have forgotten all about thatday, save that it was sultry hot, that I took off my coat and waistcoatto be cooler, carrying them, like the tramp I was, across my arm, andthus dishevelled passed some time in the afternoon an encampment offorest folk, wherefrom almost all the men were gone, and the women shyand surly.
In no very social humour myself, I walked round their woodland village,and on the outskirts, by a brook, just as I was wishing there were someone to eat my solitary lunch with, chanced upon a fellow busily engagedin hammering stones into weapons upon a flint anvil.
He was an ugly-looking individual at best, yet I was hard up forcompany, so I put my coat down, and, seating myself on a log opposite,proceeded to open my wallet, and take out the frugal stores the woodmanhad given me that morning.
The man was seated upon the ground holding a stone anvil between hisfeet, while with his hands he turned and chipped with great skill aspear-head he was making out of flint. It was about the only pastimehe had, and his little yellow eyes gleamed with a craftsman's pleasure,his shaggy round shoulders were bent over the task, the chips flew inquick particles, and the wood echoed musically as the artificer watchedthe thing under his hands take form and fashion. Presently I spoke,and the worker looked up, not too pleased at being thus interrupted.But he was easy of propitiation, and over a handful of dried raisinscommunicative.
How, I asked, knowing a craftsman's craft is often nearest to hisheart, how was it such things as that he chipped came to be thought ofby him and his? Whereon the woodman, having spit out the raisin-stonesand wiped his fingers on his fur, said in substance that the firstweapon was fashioned when the earliest ape hurled the first stone inwrath.
"But, chum," I said, taking up his half-finished spear and touching therazor-fine edge with admiring caution, "from hurling the crude pebbleto fashioning such as this is a long stride. Who first edged andpointed the primitive malice? What man with the soul of a thousandunborn fighters in him notched and sharpened your natural rock?"
Whereon the chipper grinned, and answered that, when the woodmen hadfound stones that would crack skulls, it came upon them presently thatthey would crack nuts as well. And cracking nuts between two stonesone day a flint shattered, and there on the grass was the golden secretof the edge--the thing that has made man what he is.
"Yet again, good fellow," I queried, "even this happy chance only givesus a weapon, sharp, no doubt, and calculated to do a hundred servicesfor any ten the original pebble could have done, but still unhandled,small in force, imperfect--now tell me, which of your amiable ancestorsfirst put a handle to the fashioned flint, and how he thought of it?"
The workman had done his flake by now, and wrapping it in a bit ofskin, put it carefully in his belt before turning to answer my question.
"Who made the first handle for the first flint, you of the manyquestions? She did--she, the Mother," he suddenly cried, patting theearth with his brown hand, and working himself up as he spoke, "made itin her heart for us her first-born. See, here is such as the firsthandled weapon that ever came out of darkness," and he snatched fromthe ground, where it had lain hidden under his fox-skin cloak, a heavyclub. I saw in an instant how it was. The club had been a sapling, andthe sapling's roots had grown about and circled with a splendid grip alump of native flint. A woodman had pulled the sapling, found theflint, and fashioned the two in a moment of happy inspiration, the oneto an axe-head and the other to a handle, as they lay Nature-welded!
"This, I say, is the first--the first!" screamed the old fellow asthough I were contradicting him, thumping the ground with his weapon,and working himself up to a fury as its black magic entered his being."This is the first: with this I slew Hetter and Gur, and those whoplundered my hiding-places in the woods; with this I have killed ascore of others, bursting their heads, and cracking their bones likedry sticks. With this--with this--" but here his rage rendered himinarticulate; he stammered and stuttered for a minute, and then as thekilling fury settled on him his yellow teeth shut with a sudden snap,while through them his breath rattled like wind through dead pinebranches in December, the sinews sat up on his hands as his fingerstightened upon the axe-heft like the roots of the same pines from theground when winter rain has washed the soil from beneath them; hissmall eyes gleamed like baleful planets; every hair upon his shaggyback grew stiff and erect--another minute and my span were ended.
With a leap from where I sat I flew at that hairy beast, and sinking myfists deep in his throttle, shook him till his eyes blazed withdelirious fires. We waltzed across the short greensward, and in andabout the tree-trunks, shaking, pulling, and hitting as we went, tillat last I felt the man's vigour dying within him; a little moreshaking, a sudden twist, and he was lying on the ground before me,senseless and civil! That is the worst of some orators, I thought tomyself, as I gloomily gathered up the scattered fragments of my lunch;they never know when they have said enough, and are too apt to becarried away by their own arguments.
That inhospitable village was left behind in full belief the mountainlooming in the south could be reached before nightfall, while the roadto its left would serve as a sure guide to food and shelter for theevening. But, as it turned out, the morning's haze developed a strongmist ere the afternoon was half gone, through which it was impossibleto see more than twenty yards. My hill loomed gigantic for a time witha tantalising appearance of being only a mile or two ahead, thenwavered, became visionary, and finally disappeared as completely asthough the forest mist had drunk it up bodily.
There was still the road to guide me, a fairly well-beaten tracktwining through the glades; but even the best of highways are difficultin fog, and this one was complicated by various side paths, madeprobably by hunters or bark-cutters, and without compass or guide marksit was necessary to advance with extreme caution, or get helplesslymazed.
An hour's steady tramping brought me nowhere in particular, andstopping for a minute to consider, I picked a few wild fruit, such asmy wood-cutter friend had eaten, from an overhanging bush, and in sodoing slipped, the soil having now become damp, and in falling broke abranch off. The incident was only important from what follows. Pickingmyself up, perhaps a little shaken by the jolt, I set off again uponwhat seemed the plain road, and being by this time displeased by mysurroundings, determined to make a push for "civilization" before therapidly gathering darkness settled down.
Hands in pockets and collar up, I marched forward at a good round pacefor an hour, constantly straining eyes for a sight of the hill and earsfor some indications of living beings in the deathly hush of theshrouded woods, and at the end of that time, feeling sure habitationsmust now be near, arrived at what looked like a little open space,somehow seeming rather familiar in its vague outlines.
Where had I seen such a place before? Sauntering round the margin, abush with a broken branch suddenly attracted my attention--a brokenbush with a long slide in the mud below it, and the stamp of Navy bootsin the soft turf! I glared at those signs for a moment, then with anexclamation of chagrin recognised them only too well--it was the bushwhence I had picked the fruit, and the mark of my fall. An hour's hardwalking round some accursed woodland track had brought me exactly backto the point I had started from--I was lost!
It really seemed to get twenty per cent darker as I made thatabominable discovery, and the position dawned in all its uncomfortableintensity. There was nothing for it but to start off again, this timejudging my direction only by a light breath of air drifting the misttangles before it; and therein I made a great mistake, for the breezehad shifted several points from the quarter whence it blew in themorning.
Knowing nothing of this, I went forward with as much lightheartednessas could be managed, humming a song to myself, and carefully puttingaside thoughts of warmth and supper, while the dusk increased and thegreat forest vegetation seemed to grow ranker and closer at every step.
Another disconcerting thing was that the ground sloped graduallydownwards, not upwards as it should have done, till it seemed the pathlay across the flats of a forest-covered plain, which did not conformto my wish of striking a road on the foot-hills of the mountain.However, I plodded on, drawing some small comfort from the fact that asdarkness came the mist rose from the ground and appeared to condense ina ghostly curtain twenty feet overhead, where it hung between me and aclear night sky, presently illumined by starlight with the strangesteffect.
Tired, footsore, and dejected, I struggled on a little further. Oh fora cab, I laughed bitterly to myself. Oh for even the humble necessaryomnibus of civilisation. Oh for the humblest tuck-shop where a mug ofhot coffee and a snack could be had by a homeless wanderer; and as Ithought and plodded savagely on, collar up, hands in pockets, throughthe black tangles of that endless wood, suddenly the sound of wailingchildren caught my ear!
It was the softest, saddest music ever mortal listened to. It was asthough scores of babes in pain were dropping to sleep on their mothers'breasts, and all hushing their sorrows with one accord in a commonmelancholy chorus. I stood spell-bound at that elfin wailing, thefirst sound to break the deathly stillness of the road for an hour ormore, and my blood tingled as I listened to it. Nevertheless, here waswhat I was looking for; where there were weeping children there must behabitations, and shelter, and--splendid thought!--supper. Poor littlebabes! their crying was the deadliest, sweetest thing in sorrows I everlistened to. If it was cholic--why, I knew a little of medicine, and ingratitude for that prospective supper, I had a soul big enough to curea thousand; and if they were in disgrace, and by some quaint Martianfashion had suffered simultaneous punishment for baby offences, I wouldplead for them.
In fact, I fairly set off at the run towards the sobbing, in the black,wet, night air ahead, and, tripping as I ran, looked down and saw inthe filtering starlight that the forest grass had given place to anancient roadway, paved with moss-grown flag-stones, such as they stillused in Seth.
Without stopping to think what that might mean I hurried on, thewailing now right ahead, a tremulous tumult of gentle grief rising andfalling on the night air like the sound of a sea after a storm; and so,presently, in a minute or two, came upon a ruined archway spanning thelonely road, held together by great masses of black-fingered creepers,gaunt and ghostly in the shadows, an extraordinary and unexpectedvision; and as I stopped with a jerk under that forbidding gateway andglared at its tumbled masonry and great portals hanging rotten at theirhinges, suddenly the truth flashed upon me. I had taken the forbiddenroad after all. I was in the ancient, ghost-haunted city of Queen Yang!
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