by James Hilton
After pacifying his horse, Mirsky continued the journey. The incident had broken into the serenity of his thoughts, and though he felt he had acquitted himself well enough, he was left with a small sub-current of uneasiness. He kept glancing about him, determined not to be taken unawares again, but the effort was physically as well as mentally fatiguing, though he was rewarded with many gay glimpses of parakeets and macaws, and superbly marked orchids trailing from branches overhead. The track was often hard to trace, and nowhere did he come across any sign of human visitation, much less a fellow traveller. He was somewhat surprised not to reach some native village, for he had expected the country to be fairly well populated with Indians. At an absurdly high figure he had bought from a Maramba woman a string of coloured beads, with which he had some idea of mollifying a hostile tribe if he should encounter them. It was the sort of thing he had read of in travel-books, and he thought it rather enterprising of him to have remembered it.
But there were no Indians, or, at any rate, he did not see any. Far more troublesome were the myriads of small stingless bees that buzzed around his head as he rode, and tried to fly into his mouth when he ate; and there were ticks that got under his skin and caused intense itchings; and once, when he paused to give his horse a rest, he noticed a giant spider halted on the ground beside him, its attitude one of obscene curiosity. When he rode on, it moved also, waddling alongside at an equal rate, and this, after a time, got on his nerves so much that he used his revolver again. This time his aim was good and the monster seemed to cave in like a pricked blister, its hairy tentacles waving in impotent malice as he passed out of sight.
He was satisfied that he was covering the miles, however, and as evening came and he was able to fill his water-bottle at a stream, he felt that he could easily endure a couple more days of it. An hour later, in the sudden twilight, he halted at a convenient-looking spot and pitched his camp. For a short time, then, his satisfaction recurred; the flame of the sky had quenched itself quickly, and night would be cool under trees that were themselves under the stars. He set about to make a fire, for he had always read that fires keep off wild animals; but he soon found that much of the wood lying to hand was completely unburnable, and the search for the right kinds used up a good deal of his spare enthusiasm. At length the fire was lit, and he made coffee and cooked some rice, those being the only human foods it had been possible to buy in Maramba. He ate, drank, smoked a pipe, looked after his horse, and then rigged up the mosquito-net, under which he crawled with his sleeping-bag. Then he made the disagreeable discovery that mosquito-netting did not keep out the smallest and most troublesome insects. He kept waking up with the buzz of wings in his ears, to find new bodily irritations as he waved the intruders away. At such moments he was impressed with a peculiar quality of awe in the silence that surrounded him; beyond the light of his small, flickering fire the trees began their sable mystery; he felt that the whole forest, though silent, was not asleep, but watching. The moments on his radium-pointed watch crawled more slowly than he had ever known, and long before midnight he was eager for the dawn— eager to push on and cover more miles. Probably, he thought, he had already traversed the worst section of the journey; for San Cristobal, being railhead, was likely to be the centre of more developed country. At any rate, he had done twenty miles or so in the right direction. When he woke up after short spells of sleep he found himself so badly bitten and stung that he decided it was worth while to stay awake and protect himself, and he tried to kill time by reciting verses in Russian, French, and English; after which he set himself various mental tasks, such as the enumeration of a certain number of places in various countries. …
When dawn at last appeared, he made more coffee, packed his gear, and rode away with much relief. But it was soon noticeable that his horse was jumpy and unable to maintain such a good pace as on the previous day. The track, too showed a tendency to curve northward; yet it was so clearly a track that he was reluctant to leave it. But after it had taken him for at least a mile due north, he came to the conclusion that the parting must be made, and plunged accordingly into the more difficult terrain to the left. Here the path, such as it existed at all, was encumbered with rotting tree-trunks and masses of dense undergrowth, while the foliage above was often so thick that he had to dismount. It was pretty hard work to traverse even a few yards in this sort of country, and he was uneasily conscious that he was not ticking off the miles as he had hoped and planned. Moreover, the air was quiveringly hot, with a moist and sickly-scented heaviness; yet, despite the moisture, there was a scarcity of water. Both he and his horse were suffering from thirst by the time they eventually reached a pool whose water was cold but very brackish. It was a rather lovely, tree-fringed pool, and he longed to take off his clothes and bathe in it; yet something prevented him, a curious inward warning as he saw his reflection in its ebony depths. He passed on without discovering why or even whether he had been wise to do so.
By the second nightfall he was definitely unhappy behind a mask of peevishness. The forest, so far from giving any hint of approaching civilisation, seemed to grow denser and less hospitable with every yard. He was utterly tired out, and though he estimated the day’s mileage as ten or so, he had a private misgiving that it might in reality be very much less. He was also worried about his horse, which seemed rather more than fatigued. He suspected that insect-bites, which the beast had rubbed into open sores, had set up some kind of fever. He doctored the sores with salt and water before preparing his small and not very appetising meal. There was no pleasant excitement now as he gathered wood for a fire and rigged up the mosquito-net. The preliminaries to the long vigil of darkness had lost all their picnic flavour, and he was deeply depressed as he saw the forest, changeless all around him, merge swiftly from grey into black. He was dreading the night, and, with even greater fear, he knew that he was dreading it. Perhaps, after all, it would have been better to have made some enquiries at Maramba about the sort of country this was—better even, it might be, to have invited a companion. And he was already beginning to be aware of certain deficiencies in his equipment. He could have felt easier in mind, for instance, with a few extra boxes of matches, for the firelighting had not been so simple as he had counted on. And some good ointment for sores and bites would have been another boon.
He was so tired that he fell asleep rather quickly, despite the stinging ticks; but some time later he woke up suddenly to hear his horse whimpering. The fire had gone out, and when he looked at his watch he saw that it was still hours from dawn. He felt instinctively, from the note of the cry, that something quite terrible was happening. After a few seconds of indecision he got up, took his revolver, and felt his way through the darkness. He struck a match, but the blackness after it went out made everything more impenetrable than before, and he dared not empty the box by striking others. Clammy fronds brushed his face as he stumbled through the foliage, guided by the continual whimpering; the unseen vegetation touched and recoiled as if it were alive in almost an animal sense. He was alone on the stage of a vast, pitch-black theatre, acting a pitiful little play before an audience that could see in the dark and was just beginning to be attentively hostile. That was how it felt. At last he reached his horse and patted its flanks; it was trembling, and he was thoroughly alarmed when his hand came away wet and sticky. Then, with a sinister commotion of wings, something cold and leathery struck him in the face and disappeared into the branches overhead.
He could not guess what it had been until the morning, when, after hours of partly conquered horror, he went to the horse again and saw, in the first light of dawn, an appalling transformation. The beast stood forlornly where he had tethered it the night before, but its sides and hindquarters were ribboned with blood, and its whole carcass was shrunken like a deflated bladder. There was no interest or vitality in its wandering, hot-lidded eyes. He tried to think what could have happened; at first he pictured an attack by some marauding jaguar, but there was no sign of serious fles
h- wounding—merely an immense loss of blood and that look of deathly exhaustion. Then he remembered the scramble of wings in the night, and the thing that had touched him as it fled. Was there no limit of hideousness in these forest secrecies? He was not particularly squeamish, and he had few physical compunctions, but the idea of this vampire creature gorging itself on blood throughout the long black hours, stirred him to an icy shiver.
Grimly he tended the suffering animal, relit the fire to boil water, and packed for the day’s journey. But there was no zest in what he did, despite his anxiety to be off; he felt that part of himself was still too numb to take in the full unpleasantness of the situation. A further shock awaited him when he mounted to ride away; the horse half-turned to him beforehand, as if in warning of the inevitable, and then, since he persisted, collapsed gently where it stood. He was torn between sympathy and a sudden cold lunge of personal fear. He made the horse get up, but did not attempt to mount again. Since it could not carry him, it must carry the baggage and be led; and if the forest ended soon, perhaps all would be well. Or perhaps there was a native village not far ahead, where he could buy another animal. Surely he must be near some exit from this appalling country. He dragged the horse for a little distance before remembering to take compass bearings; then he found that he had been heading south-east instead of west. That small loss of time, space, and energy sent him into a passion of rage; he doubled back on his tracks and returned to the spot where lay the remains of his burnt-out fire. To be there again, seeing his own recent footprints, lifted him to panic; he swerved blindly into the new direction, crashing through the thickets, and so keen to thrust the yards behind him that he did not even brush away the always hovering insects. He grew quieter after a while, and halted at the first stream to fill up his water-bottle. The horse browsed placidly while he stooped over the pool; it was so weak that he did not trouble to tie it up. He was right in thinking the precaution unnecessary, for when he turned round he saw that it had slid to the ground and that flies already clustered over it in evil-looking rosettes.
The horse died and he was alone. There by the pool amidst the heat of noonday, he forced himself to be very calm and think things out. New reserves of power came to him at such urgent summoning; he perceived now, even if he had refused to accept the fact before, that he was matched against a very considerable adversary. He sorted out his baggage and made various careful decisions. There were still left a few handfuls of rice and coffee and a score or more matches. The shot-gun and revolver were absolute necessities. But the mosquito-net had proved of little use, and as it was cumbersome to carry, it had better go. He also at this point abandoned the pocket Theocritus, which so far he had not even opened.
Then he pushed on. He was drenched with sweat, and soon his clothes hung in shreds, so that the countless stinging insects had access to all parts of his body. He was thirsty, yet he did not dare to empty his water-bottle with the deep swigs that he craved. Watching the compass-needle almost continuously, he staggered forward, bruising his shins against fallen logs, sinking knee-high into decaying leafage, thrusting aside the straggling pulpy lianes. If he stopped for a moment he could hear the forest in its full, drowsing chorus, with his own heart beating time to that whirr of insect-life and that faint whisper of tree-tops under the scorching sun. The whole green world lay hushed and trance-like, awaiting the mysterious liveliness of night.
By afternoon he was aware that his chief preoccupation was thirst. It mattered more now than any ticks, snakes, tarantulas, or vampire-bats; it lay over him in raw, enveloping desire, nourished by every step. His water-bottle was empty; he had sipped its last drops with exquisite niggardliness, and now his throat and lips were beginning to be like flame. Yet there was such ripe greenness everywhere that it seemed impossible that he could go far without finding some pleasant oozing mud with a stream trickling through the middle of it. Pictures such as that began to obsess his mind till he could almost believe them real, and could think that he heard the sound of a bubbling rivulet beyond the next limit of sight. He wondered if there were leaves or stems from which he could suck the juices; he wondered also what a death from thirst would be like. Then his mind began to play over the past and present in hot, roving confusion, and he thought of his horse, and that shed at Maramba full of shattered bodies, and the lights of Rio, and New York, and a glass of beer at a restaurant…. His brain swung dizzily at that last summit of bliss, and he felt something give way under him; he staggered and fell on his knees, staring at the tangled, rich-hued greenery through which small shafts of sunlight made lace-like patterns. The load on his back weighed him down, and the shot-gun, slung over his shoulder, rifle-fashion, had made a long ridge of sores which the flies constantly attacked. He thought abruptly: “I am going to die of thirst. Extraordinary! I, Leon Mirsky, formerly of Rostov-on-Don, sometime lieutenant in the Fifteenth Imperial Hussars, and lately correspondent in Rio of the ‘New York Mail,’ am about to die of thirst at a point somewhere between Maramba and San Cristobal, South America….”
He had his revolver, anyhow, for the last extremity. But surely, surely he was a long way from that. He had heard of persons going waterless for several days, and he himself had had less than twelve hours. He upbraided himself for giving way so soon; at least he must stick it out till the next day. Then, looking round and upwards, he saw a large bird swooping low overhead, and his first thought was of the astonishing prescience of vultures. But the bird passed, and after a moment the same or a similar bird flew back again. Could it be that there was water near by, some pool to which the bird had flown to drink? He had noted the direction; it was downhill. With the idea once in his mind he could almost sniff the water, and all at once he sprang to his feet, flung his pack and weapons on the ground, and raced forward with arms outstretched. There was water, and he would find it.
He did. Less than fifty yards away he ran into a sun-caked gully that had been a stream during the rainy season, but was now a series of slimy puddles. He lay belly downwards on the edge of one of these and paddled his lips and face. He lay for many minutes, caring for nothing but the relief of liquid coursing in the dried canals of his body. Birds came near him to drink, too thirsty to have fear, or to wait for him to go. Then it grew dark and was night. He fell asleep, and thousands of ticks and flies had their will of him. Sometimes, in the midst of wild dreams, he woke suddenly, startled by the movement of some bird or beast in the pool. He was in pain now, as if fire was in his stomach; and in the morning he could move only with great difficulty. His first thought was of the guns and pack which he had left a short way off in the forest; he must find them, fill up his water-bottle, and then press onward. He stumbled a few yards into the undergrowth before realising, with a sort of numbed panic, that he had not the slightest idea where to look, and that a search of the whole possible radius was far beyond the limit of his bodily strength.
He slid back into the gully and watched without resentment the flies that preyed on every inch of his exposed skin. An insect new to him, rather like a scorpion, approached to within a little space of his arm, and then scurried away when he made to touch it. His brain felt perfectly clear, clearer than at any time since that first day after leaving Maramba. He even philosophised over the flies and insects, reflecting how the health of their small bodies depended on his own sores and illness, and wondering whether life itself might not be nourished similarly on some greater, unknown matter in a state of unhealth. As ticks and microbes were to men, so were men to what? No answer; just as, perhaps, a bacillus in the cancerous throat of a prima-donna could have small conception of an aria by Mozart. A universe, then, in which life was a symptom of pain and breakdown in some larger structure?
He felt quite calmly reconciled to the fact of death, provided only that it were not to be death of thirst. But then it seemed as if a last malignant miracle were performed before his eyes, for he looked down at the pool and saw that it had dried. Somehow he had never thought of that, though it was really a
s likely as that puddles dry on city pavements. The last of the green scum had oozed away during the night, and now the sun was scorching up the final moisture. A bird swooped down, pecked at the caking mud, and seemed to share his discomfiture so comically that he burst into a loud laugh and scared it away. He went on laughing, as at some monstrous Rabelaisian humour, his finger- nails scrabbling in the cocoa-brown earth. And the cream of the jest was that his revolver lay somewhere a few yards away—yards that might as well have been miles. Suddenly, thinking about it, he waved his fists at the green encircling wall and began to shriek and shriek….
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN. — MAX OETZLER
The Oetzler House in New York represented a last-minute triumph of good taste over wealth. Aged sixty-eight, Oetzler was a sallow, bald-headed, small- statured German Jew who had sold newspapers as a small boy, and still, it might be said, sold newspapers. His fortune was reckoned to be in the seven-figure category, much of it invested in real estate; and he had the reputation of having forecast the stock-market slump long, perhaps too long, before it had happened. He was shrewd, acid, a fancier of men rather than books, and as good a judge of wine as of either. He had gathered a typical crowd around his dining- table that March evening—Wolfe-Sutton the banker, Mrs. Drinan the actress, Lanberger the latest lion among the novelists, Russell just back from the Andes, Lady Celia Rivers on her way to Hollywood, and so on. Twelve in all, including himself. His cousin had come up from Long Island to act as hostess; she was rather “out of things” intellectually, but she made up for it by a few mundaner talents which the great ones often lacked. Oetzler was just conventional enough himself to appreciate the fact that introducing people without getting their names mixed up required brains of a kind, even if one did prefer the Ziegfeld Chorus to “Strange Interlude.” His attitude towards his guests was pleasantly cynical; he liked to hear them talk, and took care never to believe much of anything they said. It was, as he reckoned it, a shop-window world, in which it would have been a breach of etiquette to attempt to purchase the goods displayed. The real stuff of the mind was housed in cellars, where one need not advertise it.