by H. G. Wells
THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS
The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled atCamberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out ofYorkshire, and his name was James Holroyd. He was a practicalelectrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy red-haired brute withirregular teeth. He doubted the existence of the deity, butaccepted Carnot's cycle, and he had read Shakespeare and found himweak in chemistry. His helper came out of the mysterious East, andhis name was Azuma-zi. But Holroyd called him Pooh-bah. Holroydliked a nigger because he would stand kicking--a habit withHolroyd--and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn theways of it. Certain odd possibilities of the negro mind broughtinto abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation Holroydnever fully realised, though just at the end he got some inkling ofthem.
To define Azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. He was, perhaps,more negroid than anything else, though his hair was curly ratherthan frizzy, and his nose had a bridge. Moreover, his skin wasbrown rather than black, and the whites of his eyes were yellow.His broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something of theviperine V. His head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow atthe forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverseway to a European's. He was short of stature and still shorter ofEnglish. In conversation he made numerous odd noises of no knownmarketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wroughtinto heraldic grotesqueness. Holroyd tried to elucidate hisreligious beliefs, and--especially after whisky--lectured to himagainst superstition and missionaries. Azuma-zi, however, shirkedthe discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it.
Azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient raiment,out of the stokehole of the _Lord Clive_, from the StraitsSettlements, and beyond, into London. He had heard even in hisyouth of the greatness and riches of London, where all the womenare white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white,and he arrived, with newly earned gold coins in his pocket, toworship at the shrine of civilisation. The day of his landing wasa dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtereddown to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delightsof Shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health,civilised in costume, penniless and, except in matters of thedirest necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for JamesHolroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell.And to James Holroyd bullying was a labour of love.
There were three dynamos with their engines at Camberwell.The two that had been there since the beginning were smallmachines; the larger one was new. The smaller machines made areasonable noise; their straps hummed over the drums, every now andthen the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned steadily,whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. One was loose in itsfoundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamodrowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone ofits iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. Theplace made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb ofthe engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinningball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over allthe deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This lastnoise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-ziaccounted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride.
If it were possible we would have the noises of that shedalways about the reader as he reads, we would tell all our story tosuch an accompaniment. It was a steady stream of din, from whichthe ear picked out first one thread and then another; there was theintermittent snorting, panting, and seething of the steam engines,the suck and thud of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as thespokes of the great driving-wheels came round, a note the leatherstraps made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumultfrom the dynamos; and over all, sometimes inaudible, as the eartired of it, and then creeping back upon the senses again, was thistrombone note of the big machine. The floor never felt steady andquiet beneath one's feet, but quivered and jarred. It was aconfusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone's thoughtsjerking into odd zigzags. And for three months, while the bigstrike of the engineers was in progress, Holroyd, who was ablackleg, and Azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of thestir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shantybetween the shed and the gates.
Holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his bigmachine soon after Azuma-zi came. He had to shout to be heard inthe din. "Look at that," said Holroyd; "where's your 'eathen idolto match 'im?" And Azuma-zi looked. For a moment Holroyd wasinaudible, and then Azuma-zi heard: "Kill a hundred men. Twelveper cent. on the ordinary shares," said Holroyd, "and that'ssomething like a Gord!"
Holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon itssize and power to Azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents ofthought that and the incessant whirling and shindy set up withinthe curly black cranium. He would explain in the most graphicmanner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by it,and once he gave Azuma-zi a shock as a sample of its quality.After that, in the breathing-times of his labour--it was heavylabour, being not only his own, but most of Holroyd's--Azuma-ziwould sit and watch the big machine. Now and then the brusheswould sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which Holroyd would swear,but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. The bandran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched wasthe complacent thud of the piston. So it lived all day in this bigairy shed, with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned upand slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew--merecaptive devils of the British Solomon--had been, but a machineenthroned. Those two smaller dynamos, Azuma-zi by force ofcontrast despised; the large one he privately christened the Lordof the Dynamos. They were fretful and irregular, but the bigdynamo was steady. How great it was! How serene and easy in itsworking! Greater and calmer even than the Buddhas he had seen atRangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! The great black coilsspun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and thedeep note of its coil steadied the whole. It affected Azuma-ziqueerly.
Azuma-zi was not fond of labour. He would sit about and watchthe Lord of the Dynamos while Holroyd went away to persuade theyard porter to get whisky, although his proper place was not in thedynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if Holroydcaught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copperwire. He would go and stand close to the colossus and look up atthe great leather band running overhead. There was a black patchon the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among allthe clatter to watch this return again and again. Odd thoughtsspun with the whirl of it. Scientific people tell us that savagesgive souls to rocks and trees--and a machine is a thousand timesmore alive than a rock or a tree. And Azuma-zi was practically asavage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than hisslop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands.His father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindredblood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of Juggernaut.
He took every opportunity Holroyd gave him of touching andhandling the great dynamo that was fascinating him. He polishedand cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun. Hefelt a mysterious sense of service in doing this. He would go upto it and touch its spinning coils gently. The gods he hadworshipped were all far away. The people in London hid their gods.
At last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape inthoughts and at last in acts. When he came into the roaring shedone morning he salaamed to the Lord of the Dynamos, and then whenHolroyd was away, he went and whispered to the thundering machinethat he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on him and savehim from Holroyd. As he did so a rare gleam of light came inthrough the open archway of the throbbing machine-shed, and theLord of the Dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was radiant withpale gold. Then Azuma-zi knew that his service was acceptable tohis Lord. After that he did not feel so lonely as he had done, andhe had indeed been very much alone in London. And even when hiswork time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the
shed.
Then, the next time Holroyd maltreated him, Azuma-zi wentpresently to the Lord of the Dynamos and whispered, "Thou seest, Omy Lord!" and the angry whir of the machinery seemed to answer him.Thereafter it appeared to him that whenever Holroyd came into theshed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "My Lordbides his time," said Azuma-zi to himself. "The iniquity of thefool is not yet ripe." And he waited and watched for the day ofreckoning. One day there was evidence of short circuiting, andHolroyd, making an unwary examination--it was in the afternoon--gota rather severe shock. Azuma-zi from behind the engine saw himjump off and curse at the peccant coil.
"He is warned," said Azuma-zi to himself. "Surely my Lord isvery patient."
Holroyd had at first initiated his "nigger" into suchelementary conceptions of the dynamo's working as would enable himto take temporary charge of the shed in his absence. But when henoticed the manner in which Azuma-zi hung about the monster hebecame suspicious. He dimly perceived his assistant was "up tosomething," and connecting him with the anointing of the coils withoil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he issued an edict,shouted above the confusion of the machinery, "Don't 'ee go nighthat big dynamo any more, Pooh-bah, or a'll take thy skin off!"Besides, if it pleased Azuma-zi to be near the big machine, it wasplain sense and decency to keep him away from it.
Azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowingbefore the Lord of the Dynamos. At which Holroyd twisted his armand kicked him as he turned to go away. As Azuma-zi presentlystood behind the engine and glared at the back of the hatedHolroyd, the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm, and soundedlike four words in his native tongue.
It is hard to say exactly what madness is. I fancy Azuma-ziwas mad. The incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may havechurned up his little store of knowledge and his big store ofsuperstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. Atany rate, when the idea of making Holroyd a sacrifice to the DynamoFetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strangetumult of exultant emotion.
That night the two men and their black shadows were alone inthe shed together. The shed was lit with one big arc light thatwinked and flickered purple. The shadows lay black behind thedynamos, the ball governors of the engines whirled from light todarkness, and their pistons beat loud and steady. The worldoutside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dimand remote. It seemed absolutely silent, too, since the riot ofthe machinery drowned every external sound. Far away was the blackfence of the yard with grey shadowy houses behind, and above wasthe deep blue sky and the pale little stars. Azuma-zi suddenlywalked across the centre of the shed above which the leather bandswere running, and went into the shadow by the big dynamo. Holroydheard a click, and the spin of the armature changed.
"What are you dewin' with that switch?" he bawled in surprise."Han't I told you--"
Then he saw the set expression of Azuma-zi's eyes as theAsiatic came out of the shadow towards him.
In another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in frontof the great dynamo.
"You coffee-headed fool!" gasped Holroyd, with a brown hand athis throat. "Keep off those contact rings." In another moment hewas tripped and reeling back upon the Lord of the Dynamos. Heinstinctively loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himselffrom the machine.
The messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to findout what had happened in the dynamo shed, met Azuma-zi at theporter's lodge by the gate. Azuma-zi tried to explain something,but the messenger could make nothing of the black's incoherentEnglish, and hurried on to the shed. The machines were all noisilyat work, and nothing seemed to be disarranged. There was, however,a queer smell of singed hair. Then he saw an odd-looking crumpledmass clinging to the front of the big dynamo, and, approaching,recognised the distorted remains of Holroyd.
The man stared and hesitated a moment. Then he saw the face,and shut his eyes convulsively. He turned on his heel before heopened them, so that he should not see Holroyd again, and went outof the shed to get advice and help.
When Azuma-zi saw Holroyd die in the grip of the Great Dynamohe had been a little scared about the consequences of his act. Yethe felt strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the LordDynamo was upon him. His plan was already settled when he met theman coming from the station, and the scientific manager whospeedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion ofsuicide. This expert scarcely noticed Azuma-zi, except to ask afew questions. Did he see Holroyd kill himself? Azuma-ziexplained that he had been out of sight at the engine furnace untilhe heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. It was not adifficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion.
The distorted remains of Holroyd, which the electricianremoved from the machine, were hastily covered by the porter witha coffee-stained tablecloth. Somebody, by a happy inspiration,fetched a medical man. The expert was chiefly anxious to get themachine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped midwayin the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. Azuma-zi, answeringor misunderstanding the questions of the people who had byauthority or impudence come into the shed, was presently sent backto the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. Of course a crowdcollected outside the gates of the yard--a crowd, for no knownreason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a suddendeath in London; two or three reporters percolated somehow into theengine-shed, and one even got to Azuma-zi; but the scientificexpert cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist.
Presently the body was carried away, and public interestdeparted with it. Azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace,seeing over and over again in the coals a figure that wriggledviolently and became still. An hour after the murder, to anyonecoming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if nothing hadever happened there. Peeping presently from his engine-room theblack saw the Lord Dynamo spin and whirl beside his littlebrothers, and the driving wheels were beating round, and the steamin the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been earlier inthe evening. After all, from the mechanical point of view, it hadbeen a most insignificant incident--the mere temporary deflectionof a current. But now the slender form and slender shadow of thescientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of Holroydtravelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floorunder the straps between the engines and the dynamos.
"Have I not served my Lord?" said Azuma-zi inaudibly, from hisshadow, and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear.As he looked at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascinationof it that had been a little in abeyance since Holroyd's death,resumed its sway.
Never had Azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly andpitilessly. The big humming machine had slain its victim withoutwavering for a second from its steady beating. It was indeed amighty god.
The unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him,scribbling on a piece of paper. His shadow lay at the foot of themonster.
"Was the Lord Dynamo still hungry? His servant was ready."
Azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward; then stopped. Thescientific manager suddenly stopped writing, and walked down theshed to the endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine thebrushes.
Azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly intoshadow by the switch. There he waited. Presently the manager'sfootsteps could be heard returning. He stopped in his oldposition, unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away fromhim. Then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another momentAzuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him.
First, the scientific manager was gripped round the body andswung towards the big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee andforcing his antagonist's head down with his hands, he loosened thegrip on his waist and swung round away from the machine. Then theblack grasped him again, putting a curly head against his chest,and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so. Then thescientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teethand bite furiously. The black yelled hideously.<
br />
They rolled over on the floor, and the black, who hadapparently slipped from the vice of the teeth or parted with someear--the scientific manager wondered which at the time--tried tothrottle him. The scientific manager was making some ineffectualattempts to claw something with his hands and to kick, when thewelcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor. The nextmoment Azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo.There was a splutter amid the roar.
The officer of the company who had entered, stood staring asAzuma-zi caught the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horribleconvulsion, and then hung motionless from the machine, his faceviolently distorted.
"I'm jolly glad you came in when you did," said the scientificmanager, still sitting on the floor.
He looked at the still quivering figure.
"It's not a nice death to die, apparently--but it is quick."
The official was still staring at the body. He was a man ofslow apprehension.
There was a pause.
The scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly.He ran his fingers along his collar thoughtfully, and moved hishead to and fro several times.
"Poor Holroyd! I see now." Then almost mechanically he wenttowards the switch in the shadow and turned the current into therailway circuit again. As he did so the singed body loosened itsgrip upon the machine and fell forward on its face. The core ofthe dynamo roared out loud and clear, and the armature beat theair.
So ended prematurely the Worship of the Dynamo Deity, perhapsthe most short-lived of all religions. Yet withal it could atleast boast a Martyrdom and a Human Sacrifice.
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from thesnows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador's Andes, therelies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world ofmen, the Country of the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay sofar open to the world that men might come at last through frightfulgorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thitherindeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeingfrom the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came thestupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito forseventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all thefish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along thePacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and suddenfloods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and camedown in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever fromthe exploring feet of men. But one of these early settlers hadchanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world hadso terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wifeand his child and all the friends and possessions he had left upthere, and start life over again in the lower world. He started itagain but ill, blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment inthe mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers alongthe length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day.
He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness,into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside avast bale of gear, when he was a child. The valley, he said, hadin it all that the heart of man could desire--sweet water, pasture,an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrubthat bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forestsof pine that held the avalanches high. Far overhead, on threesides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice;but the glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by thefarther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on thevalley side. In this valley it neither rained nor snowed, but theabundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that irrigation wouldspread over all the valley space. The settlers did well indeedthere. Their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thingmarred their happiness. Yet it was enough to mar it greatly. Astrange disease had come upon them and had made all the childrenborn to them there--and, indeed, several older childrenalso--blind. It was to seek some charm or antidote against thisplague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger anddifficulty returned down the gorge. In those days, in such cases,men did not think of germs and infections, but of sins, and itseemed to him that the reason of this affliction must he in thenegligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine sosoon as they entered the valley. He wanted a shrine--a handsome,cheap, effectual shrine--to be erected in the valley; he wantedrelics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects andmysterious medals and prayers. In his wallet he had a bar ofnative silver for which he would not account; he insisted there wasnone in the valley with something of the insistence of an inexpertliar. They had all clubbed their money and ornaments together,having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy themholy help against their ill. I figure this dim-eyed youngmountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutchedfeverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world,telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before thegreat convulsion; I can picture him presently seeking to returnwith pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and theinfinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastnesswhere the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story ofmischances is lost to me, save that I know of his evil death afterseveral years. Poor stray from that remoteness! The stream thathad once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave,and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed intothe legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one maystill hear to-day.
And amidst the little population of that now isolated andforgotten valley the disease ran its course. The old becamegroping, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were bornto them never saw at all. But life was very easy in thatsnow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns norbriers, with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breedof llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds ofthe shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. Theseeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noticedtheir loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither andthither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when atlast sight died out among them the race lived on. They had eventime to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which theymade carefully in stoves of stone. They were a simple strain ofpeople at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with theSpanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the artsof old Peru and of its lost philosophy. Generation followedgeneration. They forgot many things; they devised many things.Their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythicalin colour and uncertain. In all things save sight they were strongand able, and presently chance sent one who had an original mindand who could talk and persuade among them, and then afterwardsanother. These two passed, leaving their effects, and the littlecommunity grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settledsocial and economic problems that arose. Generation followedgeneration. Generation followed generation. There came a timewhen a child was born who was fifteen generations from thatancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver to seekGod's aid, and who never returned. Thereabout it chanced that aman came into this community from the outer world. And this is thestory of that man.
He was a mountaineer from the country near Quito, a man whohad been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of booksin an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was takenon by a party of Englishmen who had come out to Ecuador to climbmountains, to replace one of their three Swiss guides who hadfallen ill. He climbed here and he climbed there, and then camethe attempt on Parascotopetl, the Matterhorn of the Andes, in whichhe was lost to the outer world. The story of that accident hasbeen written a dozen times. Pointer's narrative is the best. Hetells how the little party worked their difficult and almostvertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatestprecipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upona little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power,how presently they found Nunez had gone from them. They s
houted,and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest ofthat night they slept no more.
As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. Itseems impossible he could have uttered a sound. He had slippedeastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he hadstruck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in themidst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the edge ofa frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far,far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising outof a narrow, shut-in valley--the lost Country of the Blind. Butthey did not know it was the lost Country of the Blind, nordistinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of uplandvalley. Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt inthe afternoon, and Pointer was called away to the war before hecould make another attack. To this day Parascotopetl lifts anunconquered crest, and Pointer's shelter crumbles unvisited amidstthe snows.
And the man who fell survived.
At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came downin the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper thanthe one above. Down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible,but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came togentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidsta softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and savedhim. He came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed;then realized his position with a mountaineer's intelligence andworked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw thestars. He rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering wherehe was and what had happened to him. He explored his limbs, anddiscovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coatturned over his head. His knife had gone from his pocket and hishat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. He recalledthat he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of theshelter wall. His ice-axe had disappeared.
He decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see,exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon, the tremendousflight he had taken. For a while he lay, gazing blankly at thevast, pale cliff towering above, rising moment by moment out of asubsiding tide of darkness. Its phantasmal, mysterious beauty heldhim for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbinglaughter . . . .
After a great interval of time he became aware that he wasnear the lower edge of the snow. Below, down what was now amoon-lit and practicable slope, he saw the dark and brokenappearance of rock-strewn turf He struggled to his feet, aching inevery joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snowabout him, went downward until he was on the turf, and theredropped rather than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flaskin his inner pocket, and instantly fell asleep . . . .
He was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees farbelow.
He sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot ofa vast precipice that sloped only a little in the gully down whichhe and his snow had come. Over against him another wall of rockreared itself against the sky. The gorge between these precipicesran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which litto the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed thedescending gorge. Below him it seemed there was a precipiceequally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort ofchimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate manmight venture. He found it easier than it seemed, and came at lastto another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of noparticular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. He took hisbearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened outabove upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quitedistinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion. At timeshis progress was like clambering along the face of a wall, andafter a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge, thevoices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold anddark about him. But the distant valley with its houses was all thebrighter for that. He came presently to talus, and among the rockshe noted--for he was an observant man--an unfamiliar fern thatseemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. Hepicked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk, and found it helpful.
About midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorgeinto the plain and the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he satdown in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water froma spring and drank it down, and remained for a time, resting beforehe went on to the houses.
They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the wholeaspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and moreunfamiliar. The greater part of its surface was lush green meadow,starred with many beautiful flowers, irrigated with extraordinarycare, and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece.High up and ringing the valley about was a wall, and what appearedto be a circumferential water channel, from which the littletrickles of water that fed the meadow plants came, and on thehigher slopes above this flocks of llamas cropped the scantyherbage. Sheds, apparently shelters or feeding-places for thellamas, stood against the boundary wall here and there. Theirrigation streams ran together into a main channel down the centreof the valley, and this was enclosed on either side by a wallbreast high. This gave a singularly urban quality to this secludedplace, a quality that was greatly enhanced by the fact that anumber of paths paved with black and white stones, and each with acurious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in anorderly manner. The houses of the central village were quiteunlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of themountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row oneither side of a central street of astonishing cleanness, hereand there their parti-coloured facade was pierced by a door,and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They wereparti-coloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sortof plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimesslate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wildplastering first brought the word "blind" into the thoughts of theexplorer. "The good man who did that," he thought, "must have beenas blind as a bat."
He descended a steep place, and so came to the wall andchannel that ran about the valley, near where the latter spoutedout its surplus contents into the deeps of the gorge in a thin andwavering thread of cascade. He could now see a number of men andwomen resting on piled heaps of grass, as if taking a siesta, inthe remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the village a number ofrecumbent children, and then nearer at hand three men carryingpails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encirclingwall towards the houses. These latter were clad in garments ofllama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they wore caps ofcloth with back and ear flaps. They followed one another in singlefile, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who havebeen up all night. There was something so reassuringly prosperousand respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitationNunez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock, andgave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley.
The three men stopped, and moved their heads as though theywere looking about them. They turned their faces this way andthat, and Nunez gesticulated with freedom. But they did not appearto see him for all his gestures, and after a time, directingthemselves towards the mountains far away to the right, theyshouted as if in answer. Nunez bawled again, and then once more,and as he gestured ineffectually the word "blind" came up to thetop of his thoughts. "The fools must be blind," he said.
When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nunez crossed thestream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, andapproached them, he was sure that they were blind. He was surethat this was the Country of the Blind of which the legends told.Conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and ratherenviable adventure. The three stood side by side, not looking athim, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by hisunfamiliar steps. They stood close together like men a littleafraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as thoughthe very balls beneath had shrunk away. There was an expressionnear awe on their faces.
"A man," one said, in hardly r
ecognisable Spanish. "A man itis--a man or a spirit--coming down from the rocks."
But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth whoenters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and theCountry of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through histhoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:--
"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."
"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."
And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them andused his eyes.
"Where does he come from, brother Pedro?" asked one.
"Down out of the rocks."
"Over the mountains I come," said Nunez, "out of the countrybeyond there--where men can see. From near Bogota--where there area hundred thousands of people, and where the city passes out ofsight."
"Sight?" muttered Pedro. "Sight?"
"He comes," said the second blind man, "out of the rocks."
The cloth of their coats, Nunez saw was curious fashioned,each with a different sort of stitching.
They startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him, eachwith a hand outstretched. He stepped back from the advance ofthese spread fingers.
"Come hither," said the third blind man, following his motionand clutching him neatly.
And they held Nunez and felt him over, saying no word furtheruntil they had done so.
"Carefully," he cried, with a finger in his eye, and foundthey thought that organ, with its fluttering lids, a queer thing inhim. They went over it again.
"A strange creature, Correa," said the one called Pedro."Feel the coarseness of his hair. Like a llama's hair."
"Rough he is as the rocks that begot him," said Correa,investigating Nunez's unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moisthand. "Perhaps he will grow finer."
Nunez struggled a little under their examination, but theygripped him firm.
"Carefully," he said again.
"He speaks," said the third man. "Certainly he is a man."
"Ugh!" said Pedro, at the roughness of his coat.
"And you have come into the world?" asked Pedro.
"_Out_ of the world. Over mountains and glaciers; rightover above there, half-way to the sun. Out of the great, big worldthat goes down, twelve days' journey to the sea."
They scarcely seemed to heed him. "Our fathers have told usmen may be made by the forces of Nature," said Correa. "It is thewarmth of things, and moisture, and rottenness--rottenness."
"Let us lead him to the elders," said Pedro.
"Shout first," said Correa, "lest the children be afraid.This is a marvellous occasion."
So they shouted, and Pedro went first and took Nunez by thehand to lead him to the houses.
He drew his hand away. "I can see," he said.
"See?" said Correa.
"Yes; see," said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbledagainst Pedro's pail.
"His senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man."He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand."
"As you will," said Nunez, and was led along laughing.
It seemed they knew nothing of sight.
Well, all in good time he would teach them.
He heard people shouting, and saw a number of figuresgathering together in the middle roadway of the village.
He found it tax his nerve and patience more than he hadanticipated, that first encounter with the population of theCountry of the Blind. The place seemed larger as he drew near toit, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of childrenand men and women (the women and girls he was pleased to note had,some of them, quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shutand sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him withsoft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at everyword he spoke. Some of the maidens and children, however, keptaloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rudebeside their softer notes. They mobbed him. His three guides keptclose to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again andagain, "A wild man out of the rocks."
"Bogota," he said. "Bogota. Over the mountain crests."
"A wild man--using wild words," said Pedro. "Did you hearthat--
"_Bogota?_ His mind has hardly formed yet. He has onlythe beginnings of speech."
A little boy nipped his hand. "Bogota!" he said mockingly.
"Aye! A city to your village. I come from the great world--wheremen have eyes and see."
"His name's Bogota," they said.
"He stumbled," said Correa--"stumbled twice as we camehither."
"Bring him in to the elders."
And they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room asblack as pitch, save at the end there faintly glowed a fire. Thecrowd closed in behind him and shut out all but the faintestglimmer of day, and before he could arrest himself he had fallenheadlong over the feet of a seated man. His arm, outflung, struckthe face of someone else as he went down; he felt the soft impactof features and heard a cry of anger, and for a moment he struggledagainst a number of hands that clutched him. It was a one-sidedfight. An inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet.
"I fell down," he said; "I couldn't see in this pitchydarkness."
There was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried tounderstand his words. Then the voice of Correa said: "He is butnewly formed. He stumbles as he walks and mingles words that meannothing with his speech."
Others also said things about him that he heard or understoodimperfectly.
"May I sit up?" he asked, in a pause. "I will not struggleagainst you again."
They consulted and let him rise.
The voice of an older man began to question him, and Nunezfound himself trying to explain the great world out of which he hadfallen, and the sky and mountains and such-like marvels, to theseelders who sat in darkness in the Country of the Blind. And theywould believe and understand nothing whatever that he told them, athing quite outside his expectation. They would not evenunderstand many of his words. For fourteen generations thesepeople had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; thenames for all the things of sight had faded and changed; the storyof the outer world was faded and changed to a child's story; andthey had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond therocky slopes above their circling wall. Blind men of genius hadarisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and traditionthey had brought with them from their seeing days, and haddismissed all these things as idle fancies and replaced them withnew and saner explanations. Much of their imagination hadshrivelled with their eyes, and they had made for themselves newimaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and finger-tips.Slowly Nunez realised this: that his expectation of wonder andreverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out; andafter his poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set asideas the confused version of a new-made being describing the marvelsof his incoherent sensations, he subsided, a little dashed, intolistening to their instruction. And the eldest of the blind menexplained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that theworld (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in therocks, and then had come first inanimate things without the gift oftouch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense,and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing andmaking fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, whichpuzzled Nunez greatly until he thought of the birds.
He went on to tell Nunez how this time had been divided intothe warm and the cold, which are the blind equivalents of day andnight, and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during thecold, so that now, but for his advent, the whole town of the blindwould have been asleep. He said Nunez must have been speciallycreated to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and thatfor all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must havecourage and do his best to learn, and at that all the people in thedoor-way murmured encouragingly. He said the night--for the blindcall their day night--was now far gone, and it behooved ev
eryone togo back to sleep. He asked Nunez if he knew how to sleep, andNunez said he did, but that before sleep he wanted food. Theybrought him food, llama's milk in a bowl and rough salted bread,and led him into a lonely place to eat out of their hearing, andafterwards to slumber until the chill of the mountain eveningroused them to begin their day again. But Nunez slumbered not atall.
Instead, he sat up in the place where they had left him,resting his limbs and turning the unanticipated circumstances ofhis arrival over and over in his mind.
Every now and then he laughed, sometimes with amusement andsometimes with indignation.
"Unformed mind!" he said. "Got no senses yet! They littleknow they've been insulting their Heaven-sent King and master . .. . .
"I see I must bring them to reason.
"Let me think.
"Let me think."
He was still thinking when the sun set.
Nunez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed tohim that the glow upon the snow-fields and glaciers that rose aboutthe valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had everseen. His eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the villageand irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and suddenlya wave of emotion took him, and he thanked God from the bottom ofhis heart that the power of sight had been given him.
He heard a voice calling to him from out of the village.
"Yaho there, Bogota! Come hither!"
At that he stood up, smiling. He would show these people onceand for all what sight would do for a man. They would seek him,but not find him.
"You move not, Bogota," said the voice.
He laughed noiselessly and made two stealthy steps aside fromthe path.
"Trample not on the grass, Bogota; that is not allowed."
Nunez had scarcely heard the sound he made himself. Hestopped, amazed.
The owner of the voice came running up the piebald pathtowards him.
He stepped back into the pathway. "Here I am," he said.
"Why did you not come when I called you?" said the blind man."Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as youwalk?"
Nunez laughed. "I can see it," he said.
"There is no such word as _see_," said the blind man,after a pause. "Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet."
Nunez followed, a little annoyed.
"My time will come," he said.
"You'll learn," the blind man answered. "There is much tolearn in the world."
"Has no one told you, 'In the Country of the Blind theOne-Eyed Man is King?'"
"What is blind?" asked the blind man, carelessly, over hisshoulder.
Four days passed and the fifth found the King of the Blindstill incognito, as a clumsy and useless stranger among hissubjects.
It was, he found, much more difficult to proclaim himself thanhe had supposed, and in the meantime, while he meditated his_coup d'etat_, he did what he was told and learnt the mannersand customs of the Country of the Blind. He found working andgoing about at night a particularly irksome thing, and he decidedthat that should be the first thing he would change.
They led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all theelements of virtue and happiness as these things can be understoodby men. They toiled, but not oppressively; they had food andclothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons ofrest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love amongthem and little children. It was marvellous with what confidenceand precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, yousee, had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating pathsof the valley area had a constant angle to the others, and wasdistinguished by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstaclesand irregularities of path or meadow had long since been clearedaway; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from theirspecial needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; theycould hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen pacesaway--could hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation hadlong replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and theirwork with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident asgarden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine;they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dogcan, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived amongthe rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, withease and confidence. It was only when at last Nunez sought toassert himself that he found how easy and confident their movementscould be.
He rebelled only after he had tried persuasion.
He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight."Look you here, you people," he said. "There are things you do notunderstand in me."
Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they satwith faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, andhe did his best to tell them what it was to see. Among his hearerswas a girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, sothat one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially hehoped to persuade. He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watchingthe mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him withamused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They toldhim there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of therocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world;thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dewand the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the worldhad neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said histhoughts were wicked. So far as he could describe sky and cloudsand stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terribleblankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which theybelieved--it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roofwas exquisitely smooth to the touch. He saw that in some manner heshocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether, andtried to show them the practical value of sight. One morning hesaw Pedro in the path called Seventeen and coming towards thecentral houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and hetold them as much. "In a little while," he prophesied, "Pedro willbe here." An old man remarked that Pedro had no business on pathSeventeen, and then, as if in confirmation, that individual as hedrew near turned and went transversely into path Ten, and so backwith nimble paces towards the outer wall. They mocked Nunez whenPedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questionsto clear his character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and wasafterwards hostile to him.
Then he induced them to let him go a long way up the slopingmeadows towards the wall with one complaisant individual, and tohim he promised to describe all that happened among the houses. Henoted certain goings and comings, but the things that really seemedto signify to these people happened inside of or behind thewindowless houses--the only things they took note of to test himby--and of those he could see or tell nothing; and it was after thefailure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress,that he resorted to force. He thought of seizing a spade andsuddenly smiting one or two of them to earth, and so in fair combatshowing the advantage of eyes. He went so far with that resolutionas to seize his spade, and then he discovered a new thing abouthimself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blindman in cold blood.
He hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched upthe spade. They stood all alert, with their heads on one side, andbent ears towards him for what he would do next.
"Put that spade down," said one, and he felt a sort ofhelpless horror. He came near obedience.
Then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall, andfled past him and out of the village.
He went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track oftrampled grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the sideof one of their ways. He felt something of the buoyancy that comesto all men in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. Hebegan to realise that you cannot even fight happily with creatureswho stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. Far away hesaw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come out of thestreet of houses and advance in a spreading line along the severa
lpaths towards him. They advanced slowly, speaking frequently toone another, and ever and again the whole cordon would halt andsniff the air and listen.
The first time they did this Nunez laughed. But afterwards hedid not laugh.
One struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping andfeeling his way along it.
For five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon,and then his vague disposition to do something forthwithbecame frantic. He stood up, went a pace or so towards thecircumferential wall, turned, and went back a little way. Therethey all stood in a crescent, still and listening.
He also stood still, gripping his spade very tightly in bothhands. Should he charge them?
The pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of "In the Countryof the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."
Should he charge them?
He looked back at the high and unclimbable wallbehind--unclimbable because of its smooth plastering, but withalpierced with many little doors and at the approaching line ofseekers. Behind these others were now coming out of the street ofhouses.
Should he charge them?
"Bogota!" called one. "Bogota! where are you?"
He gripped his spade still tighter and advanced down themeadows towards the place of habitations, and directly he movedthey converged upon him. "I'll hit them if they touch me," heswore; "by Heaven, I will. I'll hit." He called aloud, "Lookhere, I'm going to do what I like in this valley! Do you hear?I'm going to do what I like and go where I like."
They were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet movingrapidly. It was like playing blind man's buff with everyoneblindfolded except one. "Get hold of him!" cried one. He foundhimself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. He felt suddenlyhe must be active and resolute.
"You don't understand," he cried, in a voice that was meant tobe great and resolute, and which broke. "You are blind and I cansee. Leave me alone!"
"Bogota! Put down that spade and come off the grass!"
The last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produceda gust of anger. "I'll hurt you," he said, sobbing with emotion."By Heaven, I'll hurt you! Leave me alone!"
He began to run--not knowing clearly where to run. He ranfrom the nearest blind man, because it was a horror to hit him. Hestopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks.He made for where a gap was wide, and the men on either side, witha quick perception of the approach of his paces, rushed in on oneanother. He sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, and_swish!_ the spade had struck. He felt the soft thud of handand arm, and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he wasthrough.
Through! And then he was close to the street of houses again,and blind men, whirling spades and stakes, were running with areasoned swiftness hither and thither.
He heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall manrushing forward and swiping at the sound of him. He lost hisnerve, hurled his spade a yard wide of this antagonist, and whirledabout and fled, fairly yelling as he dodged another.
He was panic-stricken. He ran furiously to and fro, dodgingwhen there was no need to dodge, and, in his anxiety to see onevery side of him at once, stumbling. For a moment he was down andthey heard his fall. Far away in the circumferential wall a littledoorway looked like Heaven, and he set off in a wild rush for it.He did not even look round at his pursuers until it was gained, andhe had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among therocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who wentleaping out of sight, and lay down sobbing for breath.
And so his _coup d'etat_ came to an end.
He stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for twonights and days without food or shelter, and meditated upon theUnexpected. During these meditations he repeated very frequentlyand always with a profounder note of derision the exploded proverb:"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King." He thoughtchiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and itgrew clear that for him no practicable way was possible. He had noweapons, and now it would be hard to get one.
The canker of civilisation had got to him even in Bogota, andhe could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blindman. Of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on thethreat of assassinating them all. But--Sooner or later he mustsleep! . . . .
He tried also to find food among the pine trees, to be comfortableunder pine boughs while the frost fell at night, and--withless confidence--to catch a llama by artifice in order to tryto kill it--perhaps by hammering it with a stone--and so finally,perhaps, to eat some of it. But the llamas had a doubt of him andregarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat when he drewnear. Fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering.Finally he crawled down to the wall of the Country of the Blind andtried to make his terms. He crawled along by the stream, shouting,until two blind men came out to the gate and talked to him.
"I was mad," he said. "But I was only newly made."
They said that was better.
He told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he haddone.
Then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and illnow, and they took that as a favourable sign.
They asked him if he still thought he could "_see_."
"No," he said. "That was folly. The word means nothing.Less than nothing!"
They asked him what was overhead.
"About ten times ten the height of a man there is a roof abovethe world--of rock--and very, very smooth. So smooth--sobeautifully smooth . ." He burst again into hysterical tears."Before you ask me any more, give me some food or I shall die!"
He expected dire punishments, but these blind people werecapable of toleration. They regarded his rebellion as but one moreproof of his general idiocy and inferiority, and after they hadwhipped him they appointed him to do the simplest and heaviest workthey had for anyone to do, and he, seeing no other way of living,did submissively what he was told.
He was ill for some days and they nursed him kindly. Thatrefined his submission. But they insisted on his lying in thedark, and that was a great misery. And blind philosophers came andtalked to him of the wicked levity of his mind, and reproved him soimpressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that coveredtheir cosmic _casserole_ that he almost doubted whether indeedhe was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead.
So Nunez became a citizen of the Country of the Blind, andthese people ceased to be a generalised people and becameindividualities to him, and familiar to him, while the world beyondthe mountains became more and more remote and unreal. There wasYacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was Pedro,Yacob's nephew; and there was Medina-sarote, who was the youngestdaughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of theblind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying,glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty,but Nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the mostbeautiful thing in the whole creation. Her closed eyelids werenot sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay asthough they might open again at any moment; and she had longeyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. And hervoice was weak and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valleyswains. So that she had no lover.
There came a time when Nunez thought that, could he win her,he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of hisdays.
He watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her littleservices and presently he found that she observed him. Once at arest-day gathering they sat side by side in the dim starlight, andthe music was sweet. His hand came upon hers and he dared to claspit. Then very tenderly she returned his pressure. And one day, asthey were at their meal in the darkness, he felt her hand verysoftly seeking him, and as it chanced the fire leapt then, and hesaw the tenderness of her face.
He sought to speak to her.
He went to her one day when she was sitting in the summermoonlight spinning. The light made her a thing of silver andmyster
y. He sat down at her feet and told her he loved her, andtold her how beautiful she seemed to him. He had a lover's voice,he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and she hadnever before been touched by adoration. She made him no definiteanswer, but it was clear his words pleased her.
After that he talked to her whenever he could take anopportunity. The valley became the world for him, and the worldbeyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than afairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very tentativelyand timidly he spoke to her of sight.
Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and shelistened to his description of the stars and the mountains and herown sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.She did not believe, she could only half understand, but she wasmysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completelyunderstood.
His love lost its awe and took courage. Presently he was fordemanding her of Yacob and the elders in marriage, but she becamefearful and delayed. And it was one of her elder sisters who firsttold Yacob that Medina-sarote and Nunez were in love.
There was from the first very great opposition to the marriageof Nunez and Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her asbecause they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thingbelow the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed itbitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, thoughhe had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shookhis head and said the thing could not be. The young men were allangry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as torevile and strike Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first timehe found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after thatfight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him.But they still found his marriage impossible.
Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, andwas grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder.
"You see, my dear, he's an idiot. He has delusions; he can'tdo anything right."
"I know," wept Medina-sarote. "But he's better than he was.He's getting better. And he's strong, dear father, andkind--stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And heloves me--and, father, I love him."
Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable,and, besides--what made it more distressing--he liked Nunez formany things. So he went and sat in the windowless council-chamberwith the other elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said,at the proper time, "He's better than he was. Very likely, someday, we shall find him as sane as ourselves."
Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, hadan idea. He was a great doctor among these people, theirmedicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind,and the idea of curing Nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him.One day when Yacob was present he returned to the topic of Nunez."I have examined Nunez," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.I think very probably he might be cured."
"This is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
The elders murmured assent.
"Now, _what_ affects it?"
"Ah!" said old Yacob.
"_This_," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Thosequeer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to makean agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the caseof Nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatlydistended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequentlyhis brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction."
"Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?"
"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, inorder to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple andeasy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies."
"And then he will be sane?"
"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirablecitizen."
"Thank Heaven for science!" said old Yacob, and went forth atonce to tell Nunez of his happy hopes.
But Nunez's manner of receiving the good news struck him asbeing cold and disappointing.
"One might think," he said, "from the tone you take that youdid not care for my daughter."
It was Medina-sarote who persuaded Nunez to face the blindsurgeons.
"_You_ do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of sight?"
She shook her head.
"My world is sight."
Her head drooped lower.
"There are the beautiful things, the beautiful littlethings--the flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light andsoftness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting dawn ofclouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is _you_. Foryou alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face,your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . . . .It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me toyou, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you,and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock andstone and darkness, that horrible roof under which yourimaginations stoop . . . _No_; _you_ would not have me do that?"
A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and leftthe thing a question.
"I wish," she said, "sometimes--" She paused.
"Yes?" he said, a little apprehensively.
"I wish sometimes--you would not talk like that."
"Like what?"
"I know it's pretty--it's your imagination. I love it, but _now_--"
He felt cold. "_Now?_" he said, faintly.
She sat quite still.
"You mean--you think--I should be better, better perhaps--"
He was realising things very swiftly. He felt anger perhaps,anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack ofunderstanding--a sympathy near akin to pity.
"_Dear_," he said, and he could see by her whiteness howtensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say.He put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for atime in silence.
"If I were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voicethat was very gentle.
She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "Oh, if youwould," she sobbed, "if only you would!"
For a week before the operation that was to raise him from hisservitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nunezknew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm, sunlit hours,while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wanderedaimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. He hadgiven his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was notsure. And at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendourover the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him.He had a few minutes with Medina-sarote before she went apart tosleep.
"To-morrow," he said, "I shall see no more."
"Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all herstrength.
"They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are goingthrough this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for_me_ . . . . Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, Iwill repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice,I will repay."
He was drenched in pity for himself and her.
He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers andlooked on her sweet face for the last time. "Good-bye!" hewhispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!"
And then in silence he turned away from her.
She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something inthe rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping.
He walked away.
He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadowswere beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until thehour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted uphis eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in goldenarmour, marching down the steeps . . . .
It seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blindworld in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pitof sin.
He did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on andpassed through the wall of the circumfer
ence and out upon therocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow.
He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared overthem to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever!
He thought of that great free world that he was parted from,the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those furtherslopes, distance beyond distance, with Bogota, a place ofmultitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mysteryby night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and whitehouses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought howfor a day or so one might come down through passes drawing evernearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of theriver journey, day by day, from great Bogota to the still vasterworld beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places,the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded, and the bigsteamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea--thelimitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands,and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyingsround and about that greater world. And there, unpent bymountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc as one saw ithere, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in whichthe circling stars were floating . . . .
His eyes began to scrutinise the great curtain of themountains with a keener inquiry.
For example; if one went so, up that gully and to that chimneythere, then one might come out high among those stunted pines thatran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as itpassed above the gorge. And then? That talus might be managed.Thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to theprecipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed,then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better.And then? Then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, andhalf-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations. Andsuppose one had good fortune!
He glanced back at the village, then turned right round andregarded it with folded arms.
He thought of Medina-sarote, and she had become small andremote.
He turned again towards the mountain wall down which the dayhad come to him.
Then very circumspectly he began his climb.
When sunset came he was not longer climbing, but he was far and high.His clothes were torn, his limbs were bloodstained, he was bruisedin many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and therewas a smile on his face.
From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pitand nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow,though the mountain summits around him were things of light andfire. The mountain summits around him were things of light andfire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenchedwith light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing thegrey, a flash of small crystal here and there, a minute,minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. Therewere deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening intopurple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was theillimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things nolonger, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were contentnow merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind, in whichhe had thought to be King. And the glow of the sunset passed, andthe night came, and still he lay there, under the cold, clear stars.