The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Why torture them?”

  “To get them to give up their secrets.”

  Ironcastle and his companions listened in amazement.

  “But what can they do?” Guthrie asked.

  “They can help set traps for us.”

  “We have only to watch them more closely and tie them up.”

  “I don’t know, Master. Even tied up, they can help their tribe.”

  “If they were tortured, would they talk?”

  “Perhaps one of them is less brave than the rest—why not try?” Kouram asked, ingenuously. “We can kill them afterwards.”

  The westerners made no reply, aware of the incompatibility of their mentality and the African’s.

  “We need to listen to Kouram,” said Ironcastle, pensively, when their guide fell silent and withdrew. “He’s a very intelligent man.”

  “Listen to him, no doubt,” Guthrie muttered, “but what more can we do than we’re doing? Fundamentally, his advice is the only wisdom. It’s necessary to torture them and then kill them.”

  “You’re not going to do that, Guthrie!” Muriel exclaimed, horrified.

  “No, I won’t do it, but it would be legitimate to do it—if only for your sake, Muriel. These men are infernal vermin, ready to commit any sin—a collection of criminals—and you can be sure that they wouldn’t hesitate to cook and eat us.”

  “Wasted words,” Ironcastle interjected. “We shan’t kill them, much less torture them. Anyway, they can’t tell us anything, since we can’t understand them.”

  “Kouram might be able to understand them.”

  “No—he can only guess. That’s not enough.”

  “You’re right,” said Philippe. “We won’t debase ourselves. Even so, what are we going to do with them? Their presence is a danger.”

  “Your question is a reply,” Sir George remarked. “Shall we set them free?”

  “No! Not yet. Is it impossible, by combining the cunning of Africa and the cunning of the West, to deceive their acuity?”

  Ironcastle raised his eyebrows, then looked at Philippe fixedly.

  “Since the earth, the grass, the leaves and the water are speaking, can’t we deform the signals?”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Ironcastle. “We can certainly try. Moreover, it’s an elementary precaution to blindfold the captives’ eyes when we’re on the march, or, even better, put hoods over their heads. At night, we can keep them in a tent.”

  “It’s also necessary to gag them.” Guthrie added. “And stop up their ears…”

  “They’ll be very unhappy!” Muriel sighed.

  “Not for long. Kouram claims that they won’t leave the forest. They’ve never been known to advance more than one day’s march into the plain. Well, the forest isn’t endless.”

  “Let’s call Kouram back,” said Sir George.

  Kouram listened silently to what the white men said. “That’s good!” he replied. Kouram will be alert; his companions too—but the Squat Men’s cunning is inexhaustible. It’s always necessary to fear an escape. Look what I’ve just found.”

  He showed them some fig-leaves tied together with strands of grass; the tips of several leaves had been removed; other leaves had been pierced symmetrically.

  “One of the captives dropped this sign near a bush—and it certainly says more than one thing.” He sighed, raising his hands to his face. “Why not kill them?”

  The surveillance became more scrupulous and more severe. All day long, the captives’ faces were veiled; by night, a sentry was posted in their tent. When they were permitted to take exercise within the camp, their legs were hobbled. In spite of all this, they were an incessant object of anxiety.

  Through their impassivity, Ironcastle, Philippe and Muriel thought they were beginning to discern the cunning in their eyes and the slight quivers of their lips or eyelids by which they revealed their hatreds and hopes. When they could no longer see during the day their rage was manifest. A sly menace emanated from their attitude; the least patient uttered words that they divined to be insulting…but then they seemed to become resigned. In the bivouac, by the light of the fires, they dreamed mysteriously, as motionless as cadavers.

  “Well, are they still ‘talking’ to the others?” Philippe asked Kouram one evening.

  “Still,” Kouram replied, gravely. “They hear and they reply.”

  “But how?”

  “They hear by way of the voices of jackals, crows, hyenas and leopards. They reply by way of the ground.”

  “You’re not erasing their signs, then?”

  “We’re erasing them, Master—but not always, because we don’t find them all. The Squat Men are more cunning than we are!”

  That night was rendered more charming by a breeze that blew from the land toward the lake. The scarlet flames of the fires rose up; life could be heard growling in the depths of the woodland. Philippe studied the Southern Cross, and its tremulous reflection in the water.

  Abruptly, Muriel sat down next to him. Enveloped by red light, mingled with the blue penumbra, she was an almost fluid apparition in the profound life of the desert. He breathed in her scent, a sweetness that occasionally generated anguish; she awoke everything that was mysterious in the hearts of men. Soon, the moment became so moving that Philippe felt that he would never forget it.

  “There’s no resemblance at all between this night and a night in Touraine,” he said, “and yet, it makes me think about a night in Touraine…a night on the bank of the Loire, near the Château de Chambord…as reassuring as this one is redoubtable.”

  “Why redoubtable?” Muriel asked.

  “Here, all nights are redoubtable. Nature hasn’t lost any of its dark charm.”

  “That’s true,” the young woman whispered, shivering as she remembered the python’s coils. “But I think we’ll miss these nights.”

  “Profoundly. Life has been newly revealed to us…and how powerfully!”

  “We have seen the Beginning of which the Book speaks.”

  He bowed his head, knowing that it was necessary not to say a single word that might contradict Muriel in the beliefs that had been handed down to her by generations of mystical women and men. Like Hareton, she lived two isolated existences; in one was the state of faith, which reason never touched; in the other, a terrestrial destiny unfolded in which she thought freely, and according to the circumstances.

  “Then again,” he added, with a hint of anguish, “you’ve irradiated us with the life of your beauty. There could not be a sweetness more profound. With you, Muriel, we have never entirely left the world in which men are dominant; with you our tents are dwellings, our evening fires a hearth; you are the image of the most charming and consoling aspects of what man has wrought—our best hope and our most tender anxiety.”

  She listened curiously, delicately moved, and knowing that she was loved. Although there was a disturbance in her own heart, she did not know as yet whether she preferred Philippe to all other men, and she reserved her own testimony. “You mustn’t exaggerate,” she said. “I’m not very important…and I’m often a burden rather than a consolation.”

  “I’m not exaggerating, Muriel. Even if you were less brilliant, there would be an incomparable grace in seeing you sitting among us, so far from the white fatherland.”

  “Oh well,” she murmured, “that’s enough talk about me for one evening. Look how the stars tremble gently in the rippling waters of the lake.” She sang, in a near-whisper: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are! I can see myself again, as a little girl, beside a lake in my own country—it was evening then, too—while a voice sang that innocent little song.”

  She started, and turned her head—and they both saw a thickset form, crawling. It passed through the zone of the fires and threw itself into the lake.

  “One of the prisoners!” Philippe exclaimed.

  Already, Kouram, two men and Sir George were running forward. They stood there, eyes fixed on the surfa
ce of the water. Obscure forms were moving about—batrachians and fish—but no human form was visible.

  “The canoes!” ordered Hareton.

  These were collapsible canoes that were made ready in a trice. Two crews protected by armored clothing set off upon the lake—but their search was utterly in vain; the Squat Man had either succeeded in his escape or drowned. They did not know how he had escaped, for he had taken his bonds with him, and completely deceived the two sentries guarding the captives’ tent.

  “You see, Master,” said Kouram, when the canoes had come back.

  “I see that you were right,” Ironcastle replied, sadly. “That Squat Man has been more cunning than us.”

  “Not only him, Master. It’s the tribe that set him free.”

  “The tribe?” Guthrie exclaimed, skeptically.

  “The tribe, Master. It gave him a weapon with which to cut the cords…and perhaps the water that burns.”

  “What is the water that burns?” asked Hareton, anxiously.

  “It’s a kind of water that emerges from the ground, Master. It burns grass, wood, cloth and skin. If the Squat Men had poured it into the hollow of a stone, the fugitive might have made use of it.”

  “We’ll go see!”

  The ground on which the tent was pitched had not retained any trace of a corrosive substance.

  “Kouram likes legends!” Guthrie muttered.

  “No,” said Sir George. “Here’s a fragment of rope, evidently burned.” He displayed a fragment scarcely half a centimeter long, one end of which was charred.

  Ironcastle raised his eyebrows. “Capital! Kouram isn’t exaggerating.”

  “Where’s the proof that the rope was burned by a corrosive?” Sydney asked. “Perhaps the captive made use of a stray firebrand.”

  “No,” Sir George affirmed, as he continued to examine the rope fragment. “This isn’t the burn of a flame.”

  “Then why have they waited so long to make use of their damned liquid?”

  “Because the water that burns isn’t found everywhere, Master,” said Kouram, who had heard the exchange. “One may walk for weeks, even months, before finding it.”

  “We were wrong not to have brought dogs,” said Philippe.

  “We should have had some brought from the Antilles or Vera Cruz before the departure,” Hareton said, “but we didn’t have time.”

  “We could train jackals,” said Guthrie, half-earnestly and half-facetiously.

  “I’d prefer to trust myself to the gorilla,” Ironcastle replied. “He detests these Squat Men intensely.”

  “You’re right, Master,” Kouram put in. “The man-who-does-not-talk is the enemy of the Squat Men.”

  “Do you think he might be trained?”

  “You might try, Master—but only you!”

  Hareton tried to train the anthropoid. For the first few days, nothing seemed to penetrate the granite skull. When the gorilla was put in the presence of the captive Squat Men, an extraordinary agitation made the ape quiver, and his eyes—becoming rounder, fluorescent and green-tinted—expressed a menacing fury and a mysterious dread.

  After a few days, there was a sort of explosion in the brute’s mentality, like the abrupt blooming of certain tropical flowers. Intelligence scintillated in fits. Then the beast seemed positively to understand that it was to keep watch on the prisoners; it crouched down before their tent, sniffing the odious emanations and staring into space.

  One evening, while Hareton was staring into the fire, Kouram appeared beside him.

  “Master, the man-without-speech has sensed the Squat Men approaching. They’re close to the camp.”

  “Is everyone at his post?”

  “Yes, Master. Anyway, it’s not an attack that we have to fear.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know. It’s necessary to keep watch on the food-supplies, the captives and the ground.”

  “The ground? Why?”

  “The Squat Men know caves that their ancestors hollowed out.”

  Hareton understood what the man meant, and went to see the anthropoid. The ape was violently agitated; he was listening and sniffing; the hair on top of his head stood up at intervals.

  “Well, Sylvius?” Gently, Hareton placed his hand on the animal’s shoulder. Sylvius responded with a vague movement, sketched a caress and voiced a dull groan.

  “Go, Sylvius!”

  The animal headed toward the western extremity of the encampment. There, his agitation became frantic. Crouching down, he began digging in the earth.

  “You see, Master!” said Kouram, who had come after them. “The Squat Men are underground.”

  “The camp is situated above a cave, then?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Hareton remained deep in thought for a wile. Kouram lay down and stuck his ear to the ground. “They’re there!” he said. Sylvius’ groan seemed to agree with this statement.

  A frightful cry cut through the darkness: a woman’s cry, which made Hareton shiver. “That’s Muriel!” he exclaimed.

  He bounded toward the young woman’s tent. The native set to guard it was lying on the ground, motionless. Hareton lifted the flap of canvas that sealed the tent, and shone the beam of his electric torch inside.

  He did not see Muriel.

  VII. Muriel in the Night

  In the middle of the tent there was an oval hole, through which two men might pass. To one side, there was a block of green porphyry.

  Shouting an alarm call, Hareton ran forward. Ill-formed steps descended into the darkness. Without waiting, Ironcastle went down. When he reached the last step he saw a subterranean corridor—but after some 25 meters, the route was blocked by a collapse of earth and stones.

  Philippe, Sydney and Sir George arrived. “Damn it!” howled Guthrie, gripped by a savage fury.

  “We need to organize ourselves,” said Sir George.

  Vertigo whirled within Philippe’s skull, and his heart sounded a tocsin. They all groped around in the hope of finding an exit.

  “Send for spades and pick-axes, Kouram,” Sir George commanded.

  After a brief interval of exasperation, Guthrie recovered the practical sensibility of his race and his nation. “My rock-drill!” he said.

  Before the departure he had anticipated the possibility of encountering some obstacle of stone or earth. Accompanied by Dick and Patrick, he went in search of the apparatus. It was an ingenious machine which could, according to circumstances, be operated by hand or driven by gasoline. Comparatively light, it only needed two ordinary men to transport it.

  Ten minutes later, the drill was in place, and Sydney had filled its fuel-tank. It began its work, and opened up a passage five times as quickly as spades and picks could have done.

  Ironcastle was the first to launch himself into the opened passage. The light of electric torches showed no trace of the passage of Muriel and the Squat Men. Soon, it was necessary to duck down; then the fissure became so narrow that it was impossible to advance two abreast.

  “It’s up to me to take the lead,” Guthrie declared, in a forceful and almost imperious tone. Pulling Hareton back as the latter tried to remain at the head, he added: “No, Uncle, no! Here, my strength is our best safeguard. I’ll break through any obstacles more easily than you, and I’ll be better able to reckon with anyone who dares to start a fight!”

  “But the corridor might become too narrow for you,” Hareton objected.

  “I’ll lie down and you can crawl over me.”

  While debating the issue, Guthrie moved forward. It was all the more logical that he should take the lead because he—along with Sir George and Patrick—had put on a costume impermeable to assegais.

  Although he had to crouch down further, the tunnel did not become too narrow. The pursuers bent down so far that a little further would have made it necessary to crawl, but then the ceiling rose up, the passage broadened, and Sir George uttered an exclamation. He had just spotted a little handkerchief that
belonged to Muriel.

  Hareton took possession of it and pressed it to his lips.

  “At least that confirms that she passed this way,” Guthrie remarked.

  A feeble radiation penetrated into the subterranean passage, and—almost abruptly—the lake appeared, beneath the light of a quarter moon.

  For a few moments, the companions studied the water, in which Sirius, Orion, Virgo and the Southern Cross were reflected. Jackals were yapping on the plain; colossal frogs raised voices as resounding as those of buffaloes.

  “Nothing!” murmured Sir George.

  Three islands displayed elongated arborescent masses. They were what attracted the passionate attention of the troop.

  “That’s where they must have taken her!” Hareton exclaimed, plaintively. Large tears ran down his cheeks; his normally-impassive face was entirely distorted by pain. “I’ve done something unforgivable,” he sobbed. “I deserve torture and death a thousand times over.”

  Philippe’s despair was equal to the father’s. A nameless horror darkened his soul, rendered even more intolerable by his impotence.

  Guthrie, his eyes phosphorescent, waved his fists at the islands.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” said Sir George, authoritatively. “We’ll lose any chance of saving her if we continue to expose ourselves needlessly.”

  They examined the shore. It was almost a sheer cliff. They could not think of climbing up it. There would surely be Squat Men in hiding who would have annihilated all those who were not wearing impervious clothing in a trice. Where they stood, beneath overhanging rocks, with the lake open all the way to the islands, no surprise attack was possible.

  “What shall we do?” asked Hareton sadly. In his pain, he felt a need to entrust command to a calmer mind.

  “There’s only one thing we can do—return to the camp the way we came, man the canoes and explore the islands.”

  “Right!” said Guthrie, his excitement beginning to yield to the positive instincts of a hunter. “Let’s not leave an opportunity for another abduction. Let’s move quickly. I’ll guard the rear.”