In spite of its lassitude and its thirst, the animal did not refuse its service. It set off slowly. Several natives, being impatient, followed the colossus.
Hareton, who had raised his binoculars, let them fall back anxiously. “As long as it’s not a mistake!” he muttered, looking at the men, all of whom had their eyes turned south-westwards.
Meanwhile, Guthrie had reached the foot of the hillock. The slope was gentle; the camel climbed it without any difficulty, preceded by the natives.
Hareton and Muriel waited, distress and hope oscillating with the beating of their hearts.
A few more paces—already the men were on the ridge, capering and crying out, without it being possible to figure out whether it was in joy or disappointment.
Finally, Guthrie raised his arms.
“It’s them!” Hareton exclaimed, breathlessly. He had grabbed his binoculars again. Guthrie was laughing!
“Water! They’ve found water!”
The entire caravan leapt up, including the animals. It did not take Hareton long to reach and scale the shallow slope.
Out there in the desert of sonorous plants, two camels were running at a brisk pace. Philippe and Sir George were distinctly visible. Full waterskins were quivering on the animals’ flanks. Delirious, Guthrie howled a victory song and the men were shouting frantically; all of them had carried on running.
“Is it the water, at last?” roared Sydney, when he was close enough.
“It’s the water,” Sir George replied, placidly, holding out a gourd to him. “Out there, as Ironcastle said, there’s a large river flowing through the wilderness.”
Guthrie continued drinking the fluid of life frenetically. The natives were howling and leaping about, laughing like children.
A grave joy filled Hareton’s breast. “The Lord has turned his gaze to the prayers of the humble, and has not scorned their plea!”
Already, the rations having been distributed, the men were reviving, as dry grass revives in the rain. The animals were given minimal amounts, sufficient to give them the strength to reach the river.
Having drunk, Hareton listened without any great astonishment to the story told by Philippe and Sir George.
“Samuel wrote to me about these things,” he concluded. “Tonight, the caravan will camp on the bank of the great river.”
All distress had disappeared. The brains of the natives, in which the future only designed feeble images, forgot the ordeal in the sensuality of their revival—and because the Masters had triumphed once again over harsh Nature, their faith became unshakable.
IV. Near the River Bank
The caravan came to a halt 1000 paces from the river. Night had fallen; a starry light shone down on the vegetation and expanded subtly into the wilderness.
Six rocky masses surrounded the red camping-ground, where nothing grew but lichens, mosses and primitive plants. The fire radiated its sparkling light, and the animals that passed by in the semi-darkness paused at a distance to peer at the strange beings agitating amid the flames.
They saw batrachians emerge, as well as large crocodiles, jackals with coppery coats, dancing hyenas, bristling warthogs, pink hippopotamuses and furtive antelopes. Sometimes, a raptor with fleecy wings soared in the gloom, and a red lion appeared at the very edge of the river. Its eyes remained fixed on the encampment for some time, and then it set off on the prowl.
“It has the coat of a fox!” Sydney remarked, while Sir George was checking his rifle.
“Its gait is odd,” added Philippe.
The camels, donkeys and goats sniffed the predator’s scent anxiously.
“It is not as large as the river-leopard.”
“No,” Philippe agreed, “and certainly less fearsome.”
“Look out!” Guthrie exclaimed.
The lion had disappeared; three colossal animals had just emerged from the shadows.
“Crocodiles!” said Hareton, with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.
“Hairy crocodiles,” Philippe specified. “The same as the one this morning. The largest is positively apocalyptic.”
One of the reptiles was, indeed, at least a dozen meters long. Its mass could not have been inferior to that of a rhinoceros. Its three eyes, the color of emerald frosted with amber, were scanning the surroundings.
“Its strength must be terrible,” said Philippe.
“Indeed!” muttered Guthrie, picking up the elephant-gun. “Nature has done her work well.”
The colossal creature gave voice to a bizarre sound, analogous to the rumor of a cataract. It did not head toward the humans, but it had scented the powerful odor of the camels and goats.
“We make a very well-stocked larder,” Philippe said. “Will it dare to come through the gaps?”
There were bare zones between the fires, the caravan not having been able to gather enough wood to make up a continuous circle. An audacious beast might be able to get into the camp—but in all probability, neither a lion nor a tiger would have attempted it, being fearful of the palpitating flames.
The phantasmagorical fauna increased in the vicinity of the camp: coppery jackals, hyenas, cheetahs, panthers, night-birds, green monkeys, fluttering bats, lizards, giant toads and serpents of beryl and sapphire. Two leopards appeared on a mound; the creeping lion had reappeared, and more crocodiles climbed out of the river. The little lamps of eyes shone in the tenebrous swarm of bodies: yellow eyes, green eyes, red eyes, violet eyes, reflecting the firelight.
One of the leopards, raising its head, uttered a roar equal in strength to a lion’s.
A confused anxiety grew in the souls of the voyagers. How paltry they would have felt before that inferno of wild beasts, without their redoubtable armaments! But the infallible aim of Sir George and Philippe, so many rapid-fire weapons, Guthrie’s elephant gun and—above all—the machine-gun endowed the upright animals with an imposing power.
“A vision of St. John on Patmos!” said Guthrie.
The giant crocodile yawned; its open mouth was reminiscent of a cavern; its teeth seemed innumerable, and the entire creature made them think of the age of fabulous reptiles. It was now in front of the encampment’s largest gap; the camels were snorting fearfully, while the donkeys and goats sought refuge closer to the humans.
Attentively, with its large eyes fixed on a dromedary, the crocodile stretched itself. Perhaps it was hesitating, but only briefly. It advanced deliberately into the gap.
Then, a mad terror took possession of the domesticated animals—a terror comparable to the stampedes that draw herds of wild horses over the savannah. A few broke their hobbles; three crazed camels galloped toward the group of humans. The men ran to intercept them.
“This could reduce us to a state of inferiority,” Hareton muttered.
“Look out!” cried Guthrie.
The crocodile was in the camp.
It headed for the dromedary that it had spotted and, which, for mysterious reasons, had obtained its preference. It was a tense moment, because the other crocodiles were approaching the camp.
“Since it’s my turn,” said Philippe to Sir George, “I’ll take the right eye.”
“All right,” the Briton acquiesced, phlegmatically. “The left’s mine.”
Two shots rang out. The crocodile uttered a howl of distress, and started to turn round. A third bullet, cleaving through the pineal eye, blinded it conclusively.
The men took control of the furtive beasts, and the furious plaints of the crocodile immobilized the predators around the circle. Over the blue expanse, the ancient splendor of the stars trembled gently.
“Man is a redoubtable beast!” Guthrie concluded.
V. The Young Woman in the Blue Night
For two days the caravan advanced without hindrance. Hareton took his bearings every morning and directed the march after consulting the compass.
The region remained fertile, populated with innumerable and unusual animals: mauve hippopotamuses, exceedingly tall giraffes, hairy
crocodiles, spiders as large as birds, disquieting insects—some of the beetles attained the size of turtles—elephants armed with four tusks, climbing fish and snakes the color of fire.
The plants were particularly astonishing. They still encountered violet and blue grasses, disseminated in islets, but a leguminous flora became more abundant the further south-west they went. Its variety was inconceivable; some were shaped like sensitive plants,40 others attained the stature of birches, ash-trees and beeches, and a few colossal specimens surpassed the Sequoias of California in height and mass.
Hareton had given his companions strict warnings. “It’s necessary to respect them, without exception—they’re all redoubtable.”
These instructions excited Guthrie’s curiosity. Had he been alone, he would doubtless have given in to his instinctive bravado, but he willingly obeyed the chief. When anyone brushed a Mimosa, of a dwarf or giant variety, the leaves clenched like fists and according to their shape, emitted sound comparable to those of zithers, lyres or harps.
“What makes them redoubtable?” Sydney asked, impatiently. “Is it their thorns?”
“Their thorns are already sufficient—a prick is painful, and causes a kind of madness. Notice that the animals are avoiding any contact.”
“What shall we do, then, if they multiply to the point of rendering our passage impracticable?”
“They don’t seem to want that,” Hareton replied. “They leave free spaces everywhere. I wonder why.” He consulted Samuel Darnley’s notes.
The sky grew darker. Immense clouds ascended from the depths. A magnetic atmosphere enveloped the caravan.
“We’re going to have a fine storm!” Sir George remarked.
Spiraling winds got up in a light of copper and jade; the elements took on a furious excitement, and when immense flashes of lightning filled the expanse, it was as if some obscure will of the mineral world had determined to terrify the animals and astonish the humans. Up above, the clouds displayed a sudden genesis, a formidable consciousness suddenly surging from the unconscious.
Then the water came down, palpitating and fecund, the ancestor of everything that grows and dies.
They had set up the tents; the poorly-sheltered animals stamped their feet in the squalls and leapt up at the roars of the thunder, as if innumerable lions were wandering in the nimbus clouds.
“Ah, how I love storms!” cried Guthrie, breathing in the humid air voluptuously. “They give me ten lives!”
“They must also cause many deaths,” Sir George remarked.
“Everything causes death! It’s necessary to choose, my friend.”
“We don’t choose—we’re chosen.”
All around the camp, stampedes carried the wild animals away. A herd of giraffes passed like lightning; elephants showed their rocky backs momentarily; giant lizards sought crevices; a rhinoceros lumbered like a rolling stone and warthogs galloped ponderously, while slender antelopes fled, without knowing it, into the vicinity of a bewildered lion.
“There’s neither prey nor hunter now,” said Philippe, who was standing next to Muriel.
Already, however, the weather was abating; a gap pierced the nimbus clouds; the rain began to fall less torrentially.
Then the ancient furnace reappeared in the depths of the sky.
“There’s the Monster!” Guthrie growled.
“The authentic father!” Sir George riposted.
The end of the drama was abrupt. The earth drank the water and dried out visibly.
“We can get under way again,” said Hareton. He spoke in a weary voice and, having risen to his feet, walked heavily.
“The weather’s still disturbing!” said Guthrie. “It makes one feel weary.”
“Very weary,” Sir George agreed.
Philippe said nothing; it seemed that the weight of his body had doubled.
Even so, Hareton gave the order to depart. It proved exceedingly difficult. The humans were dragging themselves along, the animals panting hard, and they were all moving with excessive slowness.
“What’s the matter with us?” Guthrie demanded. His speech was slurred, his voice leaden, and he was moving like a man in a trance.
No one replied; for half an hour the caravan continued on its way, ponderously. It had not covered a kilometer. All around it, the islets of Mimosas multiplied to the point of rendering passage difficult. Whenever anyone inadvertently touched one of the plants, the leaves stirred strangely, and an icy fluid seemed to spread through his flesh. The phenomenon was more obvious when it was associated with a tree; the branches undulated like a nest of serpents.
“I can’t go on any more,” said Guthrie, finally, with a dull anger. “It’s as if I were dragging leaden cannonballs. Haven’t your notes anything to tell us about this, Uncle Hareton? Is it some kind of narcosis? And is it these damned plants again?”
“It doesn’t feel like narcosis to me,” Hareton replied, in a voice as constrained as Sydney’s. “No, it’s not a numbness—my thoughts are clear, my sensations normal. It’s just this intolerable weight. One would think that gravity had increased.”
“Yes,” Sir George agreed. “That’s it, exactly. Everything is still normal—except for this heaviness.”
“I must weigh 500 pounds!” Guthrie complained. “You haven’t answered my question, Uncle Hareton. Is it the plants? If so, how?”
“I think it must be the plants,” Hareton said, feeling a frisson. “Besides—as you know—here, everything depends on them. I only wish I could understand what they want…or why they’re hindering us.”
“There’s no longer a single animal visible,” Philippe remarked.
That was true. They could not see a single mammal, bird or reptile; even the insects had disappeared. With every step, the weight increased…
It was the camels that stopped first. They started uttering discordant cries, which gradually died away; then they lay down and refused to budge. The donkeys did not take long to imitate them, while the goats continued to move around, painfully.
“What will become of us?” Hareton murmured. His speech was slowed down as were his gestures, but his nerves retained their sensitivity and his thoughts were unaffected.
The giant collapsed. Although less affected, Philippe and Sir George were still paralyzed. It was Muriel who was most resistant; even so, she could not take a step without an extraordinary effort.
“Yes,” said Philippe, painfully. “What do they want? What have we done that frightens them?”
A mysterious terror floated in the air. In front of the caravan, a forest of giant Mimosas began; they must already have been alive in the time of the kings of Assyria and the Chaldean shepherds. Ten civilizations had risen and fallen since the time when their shoots had sprung from the nourishing planet.
Is it them that are stopping us? Hareton wondered. Perhaps, then, by turning back…
But they could not turn back. Their legs were almost inert; when they tried to speak, the words emerged so slowly that they became incomprehensible. All the caravan’s animals were lying on the ground; only their eyes were active—and those eyes expressed an indescribable terror…
Evening approached: a red and funereal dusk. With unprecedented efforts, Muriel had dragged herself as far as the food stores and brought back smoked meat and biscuits. They all watched the Sun disappear. Night fell. A pink crescent illuminated the surroundings faintly. Far away—very far away—jackals were yapping.
It occurred to them then that they were defenseless; predators could eat them alive—but the solitude remained complete; no animal form appeared in the grass, on the bank or on the edge of the forest. Gradually, fatigue overwhelmed all sensation and all thought—and when the crescent moon disappeared beneath the horizon, humans and animals slept beneath the tremulous grace of the constellations.
In the middle of the night, Muriel woke up. The Moon had disappeared; the whiteness of the stars formed a palpitating snow. The young woman stood up, painfully agitated by fe
ver and a phantasmagorical overexcitement. She looked at her companions stretched out in the ashen light, and suddenly experienced a sharp feeling, simultaneously sad and urgent, that it was necessary to save them.
That sentiment excluded all logic; it was self-contained, like the impulses of creatures that live entirely by instinct. She did not even try to reason…
Prey to a sort of hallucination, and although her fatigue was still overwhelming, she set off in the direction of the Southern Cross, moved by an intuition that owed its origin to something Ironcastle had said. Periodically, she was forced to pause; her head weighed upon her neck like a block of granite…
Often, she crawled. Tired as she was, her excitement did not abandon her; from time to time she murmured: “I must save them!”
Deep down, she conceived the hope that, after a while, she would emerge from the dangerous zone, forgetting that she would then find herself alone in a carnivorous world—for here, the astonishing solitude persisted; no animal was stirring in the immeasurable plain.
Muriel progressively drew away from the forest of giant Mimosas.
Several hours passed, hard and slow. The young woman had not covered more than a mile. Abruptly, she felt a delightful impression. The weight had disappeared. Muriel found the freedom of her muscles again, the sweet sensation of being mistress of her own body. Instinctively, she made haste, to get further away from the deadly zone…
Then, another anxiety began to stir within her. The animal world had returned. Jackals were passing by, as furtive as phantoms; a hyena limped through the shadows; giant toads were hopping in the moist grass; nocturnal raptors were gliding overhead on their silent wings.
Subtle, disquieting life was swarming everywhere—that agitation which, since time immemorial, has never ceased to be mingled with stubborn and ferocious destruction: sounds of breathing, obscure clamors, the rustling of grass, the jerky laughter of hyenas, the curt yapping of jackals, the plaint of an owl…
Muriel’s only weapon was a revolver, but she did not think of retreating. The excitement that had drawn her forth persisted, transforming itself into a sort of confused intoxication, doubtless due to her renewed agility.
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