by John Buchan
‘I mean that I want to step into an ancient society like the man in Wells’s Time Machine, and see the thing functioning, and not have to reconstruct it.’
‘You don’t want much!’
‘I want a good deal. But you see I happen to have found it. Also, I am like Peachey, and want to perform a feat — to do something very difficult and dangerous which nobody has ever done before.’
‘Anything more?’ Hyde asked satirically.
‘No, that’s all. I am not talking through my hat. I believe I am going to do both.’
I suppose it was that funny tension caused by the imminence of a battle we did not expect that made the taciturn Lacon talk freely. We all opened our eyes, for we felt that this was not any kind of bluff.
‘You can’t leave it at that,’ I said, when Lacon seemed to be relapsing into taciturnity. ‘We have got to hear more. I suppose your hunting-ground is South America.’
He nodded. ‘I have spent twelve years there — first of all in a frontier delimitation job, and then on my own account. You talk about Southern Arabia. But the big blank place on the map is not there, but in the Amazon valley. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles there of which we know nothing. No maps, no reports, except Indian rumours and the babble of scared rubber-hunters. It is a part of the world that is not specially safe for democracy.’
I asked him where the place lay exactly, and he mentioned names which meant nothing to me. He took up Peachey’s blue pencil and drew a rough map on the L’Illustration picture. I gathered that his hunting-ground was in the south-west corner of the Amazon area.
Peachey, who was on the Council of the Royal Geographical, observed that that country might be unexplored, but that its nature was pretty well known — nothing but swampy forests lying between the main tributaries of the great river.
‘Not known,’ said Lacon, ‘only guessed at, and the guesses happen to be wrong. There are points where even our vaguest knowledge stops clean and does not begin again for a thousand miles. How could it be otherwise? The place is far more strongly fenced than Tibet was a hundred years ago. It is a poison land — poison everywhere, in the flowers, in the insects, in the sap of the trees, and on every Indian arrow — deadly poison that makes a man die crazy with pain in three minutes.’
‘Have you been there?’ some one asked.
‘I have been through the defences. I was lost, you see, for four years. There is a way through. I found it, and I know how to go back again.’ A young second-lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t fancy that poison idea. Any other attractions for the tourist?’
‘Many. It is an unhallowed country, and things become cannibal there which are harmless anywhere else. Not only the men.’
‘I know about the cannibal fish that Roosevelt found,’ said Peachey. ‘Horrid little blighters about the size of a sea-trout, who get mad on blood. Anything beyond that?’
‘Yes,’ said Lacon, ‘there are foxes.’
I don’t think any of us believed him. Peachey laughed out loud. ‘That’s a good idea. I wish we could introduce the strain at home. It would add to the excitement of hunting if the fox turned and rent the hounds and took a leg off the first whip!’
Lacon was deadly serious, and if you looked at him you somehow couldn’t laugh. ‘That is the horror of it. There is nothing alarming in a lion or a tiger who wants your blood, but when a thing which we think of as a fugitive becomes aggressive and venomous it puts the fear of God into a man. Think of our little English fox with his sharp nozzle, snarling lips, and bright, wicked eyes. Think of him as big as a wolfhound, and cunning — well, as a fox, and as bloodthirsty as a stoat! I still dream of the brutes at night.’
There was something about Lacon’s tone and his eyes which compelled conviction. Peachey reached for the whisky. ‘I want a drink,’ he said, ‘after that nightmare. You say this cheerful land of yours is a hedge or a belt or something. That means there must be something inside it. What did you find when you got there?’
‘I didn’t get there,’ said Lacon. ‘I only squeezed a shut door a little way ajar. I am going back to open it, but I know a little of what is on the other side.’
We all waited on Lacon’s next words with something of the tenseness which one feels before going over the top. He spoke very slowly, as if he were overburdened with long-suppressed memories.
‘There is a people — a great people.’ Then he stopped.
‘White?’ somebody asked. ‘The old Rider Haggard business?’
‘I don’t know. White, after all, is a relative word. They are not Indians. They are pale, but that may be from their mode of life. I have only seen one of them. I think they are hardly human, but all the same they must be marvellous.’
‘You saw one of them?’ I put in.
‘Yes; but he came to me. I never got into their country. I only heard of it. I was raving with fever at the time, so my memory is not very good. Also, I was in a hurry, for he wanted to have me murdered, and my Indian friends had a job to hustle me away.’
Lacon’s pale eyes had a funny, fixed look, almost of pain.
‘He was a dwarf. They are all dwarfs, so the Indians told me. That may be the in-breeding, for they are the oldest human society on earth.’
‘You mean they are the Inca people?’ Hyde asked sharply.
‘Lord, no! Centuries, millenniums before the Incas. They were there before the Caribs came from the North — before the Indians. They are far older than the Phoenicians, or the Egyptians, or the Minoans. They were a great people when there was a land bridge to Asia, and before the towers of Atlantis had fallen.’
Hyde tried to look sceptical, but completely failed. There was something about Lacon’s quiet staccato sentences which held us spellbound. He, at any rate, believed every word he said, and he was no fool.
‘I never crossed their borders,’ he went on; ‘but I built up bit by bit a pretty complete knowledge of what was inside. Oddly enough, two Portuguese in the eighteenth century must have preceded me and heard the same tales. Perhaps they got a little further than I did. Anyhow, they left a record which no one believed, and you will find it to-day in the Lisbon archives. What impressed them most was that this people lived not in cities, but in gigantic towers — things as big as a Pyramid — and that these towers had no windows.’
‘How on earth—’ I began.
‘They are earth-dwellers,’ Lacon went on, ‘but their burrows are above the ground. They spend most of their life inside their great blank walls, and they have some form of artificial light, which goes on day and night. The Indians said it was fire from heaven, and for all I know it may be electricity. They are evidently advanced scientists.’
‘How do they defend themselves,’ I asked, ‘if they are surrounded by murderous cannibals? I gather they are not a race of warriors.’
‘Oh, they are a race of warriors all right, but they do not fight with steel. They are the greatest adepts in poison that the world has ever known. I expect they could teach the Boche something about poison gas. They could blot out a tribe which annoyed them, and the terror of them was like a mist on the countryside. It was even taboo to mention them. That was why it took me four years to find out anything.’
‘I should give that lot a miss, if I were you, old man,’ said Peachey. Lacon shook his head. ‘No; I’m going back. The place draws me, for it is the biggest thing undiscovered on the globe. Think of them, these pale dwarfish slugs, masters of every kind of hellish device, lairing in their great blank castles. Hoar-ancient, you know — so old that the Sphinx is young beside them. Something out of the “dark backward and abysm of time”, left untouched by the centuries. My God! how’s that for a discovery?’
Hyde had ceased to be critical. Very solemnly he asked Lacon if he had written it all down. ‘For you know,’ he said, ‘our life here is pretty chancy. Any day you may stop something heavy.’
Lacon laughed — a laugh of complete confidence. ‘Oh no. I have written nothing
down. It is all in my head. Nobody’s going to poach on my preserve. I am quite certain about my destiny. The Boche can’t harm me till I have got that shut door open.’
There fell a sudden silence among us. The words grated somehow, like an impiety. In those days, whatever our faults, the Greek aidos was a virtue which flourished among us.
Early next morning, as all the world knows, the Boche broke into our front. The first we knew of it was that he was behind our Battalion Headquarters, and after that for twenty-four hours my old lot had a remarkably cheap time. I got knocked out early in the day, and heard nothing more till Peachey was tucked into a bed beside me in the Base Hospital. I asked him the question which had been on my lips ever since I recovered consciousness.
‘Poor devil,’ he said. ‘He and half his squad were wiped out by some heavy stuff. There wasn’t much of him left. Extraordinarily gallant chap he was, too. I saw him when we first counter-attacked, with that funny crooked smile of his, as cool as if he were walking up partridges. It’s a big loss to the battalion.’
I couldn’t say anything, for I felt, more acutely than I had ever felt it before, the preposterous waste of war. It was more than the loss of a fine soldier to the British Army. I thought that a door leading to amazing mysteries had now been shut and bolted.
Nemesis
The Boys’ All-Round Book, 1928
[We were talking in the smoking-room about the vicissitudes of fortune. Some one said that in the war he never shaved of a morning without wondering where he would shave next, or whether he would ever use a razor again. Scanlan observed that he never put on his clothes now, when he got up, without wondering where he would take them off, since an event which befell him last autumn. Then he told us this story.]
I HAD BEEN staying in Yorkshire — for a cricket week — and was due on a Scots salmon river, which I shall call the Clee. It was blisteringly hot weather, but I looked forward with hope to my fishing, for I had read in The Times that there had been a good deal of rain in the North. I had a stuffy journey before me, so I came down to breakfast, on the morning I was to leave, in a suit of thin grey flannels. Being on the main line, it was possible to leave Revelsham comfortably about ten o’clock, and get to my destination in good time for dinner.
Old Alderson was leaving at the same hour, and was going to Scotland by a different route — a business journey, to take part in an arbitration in the city of Glasgow. He nodded with approval when he saw my clothes, which were much the same as his own. ‘It is going to be hideously hot,’ he said; ‘but you, lucky chap, will be undressing tonight in a cool Highland glen, while I shall be turning to my stuffy couch in a Glasgow hotel.’
I agreed, with a certain amount of complacency. Revelsham spoils one for work. I rejoiced that I had still some weeks of holiday before me, and I had that selfish satisfaction which one feels when the misfortunes of others by contrast heighten one’s own luck. I am afraid I gloated a little. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there will be a river outside my window, and a wind in the pine trees, and I will wake to hear the salmon plopping, and in the morning...’ I said a good deal more till he threatened me with a toast rack.
‘You are guilty of Hubris,’ he said, ‘which, if you have not forgotten your classics, was, according to the Greeks, the worst vice a man could have. “Hot-foot upon pride follows Nemesis the Avenger!” I shall be interested to hear what happens to you, my lad.’
For a long summer day I dozed and read in the express, which took me through coal-fields and smoky towns, and among Border glens, and through the champaign of the Lowlands, and into a country where lochs shimmered beside the track, and the heather grew up to the edge of the wayside stations. About six o’clock I reached my destination, from which it was a short three-mile drive to Inverclee.
When I reached that hospitable house I found it empty, for the whole party were on the moor at a grouse drive, and not expected back for another hour. It was a divine evening, blue and windless, and I saw that the Clee in the haugh below was in fine trim; so when the butler suggested that I might try a cast before dinner, I readily agreed. I selected a twelve-foot greenheart from the great rod box in the hall, to save time, borrowed tackle and a fly book, and soon I was crossing the lawn in the delightful mood of trepidation which attends the angler who has not been on a salmon river for a twelvemonth.
There had been rain in the hills, and the river was in perfect condition, the pools the colour of cairngorms, and the streams swirling nobly in great arcs round the beds of shingle. The Clee is an easy water to fish, for there is no need to wade, and very little undergrowth to circumvent. I put up a small Blue Doctor and fished the first pool with care. There were too many salmon topping and tailing, but it is always pleasant to see signs of life, and I was very well content with my job. I rose a fish in the tail of that first pool, but he would not come again. So I walked over half a mile of meadow to the next. There I had no better luck, though I changed the fly twice.
On and on I wandered, oblivious of the fact that the light was failing, and then I came to the pool which is the most famous on the whole Inverclee beat, the Red Scour by name, where I had often killed fish. The sight of the place intoxicated me, the more so as the salmon in it were not skylarking as elsewhere. I saw one great brute come up in a most business-like manner, and I thirsted for his blood. I changed my fly to a large-size Silver Doctor, and put all my skill into covering the swirl under the rocks on the far side. I was rewarded, for at my third cast I was fast in a good fish.
I glanced at my wrist watch after I hooked him, and saw to my consternation that it was a quarter past eight. I was at least a couple of miles from the house, and dinner could not conceivably be later than 8.30, and it would take me twenty minutes to dress. But I dismissed these considerations. A tight line is the most important thing in the world, while it remains tight.
I had brought neither net nor gaff, and to kill the fish I had to get him pretty well beat. He behaved abominably. If he had stuck to the stream I could have worn him out in ten minutes, but after a rush or two he went to the bottom and sulked. He must have sulked for at least twenty minutes. When he changed his mind he took me to the tail of the pool, where the water ran very fast and deep between edges of rock before tumbling over a considerable fall. For a moment I thought he was going to attempt the fall, but he thought better of it. He ran up to the head, where I got my thin shoes badly cut in following him, dived to the bottom for five minutes, and then came to the surface near the tail again, showing considerable signs of distress.
By this time it was almost dark, that clear, lucent, amber darkness which you get in the Highlands in fine weather. I had forgotten all about dinner, and my whole soul was concentrated on that wretched fish. It was my business to tail him, and I debated the best tactics. The proper way would have been to bring him in at right angles to the bank and get his head up on the shore. But that was impossible, since the current ran swift between two steep edges of rock. There was nothing for it but to bring him parallel to the bank and do the best I could. I had the rod in my left hand, with the butt well forward, and knelt down to get a grip of his tail. He was a bigger fish than I had thought — at least twenty pounds. As I reached for him he walloped outward, and I missed my clutch. In bending forward for a second try I overbalanced, and the next I knew I was in the water.
The current in these narrows was like a mill race. Before I knew, I was swirled over the fall, and then I seemed to be drawn a mile down into the deeps of a great pool. I had swallowed pints of water before I came to the surface. I struck out for the nearest bank, got hold of an alder root, and with a good deal of trouble dragged myself up on dry land. What had become of the rod and the fish I had no notion. I could see nothing but a black chasm of water, flecked with foam, and purple ghosts beyond, which were trees and boulders.
I had come out on the wrong side of the river, and the next thing to be done was to get back to Inverclee. But I did not fancy trying to jump the narrows where I had falle
n in. I shook the water out of my eyes and hair, wrung my trousers and jacket, and, sopping and shaken, began to make my way down the stream to look for a crossing. Then I heard a voice. I knew I was no longer on Inverclee land, but I hoped for some river keeper who would show me the best way home, so I shouted a reply.
I got a startling answer. Suddenly two powerful arms clutched me round the middle, and two massive hands were clapped on my mouth. Before I could utter a sound I was swung into the air and felt myself being carried rapidly up the bank away from the river.
I was too much startled to be able to think, and the next thing that happened confused me still further. I found myself on the edge of a road — a subsidiary highway, I remembered, ran on the other side of the Clee — and before me stood a girl and a young man, who, with my two assailants, made a party of four. Also there was a large closed car with the headlights blazing.
I was given no chance to speak. One of the men neatly and expeditiously gagged me — let me add painlessly, for he was evidently an adept at the job. My mouth and jaw were enveloped, but my ears were free. Also my arms were bound to my side with a cord which was tied behind me. Then a large ulster was put over my shoulders and buttoned up in front. All this while the young woman looked on with eyes which, in the glare of the car’s lights, seemed profoundly concerned.
‘Oh, Bawby,’ she wailed, in a voice which I recognised as belonging to the other side of the Atlantic. ‘Can’t you learn to behave. I told you you would get popped in the river if you riled Charlie any more. You can’t say you didn’t deserve it. And there is Aunt Anne coming tomorrow, and you just poison to everybody in the house. You’ve got to go away right now, and then nobody will know.’
‘Sure, he has got to go away,’ said the other young man. ‘Cis and I are going to see him off. Do you hear, Bawby? You have made us all tired, and if you stay on here the Lord knows what will happen. You are not house-broke, and you’ve got to keep away from Glenclee till you learn manners.’