Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Far in the north a curtain of mist hung on the sea, dense, motionless as the fog on the Grand Banks. He never moved his eyes from it; he knew what it was. Behind it lay the Island of Grief.

  Ail the year round the Island of Grief is hidden by the banks of mist, ramparts of dead white fog encircling it on every side. Ships give it wide berth. Some speak of warm springs on the island whose waters flow far out to sea, rising in steam eternally.

  The pelt hunter had come back with tales of forests and deer and flowers everywhere; but he had been drinking much, and much was forgiven him. —

  The body of the college youth tossed up in the cove on the mainland was battered out of recognition, but some said, when found, one hand clutched a crimson blossom half wilted, but broad as a sap pan.

  So Kent lay motionless beside his canoe, burned with thirst, every nerve vibrating, thinking all these things. It was not fear, that whitened the firm flesh under the tan; it was the fear of fear. He must not think — he must throttle dread; his eyes must never falter, his head never turn from that wall of mist across the sea. With set teeth he crushed back terror; with glittering eyes he looked into the hollow eyes of fright. And so he conquered fear.

  He rose. The sea birds whirled up into the sky, pitching, tossing, screaming, till the sharp flapping of their pinions set the snapping echoes flying among the rocks.

  Under the canoe’s sharp prow the kelp bobbed and dipped and parted; the sunlit waves ran out ahead, glittering, dancing. Splash! splash! bow and stern! And now he knelt again, and the polished paddle swung and dipped, and swept and swung and dipped again.

  Far behind, the clamour of the sea birds lingered in his ears, till the mellow dip of the paddle drowned all sound and the sea was a sea of silence. —

  No wind came to cool the hot sweat on cheek and breast. The sun blazed a path of flame before him, and he followed out into the waste of waters. The still ocean divided under the bows and rippled innocently away on either side, tinkling, foaming, sparkling like the current in a woodland brook. He looked around at the world of flattened water, and the fear of fear rose up and gripped his throat again. Then he lowered his head, like a tortured bull, and shook the fear of fear from his throat, and drove the paddle into the sea as a butcher stabs, to the hilt.

  So at last he came to the wall of mist. It was thin at first, thin and cool, but it thickened and grew warmer, and the fear of fear dragged at his head, but he would not look behind.

  Into the fog the canoe shot; the gray water ran by, high as the gunwales, oily, silent. Shapes flickered across the bows, pillars of mist that rode the waters, robed in films of tattered shadows. Gigantic forms towered to dizzy heights above him, shaking out shredded shrouds of cloud. The vast draperies of the fog swayed and hung and trembled as he brushed them; the white twilight deepened to a sombre gloom. And now it grew thinner; the fog became a mist, and the mist a haze, and the haze floated away and vanished into the blue of the heavens.

  All around lay a sea of pearl and sapphire, lapping, lapping on a silver shoal.

  So he came to the Island of Grief. —

  III

  On the silver shoal the waves washed and washed, breaking like crushed opals where the sands sang with the humming froth.

  Troops of little shore birds, wading on the shoal, tossed their sun-tipped wings and scuttled inland, where, dappled with shadow from the fringing forest, the white beach of the island stretched.

  The water all around was shallow, limpid as crystal, and he saw the ribbed sand shining on the bottom, where purple seaweed floated, and delicate sea creatures darted and swarmed and scattered again at the dip of his paddle.

  Like velvet rubbed on velvet the canoe brushed across the sand. He staggered to his feet, stumbled out, dragged the canoe high up under the trees, turned it bottom upward, and sank beside it, face downward in the sand. Sleep came to drive away the fear of fear, but hunger, thirst, and fever fought with sleep, and he dreamed — dreamed of a rope that sawed his neck, of the fight in, the woods, and the shots. He dreamed, too, of the camp, of his forty pounds of spruce gum, of Tully, and of Bates. He dreamed of the fire and the smoke-scorched kettle, of the foul odour of musty bedding, of the greasy cards, and of his own new pack, hoarded for weeks to please the others. All this he dreamed, lying there face downward in the sand; but he did not dream of the face of the dead.

  The shadows of the leaves moved on his blonde head, crisp with clipped curls. A butterfly flitted around him, alighting now on his legs, now on the back of his bronzed hands. All the afternoon the bees hung droning among the wildwood blossoms; the leaves above scarcely rustled; the shore birds brooded along the water’s edge; the thin tide, sleeping on the sand, mirrored the sky.

  Twilight paled the zenith; a breeze moved in the deeper woods; a star glimmered, went out, glimmered again, faded, and glimmered.

  Night came. A moth darted to and fro under the trees; a beetle hummed around a heap of seaweed and fell scrambling in the sand. Somewhere among the trees a ‘sound had become distinct, the song of a little brook, melodious, interminable. He heard it in his dream; it threaded all his dreams like a needle of silver, and like a needle it pricked him — pricked his dry throat and cracked lips. It could not awake him; the cool night swathed him head and foot.

  Toward dawn a bird woke up and piped. Other birds stirred, restless, half awakened; a gull spread a cramped wing on the shore, preened its feathers, scratched its tufted neck, and took two drowsy steps toward the sea.

  The sea breeze stirred out behind the mist bank; it raised the feathers on the sleeping gulls; it set the leaves whispering. A twig snapped, broke off, and fell. Kent stirred, sighed, trembled, and awoke.

  The first thing he heard was the song of the brook, and he stumbled straight into the woods. There it lay, a thin, deep stream in the gray morning light, and he stretched himself beside it and laid his cheek in it. A bird drank in the pool, too — a little fluffy bird, bright-eyed and fearless.

  His knees were firmer when at last he rose, heedless of the drops that beaded lips and chin. With his knife he dug and scraped at some white roots that hung half meshed in the bank of the brook, and when he had cleaned them in the pool he ate them.

  The sun stained the sky when he went down to the canoe, but the eternal curtain of fog, far out at sea, hid it as yet from sight.

  He lifted the canoe, bottom upwards, to his head, and, paddle and pole in either hand, carried it into the forest.

  After he had set it down he stood a moment, opening and shutting his knife. Then he looked up into the trees. There were birds there, if he could get at them. He looked at the brook. There were prints of his fingers in the sand; there, too, was the print of something else — a deer’s pointed hoof.

  He had nothing but his knife. He opened it again and looked at it.

  That day he dug for clams and ate them raw. He waded out into the shallows, too, and jabbed at fish with his setting pole, but hit nothing except a yellow crab.

  Fire was what he wanted. He hacked and chipped at flinty-looking pebbles, and scraped tinder from a stick of sun-dried driftwood. His knuckles bled, but no fire came. —

  That night he heard deer in the woods, and could not sleep for thinking, until the dawn came up behind the wall of mist, and he rose with it to drink his fill at the brook and tear raw clams with his white teeth. Again he fought for fire, craving it as he had never craved water, but his knuckles bled, and the knife scraped on the flint in vain.

  His mind, perhaps, had suffered somewhat. The white beach seemed to rise and fall like a white carpet on a gusty hearth. The birds, too, that ran along the sand, seemed big and juicy, like partridges; and he chased them, hurling shells and bits of driftwood at them till he could scarcely keep his feet for the rising, plunging beach — or carpet, whichever it was. That night the deer aroused him at intervals. He heard them splashing and grunting and crackling along the brook. Once he arose and stole after them, knife in hand, till a false step into the br
ook awoke him to his folly, and he felt his way back to the canoe trembling.

  Morning came, and again he drank at the brook, lying on the sand where countless heartshaped hoofs had passed leaving clean imprints; and again he ripped the raw clams from their shells and swallowed them, whimpering.

  All day long the white beach rose and fell and heaved and flattened under his bright dry eye’s. He chased the shore birds at times, till the unsteady beach tripped him up and he fell full length in the sand. Then he would rise moaning, and creep into the shadow of the wood, and watch the little song-birds in the branches, moaning, always moaning.

  His hands, sticky with blood, hacked steel and flint together, but so feebly that now even the cold sparks no longer came.

  He began to fear the advancing night; he dreaded to hear the big warm deer among the thickets. Fear clutched him suddenly, and he lowered his head and set his teeth and shook fear from his throat again. —

  Then he started aimlessly into the woods, crowding past bushes, scraping trees, treading on moss and twig and mouldy stump, his bruised hands swinging, always swinging. —

  The sun set in the mist as he came out of the woods on to another beach — a warm, soft beach, crimsoned by the glow in the evening clouds.

  And on the sand at his feet lay a young girl asleep, swathed in the silken garment of her own black hair, round limbed, brown, smooth as the bloom on the tawny beach.

  A gull flapped overhead, screaming. Her eyes, deeper than night, unclosed. Then her lips parted in a cry, soft with sleep, “Iho!”

  She rose, rubbing her velvet eyes. “Iho!” she cried in wonder; “Inah!”

  The gilded sand settled around her little feet. Her cheeks crimsoned.

  “E-ho! E-ho!” she whispered, and hid her face in her hair.

  IV

  The bridge of the stars spans the sky seas; the sun and the moon are the travellers who pass over it. This was also known in the lodges of the Isantee, hundreds of years ago. Chaske told it to Harpam, and when Harpam knew he told it to Hapeda; and so the knowledge spread to Harka, and from Winona to Weharka, up and down, across and ever across, woof and web, until it came to the Island of Grief. And how? God knows!

  Weharka, prattling in the tules, may have told Ne-ka; and Ne-ka, high in the November clouds, may have told Kay-oshk, who told it to Shinge-his, who told it to Skee-skah, who told it to Se-so-Kah. —

  Iho! Inah! Behold the wonder of it! And this is the fate of all knowledge that comes to the Island of Grief.

  As the red glow died in the sky, and the sand swam in shadows, the girl parted the silken curtains of her hair and looked at him.

  “Eho!” she whispered again in soft delight.

  For now it was plain to her that he was the sun! He had crossed the bridge of stars in the blue twilight; he had come! “E-to!”

  She stepped nearer, shivering, faint with the ecstasy of this holy miracle wrought before her.

  He was the Sun! Hi’s blood streaked the sky at dawn; his blood stained the clouds at even. In his eyes the blue of the sky still lingered, smothering two blue stars; and his body was as white as the breast of the Moon. —

  She opened both arms, hands timidly stretched, palm upward. Her face was raised to his, her eyes slowly closed; the deep-fringed lids trembled.

  Like a young priestess she stood, motionless save for the sudden quiver of a limb, a quick pulse-flutter in the rounded throat. And so she worshipped, naked and unashamed, even after he, reeling, fell heavily forward on his face; even when the evening breeze stealing over the sands stirred the hair on his head, as winds stir the fur of a dead animal in the dust.

  When the morning sun peered over the wall of mist, and she saw it was the sun, and she saw him, flung on the sand at her feet, then she knew that he was a man, only a man, pallid as death and smeared with blood. —

  And yet — miracle of miracles — the divine wonder in her eyes deepened, and her body seemed to swoon, and fall a-trembling, and swoon again. —

  For, although it was but a man who lay at her feet, it had been easier for her to look upon a god.

  He dreamed that he breathed fire — fire, that he craved as he had never craved water. Mad with delirium, he knelt before the flames, rubbing his torn hands, washing them in the crimson-scented flames. He had water, too, pool scented water, that sprayed his burning flesh, that washed in his eyes, his hair, his throat. After that came hunger, a fierce rending agony, that scorched and clutched and tore at his entrails; but that, too, died away, and he dreamed that he had eaten and all his flesh was warm. Then he dreamed that he slept; and when he slept he dreamed no more.

  One day he awoke and found her stretched beside him, soft palms tightly closed, smiling, asleep.

  V

  Now the days began to run more swiftly than the tide along the tawny beach; and the nights, star-dusted and blue, came and vanished and returned, only to exhale at dawn like perfume from a violet.

  They counted hours as they counted the golden bubbles, winking with a million eyes along the foam-flecked shore; and the hours ended, and began, and glimmered, iridescent, and ended as bubbles end in a tiny rainbow haze.

  There was still fire in the world; it flashed up at her touch and where she chose. A bow strung with the silk of her own hair, an arrow winged like a sea bird and tipped with shell, a line from the silver tendon of a deer, a hook of polished bone — these were the mysteries he learned, and learned them laughing, her silken head bent close to his. The first night that the bow was wrought and the glossy string attuned, she stole into the moonlit forest to the brook; and there they stood, whispering, listening, and whispering, though neither understood the voice they loved.

  In the deeper woods, Kaug, the porcupine, scraped and snuffed. They heard Wabose’ the rabbit, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat loping across dead leaves in the moonlight Skee-skah, the woodduck, sailed past, noiseless, gorgeous as a floating blossom.

  Out on the ocean’s placid silver, Shinge-his, the diver, shook the scented silence with his idle laughter, till Kay-oshk, the gray gull, stirred in his slumber. There came a sudden ripple in the stream, a mellow splash, a soft sound on the sand.

  “Iho! Behold I” —

  “I see nothing.” —

  .The beloved voice was only a wordless melody to her.

  “Iho! Ta-hinca, the red deer! E-ho! The buck will follow!”

  “Ta-hinca,” he repeated, notching the arrow.

  “E-to! Ta-mdoka!” —

  So he drew the arrow to the head, and the gray gull feathers brushed his ear, and the darkness hummed with the harmony of the singing string.

  Thus died Ta-mdoka, the buck deer of seven prongs.

  VI

  As an apple tossed spinning into the air, so spun the world above the hand that tossed it into space.

  And one day in early spring, Se-so-Kah, the robin, awoke at dawn, and saw a girl at the foot of the blossoming tree holding a babe cradled in the silken sheets of her hair.

  At its feeble cry, Kaug, the porcupine, raised his quilled head. Wabose, the rabbit, sat still with palpitating sides. Kay-oshk, the gray gull, tiptoed along the beach.

  Kent knelt with one bronzed arm around them both.

  “Iho! Inah!” whispered the girl, and held the babe up in the rosy flames of dawn.

  But Kent trembled as he looked, and his eyes filled. On the pale green moss their shadows lay — three shadows. But the shadow of the babe was white as froth.

  Because it was the firstborn son, they named it Chaske; and the girl sang as she cradled it there in the silken vestments of her hair; all day long in the sunshine she sang:

  Wa-wa, wa-wa, wa-we — yea;

  Kah-ween, nee-zheka Ke-diaus-ai,

  Ke-gah nau-wai, ne-me-go S’ween,

  Ne-baun, ne-baun, ne-daun-is ais.

  E-we wa-wa, wa-we — yea;

  E-we wa-wa, wa-we — yea.

  Out in the calm ocean, Shinge-his, the diver, listened, preening his satin breast in silence. In the
forest, Ta-hinca, the red deer, turned her delicate head to the wind.

  That night Kent thought of the dead, for the first time since he had come to the Key of Grief.

  “Ake-u! ake-u!” chirped Se-so-Kah, the robin. But the dead never come again. —

  “Beloved, sit close to us,” whispered the girl, watching his troubled eyes. “Ma-cante maseca.” —

  But he looked at the babe and its white shadow on the moss, and he only sighed: “Macante maseca, beloved! Death sits watching us across the sea.”

  Now for the first time he knew more than the fear of fear; he knew fear. And with fear came grief.

  He never before knew that grief lay hidden there in the forest. Now he knew it. Still, that happiness, eternally reborn when two small hands reached up around his neck, when feeble fingers clutched his hand — that happiness that Se-so-Kah understood, chirping to his brooding mate — that Ta-mdoka knew, licking his dappled fawns — that happiness gave him heart to meet grief calmly, in dreams or in the forest depths, and it helped him to look into the hollow eyes of fear.

  He often thought of the camp now; of Bates, his blanket mate; of Dyce, whose wrist he had broken with a blow; of Tully, whose brother he had ‘shot. He even seemed to hear the shot, the sudden report among the hemlocks; again he saw the haze of smoke, he caught a glimpse of a tall form falling through the bushes.

  He remembered every minute incident of the trial: Bates’s hand laid on his shoulder; Tully, red-bearded and wild-eyed, demanding his death; while Dyce spat and spat and smoked and kicked at the blackened log-ends projecting from the fire. He remembered, too, the verdict, and Tully’s terrible laugh; and the new jute rope that they stripped off the market-sealed gum packs.

  He thought of these things, sometimes wading out on the shoals, shell-tipped fish spear poised: at such times he would miss his fish. He thought of it sometimes when he knelt by the forest stream listening for Ta-hinca’s splash among the cresses: at such moments the feathered shaft whistled far from the mark, and Tamdoka stamped and snorted till even the white fisher, stretched on a rotting log, flattened his whiskers and stole away into the forest’s blackest, depths.