Can these monsters see in the dark? Frédéric asked himself.
Whether they could see, or some subtle sense of touch supplemented their sight, they steered the skiff through the fast-flowing waters. By the time the rain ceased completely, they had covered ten miles; the speed of the current was equal to that of a trotting horse.
We’re doomed! Frédéric thought, horrified.
He had come close to dying so many times during the war that a glimmer of hope persisted, but the hideousness of the ordeal was rendered intolerable by the capture of Corisande, an extension of his person with whom he had shared his joys and pains since infancy.
Because anguish, like all human sensations, has its rhythm of increase and decrease, Frédéric and Corisande eventually fell into a sort of torpor, which prolonged the sentiment of complete impotence. Everything within them was suspended; their very thoughts were losing themselves in a confused future.
First light and dawn appeared, fugitively, rapidly replaced by daylight. Frédéric and Corisande saw that they were on a large crude raft, surrounded by some 15 individuals who seemed to be as much beast as man.
Those sturdy heads, those formidable muzzles that stuck out like the muzzles of baboons, those short legs, those exceedingly long arms, the boar-like hair that grew all over their bodies and the green and yellow eyes, which gleamed in the half-light, revealed a race of men perhaps inferior to the mysterious race that had lived in Chellean times.28 All their weapons and tools were made of wood or hard stone: jade or malachite. There were clubs, axes, harpoons, strange grooved assegais, and other weapons made of jet, twisted into an elongated helix, scrapers and masses that must serve as hammers. The raft was made of branches tied together with lianas and covered with bark.
Frédéric took stock of the Carabao-Men and their equipment mechanically, as he had once spied on German redoubts. Corisande kept her eyes closed almost constantly, in order not to see the hideousness of the creatures.
For some time yet the raft sailed down the river, which had broadened out, the current slowing. Soon, the flow of the waters was no more rapid than a man’s walk.
The image of the Grafina rose up periodically in Frédéric’s memory. What was she doing? Was she dead or a captive? Alive, she would not resign herself to the occurrence; she would organize a pursuit. At that idea, Frédéric’s heart beat more powerfully, and escape plans multiplied. He knew, having heard it from Louise de Gavres, that the agility of the Carabao-Men was quite mediocre. He was a good runner, also trained in boxing and fencing; only shooting had been neglected—from the outset, during the war, command had been substituted for individual action on the part of officers, and he had only rarely, in exceptional circumstances, had to fight with a revolver or a sword.
What good would it do me to be able to shoot, anyway? he said to himself, with desperate irony. If I succeed in running away, only my legs will matter, and perhaps my fists, or one of those hatchets, if chance puts one my way—or even a club!
If he succeeded in escaping, though, could he abandon Corisande, even temporarily? He had an absurd feeling that his presence was necessary to the young woman. Madness! he murmured, in his fever. How can I rescue her, if I’m not free?
The Carabao-Men stopped the raft in a haven and disembarked. Immediately, they crouched down in a clump of trees rendered thicker by tall ferns. From there, they could see out while being invisible themselves. They were manifesting a sort of good humor, and one of them—the most thickset, whose enormous teeth shone like human shells—offered a slice of badly-roasted meat to the captives.
The kidnappers ate voraciously, in the manner of wolves and dogs, devoting two or three thrusts of their teeth to every mouthful, with grunts that doubtless expressed their pleasure. In this manner, they devoured an enormous provision of meat that was nearly raw and bloody—after which, having become sluggish, it seemed that they were about to go to sleep.
Several of them had closed their eyes. The man who had offered the meat to the prisoners watched them as a cat might have watched them. His monstrous face became immobile; his eyes and his mouth revealed confused impressions by slight movements. His eyes were larger than those of the others, a brighter green in color; they gleamed in the shade as much as, and perhaps more than, the eyes of a lion.
What’s passing through that head? Frédéric wondered. What bizarre instinct led them to pursue the caravan? Why haven’t they killed me? Oh yes…their sacrifices to some unknown forces or beings…I have to die ritually…and Corisande…
A long shiver passed down his spine. He loved life, but Corisande’s fate touched him even more deeply than his own. The marshy and musky odor increased the young man’s horror singularly.
“Corisande?” he murmured.
She was lying a few feet away, her legs hobbled like his, sometimes terrified, sometimes seized by an astonishment so profound that it almost abolished the reality. Sometimes, too, she went numb; a sense of fatality took hold of her and the monstrous adventure scarcely troubled her. In response to Frédéric’s appeal she raised her head and tried to get a better view of the young man through the fern-fronds that separated them. She could only perceive a broken image, rendered more indecisive by the gloom—and he could only perceive a paleness in which dilated eyes glistened.
“My poor Frédéric!” she replied. “What will become of you?”
“Ah! You, especially,” he groaned.
The thickset man got up abruptly and headed toward the young woman. He studied her with an ardor that seemed almost benevolent. He spoke in a raucous voice reminiscent of the lowing of a buffalo. His words had no more meaning for them than the melody of the river.
What he said, in a language that went back 30,000 or 40,000 years, in which no consonants could be distinguished and in which the vowels resembled howls, whistles, coughs and sighs, was: “The Pale Girl and Man will not escape the Sons of the Marsh. The Sons of the Marsh can see in the dark; their strength is greater than that of all other men. The Pale Girl will belong to Hourv, the Red Eagle, when the Moon of Jade follows the Moon of Reeds. The following night, the Pale Man will be offered as a sacrifice to the Great Marsh. The waters shall receive his entrails, his feet, his hands and his eyes. Hourv shall have his heart; the chief of chiefs shall have his head; his body will belong to the Eagle clan.”
Thus spoke Hourv, the Red Eagle, as his ancestors had spoken for millennia, without any ferocity, his soul being almost gentle—but his race saw no more cruelty in the immolation of the foreigner than we see in the immolation of oxen, whose cadavers we eat so placidly.
Without any hatred against Frédéric, he conceived for Corisande a sort of love mingled with primitive desire, and he had such a profound sense of the morality of the ancestors that he would wait, for the accomplishment of the rites, until the present lunar cycle and that of the Moon of Reeds had elapsed. In the meantime, he would defend the lives of his prisoners as he defended his own, and he had the right to kill them if the other races arrived with sufficient forces to deliver them.
Although he was sure that his prisoners did not understand any of what he said, he added: “If the Pale Captives succeed in running away, the Red Eagle and his warriors will put them to death. But how can they succeed? For those of their own race they will be invisible in the hours of darkness, when the wind comes from the mountains, heavy rain extinguishes fires, or a mist rises from the waters—but for the Sons of the Marsh they will always be visible; our watchers will know every one of their movements! Has Hourv not seized the Pale Captives from their camp, in the midst of their warriors, blind in the night without fires and stars?”
Corisande and Frédéric listened to that animal voice in amazement. Although Hourv was demonstrating by speaking that he was a man, they could not bring themselves to believe it. The stigmata of the beast were as obvious in him as in a gorilla or an orangutan. His apparent gentleness reassured the young woman vaguely, but Frédéric did not allow himself to be taken in. The war
had informed him with what insouciance, when he has the right—and especially when he has the duty—one man can cut another’s throat. Rape, an even simpler act, appeared to innumerable savages, sometimes benevolent in their customs, as normal as hunting.
“Perhaps,” the young woman murmured, “if we knew how to make ourselves understood, they’d accept a ransom?”
“Perhaps,” he replied.
He did not believe it; he remembered what the Grafina had told him: throughout the centuries, there was no memory of any material or moral exchange between the Carabao-Men and the Sumatrans or the Europeans. No one had ever learned the language of this singular race; rare escaped captives had scarcely reported a few sketchy syllables, reminiscent of the language of wolves, dogs, buffaloes or crows. Thus persisted a mystery that would undoubtedly never be unveiled.
Abruptly, Hourv sat up, listening—a gesture imitated by his companions. Then, all their faces turned toward the other bank.
“Something’s happening,” Frédéric murmured.
He was not mistaken. Through the curtain of foliage, he saw several riders surge forth, followed and preceded by dogs. With a great palpitation, he recognized the lithe body and clear face of the Grafina. He was about to cry out—although the cry would not have carried to the other bank—but brutal hands gagged him, and Corisande too.
As if some obscure divination had altered her, the Grafina came to a halt and examined the location, while two dogs explored the surroundings. In the luminous morning, she looked magnificent; Frédéric’s piercing eyes discerned the night-black eyes that seemed to see through the foliage. It was an illusion; at that distance, the thicket was impenetrable to the eye, although its occupants could see distinctly through the thin interstices.
She hasn’t abandoned us! Frédéric thought. A kind of intoxication passed through his distress. The dull hostility that he had felt toward Louise vanished; nothing remained but admiration for the woman’s beauty and courage.
There are only four of them! he said to himself—but he remembered the Grafina’s skill; if discovered, the Carabao-Men would have been slaughtered by the infallible carbine. Their instincts and millennia-old traditions inclined them to ambush; if direct combat became inevitable, they would go down like rhinoceroses…
Louise de Gavres and Rak had dismounted. Aided by the dogs, they were searching the river-bank for traces. Frédéric knew only too well that they would not find any; even so, an immeasurable hope increased within him as the sagacious seekers prolonged their research. Perhaps some sign would indicate to them that they had to go over to the other bank.
At first, that idea awoke an uplifting image of deliverance; then the young man shuddered as he thought that Louise might fall into a trap. Around him, attentively, all their senses taut, with their axes and assegais in their hands, the Carabao-Men were waiting.
In the end, the Grafina and Rak, having discovered no traces, leapt into the saddle and departed with their companions. The riders drew away. Soon, they disappeared over the horizon and grunted, while a deadly despair gripped the captives, the Carabao-Men grunted half-joyfully and half in disappointment—for they had thought momentarily that chance might deliver the Grafina to them.
A short time later, Hourv gave the signal to depart. Eight Carabao-Men picked up the raft, which 15 Malays would have had difficulty dragging, but which they transported without bending under the strain. Hourv threw Corisande over his shoulder, and a warrior took possession of Frédéric.
The forest, bristling with horns and armored with brushwood and lianas, opposed a strenuous resistance to the invaders. Four men were incessantly hacking down the vegetation with axes or cutting through it with knives. The further away they got from the river, the less difficult the passage became; the shade of old trees limited the pullulation of bushes and grass.
An indeterminate time went by, and then the forest became denser; the axes and knives recommenced hacking and cutting. Finally, the Carabao-Men uttered a raucous screech, which was a cry of victory. Another river was there, as rapid as the first.
The left bank of the river ceased to be a grassland; the Red Forest now occupied the whole extent. Louise de Gavres ordered a halt, dismounted, and signaled Rak to come closer.
“The raft can’t have got this far,” she said. “We would have caught up with it some time ago. “We have to look for the trail on the other bank.”
“Rak thinks so too, Mistress. If you wish, he’ll be the one who will go over to the right bank, with one of the dogs. He’ll recover the trail.”
Louise hesitated momentarily. She was sure that the Carabao-Men would not have been able to navigate on the Yellow River as far as the confines of the savannah without being seen by Rak or herself. On the left bank, their emanations could not have escaped the dogs.
The Grafina did not doubt that they had embarked initially, and Rak agreed. Afterwards, they must have gone deep into the forest—where they would conserve their advantage, for the obstacles would slow down the fugitives and the pursuers equally; moreover, the latter would lose time looking for traces.
“Rak can go over to the other bank,” the Grafina said. “He will know how to become invisible—and he will take Vos with him, the best dog in the islands.”29
Vos was already beside her, as lithe as a leopard, with child-like eyes full of the fire of life, the ears of a wolf, in which the slightest frissons of the grass vibrated, and a sense of smell that continually notified him of the mysterious presence of creatures that had crossed his path or were moving in the vicinity.
Louise put her hand on the dog’s head, then, drawing him toward the track-beater, she murmured: “Vos must follow Rak!”
The retriever, understanding the gesture, uttered a feeble growl; on the warpath, he did not like to leave his mistress—but he was able to obey. He sniffed the adventurer as if he wanted to know him better than he already did, and when Rak went into the river, he went in with him. Rapid as the current was, it could not stop the man or the beast.
Having come ashore on the other bank, they went back upstream while the ascendant Sun dried the man’s garments and the animal’s hide.
The Grafina and her servants followed in parallel on the left bank. An hour went by without any track being discovered.
The Grafina thought that the Carabao-Men must be far away in the forest—unless, having kept watch on the pursuers, they had re-embarked further downstream. As she was reflecting, Rak and Vos stopped. Their attitude left no doubt; they had picked up the trail; it was necessary to rejoin them.
On that side, the vegetation was too dense for the horses to be led. The young woman confided them to one of her companions; the other two were to cross the river with her. It was mere child’s play for the three of them, habitués of woods, brushwood and savannahs, accustomed since childhood to overcome natural obstacles. On campaign, Louise never forgot to bring an impermeable sheath, light and able to float, which kept her weapons and ammunition, of which one often had sovereign need in the wilderness, sheltered from water.
By the time she came ashore, Rak had already explored the forest for 500 meters from the bank.
“Have they headed into the forest?” she asked.
The scout held out a wisp of blonde hair, which would have been sufficient to show that Corisande had been disembarked there, but the revealing traces of the camp were numerous. The Carabao-Men had deemed it futile to take precautions that would have been vain. They were too numerous to be able to hide the vestiges of their passage from clever trackers. They were counting, naturally, on the start they had and the difficulties of the pursuit, in order to reach the bulk of their horde before any attack. Then they would be by far the stronger.
“Do you think they might have re-embarked further on while we were heading upriver?” asked the Grafina.
“This river leads to inhabited lands.”
And it would have taken them in the direction from which Dirk is coming, Louise thought. “Rak’s right,�
�� she continued. “Let’s follow the trail.”
Their passage through the vegetation was facilitated by the passage of the Carabao-Men themselves, and besides, although thick, the forest became less difficult as they drew away from the river. They lost no time, so clear was the trail, not only for Vos’s infallible sense of smell but even for the men.
Evidently, the fugitives had neglected all precautions, sure of having deceived their pursuers long before. Nevertheless, their negligence astonished the Grafina. The Carabao-Men might believe that their lead is long enough for them to have nothing to fear, or might even be hoping that their tracks would be found too late to allow any chance of pursuit, but their immutable traditions, like their savage instincts, should have maintained their mistrust and made them act as if peril were close at hand.
Louise suspected a maneuver that would put them out of range. She thought about it, evoking all the possibilities that her imagination and knowledge of the locale could suggest. Perhaps reinforcements were waiting for them in the forest? That was improbable. The chance that had delivered Corisande and Frédéric into their hands was unforeseeable in time as in space…so a strange coincidence had favored them.
Suddenly, an idea flared up in the young woman’s mind, and she asked: “Are we far from the Vampire River, Rak? Do you think that might lead to one of the lands where the Carabao-Men live?”
There was a tremor in the tracker’s features. “I’m sure of it!” he said. “My grandfather saw them in the region that extends to the fork of the tributary and the larger river—they nearly captured him. It’s one of their three homelands, Mistress…I thought of that as soon as you mentioned it.”
“In that case, Rak, I’ve little doubt as to their intention. The stream is fast-flowing. They’ll embark upon it—and by the time we reach the bank, they’ll be far away!”
“So far,” murmured the scout, “that we can only catch them up in their marshes…after days on end…”
The Givreuse Enigma Page 20