Chapter X: Speculations

Within an hour of our finally deciding to start five litters were
brought up to the door of the cave, each accompanied by four
regular bearers and two spare hands, also a band of about fifty
armed Amahagger, who were to form the escort and carry the
baggage. Three of these litters, of course, were for us, and one
for Billali, who, I was immensely relieved to hear, was to be our
companion, while the fifth I presumed was for the use of Ustane.

“Does the lady go with us, my father?” I asked of Billali, as he
stood superintending things in general.

He shrugged his shoulders as he answered—

“If she wills. In this country the women do what they please. We
worship them, and give them their way, because without them the
world could not go on; they are the source of life.”

“Ah,” I said, the matter never having struck me quite in that
light before.

“We worship them,” he went on, “up to a point, till at last they
get unbearable, which,” he added, “they do about every second
generation.”

“And then what do you do?” I asked, with curiosity.

“Then,” he answered, with a faint smile, “we rise, and kill the
old ones as an example to the young ones, and to show them that
we are the strongest. My poor wife was killed in that way three
years ago. It was very sad, but to tell thee the truth, my son,
life has been happier since, for my age protects me from the
young ones.”

“In short,” I replied, quoting the saying of a great man whose
wisdom has not yet lightened the darkness of the Amahagger, “thou
hast found thy position one of greater freedom and less
responsibility.”

This phrase puzzled him a little at first from its vagueness,
though I think my translation hit off its sense very well, but at
last he saw it, and appreciated it.

“Yes, yes, my Baboon,” he said, “I see it now, but all the
‘responsibilities’ are killed, at least some of them are, and
that is why there are so few old women about just now. Well, they
brought it on themselves. As for this girl,” he went on, in a
graver tone, “I know not what to say. She is a brave girl, and
she loves the Lion (Leo); thou sawest how she clung to him, and
saved his life. Also, she is, according to our custom, wed to
him, and has a right to go where he goes, unless,” he added
significantly, “_She_ would say her no, for her word overrides
all rights.”

“And if _She_ bade her leave him, and the girl refused? What
then?”

“If,” he said, with a shrug, “the hurricane bids the tree to
bend, and it will not; what happens?”

And then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked to
his litter, and in ten minutes from that time we were all well
under way.

It took us an hour and more to cross the cup of the volcanic
plain, and another half-hour or so to climb the edge on the
farther side. Once there, however, the view was a very fine one.
Before us was a long steep slope of grassy plain, broken here and
there by clumps of trees mostly of the thorn tribe. At the bottom
of this gentle slope, some nine or ten miles away, we could make
out a dim sea of marsh, over which the foul vapours hung like
smoke about a city. It was easy going for the bearers down the
slopes, and by midday we had reached the borders of the dismal
swamp. Here we halted to eat our midday meal, and then, following
a winding and devious path, plunged into the morass. Presently
the path, at any rate to our unaccustomed eyes, grew so faint as
to be almost indistinguishable from those made by the aquatic
beasts and birds, and it is to this day a mystery to me how our
bearers found their way across the marshes. Ahead of the
cavalcade marched two men with long poles, which they now and
again plunged into the ground before them, the reason of this
being that the nature of the soil frequently changed from causes
with which I am not acquainted, so that places which might be
safe enough to cross one month would certainly swallow the
wayfarer the next. Never did I see a more dreary and depressing
scene. Miles on miles of quagmire, varied only by bright green
strips of comparatively solid ground, and by deep and sullen
pools fringed with tall rushes, in which the bitterns boomed and
the frogs croaked incessantly: miles on miles of it without a
break, unless the fever fog can be called a break. The only life
in this great morass was that of the aquatic birds, and the
animals that fed on them, of both of which there were vast
numbers. Geese, cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover
swarmed all around us, many being of varieties that were quite
new to me, and all so tame that one could almost have knocked
them over with a stick. Among these birds I especially noticed a
very beautiful variety of painted snipe, almost the size of a
woodcock, and with a flight more resembling that bird’s than an
English snipe’s. In the pools, too, was a species of small
alligator or enormous iguana, I do not know which, that fed,
Billali told me, upon the waterfowl, also large quantities of a
hideous black water-snake, of which the bite is very dangerous,
though not, I gathered, so deadly as a cobra’s or a puff adder’s.
The bull-frogs were also very large, and with voices
proportionate to their size; and as for the mosquitoes—the
“musqueteers,” as Job called them—they were, if possible, even
worse than they had been on the river, and tormented us greatly.
Undoubtedly, however, the worst feature of the swamp was the
awful smell of rotting vegetation that hung about it, which was
at times positively overpowering, and the malarious exhalations
that accompanied it, which we were of course obliged to breathe.

On we went through it all, till at last the sun sank in sullen
splendour just as we reached a spot of rising ground about two
acres in extent—a little oasis of dry in the midst of the miry
wilderness—where Billali announced that we were to camp. The
camping, however, turned out to be a very simple process, and
consisted, in fact, in sitting down on the ground round a scanty
fire made of dry reeds and some wood that had been brought with
us. However, we made the best we could of it, and smoked and ate
with such appetite as the smell of damp, stifling heat would
allow, for it was very hot on this low land, and yet, oddly
enough, chilly at times. But, however hot it was, we were glad
enough to keep near the fire, because we found that the
mosquitoes did not like the smoke. Presently we rolled ourselves
up in our blankets and tried to go to sleep, but so far as I was
concerned the bull-frogs, and the extraordinary roaring and
alarming sound produced by hundreds of snipe hovering high in the
air, made sleep an impossibility, to say nothing of our other
discomforts. I turned and looked at Leo, who was next me; he was
dozing, but his face had a flushed appearance that I did not
like, and by the flickering fire-light I saw Ustane, who was
lying on the other side of him, raise herself from time to time
upon her elbow, and look at him anxiously enough.

However, I could do nothing for him, for we had all already taken
a good dose of quinine, which was the only preventive we had; so
I lay and watched the stars come out by thousands, till all the
immense arch of heaven was strewn with glittering points, and
every point a world! Here was a glorious sight by which man might
well measure his own insignificance! Soon I gave up thinking
about it, for the mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple
with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as
he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce His purpose from His
works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the
strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind
our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk,
and over-weight our feeble reason till it fell and we were
drowned in the depths of our own vanity. For what is the first
result of man’s increased knowledge interpreted from Nature’s
book by the persistent effort of his purblind observation? Is it
not but too often to make him question the existence of his
Maker, or indeed of any intelligent purpose beyond his own? The
truth is veiled, because we could no more look upon her glory
than we can upon the sun. It would destroy us. Full knowledge is
not for man as man is here, for his capacities, which he is apt
to think so great, are indeed but small. The vessel is soon
filled, and, were one-thousandth part of the unutterable and
silent wisdom that directs the rolling of those shining spheres,
and the Force which makes them roll, pressed into it, it would be
shattered into fragments. Perhaps in some other place and time it
may be otherwise, who can tell? Here the lot of man born of the
flesh is but to endure midst toil and tribulation, to catch at
the bubbles blown by Fate, which he calls pleasure, thankful if
before they burst they rest a moment in his hand, and when the
tragedy is played out, and his hour comes to perish, to pass
humbly whither he knows not.

Above me, as I lay, shone the eternal stars, and there at my feet
the impish marsh-born balls of fire rolled this way and that,
vapour-tossed and earth-desiring, and methought that in the two I
saw a type and image of what man is, and what perchance man may
one day be, if the living Force who ordained him and them should
so ordain this also. Oh, that it might be ours to rest year by
year upon that high level of the heart to which at times we
momentarily attain! Oh, that we could shake loose the prisoned
pinions of the soul and soar to that superior point, whence, like
to some traveller looking out through space from Darien’s
giddiest peak, we might gaze with spiritual eyes deep into
Infinity!

What would it be to cast off this earthy robe, to have done for
ever with these earthy thoughts and miserable desires; no longer,
like those corpse candles, to be tossed this way and that, by
forces beyond our control; or which, if we can theoretically
control them, we are at times driven by the exigencies of our
nature to obey! Yes, to cast them off, to have done with the foul
and thorny places of the world; and, like to those glittering
points above me, to rest on high wrapped for ever in the
brightness of our better selves, that even now shines in us as
fire faintly shines within those lurid balls, and lay down our
littleness in that wide glory of our dreams, that invisible but
surrounding Good, from which all truth and beauty comes!

These and many such thoughts passed through my mind that night.
They come to torment us all at times. I say to torment, for,
alas! thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of
thought. What is the purpose of our feeble crying in the awful
silences of space? Can our dim intelligence read the secrets of
that star-strewn sky? Does any answer come out of it? Never any
at all, nothing but echoes and fantastic visions! And yet we
believe that there is an answer, and that upon a time a new Dawn
will come blushing down the ways of our enduring night. We
believe it, for its reflected beauty even now shines up
continually in our hearts from beneath the horizon of the grave,
and we call it Hope. Without Hope we should suffer moral death,
and by the help of Hope we yet may climb to Heaven, or at the
worst, if she also prove but a kindly mockery given to hold us
from despair, be gently lowered into the abysses of eternal
sleep.

Then I fell to reflecting upon the undertaking on which we were
bent, and what a wild one it was, and yet how strangely the story
seemed to fit in with what had been written centuries ago upon
the sherd. Who was this extraordinary woman, Queen over a people
apparently as extraordinary as herself, and reigning amidst the
vestiges of a lost civilisation? And what was the meaning of this
story of the Fire that gave unending life? Could it be possible
that any fluid or essence should exist which might so fortify
these fleshy walls that they should from age to age resist the
mines and batterings of decay? It was possible, though not
probable. The infinite continuation of life would not, as poor
Vincey said, be so marvellous a thing as the production of life
and its temporary endurance. And if it were true, what then? The
person who found it could no doubt rule the world. He could
accumulate all the wealth in the world, and all the power, and
all the wisdom that is power. He might give a lifetime to the
study of each art or science. Well, if that were so, and this
_She_ were practically immortal, which I did not for one moment
believe, how was it that, with all these things at her feet, she
preferred to remain in a cave amongst a society of cannibals?
This surely settled the question. The whole story was monstrous,
and only worthy of the superstitious days in which it was
written. At any rate I was very sure that _I_ would not attempt
to attain unending life. I had had far too many worries and
disappointments and secret bitternesses during my forty odd years
of existence to wish that this state of affairs should be
continued indefinitely. And yet I suppose that my life has been,
comparatively speaking, a happy one.

And then, reflecting that at the present moment there was far
more likelihood of our earthly careers being cut exceedingly
short than of their being unduly prolonged, I at last managed to
get to sleep, a fact for which anybody who reads this narrative,
if anybody ever does, may very probably be thankful.

When I woke again it was just dawning, and the guard and bearers
were moving about like ghosts through the dense morning mists,
getting ready for our start. The fire had died quite down, and I
rose and stretched myself, shivering in every limb from the damp
cold of the dawn. Then I looked at Leo. He was sitting up,
holding his hands to his head, and I saw that his face was
flushed and his eye bright, and yet yellow round the pupil.

“Well, Leo,” I said, “how do you feel?”

“I feel as though I were going to die,” he answered hoarsely. “My
head is splitting, my body is trembling, and I am as sick as a
cat.”

I whistled, or if I did not whistle I felt inclined to—Leo had
got a sharp attack of fever. I went to Job, and asked him for the
quinine, of which fortunately we had still a good supply, only to
find that Job himself was not much better. He complained of pains
across the back, and dizziness, and was almost incapable of
helping himself. Then I did the only thing it was possible to do
under the circumstances—gave them both about ten grains of
quinine, and took a slightly smaller dose myself as a matter of
precaution. After that I found Billali, and explained to him how
matters stood, asking at the same time what he thought had best
be done. He came with me, and looked at Leo and Job (whom, by the
way, he had named the Pig on account of his fatness, round face,
and small eyes).

“Ah,” he said, when we were out of earshot, “the fever! I thought
so. The Lion has it badly, but he is young, and he may live. As
for the Pig, his attack is not so bad; it is the ‘little fever’
which he has; that always begins with pains across the back, it
will spend itself upon his fat.”

“Can they go on, my father?” I asked.

“Nay, my son, they must go on. If they stop here they will
certainly die; also, they will be better in the litters than on
the ground. By to-night, if all goes well, we shall be across the
marsh and in good air. Come, let us lift them into the litters
and start, for it is very bad to stand still in this morning fog.
We can eat our meal as we go.”

This we accordingly did, and with a heavy heart I once more set
out upon our strange journey. For the first three hours all went
as well as could be expected, and then an accident happened that
nearly lost us the pleasure of the company of our venerable
friend Billali, whose litter was leading the cavalcade. We were
going through a particularly dangerous stretch of quagmire, in
which the bearers sometimes sank up to their knees. Indeed, it
was a mystery to me how they contrived to carry the heavy litters
at all over such ground as that which we were traversing, though
the two spare hands, as well as the four regular ones, had of
course to put their shoulders to the pole.

Presently, as we blundered and floundered along, there was a
sharp cry, then a storm of exclamations, and, last of all, a most
tremendous splash, and the whole caravan halted.

I jumped out of my litter and ran forward. About twenty yards
ahead was the edge of one of those sullen peaty pools of which I
have spoken, the path we were following running along the top of
its bank, that, as it happened, was a steep one. Looking towards
this pool, to my horror I saw that Billali’s litter was floating
on it, and as for Billali himself, he was nowhere to be seen. To
make matters clear I may as well explain at once what had
happened. One of Billali’s bearers had unfortunately trodden on a
basking snake, which had bitten him in the leg, whereon he had,
not unnaturally, let go of the pole, and then, finding that he
was tumbling down the bank, grasped at the litter to save
himself. The result of this was what might have been expected.
The litter was pulled over the edge of the bank, the bearers let
go, and the whole thing, including Billali and the man who had
been bitten, rolled into the slimy pool. When I got to the edge
of the water neither of them were to be seen; indeed, the
unfortunate bearer never was seen again. Either he struck his
head against something, or got wedged in the mud, or possibly the
snake-bite paralyzed him. At any rate he vanished. But though
Billali was not to be seen, his whereabouts was clear enough from
the agitation of the floating litter, in the bearing cloth and
curtains of which he was entangled.

“He is there! Our father is there!” said one of the men, but he
did not stir a finger to help him, nor did any of the others.
They simply stood and stared at the water.

“Out of the way, you brutes!” I shouted in English, and throwing
off my hat I took a run and sprang well out into the horrid
slimy-looking pool. A couple of strokes took me to where Billali
was struggling beneath the cloth.

Somehow, I do not quite know how, I managed to push it free of
him, and his venerable head all covered with green slime, like
that of a yellowish Bacchus with ivy leaves, emerged upon the
surface of the water. The rest was easy, for Billali was an
eminently practical individual, and had the common sense not to
grasp hold of me as drowning people often do, so I got him by the
arm, and towed him to the bank, through the mud of which we were
with difficulty dragged. Such a filthy spectacle as we presented
I have never seen before or since, and it will perhaps give some
idea of the almost superhuman dignity of Billali’s appearance
when I say that, coughing, half-drowned, and covered with mud and
green slime as he was, with his beautiful beard coming to a
dripping point, like a Chinaman’s freshly-oiled pig-tail, he
still looked venerable and imposing.

“Ye dogs,” he said, addressing the bearers, as soon as he had
sufficiently recovered to speak, “ye left me, your father, to
drown. Had it not been for this stranger, my son the Baboon,
assuredly I should have drowned. Well, I will remember it,” and
he fixed them with his gleaming though slightly watery eye, in a
way I saw that they did not like, though they tried to appear
sulkily indifferent.

“As for thee, my son,” the old man went on, turning towards me
and grasping my hand, “rest assured that I am thy friend through
good and evil. Thou hast saved my life: perchance a day may come
when I shall save thine.”

After that we cleaned ourselves as best we could, fished out the
litter, and went on, _minus_ the man who had been drowned. I do
not know if it was owing to his being an unpopular character, or
from native indifference and selfishness of temperament, but I am
bound to say that nobody seemed to grieve much over his sudden
and final disappearance, unless, perhaps, it was the men who had
to do his share of the work.