Chapter XIV: Into the Unknown

Over the crest of the mountains the sun showed its edge, and slowly rose. An elephant, lifting his brown trunk towards it, trumpeted long and loud. The pink and gray of the daylight filtered into the sky and drove away the shadows lying deep in the ravines of the mountain. The pachyderms chained to their pickets before the gate of the fort rocked slowly from side to side.

Seated on a packing-case Pierre was overseeing the loading of the baggage. By blows of their ankuses and with cries and insults the mahouts made their beasts bend their necks and forced them to kneel. On the square pack-saddles, strengthened by thick belts of split bamboo, the sacks of rice and the packages of provisions were heaped. Each elephant, after its loading was finished, with a slow pitching movement raised itself and took up its place ready for the start. The mahouts, crouched on their great necks, exchanged jokes with the Cambodian riflemen camped around them and to whom the headman, standing before the emptied packing-cases distributed munitions and arms: a Gras musket, model of 1874, and one hundred and fifty cartridges to each man.

A flock of egrets rising from the bank of the canal flew across the shining sky. Their sharp cries made Father Ravennes lift his head. He watched for a moment their glittering flight in the direction of the mountain, then he turned to his two guides:

"You understand, do you not? We are to cross the canal and strike towards the east. No one except you two, Sahib Lursac and myself is to know the exact object of the expedition."

The two men made a sign of agreement. Their long Moï lances in their clenched hands, their loins swathed in narrow cloth bands, they stretched their naked bodies, over which the muscles stood out clearly, and smiled with an animal pleasure in the growing warmth of the day.

One of them said:

"That's understood, Father. For three nights we are to march across the plain, then on the morning of the fourth day we are to turn and go straight towards the Pou-Kas."

"Yes," agreed Lursac, "that is right. But shall we have, by that time, got far enough round the mountain to take it in the rear? Understand me well: it is absolutely necessary for us to come out on the other face of the plateau and not before the temple itself. What we have to do is to surprise them. To do that there is only one way: to arrive there by a path which no one has thought of, and to catch them in the rear. It is above all necessary that before attacking the Pou-Kas itself we must have got well round it."

The man who had already spoken again assured him:

"We understand: the three days' march towards the east will be plenty. But then those people will see where we are going, and..."

With his finger he pointed at the riflemen and the mahouts grouped before the fort.

Lursac stopped him.

"Don't worry about them," said he, "I will undertake to make them march."

The man looked at him thoughtfully.

"Perhaps it would have been better to tell them, but you are the master...."

A ray of sunshine slanting towards the valley shed an oblique light upon it and illuminated the fort. The bespattered straw roofs showed their steep slopes of blazing yellow against the morning sky.

Pierre watched contemplatively the familiar scene now so vividly illuminated by the sunlight. He thought of his arrival three months earlier. The missionary dropped his hand upon his shoulder.

"The time is come," said he.

Pierre shivered and signalled to the guides.

"Start!"

The two men set out towards the canal and behind them the caravan stirred into motion.

* * * * *

They were struggling through the desert. Around them the sun beat heavily upon the naked sandy plain which reflected its rays mercilessly. Here and there dried-up swamps showed their clay bottoms covered all over with heat cracks, while the herbage, which during the rainy season had made a girdle of green about them, hung yellow, withered and sapless.

Far away, in the west, along the blue horizon, the banks of the canal with their string of reddish mangroves made a thin edging which grew smaller and smaller with every hour of their march. Distant and threatening, the Moï mountains now made under the burning sky but a single confused crowd of peaks above which the Pou-Kas alone soared clear and dominating.

Towards evening the first hillocks made their appearance. Like small waves stricken into stillness the plain broke into undulations which ran east and west so that the setting sun shining over their tops barred them alternately with light and shade.

Between two hillocks where the course of a dried-up stream had still left a patch of stagnant water the guides called a halt. Then, in the limpid night, the fires of their first camp shot up in twisted flame and threw against the shoulders of the hills the magnified shadows of the elephants sporting in the slimy water.

On the summit of one of the hillocks one of Father Ravennes' guides had taken his stand as sentinel. He stood erect, immobile, leaning on his lance. Against the milky sky his body stood out in its barbaric profile, and through the night, until the dawn, his guttural voice cried out the hour of the watch at the measured time.

For two days more, the march resumed at dawn continued all day till night across the Waterless Country, a gloomy land made desolate by drought. Under the sky, shining like a polished steel mirror, the desert flamed monotonous and endless. The wind tearing down from the high plateau to the north swept it with long strokes. The sand rose up in clouds and rolled round the caravan, whipping the faces of the men, scorching their throats and leaving between their cracked lips voices which had sunk to a hoarse whisper and their breath dry and laboring. The heat of the ground burnt their feet through their sandals, and upon their backs bent by marching the implacable sun fell like flame.

* * * * *

The third night found them seventy miles from the station, on the edge of a water-course cut between two hillocks. The muddy banks, burnt hard by the terrible heat, had broken away under the enormous weight of the elephants. Between the sandy slopes under the meagre shade cast by a prickly gum-tree was a large pool of stagnant water, now transformed into red mud by the trampling of the elephants. In their tent, pitched on the point of the dune, Father Ravennes and Lursac were listening while the headman made his daily report.

He was an old Cambodian with dreamy eyes and leisurely movements. In his sing-songy voice sounded caressing inflections which suggested the sweetness and tenderness of the love-songs of the Lao-ese country which he was in the habit of singing to his men on the march to keep them in step.

"Then, to sum up," said Lursac, "we now have four men sick?"

"Yes, three have fever and the fourth was wounded in the right foot this morning. His comrades have had to carry him here."

Lursac looked at the headman and his eyebrows drew together making a bar across his forehead.

"That man," said he, "cannot go on. He would be a nuisance to us and would keep us back. And the others? Is it just a slight fever or a serious attack?"

The headman flung his arms wide with an air of disgust.

"Who knows?" said he, "they complain. Their feet and legs are swollen, and when we camp they don't eat and don't sleep. They spend the whole night crouched before the fires, close enough to roast themselves."

Lursac turned towards Father Ravennes.

"What do you think of it?"

The missionary nodded his head thoughtfully.

"I am afraid that they are seriously ill. These feeble constitutions of theirs, ready to contract any disease, always take the fever badly and with distressing violence. I would rather they had got something else. Quinine does not act on them, and in any case, they need, in order to fight the disease, an energy and a moral force which they do not possess."

Pierre asked:

"Then you think that the best thing we can do is to leave them behind?"

"I am sure that it would be dangerous to encumber ourselves with sick men. From the minute we enter the forest our approach will be signalled. It's no good deceiving ourselves. A body of men like this cannot march unseen. From that moment our principal chance of success will lie in the swiftness of our march. We must get up there as quickly as possible."

Pierre assented with a nod. He signed to the headman.

"You will pick out two men from the less serviceable ones and at sunrise they are to start back and return to the Post with the four invalids."

He rapidly scratched a few words in his notebook, tore out the page and handed it to the headman.

"Here are their marching orders. We will give them six days' rations of rice and dried fish. The sick men are to keep their muskets and thirty cartridges each. The two men of the escort will take fifty each. The ammunition which they leave behind is to be distributed among the remaining riflemen. That's one thing settled. Have you anything else to tell me?"

"Nothing, sahib."

"Good. Start at the same hour tomorrow. That's all. You can return to the camp."

The man bowed.

"I salute you, sahib."

"I salute you, Ket-Noi."

With a bitter smile on his lips Pierre turned to Father Ravennes.

"Six men less," said he, "and we have not yet even entered the forest!"

The missionary made a soothing movement.

"What matter? Six men more or less! The important thing is that our troop, however much it may be reduced, should continue a solid, homogeneous force, well in hand. These days of march across the Waterless Country have naturally provided a sort of preliminary trial,--the first selective process, of distinct value. The mountain is probably keeping for us a second and more difficult one. I am afraid of it, because it is a moral one. From tomorrow it will not be only fatigue, fever, bad weather and privation that the men must face; there will be something else."

He was silent. Motionless in the middle of the opening of the tent he turned his eyes towards the confused huddle of the Moï mountains of which the vague cloudy masses under the tender sky made one think of some slowly passing troop of animals monotonously heading towards the north.

Lursac, standing beside him, followed his look. The priest finished his thought:

"There will be also, and above all, fear," he murmured.

Pierre remained silent.

The warm dark came; and the quiet brought to their ears the sound of talking among the native soldiers camping by the bed of the dried-up torrent and the stamping of elephants in the swamp, the guttural calls of the mahouts and even the crackling of the fires.

Above the hillocks the rushing flight of a night-bird passed, faded into the distance, and came back with beating wings, and at the sound of its flight which seemed to fill the night with invisible rustlings, the image of Wanda arose and filled all the dark spaces about him.

* * * * *

"Lursac, come and look at this...."

Pierre, who was prone before the fire, towards which he was stretching his hands, got up and went over to Father Ravennes. Kneeling down, with his body bent over the black, leaf-covered earth, the missionary looked thoughtfully at an object which it was difficult to distinguish clearly.

"What is it?" asked Lursac.

The priest raised his head: there was a strange ring in his voice.

"Here, look what I have just found under this thin coating of leaves."

He stretched out to him over his shoulder a sort of hammer made of stone set in the end of a forked branch. The young man threw a rapid glance over the weapon. It seemed to him clumsy, commonplace and of no particular interest.

"A skull-smasher left by some Moï?" said he.

The missionary continued to look thoughtful.

"Have you ever before seen any instrument of theirs like this?" he asked. "I am well acquainted with most of the savage tribes of this region. They are all armed with the lance, the crossbow, the curved sword, and sometimes with a little iron hatchet with two cutting edges, but never yet have I found among them a weapon in any way resembling this...."

He returned to his place before the fire. He continued to examine the primitive instrument, turning it about between his hands.

"No," said he, "this is certainly an axe belonging to prehistoric times. Observe the oval shape of the flint, flattened on the two sides and shaped by hand over its entire circumference. But there is something even more strange about this simple stone. Look at it carefully. Don't you notice anything?"

"No," said Pierre absent-mindedly, "and I fail to understand your surprise. Have you not already picked up more than thirty of the same kind? As for me, I see no difference whatever between this hatchet and all those I have already examined in your cabin."

The priest said slowly:

"The fact is that you do not know how to see."

He held the flint close to the fire. On the regularity of its facets the flame was reflected in small, sharp patches of light.

"Look at these flakings still fresh from the cutting! That is what is the peculiar thing about it. It's that that bewilders me and astounds me. If I could trust to appearances I would swear that this weapon, which all my anthropological knowledge tells me must be not less than 30,000 years old, has been cut by the maker within a few months. If I were in Europe I should not hesitate to assert positively that the thing was a fake, and that it came from one of these factories of 'prehistoric' arms that exist wherever the scientists dig for real ones."

Pierre smiled in amusement.

"Ah!" said he, "and sometimes they do manage to humbug the palæontologists."

The missionary quickly protested:

"Not now, but when the science was in its infancy, it was a trade that often proved lucrative; but to imagine that here in the depths of the Moï country there could be an industry of that sort would be too preposterous!... However ..."

He stopped and looked the weapon over once more with the greatest care.

"However, I am not dreaming. This dull look is too characteristic for me to be deceived about it. These are fresh fractures. The perfect state of preservation of the stone itself signifies nothing, I know; but the absence of patina,[11] of dentrites,[12] and of coloration on this flint--how will you explain that? This is indeed one of the most extraordinary problems that I have ever encountered since I have been interested in prehistoric remains."

[Footnote 11: A greenish gray discoloration which occurs on ancient bronzes and other worked articles.]

[Footnote 12: Faint branching marks, which occur on flints which have been worked by men of prehistoric times. These designs are due to the long-continued oxidisation of the iron and manganese in the stone.]

"Bah!" said Pierre, "a Moï may have found the weapon in a hollow in some ravine and used it himself and made these new fractures that seem so strange to you."

Father Ravennes made a sign of incredulity.

"Yes," said he, "I thought of that. That explanation would be likely enough if this find were my only one; but in the two days that we have been in the forest this is the eleventh discovery that I have made. Yesterday four scratching pins and two other hatchets; today, two knives, two scrapers, and now this hatchet.... And every one of these instruments without exception offers the same appearance of newness and the same recent fractures. No, believe me, Lursac, this is one more mystery added to the other, to the great secret towards the discovery of which we are marching."

He remained thoughtful. The flame of the camp-fire flickered in his pale pupils. He had a peculiar expression in his eyes.

"At least," said he, "there may be one single mystery, and this, perhaps, is just one of its elements, one of its unforeseen aspects."

Pierre looked him up and down sharply.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "You seem to have thought of something!"

The missionary avoided the pointed enquiry of his eyes.

"Nothing," said he evasively, "I am groping my way. Amid the darkness which surrounds me I seem sometimes to find a ray of light. It appears suddenly, flickers, flees and disappears. A light ... I am searching...."

He thought for a minute and then continued:

"I say to myself that in the heart of this Moï country, whose people still live a life which is animal and primitive, an existence very similar to that which the men of the first days of life on the earth must have lived, there lies a great temple without doubt several centuries old. How and by whom was this temple built? That is the first question. In this sanctuary mysterious divinities reign--the Red Gods--of whom an image in purple metal, probably copper, is enthroned in the centre of the main hall. But these gods themselves, what are they? That is the second question. Sometimes the people call them the Living Gods. Do you remember Hmon's story? What then? Are they Lamas, living Buddhas, similar to those who reign on the lofty plateaus of Thibet? There would be nothing impossible in the thing, nothing unlikely. And the sect that worships them? To what faith do they belong? Buddhism, Taoism, Brahmanism, or just fetichism? Finally, why is the matter wrapped about with secrecy so impenetrable and so fiercely protected? The natives must know that their religion, whatever it is, has nothing to fear from French rule. The pagodas and bonzes of Annam, Tonkin, of Cochin-China and Cambodia are there to bear witness to that! What then?... No! there is evidently behind all that, behind and beyond it, something or somebody: a secret association, or a mysterious personage, of which this temple is the dwelling place. The religious question is only the camouflage that the sorceresses keep up carefully, and which they use to hide this reality of which I have long suspected the existence without ever having been able to discover in what it consists. Hmon only told us the least important part of it ... and I am searching...."

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"What is the good of imagining all these worries? In three days we shall be up there and we shall know with what we have to deal. As for these weapons, the reason for their presence here is probably much simpler and much less romantic than you think. Prehistoric man probably had one of his first dwelling places on these plateaus. Didn't you tell me so yourself? The Moïs must have found some of the caves which these prehistoric men used to occupy, and in the caves these remains which they left lying about throughout the region. What worries me much more than that is the behaviour of our men and of our beasts."

The missionary made no answer. He seemed to accept Pierre's explanation but his eyes retained their expression at once thoughtful and anxious. In any case, the last remark of the young man had brought up other matters for concern.

* * * * *

The night before, they had plunged into the maze of the mountain masses. The sudden change of direction, which had been ordered at dawn of the fourth day, had obviously provoked among the men of the escort an anxious disquiet, a sort of vague uneasiness. Nevertheless, the roughness with which Pierre had imposed his will upon them seemed to have dominated them. The mahouts on their heavily swaying beasts had followed the guides, but their eyes remained glued to the forest of which the details slowly came nearer and grew clearer. The native soldiers behind them walked without speaking to each other, and the caravan went forward in the midst of a troubled silence in which nothing was heard but the dull trampling of the elephants. Little by little the scenery changed. To the sandy desert had succeeded the dazzling monotony of a grassy plain which in turn gave way to the first slopes of the mountain range carpeted by the bamboo-grass of the forest clearings, with slender shrubs and the _Irui_, whose long, pointed purple buds stretched themselves skyward like solid flames. Here and there stagnant creeks lay across their path, green and slimy, attracting the elephants so that the mahouts had to stab their ears with heavy ankus blows to prevent them rolling in the sticky blackish hollows encircled by thorny, twisted and misshapen trees. Then the mountain, heaving up its giant flanks, had barred the way of the expedition with its steep declivities. Immediately difficulties had arisen. Among the tangled confusion of twisted trunks, of creepers, of cane-palms, of pandanus trees and of interlacing undergrowth, the riflemen, axe in hand, had had to cut a way for the beasts. The ground, covered with a heavy carpet of sodden leaves, sweated a perpetual moisture; and wherever they trod the decay from the rotting masses of vegetation underneath burst upwards in black bubbles.

From the piled débris covering the path hungry leeches, the innumerable red leeches of the Moï forests, swarmed in their turn, crawling to attack the men. They tore them off as they walked, but the first evening, just before camp had been made, three of the men, with their legs streaked with long trickles of blood and covered with wounds, the muscles swollen and stiff, had rolled over groaning. Dull and resigned, their faces drawn with pain, they had seated themselves on the trunk of an uprooted tree where they shook their naked feet mottled with bloody spots to which clung new leeches, avid and persistent. It had been necessary to dress their wounds and to help them to walk to the camp. And next morning, before continuing the march, Pierre found himself obliged to send them back. Worse than that, the elephants, worn with exertion, weary from having hauled their great weight up slopes of hills and ravines and furiously shaking their great ears all bloody from the recent stabs of the ankuses, had shown throughout the day signs of growing terror.

* * * * *

And now, before the camp-fires the mahouts were on guard. They had doubled the chains that secured their beasts, as at night, even more than during the day, the thick brains of the pachyderms seemed to swarm with obscure thoughts of rebellion and angry confusion.

Around his picket Bookobomo-of-the-Forest, the leader of the elephant file, could be heard stamping heavily. He was an enormous male recently captured on the high Boloven plateaus. He had retained a lively remembrance of the noises of the forest and the mountain passes; and when, during the afternoon, he had crossed the track of a herd of wild elephants and stopped long to sniff at it, for a long time after he had trumpeted deafeningly and savagely towards the depths of the woods,--a trumpeting in which vibrated unaccustomed tones and through which seemed to sweep the rude breath of the wind bending the great grasses in which, a few months before, he had lived his wild free life. The other beasts of the convoy--the females--were under the influence of his force and ascendancy. Slow and docile they had followed him on the march.

Hearing the hammer blows of his stamping, Pierre became anxious.

He repeated with seriousness:

"Yes, what worries me is the behavior of the men, and even more so that of the beasts...."

He looked around him. Grouped before a large camp-fire which the two guides in turn attended to, the riflemen lay wrapped in a heavy sleep broken by nervous movements.

The voices of the mahouts, camped with their elephants near a swamp at some little distance, came to him through the curtain of the trees.

The atmosphere, cold and heavy, shed its damp in a thin steam, and an inexpressible weight seemed to bear down upon the forest. Giving way to the universal torpor which the night distilled around him, Pierre stretched himself and yawned, then remembering Wanda he rose to his feet. With his eyes set in an expression of stern determination, and shaking off his premonition of failure, he stiffened his will and stilled his doubts with an energetic affirmation:

"I will get there, with or without them--alone, if necessary."

Roughly, almost violently, he repeated it looking at the missionary:

"I will get there ... I will get there...."

But the forest, drowned in darkness, seemed to stifle his voice; and the priest, deeply absorbed in his own thoughts, said nothing.