Chapter VII: The Silent Village

"Believe me when I say it, Lursac, that it would be simply foolishness for you to venture through the forest at this time of year."

Pierre remained quiet. An answer came to his lips which he suppressed. An answer which in another place and some weeks earlier he had heard given by a young girl.

He contented himself with nodding doubtfully.

Father Ravennes, getting out of his chair, strode up and down the veranda, his steps sounding loudly on the bare planking. He went on:

"At least wait until we have an answer from Post 28. The messenger that I sent there cannot be very much longer before returning; and, again, you must think of Mademoiselle Redeski whom you could not leave alone. I only hope that you will never have to repent having brought her up here."

Pierre shook his head.

"She would have come just the same without help.... As for leaving her alone, I have thought of that; she will come and stay with you here at the Mission."

Rising in his turn he took the missionary by the arm and strode with him for several paces.

"I suppose," he said, "that you understand the situation as well as I do. It is now ten days since Redeski ought to have returned. The last news we have had of him dates from three weeks back. He was then on the Moï plateau marching north. Since that, nothing!... Something serious must have happened evidently; it would be childish for us to ignore the fact."

"I don't wish to do so," said the priest. "The best proof of that is that I have sent out three of my converts to beat the countryside in search of information."

"Well?" asked Pierre anxiously.

"Two of them got back yesterday. No results!... No trace of Redeski or of his escort."

Pierre shot him a glance. "You see!" said he.

The priest grumbled.

"Yes, I see! I see!... But then again we have no accurate information: we don't even know in which direction to search. And on the other hand, nothing goes to prove that Redeski is in any danger, and very likely we are disturbing ourselves quite unnecessarily. The wisest thing, I repeat, is to await our answer from Post 28."

"When shall we have it?" asked Pierre.

"In eight days, ten, at the most. Then it will be time enough to organize our expedition."

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"Our expedition! ... that's a rather large word."

The missionary, taking out his pipe, filled it carefully, and having loaded it he looked thoughtfully at the young man.

"Listen to me," he said hesitatingly, "I ... I do not know if you understand why I speak to you in this way, but...."

Pierre looked at him.

"I imagine that you consider yourself responsible...."

The face of the missionary lighted up with a friendly smile.

"The fact is," he said, "that you are just like a child in this country."

And as Pierre made a motion of protest he added quickly:

"You misunderstand me.... Bravery has nothing to do with this matter. Others who certainly were just as brave as you have lost their lives here. The fact is that there are definite rules for the conduct of the struggle which we are waging.... And they had no idea of them--while I, who have lived fifteen years in the forest, I know the game from the bottom up. I say it without any kind of pride and with all sincerity; although since my arrival here nothing has yet appeared to confirm my suspicions, I have the feeling that of all the parts of Indo-China in which I have lived this one is the most unsafe...."

Lursac, attentive to his words, watched the face of the priest.

"What do you mean? I suppose you are thinking of the stories of Longères and Dorcel? You know about them of course?"

The missionary made an affirmative motion.

"Yes," said he simply.

A silence fell between them. From the court the voice of the corporal calling the men for the night watch came up to them.

"Bao, first watch. Tran, second watch. Vinh and Pâa, the watch over the sheds of the elephants and oxen...."

Pierre, facing the priest, asked:

"You know something about their affair?"

Fingering his beard the missionary replied:

"I know nothing ... nothing ... except that we live in the middle of a people unknown, who hate us and flee us, and whose invisible spies watch around us--around your Post as around my Mission--spying on our gestures, watching our comings in and our goings out and our slightest actions."

With a movement of his head Pierre signified his doubt.

"Are you certain of all that?" he queried.

The priest thought for a minute, then stretching his hand towards the sombre mass of the Pou-Kas standing aloft in front of the fort, he said:

"Look before you."

Pierre raised his head. His look traveled over the scene stretched out in front of him. Above the dull-colored gullies of the mountain a livid rayless sun was setting slowly. In the middle of the mass of foliage carpeting the first slope of the mountain showed a Moï village, with its conical thatched huts dotted along a pathway edged with banana trees and defended by a triple zareba of brush.

In the declining daylight this lifeless silent village seemed to lie asleep.

The priest began to speak again in a louder voice as he pointed to the huts:

"How many inhabitants are there there? Fifty?... Three hundred?... What do they do? How do they live? We shall never know!..."

Pierre continued to watch the two fortresses, hostile towns, small and difficult of attack, which stood, as it were, opposite to each other and appeared to watch each other: here, down on the plain and on the very bank of the canal the military station; up there, shadowed by the trees of the forest the strange native village, the inhabitants of which no European had ever seen.

He murmured:

"They are there, nevertheless. Look!"

On the mountain side, every instant becoming less distant, among the huts of the Moï village a mysterious liveliness seemed indeed to have arisen. Here and there hearth-fires were lit, and among their flickering lights human forms could be seen passing. The breeze, beginning to blow at the approach of dusk, came lightly over the flanks of the mountain and flowed towards the narrow valley, bringing to the Post the lingering sound of a litany chanted by women's voices.

"Yes!" said Father Ravennes, "they are there.... But no more than Redeski and no more than me, no more than Longères and Dorcel, doubtless, will you succeed in seeing them or taking them unawares, as their watchword is definite: as soon as white men are seen approaching, create a wilderness around them, disappear...."

And as Pierre made a vague gesture he said sharply:

"The best thing would be for you to have experience of it yourself: a simple experiment will make you understand the country better. Perhaps then you will attach to my advice the importance that it merits.... Come with me."

The priest strode along swiftly. Before the guardhouse the sentinel saluted him without his taking the slightest notice. He cleared the gateway with a vigorous stride. In his hurry he had forgotten to take his hat and his hair, gray, and standing out in tangled masses, hung round his face. He threw it back with a characteristic shake of his head. His hand held in a strong clasp the heavy walking stick from which he was never separated.

Pierre caught up to him. Side by side they mingled with the shadows of the valley through which a narrow footpath wound. Before them, shouldering upwards into the red sky was the formidable mass of the distant Pou-Kas. From the village the monotonous chant of the women continued to flow downward to the plain. They reached the first spurs of the mountain. The path disappeared: to the tall grass there had succeeded a denser, heavier vegetation of trees and bushes.

Suddenly Pierre stood still.

"Listen!" whispered the priest.

Arrested in their progress they leaned forward and listened with all their ears. The unknown singers had suddenly stopped their mournful song. There was a short interval, and then the heavy sound of a gong spread itself abroad in the forest carried far and near by the echoes of the mountain. Then everything became inexplicably silent, and the forest appeared more vast, more threatening. From the sky of mauve and pink, night was about to fall; and under the final caresses of the sun the forest prepared to receive it with a vast immobility of silence and stillness. The missionary drew himself up again.

"Let us go on," said he.

They set themselves to continue their climb. With eyes alert they slid from tree to tree up towards the mysterious forest, the threshold of which like a dark and living wall was stretched out above them. From time to time the bark of a wolfhound mixed with the clucking of a fowl, without it being possible to say whether it came upwards from the fort or downwards from the village.

Finally they penetrated the real forest. Its bluish-green heavy damp shadow fell about them, the shadow peculiar to the virgin undergrowth which the rays of the sun never reach and which seems all the denser and all the colder from its dark stagnation unbroken by anything or anybody. Under their feet the soft spongy soil gave and slid.

And suddenly, after their having climbed a last ledge walled about with century-old _dau_ trees with enormous trunks, they found themselves before the exterior of the village. A narrow path ran forward between two massive walls of thorny brush and was blocked by a heavy gate. Without the least hesitation Father Ravennes dashed into the outlandish enclosure with Pierre close behind him. They no longer took any precautions against being seen. They went swiftly, silently, and with their attention fixed ahead, following the open runway before them. They found two other gates similar to the first one, but lower, and they had to bend to get through them. Finally they came out in the middle of the village. In the centre of an open space, bordered on either side by a row of banana trees, four long dark huts showed pointed roofs. In front of each of them a sort of primitive tripod made of twisted bamboos supported curiously shaped stones.

As quickly as possible Lursac and the missionary made their way forward. Between the shining trunks of the bananas a few fowls ran off cackling. From the first hut a hoarse barking arose, and a mangy wolfhound with its ribs sticking through its skin dashed out. He made for the two men, ran round them growling, from time to time throwing up his pointed muzzle towards the sky and howling.

They went through the huts rapidly one after the other, looking carefully at the rough walls and searching the shadows which clung about the rice-bins and gathered under the straw roofs blackened by soot and the smoke of household fires. In one of these dwellings, consisting of a single room like all the rest, in the middle of a rectangle of stamped down earth surrounded by a great family sleeping-bench a few live coals were just dying, showing here and there a red spark which was answered by the light of two other smaller hearth-fires in the corners of the room set beside the bench on small sheets of clay. A warm smell of cooked rice hung heavy in the air. Here and there rags were scattered about, and under a beam a crossbow still swung suspended from a peg.

The priest turned to Pierre.

"Well! what do you say to that? Is it perfectly plain? Do you understand now that to make your way through such a country as this, an ... expedition is necessary?"

His voice hesitated and then emphasised the word "expedition."

Lursac spoke his thought aloud.

"How the devil could they have been warned?"

The priest smiled.

"Well, what do you make of the gong that sounded while we were coming up here?... The system is perfectly simple: they saw us come out from the Post and begin to mount towards the village. One of the native braves, while we were struggling in the middle of the forest, ran here, got ahead of us, gave three or four bangs on the gong and every one cleared out!..."

A feeling of depression came over Pierre.

"They cleared out, certainly, but how? We arrived at the entrance to the village a few minutes after the gong sounded, we should have seen them if they had come out that way, for at any rate they are not invisible!..."

The missionary nodded assent.

"Perfectly right," said he, "follow me!"

He led the way to the last _cai-nha_, and going in, went to the furthest angle of the room; then, kneeling down, he slid under the bench and disappeared. Pierre imitated him. He immediately discovered in the surface of the wall an opening, carefully cut, over which a slab of board could be lowered like a shutter.

Going forward on his hands and knees he found himself outside. He then saw running through the midst of a mass of tangled underbrush a little footpath blocked by a doorway like those at the entrance of the village.

Beside him, Father Ravennes explained.

"The service entrance! ... but I myself have my spies too...."

And as Pierre made a step towards the path he interrupted himself to shout violently:

"Don't stir!" at the same time taking him by the arm and pulling him backwards. Pierre flinging a rapid look around asked:

"What's the matter? Is there danger?"

The missionary shook his head.

"No good looking at the forest, it isn't what you think. These animals are too cunning to attack us from the front. No, it is not around us that the danger lies, but at our feet!"...

Flinging down his eyes Pierre examined the soil carefully. About a yard before him on the other side of the open gate the path, muddy and covered with a carpet of dead leaves and crushed grass, ran with sharp turns between its two walls of brush. It seemed to him peaceful and familiar, calling up in his mind the memory of those narrow, trough-like lanes of Brittany along which he used to go in his boyhood, picking the blackberries and the yellow honeysuckle clinging among the brambles and wild vines.

He said:

"I see nothing."

"Evidently," said the priest. "I also, in my first experience of them, found nothing suspicious, and I paid dearly for it!"

He drew back the edge of his white _cai-quan_, showing his right leg which stood out strongly, grooved with veins and studded with muscles. With his finger he outlined a sort of long furrow of dark red which ran down the flesh of the calf. He explained:

"An extraordinary piece of good luck got me out of it with just this slight wound. A few inches lower and I should have had my tendon cut and have been permanently lamed ... and then again, I have never been able to understand why they did not poison their devilish device, since it is their habit to do so! Our lives here, more than anywhere else, are in the hands of Providence...."

While speaking he made a few steps forward with great care. Bending over in the opening of the gate he grubbed with the point of his walking stick in the mud path and the scattered leaves, showing solidly bedded in the earth and pointing obliquely upwards a series of arrows with sharpened points cut to a fine edge and tipped with a reddish stain made by successive dippings in vegetable poison.

He started back.

"Look there!" said he, "no boot sole could stand against that, and no flesh and blood either. A slight or a deep cut, and the result would be exactly the same: a few minutes after the accident a burning in the wounded limb, followed almost immediately by a general stupor, by faintings and fever; then after an hour or two of atrocious suffering, the end,--unavoidable and without any possible remedy!..."

He stopped speaking. Bending over towards the soil he scraped carefully back over the ground which he had uncovered the scattered leaves and grass. Pierre said nothing.

Drawing himself up again the missionary pointed out a sort of terrace which the forest left uncovered above them.

"And there," said he, "in that exact spot begins what they call 'the Dead Country,' that is to say, the zone into which no man is allowed to penetrate, even if he is of the Moï race.... Then again, in order to reach as quickly as possible the last stage of Redeski's journey which we know of, it is across the forbidden country that we must cut. Let us wait then. If it is necessary we will organise your troop...."

Pierre still said nothing. Re-covered with their carpet of leaves, the arrow heads were no longer visible. Nevertheless, with his features drawn, his fists clenched, the young man continued watching the path with a fixed and savage stare. He was thinking; and his thoughts, whirling and broken, took on a bitter and terrible tinge, a feeling of rage and death.

There they stood, the two of them, motionless and wrapped in thought, Pierre with his back against the dingy wall of the _cai-nha_ and the priest before him watching him. Around them the dusk flowed through the forest. The trembling dark sea of trees became every moment more huge and more menacing. The clear line of the Pou-Kas when they raised their eyes to it became lost in a purple sky already invaded by darkness. And, through the silence of the world over which the dark kept watch, there rose only from time to time the hoarse voice of the wolfhound left alone in the village and baying at the night.