 CHAPTER XVIII. When new flow at length opened his eyes, he found me sitting alone and despondent by the fire, just returned from my vain chase. I had been caught in a heavy mist on the mountain side and was wet through as well as weighed down by fatigue and drowsiness, consequent upon the previous day's laborious march and my night-long vigil. Yet I dared not think of rest. She had gone from me, and I could not have prevented it. Yet the thought that I had allowed her to slip out of my arms to go away alone on that long, perilous journey was as intolerable as if I had consented to it. New flow was at first startled to hear of her sudden departure, but he laughed at my fears, affirming that after having once been over the ground she could not lose herself, that she would be in no danger from the Indians as she would invariably see them at a distance and avoid them, and that wild beasts, serpents, and other evil creatures would do her no harm. The small amount of food she required to sustain life could be found anywhere. Furthermore, her journey would not be interrupted by bad weather, since rain and heat had no effect on her. In the end he seemed pleased that she had left us, saying that with Rima in the wood the house and cultivated patch and hidden provisions and implements would be safe, for no Indian would venture to come where she was. His confidence reassured me, and casting myself down on the sandy floor of the cave I fell into a deep slumber which lasted until evening, then I only woke to share a meal with the old man and sleep again until the following day. New flow was not ready to start yet. He was enamored of the unaccustomed comforts of a dry sleeping-place and a fire blown about by no wind and into which fell no hissing raindrops. Not for two days more would he consent to set out on the return journey, and if he could have persuaded me our stay at Rialama would have lasted a week. We had fine weather at starting, but before long it clouded, and then for upwards of a fortnight we had it wet and stormy, which so hindered us that it took us twenty-three days to accomplish the return journey, whereas the journey out had only taken eighteen. The adventures we met with and the pains we suffered during this long march need not be related. The rain made us miserable, but we suffered more from hunger than from any other cause, and on more than one occasion were reduced to the verge of starvation. Twice we were driven to beg for food at Indian villages, and as we had nothing to give in exchange for it, we got very little. It is possible to buy hospitality from the savage without fish hooks, nails, and calico, but on this occasion I found myself without that impappable medium of exchange which had been so great a help to me on my first journey to Parahuari. Now I was miserable and without cunning. It is true that we could have exchanged the two dogs for cassava bread and corn, but we should then have been worse off than ever. And in the end the dogs saved us by an occasional capture, an armadillo surprised in the open and seized before it could bury itself in the soil, or an iguana, opossum, or lava, traced by means of their keen sense of smell to its hiding place. Then Nuflo would rejoice and feast, rewarding them with the skin, bones, and entrails. But at length one of the dogs fell lame, and Nuflo, who was very hungry, made its lameness an excuse for dispatching it, which he did apparently without compunction, notwithstanding that the poor brute had served him well in its way. He cut up and smoked dried the flesh, and the intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. But what does it matter, I argued with myself. All flesh, clean and unclean, should be and is equally abhorrent to me, and killing animals a kind of murder. But now I find myself constrained to do this evil thing that good may come. Only to live I take it now, this hateful strength giver that will enable me to reach Rima, and the purer, better life that is to be. During all that time, when we toiled onwards league after league in silence, or sat silent by the nightly fire, I thought of many things. But the past, with which I had definitely broken, was little in my mind. Rima was still the source and center of all my thoughts. From her they rose, and to her returned. Thinking, dreaming, sustained me in those dark days and nights of pain and privation. Imagination was the bread that gave me strength, the wine that exhilarated. What sustained old New Flo's mind I know not. Probably it was like a chrysalis. Dormant, independent of sustenance. The bright-winged image to be called at some future time, to life, by a great shouting of angelic hosts and noises of musical instruments, slept secure, coffined in that dull gross nature. The old beloved wood once more. Never did his native village in some mountain valley seem more beautiful to the switzer, returning war-worn from long voluntary exile, than did that blue cloud on the horizon. The forest where Rima dwelt, my bride, my beautiful, and towering over at the dark cone of Itaewa, now seemed to my hungry eyes. How near it last, how near! And yet the two or three intervening leagues to be traversed so slowly, step by step, how vast the distance seemed. Even at far Rialama, when I set out on my return, I scarcely seemed so far from my love. This maddening impatience told on my strength, which was small, and hindered me. I could not run nor even walk fast. Old new flow, slow and sober, with no flame consuming his heart, was more than my equal in the end, and to keep up with him was all I could do. At the finish he became silent and cautious, first entering the belt of trees leading away through the low range of hills at the southern extremity of the wood. For a mile or upwards we trudged on in the shade, then I began to recognize familiar ground, the old trees under which I had walked or sat, and knew that a hundred yards further on there would be a first glimpse of the palm-leaf thatch. Then all weakness forsook me. With a low cry of passionate longing and joy I rushed on ahead, but I strained my eyes in vain for a sight of that sweet shelter. No patch of pale yellow color appeared amidst the universal verdura of bushes, creepers, and trees. Trees beyond trees, trees towering above trees. For some moments I could not realize it. No, I had surely made a mistake. The house had not stood on that spot. It would appear in sight of little further on. I took a few uncertain steps onwards, and then again stood still, my brain reeling, my heart swelling night and bursting with anguish. I was still standing motionless, with hand pressed to my breast, when new flow overtook me. Where is it? The house! I stammered, pointing with my hand. All his delidity seemed gone now. He was trembling, too, his lips silently moving. At length he spoke. They have come. The children of hell have been here, and have destroyed everything. Rima! What has become of Rima? I cried, but without replying he walked on, and I followed. The house we soon found had been burnt down. Not a stick remained. Where he hid it stood a heap of black ashes covered the ground. Nothing more. But on looking round we could discover no sign of human beings having recently visited the spot. A rank growth of grass and herbage now covered the once clear space surrounding the sight of the dwelling, and the ash heap looked as if it had been lying there for a month at least. As to what had become of Rima, the old man could say no word. He sat down on the ground, overwhelmed at the calamity. Rune's people had been there. He could not doubt it, and they would come again, and he could only look for death at their hands. The thought that Rima had perished, that she was lost, was unendurable. It could not be. No doubt the Indians had come and destroyed the house during our absence, but she had returned, and they had gone away again to come no more. She would be somewhere in the forest, perhaps not far off, impatiently waiting our return. The old man stared at me while I spoke. He appeared to be in a kind of stupor, and made no reply. And at last, leaving him still sitting on the ground, I went into the wood to look for Rima. As I walked there, occasionally stopping to peer into some shadowy glade or opening, and to listen, I was tempted again and again to call the name of her I sought aloud, and still the fear that by doing so I might bring some hidden danger on myself, perhaps on her, made me silent. A strange melancholy rested on the forest, a quietude seldom broken by a distant bird's cry. How, I asked myself, should I ever find her in that wide forest while I moved about in that silent, cautious way? My only hope was that she would find me. It occurred to me that the most likely place to seek her would be some of the old haunts known to us both, where we had talked together. I thought first of the morrow tree, where she had hidden herself from me, and thither I directed my steps. Without this tree and within its shade I lingered for upwards of an hour, and finally, casting my eyes up into the great dim cloud of green and purple leaves, I softly call, Rima! Rima! If you have seen me and have concealed yourself from me in your hiding place, in mercy answer me, in mercy come down to me now. But Rima answered not, nor threw down any red glowing leaves to mock me. Only the wind high up whispered something low and sorrowful in the foliage, and, turning, I wandered away at random into the deeper shadows. By and by I was startled by the long piercing cry of a wild fowl, sounding strangely loud in the silence, and no sooner was the air still again that it struck me that no bird had uttered that cry. The Indian is a good mimic of animal voices, but practice it may be able to distinguish the true from the false bird note. For a minute or so I stood still, at a loss what to do, then moved on again with greater caution, scarcely breathing, straining my sight to pierce the shadowy depths. All at once I gave a great start, for directly before me, on the projecting root in the deeper shade of a tree, sat a dark, motionless human form. I stood still, watching it for some time, not yet knowing that it had seen me, when all doubts were put to flight by the form rising and deliberately advancing, a naked Indian with a Zapatana in his hand. As he came up out of the die-recognized piyake, the surly elder brother of my friend Kuwako. It was a great shock to meet him in the wood, but I had no time to reflect just then. I only remembered that I deeply offended him and his people, that they probably looked on me as an enemy, and would think little of taking my life. It was too late to attempt to escape by flight. I was spent with my long journey and the many privations I had suffered, while he stood there in his full strength with a deadly weapon in his hand. Nothing was left but to put a bold face on, greet him in a friendly way, and invent some plausible story to account for my action in secretly leaving the village. He was now standing still, silently regarding me, and glancing round I saw that he was not alone. At a distance of about forty yards on my right hand, two other dusky forms appeared watching me from the deep shade. Piyake! I cried, advancing three or four steps. You have returned. He answered, but without moving. Where from? Rialama. He shook his head and asked where it was. Twenty days towards the setting sun, I said. As he remained silent, I added, I heard that I could find gold in the mountains there. An old man told me, and we went to look for gold. What did you find? Nothing. Ha! And so our conversation appeared to be at an end. But after a few moments my intense desire to discover whether the savages knew odd of Rima or not made me hazard a question. Do you live here in the forest now? I asked. He shook his head, and after a while said, We come to kill animals. You are like me now, I returned quickly. You fear nothing. He looked distressfully at me, then came a little nearer and said, You are very brave. I should not have gone twenty days' journey with no weapons and only an old man for companion. What weapons did you have? I saw that he feared me and wished to make sure that I had it not in my power to do him some injury. No weapon except my knife, I replied, with assumed carelessness. With that I raised my cloak so as to let him see for himself, turning my body round before him. Have you found my pistol? I added. He shook his head, but he appeared less suspicious now and came close up to me. How do you get food? Where are you going? He asked. I answered boldly, Food! I am nearly starving. I am going to the village to see if the women have got any meat in the pot, and to tell Rooney all I have done since I left him. He looked at me keenly, a little surprised at my confidence, perhaps, then said that he was also going back and would accompany me. One of the other men now advanced, blow pipe and hand, to join us, and leaving the wood we started to walk across the savannah. It was hateful to have to recross that savannah again, to leave the woodland shadows where I had hoped to find Rima. But I was powerless. I was a prisoner once more. The lost captive recovered and not yet pardoned, probably never to be pardoned. Only by means of my own cunning could I be saved, and new flow, poor old man, must take his chance. Again and again as we tramped over the barren ground, and when we climbed the ridge, I was compelled to stand still to recover breath, explaining to Piake that I had been traveling day and night, with no meat during the last three days, so that I was exhausted. This was an exaggeration, but it was necessary to account in some way for the faintness I experienced during our walk, caused less by fatigue and want of food than by anguish of mind. At intervals I talked to him, asking after all the other members of the community by name. At last, thinking only of Rima, I asked him if any other person or persons besides his people came to the wood now or lived there. He said no. Once, I said, there was a daughter of the Didi, a girl you all feared. Is she there now? He looked at me with suspicion, and then shook his head. I dared not press him with more questions. But after an interval he said plainly, she is not there now. And I was forced to believe him, for had Rima been in the wood, they would not have been there. She was not there, this much I had discovered. Had she then lost her way, or perished on that long journey from Rialama? Or had she returned only to fall into the hands of her cruel enemies? My heart was heavy at me. But if these devils in human shape knew more than they had told me, I must, I said, hide my anxiety and wait patiently to find it out, should they spare my life. And if they spared me and had not spared that other sacred life interwoven with mine, the time would come when they would find, too late, that they had taken to their bosom a worse devil than themselves. CHAPTER XIX My arrival at the village created some excitement, but I was plainly no longer regarded as a friend or one of the family. Rooney was absent, and I looked forward to his return with no little apprehension. He would doubtless decide my fate. Kuako was also away. The others sat or stood about the great room staring at me in silence. I took no notice, but merely asked for food, then for my hammock, which I hung up in the old place, and lying down I fell into a doze. Rooney made his appearance at dusk. I rose and greeted him, but he spoke no word, and, until he went to his hammock, sat in sullen silence, ignoring my presence. On the following day the crisis came. We were once more gathered than the room, all but Kuako and another of the men who had not yet returned from some expedition, and for the space of half an hour not a word was spoken by any one. Rooney was expected. Even the children were strangely still. And whenever one of the pet birds strayed in at the open door, uttering a little plaintive note, it was chased out again, but without a sound. At length Rooney straightened himself on his seat and fixed his eyes on me, then cleared his throat and began a long harangue, delivered in the loud monotonous sing-song which I knew so well, and which met that the occasion was an important one. And as is usual in such efforts the same thought and expressions were used again and again, and yet again, with dull, angry insistence. The orator of Guyana to be impressive must be long, however little he may have to say. Strange as it may seem I listened critically to him, not without a feeling of scorn at his lower intelligence. But I was easier in my mind now, than the very fact of his addressing such a speech to me, I was convinced that he wished not to take my life, and would not do so if I could clear myself of the suspicion of treachery. I was a white man, he said. They were Indians. Nevertheless they had treated me well. They had fed me and sheltered me. They had done a great deal for me. They had taught me the use of the sabbatana, and had promised to make one for me, asking for nothing in return. They had also promised me a wife. How would I treated them? I had deserted them, going away secretly to a distance, leaving them in doubt as to my intentions. How could they tell why I had gone, and where? They had an enemy. Managa was his name. He and his people hated them. I knew that he wished them evil. I knew where to find him, for they had told me. That was what they thought when I suddenly left them. Now I returned to them, saying that I had been to Rialama. He knew where Rialama was, although he had never been there. It was so far. Why did I go to Rialama? It was a bad place. There were Indians there, a few, but they were not good Indians, like those of Parahawari, and would kill a white man. Had I gone there? Why had I gone there? He finished it last, and it was my turn to speak. But he had given me plenty of time, and my reply was ready. I have heard you, I said. Your words are good words. They are the words of a friend. I am the white man's friend, you say. Is he my friend? He went away secretly, saying no word. Why did he go without speaking to his friend, who had treated him well? Has he been to my enemy, Managa? Perhaps he is a friend of my enemy? Where has he been? I must now answer these things, saying true words to my friend. You are an Indian. I am a white man. You do not know all the white man's thoughts. These are the things I wish to tell you. In the white man's country are two kinds of men. There are the rich men who have all that a man can desire. Houses made of stone, full of fine things, fine clothes, fine weapons, fine ornaments, and they have horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, everything they desire. Because they have gold, for with gold the white man buys everything. The other kind of white men are the poor, who have no gold and cannot buy or have anything. They must work hard for the rich man for the little food he gives them, and a rag to cover their nakedness, and if he gives them shelter they have it. If not, they must lie down in the rain out of doors. In my own country, a hundred days from here, I was the son of a great chief who had much gold, and when he died it was all mine, and I was rich. But I had an enemy, one worse than Managa, for he was rich and had many people. And in a war his people overcame mine, and he took my gold, and all I possessed, making me poor. The Indian kills his enemy, but the white man takes his gold and that is worse than death. Then I said, I have been a rich man and now I am poor, and must work like a dog for some rich man, for the sake of the little food he will throw me at the end of each day. No, I cannot do it. I will go away and live with the Indians, so that those who have seen me a rich man shall never see me working like a dog for a master, and cry out and mock at me. For the Indians are not like white men. They have no gold. They are not rich and poor. All are alike. One roof covers them from the rain and sun. All have weapons which they make. All kill birds in the forest and catch fish in the rivers, and the women cook the meat, and all eat from one pot. Come with the Indians, I will be an Indian, and hunt in the forest, and eat with them, and drink with them. Then I left my country and came here, and lived with you, Rooney, and was well treated. And now, why did I go away? This I have now to tell you. After I had been here a certain time, I went over there to the forest. You wished me not to go, because of an evil thing, a daughter of the Didi that lived there, but I feared nothing and went. There I met an old man who talked to me in the white man's language. He had travelled and seen much, and told me one strange thing. On a mountain at Rialama he told me that he had seen a great lump of gold as much as a man could carry. And when I heard this I said, with the gold I could return to my country, and buy weapons for myself and all my people, and go to war with my enemy, and deprive him of all his possessions, and serve him as he has served me. I asked the old man to take me to Rialama, and when he had consented I went away from here without saying a word, so as not to be prevented. It is far to Rialama, and I had no weapons, but I feared nothing. I said, if I must fight, I must fight, and if I must be killed, I must be killed. But when I got to Rialama I found no gold. There was only a yellow stone which the old man had mistaken for gold. It was yellow, like gold, but it would buy nothing. Therefore I came back to Parahwari again, to my friend, and if he is angry with me still, because I went away without informing him, let him say, go and seek elsewhere for a new friend, for I am your friend no longer. I concluded thus boldly, because I did not wish him to know that I had suspected him of harboring any sinister designs, or that I looked on our quarrel as a very serious one. When I had finished speaking he emitted a sound which expressed neither approval nor disapproval, but only the fact that he had heard me. But I was satisfied. His expression had undergone a favourable change. It was less grim. After a while he remarked with a peculiar twitching of the mouth which might have developed into a smile. The white man will do much to get gold. You walked twenty days to see a yellow stone that would buy nothing. It was fortunate that he took this view of the case, which was flattering to his Indian nature and perhaps touched his sense of the ludicrous. At all events he said nothing to discredit my story, to which they had all listened with profound interest. From that time it seemed to be tacitly agreed to let bygones be bygones, and I could see that as the dangerous feeling that had threatened my life diminished the old pleasure they had once found in my company returned. But my feelings towards them did not change, nor could they while that black and terrible suspicion concerning Rima was in my heart. I talked again freely with them, as if there had been no break in the old friendly relations. If they watched me furtively whenever I went out of doors, I affected not to see it. I set to work to repair my rude guitar which had been broken in my absence, and studied to show them a cheerful countenance. But when alone, or in my hammock, hidden from their eyes, freed a look into my own heart, then I was conscious that something new and strange had come into my life, that a new nature, black and implacable, had taken the place of the old. And sometimes it was hard to conceal this fury that burned in me. Sometimes I felt an impulse to spring like a tiger on one of the Indians, to hold him fast by the throat, until the secret I wished to learn was forced from his lips, then to dash his brains out against the stone. But they were many, and there was no choice but to be cautious and patient, if I wished to outwith them with the cunning superior to their own. Three days after my arrival at the village, Kuakko returned with his companion. I greeted him with affected warmth, but was really pleased that he was back, believing that if the Indians knew anything of Rima, he among them all would be most likely to tell it. Kuakko appeared to have brought some important news, which he discussed with Rooney and the others, and on the following day I noticed that preparations for an expedition were in progress. Spears and bows and arrows were got ready, but not blowpipes, and I knew by this that the expedition would not be a hunting one. Having discovered so much, also that only four men were going out, I called Kuakko aside and begged him to let me go with them. He seemed pleased at the proposal and at once repeated it to Rooney, who considered for a little, and then consented. By and by he said, touching his bow, You cannot fight with our weapons! What would you do if we meet an enemy? I smiled and returned that I would not run away. All I wished to show him was that his enemies were my enemies, that I was ready to fight for my friend. He was pleased at my words, and said no more and gave me no weapons. This morning, however, when we set out before daylight, I made the discovery that he was carrying my revolver fast into his waist. He had concealed it carefully under the one simple garment he wore, but it bulged slightly, and so the secret was betrayed. I had never believed that he had lost it, and I was convinced that he took it now with the object of putting it into my hands at the last moment in case of meeting with an enemy. In the village we traveled in a northwesterly direction, and before noon camped in a grove of dwarf trees, where we remained until the sun was low, then continued our walk through a rather bearing country. At night we camped again beside a small stream, only a few inches deep, and after a meal of smoked meat and parched maize prepared to sleep till dawn of the next day. Sitting by the fire I resolved to make a first attempt to discover from Kuwako anything concerning Rima which might be known to him. Instead of lying down when the others did, I remained seated, my guardian also sitting, no doubt waiting for me to lie down first. Presently I moved nearer to him and began a conversation in a low voice, anxious not to arouse the attention of the other men. "'Once you said that Ualaba would be given to me for a wife,' I began. Some day I shall want a wife.' He nodded approval, and remarked sententiously that the desire to possess a wife was common to all men. "'What has been left to me?' I said despondingly, and spreading out my hands. My pistol gone, and did I not give Rooney the tinder box and the little box with a cock painted on it to you? I had no return, not even the blowpipe. How then can I get me a wife?' He, like the others, dull-witted savage that he was, had come to the belief that I was incapable of the cunning and duplicity they practised. I could not see a green parrot sitting silent and motionless amidst the green foliage as they could. I had not their preternatural keenness of sight, and in like manner to deceive with lies and false seeming was their faculty and not mine. He fell readily into the trap. My return to practical subjects pleased him. He made me hope that Ualava might yet be mine in spite of my poverty. It was not always necessary to have things to get a wife. To be able to maintain her was enough. Some day I would be like one of themselves, able to kill animals and catch fish. Besides did not Rooney wish to keep me with them for other reasons? But he could not keep me wifeless. I could do much. I could sing and make music. I was brave and feared nothing. I could teach the children to fight. He did not say, however, that I could teach anything to one of his years in attainments. I protested that he gave me too much praise, that they were just as brave. Did they not show a courage equal to mine by going every day to hunt in that wood which was inhabited by the daughter of the deity? I came to this subject with fear and trembling, but he took it quietly. He shook his head, and then all at once began to tell me how they first came to go there to hunt. He said that a few days after I had secretly disappeared, two men and a woman, returning home from a distant place where they had been on a visit to a relation, stopped at the village. These travelers related that two days' journey from Itaewa they had met three persons traveling in an opposite direction. An old man with a white beard, followed by two yellow dogs, a young man in a big cloak, and a strange-looking girl. Thus it came to be known that I had left the wood with the old man and the daughter of the deity. It was great news to them, for they did not believe that we had any intention of returning, and at once they began to hunt in the wood and went there every day, killing birds, monkeys, and other animals in numbers. His words had begun to excite me greatly, but I studied to appear calm and only slightly interested, so as to draw him on to say more. Then we returned, I said at last, but only two of us and not together. I left the old man on the road, and she left us in Rialama. She went away from us into the mountains. Who knows with her? But she came back! he returned, with a gleam of devilish satisfaction in his eyes that made the blood run cold in my veins. It was hard to dissemble still, to tempt him to say something that would madden me. No, no, I answered after considering his words. She feared to return. She went away to hide herself in the great mountains beyond Rialama. She could not come back. But she came back! he persisted, with that triumphant gleam in his eyes once more. Under my cloak my hand had clutched my knife-handle, but I strove hard against the fierce, almost maddening impulse to pluck it out and bury it, quick as lightning in his accursed throat. He continued, Seven days before you returned we saw her in the wood. We were always expecting, watching, always afraid, and when hunting we were three and four together. On that day I and three others saw her. It was in an open place where the trees are big and wide apart. We started up and chased her when she ran from us but feared to shoot. And in one moment she climbed up into a small tree, then, like a monkey, passed from its highest branches into a big tree. We could not see her there, but she was there in the big tree, for there was no other tree near, no way of escape. Three of us sat down to watch, and the other went back to the village. He was long gone. We were just going to leave the tree, fearing that she would do us some injury, when he came back, and with him all the others, men, women, and children. They brought axes and knives. Then Rooney said, Let no one shoot an arrow into the tree, thinking to hit her, for the arrow would be caught in her hand and throw back at him. We must burn her in the tree. There is no way to kill her except by fire. Then we went round and round, looking up, but could see nothing, and someone said, She has escaped, flying like a bird from the tree. But Rooney answered that fire would show. So we cut down the small tree and lopped the branches off, and heaped them around the big trunk. Then at a distance we cut down ten more small trees, and afterwards, further away, ten more, and then others, and piled them all round, tree after tree, until the pile reached as far from the trunk as that. And here he pointed to a bush forty to fifty yards from where we sat. The feeling with which I had listened to this recital had become intolerable. The sweat ran from me in streams. I shivered like a person in a fit of ague, and clenched my teeth together to prevent them from rattling. I must drink, I said, cutting him short and rising to my feet. He also rose but did not follow me when, with uncertain steps, I made my way to the water side, which was ten or twelve yards away. Lying prostrate on my chest I took a long draft of clear cold water, and held my face for a few moments in the current. It sent a chill through me, drying my wet skin and bracing me for the concluding part of the hideous narrative. Slowly I stepped back to the fire side and sat down again, while he resumed his old place at my side. You burnt the tree down, I said. Finished telling me now, and let me sleep. My eyes are heavy. Yes. While the men cut and brought trees, the women and children gathered dry stuff in the forest and brought it in their arms and piled it round. Then they set fire to it on all sides, laughing and shouting, BURN! BURN, Daughter of the Dee Dee! At length all the lower branches of the big tree were on fire, and the trunk was on fire, but above it was still green, and we could see nothing. But the flames went up higher and higher with a great noise, and at last from the top of the tree, out of the green leaves, came a great cry, like the cry of a bird. Able! Able! And then looking we saw something fall, through leaves and smoke and flame it fell, like a great white bird killed with an arrow and falling to the earth, and fell into the flames beneath. And it was the Daughter of the Dee Dee, and she was burnt to ashes like a moth in the flames of a fire, and no one has ever heard or seen her since. It was well for me that he spoke rapidly and finished quickly. Even before he had quite concluded, I drew my cloak round my face and stretched myself out. And I suppose that he at once followed my example, but I had grown blind and deaf to outward things just then. My heart no longer throbbed violently, it fluttered and seemed to grow feebler and feebler in its action. I remember that there was a dull rushing sound in my ears, that a gas for breath, that my life seemed ebbing away. After these horrible sensations had passed I remained quiet for about half an hour. And during this time the picture of that last act, in the hateful tragedy, grew more and more distinct and vivid in my mind, until I seemed to be actually gazing on it, until my ears were filled with the hissing and crackling of the fire, the exultant shouts of the savages, and above all the last piercing cry of Able, Able, from the cloud of burning foliage. I could not endure it longer, and rose at last to my feet. I glanced at Kuhako, lying two or three yards away. And he, like the others, was or appeared to be in a deep sleep. He was lying on his back, and his dark, fire-lit face looked as still and unconscious as a face of stone. Now was my chance to escape, if to escape was my wish. Yes, for I now possessed the coveted knowledge, and nothing more was to be gained by keeping with my deadly enemies. And now, most fortunately for me, they have brought me far on the road to that place of the five hills where Managa lived—Managa, whose name had been often in my mind since my return to Parahuari. Glancing away from Kuhako's still-stone-like face, I caught sight of that pale solitary star which Rune had pointed out to me, low down in the northwestern sky, when I had asked him where his enemy lived. In that direction we had been travelling since leaving the village. Surely, if I walked all night by to-morrow I could reach Managa's hunting-ground and be safe and think over what I had heard and on what I had to do. I moved softly away a few steps, then thinking that it would be well to take a spear in my hand. I turned back and was surprised and startled to notice that Kuhako had moved in the interval. He had turned over on his side, and his face was now towards me. His eyes appeared closed, but he might be only feigning sleep, and I dare not go back to pick up the spear. After a moment's hesitation I moved on again, and after a second glance back, and seeing that he did not stir, I waited cautiously across the stream, walked softly twenty or thirty yards, and then began to run. After intervals I paused to listen for a moment, and presently I heard a pattering sound, as of footsteps coming swiftly after me. I instantly concluded that Kuhako had been awake all the time watching my movements, and that he was now following me. I now put forth my whole speed, and while thus running could distinguish no sound. That he would miss me, for it was very dark, although with a starry sky above, was my only hope, for with no weapon except my knife my chances would be small indeed, should he overtake me. Besides he had no doubt roused the others before starting, and they would be close behind. There were no bushes in that place to hide myself in, and let them pass me, and presently to make matters worse the character of the soil changed, and I was running over level clayy ground, so white with the salt efflorescence that a dark object moving on it would show conspicuously at a distance. Here I paused to look back and listen, when distinctly came the sound of footsteps, and the next moment I made out the vague form of an Indian advancing at a rapid rate of speed, and with this uplifted spear in his hand. In the brief pause I had made he had advanced almost to within hurling distance of me, and turning I sped on again, throwing off my cloak to ease my flight. The next time I looked back he was still in sight, but not so near. He had stopped to pick up my cloak, which would be his now, and this had given me a slight advantage. I fled on, and had continued running for a distance perhaps of fifty yards when an object rushed past me, tearing through the flesh of my left arm close to the shoulder on its way, and not knowing that I was not badly wounded, nor how near my pursuer might be, I turned in desperation to meet him, and saw him not above twenty-five yards away running towards me with something bright in his hand. It was Kuikou, and after wounding me with his spear he was about to finish me with his knife. Oh, fortunate young savage! After such a victory, and with that noble blue-cloth cloak for trophy and covering, what fame and happiness will be yours? A change, swift as lightning, had come over me, a sudden exultation. I was wounded, but my right hand was sound and clutched a knife as good as his, and we were on an equality. I waited for him calmly. All weakness, grief, despair had vanished, all feelings except a terrible raging desire to spill his accursed blood, and my brain was clear, and my nerves like steel, and I remembered with something like laughter our old amusing encounters with rapiers of wood. Ah! that was only making believe and childish play. This was reality. Could any white man deprived of his treacherous, far-killing weapon meet the resolute savage, face to face, and foot to foot, and equal him with the old primitive weapons? Poor youth, this delusion will cost you dear. It was scarcely unequal contest when he hurled himself against me, with only his savage strength and courage to match my skill. In a few moments he was lying at my feet, pouring out his life-blood on that white thirsty plane. From his prostrate form I turned, the wet red knife in my hand, to meet the others, still thinking that they were on the track and close at hand. Why had he stooped to pick up the cloak if they were not following, if he had not been afraid of losing it? I turned only to receive their spears, to die with my face to them, nor was the thought of death terrible to me. I could die calmly now after killing my first assailant. But had I indeed killed him? I asked, hearing a sound like a groan escape from his lips. Quickly stooping I once more drove my weapon to the hilt in his prostrate form, and when he exhaled a deep sigh, and his frame quivered, and the blood spurred it afresh, I experienced a feeling of savage joy. And still no sound of hurrying footsteps came to my listening ears, and no vague forms appeared in the darkness. I concluded that he had either left them sleeping, or that they had not followed in the right direction. Taking up the cloak I was about to walk on when I noticed the spear he had thrown at me, lying where it had fallen some yards away, and picking that up also I went on once more, still keeping the guiding star before me. CHAPTER XX That good fight had been to me like a draft of wine, and made me for a while oblivious of my loss and the pain from my wound. But the glow and feeling of exaltation did not last. The lacerated flesh smarted. I was weak from loss of blood, and oppressed with sensations of fatigue. If my foes had appeared on the scene they would have made an easy conquest of me. But they came not, and I continued to walk on, slowly and painfully, pausing often to rest. At last, recovering somewhat from my faint condition, and losing all fear of being overtaken, my sorrow revived in full force, and thought returned to madden me. Alas, this bright being, like no other in its divine brightness, so long in the making, now no more than a dead leaf, a little dust, lost in, forgotten forever. Oh, pitiless, how cruel! But I knew it all before, this law of nature and of necessity, against which all revolt is idle. Often had the remembrance of it filled me with ineffable melancholy, only now it seemed cruel beyond all cruelty. Not nature, the instrument, not the keen sword that cuts into the bleeding tissues, but the hand that wields it, the unseen, unknown something, or a person, that manifests itself in the horrible workings of nature. Do you know, beloved, at the last, in that intolerable heat, in that moment of supreme anguish, that he is unlistening, unhelpful as the stars, that you cried not to him? To me was your cry, but your poor frail fellow-creature was not there to save, or failing that, to cast himself into the flames and perish with you, hating God. Thus, in my insufferable pain, I spoke aloud, alone in that solitary place, a bleeding fugitive in the dark night, looking up at the stars, I cursed the author of my being, and called on him to take back the abhorred gift of life. Yet, according to my philosophy, how vain it was! All my bitterness and hatred and defiance were as empty, as ineffectual, as utterly futile, as are the supplications of the meek worshipper, and no more than the whisper of a leaf, the light whirr of an insect's wing. Whether I loved him, who was overall, as when I thanked him on my knees, for guiding me to where I had heard so sweet and mysterious a melody, or hated and defied him as now, it all came from him, love and hate, good and evil. But I know, I knew then, that in one thing my philosophy was false, that it was not the whole truth, that though my cries did not touch nor come near him, they would yet hurt me, and just as a prisoner maddened at his unjust fate, beats against the stone walls of his cell, until he falls back bruised and bleeding to the floor, so did I willfully bruise my own soul, and knew that those wounds I gave myself would not heal. Of that night, the beginning of the blackest period of my life, I shall say no more. And over subsequent events I shall pass quickly. Morning found me at a distance of many miles from the scene of my duel with the Indian, in a broken, hilly country, varied with savanna and open forest. I was well nigh spent with my long march, and felt that unless food was obtained before many hours my situation would be indeed desperate. With labor I managed to climb to the summit of a hill about three hundred feet high, in order to survey the surrounding country, and found that it was one of a group of five, and conjectured that these were the five hills of Irite, and that I was in the neighborhood of Managas Village. Coming down I proceeded to the next hill, which was higher, and before reaching it came to a stream and a narrow valley dividing the hills, and proceeding along its banks in search of a crossing-place, I came full in sight of the settlements sought for. As I approached people were seen moving hurriedly about, and by the time I arrived, walking slowly and painfully, seven or eight men were standing before the village, some with spears in their hands, the women and children behind them, all staring curiously at me. Drawing near I cried out in a somewhat feeble voice that I was seeking for Managa, whereupon a gray-haired man stepped forth spear in hand, and replied that he was Managa, and demanded to know why I sought him. I told him a part of my story, enough to show that I had a deadly feud with Rune that I had escaped from him after killing one of his people. I was taken in and supplied with food. My wound was examined and dressed, and then I was permitted to lie down and sleep, while Managa, with half a dozen of his people, hurriedly started to visit the scene of my fight with Kuako, not only to verify my story, but partly with the hope of meeting Rune. I did not see him again until the next morning, when he informed me that he had found the spot where I had been overtaken, that the dead man had been discovered by the others and carried back towards Para Hurari. He had followed the trace for some distance, and he was satisfied that Rune had come thus far in the first place, only with the intention of spying on him. My arrival, and the strange tidings I had brought, had thrown the village into a great commotion. It was evident that from that time Managa lived in constant apprehension of a sudden attack from his old enemy. This gave me great satisfaction. It was my study to keep the feeling alive, and more than that, to drop continual hints of his enemy's secret murderous purpose, until he was wrought up to a kind of frenzy of mingled fear and rage. And being of a suspicious and somewhat truculent temper, he one day all at once turned on me as the immediate cause of his miserable state, suspecting perhaps that I only wished to make an instrument of him. But I was strangely bold and careless of danger then, and only mocked at his rage, telling him proudly that I feared him not, that Rune, his mortal enemy and mine, feared not him but me, that Rune knew perfectly well where I had taken refuge and would not venture to make his meditated attack while I remained in his village, but would wait for my departure. Kill me, Managa! I cried, smiting my chest as I stood facing him. Kill me! And the result will be that he will come upon you unawares and murder you all, as he has resolved to do sooner or later. After that speech he glared at me in silence, then flung down the spear he had snatched up in his sudden rage, and stalked out of the house and into the wood. But before long he was back again, seated in his old place, brooding on my words with a face black as night. It is painful to recall that secret dark chapter of my life, that period of moral insanity. But I wish not to be a hypocrite, conscious or unconscious, to delude myself or another with this plea of insanity. My mind was very clear just then. Past and present were clear to me. The future, clearest of all. I could measure the extent of my action and speculate on its future effect, and my sense of right or wrong, of individual responsibility, was more vivid than at any other period of my life. Can I even say that I was blinded by passion? Driven perhaps, but certainly not blinded. For no reaction or submission had followed on that furious revolt against the unknown being, personal or not, that is behind nature, in whose existence I believed. I was still in revolt. I would hate him, and show my hatred by being like him, as he appears to us reflected in that mirror of nature. Had he given me good gifts, the sense of right and wrong and sweet humanity, the beautiful sacred flower he had caused to grow in me I would crush ruthlessly. Its beauty and fragrance and grace would be dead forever. There was nothing evil, nothing cruel and contrary to my nature, that I would not be guilty of, glorying in my guilt. This was not the temper of a few days. I remained for close upon two months at Managha's village, never repenting nor desisting in my efforts to induce the Indians to join me in that most barbarous adventure on which my heart was set. I succeeded in the end. It would have been strange if I had not. The horrible details need not be given. God did not wait for his enemy, but fell on him unexpectedly, an hour after nightfall, in his own village. If I had really been insane during those two months, if some cloud had been on me, some demoniacal force dragging me on, the cloud and insanity vanished and the constraint was over in one moment when that hellish enterprise was completed. It was the sight of an old woman lying where she had been struck down, the fire of the blazing house lighting her wide open glassy eyes and white hair, dabbled in blood, which suddenly, as by a miracle, wrought this change in my brain. For they were all dead at last, old and young, all who had lighted the fire round that great green tree in which Rima had taken refuge, who had danced round the blaze shouting, BURN! BURN! At the moment my glance fell on that prostrate form I paused and stood still, trembling like a person struck with a sudden pang in the heart, who thinks that his last moment has come to him unawares. After a while I slunk away out of the great circle of firelight into the thick darkness beyond. Instinctively I turned towards the forests across the savannah. My forest again, and fled away from the noise and the sight of flames, never pausing until I found myself within the black shadow of the trees. Into the deeper blackness of the interior I dared not venture. On the border I paused to ask myself what I did there alone in the night-time. Sitting down I covered my face with my hands as if to hide it more effectually than it could be hidden by night and the forest shadows. What horrible thing, what calamity that frightened my soul to think of had fallen on me. The revulsion of feeling, the unspeakable horror, the remorse, was more than I could bear. I started up with a cry of anguish and would have slain myself to escape at that moment, but nature is not always an utterly cruel, and on this occasion she came to my aid. This foresook me, and I lived not again until the light of early morning was in the east, then found myself lying on the wet herbage, wet with rain that had lately fallen. My physical misery was now so great that it prevented me from dwelling on the scenes witnessed on the previous evening. Nature was again merciful in this. I only remembered that it was necessary to hide myself, in case the Indians should be still in the neighborhood and pay the wood a visit. Slowly and painfully I crept away into the forest, and there sat for several hours, scarcely thinking at all, in a half-stupified condition. At noon the sun shone out and dried the wood. I felt no hunger, only a vague sense of bodily misery, and with it the fear that if I left my hiding-place I might meet some human creature face to face. This fear prevented me from stirring until the twilight came, when I crept forth and made my way to the border of the forest to spend the night there. Whether sleep visited me during the dark hours or not, I cannot say. Day and night my condition seemed the same. I experienced only a dull sensation of utter misery which seemed in spirit and flesh alike, and inability to think clearly, or for more than a few moments consecutively about anything. Scenes in which I had been a principal actor came in wet, as in a dream when the will slumbers. Now with devilish ingenuity and persistence I was working on Managa's mind, now standing motionless in the forest listening for that sweet, mysterious melody, now staring aghast at old clock claws wide-open glassy eyes and white hair dabbled in blood. Then suddenly, in the cave at Rialama, I was fondly watching the slow return of life and color to Rima's still face. When morning came again I felt so weak that a vague fear of sinking down and dying of hunger at last roused me and sent me forth in quest of food. I moved slowly and my eyes were dimmed to see, but I knew so well where to seek for small morsels, small edible roots and leaf stalks, berries and drops of congealed gum, that it would have been strange in that rich forest if I had not been able to discover something to stay my famine. It was little, but it's suffice for the day. Once more nature was merciful to me, for that diligent seeking among the concealing leaves left no interval for thought. Every chance morsel gave a momentary pleasure, and as I prolonged my search my steps grew firmer, the dimness passed from my eyes. I was more forgetful of self, more eager, and like a wild animal with no thought or feeling beyond its immediate wants. Fatigued at the end, I fell asleep as soon as darkness brought my busy rambles to a close and did not wake until another morning dawned. My hunger was extreme now. The wailing notes of a pair of small birds, persistently flitting round me or perched with gaping bills and wings trembling with agitation, served to remind me that it was now breeding time. Also that Rima had taught me to find a small bird's nest. She found them only to delight her eyes with the sight, but they would be food for me. The crystalline yellow fluid in the gem-like white or blue or red speckled shells would help to keep me alive. All day I hunted, listening to every note and cry, watching the motions of every winged thing, and found, besides gums and fruits, over a score of nests containing eggs, mostly of small birds. And although the labour was great and the scratch as many I was well satisfied with the result. A few days later I found a supply of Haima gum and eagerly began picking it from the tree. Not that it could be used, but the thought of the brilliant light it gave was so strong in my mind that mechanically I gathered it all. The possession of this gum, when night closed round me again, produced in me an intense longing for artificial light and warmth. The darkness was harder than ever to endure. I envied the fireflies their natural lights, and ran about in the dusk to capture a few and hold them in the hollow of my two hands for the sake of their cold, fitful flashes. On the following day I wasted two or three hours trying to get fire in the primitive method with dry wood, but failed, and lost much time, and suffered more than ever from hunger and consequence. But there was fire in everything. Even when I struck at hard wood with my knife, sparks were emitted. If I could only arrest those wonderful heat and light-giving sparks. And all at once, as if I had just lighted upon some new wonderful truth, it occurred to me that with my steel hunting knife and a piece of flint fire could be obtained. Immediately I set about preparing tender with dry moss, rotten wood, and wild cotton. And in a short time I had the wished fire, and heaped wood dry and green on it to make it large. I nursed it well, and spent the night beside it, and it also served to roast some huge white grubs which I had found in the rotten wood of a prostrate trunk. The sight of these great grubs had formally disgusted me, but they tasted good to me now, and stayed my hunger, and that was all I looked for in my wild forest food. For a long time an undefined feeling prevented me from going near the sight of New Flo's burnt lodge. I went there at last, and the first thing I did was to go all round the fatal spot, cautiously peering into the rank earbage, as if I feared a lurking serpent. And at length, at some distance from the blackened heap, I discovered a human skeleton and knew it to be New Flo's. In his day he had been a great armadillo hunter, and these quaint carrion-eaters had no doubt it revenged themselves by devouring his flesh when they found him dead, killed by the savages. Having once returned to this spot of many memories, I could not quit it again. While my wild woodland life lasted, here must I have my lair, and being here I could not leave that mournful skeleton above ground. With labor I excavated a pit to bury it, careful not to cut or injure a broadleaf creeper that had begun to spread itself over the spot, and after refilling the hole I drew the long trailing stems over the mound. "'Sleep well, old man,' said I, when my work was done, and these few words, implying neither censure nor praise, was all the burial service that old New Flo had from me. I then visited the spot where the old man, assisted by me, had concealed his provisions before starting for Rialama, and was pleased to find that it had not been discovered by the Indians. Besides the store of tobacco leaf, maize, pumpkin, potatoes, and cassava bread, and the cooking utensils, I found among other things a chopper, a great acquisition, since with it I would be able to cut down small palms and bamboos to make myself a hut. The possession of a supply of food left me time for many things, time in the first place to make my own conditions. Doubtless after them there would be further progression on the old lines, luxuries added to necessaries, a healthful, fruitful life of thought and action combined, and at last a peaceful, contemplative old age. I cleared away ashes and rubbish, and marked out the very spot where Rima's separate bower had been for my habitation, which I intended to make small. In five days it was finished, then after lighting a fire I stretched myself out in my dry bed of moss and leaves with a feeling that was almost triumphant. Let the rain now fall in torrents, putting out the firefly's lamp. Let the wind and thunder roar their loudest, and the lightning smite the earth with intolerable light, frightening the poor monkeys and their wet, leafy habitations. Little would I heat it all on my dry bed, under my dry palm-leaf thatch, with glorious fire to keep me company and protect me from my ancient enemy darkness. From that first sleep under shelter I woke refreshed and was not driven by the cruel spur of hunger into the wet forest. The wished time had come of rest from labour, of leisure for thought. Resting here, just where she had rested, night by night clasping a visionary mother in her arms, whispering tenderest words in a visionary ear, I too now clasped her in my arms, a visionary Rima. How different the nights had seemed when I was without shelter, before I had rediscovered fire. How had I endured it? That strange ghostly gloom of the woods at night-time full of innumerable strange shapes, still and dark, yet with something seen at times moving amidst them, dark and vague, and strange also, an owl perhaps, or bat, or great-winged moth, or night-jar. Or had I any choice then but to listen to the night sounds of the forest, and they were various as the day sounds, and for every day sound, from the faintest, lisping and softest trill to the deep boomings in piercing cries, there was an analogue, always with something mysterious, unreal in its tone, something proper to the night. They were ghostly sounds, uttered by the ghosts of dead animals. They were a hundred different things by turns, but always with a meaning in them which I vainly strove to catch, something to be interpreted only by a sleeping faculty in us, lightly sleeping, and now, now on the very point of awaking. Now the gloom and the mystery were shut out, now I had that which stood in the place of pleasure to me, and was more than pleasure. It was a mournful rapture to lie awake now, wishing not for sleep and oblivion, hating the thought of daylight that would come at last to drown and scare away my vision. To be with Rima again, my lost Rima recovered, mine, mine at last. No longer the old vexing doubt now, you are you, and I am I, why is it? Again asked when our souls were nearer together, like two raindrops, side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer. For now they had touched, and were not two but one, inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by time, nor shattered by death's blow, no resolve by any alchemy. I had other company besides this unfailing vision and the bright dancing fire that talked to me, in its fantastic fire language. It was my custom to secure the door well on retiring. Grief had perhaps chilled my blood, for I suffered less from heat than from cold at this period, and the fire seemed grateful all night long. I was also anxious to exclude all small winged and creeping night wanderers, but to exclude them entirely proved impossible. After a dozen invisible chinks they would find their way to me, also some enter by day, to like and sealed until after nightfall. A monstrous hairy hermit-spider found an asylum in a dusky corner of the hut under the thatch, and day after day he was there, all day long, sitting close and motionless. But at dark he invariably disappeared, who knows on what murderous errand. His hue was a deep, dead leaf yellow, with a black and grey pattern, barred from some wild cat, and so large was he that his great outspread hairy legs, radiating from the flat disc of his body, would have covered a man's open hand. It was easy to see him in my small interior. Often in the night time my eyes would stray to his corner, never to encounter that strange hairy figure, but daylight failed not to bring him. He troubled me. But now, for Rima's sake, I could slay no living thing except from motives of hunger. I had it in my mind to injure him, to strike off one of his legs, which would not be missed much, as there were many, so as to make him go away and return no more to so inhospitable a place. But courage failed me. He might come stealthily back at night, to plunge his long crooked farcees into my throat, poisoning my blood with fever and delirium and black death. So I left him alone, and glanced furtively and fearfully at him, hoping that he had not divined any thoughts, that we lived on unsociably together. More companionable, but still in an uncomfortable way with the large crawling, running insects, crickets, beetles, and others. They were shapely and black and polished, and ran about here and there on the floor, just like intelligent little hoarseless carriages. Then they would pause with their immovable eyes fixed on me, seeing or in some mysterious way dividing my presence, their pliant horns waving up and down, like delicate instruments used to test the air. Beads and millipedes and dozens came, too, and were not welcome. I feared not their venom, but it was a weariness to see them, for they seemed no living things, but the vertebrae of snakes and eels and long, slim fishes, dead and desiccated, made to move mechanically over walls and floor by means of some jugglery of nature. I grew skillful at picking them up with a pair of pliant green twigs, to thrust them into the outer darkness. One night a moth fluttered in, and I lighted on my hand as I sat by the fire, forcing me to hold my breath as I cased on it. Its four wings were pale gray, with shadings dark and light, written all over in finest characters with some twilight mystery or legend. But the round underwings were clear amber yellow, veined like a leaf with red and purple veins, a thing of such exquisite chaste beauty that the sight of it gave me a sudden shock of pleasure. Very soon it flew up, circling about, and finally lighted on the palm leaf thatched directly over the fire. The heat, I thought, would soon drive it from the spot, and rising I opened the door so that it might find its way out again into its own cool, dark, flowery world. Then standing by the open door I turned and addressed it. O night wanderer of the pale, beautiful wings, go forth, and should you by chance meet her somewhere in the shadowy depths, revisiting her old haunts, be my messenger. Thus much had I spoken when the frail thing loosened its hold, to fall without a flutter, straight and swift into the white blaze beneath. I sprang forward with a shriek and stood staring into the fire, my whole frame trembling with a sudden terrible emotion. Even thus had Rima fallen, fallen from the great height, into the flames that instantly consumed her beautiful flesh and bright spirit. O cruel nature! A moth that perished in the flame, an indistinct faint sound, a dream in the night, the semblance of a shadowy form moving mislike in the twilight gloom of the forest, would suddenly bring back a vivid memory, the old anguish, to break for a while the calm of that period. It was calm then after the storm. Nevertheless, my health deteriorated. I ate little and slept little and grew thin and weak. When I looked down on the dark, glassy forest pool, where Rima would look no more to see herself, so much better than in the small mirror of her lover's pupil, it showed me a gaunt ragged man, with a tangled mass of black hair falling over his shoulders, the bones of his face showing through the dead-looking sun-parched skin, the sunken eyes with a gleam in them that was like insanity. To see this reflection had a strangely disturbing effect on me. A torturing voice would whisper in my ear, Yes, you are evidently going mad. By and by you will rush howling through the forest, only to drop down at last and die. And no person will ever find and bury your bones. Old Newflow was more fortunate in that he perished first. A lying voice, I retorted, in sudden anger. My faculties were never keener than thou. Not a fruit can ripen, but I find it. If a small bird darts by with a feather or straw in its bill, I mark its flight, and it will be a lucky bird if I do not find its nest in the end. Would a savage born in the forest do more? He would starve, why, or I find food. Ah, yes, there is nothing wonderful in that, answered the voice. The stranger from a cold country suffers less from the heat when days are hottest than the Indian who knows no other climate, but mark the result. The stranger dies while the Indian, sweating and gasping for breath, survives. In like manner the low-minded savage, cut off from all human fellowship, keeps his faculties to the end, while your finer brain proves your ruin. I cut from a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black as whale bone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb, and combed out my long, tangled hair to improve my appearance. It is not the tangled condition of your hair, persisted the voice, but your eyes so wild and strange in their expression that show the approach of madness. Make your locks as smooth as you like, and add a garland of those scarlet star-shaped blossoms hanging from the bush behind you. Crown yourself as you crowned old Kla-Kla, but the crazed look will remain just the same. And being no longer able to reply, rage and desperation drove me to enact which only seemed to prove that the hateful voice had prophesied truly. Taking up a stone I hurled it down on the water to shatter the image I saw there, as if it had been no faithful reflection of myself, but a travesty, cunningly made of enameled clay or some other material, and put there by some malicious enemy to mock me. CHAPTER XXI. Many days had passed since the hut was made. How many may not be known, since I notched no stick and knotted no cord, yet never in my rambles in the wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where the fire had done its work. Nor had I looked for it. On the contrary, my wish was never to see it, and the fear of coming accidentally upon it made me keep to the old familiar paths. But at length one night, without thinking of Rima's fearful end, it all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whose blood I had shed on the white savannah might have only been practicing his natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story. If that were so, if he had been prepared with a fictitious account of her death to meet my questions, then Rima might still exist. Lost perhaps, wandering at some distant place, exposed to perils day and night, and unable to find her way back, but living still. Her heart on fire with the hope of reunion with me, cautiously threading her way through the undergrowth of immeasurable forests, spying out the distant villages and hiding herself on the side of all men, as she knew so well how to hide, studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize some familiar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the old wood once more. Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she might be somewhere in the wood, somewhere near me, but after so long an absence full of apprehension, waiting in concealment for what tomorrow's light might show. I started up, and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then set the door open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood. But Rima had done more. Going out into the black forest in the pitiless storm, she had found and led me home. Could I do less? I was quickly out in the shadows of the wood. Surely it was more than a mere hope that made my heart beat so wildly. How could a sensation so strangely sudden, so irresistible in its power, possess me, unless she were living and near? Can it be? Can it be that we shall meet again? To look again into your divine eyes, to hold you again in my arms at last. I so changed, so different. But the old love remains, and of all that has happened in your absence I shall tell you nothing. Not one word. All shall be forgotten now. Sufferings, madness, crime, remorse. Nothing shall ever vex you again. Not new flow, who vexed you every day, for he is dead now, murdered. Only I shall not say that. And I have decently buried his poor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood. Nor would now. The sweet old days again, for I know that you would not have it different, nor would I. Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that would soon be mine. And at intervals I stood still and made the forest echo with my calls. Rima! Rima! I called again and again, and waited for some response, and heard only the familiar night sounds. As of insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog, and a low murmur in the topmost foliage, moved by some light breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenched with dew, bruised in bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks and thorns and rough branches, but it felt nothing. Gradually the excitement burnt itself out. I was hoarse with shouting and ready to drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead. And at length I crept back to my hut, to cast myself on my grass-bed, and sink into a dull, miserable, desponding stupor. But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to search the forest well, since, if no evidence of the great fire Kuhako had described to me existed, it would still be possible to believe that he had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched all day, and found nothing. But the area was large, and to search it thoroughly would require several days. On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never again would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had indeed been a vain one. There could be no mistake. Just such an open place as the Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart, while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a huge heap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate-chard tree-trunks and ashes. Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and on the present small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall! Through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel imagination was to turn that desolate ash-heap, in spite of feathery foliage and embroidery of creepers, into roaring, leaping flames again, to bring those dead savages back, men, women, and children, even the little ones I had played with, to set them yelling around me. Burn! Burn! Oh! No! This damnable spot must not be your last resting place. If the fire had not utterly consumed her, bones as well as sweet, tender flesh, shriveling her like a frail, white-winged moth into the finest white ashes, mixed inseparably with the ashes of stems and leaves innumerable, then whatever remained of her must be conveyed elsewhere to be with me, to mingle with my ashes at last. Having resolved to sift and examine the entire heap, I had once said about my task, if she had climbed into the central highest branch and had fallen straight, then she would have dropped into the flames not far from the roots, and so to begin I made a path to the trunk, and when darkness overtook me I had worked all round the tree, in a width of three to four yards, without discovering any remains. At noon on the following day I found the skeleton, or had all events, the larger bones, rendered so fragile by the fierce heat they had been subjected to, that they fell to pieces when handled. But I was careful, how careful, to save these last sacred relics, all that was now left of Rima, kissing each white fragment as I lifted it, and gathering them all on my old frayed cloak, spread out to receive them. And when I had recovered them all, even to the smallest, I took my treasure home. Another storm had shaken my soul, and had been succeeded by a second calm, which was more complete and promised to be more enduring than the first. But it was no lethargic calm, my brain was more active than ever, and by and by it found a work for my hands to do, of such a character as to distinguish me from all other forest hermits fugitives from their fellows in that savage land. The calcined bones I had rescued were kept in one of the big, crudely shaped, half-burnt earthen jars which Newflow had used for storing grain and other food-stuff. It was of a wood-ash color, and after I had given up my search for the peculiar fine clay he had used in its manufacture, for it had been in my mind to make a more shapely funeral earned myself. I set to work to ornament its surface. A portion of each day was given to this artistic labor, and when the surface was covered with a pattern of thorny stems and a trailing creeper with curving leaf and twining tendril and pendant bud and blossom I gave it color. Purples in black only were used, obtained from the juices of some deeply colored berries, and when a tint or shade or line failed to satisfy me I erased it to do it again, and this so often that I never completed my work. I might, in the proudly modest spirit of the old sculptors, have inscribed on the vase the words, Able was doing this, for was not my ideal beautiful like theirs, and the best that my art could do only an imperfect copy, a rude sketch? A serpent was represented wound around the lower portion of the jar, dull-hued with a chain of irregular black spots or blotches extending along its body, and if any person had curiously examined these spots he would have discovered that every other one was a rudely-shaped letter, and that the letters, by being properly divided, made the following words, Sin vos si siu dios i mi. Words that to some might seem wild, even insane in their extravagance, sung by some ancient forgotten poet, or possibly the motto of some lovesick knight errant whose passion was consumed to ashes long centuries ago. But not wild nor insane to me, dwelling alone on a vast stony plain and everlasting twilight, where there was no motion, nor any sound, but all things, even trees, ferns, and grasses, were stone. And in that place I had sat for many a thousand years, drawn up emotionless, with stony fingers clasped round my legs, and forehead resting on my knees, and there would I sit, unmoving, immovable, for many a thousand years to come, I, no longer I, in a universe where she was not, and God was not. The days went by, and to others grouped themselves into weeks and months. To me they were only days, not Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but nameless. They were so many, and there some so great that all my previous life, all the years I had existed before this solitary time, now looked like a small island immeasurably far away, scarcely discernible, in the midst of that endless, desolate waste of nameless days. My stock of provisions had been so long consumed that I had forgotten the flavor of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple and sweet potatoes. For new-flow's cultivated patch had been destroyed by the savages, not a stem, not a root had they left, and I, like the sorrowful man that broods on his sorrow, and the artist who thinks only of his art, had been improvident and had consumed the seed without putting a portion into the ground. Only wild food, and too little of that, found with much seeking and got with many hurts. Birds screamed at and scolded me. Branches bruised and thorns scratched me, and still worse were the angry clouds of waspish things no bigger than flies. Buzz, buzz, sting, sting! A serpent's tooth has failed to kill me. Little do I care for your small drops of fiery venom so that I get at the spoil grubs and honey. My white bread and purple wine. Once my soul hungered after knowledge. I took delight and fine thoughts, finely expressed. I sought them carefully in printed books. Now only this vile bodily hunger, this eager seeking for grubs and honey, an ignoble war with little things. A bad hunter I proved after larger game. Bird and beast despised my snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent, so many daylight hours to make. Once, seeing a troop of monkeys high up in the tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long time, thinking how royally I should feast if by some strange unheard of accident one were to fall disabled to the ground and be at my mercy. But nothing impossible happened and I had no meat. What meat did I ever have except an occasional fledgling killed in its cradle, or a lizard or small tree-frog detected in spite of its green color among the foliage? I would roast the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why should he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy symbols with no appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind of meat. But the star of stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade and, arming myself with a long stick, I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy. Rima was not there to pluck the rage from my heart and save his evil life. No coral snake this, with slim tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant color, but thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black, also a broad, flat, murderous head with stony, ice-like, whitey blue eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and make it sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone, waiting for the sharp inevitable stroke. So swift at last, so long and coming. Oh, abominable flat head, with icy cold, human-like, fiend-like eyes, I shall cut you off and throw you away. And away I flung it, far enough in all conscience. Yet I walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere, somewhere down on the black wet soil where it had fallen, through all that dense thorny tangle and millions of screening leaves, the white, lidless, living eyes were following me still, and would always be following me in all my goings and comings and windings about in the forest. And what wonder, for were we not alone together in this dreadful solitude, I, and the serpent, eaters of the dust, singled out and cursed above all cattle? He would not have bitten me, and I, faithless cannibal, had murdered him. That cursed fancy would live on, worming itself into every crevice of my mind. The severed head would grow and grow in the night-time to something monstrous at last. The hellish white, lidless eyes increasing to the size of two full moons. Murderer! Murderer! they would say. First a murderer of your own fellow creatures. That was a small crime. But God our enemy has made them in his image, and he cursed you, and we two were together, alone and apart. You and I, murderer. You and I, murderer. I tried to escape the tyrannous fancy by thinking of other things and by making light of it. The starved bloodless brain, I said, has strange thoughts. I fell to studying the dark, thick, blunt body in my hands. I noticed that the livid, rudely blotch, scaly surface showed in some lights a lovely play of prismatic colors. And growing poetical, I said. When the wild west wind broke up the rainbow on the flying gray cloud and scattered it over the earth, a fragment doubtless fell on this reptile to give it that tender celestial tint. For thus it is nature loves all her children, and gives to each some beauty little or much. Only to me, her hated stepchild, she gives no beauty, no grace. But stay! Am I not wronging her? Did not Rima, beautiful above all things, love me well? Said she not that I was beautiful? Ah, yes. That was long ago, spoke the voice that mocked me by the pool when I combed out my tangled hair. Long ago, when the soul that looked from your eyes was not the accursed thing it is now. Now Rima would start at the sight of them. Now she would fly in terror from their insane expression. Oh, spiteful voice! Must you spoil even such appetite as I have for this fork-tongued, spotty food? You, by day and Rima by night, what shall I do? What shall I do? For it had now come to this, that the end of each day brought not sleep and dreams, but waking visions. Night by night, from my dry grass bed, I beheld Nuflo sitting in his old doubled-up posture, his big brown feet close to the white ashes, sitting silent and miserable. I pitied him. I owed him hospitality. But it seemed intolerable that he should be there. It was better to shut my eyes, for then Rima's arms would be around my neck, the silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowery breath mixing with my breath. What a luminous face was hers. Even with close shut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin showing the radiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual and passionate, dark as purple wine under their dark lashes. Then my eyes would open wide. No Rima in my arms. But over there, a little way back from the fire, just beyond where old Nuflo had sat brooding a few minutes ago, Rima would be standing, still in pale and unspeakably sad. Why does she come to me from the outside darkness to stand there talking to me, yet never once lifting her mournful eyes to mine? Do not believe it, Abel. No, it was only a phantom of your brain, though what I was that you remember so well. For do you not see that when I come she fades away and is nothing? Not that. Do not ask it. I know that I once refused to look into your eyes, and afterwards, in the cave of Rialama, I looked long and was happy, unspeakably happy, but now. Oh, you do not know what you ask, you do not know the sorrow that has come into mine, that if you once beheld it, for very sorrow you would die, and you must live. But I will wait patiently, and we shall be together in the end, and see each other without disguise. Nothing shall divide us, only wish not for it soon. Think not the death will ease your pain, and seek it not. Austerities, good works, prayers? They are not seen, they are not heard, they are less than nothing, and there is no intercession. I did not know it then. But you knew it. Your life was your own. You are not saved nor judged. Aquit yourself. Undo that which you have done, which heaven cannot undo, and heaven will say no word, nor will I. You cannot, Abel, you cannot. That which you have done is done, and yours must be the penalty and the sorrow, yours and mine, yours and mine, yours and mine. This too was a phantom, a reema of the mind, one of the shapes the ever-changing black vapours of remorse and insanity would take, and all her mournful sentences were woven out of my own brain. I was not so crazed as not to know it. Only a phantom, an illusion, yet more real than reality. Real is my crime and vain remorse and death to come. That was indeed. Rema returned to tell me that I that loved her had been more cruel to her than her cruelest enemies, for they had but tortured and destroyed her body with fire, while I had cast this shadow on her soul, this sorrow transcending all sorrows, darker than death, immitable, eternal. If I could only have faded gradually, painlessly, growing feebler, embody, and dimmer in my senses each day, to sink at last into sleep. But it could not be. Still the fever in my brain, the mocking voice by day, the phantoms by night, and at last I became convinced that unless I quitted the forest before long, death would come to me in some terrible shape. But in the feeble condition I was now in, and without any provisions, to escape from the neighborhood of Parahurari was impossible, seeing that it was necessary, at starting, to avoid the villages where the Indians were of the same tribe as Rooney, who would recognize me as the white man who was once his guest and afterwards his implacable enemy. I must wait, and in spite of a weakened body and a mind diseased, struggle still to rest a scanty subsistence from wild nature. One day I discovered an old prostrate tree, buried under a thick growth of creeper and fern, the wood of which was nearly or quite rotten. As I proved by thrusting my knife to the heft in it, no doubt it would contain grubs, those huge white wood-bores which now formed an important item in my diet. On the following day I returned to the spot with a chopper and a bundle of wedges to split the trunk up, but it scarcely commenced operations when an animal, startled at my blows, rushed or rather wriggled from its hiding place under the dead wood at a distance of a few yards from me. It was a robust, round-headed, short-legged creature, about as big as a good-sized cat, and clothed in a thick greenish-brown fur. The ground all about was covered with creepers, binding the ferns, bushes, and old dead branches together, and in this confused tangle the animal scrambled and tore with a great show of energy, but really made very little progress. And all at once it flashed into my mind that it was a sloth, a common animal but rarely seen on the ground, with no tree near to take refuge in. The shock of joy this discovery produced was great enough to unnerve me, and for some moments I stood trembling, hardly able to breathe, then recovering I hastened after it, and stunned it with a blow from my chopper on its round head. Poor sloth! I said as I stood over it. Poor old lazy bones! Did Rima ever find you fast asleep in a tree, hugging a branch as if you loved it, and with her little hand pat your round human-like head, and laugh mockingly at the astonishment in your drowsy, waking eyes, and scold you tenderly for wearing your nails so long and for being so ugly? Lazy bones, your death is revenged! O, to be out of this wood, away from this sacred place, to be anywhere where killing is not murder! Then it came into my mind that I was now in possession of the supply of food, which will enable me to quit the wood. A noble creature, as much to me as if a stray migratory mule had rambled into the wood and found me, and I him. Now I would be my own mule, patient and long suffering, and far going, with naked feet hardened to hoofs, and a pack of provinder on my back to make me independent of the dry, bitter grass on the sun-burnt savannas. Part of that night and the next morning was spent in curing the flesh over a smoky fire of green wood, and in manufacturing a rough sack to store it in, for I had resolved to set out on my journey. How safely to convey Rima's treasured ashes was a subject of much thought and anxiety, the clay vessel on which I had expended so much loving, sorrowful labor had to be left, being too large and heavy to carry. Eventually I put the fragments in a light sack, and in order to avert suspicion from the people I would meet on the way, above the ashes I packed a layer of roots and bulbs. These I would say contained medicinal properties, known to the white doctors to whom I would sell them on my arrival at a Christian settlement, and with the money by myself closed to start life afresh. On the morrow I would bid a last farewell to that forest of many memories, and my journey would be eastwards, over a wild savage land of mountains, rivers, and forests, where every dozen miles would be like a hundred of Europe, but a land inhabited by tribes not unfriendly to the stranger. And perhaps it would be my good fortune to meet with Indians travelling east, who would know the easiest roots, and from time to time some compassionate voyager would let me share his wood-skin, and many leagues would be got over without weariness, till some great river flowing through British or Dutch Guiana would be reached, and so on and on, by slow or swift stages, with little to eat perhaps, with much labour and pain, in hot sun and in storm, to the Atlantic at last, and towns inhabited by Christian men. In the evening of that day, after completing my preparations, I stopped on the remaining portions of the sloth, not suitable for preservation, roasting bits of fat on the coals and boiling the head and bones into a broth, and after swallowing the liquid I crunched the bones and sucked the marrow, feeding like some hungry carnivorous animal. Clancing at the fragments scattered on the floor, I remembered old Newflow, and how I had surprised him at his feast of rank Kodamundi in his secret retreat. Newflow, old neighbor, said I. How quiet you are under your green coverlet, spangled just now with yellow flowers. It is no sham sleep, old man. I know if any suspicion of these curious doings, this feast of flesh on a spot once sacred, could flit like a small moth until your moldy hollow skull you would soon thrust out your old nose to sniff the savor of roasting fat once more. There was in me at that moment an inclination to laughter. It came to nothing, but affected me strangely, like an impulse I had not experienced since boyhood. Familiar, yet novel. After the good night to my neighbor, I tumbled into my straw and slept soundly, animal-like. No fancies in fathoms that night. The lidless white, implacable eyes of the serpents severed head were turned to dust at last. No sudden dream glare lighted up old clock-claws wrinkled dead face and white, blood-dabbled locks. Old Newflow stayed beneath his green coverlet. Nor did my mournful spirit-bride come to me to make my heart faint at the thought of immortality. But when morning dawned again, it was bitter to rise up and go. Way forever from that spot where I had often talked with Rima, the true and the visionary. The sky was cloudless and the forest wet as if rain had fallen. It was only a heavy dew, and it made the foliage look pale and hoary and the early light. And the light grew, and a whispering wind sprung as I walked through the wood, and the fast evaporating moisture was like a bloom on the feathery fronds in grass and rancourbage. But on the higher foliage it was like a faint iridescent mist, a glory above the trees. The everlasting beauty and freshness of nature was over all again, as I had so often seen it with joy and adoration, before grief and dreadful passions had dimmed my vision. And now as I walked, murmuring my last farewell, my eyes grew dim again with the tears that gathered to them.