Complete weird tales of.., p.1242
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1242
The water all around was shallow, limpid as crystal, and he saw the ribbed sand shining on the bottom, where purple seaweed floated, and delicate sea creatures darted and swarmed and scattered again at the dip of his paddle.
Like velvet rubbed on velvet the canoe brushed across the sand. He staggered to his feet, stumbled out, dragged the canoe high up under the trees, turned it bottom upward, and sank beside it, face downward in the sand. Sleep came to drive away the fear of fear, but hunger, thirst, and fever fought with sleep, and he dreamed — dreamed of a rope that sawed his neck, of the fight in the woods, and the shots. He dreamed, too, of the camp, of his forty pounds of spruce gum, of Tully, and of Bates. He dreamed of the fire and the smoke-scorched kettle, of the foul odour of musty bedding, of the greasy cards, and of his own new pack, hoarded for weeks to please the others. All this he dreamed, lying there face downward in the sand; but he did not dream of the face of the dead.
The shadows of the leaves moved on his blonde head, crisp with clipped curls. A butterfly flitted around him, alighting now on his legs, now on the back of his bronzed hands. All the afternoon the bees hung droning among the wildwood blossoms; the leaves above scarcely rustled; the shore birds brooded along the water’s edge; the thin tide, sleeping on the sand, mirrored the sky.
Twilight paled the zenith; a breeze moved in the deeper woods; a star glimmered, went out, glimmered again, faded, and glimmered.
Night came. A moth darted to and fro under the trees; a beetle hummed around a heap of seaweed and fell scrambling in the sand. Somewhere among the trees a sound had become distinct, the song of a little brook, melodious, interminable. He heard it in his dream; it threaded all his dreams like a needle of silver, and like a needle it pricked him — pricked his dry throat and cracked lips. It could not awake him; the cool night swathed him head and foot.
Toward dawn a bird woke up and piped. Other birds stirred, restless, half awakened; a gull spread a cramped wing on the shore, preened its feathers, scratched its tufted neck, and took two drowsy steps toward the sea.
The sea breeze stirred out behind the mist bank; it raised the feathers on the sleeping gulls; it set the leaves whispering. A twig snapped, broke off, and fell. Kent stirred, sighed, trembled, and awoke.
The first thing he heard was the song of the brook, and he stumbled straight into the woods. There it lay, a thin, deep stream in the gray morning light, and he stretched himself beside it and laid his cheek in it. A bird drank in the pool, too — a little fluffy bird, bright-eyed and fearless.
His knees were firmer when at last he rose, heedless of the drops that beaded lips and chin. With his knife he dug and scraped at some white roots that hung half meshed in the bank of the brook, and when he had cleaned them in the pool he ate them.
The sun stained the sky when he went down to the canoe, but the eternal curtain of fog, far out at sea, hid it as yet from sight.
He lifted the canoe, bottom upwards, to his head, and, paddle and pole in either hand, carried it into the forest.
After he had set it down he stood a moment, opening and shutting his knife. Then he looked up into the trees. There were birds there, if he could get at them. He looked at the brook. There were the prints of his fingers in the sand; there, too, was the print of something else a deer’s pointed hoof.
He had nothing but his knife. He opened it again and looked at it.
That day he dug for clams and ate them raw. He waded out into the shallows, too, and jabbed at fish with his setting pole, but hit nothing except a yellow crab.
Fire was what he wanted. He hacked and chipped at flinty-looking pebbles, and scraped tinder from a stick of sun-dried driftwood. His knuckles bled, but no fire came.
That night he heard deer in the woods, and could not sleep for thinking, until the dawn came up behind the wall of mist, and he rose with it to drink his fill at the brook and tear raw clams with his white teeth. Again he fought for fire, craving it as he had never craved water, but his knuckles bled, and the knife scraped on the flint in vain.
His mind, perhaps, had suffered somewhat. The white beach seemed to rise and fall like a white carpet on a gusty hearth. The birds, too, that ran along the sand, seemed big and juicy, like partridges; and he chased them, hurling shells and bits of driftwood at them till he could scarcely keep his feet for the rising, plunging beach — or carpet, whichever it was. That night the deer aroused him at intervals. He heard them splashing and grunting and crackling along the brook. Once he arose and stole after them, knife in hand, till a false step into the brook awoke him to his folly, and he felt his way back to the canoe, trembling.
Morning came, and again he drank at the brook, lying on the sand where countless heart-shaped hoofs had passed leaving clean imprints; and again he ripped the raw clams from their shells and swallowed them, whimpering.
All day long the white beach rose and fell and heaved and flattened under his bright dry eyes. He chased the shore birds at times, till the unsteady beach tripped him up and he fell full length in the sand. Then he would rise moaning, and creep into the shadow of the wood, and watch the little song-birds in the branches, moaning, always moaning.
His hands, sticky with blood, hacked steel and flint together, but so feebly that now even the cold sparks no longer came.
He began to fear the advancing night; he dreaded to hear the big warm deer among the thickets. Fear clutched him suddenly, and he lowered his head and set his teeth and shook fear from his throat again.
Then he started aimlessly into the woods, crowding past bushes, scraping trees, treading on moss and twig and mouldy stump, his bruised hands swinging, always swinging.
The sun set in the mist as he came out of the woods on to another beach — a warm, soft beach, crimsoned by the glow in the evening clouds.
And on the sand at his feet lay a young girl asleep, swathed in the silken garment of her own black hair, round limbed, brown, smooth as the bloom on the tawny beach.
A gull napped overhead, screaming. Her eyes, deeper than night, unclosed. Then her lips parted in a cry, soft with sleep, “Ihó!”
She rose, rubbing her velvet eyes. “Ihó!” she cried in wonder; “Inâh!”
The gilded sand settled around her little feet. Her cheeks crimsoned.
“E-hó! E-hó!” she whispered, and hid her face in her hair.
IV.
The bridge of the stars spans the sky seas; the sun and the moon are the travellers who pass over it. This was also known in the lodges of the Isantee, hundreds of years ago. Chaské told it to Hârpam, and when Hârpam knew he told it to Hapéda; and so the knowledge spread to Hârka, and from Winona to Wehârka, up and down, across and ever across, woof and web, until it came to the Island of Grief. And how? God knows!
“Wehârka, prattling in the tules, may have told Ne-kâ; and Ne-kâ, high in the November clouds, may have told Kay-óshk, who told it to Shinge-bis, who told it to Skeé-skah, who told it to Sé-só-Kah.
Ihó! Inâh! Behold the wonder of it! And this is the fate of all knowledge that comes to the Island of Grief.
* * * *
As the red glow died in the sky, and the sand swam in shadows, the girl parted the silken curtains of her hair and looked at him.
“Ehó!” she whispered again in soft delight.
For now it was plain to her that he was the sun! He had crossed the bridge of stars in the blue twilight; he had come!
“E-tó!”
She stepped nearer, shivering, faint with the ecstasy of this holy miracle wrought before her.
He was the Sun! His blood streaked the sky at dawn; his blood stained the clouds at even. In his eyes the blue of the sky still lingered, smothering two blue stars; and his body was as white as the breast of the Moon.
She opened both arms, hands timidly stretched, palm upward. Her face was raised to his, her eyes slowly closed; the deep-fringed lids trembled.
Like a young priestess she stood, motionless save for the sudden quiver of a limb, a quick pulse-flutter in the rounded throat. And so she worshipped, naked and unashamed, even after he, reeling, fell heavily forward on his face; even when the evening breeze stealing over the sands stirred the hair on his head, as winds stir the fur of a dead animal in the dust.
* * * *
When the morning sun peered over the wall of mist, and she saw it was the sun, and she saw him, flung on the sand at her feet, then she knew that he was a man, only a man, pallid as death and smeared with blood.
And yet — miracle of miracles! — the divine wonder in her eyes deepened, and her body seemed to swoon, and fall a-trembling, and swoon again.
For, although it was but a man who lay at her feet, it had been easier for her to look upon a god.
He dreamed that he breathed fire — fire, that he craved as he had never craved water. Mad with delirium, he knelt before the flames, rubbing his torn hands, washing them in the crimson-scented flames. He had water, too, cool scented water, that sprayed his burning flesh, that washed in his eyes, his hair, his throat. After that came hunger, a fierce rending agony, that scorched and clutched and tore at his entrails; but that, too, died away, and he dreamed that he had eaten and all his flesh was warm. Then he dreamed that he slept; and when he slept he dreamed no more.
One day he awoke and found her stretched beside him, soft palms tightly closed, smiling, asleep.
V.
Now the days began to run more swiftly than the tide along the tawny beach; and the nights, star-dusted and blue, came and vanished and returned, only to exhale at dawn like perfume from a violet.
They counted hours as they counted the golden bubbles, winking with a million eyes along the foam-flecked shore; and the hours ended, and began, and glimmered, iridescent, and ended as bubbles end in a tiny rainbow haze.
There was still fire in the world; it flashed up at her touch and where she chose. A bow strung with the silk of her own hair, an arrow winged like a sea bird and tipped with shell, a line from the silver tendon of a deer, a hook of polished bone — these were the mysteries he learned, and learned them laughing, her silken head bent close to his.
The first night that the bow was wrought and the glossy string attuned, she stole into the moonlit forest to the brook; and there they stood, whispering, listening, and whispering, though neither understood the voice they loved.
In the deeper woods, Kaug, the porcupine, scraped and snuffed. They heard Wabóse, the rabbit, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, loping across dead leaves in the moonlight. Skeé-skah, the wood-duck, sailed past, noiseless, gorgeous as a floating blossom.
Out on the ocean’s placid silver, Shinge-bis, the diver, shook the scented silence with his idle laughter, till Kay-óshk, the gray gull, stirred in his slumber. There came a sudden ripple in the stream, a mellow splash, a soft sound on the sand.
“Ihó! Behold!”
“I see nothing.”
The beloved voice was only a wordless melody to her.
“Ihó! Ta-hinca, the red deer! E-hó! The buck will follow!”
“Ta-hinca,” he repeated, notching the arrow.
“E-tó! Ta-mdóka!”
So he drew the arrow to the head, and the gray gull feathers brushed his ear, and the darkness hummed with the harmony of the singing string.
Thus died Ta-mdóka, the buck deer of seven prongs.
VI.
As an apple tossed spinning into the air, so spun the world above the hand that tossed it into space.
And one day in early spring, Sé-só-Kah, the robin, awoke at dawn, and saw a girl at the foot of the blossoming tree holding a babe cradled in the silken sheets of her hair.
At its feeble cry, Kaug, the porcupine, raised his quilled head. Wabóse, the rabbit, sat still with palpitating sides. Kay-óshk, the gray gull, tiptoed along the beach.
Kent knelt with one bronzed arm around them both.
“Ihó! Inâh!” whispered the girl, and held the babe up in the rosy flames of dawn.
But Kent trembled as he looked, and his eyes filled. On the pale green moss their shadows lay — three shadows. But the shadow of the babe was white as froth.
Because it was the firstborn son, they named it Chaské; and the girl sang as she cradled it there in the silken vestments of her hair; all day long in the sunshine she sang:
Wâ-wa, wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá;
Kah-wéen, nee-zhéka Ke-diaus-âi,
Ke-gâh nau-wâi, ne-mé-go S’weén,
Ne-bâun, ne-bâun, ne-dâun-is âis.
E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá;
E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá.
Out in the calm ocean, Shinge-bis, the diver, listened, preening his satin breast in silence. In the forest, Ta-hinca, the red deer, turned her delicate head to the wind.
That night Kent thought of the dead, for the first time since he had come to the Key of Grief.
“Aké-u! aké-u!” chirped Sé-só-Kah, the robin. But the dead never come again.
“Beloved, sit close to us,” whispered the girl, watching his troubled eyes. “Ma-cânte maséca.”
But he looked at the babe and its white shadow on the moss, and he only sighed: “Ma-cânte maséca, beloved! Death sits watching us across the sea.”
Now for the first time he knew more than the fear of fear; he knew fear. And with fear came grief.
He never before knew that grief lay hidden there in the forest. Now he knew it. Still, that happiness, eternally reborn when two small hands reached up around his neck, when feeble fingers clutched his hand — that happiness that Sé-só-Kah understood, chirping to his brooding mate — that Ta-mdóka knew, licking his dappled fawns — that happiness gave him heart to meet grief calmly, in dreams or in the forest depths, and it helped him to look into the hollow eyes of fear.
He often thought of the camp now; of Bates, his blanket mate; of Dyce, whose wrist he had broken with a blow; of Tully, whose brother he had shot. He even seemed to hear the shot, the sudden report among the hemlocks; again he saw the haze of smoke, he caught a glimpse of a tall form falling through the bushes.
He remembered every minute incident of the trial: Bates’s hand laid on his shoulder; Tully, red-bearded and wild-eyed, demanding his death; while Dyce spat and spat and smoked and kicked at the blackened log-ends projecting from the fire. He remembered, too, the verdict, and Tully’s terrible laugh; and the new jute rope that they stripped off the market-sealed gum packs.
He thought of these things, sometimes wading out on the shoals, shell-tipped fish spear poised: at such times he would miss his fish. He thought of it sometimes when he knelt by the forest stream listening for Ta-hinca’s splash among the cresses: at such moments the feathered shaft whistled far from the mark, and Ta-mdóka stamped and snorted till even the white fisher, stretched on a rotting log, flattened his whiskers and stole away into the forest’s blackest depths.
When the child was a year old, hour for hour notched at sunset and sunrise, it prattled with the birds, and called to Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, who called again to the child from the sky: “Northward! northward, beloved!”
When winter came — there is no frost on the Island of Grief — Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, passing high in the clouds, called: “Southward! south ward, beloved!” And the child answered in a soft whisper of an unknown tongue, till the mother shivered, and covered it with her silken hair.
“O beloved!” said the girl, “Chaské calls to all things living — to Kaug, the porcupine, to Wabóse, to Kay-óshk, the gray gull he calls, and they understand.”
Kent bent and looked into her eyes.
“Hush, beloved; it is not that I fear.”
“Then what, beloved?”
“His shadow. It is white as surf foam. And at night — I — I have seen — —”
“Oh, what?”
“The air about him aglow like a pale rose.”
“Ma cânté maséca. The earth alone lasts. I speak as one dying — I know, beloved!”
Her voice died away like a summer wind.
“Beloved!” he cried.
But there before him she was changing; the air grew misty, and her hair wavered like shreds of fog, and her slender form swayed, and faded, and swerved, like the mist above a pond.
In her arms the babe was a figure of mist, rosy, vague as a breath on a mirror.
“The earth alone lasts. Inâh! It is the end, O beloved!”
The words came from the mist — a mist as formless as the ether — a mist that drove in and crowded him, that came from the sea, from the clouds, from the earth at his feet. Faint with terror, he staggered forward calling, “ Beloved! And thou, Chaské, O beloved! Aké u! Aké u!”
Far out at sea a rosy star glimmered an instant in the mist and went out.
A sea bird screamed, soaring over the waste of fog-smothered waters. Again he saw the rosy star; it came nearer; its reflection glimmered in the water.
“Chaské! he cried.
He heard a voice, dull in the choking mist.
“O beloved, I am here!” he called again.
There was a sound on the shoal, a flicker in the fog, the flare of a torch, a face white, livid, terrible — the face of the dead.
He fell upon his knees; he closed his eyes and opened them. Tully stood beside him with a coil of rope.
* * * *
Ihó! Behold the end! The earth alone lasts. The sand, the opal wave on the golden beach, the sea of sapphire, the dusted starlight, the wind, and love, shall die. Death also shall die, and lie on the shores of the skies like the bleached skull there on the Key to Grief, polished, empty, with its teeth embedded in the sand.
A MATTER OF INTEREST.
He that knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him.
He that knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him.
He that knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.
He that knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.
Arabian Proverb.
I.
MUCH as I dislike it, I am obliged to include this story in a volume devoted to fiction: I have attempted to tell it as an absolutely true story, but until three months ago, when the indisputable proofs were placed before the British Association by Professor James Holroyd, I was regarded as an impostor. Now that the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Philadelphia Zoölogical Society, and the Natural History Museum of New York city, are convinced that the story is truthful and accurate in every particular, I prefer to tell it my own way. Professor Holroyd urges me to do this, although Professor Bruce Stoddard, of Columbia College, is now at work upon a pamphlet, to be published the latter part of next month, describing scientifically the extraordinary discovery which, to the shame of the United States, was first accepted and recognised in England.
