The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (50 page)

Next day, when, an hour before sunset, Mr. Darby, reclining on his couch, was consulting Punnett about the
topography of the island, Punnett's face gathered into a sudden fixed intensity. ‘They're coming, sir,' he said in a rapid whisper. ‘Remember to look unconcerned. I shall tell them you're a god.'

Mr. Darby, with a mouth falling open from terror, raised his eyes and saw, staring at him from every rock and every shrub within sight, a keen bronze face flecked with sharp white eyes. Happily the acuteness of the crisis brought him courage, and with a supreme effort he was able in a moment to master himself. ‘You can rely on me, Punnett!' he said with quiet dignity.

Punnett, with admirable coolness turning his back on the staring faces, stood bolt upright before Mr. Darby and then prostrated himself on the ground before him. After a brief pause he rose to his feet and then repeated the action a second and third time. Mr. Darby played his part with equal presence of mind, holding up his right arm to its full height with the palm extended each time Punnett prostrated himself. On each occasion too he shot a quick glance beyond the prostrate Punnett to see what the savages were doing. At Punnett's second obeisance he saw that they had emerged from cover and stood, tall, grim, magnificent figures of bronze, in a wide crescent about him and Punnett. Doubtless, he realized with an uncomfortable sensation in the back, there were others behind him, completing the circle. At Punnett's third obeisance, Mr. Darby, without having been aware of the smallest movement among the natives, saw that the circle had closed in to within five yards of him. Each man carried a spear in his right hand. They were naked except for a narrow loin-cloth: a fringed necklace of white and scarlet beads hung round their necks and similar bracelets round their wrists and knees. Mr. Darby could see each blink of their white eyes, every small change in their grave bronze faces. ‘They're getting very close, Punnett,' he murmured warningly.

With a sudden, quick movement Punnett turned about and faced the savages, and at his movement Mr. Darby saw the spear in each right hand give a quick, slight flicker. For
a moment Punnett faced them, silent and motionless: then in a distinct voice he pronounced two incomprehensible syllables, stretching out both arms as he did so. There was a pause, and then every savage fell on his face in the sand. The silence was so great that Mr. Darby could hear the dry ticking of a cricket in the orchids above his seat. Then Punnett spoke three more syllables and thereupon turned about again and faced Mr. Darby.

‘I have told them, sir,' he said in the loud and solemn tones of an officiating priest, ‘to approach and worship. Don't mind what they do. Just keep calm. It might be effective, sir, to hold up both hands.'

He stationed himself on the right of the seated Mr. Darby who raised both hands as the savages crept towards him on their faces. He certainly presented a strange and impressive appearance with his orchid hat, his solemnly uplifted arms, his round pink paunch, and his round pink face in which the spectacles gleamed inhumanly. Happily the savages saw only that impressive exterior: they could not see inside to where the poor little man's heart shrank like a terrified mouse before the appalling ordeal through which he was passing.

When the prostrate bodies had crept so close that they lay in a great brown human fringe about Mr. Darby's couch, two of them who wore head-dresses of green parrot-feathers rose to their feet and approached him. His fear was so great that he almost cried aloud, but he did not move otherwise than solemnly to lower to his knees his upraised arms which had begun to ache unbearably. As he did so he noted, to his relief, that the two figures were empty handed. When they were as close to him as Punnett was they dropped on one knee and began to pat and pinch his paunch and thighs. Mr. Darby's blood ran cold, but still he sat firm with his hands on his knees. At each pat, at each appraising pinch, the two savages uttered a word which sounded like Oggum.

‘What does Oggum mean, Punnett?' Mr. Darby asked, trying to make his tremulous question sound like a divine utterance.

‘It means
good,
sir,' replied Punnett in the tone of an officiating priest.

‘Good for what? Good to No, sir. I think you'll find it very tasty, though. Don't burn your fingers, sir.'

Mr. Darby hesitated. ‘I think I should feel more … ah No, sir. I think you'll find it very tasty, though. Don't burn your fingers, sir.'

Mr. Darby hesitated. ‘I think I should feel more …?' The poor little man could not utter the fatal word
eat.

‘Just
good,
sir. It means they're pleased with you, sir,' Punnett chanted in reply.

Mr. Darby's spectacles inspected the faces of the savages. He could see no signs of pleasure there: on the contrary they appeared to him sombre and cruel. The awful and menacing closeness of these naked bodies, the wild, unaccustomed smell of them, the inquisitive touch of the brown, ape-like hands, filled him with a horror that fear of death alone enabled him to disguise.

The sun was now setting and the long shadows slashed across the ruddy glow of the sand added to the awfulness of the situation. Then a terrifying thing occurred. The two creatures who had been inspecting him turned and uttered a hoarse command to the prostrate bodies which, instantly galvanized into energy, sprang to their feet and rushed upon him. A spasm of terror tightened every muscle in Mr. Darby's body. He gave himself up for lost: this, he thought to himself, was the end. Behind the dark crowd that surrounded him he heard Punnett's voice:

‘All right, sir. Keep going, sir. Don't give in.'

Then the two green-plumed savages laid hold of him and slowly hoisted him up, and the rest, raising their spears above their heads, locked them into a kind of litter. On to this litter the two lifted Mr. Darby and then the whole crowd, with Punnett in the middle of them, set off at a smart stride among the rocks and plunged into the blackness of the jungle.

Acute terror, as Mr. Darby discovered during his grim journey through the jungle, is so exhausting that the nervous system soon ceases to react to it. In fact, long before he had reached the end of his journey, he had ceased to be afraid. His indifference surprised him. He told himself that he was defenceless in the power of the savages on whose shoulders he was riding, that no doubt new ordeals awaited him at some unknown destination in the heart of the jungle, but his nerves stubbornly refused to respond. A mood of callous fatalism had settled down on him: he was aware of nothing but that he was sleepy and this rhythmic swing of his conveyance was extraordinarily soothing. The twilight was already so deep that he seemed to be moving along the bottom of a lake. Huge weeds rose up on either side of him and sometimes a dangling festoon of strongly perfumed flowers beat softly against his head and trailed across his recumbent body. Far overhead a faint and pallid luminosity, that seemed to be rather felt than seen, hinted here and there of open air and open sky. Carried aloft on his litter he seemed to be utterly alone, for he could see nothing of his bearers except their heads—six black heads on either side of him—and nothing at all of the rest of the savages, nor of Punnett who stalked, a solitary albino, among that crowd of swarthy animals.

How long the silent progress lasted Mr. Darby could not guess: he had lost all sense of time. Now and then he glanced at the row of heads on his right or left. A strange and repellent smell came from them that turned his stomach and made him shudder, but it was physical horror, not fear, that shook him. His only desire was that the journey would go on for ever, that there would be no destination, no break
in this eventless limbo, that he would be ceaselessly dandled in this soothing darkness until death—death by natural causes—received him into a peace still more absolute.

But this was not to be. Gradually his ear became aware of a remote noise, a confused and distant clamour, as if the jungle itself were breathing out a thick, continuous lamentation. Minute by minute it increased. It seemed to be drifting towards him, a turbid fog of sound that swelled and thickened along the deep channel of the jungle through which he was gliding. The little man's fears, dormant for so long, leapt up and tortured him again, grew with the terribly growing clamour into an agony of terror. The whole jungle was echoing and brawling now like a huge, hollow, empty hall; and to make the growing horror more horrible, the great trunks and dangling growths began to emerge from their obscurity around and above him, in a subdued, fiery glow that grew stronger with the growing roar. Now his journey became a mad progression through a flickering hell of fire and darkness. The jungle had roused itself to a ghastly animation; an angry and sinister splendour had replaced the night.

Suddenly the moving litter stopped and Mr. Darby, sitting up, saw before him an immense open arena full of fiery light and madly dancing black demons. The light came from seven enormous bonfires whose hissings and cracklings were audible through the pandemonium of howling chants. Gesticulating black silhouettes were hurling great bundles of fuel into the flames and running off into the darkness to return with more, while others danced madly between the fires, pouring out a babel of raucous chants. In the centre of each of two circles within the huge circle of the arena stood a straw-thatched hut raised high on wooden posts, and in the centre of the arena itself a ring of motionless figures crouched on their hams with their heads bowed to the ground before a great central bonfire. The crowds of black figures, motionless or wildly active, each group intent on its appointed ritual, each figure splashed with the flickering ruddy glare of fire that roofed all with a leaping and sinking dome of
light, gave to the scene the appearance of a gigantic anthill. Mr. Darby, appalled at the hugeness of their numbers and the sinister madness of their activities, felt his individuality shrivel to the last insignificance and gave himself up for lost.

Then a brief movement stirred his human conveyance and next moment he saw his two green-feathered examiners step forward into the flaming arena and make their way through the leaping, hurrying crowd to the crouching ring in the centre. With a bound they leapt inside the circle and stood there moving their outstretched arms in solemn gestures. In a moment the crouching shapes had leapt to their feet. A loud, shrill chant that rose clear above the roar of the crowd burst from them and at the sound of it immobility and silence, broken only by the leaping, flickering flames and the voracious crackling of the bonfires, fell upon the clearing. Then Mr. Darby felt his litter lurch and he was borne into the area. The crowd had swept aside, leaving a broad avenue to the centre; and along this avenue, fenced with upright brazen bodies whose white eyes stared up at him, Mr. Darby was borne to the central point where the ring of standing figures broke to admit him. There his bearers lowered him on his litter of spears to the ground and vanished into the encircling crowd.

Then the silence was shattered by wild exultant shouts in which he distinguished the constantly recurring syllable
Taan.
Mr. Darby rose to his feet. Once more a desperate calm had descended upon him. The central bonfire blazed upon his left: all his left side glowed and burned with the fierce heat of it. Beyond the bonfire and within his line of vision stood another litter, but the figure on it was lying down. He stood there alone on his litter, his hands clasped behind his back. His face and naked chest and paunch were ruddy in the glare of the bonfire. His spectacles blazed like burning coals. Then, to his intense relief, the figure of Punnett, his nakedness gleaming as red as his master's, stepped into the circle and approached him. When he was within a yard of the litter he prostrated himself before Mr. Darby
three times, and then, still on his knees, he addressed to him what to outwards appearances was a prayer. ‘We're safe, sir, as safe as can be. We struck a lucky moment, sir. The King died two days before we landed and they've been scouring the country for another. I told them you were a god, sir, and they took up the idea at once. They say you're a cousin of Oushtoub, the wheel-god, and they're going to make you the new King. I don't know if you've noticed, sir, the body of the late King on the litter there. There'll be some rather unpleasant ceremonies, no doubt; but nothing to hurt, sir. I'm your chief magician, so I shall be able to give you the hints you need. It's really the best thing that could have happened, because none of them can touch us. You see, you're sacred, sir, and so am I, I'm glad to say. All most convenient, sir. So don't worry about what happens.'

Punnett rose from his knees and immediately the ring of attendants began to recede from them, expanding as it receded and driving further and further back the crowd behind it until the space left empty included the two strawthatched huts. Into this arena thirteen giants advanced in single file dressed in barbaric splendour of feathers and shells. They were the twelve chiefs of the tribe, lead by the Head Chief. The leader carried a burnished spear. He approached Mr. Darby and offered him the spear.

‘Take it, sir!' said Punnett.

Mr. Darby, like a child receiving a strange toy, took the spear. The Head Chief made an incoherent sound.

‘Sit down, sir!' translated Punnett.

Mr. Darby sat down and thereupon the twelve chiefs stooped, lifted him shoulder high on his litter of spears, and bore him in slow pomp past the bonfire. When he was lowered to earth again he saw with horror that they had set him down beside the corpse of the late King. It lay stark naked on its litter, the eyes shrunk to two small shrivelled pits, the lips drawn so tight over the mouth that the teeth under them formed two protruding ridges, and the body so terribly wasted that every bone was visible under the dry and shrunken skin. Something that looked like a half-filled
sack lay beside it, and as Mr. Darby stood gazing in fascinated horror at the corpse, the Head Chief stooped to the sack. It was not a sack but a cloth and when he twitched it aside he uncovered a great heap of green parrot-feathers. He lifted them, shook them, and they fell open into a great cloak. Then two of the chiefs seized the corpse by the shoulders, heaved it up, and held it in a standing position. The dead King faced the living. Stiff, gaunt, hideously withered, he grinned sightlessly at Mr. Darby, and Mr. Darby, ripe, well-nourished, full-blooded, stared back at him with fallen jaw. The Head Chief, holding the feathered cloak open, moved behind the corpse and clasped the cloak about its neck. At the same time another chief lowered the point of the spear which Mr. Darby still held and set it against the left breast of the corpse, just over the heart. Then the master of the ceremony fixing his eyes on Mr. Darby loudly uttered two raucous syllables.