by Ruskin Bond
It was about eight feet in height, and it stood in quivering shadow at the foot of the first of three massive pillars that rose to the ridge of the roof. Beast or hydra or devil (whatever it was), it appeared to grin and mop at us, lolling out its long tongue, so that I started back from it in a scare.
But, seizing hold of my arm, the Captain said, quickly, "Have no fear, lad. It is but an image, a carven image," and I saw that it was so. The Chief stood staring at us in perplexity. Then, looking to see that we followed, he stalked onward to the centre of the hall.
What with my fright, and the close, murky atmosphere (for, though the fire gave but little smoke, there appeared to be no outlet for it), I turned sick and dizzy. Yet, I pulled myself together, to behold, without fear, the gigantic and monstrous figure of a man, having a prodigious head and bushy hair, that stood before the central pillar, while another nightmare image—half beast, half devil—loomed shadowy from before the third pillar.
The walls were wainscoted with yellow reed-work, very delicately plaited, and; ranged at intervals along them, there stood great slabs of dark wood carved in scrolls. Scrolls were painted in scarlet and black and white upon the pillars, and upon the rafters that sloped above the slabs inward to the ridge of the roof.
But, smiling in very pleasant, friendly fashion, the chief signified to us to be seated upon one of the mats which lay here and there upon the rushes with which the place was thickly strewn.
So we sat us down, wondering what would happen next. Soon after there entered two savages, one bearing plates, or rather baskets, of steaming food, the other a vessel shaped like a globe. The chief, smiling at us, made a gesture of eating with his fingers, and immediately after withdrew to the door, walking with his staff, with portentous dignity.
"Well," said the Captain when he was gone, "I don't know how 'tis with you, lad, but I am near famished, and I shall not stick for a matter of knives and forks."
With this, he tasted the dish, as I did also, and we ate of it very heartily. 'Twas cooked eels laid upon a mess of sweet potatoes and a food like a biscuit, piping hot, and mighty good, too.
When we had finished, a savage stepped to us; and having looked with care to see that not a crumb or particle of food remained fallen upon the mat or among the rushes, he bore the empty baskets from the house.
"Has that fellow something to drink, I wonder?" said the Captain presently; and, turning, beckoned to the savage, who remained. He came and stood holding the globe forth above the Captain's head. But when he made to take it, the other appeared to hesitate, stepping a pace back. Then, as the Captain continued to stretch forth his hands, he gave it to him. It looked like a big brown cannon ball, but there was a hole in the top of it.
The Captain sat staring upon it for a space, bending his brows. Then, holding it in one hand, he tilted it slowly over above the hollowed palm of the other until some liquid began to trickle from it. Having tasted this, he told me that it was water. So, he poured out some more of it, and drank, using his hand for a glass, and passed the thing to me; and I, having drunk also after the same manner, returned it to the savage. He, who had watched us with a very puzzled look in his great, merry black eyes, bore it immediately from the house.
Presently, two more savages came in, each bearing a sort of oval block, being hollowed out at one side, and having set them near us, they returned as they had come. They scarce were gone when there entered, one after another, near a dozen more. But these were not as the others (whom we took for slaves). For, they had feathers in their hair, and pendants of greenstone or birdskin hanging from their ears. Their faces were tattooed all over in the manner I have described, and along with them were the wizened chief and his gaunt comrade.
They came, all of them, without speech, with slow and stately steps, holding their heads stiffly erect, and moving with such dignity and haughtiness as put me quite in awe.
Without so much as a look at us, they passed to the farther end of the house, and returned, each bearing one of those oval-shaped blocks, to dispose them in a circle about the fire, which was contained in a sort of oblong box of stone. Then, sinking down upon the mats, each laid his head upon his wooden pillow, and was still.
"I could wish for a softer bed," said the Captain in my ear, "but travellers cannot be choosers."
Hereupon, he drew one of the blocks to him; and, having folded his handkerchief and placed it in the hollow, he laid his head upon it, and, having his pistol beside him, composed himself to rest.
I asked him whether I should watch while he slept, but he told me to try to sleep. "Have no fear,' said he, They could have murdered us before had they wished to, instead of feasting us. And, if they would murder us, it will be all one whether we watch or no."
So, I laid me down also, and, after shuffling awhile, I found I lay easy enough. However, I was not difficult to content, and was too drowsy for fear. Drowsiness swept over me as a tide, casting me, almost on the instant, into deep sleep.
That night I dreamt a monstrous dream; and it seemed to me that our ship had anchored off the island on a dark midnight.
Then rose up a dreadful figure on the shore, and stretched forth an arm of stone, and with a stone hand laid hold on the ship and lifted her aloft, and dropped her all shattered into the crater of a volcano—that same mountain we had heard emitting an eerie and desolate sound. Whereupon, with a blast of sulphureous fire, the ship was blown an appallingly great height into the air.
With that I awoke; but though the phantasy of my dream passed away, I knew, as by an instinct, that something monstrous had, indeed, happened on the island. I looked round. Save for the Captain, the great hall was deserted. It glimmered in a mesh of misty pale amber sunlight which shone in magic harmony upon the delicate green of the wainscoting, the dark, carved slabs, and the painted scroll-work—black and scarlet and white—of the pillars and rafters. I looked round—in one place the wainscoting was rent in a long fissure.
Scarce had I seen the thing but I was on my feet, and standing over the Captain. "Rouse up!" cried I, terror in my staring eyes. "An earthquake! Haste! Come on! If there come another, we shall be entombed."
He took up his pistol and we hasted out. The hour was morning. Past the carved giant we went, past the gargoyle, to the door, which opened as a sliding-panel. As we stepped forth upon the verandah, we were near dazzled by the brightness of the morning, so that at the first we did not spy the old wizened chief who sate squatted upon a mat in the verandah. He wore a great caped cloak of glossy dark-brown feathers; and, but for his mane of matted grey hair we had not known him. For, he sate perfectly motionless, having his back towards us, and did not turn his stiff reared head, nor gave any sign at our coming.
For a moment we stood, puzzled whether or not to take any notice of him. Then the Captain drew me onward. But, turning as we passed from the verandah, I had a glimpse of his face, which was as still as if it had been cut in stone; a still, impassive face, austere and inscrutable. The double-edged blade of his greenstone axe projected from beneath the folds of his cloak.
There were twenty or thirty savages on the green, for the most part servants or slaves (whom we began to distinguish by their long, undressed hair, devoid of feathers). These great, brawny fellows were standing stock still, as if listening intently.
About us the air was hot and heavy, and seemed to throb in our ears.
Suddenly there fell a jag of lightning; and the thunder scarce had ceased to roll but, flash upon flash and jag upon jag, the lightning came continuous, as if it would seam and sear and melt the firmament. The earth did crack and crack as it came to ground.
There came a sudden, mighty flaw of wind, and then fell the rain.
It fell in flows and cataracts, crashing down like an avalanche, the natives standing motionless all the while. Yet, the outrageous tempest held not long, ceasing as suddenly as it had begun. Hereupon, the savages on the green returned to their occupation, which had been lifting the carcasses of very fat pigs. St
aggering under their burdens, they flung them down in heaps before three cloaked figures who sate houses at the other side of the enclosure.
The Captain and I, to see whether the ship was affected or no, then left the palisade by way of the drawbridge and, clambering down the ladder from the terrace, made our way out on to the fern-clad hillside. Everything around us was shattered and tumbled together, and the path quite gone.
"I am apt to think, lad," said the Captain, "that 'twas no earthquake; the lightning struck the place."
"Nay," I replied, "the earth shook. 'Twas certainly an earthquake. Did you not see the fissure in the wainscoting?"
" 'Twas no earthquake, but what …" he broke off, for there came a dreadful, subterraneous rumbling sound. The ground did heave beneath our feet. I was thrown staggering down.
The dread portent ceased. The earth fell quiet. But from behind the palisade above us a blast of flame belched forth.
"Great Heaven! My men!" cried the Captain. And, sensible that he could do nothing to aid them, added, "Quickly! Quickly! To the beach!"
Hereupon, he began to hurry me along faster and faster.
The air became sulphureous and laden with dust and ashes. A rumbling, low and ominous, sounded intermittently from the region of the palisade-volcan. The woods beneath us were full of the crying of terrified beasts, and presently, from afar, what sounded like the shouts of English voices.
The sky became tinged with a ruddy glow. A fierce roaring sound arose. I looked up, to see that all about the palisade-city, which continued to belch forth fire, the fern-clad hillsides were kindled and roaring in a holocaust.
Scouring hard behind the Captain, I presently descended with him a gully, coming safe to the shore. There we repaired to a canoe, hewn all out of a great tree trunk. In the stern was a leathern sack full of a kind of bread, and a jar of water. I helped hale her down the narrow strip of shore to where the breakers were now foaming and gnashing like creatures possessed.
And, now began the island to quake and to be shaken to pieces. The cliffs split in flaws and fissures, with stupendous sounds; the roar that came to us from the woodland bespoke a deluge of fire over which, no doubt (for 'twas not within view), the volcan reared high its infernal plume.
"Quickly! Quickly, lad!" cried the Captain, when the canoe was gotten down. "Get you in! Get you in!"
"Hold hard!' cried another voice, and turning our heads, we beheld the long-lost Joseph Yates running towards us.
In a moment he was up with us, and clambered aboard next to me.
Now, there came a dreadful thundering of the cliff and fragments of rock bounded about us like hail. So, without delay the Captain launched us forth, running out through the breakers and giving the canoe at the last a mighty impulse before swinging himself aboard.
Tossed in the turmoil of the boiling sea, the canoe blundered out, vaulting nimbly over the surges. We clutched her sides, seared and scalded and near stifled with the smoke and fiery spume and dust that blew whirling down upon us from the erupting and burning island. Giddiness overcame us. We fought against it hard, with shut eyes, bringing the whole force of our wills on the resolve to endure and live.
Suddenly, there was a strange silence.
The roar of the holocaust in the woods was abated, the wind coming about from the sea; the cliffs, for a space, had ceased to thunder.
Struck out of ourselves with amazement, we forgot our peril and listened.
Straining our eyes upon the livid-looming cliffs vaulted with fire, we looked to see the cause. A sheet of light came, a tongue of flame, that, serpent-like, wound coiling down. For a moment the lull in the Inferno-storm continued. Then, on a sudden, there came an astounding loud report; and, wave upon wave and sheet upon sheet, a sulphureous blue flame swept, coiling and writhing, down the face of the cliff.
It leapt upon the beach, it lapt it round in entwining, clinging wraiths; it encircled the canoes with tongues of flame; and then came the end!
A giant boulder crashed from the summit of the lofty cliff head-long down, and rebounding upon a spur of rock that projected almost to the place where the canoes lay, crashed them utterly. And, hard upon the falling boulder, there came an avalanche, an avalanche of molten stone.
It roared down the cliff; it swept over the shore. At its touch the sea reared madly up in an appalling great wave, hissing out clouds of steam that veiled the livid light.
And, upon us then there had fallen a dreadful fate: to be whelmed in burning lava!
We saw it coming, the wave of torment and of death. We gazed with a horrid fascination on its livid front, livid and black and shimmering like silver slime; and that instant was swollen thousand-fold with agony.
In the next, by a sudden strong rebuff of the clashing seas, our canoe was jerked slanting up, and cast upon the fo'c'sle of our tossing ship.
She had lashed away from her moorings, and unchecked by any custodians, had blundered round to save us.
Thrown Away
By Rudyard Kipling
To rear a boy under what parents call the 'sheltered life system' is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise. Unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass through many unnecessary troubles; and may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply from ignorance of the proper proportions of things.
Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a well-mannered little beast with a chastened appetite. If he had been kept away from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be! Apply that notion to the 'sheltered life,' and see how it works. It does not sound pretty, but it is the better of two evils.
There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the 'sheltered life' theory; and the theory killed him dead. He stayed with his people all his days, from the hour he was born till the hour he went into Sandhurst nearly at the top of the list. He was beautifully taught in all that wins marks by a private tutor, and carried the extra weight of 'never having given his parents an hour's anxiety in his life.' What he learnt at Sandhurst beyond the regular routine is of no great consequence. He looked about him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, very good. He ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst not so high as he went in. Then there was an interval and a scene with his people, who expected much from him. Next, a year of living unspotted from the world in a third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were children and all the seniors old women; and lastly, he came out to India, where he was cut off from the support of his parents, and had no one to fall back on in time of trouble except himself.
Now, India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously—the midday sun always excepted. Too much work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter, because everyone is being transferred, and either you or she leave the Station and never return. Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output, and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die, another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between death and burial. Nothing matters except Home-furlough and acting allowances, and these only because they are scarce. It is a slack country, where all men work with imperfect instruments; and the wisest thing is to escape as soon as ever you can to some place w
here amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the having.
But this Boy—the tale is as old as the Hills—came out, and took all things seriously. He was pretty and was petted. He took the pettings seriously, and fretted over women not worth saddling a pony to call upon. He found his new free life in India very good. It does look attractive in the beginning, from a subaltern's point of view—all ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. He tasted it as the puppy tastes the soap. Only he came late to the eating, with a grown set of teeth. He had no sense of balance—just like the puppy—and could not understand why he was not treated with the consideration he received under his father's roof. This hurt his feelings.
He quarrelled with other boys and, being sensitive to the marrow, remembered these quarrels, and they excited him. He found whist, and gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after office) good; but he took them seriously, too, just as seriously as he took the 'head' that followed after drink. He lost his money over whist and gymkhanas because they were new to him.
He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much energy and interest over a two-goldmohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with their manes hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One-half of this came from inexperience—much as the puppy squabbles with the corner of he hearthrug—and the other half from the dizziness bred by stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a livelier one. No one told him about the soap and the blacking, because an average man takes it for granted that an average man is ordinarily careful in regard to them. It was pitiful to watch The Boy knocking himself to pieces, as an over-handled colt falls down and cuts himself when he gets away from the groom.
This unbridled license in amusements not worth the trouble of breaking line for, much less rioting over, endured for six months—all through one cold weather—and then we thought that the heat and the knowledge of having lost his money and health and lamed his horses would sober. The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this would have happened. You can see the principle working in any Indian Station. But this particular case fell through because The Boy was sensitive and took things seriously—as I may have said some seven times before. Of course, we could not tell how his excesses struck him personally. They were nothing very heartbreaking or above the average. He might be crippled for life financially, and want a little nursing. Still, the memory of his performances would wither away in one hot weather, and the bankers would help him to tide over the money-troubles. But he must have taken another view altogether, and have believed himself ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to him severely when the cold weather ended. That made him more wretched than ever; and it was only an ordinary 'Colonel's wigging'!
