CHAPTER XXIII
THE TRANSFORMATION BEGINS
When Ridgeway opened his eyes, the sunlight was pouring in upon himthrough the doorway. He looked at his watch, and was surprised to findthat it was nearly eleven o'clock. Lady Tennys still slept on her couchof skins; the torches had burned to the ground; the grim idol leeredmalignantly upon the intruders, and the dream that he had experiencedduring the night was rudely dispelled. His eyes strayed again to theblack, glossy, confused hair of the sleeper in the far corner, and afeeling of ineffable pity for her became companion to the sad wrenchesthat had grown from the misery of his own unhappiness.
She was sleeping on her side, her face from him, her right arm beneathher head, the dainty jewelled hand lying limply upon the spotted leopardskin. The beautifully moulded figure, slight yet perfect, swelling tothe well-turned hip, tapering to the tip of the trim shoe whichprotruded from beneath the rumpled skirt, affording a tiny glimpse of atempting ankle, was to him a most pathetic picture. As he was about toturn to the door, she awakened with a start and a faint cry. Sittinghalf erect, she gave a terrified, bewildered glance about her, her eyesat last falling upon him.
"Are you really here?" she cried, joy rushing to her eyes. "I dreamedthat you had fled and left me to be cut to pieces by the savages."
"Dreams go by contraries, and I am, therefore, a very brave man. Butcome, it is eleven o'clock. Let us see what this place looks like in thesunlight."
Together they went to the wide entrance. A surprise awaited them intheir first view of the village by day. Along the base of the circularrange of hills stretched the email homes of the inhabitants, but, searchas they would, they could discover no signs of life. There was not ahuman form in sight.
"What the dev--dickens does this mean?" exclaimed he.
"It seemed as if there were thousands of them here last night," shecried.
"Maybe we have lost our worshippers. I wonder if we are to be the solepossessors of this jungle metropolis?"
A mile away they could distinguish the banks of the river, runningtoward the great stone gateway of this perfect Eden. The plain betweenthe hills and the river was like a green, annular piece of velvet, notover a mile in diameter, skirted on all sides by tree-covered highlands.The river ran directly through the centre of the basin, coming from theforest land to their right.
In some trepidation they walked to the corner of the temple and surveyedthe hillside. Rising steeply from the low ground ran the green slope, atthe top of which grew huge trees. The village lay at the base of thehills and was over a mile long, a perfect semi-circle of strange littlehuts, stretched out in a single line, with the temple as itscentral point.
"There is the beginning of our underground stream," exclaimed he,pointing up the elevation. A fierce little stream came plunging from thevery heart of the mound, half way to the summit, tearing eagerly to thebottom, where it disappeared in the ground.
Suddenly the sound of distant shouting--or chanting, to be explicit--andthe beating of drums came to their ears. They searched the hills andvalley with alarm and dread in their eyes, but there was no sign ofhumanity. For many minutes the chanting continued, growing louder involume as it drew nearer. At last Lady Tennys uttered an exclamation andpointed toward an opening in the ridge far to the left of the village. Astring of natives came winding slowly, solemnly from this cleft--men,women and children apparently without end.
The white people stood like statues in the doorway, watching theapproach of the brown figures. There were fully two thousand in thatsingular procession, at the head of which strode the big chief, withperhaps fifty native women at his heels.
"His multiplied wife," observed Hugh sententiously.
"Do you think all of them are his wives?" said she, doubtingly.
"It seems to be a heathen's choice to punish himself on earth and avoidit in the hereafter."
Behind the women came five men wearing long white robes and carryingunusually long spears. They were followed by the rabble. At length theweird cavalcade, marching straight across the plain, came to a halt notmore than a hundred feet from the entrance to the temple. The chiefadvanced a few steps, pausing at the edge of a bare, white spot ofground some ten feet square. Then, after a most reverential bow, hetossed a small reddish chunk of wood into the white square. No soonerhad the leader deposited his piece of wood than forward came the women,the white-robed men, and then the rag-tag of the population, each persontossing a piece upon the rapidly growing heap. In silent amusement,Ridgeway and Lady Tennys watched this strange ceremony.
"They've been visiting somebody's woodpile," speculated Hugh.
"Perhaps they intend to roast us alive," ventured she.
The small army fell back from the pile of wood, the chief maintaining aposition several feet to the fore, a lad behind him bearing a lightedtorch. After many signs and presumably devout antics, one of thespearmen took the torch and lighted this contribution from a combinedpopulace. As the thin column of smoke arose on the still, hot air, thevast crowd fell to the ground as one person, arising almost instantly tobegin the wildest, most uncanny dance that mortal ever saw. The smokeand flames grew, the dry wood crackled, the spearmen poked it with theirlong weapons, and the vast brown audience went into a perfect frenzyof fervor.
Not until the pile was reduced to ashes did the smoke dance cease. Thespearmen retired, and the big chief came forward with a tread soludicrously grand that they could scarce refrain from laughter. Hecarried two short staffs in his hands, the heads of which were nothingless than the skulls of infants. To the disgust of the white people thechief presented to each of them a shudder-inspiring wand. Afterward theylearned that the skull-tipped staffs signified death to all who opposedtheir way. They also learned that the red bits of wood that had gone upin the flame were stained by the blood of a half dozen prisoners of war,executed the night before as a sacrifice to the new gods.
The new monarchs accepted the sceptres gingerly and the wildest gleebroke loose in the waiting throng. While they danced and shouted, Hughinwardly cursed the ostentation that was delaying breakfast.
Impatiently he made the chief understand what was wanted, and thatworthy proved an excellent substitute for the genii. He rushed over andbawled a few commands, and a dozen women and men sped away like thewind. A few moments later the chief entered the temple and foundRidgeway calmly measuring off the ground for the partitions that were totransform one room into three.
So apt was the white man at sign making and so apt was the brown man atunderstanding that before an hour had passed a dozen strong fellowswere at work, carrying out the designs of the new idol, the morning mealhaving been disposed of in the meantime. Using the same kind of materialthat comprised the outer walls, a partition was constructed lengthwisethrough the centre of the temple. The front half was left as a receptionhall and living room and the rear half was divided into two apartments,each fifteen feet square. They were to serve as sleeping rooms. Theseruthless improvements made it necessary to remove the great stone idolfrom his pedestal.
"Chuck him out into the backyard," said Hugh. That evening the poor oldimage, as disgusted as a piece of rock could possibly be, was carried tothe river and tossed into the rapids, his successors standing with themultitude on the high bank to witness his disappearance and to hear hisunhappy kerplunk! The waters closed over his unhallowed head and the newdispensation began. Back across the little plain to the torch-litvillage swarmed the fickle, joyous savages.
"Good Lord," observed Hugh, "what a ferocious crowd it is! They teartheir enemies to pieces and yet we have them under our thumbs--for thepresent at least."
"I believe they are naturally intelligent, and I'm sure we can helpthem. Do you know what those white robes are made from?"
"Certainly. Cotton."
"It is woven grass. They bleach it. The women do the work down by theriver, and the robes worn by their spearmen are really beautiful piecesof fabric."
"I am going to leave my measure for a pair of white
grass trousers,"said Hugh lightly, "and an umbrella," he added, looking up at thebroiling sky.
Together the white usurpers planned many important improvements againstthe probability of a long stay among the savages. A wonderful system ofsewerage was designed--and afterward carried out faithfully. A huge bathpool was to be sunk for Lady Tennys in the rear of her apartment; akitchen and cold-storage cellar were to grow off the west end of thetemple and a splendid awning was to be ordered for the front porch! Timeand patience were to give them all of these changes. Time was of lessconsequence than patience, it may be well to add. The slaving retinuewas willing but ignorant.
The adoring chief gave Tennys a group of ten handmaidens before the daywas over, and Hugh had a constant body guard of twenty stalwarts--whichhe prosaically turned into carpenters, stone-masons, errand boysand hunters.
"You must not try to civilize them in a day," she smilingly protestedwhen he became particularly enthusiastic.
"Well, just see what we have done to-day," he cried. "How can youaccount for the enforced abdication of old Uncle Rocksy, thetransformation of his palace into a commodious, three-roomlodging-house, and all such things, unless you admit that we are here todo as we please? We'll make a metropolitan place out of this hamlet ina year if we--"
"A year! Oh, don't suggest such a possibility," she cried. "I'd die if Ithought we were to be here for a year."
"I hope we won't, but we may as well look the situation straight in theface. There has been no white man here before us. It is by the rarestchance in the world that we are here. Therefore, it may be years beforewe are found and taken away from this undiscovered paradise."
The flickering, fitful light of the torches stuck in the ground behindthem played upon two white faces from which had fled the zeal and fervorof the moment before, leaving then drawn and dispirited.
"All our lives, perhaps," she murmured.
"With these savages as our only companions, worse than death a thousandtimes," he groaned, starting to his feet with the vehemence of newdespair. "Could anything be worse than the existence that liesbefore us?"
"Yes," she cried, arising, throwing back her shoulders and arms, liftingher face and breathing long draughts of the cool, pure air. "Yes! Theexistence that lies behind is worse than the one ahead. No life can beworse than the one from which I have escaped. Welcome, eternal solitude!Farewell, ambition, heart-pangs and the vain mockery of womanhood! To befree is heaven, no matter what the cost, Hugh."
"Do you mean that you would rather live here forever than go back tothe old life?"
"If I must stay here to be free, I am willing to live in this miserablevillage to the very end, rejoicing and not complaining."
"I never associated you with real unhappiness until you uttered thatlast sentence."
"I should not be selfish, though," she said quickly. "You are sounhappy, you have lost so much. We are to be alone here in this land,Hugh, you and I, forever. I will prove to you that I am more than thefrail, helpless woman that circumstances may seem to have shaped me, andyou shall have from me all the aid and encouragement that a good, truewoman can give. Sometimes I shall be despondent and regretful,--I can'thelp it, I suppose--but I shall try with you to make the wildernesscheerful. Who knows but that we may be found by explorers within amonth. Let us talk about our new subjects out there on the plain. Howmany of them are there in this village?"
She won him from the despondency into which he was sinking, and, be itsaid to her credit, she did not allow him to feel from that time forththat she was aught but brave, confident and sustaining. She was a weakwoman, and she knew that if once the strong man succumbed to despair shewas utterly helpless.
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