The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The lion choked. Its vast mouth ceased to bite and opened wide; its claws struck out at random. The gorilla’s teeth having sheared through the carotid artery, a scarlet jet streamed over the grasses.

  The claw dug into the belly for the last time; then the masses collapsed, and the black hands released the bloody throat. The colossi remained motionless.

  Carried away by a panic fury, Sydney Guthrie grabbed a flaming branch and threw it at the lions. The men howled. An obscure fear gripped the souls of the carnivores, frightened by the death of the large male; they quit the clearing and disappeared into the depths of the forest.

  Surprised by his own action, Guthrie started to laugh. The others remained serious. It was as if they had just witnessed, not a battle between two beasts, but the combat of a lion and a human—and Hareton’s voice awoke echoes in the depths of their consciousness when he remarked: “Why shouldn’t our ancestors have had the strength of that anthropoid?”

  “One might think,” the young woman exclaimed, “that the gorilla had moved…”

  “Let’s go see,” proposed Sir George Farnham.

  Guthrie examined his elephant-gun. “Let’s go!”

  “Let’s not forget to take torches,” Ironcastle added, placidly.

  They took torches and went out through a gap between the fires.

  The female apes recoiled from the creatures armed with fire, and only paused on the edge of the clearing, from which they contemplated the recumbent male with an obscure anguish. He was no longer moving; his head rested on the belly of the lion, whose mane was crimson, and whose large yellow eyes were vitrified by death.

  “Nothing to be done!” Sydney remarked. “Besides, what would be the use?”

  “None,” Maranges replied, “but seeing it survive would have given me pleasure.”

  “It seemed so very like a human being,” Muriel whispered.

  Hareton took a little mirror from his pocket and put it close to the gorilla’s mouth. “He’s not dead, though,” he concluded, displaying a fine mist on the glass. “Even so, how can he recover? He’s lost several pints of blood.”

  “Can’t we try?” the young woman asked, timidly.

  “We shall, Muriel. The vitality of these brutes is incredible.”

  Three men carried the gorilla into the ring of fires, where Ironcastle began to disinfect and dress his wounds.

  The females had come back. They were moaning strangely in the starlight.

  “Poor creatures,” said Muriel.

  “Their obscure memories forget quickly,” said Maranges. “The past hardly exists for them.”

  Ironcastle continued to examine the wounds. “It’s not impossible that he’ll live,” he concluded, admiring the anthropoid’s enormous torso.

  “This brute is at least a distant relative of our earliest ancestors…”

  “A distant relative! I don’t believe that our ancestor was a monkey or an ape!”

  Ironcastle continued dressing the wounds. The gorilla’s chest was palpitating slightly; it remained plunged in unconsciousness. “If there were a chance for him to recover in the trees…he needs care…by abandoning him…”

  “We shan’t abandon him!” cried Muriel.

  “No, darling, we’ll only abandon him if our safety requires it. All the same, he’s a burden.”

  There was a brief muffled exclamation. The oldest of the natives, a man the color of mud, pointed to the north side of the clearing. His hand was trembling.

  “What is it, Kouram?”

  “Squat Men!” the man moaned.

  The clearing seemed deserted; the howls of the wild beasts were sparse and distant.

  “I can’t see anything,” said Maranges, raising his binoculars.

  “The Squat Men are there,” the old African affirmed.

  “Are they redoubtable?”

  “They’re men born of the Pitiless Forest, cunning and ungraspable.”

  “Over there!” cried Sir George. He had just glimpsed an upright silhouette among the ferns. It had already vanished; beyond the luminous ring of flames, all they could see was the black forest beneath a sky white with stars.

  “The poor devils must have few weapons,” said Guthrie, shrugging his shoulders.

  “They have poisoned assegais, stone axes and pikes” said Kouram. “Always in large numbers, they’re skillful at setting traps, and they eat…” The old man hesitated.

  “What do they eat?” said Guthrie, impatiently.

  “Their victims, Master.”

  The fires roared and flickered like living creatures; at intervals, a crackling reminiscent of a plaint was heard; sparks rose up like a swarm of fireflies, and the forest sent forth a light breath, full of sly gentleness and ferocious mystery.

  II. The Squat Men

  Kouram recounted the legend of the Squat Men, born of the Forest, the Marsh and a Beast from the Clouds.

  No one is sure that they are human. Their eyes emit a green glow by night and can see in the dark; their torsos are broad, their limbs short; their hair resembles the fur of hyenas; they have no noses, only two black holes above the mouth; they live in tribes, the least of which includes 100 warriors; they are unskilled in lighting fires, scarcely cook their food, and are ignorant of metals; their weapons are made of wood and stone.

  The Squat Men do not know how to cultivate land, nor weave cloth, nor bake pottery; they nourish themselves on meat, nuts, tender shoots, young leaves, roots and mushrooms. They wage war implacably, devouring the wounded and prisoners, even women—and especially children. An inextinguishable hatred animates the Squat Men of the North, who have red hair, against those of the South, who have black hair, and those of the West, who are proud of their blue breasts.

  They are not increasing in number; they are diminishing with every passing generation. Their courage scorns death, and does not weaken under torture. In their faces, they resemble buffaloes as much as men; they give off an odor that resembles the odor of roasted flesh.

  When Kouram had finished, Maranges asked: “Have you seen these Squat Men?”

  “Yes, Master. I had scarcely come of age when they took me prisoner. I was to be eaten. The fire was ready to cook me. The ones who held me had red hair. They were laughing because they had other prisoners and dead men whose wounds were still bleeding. They had tied us up with lianas. The sorcerers were chanting slowly, in an unknown language. They were waving axes and flowery branches…

  “Then howls came through the branches, then sharp assegais. The Squat Men with blue breasts had come. There was a battle. I freed myself from the lianas and fled toward the plain…”

  Kouram fell silent, becoming contemplative. The times of his youth were crowding within his arid brain. There was consternation in Hareton’s gaze, which was fixed on Muriel’s sparkling hair. Maranges looked at the young woman and sighed deeply. Sydney Guthrie, however, considered the darkness without fear or anxiety. His youth, his vigor and a joy that came naturally to him hid the future from his thoughts. By virtue of his travels in the Orient, Sir George Farnham had contracted a little of the fatalism of Arabs and Mongols.

  “What can these wretches do?” said the colossus. “The machine-gun alone would suffice to wipe out a tribe, the elephant-gun to reduce them to shreds. Maranges and Farnham, as skillful as Leatherstocking,25 have rifles that fire 20 bullets a minute. Even Muriel is a fairly good shot. All our men are well-armed. We can exterminate them at a range 20 times greater than that of their assegais.”

  “They know how to render themselves invisible,” Kouram replied. “When an assegai strikes a man or an animal, we do not know where it has come from.”

  “The ground is bare around our fires…there’s nothing growing there but a few ferns and grasses...”

  Something whistled in the darkness; a long slender streak passed over the flames, and they saw a little black goat shiver. The assegai was embedded in its flank.

  Then the vast starry night became hostile. Hareton, Guthrie, Far
nham and Maranges peered into the darkness. They saw nothing but the female anthropoids, whose gleaming eyes were searching the darkness.

  Old Kouram had uttered a feeble plaint.

  “Can’t you see anything?” asked Maranges.

  “Master, I can only see that clump of ferns.”

  Philippe raised his rifle and fired three times, at three different heights. They heard two raucous cries. A dark body leapt up, fell back, and began crawling through the short grass. Maranges hesitated over finishing the fugitive off. The latter disappeared, as if he had been swallowed up by the ground. Long sinister cries—sounds reminiscent of the howling of wolves and the mocking laughter of hyenas—echoed over the clearing and in the forest.

  “We’re surrounded,” Hareton observed.

  Silence was restored uniformly. The Southern Cross marked 8 p.m.—and the little black goat, uttering a desperate bleat, collapsed and died.

  Kouram, having retrieved the assegai, held it out to Ironcastle. The American examined it attentively and said: “The point is granite. Set up the tents, Kouram.”

  The tents were erected. One of them was large enough to serve the entire expedition as a dining-room or conference-room. All of them were made of thick canvas, solid and impermeable.

  “They wouldn’t protect us against bullets,” Hareton remarked, “but these assegais won’t get through the surface.”

  When the white men were gathered in the big tent, the men served millet and roasted Cercopithecus.26 The meal was melancholy; only Guthrie seemed to retain a considerable optimism. He savored the roast, and the millet spiced with red pepper, and remarked: “We’ll have to carry out a beat!”

  “A beat?” Maranges exclaimed.

  “The area around the camp needs to be free, for a distance that exceeds the range of their damned machines. The important thing is to sleep without being disturbed.”

  They listened with a sport of bewilderment.

  “But a sortie would expose us to the assegais,” said Ironcastle.

  “Why?” asked Guthrie. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Come on, Sydney! It’s no joking matter.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t remember, Uncle Hareton. I anticipated poisoned arrows. I sent to New York for the necessary vestments…”

  “That’s true—you mentioned it to me…and I didn’t give it another thought.

  Guthrie burst out laughing as he finished a slice of Cercopithecus. “Hello!” he said. “Kouram—send someone to fetch the yellow trunk.”

  Ten minutes later, two natives brought a rather flat trunk upholstered in fawn-colored leather, at which everyone looked with ardent curiosity. Sydney opened the case carefully, displaying a thick pile of garments resembling mackintoshes.

  “A new cloth,” he said. Metallic—as supple as rubber. Here are gloves, masks, leggings, hoods…”

  “Are you sure that they’re proof against arrows?”

  “Hold on…” He unfolded one of the mackintoshes, fixed it to the side of the tent and said to Ironcastle: “Would you like to throw the assegai?”

  Hareton picked up the weapon and took aim. The spear rebounded from the garment.

  “The cloth’s still intact!” Maranges observed. “The granite point only caused a dent.”

  “There can’t be any doubt about that,” the American went on. “Padding and Mortlock furnished the merchandise—the world’s leading company in its area. The Squat Men will waste their venom. Unfortunately, there are the camels, the donkeys and the goats—if they were to perish the loss would be irreparable. That’s why I want to flatten everything around the circle where men might hide.”

  “A tree-trunk and three or four clumps of ferns!” remarked Sir George.

  Sydney put on the most voluminous of the garments, fixed a flexible mask over his face, unrolled the leggings from the ankles to the knees, and said: “Let’s set things to rights!”

  Farnham, Ironcastle, Maranges, Muriel, Kouram and the two white servants, whose names were Patrick Jefferson and Dick Nightingale, imitated him.

  “Let’s start on the side opposite the one where the animals are located,” said Ironcastle.

  The scarlet horned Moon was climbing above the depths of the clearing and its rays were soaking the millennial forest like an imponderable wave.

  “It’s astonishing that these brutes haven’t launched any more assegais,” said Maranges.

  “The Squat Men are patient,” Kouram replied. “They’ve understood that we have redoubtable weapons, and they’ll only attack us directly if they have to. Good as they are at hiding, there’s not much cover around the fires…”

  “You don’t think they’ll give up their project, then?”

  “They’re as stubborn as a rhinoceros! They’ll follow us as far as the edge of the forest. Nothing can discourage them—and if we kill any of their warriors, the more we kill, the more their hatred will increase.”

  Farnham, Hareton and Muriel, armed with binoculars, were examining the remoter parts of the site.

  “Nothing!” said Hareton.

  “No, nothing at all,” Farnham agreed. “We can get going.” He had picked up a long-handle axe, which was very sharp, to do the work of a sickle.

  Muriel leaned over the gorilla. It had not come out of its coma, and resembled a corpse.

  “He’ll pull through,” said Maranges, softly.

  The blonde head was raised again, and the young people looked at one another. A notion as imprecise as the nocturnal branches swelled Philippe’s bosom. Muriel was calm, and slightly suspicious.

  “Do you think so?” she said. “He’s lost almost all his blood…”

  “Half, at most…”

  A whimpering voice made them turn their heads. The female anthropoids were still there. The little ones and one of the mothers were asleep; the others were on watch.

  “They’re anxious,” said Kouram. “They know that the Squat Men have us surrounded…and they also know that the male is among us.”

  “They won’t attack us, will they?” Ironcastle asked.

  “I don’t think so, Master; you haven’t finished off the gorilla…they can smell him!”

  “Let’s go!” said Guthrie.

  The little troop went through a gap and found themselves outside the circle. First, Guthrie headed for the nearest clump of ferns and cut it down with a few sweeps of the axe. Then he mowed down the long grass, felled the stump of a palm-tree and moved toward the bush at which Maranges had fired. When he had got rid of it, there was no more cover within assegai range in which the Squat Men could render themselves invisible.

  “But how was the wounded man able to disappear?”

  “Into a ditch,” Kouram replied. He overtook Maranges and Guthrie. “Here it is.”

  Guthrie, Maranges and Farnham caught up with him in two strides.

  They perceived a man lying in a crevice, completely motionless. Hair as red as a fox’s fur covered his skull and was gathered in tufts on his cheeks. He had a cubic skull, truncated at the jaws, which seemed to be set directly on the shoulders, skin the color of peat, and flattened arms that terminated in extraordinarily short hands, the general form of which was reminiscent of the carapace of a crab. His feet were shorter still, with vague, scarcely-existent toes seemingly covered in a horny substance. Ample shoulders and a broad, thickset torso justified the race’s name.

  The man was almost naked; blood had coagulated on his chest and abdomen; a belt of raw animal-skin maintained a green axe and a stone knife. Two assegais lay in the crevice.

  “The three bullets hit him,” Kouram remarked, “but he’s not dead. Shall we finish him off?”

  “Don’t do that!” exclaimed Maranges, horrified.

  “He’s a hostage,” said Guthrie, phlegmatically. He bent down and lifted up the Squat Man as he might have lifted up a child. A sort of groan resounded; half a dozen assegais whistled through the air, two of which struck Kouram and Guthrie. The colossus burst out laughing, while Ko
uram informed the invisible enemies, by means of gestures, that their attack had been in vain.

  Farnham’s keen eyes scanned the cover. There was little enough of it. About 50 meters away, however, there was a bush that might have concealed two or three men.

  “What should we do?” Sir George asked.

  “It’s essential that they’re scared of us! No attack can be permitted without response. Fire!”

  Shouldering his elephant-gun, Guthrie fired toward a patch that stuck out in the center of the bush. The shot was followed by an explosion and a furious clamor. A body reared up and fell back, inanimate.

  “Poor brute!” sighed Philippe.

  “Don’t waste your pity,” Sydney replied. “The poor brutes are murderers by design and cannibals on principle. There’s no other way of informing them of our strength.” He put the body of the unconscious man under his arm and headed back to the camp. The white servants got rid of all the hiding-places that Maranges and Guthrie had not attacked. No man could hide within a radius of 100 meters, however cunning he might be.

  Sydney deposited the Squat Man next to the gorilla. Hareton took responsibility for dressing his wounds; the injured man uttered two or three groans without coming out of his swoon.

  “He’s not as badly wounded as the anthropoid.”

  Kouram studied the Squat Man with hateful apprehension. “Better to kill him,” he said. “It’ll be necessary to watch him continuously.”

  “We have ropes!” said Guthrie, lighting his pipe. “The night will be calm…and tomorrow, it’ll be light.”

  Having taken off her mask and metal hood, Muriel contemplated great Orion, a constellation of her native land, and the Southern Cross, which symbolized the unknown land. Philippe was enchanted in the presence of the girl, who was reminiscent of the oreads, the nymphs who haunt the forest at dawn, and the undines who spring forth from crepuscular lakes. In the sinister wilderness, she brought the man’s thoughts into focus. The moment was all the more redoubtable for it. Philippe paled at the thought that the peril that threatened the males threatened her even more…