The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Can’t we do anything for those poor creatures?” she said, pointing to the female anthropoids.

  “They have no need of us,” he said, smiling. “The entire forest is their realm, where everything in which gorillas delight grows in abundance.”

  “But you can see that they aren’t going away. Their anxiety is visible...they must be afraid of the red Squat Men. The Squat Men haven’t attacked them though.”

  Muriel was speaking almost mysteriously, all the more seductive for being lost in the primal forest, in the bosom of the same traps that menaced, at the dawn of humankind, the ancestors from whom her precious form distanced her even more than the millennia.

  “They haven’t attacked them,” he said, “because they’re saving their weapons…”

  “For us!” she said, with a sigh, turning her head toward Ironcastle, who had finished bandaging the Squat Man,

  His heart full of a tragic softness, Philippe savored the stellar space, the luminous grayness that was soaking the confused regions of the undergrowth and the flexible daughter of America, similar to the daughters of the pale isle where the pagan Angels who had charmed Saint Gregory had once lived.

  III. The Water-Hole

  The lot had fallen to Hareton to take the first watch. Three natives watched with him, scanning the perimeter of the clearing.

  It was a night similar to all the nights of that forest, a night of ambush and murder, of triumphs and miseries, a storm of yelping, roaring, howling, belling, croaking and cries of agony, flesh devoured alive, bellies swollen and bellies consumed, anguish, terror, ferocity and greed, the feasting of some and the horror of others, suffering nourishing sensuality, death restoring life…

  Every night for the last 100,000 years, Hareton thought, every night without respite and without mercy…every night the charming or ingenious beasts, which have so much difficulty in growing, have perished thus in accordance with inconceivable necessity…and are perishing still! Lord, how mysterious your will is!

  The pale light of the firmament weighed lightly on the black night of the forest; odors drifted, as fresh as springs, as sweet as music, as intoxicating as young women, as savage as lions, as equivocal as reptiles…

  A heavy melancholy gripped the American. Full of remorse for having brought Muriel, he could not understand his weakness. It is necessary to believe, he said to himself, that every man not only has his hour but also his season of madness.

  Because he was energetic in action and followed his projects through, he could not understand his irresolution in respect of Muriel. She had never left him. She was the last member of his immediate family, Hareton having lost his two sons when the Thunder was torpedoed off the Spanish coast. Since then, he had been unable to resist the desires and determination of his daughter.

  As dawn approached, a mist settled on the clearing and rendered the view less clear; the veiled moonlight deformed the shapes of the trees; the stars were enveloped by a pale tulle in which they vacillated like feeble night-lights.

  Then, for no reason, Ironcastle imagined Muriel carried off by Squat Men, and frightful images tormented him.

  Three jackals paused, turning towards the fire. Hareton considered their dog-like muzzles, pointed ears and vigilant eyes with a kind of sympathy. They fled into the undergrowth; everything fell back into a vast silence.

  The enemy is there, though! the voyager said to himself.

  Nothing revealed his presence; the forest seemed to be alone with its predators, thousands of herbivores having expired by tooth and claw.

  In spite of everything, Hareton submitted to the vast charm of that silence punctuated by slight sounds: the crackle of the flames, the rustling passage of animals, the sighing of the leaves…

  A whiter vapor rose up to the stars: the imponderable vapor of first light. The dew hissed in the fires; the three attentive men scrutinized the primordial light that seemed to be born as much of the trees as the firmament. The moving deception of the dawn passed in a moment; daylight had arrived in the unsoundable depths; millions of fearful insects rose up, no longer fearful of life.

  Hareton took a little Bible from his pocket and read, with the awe of his race:

  “He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground;

  “A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.

  “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.

  “And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation.”27

  Putting his hands together, he prayed—for his life was divided into two watertight compartments; in one was his faith in Science, in the other his faith in Revelation.

  There! he said to himself. It’s a matter of rendering the animals invulnerable. I would have been able to save the goat by cauterizing its wound…

  A shadow fell beside him; before turning around he knew that it was Muriel. “Darling!” he murmured. “I was wrong to obey your will.”

  “Are you so sure,” she said, “that we would not have run greater dangers without leaving our own country?”

  She took the little Bible from her father’s hands and, turning the pages at random, she read: “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.”28 She sighed, and added: “Who knows what’s happening in America?”

  A jovial laugh interrupted her; the giant figure of Guthrie loomed up in front of the dying flames. “What could be happening that is not the repetition of what was happening before our departure? I assume that thousands of ships are filling the ports of the United States, that the railways are transporting city-dwellers who are leaving the beaches to return to the cities, that the factories are humming, that the crop-growers are thinking about the autumn sowing, that honest people are taking their evening meals—for night is falling there—and that buses, trams and automobiles are filling the streets of Baltimore.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Philippe’s grave voice, “but there might also be great cataclysms.”

  “An earthquake?” asked Farnham.

  “Why not? Is there a conclusive reason why England and France should be eternally protected from earthquakes? In any case, the United States is familiar with them. But I was thinking about something else…”

  Bright daylight—a creative and murderous light—took possession of the forest. The last fires were put out. The dazzle of wings appeared in the realm of the braches.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Hareton.

  “Eat breakfast,” Sydney replied. “Then we’ll hold a council of war.”

  Kouram gave the necessary orders; two natives brought tea, coffee, pickles, jams, biscuits, smoked buffalo and sausages.

  Guthrie ate with the joyous zest that he brought to all meals. “How is the gorilla?” he asked Kouram.

  “He’s still unconscious, Master—but the Squat Man is beginning to wake up.”

  Philippe served Muriel’s breakfast; while crunching biscuits and drinking tea, the young woman studied the surroundings. “They’re still there,” she murmured. She pointed to the group of anthropoids, which had slept close to the fires.

  “That’s strange,” Philippe replied. “Kouram’s right, I think; they’re afraid of the Squat Men—who can scarcely spare a thought for gorillas, though, when they’re watching enemies like us!”

  Muriel’s large turquoise eyes became thoughtful. In a whisper, Philippe said to himself: “And, like her, dread to see the days end, of those who die with her!”29

  Having finished his smoked buffalo and coffee, Guthrie said: “Now let’s make a plan. As long as we stay in the clearing, we’ll be protected from the Squat Men. To attack us, they’d have to come out in the open. Except that we can’t stay in the clearing without water and wood. There’s water a mile away…wood is indispensable.”

  “What will we gain by making camp?” asked Maranges.

  “We’ll be able to wor
k to render as invulnerable as possible those of our men who can’t be equipped with the metallic mackintoshes,” said Ironcastle. “We can also search for the best means of safeguarding our animals, the loss of which would be a disaster.”

  “What if the damned cannibals receive reinforcements?”

  Hareton turned an anxious face to Kouram. “Is that possible?”

  “It’s possible, Master—but the red Squat Men rarely make alliances, except against the blue-breasted Squat Men. Their tribes live far apart.”

  “It would be more likely, then,” Philippe observed, “that our besiegers would encounter others of their kind during a march.”

  “We’ll make camp, then?” asked Sydney, insouciantly.

  “That’s my opinion,” Ironcastle replied.

  “And mine,” Sir George agreed, placidly.

  “How’s the water-supply, Kouram?”

  “We don’t have enough for the camels, the donkeys and the goats to drink. We were counting on the water-hole.”

  “Then a sortie is unavoidable.”

  Beyond the circle of embers and the bare zone there was nothing but islets of ferns, grass and brushwood—and then the mysterious realm of the trees. The water-hole was invisible.

  “The camp needs to be well-guarded,” said Guthrie. “You, Uncle Hareton, are the best machine-gunner; you ought to stay, with Muriel, Patrick Jefferson and most of the natives. Farnham, Maranges, Kouram, Dick Nightingale, two men and I will make a sortie as far as the water-hole. It’s a pity that we can’t take a camel…”

  Ironcastle shook his head. A vast anxiety was weighing upon him. He did not like the idea of the sortie at all. “We can wait a while longer!”

  “No!” Guthrie retorted. “If we wait, we’ll be running even greater risks. We need to decide now.”

  “Sydney’s right,” said Philippe.

  The party making the sortie was fitted out with mackintoshes and metallic masks. Guthrie had his elephant-gun, an axe and two revolvers. Maranges’ and Farnham’s armaments were identical, except for their rifles. Dick Nightingale carried a solid broad-bladed dirk.

  “Let’s go!”

  The words fell like the vibration of a tocsin. A slight shiver shook the young woman’s shoulders. The forest seemed more ferocious, more immense and more deceptive. Philippe took a last look at the girl from Baltimore.

  It was the natives who took the lead. Kouram had a subtle experience, purchased by ten brushes with death; the others opened their keen senses to the surroundings. The three of them formed a triangle with a broad base. Philippe, whose hearing was extraordinary, followed Kouram. Sydney took long slow strides, his great strength reassuring the natives even more than the elephant-gun or Farnham’s and Maranges’ infallible carbines. The others brought up the rear.

  They headed eastwards. A warthog went by under the palm-trees; antelopes ran away; the Squat Men remained invisible. At the edge of the clearing, Kouram, craning his neck, spotted green shadows.

  “Watch out!” said Philippe. Among the slight cracking sounds and furtive sliding—the almost-imperceptible noises that seemed to be the breath of the forest—he thought he could hear some kind of organized movement, which drew away and reformed to the rear.

  Trails seem to have been marked out—ancient pathways along which animals, and sometimes humans, had passed for centuries to go to the water-hole. The little troop tightened its ranks, with Kouram still in the lead, followed closely by the other two natives.

  “Perhaps they’ve decamped?” Guthrie whispered.

  “I’ve heard too many bodies slipping through the plants,” Maranges replied.

  “You have the ears of a wolf!”

  Kouram paused; one of the men put his ear to the ground. Philippe had already heard. “Someone’s moving over there,” he said, pointing at a thicket to the right of a baobab.

  “It’s them,” said Kouram. “But they’re also in front of us…and to the left. They’re surrounding us. They know we’re going to the water-hole.”

  The invisible presence became nerve-racking. They were caught in a supple, moving and solid trap—a living trap that only moved away to close in more effectively.

  In the green light, a silvery reflection revealed water, mother of all creatures. As they drew closer, they made out a small lake. Giant water-lilies displayed their petals; a flock of birds took off with the long clatter of wings; and anxious gnu stopped drinking.

  Extended between shores more capricious than the fjords of Norway, thick with feverish and avid vegetation, the lake was almost shapeless.

  The expedition stopped near a sort of promontory where the plants had been ripped up by elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, buffaloes, warthogs and antelopes. Clear and almost fresh, the water-hole was presumably fed by a subterranean spring; three small streams carried the water away.

  The men drank avidly. Less inured to the paludal bacteria, the white men, having filled their water-bottles, poured a few droplets of a yellowish liquid into them.

  “Now the canisters!”

  A clamor fantastic and terrible went up, which had a sort of rhythm to it—two howls followed by a groan. Human forms emerged and disappeared. Then silence fell again, as penetrating as a lull in a storm.

  “That’s the voice of 100 men!” Kouram murmured.

  The faces of the natives had become leaden and ashen. Farnham and Guthrie scanned the undergrowth. Guthrie, standing tall like Ajax, son of Telamon, raised his powerful elephant-gun…

  Assegais flew, which struck the metallic garments fruitlessly or fell into the lake.

  “We would have been killed!” observed Sydney, placidly.

  “These assegais might be useful,” Sir George remarked, picking up the one that had rebounded from his breast. “They’re as dangerous to them as to us.”

  “Yes, these degraded worms are supplying us with weapons…”

  The canisters having been deposited on the promontory, the little troop waited, arranged in a semicircle with the lake behind them. All the animals had fled; the banks were deserted. A single funereal bird skimmed the surface of the water.

  “What are they waiting for?” Guthrie exclaimed, with a hint of impatience.

  “They want to see if the assegais have been fatal,” Kouram replied. “The poison only acts after a time of 1000 paces.”

  Nothing was audible but the distant voices of parrots and a monkey ululating on the far side of the lake. The silence seemed interminable. Then the clamor resumed, more raucous than before, and two bands of Squat Men charged. There were at least 60, red-bearded, armed with pikes, clubs or jade axes.

  “Fire!” cried Farnham.

  He and Maranges, taking aim with infallible precision, had put four men down by the time the elephant-gun raised its resounding voice. The latter’s effect was monstrous; arms, legs, feet and red bones were scattered. A head could be seen suspended by its hair from the branches of a baobab; entrails were writhing like blue serpents.

  Howling with terror, the Squat Men beat a retreat and dissipated, save for one group that had surged out of the reeds, which fell upon the travelers wildly. A blow from a club knocked Kouram down; assailed by two Squat Men, a native collapsed, and two adversaries appeared in front of Philippe. Red lead made their faces bloody; as their eyes shone, their stout arms raised green axes.

  Parrying the blows, Maranges laid out one of his antagonists on the ground, while the second, attacking obliquely, brought down his weapon—but Philippe had stepped aside. Carried forward by his momentum, the Squat Man came too close to the bank; then, lashing out with his boot, Maranges kicked him into the lake.

  Guthrie confronted three Squat Men. They hesitated, alarmed by the giant’s stature. Sydney knocked one aggressor’s pike out of his hands, grabbed him by the neck, whirled him like a club and hurled him at his companions. Sir George, coming to the rescue, felled the stoutest of the aggressors with the butt of his gun.

  There was a rout. The Squat Men who were uninjur
ed fled into the shelter of the reeds; the wounded crawled toward the forest, and—as had been agreed—Guthrie sounded the whistle-blasts, one long and two short, to signal to Ironcastle that the danger had passed.

  “We need prisoners,” Farnham remarked, taking hold of a fugitive.

  Guthrie and Dick having done likewise, four wounded men remained in the victors’ hands.

  “How’s Kouram?” said Maranges, anxiously.

  Kouram replied with a sigh, followed by a groan. The thickness of his hair and the solid bones of his skull had saved him. The second native was already on his feet, with no other damage than a broken collar-bone.

  Twenty minutes later, the expedition returned to the camp. They formed up into a square, in the center of which the captives were dragged. Twice, the war-cry of the Squat Men echoed in the woody arcades, but there was no attack.

  When he heard the fusillade, Ironcastle, ready for combat, brought the machine-gun forward; Guthrie’s signals calmed him down. During the interval that followed, his anxiety began to increase again. He was about to make a sortie of his own, in spite of everything, when the expedition emerged from the eastern edge of the clearing.

  The caravan advanced slowly, delayed by the captives.

  “No losses?” Hareton shouted, when Philippe and Guthrie were close enough.

  “None…only one man with an injured shoulder.”

  Involuntarily, Muriel turned to Maranges, whom she liked for his character and sensitivity. “Were there many of them?” she asked.

  It was Guthrie who replied. “Sixty attacked head on; ten came from the reeds. If that’s the whole tribe, our victory is almost certain.”

  “It’s not the whole tribe,” Kouram declared.

  “He’s right,” said Philippe. “There were voices behind them. When the attack failed, the reserves didn’t put in an appearance.”

  “How many warriors do you think there are?” Ironcastle asked the old man.

  “At least ten times the fingers of the hands, and another five times,” Kouram replied.