The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “A hundred and fifty. They can’t take the camp by storm…”

  “They won’t try,” said Kouram, “and they won’t attack again in large numbers until they’ve drawn us into a trap. They know our weapons now. They know that the assegais are useless against the yellow cloaks.”

  “You don’t believe they’ll give up trailing us?”

  “They’ll be all around us as surely as the light is over the forest.”

  Ironcastle bowed his head pensively.

  “We can’t prepare our departure in one day,” Maranges put in, fearful for Muriel.

  “That’s certain,” agreed Hareton, whose anxiety had the same object. “But we need water and food, for ourselves and our animals.”

  “I don’t think they’ll attack us again on the path to the water-hole,” said Sydney.

  “No, Master,” Kouram agreed. “They won’t attack today, or tomorrow. They’ll wait for us to leave. The livestock will be able to graze, under the protection of the rifles.”

  The speakers felt the unknowns of men and circumstances weighing upon them. Between them and their fatherlands were forests, deserts and oceans; close at hand, a strange enemy, human and bestial, which had scarcely changed in a hundred centuries. That enemy was poorly armed, in a derisory manner, but terrifying in the force of their numbers, their cunning and their stubbornness. In spite of their rifles, their machine-gun and their armor, the travelers were prey…

  “How are the wounded?” asked Maranges.

  Hareton pointed to a small tent. “They’re in there. The man has regained consciousness, but he’s extremely weak. The gorilla is still torpid.”

  They turned their attention to the captives. None was dangerously wounded. With their compact faces, smeared with red lead, their ferocious eyes and barrel chests, they gave rise to grim and equivocal impressions.

  “I think they’re uglier than gorillas!” said Guthrie. “There’s something of the hyena and the rhinoceros about them.”

  “It’s not their ugliness that strikes me,” said Hareton, “but their expression. That expression is human, but it’s humanity at its worst. It reveals, to an extreme degree, a viciousness that one doesn’t find in monkeys or other men.”

  “What about panthers…or tigers?” queried Muriel.

  “They’re naïvely ferocious,” Hareton replied. “They’re not malevolent. Malevolence involves a kind of strange transcendence of the worst of carnivores. That transcendence only attains its full development in our peers. To judge by their physiognomy, these Squat Men are among the most malevolent of human beings.”

  “That’s still a kind of superiority!” muttered Farnham.

  Kouram, who had listened without understanding, said forcefully: “Don’t keep the captives! They’re more dangerous than serpents! They’ll make signals to the other Squat Men. Why not cut off their heads?”

  IV. The Python and the Warthog

  For three days, the travelers worked to prepare their departure. An antelope having been captured by the natives, Ironcastle carried out experiments with the poisoned assegais; immediate cauterization neutralized the effects of the poison.

  “Good!” said Guthrie, who had watched the experiments. “Now we need to try it on one of the captives.”

  “I don’t have the right!” his uncle replied.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a duty,” the nephew replied. “To hesitate between the lives of brave men and that of one of these bandits is mere folly.”

  Armed with an assegai, he went to fetch one of the captives, who were under guard in a large tent. It was the most thickset of the group; he was fully half as broad as he was tall. His round eyes fixed upon the giant with superstitious ferocity. After a brief hesitation, Sydney pricked the Squat Man on the shoulder. The man stiffened; his face expressed hatred and disdain.

  “There you are, Uncle Hareton—I take the sin upon myself alone. Be the good healer!”

  Ironcastle swiftly cauterized the wound. After half an hour, no symptoms of poisoning had appeared.

  “You can see that I did the right thing!” the colossus concluded, taking hold of the Squat Man again. “We’re sure now that cauterization can save men as well as animals.”

  As Kouram had predicted, there was no further attack.

  Every morning, an expedition set out for the lake. Two camels were taken, covered in strong canvas—the canvas that was used to repair the tents. The natives brought back forge, which added to the grass and young shoots that the camels, donkeys and goats grazed in the clearing.

  The Squat Men remained invisible; there was no indication of their presence.

  “One could easily believe that they’d decamped,” Maranges said, at the end of the fourth day. He had been listening to the rumors and slight noises of the surroundings for some time, with ears keener than a jackal’s.

  “They won’t decamp until they’re forced to,” said Kouram. “They’re all around us…but far enough away for us to be unable to hear or smell them!”

  The captives were scarcely feeling the pain of their wounds, except for the one that had been taken on the first evening. Retaining an impassive attitude and constantly on the alert, none of them responded to the signs by means of which Ironcastle and his companions attempted to make themselves understood. Their faces, as immutable as stone masks, seemed no less stupid than the faces of hippopotamuses or rhinoceroses. Nevertheless, two influences gradually generated light in their obscure souls. At the sight of Guthrie, their eyes dilated ferociously; at the sight of Muriel, those same eyes reflected a vague mysticism.

  “It’s through the two of you that we must try to tame them,” said Hareton.

  Those words did not satisfy Maranges; something in the bestial pupils irritated his affection.

  Another event engaged the travelers’ interest. The gorilla had recovered consciousness. His debility was extreme; he shivered with fever. When he realized that he was in the presence of humans, he manifested a weak, genuinely fearful emotion; his eyelids quivered, and he tried to raise his head, but, sensing his impotence, became resigned. Because no one did him any harm, and repetition has more effect on animals than humans, he became accustomed to his entourage. Save for a few recurrences of aversion or fear, he received the explorers’ visits placidly; those of Ironcastle, who fed and cared for him, became agreeable to him.

  “He’s certainly less untamable than these Squat brutes!” said the naturalist. “We’ll domesticate him…”

  The expedition was under way again.

  The immense forest seemed far from inextricable. The trees, often monstrous—especially the baobabs and the fig-trees—rarely formed clumps. Lianas were not abundant, nor were thorny trees and bushes.

  “This forest is comfortable,” remarked Sydney, who marched at the head with Sir George and Kouram. “I’m astonished to have encountered so few humans here.”

  “Not so few!” Farnham retorted. “In the outskirts, we counted at least three sorts of natives, which implies numerous tribes—and we’re being pursued by the Squat Men, who are not negligible.”

  “They’re the ones who prevent other men from extending further,” Kouram remarked.

  There were a great many contrasts between Farnham and Guthrie, although both of them were typical Anglo-Saxons—with a hint of Celt in the American. Sir George had an internal life as powerful as Ironcastle’s, while Sydney’s consciousness was scattered in gusts. In times of peril, Farnham retreated into himself, to the point of seeming indifferent or plunged into reverie. At such times, it was as if all his emotions had been banished, chased into the mists of the unconscious; in the forefront of his mind, there was only the vigilance of his senses and the calculations of purely objective thought. By contrast, peril excited Guthrie violently, and during combat he was seized by a sort of light vertigo, which he enjoyed tremendously, and which did not prevent him from maintaining control over his decisions and his movements.

  In sum, Farnham had an earnest
bravery, Guthrie a joyful bravery.

  Their opinions differed as much as their character. Sydney, like Aunt Rebecca, mingled spiritualism and occultism with his faith, while Sir George conformed to the rites of the Church of England, which he accepted integrally. Each of them admitted the diversity of sects, provided that the fundamental prescriptions of the gospels were followed.

  Two days went by without incident. In the silent and hermetic forest, only a few furtive animals fled before the caravan. Even the birds were silent, except for the parrots, which raised their strident voices intermittently. There was no trace of humans. Farnham and Guthrie thought that the Squat Men were staying behind them; even Kouram doubted their presence.

  In the afternoon of the third day, the trees became more widely spaced, and they found themselves in a sort of forested savannah, in which wooded islands alternated with expanses of grass and desert sands. The region was divided into two quite distinct zones; to the east, the savannah was increasingly predominant; to the west, the forest continued, interrupted by clearings. The explorers kept to the borderland of the two regions, in order to ensure themselves of the advantages of both.

  A marsh overlapping the edge of the forest, encroached on the savannah, edged by tall papyrus, whose umbels trembled in the gentle breeze that was incessantly rising and fading away. All around was a haunt of reptiles, moist, chaotic and uneven. Giant water-lilies spread out their bowl-like foliage, enveloped by algae hospitable to tenebrous animals, while birds of beryl, plush and sulfur fled as the human approached.

  “We’ll stop for lunch and a siesta,” Hareton proposed.

  While the men installed the caravan beneath the baobabs, Muriel, Sir George, Sydney and Philippe explored the shore of the marsh.

  Muriel paused near a creek. Around sacred flowers, immense butterflies of fire and jonquil, and scarlet, gray-green or turquoise flies danced their light sarabands; a frog as big as a rat jumped into the torpid water; the occasional appearance of flaccid forms, or the emergence of a gaping mouth, and the hectic flight of black fish testified to the presence of monstrous life.

  A fabulous apparition drew Muriel out of her contemplation. More than any of the creatures encountered in the age-old forest, it evoked obscure forces, the frightful chaos of the world. A larva as thick and long as a tree-trunk, covered in a damascene bark, it crawled with a repulsive agility, guided by a tiny head with eyes like glass beads. Everything that was hideous about an earthworm, a leech or a slug was manifested therein on a colossal scale. It stopped; it was impossible to tell whether it had seen the young woman—its mineral eyes had no gaze.

  A savage disgust and a sinister vertigo congealed Muriel’s flesh, and the scream that rose to her larynx could not be completed. Before the power of this creature issued from inferior regions, which seemed a vile prodigy, her terror was more profound and her revulsion more frightful than before the ferocity of a tiger or a lion.

  The threat was still latent. In the tenebrous instinct of the python, the upright creature had no familiar form—but Muriel’s trembling legs collided with a tree-trunk; she stumbled, fell to her knees, and seemed smaller. Excited by her fall, the python crawled rapidly, coiled its vast body around the young woman—and the charming individual was no longer anything but the reptile’s prey.

  Again she tried to scream; horror stifled her voice; the head of the python reared up before her pale face and her beautiful dying eyes; the giant worm’s muscles choked off her breath and caused her vertebrae to creak. She felt her consciousness vacillate; death floated above her; her mind sank into darkness…

  Sir George and Philippe were marching in single file along the shore of the marsh. The water, the grass, the reeds and the bushes displayed the immeasurable frissons of life.

  “This place exhibits a terrifying fecundity,” Sir George remarked. “The insects especially…”

  “The insects are the abomination of the world!” Philippe interjected. “Look at these flies...there isn’t a single corner of this place of which they haven’t taken possession. There they are, ready to annihilate everything and devour everything. We shall perish by the insects, Sir George…”

  As he was speaking, Sir George, having rounded a clump of papyrus, uttered a horse cry and his eyes grew wide.

  “That’s frightful!” he exclaimed.

  Immediately, the same fear passed through Philippe.

  On the promontory, the python had finished wrapping itself around Muriel and was squeezing her in its formidable vortex. Her scintillating head had slumped on to her shoulder, and a horrible charm emanated from that grace, captive of the monster.

  Instinctively, Philippe had raised his rifle, but Sir George shouted: “Revolvers and knives!”

  They bounded forward; reaching the promontory in a flash. There was no way of knowing whether the creature perceived their presence. It undulated, quivering, entirely devoted to its voracious task.

  Simultaneously, Sir George and Philippe peppered the head with revolver shots, and then began slicing through the enormous body. The coils loosened and came undone. Philippe had grabbed hold of the young woman and he laid her down on the grass. She was coming round already, a haggard smile on her oread’s face.

  “You mustn’t say anything to my father!”

  “We shan’t say a word,” Sir George promised.

  When she was on her feet again she laughed lightly, the joy of being alive still mingled with fear and disgust. “That death was too vile! You’ve saved my life twice over!” She looked away, because she wanted to see the strange corpse of the python.

  Guthrie was also following the shore of the marsh. In his own way, he admired that frightful creation, which converted mineral substances into living matter inexhaustibly. As far as the eye could see, the water nourished the paludal vegetation and offered glimpses of the fabulous animality that swarmed in its depths.

  “If there were land and water everywhere,” Guthrie muttered, “the entire planet would be alive…and yet, water can sustain it almost by itself. What a damned prodigy the Sargasso Sea is! I thought our steamer would never get out of it! That incomprehensible world, from sperm whales to zoophytes, and from sharks to the Argonauts that inhabit its gulfs! And within the gulfs, at depths of 5000, 10,000 meters, the abyssal creatures…in truth, as the Bible says, we have superior waters and inferior waters filling the Expanse…and the whole Expanse is alive. It’s magnificent and disgusting!”

  A grunt cut his soliloquy short. It had come from a phantasmagorical bay full of muddy redoubts of vegetation and firm ground where 20 herds might have found refuge. A hundred paces away stood a fantastic animal, a sort of long-legged wild pig with a colossal head, a swollen face full of warts, an opaque muzzle armed with sharp and trenchant curved tusks, and bare skin, its hair being concentrated along the spine in a long mane.

  By Old Nick, the young man thought, that’s a warthog, and a damned fine example of the species…

  The animal grunted. Brutal and bad-tempered, incoherent, ferocious and courageous in its mentality, it only recoiled in confrontation with a rhinoceros, an elephant or a lion. Even then, if cornered, it accepted the battle; how many times in the millennial darkness had a lion succumbed to thrusts of curved tusks? Ever ready for combat, though, the warthog does seek it out. That requires a moment of madness, the savage and ferocious enchantment of lust, fear transformed into fury, or the necessity of clearing a passage.

  This one was grunting because it suspected an attack. Between velvet tufts, the little eyes gleamed, and the verrucose cheeks were visibly quivering.

  “We’re short of provisions,” Guthrie muttered.

  Even so, he hesitated, indulgent toward well-constructed beasts. This one, a male in the prime of life, had what was required to father a thousand redoubtable warthogs—and Guthrie, like Theodore Roosevelt, held that there would be animals of noble heritage for a long time yet, handsome or monstrous, exceedingly fast, strong and cunning.

  As he was meditat
ing, a second warthog emerged from the marsh, and immediately afterwards, ten more frightful and superb snouts. They were all grunting, anxious and surly—and suddenly, starting to gallop, they seemed to hurl themselves upon Guthrie. He threw himself to the left, while the herd held its course—but the large male that had emerged first came on blindly.

  Guthrie did not have the time to unsheathe his weapon or take aim; the long tusks were seeking to disembowel him when, with a mighty blow of his fist, formidably swung, he struck the beast behind the ear. That blow, squarely delivered, caused the warthog to stumble; it drew back, coughing. Its eyes flashed fire.

  Sydney laughed—a barbaric and joyful laughter—proud of having shaken the powerful beast, and he shouted: “Halloo! Time! Come on!”

  The warthog resumed the attack, which the American avoided with a sidestep to the left; then his fists fell like hammers, on the neck, the flanks and the snout. The beast whirled, moved sideways, and charged, panting.

  The antagonists found themselves on the edge of a ditch, and suddenly, grabbing hold of the warthog’s foot and shoving its shoulder, Sydney launched it into the mud.

  The animal struggled there, got up and made for the other side, while Sydney, more glorious than Hercules, the conqueror of the Erymanthian Boar, shouted: “I grant you mercy, monster of the marshes!”

  V. The Beasts’ Cave

  The plants of the forest region increased in number; the trees, more abundant, with larger crowns and thicker undergrowth, rendered the march difficult. It was necessary to retreat to the savannah. Inhospitable, it consisted of red earth and lamentable grass, alternating with rocky surfaces; purple snakes slid into the crevices, blue lizards warmed themselves on rocks; here and there, an ostrich raced away into the wilderness…

  Then there was nothing more than rocks and lichens, pale corroders of the stone, in the course of the centuries…