Twelve Stories and a Dream (13 page)

"The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of
fishes, and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I came
with a kind of dull bang on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer, and the
fishes that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of
flies from road stuff in summer time. I turned on the compressed air
again—for the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in
spite of the rum—and stood recovering myself. It struck coolish down
there, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit.

"When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It was
an extraordinary sight. Even the light was extraordinary, a kind of
reddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed that
floated up on either side of the ship. And far overhead just a moony,
deep green-blue. The deck of the ship, except for a slight list to
starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between the weeds, clear
except where the masts had snapped when she rolled, and vanishing into
black night towards the forecastle. There wasn't any dead on the decks,
most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose; but afterwards I found two
skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins, where death had come to them.
It was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all, bit by bit; a
place against the rail where I'd been fond of smoking by starlight, and
the corner where an old chap from Sydney used to flirt with a widow we
had aboard. A comfortable couple they'd been, only a month ago, and now
you couldn't have got a meal for a baby crab off either of them.

"I've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I dare say I spent
the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below
to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting,
feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue
gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at
my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a
lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something
all knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never had
any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty
thoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found it
that trip. I lifted a box one end an inch or more."

He broke off in his story. "I've lifted it," he said, "as near as that!
Forty thousand pounds worth of pure gold! Gold! I shouted inside my
helmet as a kind of cheer and hurt my ears. I was getting confounded
stuffy and tired by this time—I must have been down twenty-five minutes
or more—and I thought this was good enough. I went up the companion
again, and as my eyes came up flush with the deck, a thundering great
crab gave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways.
Quite a start it gave me. I stood up clear on deck and shut the valve
behind the helmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up again—I
noticed a kind of whacking from above, as though they were hitting the
water with an oar, but I didn't look up. I fancied they were signalling
me to come up.

"And then something shot down by me—something heavy, and stood a-quiver
in the planks. I looked, and there was a long knife I'd seen young
Sanders handling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I was still calling him
this kind of fool and that—for it might have hurt me serious—when I
began to lift and drive up towards the daylight. Just about the level
of the top spars of the Ocean Pioneer, whack! I came against something
sinking down, and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. Then something
else, struggling frightful. It was a big weight atop of me, whatever it
was, and moving and twisting about. I'd have thought it a big octopus,
or some such thing, if it hadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don't
wear boots. It was all in a moment, of course. I felt myself sinking
down again, and I threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot
rolled free of me and shot down as I went up—"

He paused.

"I saw young Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a spear
driven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck what looked
like spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they went clutching
one another, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. And
in another second my helmet came a whack, fit to split, against the
niggers' canoe. It was niggers! Two canoes full.

"It was lively times, I tell you! Overboard came Always with three
spears in him. There was the legs of three or four black chaps kicking
about me in the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw the game was up at
a glance, gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down again
after poor Always, in as awful a state of scare and astonishment as you
can well imagine. I passed young Sanders and the nigger going up again
and struggling still a bit, and in another moment I was standing in the
dim again on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer.

"'Gummy,' thinks I, 'here's a fix!' Niggers? At first I couldn't see
anything for it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properly
understand how much air there was to last me, but I didn't feel like
standing very much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfully
heady—quite apart from the blue funk I was in. We'd never repined with
these beastly natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good, coming
up where I was, but I had to do something. On the spur of the moment, I
clambered over the side of the brig and landed among the weeds, and set
off through the darkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once and
knelt, and twisted back my head in the helmet and had a look up. It was
a most extraordinary bright green-blue above, and the two canoes and the
boat floating there very small and distant like a kind of twisted H. And
it made me feel sick to squint up at it, and think what the pitching and
swaying of the three meant.

"It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blundering
about in that darkness, pressure something awful, like being buried in
sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing as it
seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit, I found
myself going up a steepish sort of slope. I had another squint to see
if anything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. I
stopped with my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where I
was going, but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection of
the bottom. Then out I dashed like knocking my head through a mirror.
Directly I got my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of
beach near the forest. I had a look round, but the natives and the brig
were both hidden by a big, hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born fool
in me suggested a run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but
eased open one of the windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out
of the water. You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.

"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head
in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes
under water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy
going to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more,
coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.

"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London.
I had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned
turtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and
waited for them. There wasn't anything else for me to do.

"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'Jimmy
Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be
a little light-headed, I think, with all these dangers about and the
change in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?'
I said, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm
hanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and with that
I screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the
belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing it
must have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one
and then another went down on their hands and knees. They didn't know
what to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was very
wise and reasonable of them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and
cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd have
been after me. And out of sheer desperation I began to march towards
them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms
about, in a dignified manner. And inside of me I was singing as small as
a tomtit.

"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a
difficulty,—I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,
who're up to diving-dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely
imagine the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or two of these
niggers cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock
their brains out on the ground. And on I went as slow and solemn and
silly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber. It was evident they took
me for something immense.

"Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures
to me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention
between me and something out at sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said. I
turned slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming round
a point, the poor old Pride of Banya towed by a couple of canoes. The
sight fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition,
so I waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. And then
I turned and stalked on towards the trees again. At that time I was
praying like mad, I remember, over and over again: 'Lord help me through
with it! Lord help me through with it!' It's only fools who know nothing
of dangers can afford to laugh at praying.

"But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away like
that. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed
me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me they
didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of
me, and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old
country.

"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages,
but these poor misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to their
kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there.
By this time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their
ignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deity I took my cue. I
started a baritone howl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and began
waving my arms about a lot, and then very slowly and ceremoniously
turned their image over on its side and sat down on it. I wanted to sit
down badly, for diving-dresses ain't much wear in the tropics. Or, to
put it different like, they're a sight too much. It took away their
breath, I could see, my sitting on their joss, but in less time than a
minute they made up their minds and were hard at work worshipping me.
And I can tell you I felt a bit relieved to see things turning out so
well, in spite of the weight on my shoulders and feet.

"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might think
when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before I went down,
and without the helmet on—for they might have been spying and hiding
since over night—they would very likely take a different view from the
others. I was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed,
until the shindy of the arrival began.

"But they took it down—the whole blessed village took it down. At the
cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sitting Egyptian
images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, I
should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what
it meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the
man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come
up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly
closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a
stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought
in a lot of gory muck—the worst parts of what they were feasting on
outside, the Beasts—and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit
hungry, but I understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what
with the smell of burnt offerings about them. And they brought in a lot
of the stuff they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what I was
a bit relieved to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the
compressed air affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and
danced about me something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different
ways different people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet
handy I'd have gone for the lot of them—they made me feel that wild.
All this time I sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything better to
do. And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place
got a bit too shadowy for their taste—all these here savages are afraid
of the dark, you know—and I started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they built
big bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the darkness of my
hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and think things over, and feel
just as bad as I liked. And, Lord! I was sick.

"I was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on a
pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. Come round
just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps,
beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young
Sanders with the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind.
There was the treasure down there in the Ocean Pioneer, and how one
might get it and hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back for
it. And there was the puzzle where to get anything to eat. I tell you
I was fair rambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of
behaving too human, and so there I sat and hungered until very near
the dawn. Then the village got a bit quiet, and I couldn't stand it any
longer, and I went out and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowl
and some sour milk. What was left of these I put away among the other
offerings, just to give them a hint of my tastes. And in the morning
they came to worship, and found me sitting up stiff and respectable on
their previous god, just as they'd left me overnight. I'd got my back
against the central pillar of the hut, and, practically, I was asleep.
And that's how I became a god among the heathen—a false god no doubt,
and blasphemous, but one can't always pick and choose.