Along the moonlit trail there came wavering whiffs of orchids,
ranging from attar of roses and carnations to the pungence of
carrion, the latter doubtless distilled from as delicate and as
beautiful blossoms as the former. There were, besides, the myriad
and bewildering smells of sap, crushed leaves, and decaying wood;
acrid, sweet, spicy, and suffocating, some like musty books, others
recalling the paint on the Noah’s Ark of one’s nursery.
But the scent of the giant armadillo eluded us. When we waded
through some new, strange odor I looked back at Nupee, hoping for
some sign that it was the one we sought. But that night the great
armored creatures went their way and we ours, and the two did
not cross. Nupee showed me a track at the trail-side made long
ago, as wide and deep as the spoor of a dinosaur, and I fingered
it reverently as I would have touched the imprint of a recently
alighted pterodactyl, taking care not to spoil the outlines of the
huge claw-marks. All my search for him had been in vain thus far,
though I had been so close upon his trail as to have seen fresh
blood. I had made up my mind not to give up, but it seemed as if
success must wait for another year.
We watched and called the ghostly kinkajous and held them
fascinated with our stream of light; we aroused unnamable creatures
which squawked companionably at us and rustled the tree-top
leaves; we listened to the whispered rush of passing vampires
skimming our faces and were soothed by the hypnotic droning hum
which beetles left in their swift wake. Finally we turned and
circled through side trails so narrow and so dark that we walked
with outstretched arms, feeling for the trunks and lianas, choosing
a sloth’s gait and the hope of new adventures rather than the glare
of my flash on our path.
When we entered Kalacoon trail, we headed toward home. Within sight
of the first turn a great black branch of a tree had recently
fallen across the trail in a patch of moonlight. Before we reached
it, the branch had done something it should not have done--it had
straightened slightly. We strained our eyes to the utmost but could
not, in this eerie light, tell head from tail end of this great
serpent. It moved very slowly, and with a motion which perfectly
confounded our perception. Its progress seemed no faster than the
hour hand of a watch, but we knew that it moved, yet so close to
the white sand that the whole trail seemed to move with it. The eye
refused to admit any motion except in sudden shifts, like widely
separated films of a motion-picture. For minute after minute it
seemed quiescent; then we would blink and realize that it was two
feet higher up the bank. One thing we could see--a great thickening
near the centre of the snake: it had fed recently and to repletion,
and slowly it was making its way to some hidden lair, perhaps to
lie motionless until another moon should silver the jungle. Was
there any stranger life in the world?
Whether it was a giant bushmaster or a constrictor, we could not
tell in the diffused light. I allowed it to go unharmed, for the
spell of silence and the jungle night was too strongly woven to
be shattered again by the crash of gun or rifle. Nupee had been
quite willing to remain behind, and now, as so often with my savage
friends, he looked at me wonderingly. He did not understand and
I could not explain. We were at one in the enjoyment of direct
phenomena; we could have passed months of intimate companionship in
the wilds as I had done with his predecessors; but at the touch of
abstract things, of letting a deadly creature live for any reason
except for lack of a gun--then they looked at me always with that
puzzled look, that straining to grasp the something which they knew
must be there. And at once always followed instant acceptance,
unquestioning, without protest. The transition was smooth, direct,
complete: the sahib had had opportunity to shoot; he had not done
so; what did the sahib wish to do now--to squat longer or to go on?
We waited for many minutes at the edge of a small glade, and the
event which seemed most significant to me was in actual spectacle
one of the last of the night’s happenings. I sat with chin on
knees, coolie-fashion--a position which, when once mastered, and
with muscles trained to withstand the unusual flexion for hour
after hour, is one of the most valuable assets of the wilderness
lover and the watcher of wild things. It enables one to spend
long periods of time in the lowest of umbrella tents, or to rest
on wet ground or sharp stones where actual sitting down would
be impossible. Thus is one insulated from _bêtes rouges_ and
enthusiastic ants whose sole motto is eternal preparedness. Thus
too one slips, as it were, under the visual guard of human-shy
creatures, whose eyes are on the lookout for their enemy at human
height. From such a position, a single upward leap prepares one
instantly for advance or retreat, either of which manœuvres
is well within instant necessity at times. Then there were
always the two positions to which one could change if occasion
required--flat-footed, with arm-pits on knees, or on the balls of
the feet with elbows on knees. Thus is every muscle shifted and
relaxed.
Squatting is one of the many things which a white man may
learn from watching his _shikarees_ and guides, and which, in
the wilderness, he may adopt without losing caste. We are a
chair-ridden people, and dare hardly even cross our knees in
public. Yet how many of us delight in sitting Buddha-fashion,
or as near to it as we can attain, when the ban of society is
lifted! A chairless people, however, does not necessarily mean a
more simple, primitive type. The Japanese method of sitting is
infinitely more difficult and complex than ours. The characters of
our weak-thighed, neolithic forbears are as yet too pronounced in
our own bodies for us to keep an upright position for long. Witness
the admirable admittance of this anthropological fact by the
architects of our subway cars, who know that only a tithe of their
patrons will be fortunate enough to find room on the cane-barked
seats which have come to take the place of the stumps and fallen
logs of a hundred thousand years ago. So they have thoughtfully
strung the upper reaches of the cars with imitation branches and
swaying lianas, to which the last-comers cling jealously, and swing
with more or less of the grace of their distant forbears. Their
fur, to be sure, is rubbed thinner; nuts and fruits have given
place to newspapers and novels, and the roar and odors are not
those of the wind among the leaves and blossoms. But the simile is
amusing enough to end abruptly, and permit individual imagination
to complete it.
When I see an overtired waiter or clerk swaying from foot to foot
like a rocking elephant, I sometimes place the blame further back
than immediate impatience for the striking of the closing hour.
It were more true to blame the gentlemen whose habits were formed
before caste, whose activities preceded speech.
We may be certain that chairs will never go out of fashion. We
are at the end of bodily evolution in that direction. But to
see a white-draped, lanky Hindu, or a red-cloaked lama of the
hills, quietly fold up, no matter where he may be, is to witness
the perfection of chairless rest. One can read or write or doze
comfortably, swaying slightly with a bird’s unconscious balance,
or, as in my case at present, wholly disarm suspicion on the part
of the wild creatures by sinking from the height of a man to that
of a jungle deer. And still I had lost nothing of the insulation
which my moccasins provided from all the inconveniences of the
forest floor. Looking at Nupee after this rush of chaotic thoughts
which came between jungle happenings, I chuckled as I hugged my
knees, for I knew that Nupee had noticed and silently considered my
little accomplishment, and that he approved, and I knew that I had
acquired merit in his sight. Thus may we revel in the approval of
our super-servants, but they must never know it.
From this eulogy of squatting, my mind returned to the white light
of the glade. I watched the motionless leaves about me, many of
them drooping and rich maroon by daylight, for they were just
unbudded. Reaching far into the dark mystery of the upper jungle
stretched the air-roots, held so straight by gravity, so unheeding
of the whirling of the planet through space. Only one mighty
liana--a monkey-ladder--had revolted against this dominance of
the earth’s pull and writhed and looped upon itself in fantastic
whorls, while along its length rippled ever the undulations which
mark this uneasy growth, this crystallized Saint Vitus plant.
A momentary shiver of leaves drew our eyes to the left, and we
began to destroy the optical images evolved by the moon-shadows
and to seek the small reality which we knew lived and breathed
somewhere on that long branch. Then a sharp crack like a rifle lost
whatever it was to us forever, and we half leaped to our feet as
something swept downward through the air and crashed length after
length among the plants and fallen logs. The branches overhead
rocked to and fro, and for many minutes, like the aftermath of
a volcanic eruption, came a shower, first of twigs and swirling
leaves, then of finer particles, and lastly of motes which gleamed
like silver dust as they sifted down to the trail. When the air
cleared I saw that the monkey-ladder had vanished and I knew that
its yards upon yards of length lay coiled and crushed among the
ferns and sprouting palms of the jungle floor. It seemed most
fitting that the vegetable kingdom, whose silence and majesty gave
to the jungle night its magic qualities, should have contributed
this memorable climax.
Long before the first Spaniard sailed up the neighboring river, the
monkey-ladder had thrown its spirals aloft, and through all the
centuries, all the years, it had seen no change wrought beneath
it. The animal trail was trod now and then by Indian hunters, and
lately we had passed several times. The sound of our guns was less
than the crashing fall of an occasional forest tree. Now, with not
a leaf moved by the air, with only the two of us squatting in the
moonlight for audience, the last cell had given way. The sap could
no longer fight the decay which had entered its heart; and at the
appointed moment, the moment set by the culmination of a greater
nexus of forces than our human mind could ever hope to grasp, the
last fibre parted and the massive growth fell.
In the last few minutes, as it hung suspended, gracefully spiraled
in the moonlight, it had seemed as perfect as the new-sprouted
_moras_ at my feet. As I slowly walked out of the jungle I saw in
this the explanation of the simile of artificial scenery, of all
the strange magic which had come to me as I entered. The alchemy of
moonlight turned all the jungle to perfect growth, growth at rest.
In the silvery light was no trace of gnawing worm, of ravening ant,
or corroding fungus. The jungle was rejuvenated and made a place
more wonderful than any fairyland of which I have read or which
I have conceived. The jungle by day, as I have said--that, too,
is wonderful. We may have two friends, quite unlike in character,
whom we love each for his own personality, and yet it would be a
hideous, an unthinkable thing to see one transformed into the other.
So, with the mist settling down and tarnishing the great plaque of
silver, I left the jungle, glad that I could be far away before
the first hint of dawn came to mar the magic. Thus in memory I can
keep the dawn away until I return.
And sometime in the future, when the lure of the full moon comes,
and I answer, I shall be certain of finding the same silence, the
same wonderful light, and the waiting trees and the magic. But
Nupee may not be there. He will perhaps have slipped into memory,
with Drojak and Aladdin. And if I find no one as silently friendly
as Nupee, I shall have to watch alone through my jungle night.