They returned to the hut and prepared the kangaroo and the fish for
boiling on the morrow; the fish was to be coiled up in the saucepan, and
the kangaroo in the pot. Pan had the paunch, and with his great brown
eyes glaring out of his head with gluttony, made off with it to his own
private larder, where, after eating his full, he buried the rest. Pan
had his own private den behind a thicket of bramble, where he kept some
bones of a duck, a bacon bone, and now added this to his store. Here he
retired occasionally from civilisation, like the king of the Polynesian
island, to enjoy nature, away from the etiquette of his attendance at
court on Bevis and Mark.
Next, Mark with one of the old axes they had used to excavate the
store-room, cut a notch in the edge of the cave, where it opened on the
hut, large enough to stand the lantern in, as the chest would be
required for the raft. They raked the potatoes out of the ashes, and
had them for supper, with a damper, the last fragment of a duck, and
cold tea, like gold-diggers.
Bevis now recollected the journal he had proposed to keep, and got out
the book, in which there was as yet only one entry, and that a single
word, “Wednesday.” He set it on the table under the awning, with the
lantern open before him. Outside the edge of the awning the moon filled
the courtyard with her light.
“Why, it’s only Thursday now,” said Mark. “We’ve only been here one
full day, and it seems weeks.”
“Months,” said Bevis. “Perhaps this means Wednesday last year.”
“Of course: this is next year to that. How we must have altered! Our
friends would not know us.”
“Not even our mothers,” said Bevis.
“Nor our jolly old mokes and governors.”
“Shot a kangaroo,” said Bevis, writing; “shot a duck and a jack--No.
Are they jacks? That’s such a common name?”
“No; not jacks: jack-sharks.”
“No; sun-fish: they’re always in the sun.”
“Yes; sun-fish.”
“Shot a sun-fish: saw two squirrels, and a heron, and four parrots--”
“And a kingfisher--”
“Halcyon,” said Bevis, writing it down--“a beautiful halcyon; made a
table and a sun-dial. I must go up presently and mark the meridian by
the north star.”
“Saw one savage.”
“Who was that?”
“Why, Charlie.”
“O yes, one savage; believe there are five thousand in the jungle on the
mainland.”
“Seven thousand miles from anywhere. Put it down,” said Mark.
“Twenty degrees north latitude; right. There, look; half a page
already!”
“We ought to wash some sand to see if there’s any gold,” said Mark--“in
a cradle, you know.”
“So we did. We ought to have looked in the duck’s gizzard; tiny nuggets
get in gizzards sometimes.”
“Everything goes to the river beyond the weeds,” said Mark; “that ought
to be written.”
“Does everything go to the river?”
“Everything. While I was fishing I saw them all come back to Serendib
from it.”
“We must make haste with the raft.”
“Like lightning,” said Mark.
“Let me see,” said Bevis, leaning his arm on the table and stroking his
hair with the end of the penholder. “There are blue gum trees, and
palms, and banyans.”
“Reeds--they’re canes.”
“Sedges are papyrus.”
“The big bulrushes are bamboos.” He meant the reed-mace.
“Yes, bamboos. I’ve put it down. There ought to be a list of
everything that grows here--cedars of course; that’s something else.
Huge butterflies--”
“Very huge.”
“Heaps of flies.”
“And a tiger somewhere.”
“Then there ought to be the names of all the fossils, and metals, and if
there’s any coal,” said Bevis; “and when we have the raft we must dredge
up the anemones and pearl oysters, and--”
“And write down all the fish.”
“And everything. The language of the natives will be a bother. I must
make a new alphabet for it. Look! that will do for A,”--he made a tiny
circle; “that’s B, two dots.”
“They gurgle in their throats,” said Mark.
“That’s a gurgle,” said Bevis, making a long stroke with a dot over and
under it; “and they click with their tongues against the roofs of their
mouths. No: it’s awkward to write clicks. I know: there, CK, that’s
for click, and this curve under it means a tongue--the way you’re to put
it to make a click.”
“Click! Click!”
“Guggle!”
“Then there’s the names of the idols,” said Mark. “We’d better find
some.”
“You can cut some,” said Bevis; “cut them with your knife out of a
stick, and say they’re models, as they wouldn’t let you take the real
ones. The names; let’s see--Jog.”
“Hick-kag.”
“Hick-kag; I’ve put it down. Jog and Hick-kag are always quarrelling,
and when they hit one another, that’s thunder. That’s what they say.”
“Noodles.”
“Natives are always noodles.”
“But they can do one thing capital though.”
“What’s that?”
“Stick up together.”
“How? Why?”
“If you take a hatchet and chop a big notch in them, they stick up
together again directly.”
“Join up.”
“Like glue.”
“Then the thing is, how did the savages get here? Nobody has ever been
here before us; now where did they come from? There are sure to be
grand ruins in the jungle somewhere,” said Bevis, “all carved, and
covered with inscriptions.”
“Huge trees growing on the top.”
“Magic signs chipped out on stones, and books made of string with knots
instead of writing.”
Kaak! kaak! A heron was descending. The unearthly noise made them look
up.
“Are there any tidal waves?” said Mark.
“Sometimes--a hundred feet high. But the thing is how did they get
here? How did anybody ever get anywhere?”
“It’s very crooked,” said Mark, “very crooked: you can’t quite see it,
can you? Suppose you go and do the sun-dial: I’m sleepy.”
“Well, go to bed; I can do it.”
“Good-night!” said Mark. “Lots of chopping to do to-morrow. We ought
to have brought a grindstone for the axes. You have got the plan ready
for the raft?”
“Quite ready.”
Mark went into the hut, placed the lantern in the niche, and threw
himself on the bed. In half a minute he was firm asleep. Bevis went
out of the courtyard, round outside the fence, and up on the cliff to
the sun-dial. The stars shone brighter than it is usually thought they
do when there is no moon; but in fact it is not so much the moon as the
state of the atmosphere. There was no haze in the dry air, and he could
see the Pole Star distinctly.
He sat down--as the post on which the dial was supported was low--on the
southern side, with it between him and the north. He still had to stoop
till he had got the tip of the gnomon to cover the North Star. Closing
one eye, as if aiming, he then put his pencil on the dial in the circle
or groove scratched by the compass. The long pencil was held upright in
the groove, and moved round till it intercepted his view of the star.
The tip of the gnomon, the pencil, and the Pole Star were in a direct
line, in a row one behind the other.
To make sure, he raised his head and looked over the gnomon and pencil
to the star, when he found that he had not been holding the pencil
upright; it leaned to the east, and made an error to the west in his
meridian. “It ought to be a plumb-line,” he thought. “But I think it’s
straight now.”
He stooped again, and found the gnomon and pencil correct, and pressing
on the pencil hard, drew it towards him out of the groove a little way.
By the moonlight when he got up he could see the mark he had left, and
which showed the exact north. To-morrow he would have to draw a line
from that mark straight to the gnomon, and when the shadow fell on that
line it would be noon. With the fixed point of noon and the fixed point
of four o’clock, he thought he could make the divisions for the rest of
the hours.
The moonlight cast a shadow to the east of the noon-line, as she had
crossed the meridian. Looking up, he saw the irregular circle of the
moon high in the sky, so brilliant that the scored relievo work enchased
upon her surface was obscured by the bright light reflected from it.
Behind him numerous lights glittered in the still water, near at hand
they were sharp clean points, far away they were short bands of light
drawn towards him. Bevis went to the young oak and sat down under it.
Cassiopeia fronted him, and Capella; the Northern Crown, was faint and
low; but westward great Arcturus shone, though the moon had taken the
redness from him. The cross of Cygnus was lying on its side as it was
carried through the eastern sky; beneath it the Eagle’s central star
hung over the Nile. Low in the south, over the unknown river Antares,
too, had lost his redness.
Up through the branches of the oak he saw Lyra, the purest star in the
heavens, white as whitest and clearest light may be, gleaming at the
zenith of the pale blue dome. But just above the horizon northwards
there was a faint white light, the faintest aurora, as if another moon
was rising there. By these he knew his position, and that he was
looking the same way as if he had been gazing from the large northern
window of the parlour at home, or if he had been lying on the green path
by the strawberries, as he sometimes did in the summer evenings.
Then the North Star, minute but clear--so small, and yet chosen for the
axle and focus of the sky, instead of sun-like Sirius--the North Star
always shone just over the group of elms by the orchard. Summer and
winter, spring and autumn, it was always there, always over the elms--
whether they were reddening with the buds and flowers of February,
whether they were dull green now in the heats of August, whether they
were yellow in October.
Dick and his Team, whose waggon goes backwards, swung round it like a
stone in a sling whirled about the shoulders. Sometimes the tail of the
Bear, where Dick bestrides his second horse, hung down behind the elms
into the vapour of the horizon. Sometimes the Pointers were nearly
overhead. If they were hidden by a cloud, the Lesser Bear gave a point;
or you could draw a line through Cassiopeia, and tell the North by her
chair of stars.
The comets seemed to come within the circle of Bootes--Arcturus you
always know is some way beyond the tail of the Bear. The comets come
inside the circle of the stars that never set. The governor had seen
three or four appear there in his time, just over the elms under the
Pole. Donati’s, which perhaps you can remember, came there--a tiny
thing twelve inches long from nucleus to tail to look at, afterwards the
weird sign the world stood amazed at. Then there was another not long
after, which seemed to appear at once as a broad streak across the sky.
Like the sketches in old star-maps, it did indeed cross the whole sky
for a night or two, but went too quickly for the world to awake at
midnight and wonder at. Lately two more have come in the enchanted
circle of the stars that never set.
All the stars from Arcturus to Capella came about the elms by the
orchard; as Arcturus went down over the place of sunset in autumn,
Capella began to shine over another group of elms--in the meadow to the
north-east. Capella is sure to be seen, because it begins to become
conspicuous just as people say the sky is star-lit as winter sends the
first frost or two. But Capella is the brightest star in the northern
sky in summer, and it always came up by the second or north-east group
of elms.
Between these two groups of tall trees--so tall and thick that they were
generally visible even on dark nights--the streamers of the Aurora
Borealis shot up in winter, and between them in summer the faint
reflection of the midnight sun, like the lunar dawn which precedes the
rising of the moon always appeared. The real day-dawn--the white foot
of Aurora--came through the sky-curtain a little to the right of the
second group, and about over a young oak in the hedge across the road,
opposite the garden wall.
When the few leaves left on this young oak were brown, and rustled in
the frosty night, the massy shoulder of Orion came heaving up through
it--first one bright star, then another; then the gleaming girdle, and
the less definite scabbard; then the great constellation stretched
across the east. At the first sight of Orion’s shoulder Bevis always
felt suddenly stronger, as if a breath of the mighty hunter’s had come
down and entered into him.
He stood upright; his frame enlarged; his instep lifted him as he
walked, as if he too could swing the vast club and chase the lion from
his lair. The sparkle of Orion’s stars brought to him a remnant of the
immense vigour of the young world, the frosty air braced his sinews, and
power came into his arms.
As the constellation rose, so presently new vigour too entered into the
trees, the sap moved, the buds thrust forth, the new leaf came, and the
nightingale travelling up from the south sang in the musical April
nights. But this was when Orion was south, and Sirius flared like a
night-sun over the great oak at the top of the Home Field.
Sirius rose through the young oak opposite the garden wall, passed
through a third group of elms, by the rick-yard, gleaming through the
branches--hung in the spring above the great oak at the top of the Home
Field, and lowered by degrees westwards behind the ashes growing at that
end of the New Sea by the harbour. After it Arcturus came, and lorded
the Midsummer zenith, where now lucent Lyra looked down upon him.
Up, too, through the little oak came Aldebaran the red Bull’s-Eye, the
bent rod of Aries, and the cluster of the Pleiades. The Pleiades he
loved most, for they were the first constellation he learned to know.
The flickering Pleiades, the star-dusted spot in Cancer, and Leo, came
in succession. Antares, the harvest-star, scarcely cleared the great
oak southwards in summer. He got them all from a movable planisphere,
the very best star-maps ever made, proceeding step by step, drawing
imaginary lines from one to the other, as through the Pointers to the
Pole, and so knew the designs on our northern dome.
He transferred them from the map to the trees. The north group of elms,
the north-east group, the east oak, the south-east elms, the southern
great oak, the westward ashes, the orchard itself north-west,--through
these like a zodiac the stars moved, all east to west, except the
enchanted circle about the Pole. For the Bear and the Lesser Bear
sometimes seemed to move from west to east when they were returning,
swinging under to what would have been their place of rising.
Fixing them thus by night, he knew where many were by day; the Pole Star
was always over the north elms--when the starlings stayed and whistled
there before they flew to the housetop, when the rooks called there
before the sun set on their way home to the jungle, when the fieldfares
in the gloomy winter noon perched up there. The Pole Star was always
over the elms.
In the summer mornings the sun rose north of east, between the second
group of elms and the little oak--so far to the north that he came up
over the vale instead of the Downs. The morning beams then lit up the
northern or outer side of the garden wall, and fell aslant through the
narrow kitchen window, under the beam of the ceiling. In the evening
the sun set again northwards of the orchard, between it and the north
elms, having come round towards the place of rising, and shining again
on the outside of the garden wall, so that there seemed but a few miles
between. He did not sink, but only dipped, and the dawn that travelled
above him indicated his place, moving between the north and north-east
elms, and overcoming the night by the little oak. The sun did not rise
and sink; he travelled round an immense circle.
In the winter mornings the sun rose between the young oak and the third
group of elms, red and vapour hung, and his beams presently shot through
the window to the logs on the kitchen hearth. He sank then between the
south-westerly ashes and the orchard, rising from the wall of the Downs,
and sinking again behind it. At noon he was just over, only a little
higher than the great southern oak. All day long the outer side of the
garden wall was in shadow, and at night the northern sky was black to
the horizon. The travelling dawn was not visible: the sun rose and
sank, and was only visible through half of the great circle. The cocks
crowed at four in the afternoon, and the rooks hastened to the jungle.
But by-and-by, when the giant Orion shone with his full width grasping
all the sky, then in the mornings the sun’s rising began to shift
backwards--first to the edge of the third group of elms, then straight
up the road, then to the little oak. In the afternoon, the place of
setting likewise shifted backwards to the north, and came behind the
orchard. At noon he was twice as high as the southern oak, and every
day at noontide the shadows gradually shortened. The nightingale sang
in the musical April night, the cowslips opened, and the bees hummed
over the meadows.
Last of all, the sweet turtle-doves cooed and wooed; beauteous June
wearing her roses came, and the sun shone at the highest point of his
great circle. Then you could not look at him unless up through the
boughs of a tree. Round the zodiac of the elms, and the little oak, the
great oak, the ashes, and the orchard, the sun revolved; and the house,
and the garden path by the strawberries--the best place to see--were in
the centre of his golden ring.
The sward on the path on which Bevis used to lie and gaze up in the
summer evening, was real, and tangible; the earth under was real; and so
too the elms, the oak, the ash-trees, were real and tangible--things to
be touched, and known to be. Now like these, the mind, stepping from
the one to the other, knew and almost felt the stars to be real and not
mere specks of light, but things that were there by day over the elms as
well as by night, and not apparitions of the evening departing at the
twittering of the swallows. They were real, and the touch of his mind
felt to them.
He could not, as he reclined on the garden path by the strawberries,
physically reach to and feel the oak; but he could feel the oak in his
mind, and so from the oak, stepping beyond it, he felt the stars. They
were always there by day as well as by night. The Bear did not sink,
the sun in summer only dipped, and his reflection--the travelling dawn--
shone above him, and so from these unravelling out the enlarging sky, he
felt as well as knew that neither the stars nor the sun ever rose or
set. The heavens were always around and with him. The strawberries and
the sward of the garden path, he himself reclining there, were moving
through, among, and between the stars; they were as much by him as the
strawberry leaves.
By day the sun, as he sat down under the oak, was as much by him as the
boughs of the great tree. It was by him like the swallows.
The heavens were as much a part of life as the elms, the oak, the house,
the garden and orchard, the meadow and the brook. They were no more
separated than the furniture of the parlour, than the old oak chair
where he sat, and saw the new moon shine over the mulberry-tree. They
were neither above nor beneath, they were in the same place with him;
just as when you walk in a wood the trees are all about you, on a plane
with you, so he felt the constellations and the sun on a plane with him,
and that he was moving among them as the earth rolled on, like them,
with them, in the stream of space.
The day did not shut off the stars, the night did not shut off the sun;
they were always there. Not that he always thought of them, but they
were never dismissed. When he listened to the greenfinches sweetly
calling in the hawthorn, or when he read his books, poring over the
Odyssey, with the sunshine on the wall, they were always there; there
was no severance. Bevis lived not only out to the finches and the
swallows, to the far-away hills, but he lived out and felt out to the
sky.
It was living, not thinking. He lived it, never thinking, as the
finches live their sunny life in the happy days of June. There was
magic in everything, blades of grass and stars, the sun and the stones
upon the ground.
The green path by the strawberries was the centre of the world, and
round about it by day _and_ night the sun circled in a magical golden
ring.
Under the oak on New Formosa that warm summer night, Bevis looked up as
he reclined at the white pure light of Lyra, and forgot everything but
the consciousness of living, feeling up to and beyond it. The earth and
the water, the oak, went away; he himself went away: his mind joined
itself and was linked up through ethereal space to its beauty.
Bevis, as you know did not think: we have done the thinking, the
analysis for him. He felt and was lost in the larger consciousness of
the heavens.
The moon moved, and with it the shadow of the cliff on the water
beneath, a planet rose eastwards over their new Nile, water-fowl clucked
as they flew over.
Kaak! Kaak! Another heron called and his discordant piercing yell
sounded over the water, seeming to penetrate to the distant and shadowy
shores. The noise awoke him, and he went down to the hut. Mark was
firm asleep, the lantern burned in the niche; Pan had been curled up by
the bedside, but lifted his head and wagged his tail, thumping the floor
as he entered. Bevis let down the curtain closing the doorway, put out
the lantern, and in three minutes was as firm as Mark. After some time,
Pan rose quietly and went out, slipping under the curtain, which fell
back into its place when he had passed.
Volume Three, Chapter II.