INTO THE UNKNOWN
Over the crest of the mountains the sun showed its edge, and slowly
rose. An elephant, lifting his brown trunk towards it, trumpeted long
and loud. The pink and gray of the daylight filtered into the sky and
drove away the shadows lying deep in the ravines of the mountain. The
pachyderms chained to their pickets before the gate of the fort rocked
slowly from side to side.
Seated on a packing-case Pierre was overseeing the loading of the
baggage. By blows of their ankuses and with cries and insults the
mahouts made their beasts bend their necks and forced them to kneel.
On the square pack-saddles, strengthened by thick belts of split
bamboo, the sacks of rice and the packages of provisions were heaped.
Each elephant, after its loading was finished, with a slow pitching
movement raised itself and took up its place ready for the start.
The mahouts, crouched on their great necks, exchanged jokes with the
Cambodian riflemen camped around them and to whom the headman, standing
before the emptied packing-cases distributed munitions and arms: a Gras
musket, model of 1874, and one hundred and fifty cartridges to each man.
A flock of egrets rising from the bank of the canal flew across the
shining sky. Their sharp cries made Father Ravennes lift his head. He
watched for a moment their glittering flight in the direction of the
mountain, then he turned to his two guides:
"You understand, do you not? We are to cross the canal and strike
towards the east. No one except you two, Sahib Lursac and myself is to
know the exact object of the expedition."
The two men made a sign of agreement. Their long Moï lances in their
clenched hands, their loins swathed in narrow cloth bands, they
stretched their naked bodies, over which the muscles stood out clearly,
and smiled with an animal pleasure in the growing warmth of the day.
One of them said:
"That's understood, Father. For three nights we are to march across
the plain, then on the morning of the fourth day we are to turn and go
straight towards the Pou-Kas."
"Yes," agreed Lursac, "that is right. But shall we have, by that time,
got far enough round the mountain to take it in the rear? Understand me
well: it is absolutely necessary for us to come out on the other face
of the plateau and not before the temple itself. What we have to do is
to surprise them. To do that there is only one way: to arrive there by
a path which no one has thought of, and to catch them in the rear. It
is above all necessary that before attacking the Pou-Kas itself we must
have got well round it."
The man who had already spoken again assured him:
"We understand: the three days' march towards the east will be plenty.
But then those people will see where we are going, and..."
With his finger he pointed at the riflemen and the mahouts grouped
before the fort.
Lursac stopped him.
"Don't worry about them," said he, "I will undertake to make them
march."
The man looked at him thoughtfully.
"Perhaps it would have been better to tell them, but you are the
master...."
A ray of sunshine slanting towards the valley shed an oblique light
upon it and illuminated the fort. The bespattered straw roofs showed
their steep slopes of blazing yellow against the morning sky.
Pierre watched contemplatively the familiar scene now so vividly
illuminated by the sunlight. He thought of his arrival three months
earlier. The missionary dropped his hand upon his shoulder.
"The time is come," said he.
Pierre shivered and signalled to the guides.
"Start!"
The two men set out towards the canal and behind them the caravan
stirred into motion.
* * * * *
They were struggling through the desert. Around them the sun
beat heavily upon the naked sandy plain which reflected its rays
mercilessly. Here and there dried-up swamps showed their clay bottoms
covered all over with heat cracks, while the herbage, which during
the rainy season had made a girdle of green about them, hung yellow,
withered and sapless.
Far away, in the west, along the blue horizon, the banks of the canal
with their string of reddish mangroves made a thin edging which grew
smaller and smaller with every hour of their march. Distant and
threatening, the Moï mountains now made under the burning sky but a
single confused crowd of peaks above which the Pou-Kas alone soared
clear and dominating.
Towards evening the first hillocks made their appearance. Like small
waves stricken into stillness the plain broke into undulations which
ran east and west so that the setting sun shining over their tops
barred them alternately with light and shade.
Between two hillocks where the course of a dried-up stream had still
left a patch of stagnant water the guides called a halt. Then, in the
limpid night, the fires of their first camp shot up in twisted flame
and threw against the shoulders of the hills the magnified shadows of
the elephants sporting in the slimy water.
On the summit of one of the hillocks one of Father Ravennes' guides
had taken his stand as sentinel. He stood erect, immobile, leaning on
his lance. Against the milky sky his body stood out in its barbaric
profile, and through the night, until the dawn, his guttural voice
cried out the hour of the watch at the measured time.
For two days more, the march resumed at dawn continued all day till
night across the Waterless Country, a gloomy land made desolate by
drought. Under the sky, shining like a polished steel mirror, the
desert flamed monotonous and endless. The wind tearing down from the
high plateau to the north swept it with long strokes. The sand rose up
in clouds and rolled round the caravan, whipping the faces of the men,
scorching their throats and leaving between their cracked lips voices
which had sunk to a hoarse whisper and their breath dry and laboring.
The heat of the ground burnt their feet through their sandals, and upon
their backs bent by marching the implacable sun fell like flame.
* * * * *
The third night found them seventy miles from the station, on the edge
of a water-course cut between two hillocks. The muddy banks, burnt hard
by the terrible heat, had broken away under the enormous weight of the
elephants. Between the sandy slopes under the meagre shade cast by a
prickly gum-tree was a large pool of stagnant water, now transformed
into red mud by the trampling of the elephants. In their tent, pitched
on the point of the dune, Father Ravennes and Lursac were listening
while the headman made his daily report.
He was an old Cambodian with dreamy eyes and leisurely movements. In
his sing-songy voice sounded caressing inflections which suggested the
sweetness and tenderness of the love-songs of the Lao-ese country which
he was in the habit of singing to his men on the march to keep them in
step.
"Then, to sum up," said Lursac, "we now have four men sick?"
"Yes, three have fever and the fourth was wounded in the right foot
this morning. His comrades have had to carry him here."
Lursac looked at the headman and his eyebrows drew together making a
bar across his forehead.
"That man," said he, "cannot go on. He would be a nuisance to us and
would keep us back. And the others? Is it just a slight fever or a
serious attack?"
The headman flung his arms wide with an air of disgust.
"Who knows?" said he, "they complain. Their feet and legs are swollen,
and when we camp they don't eat and don't sleep. They spend the whole
night crouched before the fires, close enough to roast themselves."
Lursac turned towards Father Ravennes.
"What do you think of it?"
The missionary nodded his head thoughtfully.
"I am afraid that they are seriously ill. These feeble constitutions of
theirs, ready to contract any disease, always take the fever badly and
with distressing violence. I would rather they had got something else.
Quinine does not act on them, and in any case, they need, in order
to fight the disease, an energy and a moral force which they do not
possess."
Pierre asked:
"Then you think that the best thing we can do is to leave them behind?"
"I am sure that it would be dangerous to encumber ourselves with
sick men. From the minute we enter the forest our approach will be
signalled. It's no good deceiving ourselves. A body of men like this
cannot march unseen. From that moment our principal chance of success
will lie in the swiftness of our march. We must get up there as quickly
as possible."
Pierre assented with a nod. He signed to the headman.
"You will pick out two men from the less serviceable ones and at
sunrise they are to start back and return to the Post with the four
invalids."
He rapidly scratched a few words in his notebook, tore out the page and
handed it to the headman.
"Here are their marching orders. We will give them six days' rations
of rice and dried fish. The sick men are to keep their muskets and
thirty cartridges each. The two men of the escort will take fifty each.
The ammunition which they leave behind is to be distributed among the
remaining riflemen. That's one thing settled. Have you anything else to
tell me?"
"Nothing, sahib."
"Good. Start at the same hour tomorrow. That's all. You can return to
the camp."
The man bowed.
"I salute you, sahib."
"I salute you, Ket-Noi."
With a bitter smile on his lips Pierre turned to Father Ravennes.
"Six men less," said he, "and we have not yet even entered the forest!"
The missionary made a soothing movement.
"What matter? Six men more or less! The important thing is that our
troop, however much it may be reduced, should continue a solid,
homogeneous force, well in hand. These days of march across the
Waterless Country have naturally provided a sort of preliminary
trial,--the first selective process, of distinct value. The mountain is
probably keeping for us a second and more difficult one. I am afraid
of it, because it is a moral one. From tomorrow it will not be only
fatigue, fever, bad weather and privation that the men must face; there
will be something else."
He was silent. Motionless in the middle of the opening of the tent he
turned his eyes towards the confused huddle of the Moï mountains of
which the vague cloudy masses under the tender sky made one think of
some slowly passing troop of animals monotonously heading towards the
north.
Lursac, standing beside him, followed his look. The priest finished his
thought:
"There will be also, and above all, fear," he murmured.
Pierre remained silent.
The warm dark came; and the quiet brought to their ears the sound of
talking among the native soldiers camping by the bed of the dried-up
torrent and the stamping of elephants in the swamp, the guttural calls
of the mahouts and even the crackling of the fires.
Above the hillocks the rushing flight of a night-bird passed, faded
into the distance, and came back with beating wings, and at the sound
of its flight which seemed to fill the night with invisible rustlings,
the image of Wanda arose and filled all the dark spaces about him.
* * * * *
"Lursac, come and look at this...."
Pierre, who was prone before the fire, towards which he was stretching
his hands, got up and went over to Father Ravennes. Kneeling down, with
his body bent over the black, leaf-covered earth, the missionary looked
thoughtfully at an object which it was difficult to distinguish clearly.
"What is it?" asked Lursac.
The priest raised his head: there was a strange ring in his voice.
"Here, look what I have just found under this thin coating of leaves."
He stretched out to him over his shoulder a sort of hammer made of
stone set in the end of a forked branch. The young man threw a rapid
glance over the weapon. It seemed to him clumsy, commonplace and of no
particular interest.
"A skull-smasher left by some Moï?" said he.
The missionary continued to look thoughtful.
"Have you ever before seen any instrument of theirs like this?" he
asked. "I am well acquainted with most of the savage tribes of this
region. They are all armed with the lance, the crossbow, the curved
sword, and sometimes with a little iron hatchet with two cutting edges,
but never yet have I found among them a weapon in any way resembling
this...."
He returned to his place before the fire. He continued to examine the
primitive instrument, turning it about between his hands.
"No," said he, "this is certainly an axe belonging to prehistoric
times. Observe the oval shape of the flint, flattened on the two
sides and shaped by hand over its entire circumference. But there
is something even more strange about this simple stone. Look at it
carefully. Don't you notice anything?"
"No," said Pierre absent-mindedly, "and I fail to understand your
surprise. Have you not already picked up more than thirty of the same
kind? As for me, I see no difference whatever between this hatchet and
all those I have already examined in your cabin."
The priest said slowly:
"The fact is that you do not know how to see."
He held the flint close to the fire. On the regularity of its facets
the flame was reflected in small, sharp patches of light.
"Look at these flakings still fresh from the cutting! That is what is
the peculiar thing about it. It's that that bewilders me and astounds
me. If I could trust to appearances I would swear that this weapon,
which all my anthropological knowledge tells me must be not less than
30,000 years old, has been cut by the maker within a few months. If
I were in Europe I should not hesitate to assert positively that the
thing was a fake, and that it came from one of these factories of
'prehistoric' arms that exist wherever the scientists dig for real
ones."
Pierre smiled in amusement.
"Ah!" said he, "and sometimes they do manage to humbug the
palæontologists."
The missionary quickly protested:
"Not now, but when the science was in its infancy, it was a trade that
often proved lucrative; but to imagine that here in the depths of
the Moï country there could be an industry of that sort would be too
preposterous!... However ..."
He stopped and looked the weapon over once more with the greatest care.
"However, I am not dreaming. This dull look is too characteristic for
me to be deceived about it. These are fresh fractures. The perfect
state of preservation of the stone itself signifies nothing, I know;
but the absence of patina,[11] of dentrites,[12] and of coloration on
this flint--how will you explain that? This is indeed one of the most
extraordinary problems that I have ever encountered since I have been
interested in prehistoric remains."
[Footnote 11: A greenish gray discoloration which occurs on ancient
bronzes and other worked articles.]
[Footnote 12: Faint branching marks, which occur on flints which have
been worked by men of prehistoric times. These designs are due to the
long-continued oxidisation of the iron and manganese in the stone.]
"Bah!" said Pierre, "a Moï may have found the weapon in a hollow in
some ravine and used it himself and made these new fractures that seem
so strange to you."
Father Ravennes made a sign of incredulity.
"Yes," said he, "I thought of that. That explanation would be likely
enough if this find were my only one; but in the two days that we have
been in the forest this is the eleventh discovery that I have made.
Yesterday four scratching pins and two other hatchets; today, two
knives, two scrapers, and now this hatchet.... And every one of these
instruments without exception offers the same appearance of newness and
the same recent fractures. No, believe me, Lursac, this is one more
mystery added to the other, to the great secret towards the discovery
of which we are marching."
He remained thoughtful. The flame of the camp-fire flickered in his
pale pupils. He had a peculiar expression in his eyes.
"At least," said he, "there may be one single mystery, and this,
perhaps, is just one of its elements, one of its unforeseen aspects."
Pierre looked him up and down sharply.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "You seem to have thought of something!"
The missionary avoided the pointed enquiry of his eyes.
"Nothing," said he evasively, "I am groping my way. Amid the darkness
which surrounds me I seem sometimes to find a ray of light. It
appears suddenly, flickers, flees and disappears. A light ... I am
searching...."
He thought for a minute and then continued:
"I say to myself that in the heart of this Moï country, whose people
still live a life which is animal and primitive, an existence very
similar to that which the men of the first days of life on the earth
must have lived, there lies a great temple without doubt several
centuries old. How and by whom was this temple built? That is the
first question. In this sanctuary mysterious divinities reign--the
Red Gods--of whom an image in purple metal, probably copper, is
enthroned in the centre of the main hall. But these gods themselves,
what are they? That is the second question. Sometimes the people call
them the Living Gods. Do you remember Hmon's story? What then? Are
they Lamas, living Buddhas, similar to those who reign on the lofty
plateaus of Thibet? There would be nothing impossible in the thing,
nothing unlikely. And the sect that worships them? To what faith do
they belong? Buddhism, Taoism, Brahmanism, or just fetichism? Finally,
why is the matter wrapped about with secrecy so impenetrable and so
fiercely protected? The natives must know that their religion, whatever
it is, has nothing to fear from French rule. The pagodas and bonzes of
Annam, Tonkin, of Cochin-China and Cambodia are there to bear witness
to that! What then?... No! there is evidently behind all that, behind
and beyond it, something or somebody: a secret association, or a
mysterious personage, of which this temple is the dwelling place. The
religious question is only the camouflage that the sorceresses keep up
carefully, and which they use to hide this reality of which I have long
suspected the existence without ever having been able to discover in
what it consists. Hmon only told us the least important part of it ...
and I am searching...."
Pierre shrugged his shoulders.
"What is the good of imagining all these worries? In three days we
shall be up there and we shall know with what we have to deal. As for
these weapons, the reason for their presence here is probably much
simpler and much less romantic than you think. Prehistoric man probably
had one of his first dwelling places on these plateaus. Didn't you tell
me so yourself? The Moïs must have found some of the caves which these
prehistoric men used to occupy, and in the caves these remains which
they left lying about throughout the region. What worries me much more
than that is the behaviour of our men and of our beasts."
The missionary made no answer. He seemed to accept Pierre's explanation
but his eyes retained their expression at once thoughtful and anxious.
In any case, the last remark of the young man had brought up other
matters for concern.
* * * * *
The night before, they had plunged into the maze of the mountain
masses. The sudden change of direction, which had been ordered at
dawn of the fourth day, had obviously provoked among the men of the
escort an anxious disquiet, a sort of vague uneasiness. Nevertheless,
the roughness with which Pierre had imposed his will upon them seemed
to have dominated them. The mahouts on their heavily swaying beasts
had followed the guides, but their eyes remained glued to the forest
of which the details slowly came nearer and grew clearer. The native
soldiers behind them walked without speaking to each other, and the
caravan went forward in the midst of a troubled silence in which
nothing was heard but the dull trampling of the elephants. Little by
little the scenery changed. To the sandy desert had succeeded the
dazzling monotony of a grassy plain which in turn gave way to the
first slopes of the mountain range carpeted by the bamboo-grass of
the forest clearings, with slender shrubs and the _Irui_, whose long,
pointed purple buds stretched themselves skyward like solid flames.
Here and there stagnant creeks lay across their path, green and slimy,
attracting the elephants so that the mahouts had to stab their ears
with heavy ankus blows to prevent them rolling in the sticky blackish
hollows encircled by thorny, twisted and misshapen trees. Then the
mountain, heaving up its giant flanks, had barred the way of the
expedition with its steep declivities. Immediately difficulties had
arisen. Among the tangled confusion of twisted trunks, of creepers,
of cane-palms, of pandanus trees and of interlacing undergrowth, the
riflemen, axe in hand, had had to cut a way for the beasts. The ground,
covered with a heavy carpet of sodden leaves, sweated a perpetual
moisture; and wherever they trod the decay from the rotting masses of
vegetation underneath burst upwards in black bubbles.
From the piled débris covering the path hungry leeches, the innumerable
red leeches of the Moï forests, swarmed in their turn, crawling to
attack the men. They tore them off as they walked, but the first
evening, just before camp had been made, three of the men, with their
legs streaked with long trickles of blood and covered with wounds, the
muscles swollen and stiff, had rolled over groaning. Dull and resigned,
their faces drawn with pain, they had seated themselves on the trunk of
an uprooted tree where they shook their naked feet mottled with bloody
spots to which clung new leeches, avid and persistent. It had been
necessary to dress their wounds and to help them to walk to the camp.
And next morning, before continuing the march, Pierre found himself
obliged to send them back. Worse than that, the elephants, worn with
exertion, weary from having hauled their great weight up slopes of
hills and ravines and furiously shaking their great ears all bloody
from the recent stabs of the ankuses, had shown throughout the day
signs of growing terror.
* * * * *
And now, before the camp-fires the mahouts were on guard. They had
doubled the chains that secured their beasts, as at night, even more
than during the day, the thick brains of the pachyderms seemed to swarm
with obscure thoughts of rebellion and angry confusion.
Around his picket Bookobomo-of-the-Forest, the leader of the elephant
file, could be heard stamping heavily. He was an enormous male recently
captured on the high Boloven plateaus. He had retained a lively
remembrance of the noises of the forest and the mountain passes; and
when, during the afternoon, he had crossed the track of a herd of wild
elephants and stopped long to sniff at it, for a long time after he had
trumpeted deafeningly and savagely towards the depths of the woods,--a
trumpeting in which vibrated unaccustomed tones and through which
seemed to sweep the rude breath of the wind bending the great grasses
in which, a few months before, he had lived his wild free life. The
other beasts of the convoy--the females--were under the influence of
his force and ascendancy. Slow and docile they had followed him on the
march.
Hearing the hammer blows of his stamping, Pierre became anxious.
He repeated with seriousness:
"Yes, what worries me is the behavior of the men, and even more so that
of the beasts...."
He looked around him. Grouped before a large camp-fire which the two
guides in turn attended to, the riflemen lay wrapped in a heavy sleep
broken by nervous movements.
The voices of the mahouts, camped with their elephants near a swamp at
some little distance, came to him through the curtain of the trees.
The atmosphere, cold and heavy, shed its damp in a thin steam, and an
inexpressible weight seemed to bear down upon the forest. Giving way
to the universal torpor which the night distilled around him, Pierre
stretched himself and yawned, then remembering Wanda he rose to his
feet. With his eyes set in an expression of stern determination, and
shaking off his premonition of failure, he stiffened his will and
stilled his doubts with an energetic affirmation:
"I will get there, with or without them--alone, if necessary."
Roughly, almost violently, he repeated it looking at the missionary:
"I will get there ... I will get there...."
But the forest, drowned in darkness, seemed to stifle his voice; and
the priest, deeply absorbed in his own thoughts, said nothing.