FENERALIA
WE got at last to the highest point of the island, and thence we saw on
the other shore a large falla at anchor. Sneekape came as close to
ecstasy as such a petty nature could; he recognised her as one from his
own island; at this period of the year they were able to bargain for the
best females from Swoonarie for use in his country; now was the time
when they were most hypnotised by their narcotic atmosphere or their
problems; and it was easy to take the most beautiful, healthy, and
dreamy-natured. These sleepy denizens of Swoonarie were great breeders,
and their women when young had a dreamy grace that made them especially
attractive to a race of active, marauding disposition; away from their
opiate plain and atmosphere and the seductions of their ailool, the
blood in their veins grew almost active and touched their peachy cheeks
with bloom; their dark eyes languished with slumberous light; their
limbs moved as in a dream-dance; their voices grew as sweet and far-off
as the scarce-caught echo of lapsing rivers, or the low sigh of wind
through grass; their thoughts and passions would rise at times out of
the dim abyss of dreams in wild, consuming tempests. This falla-load, if
it had been well selected, would fetch an enormous price and fill the
treasury of the state.
We posted as quickly as our sleep-viscous limbs and faculties would
permit down towards the beach; and soon we were on board of a
luxuriously fitted galleon, the largest I had ever seen in the
archipelago. Off shore the glutinous lethargy that had clogged every
pore of our being seemed to melt and move with the blood. Sneekape was
soon closeted with the leaders of the enterprise; and after the
interview I was admitted to their fulsome salutations and oppressively
eager acquaintanceship. The women were in the middle of the ship; for I
could hear a faint, confused hum that rose at times into the muffled
sounds of feminine voices. Towards evening the swish of paddles was
heard, and going on deck I saw through the thickening gossamer of
twilight a canoe approach. It grated against the bulwarks, and the men
leaped on board and drew up after them some mantled and swathed figures
that must have been another instalment of women. There was a hurried
consultation, and the anchors were lifted. The great paddles were set in
motion; but before the sails bellied with the wind that blew outside the
shelter of the island the whizz of an arrow struck on my ear; the
missile sliced the water not many yards astern. Towards the shore dark
objects moved in the dim light, but the wind had now given the keel and
helm firm grip, and no paddles could overtake us. The expedition had
just escaped its greatest danger,—an attack from the fierce Feneralians
for poaching on their preserves. Most of these voyages to Swoonarie
ended in bloodshed, and it often happened that neither falla nor crew
ever returned.
I had full opportunity on the voyage of hearing about these neighbours
of the dreamers; for it fell calm, when we had got out of sight of land,
and the paddles propelled the ship at but a slow pace. Feneralia was an
island to which had been deported for centuries all the habitual
bankrupts of the archipelago. It will scarcely be believed in the
communities of Christendom, and it was long before I could be brought to
credit the story. But Sneekape asserted again and again that a species
of financial madness often seizes some of the more luxurious of the
peoples on the islands; they imagine that they have been specially
commissioned by heaven to spend; they have a fixed idea that mankind is
naturally portioned off into the earners and the spenders, and the
latter are as rare as creative genius upon earth; they are angelic
spirits that have abandoned their birthright to the infinite, and
wandered down into a world condemned to labour and acquisition; they are
beams of heavenly light let in upon the darkness of a race given over to
wage-earning. In some communities their story of divine mission is
accepted; they are made politicians and statesmen, and the public
treasury is handed over to them to do with as they please; some new tax
or loan is ever demanding their powers of expenditure; and how to turn
the plus into a minus almost wears them to a shadow. In other
communities they have been smiled at as harmless madmen till they have
grown subtly skilful and ingenious in inventing new methods of getting
command of the surplus earnings of their neighbours; to gratify the
moral weakness of their fellow-citizens they become periodically
bankrupt, and start again on their virtuous mission to turn the needless
plus of some other plutocratic locality into a minus. When their divine
mission has thus come to be considered harmless lunacy, they are given
the alternative of joining the altruists on Tirralaria or being deported
to Feneralia. This was an island originally of great fertility and
natural powers, but nothing would now grow on it, and the inhabitants in
order to live had to become the buccaneers of the archipelago. They
called themselves philanthropists; for they loved their fellow-men so
much that they were ever relieving them of unnecessary burdens and
spending for them that which they had never learned to spend for
themselves. Another favourite name that they adopted was financiers;
they were ever sailing out on great loan expeditions; they would land in
force on an island, advertise a huge loan with the attraction of a large
percentage, pay the first interest out of the capital and vanish forever
with the rest. If they went back there, they had some other scheme to
cover their philanthropy: for example, a company to extract gold from
sea-water or silver from starlight, destined to make all the
shareholders rich. Sneekape held that they were nothing but freebooters.
On these financial raids they generally employed some of the mild-eyed
dreamers of Swoonarie to mask their batteries. These had always some
fine scheme on hand that needed money to make it coin gold, and by their
simplicity they easily drew a community into belief in their dream; when
the money was secured, a Feneralian force was ready to make off with it
and repel any attempt to reclaim it; and when any people tried to
retaliate on Swoonarie, or make reprisals, or injure it in any way, they
swooped down on the invaders with their bloodthirsty manners and
cheerful arrogance.
They were the spenders of the world; the rest of mankind were the
earners. They would not hear of joining with the Tirralarians.
Socialists! Not they. They did not believe in the equality of men; there
were at least two levels, that of themselves and that of all other men;
they had the appetites and the appreciation of enjoyment; the rest of
the world was their purse; what did Heaven mean by such specialisation
but that the one set was to serve the other? It was only the lack of
numbers that prevented their carrying out the scheme of nature in its
entirety. It was this that made them starve for months on their now
barren island, whilst their harvest was preparing in the rest of the
world. Ignorance blinded the wage-earners to the true object of their
earning and made them fight to retain the result; if only they could
open their eyes and look at things as they are in reality, they would
see that it was meant for the appetite-bearers, the Feneralians. So
these latter were often kept out of their rights, and had to fight to
the death for them. They were often cooped up in their island by the
stupid savages, who would not listen to the voice of nature and justice.
Periodical raids were made upon them by way of retaliation; but it had
been impossible to clear out this nest of pirates, as other men called
it; this home of philanthropy, their own name for it. It was ever being
recruited by the unearning spenders who had failed to make the people in
their own islands believe in their divine mission. They were a cheerful,
active race that never abandoned hope even in the midst of starvation,
and never lost their patronising manners even when clad in rags. They
were the natural lords of creation, dethroned by their slaves, the
earners and fortune-makers. Some communities were wise enough to
recognise their genius and make them their statesmen. The millennium
would never arrive till all communities did the same.
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