NOOKOO
WE got on shore in a sandy corner of a great cave; and we were soon
asleep from our great exertions and endurance. When I awoke, I saw that
the dome underneath which we slept was covered with myriads of
glowworms. Before long my eyes grew accustomed to the twilight of our
abode, and I could see pillars of gleaming white stretch from floor to
roof, as if hewn out of marble by the workmen of some great sculptor and
then abandoned before the capitals and bases could be carved into floral
symmetry. Pendent masses waited for some architect to hollow them into
forms of grace. Vaultings and domings of countless variety were there,
needing only the skilled hand to make them harmonise into marvellous
beauty. I could hear the rush and bustle of the current that had borne
us in, as it swept I knew not whither. I looked to see the direction,
and was for the first time struck by the wondrous azure of the light
that was around us. Untroubled depths lay close to our resting-place;
and the sunlight that shot through the waters of the low archway bore up
the mingled colour of the sea and the sky into the half-darkness of this
undercliff cathedral; all the mouldings and groinings of the vault were
bathed in a deep violet light such as we see in rare skies when the sun
has long set, and the thin moon stands sicklewise beside the harvest of
the stars. Only in our own shelving niche were there marks of the
discolouring hand of man; the débris of former fires lay scattered, and
dark shading ran up the marble of the roof; it had been used, I could
see, for generations as a camping-ground of recurrent dwellers in the
cave.
Our guide soon had a fire lit, and the meal he cooked was welcome. As we
ate, he told me his story. He had with the aid of the father of his
fiancée followed up a wonderful invention of his father’s, who had died
from an accident in his researches. It was a method of utilising the
germs of disease in warfare. Millions of the most destructive and most
prolific plague-scattering microbes were inclosed in minute globules for
arrow-points and in huge bombs for catapults. To prevent the plague
spreading amongst friends, they had also found a powerful disinfectant,
that could impregnate the air for miles in a few minutes and destroy all
the pestiferous germs.
A Figlefian, having heard of the invention, lured him into their island
with the promise of making a hero of him, but had enslaved him instead;
and he had lived like all the Swoonarian slaves, nursing the hope of
independence and revenge. He had been taken by his master on the last
voyage, and had discovered during the shipwreck that his bride was
included in the human cargo. He burst out into loud invectives against
the licentious tyrants; and he justified his determination to revenge by
a description of their devilish lechery and intrigue.
When the story was finished, his bride had disappeared; and we followed
her along the gallery that edged the torrent. We came across her seated
upon a broken stalagmite, but as we sat down near her on a shelf that
had once been the tidemark of the water a wild shriek pierced our ears;
it shot through the gorge we had just passed, and, peering into the
darkness through which it was sliding, we saw two men like Sneekape
clutching fiercely at the slippery walls of the ravine as their canoe
swept onwards. It was the shriek of despair and helplessness. Away into
the unknown it sped, and the agonised voices were swallowed up by the
darkness on the other side. The yell grew muffled and far-off, and then
suddenly sank. Our guide laid his ear to the azure depths of the
indwelling ocean, but he heard no more than I did,—the suck and splash
of the waters in their undercliff passage and the boom of the waves as
they struck on the wall of rock without.
We returned to our sleeping-place. We watched the twilight of our cave
die out and the glowworms glimmer and flash on the roof; and I fell into
a dream of starflights in space and the intricate dance of worlds across
the face of night. I was oppressed to agony, and awoke. The violet light
was rippling along the vault and paling the steely glimmer of our living
lamps. I heard the rush of the torrent; but there was no breathing or
rustle of mortals. I looked around. My companions were gone.
Here was I, alone, buried in this underground hiding-place of the
waters. Frenzy seized my mind, and I rushed to the edge of the torrent,
only to find the canoe gone and the traces of the feet of my guide and
his betrothed upon the sand, where they had embarked.
After a time I roused myself from my despair. I noted that the inrushing
waters had a downward flow. If I followed them, I should be certain to
find human beings. I made torches of the garments that lay in the nooks,
and stumbled along the marvellous cave, for how many days I know not,
guided by the hiss of the tortuous waters. To the right I often lost the
wall that I crept along. There were deep subcaves branching off. At last
I sank down in weariness and nausea of life. My torches had given out. I
had long before eaten the last of my food. I fell into a swoon, and I
seemed to dream. I saw Sneekape tempted by beautiful women and agonised
to find them phantoms. He was whipped and lashed as he and his
countrymen had whipped and lashed the Swoonarian slaves. Phantom after
phantom drew him into love-passages, till at last I saw him sink in
death upon the earth. He had died of his own special passion.
It was no dream at all, for my rescuer appeared and interpreted to me
the scenes I had just witnessed. They never killed any of these cruel
tyrants who had done them so many wrongs; they only let them feel what
they had been, and allowed them to die of surfeit of their own passions.
It was worth the trouble, to make them agonise through the dreary fate
of their victims and meet the natural result of their own vices. To kill
them off would be too merciful. The method of nature was more just, to
make their own sins punish them.
They were about to apply a quicker solvent to these obstructives of the
progress of man. They had the germs of all the diseases that attacked
their vices, and every Swoonarian woman was to be armed with capsules of
them, and whenever any one of the licentious tyrants approached her with
unjust or salacious intent in his mind, a capsule was, with its sharp
point, to effect a slight scratch on his body and, broken, to pour its
contents into the wound. The Swoonarian men were escaping by means of
seeming suicide. They plunged into what the Figlefians thought a boiling
caldron in their burning mountain Nookoo. But there was a cool space in
it, and it was into this that they dived and came up in the cave.
My rescuer had pleaded with his fellow-conspirators for my life and on
oath that I would never divulge their secret I was given up to him. He
blindfolded me and led me by a rough and devious path, that zigzagged
and circled round in the most bewildering way. Then was I conscious of
being enclosed in something that seemed a coffin. I dared not rebel; and
in fact I fully trusted the good faith of my rescuer. I soon felt myself
hurled as if through the air and my strange enclosure plunge as if into
water. For a few moments I had the sensation of stifling, and then I
felt a rush of briny air into my lungs; there was buoyancy about my
cell, and before long it moved along the surface of water and struck
land. I heard the voice of my guide again; the lid of my coffin was
unlocked, and I knew that I was standing on the earth in the sweet air
of heaven once more. Many a mile, it seemed to me, was I led up and
down, but at last we sat, and food was supplied to me. Again we started
forth on our rough journey. I was led down to a sandy beach; I knew by
the sound of the rippling waves and by the soft pliancy of that on which
I walked. I heard men’s voices and the sound of paddles. I was lifted
into a canoe, and my rescuer whispered in my ear farewell. I sought his
hand, and pressed it in token of gratitude. When the band was removed
from my eyes, I was on board my own yacht, and the dawn was breaking in
the east.
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