MESKEETA
BLASTEMO, warlike though he was, was greatly alarmed at seeing the wind
fall and the _Daydream_ drift towards one of the lowest of the group. He
knew it was Meskeeta, which he translated the isle of Book-butchers; the
people themselves translated it the isle of the Discerners of Good and
Evil. But it was the evil, our friend explained, that they especially
loved and indulged in; and it was not difficult for them, with their
venomous habit of anatomising the quivering tissues, to find evil in the
best of good. The ship was drifting so fast on the low shore that he got
Captain Burns to anchor; and soon after the great chains clanked and
whizzed she had stopped in her course. The crew began to feel their
faces and hands smart as if stung with nettles; and before long they
discovered that minute darts were sticking in their skin, feathered and
pointed and adhesive with some poisonous acid. As a rule a good vigorous
rub brushed off the microscopic barbs and prevented the venom searching
the blood. But those who had sensitive skins suffered keenly from the
volleys that came sweeping down the light puffs of wind now beginning to
set out from the shore. The captain would have heaved anchor and sailed,
had he not found that their provisions were running short. So he ordered
the thinner-skinned below, and with the others he watched the beach to
see if he could find the dart-throwers. Only by aid of the ship’s
telescope could he discover them, so diminutive were they and so masked
were their batteries. Blastemo had not much hope; but they might try
whether the islanders had any stores. Meanwhile, to reduce the virulence
of the pigmies, on his advice they lit all the lamps they had and
crowded them together on the point that would produce most effect on the
shore. At once the volleys ceased, and through the glass could be seen
the little beings falling in the dust. The effect was still more
pronounced when blank cartridges of gunpowder were fired and showers of
rockets and squibs. The creatures grovelled towards the ship, then bit
the dust, and scattered it with their hands upon their hair and bodies.
Blastemo told them that these pigmies were worshippers of anything that
flashed or dazzled, but whenever even the sun got obscured or clouded
they began to shoot at it. Into this island had been exiled all who were
bitten with the mania of criticism, and, however stalwart their
proportions when cast on its shores, their microscopic fault-finding
within a few generations reduced their descendants to the size of this
puny race of dart-throwers. For lack of books and authors to dissect and
torture, they resorted to this petty internecine warfare. They never did
much harm, it is true, except to one another and to oversensitive
targets, their missiles had grown so minute and their vision so oblique
and so marred by the habit of wearing varieties of spectacles. These
spectacles were all spotted and cracked and twisted, in order to produce
blemishes to be criticised and attacked in every object gazed at; they
had been originally assumed, it was said, to permit them to stare at the
sun and other luminaries without blenching, but, as they were never
cleaned or mended or renewed, they became invaluable in their daily
business of fault-finding; they discovered stains on the purest white,
and defects in the most perfect thing ever created; and that was a great
comfort. It was also a comfort to their victims; for they could not
distinguish the vulnerable parts from the invulnerable or even see to
shoot straight; they were as good as purblind. The worst the venomous
little creatures could do was to send their poisoned barbs down the wind
in volleys and thus obscure the vision of their foes or of those who
looked on; they even thought that they thus obscured the sun at times,
and they were sorry for this, for they adored everything that flashed
with brilliancy.
“When we saw them lie on their stomachs in the dust,” continued Burns,
“we struck out in our boats for the shore, expecting peace at least.
But, as we got out of range of our lamps, the dwarfs leaped up and began
pouring their paltry missiles into the air. We landed with some
inconvenience but no real harm; for we were all thick-skinned. They
crowded round us in groups, busy with their petty bows and slings. Their
missiles flew like dust. But they did more harm to one another than to
us, they missed us so often, and we spread our handkerchiefs over our
faces and hands. This last resort was necessary, for we noticed that one
group made the face their target, another the neck, and a third the
hands; their functions were, we could see, carefully specialised. One
feature that perplexed us was that they had their upper parts concealed
in such enormous masks as, if we had not seen their legs, would have
made them seem giants; each man’s mask was large enough to cover a whole
group; and the masks in each group were all exactly alike; but, as they
shifted from group to group, they interchanged masks. The only thing
that seemed to distinguish one from another was that a few of the masks
had names on them.
“We were much puzzled about all this till Blastemo, here, showed us that
it was a ruse to hide their identity in their internecine warfare; no
one could tell which of his enemies had dealt him any blow or poisonous
wound; and the size of the masks was to deceive as to the numbers and
force, when the foe could not see the legs. The gigantic heads had huge
brows, and beneath these protruded eyes that added a more truculent
expression to the already truculent face. These eyes were the spectacles
which were intended to give especial protection to the living eyes
behind and to distort and mar the objects looked at; they were an
especial mark for the missiles of enemies; and so they were cracked and
scratched in all directions. Blastemo also explained to us the sudden
change of attitude towards us after we had left the ship; it was the
dazzle that they adored and not the sources of it. We would not have
minded the artillery of the pigmies, but that, after seeing how futile
it was, they began to squirt water as well, and we were soon covered
with fetid mud from head to foot; the minute missiles mingled with the
water, and the poison on them gave the disgusting smell.
“We sent off to the ship for lamps, and we bore them, each of us one,
gleaming on our heads. We were at once safe, except for guerilla
warriors, who might be for the moment behind any one of us. They did
not now grovel in the dust; the light was not strong enough to produce
this effect. They approached and patted us with most patronising
familiarity, minute though they were. They seemed to draw infinite
courage from their numbers and the masking of their faces; for if we
caught any one of them alone and lifted him in our hands and took off
his head-gear, he shivered with fear and lay down flat on the palm of
our hands with imploring gestures; and when we let him down on the
ground he scampered off to the shelter of some group as if for dear
life. We were glad to be rid of the wretched little creatures; for
when held close to us they stank abominably, reminding us of certain
bed-lurking insects of Christendom. Without their masks they seemed to
lose their self-confidence and braggart airs, and yet there were a few
who wore none, and stood off from us in haughty isolation that almost
made us laugh, so incongruous was it with their stature. Blastemo
tells us that these were the great men amongst them, who thought they
had the power of conferring godhead and everlasting fame; they called
themselves, in fact, Todes, or the godmakers of mankind. Sandy Macrae
thought of bringing off one or two of them in his pocket, so useful
would they be to people without a religion, and to title-beggars and
popularity-hunters in the old country. Sandy’s waistcoat would have
held enough to serve all Europe. But the thought of the proximity of
the dirty little imps to his nose made him rob Christendom of such a
reinforcement of its courts and centres.
“We watched them for a time, and observed that all of them had a squint
in their eyes, so that we could never tell which way they were looking.
And their noses extended right across their lips into a sharp point.
They were, in fact, a most treacherous looking crew; and treacherous
they were, too, as any one of us soon found when his lamp went out or
when he turned his back on a group of them. We soon discovered, too, how
innumerable were the dissensions and divisions amongst them. When they
were all in front of us and all our lamps were shining brightly, group
would turn against group; but if that was not possible the members of a
group would turn and embrace, or adore, or brush the clothes of one
another. Blastemo explained to us that mutual flattery was the only
alternative they knew for malicious hatred or envy or jealousy. They
build their temples over the graves of those whom they call great men
and whom they have persecuted to death, and each worshipper expects a
temple to be erected over his grave when he dies. So you can imagine the
number of sacred buildings in the island. No stranger is admitted to any
of them; but it is said that each of them is a vast mirror within; only
one worshipper enters at a time; and he sees on all sides of him nothing
but glorified editions of himself. Without, they are of a jaundiced
colour, broken only by the light of green lamps that are ever kept
alight, in order, they say, to ward off the evil eye. There are no
priests, for every devotee is his own priest; but each has a doorkeeper
who is dressed up to represent Envy. His chief duty is to see that only
one enters at a time and that he adds his quota to the fire on the
altar. This consists of some book that he has criticised and shown to be
full of faults. They keep a feeble folk in slavery, dwarfs like
themselves, to produce books on which to exercise their critical powers.
These poor creatures have highly sensitive skins and feelings, and they
writhe under the attacks of their critics; it is their agony that gives
the keenest pleasure to their masters and makes the sweetest incense in
their offerings to the gods. The Meskeetans, indeed, would have lost the
end of their existence and died out but for this diversion. Occasionally
they get mad over a book of real power; they dance with rage and
afterwards with delight, for it piques their best faculties to energy;
and the joy they afterwards get out of its petty faults is tenfold
because their rage did not lead them to burn it at once or tear it into
fragments. Every comma or letter or word misplaced makes them
inordinately proud of their acumen; they strut and crow as if they had
found the source of original sin. The overseers of the slaves make them
insert mistakes in the books in order that their discovery may gratify
the venomous little masters. The lot of no people in the whole
archipelago arouses so much pity as that of these book-makers, so
utterly hopeless is it. They are kept alive that their anguish may be
enjoyed; they are carefully watched lest they commit suicide, all to
gratify the inhuman desire of the little monsters, their owners.
“This we knew afterwards from our friend here,” continued our captain.
“But we went up into their town to see if we could get food or fuel. We
saw their yellow, green-lanterned temples, and came upon some of the
poor scholars in chains bent over their books. The houses were made of
glass like their temples, and it was somewhat painful for our eyes to
look at them in the sun; but inside they were all mirror; every little
man could contemplate his own self, whatever he did within his own
household; outside he could see nothing to adore but the sun and its
reflection; inside he took the place of that luminary and god. Every
house bore evidence of having stood siege: it was cracked and splashed
with mud in almost every part; there were some spaces that were left
intact, and on these I saw something engraved; it was, Blastemo
interpreted, the chief maxim of their adored book: ‘God has given us to
know all things, and to say all things without error; let the world
worship us, His prophets and vicegerents upon earth.’ Where this was
written, the glass was thin and transparent, so that it could be read
both without and within; all the rest was fortified to stand a siege by
any one group.
“We could find no supplies. They had no food but a flour obtained by
pounding up the bones of those whom they considered the great dead, or a
kind of chalky paste obtained from reducing statues of themselves and of
the gods whom they worshipped. Their only drink was a black fluid that
tasted like vinegar, and no fuel could we get but a few of the books
produced by the enslaved people.
“The oil in our lamps began to give out, and we had to beat a hasty
retreat, for they had found that we did not bow before them as
omniscient or divine, or treat their sayings and life with any great
adoration. They began to concentrate their sharpest and most poisonous
darts upon us, as we turned to make off, and yet when we arrived on
board and massed our newly lighted lamps, we could see the little
creatures down on their faces again in the dust.”
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