BROOLYI
DURING the latter part of our conferences Blastemo had fallen silent;
his oaths and wild exclamations had first grown less frequent and then
ceased. When I looked to find the cause of the break in the torrent, I
laughed to see the rubicund face blanched, and instead of the usual
militant boldness of the expression a tremulous light in the eye. Sandy
Macrae at a gesture from me helped him below and we saw no more of him
for days, and heard nothing either but long-intervalled groans of agony.
For the wind had freshened ahead, and, as something or other had
disturbed the compasses, we could not tell whether we were keeping our
course or not. We steered by the sun; and, as we had not our pilot to
correct us, we had gradually shot far past our destination, and a
current had carried us away to the east.
Before daybreak on the third day our lookout called our attention to a
strange object on the horizon all gleaming white. At first the captain
thought it was an iceberg wandered into these tropical regions, but as
the sun forged up towards the rim of sky the ever-shifting tints that it
threw over the vault revealed to him that it was a snow-peak on whose
top lay a wreath of white filmy wool like a cloud. As the sunlight
strengthened, they saw the wool-festoon float out like a pennon, tinged
with the scarlet and gold of the dawn. The stars grew dim and winked
out. The day broadened into a glare, and still the peak stood firm with
its pennant of steam.
I was called, and I knew what it was they had been watching. It was the
mystery of mysteries, the Isle of Devils, that was thrusting up its
snow-peak into the sky. I bade Burns steer straight for it, and the wind
that still blew fresh from the north-west was with us. The gleaming cone
grew loftier and more beautiful in its outline, and past noon we could
see the cloud-turbaned peaks that flanked it begin to show beneath its
radiance. Still we pushed on, and, as the sun shot his western shuttle
through his great web of rays, and we could see the land darken at the
roots of the peak of snow, a strange circumstance occurred. There came
over the heavens a glossy look as if we were moving under a dome of
crystal closer to us than the azure of the sky. It was an occurrence I
had noticed once or twice before, but I could get no satisfactory
explanation of the phenomenon. It was like the glitter of the sky on a
morning of keen frost, that is just about to be followed by a tempest of
rain; and what made it stranger was that the crystalline dome vanished
as suddenly as it had come. The stars came out with a precipitance that
alarmed us. We had not time to recover from our terror when a shout rose
from the bow, “Breakers ahead.” We had but a few moments to bring her
round and lower the sails, and together the sea and the wind struck us
with a thud and made the ship stagger. I thought she would go to the
bottom, she heeled with such suddenness and shipped such a mass of
water. The masts broke like reeds, and the yards thundered down upon the
deck.
In the midst of the commotion I saw Blastemo rush towards me over the
wreckage, the pallor gone from his face. It was now livid with terror.
He looked for a moment to the horizon, and then to the smooth sea that
lay on either side of the tornado. He seized me by the arm and in a
hoarse whisper begged me to hurry away from the accursed peak that still
shone clear over our stern. Within half an hour we were in as peaceful
an atmosphere and sea as we had had; not a trace of the storm or of the
troubled water was to be seen. Even the long roll of billows with which
we had run so long had vanished. As we cleared away the wreckage, our
guest lay down exhausted on the deck. In a whisper of terror he told me
the same story as I had heard from other islanders. None of them had
ever been able to approach the Isle of Devils; every ship that had made
the attempt had been disabled and blown off. This had been the case for
long centuries, although there was a dim tradition that their ancestors
had come from it in vessels. The shock seemed to have driven out his
sea-sickness to some extent, and he kept by the man at the wheel till we
were out of sight of the snow-peak. Before he left the deck he gave such
instructions as to the route that no mistake could be made again.
Even this would not satisfy him, and in spite of his recurrent pallidity
he returned to his post in the morning and watched every point on the
horizon to see that we should not deviate as we did before. In three
more days of light winds and calms we came in sight of a land that
filled him with almost uncontrollable delight. He recognised its first
dim outline upon the horizon as his own. As we approached it, its sierra
rose boldly into the heavens, though rarely to the line of perpetual
snow. Great ranges of mountains seemed to divide it into isolated
corners, and jutted into the ocean in beetling precipices that forbade
too close approach to the angry snarl of their surf. It was in every
feature of it the home of warlike tribes bastioned against mutual peace
and intercourse. I was much amused, therefore, to hear Blastemo break
into an invocation to his fatherland as the home of all that was noble
and peace-loving. He repeated its name again and again with eulogistic
epithets, “noble, pacific Broolyi”; and, seeing us stand by
unenthusiastic, he tried to rouse us by explaining that the name meant
Isle of Peace, for the inhabitants were engaged in converting the whole
archipelago to its doctrine of peace; they were the great missionaries
of the gospel of peace to a world given over to war and mutual hatred.
The confused swell near the iron-bound coast relieved us of the need of
reply; for he quietly collapsed and sought a recumbent posture below.
We ran north along the wild scene of sheer cliffs. Solitary bird haunts
waist-deep in the sullen billows, monstrous toothed jaws angrily
churning the waters that ebbed and flowed across them, hollow-sounding
caves that echoed to the splash and boom of the sea and to the screams
of disturbed flashes of winged life, varied the monotony of the adamant
bulwark of nature. A note of everlasting war between land and sea
sounded hoarse along the shore, and ever as we approached there rang out
the wild challenge of the torn and recoiling waves. The marks of the
unending warfare of centuries lay in the reefs and outlying fragments of
rock that chafed the waters as they flowed. It was indeed a conflict of
Titans, whose chief ally and source of power was Time. Round great
headlands we swept that mocked and baffled the high-flashing onslaught
of the immortal enemy. How many generations of men had wailed into life,
grown, fought tooth and nail, and lapsed into the grave, since these
browbeaten cliffs had begun to outface the passions of their restless
foe!
We rounded one foreland more colossal and overhanging than any; but its
fantastic shapes held us only a moment, for beyond, the land rapidly
fell into a broad valley, and there two embattled bodies of men were
busy hacking and hewing each other. Their armour clashed under the
strokes, fierce shouts issued from those that were hurrying from the
rear, and a minor undercurrent of sound was a medley of wails and
groans. The crew were soon all on deck absorbed in the new spectacle.
Even Blastemo had recovered and ascended. He looked on from a modest
hiding-place in the rear; but, as soon as we saw him, we burst into a
roar of laughter, remembering his recent eulogies of peace and of the
pacific nature of his countrymen. He knew what we meant, and slunk below
again.
I had occasion to go soon after to my cabin, and I found him pacing the
floor in wild agitation. The sound of the clashing arms and the shouts
and groans reached him even here, and he saw, though dimly, through the
thick glass of the port-hole the swaying masses and the give-and-take of
the combat. His blood was in ferment, and he pleaded with me to put him
on shore, that he might join in the struggle. It maddened him to hear
the clangour and not be in the midst of the fray. He confessed that he
had not looked closely or long enough to know who were the combatants or
what was the right or wrong for which they fought. All he knew was that
it was near the capital and his own district, and his desire to keep the
peace was overwhelming everything else in him. I refused to listen to
his petitions, fearing that by landing him we might draw the fury of
either side or perhaps of both upon us. We sped on and soon melted the
uproar into a confused hum and shut out the sight that so fevered his
blood.
Our next experience was as exciting. We shot past the cape that like a
sheltering arm curled round the great harbour of the island, and a city
spread upwards from it bastioned to the roofs. And what a commotion
filled every parapet and wall and street! Never had such a craft been
seen in these waters; and our fame had spread before us. Every movement
of the _Daydream_, since she had approached the island, had been
messengered to the city. Banners and trophies swung in the breeze. Wild
music made the air a hoarse discordant pæan. Bells rung, gongs sounded,
shrill pipes shot skirling blasts into the ear of heaven. Marchings and
countermarchings of squares and rectangles of blue and green and scarlet
humanity made a moving tartan of the shore. The chromatropic effect was
as harassing to the eye as the clangour to the ear. Puffs of acrid smoke
obscured the air at intervals. At a distance it was alarming. What would
it be near at our hand? The whole armed population was evidently in
motion. Our guest, mad though he was with excitement, managed to
reassure us, and, taking from his cabin a small blue-green and red
pennon, flung it out from our poop. The effect was instantaneous. The
commotion ceased. The troops wheeled and marched inland, and soon only
the ununiformed crowd were left to watch us as we swept up to an
anchorage within a breastwork of the harbour.
The night fell, and silence shed its sleep upon the many-coloured,
myriad-noted world. With the morning returned the bustle and skirl and
brazen echo of a warlike community. Everything, as we looked out to the
shore, seemed to move to disciplinary rhythm. I went to the royal levee
with Blastemo, and, after he had prelected to the courtiers and the king
in a language that I did not understand, I was addressed from the throne
in Aleofanian. I could see from the speech that my fireship had deeply
impressed the community and especially the governors of Broolyi, but
their warlike purpose and employments were veiled in eulogies of their
mission of peace. Peace was the ideal and prayer of their inmost souls,
and this fireship of mine would enable them to fulfil it the sooner. It
was difficult to disentangle this from the labyrinth of ceremonies and
gestures, verbiage and oaths, that seemed to form the very heart of
Broolyian civilisation. Every climax reached by the monarchic eloquence
we heard echoed outside of the palace by the roll of drums and the
air-splitting shrill of pipes. The whole life of the community seemed to
move to machinery that centred in the court.
This I afterwards found was no mere metaphor or fancy. The next day was
their great festival of the week, and the people crowded into the
temples to worship the gods. None worked or were supposed to work. I
went with Blastemo first to one sacred building and then to another; and
I was struck with the fact that everything seemed to proceed as by
clockwork, the music, the sermon, the genuflections of the priest. “You
are right,” said my guide. “And I will show you how the whole thing is
worked.”
He took me to an enormous hall behind the palace. It was like a huge
factory, so full was it of machinery, all in motion. It was, indeed, he
assured me, a religion factory, one of the grandest institutions in the
world. This controlled all the services in the temples of the island. He
took me to one great machine that had on a capacious barrel all the
litanies of the year. At the moment we came up it was started by the
controller of religious services, who sat in a recess of the inner hall
of the king’s palace. We heard a prayer to the god of peace most
painfully and articulately intoned. I did not understand the words, but
I could make out from the tones in which they were uttered the changes
of meaning and spiritual attitude. It was marvellous, the solemnity of
the effect, provided we shut our eyes; there was such majesty in the
volume of the sound and in the elocutionary variations of the tone; one
might have imagined a vast assembly pouring forth in unison a submissive
appeal to heaven. In the temple the clack and shuttling of the machinery
were not heard; instead of it there was an automatic priest
magnificently clothed, bowing and posturing to suit the word. It was
only a wax figure containing clockwork controlled by this great litany
machine, but the effect was like life, or rather much more impressive.
There was none of the hawking and hemming of the human priest, none of
his awkward pauses and blowings of the nose, none of the clumsy gestures
or inability to dispose of the hands; and the voice rang out through the
great buildings with a bell-like clearness and naturalness that would
have made the human voice seem bathos. How feeble and tremulous, I
remembered, buzzed the voices of the priests I had heard intoning in the
cathedrals of Europe! I felt almost ashamed of the memory.
With a whirr and a click the litany machine stopped, and the
processional machine took up the tale. There was more noise and clang in
this, for more force had to be applied; a hundred or more processions of
marionette acolytes and priests through the various temples of the
island were impelled by it. There was a manifest rhythm in its motions,
almost like the sound of a stately minuet. I saw these processions
afterwards; and nothing could exceed the solemnity of the motions of the
man-like fantoccini. I never saw such an impressive ceremonial; every
step, every gesture was in harmony; there was no unseemly merriment in
the eyes or conversation on the lips of the youthful figures; and the
chanting was so noble and beautiful, filling as it did the whole vast
edifice with its mournful, or jubilant sound. The service was well
through before I had come into the religion factory, and the only other
machine I saw at work was that which produced the music. It was in an
adjoining hall, which was filled with thousands of pipes of the most
varied size and construction. There sat the musician, and the whole
building trembled as the keys were struck. It was intolerable; the
groaning and thunder it produced made the very tips of our ears to
shake. But when delivered by tubes or wires into the vast temples of the
country, nothing could surpass the softness and harmony of the volume of
sound.
One large edifice served for the central section of the town; it was
spacious enough to contain every man, woman, and child that lived in the
district. Each suburb had a smaller temple, yet large enough to dwarf
the cathedrals of England. I was deeply interested in them, and every
weekly festival I visited one or more of them. I was especially anxious
to hear the sermon or prelection. The lay-figure rose and moved his eyes
and lips and his arms and body to suit the words that were uttered. The
whole of the audience was too distant from it to distinguish the
movements; and the wax lifelessness of the face, which I made out when,
after the service, I approached it, could not have been seen by any of
the worshippers, so far aloft was it perched in a pulpit on the farthest
wall. The tones reached every ear in the huge edifice, and their
modulation and expression were perfect. I conjectured that the sermon
had been spoken into some recorder before, and that this reproduced it
by machinery on some diaphragm in each church, and that over the
diaphragm was fixed some instrument inside the lay-figure for
multiplying many times the volume of the sound.
The illusion was complete. I never heard oratory so impressive, or
religious service so solemnly performed. The sermon was, Blastemo told
me, a discourse on peace as the aim of all mankind. It painted the
horrors of war, and brought out in contrast a portrait of the man of the
millennium, who would have his passions so under control that nothing
would rouse him to anger or strife. It closed with a vindication of the
warlike policy for reaching this great ideal. Nothing but continual and
effective warfare would make men afraid to quarrel or bring their
quarrel to issue. The ebullience of the passions of the world was to be
mastered by fear. When they had brought warfare to the perfection of
destructiveness, all wars would cease; terror of death would be the
universal guiding motive of communities and individuals. Then would the
god of peace have voice through the whole world, for he would have his
mentor in every human breast in every assembly, the knowledge that any
strife must end in the annihilation of all those who take part in it.
The peroration was fervid in its appeal to the worshippers to pursue
warfare till it should be absolute in its annihilative power.
I was deeply impressed by the whole performance; never did it approach
to that bathos which, I remembered, had so often marred the services in
even the greatest cathedrals and churches of the various divisions of
Christianity. There was no halting in the oratory, no feebleness of
voice, no ridiculous straining of the nervous or muscular power. There
was no hitch in the processions or ceremonies, nothing pinchbeck or
tawdry or mean. The music was noble, and in its softening and shading as
fine as the massing of tens of thousands of human voices, there was no
discord, no jar. The effect of the whole was uniform, deep, and abiding.
Yet I could not get out of mind the cogs and wheels and keys of the
religion factory, the workmen moving about seeing that the machinery was
well oiled and that it worked without chance of breakdown, the solitary
performer sitting at the keyboard, and the king’s minister in the royal
recess grinding out the service. I expressed my feelings to Blastemo as
we walked away, and he warmly defended the method of his country. They
had had in the past a priesthood attached to the various temples, but it
had been found that their lives so differed from their teachings that
the people laughed at the whole of religion as a farce. The performances
and discourses were so feeble or extravagant or grotesque that the
buildings were deserted as a rule, or, if one was frequented, it was by
a wild crowd of enthusiasts stirred by some mad preacher to a crusade
against law, order, or progress. The church and religion had grown a
scandal. Women were the only regular worshippers, and they were in the
hands of unscrupulous priests, who used them against the aims and ideals
of the government and the community. The state tried for a time the
effect of adding to the creed a dogma that the religious efficacy of the
services was quite independent of the character of the priests; it came
direct from heaven, and the pollution of the vessel or channel did not
mar the divine influence. It was all in vain. It did not bring the men
to church; and it only hurried on the degeneracy of the priesthood. The
church became the nest of all the unclean and revolutionary characters
in the community. Again and again it threatened the safety of the state
by instilling a rebellious spirit into the women, and through them into
the youths of the nation during a serious war with a neighbour.
Something had to be done. There were the grand old temples; there was
the litany of the state religion consecrated by long generations of
worshippers; and yet the institution was but a lurking-place for the
indolent and voluptuous and hypocritical and rebellious in masculine
breasts. The endowments had fallen into a hopeless state. The finances
were quite inadequate. The worshippers would not support their own
services.
There was a great statesman at the helm of affairs, the ablest monarch
that had ever been selected by the council of wise warriors. He saw his
opportunity. He happened to have one of the most original and inventive
engineers as his right-hand man for the manufacture and superintendence
of war material. This latter had landed on the shores of Broolyi they
knew not whence. In these islands they ask no questions but accept what
the gods send them. The two together elaborated the existing religious
system. The dogma that the divine influence was altogether irrespective
of the channel or priest had thoroughly soaked into the natures of the
worshippers from the sermons of the preachers; and it was easy to turn
the flank of the doctrine by showing that automatic priests would have
least effect of all upon the religious elements that came through them.
They would be completely neutral like the air or the ether through which
the gods influenced the minds of men.
There was some talk of rebellion when the system was changed; but most
of the priests were too manifestly disreputable or characterless to
bring much influence to bear. They were banished to the islands that
were occupied by the non-moral religionists, and were never heard of
more. The women were only too glad to see the services conducted in
order and decency, whilst the men saw with pleasure the rotten finances
taken up by the state. It was one of the most peaceful and natural
changes that ever occurred; and now the temples were filled with men as
well as women. The music was splendid, the ceremonies solemn, the
discourses worth listening to. It cost far less. It was absolutely
controlled by the state, and all throughout the island had the same
spiritual fare.
I suggested to Blastemo that there was surely great monotony in having
the same thing year in, year out, every festival. He laughed at my
simplicity. The monarch and the engineer had fully provided for that
feature of human nature which makes it weary of mere repetition. The
finest imaginations of the country were employed in writing discourses;
the best musicians spent most of their time in composing the hymns and
songs; the finest theatrical talent and the most devout minds combined
to make new ceremonies and services. That was the reason there was not
standing room in most of the temples of the country. Everything was
under the eye of the king and his wise warriors. It was one of the most
effective disciplines that ever state had had in its hands; the
state-organised church of Aleofane was not to be compared to it. The
souls of the community were regimented like their bodies.
I was silenced; but any doubt of the efficacy of the institution was not
dissipated when I heard that it was still comparatively new. The monarch
had not long since died, and the engineer was still living. It had still
to be tested by time, and the attraction of novelty had not yet worn
off. Yet I had to acknowledge that it was a most effective method of
ridding a state church of irregularities and keeping a strong hand over
the minds of the community. Whether it would allow the civilisation to
advance was another question. Originality would soon be a thing
inconceivable in the island, if it were not already completely dead.
Peace in the spiritual world had been reached, but at the expense of all
new thought or individuality of character.
When I heard that the inventor of this automatic worship was still
alive, I felt eager to see him, certain as I was that he must be a man
of remarkable powers; but I found great difficulty in getting Blastemo
or anyone else to tell me about him. Since the election of the new
monarch, I ascertained by sundry hints, he had been in exile. Where he
was imprisoned I could not find out. His great capacity and his
ever-advancing thought had manifestly aroused the jealousy of the new
occupant of the throne. Hence, I conjectured, it was that the new arts
of war had grown abortive, promise though they once did to go far
towards the ideal of absolute destructiveness which would lead to
universal peace. I saw that he or someone else had introduced an
explosive, which might, with improvements, have made as effective a
means of war as European gunpowder. It had enabled the last king to
batter down the fortress-mansions of his nobles in the country and drive
them to settle round the court and abandon their continual little
internecine wars. Under his successor, the makers of the explosive had
lost its true secret; and the baronial castles were rebuilding, in spite
of the threats of royal displeasure. This was the meaning of the battle
we had seen before arriving at the harbour; two nobles were settling a
quarrel in the old way, heedless of royal power or judicial courts.
Whilst I was in Broolyi I saw hundreds of quarrels that were settled by
duels. The Broolyians had no control over their tempers, and during the
reign of the explosive they had given free play to them, as they knew
that the result would be no risk of life, but only to property in
settlement before the law-courts. It was like living over a gunpowder
magazine, and I avoided intercourse with these spitfires. Indeed, it was
difficult to conduct without hitch the commonest conversation with
Blastemo, now he had returned to his native fire-damp of an atmosphere.
Nothing but isolated residence in fortified keeps with miles of morass
or mountain or forest between them could ever insure peace amongst such
a people. To think that the name of their country was “Isle of Peace,”
and that the great object of their worship was the god of peace!
One day I heard of another community off the farther coast of Broolyi;
it was said to exist without government or institutions of any kind. My
curiosity was excited, and, though on inquiry I found that it was the
exile asylum of the archipelago for all who were plagued with the craze
of anarchism, I resolved to see the island for myself. They could not
laugh me out of my determination, and I at last procured a royal
passport that would pass me over the intervening districts in safety.
For the rest I was to look after myself if I ventured over the channel
that lay between the islands. None of the Broolyians would ever risk
their lives in that den of wild beasts, Kayoss. It had been chosen
because of its proximity to the most warlike people in the archipelago;
and, if any of the inhabitants attempted to leave it, the Broolyians
were authorised to shoot them down. A garrison was regularly established
over against it for the purpose.
I set out, glad to be free from the harassing ceremonial of a military,
machine-like, and yet most capricious-tempered community; but it was a
long and difficult journey, from castle to castle, over mountain and
through forest, often delayed by some local imbroglio or the jealousy of
neighbouring barons. Nothing but the magnificence of the scenery could
compensate for the petty annoyances that retarded my passage. Everywhere
I could see that the military commonweal was founded on slave labour.
The ground was tilled and the operations of common life were conducted
by men of a different race and climate from the oath-compelling
fire-eaters that ruled the island; and over them stood overseers with
whips to urge their industry. It was a sorry sight; and when I looked
into the faces of the workers, I could distinguish the wreckage of
nobler natures than were to be found in Broolyian breasts. The foreheads
were larger, the skulls more capacious; the eyes were full of a shy
melancholy that seemed to shrink from investigation; they had not the
huge lower jaws of their masters, or the cavernous mouths, or the red
hair. They were now but beasts of burden, and their limbs were muscular
and heavy and their footsteps dragging and torpid; but there was romance
lurking in the refined lineaments and the occasional grace that shone
out here and there amongst them. Whence they had come and what was their
fate I could not ascertain. That they were not natives I could see; and
that it was inferiority of will rather than inferiority of intellect or
imagination or civilisation that had led to their enslavement to the
fiery-willed Broolyians I could easily conjecture from the ruins of
their past that peeped out through the labour-clotted masks of their
rustic or artisan life.
I had to disguise my interest in them in order to get through the
country. Any sympathy or pity would have roused the savage wills of
their masters and sacrificed my hopes of the future, if not myself, to
the exaggerated Broolyian ideas of rebellion and the punishment it
demanded. Whenever I could, I lay in the shelter of some tree or
coppice, and watched the movements of these interesting relics of a
subjugated civilisation. Perhaps I might be able to do something for
them when I gained a higher platform of vantage.
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