A PORTRAIT AND A TEMPLE
The night, however, passed without event and morning came bathing the
empty edge of the forest with crystal freshness. The scene I still had
to myself. My morning journey down to the water's edge for food and
bathing was made with the most painful caution and I ate without relish.
My world had altered overnight. I was no longer merely shipwrecked but
shipwrecked among savages who might adhere to that perverted
epicureanism which esteems human fare for its flesh pots. Stories of
cannibalism had been plentiful at the captain's table on the
_Wastrel_--the value of white heads for decorating native huts had been
touched upon. My defense was limited to the six cartridges in the
chambers of my revolver and the newly discovered slung-shot.
Meantime I was hideously lonely. I turned the chest on end near the
opening of my cavern and spread the newspaper portrait upon it for full
inspection. The two upper corners I fastened with the curved and
jewelled daggers from Jerusalem.
The days which immediately followed marched slowly and were much alike.
It was only in my own state of mind that there was any element of change
or development.
The lurking figures did not reappear at the edge of the jungle and I
began to hope that they were members of some itinerant band from the
opposite side of the island who had chanced upon this locality in their
wanderings and might not again return. I was not even positive that they
had seen me.
Slowly, weirdly, while I dwelt in uncertainty and suspense the influence
of the lady in the picture grew upon me and compelled me. It may have
been at first, and doubtless was, a form of auto-hypnosis. Already the
seed for such an influence had been planted in the dependence which
young Mansfield and myself came to feel for the unknown girl's diary.
Now, in utter isolation, I was doubly in need of something to avert my
thoughts from channels which go down to madness and despair. The
lifelike quality of the portrait made it easier to talk aloud, and as
the spell grew I found myself talking with the softness of the lover.
There is a power in the spoken word. The mere act of giving audible
expression is a spur to thought. Sitting alone and debating how
uncertainly the wretched spark of life sputtered at the wick of my
being, I was the craven. When I talked to the picture whose lips smiled
as though all the world were brave, I grew ashamed of my terror.
Leaving my cave in the morning to forage and reconnoiter with the pistol
at my belt, I would carry with me, as a fragrant memory, the gracious
smile of her lips and the royal fearlessness of her eyes. Her image
nerved me to endurance; gave me a shoulder touch on normal thought, and
enabled me to hold in memory the world for which her evening gown and
pearls were symbols--and in deeply morbid moments this saved me from
losing my grip. Certainly, it was all an artificial stay--a ludicrous
pretense--but it served--and that is the final test of any love or any
creed. It served.
As these forces worked, I, at times, forgot that the picture was that of
an unknown. Its reality was so strong that it came to stand for some one
I had left behind, whom I must live to rejoin; some one inexpressibly
dear whose love hung over me and safeguarded me like a powerful
talisman. Often, in my broken sleep, I would dream that I was sore beset
by a thousand dangers and had fled to my cave as animals have fled to
caves since the world began, and that I stood huddling there miserably,
awaiting the end. Then, in the dream, she would come out of the
picture, as Galatea stepped down from the lifelessness of granite into
rosy and animated warmth. My assailants always fell back before her
coming and I, despite my terror, would attempt to meet her gallantly.
She would open a hidden door in the side of the rock, and lead me
through it. And always, in this repeated and unvarying dream, beyond the
door we stepped into a brilliantly lighted room where men and women
chatted carelessly in evening dress and danced to the tinkle of stringed
instruments.
By these degrees the illusion grew until my pretense became a vagary and
obsession and to me ceased to be a pretense. I fell back on occultism
and told myself that I had succeeded by mere concentration of mind in
forcing her to project her astral self across the world, until I had
with me her picture and her essence of soul.
Many of life's most sacred and permanent institutions are only fictions,
long entertained. My fiction became so real to me that for periods I
forgot to question it--then sometimes, at a moment when the illusion was
strongest, some impulse of reason would strike in upon and chill me,
like a sluicing from a cold bucket. It would come upon me to think of
myself as I should have appeared to any unwarned stranger, who had found
me talking, even lovemaking, with a sheet of lifeless paper. And from
that impersonal view-point I would wonder if my brain had already
crumbled to madness and imbecility. The cold sweat would bead my
forehead. My finger would creep to the trigger of my pistol and linger
there, twitching with the itch of self-destruction. But soon the smiling
lips would reassure me; the mood would pass and again I would surrender
myself to the pretense which was grateful where the truth was austere
and desolate.
I discovered in my tramps about the island's edge that this spot seemed
to be the most favored home of the orchid. This monarch of flowers
bloomed at the jungle's margin, in an infinite variety of flaunting
petals, soft colors and deeply glowing life. No other flower is so
ethereal and illusively lovely. None could be more fitted for a tribute
to as impalpable a love as I acknowledged. It became a part of my daily
program to bring back with me as I returned to the cave, masses of these
splendid blossoms which I heaped before her shrine.
I had reached the age of thirty-five and had heretofore been immune to
feminine fascinations. I had even been characterized as a woman-hater,
though this was an injustice. This new obsession, bewitching--whatever
you may choose to term it--was not momentary. In defense of my
consistency I declare that the thing required two weeks at least for its
accomplishment. And in those two weeks other affairs were developing.
Of course, I had been told, as has every traveler in the south seas,
that there is not an atoll or island left for discovery. I had been
informed that on every coral speck in the reef-strewn ocean, there is or
has been, a white man. I knew now that this was a fallacy. My island was
marked by a volcano tall enough to proclaim itself as far as a glass
could sweep the horizon from a ship's lookout, and if no pearl shell or
beche-de-mer trader, no blackbirder of the old days, no windswept vessel
of the present had hitherto sighted that peak, it must lie too far off
the course of rambling traffic, to expect a visit now. I knew that we
had dropped down-world for days before the wreck, and I had heard
grumbling, because of the mysterious course being steered. I was the
firstcomer--and yet the faint and struggling instinct of hope urged the
setting up of a tattered flag or two of sail cloth along the beetling
heights.
From my eyrie in the rocks, the coast line went away in a succession of
broken and porous cliffs which I had explored for a distance of perhaps
two miles. That two miles held all I had learned to know of this island
which was clearly a large one. What the interior had behind its curtain
of palm and moss and cane--back in the impenetrable jungle--belonged to
the mystery of an unopened book. I did know that off to the left as one
faced the sea, separated from me by four or five miles of precipitous
coast line, loomed a headland from which a flag waving by day would be
observable--if ever a vessel came across the shoulder of the world. To
reach the point and return would be a day's journey, for the path I must
take led over a trail more suited to a mountain goat than a man who had
until lately been civilized.
One morning I set out carrying tightly wrapped one of the pieces of
sail-cloth which had come out of the mate's chest. My resolution to set
my flag flying had filled me with a sort of specious exaltation. The
venomous beauty of the place was beyond description, and in a measure I
yielded to its lure and walked almost buoyantly. The sea to its skyline
was blue with a depth of sapphire. The tangle of the jungle was aflash
with vivid and sparkling color. Small, harmless snakes slid brightly
aside, as multi-hued as shreds of rainbow. I had climbed and crawled for
several hours, and was beginning to suffer keenly from weariness and
stone bruises on my poorly protected feet, when I came to a sort of path
running upward. This led me to a more commanding eminence than I had
before reached and gave me a view inland over an endless blanket of
green, unbroken forest. Ahead of me was a still greater height, and
after a short rest I made my way to the point from which I could look
across its crest. Then I halted dead in my tracks and stood fingering my
revolver. A cold sweat came out on my forehead and my knees trembled,
threatening to fail me. It was as though a curtain had risen on a stage
set to terrify the beholder.
The high ground fell steeply away into a basin whose slopes were roughly
broken into rising tiers. These tiers commanded a sort of amphitheatre
two hundred yards in diameter, through which ran a small thread of water
cascading from the interior elevation. A quarter of a mile away began
the background of timber and tangle.
The bottom of the basin had been worn smooth by much treading. A boulder
some four feet tall and probably of an equal thickness rose, pulpit
like, at the center. Its top was hollowed out into a bowl and its sides
were inscribed with crude hieroglyphics. Near it were a half-dozen
upright poles, surmounted by what seemed to be cocoanuts. In a dozen
places under rude stone ovens were the ashes of dead fires. Scattering
piles of human bones--but nowhere a skull--told me that I had stumbled
on a _kai-kai_ temple--a place of cannibal observances and feasting. I
did not at once venture into the hollow for closer scrutiny. It was not
such an institution as one would care to invade carelessly. Over the
whole place hung a horrible stench. Flies buzzed about it in noisy,
filthy swarms. After a long interval of listening and reconnoitering I
became convinced that this place of special observance was to-day as
neglected as are many churches in Christian lands on week days.
I crept tremblingly down into the abominable pit and made my way toward
the stone altar prepared now for any atrocious sight. But the climax of
discovery came when I had crawled half way and the cocoanuts on the
poles resolved themselves into withered, human heads, sun dried and
yellow fringed.
These mummied skulls were for the most part trophies of old battles, but
lying at the top of the rock was another which must have surmounted its
living shoulders only a few days ago. The frizzled hair was tied into
dozens of kinky knots. The facial angle was low and slanting and the
coarse lips were hideously twisted in a snarl of death and defiance. On
the scalp, which a war club had crushed, sat a very beautiful head-dress
of gull feathers, brilliantly dyed in green and crimson and orange. The
victim had worn to his obsequies such a decoration as might have crowned
a princess of the Incas. He had been a warrior of rank and now, as
befitted his station, his head lay drying out on a mat of yellow and
brown wood pulp.
A stifling nausea assaulted the pit of my stomach. My retreating steps
reeled drunkenly, and when, near the rim of the basin, I turned for a
final gaze in the fascination of horror, I no longer had the place to
myself.
Two human figures stood at the farther rim of the amphitheater, silently
regarding me. Both were thin, pigmy-built men with long arms and low
foreheads. Their faces, grotesquely disfigured with bone and shell
ornaments spiked through noses and ears, were bestial yet not stupid.
Their eyes were beady and sharp, and just now their thick lips hung
pendulous with wonderment. For an instant I was incapable of motion;
then, as they stood in equal petrification, I remembered and acted on
the counsel of an east-side gang member whom I had once been privileged
to know in New York. I had inconsequently inquired whether, in his
acrimonious career, he never came eye to eye with fear.
"Sure thing," he had promptly replied, "but when a guy gets your
goat--stall. If you makes de play strong enough it's a cinch you gets
his goat too."
By that rule this was my moment to "stall." I drew myself up to the
limit of stature and threw out my chest in the best semblance of
arrogance I could assume.
They were decked like the head of their sacrificial victim, in brilliant
feather work, beautifully and harmoniously wrought. Their flint-tipped
spears were elaborately carved and their necklaces were fashioned of
shells and teeth. Some of the teeth were human. For perhaps thirty
seconds we held the strained tableau, then I glanced over my shoulder.
Between me and retreat stood a third figure. Compared to his gaudiness
of decking, the raiment of the others was mean and sober. One bare
shoulder and arm was covered with festering ulcers. His monkey-like
face had the same slant of brow and heaviness of lip, but it worked
constantly with a keen and twitching play of expression which argued
speculative thought. As I turned he was leaning on a knotted war-club,
and regarding me with profound gravity.