IV

One night after I had made my bed on a grassy sand-bank above the sea

and was waiting, in the thrilling and breathless twilight, to fall

asleep, I suddenly heard a sound as of a child weeping somewhere. My

heart bounded in horror. I lay scarce daring to breathe, and then when

there was silence again, looked up and down the shore for the person

who had cried. But I saw no one. I listened--listened, expecting to

hear the cry again, but only the waves turned the stones, broke,

rolled up, and turned the stones again. Evening crept over the sea,

and the waves looked dark and shadowy; the silence grew more intense.

I turned on one side to go to sleep, and then once more came a sad,

despairing human cry as of a lost child. I sat bolt upright and looked

about me, and even then, whilst I stared, the cry came again, and

from the sea. "Is it possible there is a child down by the waves?" I

thought, and I tried to distinguish some little human shape in the

darkness that seemed hastening on the shoulders of the incoming waves.

There came a terrible wail and another silence. I dared not go and

search, but I lay and shuddered and felt terribly lonely. The waves

followed one another and followed again, ever faster and faster as it

seemed in the darkness--

Still on each wave followed the wave behind,

And then another behind,

And then another behind....

They came forward fantastically, and I felt as if I were lying in the

presence of something most ancient, most terrible.

Presently a bird with great dark wings flew noiselessly just over my

head, and then over the sea rose the moon, young, new drest, and I

forgot the strange cry in the presence of a familiar friend. It was as

if a light had been brought into one's bedroom. Probably the cry was

that of an owl; it came no more. I slept.

V

There was my walk to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda on

the promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashore

were swamps overgrown with bamboos and giant grasses, twelve feet

high. The sea was grey and calm. Lying on the sand, one saw the

reflection, or the refracted images, of the grey stones at the bottom

of the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, it

splashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, came

back again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-water

line was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the whole

of the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshine

struggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled in

the giant grasses like the sound of men on horseback, so that I was

continually looking behind in apprehension.

A land that is lonelier than ruin,

A sea that is stranger than death.

At a lonely house, half-way to the monastery, I thought to obtain

bread, but as I approached it twelve large brown mastiffs rushed out

and assailed me. I was in a pitiable plight, warding them off with my

stick, and did not escape without bites. I called for help, and some

one then whistled from a window and called the dogs back. I don't

fear dogs, but these were powerful animals, and withal a tremendous

surprise. I must have had a bad time had no one called them away.

I came to the river Bzib, deep and fast-running, and rowed myself

across in a leaky and muddy boat. I ploughed my way through deep

sand, or stepped from boulder to boulder, or crushed through miles of

sea-holly and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which the

Ahkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, since

their conversion, they have chiefly committed murder. I passed through

three strange woods, the first of juniper and wild pear; the second,

all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn,

but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the

third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the

far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like

woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular

elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the

earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the

wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails

had never been clipped; the third, queenly, as if beloved of Diana.

Evening grew to night as I plodded past these woods or struggled

through them. The temptation was to go into the wood and walk on

firmer soil--but the thickets were many, and not a furlong did it

profit me. Then there were thorns, you must know, and abundant

long-clawed creepers that grasped the legs and kept them fixed

till they were tenderly extricated by the hand. When I came to the

pine-wood it was night, and the many stars shone over the sea. I

walked easily and gratefully over the soft pine needles, and I

constantly sought with my eyes for the monastery domes. The moonlight

through the pines looked like mist, and the forest climbed gradually

over rising cliffs. Far away on the dark cape I saw the flash of the

lighthouse....

No houses, no people, only a faint cart-track. That track bade me

hope. I would follow it in any case. At last, suddenly, I thought

I saw the cloud of white smoke of a bonfire. It was the far-away

monastery wall, high and white, with a little lamp in one window. I

bore up with the distance, forms grew distinct in the night; I entered

the monastery by a five-hundred-yard avenue of cedars.

I met a novice in a long smock. He took me to the guest-rooms of the

monastery, and there, to my joy, I was accommodated with a bed--the

first for many weeks. I was introduced to a very fat and ancient monk

who carried at his belt a bunch of keys. Though very stupid, and, as I

learnt afterwards, quite illiterate, he was the spirit of hospitality.

He kept the larder, and very gladly brought me milk and bread and

cheese, roast beef, wine, and would apparently have brought me

anything I asked for--all "for the love of God": no monastery charges

anything for its hospitality.

After my supper I was glad to stretch my limbs and sleep. I opened my

window and lay for a while looking at the mysterious dark masses of

the cedars and listening to the low sobbing of the waves. In the

monastery buildings I heard the turnings of heavy keys. I slept. Next

morning at sunrise I had breakfast in the refectory, and the abbot

deigned to come in and talk about Pitsoonda. His was an ancient and

beautiful monastery, built by the same hand that erected St. Sophia at

Constantinople, Justinian the First. It was indeed a replica of that

famous building, a fine specimen of Byzantine architecture. It had

changed hands many times, belonging to the Greeks, the Turks, the

Cherkesses, and finally to the Russians. Here formerly stood the

fortified town of Pitius, scarcely a stone of which was now standing,

though many were the weapons and household implements that had been

found by the monks. It was now the scene of the quiet life of twenty

or thirty brethren. No one ever visited them or sought them from

without. Steamers never called--only occasional feluccas came in

bringing Caucasian tribesmen from neighbouring villages, and there was

no carriage-way to any town.

We talked later of present-day matters, the abbot being at once

omniscient and omni-ignorant, and I finished my breakfast in time

to accompany him to church. I went to morning service in the great

high-walled cathedral and saw all the brothers pray. Of the people of

the neighbourhood there were only three; these with the monks formed

the whole congregation--there is no village at Pitsoonda. Imagine a

gigantic and noble building fit to be the living heart of a great

metropolis, and inside of it but a few little pictures, brightly

painted, and a diminutive rood-screen, scarcely higher than a

five-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted a

lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but

in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of

Robert Louis Stevenson--a Christ with a certain amount of cynicism,

one who might have smoked upon occasion. No doubt it was painted by a

Greek: a Russian would never have done anything so Western.

The monks, looking ancient and dwarf-like, for they had never cut

their beards, were accommodated in little pews along the walls, and

they could stand and rest their shoulders upon the high arms of the

pews and doze, but could not sit, for there were no seats.

The service was beautiful, though I had little feeling of being

in church--one needs many people in such a cathedral. I was more

interested in the monks, their faces and appearances, and in the

atmosphere of the monastery. Most of the monks were peasants,

dedicated to the religion of Christ and leading particularly strict

lives. It was difficult to understand how they lived. Their faces all

bore witness to their religious exercises, and on some were evidences

of spiritual meditation. They were all naturally rather stupid, and

here more stupid than usual, because they were cut off from society,

even from the society of their native villages. They did not study, or

read, or write; they had no worldly life to occupy them--there was no

means for it. They could gossip--yes, but I doubt if they even did

that. Assuredly here the Middle Ages slept.

* * * * *

Round the monastery, behold, the ruins of a great fort, slowly

crumbling away under the hand of Time. No fleets now sail against

Pitius, no pirates land on the barren cape--there is nothing to steal.

Even the monastery is without gold.