THE PLOT
We left the shed and, after she had locked its door very carefully and
returned the stone key to her pouch, were taken by Dramana to see the
famous Tree of Illusions, of which the juice and leaves, if powdered
and burnt, could produce such strange dreams and intoxicating effects.
It grew in a large walled space that was called Heu-Heu’s Garden,
though nothing else was planted there. Dramana assured us indeed that
this tree had a poisonous effect upon all other vegetation.
Passing the wall by a door of which she also produced some kind of key
out of her bag, we found ourselves standing in front of the famous
tree, if so it can be called, for its growth was shrub-like and its
topmost twigs were not more than twenty feet above the ground. On the
other hand, it covered a great area and had a trunk two or three feet
thick from which projected a vast number of branches whereof the
extremities lay upon the soil, and I think rooted there, after the
manner of wild figs, though of this I am not certain.
It was an unholy product of nature, inasmuch as it had no real foliage,
only dark green, euphorbia-like and fleshy fingers—indeed, I think it
must have been some variety of euphorbia. At the extremities of these
green fingers appeared purple-coloured blooms with a most evil smell
that reminded me of the odour of something dead; also down their
sides—for, like the orange, the tree appeared to have the property of
flowering and fruiting at the same time—were yellow seed vessels about
the size of those of a prickly pear. Except that the trunk was covered
with corrugated gray bark and that the finger-like leaves were full of
resinous white milk like those of other euphorbias, there is nothing
more to say about it. I should add, however, that Dramana told us no
other specimen existed, either on the mainland or the island, and that
to attempt its propagation elsewhere was a capital offence. In short,
the Tree of Illusions was a monopoly of the priests.
Hans set to work and cut a large faggot of the leaves, or fingers,
which he tied up with a piece of string he had in his pocket, to be
conveyed to Zikali, though there seemed to be such a small prospect of
their ever reaching him. It was not an agreeable job, for when it was
cut the white juice of the tree spurted out, and if it fell upon the
flesh, burned like caustic.
I was glad when it came to an end because of the stench of the flowers,
but before I left I took the opportunity, when Dramana was not looking,
of picking some of the ripest of the fruits and putting them in my
pocket, with the idea of planting the seeds should we ever escape from
that country. I am sorry to say, however, that I never did so, as the
sharp spines that grew upon the fruits wore a hole in the lining of my
pocket, which already was thin from use, and they tumbled out
unobserved. Evidently the Tree of Illusions did not intend to be
reproduced elsewhere; at least, that was Hans’s explanation.
On our way back to the house we had to pass round a lava boulder on the
lake side of the sluice shed, crossing by a little bridge the water
channel that ran beneath it, near to a flight of landing steps that
were used by fishermen. I examined this channel which pierced the sea
wall and here, outside the sluice gate, was about twenty feet wide. At
the side of it, built into the wall, was a slab of stone on which were
marks, cut there, no doubt, to indicate the height of the water level
and the rate at which it rose. I noticed that the topmost of these
marks was already covered, and that during the little while I stood and
watched, it vanished altogether, showing that the water was rising
rapidly.
Seeing that I was interested, Dramana remarked that the priests said
that tradition never told of the water having reached that topmost mark
before, even during the greatest rains. She added that she supposed it
had done so now owing to the unprecedented wetness of the summer and
great tempests farther up the river that fed the lake, of which we were
experiencing the last.
“It is fortunate that you have such a strong door to keep out the
water,” I said.
“Yes, Lord,” she answered, “since if it broke all this side
of the island would be flooded. If you look you will see that already
the lake stands higher than the cultivated lands and even than the
mouth of the Cave of Heu-Heu. It is told in tradition that when first,
hundreds of years ago, these lands were reclaimed from the mud of the
lake and the wall was built to protect them, the priests of Heu-Heu
trusted to the rain for their crops. Then came many dry seasons, and
they cut a way through the wall and let in water to irrigate them,
making the sluice gate that you have seen to keep it out if it rose too
high. An old priest of that time said that this was madness and would
one day prove their destruction, but they laughed at him and made the
sluice. He was wrong also, since thenceforward their crops were
doubled, and the gate is so well-fashioned that no floods, however
great, have ever passed through or over it; nor can they do so, because
the top of the stone gate rises to the height of a child above the
level of the water wall which separates the lake from the reclaimed
land.”
“The lake might come over the crest of the wall,” I suggested.
“No, Lord. If you look you will see that the wall is raised far above
its level, to a height that no flood could ever reach.”
“Then safety depends upon the gate, Dramana?”
“Yes, Lord. If the flood were high enough, which it never has been
within the memory of man, the safety of the town would depend upon the
gate, and that of the Cave of Heu-Heu also. Before the mountain broke
into flame and destroyed the city of our ancestors, the new mouth was
made on the level, for formerly, it is said, it was entered from the
slope above. Moreover, there is no danger, because if any accident
happened and the flood broke through, all could flee up the mountain.
Only then the cultivated land would be ruined for a time and there
might be scarcity, during which people must obtain corn from the
mainland or draw it from that which is stored in pits in the hillside,
to be used in case of war or siege.”
I thanked her for her explanation of these interesting hydraulic
problems, and after another glance at the scale rock, on which the
marks had now vanished completely, showing me that the lake was still
rising rapidly, we went to the house to rest and eat.
Here Dramana left us, saying that she would return at sundown. I begged
her to do so without fail. This I did for her own sake, a fact that I
did not explain. Personally, I was indifferent as to whether she came
back or not, having learned all she could teach us, but as I was
planning catastrophe, I was anxious, should it come, to give her any
chance of escape that might offer for ourselves. After all, she had
been a good friend to us and was one who hated Dacha and Heu-Heu and
loved her sister Sabeela.
Hans led her to the door and in an awkward fashion made much ado in
helping her to put on her leaf raincoat, which she had discarded and
was carrying. For now suddenly the rain, which had almost ceased while
we walked, had begun to fall again in torrents.
When we had eaten and were left alone within closed doors, Hans and I
took counsel together.
“What is to be done, Hans?” I asked, wishing to hear his views.
“This, I think, Baas,” he answered. “When it draws near to
midnight we must go to hide near the steps, there by the Rock of
Offerings, not the smaller ones near the sluice gate. Then when the
canoe comes and lands the Lady Sabeela to be married, as soon as she
has been taken and tied to the post we must swim out to it, get aboard,
and go back to Walloo-town.”
“But that would not save the Lady Sabeela, Hans.”
“No, Baas, I was not troubling my head about the Lady Sabeela who I
hope will be happy with Heu-Heu, but it would save _us,_ though perhaps
we shall have to leave some of our things behind. If Issicore and the
rest wish to save the Lady Sabeela, they had better cease from being
cowards who are afraid of a stone statue and a handful of priests, and
do so for themselves.”
“Listen, Hans,” I said. “We came here to get a bundle of
stinking leaves for Zikali and to save the Lady Sabeela who is the
victim of folly and wickedness. The first we have got, the second
remains to be done. I mean to save that unfortunate woman, or to die in
the attempt.”
“Yes, Baas. I thought the Baas would say that, since we are all fools
in our different ways, and how can any one dig out of his heart the
folly that his mother put there before he was born? Therefore, since
the Baas is a fool, or in love with the Lady Sabeela because she is so
pretty—I don’t know which—we must make another plan and try
to get ourselves killed in carrying it out.”
“What plan?” I asked, disregarding his crude satire.
“I don’t know, Baas,” he said, staring at the roof. “If
I had something to drink, I might be able to think of one, as all this
wet has filled my head with fog, just as my stomach is full of water.
Still, Baas, do I understand the Baas to say that if that stone gate
were broken the lake would flow in and flood this place, also the Cave
of Heu-Heu, where all the priests and their wives will be gathered
worshipping him?”
“Yes, Hans, so I believe, and very quickly. As soon as the water began
to run it would tear away the wall on either side of the sluice and
enter in a mighty flood; especially as now the rain is again falling
heavily.”
“Then, Baas, we must let the stone fall, and as we are not strong
enough to do it ourselves, we must ask this to help us,” and he
produced from his bag the two pounds of powder done up in stout flasks
of soldered tin as it had left the maker in England. “As I am called
Lord-of-the-Fire, the priests of Heu-Heu will think it quite natural,”
he added with a grin.
“Yes, Hans,” I said, nodding, “but the question
is—how?”
“I think like this, Baas. We must pack these two tins tight into that
hole in the rock door beneath the pin with the help of little stones,
and cover them over thickly with mud to give the powder time to work
before the tins are blown out of the hole. But first we must bore holes
in the tins and make slow matches and put the ends of them into the
holes. Only how are we to make these slow matches?”
I looked about me. There on a shelf in the room stood the clay lamps
with which it was lighted at night, and by them lay a coil of the wick
which these people used, made of fine and dry plaited rushes, many feet
of it.
“There’s the very stuff!” I said.
We got it down, we soaked it in a mixture of the native oil, mixed with
gunpowder that I extracted from a cartridge, and behold! in half an
hour we had two splendid slow matches that by experiment I reckoned
would take quite five minutes to burn before the fire reached the
powder. That was all we could do for the moment.
“Now, Baas,” said Hans, when we had finished our preparations and
hidden the matches away to dry, “all this is very nice, but supposing
that the stone falls and the water runs in and everything goes softly,
how are we to get off the island? If we drown the priests of
Heu-Heu—though I do not think we shall drown them because they will
bolt up the mountain-side like rock rabbits—we drown ourselves also,
and travel in their company to the Place of Fires of which your
Reverend Father was so fond of talking. It will be very nice to try to
drown the priests of Heu-Heu, Baas, but we shall be no better off, nor
will the Lady Sabeela if we leave her tied to that post.”
“We shall not leave her, Hans, that is if things go as I hope; we shall
leave someone else.”
Hans saw light and his face brightened.
“Oh, Baas, now I understand! You mean that you will tie to the post the
Lady Dramana, who is older and not quite so nice-looking as the Lady
Sabeela, which is why you told her she must stay with us all the time
after she comes back? That is quite a good plan, especially as it will
save us trouble with her afterwards. Only, Baas, it will be necessary
to give her a little knock on the head first lest she should make a
noise and betray us in her selfishness.”
“Hans, you are a brute to think that I mean anything of the sort,”
I said indignantly.
“Yes, Baas, of course I am a brute who think of you and myself before I
do of others. But then _who_ will the Baas leave? Surely he does not
mean to leave _me_ dressed up in a bride’s robe?” he added in
genuine alarm.
“Hans, you are a fool as well as a brute, for, silly as you may be, how
could I get on without you? I do not mean to leave any one living. I
mean to leave that dead woman in the gate house.”
He stared at me in evident admiration and answered,
“The Baas is growing quite clever. For once he has thought of something
that I have not thought of first. It is a good plan—if we can carry her
there without any one seeing us, and the Lady Sabeela does not betray
us by making a noise, laughing and crying both together like stupid
women do. But suppose that it all happens, there will be four of us,
and how are we to get into that canoe, Baas, if those cowardly Walloos
wait so long?”
“Thus, Hans. When the canoe lands the Lady Sabeela and she has been
tied to the post, if Dramana speaks truth, it waits for the dawn at a
little distance. While it is waiting you must swim out to it, taking
your pistol with you, which you will hold above your head with one hand
to keep the cartridges dry, but leaving everything else behind. Then
you must get into the boat, telling the Walloo and Issicore, or whoever
is there, who you are. Later, when all is quiet, the Lady Dramana and I
will carry the dead woman to the post and tie her there in place of
Sabeela. After this you will bring the canoe to the landing steps—the
small landing steps by the big boulder which we saw near to the sluice
mouth on the lake wall, those that Dramana told us were used by
fishermen, because it is not lawful for them to set foot upon the Rock
of Offerings. You remember them?”
“Yes, Baas. You mean the ones at the end of a little pier which Dramana
also said was built to keep mud from the lake from drifting into the
sluice mouth and blocking it.”
“When I see you coming, Hans, I shall fire the slow matches and we will
run down to the pier and get into the canoe. I hope that the priests
and their women in the cave, which is at a distance, will not hear the
powder explode beneath that shed, and that when they come out of the
cave they will find the water running in and swamping them. This might
give them something else to do besides pursuing us, as doubtless they
would otherwise, for I am sure they have canoes hidden away somewhere
near by, although Dramana may not know where they are. Now do you
understand?”
“Oh, yes, Baas. As I said, the Baas has grown quite clever all of a
sudden. I think it must be that Wine of Dreams he drank last night that
has woke up his mind. But the Baas has missed one thing. Supposing that
I get into the canoe safely, how am I to make those people row in to
the landing steps and take you off? Probably they will be afraid, Baas,
or say that it is against their custom, or that Heu-Heu will catch them
if they do, or something of the sort.
“You will talk to them gently, Hans, and if they will not listen, then
you will talk to them with your pistol. Yes, if necessary, you will
shoot one or more of them, Hans, after which I think the rest will obey
you. But I hope that this will not be necessary, since if Issicore is
there, certainly he will desire to win back Sabeela from Heu-Heu. Now
we have settled everything, and I am going to sleep for a while, with
the slow matches under me to dry them, as I advise you to do also. We
had little rest last night, and to-night we shall have none at all, so
we may as well take some while we can. But first bring that mat and tie
up the twigs from the stinking tree for Zikali, on whom be every kind
of curse for sending us on this job.”
“Settled everything!” I repeated to myself with inward sarcasm as I
lay down and shut my eyes. In truth, nothing at all was ever less
settled, since success in such a desperate adventure depended upon a
string of hypotheses long enough to reach from where we were to
Capetown. Our case was an excellent example of the old proverb:
If ifs and ands made pots and pans,
There’d be no work for tinkers’ hands.
_If_ the canoe came; _if_ it waited off the rock; _if_ Hans
could swim out to it without being observed and get aboard; _if_ he
could persuade those fetish-ridden Walloos to come to take us off; _if_
we could carry out our little game about the powder undetected; _if_
the powder went off all right and broke up the sluice-handle as per
plan; _if_ we could free Sabeela from the post; _if_ she did not play
the fool in some female fashion; _if_ blackguards of sorts did not
manage to cut our throats during all these operations, and a score of
other “ifs,” why, then our pots and pans would be satisfactorily
manufactured and perhaps the priests of Heu-Heu would be satisfactorily
frightened away or drowned. As it was, it looked to me as though, so
far from not getting any rest that night, we should slumber more
soundly than ever we did before—in the last long sleep of all.
Well, it could not be helped, so I just fell back upon my favourite
fatalism, said my prayers and went off to sleep, which, thank God, I
can do at any time and under almost any circumstances. Had it not been
for that gift I should have been dead long ago.
When I woke up it was dark, and I found Dramana standing over me;
indeed, it was her entry that roused me. I looked at my watch and
discovered to my surprise that it was past ten o’clock at night.
“Why did you not wake me before?” I said to Hans.
“What was the use, Baas, seeing that there was nothing to be done and
it is dull to be idle without a drop to drink?”
That’s what he said, but the fact was that he had been fast asleep
himself. Well, I was thankful, as thus we got rid of many weary hours
of waiting.
Suddenly I made up my mind to tell Dramana everything, and did so.
There was something about this woman that made me trust her; also,
obviously, she was mad with desire to escape from Dacha, whom she hated
and who hated her and had determined to murder her as soon as he had
obtained possession of Sabeela.
She listened and stared at me, amazed at the boldness of my plans.
“It may all end well,” she said, “though there is the magic
of the priests to be feared which may tell them things that their eyes
do not see.”
“I will risk the magic,” I said.
“There is also another thing,” she went on. “We cannot get
into the place where the stone gate is which you would destroy. As I
was bidden, when I went back to the cave, I gave up the bag in which I
carried the key and that of Heu-Heu’s Garden to Dacha, and he has put
it away, I know not where. The door is very strong, Lord, and cannot be
broken down, and if I went to ask Dacha for the key again he would
guess all, especially as the water is rising more fast than it ever
rose before in the memory of man, and priests have been to make sure
that the stone gate is fixed so that it cannot be moved—yes, and bound
down the handle with ropes.”
Now I sat still, not knowing what to say, for I had overlooked this
matter of the key. While I did so I heard Hans chuckling idiotically.
“What are you laughing at, you little donkey?” I asked. “Is
it a time to laugh when all our plans have come to nothing?”
“No, Baas, or rather, yes, Baas. You see, Baas, I guessed that
something of this sort might happen, so, just in case it should, I took
the key out of the Lady Dramana’s bag and put in a stone of about the
same weight in place of it. Here it is,” and from his pocket he
produced that ponderous and archaic lock-opening instrument.
“That was wise. Only you say, Dramana, that the priests have been to
the shed. How did they get in without the key?” I asked.
“Lord, there are two keys. He who is called the Watcher of the Gate has
one of his own. According to his oath he carries it about him all day
at his girdle and sleeps with it at night. The key I had was that of
the high priest, who uses it, and others that he may look into all
things when he pleases, though this he does seldom, if ever.”
“So far so good, then, Dramana. Have you aught to tell us?”
“Yes, Lord. You will do well to escape from this island to-night, if
you can, since at to-day’s council an oracle has gone forth from
Heu-Heu that you and your companion are to be sacrificed at the bridal
feast to-morrow. It is an offering to the Wood-dwellers, who now know
that the woman was killed by you on the river and say that if you are
allowed to live they will not fight against the Walloos. I think also
that I am to be sacrificed with you.”
“Are we indeed?” I said, reflecting to myself that any scruples I
might have had as to attempting to drown out these fanatical brutes
were now extinct for reasons which quite satisfied my conscience. I did
not intend to be sacrificed if I could help it, then or at any future
time, and evidently the best way to prevent this would be to give the
prospective sacrificers a dose of their own medicine. From that moment
I became as ruthless as Hans himself.
Now I understood why we were being treated with so much courtesy and
allowed to see everything we wished. It was to lull our suspicions.
What did it matter how much we learned, if within a few hours we were
to be sent to a land whence we could communicate it to no one else?
I asked more particularly about this oracle, but only got answers from
Dramana that I could not understand. It appeared, however, that as she
said, it had undoubtedly been issued in reply to prayers from the
savage Hairy Folk, who demanded satisfaction for the death of their
countrywoman on the river, and threatened rebellion if it were not
granted. This explained everything, and really the details did not
matter.
Having collected all the information I could, we sat down to supper,
during which Dramana told us incidentally that it had been arranged
that our arms, which were known “to spit out fire,” should be
stolen from us while we slept before dawn, so as to make us helpless
when we were seized.
So it came to this: if we were to act at all, it must be at once.
I ate as much as I was able, because food gives strength, and Hans did
the same. Indeed, I am sure that he would have made an excellent meal
even in sight of the noose which his neck was about to occupy. Eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die, would have been Hans’s favourite motto if
he had known it, as perhaps he did. Indeed, we did drink also of some
of the native liquor which Dramana had brought with her, since I
thought that a moderate amount of alcohol would do us both good,
especially Hans, who had the prospect of a cold swim before him.
Immediately I had swallowed the stuff I regretted it, since it occurred
to me that it might be drugged. However, it was not; Dramana had seen
to that.
When we had finished our food we packed up our small belongings in the
most convenient way we could. One half of these I gave to Dramana to
carry, as she was a strong woman, and, of course, as he had to swim,
Hans could be burdened with nothing except his pistol and the bundle of
twigs from the Tree of Illusions, which we thought might help both to
support and to conceal him in the water.
Then about eleven o’clock we started, throwing over our heads goatskin
rugs that had served for coverings on our beds, to make us resemble
those animals if that were possible.