Leading Eveena from the room, I hastily dictated every precaution that
could diminish the danger to her and others. Velna had run risks that
could not well be increased, and on her and on myself must devolve
what remained to be done. I sent an ambâ to summon Davilo, gathered
the garments that Eveena had thrown off, and removed them to the
death-chamber. When the first arrangements were made, and I had paid
the fee of Astona, the woman-physician, I passed out into the garden,
and Davilo met me at the door of the peristyle. A few words explained
all that was necessary. It was still almost dark; and as we stood
close by the door, speaking in the low tone partly of sadness, partly
of precaution, two figures were dimly discernible just inside, and we
caught a few broken words.
"You have heard," said a harsh voice, which seemed to be Astona's,
"there is no doubt now. You have your part to play, and can do it
quickly and safely."
I paid little attention to words whose dangerous significance would at
another moment have been plain to me. But Davilo, greatly alarmed,
laid his hand upon my arm. As he did so, another voice thrilled me
with intensest pain and amazement.
"Be quick to bear your message," Eivé said, in rapid guarded tones.
"They have means of vengeance certain and prompt, and they never
spare."
Astona departed without seeing us. Eivé closed the door, and Davilo
and I, hastily and unperceived, followed the spy to the gate of the
enclosure. Some one waited for her there. What passed we could not
hear; but, as we saw Astona and another depart, Davilo spoke
imprudently aloud—
"She has the secret, and she must die. Nay (as I would have
expostulated), she is spy, traitress, and assassin, and merits her
doom most richly."
"Hist!" said I, "your words may have fallen into other ears;" for I
thought that beyond the wall I discerned a crouching figure. If that
of a man, however, it was too far off, and dressed in colours too
dark, to be clearly seen; and in another instant it had certainly
vanished.
"Remember," he urged, "you have heard that one quite as dangerous is
under your own roof; and, once more, it is not only your life that is
at stake. What you call courage, what seems to us sheer folly, may
cost you and others what you value far more than your life. An error
of softness now may make your future existence one long and useless
remorse."
Half-an-hour later, having warned the women to their rooms—ordering a
variety of disinfecting measures in which Martial science excelled
while they were needed there—I opened the door of the death chamber
to those who carried in a coffer hollowed out of a dark, exceedingly
dense natural stone, and half-filled with a liquid of enormous
destructive power. Then I lifted tenderly the lifeless form, laid it
on cushions arranged therein, kissed the lips, and closed the coffer.
Two of Davilo's attendants had meantime adjusted the electric
machinery. We carried the coffer into the apartment where this worked
to heat the stove, to keep the lights burning, to raise, warm, and
diffuse the water through the house, and perform many other important
household services. Two strong bars of conducting metal were attached
to the apparatus, and fitted into two hollows of the coffer. A flash,
a certain hissing sound, followed. After a few moments the coffer was
opened, and Davilo, carefully gathering a few handfuls of solid white
material, something resembling pumice stone in appearance, placed them
in a golden chest about twelve inches cube, which was then soldered
down by the heat derived from the electric power. Then all infected
clothes and the contents of the death chamber were carried out for
destruction; while, with a tool adjusted to the machinery, one of the
attendants engraved a few characters upon the chest. Whatever the
risk, I could not part with every relic of her we had lost; and, after
passing them through such chemical purification as Martial science
suggested, I took the three long chestnut locks I had preserved.
Velna's quick fingers wove them into plaits, one of which I left with
her, one bound around my own neck, and one reserved for Eveena. As
soon as the sun had risen, I had despatched a message to the Prince,
explaining the danger of infection to which I had been subjected, and
asking permission notwithstanding to wait upon him. The emergency was
so pressing that neither sorrow nor peril would allow me to neglect an
embassy on which the lives of hundreds, and perhaps the safety of his
kingdom, might depend. Passing Eivé as I turned towards Eveena's room,
and fevered with intense thirst, I bade her bring me thither a cup of
the carcarâ. I need not dwell on the terribly painful moments in which
I bound round Eveena's arm a bracelet prized above all the choicest
ornaments she possessed. To calm her agitation and my own by means of
the charny, I sought the keys. They were not at my belt, and I asked,
"Have I returned them to you?"
"Certainly not," said Eveena, startled. "Can you not find them?"
At this moment Eivé entered the room and presented me with the cup for
which I had asked. It struck me with surprise, even at that moment,
that Eveena took it from my hand and carried it first to her own lips.
Eivé had turned to leave the room; but before she had reached the
threshold Eveena had sprung up, placed her foot upon the spring that
closed the door, and snatching the test-stone from my watch chain
dipped it into the cup. Her face turned white as death, while she held
up to my eyes the discoloured disc which proved the presence of the
deadliest Martial poison.
"Be calm," she said, as a cry of horror burst from my lips. "The
keys!"
"_You_ have them," Eivé said with a gasp, her face still averted.
"I took them from Eveena myself," I answered sternly. "Stand back into
that corner, Eivé," as I opened the door and called sharply the other
members of the household. When they entered, unable to stand, I had
fallen back upon a chair, and called Eivé to my side. As I laid my
hand on her arm she threw herself on the floor, screaming and writhing
like a terrified child rather than a woman detected in a crime, the
conception and execution of which must have required an evil courage
and determination happily seldom possessed by women.
"Stand up!" I said. "Lift her, then, Enva and Eiralé. Unfasten the
shoulder-clasps and zone."
As her outer robe dropped, Eivé snatched at an object in its folds,
but too late; and the electric keys, which gave access to all my
cases, papers, and to the medicine-chest above all, lay glittering on
the ground.
"That cup Eivé brought to me. Which of you saw her?"
"I did," said Enva quietly, all feelings of malice and curiosity alike
awed into silence by the evidence of some terrible, though as yet to
them unknown, secret. "She mixed it and brought it hither herself."
"And," I said, "it contains a poison against which, had I drunk
one-half the draught, no antidote could have availed—a poison to
which these keys only could have given access."
Again the test-stone was applied, and again the discoloration
testified to the truth of the charge.
"You have seen?" I said.
"We have seen," answered Enva, in the same tone of horror, too deep to
be other than quiet.
We all left the room, closing the door upon the prisoner. Dismissing
the girls to their own chambers, with strict injunctions not to quit
them unpermitted, I was left alone with Eveena. We were silent for
some minutes, my own heart oppressed with mingled emotions, all
intensely painful, but so confused that, while conscious of acute
suffering, I scarcely realised anything that had occurred. Eveena, who
knelt beside me, though deeply horror-struck, was less surprised and
was far less agitated than I. At last, leaning forward with her arms
on my knee and looking up in my face, she was about to speak. But the
touch and look seemed to break a spell, and, shuddering from head to
foot, I burst into tears like those of an hysterical girl. When, with
the strongest effort that shame and necessity could prompt, aided by
her silent soothing, I had somewhat regained my self-command, Eveena
spoke, in the same attitude and with the same look:—
"You said once that you could pardon such an attempt. That you should
ever forgive at heart cannot be. That punishment should not follow so
terrible a crime, even I cannot desire. But for _my_ sake, do not give
her up to the doom she has deserved. Do you know" (as I was silent)
"what that doom is?"
"Death, I suppose."
"Yes!" she said, shuddering, "but death with torture—death on the
vivisection-table. Will you, whatever the danger—_can_ you, give up
to such a fate, to such hands, one whom your hand has caressed, whose
head has rested on your heart?"
"It needs not that, Eveena," I answered; "enough that she is woman. I
would face that death myself rather than, for whatever crime, send a
woman, above all a young girl, to such an end. I would rather by far
slay my worst enemy with my own hand than consign him to a death of
torture. But, more than that, my conscience would not permit me to
call on the law to punish a household treason, where household
authority is so strong and so arbitrary as here. Assassination is the
weapon of the oppressed and helpless; and it is not for me so to be
judge in my own cause as to pronounce that Eivé has had no
provocation."
"Shame upon her!" said Eveena indignantly. "No one under your roof
ever had or could have reason to raise a hand, I do not say against
your life, but to give you a moment's pain. I do not ask, I do not
wish you to spare her; only I am glad to think you will deal with her
yourself—remember she has herself removed all limit to your
power—and not by the shameless and merciless hands to which the law
would give her."
We returned to Eveena's chamber. The scene that followed I cannot bear
to recall. Enough that Eivé knew as well as Eveena the law she had
broken and the penalty she had incurred; and, petted darling as she
had been, she utterly lacked all faith in the tenderness she had known
so well, or even in the mercy to which Eveena had confidently
appealed. Understanding at last that she was safe from the law, the
expression of her gratitude was as vehement as her terror had been
intense. But the new phase of passion was not the less repugnant. Not
that there was anything strange in the violent revulsion of feeling.
Born and trained among a race who fear to forgive, Eivé was familiar
by report at least with the merciless vengeance of cowards. Whatever
they might have done later, few would have promised mercy in the very
moment of escape to an ordinary assassin; and if Eivé understood any
aspect of my character, that she could best appreciate was the
outraged tenderness which forbade me to look on hers as ordinary
guilt. Acutely sensitive to pain and fear, she had both known the
better to what terror might prompt the injured, and was the more
appalled by the prospect. Her eagerness to accept by anticipation
whatever degradation and pain domestic power could inflict, when
released by the terrible alternative of legal prosecution from its
usual limits, breathed more of doubt and terror than of shame or
penitence. But at first it keenly affected me. It was with something
akin to a bodily pang that I heard this fragile girl, so easily
subdued by such rebuke or menace as her companions would scarcely have
affected to fear, now pleading for punishment such as would have
quelled the pride and courage of the most high-spirited of her sex. I
felt the deepest pity, not so much for the fear with which she still
trembled as for the agony of terror she must have previously endured.
Eveena averted from her abject supplications a face in which I read
much pain, but more of what would have been disgust in a less
intensely sympathetic nature. And ere long I saw or felt in Eivé's
manner that which caused me suddenly to dismiss Eveena from the room,
as from a presence unfit for her spotless purity and exquisite
delicacy. Finding in me no sign of passionate anger, no readiness, but
reluctance to visit treason with physical pain, Eivé's own expression
changed. Unable to conceive the feeling that rendered the course she
had at first expected simply impossible to me, a nature I had utterly
misconceived caught at an idea few women, not experienced in the worst
of life's lessons, would have entertained. The tiny fragile form, the
slight limbs whose delicate proportions seemed to me almost those of
infancy, their irrepressible quivering plainly revealed by the absence
of robe and veil, no man worthy of the name could have beheld without
intense compassion. But such a feeling she could not realise. As her
features lost the sincerity of overwhelming fear, as the drooping lids
failed for one moment to conceal a look of almost assured exultation
in the dark eyes, my soul was suddenly and thoroughly revolted. I had
forgiven the hand aimed at a heart that never throbbed with a pulse
unkind to her. I might have forgotten the treason that requited
tenderness and trust by seeking my life; but I could never forget,
never recover, that moment's insight into thoughts that so outraged an
affection which, if my conscience belied me not, was absolutely
stainless and unselfish.
It cost a strong persistent effort of self-control to address her
again. But a confession full and complete my duty to others compelled
me to enforce. The story of the next hour I never told or can tell. To
one only did I give a confidence that would have rendered explanation
natural; and that one was the last to whom I could have spoken on this
subject. Enough that the charming infantine simplicity had disguised
an elaborate treachery of which I reluctantly learned that human
nature is capable. The caressed and caressing child had sold my life,
if not her own soul, for the promise of wealth that could purchase
nothing I denied her, and of the first place among the women of her
world. That promise I soon found had not been warranted, directly or
indirectly, by him who alone could at present fulfil it. Needless to
relate the details either of the confession or its extortion. Enough
that Eivé learnt at last perforce that though I had, as it seemed to
her, been fool enough to spare her the vengeance of the law, and to
spare her still as far as possible, her power to fool me further was
gone for ever. Needless to speak of the lies repeated and sustained,
till truth was wrung from quivering lips and sobbing voice; of the
looks that appealed long and incredulously to a love as utterly
forfeited as misunderstood. To the last Eivé could not comprehend the
nature that, having spared her so much, would not spare wholly; the
mercy felt for the weakness, not for the charms of youth and sex.
Shamed, grieved, wounded to the quick, I quitted the presence of one
who, I fear, was as little worth the anguish I then endured for her,
as the tenderness she had so long betrayed; and left the late darling
of my house a prisoner under strict guard, necessary for the safety of
others than ourselves.
Finding a message awaiting me, I sought at once the interview which
the Sovereign fearlessly granted.
"I see," said the Prince with much feeling, as he received my salute,
"that you have gone through deeper pain than such domestic losses can
well cause to us. I am sorry that you are grieved. I can say no more,
and perhaps the less I say the less pain I shall give. Only permit me
this remark. Since I have known you, it has seemed to me that the
utter distinction between our character and yours, showing as it does
at so many points, springs from some single root-difference. We, so
careful of our own life and comfort, care little for those of others.
We, so afraid of pain, are indifferent to its infliction, unless we
have to witness it, and only some of us flinch from the sight. The
softness of heart you show in this trouble seems in some strange way
associated with the strength of heart which you have proved in
dangers, the least of which none of us would have encountered
willingly, and which, forced on us, would have unnerved us all. I am
glad to prove to you that to some extent I depart from my national
character and approach, however, distantly, to yours. I can feel for a
friend's sorrow, and I can face what you seem to consider a real
danger. But you had a purpose in asking this audience. My ears are
open—your lips are unsealed."
"Prince," I replied, "what you have said opens the way to that I
wished to ask. You say truly that courage and tenderness have a common
root, as have the unmanly softness and equally unmanly hardness common
among your subjects. Those for whom death ends all utterly and for
ever will of necessity, at least as soon as the training of years and
of generations has rendered their thought consistent, dread death with
intensest fear, and love to brighten and sweeten life with every
possible enjoyment. Animal enjoyment becomes the most precious, since
it is the keenest. Higher pleasures lose half their value, when the
distinction between the two is reduced to the distinction between the
sensations of higher and lower nerve centres. Thus men care too much
for themselves to care for others; and after all, strong deep
affection, entwined with the heartstrings, can only torture and tear
the hearts for which death is a final parting. Such love as I have
felt for woman—even such love as I felt for her, your gift, whom I
have lost—would be pain intolerable if the thought were ever present
that one day we must, and any day we might, part for ever. I put the
knife against my breast, my life in your hand, when I say this, and I
ask of you no secrecy, no favour for myself; but that, as I trust you,
you will guard the life that is dearest to me if you take from me the
power to guard it.... There are those among your subjects who are not
the cowards you find around your throne, who are not brutal in their
households, not incapable of tenderness and sacrifice for others."
As I spoke I carefully watched the Prince's face, on which no shade of
displeasure was visible; rather the sentiment of one who is somewhat
gratified to hear a perplexing problem solved in a manner agreeable to
his wishes.
"And the reason is," I continued, "that these men and women believe or
know that they are answerable to an eternal Sovereign mightier than
yourself, and that they will reap, not perhaps here, but after death
as they shall have sown; that if they do not forfeit the promise by
their own deed, they shall rejoin hereafter those dearest to them
here."
"There are such?" he said. "I would they were known to me. I had not
dreamed that there were in my realm men who would screen the heart of
another with their own palm."
"Prince," I replied earnestly, "I as their ambassador as one of their
leaders, appeal to you to know and to protect them. They can defend
themselves at need, and, it may be, might prevail though matched one
against a thousand. For their weapons are those against which no
distance, no defences, no numbers afford protection. But in such a
strife many of their lives must be lost, and infinite suffering and
havoc wrought on foes they would willingly spare. They are threatened
with extermination by secret spite or open force; but open force will
be the last resort of enemies well aware that those who strike at the
Star have ever been smitten by the lightning."
A slight change in his countenance satisfied me that the Emblem was
not unknown to him.
"You say," he replied, "that there is an organised scheme to destroy
these people by force or fraud?"
"The scheme, Prince, was confessed in my own hearing by one of its
instruments; and in proof thereof, my own life, as a Chief of the
Order, was attempted this morning."
The Prince sprang to his feet in all the passion of a man who for the
first time receives a personal insult; of an Autocrat stung to the
quick by an unprecedented outrage to his authority and dignity.
"Who has dared?" he said. "Who has taken on himself to make law, or
form plans for carrying out old law, without my leave? Who has dared
to strike at the life over which I have cast the shadow of my throne?
Give me their names, my guest, and, before the evening mist closes in
to-morrow, pronounce their doom."
"I cannot obey your royal command. I have no proof against the only
man who, to my knowledge, can desire my death. Those who actually and
immediately aimed at my life are shielded by the inviolable weakness
of sex from the revenge and even the justice of manhood."
"Each man," returned the Prince, but partially conceiving my meaning,
"is master at home. I wish I were satisfied that your heart will let
you deal justly and wisely with the most hateful offspring of the most
hateful of living races—a woman who betrays the life of her lord. But
those who planned a general scheme of destruction—a purpose of public
policy—without my knowledge, must aim also at my life and throne; for
even were their purpose such as I approved, attempted without my
permission, they know I would never pardon the presumption. I do not
sit in Council with dull ears, or silent lips, or empty hands; and it
is not for the highest more than for the lowest under me to snatch my
sceptre for a moment."
"Guard then your own," I said. "Without your leave and in your
lifetime, open force will scarcely he used against us; and if against
secret murder or outrage we appeal to the law, you will see that the
law does justice?"
"I will," he replied; "and I pardon your advice to guard my own,
because you judge me by my people. But a Prince's life is the charge
of his guards; the lives of his people are his care."
He was silent for a few minutes, evidently in deep reflection.
"I thank you," he said at last, "and I give you one warning in partial
return for yours. There is a law which can be used against the members
of a secret society with terrible effect. Not only are they exposed to
death if detected, but those who strike them are legally exempt from
punishment. I will care that that law shall not menace you long.
Whilst it remains guard yourselves; I am powerless to break it."
As I quitted the Palace, Ergimo joined me and mounted my carriage.
Seizing a moment when none were within sight or hearing, he said—
"Astona was found two hours ago dead, as an enemy or a traitor dies.
She was seen to fall from the roof of her house, and none was near her
when she fell. But Davilo has already been arrested as her murderer,
on the ground that he was heard before sunrise this morning to say
that she must die."
"Who heard that must have heard more. Let this news be quickly known
to whom it concerns."
I checked the carriage instantly, and turned into a road that
conducted us in ten minutes to a public telegraph office.
"Come with me," I said, "quickly. As an officer of the Camptâ your
presence may ensure the delivery of letters which might otherwise be
stopped."
He seized the hint at once, and as we approached a vacant desk he said
to the nearest officer, "In the Camptâ's name;" a form which ensured
that the most audacious and curious spy, backed by the highest
authority save that invoked, dared neither stop nor search into a
message so warranted. Before I left the desk every Chief of the Zinta
at his several post had received, through that strange symbolic
language of which I have already given samples, from me advice of what
had occurred and from Esmo warning to meet at an appointed place and
time.
The day at whose close we should meet was that of Davilo's trial. I
mingled with the crowd around the Court doors, a crowd manifesting
bitter hostility to the prisoner and to the Order, of whose secrets a
revelation was eagerly expected. Easily forcing my way through the
mass, I felt on a sudden a touch, a sign; and turning my eyes saw a
face I had surely never looked on before. Yet the sign could only have
been given by a colleague. That which followed implied the presence of
the Signet itself.
"I told you," whispered a voice I knew well, "how completely we can
change even countenance at will."
It was so; but though acquainted with the process, I had never
believed that the change could be so absolute. By help of my strength
and height, still more perhaps by the subtle influence of his own
powerful will acting none the less imperiously on minds unconscious of
its influence, Esmo made his way with me into the Court.
Around five sides of the hexagon were seats, tier above tier,
appropriated to the public who wish to see as well as hear. The
phonograph reported every word uttered to hundreds of distant offices.
Against the sixth side were placed the seats of the seven judges; in
front, at an equal elevation, the chair of the prisoner, the seats of
the advocates on right and left, and the place from which each witness
must deliver his testimony in full view and within easy hearing both
of the bench, the bar, and the audience. Davilo sat in his chair
unguarded, but in an attitude strangely constrained and motionless.
Only his bright eyes moved freely, and his head turned a little from
side to side. He recognised us instantly, and his look expressed no
trace of fear.
"The _quârry_" whispered Esmo, observing my perplexity.
"It paralyses the nerves of motion, leaving those of sensation active;
and is administered to a prisoner on the instant of his arrest, so as
to keep him absolutely helpless till his sentence is executed, or till
on his acquittal an antidote is administered."
The counsel for the prosecution stated in the briefest possible words
the story of Astona, from the moment when she left my house to that at
which she was found dead, and the method of her death; related
Davilo's words, and then proceeded to call his witnesses. Of course
the one vital question was whether by possibility Davilo, who had
never left my premises since the words were uttered, could have
brought about a death, evidently accidental in its immediate cause, at
a distance of many miles. His words were attested by one whom I
recognised as an officer of Endo Zamptâ, and I was called to confirm
or contradict them. The presiding judge, as I took my place, read a
brief telling terrible menace, expounding the legal penalties of
perjury.
"You will speak the truth," he said, "or you know the consequences."
As he spoke, he encountered Esmo's eyes, and quailed under the gaze,
sinking back into his seat motionless as the bird under the alleged
fascination of the serpent. I admitted that the words in question had
been addressed to me; and I proved that Davilo had been busily engaged
with me from that moment until an hour later than that of the fatal
accident. There being thus no dispute as to the facts, a keen contest
of argument proceeded between the advocates on either side. The
defenders of the prisoner ridiculed with an affectation of scientific
contempt—none the less effective because the chief pleader was
himself an experienced member of our Order—the idea that the actions
or fate of a person at a distance could be affected by the mere will
of another; and related, as absurd and incredible traditions of old to
this purport, some anecdotes which had been communicated to me as
among the best attested and most striking examples of the historical
exercise of the mystic powers. The able and bigoted sceptics, who
prosecuted this day in the interests of science, insisted, with equal
inconsistency and equal skill, on the innumerable recorded and
attested instances of some diabolical power possessed by certain
supposed members of a detested and malignant sect. A year ago the
judges would probably have sided unanimously with the former. But the
feeling that animated the conspiracy, if it should be so called,
against the Zinta, had penetrated all Martial society; and in order to
destroy the votaries of religion, Science, in the persons of her most
distinguished students, was this day ready to abjure her character,
and forswear her most cherished tenets. As has often happened in Mars,
and may one day happen on Earth as the new ideas come into greater
force, proven fact was deliberately set against logical impossibility;
and for once—what probably had not happened in Mars for ten thousand
years—proven fact and common sense carried the day against science
and "universal experience;" but, unhappily, against the prisoner.
After retiring separately for about an hour, the Judges returned.
Their brief and very confused decisions were read by the Secretary.
The reasons were seldom intelligible, each contradicting himself and
all his colleagues, and not one among the judgments having even the
appearance of cohesion and consistency. But, by six to one, they
doomed the prisoner to the vivisection-table. As he was carried forth
his eyes met ours, and the perfect calm and steadiness of their glance
astounded me not a little.
My natural thought prompted, of course, an appeal to the mercy of the
Throne. In every State a power of giving effect in the law's despite
to public policy, or of commanding that, in certain strange and
unforeseen circumstances, common sense and practical justice shall
override a sentence which no court bound by the letter of the law can
withhold, must rest with the Sovereign. But in Mars the prerogative of
mercy, in the proper sense of the word—judicial rather than political
mercy—is exercised less by the Prince himself than by a small council
of judges advising him and pronouncing their decision in his name.
Even if we could have relied on the Camptâ with absolute confidence,
there were many reasons against an appeal which would, in fact, have
asked him to declare himself on our side. While such a declaration
might, in the existing state of public feeling, have caused revolt or
riot, it would have put on their guard, perhaps driven to a premature
attempt which he was not prepared to meet, the traitors whose scheme
against his life the Prince felt confident that he should speedily
detect and punish.
All these considerations were brought before our Council, whose debate
was brief but not hurried or excited. The supreme calm of Esmo's
demeanour communicated itself to all the eleven, in not one of whom
could I recognise till they spoke my colleagues of our last Council.
The order went forth that a party should attend Esmo's orders at a
point about half a mile distant from the studio in which, for the
benefit of a great medical school, my unhappy friend was to be put to
torture indescribable.
"Happily," said Esmo, "the first portion of the experiment will be
made by the Vivisector-General alone, and will commence at midnight.
Half an hour before that time our party will be assembled."
I had insisted on being one of the band, and Esmo had very reluctantly
yielded to the unanimous approval of colleagues who thought that on
this occasion physical strength might render essential service at some
unforeseen crisis. Moreover, the place lying within my geographical
province, several of those engaged looked up to me as their immediate
chief, and it was thought well to place me on such an occasion at
their head.
The night was, as had been predicted, absolutely dark, but the roads
were brilliantly lighted. Suddenly, however, as we drew towards the
point of meeting, the lights went out, an accident unprecedented in
Martial administration.
"But they will be relighted!" said one of my companions.
"Can human skill relight the lamps that the power of the Star has
extinguished?" was the reply of another.
We fell in military order, with perfect discipline and steadiness,
under the influence of Esmo's silent will and scarcely discernible
gestures. The wing of the college in which the dissection was to take
place was guarded by some forty sentinels, armed with the spear and
lightning gun. But as we came close to them, I observed that each
stood motionless as a statue, with eyes open, but utterly devoid of
sight.
"I have been here before you," murmured Esmo. "To the left."
The door gave way at once before the touch of some electric instrument
or immaterial power wielded by his hand. We passed in, guided by him,
through one or two chambers, and along a passage, at the end of which
a light shone through a crystal door. Here proof of Esmo's superior
judgment was afforded. He would fain have had the party much smaller
than it was, and composed exclusively of the very few old and
experienced members of the Zinta within reach at the moment. We were
nearly a score in number, some even more inexperienced than myself,
half the party my own immediate followers; and I remembered far better
the feelings of a friend and a soldier than the lessons of the college
or the Shrine. As the door opened, and we caught sight of our friend
stretched on the vivisection table, the younger of the company,
hurried on by my own example, lost their heads and got, so to speak,
out of hand. We rushed tumultuously forward and fell on the Vivisector
and two assistants, who stood motionless and perhaps unconscious, but
with glittering knives just ready for their fiendish work. Before Esmo
could interpose, these executioners were cut down with the "crimson
blade" (cold steel); and we bore off our friend with more of eagerness
and triumph than at all befitted our own consciousness of power, or
suited the temper of our Chief.
Never did Esmo speak so sharply or severely as in the brief reprimand
he gave us when we reassembled; the justice of which I instinctively
acknowledged, as he ceased, by the salute I had given so often at the
close of less impressive and less richly deserved reprimands on the
parade ground or the march. Uninjured, and speedily relieved from the
effects of the _quârry_, Davilo was carried off to a place of
temporary concealment, and we dispersed.
Eveena heard my story with more annoyance than interest, mortified not
a little by the reproof I had drawn upon myself and my followers; and,
despite her reluctance to seem to acknowledge a fault in me,
apparently afraid that a similar ebullition of feeling might on some
future occasion lead to serious disaster.