and the moss began to appear all over the dead houses. One day some
thistledown went drifting over the river.
For some years I watched these signs attentively, until I became certain
that London was passing away. Then I hoped once more, and all along both
banks of the river there was anger among the lost things that anything
should dare to hope upon the forsaken mud. Gradually the horrible houses
crumbled, until the poor dead things that never had had life got decent
burial among the weeds and moss. At last the may appeared and the
convolvulus. Finally, the wild rose stood up over mounds that had been
wharves and warehouses. Then I knew that the cause of Nature had
triumphed, and London had passed away.
The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in an ancient
cloak that was one of those that once my friends had worn, and peered
over the edge to see that I still was there. Then he went, and I never
saw men again: they had passed away with London.
A few days after the last man had gone the birds came into London, all
the birds that sing. When they first saw me they all looked sideways at
me, then they went away a little and spoke among themselves.
“He only sinned against Man,” they said; “it is not our quarrel.”
“Let us be kind to him,” they said.
Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the time of the
rising of the dawn, and from both banks of the river, and from the sky,
and from the thickets that were once the streets, hundreds of birds were
singing. As the light increased the birds sang more and more; they grew
thicker and thicker in the air above my head, till there were thousands
of them singing there, and then millions, and at last I could see
nothing but a host of flickering wings with the sunlight on them, and
little gaps of sky. Then when there was nothing to be heard in London
but the myriad notes of that exultant song, my soul rose up from the
bones in the hole in the mud and began to climb up the song heavenwards.
And it seemed that a laneway opened amongst the wings of the birds, and
it went up and up, and one of the smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar
at the end of it. And then I knew by a sign that the mud should receive
me no more, for suddenly I found that I could weep.
At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in London, and outside
some sparrows were twittering in a tree in the light of the radiant
morning; and there were tears still wet upon my face, for one’s
restraint is feeble while one sleeps. But I arose and opened the window
wide, and, stretching my hands out over the little garden, I blessed the
birds whose song had woken me up from the troubled and terrible
centuries of my dream.
_Bethmoora_
There is a faint freshness in the London night as though some strayed
reveller of a breeze had left his comrades in the Kentish uplands and
had entered the town by stealth. The pavements are a little damp and
shiny. Upon one’s ears that at this late hour have become very acute
there hits the tap of a remote footfall. Louder and louder grow the
taps, filling the whole night. And a black cloaked figure passes by, and
goes tapping into the dark. One who has danced goes homewards. Somewhere
a ball has closed its doors and ended. Its yellow lights are out, its
musicians are silent, its dancers have all gone into the night air, and
Time has said of it, “Let it be past and over, and among the things that
I have put away.”
Shadows begin to detach themselves from their great gathering places. No
less silently than those shadows that are thin and dead move homewards
the stealthy cats. Thus have we even in London our faint forebodings of
the dawn’s approach, which the birds and the beasts and the stars are
crying aloud to the untrammelled fields.
At what moment I know not I perceive that the night itself is
irrecoverably overthrown. It is suddenly revealed to me by the weary
pallor of the street lamps that the streets are silent and nocturnal
still, not because there is any strength in night, but because men have
not yet arisen from sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected and
untidy guards still bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways,
although the realms of the monarch that they guard have shrunk to a
single province which no enemy yet has troubled to overrun.
And it is now manifest from the aspect of the street lamps, those
abashed dependants of night, that already English mountain peaks have
seen the dawn, that the cliffs of Dover are standing white to the
morning, that the sea-mist has lifted and is pouring inland.
And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out the streets.
Behold now night is dead.
What memories, what fancies throng one’s mind! A night but just now
gathered out of London by the hostile hand of Time. A million common
artificial things all cloaked for a while in mystery, like beggars robed
in purple, and seated on dread thrones. Four million people asleep,
dreaming perhaps. What worlds have they gone into? Whom have they met?
But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her loneliness, whose
gates swing to and fro. To and fro they swing, and creak and creak in
the wind, but no one hears them. They are of green copper, very lovely,
but no one sees them now. The desert wind pours sand into their hinges,
no watchman comes to ease them. No guard goes round Bethmoora’s
battlements, no enemy assails them. There are no lights in her houses,
no footfall in her streets; she stands there dead and lonely beyond the
Hills of Hap, and I would see Bethmoora once again, but dare not.
It is many a year, as they tell me, since Bethmoora became desolate.
Her desolation is spoken of in taverns where sailors meet, and certain
travellers have told me of it.
I had hoped to see Bethmoora once again. It is many a year ago, they
say, when the vintage was last gathered in from the vineyards that I
knew, where it is all desert now. It was a radiant day, and the people
of the city were dancing by the vineyards, while here and there one
played upon the kalipac. The purple flowering shrubs were all in bloom,
and the snow shone upon the Hills of Hap.
Outside the copper gates they crushed the grapes in vats to make the
syrabub. It had been a goodly vintage.
In little gardens at the desert’s edge men beat the tambang and the
tittibuk, and blew melodiously the zootibar.
All there was mirth and song and dance, because the vintage had been
gathered in, and there would be ample syrabub for the winter months, and
much left over to exchange for turquoises and emeralds with the
merchants who come down from Oxuhahn. Thus they rejoiced all day over
their vintage on the narrow strip of cultivated ground that lay between
Bethmoora and the desert which meets the sky to the South. And when the
heat of the day began to abate, and the sun drew near to the snows on
the Hills of Hap, the note of the zootibar still rose clear from the
gardens, and the brilliant dresses of the dancers still wound among the
flowers. All that day three men on mules had been noticed crossing the
face of the Hills of Hap. Backwards and forwards they moved as the track
wound lower and lower, three little specks of black against the snow.
They were seen first in the very early morning up near the shoulder of
Peol Jagganoth, and seemed to be coming out of Utnar Véhi. All day they
came. And in the evening, just before lights come out and colours
change, they appeared before Bethmoora’s copper gates. They carried
staves, such as messengers bear in those lands, and seemed sombrely clad
when the dancers all came round them with their green and lilac dresses.
Those Europeans who were present and heard the message given were
ignorant of the language, and only caught the name of Utnar Véhi. But it
was brief, and passed rapidly from mouth to mouth, and almost at once
the people burnt their vineyards and began to flee away from Bethmoora,
going for the most part northwards, though some went to the East. They
ran down out of their fair white houses, and streamed through the copper
gate; the throbbing of the tambang and the tittibuk suddenly ceased with
the note of the zootibar, and the clinking kalipac stopped a moment
after. The three strange travellers went back the way they came the
instant their message was given. It was the hour when a light would have
appeared in some high tower, and window after window would have poured
into the dusk its lion-frightening light, and the copper gates would
have been fastened up. But no lights came out in windows there that
night and have not ever since, and those copper gates were left wide and
have never shut, and the sound arose of the red fire crackling in the
vineyards, and the pattering of feet fleeing softly. There were no
cries, no other sounds at all, only the rapid and determined flight.
They fled as swiftly and quietly as a herd of wild cattle flee when they
suddenly see a man. It was as though something had befallen which had
been feared for generations, which could only be escaped by instant
flight, which left no time for indecision.
Then fear took the Europeans also, and they too fled. And what the
message was I have never heard.
Many believe that it was a message from Thuba Mleen, the mysterious
emperor of those lands, who is never seen by man, advising that
Bethmoora should be left desolate. Others say that the message was one
of warning from the gods, whether from friendly gods or from adverse
ones they know not.
And others hold that the Plague was ravaging a line of cities over in
Utnar Véhi, following the South-west wind which for many weeks had been
blowing across them towards Bethmoora.
Some say that the terrible gnousar sickness was upon the three
travellers, and that their very mules were dripping with it, and suppose
that they were driven to the city by hunger, but suggest no better
reason for so terrible a crime.
But most believe that it was a message from the desert himself, who owns
all the Earth to the southwards, spoken with his peculiar cry to those
three who knew his voice—men who had been out on the sand-wastes without
tents by night, who had been by day without water, men who had been out
there where the desert mutters, and had grown to know his needs and his
malevolence. They say that the desert had a need for Bethmoora, that he
wished to come into her lovely streets, and to send into her temples and
her houses his storm-winds draped with sand. For he hates the sound and
the sight of men in his old evil heart, and he would have Bethmoora
silent and undisturbed, save for the weird love he whispers at her
gates.
If I knew what that message was that the three men brought on mules, and
told in the copper gate, I think that I should go and see Bethmoora once
again. For a great longing comes on me here in London to see once more
that white and beautiful city; and yet I dare not, for I know not the
danger I should have to face, whether I should risk the fury of unknown
dreadful gods, or some disease unspeakable and slow, or the desert’s
curse, or torture in some little private room of the Emperor Thuba
Mleen, or something that the travellers have not told—perhaps more
fearful still.
_Idle Days on the Yann_
So I came down through the wood to the bank of Yann and found, as had
been prophesied, the ship _Bird of the River_ about to loose her cable.
The captain sate cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitar
lying beside him in its jewelled scabbard, and the sailors toiled to
spread the nimble sails to bring the ship into the central stream of
Yann, and all the while sang ancient soothing songs. And the wind of the
evening descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainous abode of
distant gods came suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxious city, into
the wing-like sails.
And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors lowered the
greater sails. But I had gone to bow before the captain, and to inquire
concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of the most holy
gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captain answered that he
came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods that were the least and
humblest, who seldom sent the famine or the thunder, and were easily
appeased with little battles. And I told how I came from Ireland, which
is of Europe, whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they
said, “There are no such places in all the land of dreams.” When they
had ceased to mock me, I explained that my fancy mostly dwelt in the
desert of Cuppar-Nombo, about a beautiful blue city called Golthoth the
Damned, which was sentinelled all round by wolves and their shadows, and
had been utterly desolate for years and years, because of a curse which
the gods once spoke in anger and could never since recall. And sometimes
my dreams took me as far as Pungar Vees, the red walled city where the
fountains are, which trades with the Isles and Thul. When I said this
they complimented me upon the abode of my fancy, saying that, though
they had never seen these cities, such places might well be imagined.
For the rest of that evening I bargained with the captain over the sum
that I should pay him for my fare if God and the tide of Yann should
bring us safely as far as the cliffs by the sea, which are named
Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann.
[Illustration: BIRD OF THE RIVER]
And now the sun had set, and all the colors of the world and heaven had
held a festival with him, and slipped one by one away before the
imminent approach of night. The parrots had all flown home to the jungle
on either bank, the monkeys in rows in safety on high branches of the
trees were silent and asleep, the fireflies in the deeps of the forest
were going up and down, and the great stars came gleaming out to look on
the face of Yann. Then the sailors lighted lanterns and hung them round
the ship, and the light flashed out on a sudden and dazzled Yann, and
the ducks that fed along his marshy banks all suddenly arose, and made
wide circles in the upper air, and saw the distant reaches of the Yann
and the white mist that softly cloaked the jungle, before they returned
again into their marshes.
And then the sailors knelt on the decks and prayed, not all together,
but five or six at a time. Side by side there kneeled down together five
or six, for there only prayed at the same time men of different faiths,
so that no god should hear two men praying to him at once. As soon as
any one had finished his prayer, another of the same faith would take
his place. Thus knelt the row of five or six with bended heads under the
fluttering sail, while the central stream of the River Yann took them on
towards the sea, and their prayers rose up from among the lanterns and
went towards the stars. And behind them in the after end of the ship the
helmsman prayed aloud the helmsman’s prayer, which is prayed by all who
follow his trade upon the River Yann, of whatever faith they be. And the
captain prayed to his little lesser gods, to the gods that bless
Belzoond.
And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous
God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were
being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth,
whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now
unworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed.
And upon us praying the night came suddenly down, as it comes upon all
men who pray at evening and upon all men who do not; yet our prayers
comforted our own souls when we thought of the Great Night to come.
And so Yann bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate with molten
snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of Hap, and the
Marn and Migris were swollen full with floods; and he bore us in his
might past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza.
Soon we all slept except the helmsman, who kept the ship in the
mid-stream of Yann.
When the sun rose the helmsman ceased to sing, for by song he cheered
himself in the lonely night. When the song ceased we suddenly all awoke,
and another took the helm, and the helmsman slept.
We knew that soon we should come to Mandaroon. We made a meal, and
Mandaroon appeared. Then the captain commanded, and the sailors loosed
again the greater sails, and the ship turned and left the stream of Yann
and came into a harbour beneath the ruddy walls of Mandaroon. Then while
the sailors went and gathered fruits I came alone to the gate of
Mandaroon. A few huts were outside it, in which lived the guard. A
sentinel with a long white beard was standing in the gate, armed with a
rusty pike. He wore large spectacles, which were covered with dust.
Through the gate I saw the city. A deathly stillness was over all of it.
The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick on doorsteps; in the
market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent of incense came wafted
through the gateway, of incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum
of the echoes of distant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue of
the region of Yann, “Why are they all asleep in this still city?”
He answered: “None may ask questions in this gate for fear they wake the
people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the gods will
die. And when the gods die men may dream no more.” And I began to ask
him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike because none
might ask questions there. So I left him and went back to the _Bird of
the River_.
Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering over
her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.
When I came back again to the _Bird of the River_, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed out again,
and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now the sun was
moving toward his heights, and there had reached us on the River Yann
the song of those countless myriads of choirs that attend him in his
progress round the world. For the little creatures that have many legs
had spread their gauze wings easily on the air, as a man rests his
elbows on a balcony and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to the sun, or
else they moved together on the air in wavering dances intricate and
swift, or turned aside to avoid the onrush of some drop of water that a
breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the air and driving it
before it, as it fell whirring in its rush to the earth; but all the
while they sang triumphantly. “For the day is for us,” they said,
“whether our great and sacred father the Sun shall bring up more life
like us from the marshes, or whether all the world shall end to-night.”
And there sang all those whose notes are known to human ears, as well as
those whose far more numerous notes have been never heard by man.
To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolate
continents during all the lifetime of a man.
And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to behold and
rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced, but
danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of distant
conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in some encampment
of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but beyond that would
never abate her pride to dance for a fragment more.
And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purple
orchids and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of the
jungle’s decay. And they, too, were among those whose voices are not
discernible by human ears. And as they floated above the river, going
from forest to forest, their splendour was matched by the inimical
beauty of the birds who darted out to pursue them. Or sometimes they
settled on the white and wax-like blooms of the plant that creeps and
clambers about the trees of the forest; and their purple wings flashed
out on the great blossoms as, when the caravans go from Nurl to Thace,
the gleaming silks flash out upon the snow, where the crafty merchants
spread them one by one to astonish the mountaineers of the Hills of
Noor.
But upon men and beasts the sun sent a drowsiness. The river monsters
along the river’s marge lay dormant in the slime. The sailors pitched a
pavilion, with golden tassels, for the captain upon the deck, and then
went, all but the helmsman, under a sail that they had hung as an awning
between two masts. Then they told tales to one another, each of his own
city or of the miracles of his god, until all were fallen asleep. The
captain offered me the shade of his pavilion with the gold tassels, and
there we talked for awhile, he telling me that he was taking merchandise
to Perdóndaris, and that he would take back to fair Belzoond things
appertaining to the affairs of the sea. Then, as I watched through the
pavilion’s opening the brilliant birds and butterflies that crossed and
recrossed over the river, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was a
monarch entering his capital underneath arches of flags, and all the
musicians of the world were there, playing melodiously their
instruments; but no one cheered.
In the afternoon, as the day grew cooler again, I awoke and found the
captain buckling on his scimitar, which he had taken off him while he
rested.
And now we were approaching the wide court of Astahahn, which opens upon
the river. Strange boats of antique design were chained there to the
steps. As we neared it we saw the open marble court, on three sides of
which stood the city fronting on colonnades. And in the court and along
the colonnades the people of that city walked with solemnity and care
according to the rites of ancient ceremony. All in that city was of
ancient device; the carving on the houses, which, when age had broken
it, remained unrepaired, was of the remotest times, and everywhere were
represented in stone beasts that have long since passed away from
Earth—the dragon, the griffin, and the hippogriffin, and the different
species of gargoyle. Nothing was to be found, whether material or
custom, that was new in Astahahn. Now they took no notice at all of us
as we went by, but continued their processions and ceremonies in the
ancient city, and the sailors, knowing their custom, took no notice of
them. But I called, as we came near, to one who stood beside the water’s
edge, asking him what men did in Astahahn and what their merchandise
was, and with whom they traded. He said, “Here we have fettered and
manacled Time, who would otherwise slay the gods.”
I asked him what gods they worshipped in that city, and he said, “All
those gods whom Time has not yet slain.” Then he turned from me and
would say no more, but busied himself in behaving in accordance with
ancient custom. And so, according to the will of Yann, we drifted
onwards and left Astahahn. The river widened below Astahahn, and we
found in greater quantities such birds as prey on fishes. And they were
very wonderful in their plumage, and they came not out of the jungle,
but flew, with their long necks stretched out before them, and their
legs lying on the wind behind, straight up the river over the
mid-stream.
And now the evening began to gather in. A thick white mist had appeared
over the river, and was softly rising higher. It clutched at the trees
with long impalpable arms, it rose higher and higher, chilling the air;
and white shapes moved away into the jungle as though the ghosts of
shipwrecked mariners were searching stealthily in the darkness for the
spirits of evil that long ago had wrecked them on the Yann.
As the sun sank behind the field of orchids that grew on the matted
summit of the jungle, the river monsters came wallowing out of the slime
in which they had reclined during the heat of the day, and the great
beasts of the jungle came down to drink. The butterflies a while since
were gone to rest. In little narrow tributaries that we passed night
seemed already to have fallen, though the sun which had disappeared from
us had not yet set.