As no one else seemed anxious to pursue this subject further, we
subsided into a sort of lethargy. Even plans for what we should do when
the guards came were forgotten. And then, suddenly, the door was opened.
We all sprang to our feet. A priest--in fact, the same one who had
brought us here originally--came in. A squad of guards stood outside.
"Good afternoon, how are you? Chief Priest ask me to tell you, Buddha
wish to see you. Please you come with me." He politely indicated the
door.
With a shrug Baker complied, and the rest of us followed. Down the hall
we marched again, through all of the turns of the morning and so at last
into the corridor which ended in a window. This time we passed the
aluminum door and continued right to the end. The window, we now saw,
was really a French door which opened to a small balcony. Our guide
opened the door and pushed us out. The balcony, we found, was about four
hundred feet above the valley floor, but we did not spend much time
enjoying the view.
Scarcely fifty feet in front of us stood the Living Buddha!
For a full minute we stared at each other, and then I began to realize
that he was embarrassed! A wrinkle appeared between his eyes and he
swallowed a couple of times. Then he spoke.
"Good afternoon, Professor Baker and party. I am happy to meet you."
The voice, and particularly the language, so startled us that for a
moment nobody could think of a reply. The voice was a deep pulsing
rumble, like the tone of the biggest pipes of an organ, and filled with
a variety of glottal wheezings and windy overtones. I think it was
through these additional sounds rather than the actual tones that we
could understand him at all, for the fundamentals were surely below the
ordinary limits of human audibility. What we heard and could translate
into articulate words was hardly more than a cavernous whisper. The
important thing was that we could understand him, and, more than that,
that he was friendly. Baker made reply at last.
"Good afternoon. We also are happy, and most honored. How should we
address you?"
"My name is Kazu Takahashi, but I am told that I am also Buddha. This I
would like to discuss with you, if you have time."
"We have time for nothing else," said Baker.
Buddha's eyebrows raised slightly. "So I was right. They are going to
kill you."
Baker glanced at us meaningfully. This giant was no fool. Suddenly there
came over me a little thrill of hope. Maybe--but he was speaking again.
"I have not before had opportunity to talk to men from west. Only from
China, Japan, Soviet State. You will tell me of rest of world?"
"With pleasure," said Baker.
I became conscious that the door behind us was opening. I glanced back,
and saw Phobat Rau, surrounded by guards and priests. He gestured to us
to come in. Baker turned, while Buddha bent his head closer to see also.
Rau came to the door. "Come back," he called urgently. "You are in grave
danger. You must come in."
* * * * *
Quite definitely I had no desire to go in. Neither did Baker, for he
shook his head and moved away from the door. Rau's face was suddenly
enraged. He made a quick motion to the guards, and then held them back.
With an evident effort he calmed himself and called again, softly.
"Please come in. I was hasty this morning. I am sorry. I think now I see
a way for you to return safely, if you will come in."
For reply, Baker turned to the giant. He climbed upon the rail of the
balcony.
"Take us away from here, if you wish to hear what we have to say. Take
us, or they will kill us!"
In answer, Buddha extended one hand, palm up, so that it was level with
the balcony. For an instant I hesitated at the sight of that irregular
rough surface, big as a city block, and then I heard steps behind us and
a click. With one accord we leaped over the parapet just as a scattered
volley of pistol shots rang out. We tumbled head over heels down a rough
leathery slope into a hollow, and then the platform lifted like a roller
coaster. In a second the balcony, the whole hillside vanished and we
went rocketing up into the blue sky. A gale of wind blew past, almost
carrying us with it, and then a portion of the surface rose and became
thirty foot tree trunks which curled incredibly over and around us,
forming a small cavern which shut out the wind and held us securely
against falling.
Buddha had closed his fist.
For a breathless fifteen seconds we were carried in darkness, and then
the great hand unfolded. It was lying flat on an immense smooth area of
concrete, which we presently identified as the higher of the two tables.
We got to our feet and staggered to the edge of the palm. Here we met
another problem, in the form of a rounded ten foot drop-off to the
concrete table. As we stood looking down in dismay, the other vast hand
came up from below, carrying a heavy sheet of metal. This was carefully
placed with one edge on the hand and the other on the table, forming a
ramp. Holding onto each other for mutual support, we made our way to the
table and there literally collapsed. Chamberlin became violently sick,
and none of the rest of us felt much better. The giant carefully
withdrew both hands and watched us from a distance of a hundred yards,
with only the head and upper part of his body visible.
From our position on the concrete platform I now looked closely at Kazu
for the first time. My first impression was not so much one of size, as
of an incredible richness of detail. It was like examining a normal
human through a powerful microscope, except here the whole was visible
at once. Even at a distance of two hundred feet, the hair, the
eyelashes, the pores of the skin showed up with a texture and form which
I had never noted before, even in my studies as a biologist. The general
effect was most confusing, for I would lose and regain the sense of
scale, first thinking of him as an ordinary man, and then realizing the
proportion. The nearest comparison that I can think of is the sensation
when standing very close to a large motion picture screen, but here the
image is blurry whereas I saw with a clarity and sharpness that was
simply unbelievable.
Buddha seemed to realize our condition, for he smiled sympathetically,
and waited until poor Walt had recovered somewhat from his nausea.
Baker, as spokesman, renewed the conversation. Walking a few steps
toward the front of the enormous desk, he spoke in a loud clear voice.
"You have saved our lives. We thank you."
The great head nodded benignly, and after a thoughtful pause, that
strange voice began.
"My teachers have brought others before me to lecture, but always I know
that they speak only as they are told to speak. You are different. I am
glad that I saw you last night, or I would never know that you had
come."
He paused, evidently gathering his thoughts for the next foray into an
unfamiliar language. Then he leaned closer.
"Phobat Rau has spoken to you of my birth and life here?"
Baker nodded, and then, realizing that Kazu could not see such a
microscopic movement, he replied orally.
"He has told us your story in detail. It is a marvel which we can yet
scarcely believe. But the greatest marvel of all is that you speak our
language, and comprehend so quickly."
Kazu thought of this for a moment.
"Yes, my teachers have done well, I think. I have studied the writings
of many great men, but there is yet much that I do not understand. I
think it is important that I understand, because I am so strong. I do
not wish to use this strength for evil, and I am not sure that those
whom my teachers serve are good. I have studied the words of the great
Buddha, but now my teachers say that I am to appear as if I were Buddha.
But that is an untruth, and untruth is evil. So now I hope that you will
tell me the whole truth."
Kazu stepped back a quarter of a mile, and then reappeared, dragging his
four hundred foot chair. Sitting on this, he crouched forward until his
face was hardly a hundred feet before us, and his warm humid breath
swept over us like wind from some exotic jungle. Baker took a moment to
marshal his thoughts, and then came forward, threw out his chest and
began speaking as though addressing an outdoor political meeting.
How long Baker spoke I do not know. He began by outlining history,
contrasting the ideals of Buddha and other great religious leaders with
the dark record of human oppression and cruelty. Kazu's vast face proved
most expressive of his feelings as he listened intently. When Baker came
to the subject of communism, he leaned over so far backward in his
effort to be fair that I feared that he was overdoing it, and would
convince the giant in the wrong direction.
* * * * *
When Baker was only part-way through his lecture, he remarked that some
point in geography could be better explained by a drawing, but that
obviously he could not make one large enough for Kazu to see. At this
the giant laughed and pointed to his big leanto.
"Come," he said, "you shall draw on a piece of glass and the light will
make it great that I may see."
We were thereupon transferred the mile distance to the building by a
reversal of our previous route: up the ramp to Kazu's ample palm, a
series of breathtaking swoops through space, and we were in the vast
interior of the leanto.
The furnishings of this study room consisted of a chair, a sloping
writing desk and a screen fully two hundred feet square on the wall
opposite the chair. Beside the chair was a sort of bracket on the wall
which supported the projection room. Kazu placed his hand level with an
elevated balcony leading to this and we scrambled off. With Baker in the
lead, we opened the door and entered the projection room. It was larger
than we had estimated from outside, when we had the immense furniture
for comparison. The dimensions were perhaps forty feet on the side, and
most of the interior was taken up by shelves on which were stored
thousands of films of book pages, maps, photographs and diagrams of all
kinds. In the side facing the screen were a number of ports and a
battery of movie and still projectors. One of the latter was, we saw,
adapted for writing or drawing on the glass slide while it was being
projected. We studied this for a moment, located the special marking
pencil, and then I called out of the door that we were ready.
"Look also," replied Kazu, "you will find device which magnify voice. My
teachers use this always."
A further search disclosed a microphone and the switch for a public
address amplifier. Baker settled down to his now illustrated lecture.
After he had talked himself hoarse, Baker asked each of the rest of us
to speak briefly on our own specialties. I was the last, and I was
practically through when I became aware that we were not alone in the
room. I gave Martin a nudge, and turned from the microphone to face
eight of the uniformed guards, led by our friendly yellow-robed priest.
Only now he wasn't friendly, and he carried a heavy automatic which was
carefully aimed right at us.
"Very clever, gentlemen," he said. "You took good advantage of your
chance with our simple giant, did you not? Tried your best to ruin the
whole work of Pan-Asia just to save your miserable skins. Well, you
shall not--"
He was interrupted by the thunder of Kazu's voice.
"Please continue, Mr. Cady. I find it most interesting. Why do you
stop?"
I took a step toward the microphone, but a menacing gesture with the gun
stopped me. I looked from yellow-robe to Baker. After a moment's
hesitation, the latter spoke.
"I'm afraid, my friend, that you have misjudged the situation. I admit
that we jumped into Buddha's hand to escape from Phobat Rau, but if you
are familiar with the expression, our leap was from the frying pan into
the fire. Your giant is holding us prisoner, and even now forces us to
tell him things on pain of death."
The priest looked astonished, and the gun barrel dropped slightly.
"No one," continued Baker in a sincere tone, "could have been more
welcome than you. But"--his voice dropped and he took a step toward the
other--"we must be careful. If he should even suspect that you are here
to rescue us, he would crush this room like an egg!"
The priest, now thoroughly alarmed, glanced about nervously, his
automatic pointing at the floor. The guards, who knew no English, looked
at each other in surprise.
Baker took quick advantage of the confusion.
"We must not allow him to become suspicious. I will continue talking
over the microphone while your guards take my friends to safety."
With this he stepped to the microphone and projector. The priest seemed
for an instant about to stop him, and then he turned to the guards and
gave a series of rapid orders. They advanced and surrounded Martin, Walt
and me, and indicated by gesture that we were to go with them to the
walk-way which led to the wall of the great room. In panic I looked at
Baker, but he was bent over the glass plate of the projector, drawing
something and speaking in his precise clipped voice.
"I shall now show you a map of the United States and indicate the
principal cities. First, on the Atlantic coast we have New York...."
We were out of the room and on the gallery. For a moment I thought that
Kazu might see us, and then I realized that the whole place was dark and
that he was concentrating on Baker's silly map. Briefly I wondered what
Baker was up to anyway, but this sudden terrible turn of events made any
kind of calm reasoning very difficult.
Outside the projection room, Baker's voice came booming over the
loudspeakers.
"Chicago is located at the southern end of Lake Michigan, just west of
Detroit, while St. Louis--"
* * * * *
Suddenly the room lights came on, and the whole structure of the bridge
shook as from an earthquake. The guards ahead abruptly turned and
scrambled back, knocking us over in their haste. I grabbed the handrail
for support, and then became aware of a vast blurry shape looming above
and of a hand as large as a building that reached down toward the
guards, now halfway back to the projection room. In a sort of hypnotic
horror I watched the thumb and forefinger snap them and a thirty foot
section of railing off into space. Then, very gently the hand plucked
the roof from the projection room, exposing Baker and the priest.
Yellow-robe dropped his gun and ran towards a corner, but Baker neatly
tripped him and then stepped back for Kazu to finish the job.
A moment later Baker came out onto the bridge. Martin tried to frame a
question.
"What--how did he--?"
Baker grinned and pointed silently at the screen. We looked and
understood. Where a map of the United States should have been was a
scrawled message in English: "Priests here taking us captive."
We returned to our lecturing, but after what had happened neither we
nor Kazu felt much like concentrating on geographical or other general
facts. We all knew that Rau had not given up. For the moment we were
protected by Kazu's immense power, but there were some doubts in our
minds as to how long this might last. After all, Rau was his lifelong
mentor and protector. For the moment the young giant seemed to have
taken a liking to us, but perhaps it was only a passing whim. Presently
Rau would assert his authority and Kazu, his curiosity satisfied, would
hand us over--in exchange, perhaps, for supper.
After about fifteen minutes more of lecturing, Kazu interrupted.
"Soon will be sunset. Suggest we return to privacy of high table to
discuss next move."
The transfer took less than a minute. The afternoon, we saw, was indeed
far gone. None of us had realized how long we had been in the projection
room. Once we were safely back on the table, Kazu addressed us, using
his softest voice, which was a hurricane-like whisper.
"Phobat Rau plans for me to go soon to head armies of Asia in fight
against west. My study of history has raised doubts of rightness of such
war, and what you say strengthen these. Now I must see for myself,
without guidance or interference from Rau. But I need assistance, to
direct me how I shall go. I believe you will be fair. Will you help me?"
For a moment the incongruity of that last question prevented our
grasping the full implication of Kazu's statement. Then Baker, evidently
realizing that this was no time for philosophic quibbling, signified our
assent. Kazu proceeded at once to practical plans.
"Tonight I sleep in usual place, where you disturbed me with small rock
slide. But you must stay awake by turns to guard against capture. In
morning you direct my steps away from Yat to mainland of Asia, where--"
He stopped. Seeing the direction he was looking, we hastened to the edge
of the table. Far below, on the ground, was a railroad train surrounded
by a small crowd of priests. For a moment we were puzzled, and then we
saw that the train was made up entirely of gondola cars such as are used
to carry coal and other bulk cargo. But these cars, a dozen in number,
contained a white substance which steamed. We did not require more than
one guess. The train brought Kazu's supper.
The giant made a slight bow of thanks to the delegation at his feet, and
proceeded carefully to empty the cars into his dish. Then, instead of
squatting at his low eating table, he brought the dish and other
utensils up to our level and dumped a ton or so of steaming rice at our
feet. Evidently he wished us to share his supper. We had no tools other
than our hands, but since we had not eaten in almost twenty-four hours,
we did not stop for the conventions. Scooping up double handfuls of the
unseasoned stuff, we fell to even before Kazu had gotten his ponderous
spoon into position. Suddenly, Baker yelled at us.
"Hold it!" He turned to Kazu who had a spoonful poised halfway to his
mouth. "Kazu, don't eat. This rice is doped!"
I took a mouthful of the rice. There was not much flavor--only a little
salt which I guessed came from seawater. I explored the stuff with my
tongue, and presently noticed a familiar taste. It took me a moment to
place it. Yes, that was it. Barbiturate. The stuff in sleeping pills.
Kazu bent his great face over us. Baker briefly explained. Kazu appeared
at first puzzled. He dropped the spoon into the dish and pushed it away
from him. His brow wrinkled, and he glanced down at the ground. Walking
to the edge, we saw that the group of priests were standing quietly
around the engine, as though waiting for something. What they were
waiting for evidently struck Kazu and us at the same time. Kazu leaned
toward them and spoke in Japanese. His voice was angry. Baker tried to
translate.
"He says, 'how dare you poison Buddha'--Look, they're running off--"
The next second things happened too rapidly for translation or even
immediate interpretation. Kazu spoke again, his voice rising to an earth
shaking roar at the end. The little men below were scattering in all
directions, and the train started to back off down its track. Suddenly
Kazu turned and picked up his hundred foot steel dish. He swept it
across the table and then down in a long curving arc. There was an earth
shaking thud and where the running figures and the train had been was
now only the upturned bottom of the immense dish. Priests and cars alike
were entombed in a thousand tons of hot rice!
Kazu now turned to us. "Come," he said, "Yat is not safe, even for
Buddha. Now we must leave here at once."
He extended his hand towards us, and then, with another thought, turned
and strode to the leanto. In a moment he returned carrying the
projection room, with a tail of structural steel and electric cables
hanging below. This he placed on the table and indicated that we were to
enter. As soon as we were inside, Kazu clapped on the roof and picked up
the stout steel box. We clung to the frame supporting the projectors,
while a mass of slides, film cans and other debris battered us with
every swooping motion. We could not see what was going on outside, but
the giant seemed to be picking up a number of things from the ground and
from inside the leanto. Then he commenced a regular stride across the
crater floor. Now at last we got to a window, just in time to glimpse
the nearby cliff. On the rim, some hundreds of feet above I saw a group
of uniformed men clustered about some device. Then we were closer and I
saw that it was an antiaircraft gun, which they were trying to direct
at us. I think Kazu must have seen it at the same moment, for abruptly
he scrambled up the steep hillside and pulverized gun, crew and the
whole crater rim with one tremendous blow of his fist.
I got a brief aerial view of the whole island as Kazu balanced
momentarily on the rim, and then we were all thrown to the floor as he
stumbled and slid down the hillside to the level country outside of the
crater.
V
Up until this moment we had been engaged in an essentially personal
enterprise, even though its object was to secure information vital to
the United Nations. From this time on, however, the personal element was
to become almost completely subordinate to the vast problems of humanity
itself, for, as we were to soon find, we had tied ourselves to a symbol
that was determined to live up to all that was claimed or expected of
him, and further, who depended upon our advice. The situation for us was
made much worse because at first we doubted both his sincerity and good
sense--in fact, it was not until after the Wagnerian climax of the whole
thing that we at last realized, along with the rest of the world,
exactly what Kazu Takahashi believed in.
Kazu crossed the flat eastern half of Yat in less than a minute,
evidently wishing to get out of range of Rau's artillery as quickly as
possible. His feet tore through the groves as a normal man's might
through a field of clover; indeed, he experienced more trouble from the
softness of the ground than from any vegetation. As we were soon to
learn, one of the disadvantages of Kazu's size lay in the mechanical
properties of the world as experienced by him. Kazu stood almost 600
feet high, or roughly 100 times the linear dimensions of a normal man.
From the simple laws of geometry, this increased his weight by 100^3 or
1 million times. But the area of his body, including the soles of his
feet which had to support this gigantic load, had increased by but
100^2, or ten thousand times. The ground pressure under his feet was
thus 100 times greater, for each square inch, than for a normal man. The
result was that Kazu sank into the ground at each step until he reached
bedrock, or soil strong enough to carry the load.
At the beach he hesitated briefly, as though getting his bearings, and
then waded into the ocean. The surf which had used us so violently was
to him only a half inch ripple. He strode through the shallows and past
the reef in a matter of seconds, and then plunged into deeper water.
From our dizzy perch, now carried at hip height, we watched the great
feet drive down into the sea, leaving green walls of solid water about
them.
Although we did not realize it at the time, we later learned that Kazu's
wading forays were attended by tidal waves which inundated islands up to
a hundred miles away. This trip across a twenty mile strait swamped a
dozen native fishing craft, flooded out four villages and killed some
hundreds of people.
We fared better than some of these innocent bystanders, for Kazu
carefully held our steel box above the sea, and presently lurched
through shallow water to the dry land.
The new island was larger than Yat, and entirely given over to rice
growing for Kazu's food supply. He threaded his way easily among the
paddies, up through some low hills, and then down a narrow gorge into
the sea again.
Ahead lay a much more extensive body of water. The sun was now hardly
fifteen degrees above the horizon, and its glare plus a bank of clouds
made it difficult to see the distant land. Kazu raised our room to the
level of his face.
"Is that Island of Celebes?"
Baker started to pick up the microphone, and then abruptly realizing
that it was dead, he shouted back from the projection port.
"I think it is. Let me look for a chart."
Kazu waited patiently while we searched, placing the room on a hilltop
to give us a steadier platform. We all began a mad scramble in the mass
of debris. Kazu removed the roof to give more light, but it soon became
clear that there wasn't much hope. All that we could find were thousands
of slides of the Chinese classics. At last we gave up. When we told Kazu
this, he looked across the water and wrinkled his brow. We could sense
the reason for his anxiety, for the distant shore could hardly be less
than seventy miles away. Mentally I reduced this to terms I could
understand. Seven tenths of a mile, of which an unknown percentage might
be swimming.
Kazu's voice rumbled down to us, "I would prefer to wade. I cannot swim
well." He peered down into our roofless box anxiously.
"If we only had one chart," began Baker, when Walt, who had been
rummaging near the projector window, called to us.
"Take a look over there, just around the point."
We saw the prow of a ship. There was a moment of terror lest it be an
Indonesian coast patrol, and then we saw that it was just a small island
steamer of a thousand tons or so, chugging along less than two miles
offshore.
* * * * *
I think that the idea hit us all at the same instant. Baker, as
spokesman, called to Kazu. The giant, for the first time, grinned at us.
Then he picked up our box and waded into the ocean.
I don't think the people in the little ship even saw us until we were
practically upon them, because of the mist and sunset glare. What they
thought I can only imagine, for the water was little more than knee deep
and Kazu towered fully four hundred feet above it. Then a hand as big as
the foredeck reached down and gently stopped them by the simple
expedient of forming a V between thumb and fingers into which the prow
pushed. I heard the sound of bells and saw tiny figures scurrying about
on the deck. On the opposite side a number of white specks appeared in
the water as crewmen dove overboard. Our box was now lowered until its
door was next to the bridge. We leaped aboard, under cover of a great
hand which obligingly plucked away the near wall of the pilot house. We
entered the house just as the captain beat a precipitate retreat out
the other side, and after a moment in the chartroom we found what we
wanted. While Martin stood watch at the far door, we took advantage of
the electric lights to examine the chart of the east coast of Celebes.
That island, we found, was only sixty miles away and the deepest
sounding was less than six hundred feet. Kazu could wade the whole
distance.
* * * * *
The nautical charts did not show much detail for the interior of
Celebes, but from our elevation we could see enough of the terrain to
guide Kazu quite well. The course which Baker plotted took us across the
northern part of the big island, and far enough inland to avoid easy
detection from the sea. As the day progressed, the sky gradually filled
with clouds, promising more rain, so that I doubt if many people saw us.
Those who did, I suspect, were more interested in taking cover than in
interfering with Kazu's progress.
The journey across Celebes took only a couple of hours, and so, by noon,
we stood on the shore of the strait of Macassar, looking across
seventy-five miles of blue water to the mountains of Borneo.
It was not until now that Baker explained what he had in mind in
choosing this particular route.
"We're going to Singapore," he said. "Get under the protection of the
Royal Navy and Air Force before the commies spot us and start dropping
bombs and rockets. If Buddha wants to see the world, he'd better start
by getting a good bodyguard."
Kazu seemed agreeable when appraised of this plan, and so we began to
plot a more detailed route over the 1,100 miles between us and the
British crown colony. We stood at the narrowest part of the strait, but
unfortunately most of it was too deep for Kazu to wade. Reference to the
charts showed that by going 250 miles south, we would reduce the swim to
about 30 miles, or the equivalent of some 500 yards for a normal man. To
this was added a wade of 120 miles through shallows and over the many
small Balabalagan Islands.
Suddenly Kazu's hand swept down and came up with a 60-foot whale, which
he devoured in great gory bites. After this midocean lunch, Kazu resumed
his wading. In the middle of the strait the depth exceeded five thousand
feet, and he had to swim for a time, after fastening our box to his head
by means of the trailing cables.
At length the sea became shallow once more, Kazu's feet crunched through
coral, and the coast of Borneo appeared dimly ahead. We were all taking
time for the luxury of a sigh of relief when Chamberlin screamed a
warning.
"Planes! Coming in low at three o'clock!"
Fortunately Kazu heard this also, although the language confused him.
Precious seconds were wasted while he held the box up to his face for
more explicit directions. The planes, a flight of six, were streaking
towards us just above the wavetops. We could see that they carried
torpedoes, and it was not difficult to guess their intentions.
"Go sideways!" Baker yelled, but Kazu did not move. He simply stood
facing the oncoming aircraft, our box held in his left hand at head
level, and his right arm hanging at his side, half submerged. Either
Kazu was too frightened to move, or he did not understand the danger.
The planes were hardly a half mile away now, evidently holding their
fire until the last moment to insure a hit. What even one torpedo could
do I didn't dare to contemplate, and here were twelve possible strikes.
After all, Kazu was made of flesh, and after having seen the effect of
TNT on the steel side of a ship, I had little doubt as to what would
happen to him.
Now the last seconds were at hand. The planes were closing at five
hundred yards, the torpedoes would drop in a second.... But suddenly
Kazu moved. His whole body swung abruptly to the left and at the same
time the right hand came up through the water. We, of course, were
pitched headlong, but we did briefly glimpse a tremendous fan of solid
green water rising up to meet the planes. They tried to dodge but it was
too late. Into the waterspout they flew, all six with their torpedoes
still attached, and down into the ocean they fell, broken and sinking.
It was all over in a moment. We were so amazed it was moments before we
could move.
Kazu turned and resumed his stroll toward Borneo without a single
backward glance at the havoc wrought by his splash.
* * * * *
As we entered the foothills I became conscious for the first time of a
curious change. It was a psychological change in me, a change in my
sense of scale. We had been carried so long at Kazu's shoulder level,
and had grown so accustomed to looking out along his arms from almost
the same viewpoint as his, that we were now estimating the size of the
mountains as though we were as large as Kazu! It is difficult to express
just how I felt, and now that it is all over, the memory has become so
tenuous and subtle that I fear I will never be able to explain it so
that anyone but my three companions could understand. But this was the
first moment that I noticed the effect. The mountains were suddenly no
longer 4,000 foot peaks viewed from a plane 500 feet above ground level,
but were forty foot mounds with a six inch cover of mossy brush, and I
was walking up their sides as a normal human being! The change was, as
nearly as I can express it, from the viewpoint of a normal human being
under extraordinary circumstances to that of an ordinary man visiting a
miniature world. The whale to me was now a fat jellyfish seven inches
long, the Chinese warplanes were toys with an eight inch wingspread, the
little steamer of yesterday was a flimsy toy built of cardboard and
tinfoil. We had, in effect, identified ourselves completely with Kazu.
And so we climbed dripping from the Straits of Macassar, and entered the
mists and jungles of Borneo.
Our course toward Singapore carried us across the full width of
southern Borneo, a distance, from a point north of Kotabaroe to Cape
Datu, of almost six hundred miles.
After about an hour, the blue outlines of the Schwanner Mountains
appeared ahead and presently we passed quite close to Mt. Raya, which at
7,500 feet was the greatest mountain Kazu had ever seen. Then, dropping
into another valley, we followed the course of the Kapuas River for a
time, and finally turned west again through an area of plantations. Here
Kazu made an effort to secure food by plucking and eating fruit and
treetops together. The result was unsatisfactory, but presently we
came upon a granary containing thousands of sacks of rice. The
workmen, warned by our earthquake approach, fled long before we
reached it. Kazu carefully removed the corrugated iron roof and ate the
whole contents of the warehouse, which amounted to about a handful. The
sacks appeared about a quarter of an inch in length, and seemed to be
filled with a fine white powder.
Following this meal, Kazu drained a small lake, getting incidentally a
goodly catch of carp, although he could not even taste them. Then, since
it was now late in the afternoon, he turned northwest to the hills to
spend the night.
The last part of the journey was almost entirely through shallow
water--three hundred miles of the warm South China Sea. Baker planned to
make a before dawn start, so that we might be close to the Malay
Peninsula before daylight could expose us to further attack. Kazu
suggested pushing on at once, but Baker did not think it wise to
approach the formidable defenses of Singapore by night. And so for a
second time we sought out an isolated valley where Kazu could snuggle
between two soft hills, and we could get what sleep was possible in the
wreckage of the projection room.
The China Sea passage was made without incident. We started at three
A.M. in a downpour of rain, and by six, at dawn, the low outline of the
Malay Peninsula came into sight. We made our landfall some forty miles
north of Singapore, and at once cut across country toward Johore Bahru
and the great British crown colony.
The rice paddies, roads and other signs of civilization were a welcome
sight, and I was already relaxing, mentally, in a hot tub at the
officers club when the awakening came. It came in the form of a squadron
of fighter planes carrying British markings which roared out of the
south without warning and passed Kazu's head with all their guns firing.
Fortunately neither his eyes nor our thin shelled box was hit, but Kazu
felt the tiny projectiles which penetrated even his twelve inch hide. As
the planes wheeled for another pass he called out in English that he was
a friend, but of course the pilots could not hear above the roar of
their jets. On the second try two of the planes released rockets, which
fortunately missed, but this put a different light on the whole thing. A
direct hit with a ten inch rocket would be as dangerous as a torpedo.
Baker tried to yell some advice, but there was no chance before the
planes came in again. This time Kazu waved, and finally threw a handful
of earth and trees at them. The whole squadron zoomed upwards like a
covey of startled birds.
By the time we had reached a temporary haven, Kazu was thoroughly
winded, and we were battered nearly insensible. Baker, in fact, was out
cold. Kazu slowed down, and then finding no directions or advice
forthcoming, he resumed a steady dogtrot to the north. Martin and I
tried to draw Baker to a safer position beside the projector, but in the
process one of the steel shelves collapsed, adding Martin to the
casualty list. Walt and I then attempted to drag the two of them to
safety, but in the midst of these efforts a particularly hard lurch sent
me headfirst into the projector, and my interest in proceedings
thereupon became nil. Walt, battered and seasick, gave up and collapsed
with the rest of us. Further efforts at communication by Kazu proved
fruitless. Buddha was on his own.