BEHIND THE MASK
The Silent Pools and the woods around were the haunts of innumerable
birds. Rose-coloured flamingoes and gorgeous ducks, birds arrayed in all
the jewellery of the tropics, birds not much bigger than dragon-flies, and
birds that looked like flying beetles.
When they had dined, Adams, leaving the others to smoke and take their
siesta, went off by the water's edge on a tour of the pools. They were
three in number; sheets of water blue and tranquil and well-named, for
surely in all the world nowhere else could such perfect peace be found.
Perhaps it was the shelter of the forest protecting these windless sheets
of water; perhaps it was the nature of the foliage, so triumphantly alive
yet so motionless; perhaps beyond these some more recondite reason
influenced the mind and stirred the imagination. Who knows? The spirit of
the scene was there. The spirit of deep and unalterable peace. The peace
of shadowy lagoons, the peace of the cedar groves where the sheltering
trees shaded the loveliness of Merope, the peace of the heart which passes
all understanding and which men have named the Peace of God.
It was the first time since leaving Yandjali that Adams had found himself
alone and out of sight of his companions. He breathed deeply, as if
breathing in the air of freedom, and as he strode along, tramping through
the long grass, his mind, whilst losing no detail of the scene around him,
was travelling far away, even to Paris, and beyond.
Suddenly, twenty yards ahead, bounding and beautiful in its freedom and
grace, a small antelope passed with the swiftness of an arrow; after it,
almost touching it, came another form, yellow and fierce and flashing
through the grass and vanishing, like the antelope, amidst the high
grasses on the edge of the pool.
The antelope had rushed to the water for protection, and the leopard had
followed, carried forward by its impetus and ferocity, for Adams could
hear its splash following the splash of the quarry; then a roar split the
silence, echoed from the trees, and sent innumerable birds fluttering and
crying from the edge of the forest and the edge of the pool.
Adams burst through the long speargrass to see what was happening, and,
standing on the boggy margin, holding the grasses aside, gazed.
The antelope had vanished as if it had never been, and a few yards from
the shore, in the midst of a lather of water that seemed beaten up with a
great swizzle-stick, the leopard's head, mouth open, roaring, horrified
his eyes for a moment and then was jerked under the surface.
The water closed, eddied, and became still, and Silence resumed her sway
over the Silent Pools.
Something beneath the water had devoured the antelope; something beneath
the water had dragged the leopard to its doom, and swish! a huge flail
tore the speargrass to ribbons and sent Adams flying backward with the
wind of its passage.
Another foot and the crocodile's tail would have swept him to the fate of
the antelope and leopard.
The place was alive with ferocity and horror, and it seemed to Adams that
the Silent Pools had suddenly slipped the mask of silence and beauty and
shown to him the face of hideous death.
He wiped the sweat from his brow. He was unarmed, and it seemed that a
man, to walk in safety through this Garden of Eden, ought to be armed to
the teeth. He turned back to the camp, walking slowly and seeing nothing
of the beauties around him, nothing but the picture of the leopard's face,
the paws frantically beating the water, and a more horrible picture still,
the water resuming its calmness and its peace.
When he reached the camp, he found Berselius and Meeus absent. After their
siesta they had gone for a stroll by the water's edge in the opposite
direction to that which he had taken. The soldiers were on duty, keeping a
watchful eye on the villagers; all were seated, the villagers in front of
their huts and the soldiers in the shade, with their rifles handy; all,
that is to say, except the nigger child, who was trotting about here and
there, and who seemed quite destitute of fear or concern.
When this creature saw the gigantic Adams who looked even more gigantic in
his white drill clothes, it laughed and ran away, with hands outspread and
head half slewed round. Then it hid behind a tree. There is nothing more
charming than the flight of a child when it wishes to be pursued. It is
the instinct of women and children to run away, so as to lead you on, and
it is the instinct of a rightly constituted man to follow. Adams came
toward the tree, and the villagers seated before their huts and the
soldiers seated in the shade all turned their heads like automata to
watch.
"Hi there, you ink-bottle!" cried Adams. "Hullo there, you black dogaroo!
Out you come, Uncle Remus!" Then he whistled.
He stood still, knowing that to approach closer would drive the dogaroo to
flight or to tree climbing.
There was nothing visible but two small black hands clutching the tree
bole; then the gollywog face, absolutely split in two with a grin,
appeared and vanished.
Adams sat down.
The old, old village woman who was, in fact, the child's grandmother, had
been looking on nervously, but when the big man sat down she knew he was
only playing with the child, and she called out something in the native,
evidently meant to reassure it. But she might have saved her breath, for
the black bundle behind the tree suddenly left cover and stood with hands
folded, looking at the seated man.
He drew his watch from his pocket and held it up. It approached. He
whistled, and it approached nearer. Two yards away it stopped dead.
"Tick-tick," said Adams, holding up the watch.
"Papeete N'quong," replied the other, or words to that effect.
It spoke in a hoarse, crowing voice not at all unpleasant. If you listen
to English children playing in the street you will often hear this
croaking sort of voice, like the voice of a young rook.
Papeete struck Adams as a good name for the animal and, calling him by it,
he held out the watch as a bait.
The lured one approached closer, held out a black claw, and next moment
was seized by the foot.
It rolled on the ground like a dog, laughing and kicking, and Adams
tickled it; and the grim soldiers laughed, showing their sharp white
teeth, and the old grandmother beat her hands together, palm to palm, as
if pleased, and the other villagers looked on without the ghost of an
expression on their black faces.
Then he jumped it on its feet and sent it back to its people with a slap
on its behind, and returned to his tent to smoke till Berselius and Meeus
returned.
But he had worked his own undoing, for, till they broke camp, Papeete
haunted him like a buzz-fly, peeping at him, sometimes from under the
tent, trotting after him like a dog, watching him from a distance, till he
began to think of "haunts" and "sendings" and spooks.
When Berselius and his companion returned, the three men sat and smoked
till supper time.
At dark the villagers were driven into their huts and at the door of each
hut lay a sentry.
A big fire was lit, and by its light two more sentries kept watch over the
others and their prisoners. Then the moon rose, spreading silver over the
silence of the pools and the limitless foliage of the forest.