Part 5

The first officer, the only man in the ship who could converse freely with me in English, waved his hand as he went overside. He was going ashore to some friends. The shore of the island was just out of hailing distance. The setting sun was below the height of the land. The huts among the columns of the palms along the beach were becoming formless. Even by day our steamer, among those islands of Indonesia, gave me the idea that she was a vagrant from another and a coarser world. Land was nearly always in sight, but whether distant or close to our beam it might have been a vagary, the vaporous show of a kingdom with which we could have no contact. It would have no name. It had not been seen before. We were the first to see it, and the last. To-morrow some other shape would be there, or nothing. The only reality was our steamer and its Dutchman, chance blunderers into a region which was not for us. Even when the sun was over the ship, and the blaze on the deck was like exposure to a furnace, the coast in sight was but the filmy stuff of an hallucination.

But now the sun was going, and in those seas that spectacle was always strangely disturbing. It was a celestial display which should have been accompanied by the rolling of thunder and the shaking of the earth. One watched for the sudden peopling of those far off and luminous battlements of the sky. But there was no sound. There was no movement. It was an empty display; we might have been surprised by the beginning of a rehearsal which was postponed. One could not help feeling the immanence of a revelation to men who now, open-mouthed, had paused in their foolish activities, and were waiting; and so it was astonishing, after that warning prelude, that only darkness should fall. We were reprieved. Perhaps Heaven did not know what to do with us.

The pale huts receded into nothing. The black filigree of palm fronds above them dissolved in night. The smooth water of the anchorage vanished without a whisper. The day was done. In the alleyway on which my cabin opened a few electric sconces made solid a short walk, which was suspended with vague ends in the dark. The weight of a heated silence, in which there was no more to be discerned than that short promenade, fell over the ship. It was astonishing that she could be so quiet.

In my cabin even an electric fan would have been a companion, but it would not work; it was dumb. The cabin was only a recess in solitude. Every book there had been read, and the advertisements in the newspapers, which were two months old, and had been used for packing. When I left London I took with me some clear and scientific advice about the collecting of insects. “Not butterflies and moths.” My instructions were specific. “Only diptera, hymenoptera, and bugs like these.” The bugs called “these” were exhibited and demonstrated in their British counterparts.

It appeared that I might be of aid to a new study, which now is earnestly seeking an answer to the growing challenge of the insect world to man’s dominion of this earth. This quest was urged on me with cool insistence, careless of any suspicion I might have had that there may be, to an overseeing and directing mind unknown, worse pests than bugs on earth. I accepted the job, the tins, the pins, the forceps, the bottles, chemicals, nets and all, and submitted to a series of elementary lessons. I began with the feeling of a Jain in the matter; but at last was persuaded that I should be performing a social service, for I was reminded that a tse-tse fly could make as good an exhibit of me as ever man made of a gorilla.

With some little entomological routine to be got through daily I began to understand why it was the Victorian naturalists showed a fortitude in adversity which, had they resolved, not on beetles but on something nobler, might have got them to Truth itself. On tropical days so searching that nothing but a sudden threat would have moved a man from where he happened to be resting, I picked up my net with alacrity, filled a little bag with bottles, and toiled to some place which, so the sun and wind told me, would make the shade of old Wallace eagerly readjust his ghostly spectacles as he watched me; and I saw clearly enough then that at an earlier age and with a stouter nerve I should have found fun in collecting record horns and tusks. It was usually in a secluded corner where I was alone; though once, near a Malay village in Celebes, in a clearing which had already become a tangled shrubbery again, I noticed at last a native, his krise in his sarong, sternly watching me. He stood like a threatening image, and whenever I glanced casually in his direction, which I did as often as dignity allowed, he still had that severe look. Presently I found that this area was a Mohammedan graveyard, for I tripped over one of the hidden stones while stealthily following the eccentric course of a fly which looked attractively malignant. The Malay stood over me as I pulled out some thorns with forced deliberation. He did not speak. He picked up a spare net, and spent the rest of the morning adding industriously to my collection.

The close scrutiny of one patch of forest, into which direct sunlight fell, with the eye watchful for the slightest movement, gave one a notion of the density with which that apparently empty jungle was peopled. A biologist once said that most of the world’s protoplasm is locked up in the bodies of insects. You would think so when, having missed a miniature bogie with the net, you scrutinised the place where it had so miraculously disappeared. (Sometimes it was in a fold of the net all the time, discovered when it nailed a careless hand.)

Nothing appears to be there but fronds and branches, yet as soon as the image of the object you missed begins to fade from your recollection, you see, sitting under a leaf, a robber fly eating a victim as large as itself. Near it is a big grasshopper so closely resembling the leaves and stem with which it is aligned that your sight is apt to take it in as a slow transmutation of the foliage. Touch him, and he shoots off like a projectile. His noisy flight betrays a number of things. They move, and then there they are. A shield bug, whose homeland cousins are hated by fruit-growers, moves uneasily in its place. You had supposed it was a coloured leaf-scar. Spiders and mantids run and drop. You mark the fall of one creature, and then are aware that a column of ants is marching through the dead leaves at your feet. Every inch appears to be occupied, where a casual glance would have seen nothing in the whole front of the woods.

The mere collecting of these creatures is but a pastime, though it is easy enough to find species that are unknown to entomologists; yet of very few of those innumerable forms is the life-history known, though some of the little items of the forest prove disastrous, with acquired habits, in the plantations. Man quite easily displaces the tigers and their lairs, but it is more than likely that the little things, of which he has been contemptuous, may put up a more remarkable fight for a place in the sun than he will enjoy.

When the ship was quiet at night, that was the time when the bottles were emptied, and the creatures were put into paper envelopes, with a place and date. The electric sconces outside at night made good hunting ground. Moths like translucent jewels reposed on them; but the luminous plaques were chiefly valuable as attractions for mosquitoes and some flies which would have been unbelievable even by day.

One night, unable for a time to do more work because my hands were wet with sweat caused by my concentration on small and delicate objects, I looked up at some books facing me on the table. A creature with eyes like tiny orange glow lamps was sitting there watching me, its wings tremulous with energy.

It was a moth, demi-octavo in size, and I became at once a little nervous in its presence. I assured it earnestly that moths were quite outside my instructions. Nevertheless, when I rose gently to inspect it, so desirable a beauty I had never seen before. It was jet black, body and wings, though its wings were marked sparsely with hieroglyphics in gold. Was it real? I got the net, and secured it neatly as it rose; brought a killing bottle--might I not have one such creature when Bates and Wallace slew their thousands?--and watched the captive where it quivered, though not in alarm, in a loose fold of the muslin. It was quiet, making a haze of its wings, at times checking them so that I could attempt a translation of its golden message. It had a face ... rather a large black face, in which those glowing eyes were very conspicuous.

I took out the cork of the bottle, looked again at the quivering and fearsome beauty, and put back the cork and shoved the bottle away. It was impossible. It would have been worse than murder. They who destroy beauty are damned. I felt I did not want to be damned. That wonderful form, and the stillness, and the silence, overcame me. This creature was not mine. I freed the prisoner. It shot round the cabin, settled again on a book, and watched me, with its wings vibrating, until I had finished. A dim suspicion that it was more than a moth was inconsequential, but natural.

XII

The men who are under an infernal spell, a spell which our best political economists have proved cannot be and ought not to be broken, and who therefore must run to and fro between London and Croydon all their wretched lives, are astonished when an infant shows more initiative and ventures to New York. But why shouldn’t it? Its journey proved as easy as a perambulator and a nurse. There is nothing in being carried about. Where steamships and railways go anyone may go. You have only to take a seat, and wait. A child could travel in independence from here to Macassar, which is a mere name through distance, and it would but add interest to a long voyage for doting seamen. The trouble for a restless soul begins only when he would turn aside, and go where other people do not. Then he finds that the herd has no sympathy for one of its members who would leave the farmer’s field; no sympathy, no advice, no help; nothing but curt warnings and mocking prophecies.

[Illustration:

_After a long and faithful adherence to the beaten tracks you reach some distant coastal outpost_-- ]

After a long and faithful adherence to the beaten tracks you reach some distant coastal outpost, and, enforced, there you pause. There is nothing else to do, so you look inland to the hills. What do they hide? The exiles on the spot, through envy and jealousy--for it would be absurd to suppose that they do not want to lose you--deny all access to those hills. That outpost is touched by a steamer at least once a fortnight, and while waiting for it, each evening, when the other men are as idle as yourself, you ask disturbing questions about the land beyond, The men reclining about the room murmur that nobody ever goes. Some day, of course, before they return home, they intend to stand on those hills. Just once. Wants a bit of doing, though. Pretty bad, the fevers. Can’t trust the natives. Last year a young fellow, just out, he tried it. Thought we didn’t know. Wouldn’t listen to us. Said he would be back in a week. He isn’t back yet. And there was a Dutchman once.... Heard about him? Well. The sagacious informant here glances round to see who is present, and leans over to whisper, ending his story with a malignant chuckle. “And served him right, too.”

If you listened to those fellows in complete social credulity you would merely stay at the rest-house till the next ship anchored, and when she departed so would you, still gazing at the unknown over her taffrail. But she has not arrived yet, and therefore every day, as you look to the hills, you explore a path which leads, so it seems, to those ramparts of cobalt. You have not the cheerful idea, of course, of continuing long enough. That would show courage instead of sociability. You merely wish to gratify, as much as a quiet creature dare, an intolerable desire to approach the forbidden.

Then, in some manner, those hills vanish. After five minutes on that track they go. An illusion? You continue till you reach a secluded valley, a steep and narrow place about which nobody has warned you, though to warn a friend of it, in case he should stray that way by chance, seems at a glance to be a positive duty. You watch a river come down turbulently through woods as dark and still as night. It goes over rocks, but with hardly a sound, as though it were muffled. A native crouches on the coiled roots of a tree on the opposite shore, and eyes you. But he does not move his head. He says nothing. He continues to watch you, and he does not move. Is it possible to get beyond that point? Very likely not. The very hills have disappeared. That dark forest, if it is not impenetrable, would be better if it were. The land is only a dream, and that native is the warning figure in it. You shout over to the figure, but it does not answer. It looks away. So you turn back, listen to more stories for a few more nights in the rest-house, and leave with the next ship.

There is the island of Celebes. Ships go to it direct from England. A child could manage the journey thither. I could not count the number of villages of its coast off which anchored my local trading steamer; we stood in and out of Celebes for weeks. I sought for a man who could tell me about the interior of that island--which has about the same area as Ireland, but a coastline long enough for an archipelago--but never found him. Picture post-cards may be obtained at Macassar and Menado, and trips by motor-car bought for as far as the roads go. But Brighton has the same advantages. Yet when it came to the question of a journey into the interior, then you might as well have been in a London post-office appealing through the wire netting, to a young lady counting insurance stamps, for a way to send a message to Joanna Southcott about that box. Yet there cannot be another large island anywhere in the world with shores so inviting, because those of Celebes are uninhabited, except for short lengths; and the mountains of the interior of that island, which is crossed by the equator, are so fantastic that they might be hiding the wonders of all outlandish legends. No matter. There is no approach, apparently, to the heights. A spell is on the place. You must be content to watch that coast and those hills pass, unless you are more daring than this deponent in flaunting the settled ways and opinions of your fellow-men.

The time does come, it does come, when you can stand the charted paths no longer. It is all very well for the people at home, misled by the narratives of flamboyant tourists, to suppose that the track you are following is one only for the stout of heart. By the map, doubtless, it looks as though it were. But you know better. The chief difficulty on that track, however devious and far it may seem from London, is that you cannot get away from it. While this is strictly true, it must be remembered that it is not altogether a simple excursion for a wayfarer to leave the highways and cross alone and in safety some of the moors of England. The warnings of the friends with whom you consort for a few days at a rest-house in the tropics merit attention. There is something in what they say.

At last you are in no doubt about it. If the warning fables were only half as bad as the reality still the common path could hold you no longer. Boredom with the ways of Labuan is no different from boredom in Highgate. With deliberation you cast your luggage into a godown, careless whether or not you ever see it again, and set out light-foot for the unknown quarter where health is the only fortune, and where all the money in the world cannot buy refreshment when it does not exist, nor goodwill from creatures who do not like your face. If your good luck or common sense prove inadequate, then you are aware you won’t return; but there is satisfaction to be found in the certain knowledge that if you have to pay the ultimate forfeit it will be because you ought to pay it. You cannot find that satisfaction in London, which is in many ways worse than the jungle. If you prove good enough, the wild will reward you with a safe passage; but the city will even punish qualities which make men honest citizens and pleasant neighbours.

In weeks of toil you get far beyond the last echo of the coast. You can imagine you have reached, not another place, but another time, and have entered an earlier age of the earth. Soon after the beginning of the journey up country there was a suspicion, when another silent reach of the river opened, where immense trees overhung and were motionless, and were doubled in the mirror, that now you were about to wake up. This would go. In reality you were not there.

The paddlers ceased. A buffalo, a bronze statue on a strip of sand in the water, stared at the lot of you as you rounded the point. Then he erupted that scene. It did exist; it was alive. The first ripple from the outer world had come to stir into protest that timeless peace.

The river is left, and a traverse made of the forest. Ranges are crossed. You become a little doubtful of your whereabouts. The map treasured in a rubber bag now abandons you to an indeterminate land. The natives are shy, food is scarce and a little queer, and exposure and wounds recall to the memory the unfriendly yarns of the settlement far away. About time to turn back? But the inclination is to go on, for the days seem brighter and more innocent than you have ever known them to be. Even food has become an enjoyable way to continue life; and the camp at sundown, when, offering grace for the pleasure of conscious continuance in fatigue, you look upwards to a fading stratum of gold on the roof of the jungle across the stream, and the cicadas begin their pæan, is richer than success. The very smell of the wood smoke is a luxury. Only at night, when the darkness is so well established that it could be the irrevocable end of all the days, and the distant sounds in the forest are inexplicable if they are not menacing, do the thoughts turn backward. It would be easier, you think then, to be safe.

But the next day you discover that you are not alone in that unknown country. A man meets you, and says that he has heard you were about. He has been trying to find you. He would like to hear a bit of news. He behaves to you as though you were the best friend he had. You learn that he has been there for nearly a year. He came to that corner of the continent from the other side. He says this as though he were merely remarking that it rained yesterday; and the extraordinary character of such a journey causes you to glance at him for some clue to the reason for so obvious a lie. Yet no, that fellow is not a liar--not in such a small matter, anyhow. What is he doing there? Oh, just looking round for gold, or tin, or a job. Have you heard a word, he asks, of a railway coming along?

You cannot journey to any unusual quarter without surprising there one of these wanderers. He is looking a country over, and has lived with the chief’s daughter, and improved the chief’s importance with neighbouring tribes, and has kept open a wary eye for gold or anything else which might be lying about, long before regular communication was made with the sea, and years ahead of the bold explorers about whom the newspapers make such a fuss; he saw the land before the missionaries. These wanderers make rough maps of their own, they are familiar with the most unlikely recesses of the land--which they reached, by the way, from China, or Uganda, or Bogota, or wherever they were last. If one of them tells you his name you need not believe him. The place of his birth is not the place of his confidence. It is no good asking him what he is going to do next, for he does not know. While you are with him, you feel that a better companion for such a country was never born; and when you leave him you know you will never see him again, nor even hear of him. But he is a man you will never forget.

XIII

There was an island, which must have evaporated with the morning mists like other promising things, called Bragman. It is recorded by Maundeville, and he had positive knowledge that on Bragman was “no Thief, nor Murderer, nor common Woman, nor poor Beggar, nor ever was Man slain in that Country. And because they be so true and so righteous, and so full of good conditions, they were never grieved with Tempests, nor with Thunder, nor with Lightning, nor with Hail, nor with Pestilence, nor with War, nor with Hunger, nor with any other Tribulation, as we be, many Times, amongst us, for our Sins.”