I endeavoured, it is true, to convert her, but, ah! did I go to work in the right way? Did I draw, in awful colours, the certain consequences of ignorance of the Truth? Did I endeavour to strike a salutary terror into her heathen heart?
No; such would have been a proper course of conduct, but such was not mine! I weakly adopted the opposite plan—that used by the Jesuits in their dealings with the Chinese and other darkened peoples. I attempted, meanly attempted (but, as may be guessed, with but limited success), to give an orthodox Nonconformist character to the observances of Doto’s religion. For example, instead of thundering, as was my duty, at her worldly diversions of promiscuous dancing, and ball play, I took a part in these secular pursuits, fondly persuading myself that my presence discouraged levity, and was a check upon unseemly mirth.
Thus, among the young native men and maidens, in the windings of the mazy dance, might have been seen disporting himself, a person of stalwart form, whose attire still somewhat faintly indicated his European origin and sacred functions. A hymn-book in my hand instead of a rattle (used by the natives), I capered gaily through their midst. Often and often I led the music, instructing my festive flock in English hymns, which, however, I adapted to gay and artless melodies, such as “There’s some one in de house wid Dinah!” or “Old Joe kicking up behind and afore!”
This kind of entertainment was entirely new to the natives, who heartily preferred it to their own dull music, resembling what are called, I believe, “Gregorians,” by a bloated and Erastian establishment.
So far, then, I may perchance trust that my efforts were not altogether vain, and the seed thus sown may, in one or two cases, have fallen on ground not absolutely stony. But, alas! I have little room for hope.
I pursued my career of unblushing “economy”—as the Jesuits say, meaning, alas! economy of plain truth speaking—and of heathen dissipation. Few were the dances in which I did not take a part, sinking so low as occasionally to oblige with a hornpipe. My blue ribbon had long ago worn out, and with it my strict views on Temperance. I acquired a liking for the strange drink of the islanders—a thick wine and water, sometimes mixed with cheese and honey. In fact, I was sliding back—like the unfortunate Fanti missionary, John Greedy, M.A., whose case, as reported by precious Mr. Grant Allen, so painfully moved serious circles—I was sliding back to the level of the savagery around me. May these confessions be accepted in the same spirit as they are offered; may it partly palliate my guilt that I had apparently no chance of escape from the island, and no hope beyond that of converting the natives and marrying Doto. I trusted to do it, not (as of old) by open and fearless denunciation, but by slowly winning hearts, in a secular and sportive capacity, before gaining souls.
Even so have I seen young priests of the prelatical Establishment aim at popularity by playing cricket with liberal coal-miners of sectarian persuasions. They told me they were “in the mission field,” and one observed that his favourite post in the field was third man. I know not what he meant. But to return to the island.
My career of soul-destroying “amusement” (ah, how hollow!) was not uninterrupted by warnings. Every now and again the mask was raised, and I saw clearly the unspeakable horrors of heathen existence.
For example, in an earlier part of this narrative, I have mentioned an old heathen called Elatreus, a good-natured, dull, absent-minded man, who reminded me of a respectable British citizen. How awful was his end, how trebly awful when I reflect how nearly I—but let me not anticipate. Elatreus was the head, and eldest surviving member of a family which had a singular history. I never could make out what the story was, but, in consequence of some ancient crime, the chief of the family was never allowed to enter the town hall. The penalty, if he infringed the law, was terrible. Now it chanced one day that I was wandering down the street, my hands full of rare flowers which I had gathered for Doto, and with four young doves in my hat. It was spring, and at that season the young persons of the island expected to receive such gifts from their admirers. I was also followed by eleven little fawns, which I had tamed for her, and four young whelps of the bear. At the same time, in the lightness of my foolish heart, I was singing a native song, all about one Lityerses, to the tune of “Barbara Allen.”
At this moment, I observed, coming out of a side street, old Elatreus. He was doddering along, his hands behind his back, and his nose in the air, followed by a small but increasing crowd of the natives, who crept stealthily behind at a considerable distance. I paused to watch what was happening.
Elatreus entered the main street, and lounged along till he came opposite the town hall, on which some repairs were being made. The door stood wide open. He gazed at it, in a vacant but interested way, and went up the steps, where he stood staring in an absent-minded, vacant kind of fashion. I could see that the crowd watching him from the corner of the side street was vastly excited.
Elatreus now passed his hand across his brow, seemed vastly puzzled, and yawned. Then he slowly entered the town hall. With a wild yell of savage triumph the mob rushed in after him, and in a few moments came forth again, with Elatreus bound and manacled. Some one sped away, and brought the old priest, who carried the sickle. He appeared full of joy, and lustily intoned—for they have this Popish custom of intoning—an unintelligible hymn. By this time Elatreus had been wreathed and crowned with flowers, and the rude multitude for this purpose seized the interesting orchids which I had gathered for my Doto. They then dragged the old man, pitifully lamenting, to the largest altar in the centre of the square.
Need I say what followed? The scene was too awful. With a horrible expression of joy the priest laid the poor wretch on the great stone altar, and with his keen sickle—but it is too horrible! . . . This was the penalty for a harmless act, forbidden by a senseless law, which Elatreus—a most respectable man for an idolater—had broken in mere innocent absence of mind.
Alas! among such a people, how could I ever hope, alone and unaided, to effect any truly regenerating work?
Yet I was not wholly discouraged; indeed, my infatuation for Doto made me overlook much profligate behaviour that I do not care to mention in a tract which may fall into the hands of the young. One other example of the native barbarity, however, I must narrate.
A respected couple in the vicinity had long been childless. At length their wishes were crowned with success, and a little baby girl was born to them. But the priest, who had curious ideas of his own, insisted on consulting, as to this child, a certain witch, a woman who dwelt apart in a cave where there was a sulphurous hot-water spring, surrounded by laurel bushes, regarded as sacred by the benighted islanders. This spring, or the fumes that arose from it, was supposed to confer on the dweller in the cave the gift of prophecy. She was the servant of Apollon, and was credited with possessing a spirit of divination. The woman, after undergoing, or simulating, an epileptic attack, declared, in rhythmical language, that the babe must not be allowed to live. She averred that it would “bring destruction on Scheria,” the native name for the island, which I have styled Boothland, in honour of the Salvation Army. This was enough for the priests, who did not actually slay the infant, but exposed it on the side of a mountain, where the beasts and birds were likely to have their way with it.
Now it chanced that I had climbed the hill-top that day to watch for a sail, for I never quite lost hope of being taken away by some British or continental vessel. My attendants, for a wonder, were all absent at some feast—Carneia, I think they called it—of their heathen gods. The time was early summer; it only wanted a fortnight of the date, as far as I could reckon, at which I had first been cast on the island, a year before.
As I descended the hillside, pleased, I must own, by the warm blight sunlight, the colour of the sea, and the smell of the aromatic herbs,—pleased, and half forgetful of the horrid heathenism that surrounded me, I heard a low wail as of an infant. I searched about, in surprise, and came on a beautiful baby, in rich swaddling bands, with a gold signet ring tied round its neck. Such an occurrence was not very unusual, as the natives, like most savages, were in the habit of keeping down the surplus population, by thus exposing their little ones. The history of the island was full of legends of exposed children, picked up by the charitable (there was, oddly enough, no prohibition against this), and afterwards recognized and welcomed by their families. As any Englishman would have done, I lifted the dear little thing in my arms, and, a happy thought occurring to me, carried it off as a present to Doto, who doted on babies, as all girls do. The gift proved to be the most welcome that I had ever offered, though Doto, as usual, would not accept it from my hands, but made me lay it down beside the hearth, which they regarded as a sacred place. Even if an enemy reached the hearth of his foe, he would, thenceforth, be quite safe in his house. Doto then picked up the child, warmed and caressed it, sent for milk for its entertainment, and was full of pleasure in her new pet.
She was a dear good girl, Doto, in spite of her heathen training. {74}
Strangely enough, as I thought at the time, she burst out weeping when I took my leave of her, and seemed almost as if she had some secret to impart to me. This, at least, showed an interest in me, and I walked to my home with high presumptuous thoughts.
As I passed a certain group of rocks, in a lonely uncultivated district, while the grey of evening was falling, I heard a low whistle. The place had a bad reputation, being thought to be haunted. Perhaps I had unconsciously imbibed some of the superstitions of the natives, for I started in alarm.
Then I heard an unmistakably British voice cry, in a suppressed tone, “Hi!”
The underwood rustled, and I beheld, to my astonishment, the form, the crawling and abject form, of William Bludger!
Since the day of his landing we had never once met, William having been sent off to a distant part of the island.
“Hi!” he said again, and when I exclaimed, naturally, “Hullo!” he put his finger on his lips, and beckoned to me to join him. This I did, and found that he was lurking in a cavern under the group of grey weather-worn stones.
When I entered the cave, Bludger fell a-trembling so violently that he could not speak. He seemed in the utmost alarm, his face quite ashen with terror.
“What is the matter, William Bludger?” I asked; “have you had a Call, or why do you thrust yourself on me?”
“Have you sich a thing as a chaw about ye?” he asked in tremulous accents. “I’m that done; never a drop has passed my lips for three days, strike me dead; and I’d give anything for a chaw o’ tobacco. A sup of drink you have not got, Capt’n Hymn-book, axing your pardon for the liberty?”
“William,” I said, “even in this benighted island, you set a pitiful example. You have been drinking, sir; you are reaping what you have sown; and only temperance, strict, undeviating total abstinence rather, can restore your health.”
“So help me!” cried the wretched man, “except a drop of Pramneian {76} I took, the morning I cut and run,—and that was three days ago,—nothing stronger than castor-oil berries have crossed my lips. It ain’t that, sir; it ain’t the drink. It’s—it’s the Thargeelyah. Next week, sir, they are going to roast us—you and me—flog us first, and roast us after. Oh Lord! Oh Lord!”
VII. FLIGHT.
“Flog us first, and roast us afterwards.” I repeated mechanically the words of William Bludger. “Why, you must be mad; they are more likely to fall down and worship us,—me at any rate.”
“No, Capt’n,” replied William; “that’s your mistake. They say we’re both Catharmata; that’s what they call us; and you’re no better than me.”
“And what are Catharmata?” I inquired, remembering that this word, or something like it, had been constantly used by the natives in my hearing.
“Well, Capt’n, it means, first and foremost, just the off-scourings of creation, the very dust and sweepings of the shop,” answered Bludger, who had somehow regained his confidence. To have a fellow-sufferer, and to see the pallor which, doubtless, overspread my features, was a source of comfort to this hardened man. At the same time I confess that, if William Bludger alone had been destined to suffer, I could have contemplated the decree with Christian resignation.
“I speak the beggars’ patter pretty well now,” Bludger went on; “and I see Catharmata means more than just mere dirt. It means two unlucky devils.”
“William?” I exclaimed.
“It means, saving your presence, two poor coves, as has no luck, like you and me, and that can be got rid of once a year, at an entertainment they call the Thargeelyah, I dunno why, a kind o’ friendly lead. They choose fellows as either behaves ill, or has no friends to make a fuss about them, and they gives them three dozen, or more, and takes them down to the beach, and burns them alive over a slow fire. And then they toss the ashes out to sea, and think all the bad luck goes away with the tide. Oh, I never was in such a hole as this!”
Bludger’s words made me shudder. I had never forgotten the hideous sacrifice, doubtless the Thargeelyah, as they called it, that greeted me when I was first cast ashore on the island. To think that I had only been saved that I might figure as a victim of some of their heathen gods!
Oh, now the thought came back to me with a bitter repentance, that if I had only converted all the islanders, they would never have dreamed of sacrificing me in honour of a mere idol! Why had I been so lukewarm, why had I backslidden, why had I endeavoured to make myself agreeable by joining in promiscuous dances, when I should have been thundering against Pagan idolatry, holy water, idols, sacrifices and the whole abominable system of life on the island? True, I might have goaded them into slaying me; I might have suffered as a martyr; but, at the least, I would have deserved the martyr’s crown. And now I was to perish at the stake, without even the precious consolation of being a real martyr, and was to be flogged into the bargain.
I gave a hollow groan as these reflections passed through my mind, and this appeared to afford William Bludger some consolation.
“You don’t seem to like it yourself, Capt’n; what’s your advice? We’re both in the same boat; leastways I wish we were in a boat; anyhow we’re both in the same hole.”
There was no denying this, and it was high time to mature some plan of escape. Already I must have been missed by my attendants, my gaolers rather, who would have returned from their festival, and would be looking for me everywhere.
I bitterly turned over in my mind the facts of our situation; “ours,” for, as a just punishment of my remissness, I was in the same quandary as a drunken, dissipated sailor before the mast.
If William had but possessed a sweet and tuneful voice (often a gift found in the most depraved natures), and if I had been able to borrow a harmonium on wheels, I would not, even now, have despaired of converting the whole island in the course of the week. As remarkable feats have been performed, with equal alacrity, by precious Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and I am informed that expeditious conversions are by no means infrequent among politicians. But it was vain to think of this resource, as William had no voice, and knew no hymns, while I had no means of access to a perambulating harmonium.
“I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” said Bludger; “I have a notion.”
“Name it, William,” I replied, my heart and manner softened by community in suffering and terror.
“Well, if I were you, sir, I would not go home to-night at all; I’d stop where you are. The beggars won’t find you, let them hunt as they like; they daren’t come near this place, bless you, it’s an ’Arnt;” by which he meant that it was haunted.
“Well,” said I, “but how should we be any better off to-morrow morning?”
“That’s just it, sir,” said Bludger. “We’ll be up with the first stroke of dawn, nip down to the harbour, get on board a boat, and be off before any of them are stirring.”
“But, even if we manage to secure a boat,” I said, “what about provisions, and where are we to sail for?”
“Oh, never mind that,” said Bill; “we can’t be worse off than we are, and I’ll slip out to-night, and lay in some prog in the town. Also some grog, if I can lay my hands on it,” he added, with an unholy smile.
“No, William,” I murmured; “no grog; our lives depend on our sobriety.”
“Always a-preaching, the old tub-thumper,” I heard William say to himself; but he made no further reference to the subject.
It was now quite dark, and we lay whispering, in the damp hollow under the great stone. Our plan was to crawl away at the first blush of dawn, when men generally sleep most soundly; that William should enter one of the unguarded houses (for these people never stole, and did not know the meaning of the word “thief”), that he should help himself to provisions, and that meanwhile I should have a boat ready to start in the harbour.
This larcenous but inevitable programme we carried out, after waiting through dreadful hours of cold and shivering anxiety. Every cry of a night bird from the marsh or the wood sent my heart into my mouth. I felt inconceivably mean and remorseful, my vanity having received a dreadful shock from the discovery that, far from being a god, I was to be a kind of burnt-offering.
At last the east grew faintly grey, and we started, not keeping together, but Bludger marching cautiously in my rear, at a considerable distance. We only met one person, a dissipated young man, who, I greatly fear, had been paying his court to a shepherdess in the hills. When he shouted a challenge, I replied, Erastes eimi, which means, I am sorry to say, “I am a lover,” and implied that I, also, had been engaged in low intrigue. “Farewell, with good fortune,” he replied, and went on his way, singing some catch about Amaryllis, who, I presume, was the object of his unhallowed attentions.
We slipped into the silent town, unwalled and unguarded as it was, for as one of their own poets had said, “We dwell by the wash of the waves, far off from toilsome men, and with us are no folk conversant.” They were a race that knew war only by a vague tradition, that they had dwelt, at some former age, in an island, perhaps New Zealand, where they were subject to constant annoyance from Giants,—a likely story. Thence they had migrated to their present home, where only one white man had ever been cast away—one Odysseus, so their traditions declared—before our arrival. Him, however, they had treated hospitably, very unlike their contemplated behaviour to Bludger and me.
I am obliged to make this historical digression that the reader may understand how it happened, under Providence, that we were not detected in passing through the town, and how Bludger successfully accomplished what, I fear, was by no means his first burglary.
We parted at the chief’s house, Bill to secure provisions, and I to unmoor a boat, and bring her round to a lonely bay on the coast, where my companion was to join me.
I accomplished my task without the slightest difficulty, selected a light craft,—they did not use canoes, but rowed boats like coracles,—and was lying at anchor, moored with a heavy stone, in the bay.
The dawn was now breaking in the most beautiful colours—gold, purple, crimson, and green—across the sea. All nature was still, save for the first pipe of awakening birds.
There was a delicate fragrance in the air, which was at once soft and keen, and, as I watched the red sunlight on the high cliffs, and on the smooth trunks of the palm trees, I felt, strange to say, a kind of reluctance to leave the island.
The people, apart from their cruel and abominable religion, were the gentlest and most peaceful I have ever known. They were beautiful to look upon, so finely made and shapely that I have never seen their like. Their language was exquisitely sweet and melodious, and though, except hymns, I do not care for poetry, yet I must admit that some of their compositions in verse were extremely pleasing, though they were ignorant of the art of rhyme. All about them was beautifully made, and they were ignorant of poverty. I never saw a beggar on the island; and Christians, unhappily, do not share their goods with each other, and with the poor, so freely as did these benighted heathens. Often have I laboured to make them understand what our Pauper Question means, but they could not comprehend me.
“How can a man lack home, and food, and fire?” they would say; “do people not love each other in your country?”
I explained that we love each other as Christians, but this did not seem to enlighten their benighted minds. On the other hand, it is true that they settle their population question by strangling or exposing the majority of their infant daughters.
Rocked on the smooth green swell of the sea, beneath the white rocks, I was brooding over these and many other matters, when I heard sudden and violent movements in the deep vegetation on the hillside. The laurel groves were stirred, and Bill Bludger, with a basket in his hand, bounded down the slope, and swam for dear life to the boat.
“They’re after me,” he cried; and at that moment an arrow quivered in the side of the boat.
I helped William on board as well as I might, under a shower of arrows from the hill-top, most of which, owing to the distance, were ill directed and fell short, or went wide.
Into the boat, at last, I got him, and thrusting an oar in his direction, I said, “Pull for your life,” and began rowing. To my horror, the boat made no way, but kept spinning round. A glance in the bow showed me what was the matter: William Bludger was hopelessly intoxicated! He had got at the jars of wine in the chief’s cellar,—thalamos, they call it,—and had not taken the precaution of mixing the liquor with water, as the natives invariably do when they drink. The excitement of running had sent the alcoholic fumes direct to his brain, and now he lay, a useless and embarrassing cargo, in the bows. Meanwhile, the shouts of the natives rang nearer and louder, and I knew that boats would soon be launched for our capture. I thought of throwing Bludger overboard, and sculling, but determined not to stain what might be my last moments with an act of selfishness. I therefore pulled hard for the open sea, but to no avail. On every side boats crowded round me, and I should probably have been shot, or speared, but for the old priest, who, erect in the bows of the largest vessel, kept yelling that we were to be taken alive.
Alas! I well knew the secret of his cruel mercies.
He meant to reserve us for the sacrifice.
VIII. SAVED!
Why should I linger over the sufferings of the miserable week that followed our capture? Hauled back to my former home, I was again made the object of the mocking reverence of my captors. Ah, how often, in my reckless youth, have my serious aunts warned me that I “would be a goat at the last”! Too true, too true; now I was to be a scapegoat, to be driven forth, as these ignorant and strangely perverted people believed, with the sins of the community on my head, those sins which would, according to their miserable superstition, be expiated by the death, and consumed away by the burning, of myself and William Bludger!
The week went by, as all weeks must, and at length came the solemn day which they call Thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their idol, Apollon. Long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, I do not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies. I know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, I heard the voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a female, named Aphrodighty. Harps were twanging too, and I heard the refrain of one of the native songs, “To-night they love who never loved before; to-night let him who loves love all the more.” The words have unconsciously arranged themselves, even in English, as poetry; those who know Thomas Gowles best, best know how unlikely it is that he would willingly dabble in the worldly art of verse-fashioning. Think of my reflections with a painful, shameful, and, above all, undeserved death before me, while all the fragrant air was ringing with lascivious merriment. My impression is that, as all the sins of the year were, in their opinion, to be got rid of next day, and tossed into the sea with the ashes of Bludger and myself, the natives had made up their minds—an eligible opportunity now presenting itself—to be as wicked as they knew how. Alas! though I have not dwelt on this painful aspect of their character, they “knew how” only too well.
The sun rose at last, and flooded the island, when I perceived that, from every side, crowds of revellers were pressing together to the place where I lay in fetters. They had a wild, dissipated air, flowers were wreathed and twisted in their wet and dewy locks, which floated on the morning wind. Many of the young men were merely dressed—if “dressed” it could be called—in the skins of leopards, panthers, bears, goats, and deer, tossed over their shoulders. In their hands they all held wet, dripping branches of fragrant trees, many of them tipped with pine cones, and wreathed with tendrils of the vine. Others carried switches, of which I divined the use only too clearly, and the women were waving over their heads tame serpents, which writhed and wriggled hideously. It was an awful spectacle!
I was dragged forth by these revellers; many of them were intoxicated, and, in a moment—I blush even now to think of it—I was stripped naked! Nothing was left to me but my hat and spectacles, which, for some religious reason I presume, I was, fortunately, allowed to retain. Then I was driven with blows, which hurt a great deal, into the market-place, and up to the great altar, where William Bludger, also naked, was lying more dead than alive.
“William,” I said solemnly, “what cheer?” He did not answer me. Even in that supreme moment it was not difficult to discern that William had been looking on the wine when it was red, and had not confined himself to mere ocular observation. I tried to make him remember he was an Englishman, that the honour of our country was in our hands, and that we should die with the courage and dignity befitting our race. These were strange consolations and exhortations for me to offer in such an extremity, but, now it had come to the last pass, it is curious what mere worldly thoughts hurried through my mind.
My words were wasted: the natives seized William and forced him to his feet. Then, while a hymn was sung, they put chains of black and white figs round our necks, and thrust into our hands pieces of cheese, figs, and certain peculiar herbs. This formed part of what may well be called the “Ritual” of this cruel race. May Ritualists heed my words, and turn from the errors of their ways!
Too well I knew all that now awaited us. All that I had seen and shuddered at, on the day of my landing on the island, was now practised on self and partner. We had to tread the long paved way to the distant cove at the river’s mouth; we had to endure the lashes from the switches of wild fig. The priestess, carrying the wooden idol, walked hard by us, and cried out, whenever the blows fell fewer or lighter, that the idol was waxing too heavy for her to bear. Then they redoubled their cruelties.
It was a wonderfully lovely day. In the blue heaven there was not a cloud. We had reached the river’s mouth, and were fast approaching the stakes that had already been fixed in the sands for our execution; nay, the piles of green wood were already being heaped up by the young men. There was, there could be, no hope, and, weary and wounded, I almost welcomed the prospect of death, however cruel.
Suddenly the blows ceased to shower on me, and I heard a cry from the lips of the old priest, and, turning about, I saw that the eyes of all the assembled multitude were fixed on a point on the horizon.
Looking automatically in the direction towards which they were gazing, I beheld—oh joy, oh wonder!—I beheld a long trail of cloud floating level with the sea! It was the smoke of a steamer!
“Too late, too late,” I thought, and bitterly reflected that, had the vessel appeared but an hour earlier, the attention of my cruel captors might have been diverted to such a spectacle as they had never seen before.
But it was not too late.
Perched on a little hillock, and straining his gaze to the south, the old priest was speaking loudly and excitedly. The crowd deserted us, and gathered about him.
I threw myself on the sand, weary, hopeless, parched with thirst, and racked with pain. Bludger was already lying in a crumpled mass at my feet. I think he had fainted.
I retained consciousness, but that was all. The fierceness of the sun beat upon me, the sky and sea and shore swam before me in a mist. Presently I heard the voice of the priest, raised in the cadences which he favoured when he was reading texts out of their sacred books, if books they could be called. I looked at him with a faint curiosity, and perceived that he held in his hands the wooden casket, adorned with strangely carved bands of gold and ivory, which I had seen on the night of my arrival on the island.
From this he had selected the old grey scraps of metal, scratched, as I was well aware, with what they conceived to be ancient prophecies.
I was now sufficiently acquainted with the language to understand the verses which he was chanting, and which I had already heard, without comprehending them. They ran thus in English:
“But when a man, having a chimney pot on his head, and four eyes, appears in Scheria, and when a ship without sails also comes, sailing without wind, and breathing smoke, then shall destruction fall on the island.”
He had not ended when it was plain, even to those ignorant people, that the prophecy was about to be fulfilled. From the long, narrow, black line of the steamer, which had approached us with astonishing speed, “sailing without wind, and breathing smoke,” there burst six flashes of fire, followed by a peal like thunder, and six tall fountains, as the natives fancied, of sea-water rose and fell in the bay, where the shells had lighted.
It was plain that the commander of the vessel, finding himself in unknown seas, and hard by an unvisited country, was determined to strike terror and command respect by this salute.
The noise of the broadside had scarcely died away, when the natives fled, disappeared like magic, leaving many of their garments behind them.
They were making for their town, which was concealed from the view of the rapidly nearing steamer. From her mast I could now see, flaunting the slight breeze, the dear old Union Jack, and the banner of the Salvation Navy! {95}
My resolution was taken in a moment. Bludger had now recovered consciousness, and was picking up heart. I thrust into his hands one of the branches with which we had been flogged, fastened to it a cloak of one of the natives, bade him keep waving it from a rocky promontory, and, rushing down to the sea, I leaped in, and swam with all my strength towards the vessel. Weak as I was, my new hopes gave me strength, and presently, from the crest of a wave, I saw that the people of the steamer were lowering a boat, and rowing towards me.
In a few minutes they had reached me, my countrymen’s hands were in mine. They dragged me on board; they pulled back to their vessel; and I stood, entirely undressed, on the deck of a British ship!
So long had I lived among people heedless of modesty that I was rushing, with open arms, towards the officer on the quarter-deck, who was dressed as a bishop, when I heard a scream of horror. I turned round in time to see the bishop’s wife fleeing precipitately to the cabin, and driving her children and governess in front of her.
Then all the horror of the situation flooded my heart and brain, and I fell fainting on the quarter-deck.
When I recovered my consciousness, I found myself plainly but comfortably dressed in the ordinary costume, except the hat, which lay beside me, of a dean in the Church of England. My wounds had been carefully attended to, William Bludger had been taken on board, and I was surrounded by the kind faces of my benefactors, including the bishop’s consort. My apologies for my somewhat sudden and unceremonious intrusion were cut short by the arrival of tea and a slight collation suitable for an invalid. In an hour I was walking the quarter-deck with the bishop in command of the William Wilberforce, armed steam yacht, of North Shields, fitted out for the purposes of the Salvation Navy. From the worthy prelate in command of the William Wilberforce, I learned much concerning his own past career and the nature of his enterprise, as I directed the navigation of the vessel through the shoals and reefs which lay about the harbour of the island.
The bishop (a purely brevet title) would refresh his memory, now and then, from a penny biography of himself with which he was provided, and the following, in brief, is a record of his life and adventures:—
Thomas Sloggins (that was his name), from his earliest infancy, had been possessed with a passion for doing good to others, a passion, alas! but too rarely reciprocated. I pass over many affecting details of his adventures as a ministering child: how he endeavoured to win his father from tobacco by breaking his favourite pipes; how he strove to wean his elder brother from cruel field-sports, by stuffing the joints of his fishing-rod with gravel; with many other touching incidents.
Being almost entirely uneducated, young Sloggins, when he reached man’s estate, conceived that he would most benefit his fellow-creatures by combining the professions of the pulpit and the press—by preaching on Sundays and at odd times, while he acted as outdoor reporter to The Rowdy Puritan on every lawful day. Being a man of great earnestness and enterprise, he soon rose in the ranks of the Salvation Navy; and at one time commanded an evangelical barge on the benighted canals of our country. Finally, he made England almost too hot to hold him, by the original forms of his benevolence, while, at the same time, he acquired the utmost esteem and confidence of many wealthy philanthropists and excellent, if impulsive, ladies. These good people provided him with that well-equipped and armed steam yacht, the William Wilberforce, which he manned with a crew of converted characters (they certainly looked as if they must have needed a great deal of converting), and he had now for months been cruising in the South Pacific. A local cyclone had driven the William Wilberforce out of her reckoning, and hence the appearance of that vessel in the very nick of time to achieve my rescue.
When the bishop had finished his story, I briefly recapitulated to him my own adventures, and we agreed that the conversion of the island must be our earliest task. To begin with, we steered into the harbour, where a vast multitude of the natives were assembled in arms, and awaited our approach with a threatening demeanour. Our landing was opposed, but a few well-directed volleys from a Gardiner gun (which did not jam) caused the hostile force to disperse, and we landed in great state. Marching on the chief’s house, we were received with an abject submission that I had scarcely expected. The people were absolutely cowed, more by the fulfilment of the prophecy, I think, than even by the execution done by our Gardiner machine gun. At the bishop’s request, I delivered a harangue in the native tongue, declaring that we only required the British flag to be hoisted on the palace, and the immediate disendowment of the heathen church as in those parts established. I was listened to in uneasy silence; but my demand for lodgings in the palace was acceded to; and, in a few hours, the bishop, with his wife and children, were sumptuously housed under the roof of the chief. The ladies of the chief’s family showed great curiosity in watching and endeavouring to converse with our friends. I was amused to see how soon the light-hearted islanders appeared to forget their troubles and apprehensions. Doto, in particular, became quite devoted to the prelate’s elder daughter (the youngest of the bishop’s family was suffering from measles), and would never be out of her company. Thus all seemed to fare merrily; presents were brought to us—flowers, fruit, the feathers of rare birds, and ornaments of native gold were literally showered upon the ladies of the party. The chief promised to call a meeting of his counsellors on the morrow, and all seemed going on well, when, alas! measles broke out in the palace. The infant whom I had presented to Doto—the infant whom I had found on the mountain side—was the first sufferer. Then Doto caught the disease herself, then her mother, then the chief. In vain we attempted to nurse and tend them; in vain we expended the contents of the ship’s medicine chest on the invalids. The malady having, as it were, an entirely new field to work upon, raged like the most awful pestilence. Through all ranks of the people it spread like wild-fire; many died, none could be induced to take the most ordinary precautions. The natives became, as it were, mad under the torments of fever and the burning heat of the unaccustomed malady; they rushed about, quite unclad, for the sake of the deceptive coolness, and hundreds of them cast themselves into the sea and into the river.
It was my sad lot to see my dear Doto die—the first of the sufferers in the palace to succumb to the disease. Meanwhile, the bishop and myself being entirely absorbed in attendance on the sick, the crew of the William Wilberforce, I deeply regret to say, escaped from all restraint, and forgot what was due to themselves and their profession. They revelled with the most abandoned of the natives, and disease and drink ravaged the once peaceful island. Every sign of government and order vanished. The old priest built a huge pile of firewood, and laying himself there with the images of the gods, set fire to the whole, and perished with his own false religion.
After this event, the island ceased to be a safe residence for ourselves. Among the mountains, as I learned, where the pestilence had not yet penetrated, the shepherds and the wilder tribes were gathering in arms. One night we stole on board the William Wilberforce, leaving the city desolate, filled with the smoke of funeral pyres, and the wailing of men and women. There was a dreadful sultry stillness in the air, and all day long wild beasts had been dashing madly into the sea, and the sky had been obscured by flights of birds. On all the crests of the circle of surrounding hills we saw, in the growing darkness, the beacons and camp fires of the insurgents from the interior. Just before the dawn the William Wilberforce was attacked by the whole mass of the natives in boats and rafts. But we had not been unprepared for this movement, nor were the resources of science unequal to the occasion. We had surrounded the William Wilberforce with a belt, or cordon, of torpedoes, and as each of the assaulting boats touched the boom, a terrible explosion shook the water into fountains of foam, and the waves were strewn with scalded, wounded, and mutilated men. Meanwhile, we bombarded the city and the harbour, and the night passed amid the most awful sounds and sights—fire, smoke, yells of anger and pain, cries of the native leaders encouraging their men, and shouts from our own people, who had to repel the boarders, when the boom was at last forced, with pikes and cutlasses. Just before the dawn a strange thing happened. A great glowing coal, as it seemed, fell with a hissing crash on the deck of the William Wilberforce, and others dropped, with a strange sound and a dreadful odour of burning, in the water all around us. Had the natives discovered some mode of retaliating on our use of firearms?
I looked in the direction of their burning city, and beheld, on the sharp peak of the highest mountain (now visible in the grey morning light), an object like a gigantic pine-tree of fire. The blazing trunk rose, slim and straight, from the mountain crest, and, at a vast height, developed a wilderness of burning branches. Fearful hollow sounds came from the hill, its sides were seamed with racing cataracts of living lava, of coursing and leaping flames, which rolled down with incredible swiftness and speed towards the doomed city. Then the waters of the harbour were smitten and shaken, and the William Wilberforce rocked and heaved as in the most appalling storm, though all the winds were silent, while a mighty wave swept far inland towards the streams of fire. There was no room for doubt; a volcanic eruption was occurring, and a submarine earthquake, as not uncommonly happens, had also taken place. Our only hope was in immediate flight. Presently steam was got up, and we steamed away into the light of the glowing east, leaving behind us only a burning island, and a fire like an ugly dawn flaring in the western sky.
When we returned in the evening, Boothland—as I may now indeed call it, for Scheria has ceased to be—was one black smoking cinder.
Hardly a tree or a recognizable rock remained to show that this had once been a peaceful home of men. The oracle, or prophecy of the old priest, had been horribly, though, of course, quite accidentally, fulfilled.
* * * * *
Little remains to be told. On my return home, I chanced to visit the British Museum, and there, much to my surprise, observed an old piece of stone, chipped with the characters, or letters, in use among the natives of Scheria.
“Why,” said I, reading the words aloud, “these are the characters which the natives employed on my island.”
“These?” said the worthy official who accompanied me. “Why, these are the most archaic Greek letters which have yet been discovered: inscriptions from beneath the lava beds of Santorin.”
“I can’t help that,” I said. “The Polynesians used them too; and you see I can read them easily, though I don’t know Greek.”
I then told him the whole story of my connection with the island, and of the unfortunate results of the contact between these poor people and our superior modern civilization.
I have rarely seen a man more affected by any recital than was the head of the classical department of the Museum by my artless narrative. When I described the sacrifice I saw on landing in the island, he exclaimed, “Great Heavens! the Attic Thargelia.” He grew more and more excited as I went on, and producing a Greek book, “Pausanias,” he showed me that the sacrifice of wild beasts was practised sixteen hundred years ago in honour of Artemis Elaphria. The killing of old Elatreus for entering the town hall reminded him of a custom in Achæa Pthiotis. When I had finished my tale, he burst out into violent and libellous language. “You have destroyed,” he said, “with your miserable modern measles and Gardiner guns, the last remaining city of the ancient Greeks. The winds cast you on the shore of Phæacia, the island sung by Homer; and, in your brutal ignorance, you never knew it. You have ruined a happy, harmless, and peaceful people, and deprived archæology of an opportunity that can never, never return!”
I do not know about archæology, but as for “harmless and peaceful people,” I leave it to my readers to say whether the islanders were anything of the sort.
I learn that the Government has just refused to give the Museum a grant of five thousand pounds to be employed in what are called “Excavations in Ancient Phæacia,” diggings, that is, in Boothland.
With so many darkened people still ignorant of our enlightened civilization, I think the grant would be a shameful waste of public money. {106}
* * * * *
We publish the original text of the prophecy repeatedly alluded to by Mr. Gowles. The learned say that no equivalent occurs for the line about his “four eyes,” and it is insinuated, in a literary journal of eminence, that Mr. Gowles pilfered the notion from Good’s glass eye, in a secular romance, called King Solomon’s Mines, which Mr. Gowles, we are sure, never heard of in his life.—ED.
THE PROPHECY.
’Αλλ’ οτε καπνοδοχον τις εχων περι κραατος αυλον
και νηυς πυριπεμπτος ατερ πτερυyων ανεμωκεων
ιξεται εις ’Απιην χερσον δια λαιτμα θαλασσης,
δη τοτε πουλυβοτειραν επι χθονα λοιμος ικανει
ξυν δε τε τω πτολεμος, τοτε δη θεοι εκλειψουσιν
εξ εδρανων, τατ’ ολειται αιστωθεντα κατ’ ακρης.
IN THE WRONG PARADISE
AN OCCIDENTAL APOLOGUE.
In the drawing-room, or, as it is more correctly called, the “dormitory,” of my club, I had been reading a volume named “Sur l’Humanité Posthume,” by M. D’Assier, a French follower of Comte. The mixture of positivism and ghost-stories highly diverted me. Moved by the sagacity and pertinence of M. D’Assier’s arguments for a limited and fortuitous immortality, I fell into such an uncontrollable fit of laughter as caused, I could see, first annoyance and then anxiety in those members of my club whom my explosion of mirth had awakened. As I still chuckled and screamed, it appeared to me that the noise I made gradually grew fainter and more distant, seeming to resound in some vast empty space, even more funereal and melancholy than the dormitory of my club, the “Tepidarium.” It has happened to most people to laugh themselves awake out of a dream, and every one who has done so must remember the ghastly, hollow, and maniacal sound of his own mirth. It rings horribly in a quiet room where there has been, as the Veddahs of Ceylon say is the case in the world at large, “nothing to laugh at.” Dean Swift once came to himself, after a dream, laughing thus hideously at the following conceit: “I told Apronia to be very careful especially about the legs.” Well, the explosions of my laughter crackled in a yet more weird and lunatic fashion about my own ears as I slowly became aware that I had died of an excessive sense of the ludicrous, and that the space in which I was so inappropriately giggling was, indeed, the fore-court of the House of Hades. As I grew more absolutely convinced of this truth, and began dimly to discern a strange world visible in a sallow light, like that of the London streets when a black fog hangs just over the houses, my hysterical chuckling gradually died away. Amusement at the poor follies of mortals was succeeded by an awful and anxious curiosity as to the state of immortality and the life after death. Already it was certain that “the Manes are somewhat,” and that annihilation is the dream of people sceptical through lack of imagination. The scene around me now resolved itself into a high grey upland country, bleak and wild, like the waste pastoral places of Liddesdale. As I stood expectant, I observed a figure coming towards me at some distance. The figure bore in its hand a gun, and, as I am short-sighted, I at first conceived that he was the gamekeeper. “This affair,” I tried to say to myself, “is only a dream after all; I shall wake and forget my nightmare.”
But still the man drew nearer, and I began to perceive my error. Gamekeepers do not usually paint their faces red and green, neither do they wear scalp-locks, a tuft of eagle’s feathers, moccasins, and buffalo-hide cloaks, embroidered with representations of war and the chase. This was the accoutrement of the stranger who now approached me, and whose copper-coloured complexion indicated that he was a member of the Red Indian, or, as the late Mr. Morgan called it the “Ganowanian” race. The stranger’s attire was old and clouted; the barrel of his flint-lock musket was rusted, and the stock was actually overgrown with small funguses. It was a peculiarity of this man that everything he carried was more or less broken and outworn. The barrel of his piece was riven, his tomahawk was a mere shard of rusted steel, on many of his accoutrements the vapour of fire had passed. He approached me with a stately bearing, and, after saluting me in the fashion of his people, gave me to know that he welcomed me to the land of spirits, and that he was deputed to carry me to the paradise of the Ojibbeways. “But, sir,” I cried in painful confusion, “there is here some great mistake. I am no Ojibbeway, but an Agnostic; the after-life of spirits is only (as one of our great teachers says) ‘an hypothesis based on contradictory probabilities;’ and I really must decline to accompany you to a place of which the existence is uncertain, and which, if it does anywhere exist, would be uncongenial in the extreme to a person of my habits.”
To this remonstrance my Ojibbeway Virgil answered, in effect, that in the enormous passenger traffic between the earth and the next worlds mistakes must and frequently do occur. Quisque suos patimur manes, as the Roman says, is the rule, but there are many exceptions. Many a man finds himself in the paradise of a religion not his own, and suffers from the consequences. This was, in brief, the explanation of my guide, who could only console me by observing that if I felt ill at ease in the Ojibbeway paradise, I might, perhaps, be more fortunate in that of some other creed. “As for your Agnostics,” said he, “their main occupation in their own next world is to read the poetry of George Eliot and the philosophical works of Mr. J. S. Mill.” On hearing this, I was much consoled for having missed the entrance to my proper sphere, and I prepared to follow my guide with cheerful alacrity, into the paradise of the Ojibbeways.
Our track lay, at first, along the “Path of Souls,” and the still, grey air was only disturbed by a faint rustling and twittering of spirits on the march. We seemed to have journeyed but a short time, when a red light shone on the left hand of the way. As we drew nearer, this light appeared to proceed from a prodigious strawberry, a perfect mountain of a strawberry. Its cool and shining sides seemed very attractive to a thirsty Soul. A red man, dressed strangely in the feathers of a raven, stood hard by, and loudly invited all passers-by to partake of this refreshment. I was about to excavate a portion of the monstrous strawberry (being partial to that fruit), when my guide held my hand and whispered in a low voice that they who accepted the invitation of the man that guarded the strawberry were lost. He added that, into whatever paradise I might stray, I must beware of tasting any of the food of the departed. All who yield to the temptation must inevitably remain where they have put the food of the dead to their lips. “You,” said my guide, with a slight sneer, “seem rather particular about your future home, and you must be especially careful to make no error.” Thus admonished, I followed my guide to the river which runs between our world and the paradise of the Ojibbeways. A large stump of a tree lies half across the stream, the other half must be crossed by the agility of the wayfarer. Little children do but badly here, and “an Ojibbeway woman,” said my guide, “can never be consoled when her child dies before it is fairly expert in jumping. Such young children they cannot expect to meet again in paradise.” I made no reply, but was reminded of some good and unhappy women I had known on earth, who were inconsolable because their babes had died before being sprinkled with water by a priest. These babes they, like the Ojibbeway matrons, “could not expect to meet again in paradise.” To a grown-up spirit the jump across the mystic river presented no difficulty, and I found myself instantly among the wigwams of the Ojibbeway heaven. It was a remarkably large village, and as far as the eye could see huts and tents were erected along the river. The sound of magic songs and of drums filled all the air, and in the fields the spirits were playing lacrosse. All the people of the village had deserted their homes and were enjoying themselves at the game. Outside one hut, however, a perplexed and forlorn phantom was sitting, and to my surprise I saw that he was dressed in European clothes. As we drew nearer I observed that he wore the black garb and white neck-tie of a minister in some religious denomination, and on coming to still closer quarters I recognized an old acquaintance, the Rev. Peter McSnadden. Now Peter had been a “jined member” of that mysterious “U. P. Kirk” which, according to the author of “Lothair,” was founded by the Jesuits for the greater confusion of Scotch theology. Peter, I knew, had been active as a missionary among the Red Men in Canada; but I had neither heard of his death nor could conceive how his shade had found its way into a paradise so inappropriate as that in which I encountered him. Though never very fond of Peter, my heart warmed to him, as the heart sometimes does to an acquaintance unexpectedly met in a strange land. Coming cautiously behind him, I slapped Peter on the shoulder, whereon he leaped up with a wild unearthly yell, his countenance displaying lively tokens of terror. When he recognized me he first murmured, “I thought it was these murdering Apaches again;” and it was long before I could soothe him, or get him to explain his fears, and the circumstance of his appearance in so strange a final home. “Sir,” said Peter, “it’s just some terrible mistake. For twenty years was I preaching to these poor painted bodies anent heaven and hell, and trying to win them from their fearsome notions about a place where they would play at the ba’ on the Sabbath, and the like shameful heathen diversions. Many a time did I round it to them about a far, far other place—
“Where congregations ne’er break up,
And sermons never end!”
And now, lo and behold, here I am in their heathenish Gehenna, where the Sabbath-day is just clean neglected; indeed, I have lost count myself, and do not know one day from the other. Oh, man, it’s just rideec’lous. A body—I mean a soul—does not know where to turn.” Here Peter, whose accent I cannot attempt to reproduce (he was a Paisley man), burst into honest tears. Though I could not but agree with Peter that his situation was “just rideec’lous,” I consoled him as well as I might, saying that a man should make the best of every position, and that “where there was life there was hope,” a sentiment of which I instantly perceived the futility in this particular instance. “Ye do not know the worst,” the Rev. Mr. McSnadden went on. “I am here to make them sport, like Samson among the Philistines. Their paradise would be no paradise to them if they had not a pale-face, as they say, to scalp and tomahawk. And I am that pale-face. Before you can say ‘scalping-knife’ these awful Apaches may be on me, taking my scalp and other leeberties with my person. It grows again, my scalp does, immediately; but that’s only that they may take it some other day.” The full horror of Mr. McSnadden’s situation now dawned upon me, but at the same time I could not but perceive that, without the presence of some pale-face to torture—Peter or another—paradise would, indeed, be no paradise to a Red Indian. In the same way Tertullian (or some other early Father) has remarked that the pleasures of the blessed will be much enhanced by what they observe of the torments of the wicked. As I was reflecting thus two wild yells burst upon my hearing. One came from a band of Apache spirits who had stolen into the Ojibbeway village; the other scream was uttered by my unfortunate friend. I confess that I fled with what speed I might, nor did I pause till the groans of the miserable Peter faded in the distance. He was, indeed, a man in the wrong paradise.
In my anxiety to avoid sharing the fate of Peter at the hands of the Apaches, I had run out of sight and sound of the Ojibbeway village. When I paused I found myself alone, on a wide sandy tract, at the extremity of which was an endless thicket of dark poplar-trees, a grove dear to Persephone. Here and there in the dank sand, half buried by the fallen generations of yellow poplar-leaves, were pits dug, a cubit every way, and there were many ruinous altars of ancient stones. On some were engraved figures of a divine pair, a king and queen seated on a throne, while men and women approached them with cakes in their hands or with the sacrifice of a cock. While I was admiring these strange sights, I beheld as it were a moving light among the deeps of the poplar thicket, and presently saw coming towards me a young man clad in white raiment and of a radiant aspect. In his hand he bore a golden wand whereon were wings of gold. The first down of manhood was on his lip; he was in that season of life when youth is most gracious. Then I knew him to be no other than Hermes of the golden rod, the guide of the souls of men outworn. He took my hand with a word of welcome, and led me through the gloom of the poplar trees.
Like Thomas the Rhymer, on his way to Fairyland—
“We saw neither sun nor moon,
But we heard the roaring of the sea.”
This eternal “swowing of a flode” was the sound made by the circling stream of Oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the White Rock, and the sands of the region of dreams. So we fleeted onwards till we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us like the steep side of a hill. On the left side of the gates we beheld a fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near. “There is another yonder,” he said, pointing to the right hand, “a stream of still water that issues from the Lake of Memory, and there are guards who keep that stream from the lips of the profane. Go to them and speak thus: ‘I am the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and this yourselves know right well. But I am perishing with thirst, so give me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the mere of Memory.’ And they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed.” So I did as he said, and went before the guardians of the water. Now they were veiled, and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away. “Thou comest to the pure, from the pure,” they said, “and thou art a suppliant of holy Persephone. Happy and most blessed art thou, advance to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but divine.” Then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be conceived, a meadow of that short grass which grows on some shores beside the sea. There were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. Here grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull carried off Europa. Beyond the level land beside the sea, between these coasts and the far-off hills, was a steep lonely rock, on which were set the shining temples of the Grecian faith. The blue seas that begirt the coasts were narrow, and ran like rivers between many islands not less fair than the country to which we were come, while other isles, each with its crest of clear-cut hills, lay westward, far away, and receding into the place of the sunset. Then I recognized the Fortunate Islands spoken of by Pindar, and the paradise of the Greeks. “Round these the ocean breezes blow and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees of splendour, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their hands.” {124} And, as Pindar says again, “for them shineth below the strength of the sun, while in our world it is night, and the space of crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade of frankincense-trees and of fruits of gold. And some in horses and in bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight, and among them thriveth all fair flowering bliss; and fragrance ever streameth through the lovely land as they mingle incense of every kind upon the altars of the gods.” In this beautiful country I took great delight, now watching the young men leaping and running (and they were marvellously good over a short distance of ground), now sitting in a chariot whereto were harnessed steeds swifter than the wind, like those that, Homer says, “the gods gave, glorious gifts, to Peleus.” And the people, young and old, received me kindly, welcoming me in their Greek speech, which was like the sound of music. And because I had ever been a lover of them and of their tongue, my ears were opened to understand them, though they spoke not Greek as we read it. Now when I had beheld many of the marvels of the Fortunate Islands, and had sat at meat with those kind hosts (though I only made semblance to eat of what they placed before me), and had seen the face of Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, who is the lord of that country, my friends told me that there was come among them one of my own nation who seemed most sad and sorrowful, and they could make him no mirth. Then they carried me to a house in a grove, and all around it a fair garden, and a well in the midst.
Now stooping over the well, that he might have sight of his own face, was a most wretched man. He was pale and very meagre; he had black rings under his eyes, and his hair was long, limp, and greasy, falling over his shoulders. He was clad somewhat after the manner of the old Greeks, but his raiment was wofully ill-made and ill-girt upon him, nor did he ever seem at his ease. As soon as I beheld his sallow face I knew him for one I had seen and mocked at in the world of the living. He was a certain Figgins, and he had been honestly apprenticed to a photographer; but, being a weak and vain young fellow, he had picked up modern notions about art, the nude, plasticity, and the like, in the photographer’s workroom, whereby he became a weariness to the photographer and to them that sat unto him. Being dismissed from his honest employment, this chitterling must needs become a model to some painters that were near as ignorant as himself. They talked to him about the Greeks, about the antique, about Paganism, about the Renaissance, till they made him as much the child of folly as themselves. And they painted him as Antinous, as Eros, as Sleep, and I know not what, but whatever name they called him he was always the same lank-haired, dowdy, effeminate, pasty-faced photographer’s young man. Then he must needs take to writing poems all about Greece, and the free ways of the old Greeks, and Lais, and Phryne, and therein he made “Aeolus” rhyme to “control us.” For of Greek this fellow knew not a word, and any Greek that met him had called him a κολλοψ, and bidden him begone to the crows for a cursed fellow, and one that made false quantities in every Greek name he uttered. But his little poems were much liked by young men of his own sort, and by some of the young women. Now death had come to Figgins, and here he was in the Fortunate Islands, the very paradise of those Greeks about whom he had always been prating while he was alive. And yet he was not happy. A little lyre lay beside him in the grass, and now and again he twanged on it dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no button-hole. Then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and wish himself back in his friends’ studios in London. I almost pitied the wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had never been more wretched. “Why,” I asked, “was your mouth not always full of the ‘Greek spirit,’ and did you not mock the Christians and their religion? And, as to their heaven, did you not say that it was a tedious place, full of pious old ladies and Philistines? And are you not got to the paradise of the Greeks? What, then, ails you with your lot?” “Sir,” said he, “to be plain with you, I do not understand a word these fellows about me say, and I feel as I did the first time I went to Paris, before I knew enough French to read the Master’s poems. {128} Again, every one here is mirthful and gay, and there is no man with a divinely passionate potentiality of pain. When I first came here they were always asking me to run with them or jump against them, and one fellow insisted I should box with him, and hurt me very much. My potentiality of pain is considerable. Or they would have me drive with them in these dangerous open chariots,—me, that never rode in a hansom cab without feeling nervous. And after dinner they sing songs of which I do not catch the meaning of one syllable, and the music is like nothing I ever heard in my life. And they are all abominably active and healthy. And such of their poets as I admired—in Bohn’s cribs, of course—the poets of the Anthology, are not here at all, and the poets who are here are tremendous proud toffs” (here Figgins relapsed into his natural style as it was before he became a Neopagan poet), “and won’t say a word to a cove. And I’m sick of the Greeks, and the Fortunate Islands are a blooming fraud, and oh, for paradise, give me Pentonville.” With these words, perhaps the only unaffected expression of genuine sentiment poor Figgins had ever uttered, he relapsed into a gloomy silence. I advised him to cultivate the society of the authors whose selected works are in the Greek Delectus, and to try to make friends with Xenophon, whose Greek is about as easy as that of any ancient. But I fear that Figgins, like the Rev. Peter McSnadden, is really suffering a kind of punishment in the disguise of a reward, and all through having accidentally found his way into what he foolishly thought would be the right paradise for him.
Now I might have stayed long in the Fortunate Islands, yet, beautiful as they were, I ever felt like Odysseus in the island of fair Circe. The country was lovely and the land desirable, but the Christian souls were not there without whom heaven itself were no paradise to me. And it chanced that as we sat at the feast a maiden came to me with a pomegranate on a plate of silver, and said, “Sir, thou hast now been here for the course of a whole moon, yet hast neither eaten nor drunk of what is set before thee. Now it is commanded that thou must taste if it were but a seed of this pomegranate, or depart from among us.” Then, making such excuses as I might, I was constrained to refuse to eat, for no soul can leave a paradise wherein it has tasted food. And as I spoke the walls of the fair hall wherein we sat, which were painted with the effigies of them that fell at Thermopylæ and in Arcadion, wavered and grew dim, and darkness came upon me.
The first of my senses which returned to me was that of smell, and I seemed almost drowned in the spicy perfumes of Araby. Then my eyes became aware of a green soft fluttering, as of the leaves of a great forest, but quickly I perceived that the fluttering was caused by the green scarfs of a countless multitude of women. They were “fine women” in the popular sense of the term, and were of the school of beauty admired by the Faithful of Islam, and known to Mr. Bailey, in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” as “crumby.” These fond attendant nymphs carried me into gardens twain, in each two gushing springs, in each fruit, and palms, and pomegranates. There were the blessed reclining, precisely as the Prophet has declared, “on beds the linings whereof are brocade, and the fruit of the two gardens within reach to cull.” There also were the “maids of modest glances,” previously indifferent to the wooing “of man or ginn.” “Bright and large-eyed maids kept in their tents, reclining on green cushions and beautiful carpets. About the golden couches went eternal youths with goblets and ewers, and a cup of flowing wine. No headache shall they feel therefrom,” says the compassionate Prophet, “nor shall their wits be dimmed.” And all that land is misty and fragrant with the perfume of the softest Latakia, and the gardens are musical with the bubbling of countless narghilés; and I must say that to the Christian soul which enters that paradise the whole place has, certainly, a rather curious air, as of a highly transcendental Cremorne. There could be no doubt, however, that the Faithful were enjoying themselves amazingly—“right lucky fellows,” as we read in the new translation of the Koran. Yet even here all was not peace and pleasantness, for I heard my name called by a small voice, in a tone of patient subdued querulousness. Looking hastily round, I with some difficulty recognized, in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old college tutor and professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to “drawing” pupils who were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation of the first batch of married fellows. How he had got into this thoroughly wrong paradise was a mystery which he made no attempt to explain. “A nice place this, eh?” he said to me. “Nice gardens; remind me of Magdalene a good deal. It seems, however, to be decidedly rather gay just now; don’t you think so? Commemoration week, perhaps. A great many young ladies up, certainly; a good deal of cup drunk in the gardens too. I always did prefer to go down in Commemoration week, myself; never was a dancing man. There is a great deal of dancing here, but the young ladies dance alone, rather like what is called the ballet, I believe, at the opera. I must say the young persons are a little forward; a little embarrassing it is to be alone here, especially as I have forgotten a good deal of my Arabic. Don’t you think, my dear fellow, you and I could manage to give them the slip? Run away from them, eh?” He uttered a timid little chuckle, and at that moment an innumerable host of houris began a ballet d’action illustrative of a series of events in the career of the Prophet. It was obvious that my poor uncomplaining old friend was really very miserable. The “thornless loto trees” were all thorny to him, and the “tal’h trees with piles of fruit, the outspread shade, and water outpoured” could not comfort him in his really very natural shyness. A happy thought occurred to me. In early and credulous youth I had studied the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Petrus de Abano. Their lessons, which had not hitherto been of much practical service, recurred to my mind. Stooping down, I drew a circle round myself and my old friend in the fragrant white blossoms which were strewn so thick that they quite hid the grass. This circle I fortified by the usual signs employed, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us, in the conjuration of evil spirits. I then proceeded to utter one of the common forms of exorcism. Instantly the myriad houris assumed the forms of irritated demons; the smoke from the uncounted narghilés burned thick and black; the cries of the frustrated ginns, who were no better than they should be, rang wildly in our ears; the palm-trees shook beneath a mighty wind; the distant summits of the minarets rocked and wavered, and, with a tremendous crash, the paradise of the Faithful disappeared.
* * * * *
As I rang the bell, and requested the club-waiter to carry away the smoking fragments of the moderator-lamp which I had accidentally knocked over in awaking from my nightmare, I reflected on the vanity of men and the unsubstantial character of the future homes that their fancy has fashioned. The ideal heavens of modern poets and novelists, and of ancient priests, come no nearer than the drugged dreams of the angekok and the biraark of Greenland and Queensland to that rest and peace whereof it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive. To the wrong man each of our pictured heavens would be a hell, and even to the appropriate devotee each would become a tedious purgatory.