POSTSCRIPT TO LIMANORA
When he had reached this point in his narrative, a striking instance of the result of his education occurred. It was getting towards the end of winter, and we who had our rules of thumb for the changes in the weather were looking for the equinoctial gales that harbinger the approach of spring. The days were lengthening, and the light of the sun was growing clear and strong upon our high-perched huts.
We had noticed a certain distraction in his manner, an absence of thought or of consciousness, when he was describing the development of his magnetic sense. And when he ceased for the night he could not rest but paced uneasily along our platform of cliff which overlooked the waters of the sound. The moon had begun to wane, and our weather lore bade us look out for storms at the beginning of her next phase. I could not go myself to rest for thinking of his strange narrative and the wonderful people he had sojourned amongst. I sat up many hours writing out what I could remember of his conversations and descriptions while it was still clear in my mind.
Some time after midnight I looked out and saw the silver moonshine on the still waters below and was attracted by the beauty of the scene. I had thought that he had retired, but I had scarcely seated myself on a projecting boss of rock that took in one of our widest views, when his musical voice startled me out of my reverie.
We fell into such sympathetic intercourse as the beauty of night often stimulates in two sleepless spirits meeting under the moon. He told me that the earth was then tremulous with suppressed passion, and that far off in his old home in the Pacific her heart was about to break. He felt waves of magnetic feeling pass through him, and they drew his soul back to Limanora. He knew that the spirits he loved there were yearning for him. For his heart quivered and throbbed with full memories of all he had known and experienced. There was anguish in the magnetic undulance vibrating across his being. It was not merely that a great storm was approaching; that he had known for some days. There were human pulsations in the ether which beat like an ocean upon his brain. That was why he could not rest. If only he could have his wings again, he would try to respond to the call. But it was useless with the recrudescence of his muddier humanity to attempt return by such aërial means. I offered to go with him on the morrow to the nearest city and charter a ship to carry us to his former home. But he would not listen to my proposal, and bade me seek rest and sleep.
I began to feel that I was intruding on the privacy of an agonised soul, and I bade him good-night and left him to his own thoughts.
The exhaustion of overcharged emotion soon let me drift into troubled unconsciousness. Dream followed dream like hurrying clouds over the moon. At dawn I woke in nightmare. The hut was shaking. I thought that I was still dreaming. But the swish of the rain and the lashing of the tree-branches on the roof soon made me understand. The calm of the night before had given way to tempest; and the earth was suffering rupture.
I remembered the prediction of our guest, and rushed to his hut. He was not there; nor could I conjecture whither he had gone. I thought he had taken shelter in the bush from the storm. Three days it lasted, and then we were able to go out and search the drenched forest. We followed up every track that he had been accustomed to take. We went to all his favourite haunts. But no trace could we find of him, though days were spent on the search. Then we forced our way through the dense undergrowth in several directions we had never seen him take; and at last we came upon a yawning chasm, which had every appearance of being newly opened. The precipitous side of the mountain had split, and a vast landslip had swept down it and filled the bottom of the gulf. We could not resist the natural conclusion; this was the tomb of our guest. After all his wanderings he had found appropriate resting-place. The earth he knew so well had taken him to her bosom.