PREFACE
LATE in the autumn, when the memory of the stranger who had told us so many wonderful things had begun to lose its sharpness and we had almost ceased to talk of him, we were startled by his reappearance.
We were in our tunnels, taking advantage of the dry weather to get piles of our wash dirt out ready for sluicing in the wet season, and were working till nightfall. On a still, fair evening, which reminded me of the night he vanished, we were returning jaded from our long work and had just issued from the belt of bush that fringed our clearing when the moon rose above the peaks on the other side of the fiord and flashed a shuttle of gold across the waters. Raising our eyes to our huts, we stopped thunderstruck. Was that but a lunar effect on the throne-like cliff in front of them? It could not be a spirit; we had never heard of ghosts in these new lands, nor could the belief in them seize hold of minds so accustomed as ours were to deal with the rougher and more material elements of nature. We shook off our trance, and stepped forward. The sound of our footsteps made the figure move and as he turned in the moonlight we recognised our lost friend (his apparition, we first supposed). But he rose with his old quiet and dignified salute of welcome, and joining us as we sat at our evening meal, we talked as if he had parted with us only that morning. We had not the hardihood to ask him what had become of him these long months. But I noticed that he had more of his old semi-transparency of tissue and ethereality of hue, and in his eyes, as he ceased from talking, there was a baffled look I had never seen before in them. He would lapse more frequently into deep reverie. He seemed to have gone through a lifetime of effort and suffering, and his spirit was, I could see, weary and sore within him.
He shrank at first from all reference to his life within the circle of mist out on the Pacific. It seemed now to be a painful memory. There was a pathos in his tone as he spoke far keener than I had noted in it before. But gradually I drew him into reminiscence of it when we were alone in the bush, and he seemed after a time to find consolation in thinking and speaking about it, especially when he talked of the spiritual side of the civilisation in the midst of which he had lived for so many years.
In the long nights of that last winter he resumed his narrative again. He seemed to have difficulty in finding English expression for what he had to tell, but I encouraged him in our wanderings around the fiord to repeat and interpret and explain what he had told us. Gradually the narrative found a more intelligible language, and I was able to jot down notes that I understood. I have done my best to throw them together into the form that they ultimately found in his story as he told it to us sitting together in our hut. But I am still puzzled and sometimes confused by many of the ideas and feel that they have baffled my best skill to put them into our tongue. Some of his descriptions awakened in us a sense of incredulity, and others shook our old world of beliefs to its foundations. But we were drawn to him by the noble and ingenuous way in which he told us all; indeed, were often fascinated and blinded as we listened. We could not but accept his story as the highest truth we could hear in this world, and yet we were struck dumb by its strangeness. Much of our bewilderment we attributed to the difficulty of understanding his strange speech, and more to our own ignorance of the intricate problems that have troubled sages. We have kept back this latter part of his story for a time in order that by study and care we might make it more intelligible and more suited to the thoughts of Christendom. But we have to acknowledge ourselves still baffled by the impossible task of making this road through difficult regions plain and easy, and so have resolved to issue the narrative with all its faults upon it.
GODFREY SWEVEN.