EPILOGUE
WE felt guiltily conscious, as he came to this close of his narrative. But we had not the heart to hint what we thought might have become of her.
Almost three years had passed before his narrative reached the point of contact with our lives. He now became restless and jaded and flitted in and out amongst us like a ghost. For days he vanished in the bush, and again and again we thought he had finally disappeared. But he ever returned, more restless and yet more gentle.
We could not bear to see his agony and yearning, and at last proposed that we should hire or purchase a small steamer, and under his guidance make for Riallaro. He was long reluctant, but after months of hope deferred resigned himself to the enterprise.
Trowm and I made for the nearest port and brought our purchase round to our fiord, well-provisioned and equipped for a tropical voyage. Somm was left by our huts and our mine to guard our interests, but still more to watch for the advent of any messenger from the strange land within the circle of mist.
The rest of us set out with our guest in search of his home. Nothing happened to our expedition beyond the usual mishaps of tropical seas. A tornado made us take refuge within an uninhabited atoll; in its harbour our craft was safe enough, but it took all our powers to hold on to the scanty herbage that clung to the reef and prevent our being blown into the ocean beyond. Once or twice we had an awkward incident with sharks, and once we came too close to an island whose shore swarmed with threatening savages. They sprang into their canoes and made for us, but our steam enabled us to outdistance them with ease.
Our stranger knew the exact latitude and longitude of Riallaro. He could point out its place on a map with a confidence that made us feel we were about to enter with him into the mysterious archipelago. We sailed straight for the western side of the ring of mist, but never did we encounter any such feature as he had described to us. Once or twice we thought we saw an extended haze on the horizon and made for it; but it vanished as we approached; it was only the mirage of the ocean. Weeks and weeks we steamed around and over the region, but not a trace of the great archipelago or its nebulous fence did we find.
Even our guide at last fell into silent bewilderment. He could not believe that it had all disappeared like a dream; unless, as we fancied, the subterranean forces had blown it into space. Nor could he mistrust his senses or his knowledge. What to think of it he did not venture to decide. He lay in stupor and silence for days.
But we knew that within a few weeks began the season of hurricanes; and we determined to make back for our shelter in the southern fiord. He reluctantly consented to our persuasion, after making us promise that we should return again to search for his lost paradise. In the meantime he would be able to study the charts of the region, and define the knowledge of it more exactly. He knew by heart its relations to the sun and the stars; and with study he could tell the very place where to follow our search. As it was, he had doubtless made some mistake; and he would rectify it in the interval of rest.
Without mishap or obstructive weather we got back into the shadow of our mountains; and one day of brilliant sunshine we sailed into the fiord. Somm was on the shore to welcome us. He had no news to give. No one had been near the place since we had left. But he had had to make into a neighbouring sound in order to supply his empty larder, and as the wind seemed to favour his trip, he had brought the masts and sails of our boat out of our cave.
Our guest paced up to our hut as in a dream, seeming to hear and see nothing around him. We let him find his way alone, whilst we beached and dismantled our little steamer.
In our bustle of work we had forgotten him. Suddenly a strange, scarcely human cry awakened our attention. We rushed up the steep pathway and found him lying in trance by the mouth of the cave, stretched upon the wings that we had cast into our lumber-hole when we rescued him from the water. Somm had had to turn them out to get at the sails and cordage of the boat, and had forgotten to return them to their place. They were cobwebbed and covered with lichen and mould, yet the transparency of them in spots gathered the rays of the sun upon the herbage underneath.
We raised him from his resting-place and carried him into our spare hut. There we tried to bring him back to consciousness, but our efforts were vain. There was life in him, we were certain; yet there was scarcely a sign of it in movement or breath, only a fragment of the wings held to the mouth showed a trace of moisture. So we left him for the night, remembering that it was long before he recovered from the first trance in which we had found him. We wrapped him round with warm clothing, and placing him comfortably on a soft bed of fern put food and drink near him, so that, if he wakened, he should know we had thought of him and were near.
The next morning at daybreak I rose, and the incident of the previous evening rushed into my mind. I made for the hut, expecting to find him recovered and asleep, but I found no human being there. The wrappings had fallen on either side of the fern-lair. The bowls of meat and drink were almost empty; but there were evident marks of the claws and beaks of birds in them.
We searched for him in the bush for days, but we never found track of him. The only sign of his movements was that the wings were gone. Whether he had adjusted them to his body and flown into the air or buried them in the sea we could not discover. There clings to our thoughts the fancy that he faded away into the azure under the blow of assurance that Thyriel was gone for ever. We kept our eyes on the alert for years after, as we went prospecting through the forest; and slowly the thought lurking in our minds passed into assured belief that his ethereal texture had melted into the air at death, that the earth received none of his material atoms when his energy fled from its surface.
It is only now, when we are sure that he has gone from our orb, that we venture on giving his story to the rest of mankind. We know no better memorial to him, and no better form for our gratitude than to let others know what he gave us, to let others feel what has passed into our own lives as an imperishable memory.
GODFREY SWEVEN.
THE END.