Chapter IX
The Island in the Lake
We made the canoe fast and landed on the great rock, to
perceive that it was really a peninsula. That is to say, it was
joined to the main land of the lake island by a broad roadway
quite fifty yards across, which appeared to end in the mouth of
the cave. On this causeway we noted a very remarkable thing,
namely, two grooves separated by an exact distance of nine feet
which ran into the mouth of the cave and vanished there.
"Explain!" said Bickley.
"Paths," I said, "worn by countless feet walking on them for
thousands of years."
"You should cultivate the art of observation, Arbuthnot. What
do you say, Bastin?"
He stared at the grooves through his spectacles, and replied:
"I don't say anything, except that I can't see anybody to make
paths here. Indeed, the place seems quite unpopulated, and all
the Orofenans told me that they never landed on it because if
they did they would die. It is a part of their superstitious
nonsense. If you have any idea in your head you had better tell
us quickly before we breakfast. I am very hungry."
"You always are," remarked Bickley; "even when most people's
appetites might have been affected. Well, I think that this great
plateau was once a landing-place for flying machines, and that
there is the air-shed or garage."
Bastin stared at him.
"Don't you think we had better breakfast?" he said. "There are
two roast pigs in that canoe, and lots of other food, enough to
last us a week, I should say. Of course, I understand that the
blood you have shed has thrown you off your balance. I believe it
has that effect, except on the most hardened. Flying machines
were only invented a few years ago by the brothers Wright in
America."
"Bastin," said Bickley, "I begin to regret that I did not leave
you to take part in another breakfast yonder--I mean as the
principal dish."
"It was Providence, not you, who prevented it, Bickley,
doubtless because I am unworthy of such a glorious end."
"Then it is lucky that Providence is a good shot with a pistol.
Stop talking nonsense and listen. If those were paths worn by
feet they would run to the edge of the rock. They do not. They
begin there in that gentle depression and slope upwards somewhat
steeply. The air machines, which were evidently large, lit in the
depression, possibly as a bird does, and then ran on wheels or
sledge skids along the grooves to the air-shed in the mountain.
Come to the cave and you will see."
"Not till we have breakfast," said Bastin. "I will get out a
pig. As a matter of fact, I had no supper last night, as I was
taking a class of native boys and making some arrangements of my
own."
As for me, I only whistled. It all seemed very feasible. And
yet how could such things be?
We unloaded the canoe and ate. Bastin's appetite was splendid.
Indeed, I had to ask him to remember that when this supply was
done I did not know where we should find any more.
"Take no thought for the morrow," he replied. "I have no doubt
it will come from somewhere," and he helped himself to another
chop.
Never had I admired him so much. Not a couple of hours before
he was about to be cruelly murdered and eaten. But this did not
seem to affect him in the least. Bastin was the only man I have
ever known with a really perfect faith. It is a quality worth
having and one that makes for happiness. What a great thing not
to care whether you are breakfasted on, or breakfast!
"I see that there is lots of driftwood about here," he
remarked, "but unfortunately we have no tea, so in this climate
it is of little use, unless indeed we can catch some fish and
cook them."
"Stop talking about eating and help us to haul up the canoe,"
said Bickley.
Between the three of us we dragged and carried the canoe a long
way from the lake, fearing lest the natives should come and bear
it off with our provisions. Then, having given Tommy his
breakfast off the scraps, we walked to the cave. I glanced at my
companions. Bickley's face was alight with scientific eagerness.
Here are not dreams or speculations, but facts to be learned, it
seemed to say, and I will learn them. The past is going to show
me some of its secrets, to tell me how men of long ago lived and
died and how far they had advanced to that point on the road of
civilisation at which I stand in my little hour of existence.
That of Bastin was mildly interested, no more. Obviously, with
half his mind he was thinking of something else, probably of his
converts on the main island and of the school class fixed for
this hour which circumstances prevented him from attending.
Indeed, like Lot's wife he was casting glances behind him towards
the wicked place from which he had been forced to flee.
Neither the past nor the future had much real interest for
Bastin; any more than they had for Bickley, though for different
reasons. The former was done with; the latter he was quite
content to leave in other hands. If he had any clear idea
thereof, probably that undiscovered land appeared to him as a
big, pleasant place where are no unbelievers or erroneous
doctrines, and all sinners will be sternly repressed, in which,
clad in a white surplice with all proper ecclesiastical
trappings, he would argue eternally with the Early Fathers and in
due course utterly annihilate Bickley, that is in a moral sense.
Personally and as a man he was extremely attached to Bickley as a
necessary and wrong-headed nuisance to which he had become
accustomed.
And I! What did I feel? I do not know; I cannot describe. An
extraordinary attraction, a semi-spiritual exaltation, I think.
That cave mouth might have been a magnet drawing my soul. With my
body I should have been afraid, as I daresay I was, for our
circumstances were sufficiently desperate. Here we were,
castaways upon an island, probably uncharted, one of thousands in
the recesses of a vast ocean, from which we had little chance of
escape. More, having offended the religious instincts of the
primeval inhabitants of that island, we had been forced to flee
to a rocky mountain in the centre of a lake, where, after the
food we had brought with us by accident was consumed, we should
no doubt be forced to choose between death by starvation, or, if
we attempted to retreat, at the hands of justly infuriated
savages. Yet these facts did not oppress me, for I was being
drawn, drawn to I knew not what, and if it were to doom--well, no
matter.
Therefore, none of us cared: Bastin because his faith was equal
to any emergency and there was always that white-robed heaven
waiting for him beyond which his imagination did not go (I often
wondered whether he pictured Mrs. Bastin as also waiting; if so,
he never said anything about her); Bickley because as a child of
the Present and a servant of knowledge he feared no future,
believing it to be for him non-existent, and was careless as to
when his strenuous hour of life should end; and I because I felt
that yonder lay my true future; yes, and my true past, even
though to discover them I must pass through that portal which we
know as Death.
We reached the mouth of the cave. It was a vast place; perhaps
the arch of it was a hundred feet high, and I could see that once
all this arch had been adorned with sculptures. Protected as
these were by the overhanging rock, for the sculptured mouth of
the cave was cut deep into the mountain face, they were still so
worn that it was impossible to discern their details. Time had
eaten them away like an acid. But what length of time? I could
not guess, but it must have been stupendous to have worked thus
upon that hard and sheltered rock.
This came home to me with added force when, from subsequent
examination, we learned that the entire mouth of this cave had
been sealed up for unnumbered ages. It will be remembered that
Marama told me the mountain in the lake had risen much during the
frightful cyclone in which we were wrecked and with it the cave
mouth which previously had been invisible. From the markings on
the mountain side it was obvious that something of the sort had
happened very recently, at any rate on this eastern face. That
is, either the flat rock had sunk or the volcano had been thrown
upwards.
Once in the far past the cave had been as it was when we found
it. Then it had gone down in such a way that the table-rock
entirely sealed the entrance. Now this entrance was once more
open, and although of course there was a break in them, the
grooves of which I have spoken ran on into the cave at only a
slightly different level from that at which they lay upon the
flat rock. And yet, although they had been thus sheltered by a
great stone curtain in front of them, still these sculptures were
worn away by the tooth of Time. Of course, however, this may have
happened to them before they were buried in some ancient
cataclysm, to be thus resurrected at the hour of our arrival upon
the island.
Without pausing to make any closer examination of these
crumbled carvings, we entered the yawning mouth of that great
place, following and indeed walking in the deep grooves that I
have mentioned. Presently it seemed to open out as a courtyard
might at the end of a passage; yes, to open on to some vast place
whereof in that gloom we could not see the roof or the limits.
All we knew was that it must be enormous--the echoes of our
voices and footsteps told us as much, for these seemed to come
back to us from high, high above and from far, far away. Bickley
and I said nothing; we were too overcome. But Bastin remarked:
"Did you ever go to Olympia? I did once to see a kind of play
where the people said nothing, only ran about dressed up. They
told me it was religious, the sort of thing a clergyman should
study. I didn't think it religious at all. It was all about a nun
who had a baby."
"Well, what of it?" snapped Bickley.
"Nothing particular, except that nuns don't have babies, or if
they do the fact should not be advertised. But I wasn't thinking
of that. I was thinking that this place is like an underground
Olympia."
"Oh, be quiet!" I said, for though Bastin's description was not
bad, his monotonous, drawling voice jarred on me in that
solemnity.
"Be careful where you walk," whispered Bickley, for even he
seemed awed, "there may be pits in this floor."
"I wish we had a light," I said, halting.
"If candles are of any use," broke in Bastin, "as it happens I
have a packet in my pocket. I took them with me this morning for
a certain purpose."
"Not unconnected with the paraffin and the burning of the idol,
I suppose?" said Bickley. "Hand them over."
"Yes; if I had been allowed a little more time I intended--"
"Never mind what you intended; we know what you did and that's
enough," said Bickley as he snatched the packet from Bastin's
hand and proceeded to undo it, adding, "By heaven! I have no
matches, nor have you, Arbuthnot!"
"I have a dozen boxes of wax vestas in my other pocket," said
Bastin. "You see, they burn so well when you want to get up a
fire on a damp idol. As you may have noticed, the dew is very
heavy here."
In due course these too were produced. I took possession of
them as they were too valuable to be left in the charge of
Bastin, and, extracting a box from the packet, lit two of the
candles which were of the short thick variety, like those used in
carriage-lamps.
Presently they burned up, making two faint stars of light
which, however, were not strong enough to show us either the roof
or the sides of that vast place. By their aid we pursued our
path, still following the grooves till suddenly these came to an
end. Now all around us was a flat floor of rock which, as we
perceived clearly when we pushed aside the dust that had gathered
thickly on it in the course of ages, doubtless from the gradual
disintegration of the stony walls, had once been polished till it
resembled black marble. Indeed, certain cracks in the floor
appeared to have been filled in with some dark-coloured cement. I
stood looking at them while Bickley wandered off to the right and
a little forward, and presently called to me. I walked to him,
Bastin sticking close to me as I had the other candle, as did the
little dog, Tommy, who did not like these new surroundings and
would not leave my heels.
"Look," said Bickley, holding up his candle, "and tell me--
what's that?"
Before me, faintly shown, was some curious structure of
gleaming rods made of yellowish metal, which rods appeared to be
connected by wires. The structure might have been forty feet high
and perhaps a hundred long. Its bottom part was buried in dust.
"What is that?" asked Bickley again.
I made no answer, for I was thinking. Bastin, however, replied:
"It's difficult to be sure in this light, but I should think
that it may be the remains of a cage in which some people who
lived here kept monkeys, or perhaps it was an aviary. Look at
those little ladders for the monkeys to climb by, or possibly for
the birds to sit on."
"Are you sure it wasn't tame angels?" asked Bickley.
"What a ridiculous remark! How can you keep an angel in a cage?
I--"
"Aeroplane!" I almost whispered to Bickley.
"You've got it!" he answered. "The framework of an aeroplane
and a jolly large one, too. Only why hasn't it oxidised?"
"Some indestructible metal," I suggested. "Gold, for instance,
does not oxidise."
He nodded and said:
"We shall have to dig it out. The dust is feet thick about it;
we can do nothing without spades. Come on."
We went round to the end of the structure, whatever it might
be, and presently came to another. Again we went on and came to
another, all of them being berthed exactly in line.
"What did I tell you?" said Bickley in a voice of triumph. "A
whole garage full, a regular fleet of aeroplanes!"
"That must be nonsense," said Bastin, "for I am quite sure that
these Orofenans cannot make such things. Indeed they have no
metal, and even cut the throats of pigs with wooden knives."
Now I began to walk forward, bearing to the left so as to
regain our former line. We could do nothing with these metal
skeletons, and I felt that there must be more to find beyond.
Presently I saw something looming ahead of me and quickened my
pace, only to recoil. For there, not thirty feet away and perhaps
three hundred yards from the mouth of the cave, suddenly appeared
what looked like a gigantic man. Tommy saw it also and barked as
dogs do when they are frightened, and the sound of his yaps
echoed endlessly from every quarter, which scared him to silence.
Recovering myself I went forward, for now I guessed the truth. It
was not a man but a statue.
The thing stood upon a huge base which lessened by successive
steps, eight of them, I think, to its summit. The foot of this
base may have been a square of fifty feet or rather more; the
real support or pedestal of the statue, however, was only a
square of about six feet. The figure itself was little above
life-size, or at any rate above our life-size, say seven feet in
height. It was very peculiar in sundry ways.
To begin with, nothing of the body was visible, for it was
swathed like a corpse. From these wrappings projected one arm,
the right, in the hand of which was the likeness of a lighted
torch. The head was not veiled. It was that of a man, long-nosed,
thin-lipped, stern-visaged; the countenance pervaded by an awful
and unutterable calm, as deep as that of Buddha only less benign.
On the brow was a wreathed head-dress, not unlike an Eastern
turban, from which sprang two little wings resembling in some
degree those on the famous Greek head of Hypnos, lord of Sleep.
Between the folds of the wrappings on the back sprang two other
wings, enormous wings bent like those of a bird about to take
flight. Indeed the whole attitude of the figure suggested that it
was springing from earth to air. It was executed in black basalt
or some stone of the sort, and very highly finished. For
instance, on the bare feet and the arm which held the torch could
be felt every muscle and even some of the veins. In the same way
the details of the skull were perfectly perceptible to the touch,
although at first sight not visible on the marble surface. This
was ascertained by climbing on the pedestal and feeling the face
with our hands.
Here I may say that its modelling as well as that of the feet
and the arm filled Bickley, who, of course, was a highly trained
anatomist, with absolute amazement. He said that he would never
have thought it possible that such accuracy could have been
reached by an artist working in so hard a material.
When the others had arrived we studied this relic as closely as
our two candles would allow, and in turn expressed our opinions
of its significance. Bastin thought that if those things down
there were really the remains of aeroplanes, which he did not
believe, the statue had something to do with flying, as was shown
by the fact that it had wings on its head and shoulders. Also, he
added, after examining the face, the head was uncommonly like
that of the idol that he had blown up. It had the same long nose
and severe shut mouth. If he was right, this was probably another
effigy of Oro which we should do well to destroy at once before
the islanders came to worship it.
Bickley ground his teeth as he listened to him.
"Destroy that!" he gasped. "Destroy! Oh! you, you--early
Christian."
Here I may state that Bastin was quite right, as we proved
subsequently when we compared the head of the fetish, which, as
it will be remembered, he had brought away with him, with that of
the statue. Allowing for an enormous debasement of art, they were
essentially identical in the facial characteristics. This would
suggest the descent of a tradition through countless generations.
Or of course it may have been accidental. I am sure I do not
know, but I think it possible that for unknown centuries other
old statues may have existed in Orofena from which the idol was
copied. Or some daring and impious spirit may have found his way
to the cave in past ages and fashioned the local god upon this
ancient model.
Bickley was struck at once, as I had been, with the resemblance
of the figure to that of the Egyptian Osiris. Of course there
were differences. For instance, instead of the crook and the
scourge, this divinity held a torch. Again, in place of the crown
of Egypt it wore a winged head-dress, though it is true this was
not very far removed from the winged disc of that country. The
wings that sprang from its shoulders, however, suggested
Babylonia rather than Egypt, or the Assyrian bulls that are
similarly adorned. All of these symbolical ideas might have been
taken from that figure. But what was it? What was it?
In a flash the answer came to me. A representation of the
spirit of Death! Neither more nor less. There was the shroud;
there the cold, inscrutable countenance suggesting mysteries that
it hid. But the torch and the wings? Well, the torch was that
which lighted souls to the other world, and on the wings they
flew thither. Whoever fashioned that statue hoped for another
life, or so I was convinced.
I explained my ideas. Bastin thought them fanciful and
preferred his notion of a flying man, since by constitution he
was unable to discover anything spiritual in any religion except
his own. Bickley agreed that it was probably an allegorical
representation of death but sniffed at my interpretation of the
wings and the torch, since by constitution he could not believe
that the folly of a belief in immortality could have developed so
early in the world, that is, among a highly civilised people such
as must have produced this statue.
What we could none of us understand was why this ominous image
with its dead, cold face should have been placed in an aerodrome,
nor in fact did we ever discover. Possibly it was there long
before the cave was put to this use. At first the place may have
been a temple and have so remained until circumstances forced the
worshippers to change their habits, or even their Faith.
We examined this wondrous work and the pedestal on which it
stood as closely as we were able by the dim light of our candles.
I was anxious to go further and see what lay beyond it; indeed we
did walk a few paces, twenty perhaps, onward into the recesses of
the cave.
Then Bickley discovered something that looked like the mouth of
a well down which he nearly tumbled, and Bastin began to complain
that he was hot and very thirsty; also to point out that he
wished for no more caves and idols at present.
"Look here, Arbuthnot," said Bickley, "these candles are
burning low and we don't want to use up more if we can prevent
it, for we may need what we have got very badly later on. Now,
according to my pocket compass the mouth of this cave points due
east; probably at the beginning it was orientated to the rising
sun for purposes of astronomical observation or of worship at
certain periods of the year. From the position of the sun when we
landed on the rock this morning I imagine that just now it rises
almost exactly opposite to the mouth of the cave. If this is so,
to-morrow at dawn, for a time at least, the light should
penetrate as far as the statue, and perhaps further. What I
suggest is that we should walt till then to explore."
I agreed with him, especially as I was feeling tired, being
exhausted by wonder, and wanted time to think. So we turned back.
As we did so I missed Tommy and inquired anxiously where he was,
being afraid lest he might have tumbled down the well-like hole.
"He's all right," said Bastin. "I saw him sniffing at the base
of that statue. I expect there is a rat in there, or perhaps a
snake."
Sure enough when we reached it there was Tommy with his black
nose pressed against the lowest of the tiers that formed the base
of the statue, and sniffing loudly. Also he was scratching in the
dust as a dog does when he has winded a rabbit in a hole. So
engrossed was he in this occupation that it was with difficulty
that I coaxed him to leave the place.
I did not think much of the incident at that time, but
afterwards it came back to me, and I determined to investigate
those stones at the first opportunity.
Passing the wrecks of the machines, we emerged on to the
causeway without accident. After we had rested and washed we set
to work to draw our canoe with its precious burden of food right
into the mouth of the cave, where we hid it as well as we could.
This done we went for a walk round the base of the peak. This
proved to be a great deal larger than we had imagined, over two
miles in circumference indeed. All about it was a belt of fertile
land, as I suppose deposited there by the waters of the great
lake and resulting from the decay of vegetation. Much of this
belt was covered with ancient forest ending in mud flats that
appeared to have been thrown up recently, perhaps at the time of
the tidal wave which bore us to Orofena. On the higher part of
the belt were many of the extraordinary crater-like holes that I
have mentioned as being prevalent on the main island; indeed the
place had all the appearance of having been subjected to a
terrific and continuous bombardment.
When we had completed its circuit we set to work to climb the
peak in order to explore the terraces of which I have spoken and
the ruins which I had seen through my field-glasses. It was quite
true; they were terraces cut with infinite labour out of the
solid rock, and on them had once stood a city, now pounded into
dust and fragments. We struggled over the broken blocks of stone
to what we had taken for a temple, which stood near the lip of
the crater, for without doubt this mound was an extinct volcano,
or rather its crest. All we could make out when we arrived was
that here had once stood some great building, for its courts
could still be traced; also there lay about fragments of steps
and pillars.
Apparently the latter had once been carved, but the passage of
innumerable ages had obliterated the work and we could not turn
these great blocks over to discover if any remained beneath. It
was as though the god Thor had broken up the edifice with his
hammer, or Jove had shattered it with his thunderbolts; nothing
else would account for that utter wreck, except, as Bickley
remarked significantly, the scientific use of high explosives.
Following the line of what seemed to have been a road, we came
to the edge of the volcano and found, as we expected, the usual
depression out of which fire and lava had once been cast, as from
Hecla or Vesuvius. It was now a lake more than a quarter of a
mile across. Indeed it had been thus in the ancient days when the
buildings stood upon the terraces, for we saw the remains of
steps leading down to the water. Perhaps it had served as the
sacred lake of the temple.
We gazed with wonderment and then, wearied out, scrambled back
through the ruins, which, by the way, were of a different stone
from the lava of the mountain, to the mouth of the great cave.
