Chapter XX
Oro and Arbuthnot Travel by Night
As time went on, Oro began to visit me more and more
frequently, till at last scarcely a night went by that he did not
appear mysteriously in my sleeping-place. The odd thing was that
neither Bickley nor Bastin seemed to be aware of these nocturnal
calls. Indeed, when I mentioned them on one or two occasions,
they stared at me and said it was strange that he should have
come and gone as they saw nothing of him.
On my speaking again of the matter, Bickley at once turned the
conversation, from which I gathered that he believed me to be
suffering from delusions consequent on my illness, or perhaps to
have taken to dreaming. This was not wonderful since, as I
learned afterwards, Bickley, after he was sure that I was asleep,
made a practice of tying a thread across my doorway and of
ascertaining at the dawn that it remained unbroken. But Oro was
not to be caught in that way. I suppose, as it was impossible for
him to pass through the latticework of the open side of the
house, that he undid the thread and fastened it again when he
left; at least, that was Bastin's explanation, or, rather, one of
them. Another was that he crawled beneath it, but this I could
not believe. I am quite certain that during all his prolonged
existence Oro never crawled.
At any rate, he came, or seemed to come, and pumped me--I can
use no other word--most energetically as to existing conditions
in the world, especially those of the civilised countries, their
methods of government, their social state, the physical
characteristics of the various races, their religions, the exact
degrees of civilisation that they had developed, their
attainments in art, science and literature, their martial
capacities, their laws, and I know not what besides.
I told him all I could, but did not in the least seem to
satisfy his perennial thirst for information.
"I should prefer to judge for myself," he said at last. "Why
are you so anxious to learn about all these nations, Oro?" I
asked, exhausted.
"Because the knowledge I gather may affect my plans for the
future," he replied darkly.
"I am told, Oro, that your people acquired the power of
transporting themselves from place to place."
"It is true that the lords of the Sons of Wisdom had such
power, and that I have it still, O Humphrey."
"Then why do you not go to look with your own eyes?" I
suggested.
"Because I should need a guide; one who could explain much in a
short time," he said, contemplating me with his burning glance
until I began to feel uncomfortable.
To change the subject I asked him whether he had any further
information about the war, which he had told me was raging in
Europe.
He answered: "Not much; only that it was going on with varying
success, and would continue to do so until the nations involved
therein were exhausted," or so he believed. The war did not seem
greatly to interest Oro. It was, he remarked, but a small affair
compared to those which he had known in the old days. Then he
departed, and I went to sleep.
Next night he appeared again, and, after talking a little on
different subjects, remarked quietly that he had been thinking
over what I had said as to his visiting the modern world, and
intended to act upon the suggestion.
"When?" I asked.
"Now," he said. "I am going to visit this England of yours and
the town you call London, and you will accompany me."
"It is not possible!" I exclaimed. "We have no ship."
"We can travel without a ship," said Oro.
I grew alarmed, and suggested that Bastin or Bickley would be a
much better companion than I should in my resent weak state.
"An empty-headed man, or one who always doubts and argues,
would be useless," he replied sharply. "You shall come and you
only."
I expostulated; I tried to get up and fly--which, indeed, I did
do, in another sense.
But Oro fixed his eyes upon me and slowly waved his thin hand
to and fro above my head.
My senses reeled. Then came a great darkness.
They returned again. Now I was standing in an icy, reeking fog,
which I knew could belong to one place only--London, in December,
and at my side was Oro.
"Is this the climate of your wonderful city?" he asked, or
seemed to ask, in an aggrieved tone.
I replied that it was, for about three months in the year, and
began to look about me.
Soon I found my bearings. In front of me were great piles of
buildings, looking dim and mysterious in the fog, in which I
recognised the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, for
both could be seen from where we stood in front of the
Westminster Bridge Station. I explained their identity to Oro.
"Good," he said. "Let us enter your Place of Talk."
"But I am not a member, and we have no passes for the
Strangers' Gallery," I expostulated.
"We shall not need any," he replied contemptuously. "Lead on."
Thus adjured, I crossed the road, Oro following me. Looking
round, to my horror I saw him right in the path of a motor-bus
which seemed to go over him.
"There's an end to Oro," thought I to myself. "Well, at any
rate, I have got home."
Next instant he was at my side quite undisturbed by the
incident of the bus. We came to a policeman at the door and I
hesitated, expecting to be challenged. But the policeman seemed
absolutely indifferent to our presence, even when Oro marched
past him in his flowing robes. So I followed with a like success.
Then I understood that we must be invisible.
We passed to the lobby, where members were hurrying to and fro,
and constituents and pressmen were gathered, and so on into the
House. Oro walked up its floor and took his stand by the table,
in front of the Speaker. I followed him, none saying us No.
As it chanced there was what is called a scene in progress--I
think it was over Irish matters; the details are of no account.
Members shouted, Ministers prevaricated and grew angry, the
Speaker intervened. On the whole, it was rather a degrading
spectacle. I stood, or seemed to stand, and watched it all. Oro,
in his sweeping robes, which looked so incongruous in that place,
stepped, or seemed to step, up to the principal personages of the
Government and Opposition, whom I indicated to him, and inspected
them one by one, as a naturalist might examine strange insects.
Then, returning to me, he said:
"Come away; I have seen and heard enough. Who would have
thought that this nation of yours was struggling for its life in
war?"
We passed out of the House and somehow came to Trafalgar
Square. A meeting was in progress there, convened, apparently, to
advocate the rights of Labour, also those of women, also to
protest against things in general, especially the threat of
Conscription in the service of the country.
Here the noise was tremendous, and, the fog having lifted
somewhat, we could see everything. Speakers bawled from the base
of Nelson's column. Their supporters cheered, their adversaries
rushed at them, and in one or two instances succeeded in pulling
them down. A woman climbed up and began to scream out something
which could only be heard by a few reporters gathered round her.
I thought her an unpleasant-looking person, and evidently her
remarks were not palatable to the majority of her auditors. There
was a rush, and she was dragged from the base of one of
Landseer's lions on which she stood. Her skirt was half rent off
her and her bodice split down the back. Finally, she was conveyed
away, kicking, biting, and scratching, by a number of police. It
was a disgusting sight, and tumult ensued.
"Let us go," said Oro. "Your officers of order are good; the
rest is not good."
Later we found ourselves opposite to the doors of a famous
restaurant where a magnificent and gigantic commissionaire helped
ladies from motor-cars, receiving in return money from the men
who attended on them. We entered; it was the hour of dinner. The
place sparkled with gems, and the naked backs of the women
gleamed in the electric light. Course followed upon course;
champagne flowed, a fine band played, everything was costly;
everything was, in a sense, repellent.
"These are the wealthy citizens of a nation engaged in fighting
for its life," remarked Oro to me, stroking his long beard. "It
is interesting, very interesting. Let us go."
We went out and on, passing a public-house crowded with women
who had left their babies in charge of children in the icy
street. It was a day of Intercession for the success of England
in the war. This was placarded everywhere. We entered, or,
rather, Oro did, I following him, one of the churches in the
Strand where an evening service was in progress. The preacher in
the pulpit, a very able man, was holding forth upon the necessity
for national repentance and self-denial; also of prayer. In the
body of the church exactly thirty-two people, most of them
elderly women, were listening to him with an air of placid
acceptance.
"The priest talks well, but his hearers are not many, said Oro.
"Let us go."
We came to the flaunting doors of a great music-hall and passed
through them, though to others this would have been impossible,
for the place was filled from floor to roof. In its promenades
men were drinking and smoking, while gaudy women, painted and
low-robed, leered at them. On the stage girls danced, throwing
their legs above their heads. Then they vanished amidst applause,
and a woman in a yellow robe, who pretended to be tipsy, sang a
horrible and vulgar song full of topical allusions, which was
received with screams of delight by the enormous audience.
"Here the hearers are very many, but those to whom they listen
do not talk well. Let us go," said Oro, and we went.
At a recruiting station we paused a moment to consider posters
supposed to be attractive, the very sight of which sent a thrill
of shame through me. I remember that the inscription under one of
them was: "What will your best girl say?"
"Is that how you gather your soldiers? Later it will be
otherwise," said Oro, and passed on.
We reached Blackfriars and entered a hall at the doors of which
stood women in poke-bonnets, very sweet-faced, earnest-looking
women. Their countenances seemed to strike Oro, and he motioned
me to follow him into the hall. It was quite full of a miserable-
looking congregation of perhaps a thousand people. A man in the
blue and red uniform of the Salvation Army was preaching of duty
to God and country, of self-denial, hope and forgiveness. He
seemed a humble person, but his words were earnest, and love
flowed from him. Some of his miserable congregation wept, others
stared at him open-mouthed, a few, who were very weary, slept. He
called them up to receive pardon, and a number, led by the sweet-
faced women, came and knelt before him. He and others whispered
to them, then seemed to bless them, and they rose with their
faces changed.
"Let us go," said Oro. "I do not understand these rites, but at
last in your great and wonderful city I have seen something that
is pure and noble."
We went out. In the streets there was great excitement. People
ran to and fro pointing upwards. Searchlights, like huge fingers
of flame, stole across the sky; guns boomed. At last, in the
glare of a searchlight, we saw a long and sinister object
floating high above us and gleaming as though it were made of
silver. Flashes came from it followed by terrible booming reports
that grew nearer and nearer. A house collapsed with a crash just
behind us.
"Ah!" said Oro, with a smile. "I know this--it is war, war as
it was when the world was different and yet the same."
As he spoke, a motor-bus rumbled past. Another flash and
explosion. A man, walking with his arms round the waist of a girl
just ahead of us; seemed to be tossed up and to melt. The girl
fell in a heap on the pavement; somehow her head and her feet had
come quite close together and yet she appeared to be sitting
down. The motor-bus burst into fragments and its passengers
hurtled through the air, mere hideous lumps that had been men and
women. The head of one of them came dancing down the pavement
towards us, a cigar still stuck in the corner of its mouth.
"Yes, this is war," said Oro. "It makes me young again to see
it. But does this city of yours understand?"
We watched a while. A crowd gathered. Policemen ran up,
ambulances came. The place was cleared, and all that was left
they carried away. A few minutes later another man passed by with
his arm round the waist of another girl. Another motor-bus
rumbled up, and, avoiding the hole in the roadway, travelled on,
its conductor keeping a keen look-out for fares.
The street was cleared by the police; the airship continued its
course, spawning bombs in the distance, and vanished. The
incident was closed.
"Let us go home," said Oro. "I have seen enough of your great
and wonderful city. I would rest in the quiet of Nyo and think."
The next thing that I remember was the voice of Bastin, saying:
"If you don't mind, Arbuthnot, I wish that you would get up.
The Glittering Lady (he still called her that) is coming here to
have a talk with me which I should prefer to be private. Excuse
me for disturbing you, but you have overslept yourself; indeed, I
think it must be nine o'clock, so far as I can judge by the sun,
for my watch is very erratic now, ever since Bickley tried to
clean it."
"I am sorry, my dear fellow," I said sleepily, "but do you know
I thought I was in London--in fact, I could swear that I have
been there."
"Then," interrupted Bickley, who had followed Bastin into the
hut, giving me that doubtful glance with which I was now
familiar, "I wish to goodness that you had brought back an
evening paper with you."
A night or two later I was again suddenly awakened to feel that
Oro was approaching. He appeared like a ghost in the bright
moonlight, greeted me, and said:
"Tonight, Humphrey, we must make another journey. I would visit
the seat of the war."
"I do not wish to go," I said feebly.
"What you wish does not matter," he replied. "I wish that you
should go, and therefore you must."
"Listen, Oro," I exclaimed. "I do not like this business; it
seems dangerous to me."
"There is no danger if you are obedient, Humphrey."
"I think there is. I do not understand what happens. Do you
make use of what the Lady Yva called the Fourth Dimension, so
that our bodies pass over the seas and through mountains, like
the vibrations of our Wireless, of which I was speaking to you?"
"No, Humphrey. That method is good and easy, but I do not use
it because if I did we should be visible in the places which we
visit, since there all the atoms that make a man would collect
together again and be a man."
"What, then, do you do?" I asked, exasperated.
"Man, Humphrey, is not one; he is many. Thus, amongst other
things he has a Double, which can see and hear, as he can in the
flesh, if it is separated from the flesh."
"The old Egyptians believed that," I said.
"Did they? Doubtless they inherited the knowledge from us, the
Sons of Wisdom. The cup of our learning was so full that, keep it
secret as we would, from time to time some of it overflowed among
the vulgar, and doubtless thus the light of our knowledge still
burns feebly in the world."
I reflected to myself that whatever might be their other
characteristics, the Sons of Wisdom had lost that of modesty, but
I only asked how he used his Double, supposing that it existed.
"Very easily," he answered. "In sleep it can be drawn from the
body and sent upon its mission by one that is its master."
"Then while you were asleep for all those thousands of years
your Double must have made many journeys."
"Perhaps," he replied quietly, "and my spirit also, which is
another part of me that may have dwelt in the bodies of other
men. But unhappily, if so I forget, and that is why I have so
much to learn and must even make use of such poor instruments as
you, Humphrey."
"Then if I sleep and you distil my Double out of me, I suppose
that you sleep too. In that case who distils your Double out of
you, Lord Oro?"
He grew angry and answered:
"Ask no more questions, blind and ignorant as you are. It is
your part not to examine, but to obey. Sleep now," and again he
waved his hand over me.
In an instant, as it seemed, we were standing in a grey old
town that I judged from its appearance must be either in northern
France or Belgium. It was much shattered by bombardment; the
church, for instance, was a ruin; also many of the houses had
been burnt. Now, however, no firing was going on for the town had
been taken. The streets were full of armed men wearing the German
uniform and helmet. We passed down them and were able to see into
the houses. In some of these were German soldiers engaged in
looting and in other things so horrible that even the unmoved Oro
turned away his head.
We came to the market-place. It was crowded with German troops,
also with a great number of the inhabitants of the town, most of
them elderly men and women with children, who had fallen into
their power. The Germans, under the command of officers, were
dragging the men from the arms of their wives and children to one
side, and with rifle-butts beating back the screaming women. Among
the men I noticed two or three priests who were doing their best
to soothe their companions and even giving them absolution in
hurried whispers.
At length the separation was effected, whereon at a hoarse word
of command, a company of soldiers began to fire at the men and
continued doing so until all had fallen. Then petty officers went
among the slaughtered and with pistols blew out the brains of any
who still moved.
"These butchers, you say, are Germans?" asked Oro of me.
"Yes," I answered, sick with horror, for though I was in the
mind and not in the body, I could feel as the mind does. Had I
been in the body also, I should have fainted.
"Then we need not waste time in visiting their country. It is
enough; let us go on."
We passed out into the open land and came to a village. It was
in the occupation of German cavalry. Two of them held a little
girl of nine or ten, one by her body, the other by her right
hand. An officer stood between them with a drawn sword fronting
the terrified child. He was a horrible, coarse-faced man who
looked to me as though he had been drinking.
"I'll teach the young devil to show us the wrong road and let
those French swine escape," he shouted, and struck with the
sword. The girl's right hand fell to the ground.
"War as practised by the Germans!" remarked Oro. Then he
stepped, or seemed to step up to the man and whispered, or seemed
to whisper, in his ear.
I do not know what tongue or what spirit speech he used, or
what he said, but the bloated-faced brute turned pale. Yes, he
drew sick with fear.
"I think there are spirits in this place," he said with a
German oath. "I could have sworn that something told me that I
was going to die. Mount!"
The Uhlans mounted and began to ride away.
"Watch," said Oro.
As he spoke out of a dark cloud appeared an aeroplane. Its
pilot saw the band of Germans beneath and dropped a bomb. The aim
was good, for the missile exploded in the midst of them, causing
a great cloud of dust from which arose the screams of men and
horses.
"Come and see," said Oro.
We were there. Out of the cloud of dust appeared one man
galloping furiously. He was a young fellow who, as I noted, had
turned his head away and hidden his eyes with his hand when the
horror was done yonder. All the others were dead except the
officer who had worked the deed. He was still living, but both
his hands and one of his feet had been blown away. Presently he
died, screaming to God for mercy.
We passed on and came to a barn with wide doors that swung a
little in the wind, causing the rusted hinges to scream like a
creature in pain. On each of these doors hung a dead man
crucified. The hat of one of them lay upon the ground, and I knew
from the shape of it that he was a Colonial soldier.
"Did you not tell me," said Oro after surveying them, "that
these Germans are of your Christian faith?"
"Yes; and the Name of God is always on their ruler's lips."
"Ah!" he said, "I am glad that I worship Fate. Bastin the
priest need trouble me no more."
"There is something behind Fate," I said, quoting Bastin
himself.
"Perhaps. So indeed I have always held, but after much study I
cannot understand the manner of its working. Fate is enough for
me."
We went on and came to a flat country that was lined with
ditches, all of them full of men, Germans on one side, English
and French upon the other. A terrible bombardment shook the
earth, the shells raining upon the ditches. Presently that from
the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them
thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of
fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of
ground that was pitted with shell craters. They came to barbed
wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with
nippers and pulled up the posts. Then through the gaps they
surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades. They reached the
German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose
a hellish din. Pistols were fired and everywhere bayonets
flashed.
Behind them rushed a horde of little, dark-skinned men, Indians
who carried great knives in their hands. Those leapt over the
first trench and running on with wild yells, dived into the
second, those who were left of them, and there began hacking with
their knives at the defenders and the soldiers who worked the
spitting maxim guns. In twenty minutes it was over; those lines
of trenches were taken, and once more from either side the guns
began to boom.
"War again," said Oro, "clean, honest war, such as the god I
call Fate decrees for man. I have seen enough. Now I would visit
those whom you call Turks. I understand they have another worship
and perhaps they are nobler than these Christians."
We came to a hilly country which I recognised as Armenia, for
once I travelled there, and stopped on an seashore. Here were the
Turks in thousands. They were engaged in driving before them mobs
of men, women and children in countless numbers. On and on they
drove them till they reached the shore. There they massacred them
with bayonets, with bullets, or by drowning. I remember a
dreadful scene of a poor woman standing up to her waist in the
water. Three children were clinging to her--but I cannot go on,
really I cannot go on. In the end a Turk waded out and bayoneted
her while she strove to protect the last living child with her
poor body whence it sprang.
"These, I understand," said Oro, pointing to the Turkish
soldiers, "worship a prophet who they say is the voice of God."
"Yes," I answered, "and therefore they massacre these who are
Christians because they worship God without a prophet."
"And what do the Christians massacre each other for?"
"Power and the wealth and territories that are power. That is,
the King of the Germans wishes to rule the world, but the other
Nations do not desire his dominion. Therefore they fight for
Liberty and Justice."
"As it was, so it is and shall be," remarked Oro, "only with
this difference. In the old world some were wise, but here--" and
he stopped, his eyes fixed upon the Armenian woman struggling in
her death agony while the murderer drowned her child, then added:
"Let us go."
Our road ran across the sea. On it we saw a ship so large that
it attracted Oro's attention, and for once he expressed
astonishment.
"In my day," he said, "we had no vessels of this greatness in
the world. I wish to look upon it."
We landed on the deck of the ship, or rather the floating
palace, and examined her. She carried many passengers, some
English, some American, and I pointed out to Oro the differences
between the two peoples. These were not, he remarked, very wide
except that the American women wore more jewels, also that some
of the American men, to whom we listened as they conversed, spoke
of the greatness of their country, whereas the Englishmen, if
they said anything concerning it, belittled their country.
Presently, on the surface of the sea at a little distance
appeared something strange, a small and ominous object like a can
on the top of a pole. A voice cried out "Submarine!" and everyone
near rushed to look.
"If those Germans try any of their monkey tricks on us, I guess
the United States will give them hell," said another voice near
by.
Then from the direction of the pole with the tin can on the top
of it, came something which caused a disturbance in the smooth
water and bubbles to rise in its wake.
"A torpedo!" cried some.
"Shut your mouth," said the voice. "Who dare torpedo a vessel
full of the citizens of the United States?"
Next came a booming crash and a flood of upthrown water, in the
wash of which that speaker was carried away into the deep. Then
horror! horror! horror! indescribable, as the mighty vessel went
wallowing to her doom. Boats launched; boats overset; boats
dragged under by her rush through the water which could not be
stayed. Maddened men and women running to and fro, their eyes
starting from their heads, clasping children, fastening lifebelts
over their costly gowns, or appearing from their cabins, their
hands filled with jewels that they sought to save. Orders cried
from high places by stern-faced officers doing their duty to the
last. And a little way off that thin pole with a tin can on the
top of it watching its work.
Then the plunge of the enormous ship into the deep, its huge
screws still whirling in the air and the boom of the bursting
boilers. Lastly everything gone save a few boats floating on the
quiet sea and around them dots that were the heads of struggling
human beings.
"Let us go home," said Oro. "I grow tired of this war of your
Christian peoples. It is no better than that of the barbarian
nations of the early world. Indeed it is worse, since then we
worshipped Fate and but a few of us had wisdom. Now you all claim
wisdom and declare that you worship a God of Mercy."
With these words still ringing in my ears I woke up upon the
Island of Orofena, filled with terror at the horrible
possibilities of nightmare.
What else could it be? There was the brown and ancient cone of
the extinct volcano. There were the tall palms of the main island
and the lake glittering in the sunlight between. There was Bastin
conducting a kind of Sunday school of Orofenans upon the point of
the Rock of Offerings, as now he had obtained the leave of Oro to
do. There was the mouth of the cave, and issuing from it Bickley,
who by help of one of the hurricane lamps had been making an
examination of the buried remains of what he supposed to be
flying machines. Without doubt it was nightmare, and I would say
nothing to them about it for fear of mockery.
Yet two nights later Oro came again and after the usual
preliminaries, said:
"Humphrey, this night we will visit that mighty American
nation, of which you have told me so much, and the other Neutral
Countries.
[At this point there is a gap in Mr. Arbuthnot's M.S., so Oro's
reflections on the Neutral Nations, if any, remain unrecorded. It
continues:]
On our homeward way we passed over Australia, making a detour
to do so. Of the cities Oro took no account. He said that they
were too large and too many, but the country interested him so
much that I gathered he must have given great attention to
agriculture at some time in the past. He pointed out to me that
the climate was fine, and the land so fertile that with a proper
system of irrigation and water-storage it could support tens of
millions and feed not only itself but a great part of the
outlying world.
"But where are the people?" he asked. "Outside of those huge
hives," and he indicated the great cities, "I see few of them,
though doubtless some of the men are fighting in this war. Well,
in the days to come this must be remedied."
Over New Zealand, which he found beautiful, he shook his head
for the same reason.
On another night we visited the East. China with its teeming
millions interested him extremely, partly because he declared
these to be the descendants of one of the barbarian nations of
his own day. He made a remark to the effect that this race had
always possessed points and capacities, and that he thought that
with proper government and instruction their Chinese offspring
would be of use in a regenerated world.
For the Japanese and all that they had done in two short
generations, he went so far as to express real admiration, a very
rare thing with Oro, who was by nature critical. I could see that
mentally he put a white mark against their name.
India, too, really moved him. He admired the ancient buildings
at Delhi and Agra, especially the Taj Mahal. This, he declared,
was reminiscent of some of the palaces that stood at Pani, the
capital city of the Sons of Wisdom, before it was destroyed by
the Barbarians.
The English administration of the country also attracted a word
of praise from him, I think because of its rather autocratic
character. Indeed he went so far as to declare that, with certain
modifications, it should be continued in the future, and even to
intimate that he would bear the matter in mind. Democratic forms
of government had no charms for Oro.
Amongst other places, we stopped at Benares and watched the
funeral rites in progress upon the banks of the holy Ganges. The
bearers of the dead brought the body of a woman wrapped in a red
shroud that glittered with tinsel ornaments. Coming forward at a
run and chanting as they ran, they placed it upon the stones for
a little while, then lifted it up again and carried it down the
steps to the edge of the river. Here they took water and poured
it over the corpse, thus performing the rite of the baptism of
death. This done, they placed its feet in the water and left it
looking very small and lonely. Presently appeared a tall,
white-draped woman who took her stand by the body and wailed. It
was the dead one's mother. Again the bearers approached and laid
the corpse upon the flaming pyre.
"These rites are ancient," said Oro. "When I ruled as King of
the World they were practised in this very place. It is pleasant
to me to find something that has survived the changefulness of
Time. Let it continue till the end."
Here I will cease. These experiences that I have recorded are
but samples, for also we visited Russia and other countries.
Perhaps, too, they were not experiences at all, but only dreams
consequent on my state of health. I cannot say for certain,
though much of what I seemed to see fitted in very well indeed
with what I learned in after days, and certainly at the time they
appeared as real as though Oro and I had stood together upon
those various shores.
