When the World Shook Part 18

"For Heaven's sake!" said Bickley, "keep your theology to yourself at present. If you upset the old fellow and put him in a temper he may die."

"If a man tells me that he is a G.o.d it is my duty to tell him that he is a liar," replied Bastin obstinately.

"Which you did, Bastin, only fortunately he did not understand you. But for your own sake I advise you not to take liberties. He is not one, I think, with whom it is wise to trifle. I think he seems thirsty. Go and get some water from the rain pool, not from the lake."

Bastin departed and presently returned with an aluminum jug full of pure water and a gla.s.s. Bickley poured some of it into a gla.s.s and handed it to Yva who bent her head in thanks. Then she did a curious thing. Having first lifted the gla.s.s with both hands to the sky and held it so for a few seconds, she turned and with an obeisance poured a little of it on the ground before her father's feet.

A libation, thought I to myself, and evidently Bastin agreed with me, for I heard him mutter,

"I believe she is making a heathen offering."

Doubtless we were right, for Oro accepted the homage by a little motion of the head. After this, at a sign from him she drank the water. Then the gla.s.s was refilled and handed to Oro who also held it towards the sky. He, however, made no libation but drank at once, two tumblers of it in rapid succession.

By now the direct sunlight was pa.s.sing from the mouth of the cave, and though it was hot enough, both of them s.h.i.+vered a little. They spoke together in some language of which we could not understand a word, as though they were debating what their course of action should be. The dispute was long and earnest. Had we known what was pa.s.sing, which I learned afterwards, it would have made us sufficiently anxious, for the point at issue was nothing less than whether we should or should not be forthwith destroyed--an end, it appears, that Oro was quite capable of bringing about if he so pleased. Yva, however, had very clear views of her own on the matter and, as I gather, even dared to threaten that she would protect us by the use of certain powers at her command, though what these were I do not know.

While the event hung doubtful Tommy, who was growing bored with these long proceedings, picked up a bough still covered with flowers which, after their pretty fas.h.i.+on, the Orofenans had placed on the top of one of the baskets of food. This small bough he brought and laid at the feet of Oro, no doubt in the hope that he would throw it for him to fetch, a game in which the dog delighted. For some reason Oro saw an omen in this simple canine performance, or he may have thought that the dog was making an offering to him, for he put his thin hand to his brow and thought a while, then motioned to Bastin to pick up the bough and give it to him.

Next he spoke to his daughter as though a.s.senting to something, for I saw her sigh in relief. No wonder, for he was conveying his decision to spare our lives and admit us to their fellows.h.i.+p.

After this again they talked, but in quite a different tone and manner.

Then the Glittering Lady said to me in her slow and archaic Orofenan:

"We go to rest. You must not follow. We come back perhaps tonight, perhaps next night. We are quite safe. You are quite safe under the beard of Oro. Spirit of Oro watch you. You understand?"

I said I understood, whereon she answered:

"Good-bye, O Humfe-ry."

"Good-bye, O Yva," I replied, bowing.

Thereon they turned and refusing all a.s.sistance from us, vanished into the darkness of the cave leaning upon each other and walking slowly.

Chapter XII. Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Years!

"You seem to have made the best of your time, old fellow," said Bickley in rather a sour voice.

"I never knew people begin to call each other by their Christian names so soon," added Bastin, looking at me with a suspicious eye.

"I know no other," I said.

"Perhaps not, but at any rate you have another, though you don't seem to have told it to her. Anyway, I am glad they are gone, for I was getting tired of being ordered by everybody to carry about wood and water for them. Also I am terribly hungry as I can't eat before it is light. They have taken most of the best fruit to which I was looking forward, but thank goodness they do not seem to care for pork."

"So am I," said Bickley, who really looked exhausted. "Get the food, there's a good fellow. We'll talk afterwards."

When we had eaten, somewhat silently, I asked Bickley what he made of the business; also whither he thought the sleepers had gone.

"I think I can answer the last question," interrupted Bastin. "I expect it is to a place well known to students of the Bible which even Bickley mentions sometimes when he is angry. At any rate, they seem to be very fond of heat, for they wouldn't part from it even in their coffins, and you will admit that they are not quite natural, although that Glittering Lady is so attractive as regards her exterior."

Bickley waved these remarks aside and addressed himself to me.

"I don't know what to think of it," he said; "but as the experience is not natural and everything in the Universe, so far as we know it, has a natural explanation, I am inclined to the belief that we are suffering from hallucinations, which in their way are also quite natural. It does not seem possible that two people can really have been asleep for an unknown length of time enclosed in vessels of gla.s.s or crystal, kept warm by radium or some such substance, and then emerge from them comparatively strong and well. It is contrary to natural law."

"How about microbes?" I asked. "They are said to last practically for ever, and they are living things. So in their case your natural law breaks down."

"That is true," he answered. "Some microbes in a sealed tube and under certain conditions do appear to possess indefinite powers of life. Also radium has an indefinite life, but that is a mineral. Only these people are not microbes nor are they minerals. Also, experience tells us that they could not have lived for more than a few months at the outside in such circ.u.mstances as we seemed to find them."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I suggest that we did not really find them at all; that we have all been dreaming. You know that there are certain gases which produce illusions, laughing gas is one of them, and that these gases are sometimes met with in caves. Now there were very peculiar odours in that place under the statue, which may have worked upon our imaginations in some such way. Otherwise we are up against a miracle, and, as you know, I do not believe in miracles."

"I do," said Bastin calmly. "You'll find all about it in the Bible if you will only take the trouble to read. Why do you talk such rubbish about gases?"

"Because only gas, or something of the sort, could have made us imagine them."

"Nonsense, Bickley! Those people were here right enough. Didn't they eat our fruit and drink the water I brought them without ever saying thank you? Only, they are not human. They are evil spirits, and for my part I don't want to see any more of them, though I have no doubt Arbuthnot does, as that Glittering Lady threw her arms round his neck when she woke up, and already he is calling her by her Christian name, if the word Christian can be used in connection with her. The old fellow had the impudence to tell us that he was a G.o.d, and it is remarkable that he should have called himself Oro, seeing that the devil they wors.h.i.+p on the island is also called Oro and the place itself is named Orofena."

"As to where they have gone," continued Bickley, taking no notice of Bastin, "I really don't know. My expectation is, however, that when we go to look tomorrow morning--and I suggest that we should not do so before then in order that we may give our minds time to clear--we shall find that sepulchre place quite empty, even perhaps without the crystal coffins we have imagined to stand there."

"Perhaps we shall find that there isn't a cave at all and that we are not sitting on a flat rock outside of it," suggested Bastin with heavy sarcasm, adding, "You are clever in your way, Bickley, but you can talk more rubbish than any man I ever knew."

"They told us they would come back tonight or tomorrow," I said. "If they do, what will you say then, Bickley?"

"I will wait till they come to answer that question. Now let us go for a walk and try to change our thoughts. We are all over-strained and scarcely know what we are saying."

"One more question," I said as we rose to start. "Did Tommy suffer from hallucinations as well as ourselves?"

"Why not?" answered Bickley. "He is an animal just as we are, or perhaps we thought we saw Tommy do the things he did."

"When you found that basket of fruit, Bastin, which the natives brought over in the canoe, was there a bough covered with red flowers lying on the top of it?"

"Yes, Arbuthnot, one bough only; I threw it down on the rock as it got in the way when I was carrying the basket."

"Which flowering bough we all thought we saw the Sleeper Oro carry away after Tommy had brought it to him."

"Yes; he made me pick it up and give it to him," said Bastin.

"Well, if we did not see this it should still be lying on the rock, as there has been no wind and there are no animals here to carry it away.

You will admit that, Bickley?"

He nodded.

"Then if it has gone you will admit also that the presumption is that we saw what we thought we did see?"

"I do not know how that conclusion can be avoided, at any rate so far as the incident of the bough is concerned," replied Bickley with caution.