When It Was Dark Part 40

On the sh.o.r.es of the little "Porth," as it was called, the fishermen sat about with sleepy, vacant eyes, waiting for the signal of watchmen on the moor above--the shrill Cornish cry of "Ubba!" "Ubba!" which would tell them the mackerel were in sight.

Behind the cove, running inland, were the vast, lonely moors which run between the Atlantic and the Channel. It is always grey and sad upon these rolling solitudes, sad and silent. The glory of summer gorse had not yet clothed them with a fleeting warmth and hospitality. As far as the eye could reach they stretched away with a forlorn immensity that struck cold to Hands's heart. Peace was here indeed, but how austere!

quiet, but what a brooding and cruel silence!

Every now and again the roving eye, in its search for incident and colour, was caught and arrested by the bleak engine-house of some ancient deserted mine and the gaunt chimney which pointed like a leaden finger to the stormy skies above. Great humming winds swept over the moor, driving flocks of t.i.tanic clouds, an Olympian army in rout, before their fierce breath.

Here, day by day, Hands took his solitary walk, or sometimes he would sit sheltered in a hollow of the jagged volcanic rocks which set round about the cove a barrier of jagged teeth. Down below him a hard, green sea boiled and seethed in an agony of fierce unrest. The black cormorants in the middle distance dived for their cold prey. The sea-birds were tossed on the currents of the wild air, calling to each other with forlorn, melancholy voices. This remote Western world resounded with the powerful voices of the waves; night and day the gongs of Neptune's anger were sounding.

In the afternoon a weary postman tramped over the moor. He brought the London newspapers of the day before, and Hands read them with a strange subjective sensation of spectators.h.i.+p.

So far away was he from the world that by a paradox of psychology he viewed its turmoil with a clearer eye. As poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity, as a painter often prefers to paint a great canvas from studies and memory--quiet in his studio--rather than from the actual but too kinetic scene, so Hands as he read the news-sheets felt and lived the story they had to tell far more acutely than in London.

He had more time to think about what he read. It was in this lost corner of the world that the chill began to creep over him.

The furious sounds of Nature clamoured in his ears, a.s.saulting them like strongholds; these were the objective sounds.

But as his subjective brain grew clear the words his eyes conveyed to it filled it with a more awful reverberation.

The awful weight grew. He began to realise with terrible distinctness _the consequences_ of his discovery. They stunned him. A carved inscription, a crumbling tomb in half an acre of waste ground. He had stumbled upon so much and little more. _He_, Cyril Hands, had found this.

His straining eyes day by day turned to the columns of the papers.

CHAPTER III

ALL YE INHABITANTS OF THE WORLD, AND DWELLERS ON THE EARTH, SEE YE, WHEN HE LIFTETH UP AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS.--ISAIAH XVIII: 3

Hands awoke to terrible realisation.

The telegrams in the newspapers provided him with a bird's-eye view, an epitomised summary of a world in tumult.

Out of a wealth of detail, culled from innumerable telegrams and articles, certain facts stood out clearly.

In the Balkan States, always in unrest, a crisis, graver than ever before, suddenly came about. The situation _flared_ up like a petrol explosion.

A great revival of Mohammedan enthusiasm had begun to spread from Jerusalem as soon as Europe had more or less definitely accepted the discovery made by Cyril Hands and confirmed by the international committee.

It was no longer possible to hold the troops of the Sultan in check. It was openly said by the correspondents that _instructions_ had been sent from Yildiz Kiosk to the provincial Valis in both European and Asiatic Turkey that Christians were to be exterminated, swept for ever from the world.

Telegrams of dire importance filled the columns of the papers.

Hands would read in one _Daily Wire_:

"PARIS (_From our own Correspondent_).--The Prince of Bulgaria has indefinitely postponed his departure, and remains at the Hotel Ritz for the present. It is impossible for him to progress beyond Vienna. Dr. Daneff, the Bulgarian Premier, has arrived here. In the course of an interview with a representative of _Le Matin_ he has stated the only hope of saving the Christians remaining in the Balkan States lies in the intervention of Russia. 'The situation,'

Dr. Daneff is reported to have said, 'has a.s.sumed the appearance of a religious war. The followers of Islam are drunk with triumph and hatred of the "Nazarenes." The recent discoveries in Jerusalem simply mean a licence to sweep Christians out of existence. The exulting cries of "Ashahadu, la ilaha ill Allah" have already sounded the death-knell of our ancient faith in Bulgaria.' M.

Daneff was extremely affected during the interview, and states that Prince Ferdinand is unable to leave his room."

Never before in the history of Eastern Europe had the future appeared so gloomy or the present been so replete with horror.

The ma.s.sacres of bygone years were as nothing to those which were daily flashed over the wires to startle and appal a world which was still Christian, at least in name.

An extract from a leading article in the _Daily Wire_ shows that the underlying reason and cause was thoroughly appreciated and understood in England no less than abroad.

"In this labyrinth of myth and murder," the article said, "a sudden and spontaneous outburst of hatred, of Mussulman hatred for the Christian, has now--owing to the overthrow of the chief accepted doctrine of the Christian faith--become a deliberate measure of extermination adopted by a barbarous Government as the simplest solution of the problem in the Near East. The stupendous fact which has lately burst upon the world has had effects which, while they might have been antic.i.p.ated in some degree, have already pa.s.sed far beyond the bounds of the most confirmed political pessimist's dream.

"From the _fact_ of the Jerusalem discovery, ambitious agitators have hurried to draw their profit. Politicians have not hesitated to provoke a series of ma.s.sacres, and by playing upon the worst forms of Mussulman fanaticism to organise that ghastliest system of crime upon the largest and most comprehensive scale. The whole thing is, moreover, immensely complicated by the utter unscrupulousness of that a.s.sociation universally notorious as the Macedonian Committee. These people, who may be described as a company of aspirants to the crown of immortality earned by other people's martyrdom, have themselves a.s.sisted in the work of lighting the fires of Turkish pa.s.sion, and they have helped to provoke atrocities which will enable them to pose before the eyes of the civilised world as the interesting victims of Moslem ferocity."

Thus Hands read in his rock cave above the boiling winter sea. Thus and much more, as the cloud grew darker and darker over Eastern Europe, darker and darker day by day.

In a week it became plain to the world that Bulgarians, Servians, and Armenians alike had collapsed utterly before the insolent exultation of the Turks. The spirit of resistance and enthusiasm had gone. The ignorant and tortured peoples had no answer for those who flung foul insults at the Cross.

As reflected in the newspapers, the public mind in England was becoming seriously alarmed at these horrible and daily bulletins, but neither Parliament nor people were as yet ready with a suggested course of action. The forces of disintegration had been at work; it seemed no longer possible to secure a great _body_ of opinion as in the old times.

And Englishmen were troubled with grave domestic problems also. More especially the great increase of the worst forms of crime attracted universal attention and dismay.

Then news came which shook the whole country to its depths. Men began to look into each other's eyes and ask what these things might mean.

Hands read:

"Our special correspondent in Bombay telegraphs disquieting news from India. The native regiments in Bengal are becoming difficult to handle. The officers of the staff corps are making special reports to headquarters. Three native officers of the 100th Bengal Lancers have been placed under arrest, though no particulars as to the exact reason for this step have been allowed to transpire."

This first guarded intimation of serious disaffection in India was followed, two days afterwards, by longer and far more serious reports.

The Indian mail arrived with copies of _The Madras Mail_ and _The Times of India_, which disclosed much more than had hitherto come over the cables.

Long extracts were printed from these journals in the English dailies.

Epitomised, Hands learned the following facts. From a ma.s.s of detail a few lurid facts remained fixed in his brain.

The well-meant but frequently unsuccessful mission efforts in Southern India were brought to a complete and utter stand-still.

By that thought-willed system of communication and the almost flame-like mouth-to-mouth carnage of news which is so inexplicable to Western minds, who can only understand the workings of the electric telegraph, the whole of India seemed to be throbbing with the news of the downfall of Christianity, and this within a fortnight of the publication of the European report.

From Cashmere to Travancore the millions whispered the news to each other with fierce if secret exultation.

The higher Hinduism, the key to the native character in India, the wall of caste, rose up grim and forbidding. The pa.s.sionate earnestness of the missionaries was met by questions they could not answer. In a few days the work of years seemed utterly undone.

Europeans began to be insulted in the Punjaub as they had never been since the days before the Mutiny. English officers and civilians also began to send their wives home. The great P. and O. boats were inconveniently crowded.

In Afghanistan there was a great uneasiness. The Emir had received two Russian officers. Russian troops were ma.s.sing on the north-west frontier. Fanatics began to appear in the Hill provinces, claiming divine missions. People began to remember that every fourth man, woman, and child in the whole human race is a Buddhist. Asia began to feel a great thrill of excitement permeating it through and through. There were rumours of a new incarnation of Buddha, who would lead his followers to the conquest of the West.

Troops from all over India began to concentrate near the Sri Ulang Pa.s.s in the Hindu-Kush.

Simultaneously with these ominous rumours of war came an extraordinary outburst of Christian fanaticism in Russia. The peasantry burst into a flame of anger against England. The priests of the Greek Church not only refused to believe in the Palestine discovery, but they refused to ignore it, as the Roman Catholics of the world were endeavouring to do.

They began to preach war against Great Britain for its infidelity, and the political Powers seized the opportunity to use religious fanaticism for their own ends.