In the Wrong Paradise Part 3

"Flog us first, and roast us afterwards." I repeated mechanically the words of William Bludger. "Why, you must be mad; they are more likely to fall down and wors.h.i.+p us,--_me_ at any rate."

"No, Capt'n," replied William; "that's your mistake. They say we're both Catharmata; that's what they call us; and you're no better than me."

"And what are Catharmata?" I inquired, remembering that this word, or something like it, had been constantly used by the natives in my hearing.

"Well, Capt'n, it means, first and foremost, just the off-scourings of creation, the very dust and sweepings of the shop," answered Bludger, who had somehow regained his confidence. To have a fellow-sufferer, and to see the pallor which, doubtless, overspread my features, was a source of comfort to this hardened man. At the same time I confess that, if William Bludger alone had been destined to suffer, I could have contemplated the decree with Christian resignation.

"I speak the beggars' patter pretty well now," Bludger went on; "and I see Catharmata means more than just mere dirt. It means two unlucky devils."

"William?" I exclaimed.

"It means, saving your presence, two poor coves, as has no luck, like you and me, and that can be got rid of once a year, at an entertainment they call the Thargeelyah, I dunno why, a kind o' friendly lead. They choose fellows as either behaves ill, or has no friends to make a fuss about them, and they gives them three dozen, or more, and takes them down to the beach, and burns them alive over a slow fire. And then they toss the ashes out to sea, and think all the bad luck goes away with the tide. Oh, I never was in such a hole as this!"

Bludger's words made me shudder. I had never forgotten the hideous sacrifice, doubtless the Thargeelyah, as they called it, that greeted me when I was first cast ash.o.r.e on the island. To think that I had only been saved that I might figure as a victim of some of their heathen G.o.ds!

Oh, now the thought came back to me with a bitter repentance, that if I had only converted all the islanders, they would never have dreamed of sacrificing me in honour of a mere idol! Why had I been so lukewarm, why had I backslidden, why had I endeavoured to make myself agreeable by joining in promiscuous dances, when I should have been thundering against Pagan idolatry, holy water, idols, sacrifices and the whole abominable system of life on the island? True, I might have goaded them into slaying me; I might have suffered as a martyr; but, at the least, I would have deserved the martyr's crown. And now I was to perish at the stake, without even the precious consolation of being a real martyr, and was to be flogged into the bargain.

I gave a hollow groan as these reflections pa.s.sed through my mind, and this appeared to afford William Bludger some consolation.

"You don't seem to like it yourself, Capt'n; what's your advice? We're both in the same boat; leastways I wish we _were_ in a boat; anyhow we're both in the same hole."

There was no denying this, and it was high time to mature some plan of escape. Already I must have been missed by my attendants, my gaolers rather, who would have returned from their festival, and would be looking for me everywhere.

I bitterly turned over in my mind the facts of our situation; "ours,"

for, as a just punishment of my remissness, I was in the same quandary as a drunken, dissipated sailor before the mast.

If William had but possessed a sweet and tuneful voice (often a gift found in the most depraved natures), and if I had been able to borrow a harmonium on wheels, I would not, even now, have despaired of converting the whole island in the course of the week. As remarkable feats have been performed, with equal alacrity, by precious Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and I am informed that expeditious conversions are by no means infrequent among politicians. But it was vain to think of this resource, as William had no voice, and knew no hymns, while I had no means of access to a perambulating harmonium.

"I'll tell you what it is, sir," said Bludger; "I have a notion."

"Name it, William," I replied, my heart and manner softened by community in suffering and terror.

"Well, if I were you, sir, I would not go home to-night at all; I'd stop where you are. The beggars won't find you, let them hunt as they like; they daren't come near this place, bless you, it's an 'Arnt;" by which he meant that it was haunted.

"Well," said I, "but how should we be any better off to-morrow morning?"

"That's just it, sir," said Bludger. "We'll be up with the first stroke of dawn, nip down to the harbour, get on board a boat, and be off before any of them are stirring."

"But, even if we manage to secure a boat," I said, "what about provisions, and where are we to sail for?"

"Oh, never mind that," said Bill; "we can't be worse off than we are, and I'll slip out to-night, and lay in some prog in the town. Also some grog, if I can lay my hands on it," he added, with an unholy smile.

"No, William," I murmured; "no grog; our lives depend on our sobriety."

"Always a-preaching, the old tub-thumper," I heard William say to himself; but he made no further reference to the subject.

It was now quite dark, and we lay whispering, in the damp hollow under the great stone. Our plan was to crawl away at the first blush of dawn, when men generally sleep most soundly; that William should enter one of the unguarded houses (for these people never stole, and did not know the meaning of the word "thief"), that he should help himself to provisions, and that meanwhile I should have a boat ready to start in the harbour.

This larcenous but inevitable programme we carried out, after waiting through dreadful hours of cold and s.h.i.+vering anxiety. Every cry of a night bird from the marsh or the wood sent my heart into my mouth. I felt inconceivably mean and remorseful, my vanity having received a dreadful shock from the discovery that, far from being a G.o.d, I was to be a kind of burnt-offering.

At last the east grew faintly grey, and we started, not keeping together, but Bludger marching cautiously in my rear, at a considerable distance.

We only met one person, a dissipated young man, who, I greatly fear, had been paying his court to a shepherdess in the hills. When he shouted a challenge, I replied, Erastes eimi, which means, I am sorry to say, "I am a lover," and implied that I, also, had been engaged in low intrigue.

"Farewell, with good fortune," he replied, and went on his way, singing some catch about Amaryllis, who, I presume, was the object of his unhallowed attentions.

We slipped into the silent town, unwalled and unguarded as it was, for as one of their own poets had said, "We dwell by the wash of the waves, far off from toilsome men, and with us are no folk conversant." They were a race that knew war only by a vague tradition, that they had dwelt, at some former age, in an island, perhaps New Zealand, where they were subject to constant annoyance from Giants,--a likely story. Thence they had migrated to their present home, where only one white man had ever been cast away--one Odysseus, so their traditions declared--before our arrival. Him, however, they had treated hospitably, very unlike their contemplated behaviour to Bludger and me.

I am obliged to make this historical digression that the reader may understand how it happened, under Providence, that we were not detected in pa.s.sing through the town, and how Bludger successfully accomplished what, I fear, was by no means his first burglary.

We parted at the chief's house, Bill to secure provisions, and I to unmoor a boat, and bring her round to a lonely bay on the coast, where my companion was to join me.

I accomplished my task without the slightest difficulty, selected a light craft,--they did not use canoes, but rowed boats like coracles,--and was lying at anchor, moored with a heavy stone, in the bay.

The dawn was now breaking in the most beautiful colours--gold, purple, crimson, and green--across the sea. All nature was still, save for the first pipe of awakening birds.

There was a delicate fragrance in the air, which was at once soft and keen, and, as I watched the red sunlight on the high cliffs, and on the smooth trunks of the palm trees, I felt, strange to say, a kind of reluctance to leave the island.

The people, apart from their cruel and abominable religion, were the gentlest and most peaceful I have ever known. They were beautiful to look upon, so finely made and shapely that I have never seen their like.

Their language was exquisitely sweet and melodious, and though, except hymns, I do not care for poetry, yet I must admit that some of their compositions in verse were extremely pleasing, though they were ignorant of the art of rhyme. All about them was beautifully made, and they were ignorant of poverty. I never saw a beggar on the island; and Christians, unhappily, do not share their goods with each other, and with the poor, so freely as did these benighted heathens. Often have I laboured to make them understand what our Pauper Question means, but they could not comprehend me.

"How can a man lack home, and food, and fire?" they would say; "do people not love each other in your country?"

I explained that we love each other _as Christians_, but this did not seem to enlighten their benighted minds. On the other hand, it is true that they settle their population question by strangling or exposing the majority of their infant daughters.

Rocked on the smooth green swell of the sea, beneath the white rocks, I was brooding over these and many other matters, when I heard sudden and violent movements in the deep vegetation on the hillside. The laurel groves were stirred, and Bill Bludger, with a basket in his hand, bounded down the slope, and swam for dear life to the boat.

"They're after me," he cried; and at that moment an arrow quivered in the side of the boat.

I helped William on board as well as I might, under a shower of arrows from the hill-top, most of which, owing to the distance, were ill directed and fell short, or went wide.

Into the boat, at last, I got him, and thrusting an oar in his direction, I said, "Pull for your life," and began rowing. To my horror, the boat made no way, but kept spinning round. A glance in the bow showed me what was the matter: _William Bludger was hopelessly intoxicated_! He had got at the jars of wine in the chief's cellar,--thalamos, they call it,--and had not taken the precaution of mixing the liquor with water, as the natives invariably do when they drink. The excitement of running had sent the alcoholic fumes direct to his brain, and now he lay, a useless and embarra.s.sing cargo, in the bows. Meanwhile, the shouts of the natives rang nearer and louder, and I knew that boats would soon be launched for our capture. I thought of throwing Bludger overboard, and sculling, but determined not to stain what might be my last moments with an act of selfishness. I therefore pulled hard for the open sea, but to no avail. On every side boats crowded round me, and I should probably have been shot, or speared, but for the old priest, who, erect in the bows of the largest vessel, kept yelling that we were to be taken alive.

Alas! I well knew the secret of his cruel mercies.

He meant to reserve us for the sacrifice.

VIII. SAVED!

Why should I linger over the sufferings of the miserable week that followed our capture? Hauled back to my former home, I was again made the object of the mocking reverence of my captors. Ah, how often, in my reckless youth, have my serious aunts warned me that I "would be a goat at the last"! Too true, too true; now I was to be a scapegoat, to be driven forth, as these ignorant and strangely perverted people believed, with the sins of the community on my head, those sins which would, according to their _miserable superst.i.tion_, be expiated by the death, and consumed away by the burning, of myself and William Bludger!

The week went by, as all weeks must, and at length came the solemn day which they call Thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their idol, Apollon. Long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, I do not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies.

I know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, I heard the voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a female, named Aphrodighty. Harps were tw.a.n.ging too, and I heard the refrain of one of the native songs, "To-night they love who never loved before; to-night let him who loves love all the more." The words have unconsciously arranged themselves, even in English, as poetry; those who know Thomas Gowles best, best know how unlikely it is that he would willingly dabble in the worldly art of verse-fas.h.i.+oning. Think of my reflections with a painful, shameful, and, above all, _undeserved_ death before me, while all the fragrant air was ringing with lascivious merriment. My impression is that, as all the sins of the year were, in their opinion, to be got rid of next day, and tossed into the sea with the ashes of Bludger and myself, the natives had made up their minds--an eligible opportunity now presenting itself--to be _as wicked as they knew how_. Alas! though I have not dwelt on this painful aspect of their character, they "knew how" only too well.

The sun rose at last, and flooded the island, when I perceived that, from every side, crowds of revellers were pressing together to the place where I lay in fetters. They had a wild, dissipated air, flowers were wreathed and twisted in their wet and dewy locks, which floated on the morning wind. Many of the young men were merely dressed--if "dressed" it could be called--in the skins of leopards, panthers, bears, goats, and deer, tossed over their shoulders. In their hands they all held wet, dripping branches of fragrant trees, many of them tipped with pine cones, and wreathed with tendrils of the vine. Others carried switches, of which I divined the use only too clearly, and the women were waving over their heads tame serpents, which writhed and wriggled hideously. It was an awful spectacle!