Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight Part 23

The two made such a racket when they came in they awoke the boy, who dropped the slate. He never again came to the springhouse to sleep; and though afterwards I sat many hours by his bedside in the cabin, he never again uttered a strange or unusual sound until just before his death, which occurred in the fall.

In the early fall his father and mother visited a negro family who had a child ill with scarlet fever. Within two weeks their own boy was taken with the same illness and a few days thereafter died. Shortly before his death I went into the cabin and found him raving in the strange tongue.

He had been born on the place. I felt too sad to be curious or to go for the stenographer, but I remember very distinctly the sounds of the last few words he uttered, which were twice repeated. These I wrote down and sent away. I found the translation of the words was; "After a brief bird life I shall find Nirvana."

In a talk with his mother, which occurred some time before his death, she stated that it was a rare thing he ever talked in his sleep and then only used the most common expressions.

She told me her mother was born west of Timbuctu, belonged to a Berber tribe, and had been taken prisoner and sold to slave dealers of the west African coast.

Several weeks after the boy's death I received from Professor Fales a liberal translation of the boy's talk and writings, which at the suggestion of the professor and his friend I have kept a secret, as neither of us believed in transmigration, or desired to figure as in any sense encouraging such an outrageously absurd belief.

The translator and professor are both dead and I suppose their copies have been destroyed. I give mine to the public as a spooky flight of fancy unworthy of belief, aware that this declaration will cause a few half-crazy people to believe the tale is true.

THE TRANSLATION.

The city of Theni is the capital of Kami. The western and southern coast of Kami and the interior country to the central range is a pleasant land, where palm trees of many kinds grow and there is much tropical verdure because on these coasts there is a constant current of warm water, which comes through an untraveled sea lying west and south of us, and in which float endless paths of sarga.s.sum.

To the north and east beyond the central range, as also the land northeast of us across the sea, are barren wastes of ice and snow. It has not always been so. Our records show that centuries ago the whole land was as the south and west coast country, but each year the fields of ice swallow more and more of our sweet and fertile land, until now we have but little s.p.a.ce for our teeming population and each year less and less to eat.

On the top of a mountain south of our city dwell a few strange people with a strange faith and who keep to themselves. For years they have been building a great s.h.i.+p well up the mountain side. They are directed and encouraged in this useless labor by a prophet who tells of the early destruction of our land by ice and water.

I visited the place recently; the great s.h.i.+p is nearly completed and they are beginning to sheet the hull with copper to protect it from ice floes.

For three nights past my sleep has been disturbed by strange, wild dreams. I see the warm ocean currents which wash our sh.o.r.es, s.h.i.+fted westward by some strange freak of nature, and a land far north of us, now ice and snow, turned into greenland; while our whole land is enshrouded in death dealing cold and ice and snow and preceding this, the waters creep up and engulf our city. The mountain on which the great s.h.i.+p rests sinks down to meet the rising waters and the s.h.i.+p sails off to the southeast, leaving us helpless victims to be engulfed by the rising waters or frozen by the creeping, numbing cold, or smothered under mountains of ice and snow. How long before this shall be I do not know.

I have told my dream to Nefert, the best beloved of my wives, and we have agreed to prepare against the portent of such catastrophes.

We have too many idle, too many to feed; it were better were our population reduced one-half.

We will gather all the provisions of the land into great warehouses, and only those shall eat who labor to build our great pyramid, within which the chosen shall find refuge from the rising waters and the destructive cold.

When the pyramid is completed, we shall store it with great quant.i.ties of grain and fuel and textiles to last for years; and as the waters rise, if they shall cover the eminence on which we shall built it, which seems impossible, we shall ascend from the lower to the upper chambers.

On the morrow we will begin our preparations, which will not be wasted, though the flood and cold come not, as it will make for us a most pretentious tomb.

I shall send a great force to gather grain and other foodstuffs, another to collect fuel, others still shall be put to work to weave heavy woolen textiles. Five thousand shall quarry stone for the pyramid of Theni, which shall be built upon the highest mountain near our city. Thirty thousand shall drag and carry great stones from the quarries to the site and fifteen thousand more shall shape and place the stones. Twelve thousand shall act as guards and task masters, to see that the work is done and speedily.

I shall tell the pyramid is for my tomb and until my death to be used as a great storage warehouse; else the people may grow frightened and desperate. They have not yet learned to fear storage plants. Those of the people who are too old or too young to labor shall die.

Dimly discernible from the city is the central high mountain range, extending from the eastern coast far to the northwest and there ending in a rugged promontory, jutting out into a frozen sea.

The country across these mountains, and even to their snow-capped, fog-bannered peaks, is a land of ice and snow, dest.i.tute of all life, except a few wild and hardy white-clothed birds and beasts. Even from the mountain peaks you may see the spires and walls of an ice-encased, long dead city.

Near the city is a lesser range, upon which to their very tops grow dense groves of palm and other fern-like trees. In the shelter of these groves are many villas of the rich.

Upon the highest of this range and near our granite quarries I have decided to build the pyramid. The task of building, beginning today, will be pushed with the utmost speed.

The road leading from the city to the top and from the quarries we broadened and regraded. The site was cleared and leveled and the basal walls, six hundred and eighty feet square, started. The height is to be three hundred and fifty feet and the wall angle is approximately forty-seven degrees.

During the building there was much sickness and many deaths from starvation and hards.h.i.+p, for all of which I was held responsible, and until the laboring-people swore at and called me Santa, The Terrible.

Each day the pyramid grew in size; and each night seemed slightly colder than the one preceding it. It was reported that the snow on the distant mountain peaks was deeper than ever before.

We now used the lower stories of the pyramid as a storeroom for fuel and grain and were forced constantly to maintain a heavy guard to keep the half-starved populace from stealing our supplies. I had executed more than a dozen who were caught attempting to steal food stored for their betters.

The warm ocean current s.h.i.+fted to the west. The sun was overcast by clouds. The earth trembled. The snow line crept down the mountain range.

The land seemed slowly sinking into the sea. The people shook from fear and cold.

It was necessary to push the work, and, in their terror and to satisfy their hunger, the whole population labored on the pyramid.

One night, when the pyramid was three hundred feet high, a light snow, the first, covered pyramid mountain. A few weeks later there was another and the next morning there was thin ice.

A swift-running mountain river separated pyramid mountain and the city of Theni from the foothills of the distant range. Gradually the current disappeared. The river became a salt lake, then a bay of the great western sea.

One night there was an earthquake, in which we feared for the destruction of the pyramid, and in which a number of the houses of the city toppled over on their occupants.

In the morning it was observed that the mountain on which the prophet's people lived had settled until the place where the s.h.i.+p rested was but a few feet above the level of our new sea. The mountain on which our pyramid had been constructed and the adjacent plain on which the city was built had risen materially in alt.i.tude; at least such seemed to be the case.

Within ten days the s.h.i.+p rode at anchor. Then I knew that my G.o.ds had been good to me and had truly warned so I might make preparation. I determined on the morrow to seize the s.h.i.+p and retain it for my own use.

All owners of boats had long since fled the land. The next morning when I awoke the s.h.i.+p was a distant speck upon the growing ocean. It seemed the G.o.ds of some few others were caring for them also.

The pyramid now was about completed and not having provisions for all, though we of the palace stinted not ourselves, having plenty for years, I directed the guards to issue only half rations to the people. They died by hundreds and were cast from the cliffs into the cold waters of the sea.

Noticing that great crowds gathered in the city and that they wept and swore and encouraged one another to a.s.sault the palace and tear their ruler to pieces, I thought it best to desert the palace and take possession of the pyramid, which was full of provisions, and had a guard of several thousand soldiers.

So we of the palace, some hundred persons, with a guard of more than three hundred, moved into the pyramid; and, with the stones prepared for that purpose, closed the entrance hall with fifty feet of solid masonry, telling the soldiers outside that we would feed them from our supplies, which we had no intention of doing, except as they might be of use. How easy it is to fool the common people.

That night it stormed and sleet and snow made the outer pyramid a thing of milky gla.s.s.

The half-naked, half-starved people came by thousands, and holding out their hands in supplication, begged for bread. But we, sheltered and fed and clothed and sitting by our fires, had no thought for and took no risk for others.

The pyramid in the winter sunlight, with its coating of milk-white ice, seemed an immense half-buried diamond; and we within its heart were not more considerate of the starving, surging ma.s.s at its base.

Through the narrow slit-like ventilators, we heard in the afternoon the sound of strife; and, climbing to the flat top, where there was a walled-in area about twenty feet square, looked down upon the soldiers struggling with and slaughtering the half-armed, starving, s.h.i.+vering populace.

For sport, not caring whether they killed soldiers or subjects, I had some of our guard bring a quant.i.ty of unused granite blocks about two feet square and slide them down the ice-smooth surface into the seething ma.s.s below.

After watching for some time, though clothed in a heavy woolen gown, I grew cold and tired of the sport and went below to the feast, the music and the dance. There I sat with Nefert and two other queens, not less beautiful.

One of the guards from the pinnacle came down and reported that the soldiers had ceased fighting the populace and, joining cause with them, were attempting to scale the pyramid by cutting steps in the icy surface. So again I went above and Nefert went with me.

Our guards collected small stone blocks and with them bowled off our desperate, slowly-climbing a.s.sailants. The boulders slid over the glazed surface with the speed of a swift-winged water fowl and when they found a victim precipitated him, a death-dealing catapultic charge upon the heads of his comrades. The effort to reach us was utterly futile.

For several days we found it great sport to shoot loaves of bread and a few tempting morsels of food down to the starving ma.s.s and watch them fight and struggle for possession.

At my suggestion, to make the game of greater interest, we took the bread from the crusts and stuffed the loaves with stones. Occasionally, one s.n.a.t.c.hing for the bread lost his life from the stone loaf. So the days pa.s.sed, not wholly without amus.e.m.e.nt.

The whole land was now white with snow and ice. Great white bears came out of the mountains of the north and feasted on the dead at the base of the pyramid. Nowhere in the land could we see a living man.