When the World Shook · Chapter 12 (2/2)

“You would murder as did your forefathers, O children of snakes and hogs fashioned in the shape of men. You would sacrifice those who dwell in my shadow to satisfy your hate because they are wiser than you. Come hither thou,” and he beckoned with a bony finger to the chief magician.

The man advanced towards him in short jumps, as a mechanical toy might do, and stood before him, his miniature crate and feathers all awry and the sweat of terror melting the paint in streaks upon his face.

“Look into the eyes of Oro, O worshipper of Oro,” said the Sleeper, and he obeyed, his own eyes starting out of his head.

“Receive the curse of Oro,” said the Ancient again. Then followed a terrible spectacle. The man went raving mad. He bounded into the air to a height inconceivable. He threw himself upon the ground and rolled upon the rock. He rose again and staggered round and round, tearing pieces out of his arms with his teeth. He yelled hideously like one possessed. He grovelled, beating his forehead against the rock. Then he sat up, slowly choked and⁠—died.

His companions seemed to catch the infection of death as terrified savages often do. They too performed dreadful antics, all except three of them who stood paralysed. They rushed about battering each other with their fists and wooden weapons, looking like devils from hell in their hideous painted attire. They grappled and fought furiously. They separated and plunged into the lake, where with a last grimace they sank like stones.

It seemed to last a long while, but I think that as a matter of fact within five minutes it was over; they were all dead. Only the three paralysed ones remained standing and rolling their eyes.

The Sleeper beckoned to them with his thin finger, and they walked forward in step like soldiers.

“Lift that man from the boat,” he said, pointing to Bastin, “cut his bonds and those of the others.”

They obeyed with a wonderful alacrity. In a minute we stood at liberty and were pulling the grass gags from our mouths. The Ancient pointed to the head magician who lay dead upon the rock, his hideous, contorted countenance staring open-eyed at heaven.

“Take that sorcerer and show him to the other sorcerers yonder,” he said, “and tell them where your fellows are if they would find them. Know by these signs that the Oro, god of the Mountain, who has slept a while, is awake, and ill will it go with them who question his power or dare to try to harm those who dwell in his house. Bring food day by day and await commands. Begone!”

The dreadful-looking body was bundled into one of the canoes, that out of which Bastin had emerged. A rower sprang into each of them and presently was paddling as he had never done before. As the setting moon vanished, they vanished with it, and once more there was a great silence.

“I am going to find my boots,” said Bastin. “This rock is hard and I hurt my feet kicking at those poor fellows who appear to have come to a bad end, how, I do not exactly understand. Personally, I think that more allowances should have been made for them, as I hope will be the case elsewhere, since after all they only acted according to their lights.”

“Curse their lights!” ejaculated Bickley, feeling his throat which was bruised. “I’m glad they are out.”

Bastin limped away in search of his boots, but Bickley and I stood where we were contemplating the awakened Sleeper. All recollection of the recent tumultuous scene seemed to have passed from his mind, for he was engaged in a study of the heavens. They were wonderfully brilliant now that the moon was down, brilliant as they only can be in the tropics when the sky is clear.

Something caused me to look round, and there, coming towards us, was she who said her name was Yva. Evidently all her weakness had departed also, for now she needed no support, but walked with a peculiar gliding motion that reminded me of a swan floating forward on the water. Well had we named her the Glittering Lady, for in the starlight literally she seemed to glitter. I suppose the effect came from her golden raiment, which, however, I noticed, as in her father’s case, was not the same that she had worn in the coffin; also from her hair that seemed to give out a light of its own. At least, she shimmered as she came, her tall shape swaying at every step like a willow in the wind. She drew near, and I saw that her face, too, had filled out and now was that of one in perfect health and vigour, while her eyes shone softly and seemed wondrous large.

In her hands she carried those two plates of metal which I had seen lying in the coffin of the Sleeper Oro. These she gave to him, then fell back out of his hearing⁠—if it were ever possible to do this, a point on which I am not sure⁠—and began to talk to me. I noted at once that in the few hours during which she was absent, her knowledge of the Orofenan tongue seemed to have improved greatly as though she had drunk deeply from some hidden fount of memory. Now she spoke it with readiness, as Oro had done when he addressed the sorcerers, although many of the words she used were not known to me, and the general form of her language appeared archaic, as for instance that of Spenser as compared with modern English. When she saw I did not comprehend her, however, she would stop and cast her sentences in a different shape, till at length I caught her meaning. Now I give the substance of what she said.

“You are safe,” she began, glancing first at the palm ropes that lay upon the rock and then at my wrists, one of which was cut.

“Yes, Lady Yva, thanks to your father.”

“You should say thanks to me. My father was thinking of other things, but I was thinking of you strangers, and from where I was I saw those wicked ones coming to kill you.”

“Oh! from the top of the mountain, I suppose.”

She shook her head and smiled but vouchsafed no further explanation, unless her following words can be so called. These were:

“I can see otherwise than with my eyes, if I choose.” A statement that caused Bickley, who was listening, to mutter:

“Impossible! What the deuce can she mean? Telepathy, perhaps.”

“I saw,” she continued, “and told the Lord, my father. He came forth. Did he kill them? I did not look to learn.”

“Yes. They lie in the lake, all except three whom he sent away as messengers.”

“I thought so. Death is terrible, O Humphrey, but it is a sword which those who rule must use to smite the wicked and the savage.”

Not wishing to pursue this subject, I asked her what her father was doing with the metal plates.

“He reads the stars,” she answered, “to learn how long we have been asleep. Before we went to sleep he made two pictures of them, as they were then and as they should be at the time he had set for our awakening.”

“We set that time,” interrupted Bickley.

“Not so, O Bickley,” she answered, smiling again. “In the divine Oro’s head was the time set. You were the hand that executed his decree.”

When Bickley heard this I really thought he would have burst. However, he controlled himself nobly, being anxious to hear the end of this mysterious fib.

“How long was the time that the lord Oro set apart for sleep?” I asked.

She paused as though puzzled to find words to express her meaning, then held up her hands and said:

“Ten,” nodding at her fingers. By second thoughts she took Bickley’s hands, not mine, and counted his ten fingers.

“Ten years,” said Bickley. “Well, of course, it is impossible, but perhaps⁠—” and he paused.

“Ten tens,” she went on with a deepening smile, “one hundred.”

“O!” said Bickley.

“Ten hundreds, one thousand.”

“I say!” said Bickley.

“Ten times ten thousand, one hundred thousand.”

Bickley became silent.

“Twice one hundred thousand and half a hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand years. That was the space of time which the lord Oro, my father, set for our sleep. Whether it has been fulfilled he will know presently when he has read the book of the stars and made comparison of it with what he wrote before we laid us down to rest,” and she pointed to the metal plates which the Ancient was studying.

Bickley walked away, making sounds as though he were going to be ill and looking so absurd in his indignation that I nearly laughed. The Lady Yva actually did laugh, and very musical was that laugh.

“He does not believe,” she said. “He is so clever he knows everything. But two hundred and fifty thousand years ago we should have thought him quite stupid. Then we could read the stars and calculate their movements forever.”

“So can we,” I answered, rather nettled.

“I am glad, O Humphrey, since you will be able to show my father if in one of them he is wrong.”

Secretly I hoped that this task would not be laid on me. Indeed, I thought it well to change the subject for the edification of Bickley who had recovered and was drawn back by his eager curiosity. Just then, too, Bastin joined us, happy in his regained boots.

“You tell us, Lady Yva,” I said, “that you slept, or should have slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years.” Here Bastin opened his eyes. “If that was so, where was your mind all this time?”

“If by my mind you mean spirit, O Humphrey, I have to answer that at present I do not know for certain. I think, however, that it dwelt elsewhere, perhaps in other bodies on the earth, or some different earth. At least, I know that my heart is very full of memories which as yet I cannot unroll and read.”

“Great heavens, this is madness!” said Bickley.

“In the great heavens,” she answered slowly, “there are many things which you, poor man, would think to be madness, but yet are truth and perfect wisdom. These things, or some of them, soon I shall hope to show you.”

“Do if you can,” said Bickley.

“Why not?” interrupted Bastin. “I think the lady’s remarks quite reasonable. It seems to me highly improbable if really she has slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years, which, of course, I can’t decide, that an immortal spirit would be allowed to remain idle for so long. That would be wallowing in a bed of idleness and shirking its duty which is to do its work. Also, as she tells you, Bickley, you are not half so clever as you think you are in your silly scepticism, and I have no doubt that there are many things in other worlds which would expose your ignorance, if only you could see them.”

At this moment Oro turned and called his daughter. She went at once, saying:

“Come, strangers, and you shall learn.”

So we followed her.

“Daughter,” he said, speaking in Orofenan, I think that we might understand, “ask these strangers to bring one of those lamps of theirs that by the light of it I may study these writings.”

“Perhaps this may serve,” said Bickley, suddenly producing an electric torch from his pocket and flashing it into his face. It was his form of repartee for all he had suffered at the hands of this incomprehensible pair. Let me say at once that it was singularly successful. Perhaps the wisdom of the ages in which Oro flourished had overlooked so small a matter as electric torches, or perhaps he did not expect to meet with them in these degenerate days. At any rate for the first and last time in my intercourse with him I saw the god, or lord⁠—the native word bears either meaning⁠—Oro genuinely astonished. He started and stepped back, and for a moment or two seemed a little frightened. Then muttering something as to the cleverness of this light-producing instrument, he motioned to his daughter to take it from Bickley and hold it in a certain position. She obeyed, and in its illumination he began to study the engraved plates, holding one of them in either hand.

After a while he gave me one of the plates to hold, and with his disengaged hand pointed successively to the constellation of Orion, to the stars Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Rigel, the Pleiades, Sirius and others which with my very limited knowledge I could not recognise offhand. Then on the plate which I held, he showed us those same stars and constellations, checking them one by one.

Then he remarked very quietly that all was in order, and handing the plate he held to Yva, said:

“The calculations made so long ago are correct, nor have the stars varied in their proper motions during what is after all but an hour of time. If you, Stranger, who, I understand, are named Humphrey, should be, as I gather, a heaven-master, naturally you will ask me how I could fix an exact date by the stars without an error of, let us say, from five to ten thousand years. I answer you that by the proper motion of the stars alone it would have been difficult. Therefore I remember that in order to be exact, I calculated the future conjunctions of those two planets,” and he pointed to Saturn and Jupiter. “Finding that one of these occurred near yonder star,” and he indicated the bright orb, Spica, “at a certain time, I determined that then I would awake. Behold! There are the stars as I engraved them from my foreknowledge, upon this chart, and there those two great planets hang in conjunction. Daughter Yva, my wisdom has not failed me. This world of ours has travelled round the sun neither less nor more than two hundred and fifty thousand times since we laid ourselves down to sleep. It is written here, and yonder,” and he pointed, first to the engraved plates and then to the vast expanse of the starlit heavens.

Awe fell on me; I think that even Bickley and Bastin were awed, at any rate for the moment. It was a terrible thing to look on a being, to all appearance more or less human, who alleged that he had been asleep for two hundred and fifty thousand years, and proceeded to prove it by certain ancient star charts. Of course at the time I could not check those charts, lacking the necessary knowledge, but I have done so since and found that they are quite accurate. However this made no difference, since the circumstances and something in his manner convinced me that he spoke the absolute truth.

He and his daughter had been asleep for two hundred and fifty thousand years. Oh! Heavens, for two hundred and fifty thousand years!