Presently the brown man slunk from the Sacred Grove; he was at liberty now to go. Like a shadow he moved among the Wongai-trees, shuddering from their touch. He avoided the village path, though it was broad and deserted and lit up by the moon. Instead, he stole through the banana-trees, emerged on the shadowed hill-track, and crept into his hut. The darkness was a friend. There was no human eye to see. The tense savagery left his face, and he sighed like a tired child. He bowed himself upon his mat, and prayed.
“Dear God, help me, let them not do to me as to the aboriginal, as to all that fall into their hands. Succour me, or kill me, but protect me from the Dance of Death. Death itself would be sweet, but I die a thousand deaths each time I see the Dance of Death. I dance with the dying man, I feel the drawing of life from the body – and C’Zarcke knows! Please God help me!”
CHAPTER II
PREPARING FOR THE END
On the second hill of Mer sat Jakara the Strange – dreaming. His eyes saw the palm-tops that shaded the village roofs; they saw the shore hills and the little jungles, then peeping villages again. Some were palisaded, and each had its golden beach speckling the island edge; the curling waves beyond foamed in song upon the reef, for it was low tide, with spume in the air and a clearness of sky that betrayed the presence of the great reef, which showed as a water-cloud of vivid yellow-green surrounding nearly all the island. Peeping from below the surface there shone up wondrous coral gardens stretching seaward to vanish in deep blue water. From his eyrie on the hill Jakara could distinguish a mile of queer under-water growths. But his mind saw unseen things which caused heart-ache for deep below that coral ledge there lay a ship. He sighed, his eyes misted with tears, for his ship-mates, even the skulls of his father and mother, had been traded to New Guinea savages. He alone was saved, for Gobeda had snatched him and claimed him as the “Lamar” of his son.
Jakara’s eyes cleared and he could distinguish Eroob, thirty miles away towards New Guinea, its big hill, Lalour, showing like a rounded pyramid through a haze. And away towards the eastern horizon a peculiar sight; columns of smoke, miles in length, spouting skywards as bursting shells fall on distant trenches. It was the rollers from the open Pacific thundering upon the Great Barrier Reef. Away out there lay the frigate, Pandora, with the mutinous bones of some Bounty men strewn among the guns.
Jakara glanced down at Dauar and Waiar close inshore, joined fittingly by a treacherous coral reef. Tiny Dauar thrust upward its big and little peaks; Au (big) Dauar must be six hundred feet high, Kebi Dauar about three hundred. On the hummocky ground between the two peaks was a small dull patch of vegetation. Au Dauar was very steep, covered with grass, as if to ape giant Gelam, the extinct crater of Mer.
Waiar stood frowning in a crescent-shaped wall of battlemented rock three hundred feet high, grim and foreboding. In its barren gullies clung scanty tufts of vegetation. Both islets were the remnants of two blown-out craters. Waiar often reminded Jakara of a monstrous decayed tooth thrust up from the coral jawed sea. The islet’s associations are as sinister as its fantastic crags. He looked to the skies and found pleasure in their unending beauty.
So far he had done well – preserved his life, his intelligence, and a clean white heart. The rock beside him was scarred with rude marks, his diary of the years. Twelve marks – and he was sixteen when wrecked. Twelve years’ study of the native mind – above all, study of C’Zarcke’s. By the knowledge gained he had kept his head, which mattered less than the Dance of Death, the dance of the headless body. He had learned intimately the language of the people, their customs, their ceremonies, their ideals, their life-pursuits. He could sail a canoe with the best, throw the heaviest wawp (harpoon), shoot an unerring arrow, and laugh and dance to their delight and admiration. He had won initiation step by step as their own youths had done, had fought in battles and killed his men, but – he was not a warrior. The only thing he could not do was to stun a man and —
He understood the native mind so intimately that at a smile and a word he could turn a blood-thirsty animal into a smiling boy. And the women – they were complicated.
As for the Council of the Zogo-le, and their attendant priesthood, he had studied them in the delirium of the ceremonial dances and all alone in the brooding quiet of the night. He had studied them for fear of his head, and later, as the years passed, because of an intense curiosity as to the secret of their undoubted powers. He had gradually realized that the mummery which kept the natives in subjection was merely a means to an end, that behind it all there lay a tangible power hardly realized by civilized man. Jakara knew that the three of the Zogo-le, headed by the dreaded Zogo, C’Zarcke, could and did converse and plan with one another while long distances apart, without the aid of words or written messages or sound. He had often known C’Zarcke to inform the clans, to the very hour, of a happening a hundred miles away. This strange power seemed partly dependent on atmospheric conditions and on the mental state of groups of people at different points. C’Zarcke could read men’s minds, too. He could decipher secret thoughts, and could put men to sleep at a glance. Their medicine-men were a degree lower in the cultural scale, but could cure apparently hopeless diseases by mesmerism and hypnotism and some allied mysterious power.
Far below Jakara was a grassy knoll crowning a sheer black cliff, jocularly known now as “Geedee’s Lookout,” for the girl nursed a broken heart there. From his position on the hill he could see big Maiad village with its nearly mile-long spread of beehive-shaped houses, each protected by its stout outer palisading of bamboo; he could just see pleasant-faced Geedee coming up to sit in her loneliness. “She is stealing away from her work in the gardens,” thought Jakara, and his face softened as the distrust eased from his eyes, the wariness from his figure; even the crooked fingers of his right hand straightened a little – fingers that were ever ready to grip the heavy double-edged shark-tooth sword that he carried.
His gaze wandered away again down over the tobacco and banana patches and valleyed gardens towards the dome-shaped house of the Zogo. He hated but feared C’Zarcke, who for years had read his mind and would have had him killed long ago but for Jakara’s unfailing shrewdness in planning native warfare. Then came the frightening thought that some day C’Zarcke would cynically command him to plan an attack upon a wrecked ship, and Jakara shuddered, remembering the head-knife. Oh, curse C’Zarcke! Curse him! Curse him! Why would he not die! He understood so well Jakara’s secret fear, though he never spoke of it by word of mouth.
From a hiding-place in the rock Jakara reached down a battered ship’s telescope. It was his treasure. It showed him ships hours before the natives could see them – except C’Zarcke. C’Zarcke always knew, hours before the telescope could see. Jakara sighted the telescope at the Zogo-house. C’Zarcke stood outside under the crimson flame-tree. Jakara could distinguish the thoughtful lines of that remarkable face. A man of heavy stature, C’Zarcke’s personality would have compelled attention among a notable gathering from civilized nations. Few as were the barbaric articles of his clothing, each carelessly worn ornament spelt more power to his people than did the insignia upon a European emperor. His very presence caused instant silence to the most hilarious merriment; men trembled as if with fever. For C’Zarcke held power of life and death without any exception, even though his foe were hundreds of miles away. Far more, every Islander implicitly believed that C’Zarcke could influence a man’s spirit after death. His close-shut jaw was covered by a beard divided into three long rolls, each the thickness of a man’s fist; his brow was broad and corrugated, his nose almost hooked; his lips close shut and firm. Strangely, there was not a hair on. his chocolate-coloured chest. Body and limbs were massive, the head a leonine thing of dominant mental power. His eyes were large and black, alive with an almost insane urge to learn more – to understand! Like the eyes of all the Zogo-le, they queerly changed when —
As if impelled, C’Zarcke turned his face, and Jakara