Читать книгу The Last Lemurian: A Westralian Romance - G. Firth Scott - Страница 6

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The place where we found ourselves was at once romantic and weird.

Behind us, as far as we could see, there was only a weary stretch of dry, dead sand, gleaming and shimmering in the fierce, unbroken sunlight. Before us, beyond the luxuriant verdure of our haven, rose the range of barren, rocky mountains, free from all vegetation, and as arid as the desert, in all save the face of rock immediately in front of us. From a point nearly at the summit a stream of water bubbled, as if it were coming through an outlet pipe of some enormous cistern, and trickled over the rough surface of the rock in a thousand mimic cascades, tinkling and splashing as it fell until the air was full of the melody. At the base of the rock the water gathered into a deep pool, so clear that one could see the pebbles lying at the bottom. Round the entire margin there was a luxuriant growth of vegetation, fine broad-leaved trees, of a kind I had never seen before, spreading far their branches, and shielding from the burning rays of the sun the velvety grass that grew right up to the stems. Towards the desert it stopped as suddenly as the edge of a well-kept lawn. There was no outlet that we could find for the water of the pool, and we could only surmise that it flowed away somewhere underground; for there were no signs of the pool ever having overflowed, and yet a considerable body of water was running into it every hour.

"Like all our Australian rivers, the biggest stream is underground, I suppose," the Hatter remarked. "I've seen the Murray almost in flood at one part, while a hundred miles or so away there was not enough water to float a wool barge."

I was looking at the stream as it came bubbling down the rock.

"It's strange the water has not cut a deeper scar in the rock," I said. "These trees look a pretty good age, judging by their size, and that stream must have been running a long time; but still there is hardly any of the stone worn away."

"It's a quaint place altogether," the Hatter said. "Look how the grass stops growing when it meets the sand, just as if it were trimmed every morning. Why, there are no birds about the place, nor flies, nor anything else that I can see with life, except the trees and the grass."

It was quite correct. We hunted through the trees for a sign of some token of animal life, but beyond our camels and ourselves there was none. In our search we came up to the rock down which the water tumbled. We understood then why it had worn away so little, for not even with the aid of a chilled steel drill and a heavy hammer could we make more than the faintest impression upon it.

"If this is our golden range and we have to mine in stuff like this, I'm afraid it will be a long time before we get our camels loaded," I said, as we rested from our fruitless efforts. "We could have driven a hole a foot deep in the toughest rock I ever met with by this time, and there is hardly a dent in this, and the point flattened off the drill into the bargain."

"It is a quaint place, and I should not be surprised even if we met the Yellow Lady of twenty feet stature, and her hordes of shrivelled-up mummies," the Hatter answered, looking at the rock with a puzzled expression on his face.

"I wonder what dynamite would do," I suggested.

"Not worth wasting it. We may need all we have before we get to the end of our journey," he answered.

"I don't feel altogether comfortable," I said, as I rose from the boulder I had been sitting upon. There was a strange oppressiveness in the air now that the first effects of the charm were wearing away. "I'm inclined to overhaul our rifles and sort out the ammunition. We may want them before long."

The Hatter looked at me with a smile lurking away down in the depths of his eyes.

"Getting nervous?" he asked.

"Not exactly, but—what's that?"

If ever I felt my heart in my mouth it was at that moment. The Hatter jumped to his feet with the blaze in his eyes that always came when he was suddenly startled, and I felt braver when I saw that he too had felt the shock.

We had been resting with our backs to the pool, and a heavy plunge and its accompanying splash, that sounded terribly loud in the quiet of the place, had been the cause of our alarm. We hurried to the pool.

A few bubbles still floating on the surface and the race of ripples travelling from the centre to the sides were all we could discern.

The Hatter stood watching the pool, calm and unconcerned again, while I looked anywhere and everywhere for some explanation of the mystery.

"It is too absurd," I heard the Hatter say, and then he laughed, and I turned towards him.

"But we'll get our rifles all the same," he went on, looking round at me.

"Why, what do you make of it?" I asked, as we hastened to the spot where we had piled the packs when we lifted them off the backs of our tired camels.

"Bunyip," he answered. "Look at the camels."

The creatures that we had left browsing peacefully in the shade of the trees when we went to test the quality of the rock were now standing out in the sunlight on the desert, their necks swaying from side to side and their big blabby lips shaking, while their eyes rolled and glared in every direction.

"Here, let's get out of this," I cried, a horrible tremor of fear running over me.

The Hatter did not answer, but walked to the packs and drew out the rifles. Then he opened the box of ammunition and handed me a packet of cartridges.

"Load up the magazine, and put the rest in your pocket," he said, as he proceeded to set me the example.

When we had finished filling the Winchesters, the Hatter produced two revolvers, which were also in the armoury of our treasure-trove camel train. We took one each, carefully loading all the chambers and keeping some spare cartridges in our pockets.

"Now we can look to the camels," the Hatter said.

We went to them and tried to soothe the terror they evidently felt. They came to meet us, and followed us as far as the beginning of the grass, but nothing we could do would induce them to come off the sand.

"It's no use wasting time over them. Let's go back and wait," the Hatter said.

"But what have we got to wait for?" I asked.

"The bunyip," he answered laconically.

"Oh! go slow!" I exclaimed. "You don't believe that silly yarn, do you?"

"My lad, I'm ready to believe anything about this place after the rock and that splash. The old man swore the pool he and his fellow niggers drank out of was the bunyip's lair, and that was why they all went to sleep. If this isn't the place and the range he talked about, then it's another equally peculiar. I've always thought there must be something in the bunyip yarn."

I laughed. "You're as bad as a new chum," I exclaimed.

"Wait awhile," he replied. "You've heard the yarn the same as I have, and I suppose every other white man has who ever saw or spoke to an aboriginal. Only, perhaps, I have heard it more often, because I have had more to do with blackfellows, and that in every part of the continent, from York Peninsula to Wilson's Promontory, and from the Swan river to Moreton Bay."

"That's a pretty stiff bit of country," I interrupted.

"It includes what I say—every part of the continent," he continued quietly. "Now just add this up, and see what it comes to. From every blackfellow who has told me the yarn—and there have been a few hundreds of them—the description has always been the same. You can't talk about collusion between men and tribes who never saw or heard of one another. Firstly, they're all scared out of their lives of it. 'Baal th'at pfeller bunyip; 'im no good, 'im debbil-debbil,' they tell you, if they talk what they call English. If they don't, they tell you the same in their own tongue. They've never seen it, but—and this is the second point—they tell you it lives in deep waterholes and lagoons, and for that reason they will never go into strange water nor camp near it, and sometimes will go for days without a drink rather than visit a pool where the bunyip is said to be."

"No one has ever seen one since the white man came here, at all events," I answered.

"Well?"

"And they've looked often enough. Why, scares are always getting up about the bunyip being heard or seen in some lagoon or other, and all the country side turns out and hunts, and hunts, and hunts, but nary a bunyip can be found."

"Well?" he repeated.

"Well, isn't that enough? If it isn't, how do you get over the fact that these scares get up at places hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles apart? Does the bunyip fly, or are there more than one, and if there are, why hasn't—"

"There is only one," he interrupted.

"Then how does he travel from one place to another?" I said.

"Look here, my lad, the water from that pool goes somewhere, doesn't it?"

"I suppose so," I replied.

"And so does the water of hundreds of other pools and rivers in Australia—but it does not flow on the surface. Why should there not be underground channels leading from one to the other, and perhaps ending or centring here, for example, as an ideal bunyip's lair?"

"That's too stiff for me!" I exclaimed.

"All right; we'll wait and see," he answered.

We dropped the discussion, and turned to consider our plan of campaign. I could not accept the bunyip theory, but at the same time there was no questioning the fact that something very mysterious had occurred when we heard that splash, or why should the camels be so terrified?

"I fancy the trees," I exclaimed, looking up into the leafy canopy of one. "If we get up above the lower branches the leaves will screen us from below, while we can see all that goes on, and have a grand command over any enemy underneath us."

"It's a stiff climb," the Hatter answered, looking at the trunk, which rose a good thirty feet without a twig to mar its smoothness.

"I think I can do it," I answered, for I was always a great hand at climbing, and rather plumed myself upon my prowess.

"But I doubt if I can," the Hatter said.

"Why, there's that rope ladder in the tool kit that we were nearly throwing away," I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the article which had caused us some wonder as to the reason of its inclusion in a miner's swag when we first found it.

"Our luck again," he answered, as we overhauled the packs until we came to the one we wanted. Taking a coil of light lanyard with me, and leaving my rifle at the foot of the tree (I did not care to go up without my revolver, in case I should meet anything unexpected), I started to swarm up the tree. It was, as the Hatter had remarked, a stiff climb, but I did it, although when I reached the lower branches I was pretty well blown. I threw one leg over a bough, and, holding on to the trunk of the tree, I examined the situation.

The leaves grew thick almost to the stem, and about six feet above me another set of branches shot out from the trunk. The bough upon which I rested forked out into two prongs, as it were, some three feet from the trunk of the tree, and each of these again forked a foot farther on. Growing laterally, the twigs and minor branches formed a perfect network of stems, with the leaves so thick that it was difficult to see through, and impossible for any one to fall through them to the ground. The branches which stood out all round were equally dense, and I called out to the Hatter that I had found a place where we could almost stow the camels.

Climbing on to the boughs I lowered my line, which he made fast to one end of the ladder, and I soon had it up. The other end lay on the ground in a coil, so I clambered up to the second tier of branches and made my end fast there. Then I called out to the Hatter to come up.

He came up and inspected.

"We'll fix our camp up here," he said, "and I reckon all the bunyips in the world won't reach us."

The sun was getting down towards the horizon, so that we had not much time. We made the most of it, however, and when it went down, we had all our ammunition and blankets up in our nest, besides food and water, to last us for a day or so. While we still had light we bent some of the boughs so as to enable us to have a clear view of the ground and the pool below us.

The moon was at the full, and as the sun went out of sight it rose. Out on the desert we could see our camels grouped together and crouched down as if asleep. The pool, lit up into a silver sheen, rested unruffled below us, and between the dense foliage of the trees the moonlight streamed upon an open patch of closely growing grass immediately in front of our look-out holes. Everywhere else the shadow was impenetrable.

We had taken a hasty meal, and now lay prone upon our blankets, with rifles ready, waiting and watching for anything which might eventuate.

The subdued tinkle of the falling water was the only sound to be heard, and the weird stillness of the scene was beginning to affect me more than I appreciated, when suddenly we heard a heavy grating noise from somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees.

The Hatter touched me, and I turned my face towards him.

"There's something in the air I can't make out," he whispered.

"Where?" I asked in the same tone, and looking quickly round.

"Nothing to see," he answered. "I feel it. Oh, look there!"

I peered through my loophole, and felt the blood run cold in my veins.

Beyond the glare of the moonlight upon the open patch I have spoken of, and through the black shadow on the far side of it, there came a faint greenish phosphorescence which increased slowly and spread as if the source of it were coming nearer. It lit up the trees and made even the grass distinct in its horrible ghostly flicker. Then in the centre of it there appeared a form which I shall never forget as long as I live.

Luminous with the greenish phosphorescence, and striding along with a majestic carriage that would alone have been awe-inspiring, was the form of a woman. Even from the place where we lay we could see that she was of enormous proportions, and the utter absence of drapery of any kind, together with the sombre depths of the shadow beyond her, made her appear really taller than she was. Her skin showed through the unearthly light like polished brass, and her eyes, which were wide open and gazing straight in front of her, gleamed like those of a cat.

I shuddered as I looked, and felt my flesh creep and the very marrow of my bones turn cold. The Hatter gripped me tight by the arm.

"The Yellow Woman!" he whispered hoarsely.

Across the open space she walked, the luminous sheen fading as she came into the full light of the moon, but the fire in her eyes burning more brightly and more horribly than it had done in the dark.

At the edge of the pool she stopped, and, raising her arms above her head, she shook down a mass of hair that twisted and curled round her in a red wreathing cloak extending below her knees, and, to my mind, making her still more unearthly and fearful.

Silent she stood, as if waiting for something, while we, too startled to move, lay and gazed down upon her.

Presently she turned and uttered a cry in a voice that pierced the air like a shrill shrieking steam whistle. A sound more hideously, horribly fiendish, it would be difficult to imagine.

Again we heard the harsh grating sound and directly afterwards a peculiar pattering on the ground. A moment later and a swarm of figures ran from the shadows into the moonlight and surrounded the woman. At first they seemed to be small monkeys which scarcely reached to her knees, but as we watched them more closely we saw that they were men, small, wizened, shrivelled-up men, and involuntarily the expression of the Hatter's blackfellow came to my mind. They were moving and living copies of sun-dried mummies!

She waved her arms, and the swarm scattered round the pool until they stood, a ring of withered gnomes, at the edge of the water.

She clapped her hands, and the figures, stooping down as if impelled by one instinct, began to beat the surface of the water with both hands, so fast that it was soon a white foaming cauldron.

Again she clapped her hands, and the beating ceased, every little figure standing still and silent, so still that we could hear the bubbles bursting in a soft hissing sound.

The woman stood gazing intently upon the pool until the last of the foam had vanished. Then again she clapped her hands, and again the throng of figures beat the water till it frothed, and again she waited till the foam had disappeared. Three times was the performance repeated before she uttered a sound. Then as the last bubble burst she spoke.

I do not know what she said, but with the first word the Hatter exclaimed, "Ah."

I suppose it was due to the strain upon my nerves, and the intentness with which I had been watching the scene, but the sound of the Hatter's voice startled me so suddenly that I clutched my hands in sheer fright. I was holding my rifle with a finger on the trigger, and the result was a shot.

It rang out upon the night, the flash of the powder gleamed in the dark, and the bullet plunged into the middle of the pool. I heard the Hatter make a startled exclamation, and the rest was a wild nightmare.

The woman, turning her frightful eyes towards our hiding-place, raised her arms to their full length over her head with her fingers extended, and uttered a long, low wail, that horrified me and terrified me nearly to a stupor. The swarm of pigmies scattered from the pool, and ran hither and thither through the trees, making inarticulate sounds that were as though an army were gurgling in the last agonies of convulsions.

I felt the Hatter's hand grip my wrist, and in my ear I heard him whisper—

"Fool, sleep."

Then darkness fell upon me.

It seemed an age by the time that I recovered my senses, although the Hatter told me it was only a few minutes.

I heard his voice in my ear—

"Lie still, and fear nothing."

"All right," I whispered back, and at once I felt cool and collected.

Below me the woman still stood wailing, and round and round the pool the pigmy figures were pattering.

"Listen," the Hatter whispered again. "I think I know her language, and I'm going to play a bold stroke."

"All right," I answered. They were the only words I seemed to know.

For the account of the following scene, so far as the dialogue is concerned, I am entirely indebted to my companion, the language in which it was conducted being to me merely an aimless babble of sounds, without accent, rhythm, or anything else that distinguishes the chatter of apes from human speech. The Hatter told me afterwards that it was the tongue of a tribe he had come across somewhere in the Pitchorie district, a tract of country in North Australia, hundreds of miles from anywhere save desert, where the blacks find their much-valued narcotic, the pitchorie plant.

Leaning over his loophole the Hatter called out in a loud voice:

"Who seeks the King of Night?"

The effect upon the woman was dramatic. Her wail stopped at the instant, and, with her horrible gleaming eye lifted up towards us, she sank forward upon her knees, stretching out her arms towards us. The pigmies arrested their movements and fell down upon their faces, and the night was calm and quiet as it had been before they came.

"Who seeks the King of Night?" the Hatter cried out again.

"Nay, awful lord, I came but to seek him of the silent pool," the woman answered, her eyes still gleaming towards us.

"You lie," the Hatter cried angrily.

"Nay, nay, most mighty one. It is the time when the moon is full, and I come to greet him who shares with me the burden of the ages."

"If you speak truth, speak on and paint to me the image of whom you speak."

"He, monarch of all pools and waters, last of the race that sprang from the union of the ruler of all men and the chosen of the reptiles. He, who lives and has his realm in the streams that flow beneath the earth; his body clothed in the scales of his mother's kind; half fashioned like a man and half like a lizard of the pool. He who comes but once in the lifetime of a moon to view the world, where once his father ruled, till the end shall come, and I shall find the love for whom I languish, and he the way to ceaseless sleep."

"How name you him?"

"O mighty one, why ask? Was it not spoken from the clouds when he came forth in life, a word of terror to all men, to live while he lived, to last while our people lasted, and then to be a mockery in the mouths of those who shall come to jeer our fallen power and wrest the ruined fragments from our hold?"

"Name him."

The wail broke out again as the woman bowed herself to the ground and writhed in an agony.

"Need I speak again?" the Hatter cried.

She raised herself on her knees, pressing her hands to her head and swaying to and fro.

"O King of Night, forget not what it means. His name from me portends his doom and I shall be alone."

"Speak it or die."

With a shriek that made every pigmy form quiver, and cut my ears like a sting, she leaped to her feet and rolled on the ground again as she cried. "Oh, no, not that, not that."

"Then speak," the Hatter yelled.

She stood up again, her eyes flaring in a fresh horror.

"I name him. Bunyip!"

The pigmies seemed to shrink into yet smaller and more repulsive forms at the mention of the word, and she who uttered it crouched down upon the ground till her wealth of hair spread over her and hid the glaring yellow skin from our eyes, while sobs shook her frame and added still more to the weird, unearthly spectacle below us.

"Go back from whence you came. Rest hidden till the moon comes up again. Then come here once more."

She pushed back the hair from her face as she looked up.

"My destiny, O king," she said.

"Learn it then."

With a cry she sprang to her feet, and the pigmies, galvanised, as it were, into life by her voice, jumped up and rushed away into the shadows from whence they first appeared. She waited till they had gone, and then, turning towards our hiding place, she bowed seven times to the ground before she followed her army into the darkness.

Again we heard the grating sound, and then the night was silent.