Читать книгу Drums of Mer - Ion Idriess - Страница 9

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 gazed right into the eyes of his enemy. The savage seemed almost to have an understanding soul! Jakara felt guiltily inclined to put the telescope down, but clenched his teeth, staring hard. How he hated the man! He could count the very eyelashes on the lids that he so much wished would close. What a broad, ruggedly handsome face, a calm face shielding burning thoughts! Those eyes – C’Zarcke’s black eyes – turning an intense blue-black, icily staring, growing larger but as if a glaze were obliterating earth-life to enable him to absorb unseen things. A sickly hair-raising sensation touched Jakara’s consciousness. Despairingly he covered his face just as C’Zarcke turned and strode thoughtfully into the Zogo-house.

C’Zarcke, the searcher after knowledge, had become aware that Jakara the white Lamar was spying upon him, and with evil wishes. He had felt it! And by this, as in years past, C’Zarcke was disturbed, for this Lamar of the seas possessed a power unknown to him. C’Zarcke had watched this alien and learned new things, but this power, apparently similar to his own, the priest had not solved. He knew where Jakara was, and that from the distance, when even his form would be indistinct, Jakara could bring his face to him, and by a different process from his own. C’Zarcke was deeply moved to know how.

Jakara hid the telescope. This was his private ground – “Jakara’s Lookout.” Here for one day in every week he talked to himself, thinking and arguing of all things he had learned before the shipwreck, lest when he should be rescued his mental state might have sunk to savagery. Here also he pondered over the mysterious learning of the Zogo-le and by disdaining the mummery of the people his brain had grown quick and shrewd, alert with the white man’s sense combined with that of the savage. The natives, though curious, seldom troubled him here. One was coming now, a tall young man proudly nodding as he smiled to the salutes called to him while walking through the village. With swinging arms he strode through the manioc gardens and on up the slope of the hill. Beizam, son of Boga the Mamoose of Mer, a bashful smile on his handsome face, coming eagerly to show Jakara the head-mai which flaunted upon his neck.

The friends met with a smile and clasping of hands upon shoulders.

“Beizam is a warrior now, and the head-mai becomes him well,” congratulated Jakara warmly.

Beizam’s teeth gleamed with pleasure. “It was a perfect stroke,” he said quickly, “and in the raid I caught him by myself. He was a warrior too, and had killed his men.”

“It behoved the son of a Mamoose to take the head of a warrior as his first kill,” replied Jakara gravely. “Bogo, your father, is a noted fighter, but even he did not make such a beginning as you have done. It is a good omen.”

Beizam’s face shone. “Why don’t you become a warrior, Jakara?” he asked quickly. “You are a brave man, and for your wonderful cunning the Zogo-le have made of you a chief. Yet you will not drink of the blood of any that you have slain.”

With admiration Beizam raised his sinewy hand and touched the pearl-shell circlet round Jakara’s neck. It was of similar design to Beizam’s head-mai, except that it lacked the carved skull, the final badge of warriorhood. Instead, Jakara’s circlet had little nicks, and each represented the life of a man.

“I cannot,” he replied gravely. “My religion forbids, as the men of Mer know, otherwise I would have done so long ago!”

Beizam gazed quizzically seaward. “Truly we call you ‘Jakara the Strange,’ ” he said, “the greatest honour that man can earn has lain before your sword time and again yet you have let it lie there and rot rather than drink. Truly you are ‘strange.’ And your gods! How can they possibly be greater than our Au-gud, who knows the very courses that the stars take!” Smilingly he faced Jakara. “Only, Jakara, that we know you breathe the cunning of the serpent in the councils of war, I should count you brave; but a fool!”

Jakara laughed heartily. “Only,” he said, “that I know I should have no chance against Beizam, I would take the maid.”

He pointed downwards to a banana-garden from the broad leaves of which a brown-limbed girl gazed up at the men.

Beizam laughed gleefully, and with joking farewell hurried down the hill. Jakara kept a smiling face until the two met and, waving to him, disappeared among the banana-leaves.

Jakara scowled. His steel-grey eyes, the tight-pressed lips, gave his face an instant savagery. The determined jaw but particularly the slightly hooked nose, made him strikingly like the clean-built men of Las; the likeness would have been more evident if his brown skin had been tinged with the chocolate colour of theirs.

“Murderer,” he whispered, “burning to make others dance the Dance. How many will you make quiver? And will there be any poor wretches of whites amongst them? How I should love to slit that big full throat of yours, if only I could keep my own head too.”

Gloweringly he leaned against the boulder and gazed towards invisible Tutu. Gradually his face softened to a tender sympathy, for on blood-stained Tutu there dwelt another Lamar, and, a girl!

To these Torres Strait Islanders every white person was believed to be a “Lamar,” a human spirit of the dead, to be instantly killed. Shipwrecked people in boats were thought to be Lamars, that is, spirits given up by the sea itself, and were especially feared, for, if they were once allowed to breathe the air of land, they inhaled the power to wreak catastrophe upon all humans. Very rarely, because of some fancied resemblance, an Islander claimed a shipwrecked person as his dead son or daughter returned to earth-life in spirit-form, and such were spared. Thus had Jakara been spared, and also a few, a very few, men and women who had survived shipwreck among the superstitious natives of those islands.*

(*Thus had Mrs Barbara Thompson been spared after the wreck of the cutter America on the distant Prince of Wales Group. She was claimed by the chief of Entrance as the spirit of his deceased daughter, Gi-’om. Boroto, chief of Murralug (Prince of Wales Island), took the white woman to wife. After five years she was rescued by H.M.S. Rattlesnake and restored to her friends in Sydney.)

Jakara blamed C’Zarcke that he had never met Eyes of the Sea, as the natives called the Lamar of Tutu. Though he had voyaged to Tutu Island, he had never seen the girl who had been taken from a shipwrecked vessel when five years old. She had been claimed as the Lamar of a Tutu girl. Jakara had often pondered upon the white girl’s plight. Reared as a savage, she had been forced to take part in all their dreadful ceremonies. Jakara shuddered as he thought of the Waiat rites, but she had so far escaped the “Wedding of the Virgins.” He knew her age; she must be twenty now, just the age at which a white girl would be dreaming of the glories of life.

Jakara sighed, and walked thoughtfully down the slope. Hilly Mer is very pretty. The foliage screened villages below, each facing its own tiny beach, with a fleet of big fighting-canoes drawn right up to the front avenues of palms. Each village was flanked by steep grassy headlands, or deep green of tangled jungle, with the intense green of banana-patches away behind. Behind, and farther back still, were the well-kept vegetable and fruit gardens climbing up the little hills, and towards the centre of the island the green-grey of the Wongais surrounding the Sacred Grove. And, brooding high over all, the sombre mass of Gelam, its dead crater-rim circular and glassy, miles in circumference, its great maw now supporting grassy slopes. The island was so markedly different from the Great South Land; in its people, its rocks, its trees, its birds, its corals and fishes. Seven hundred feet above the sea, in the lava rocks of that old crater, are huge chunks of dead coral, proving how in ages past the volcano pushed Mer right up through the bottom of the sea. The Miriam-le were vastly different from the nomadic Australian aboriginal. They were expert navigators, canny traders, and keen agriculturists, and had conquered, explored, and colonized all Torres Strait.

The village houses were plentiful and neat and clean, adroitly thatched with grasses and mats of plaited palm-leaves. Before every house there stood a Sarokag pole, sometimes adorned with big spiral shells, which showed that the man within was initiated into manhood, but was not yet a warrior. On other poles were skulls, the number of which denoted the fighting-power and honour of the master within.

Over Jakara’s house also there stood a pole, and it bore a strange device. This consisted simply of wings of palm-branches topping a bamboo and turned by the wind like a windmill. In answer to questions, in this matter as in numerous others, Jakara had smiled wisely. He had always striven to impress upon these susceptible people that there were things of which he understood more than they. And they had long since accepted him at his own valuation; admitted him as one of themselves, and let him alone, though he was always “Jakara the Strange.”

He entered the house, latched the door close, and took down a staff of seasoned ironwood from behind the festoons of bright yellow tobacco-leaf along the walls. Inside, the bamboo pole fastened to the windmill came through the roof and whizzed round. Attached to it by a simple wooden device was a stone killing-club, which whirled round at striking angles at the height of a man’s head. Jakara stood before it and struck, and the house rang with wood smacking stone as he warded off the swift blows. With spurts of the breeze outside the club revolved at erratic speed, and, to protect himself, Jakara became a machine of sinew and energy and unerring sight.

For years he had thus practised against the club, though occasionally it had sprawled him senseless on the floor. But practice and fear for his head had set him running the mill faster and faster, until he had long since developed a quickness of eye and foot, body and sword, and above all the lasting of his wind, which had earned him among enemy peoples the title of “Jakara the Unkillable.” Leaping back from the vicious club, he took from the wall a small shield which fitted snugly over his left forearm. It was of hardwood, thickly studded with iron bolts hammered from floating spars, and weeks of thought and labour and fear had gone to the making of that buckler. But in several hot fights it had saved him from a cracked skull. Now, setting the mill to its limit, Jakara rushed the whizzing club, while the villagers hushed to listen to ringing blows of stone and wood and iron. Sparks were slow in comparison to the quickness of Jakara’s eye.

Though self-defence was one object of this unceasing practice, the chief motive was the fear that at some time he must face the possibility of being forced to perform the Dance of Death. If he could only die fighting, so that they could not possibly stun him! For if they killed him outright he could never Dance!

The practice over, from the wall he took down a long rapier, pulled the shining blade from the scabbard, and balanced the thing, his eyes sparkling with unholy love. This blade was “Lightning,” so named by fighting warriors who had seen its gleaming swiftness in action. If he might only fight out the last act in the midst of a ravening crowd with his one earthly love in his hand! But, O Lord above, they were such experts at the stunning stroke. Though he killed and killed, they would strive and strive to stun, and stun only. Sighing, he bent the rapier like a bow, then whirled it around his body until the weapon hummed. Again he examined the steel, tenderly feeling its point and edge, and again, as at many times past, wondered at its history, for it was a Spanish blade. He had seen ear-rings of Spain adorning a girl of Las, and odd men of Mer wore rings heavy with the gold and workmanship of Castille. The Las villagers also used quite a number of Spanish words. What was the story of these relics? Without the slightest doubt, the wreck of a Spanish adventurer in the long ago.

Jakara knew that from the sixteenth century Dutch and Spanish ships had ventured into these treacherous seas, jealously keeping their discoveries secret until the great Cook had sailed through the Strait and claimed Australia for Britain. Jakara knew from the diving natives that the bones of many vessels, mostly unknown, lie among the reefs. What romances of the white man’s history C’Zarcke must know! C’Zarcke had given him the blade as a reward for the planning of a highly successful raid.

With the point piercing the floor, he leaned thoughtfully on the hilt. C’Zarcke, always C'Zarcke! Presently he jerked himself straight, with the old terrible feeling at the base of his neck – a feeling such as a man might have when half awake if a spirit breathed upon the back of his neck. He knew C’Zarcke was thinking of him. Hurriedly he replaced the weapon and, leaning over the coral hearth, blew the coco-husks into flame.

Within the Zogo-house C’Zarcke sat brooding with the night. Care creased his brow, thought clouded his eyes, his heavy lips drooped with a childlike despondency. C’Zarcke was not worrying about himself – he was dreading the future of his nation. For as a nation the Island people classed themselves.

C’Zarcke feared not the Lamars, but their numbers, the incomprehensible things that were theirs, and above all, their understanding. So far, these strange people had not troubled the Eastern Group and but little of the West, but he knew that at the Central Group of islands, and along the coast of the Great South Land and its islands off shore, wherever the Lamars wished to land, they landed; that whatever the Lamars wanted, they took.

For centuries past the mere existence of the Lamars had been acknowledged as a peril by the Zogo-le of the Strait. Those strange beings had come from they knew not where; they had come like a hurricane, done their damage, and vanished like the storm.

Throughout the centuries they had come in this manner, and the Zogo-le of the day had left on record that the arrows of the Islanders had splintered against the bodies of these beings, their toughest spears had crumpled up, even their stone clubs had bounced shattered from the heads of the Lamars.

After each visitation the people had become more and more convinced that the Lamars were invulnerable, that it was hopeless to fight against them.

The Zogo-le have their legends of our first known navigator of the Strait, Luiz Vaez de Torres, in the Spanish frigate San Pedro in 1606. C’Zarcke did not know him by that name, but their legends definitely told C’Zarcke how the Lamars by unbeatable force had taken twenty Islanders, who had vanished from their sight for ever. The Spanish captain had taken these natives to show to His Majesty the King of Spain. Portuguese navigators had done the same. The Lamars, except when caught in distress, had always been invincible. There was but one case in which the Lamars, actually in fighting-ships too, had fled before the Islanders. But C’Zarcke understood full well that this was probably because their ships were in a perilous position due to the sea. Very vividly the legends of the Zogo-le pictured the sack of Eroob by the Lamars. In June 1793 Bampton and Alt in the Hormuzeer and Chesterfield sent a whale-boat ashore for water. The Erubians attacked the boat, killing five men, and great was the joy to find that at last the Lamars had become vulnerable to spear and club. But next day the crews of both vessels landed, drove off the Islanders with slaughter, burned six villages, destroyed a hundred and seventy huge war-canoes, cut down the gardens, and played general havoc.

There were other instances, all ending in the same result, which the Island history told to the Zogo-le. The Lamars, with their mysterious and unexplainable weapons, were invincible! For centuries past they had but come and gone, leaving to the people only the remembrance of a nightmare.

But now they were coming in great numbers, and staying! C’Zarcke was full of fears; upon him lay the entire responsibility for the Island peoples.

To the Zogo-le on Mer were constantly brought news of the doings of the Lamars over hundreds of miles of waterways. C’Zarcke knew the increasing numbers of these strange beings; he knew that so far they had proved invincible to attack by coloured men. What were their real numbers? What did they want? Would they ultimately overrun all the Islands? Could they not be stopped? Must the Island people eventually perish?

C’Zarcke thought and worried far into the night, but this great question was as insoluble as that of the stars, as indefinite as the Lamars themselves. He did not know what the Lamars were, these strange people who had suddenly invaded the Island world – from the very skies, the Islanders believed.

C’Zarcke did not now believe that Lamars were the spirits of men come to earth again for a season. As he thought of Jakara, he grimly resolved to prove the matter. This Lamar had passions very similar to those of Island men. C’Zarcke would bring Eyes of the Sea, the woman Lamar, to Mer. The priest smiled cynically. He was positive of the result. But he sighed again, thinking deeply on matters more important.

He had dreamed of learning so much from Jakara, as the boy Lamar grew up. He had thought to find out everything that the Lamars really were. But C’Zarcke could not realize the difference of mentality between coloured and white. Also, one was a frightened captive of a totally unknown race of human beings; the other was a great chief hedged round by superstition and savage power. The very environment of the two, not to take into account utterly different racial customs and ideals and the tense distrust between them both, was alone more than enough to intensify the feeling of antagonism between them, and defeat C’Zarcke’s hopes.

C’Zarcke had learned little, and that little had but added to his fears – fears for the ultimate fate of his people.

Sighing deeply, the great priest cupped his chin between his hands and stared unseeing at the sacred mats upon the Zogo-house floor.