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Chapter II · Revolt of the Birds

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Chapter two of the Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post This LibriVox recording
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is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter two. Before
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I go into the strange details Bennett gave me when he picked up the Chinese
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sumpond in the rout of his steamer that night, I want to get another
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thing before you. The story the German derelict Captain told me in the club
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room of the Wu Fang Company. It is not a part of Bennett's story,
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but it bears upon it in one prime essential and you will grasp the
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whole sweep of Bennett's narrative in its deeper meaning if you carry forward in your
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mind the controlling idea in Nordheim's story. Captain the Baron Nordheim, as Bennett
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addressed him. You see, as I have said, they were careful of
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distinctions. It was the only thing they had left. And this derelict might
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have been a baron, He might have been anything. One never knows.
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I did not look him up in the Almanac de Gootha, but the Almanac
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de Gootha records more than one down going man stepping into the abyss. At
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any rate, he was an educated German. I don't know what sent him
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on his way to the Wufang company. There was a hint of it,
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I think in this story. He told the story I am relating, he
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had been caught in a line and taken overboard from his ship. He could
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not swim. The line had played out, and he had gone down.
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It was a smooth sea with a clear green water, and he had descended
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slowly, he said, feet first and upright, turning a little, but
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maintaining this position. Persons on the deck could see him as he disappeared thus
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into the depths of the sea. It was a fragment of time before they
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could get the line taut. That was the point about the adventure, the
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very brief time involved. He could not have been more than sixty seconds in
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the sea, and yet he said, in that period of time he relived
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in every accurate detail a dramatic portion of his life. I think he meant
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the most disastrous of it, perhaps the portion of it that sent him out
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of his class into the east and finally into the club of the Wufang Company.
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He related the incident in dramatic detail. One could see that it was
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a fragment of life something the man had lived contracted to its essentials. He
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had been a student of the University of Giessen and the province of Hesse.
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There had been the usual complications with a woman. This baron Nordheim must have
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been a fine type of young German in that day. The devitalizing East had
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not removed every evidence of it. One could see what the man had been.
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Such complications would ordinarily have been of no importance, But as it happened,
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the young woman was of the elevated class in Hesse, and one of
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her relatives took it up. He was a member of the Imperial Guard.
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He came down from Berlin, and there was a duel, Nordheim said,
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in the brief period of his descent into the sea, he passed again through
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every detail of this duel. At five o'clock in the morning, they went
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out from Giesen and carriages to a student's clubhouse in a neighboring province. It
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was the usual spectacular duel, so dear to the dramatic Germans. Since the
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two men were stripped to the waist and armed with sabers, they stood just
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opposite one another, so that with the arm extending a point of the saber
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could touch the opponent to the eye. A duel so arranged would be a
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deadly affair, but the German race gets the maximum of dramatic effect with the
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minimum of peril in its tragic affairs. Two aides armed with sabers stood between
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the opponents, and the duellists were not permitted to move from their positions.
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The duel went on for some time with the appearance of a desperate affair,
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but it was stopped constantly. There was hardly a thrust of the saber that
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was not intercepted. If blood were drawn, the aids intervened and the surgeons
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consulted. Finally, the guardsmen touched Nordheim on the forearm, an artery was
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cut and the duel ended. The thing would have been all in proper form
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but for the fact that real human emotions were involved. The girl was engaged
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to the guardsman. A word or two passed between the men at the end
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of the formal duel, and suddenly, before the managers of the affair could
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interfere, there was a moment of actual fighting. The guardsman was killed and
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Nordheim had to get out of the empire. The man did not precisely say
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this in the story, but he gave details enough to make it certain.
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It was the big tragic event at the turn of his life. He was
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a civilian. He had killed an officer of the Emperor's guard. There was
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no chance that he would go clear of it. The only chance he had
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was to disappear, and so he came into Asia and the Wufang company.
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There was no relation in this incident to Bennett's adventure, except that it bears
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on a certain feature that will presently develop, the feature of time. That
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was the point Nordheim was making. That time was merely a condition of the
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mind. It could be suspended, or it could be strangely lengthened. Extreme
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peril in the presence of death could indefinitely extend it. A moment could be
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made to cover a long period of time. That was the point he made,
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and that is the point that bears on Bennett's story. As I have
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said, he could not have been longer than sixty seconds in the sea,
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and yet he had relived in every detail the experiences of his life for a
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very considerable period. Was time then strangely subject to human emotion. Thus,
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in a day one might under certain conditions of the mind have the experiences and
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sensations of a lifetime. If the situation were tense enough, if the feeling
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were overpowering enough, time could be extended as one stretches an elastic band.
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Of course, Nordheim knew nothing about this story I got from Bennett, but
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his experiences for the brief period of time in the sea had set him to
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thinking about this condition of time, and a further experience made it almost an
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obsession with him, a sort of fixed idea that a German can so easily
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get absorbed into this further experience. In fact, the really strange thing which
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he had started out to relate had added to his interest in this idea.
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Somewhere, the actual situs of these wanderings were never precisely charted. Up a
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sluggish river of the Melee Peninsula, there was a German resident. He was
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alone in this wilderness of Asia. It wasn't certain what the contraband was he
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traded in raw opium. Perhaps the Wufang company had located him, and it
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sent Nordheim in on one of its leprous ships to get the stuff he had
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to sell. That's the reason the spot on the coast remained indefinite. In
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the man's story, the Wufang Company did not wish the world to know where
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precisely its doubtful customers were located or the destination of its ships. But if
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the contraband which the resident sold to the Wufang Company was left in doubt,
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there was no doubt about what Nordheim took to the recluse in exchange French champagne
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and hashish. The resident in his thatch house at the end of the Sluggish
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River explained it to Nordheim. Hashish had a strange effect on the human mind.
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It lengthens one's conception of time. The residence said, I get drunk,
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I take the drug, and so it happens that in one afternoon I
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enjoy myself for a month. It was a finger's touch on an immense mystery.
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A lost German in a forest of Asia was on the way to one
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of the greatest discoveries of the age. He had outwitted time. He had
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hit upon a plan to extend the pleasant periods of it. Nordheim said,
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there was no doubt about the effects of the drug. It did extend the
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consciousness of time. Grave professors had experimented with it in the universities at Berlin.
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In half an hour one could traverse the length of unter de Linden.
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But if one swallowed a portion of the drug, a very limited portion,
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one seemed a whole afternoon in that pleasant walk. Strange that this astounding quality
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in the Asiatic hemp should have received so little attention from the savants of the
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world. What an immense control one would have over one's life, if one
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could extend for a long period brief happy moments in it. Carry this incident
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in mind as we go forward with Bennett's amazing narrative. Bennett said, there
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was nothing on the flimsy craft to take aboard but the man. That strange
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cloud, that sale cloud that had brought the sampan out, was a clean
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mystery, a thing like witchcraft, a thing out of the order of nature.
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A cloud does not travel back against the wind. Bennett said that if
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he alone had seen it, he might have believed himself under the delusion of
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a mirage of the sea. But every native of the crew saw it,
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and the appalling mystery of it overcame the abysmal reserve of the race. There
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was the profound comment of that murmur heard like a sigh out of the bosom
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of the crew. And there was another thing. There was an intent in
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the phenomenon of that cloud, a definite intent. It brought the sum pond
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out to the steamer, and it withdrew when that voyage was accomplished. One
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could go just so far with coincidence, and then the human understanding balked at
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it. There was the old illustration. If one found three trees at an
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equal distance apart and standing in a precise line, that might be chance.
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But if one found seven trees thus arranged, there was an intent behind it.
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Somebody had planted them. Chance didn't go ahead with a plan. Chance
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was a kind of accident. But this thing was no accident. That cloud
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moved to a purpose, the purpose of getting that white man to the steamer,
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and it did it. Then it went back against the wind. That
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was the thing that got his goat, as he expressed, it, got
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the goat of the crew, and he went on about it. Of course,
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I was thinking of the bottles and the ice that the Dutch skipper had
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given him. But I got away from that rational explanation a moment later.
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I got away from it with a decided start. He began to describe the
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white man, and presently, in a flash, I knew him. It
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was Arthur Hudson. It took a profound effort to control my face, to
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control my amazement. Hudson was a missing man, but not one of the
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missing men I was after. There was no dosser entry for which he was
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wanted. He wasn't involved with a crime. But he was involved in a
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romance that had hung for its seven days on the tongue of London, and
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then he had vanished out of all human knowledge. I knew all about it.
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There was a girl, of course, and I had what she knew.
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Everything she knew, even the letters the man had written. She had
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made a clean breast of it to me, and I knew the details running
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out in every direction from the culminating dramatic incident. It's marvelous. It's incredible
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how an efficient secret service can get at the very hidden details in a case
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when it goes carefully after them. And we had gone carefully after the details
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in this case. Hudson was an American of an important family, and at
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the time the earth swallowed him, he was rich. I shall have something
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in detail to say about this feature presently, and the girl was socially prominent
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in England, rather too prominent, as it turned out. The other man,
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there was always another man in these triangles, was notorious Lord X.
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I don't want to name him. Everybody knows his career and how it ended.
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Bennett was going on. He was discussing a philosophy. I did not
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follow him. He had deflected from the narrative into a rambling discussion on coincidence
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and design and events with an endless array of examples. I was thinking back
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over Hudson's affair. He had visited in England as a boy, and in
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the country he had met this English girl. There had sprung up a youthful
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romance and a sort of engagement. The girl, then was one of those
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slim, fresh, wholesome youngsters that our English race can breed in its best
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country families. What London does to some of the finest of them later on,
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as it did to her, is enough to crucify the very souls in
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us. Hudson went home with this ideal of her firmly fixed. His father
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had died and the estate was involved. In fact, there was only a
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string of bituminous coal mines as an asset, and they were going to pot,
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as such properties go to pot when there is no personal supervision by the
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owners. Arthur Hudson was the only heir, the only individual in fact living
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at his father's death. He wanted to marry this English girl and live in
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England. He was wild about her and the outdoor country life. But for
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this he had to have money. He had to get his father's wrecked estate
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on its feet, and he went about it like a man. He sold
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the house on Long Island and went down into the coal region himself. It
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was an awful place to put in the days of one's life. The Long
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Valley was a pot of smoke, the river a stinking yellow drain. There
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were only the shacks of the miners to live in the scalm of southern Europe.
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To talk with women like beasts of burden, men like underground gnomes.
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It was awful, but there was firm fiber in the man, great stuff,
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the stuff of the builders of empires in him. He stuck it five
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years in that hell, and the thing that kept him up was this English
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girl, I mean the ideal of her. It was the thing in his
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heart that held all this physical horror back from him, and the ideal became
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finer all the time the man's worship polished it. He could endure this hell
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for a season, because from the smoke of its pit he was going to
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the clean air of England and to this lovely girl, fresh like a blossom.
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He thought of her in every moment of his waking life, but not
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in the unconsciously leap life. That was a thing he complained of. He
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never could see this girl in his dreams. He never could dream of her.
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He wrote it in his letters to the Girl, the letters I saw.
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He did have a dream about a girl, a dream that kept coming
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back, always the same. But it wasn't this English girl that he saw
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in it. It was a girl that he had never seen anywhere, a
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slender, dark haired girl with a delicate ethereal beauty like a dryad and a
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sacred grove or a fairy woman. A flock of birds moved always about her,
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settled on the earth, beside her, arose beside her, convoyed her
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like a treasure. It was always the same. If he dreamed of a
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woman at all, it was always this woman. He poured it all out
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to his sweetheart in England. He resented this intrusion. He wanted to dream
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of her, but it was of no use to resent it. The thing
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was beyond his will. And here was another strange thing, The resentment at
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the parallel life I mean, the real and the dream life that alternated in
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this man's consciousness was not confined to one. It lay equally in the two
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lives Hudson's subconscious soul, if one may put it that way, in worship
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of this dream woman of the birds resented and rejected the other worship of his
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conscious soul. The man lived in two worlds, and he was not the
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same man in them, at least in his heart. He was not the
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same man. But strangely, his introspections were the same in both, I
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mean in method. He considered and he reflected in the one precisely as he
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considered and reflected in the other. And thus considering in the one state,
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he could not understand his attitude in the other. Awake, he was in
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love with this girl in England, thought of her, only longed for her,
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And when the night came on him, he turned to the other with
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a sort of shudder of the soul for what he had escaped. He could
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see then that this incomparable dryad moving within the birds was the one he longed
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for, was the one only woman in the world for him that limitation is
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too narrow, the one only woman in time, in space. For him,
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there was no doubt about it. Something like the drunken confusion of a
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drug would clear away, and he seemed to see, seemed to see clearly
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that the other obsession was a sort of derangement of the soul. Then the
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day would come, and this whole life would withdraw into the region of the
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fancy. It was this day life that prevailed, it would always prevail in
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such a conflict. We are creatures of the sun, and what appear in
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it are the realities of the world. To us, the innumerable unstable states
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of the mind in the vast realm of dreams do not move us to their
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will with the insistence of our waking impressions. Nevertheless, they profoundly impress us,
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impress us, sometimes as of a deeper significance than the waking phenomena that
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we call life. Or Old mysterious religions teach that it was through the vehicle
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of the dream that the soul of man received its vital message, as though
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the withdrawal of sense impressions put the human mind in a closer touch with the
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intelligence behind the world. It's all inconceivably mysterious. Letters went on. The
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English girl was amused to keep Hudson thinking of her as a country innocent.
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He got no idea of the change that was going on, the smart,
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fast life she was getting into the dissent. Then he sold out, got
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a fortune in an American bank and came to England. He did not tell
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his sweetheart he was coming the strike of fortune and the sale of the properties,
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and his coming for her was to be a surprise. The surprise was
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on the other side. I may as well write it all out here.
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Why tone it down, It's the truth. Hudson called up the country house.
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When he got to London. They gave a woman's club in the city.
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The club said the girl was out for the week end at earldom Mere
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House. He asked a man he knew in his club about it. He
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said, if you have a birdy in that nest, you had better cut
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along. Hudson thought he meant the distance. The man added a word or
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two. The ants a sound sleeper. Hudson got the route to the house
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from a road map, picked up a motor and drove out. It was
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no great distance, only an hour or so out, but a tire went
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down. There was a lot of trouble, no spare case, it seemed,
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or something of the sort. At any rate. It was rather late
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when he arrived. Too late to go in, he thought, But he
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was crazy to see the girl. To see the house that held her would
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be something. He bade the motorist wait, and he walked up. It
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was a heavenly night. There was no moon, but the whole heaven was
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white with stars. It was a night designed in paradise for a long absent
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lover to come home to his sweetheart. Hudson was surprised at a turn of
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the path to see lights in the house. He thought it would be one
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of the country houses that shut up early from what his friend said of the
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ant, and to cut along. It seemed to be a drawing room that
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was lighted. The other parts of the house were dark. He advanced on
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the path and presently he caught the sound of faint music and noises. There
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was a French casement door opening from the lighted drawing room on to the lawn.
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It was ajar and Hudson went in. You see the charm and surprise
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moved him. The girl would go red and white and breathless when he appeared,
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poor devil. I would like to leave the rest of it out,
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but it is a part of this complicated truth. It's a fragment of this
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history of a life. Things happen and one has to face them. A
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surgeon doesn't draw back before a malformation of the body. And it's a demonstration
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in the new philosophy, the philosophy of experiment, that the generation coming up
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has got in its head. I've no comment to make on it. The
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girl told me what happened when she showed me Hudson's letters and made a clean
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breast it. She had gone out to spend the weekend at Earldmere House.
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At dinner, Lord X had a bottle of champagne brought in. The old
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aunt objected. Young girls were not offered champagne in her day. There was
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a bit of protest from the Englishman and the girl smiled, but the wishes
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of the old aunt were respected. The man put the champagne back into the
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ice. He made a little amusing gesture, a lift of the eyebrows,
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as one would say, oh well, let it go for the present.
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That was the first act in the drama. The second came after dinner in
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the drawing room, when Lord X set a record of American jazz on a
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victrola and put back the rugs. The old aunt made another protest. It
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was no proper music for a drawing room, and no proper dance for a
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young girl. X shut off the record. He made the same gesture,
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a sort of signal as among conspirators. They had a rubber of bridge a
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dummy for fourth and the evening ended. Everybody took a candle and went up.
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But the girl had a hint of a plan. It was added to
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the Englishman's good night with the candle and sleeps like the dead. Read a
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bit. She did, read a bit, took off her evening dress and
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the tight things. As she put it. There was a light by the
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bed and some French novels, not any that one could purchase at a newsstand.
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The illustrations, the girl said, entreated her. She read prompt up
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among the pillows. An hour later she heard a light tap on the door
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and X's voice, slip on something and come down. She slipped on a
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dressing gown. She made a point about that in her story, not about
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the conventionality of the garment, but about the lure of it. It was
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a Paris creation. She looked at herself a moment as she passed the mirror.
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She thought she was stunning in it. She found Lord X with the
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bucket of ice in the drawing room and the champagne. There were two bottles
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in it. Now they drank it. He had the rug's back and they
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tried the American jazz record. He had a table cover over the victrola to
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soften the sound. The girl laughed at the way he played the part.
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Of course, she understood the man's Victorian aunt was a joke. All London
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knew about the little play acting. It was part of the game. Gave
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it a tone, you see, as she said it. But it was
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getting a bit overdone. He would have to get a new stunt. This
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was on the way to being standardized, she laughed. That was the thing
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that affected me in her story, the way she regarded the trick. It
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wasn't what one did, it was the way by which one came to do
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it, to be cleverly managed was the point, was the whole point,
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of course, one was never misled, one respected the fiction if it were
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clever. She indicated the formula one must give an affair the aspect of romantic
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accident. Then Arthur Hudson stepped through the door into the drawing room. The
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girl said she was dancing with Lord X when over his shoulder she saw the
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man. She did not see him enter. She saw him standing just inside.
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She didn't know how long he had been inside. The Englishman was getting
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a bit out of hand. He might have kissed her just then, or
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the moment before she stopped and the Englishman turned. He went at Hudson with
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a rush, She said. Hudson did not move, did not look at
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the man. He stood looking at her, his eyes wide, his mouth
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gaping. He never did seem to look at Lord X. When the man
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reached the door, he struck him with his clenched hand, but he did
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not look at him. It was a terrific blow. It crushed out Lord
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X's nose all over his face. No surgeon could ever restore it. It
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broke out the front teeth in both the upper and lower jaws, and it
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damaged the muscles of the left eye so that it was drawn down for life.
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That was one thing in the tragedy that the girl seemed to admire,
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that terrific right hander. She laughed, it spoiled his profession, it did.
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He wasn't pretty to look at. After that, he slid entirely across
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the drawing room into the opposite corner. The girl said it was some moments
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before she knew Hudson. She was a bit dizzy, and objects weren't quite
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clear. She didn't move. She kept putting her hair back from her face.
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She had a great wealth of straw colored hair. She was a beauty
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of the loveliest English type, and she knew it. That was another point
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about her. She enjoyed observing what this beauty did to men, the reactions
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from it. She was looking for the reaction of it, even now on
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Hudson think of it, at the crisis of such a tragedy. But what
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do I know about women? What does any man know about them? She
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thought she was lovely, and she was, and she waited for Hudson to
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speak, to come to her. He didn't move. She wondered about it.
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When she told me How could any normal man hold out like that against
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the lure of her? She may have been must a bit Lord X was
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a normal man. The dressing gown may have fallen away on either side from
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her shoulders, But clothes are allure. That's the object of clothes. One
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wore a single garment before the whole world nowadays, on the beach at Dauville,
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and she had three, counting the dressing gown for one. She thought
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she was a beauty that night, a beauty. Just then? What was
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the matter with this American? Did I know? He did not move,
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but all at once he changed, his face changed or else. She finally
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saw him clearly through the haze that she was trying to put back with that
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gesture toward her hair. He stood now a relaxed heap against the door.
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He looked bewildered, puzzled, uncertain, bewildered. There isn't a word to
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describe it. Precisely, he looked as the soul of a man might look
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if some awful accident had suddenly ejected it out of his body and did not
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know what to do. That's precisely it. That's precisely how the man looked.
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I got that profound impression from her discrept of him. She did not
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speak to him. She was waiting on the lure, waiting on the charm
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of her to move him. But he spoke finally. His voice was low,
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as though it came from a long distance. What he said was the
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other perhaps I can find her, And he went out. I am compelled
26:22
to give you this incident in its detail, if you are to understand the
26:26
sort of man Hudson was. The girl kept coming back to her query about
26:30
him in our talk. What was the matter with the American? Did he
26:36
expect to crack a rock's egg and find a woman within it? The world
26:40
had changed. The new generation had made up their minds to live, to
26:44
live all they could in the time they had, And the more experiences one
26:48
had, the more reactions, the more one lived. Did he expect to
26:52
find her waiting for him? A little country, innocent and a blossomed pasture
26:59
in what sort of sarcophagus? Had the man been entombed? It was the
27:03
day of women. Women had come into their inheritance of freedom at last,
27:08
and they proposed to make the most of it. Life was too precious to
27:12
be risked blindly as it was too precious to be wasted. Imagine going to
27:18
live with a man for one's life when one knew nothing about a man.
27:22
Did any man of us enter an irrevocable situation until after he knew pretty thoroughly
27:27
all about it? And experience was life? Look at the thing? If
27:33
one had an afternoon to see all the pictures in a gallery, would one
27:36
spend the whole of it before a single picture? One would see the gallery,
27:41
and then if one preferred a certain picture in it, one might come
27:44
back to sit comfortably on a lounge before it. For any time that one
27:47
had over What could one know of life? If one knew only one man,
27:52
one picture? Look at the waste of it. She was right.
27:56
There was something the matter with Hudson. He belonged in another world, in
28:02
another conception of life, and he disappeared out of this new one that had
28:06
risen. Did he find the other? I was keen to get Bennett back
28:11
into his story. I was so engrossed with the memory that I had hardly
28:15
noticed that Bennett's voice had ceased. He was sitting quite still now, but
28:18
he had been at the brandy bottle while I was in my reflection. It
28:22
was empty. I got him back into his story. He had taken the
28:27
unconscious man on to the deck of the steamer, abandoning the sampond to the
28:32
sea. Unfortunately the bottles and the ice. He put a mattress on the
28:37
deck for the man. It was still hot, the land breeze was gone.
28:41
There was not wind enough now to move the soampon out of the track
28:45
of the steamer. He said a native to keep a towel wet in cold
28:48
water on the man's head, and got some brandy in him, a tea
28:52
spoonful at a time. But he never did get him back to more than
28:56
fitful consciousness. And in these intervals Bennett got his style out of him.
29:00
He got it in fragments, fragments that did not go together, either in
29:04
sequence or in time, but in a sort of way Bennett could fit them
29:08
together himself. The man went through the night in his delirium, and the
29:12
next day they rigged up a shelter over him on the deck, some old
29:17
canvas to keep the sun off. The man seemed greatly disturbed when they tried
29:21
to move him into the cabin. Even in delirium, he fought against it.
29:26
He wanted to remain on the open deck, and he had his way.
29:30
I put the query that ran before the story, what became of Hudson?
29:34
Bennett sat looking at the empty brandy bottle. I took the hint.
29:37
The slippered old Chinese waiter shuffled in again. Bennett dribbled the brandy into his
29:42
dirty glass, as one might measure out the treasure of a vintage. The
29:47
man had disappeared from the deck of his ship in the night. He did
29:51
not know what had become of him. He thought at the time that the
29:53
man had rolled off the deck into the sea, but he wasn't so certain
29:57
about it, And the older he got in the mo he thought about it,
30:00
the less certain he was. Maybe what the delirious man said would happen
30:04
to him had in fact happened. He stopped abruptly, as though a sudden,
30:08
profound reflection had seized him. I took advantage of that to pour my
30:14
measure of the brandy on the dirty matting. When I looked up, Bennett's
30:18
face was turned toward the window. He made a gesture toward it with his
30:21
thumb. He indicated a sparrow outside. The sparrow was picking a caterpillar from
30:26
the lid of a packing box. God, he said, a man's a
30:30
fool to think that he can see and understand all that's going on around him.
30:36
He doesn't even see what he could see if he looked, Not to
30:38
mention the mysteries, he doesn't see the danger he's in from that thing.
30:44
He jerked his thumb toward the lid of the packing box. Our fates in
30:48
it. We talk about the end of the great war. God, We're
30:52
in the greatest war that the human mind ever dreamed of. No conception of
30:56
war ever equaled the one we are in, the one that goes on day
31:00
and night, no quarter, no armistice, a deadly, ruthless, determined
31:04
struggle for possession of the earth, with extermination for the vanquished, extermination.
31:11
We can't patch up a piece with this enemy. We can't even patch up
31:15
a truce. It goes on. If we win, we live, if
31:18
we lose. He put out the fingers of his big hand and then closed
31:23
them slowly. He could not have made a more forcible gesture. He went
31:29
on, you can't reason with this enemy. It doesn't reason. It goes
31:34
on a thing that we simply can't get at the will to victory. We
31:41
used to hear a lot about that in the German War. But this enemy
31:44
has the instinct to victory. Think of that. You can't break down the
31:48
morale of an instinct. It's outside of propaganda, outside of fear, outside
31:53
of panic. Death. Don't touch it, disaster, don't touch it.
31:59
God. He repeated, the thumb jerk toward the window. Man has one
32:04
great ally. It may save him the birds. But for the aid of
32:09
this ally, the great insect life would overrun the world like a wave.
32:15
In a year, every green thing would vanish. There wouldn't be a leaf
32:17
or a grass blade. The human race would be driven to the sea for
32:21
food. It would have to dig in to live. It couldn't hold out.
32:25
In a dozen years, it would cease to exist. There was a
32:29
tense vigor in the man's words, but there was no vigor of declamation in
32:32
his voice. He sat stooped over in his chair, and he spoke like
32:37
one idly in a reflection, one who wasn't concerned about an effect. I
32:42
was puzzled, what sort of a tangent was he on? I meant so
32:45
far as Hudson, and the mystery about him was concerned, But the vivid
32:50
pictures he created gripped me. One saw what he meant. Of course,
32:54
everybody had thought idly along the line, but who had ever realized the immensity
33:00
of it. If our ally failed us, he shrugged his big shoulders.
33:07
They alone checked the advance of this loathsome conqueror. They hold the line.
33:13
If the enemy breaks through, we're doomed, and we don't give a thought
33:16
to them. We don't even know the wars on he paused, And we
33:22
see fifty million tons of insects shift from one sector to another point of attack.
33:28
We see a dozen cubic miles of space filled with the enemy in some
33:31
sudden drive on us, and we leave our fate to the birds. I
33:37
thought Bennett was drunk. I thought he had gotten into one of those ruts
33:40
of the mind common to men and liquor. But he was not drunk.
33:45
How he sat up under that terrible brandy was a wonder, But he did
33:49
sit up under it. The only effect of the drink that one could notice
33:52
was that he became a little more precise in his expressions and a little more
33:57
mysterious. A gesture with his hand toward the window, either to dismiss the
34:02
subject which he had elaborated, or to include it with the story he returned
34:07
to. He came back to the unconscious man on the deck of his ship,
34:12
muttering in the shadow of the rotten canvas. He began to talk about
34:15
him. How had he come here? What had happened to him? There
34:20
was no white man on any island of this sea, and this craft had
34:23
not come from the wreck of a ship. No ship would carry a rotten
34:27
sampond on its davits. It came out from the land under the mystery sail.
34:32
Bennett continued to do all he could to get the man on his feet,
34:36
but it was no go. He got some broth in him, and
34:38
the spoonfuls of liquor, and now and then he got some fragment of his
34:43
story. One could visualize the thing, the curious ship captain sitting by the
34:46
delirious man, noting every word, considering every gesture and expression, and putting
34:52
it together as one puts together the fragments of a puzzle, now giving it
34:57
up as a fantastic vagary, and then coming back to it for the truth.
35:01
There was one thing in the fragments that Bennett got that struck me with
35:05
the impact of a blow. The man said that there had been a woman
35:08
with him on the sampan. That fragment had a marked significance for me.
35:14
It connected Hudson with the affair I detailed a moment ago. It completed his
35:19
adventure with the English girl. One thought instantly of his last significant sentence,
35:23
when he was standing by his dead self in the door of Lord X's drawing
35:28
room. The other perhaps I can find her? Had he found her?
35:34
Or was it merely that persistent dream coming out in the delirium? How could
35:38
there have been a girl with him on this rotten sampon at this point in
35:42
the China Sea. Was it the dream again? If it were, that
35:45
here was a parallel for Chillingsworth's traitor the same ending. I thought it was
35:51
the brandy in Bennett at the time that made him so complaisant, so willing
35:54
to accept the mystery in Hudson's disappearance, to believe what the man said his
36:00
delirium. But it was not the brandy. I can believe it, and
36:04
I do not drink the brandy of the Wufang company. Hudson said that there
36:07
was a girl with him on the sampan, and that she had gone away
36:12
in the cloud that had made a sail to bring the sampan out to the
36:15
ship. He said the cloud would come for him. That was the reason
36:19
he fought, even in his delirium, for his open place on the deck.
36:23
Did it come for him? Bennett kept putting that querry as he got
36:28
on with the story. At any rate, the man was gone. One
36:31
morning, when Bennett came out on the deck, the native lookout set a
36:36
thick cloud past the ship. But, as Bennett said, any native would
36:39
be sure to add a wonder of his own to the rest of these wonders.
36:45
End of Chapter two.