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Chapter III · Revolt of the Birds

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Chapter three of the Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post the LibriVox recordings
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in the public Domain, read by Bin Tucker. Chapter three, Bennett pieced
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out Hudson's adventure on his way north. He was idle on the ship,
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and this strange affair gave him something to do. I could see him on
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that dead water, under a sky that did not change, the rusty freighter
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leprous, and the sun. Putting the thing together as one puts together the
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tiny fragments of a letter torn to bits, One spreads them all out on
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a table before one and goes at what seems a hopeless task. But the
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man had the time and the motive, and he got a sort of unity
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in the end. Out of the fragments. Of course, the details would
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not be precisely correct. One had to supply missing parts. And yet he
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had from his basket of scraps. Now and then an incident of startling detail
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like the scene on the sea before his ship came up, and segments that
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were mostly blank, dark places that could not be filled, could not in
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fact be imagined. What happened to Hudson immediately after he disappeared out of London
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that night, how he had got into Asia, and so forth. Bennett
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gave it all up beyond a certain point. He worked forward from an event
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on the sea, taking that event for a beginning. He did not endeavor
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to go back of that event. It was a thing that seemed to stick
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in the memory of the delirious man. He had been set adrift in the
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sampond from a ship. Bennett thought that was all the story at first,
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the man had been set adrift and he had picked him up. But he
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saw later it was the beginning of the whole thing. This is how Bennett
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finally worked it out from the vague data he had. It was conjecture,
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merely a sort of theory, but something of the sort seemed to be indicated.
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Something of the sort was at the origin of the thing. At any
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rate, it made what one might call a working hypothesis. Hudson was looking
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for something, He was searching the world for it. How he had got
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into Asia, and how he came to set out on his quest, and
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what the quest was were dead points to Bennett. He could not get them
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precisely coupled up. He could not piece out this portion of the story,
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but he had a marvelous memory. He gave me the fragments out of Hudson's
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babble. He did not know precisely what they indicated, and he did not
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join them up. But to me they were sign boards along the way of
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the man's adventures. I had all that went before. Bennett did not understand
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these fragments from Hudson's talk, but I could put the whole thing together.
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He had set out on a quest, and he had a sort of instinct
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about it. I don't think that in the beginning the instinct led him.
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I think the first thing was the flight of panic. To get out of
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London. Was the idea to get away, to get as far from that
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cursed city as the earth would permit him to go, and so he crossed
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Europe into Asia. That would be the first impulse, to put all the
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distance one could between the city of this tragic disaster and himself, between the
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wreck of his life and the future. Then when he had got some hold
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on himself, he would go about to search for the other woman. And
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perhaps that quest was not entirely a vague wander lure. Chillingsworth's traitor said that
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he had an instinct about where the island was that he saw in his dreams.
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Perhaps Hudson too had some sort of instinct about where the thing was that
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he sought. It doesn't get us anywhere to reject such a theory with a
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smile. When one has a profound feeling there may be some lure of direction
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in it. What is it that guides the birds and their migrations, and
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the schools of fish that travel in the sea. It must be some sort
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of instinctive direction toward the thing they seek. Of course it would be a
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mystery. But are we not surrounded, hedged in by mysteries? Do they
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not lie in every direction? We have no adequate explanation for any one of
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them. Are not the very ablest scientists constantly presenting us with mystery. An
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old naturalist in the south of France brings a cocoon containing a moth into province
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from a distant part of Europe. He brings a single one. There is
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no moth of that species in this part of France. He screens it in
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a room and hatches it out, and on a day when it reaches a
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certain period of maturity, there appears a mate for it at the window.
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The thing is incredible. It is beyond belief. It is beyond explanation,
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but it happens, and it is true. The old naturalist has no explanation
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to offer. What living man can have an explanation to offer? How could
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a moth in a distant part of Europe know that another would be hatched out
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in a screened room in province and travel across the hills and valleys to it.
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And how could the moth carried into captivity by the naturalist in its dormant
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state, when it awoke to life call a mate out of the far away
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ward world to it. The thing appalls us, It staggers the human mind.
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We can't explain it. It may be beyond reason if one likes,
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but it is not beyond faith. That Hudson had, unconsciously, perhaps some
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instinct of direction about the thing he sought. Why should a moth and province
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possess a mystery of direction that the human soul is denied? The man was
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dominated by an intense longing, a longing that cannot be gaged by any little
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measure, a thing like the pole of the stars, like the pole of
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the Earth on its satellite. This dream life had been half of the man's
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existence. It was now the whole of it. Is there any wonder that
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he finally got on the way to the thing he sought. Bennett said that
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if anything existed in Asia, there would be a rumor of it somewhere.
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That's the truth. Any man with any experience of the East knows that the
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English discovered it again and again in India, when there were no means of
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communication, no telegraphs, no flash signals, nothing, there would be a
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rumor among the natives in the cities of the coast about battles on that day
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in the interior. If there was a fight anywhere in the hills, something
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would be known of it, although it was not possible to have any direct
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means of communication. No one understands this. It is one of the phenomena
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of mystery. And so it happened that somewhere on the coast Hudson got a
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rumor of a white woman and the birds, and he set out to find
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her. Perhaps we have a hint of the thing in what we call the
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affinity of elements, the lure that a grain of metal has for another grain,
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the leap of steel filings to a magnet. Might not that mystery of
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attraction be extended across the world, across space. Hudson had then hired a
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Chinese crew with a ship of sorts to take him on the search for the
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girl. When they arrived near to the point of destination, somewhere on the
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south coast, the native crew refused to land. There were all kinds of
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trouble, but the Oriental obstinacy held they would not go ashore. The ship
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was apparently standing out to sea off some point on the coast. The coast,
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as Bennett said earlier in his story, is practically unknown, no law
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runs, and it is dotted with islands not charted undiscovered. In fact,
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he could not precisely understand what was wrong why the crew went into mutiny.
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Here there would be some powerful reason for that. A Chinese trader usually keeps
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his word, and the ship must have been had from some sort of trader.
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The devil's contention went on for a night, with the ship standing out
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to sea and the coast visible to the west. Anyone with the knowledge of
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the East, with an experience of the Oriental can picture the desperate position in
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which Hudson found himself when the ship that he hired to adventure on his quest
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would not go into the coast. He could make out this coast with the
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eye faintly in the distance, and on it somewhere was the one he sought,
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if the instinct in him was correct, that instinct of the soul which
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remains so profound a mystery. He had not only that intense feeling to direct
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him, but he had also a rumor that had come to him in Asia.
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There must have been a very definite rumor about this girl currently in the
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waste places of the East in which he had been wandering, definite enough to
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give a location to the point of land toward which the course of the ship
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had been directed. There seemed to be no doubt about the fact that the
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one Hudson was seeking was somewhere behind the dim coast outline that emerged vaguely from
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the sea on its western horizon. These details came out in the man's delirium.
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They gave a framework for the picture that one could so easily visualize.
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It must have been the devil's situation for a man like Hudson, a man
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who had been following a dream, a dream that his whole life was absorbed
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in that embodied now every hope, every fortune of the future. A thing
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that had been a vague fancy, a thing that could be only imagined,
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that had no reality, that had no place in the actualities of existence.
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Now, on this day, with the main land to be outlined in the
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distance, had become a part of life. It had hardened into fact.
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It had moved from a fairy kingdom of dreams into the land of living men.
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This woman that he sought was not a fancy. Then, she was
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not a fairy creature imagined in an extravaganza of the mind. She was a
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living woman. And to the west, beyond the strip of Placid Sea,
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she awaited him. Then, at the very hour when his hand was extended
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to touch her, he was held up by this wall. The ship stopped.
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It was easy enough to imagine that scene. The Oriental crew would not
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be above board with their resistance. The Oriental does not come out like the
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English sailor with a determined stand against you. The engines of the ship would
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stop. The impatient white man would make an inquiry. He would be told
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that something about the engines was broken down. He would be met by obsequious
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apologies. The broken engine would be speedily repaired. He would be assured that
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his wishes would be carried out. If he were not familiar with the East,
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he would be deceived by this. Perhaps for a time he was deceived
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by it. One going into Asia from the west would take these expressions in
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their literal meaning. He would expect them to be carried out. He would
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know later what they meant. Bennett would have known instantly, or any of
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the white men in the service of the Wu Fang company. Of course,
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an engine might break down, an accident could easily happen to the engines that
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must have been in the ship. Hudson picked up. Any accident in fact,
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might have happened to it. But it was certain that there was a
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delay here for the man, not the result of any accident. Somewhere in
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the haze of delirium, Hudson said, the crew mutinied that, in plain
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terms, would be the actual fact that Chinese crew had decided not to go
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into this coast line. Hudson discovered that fact a little later on. It
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is probable that for the moment, perhaps for the duration of a day,
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he was misled by the excuses they gave him. But he must have discovered
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presently that there was no substance in those excuses. The ship stood out in
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the sea while the crew pretended to repair the engines. Hudson sat on the
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deck, looking at the line of the coast. He was certain now to
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reach it. His ship would presently go on, and an hour or two
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he could go ashore. He must have had a vast upward sweep of the
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heart at the contemplation of it. Before the sun set he would be in
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the land of the fairy woman and the birds. He never had a doubt
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about it. That fact, Bennett said, was constantly evident in his delirium.
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But the ship did not go on the insistence of the white Man must
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have made itself felt. Then it would certainly make itself presently felt. He
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would not have remained an afternoon in his chair. He would have finally gone
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to inquire about the engines. He would have sent for his Chinese skipper.
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One can visualize that official clearly enough to make a painted water color. He
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would wear a cap of the German Merchant Marine, and there the uniform of
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the service would stop. He would have the usual Chinese garment, and he
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would go barefoot. But he would be very polite and apologetic, he would
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explain the accident to the engines. The explanation would avoid details, but he
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would assure the white Man that the ship would go on. When he was
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pressed for the hour at which this happy event would take place, he would
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have recourse to the vague gestures of the East and its vaguer expression, no
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can tell, excellency. It is a useful expression with the Oriental when he
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does not mean to tell, or when there is nothing in fact to tell.
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Night would have fallen, and the ship would have stood out in this
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same position in the sea. Its deck would have been deserted. Hudson would
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have found himself alone. A Chinese crew has the quality of rats. They
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can disappear in a moment at the sound of one's voice. A whole crew
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can vanish. It can disappear into a ship, as vermin disappear into a
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wall. With the Knight lying on the sea, Hudson would find himself on
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what appeared to be an abandoned ship. He would have discovered nothing if he
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happened on to one of the crew. The ubiquitous creature, after every kind
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of apology would slip away from him. If he found the skipper. He
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would have found the smiling Oriental profuse in his explanations of regret, explanations always
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with the same delphic expression. No can tell, excellency. It would be
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a night of long anxiety for the man. Fear would present itself, the
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dread of something behind this extraordinary accident that was given to him for an excuse.
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Finally, a suspicion would arise, and when the morning finally dawned on
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the sea, he would understand he must have understood finally, the expressions in
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his delirium make that certain. Then he would come to realize that the ship
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would not go into the coast. He must have been profoundly puzzled when he
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did come finally to understand it. That land vaguely to be made out in
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the distance was an island, But it was an island enveloped in some sort
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of horror. He could not make out just what this horror was. There
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was something there that put the fear of death into this Chinese crew. What
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was it? The man would have no conception of the real fact about it,
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and he would get no definite idea from the indirections that an Oriental would
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be sure to give him, but it was something that no man dared to
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face. He presented every inducement to the Chinese skipper, he would double what
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he had offered for the ship. When he began to realize that the crew
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would not go on, the first explanation that would appear to him was that
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he was being held up for a higher price. The thing had every aspect
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of that sort of blackmail. That would be a convincing reason, and it
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would not be out of character in Asia. One coming into the Far East
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would hit at once. On that explanation, Bennett would have rejected it.
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The Chinese trader, even the skipper of such a ship, would be strangely
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honest about his bargain. Such a subterfuge would not have occurred to him.
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The man doubtless honestly wished to go on to carry out his contract with the
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White Man if he could. But no inducement that could be offered would move
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the crew. Panic had enveloped it. Neither force nor the lure of money
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would move it. Then a strange thing happened, a thing that Hudson,
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new to the East thought strange, a thing not strange to the Wu Fang
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company. The Chinese skipper offered to return the money that Hudson had paid for
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the voyage. The crew would not go into this land of terrors. He
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would go back to the port from which they had sailed. He would return
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the white Man to the very spot from which he had stepped on to the
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ship. He would return his money to him, in fact, offered the
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gold in a bag to him. The discussion went on until midday, this
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bitter, desperate struggle between the will of the white man and the terror of
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the crew. But he was not a man to be turned back from the
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thing he wanted. He was not to be held up by a fear of
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death, by a fear of anything. And so finally he made his decision.
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If the crew would not go in, he would go in himself.
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There was a bare rigged sumpon on the excuse of a ship. There would
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be no boat on its davits. The thing would probably be fastened on the
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deck, something to be called a boat. In the ship papers. There
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would always be papers of a sort. The Chinese skipper must have labored to
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persuade Hudson from this mad adventure. He would find something awful on that island.
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He did not undertake to define it. Perhaps he did not know what
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it was, some horror of death sure to destroy any one who would go
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ashore on it. He would fall back on the idiomatic expression. No can
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tell, excellency, it is certain at any rate that they put Hudson overboard
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in the sum Pond to drift ashore, or he went of his own will.
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Bennett didn't know. There was suggestive hints in Hudson's wild talk that there
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was a current running that would beach the sum Pond when it got in the
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drift of it. The Chinese skipper or whatever the Chink called himself, who
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had charge of Hudson's ship, Nuthus, he put the sumpon afloat in this
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current. It would drift in if the mad white man was determined to go
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ashore on this cursed hell of an island. It is impossible to think of
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a situation more tragic than this. Hudson alone on the deck of the Sumpon,
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drifting with the current towards this island of mystery. He must have been
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in some degree impressed with the immovable fear of the Chinese crew. He could
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not wholly reject it. The oriental is sound when you get to the base
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in him. When he acts, he has always a good and sufficient reason
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for it. He's not a creature of whims. I suppose Hudson thought that
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he was facing one of the vagaries of a superstition, but he must have
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had some concern beyond that. No man ever voyaged on a wilder adventure.
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Even Chillingsworth's traitor had a definite picture of the port he sailed. For.
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Hudson had no conception of this outline of land toward which the sampan drifted.
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There was something awfully wrong with it. That was all he knew, except
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the one big fact that he had to land on it to find his woman
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of dreams. It was like an Arabian Nights story. A dragon guarded this
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coast. But what sort of dragon. He never could get a hint of
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that out of the Chinese crew or the inscrutable skipper under his German cap.
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The Oriental mind seemed to scamper back into its hole in the wall when he
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tried to drive it in on this mystery. But it was definite on one
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essential point. Death awaited any human creature that landed all the circumlocutions of the
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Oriental jabber drifted back to that Hudson must have considered a thing so definite was
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he going into just that death. The reflection must have given him some concern.
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The life he was seeking to enter had not been a life of reality.
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Perhaps the only way to it was the way out. There was another
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thing about this tragic situation that puzzled Bennett, and at first it also puzzled
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me. How did Hudson expect to get back to the ship. To go
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adrift in that bare rigged craft seemed an utter abandonment of himself to the sea,
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to death, to whatever fate awaited him. It was clear enough from
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the side of the Chinese skipper, why bother about a man who was going
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to his death? That would be Oriental common sense. One who could not
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come back would need no way planned for a return, And so, like
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a practical person, he put out to sea with his ship when the night
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shut down. That would be the chink side. As Bennett summed it up,
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he was uncertain about Hudson's side of it. He may have got a
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promise from the Chinese skipper to stand by and take him off if he were
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able to signal the ship from the coast. That would be the practical thing
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to do, and the Oriental would have made that agreement made it. To
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break it, to keep it would be to accomplish the sort of folly that
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the sound, practical Asiatic mind does not waste time over keeping faith with a
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dead man. Of course, there is the further theory that Hudson was burning
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his bridges. Bennett rejected that, but I do not reject. He would
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share in the fate of his woman of dreams. She was the only thing
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he had. He had gone practically out of life to seek her. He
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was given up everything for this dream. In fact, it was no longer
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a dream. It was the one reality. Everything else, all the life
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we call reality, was allusion to this man. I could understand it,
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but picture the thing drifting with that sum pun alone slowly in a sea current,
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and to some form of horror that set a whole Chinese crew squealing when
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they thought about it. The chink was right. The sum poon landed about
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an hour before sunset, and the crew was right. Hudson was appalled with
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the aspect of the island as he approached it. He got an ever increasingly
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better view of it as the current carried him in the whole sweep of the
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island looked like the wreck of a world. It looked devastated as by some
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hideous toxic blight. There was a tree, shrub or green living thing on
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it. And the point was the appalling point that it had been originally a
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fertile, cultivated green island, ranking rich in this tropical sea. Hudson,
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from the deck of the sum Pond, as he approached, thought the island
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had been gassed, as one might say, that is, some volcanic actions
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had released a toxic sulfur vapor through a crevice or the like, and the
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whole island, so to speak, had been gassed. That was the only
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explanation that occurred to the man, the only explanation possible. He began to
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look out for a breath of this vapor, some evidence of it in the
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air as the sum Pond drifted in, but he could detect nothing. That
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fact gave him a profound concern. Would this toxic gas be of some unknown
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chemical constituency and odorless? Such gases were not wholly unknown to science, There
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might be such a deadly gas in nature, and escaping here he recalled that
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there were in fact, certain heavy toxic gases that lay close to the earth,
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making in certain portions of the world what were called death zones. Dogs
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and low standing animals died in these. A man on a horse would sometimes
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pass unharmed. He concluded that this was the correct solution of the mystery.
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It accounted for the hideous devastation of all forms of vegetable life, and for
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the deadly fear of the Chinese crew. These death zones had in all quarters
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of the world an appalling terror for the native mind, death coupled with some
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malicious devil purpose. This theory went to pieces when the sampan beached. Hudson
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saw it. When he waded ashore and housared the sampond to a point of
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rock, The island had a form of life creeping over it. It was
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matted with insects, like a rotten carcass. They were everywhere, in millions,
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in numbers beyond any computation known even to the magnitudes of celestial mathematics.
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The whole island crawled, reeked with insects. They met the man at the
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water. He crushed through them to get up the beach. They swarmed around
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him, spread over his feet, his legs, and he retreated into the
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sea. The houser of the sampond was over a point of rock standing out
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in the water from the beach. He waded back to its clean deck,
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clearing the insects from his body in the salt water. He sat down then
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to consider what he would do. Evidently there was no living thing in this
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awful place except this loathsome cover of insects that was matted over it. The
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Chinese crew were right to mutiny. It was a death island, a death
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island more awful than anything that could occur to the human fancy in its wildest
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nightmare. The living creature that went ashore on that island would meet the most
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loathsome death possible to imagine. Enveloped in that crawling mass, and devoured by
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it, the horror was inconceivable. The man was appalled. He had landed
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on the shore of a hell. And he stood there on the deck of
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the sampond, trying to comprehend in some degree the magnitude of the horror.
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He searched the whole sweep of land. It had been a beautiful thing once
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in this tropic sea, a paradise of a thing, And now It was
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a loathsome carcass of a world festering with things that crawled. There could be
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no human creature in this ghastly hell. But there was. Hudson saw smoke
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to the west, a thin thread of blue climbing into the sky. It
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was along the coast, at the edge of the sea, and obscured by
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a rising shoulder of the island. The sand beach sloped gently out. There
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was only a ripple of water. Hudson got down into the sea, and,
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keeping within the protection of the water, started to explore the coast to
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the west in the direction of the smoke. He found a house setting at
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the water's edge. It was the very strangest house that one could imagine.
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Bennett could not get the details very clearly out of Hudson's wild talk. It
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seemed to be a type of the mission house in the East, except that
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it was screened all over with a close matting of every sort of fabric to
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be found in that part of the world, and there was a sort of
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screened way running from it right down into the sea. There was no opening
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on the island side. Doors that way had all been closed and sealed tight.
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The chimney pipe from which the smoke ascended had a closed wire screen over
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it. Hudson got a conception of these things as he approached through the water.
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Man had been driven out of this island. The invading insects had forced
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him out, crowded him out. Here at the water's edge was the last
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stand of the last people on it. He entered, wading into the covered
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way from the sea, Bennett had difficulty to piece out the story here.
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The speech of the unconscious man under the sail screen on his deck got rapid,
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ran into a swift jumble of expressions. But from the hard fragments and
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the front of delirium, Bennett understood that Hudson found in that house the thing
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he was seeking, and that events happened quickly. Bennett said there was a
27:08
missionary and his daughter in the house, and there was also an Oriental.
27:12
He couldn't quite determine the status of the Oriental. He seemed to have been
27:17
the king or head man of the island originally, and he seemed also to
27:21
be at the time Hudson landed, the source of the food supply. Of
27:25
the three besieged persons, they were horribly besieged by the vast armies of insects
27:30
that had overrun the island. Fish was the only food the Oriental got it
27:34
out of the sea. It was this thin smoke from the fish cooking over
27:38
a fire of dried insects that had signaled Hudson. Bennett wasn't quite clear about
27:44
the status or relation of the persons, that is, with respect to the
27:48
Oriental. The missionary was dying, did die the knight Hudson came in.
27:52
The girl, it seemed, thought it was friendship for her father that kept
27:56
the Oriental in their service. He could have got a way, Bennett,
28:02
who knew the Oriental mind better, thought the native hung on to get the
28:04
girl. When the old man finally died, the dying man himself had some
28:08
fearful idea of that sort. He seemed to keep alive on that fear,
28:12
for he snapped out the moment it was relaxed. He was a thin ghost
28:17
of a man under a blanket, and he hailed Hudson as an answer to
28:19
prayer, a messenger of rescue that God had sent him. There was only
28:25
life enough in the creature to utter his blessing over the visitor when he came
28:27
in. They buried him. That night under the floor of the house,
28:33
Hudson raved over the girl. Bennett couldn't get the dope, as he called
28:37
it, on her clear. Hudson seemed to know her, seemed to have
28:41
been mad about her for a long time. He jabbered of her as a
28:45
dream woman, a wonder of God, a fairy creature out of some strange
28:48
heaven. Bennett couldn't get it straightened out. She was a dark haired,
28:53
slender girl with masses of hair around, a face of dreams, a sort
28:56
of wonder creature imagined in the fancy of a drug in sacred groves. Of
29:03
course, I knew Hudson had found the one he was seeking. The instinct
29:07
in him was sound. She was here, besieged by the insects in this
29:10
accursed place, and following the insistence of his dream, he had come finally
29:15
to her across the waste of the world. It was the waste of the
29:18
world to him. When one loves a woman, or the ideal or the
29:22
dream of a woman, as he did, as all of us sometimes do,
29:26
the whole world is a devastation without her. You must remember how awfully
29:32
his reality of life had been wrecked. The whole physical aspect of reality had
29:37
gone down with it. He had to find her, and he did find
29:41
her. He had come to her here in this lost corner of Asia,
29:45
come to her from the other side of the world, with only the instinct
29:48
in the dream to guide him. He had come to her precisely as the
29:52
moth had come to the screened window in Provence, seeking its mate, carried
29:56
away by the old Naturalists out of the south of Europe. It was an
30:02
equally inexplicable example of that profound mystery. I have no verbal theory about it.
30:07
The old naturalist sensibly had none. He gave it up. There was
30:12
some instinct, we may call it, that, leading the moth to its
30:17
mate, leading Hudson over four thousand miles of sea to the girl. He
30:19
longed for some instinct, some sense direction of the soul, that the despair
30:25
of a consuming emotion can, in its dire extremity, summoned to its aid
30:32
God to have looked on at that meeting. Think of the thing when Hudson
30:37
came wading through the sea into that house, and lifting up his face,
30:41
saw the girl standing before him. Here she was a reality, and in
30:47
the world, her eyes wide, her dark hair a cloud about her face,
30:51
her slender body as of a dryad out of a sacred grove. Remember
30:56
that up to this very hour, for all the passion in him, she
31:00
had been a mere fancy of the mind, a vision of the night watches.
31:04
For all his longing, he could not be certain that she lived.
31:08
He could hope, he could believe, he could have the faith of the
31:11
apostles, But he could not be certain. The pin fingers fail when one
31:18
tries to write down the sweep of heavenly joy that must have surged up in
31:21
his soul. He had found her. The old pagan peoples groping in the
31:27
dark at the morning of the world made that thrill of the soul, the
31:30
cult of a religion. A man would give his roof tree in his lands,
31:34
he would give the days of his life. He would give a promised
31:37
heaven of angel choruses for a day, for an hour with a woman that
31:42
he loved. Like this, Think of the thing, Think of the vast
31:47
difference between the meeting in this house and that other meeting in Lord X's house
31:52
and the environs of London. Remember, there was nothing with which to peace
31:56
out the scene. One had to get it from conjecture. The fragments Hudson
32:01
gave and his mad talk were only hints of it. They were the merest
32:06
vague hints. Bennett wasn't certain at first that there had in fact been any
32:10
such person on the island, but in the end, when he got the
32:15
puzzle all pieced together, he saw there must have been. The dope on
32:19
the situation was more definite. This had been one of the great fertile rice
32:22
islands of the China Sea, a green paradise cultivated like a garden. No
32:28
spot on the whole earth could have equalled it, as though the authority that
32:30
had made the world had finished up there a bit of the job precisely to
32:35
suit him, just to see what he could turn out if he did his
32:37
best on it. But it was the old story of human selfishness. The
32:44
flocks of migrating birds stopped over on this island, and they took some toll
32:47
of the rice fields. They also removed the insects from the fields, but
32:52
the natives seemed not to consider that it was the toll of the rice that
32:57
they complained of. They took the complaint to their Oriental headman, and he
33:01
worked out a plan to poison the birds. The missionary and his daughter protested.
33:07
The old man pointed out what would happen. He knew what the insect
33:10
life on the earth would do to it if the birds were removed. He
33:15
was an American, it seemed, and he had the data from his own
33:17
country. The insect life and man were in a terrific struggle for possession of
33:22
the earth. The birds alone held the earth for the race. The prodigious
33:27
procreation of insect life was simply incomprehensible. Five billions of birds in the United
33:32
States of America alone stood between the human population of that country and the devastation
33:38
of death. If the birds were driven from the island, the insect life
33:43
would destroy it. But it was no go There was that fixed notion in
33:49
the Oriental mind. Bennett understood it. This headman purchased a cargo of arsenic
33:54
from a tramp traitor and put it out. The migrating birds were poisoned by
34:00
millions. And just here is where the girl stood out in Hudson's wild talk.
34:07
She was on the side of the birds. She tried to frighten them
34:09
out of the poisoned rice fields. She fed them clean rice on top of
34:14
the mission house and in the bit of garden about it. The birds learned
34:17
finally, after the awful slaughter, they came only to the mission for the
34:22
clean rice. She fed them as long as she could get the rice.
34:24
They swarmed around her. She stood out a picture like that in Hudson's delirium.
34:30
There was a point in the whole incredible adventure. The girl and the
34:34
birds they knew her, swarmed to her, seemed to pass the knowledge of
34:38
her along. They abandoned the island, but long after the clean rice to
34:43
feed them failed, they continued to circle over the mission house on their way
34:46
north. Continued still to do it. When the birds revolted, the insects
34:52
did the rest. Hudson saw the result. The paradise became a loathsome hell.
34:58
The native population was ext terminated, driven into the sea. This house
35:02
was the last stand. The missionary held the advance of the insects with poisoned
35:07
sprays from the remainder of the arsenic cargo, but he was driven out,
35:12
as all life, animal and vegetable was driven out, screened in a cage
35:16
to be constantly wetted with poison. He was besieged at the water's edge.
35:22
This was the situation when Hudson waited in around the point of land from the
35:24
deck of the sampon. He arrived on the stroke of time. The besieged
35:30
persons were in the last extremity. There was no further material for screens.
35:36
The store of arsenic was used up. There was no food but fish.
35:39
The old missionary was dying, and the thing he found was no mere vague
35:44
dread. The Oriental knew what he was about. One incident convinced Hudson if
35:50
any man with the knowledge of the East needed a proof. There was an
35:53
old service pistol with some cartridges hanging on the wall by the girl's bed in
35:58
her father's room. When Hudson examined it, he found it useless. The
36:01
firing pin had been filed off. That pistol just there gave Hudson a clue,
36:07
he thought, to the girl's state of mind, but she kept it
36:10
from the dying man. She consoled him with a strange fancy the birds would
36:15
take care of her. If anything happened to him, they would take her
36:19
to the land they migrated to some fairy country. It was a brave piece
36:23
of business, but she got the dying man in half belief of it.
36:28
His deep religious convictions, no doubt, gave the fancy a sort of substance.
36:31
It fitted into the inscrutable compensations of God. Some way was always found
36:37
to rescue the righteous God. Sometimes, since the birds the ravens had fed
36:43
Elijah in the wilderness, the girl drew on the sacred text it would be
36:46
all right, he need have no fear about it. And she adorned the
36:51
idea and elaborated it for the dying man, to the extent even of conjectures
36:55
on the land to which the birds would take her, some vague earthly paradise,
37:00
the destination of the birds in their mysterious migration. It was brave business,
37:05
with that old service pistol, the actual reality the only escape for her.
37:09
One had to realize that the old man was hanging to life by a
37:13
mere cobweb. He did not understand anything beyond the elemental fact that a white
37:17
man had arrived, and that they were now all right. He could go.
37:22
It must have been like one of those dramatic scenes in the Old Testament
37:27
scriptures. The messenger of God, long prayed for, had appeared, all
37:30
peril, all anxiety for his daughter was ended. The cobweb thread of life
37:36
parted in the blessing the feeble man poured out like that the old man passed.
37:43
He did not know how little Hudson could help. How the white man
37:46
must have damned that mutinous Chinese crew with his ship standing by. But there
37:52
was no ship. There was only the bare sumpun Hauser to a point of
37:58
rock undulating in the sea, parted by a dozen strides of salt water.
38:01
From this loathsome island, Hudson and the girl faced the fact with the Oriental
38:07
grinning by the door. The Native was disturbed, but he was not giving
38:10
up. Bennett understood something of the workings of the native mind. A chink
38:15
can wait when he sees a thing on its way to him. Otherwise he
38:19
doesn't wait. He can be as quick as the men of any race.
38:22
It was of no use to wait now. But there was one thing the
38:25
Oriental didn't realize. The white men, he knew, were physically enervated by
38:30
the East. He didn't count on the iron body Hudson brought with him into
38:35
Asia again. He got out of the coal fields when he was retrieving his
38:38
fortune. The iron body that made such a ghastly wreck of Lord X.
38:43
That night in the drawing room, things moved quickly. There was only one
38:49
thing to do. They must trust themselves to the sea. Bennett stopped here
38:53
in his narrative. He poured out another glass of brandy, poured the dirty
38:58
glass full to the brim, but he did not at once drink it.
39:00
He sat back in his chair with his big hands folded in front of him.
39:06
Here had been a difficult place to piece together with Hudson's fragments. What
39:10
happened wasn't precisely clear. One thing, however, was certain. There had
39:15
been a very devil of a fight. It had started like a flash,
39:20
with some jitsu grip that the Oriental had tried on Hudson as he passed behind
39:23
him. Bennett knew the sort of thing, had seen it on the South
39:29
Coast, seen men's spines snapped by it. A cruelly quick thing. But
39:35
the Native hadn't got his grip quite right. Hudson had a warning or he
39:38
changed his position at the moment, and the chink wasn't counting on an iron
39:43
body against his jitsu. Anyway, the trick failed, and that devil's fight
39:49
got under way. The Native must have been a husky brute. The fight
39:52
wrecked the house, wrecked all the netting, and went on outside. Bennett
39:57
didn't know the details, but it ended in an old fashion English hiplock that
40:00
brought the Oriental down with his own. Spine snapped. He couldn't move,
40:06
and the insects got him. Bennett paused, one needed no comment on that
40:10
awful loathsome horror. Hudson and the girl had to run for it. Then
40:16
the insects swarmed in. Now that the poisoned nettings all around the house were
40:21
gone, there was no time for anything. They had to go. They
40:24
waded along the beach, through the water to the sampon it laid their housard
40:29
to the point of rock, and Hudson got it off. Their only chance
40:32
was on the sea, A damned poor chance, as Bennett said, but
40:37
it was the only one. The crawling curse over that whole island extended to
40:42
the water on every side. It overran the house now and everything it contained,
40:47
no living thing could remain could live an hour outside the security of the
40:52
sea. Stripped clean. It was a choice of deaths. That's how it
40:57
looked to Bennett, how it must have looked to Hudson, but anything was
41:00
better than what the chink got. A raw trunk denuded of every feature,
41:06
writhing in a massive vermin one would die clean in the sea. But even
41:12
that fortune seemed denied them. The current ran landward. That's how Hudson managed
41:15
to come ashore, and in spite of every effort, the man could not
41:20
get the sump on out into the open sea. He worked like a piece
41:23
of plank for an oar, and the girl helped, but the current was
41:28
against them. It always brought the craft back to the island. That doomed
41:31
spot seemed to draw them like a magnet. They couldn't manage to come clear
41:36
of it. The cruel, disheartening struggle went on between the trapped man and
41:40
the sea. The two people, toiling like the damned, would get the
41:44
craft out for a distance, and then the current would suck it in.
41:49
There could be only one end. A sea current doesn't tire out. It
41:53
seemed like a strange, vicious in tint in nature against them. There was
41:59
a bit of wind blowing toward the sea, enough to stimulate hope in the
42:02
man, always to a further effort, But it was a little irony of
42:07
the wicked gods. With any sort of sail, the sampan would have overcome
42:13
the current, but there was nothing but the bare rigging for the wind to
42:16
drift through. Then, when the end appeared, the miracle happened. A
42:22
great swarm of white birds moving north settled on the rigging of the sampan,
42:28
clustered, massed on it like a hive of bees. They were small,
42:32
downy things, and their close, cluttered feathery bodies covered all the bare rigging,
42:37
as with a blanket of cotton wool. It made a sail. The
42:42
resistance to the wind offered by this compact feathery mass was enough to overcome the
42:46
current. The sampan moved out into the open sea. Bennett stopped again in
42:52
his narrative. The fingers of his big hands, interlaced before him, moved
42:58
as in a sort of tattoo. I don't know, he said, and
43:02
again I don't know. It was a profound comment, going to the core
43:08
of the thing. It was a migrating flock, I suppose, worn out
43:15
with a long flight and taking the first rest. It confind every bird crowding
43:20
in to get a foothold. They would pack up like that if they were
43:23
exhausted. But I don't know. He didn't mean a doubt on the essential
43:30
fact. He meant a doubt on what one would call a rational explanation of
43:36
it. He looked out the window at the slimy canal, and about him
43:39
at the club room of the Wufang company, carpeted with its dirty matting.
43:45
He put out one of his hands, took up the glass of brandy,
43:49
and drank it as one would a cup of water. Maybe time don't count,
43:54
he said. I caught at the word. It was the very point,
44:00
and between the end of that sentence and the next I had a flashed
44:02
vision of the scene. They were together for a day on the sea,
44:07
for a day, convoyed by the birds. They were together on the rotten
44:13
deck of the Chinese sampon. How long was that? Not? The hemp
44:17
of Asia only can extend the conception of time. Great emotion can extend it.
44:25
I wrote it down a day, but was it not rather the days
44:29
and nights of a life eons light year duration incredibly extended. This is the
44:37
very point that Nordheim's story put its thumb on. It's the reason I gave
44:40
you that derelict story in detail, the extension of time that the man experienced
44:45
in the moment of his descent into the sea, the extension of time that
44:50
the lost creature sought at the head of his river in the Malay Peninsula.
44:54
They were evidence, persuasive evidence of the vast, incredible possible ability. Time
45:00
is no reality, It is no thing fixed in nature. It is a
45:06
condition of the mind. Great emotions play the devil with it. Even the
45:10
physical transmutations of a drug can put it out of balance. You see now
45:15
why I repeated the stories of the two derelicts in the club room of the
45:20
Wufeng Company. Suppose you had got the idea that Hudson's dream ended like the
45:25
dream of Chillingsworth's traitor ended death at the end of it. That would be
45:30
the end in one view, if one saw only a single, narrow,
45:36
culminating fact. But here was the human mind, drugged by a great emotion,
45:40
out of all conception of time, seated on the deck of the sumpond,
45:45
together convoyed by the birds, the sea extending like an empty world about
45:51
them, they lived on. Bennett summed the whole thing up in his next
45:55
sentence. Maybe that day on the sea was enough for them. That was
46:01
a further vital point. We can't stand much. I mean, the human
46:07
body won't stand a long strain. It goes to pieces. They couldn't have
46:13
lived on like that in any world we know. We have no word to
46:16
describe what that man and that girl felt for one another. The rotten deck
46:21
of that hot, dirty Chinese sumpond was a paradise. They were together.
46:27
That summed it up. Bennett fingered the dirty brandy glass. There came a
46:31
sudden energy in his voice. Don't we slave through a whole hell of a
46:37
life just to get a moment of what we want? Does anybody know how
46:42
big that moment can be? Maybe it can feel all the time there is,
46:47
he arose. It was a marvel to me that he could stand with
46:51
all that vicious liquor in him. He picked up the Italian translation of The
46:55
Passing of Arthur that his companion had left lying by the chair when he went
47:00
out, crossed the room, and carefully set it in the packing box shelf
47:05
beside the old books on navigation. I don't know what happened, he said.
47:13
The girl may have slipped from the deck of the sum pond into the
47:15
sea after the exhaustion of that terrible adventure. That white man may have rolled
47:22
into the sea from the deck of my ship, or the two of them
47:25
may have passed with the birds to some earthly paradise. Anyway, he was
47:31
gone one morning, and the native lookout said he saw the cloud pass end
47:37
of Chapter three, end of the Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post