Jimmy Goggles the God
"It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "Butit's happened to me. Among other things."I intimated my sense of his condescension."It don't leave much for ambition, does it?" said the sunburnt man."I was one of those men who were saved from the Ocean Pioneer.Gummy! how time flies! It's twenty years ago. I doubt if you'llremember anything of the Ocean Pioneer?"The name was familiar, and I tried to recall when and where I hadread it. The Ocean Pioneer? "Something about gold dust," I saidvaguely, "but the precise--""That's it," he said. "In a beastly little channel she hadn't nobusiness in--dodging pirates. It was before they'd put the kyboshon that business. And there'd been volcanoes or something and allthe rocks was wrong. There's places about by Soona where you fairhave to follow the rocks about to see where they're going next.Down she went in twenty fathoms before you could have dealt for whist,with fifty thousand pounds worth of gold aboard, it was said,in one form or another.""Survivors?""Three.""I remember the case now," I said. "There was something about salvage--"But at the word salvage the sunburnt man exploded into language soextraordinarily horrible that I stopped aghast. He came down to moreordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "Excuse me,"he said, "but--salvage!"He leant over towards me. "I was in that job," he said. "Tried to makemyself a rich man, and got made a god instead. I've got my feelings--"It ain't all jam being a god," said the sunburnt man, and for sometime conversed by means of such pithy but unprogressive axioms.At last he took up his tale again."There was me," said the sunburnt man, "and a seaman named Jacobs,and Always, the mate of the Ocean Pioneer. And him it was that setthe whole thing going. I remember him now, when we was in thejolly-boat, suggesting it all to our minds just by one sentence.He was a wonderful hand at suggesting things. 'There was fortythousand pounds,' he said, 'on that ship, and it's for me to sayjust where she went down.' It didn't need much brains to tumbleto that. And he was the leader from the first to the last. He gothold of the Sanderses and their brig; they were brothers, andthe brig was the Pride of Banya, and he it was bought the diving-dress--a second-hand one with a compressed air apparatus instead of pumping.He'd have done the diving too, if it hadn't made him sick going down.And the salvage people were mucking about with a chart he'd cooked up,as solemn as could be, at Starr Race, a hundred and twenty miles away."I can tell you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drinkand bright hopes all the time. It all seemed so neat and cleanand straightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert.' And weused to speculate how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers,who'd started two days before us, were getting on, until our sidesfairly ached. We all messed together in the Sanderses' cabin--itwas a curious crew, all officers and no men--and there stood thediving-dress waiting its turn. Young Sanders was a humorous sort ofchap, and there certainly was something funny in the confoundedthing's great fat head and its stare, and he made us see it too.'Jimmie Goggles,' he used to call it, and talk to it like a Christian.Asked if he was married, and how Mrs. Goggles was, and all the littleGoggleses. Fit to make you split. And every blessed day all of usused to drink the health of Jimmy Goggles in rum, and unscrew his eyeand pour a glass of rum in him, until, instead of that nastymackintosheriness, he smelt as nice in his inside as a cask of rum.It was jolly times we had in those days, I can tell you--littlesuspecting, poor chaps! what was a-coming."We weren't going to throw away our chances by any blessed hurry,you know, and we spent a whole day sounding our way towards wherethe Ocean Pioneer had gone down, right between two chunks of ropygrey rock--lava rocks that rose nearly out of the water. We hadto lay off about half a mile to get a safe anchorage, and there wasa thundering row who should stop on board. And there she lay justas she had gone down, so that you could see the top of the maststhat was still standing perfectly distinctly. The row ending inall coming in the boat. I went down in the diving-dress on Fridaymorning directly it was light."What a surprise it was! I can see it all now quite distinctly.It was a queer-looking place, and the light was just coming. Peopleover here think every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shoreand palm trees and surf, bless 'em! This place, for instance,wasn't a bit that way. Not common rocks they were, underminedby waves; but great curved banks like ironwork cinder heaps,with green slime below, and thorny shrubs and things just wavingupon them here and there, and the water glassy calm and clear,and showing you a kind of dirty grey-black shine, with huge flaringred-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and dartingthings going through it. And far away beyond the ditches and poolsand the heaps was a forest on the mountain flank, growing again afterthe fires and cinder showers of the last eruption. And the other wayforest, too, and a kind of broken--what is it?--ambytheatre of blackand rusty cinders rising out of it all, and the sea in a kind of bayin the middle."The dawn, I say, was just coming, and there wasn't much colourabout things, and not a human being but ourselves anywhere in sightup or down the channel. Except the Pride of Banya, lying out beyonda lump of rocks towards the line of the sea."Not a human being in sight," he repeated, and paused."I don't know where they came from, not a bit. And we were feelingso safe that we were all alone that poor young Sanders was a-singing.I was in Jimmy Goggles, all except the helmet. 'Easy,' says Always,'there's her mast.' And after I'd had just one squint over the gunwale,I caught up the bogey and almost tipped out as old Sanders broughtthe boat round. When the windows were screwed and everything wasall right, I shut the valve from the air belt in order to helpmy sinking, and jumped overboard, feet foremost--for we hadn'ta ladder. I left the boat pitching, and all of them staring downinto the water after me, as my head sank down into the weeds andblackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not the mostcautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a lookoutat such a desolate place. It stunk of solitude."Of course you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving.None of us were divers. We'd had to muck about with the thing to getthe way of it, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feelsdamnable. Your ears hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurtyourself yawning or sneezing, but it takes you like that, only tentimes worse. And a pain over the eyebrows here--splitting--and afeeling like influenza in the head. And it isn't all heaven in yourlungs and things. And going down feels like the beginning of a lift,only it keeps on. And you can't turn your head to see what's above you,and you can't get a fair squint at what's happening to your feetwithout bending down something painful. And being deep it was dark,let alone the blackness of the ashes and mud that formed the bottom.It was like going down out of the dawn back into the night, so to speak."The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot offishes, and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I camewith a kind of dull bang on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer, and thefishes that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm offlies from road stuff in summer time. I turned on the compressed airagain--for the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, inspite of the rum--and stood recovering myself. It struck coolish downthere, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit."When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It wasan extraordinary sight. Even the light was extraordinary, a kindof reddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweedthat floated up on either side of the ship. And far overhead justa moony, deep green-blue. The deck of the ship, except for a slightlist to starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long betweenthe weeds, clear except where the masts had snapped when she rolled,and vanishing into black night towards the forecastle. There wasn'tany dead on the decks, most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose;but afterwards I found two skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins,where death had come to them. It was curious to stand on that deckand recognise it all, bit by bit; a place against the rail where I'dbeen fond of smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old chapfrom Sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard. A comfortablecouple they'd been, only a month ago, and now you couldn't havegot a meal for a baby crab off either of them."I've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I dare say Ispent the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I wentbelow to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow workhunting, feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusingblue gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about,a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect.I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped andpicked up something all knobs and spikes. What do you think?Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling for bones. Wehad talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and Always knew justwhere the stuff was stowed. I found it that trip. I lifted a boxone end an inch or more."He broke off in his story. "I've lifted it," he said, "as near asthat! Forty thousand pounds worth of pure gold! Gold! I shoutedinside my helmet as a kind of cheer and hurt my ears. I was gettingconfounded stuffy and tired by this time--I must have been downtwenty-five minutes or more--and I thought this was good enough.I went up the companion again, and as my eyes came up flush withthe deck, a thundering great crab gave a kind of hysterical jumpand went scuttling off sideways. Quite a start it gave me. I stoodup clear on deck and shut the valve behind the helmet to let the airaccumulate to carry me up again--I noticed a kind of whackingfrom above, as though they were hitting the water with an oar,but I didn't look up. I fancied they were signalling me to come up."And then something shot down by me--something heavy, and stooda-quiver in the planks. I looked, and there was a long knife I'dseen young Sanders handling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I wasstill calling him this kind of fool and that--for it might have hurtme serious--when I began to lift and drive up towards the daylight.Just about the level of the top spars of the Ocean Pioneer, whack!I came against something sinking down, and a boot knocked in frontof my helmet. Then something else, struggling frightful. It wasa big weight atop of me, whatever it was, and moving and twistingabout. I'd have thought it a big octopus, or some such thing, if ithadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don't wear boots. It wasall in a moment, of course. I felt myself sinking down again, andI threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot rolledfree of me and shot down as I went up--"He paused."I saw young Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a speardriven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck whatlooked like spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they wentclutching one another, and turning over, and both too far goneto leave go. And in another second my helmet came a whack, fitto split, against the niggers' canoe. It was niggers! Two canoes full."It was lively times, I tell you! Overboard came Always with threespears in him. There was the legs of three or four black chapskicking about me in the water. I couldn't see much, but I sawthe game was up at a glance, gave my valve a tremendous twist,and went bubbling down again after poor Always, in as awful a stateof scare and astonishment as you can well imagine. I passed youngSanders and the nigger going up again and struggling still a bit,and in another moment I was standing in the dim again on the deckof the Ocean Pioneer."'Gummy,' thinks I, 'here's a fix!' Niggers? At first I couldn't seeanything for it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properlyunderstand how much air there was to last me, but I didn't feel likestanding very much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfullyheady--quite apart from the blue funk I was in. We'd never repinedwith these beastly natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good,coming up where I was, but I had to do something. On the spurof the moment, I clambered over the side of the brig and landedamong the weeds, and set off through the darkness as fast as I could.I just stopped once and knelt, and twisted back my head in the helmetand had a look up. It was a most extraordinary bright green-blue above,and the two canoes and the boat floating there very small and distantlike a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sick to squint up at it,and think what the pitching and swaying of the three meant."It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blunderingabout in that darkness, pressure something awful, like being buriedin sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothingas it seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit,I found myself going up a steepish sort of slope. I had anothersquint to see if anything was visible of the canoes and boats,and then kept on. I stopped with my head a foot from the surface,and tried to see where I was going, but, of course, nothing wasto be seen but the reflection of the bottom. Then out I dashed likeknocking my head through a mirror. Directly I got my eyes out ofthe water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near the forest. I had alook round, but the natives and the brig were both hidden by a big,hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born fool in me suggested a runfor the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but eased open one ofthe windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out of the water.You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted."Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and yourhead in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-fiveminutes under water, you don't break any records running. I ran likea ploughboy going to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozenniggers or more, coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of wayto meet me."I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out ofLondon. I had about as much chance of cutting back to the water asa turned turtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my handsfree, and waited for them. There wasn't anything else for me to do."But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'JimmyGoggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be alittle light-headed, I think, with all these dangers about and thechange in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' Isaid, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'mhanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and withthat I screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed airfrom the belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regularimposing it must have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step;and presently one and then another went down on their hands and knees.They didn't know what to make of me, and they was doing the extrapolite, which was very wise and reasonable of them. I had half a mindto edge back seaward and cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. Astep back and they'd have been after me. And out of sheer desperationI began to march towards them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps,and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner. And insideof me I was singing as small as a tomtit."But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over adifficulty,--I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,who're up to diving-dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcelyimagine the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or twoof these niggers cut and run, the others started in a great hurrytrying to knock their brains out on the ground. And on I went asslow and solemn and silly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber.It was evident they took me for something immense."Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gesturesto me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attentionbetween me and something out at sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said.I turned slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, cominground a point, the poor old Pride of Banya towed by a couple of canoes.The sight fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected somerecognition, so I waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committalmanner. And then I turned and stalked on towards the trees again.At that time I was praying like mad, I remember, over and over again:'Lord help me through with it! Lord help me through with it!' It'sonly fools who know nothing of dangers can afford to laugh at praying."But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and awaylike that. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort ofpressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It wasclear to me they didn't take me for a British citizen, whateverelse they thought of me, and for my own part I was never less anxiousto own up to the old country."You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar withsavages, but these poor misguided, ignorant creatures took mestraight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessedold black stone there. By this time I was beginning to sort of realisethe depth of their ignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deityI took my cue. I started a baritone howl, 'wow-wow,' very longon one note, and began waving my arms about a lot, and then veryslowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its side andsat down on it. I wanted to sit down badly, for diving-dresses ain'tmuch wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they'rea sight too much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sittingon their joss, but in less time than a minute they made up theirminds and were hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell youI felt a bit relieved to see things turning out so well, in spiteof the weight on my shoulders and feet."But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes mightthink when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat beforeI went down, and without the helmet on--for they might have beenspying and hiding since over night--they would very likely takea different view from the others. I was in a deuce of a stew aboutthat for hours, as it seemed, until the shindy of the arrival began."But they took it down--the whole blessed village took it down.At the cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sittingEgyptian images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearlytwelve hours, I should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'dhardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. I don't thinkany of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leatherygreat joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue!the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum!and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab therewas before me, and brought in a lot of gory muck--the worst partsof what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts--and burnt itall in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but I understand nowhow gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell of burntofferings about them. And they brought in a lot of the stuff they'dgot off the brig and, among other stuff, what I was a bit relievedto see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressedair affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and dancedabout me something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different waysdifferent people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handyI'd have gone for the lot of them--they made me feel that wild.All this time I sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything betterto do. And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-houseplace got a bit too shadowy for their taste--all these here savagesare afraid of the dark, you know--and I started a sort of 'Moo' noise,they built big bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in thedarkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and thinkthings over, and feel just as bad as I liked. And, Lord! I was sick."I was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetleon a pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it.Come round just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the otherchaps, beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate,and young Sanders with the spear through his neck wouldn't go outof my mind. There was the treasure down there in the Ocean Pioneer,and how one might get it and hide it somewhere safer, and get awayand come back for it. And there was the puzzle where to get anythingto eat. I tell you I was fair rambling. I was afraid to ask by signsfor food, for fear of behaving too human, and so there I sat andhungered until very near the dawn. Then the village got a bit quiet,and I couldn't stand it any longer, and I went out and got some stufflike artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk. What was left of theseI put away among the other offerings, just to give them a hintof my tastes. And in the morning they came to worship, and foundme sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just asthey'd left me overnight. I'd got my back against the central pillarof the hut, and, practically, I was asleep. And that's how I becamea god among the heathen--a false god no doubt, and blasphemous,but one can't always pick and choose."Now, I don't want to crack myself up as a god beyond my merits,but I must confess that while I was god to these people they wasextraordinary successful. I don't say there's anything in it,mind you. They won a battle with another tribe--I got a lot ofofferings I didn't want through it--they had wonderful fishing,and their crop of pourra was exceptional fine. And they countedthe capture of the brig among the benefits I brought 'em. I mustsay I don't think that was a poor record for a perfectly new hand.And, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it, I was the tribal godof those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months. . . ."What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that diving-dressall the time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, anda deuce of a time I had too, making them understand what it wasI wanted them to do. That indeed was the great difficulty--makingthem understand my wishes. I couldn't let myself down by talking theirlingo badly--even if I'd been able to speak at all--and I couldn'tgo flapping a lot of gestures at them. So I drew pictures in sandand sat down beside them and hooted like one o'clock. Sometimesthey did the things I wanted all right, and sometimes they did themall wrong. They was always very willing, certainly. All the whileI was puzzling how I was to get the confounded business settled.Every night before the dawn I used to march out in full rig and go offto a place where I could see the channel in which the Ocean Pioneerlay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I tried to walk outto her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. I didn't getback till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers out onthe beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexedand tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going downagain, I could have punched their silly heads all round when theystarted rejoicing. I'm hanged if I like so much ceremony."And then came the missionary. That missionary! It was in the afternoon,and I was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting onthat old black stone of theirs when he came. I heard a row outsideand jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter.'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up,in a flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang outstraight away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says.'You come inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming head.'There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came,Bible in hand, after the manner of them--a little sandy chap in specksand a pith helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there inthe shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles, struck hima bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in calico?'for I don't hold with missionaries."I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quiteoutclassed with a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I toldhim to read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. Downhe goes to read, and his interpreter, being of course as superstitiousas any of them, took it as an act of worship and plumped down likea shot. All my people gave a howl of triumph, and there wasn'tany more business to be done in my village after that journey,not by the likes of him."But, of course, I was a fool to choke him off like that. If I'd hadany sense I should have told him straight away of the treasureand taken him into Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child,with a few hours to think it over, could have seen the connectionbetween my diving-dress and the loss of the Ocean Pioneer. A weekafter he left I went out one morning and saw the Motherhood, thesalver's ship from Starr Race, towing up the channel and sounding.The whole blessed game was up, and all my trouble thrown away. Gummy!How wild I felt! And guying it in that stinking silly dress! Fourmonths!"The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said,when he emerged to linguistic purity once more. "Forty thousandpounds worth of gold.""Did the little missionary come back?" I asked."Oh, yes! Bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a maninside the god, and started out to see as much with tremendousceremony. But there wasn't--he got sold again. I always did hatescenes and explanations, and long before he came I was out of itall--going home to Banya along the coast, hiding in bushes by day,and thieving food from the villages by night. Only weapon, a spear.No clothes, no money. Nothing. My face was my fortune, as the sayingis. And just a squeak of eight thousand pounds of gold--fifth share.But the natives cut up rusty, thank goodness, because they thoughtit was him had driven their luck away."
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