The Red One
THERE it was! The abrupt liberation of sound! As he timed it withhis watch, Bassett likened it to the trump of an archangel. Wallsof cities, he meditated, might well fall down before so vast andcompelling a summons. For the thousandth time vainly he tried toanalyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated theland far into the strong-holds of the surrounding tribes. Themountain gorge which was its source rang to the rising tide of ituntil it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air. With thewantonness of a sick man's fancy, he likened it to the mighty cryof some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath.Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demanding in suchprofounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond thenarrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, theclamour of protest in that there were no ears to hear andcomprehend its utterance.- Such the sick man's fancy. Still he strove to analyse the sound.Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweetas a thrummed taut cord of silver - no; it was none of these, nor ablend of these. There were no words nor semblances in hisvocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality ofthat sound.Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quartersof hours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, everchanging from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving freshimpulse - fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprunginto being. It became a confusion of troubled mutterings andbabblings and colossal whisperings. Slowly it withdrew, sob bysob, into whatever great bosom had birthed it, until it whimpereddeadly whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers ofdelight, striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret,some understanding of infinite import and value. It dwindled to aghost of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became athing that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutesafter it had ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassettglanced at his watch. An hour had elapsed ere that archangel'strump had subsided into tonal nothingness.Was this, then, HIS dark tower? - Bassett pondered, remembering hisBrowning and gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands.And the fancy made him smile - of Childe Roland bearing a slug-hornto his lips with an arm as feeble as his was. Was it months, oryears, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious callon the beach at Ringmanu? To save himself he could not tell. Thelong sickness had been most long. In conscious count of time heknew of months, many of them; but he had no way of estimating thelong intervals of delirium and stupor. And how fared CaptainBateman of the blackbirder NARI? he wondered; and had CaptainBateman's drunken mate died of delirium tremens yet?From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review allthat had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when hefirst heard the sound and plunged into the jungle after it. Sagawahad protested. He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyishface eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, inhis hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot-gun, as hequavered, in Beche-de-mer English: "Me fella too much fright alongbush. Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush."Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection. The little New Hanoverboy had been frightened, but had proved faithful, following himwithout hesitancy into the bush in the quest after the source ofthe wonderful sound. No fire-hollowed tree-trunk, that, throbbingwar through the jungle depths, had been Bassett's conclusion.Erroneous had been his next conclusion, namely, that the source orcause could not be more distant than an hour's walk, and that hewould easily be back by mid-afternoon to be picked up by the NARI'Swhale-boat."That big fella noise no good, all the same devil-devil," Sagawahad adjudged. And Sagawa had been right. Had he not had his headhacked off within the day? Bassett shuddered. Without doubtSagawa had been eaten as well by the "bad fella boys too much" thatstopped along the bush. He could see him, as he had last seen him,stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist's gear of hismaster, lying on the narrow trail where he had been decapitatedbarely the moment before. Yes, within a minute the thing hadhappened. Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen himtrudging patiently along under his burdens. Then Bassett's owntrouble had come upon him. He looked at the cruelly healed stumpsof the first and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed themsoftly into the indentation in the back of his skull. Quick as hadbeen the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quickenough to duck away his head and partially to deflect the strokewith his up-flung hand. Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound hadbeen the price he paid for his life. With one barrel of his ten-gauge shot-gun he had blown the life out of the bushman who had sonearly got him; with the other barrel he had peppered the bushmenbending over Sagawa, and had the pleasure of knowing that the majorportion of the charge had gone into the one who leaped away withSagawa's head. Everything had occurred in a flash. Only himself,the slain bushman, and what remained of Sagawa, were in the narrow,wild-pig run of a path. From the dark jungle on either side cameno rustle of movement or sound of life. And he had suffereddistinct and dreadful shock. For the first time in his life he hadkilled a human being, and he knew nausea as he contemplated themess of his handiwork.Then had begun the chase. He retreated up the pig-run before hishunters, who were between him and the beach. How many there were,he could not guess. There might have been one, or a hundred, foraught he saw of them. That some of them took to the trees andtravelled along through the jungle roof he was certain; but at themost he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows.No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while,whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him orstruck tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him. Theywere bone-tipped and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn fromthe breasts of humming-birds, iridesced like jewels.Once - and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefullyat the recollection - he had detected a shadow above him that cameto instant rest as he turned his gaze upward. He could make outnothing, but, deciding to chance it, had fired at it a heavy chargeof number five shot. Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadowcrashed down through tree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon theearth at his feet, and, still squalling its rage and pain, had sunkits human teeth into the ankle of his stout tramping boot. He, onthe other hand, was not idle, and with his free foot had done whatreduced the squalling to silence. So inured to savagery hasBassett since become, that he chuckled again with the glee of therecollection.What a night had followed! Small wonder that he had accumulatedsuch a virulence and variety of fevers, he thought, as he recalledthat sleepless night of torment, when the throb of his wounds wasas nothing compared with the myriad stings of the mosquitoes.There had been no escaping them, and he had not dared to light afire. They had literally pumped his body full of poison, so that,with the coming of day, eyes swollen almost shut, he had stumbledblindly on, not caring much when his head should be hacked off andhis carcass started on the way of Sagawa's to the cooking fire.Twenty-four hours had made a wreck of him - of mind as well asbody. He had scarcely retained his wits at all, so maddened was heby the tremendous inoculation of poison he had received. Severaltimes he fired his shot-gun with effect into the shadows thatdogged him. Stinging day insects and gnats added to his torment,while his bloody wounds attracted hosts of loathsome flies thatclung sluggishly to his flesh and had to be brushed off and crushedoff.Once, in that day, he heard again the wonderful sound, seeminglymore distant, but rising imperiously above the nearer war-drums inthe bush. Right there was where he had made his mistake. Thinkingthat he had passed beyond it and that, therefore, it was betweenhim and the beach of Ringmanu, he had worked back toward it when inreality he was penetrating deeper and deeper into the mysteriousheart of the unexplored island. That night, crawling in among thetwisted roots of a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion whilethe mosquitoes had had their will of him.Followed days and nights that were vague as nightmares in hismemory. One clear vision he remembered was of suddenly findinghimself in the midst of a bush village and watching the old men andchildren fleeing into the jungle. All had fled but one. Fromclose at hand and above him, a whimpering as of some animal in painand terror had startled him. And looking up he had seen her - agirl, or young woman rather, suspended by one arm in the cookingsun. Perhaps for days she had so hung. Her swollen, protrudingtongue spoke as much. Still alive, she gazed at him with eyes ofterror. Past help, he decided, as he noted the swellings of herlegs which advertised that the joints had been crushed and thegreat bones broken. He resolved to shoot her, and there the visionterminated. He could not remember whether he had or not, any morethan could he remember how he chanced to be in that village, or howhe succeeded in getting away from it.Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett's mind as hereviewed that period of his terrible wanderings. He rememberedinvading another village of a dozen houses and driving all beforehim with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee,who spat at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-ovenand from amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig thatsteamed its essence deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings.It was at this place that a wantonness of savagery had seized uponhim. Having feasted, ready to depart with a hind-quarter of thepig in his hand, he deliberately fired the grass thatch of a housewith his burning glass.But seared deepest of all in Bassett's brain, was the dank andnoisome jungle. It actually stank with evil, and it was alwaystwilight. Rarely did a shaft of sunlight penetrate its matted roofa hundred feet overhead. And beneath that roof was an aerial oozeof vegetation, a monstrous, parasitic dripping of decadent life-forms that rooted in death and lived on death. And through allthis he drifted, ever pursued by the flitting shadows of theanthropophagi, themselves ghosts of evil that dared not face him inbattle but that knew that, soon or late, they would feed on him.Bassett remembered that at the time, in lucid moments, he hadlikened himself to a wounded bull pursued by plains' coyotes toocowardly to battle with him for the meat of him, yet certain of theinevitable end of him when they would be full gorged. As thebull's horns and stamping hoofs kept off the coyotes, so his shot-gun kept off these Solomon Islanders, these twilight shades ofbushmen of the island of Guadalcanal.Came the day of the grass lands. Abruptly, as if cloven by thesword of God in the hand of God, the jungle terminated. The edgeof it, perpendicular and as black as the infamy of it, was ahundred feet up and down. And, beginning at the edge of it, grewthe grass - sweet, soft, tender, pasture grass that would havedelighted the eyes and beasts of any husbandman and that extended,on and on, for leagues and leagues of velvet verdure, to thebackbone of the great island, the towering mountain range flung upby some ancient earth-cataclysm, serrated and gullied but not yeterased by the erosive tropic rains. But the grass! He had crawledinto it a dozen yards, buried his face in it, smelled it, andbroken down in a fit of involuntary weeping.And, while he wept, the wonderful sound had pealed forth - if byPEAL, he had often thought since, an adequate description could begiven of the enunciation of so vast a sound melting sweet. Sweetit was, as no sound ever heard. Vast it was, of so mighty aresonance that it might have proceeded from some brazen-throatedmonster. And yet it called to him across that leagues-widesavannah, and was like a benediction to his long-suffering, painracked spirit.He remembered how he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but nolonger sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he hadbeen able to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu. Some freak of airpressures and air currents, he reflected, had made it possible forthe sound to carry so far. Such conditions might not happen againin a thousand days or ten thousand days, but the one day it hadhappened had been the day he landed from the NARI for severalhours' collecting. Especially had he been in quest of the famedjungle butterfly, a foot across from wing-tip to wing-tip, asvelvet-dusky of lack of colour as was the gloom of the roof, ofsuch lofty arboreal habits that it resorted only to the jungle roofand could be brought down only by a dose of shot. It was for thispurpose that Sagawa had carried the ten-gauge shot-gun.Two days and nights he had spent crawling across that belt of grassland. He had suffered much, but pursuit had ceased at the jungle-edge. And he would have died of thirst had not a heavythunderstorm revived him on the second day.And then had come Balatta. In the first shade, where the savannahyielded to the dense mountain jungle, he had collapsed to die. Atfirst she had squealed with delight at sight of his helplessness,and was for beating his brain out with a stout forest branch.Perhaps it was his very utter helplessness that had appealed toher, and perhaps it was her human curiosity that made her refrain.At any rate, she had refrained, for he opened his eyes again underthe impending blow, and saw her studying him intently. Whatespecially struck her about him were his blue eyes and white skin.Coolly she had squatted on her hams, spat on his arm, and with herfinger-tips scrubbed away the dirt of days and nights of muck andjungle that sullied the pristine whiteness of his skin.And everything about her had struck him especially, although therewas nothing conventional about her at all. He laughed weakly atthe recollection, for she had been as innocent of garb as Evebefore the fig-leaf adventure. Squat and lean at the same time,asymmetrically limbed, string-muscled as if with lengths ofcordage, dirt-caked from infancy save for casual showers, she wasas unbeautiful a prototype of woman as he, with a scientist's eye,had ever gazed upon. Her breasts advertised at the one time hermaturity and youth; and, if by nothing else, her sex was advertisedby the one article of finery with which she was adorned, namely apig's tail, thrust though a hole in her left ear-lobe. So latelyhad the tail been severed, that its raw end still oozed blood thatdried upon her shoulder like so much candle-droppings. And herface! A twisted and wizened complex of apish features, perforatedby upturned, sky-open, Mongolian nostrils, by a mouth that saggedfrom a huge upper-lip and faded precipitately into a retreatingchin, by peering querulous eyes that blinked as blink the eyes ofdenizens of monkey-cages.Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and theancient and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in theslightest the grotesque hideousness of her. When he had eatenweakly for a space, he closed his eyes in order not to see her,although again and again she poked them open to peer at the blue ofthem. Then had come the sound. Nearer, much nearer, he knew it tobe; and he knew equally well, despite the weary way he had come,that it was still many hours distant. The effect of it on her hadbeen startling. She cringed under it, with averted face, moaningand chattering with fear. But after it had lived its full life ofan hour, he closed his eyes and fell asleep with Balatta brushingthe flies from him.When he awoke it was night, and she was gone. But he was aware ofrenewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated by themosquito poison to suffer further inflammation, he closed his eyesand slept an unbroken stretch till sun-up. A little later Balattahad returned, bringing with her a half-dozen women who, unbeautifulas they were, were patently not so unbeautiful as she. Sheevidenced by her conduct that she considered him her find, herproperty, and the pride she took in showing him off would have beenludicrous had his situation not been so desperate.Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, whenhe collapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow of thebreadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the matter ofretaining possession of him. Ngurn, whom Bassett was to knowafterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of thevillage, had wanted his head. Others of the grinning andchattering monkey-men, all as stark of clothes and bestial ofappearance as Balatta, had wanted his body for the roasting oven.At that time he had not understood their language, if by LANGUAGEmight be dignified the uncouth sounds they made to represent ideas.But Bassett had thoroughly understood the matter of debate,especially when the men pressed and prodded and felt of the fleshof him as if he were so much commodity in a butcher's stall.Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accidenthappened. One of the men, curiously examining Bassett's shot-gun,managed to cock and pull a trigger. The recoil of the butt intothe pit of the man's stomach had not been the most sanguinaryresult, for the charge of shot, at a distance of a yard, had blownthe head of one of the debaters into nothingness.Even Balatta joined the others in flight, and, ere they returned,his senses already reeling from the oncoming fever-attack, Bassetthad regained possession of the gun. Whereupon, although his teethchattered with the ague and his swimming eyes could scarcely see,he held on to his fading consciousness until he could intimidatethe bushmen with the simple magics of compass, watch, burningglass, and matches. At the last, with due emphasis, of solemnityand awfulness, he had killed a young pig with his shot-gun andpromptly fainted.Bassett flexed his arm-muscles in quest of what possible strengthmight reside in such weakness, and dragged himself slowly andtotteringly to his feet. He was shockingly emaciated; yet, duringthe various convalescences of the many months of his long sickness,he had never regained quite the same degree of strength as thistime. What he feared was another relapse such as he had alreadyfrequently experienced. Without drugs, without even quinine, hehad managed so far to live through a combination of the mostpernicious and most malignant of malarial and black-water fevers.But could he continue to endure? Such was his everlasting query.For, like the genuine scientist he was, he would not be content todie until he had solved the secret of the sound.Supported by a staff, he staggered the few steps to the devil-devilhouse where death and Ngurn reigned in gloom. Almost as infamouslydark and evil-stinking as the jungle was the devil-devil house - inBassett's opinion. Yet therein was usually to be found hisfavourite crony and gossip, Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or adiscussion, the while he sat in the ashes of death and in a slowsmoke shrewdly revolved curing human heads suspended from therafters. For, through the months' interval of consciousness of hislong sickness, Bassett had mastered the psychological simplicitiesand lingual difficulties of the language of the tribe of Ngurn andBalatta and Vngngn - the latter the addle-headed young chief whowas ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered intrigue had it, was the sonof Ngurn."Will the Red One speak to-day?" Bassett asked, by this time soaccustomed to the old man's gruesome occupation as to take even aninterest in the progress of the smoke-curing.With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head he wasat work upon."It will be ten days before I can say 'finish,'" he said. "Neverhas any man fixed heads like these."Bassett smiled inwardly at the old fellow's reluctance to talk withhim of the Red One. It had always been so. Never, by any chance,had Ngurn or any other member of the weird tribe divulged theslightest hint of any physical characteristic of the Red One.Physical the Red One must be, to emit the wonderful sound, andthough it was called the Red One, Bassett could not be sure thatred represented the colour of it. Red enough were the deeds andpowers of it, from what abstract clues he had gleaned. Not alone,had Ngurn informed him, was the Red One more bestial powerful thanthe neighbour tribal gods, ever athirst for the red blood of livinghuman sacrifices, but the neighbour gods themselves were sacrificedand tormented before him. He was the god of a dozen alliedvillages similar to this one, which was the central and commandingvillage of the federation. By virtue of the Red One many alienvillages had been devastated and even wiped out, the prisonerssacrificed to the Red One. This was true to-day, and it extendedback into old history carried down by word of mouth through thegenerations. When he, Ngurn, had been a young man, the tribesbeyond the grass lands had made a war raid. In the counter raid,Ngurn and his fighting folk had made many prisoners. Of childrenalone over five score living had been bled white before the RedOne, and many, many more men and women.The Thunderer was another of Ngurn's names for the mysteriousdeity. Also at times was he called The Loud Shouter, The God-Voiced, The Bird-Throated, The One with the Throat Sweet as theThroat of the Honey-Bird, The Sun Singer, and The Star-Born.Why The Star-Born? In vain Bassett interrogated Ngurn. Accordingto that old devil-devil doctor, the Red One had always been, justwhere he was at present, for ever singing and thundering his willover men. But Ngurn's father, wrapped in decaying grass-mattingand hanging even then over their heads among the smoky rafters ofthe devil-devil house, had held otherwise. That departed wise onehad believed that the Red One came from out of the starry night,else why - so his argument had run - had the old and forgotten onespassed his name down as the Star-Born? Bassett could not butrecognize something cogent in such argument. But Ngurn affirmedthe long years of his long life, wherein he had gazed upon manystarry nights, yet never had he found a star on grass land or injungle depth - and he had looked for them. True, he had beheldshooting stars (this in reply to Bassett's contention); butlikewise had he beheld the phosphorescence of fungoid growths androtten meat and fireflies on dark nights, and the flames of wood-fires and of blazing candle-nuts; yet what were flame and blaze andglow when they had flamed and blazed and glowed? Answer:memories, memories only, of things which had ceased to be, likememories of matings accomplished, of feasts forgotten, of desiresthat were the ghosts of desires, flaring, flaming, burning, yetunrealized in achievement of easement and satisfaction. Where wasthe appetite of yesterday? the roasted flesh of the wild pig thehunter's arrow failed to slay? the maid, unwed and dead ere theyoung man knew her?A memory was not a star, was Ngurn's contention. How could amemory be a star? Further, after all his long life he stillobserved the starry night-sky unaltered. Never had he noted theabsence of a single star from its accustomed place. Besides, starswere fire, and the Red One was not fire - which last involuntarybetrayal told Bassett nothing."Will the Red One speak to-morrow?" he queried.Ngurn shrugged his shoulders as who should say."And the day after? - and the day after that?" Bassett persisted."I would like to have the curing of your head," Ngurn changed thesubject. "It is different from any other head. No devil-devil hasa head like it. Besides, I would cure it well. I would takemonths and months. The moons would come and the moons would go,and the smoke would be very slow, and I should myself gather thematerials for the curing smoke. The skin would not wrinkle. Itwould be as smooth as your skin now."He stood up, and from the dim rafters, grimed with the smoking ofcountless heads, where day was no more than a gloom, took down amatting-wrapped parcel and began to open it."It is a head like yours," he said, "but it is poorly cured."Bassett had pricked up his ears at the suggestion that it was awhite man's head; for he had long since come to accept that thesejungle-dwellers, in the midmost centre of the great island, hadnever had intercourse with white men. Certainly he had found themwithout the almost universal beche-de-mer English of the west SouthPacific. Nor had they knowledge of tobacco, nor of gunpowder.Their few precious knives, made from lengths of hoop-iron, andtheir few and more precious tomahawks from cheap trade hatchets, hehad surmised they had captured in war from the bushmen of thejungle beyond the grass lands, and that they, in turn, hadsimilarly gained them from the salt-water men who fringed the coralbeaches of the shore and had contact with the occasional white men."The folk in the out beyond do not know how to cure heads," oldNgurn explained, as he drew forth from the filthy matting andplaced in Bassett's hands an indubitable white man's head.Ancient it was beyond question; white it was as the blond hairattested. He could have sworn it once belonged to an Englishman,and to an Englishman of long before by token of the heavy goldcirclets still threaded in the withered ear-lobes."Now your head . . . " the devil-devil doctor began on hisfavourite topic."I'll tell you what," Bassett interrupted, struck by a new idea."When I die I'll let you have my head to cure, if, first, you takeme to look upon the Red One.""I will have your head anyway when you are dead," Ngurn rejectedthe proposition. He added, with the brutal frankness of thesavage: "Besides, you have not long to live. You are almost adead man now. You will grow less strong. In not many months Ishall have you here turning and turning in the smoke. It ispleasant, through the long afternoons, to turn the head of one youhave known as well as I know you. And I shall talk to you and tellyou the many secrets you want to know. Which will not matter, foryou will be dead.""Ngurn," Bassett threatened in sudden anger. "You know the BabyThunder in the Iron that is mine." (This was in reference to hisall-potent and all-awful shotgun.) "I can kill you any time, andthen you will not get my head.""Just the same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk get it,"Ngurn complacently assured him. "And just the same will it turnhere in the and turn devil-devil house in the smoke. The quickeryou slay me with your Baby Thunder, the quicker will your head turnin the smoke."And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion.What was the Red One? - Bassett asked himself a thousand times inthe succeeding week, while he seemed to grow stronger. What wasthe source of the wonderful sound? What was this Sun Singer, thisStar-Born One, this mysterious deity, as bestial-conducted as theblack and kinky-headed and monkey-like human beasts who worshippedit, and whose silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding hehad heard at the taboo distance for so long?Ngurn had he failed to bribe with the inevitable curing of his headwhen he was dead. Vngngn, imbecile and chief that he was, was tooimbecilic, too much under the sway of Ngurn, to be considered.Remained Balatta, who, from the time she found him and poked hisblue eyes open to recrudescence of her grotesque femalehideousness, had continued his adorer. Woman she was, and he hadlong known that the only way to win from her treason of her tribewas through the woman's heart of her.Bassett was a fastidious man. He had never recovered from theinitial horror caused by Balatta's female awfulness. Back inEngland, even at best the charm of woman, to him, had never beenrobust. Yet now, resolutely, as only a man can do who is capableof martyring himself for the cause of science, he proceeded toviolate all the fineness and delicacy of his nature by making loveto the unthinkably disgusting bushwoman.He shuddered, but with averted face hid his grimaces and swallowedhis gorge as he put his arm around her dirt-crusted shoulders andfelt the contact of her rancidoily and kinky hair with his neck andchin. But he nearly screamed when she succumbed to that caress soat the very first of the courtship and mowed and gibbered andsquealed little, queer, pig-like gurgly noises of delight. It wastoo much. And the next he did in the singular courtship was totake her down to the stream and give her a vigorous scrubbing.From then on he devoted himself to her like a true swain asfrequently and for as long at a time as his will could override hisrepugnance. But marriage, which she ardently suggested, with dueobservance of tribal custom, he balked at. Fortunately, taboo rulewas strong in the tribe. Thus, Ngurn could never touch bone, orflesh, or hide of crocodile. This had been ordained at his birth.Vngngn was denied ever the touch of woman. Such pollution, did itchance to occur, could be purged only by the death of the offendingfemale. It had happened once, since Bassett's arrival, when a girlof nine, running in play, stumbled and fell against the sacredchief. And the girl-child was seen no more. In whispers, Balattatold Bassett that she had been three days and nights in dyingbefore the Red One. As for Balatta, the breadfruit was taboo toher. For which Bassett was thankful. The taboo might have beenwater.For himself, he fabricated a special taboo. Only could he marry,he explained, when the Southern Cross rode highest in the sky.Knowing his astronomy, he thus gained a reprieve of nearly ninemonths; and he was confident that within that time he would eitherbe dead or escaped to the coast with full knowledge of the Red Oneand of the source of the Red One's wonderful voice. At first hehad fancied the Red One to be some colossal statue, like Memnon,rendered vocal under certain temperature conditions of sunlight.But when, after a war raid, a batch of prisoners was brought in andthe sacrifice made at night, in the midst of rain, when the suncould play no part, the Red One had been more vocal than usual,Bassett discarded that hypothesis.In company with Balatta, sometimes with men and parties of women,the freedom of the jungle was his for three quadrants of thecompass. But the fourth quadrant, which contained the Red One'sabiding place, was taboo. He made more thorough love to Balatta -also saw to it that she scrubbed herself more frequently. Eternalfemale she was, capable of any treason for the sake of love. And,though the sight of her was provocative of nausea and the contactof her provocative of despair, although he could not escape herawfulness in his dream-haunted nightmares of her, he neverthelesswas aware of the cosmic verity of sex that animated her and thatmade her own life of less value than the happiness of her loverwith whom she hoped to mate. Juliet or Balatta? Where was theintrinsic difference? The soft and tender product of ultra-civilization, or her bestial prototype of a hundred thousand yearsbefore her? - there was no difference.Bassett was a scientist first, a humanist afterward. In thejungle-heart of Guadalcanal he put the affair to the test, as inthe laboratory he would have put to the test any chemical reaction.He increased his feigned ardour for the bushwoman, at the same timeincreasing the imperiousness of his will of desire over her to beled to look upon the Red One face to face. It was the old story,he recognized, that the woman must pay, and it occurred when thetwo of them, one day, were catching the unclassified and unnamedlittle black fish, an inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotundwith salmon-golden roe, that frequented the fresh water, and thatwere esteemed, raw and whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy.Prone in the muck of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threwherself, clutching his ankles with her hands kissing his feet andmaking slubbery noises that chilled his backbone up and down again.She begged him to kill her rather than exact this ultimate love-payment. She told him of the penalty of breaking the taboo of theRed One - a week of torture, living, the details of which sheyammered out from her face in the mire until he realized that hewas yet a tyro in knowledge of the frightfulness the human wascapable of wreaking on the human.Yet did Bassett insist on having his man's will satisfied, at thewoman's risk, that he might solve the mystery of the Red One'ssinging, though she should die long and horribly and screaming.And Balatta, being mere woman, yielded. She led him into theforbidden quadrant. An abrupt mountain, shouldering in from thenorth to meet a similar intrusion from the south, tormented thestream in which they had fished into a deep and gloomy gorge.After a mile along the gorge, the way plunged sharply upward untilthey crossed a saddle of raw limestone which attracted hisgeologist's eye. Still climbing, although he paused often fromsheer physical weakness, they scaled forest-clad heights until theyemerged on a naked mesa or tableland. Bassett recognized the stuffof its composition as black volcanic sand, and knew that a pocketmagnet could have captured a full load of the sharply angulargrains he trod upon.And then holding Balatta by the hand and leading her onward, hecame to it - a tremendous pit, obviously artificial, in the heartof the plateau. Old history, the South Seas Sailing Directions,scores of remembered data and connotations swift and furious,surged through his brain. It was Mendana who had discovered theislands and named them Solomon's, believing that he had found thatmonarch's fabled mines. They had laughed at the old navigator'schild-like credulity; and yet here stood himself, Bassett, on therim of an excavation for all the world like the diamond pits ofSouth Africa.But no diamond this that he gazed down upon. Rather was it apearl, with the depth of iridescence of a pearl; but of a size allpearls of earth and time, welded into one, could not have totalled;and of a colour undreamed of in any pearl, or of anything else, forthat matter, for it was the colour of the Red One. And the Red Onehimself Bassett knew it to be on the instant. A perfect sphere,full two hundred feet in diameter, the top of it was a hundred feetbelow the level of the rim. He likened the colour quality of it tolacquer. Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied byman, but a lacquer too marvellously clever to have beenmanufactured by the bush-folk. Brighter than bright cherry-red,its richness of colour was as if it were red builded upon red. Itglowed and iridesced in the sunlight as if gleaming up fromunderlay under underlay of red.In vain Balatta strove to dissuade him from descending. She threwherself in the dirt; but, when he continued down the trail thatspiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and whimpering herterror. That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing,was patent. Considering the paucity of members of the federatedtwelve villages and their primitive tools and methods, Bassett knewthat the toil of a myriad generations could scarcely have made thatenormous excavation.He found the pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among which,battered and defaced, lay village gods of wood and stone. Some,covered with obscene totemic figures and designs, were carved fromsolid tree trunks forty or fifty feet in length. He noted theabsence of the shark and turtle gods, so common among the shorevillages, and was amazed at the constant recurrence of the helmetmotive. What did these jungle savages of the dark heart ofGuadalcanal know of helmets? Had Mendana's men-at-arms wornhelmets and penetrated here centuries before? And if not, thenwhence had the bush-folk caught the motive?Advancing over the litter of gods and bones, Balatta whimpering athis heels, Bassett entered the shadow of the Red One and passed onunder its gigantic overhang until he touched it with his finger-tips. No lacquer that. Nor was the surface smooth as it shouldhave been in the case of lacquer. On the contrary, it wascorrugated and pitted, with here and there patches that showedsigns of heat and fusing. Also, the substance of it was metal,though unlike any metal, or combination of metals, he had everknown. As for the colour itself, he decided it to be noapplication. It was the intrinsic colour of the metal itself.He moved his finger-tips, which up to that had merely rested, alongthe surface, and felt the whole gigantic sphere quicken and liveand respond. It was incredible! So light a touch on so vast amass! Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip caress in rhythmicvibrations that became whisperings and rustlings and mutterings ofsound - but of sound so different; so elusively thin that it wasshimmeringly sibilant; so mellow that it was maddening sweet,piping like an elfin horn, which last was just what Bassett decidedwould be like a peal from some bell of the gods reaching earthwardfrom across space.He looked at Balatta with swift questioning; but the voice of theRed One he had evoked had flung her face downward and moaning amongthe bones. He returned to contemplation of the prodigy. Hollow itwas, and of no metal known on earth, was his conclusion. It wasright-named by the ones of old-time as the Star-Born. Only fromthe stars could it have come, and no thing of chance was it. Itwas a creation of artifice and mind. Such perfection of form, suchhollowness that it certainly possessed, could not be the result ofmere fortuitousness. A child of intelligences, remote andunguessable, working corporally in metals, it indubitably was. Hestared at it in amaze, his brain a racing wild-fire of hypothesesto account for this far-journeyer who had adventured the night ofspace, threaded the stars, and now rose before him and above him,exhumed by patient anthropophagi, pitted and lacquered by its fierybath in two atmospheres.But was the colour a lacquer of heat upon some familiar metal? Orwas it an intrinsic quality of the metal itself? He thrust in theblue-point of his pocket-knife to test the constitution of thestuff. Instantly the entire sphere burst into a mighty whispering,sharp with protest, almost twanging goldenly, if a whisper couldpossibly be considered to twang, rising higher, sinking deeper, thetwo extremes of the registry of sound threatening to complete thecircle and coalesce into the bull-mouthed thundering he had sooften heard beyond the taboo distance.Forgetful of safety, of his own life itself, entranced by thewonder of the unthinkable and unguessable thing, he raised hisknife to strike heavily from a long stroke, but was prevented byBalatta. She upreared on her own knees in an agony of terror,clasping his knees and supplicating him to desist. In theintensity of her desire to impress him, she put her forearm betweenher teeth and sank them to the bone.He scarcely observed her act, although he yielded automatically tohis gentler instincts and withheld the knife-hack. To him, humanlife had dwarfed to microscopic proportions before this colossalportent of higher life from within the distances of the siderealuniverse. As had she been a dog, he kicked the ugly littlebushwoman to her feet and compelled her to start with him on anencirclement of the base. Part way around, he encountered horrors.Even, among the others, did he recognize the sun-shrivelled remnantof the nine-years girl who had accidentally broken Chief Vngngn'spersonality taboo. And, among what was left of these that hadpassed, he encountered what was left of one who had not yet passed.Truly had the bush-folk named themselves into the name of the RedOne, seeing in him their own image which they strove to placate andplease with such red offerings.Farther around, always treading the bones and images of humans andgods that constituted the floor of this ancient charnel-house ofsacrifice, he came upon the device by which the Red One was made tosend his call singing thunderingly across the jungle-belts andgrass-lands to the far beach of Ringmanu. Simple and primitive wasit as was the Red One's consummate artifice. A great king-post,half a hundred feet in length, seasoned by centuries ofsuperstitious care, carven into dynasties of gods, eachsuperimposed, each helmeted, each seated in the open mouth of acrocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted of climbing vegetableparasites, from the apex of a tripod of three great forest trunks,themselves carved into grinning and grotesque adumbrations of man'smodern concepts of art and god. From the striker king-post, weresuspended ropes of climbers to which men could apply their strengthand direction. Like a battering ram, this king-post could bedriven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously forhimself and the twelve tribes under him. Bassett laughed aloud,almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger,winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushmanstronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head-hunting savages. It was as if God's World had fallen into the muckmire of the abyss underlying the bottom of hell; as if Jehovah'sCommandments had been presented on carved stone to the monkeys ofthe monkey cage at the Zoo; as if the Sermon on the Mount had beenpreached in a roaring bedlam of lunatics.The slow weeks passed. The nights, by election, Bassett spent onthe ashen floor of the devil-devil house, beneath the ever-swinging, slow-curing heads. His reason for this was that it wastaboo to the lesser sex of woman, and therefore, a refuge for himfrom Balatta, who grew more persecutingly and perilously loverly asthe Southern Cross rode higher in the sky and marked the imminenceof her nuptials. His days Bassett spent in a hammock swung underthe shade of the great breadfruit tree before the devil-devilhouse. There were breaks in this programme, when, in the comas ofhis devastating fever-attacks, he lay for days and nights in thehouse of heads. Ever he struggled to combat the fever, to live, tocontinue to live, to grow strong and stronger against the day whenhe would be strong enough to dare the grass-lands and the beltedjungle beyond, and win to the beach, and to some labour-recruiting,black-birding ketch or schooner, and on to civilization and the menof civilization, to whom he could give news of the message fromother worlds that lay, darkly worshipped by beastmen, in the blackheart of Guadalcanal's midmost centre.On the other nights, lying late under the breadfruit tree, Bassettspent long hours watching the slow setting of the western starsbeyond the black wall of jungle where it had been thrust back bythe clearing for the village. Possessed of more than a cursoryknowledge of astronomy, he took a sick man's pleasure inspeculating as to the dwellers on the unseen worlds of thoseincredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light, life cameforth, a shy visitant, from the rayless crypts of matter. He couldno more apprehend limits to time than bounds to space. Nosubversive radium speculations had shaken his steady scientificfaith in the conservation of energy and the indestructibility ofmatter. Always and forever must there have been stars. Andsurely, in that cosmic ferment, all must be comparatively alike,comparatively of the same substance, or substances, save for thefreaks of the ferment. All must obey, or compose, the same lawsthat ran without infraction through the entire experience of man.Therefore, he argued and agreed, must worlds and life be appanagesto all the suns as they were appanages to the particular of his ownsolar system.Even as he lay here, under the breadfruit tree, an intelligencethat stared across the starry gulfs, so must all the universe beexposed to the ceaseless scrutiny of innumerable eyes, like his,though grantedly different, with behind them, by the same token,intelligences that questioned and sought the meaning and theconstruction of the whole. So reasoning, he felt his soul go forthin kinship with that august company, that multitude whose gaze wasforever upon the arras of infinity.Who were they, what were they, those far distant and superior oneswho had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent,heaven-singing message? Surely, and long since, had they, too,trod the path on which man had so recently, by the calendar of thecosmos, set his feet. And to be able to send a message across thepit of space, surely they had reached those heights to which man,in tears and travail and bloody sweat, in darkness and confusion ofmany counsels, was so slowly struggling. And what were they ontheir heights? Had they won Brotherhood? Or had they learned thatthe law of love imposed the penalty of weakness and decay? Wasstrife, life? Was the rule of all the universe the pitiless ruleof natural selection? And, and most immediately and poignantly,were their far conclusions, their long-won wisdoms, shut even thenin the huge, metallic heart of the Red One, waiting for the firstearth-man to read? Of one thing he was certain: No drop of reddew shaken from the lion-mane of some sun in torment, was thesounding sphere. It was of design, not chance, and it containedthe speech and wisdom of the stars.What engines and elements and mastered forces, what lore andmysteries and destiny-controls, might be there! Undoubtedly, sinceso much could be enclosed in so little a thing as the foundationstone of a public building, this enormous sphere should containvast histories, profounds of research achieved beyond man's wildestguesses, laws and formulae that, easily mastered, would make man'slife on earth, individual and collective, spring up from itspresent mire to inconceivable heights of purity and power. It wasTime's greatest gift to blindfold, insatiable, and sky-aspiringman. And to him, Bassett, had been vouchsafed the lordly fortuneto be the first to receive this message from man's interstellarkin!No white man, much less no outland man of the other bush-tribes,had gazed upon the Red One and lived. Such the law expounded byNgurn to Bassett. There was such a thing as blood brotherhood.Bassett, in return, had often argued in the past. But Ngurn hadstated solemnly no. Even the blood brotherhood was outside thefavour of the Red One. Only a man born within the tribe could lookupon the Red One and live. But now, his guilty secret known onlyto Balatta, whose fear of immolation before the Red One fast-sealedher lips, the situation was different. What he had to do was torecover from the abominable fevers that weakened him, and gain tocivilization. Then would he lead an expedition back, and, althoughthe entire population of Guadalcanal he destroyed, extract from theheart of the Red One the message of the world from other worlds.But Bassett's relapses grew more frequent, his brief convalescencesless and less vigorous, his periods of coma longer, until he cameto know, beyond the last promptings of the optimism inherent in sotremendous a constitution as his own, that he would never live tocross the grass lands, perforate the perilous coast jungle, andreach the sea. He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in thesky, till even Balatta knew that he would be dead ere the nuptialdate determined by his taboo. Ngurn made pilgrimage personally andgathered the smoke materials for the curing of Bassett's head, andto him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artisticperfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead. As forhimself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long and too deeply had lifeebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its impendingextinction. He continued to persist, alternating periods ofunconsciousness with periods of semi-consciousness, dreamy andunreal, in which he idly wondered whether he had ever truly beheldthe Red One or whether it was a nightmare fancy of delirium.Came the day when all mists and cob-webs dissolved, when he foundhis brain clear as a bell, and took just appraisement of his body'sweakness. Neither hand nor foot could he lift. So little controlof his body did he have, that he was scarcely aware of possessingone. Lightly indeed his flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul, inits briefness of clarity, knew by its very clarity that the blackof cessation was near. He knew the end was close; knew that in alltruth he had with his eyes beheld the Red One, the messengerbetween the worlds; knew that he would never live to carry thatmessage to the world - that message, for aught to the contrary,which might already have waited man's hearing in the heart ofGuadalcanal for ten thousand years. And Bassett stirred withresolve, calling Ngurn to him, out under the shade of thebreadfruit tree, and with the old devil-devil doctor discussing theterms and arrangements of his last life effort, his final adventurein the quick of the flesh."I know the law, O Ngurn," he concluded the matter. "Whoso is notof the folk may not look upon the Red One and live. I shall notlive anyway. Your young men shall carry me before the face of theRed One, and I shall look upon him, and hear his voice, andthereupon die, under your hand, O Ngurn. Thus will the threethings be satisfied: the law, my desire, and your quickerpossession of my head for which all your preparations wait."To which Ngurn consented, adding:"It is better so. A sick man who cannot get well is foolish tolive on for so little a while. Also is it better for the livingthat he should go. You have been much in the way of late. Not butwhat it was good for me to talk to such a wise one. But for moonsof days we have held little talk. Instead, you have taken up roomin the house of heads, making noises like a dying pig, or talkingmuch and loudly in your own language which I do not understand.This has been a confusion to me, for I like to think on the greatthings of the light and dark as I turn the heads in the smoke.Your much noise has thus been a disturbance to the long-learningand hatching of the final wisdom that will be mine before I die.As for you, upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well thatyou die now. And I promise you, in the long days to come when Iturn your head in the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in todisturb us. And I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old manand very wise, and I shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turnyour head in the smoke."So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a dozenof the men, Bassett departed on the last little adventure that wasto cap the total adventure, for him, of living. With a body ofwhich he was scarcely aware, for even the pain had been exhaustedout of it, and with a bright clear brain that accommodated him to aquiet ecstasy of sheer lucidness of thought, he lay back on thelurching litter and watched the fading of the passing world,beholding for the last time the breadfruit tree before the devil-devil house, the dim day beneath the matted jungle roof, the gloomygorge between the shouldering mountains, the saddle of rawlimestone, and the mesa of black volcanic sand.Down the spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling thesheening, glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridescefrom colour and light into sweet singing and thunder. And overbones and logs of immolated men and gods they bore him, past thehorrors of other immolated ones that yet lived, to the three-king-post tripod and the huge king-post striker.Here Bassett, helped by Ngurn and Balatta, weakly sat up, swayingweakly from the hips, and with clear, unfaltering, all-seeing eyesgazed upon the Red One."Once, O Ngurn," he said, not taking his eyes from the sheening,vibrating surface whereon and wherein all the shades of cherry-redplayed unceasingly, ever a-quiver to change into sound, to becomesilken rustlings, silvery whisperings, golden thrummings of cords,velvet pipings of elfland, mellow distances of thunderings."I wait," Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the long-handledtomahawk unassumingly ready in his hand."Once, O Ngurn," Bassett repeated, "let the Red One speak so that Imay see it speak as well as hear it. Then strike, thus, when Iraise my hand; for, when I raise my hand, I shall drop my headforward and make place for the stroke at the base of my neck. But,O Ngurn, I, who am about to pass out of the light of day for ever,would like to pass with the wonder-voice of the Red One singinggreatly in my ears.""And I promise you that never will a head be so well cured asyours," Ngurn assured him, at the same time signalling thetribesmen to man the propelling ropes suspended from the king-poststriker. "Your head shall be my greatest piece of work in thecuring of heads."Bassett smiled quietly to the old one's conceit, as the greatcarved log, drawn back through two-score feet of space, wasreleased. The next moment he was lost in ecstasy at the abrupt andthunderous liberation of sound. But such thunder! Mellow it waswith preciousness of all sounding metals. Archangels spoke in it;it was magnificently beautiful before all other sounds; it wasinvested with the intelligence of supermen of planets of othersuns; it was the voice of God, seducing and commanding to be heard.And - the everlasting miracle of that interstellar metal! Bassett,with his own eyes, saw colour and colours transform into sound tillthe whole visible surface of the vast sphere was a-crawl andtitillant and vaporous with what he could not tell was colour orwas sound. In that moment the interstices of matter were his, andthe interfusings and intermating transfusings of matter and force.Time passed. At the last Bassett was brought back from his ecstasyby an impatient movement of Ngurn. He had quite forgotten the olddevil-devil one. A quick flash of fancy brought a husky chuckleinto Bassett's throat. His shot-gun lay beside him in the litter.All he had to do, muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and blowhis head into nothingness.But why cheat him? was Bassett's next thought. Head-hunting,cannibal beast of a human that was as much ape as human,nevertheless Old Ngurn had, according to his lights, played squarerthan square. Ngurn was in himself a forerunner of ethics andcontract, of consideration, and gentleness in man. No, Bassettdecided; it would be a ghastly pity and an act of dishonour tocheat the old fellow at the last. His head was Ngurn's, andNgurn's head to cure it would be.And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his headas agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his tautspinal cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merelyand only and undesired. He knew, without seeing, when the razor-edged hatchet rose in the air behind him. And for that instant,ere the end, there fell upon Bassett the shadows of the Unknown, asense of impending marvel of the rending of walls before theimaginable. Almost, when he knew the blow had started and just erethe edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazedupon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth - And, simultaneous withthe bite of the steel on the onrush of the dark, in a flashinginstant of fancy, he saw the vision of his head turning slowly,always turning, in the devil-devil house beside the breadfruittree.
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