Limanora the island of progress
We did not encumber ourselves with more than we thought would be
essential for the long air-journey back to Riallaro. The minute pellets
of sustenance were easily disposed of. But it puzzled us to know what
to do with the additional apparatus for so protracted a voyage. My
powers of flight were still so crude and undeveloped and my locomotion
through the air so clumsy and slow that Thyriel had to carry both
hers and mine. I was greatly perturbed over the possible result of so
dangerous a venture. But it had to be undertaken, and she had buoyancy
and exhilaration enough for both. My sinking heart felt the influence
of her magnetism, and I gained confidence after we set out.
The first half of our voyage was marked by singular good fortune. The
breeze went with us every day, and at night, or when the muscles of
my legs and arms grew numb from fatigue, we sighted an iceberg and
rested on it; though it heaved and rocked and on occasion threatened
submersion, our minds were at rest, for we had our wings always
attached and everything in readiness to sweep upwards from our perch.
The difficulty came when we passed beyond the Antarctic Ocean, and
voyaged high above that heaving trackless desert of water which lies
between the region of icebergs and the first ring of islets that
stipple the tropical seas. How were we to find resting-places at night
or during the day, when my wing-achievements grew lame and tardy? Even
Thyriel’s heart sank, as she thought of the hundreds of leagues we had
to traverse unbroken by any sign of land.
At first she kept along the immemorial line of bird-travel from the
south on the chance of finding here and there some spot of land thrown
up by the growing disturbances beneath the sea. For some days we were
fortunate enough to find a nightly perching-place above the billows
upon the temporary vents of the submarine fires, dangerous it is true,
yet with care and watching safe. Then we came upon a zone of calm
water, so strangely still and free from the action of wind and current
that the albatrosses basked moveless upon it. Here Thyriel bound our
wings together and made a raft, on which we floated as we slept.
But that was only for two revolutions of the earth and was the
prelude to a tornado from the north-east, a wind so unusual in those
latitudes that the Limanorans never take it into the calculations of
their voyages through the air. Just when we were within three days’
wing-journey of our home the tempest began and brought us almost to a
standstill. We tried to battle against it but our efforts were vain.
Then we rose, according to Limanoran custom, into the higher atmosphere
where is usually found perfect calm and perfect freedom from cloud and
storm, but the fury of the disturbance seemed to be miles deep. The
upper air was as thick and turbulent as the lower.
Our troubles culminated in disaster to my wing-appendages. I was
never expert in their management, but in the baffling storm I grew
helpless and in my despair let them beat almost unguided. The result
was irreparable injury to the left wing and such an obstruction to the
movement of the right as made it unmanageable. I felt my heart sink;
for I saw that I must soon fall into the ocean below and be dashed to
pieces or drowned.
Thyriel looked down and saw my peril. In a flash of thought she
abandoned all she carried except her chest-and-shoulder engines, and,
swooping down towards me, caught me as I fell. An upward sweep of
the wind aided her in her efforts, and she buoyed me up till I had
recovered energy and heart. Then she told me what she meant to do. For
a time I would not be persuaded and prayed that I might be abandoned to
my fate, but she would not hear of such a thing. By the force of her
will I soon gave way and nestled, as I had often done when learning to
fly, in the hollow between her wings.
Before the storm she let herself go; and I could feel we were moving
almost as swiftly as if we had been in our own faleena. It was useless
for her, she showed me, to fight against the wind, especially after she
had thrown away the apparatus for quickly renewing the power of her
engines. After a time I saw how much she laboured under her burden, and
I sent promptly into the gulf beneath all that I had carried, my broken
wings, my engines, and my stores of sustenance. I felt that her spirit
protested; but she said nothing, and I was relieved to feel that we
were rising instead of falling. She grew more buoyant and was even able
to spare magnetism enough to put heart into me.
The course she had taken so promptly was the only one that could have
saved both of us. She might have weathered the storm alone, and then
found her way back to Limanora. But as it was she knew that the tempest
would bear us, if she could keep us both high above the earth, right
across the long narrow cloud of New Zealand.
She felt by her bodily magnetism that we were approaching it, and while
it was still daylight we came within reach of it. She, seeing that we
were evidently coasting its southern shores, but too far off to make
them with her exhausted powers, grew afraid that we would be blown far
off to the south again and thus miss our resting-place; for we could
see the coasts round northwards. Happily at this juncture the wind
suddenly veered round to the south-west, and we were swept before it in
the twilight into a deep fiord. Our hearts were glad to feel that soon
we should touch the earth and rest. I was tempestuously elated; for I
felt, by the beat of her heart and the quick short breaths she drew,
that she was near the end of her powers.
We were close to a precipice and I was eagerly preparing to leap from
her back, when she seemed suddenly to collapse. I fell through the
air, and then knew no more till I awakened in your hut. What became
of Thyriel puzzled me for long. But I am persuaded that after seeing
me drawn by you safely to land she went off before the favouring wind
towards Limanora for help. That she has been so long troubles my
thoughts deeply at times. But I believe that she will return for me,
if only I rest here long enough. I dare not leave the place long, lest
she should come in my absence. And the solitude and your gentle silence
soothe me in my weary meditation.
EPILOGUE
WE felt guiltily conscious, as he came to this close of his narrative.
But we had not the heart to hint what we thought might have become of
her.
Almost three years had passed before his narrative reached the point of
contact with our lives. He now became restless and jaded and flitted
in and out amongst us like a ghost. For days he vanished in the bush,
and again and again we thought he had finally disappeared. But he ever
returned, more restless and yet more gentle.
We could not bear to see his agony and yearning, and at last proposed
that we should hire or purchase a small steamer, and under his guidance
make for Riallaro. He was long reluctant, but after months of hope
deferred resigned himself to the enterprise.
Trowm and I made for the nearest port and brought our purchase round to
our fiord, well-provisioned and equipped for a tropical voyage. Somm
was left by our huts and our mine to guard our interests, but still
more to watch for the advent of any messenger from the strange land
within the circle of mist.
The rest of us set out with our guest in search of his home. Nothing
happened to our expedition beyond the usual mishaps of tropical seas.
A tornado made us take refuge within an uninhabited atoll; in its
harbour our craft was safe enough, but it took all our powers to hold
on to the scanty herbage that clung to the reef and prevent our being
blown into the ocean beyond. Once or twice we had an awkward incident
with sharks, and once we came too close to an island whose shore
swarmed with threatening savages. They sprang into their canoes and
made for us, but our steam enabled us to outdistance them with ease.
Our stranger knew the exact latitude and longitude of Riallaro. He
could point out its place on a map with a confidence that made us feel
we were about to enter with him into the mysterious archipelago. We
sailed straight for the western side of the ring of mist, but never did
we encounter any such feature as he had described to us. Once or twice
we thought we saw an extended haze on the horizon and made for it; but
it vanished as we approached; it was only the mirage of the ocean.
Weeks and weeks we steamed around and over the region, but not a trace
of the great archipelago or its nebulous fence did we find.
Even our guide at last fell into silent bewilderment. He could not
believe that it had all disappeared like a dream; unless, as we
fancied, the subterranean forces had blown it into space. Nor could he
mistrust his senses or his knowledge. What to think of it he did not
venture to decide. He lay in stupor and silence for days.
But we knew that within a few weeks began the season of hurricanes; and
we determined to make back for our shelter in the southern fiord. He
reluctantly consented to our persuasion, after making us promise that
we should return again to search for his lost paradise. In the meantime
he would be able to study the charts of the region, and define the
knowledge of it more exactly. He knew by heart its relations to the
sun and the stars; and with study he could tell the very place where to
follow our search. As it was, he had doubtless made some mistake; and
he would rectify it in the interval of rest.
Without mishap or obstructive weather we got back into the shadow of
our mountains; and one day of brilliant sunshine we sailed into the
fiord. Somm was on the shore to welcome us. He had no news to give. No
one had been near the place since we had left. But he had had to make
into a neighbouring sound in order to supply his empty larder, and as
the wind seemed to favour his trip, he had brought the masts and sails
of our boat out of our cave.
Our guest paced up to our hut as in a dream, seeming to hear and see
nothing around him. We let him find his way alone, whilst we beached
and dismantled our little steamer.
In our bustle of work we had forgotten him. Suddenly a strange,
scarcely human cry awakened our attention. We rushed up the steep
pathway and found him lying in trance by the mouth of the cave,
stretched upon the wings that we had cast into our lumber-hole when we
rescued him from the water. Somm had had to turn them out to get at
the sails and cordage of the boat, and had forgotten to return them to
their place. They were cobwebbed and covered with lichen and mould, yet
the transparency of them in spots gathered the rays of the sun upon the
herbage underneath.
We raised him from his resting-place and carried him into our spare
hut. There we tried to bring him back to consciousness, but our efforts
were vain. There was life in him, we were certain; yet there was
scarcely a sign of it in movement or breath, only a fragment of the
wings held to the mouth showed a trace of moisture. So we left him
for the night, remembering that it was long before he recovered from
the first trance in which we had found him. We wrapped him round with
warm clothing, and placing him comfortably on a soft bed of fern put
food and drink near him, so that, if he wakened, he should know we had
thought of him and were near.
The next morning at daybreak I rose, and the incident of the previous
evening rushed into my mind. I made for the hut, expecting to find him
recovered and asleep, but I found no human being there. The wrappings
had fallen on either side of the fern-lair. The bowls of meat and drink
were almost empty; but there were evident marks of the claws and beaks
of birds in them.