Limanora the island of progress
otherwise float past with only stifling effect were tapped, first for
their electricity and then for their rain. Storms of dust that now and
again darkened over the circle of fog could be precipitated into the
ocean partly by electricity, partly by the blasts of the storm-cone.
The atmosphere was kept singularly pure and free from deleterious
germs or particles, and few nights passed without a drenching shower
cleansing the whole lower portion of the island. The peak of Lilaroma
drew to it like a magnet all the masses of moisture that collected
within many hundred miles of it; and a little manipulation would break
these up into refreshing night showers that swept its slopes and the
plateaux and levels below; and, in order to prevent the destructive
floods that this might produce in the rivers, the shoulders of the
mountain and its deep valleys bristled with great forests which sponged
up the falling moisture and let it down gently from hour to hour into
the bastioned channels.
Climate was to this people as much a matter of management as food
and its production. They could modify it to fit any change in the
conditions or necessities or purposes of life. To be at the mercy
of the forces of nature was a state of existence in what they now
considered their barbarous past. It was only the unforeseen that had
them at a disadvantage; and the unforeseen was to them now only the
cosmic. As the planetary system shifted through space, it had to
encounter conditions and modes and degrees of energy and life that
nothing short of omniscience could anticipate; but they were beginning
to master the secret of many of those unexpected changes of condition.
The astro-sciential families had been classifying for centuries the
symptoms that accompanied these in the appearance of the sun or of one
or other of the planets. With their innumerable delicate instruments
for recording and analysing the electric, magnetic, luminous, and
heat-vaporous state of distant space, they could see afar off the
beginnings of cosmic disturbances and anticipate their ultimate
direction; and in many cases they could guard Limanora against the more
patent and destructive effects of magnetic and electric storms and of
great waves of heat or light.
Yet there was much to master in the new cosmic conditions that from
time to time beset the earth or the planetary system. Some seemed to
arise so suddenly that no observation could have anticipated them.
Especially was this the case with living drift, into shoals of which
the universe struck, the spawn of undeveloped worlds. Hence came new
diseases so widespread as to be plagues. These generally evaded the
fine instruments of the astro-scientist, till they had reached the very
atmosphere of the earth; for in the interstellar spaces they led so
meagre a life and were spread so thinly and widely that they scarcely
intercepted the light or other forms of energy from the sun or other
systems. Yet the imaginative families and the inventors were struggling
towards some more delicate instrument, which would observe and record
the presence of interstellar material life.
CHAPTER XIV
CHOKTROO
THE Lilamo were usually occupied in these sanitary duties, but at
times the other section of their defence of Limanora claimed their
attention. I had had good reason to know the force of the lilaran, or
storm-cone, in my attempt to arrive in the island. Had it not been
decided to permit our entrance, our perseverance would have failed of
the attainment of our object.
I was soon to witness a marvellous display of the defensive and
repulsive powers of the storm-cone. For some years after the first
period of my novitiate and my partial admission to privileges as
a citizen with which this period ended, there had been observed
throughout the archipelago a movement which spread with considerable
rapidity. It was one of the amusements of the Limanorans to watch
the comedy of life upon the other islands through the idrovamolan,
or instrument for distance seeing and hearing, which they had fixed
high up the mountain. On a floating strip of irelium, that could
be projected far into the sky, scenes beneath the horizon could
be mirrored and watched through this instrument and through other
instruments for reducing distance. The sounds, too, that rose from
the scene re-echoed from the under-surface of the floating mirror,
and could be magnified by the makrakoustic part of the idrovamolan
into their original volume. A rarer and more difficult instrument was
one which combined with this power of seeing and hearing at a great
distance that of noting the magnetism working in a community even under
the horizon.
Recently they had found that they could dispense with the floating
mirror and reflector. The ether was their transmitter of all they
wished to see or hear at a distance. Through it passed electric waves
from even immeasurable distances, whilst the sky itself formed a
sufficiently complete mirror for reflecting whatever was occurring
under the horizon. By recent discoveries and inventions they were
enabled to transform electric impulses into the scene or sound that
gave them out into the surrounding air. Their new instruments would
tap the occurrences at any point on any given line or in any given
direction. They were now independent of any artificial medium for their
knowledge of the outside world. The receivers of their new idrovamolan
were every moment recording and analysing whatsoever occurred along the
line in which it was directed; and its transformers were constantly
translating the electric records into the forms or sounds which
originally sent out the impulses; it was so constructed as to prevent
the confusion of waves that came from different points on the route,
for it moved with the swiftness of light or, if required, with that of
electricity. These new modifications gave them hope that they would
soon be able to see and hear much of what goes on in universes which,
though invisible, yet transmit luminous and electric waves sufficiently
strong to affect their telescopic instruments, and that the straggling
rays of light or electricity might be transformed into the scenes and
sounds which gave them birth.
As it was, the Limanorans were able to watch all that was going on in
the islands around them. During their leisure hours, when it was their
duty as well as their pleasure to relax the mind, they would sit and
observe the life of what they called their menagerie. To them, indeed,
the whirling eddy of existence with its ambitions and crimes, its
luxury and misery, in the archipelago around seemed little more than
the antics of monkeys or the internecine appetites of wild beasts. The
scenes were generally amusing in the ape-like vanities and mimicries
they exhibited. Sometimes they were offensive and even repulsive in
their filth or brutalities. How beings formed like themselves could
endure the grossness of their luxuries and the falsity and hollowness
of their most admired social displays was to them a bewildering
problem. Even the best of these islanders were as far behind the
Limanorans in true human qualities as they thought themselves in
advance of apes. The daily observation of these creatures so humanly
endowed and yet so foul and blind in act was often too much to bear
for any length of time; the most repulsive scenes were those of what
was considered high life, of courts and courtly circles, of rulers
and leaders of act and thought. “Who can bear the horror of their
intrigues and hypocrisies, their cruel trampling of the fallen, their
hideous fawning on the successful, their insolent pride and intolerance
of the weak!” I often heard exclamations like this from the lips of
the watchers as they turned away from the idrovamolan with a shudder.
The combination of ape and bully, of reptile and vapourer was, in the
thoughts of this people, the lowest depth to which human nature could
fall; and it was the usual and most envied form in the high social
life of most of these islands. The barbarism and ignorance of the poor
and downtrodden marked a less retrograde phase of humanity. The sight
of the posturings and scrapings, the insolence and spaniel manners of
the higher classes served every day to deepen the horror of exile and
to frighten every Limanoran from anything that would lead even to the
slightest retrogression. Had it not been for this wholesome effect upon
their minds, they would have long ago abandoned the custom of watching
this beast spectacle of retrograde and showy civilisation, so much pain
mingled with their amusement at it. They knew that their pity was vain;
for it would take unremitting effort for thousands of years to raise
these peoples to the Limanoran level, if the Limanoran missionaries had
not in the meantime been dragged down to the lower level; and these
thousands of years could be better spent in attaining higher and higher
ideals in their own life. The task, they knew, was as hopeless as if
these descendants of their degenerate exiles should attempt to drag
the lower animals up to their stage of human development, and this
irremediable nature of their state added to the pain of the observers.
Had the habit of watching the comedy of their menagerie been given up,
the Lilamo would have still had to observe the enactment of history
in the surrounding islands. It was part of their duty of defence to
anticipate all armaments against Limanora; and they had discovered
that there was unusual excitement amongst the various peoples since
the arrival of the _Daydream_ in their waters. It was evident
that this formed an epoch in the history of the archipelago. The
Lilamo reported the movements of the portentous smoke-pennoned ship
which sailed in the teeth of all winds like their own ships of the
air. What was to prevent it approaching Limanora in spite of the
force of the storm-cone? The thought brought the first trace of fear
into the breasts of this people; for, once a foreign element had been
able to force its way into their midst, how could they prevent moral
contamination and swift retrogression? Their advance would crumble away
in a few centuries, nothing but their material progress being likely to
survive the incursion of barbarism.
It was imperative that new measures of defence be adopted. It was then
that the forces of Rimla had been enormously increased, thus making
it possible for most of its energy to take the electric form in the
storm-cone. With this they would be able to repel the new monster with
so much metal in its bosom; they would play with it as with a toy on
the water. All my wanderings had been narrowly watched, my landing
in Aleofane, my escape from it, my sojourn in Tirralaria and ascent
of Klimarol, my companionship with Sneekape and my scorn of him, my
sympathy with the refugees in Nookoo, and my friendship with Noola.
Nothing escaped their attention, and my character was analysed in the
most minute way by deductions from the details of my conduct. It was
decided that, if I showed eagerness and persistence enough, I should be
allowed to land with Noola; but that my fire-ship and my men should be
blown off from the coast.
Since then the affairs of the archipelago had been observed as
narrowly as before, and especially the wanderings and history of the
_Daydream_. As I expected, it passed finally into the possession
of Broolyi, and the new ideas and methods it brought into the warfare
of this isolated zone of the world made an era in its history. A great
military organiser had arisen; and he had by the potency of his will
moulded Broolyi into a unity which with the help of new fire-ships
built on the model of my yacht had brought the other islands into