Limanora the island of progress
of them the Broolyians had to endure in patience. Nor did it grow
less from generation to generation. Fancy never let the stories of
the defeat of the great Choktroo rest; they gathered to them features
more and more terrible to contemplate. A halo of dread and mystery is
far more effective as a fence against human intrusion than a halo of
sanctity or even divinity. It cows the miscreant and the brute in the
human breast. The duties of the Lilamo in repelling the attacks of men
would vanish for hundreds of generations.
For Choktroo, his fate was a romantic contrast to that of his fame.
Reports were brought in by the idrovamolan or by flying messengers who
had ventured over the belt of fog. He was rescued by the neighbouring
tribe before he starved on the barren islet, only to be threatened with
sacrifice to one of their gods. A missionary who had some influence
over the heathen arrived at the moment of sacrifice and saved him.
After learning their language he worked his way by intrigues and
assassinations and what they thought magic up to the headship of the
tribe. When he had made himself secure in his power over them, he
built a great fleet of war-canoes, and, after mastering the groups of
islands within range and enlisting their warriors and canoes in his
service, he set sail southward for some land they knew not of. South
and then east the fleet made way, his followers still unalarmed. At
last appeared the circle of mystery on the horizon. He gave the word to
row forward into it; but, before the command had reached the outermost
of the canoes, he was hurled from his platform into the sea, and, as
he rose to the surface, he was promptly speared by his own immediate
staff. Round swung the heads of the canoes by one simultaneous impulse.
Their chief had become a madman to think of entering that belt of
mystery; and away they paddled for very life; nor did they cease their
frantic efforts till the dark cloud had sunk beneath the horizon.
CHAPTER XV
THE DUOMOVAMOLAN OR COSMOPHONE
THOUGH the Limanorans calmly pursued their regular employments during
these attempts at invasion, I had myself felt the uneasy spiritual
atmosphere that precedes and presages turmoil. None but the Lilamo
were engaged in preparation for defence; yet during all the years
every spirit was tense and giving out its energy in sympathy to this
section of the people. There was a palpable loss of nervous power
in the community, for they knew that by accident some joint in the
arrangements might fail to work and all the defence miscarry. Not till
the bold disturber of their progress was finally disposed of did the
tension or the leakage of nerve-energy cease. To be absorbed in mere
war was to them the hades of human society, and to have again sealed up
their island from the intrusion of degenerate souls was a happy epoch
in their history.
While the whole community quivered with inward jubilance, two momentary
dangers threatened it: it might take some time to recover its
equilibrium; and its thoughts and interests, narrowed by the necessity
of defence against this threat from below, might be long in rising to
the true cosmic level. Some exceptional stimulus was needed to raise
their lives and aims, some appeal to the spirit, which would set them
free from the trammels of earth and all deteriorative excitement. Such
liberation had been by no means uncommon in their past, but no occasion
for it had occurred since I had entered on my novitiate, except in the
case of individuals and families; then I had been too busy with my
training or too distant from the household concerned to notice it.
Now it was to be a national purification of the nature, and I was to
share in it. Would this be a religious ceremony, a day of humiliation
and prayer, such as I had often witnessed in my old home after great
national disasters or during plague or famine? I had seen no churches
or temples, no signs of religious service, no acts of private worship.
I had never heard anyone speak of gods or priests or expiations. Was
this at last to be the revelation of the inner shrine, into which I had
never been able to penetrate?
I had not long to wait for the solution of my problems. Purposes here
moved to conclusions with lightning swiftness, and when one impulse
stirred the people, there was needed no heralding to mass them in the
desired place. I found myself drawn with my proparents and Thyriel and
her household towards a massive building that stood upon a peak far
up the slopes of Lilaroma. There was no need of road or steps to it;
wings made the wide air the highway. Yet were there great terraces
ramparting the sides of the peak, and from the highest seawards there
was a marvellous flight of steps which, when the clouds hid Lilaroma,
seemed to lead up into heaven. I had often seen the edifice gleam high
in the setting sun, yet there were so many temple-like structures on
the shoulders and peaks of the giant mountain that it had ceased to
excite inquiry. Now as we flew towards it its titanic proportions
and jewelled beauty seemed to dominate all the lower world. The
building, the most striking that I had ever seen, raised an enormous
circular dome of crystal to the sky, and around this were innumerable
smaller structures, which elsewhere would have bulked huge to the
eye. As we drew nearer, I saw that each crystal cupola, instead of
crouching low upon the terrace as I had thought at first, rose upon
a lofty and massive tower of great strength. What I had taken for
smaller and higher terraces and bastions were the walls of towers
and square citadels that seemed built to outlast the wars of Titans.
Solid lava they were of extraordinary thickness. There was nothing
here of that slenderness and delicacy which had made me compare their
other buildings to lace-work. The terraces and flight of steps I had
seen from below were but the outer flanks of the layer on layer of
foundations laid upon the plateau to save the structure from all but
the deepest-sourced tremors.
As we entered the mighty portal, I felt that no storm or earthquake
could move it. It seemed a city sculptured out of the solid rock; but,
as soon as we were in, the sense of this massiveness vanished and the
whole appeared as we looked up fairy-like and gossamer. In any one of
the vast temples nothing but a film seemed to separate us from the
azure sky. In the smaller towers we gazed up a dark shaft roofed by a
circle of sky, and the very stars shone out upon our vision by day, so
palpable was the column of darkness above us.
We soon settled in our hanging rests under the great central dome.
Around us were thousands hung in mid-air in different attitudes of
rest. Yet the building sounded empty, so vast was it and so silent
were all. The slightest whisper rang across its great untrammelled
spaces with the sharpness of a word beside us. Not a column or beam or
ornament broke the harmonious simplicity of the spacious circle from
vault to floor, from side to side. Everyone by instinct kept still; for
the mere rustle of a wing appalled by its far-reaching effect. We even
held our breath lest the sound should break the colossal stillness. To
me it seemed for a time frozen silence.
I soon perceived that there was no effort in the self-repression of
my neighbours’ movements. They were entranced, their heads erect as
if catching the echo of some far-off music. To me there was as deep
stillness as before. I listened intently, but felt no change except a
slight exhilaration; an electric influence was pulsing around. To the
electric sense in them some great harmony was appealing. Yet there
was more than this; for their eyes were fixed intently on the dome. I
looked up and felt awestruck. There on a scale that seemed to match
the sky of night I saw enacting the evolution of a universe. In the
blue vault a great sphere of glowing vapour was whirling round; from it
sprang off huge concentric rings, that one after the other, themselves
became whirling spheres ablaze with the intensity of white heat. Step
by step a system of earths revolving round a central sun was developed.
On one as it cooled we could see life appear and grow varied, then
fade away and finally vanish. Before the last tragedy had closed,
another had taken up the strain of existence, had run its course upon
the globe, and a third had stepped into the ranks of life-bearers. The
torch of generation was passed on from orbit to orbit, the central
luminary ever dimming its fires, till at last the system wheeled on
through darkness, seeming to have no purpose in the universe; but just
as the last light flickered and began to vanish from the surface of the
sun, out of the darkness seemed to rush another dead universe; through
the eternities the two had been approaching nearer and nearer, drawn by
their common doom. In a moment they had crashed together and out of the
collision came a mist of fire, that soon by whirling in space became
again another and a larger sphere of glowing vapour.
How impressive was this reincarnation of worlds! Deeper and deeper the
scene sank into the spirit, as the electric thrill which accompanied
the earlier steps of the process passed into dim-echoing music,
translating all we saw into sounds. A singular feature of their music
was that it was never produced in the same room in which it was to be
listened to. The machinery and the orchestra drown by their clack and
clamour the soft footfalls of harmony that are the only true spirit
of music; this was their reason. They had a contrivance in every
large room, a huge-mouthed tube by which inflowing music was softened
or strengthened and which could if need be raise a whisper into a
thunder-peal; in this was a series of keys or stops, by which any sound
coming through it could be modulated. One key could make the apparatus
soundproof by filling its throat with a pledget of a peculiar fibrous
metal they had. One series could wring out the harshness of any sound
till it became soft as a much-reverberated echo. A second magnified any
sound, however soft, to the required loudness and volume, and the whole
was controlled by a minute key-board which could be held in the hand
and moved to any part of the room.
In this vast auditorium I could not see where the key-board was
managed; but he must have been a poet-musician who manipulated it, so
delicately did the volume of sound adapt itself to the mood of those
who watched the growth and decay of worlds. Now it swelled with the
collision into thunderous harmony; again as a crisis approached in the
tragedy it fell to the low music of far-echoing nature-sounds. At times
this marvellous opera of universes died away to my hearing; yet my
neighbours lay in trance as if still catching harmonies that mastered
the soul. I knew nothing but the vague electric thrill that passes
through the nature at some great thought. Harmonies as colossal touched
their electric sense as those which before had come through their
hearing. I longed to follow them into those spheres of melodious being
that were still beyond me.
I came afterwards to know the astronomic family that had arranged these
wonderful effects upon the soul through the various senses, and I saw
the mechanism by which they were contrived. Its simplicity was what
struck me most, when I remembered how complicated were the sensuous
modes of appeal to the spirit. Out of innumerable sonoscripts and
electrographs impressed by the world of stars upon their records, they
had selected those that would fit together and raise the souls of the
listeners to the sublimity of seeing the infinite cosmos.
This daylight representation of the music of the spheres was but a