The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection of the bottom.
Then out I dashed, like knocking my head through a mirror. Directly I got
my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near the
forest. I had a look 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
run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but I eased open one of
the 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 your head in
a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes under
water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy going
to work. And half-way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more, coming
out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.
"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London. I
had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned turtle.
I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, 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. 'Jimmy
Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be a
little lightheaded, I think, with all these dangers about and the change
in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' I said, as if
the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm hanged if I don't
give you something to stare at,' I said, and with that I screwed up the
escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until I was
swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing 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 extra polite, which was very wise and reasonable of
them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it
seemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd have been after me. And out of
sheer desperation I began to march towards them up the beach, with slow,
heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner.
And inside of me I was singing as small as a tomtit.
"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a
difficulty,--I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,
who're up to diving dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely imagine
the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or two of these niggers
cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock their
brains out on the ground. And on I went as slow 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 gestures to
me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention between
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, coming round a point,
the poor old _Pride of Banya_ towed by a couple of canoes. The sight
fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition, so I
waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. 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's only fools who know nothing of danger
can afford to laugh at praying."
"But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away like
that. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed me
to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me they
didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me,
and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old country.
"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages,
but these poor, misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to their
kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. By
this time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance,
and directly I set eyes on this deity I took my cue. I started a baritone
howl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and began waving my arms about a
lot, and then very slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its
side and sat down on it. I wanted to sit down badly, for diving dresses
ain't much wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they're a
sight too much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sitting on
their joss, but in less time than a minute they made up their minds and
were hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell you I felt a bit relieved
to see things turning out so well, in spite of the weight on my shoulders
and feet.
"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might think
when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before I went down, and
without the helmet on--for they might have been spying and hiding since
over night--they would very likely take a different view from the others.
I was in a deuce of a stew about that 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 sitting Egyptian
images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, I
should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what it
meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the man
inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great 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 there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory
muck--the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts--
and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but I
understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell
of burnt-offerings about them. And they brought in a lot of the stuff
they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what I was a bit relieved
to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed air
affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced about me
something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different ways different
people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handy I'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 better to do. And at last, when
nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place got a bit too shadowy for
their taste--all these here savages are 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 the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a
bit and think things 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 beetle on a
pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. Come round
just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps, beastly
drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young Sanders with
the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of 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 away and come back for it. And there
was the puzzle where to get anything to eat. I tell you I was fair
rambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of behaving too
human, and so there I sat and hungered 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 stuff like artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk. What
was left of these I put away among the other offerings, just to give them
a hint of my tastes. And in the morning they came to worship, and found me
sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as they'd
left me overnight. I'd got my back against the central pillar of the hut,
and, practically, I was asleep. And that's how I became a god among the
heathen--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 was extraordinary
successful. I don't say there's anything in it, mind you. They won a
battle with another tribe--I got a lot of offerings I didn't want through
it--they had wonderful fishing, and their crop of pourra was exceptional
fine. And they counted the capture of the brig among the benefits I
brought 'em. I must say 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 god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months...
"What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that diving-dress all the
time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a time
I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do. That
indeed was the great difficulty--making them understand my wishes. I
couldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly, even if I'd been
able to speak at all, and I couldn't go flapping a lot of gestures at
them. So I drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hooted like
one o'clock. Sometimes they did the things I wanted all right, and
sometimes they did them all wrong. They was always very willing,
certainly. All the while I 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 off to a place where I could see the channel in which the
_Ocean Pioneer_ lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I tried
to walk out to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. I
didn't get back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers
out on the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexed
and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down again,
I could have punched their silly heads all round when they started
rejoicing. Hanged if I like so much ceremony.
"And then came the missionary. That missionary! _What_ a Guy! Gummy!
It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my outer temple
place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs, when he came. I heard a
row outside and 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 out straight
away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come
inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming Exeter Hall of a 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 specks and a pith
helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my
copper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first.
'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in scissors?' for I don't hold with
missionaries.
"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quite
outclassed by a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I told him to
read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. There wasn't no
inscription; why should there be? but down he goes to read, and his
interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, more so by
reason of his seeing missionary close to, took it for an act of worship