The world below
that of a legislator, and that it would be grotesque to punish a judge
for a defect in the law which he dispenses. We have fallen into strange
hands, of whom we knew nothing previously, and it is by the mercy of
circumstance that we are able to lay our case before you. I can do this
confidently because I know that you will understand our position, and I
am assured that you are not in yourself either unjust or merciless. I
will not weary you with many thoughts, for I know that you are in haste,
and we would ourselves very gladly be free from the increasing heat and
danger. Our defence is threefold, and I submit that each point is in
itself sufficient: (1) We think that the sentence was fair; (2) if it
were harsh, which we deny, it was in accordance with the laws of our
country, which we were sworn to administer; (3) if these two pleas
should fail,--which is beyond my imagination,--it would still remain
that for any possible fault we have been tortured and punished already
beyond our deserving. Consider that it is in the name of mercy that this
fate has been threatened! We are accused of brutality, but we have never
sentenced any of our people to be boiled alive, even for the foulest
crimes. It may be that the Dwellers did not intend that such a horror
should happen. I think it more likely that they proposed to alarm us
only, and foresaw your coming, and that you would release us, so that we
can go back to our duties, knowing their wishes, and introducing their
methods into our country, with consequences which they will no doubt
themselves direct to a satisfactory issue.”
I replied, “I will not torture your minds with a long judgment, though
the issues which you have raised invite it. I will tell you at once that
the first two pleas fail. The sentence was not fair, and on hearing the
evidence you should rather have addressed your minds to the inequity of
the social conditions which it revealed, and to exhort the prosecutors
to observe a higher standard of social morality in future. Having heard
them, however, I think your arguments would have been wasted. They, at
least, are unfit to exist, and as I do not wish to prolong their agony,
after they have heard this decision, I propose to deal with them before
I complete my judgment.”
I then went with my companion to the two pens which contained them, and
drew out the bars on which they rested. As we thought the male culprit
was slightly the less repulsive of the two, we soused him first, that
his trouble should be the sooner over.
As we commenced to draw the bars, their cries became deafening in
volume, and the female, in a frenzy of fear and vituperation, commenced
spitting in our direction.
As the last bar withdrew, the male leapt to the uprights at the side,
but found that they were made of a material too smooth for his grasp to
hold, and he fell backward into the water which bubbled beneath him.
Having disposed of the female in the same way, I resumed my verdict.
“The second point, as I have said, is of no more avail than the first,
because it appears to me to be a very evil thing that legislators or
judges should attempt to exalt the laws they dispense as being higher
than the essential justice which they are intended to demonstrate. It
should be the greatest difficulty in putting an unjust law into
operation that no judges of good character should be found who would
consent to enforce it. A judge who solemnly administers a law which he
knows in his heart to be unjust is baser than one who takes bribes from
a litigant. In the one case he is bribed by an individual to do
injustice at some risk to his own position; in the other he is bribed by
the State to do injustice, with an assurance that it can be perpetrated
with impunity.
“But your third point is of a different quality. To consider it fully
would take more time than is now available, and we might all be involved
in a common fate the while I should do so. It appears to me that there
is force in your contention that the fate to which you have been
condemned has an even greater severity than the harshness of your own
laws, for which they have condemned you. I am not sure that this is so,
but it is at least a plausible and confusing argument. I have
endeavoured to consider it from their standpoint, and I think that their
reply would be that there is no point in the comparison, because they
have acted from different motives, and with different intentions. Your
laws are designed to produce certain courses of conduct in your
individual citizens, to repress tendencies which might be subversive of
the State as it is organised, and as you were content to continue it;
you endeavoured (we may hope) to use no more harshness than you
considered that these objects required. They have no such objects in
view. They do not make you examples to others, nor design to coerce you
into observing any rules of future conduct. They regard you as having a
mentality so base that it should be destroyed entirely. But you say that
they may not have intended that this fate should fall upon you. I think
that this is less than possible, for, having heard your arguments, I
accept their decision very heartily.”
Saying this I commenced to withdraw the bars, and my companion helped me
in silence.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FATE OF THE KILLERS
The horny beak must have been softening in the boiling tank before my
mind could free itself from the fierce despairing cry, “The fools, the
fools!” with which the chief of the culprits had splashed down to his
allotted end. It confirmed my opinion that there would have been a
different choice of judge if his advice had been taken.
But we had no time for thought, where action was urgent. With a sense of
good work done, we passed out from a building on which the fire was
already falling. The wind had risen, and as the buildings burned, not
down but inwards--I mean that the outside of the walls was burnt off
evenly to a core of somewhat different quality--burning flakes, almost
as light as air, began to float on the wind, and sometimes would have
driven against us, so that we avoided them with difficulty.
It was to withdraw from these that we moved away from the boiling tank,
which my companion left with reluctance, so much did the sight of any
water allure her, and but for the fact that it was in the condition of a
thin soup from the many bodies which had been boiled within it, and
indescribably repulsive, I doubt whether the heat would have been
sufficient to deter her from the swim she needed. For myself, my thirst
was such that only this new danger was sufficient to force me from it.
But my cup was gone, with all my other possessions, excepting only what
my pockets held. So I had no means of cooling the water, if I could have
persuaded myself to drink it; and of boiling water I had just had a
sufficient experience. For the Chief Justice, as he plunged, had
contrived a kick which sent a swirl of water over the grating on which I
stood as I pulled at the last bar, and though I jumped very quickly I
had not escaped entirely, and to a stiff right arm I now added the
infirmity of a left foot that limped and blistered.
I scarcely grudged him his revenge,--he was a good fighter, and perhaps
fate had used him hardly,--but I felt an increased doubt of how we could
hope to escape from the surrounding Killers that grouped beneath the
crescent wall that enclosed us.
My companion was not troubled in that direction. “There is water near,”
she told me jubilantly, and the next moment we were standing beside a
large pool that sparkled clear and cool in the sunlight. A stream came
in at one end from the cliff-side, and was drained away through a sluice
at the other, so that it was fresh continually. Weeds grew in a clear
depth, but did not reach the surface.
She dropped the javelin, and dived.
I had seen seals swim, and many graceful forms to which the water is
native, but I had seen nothing like I saw then.
The legs did not move separately, but the appendages of which I have
told held them together as one limb. The double tail, which was carried
on land in such a way that it was barely visible, now came out, and with
the tiny monkey hands at each extremity, may have done much, both in
steering and propulsion. But the whole body seemed to move without
effort. A curve, a twist and it shot the pool’s length and back, without
evidence of any further directing motion.
I have always loved the water and (having drunk all I would) I was
already taking off my damaged rags to join her, when I noticed that she
was motionless above the weeds and looking intently at or through them.
I marvelled how she could maintain her position, and paused a moment to
watch her. The next, she had looked up, and must have recognised what I
was doing, for her thought was urgent against it. I was not instantly
willing to give up my intention, and while she still pressed me to
desist, there came a movement under the weeds that caused the whole
surface to tremble. The next second she had shot upward, and leapt out
beside me.
“Water-snakes,” she answered. “They do not know us here, as do those of
the ocean. Under the weeds, it is deep beyond seeing. I do not think I
could have saved you, if you had come in. But I have taught those snakes
that such as I am are not for a meal for their larder.”
I did not reply, for I had looked up, and seen that the living-wall was
ablaze for all its length from cliff to cliff.
She saw it also, but more coolly. “Did you not foresee that it must be?
I only thought that the Dwellers would be here sooner. It is a place of
hiding that we need; but the water drew me.”
“I do not see where we can hide on this plateau.”
“I think there is only one place, and that I have seen it already.”
She led me toward the southern corner, where the cliff was met by the
blazing wall. The Killers had left it at this point, for they were all
thronging wildly to the gateway, and pouring out through the narrow neck
between the burning of the open gates.
When we were about fifty yards from the wall, we turned to the
cliff-side, and looking up saw a fault in the rock, it could scarcely be
called a cave, but there was a shallow horizontal gap, about two feet
high at one end, and about ten feet wide, narrowing to a point at the
farther side, and about eight feet from the ground. I don’t think I
could easily have climbed even that height in the condition in which I
was, but she led the way, and wriggled easily, feet first, into the gap,
and helped me till I was lying there beside her.
In the shadow, with the sun already descending toward the hills behind
us, they would be good eyes indeed which would have detected us from any
distance, while we had a wide view of the whole plateau, of the cliff on
the left hand where it curved slightly forward, and of the whole stretch
of the lower country beneath us.
“It is to our left,” she told me, as we watched and waited, “that our
people will descend the cliff if they continue in that purpose. It is
only there that it is possible to climb it.”
It looked impossible to me, even there, but I did not question it.
“The Dwellers come,” she said, “we are none too soon. If you make your
mind blank and observe only, I do not think they will detect us.
Everything may depend on that. Avoid thought. Do not communicate with my
kind either, if they should appear.”
Then she closed her mind, and I was alone beside her.
* * * * *
When the Killers ran out from the blazing gateway, they had scattered
aimlessly about the plateau, as ants do when their nest is broken, and
for some time they remained in restless tumult, moving continually