Chapter 10

FORTY YEARS! THE AWAKENING

And then voices in my own tongue, low voices in the tongue I had not heard for so long; and kind English faces coming and going beside my bed, and mingling with my dreams.

And there came a time when I awoke to full sanity again, a time when dreams no longer blended with reality.

I lay in a cool, green-shuttered room, and beside me sat a pleasant- faced man, dressed in white, who was looking at me intently, and who nodded vigorously as I looked back at him.

"Better, eh?" he asked "There, don't speak. I can see you are. Take this, and go to sleep; you have had a bad time, and must get stronger before you talk."

And strong I got rapidly, and in a few days he told me where I was, and how I came there.

He was the British Consul at Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, and one morning about two months before, some natives had brought me in to him slung in a machilla.

They said they had been paid to bring me in, and that I was sick, and before he had had time to question them closely they had disappeared, without anyone finding out where they came from.

Sick and delirious, the Consul had been on the point of sending me to the Portuguese hospital, when a few words in English caught his attention, and feeling that he could not leave a fellow-countryman to the mercy of strangers and foreigners in such a plight, he had seen me through the stiff bout of brain fever in his own house.

As he told me all this, I decided to tell him all in return; for I now remembered all that had happened up to the time I had swallowed the berry; though after that it seemed nothing but a dream.

And first I asked him if the natives had brought anything with me. "Nothing whatever," he replied, "except a small skin bag of stones!"

He had not opened it, nor did I need to then, for the feel was enough. And it had been no dream then the crater, the deluge, the priestess, and the promise she gave me.

Quietly, and as briefly as I could, I told him my story. Half way through it he stopped me. "Look here," he said, "you mustn't go on like this. You are wandering again!" and though I assured him I was not, he felt my pulse and took my temperature. Then he let me go on again, and though he looked puzzled and uneasy he listened till I was finished. And then, looking at his pained and startled expression, I could see that he believed I was lying or mad.

And then and then only I opened the bag. And the diamonds were there enough to make a dozen men rich many more than the few blue ones I had with me when I first escaped.

And never was a man more astounded than the Consul; again and again he made me repeat my story, and at last, in considerable agitation, he got up and walked to the window, where he stood looking out in silence for some time.

Then he came back to the bed where I lay, and looked searchingly at me again.

"You are a young man," he said slowly; "to all appearance you are a young, strong man in spite of your scarred face and your bent spine, you look a young man! Now how long were you there in that pit how long do you think has passed since your terrible experience with the Snake?"

"It all seems like a dream," I answered him, "and I cannot tell. But I must have been several months in the crater perhaps a year. Since then I cannot have wandered long."

"Well, then," he questioned, "what month and year was it that you went to Walfisch Bay, and found Inyati?"

"In 1860," I said; "I landed there in November, 1860. What is it now?"

"Good God, man," he exclaimed, "you must be mistaken. Are you sure it was 1860?"

"Sure," I repeated, "November, 1860; and it was some time in the following May that I lost Inyati May, 1861. Last year, was it?"

"Last year! Last year!" he repeated as though dazed in fact I could see that he was absolutely frightened. "Why man, what you tell me is incredible impossible! If it were true, you have slept for nearly forty years. For it is now 1900."

And now it was my turn to be amazed, for truly what he had told me was incredible . . . surely he must be mad himself!

But he went to the door and called the little Portuguese doctor, who had also been kindness itself to me.

"Aha," he said as he looked me over and felt my pulse, "now you are well and have sense again, eh? That is good, it is good that you are strong very strong never have I see so strong a man never! And if you have not been strong, you would die, for your head it was quite mad!"

"Look here, Doctor Santos," said the Consul, "our friend has forgotten a lot of what has happened to him, . . there is a long period about which his mind is a blank months in fact years!"

"That can be if it is the fever, yes! he will remember again. But his head have been hurt, it is to be seen, that too may make forget, for months even a year!"

"Forty years?" suggested the Consul tentatively.

"Ah, you joke, my friend!" replied Santos, "that would not be possible, he is surely not that age himself?"

And laughing, as he thought, at the Consul's joke, the little man gave me a few instructions that I did not even hear, and left us.

And the Consul, without a word, handed me a newspaper, and a glance at it was enough to show that he at least had made no mistake, for it was dated September, 1900.

And now I was like to go crazy again, with the shock and bewilderment. Forty years! A lifetime lost. My friends would be dead, or old, old people who had long forgotten me. Of what use would all this wealth be to me an old and forgotten friendless man. Old! yes, I must be an old, old man myself. And yet, now the fever had gone, I felt strong and vigorous indeed, the doctor had said that I was exceptionally strong and that I was not forty and the Consul too had said I was a "young, strong man!"

Surely this was pure hallucination . . . but no! the paper was real enough. And turning it over I saw that indeed I had slept a lifetime, for although it was in my own tongue, all it referred to was absolutely strange to me. New inventions, places I had never heard of, nations even that were unknown to me; it was as though I read of a new world, as, uncomprehending, I glanced through this first newspaper that I had seen for forty years.

The Consul had sat watching me in silence. He saw my agitation, and realized something of what I felt, for putting out his hand and grasping mine he said, kindly: "It must be a blow . . . friends all dead, eh? Well, I'm your friend, anyhow . . . and you'll remember later. Why, man, you must get that forty years out of your mind you are surely younger than myself, and will be as strong as a bull in a week or two. Try and sleep, my friend; you'll remember better to-morrow!"

But well I knew that the memory of those lost years would never return to me. "Eat and forget forget!" The words were ringing in my ears even now, as though spoken but yesterday. I had but to close my eyes and the scene of deluge and destruction, there beneath the Snake, came as a vivid picture before them and the eyes and voice of the woman that had bade me forget were with me always. Those burning eyes! They blotted out every other vision even that of the woman that had waited. God help me, I could not even remember the semblance of her face always those eyes of flame came between us. And God help her! If she had waited all these years she would be an old, old woman but forty years! Surely she was dead!

When had it been, that awful sleep of mine that had blotted out nearly half a century, and left me, an anachronism, an outcast a "young, strong man" still, whilst my schoolmates must be old, toothless gossips or long since dead and forgotten? It must have been in the crater where I had fallen that all these years had passed!

The strange berries, mayhap they had robbed me of these years the berries that stupefied me and gave me pleasant dreams.

What then had the priestess bidden me forget . . . the path? Yes, the path; and truly my wanderings had been but as a confused dream, a long weary search it had seemed, hopeless and endless, yet it could have taken but a few months from that long total of years.

And the thought came to me that though I knew nothing of this way of my return, yet the spell had not been perfect, for I forgot little of that other path I had trod with Inyati, and after; and I could, and would, return!

For as my strength came back, and grew till it was the wonder of all, so did my longing to return increase.

The eyes the voice that had bidden me go, now seemed to call for me incessantly . . . all else was a weariness I must go back!

For long I fought it. I even went back to England with Gerard, my good friend the Consul, who, if he still thought me mad, at least respected my madness.

For he said nothing of my story to a soul, and he it was that piloted me as a child through the new conditions of life that I found on all sides in England; he helped me turn part of my diamonds into a large fortune, he helped me at length and with reluctance, for he would rather not have believed in the miracle of my long sleep to find proof of all I had told him.

There came a day when we stood before the graves of my father and mother, who had died years after I had left England died mourning me as dead and from the lips of an old greybeard, who had been my schoolmate, we heard how that scapegrace son of theirs had gone treasure-seeking and had never returned all those years ago.

Poor old garrulous fool; he little knew that the deformed, but strong and vigorous man that asked him of this companion of his youth was that very "scapegrace" himself transformed, and with age held back from him by a miracle.

And there came a day, too, when a sweet-voiced, silver-haired old lady, with her grandchildren playing about her, told these two strangers from Africa how her lover of long ago had gone there to win her a fortune, and had never returned, and how she had waited ten long years for him, till all hope of him had fled, before she married; and how even now she held his memory in dear regard.

How astonished and delighted she had been at the blazing diamond I had given her, in memory of that old adventurer, of whom we said we had heard in far-off Africa; and how I feared as she looked in my eyes, that she would know. For as she gazed tearfully at me, and stammered her protests and thanks for she was poor, and it meant wealth to her I saw her eyes widen as they looked into my own, and she stammered: "You! . . . who are you? . . . You have his very eyes, are you his son?"

Almost was I tempted to tell her all, but the Consul's warning glance stayed me; and why, indeed, should I change her sweet memory of me as I had been, into the horror and dismay she must feel if she knew all?

And so I left her happy, and she blessed me as I went; blessed me as a mother might do for indeed I was apparently young enough to be her son and to her amongst all the women of my own land my disfigurements were as nothing, for she was of those wise and sweet beings that see deeper than the surface.

And then I came back, for I was as a lost man there in the rush and worry of a civilization I knew nothing of moreover, never could I rest, for the eyes of that other being were haunting me and calling me . . . calling me. . . . Well she had known spirit, woman, witch, or what she may have been that once I had looked in her eyes I might forget all else, but her I should forget never.

And so I have sought for years . . . and I cannot find the path.

Again and again I have tried from all sides. West, where Inyati led me, the dunes have altered; storm after storm has swept them till many of the pans are filled and covered, and others laid bare; and from the south it is the same.

Eastward I have tried in vain, for Khama's men are jealous guardians of the desert border there, and twice I have been turned back, in spite of my gold.

From the north and through it I must have found a path back I have struggled long, and there fever has killed my men, and pathless forests have kept me back.

There I left Gerard in a lonely grave; for after he knew that my story had been true nothing could keep him from joining me. Life in Loanda was far too tame, with such an adventure in hand. "Hang the diamonds," he had said, "I've money enough for my simple needs. But those berries they are what I want, for I am getting old, and would be young again. And this woman you dream and rave of perhaps I would see her too!"

Poor friend, he lies there in the thick forest where the fever took him he had not my strength.

And now I go again this time alone. I have searched these dunes till but one path remains untried on that path I now travel. And this time I shall not strive in vain, and again I shall look into those eyes that I have worshipped so long.

And then? Who knows? I am no trembling fugitive now, but one who fears not to measure strength with the immortals if needs be. ... If she be that, I fear nothing . . . and I shall find the way. Seek not to follow me, my friend of the wilderness . . . for I leave no spoor. . . . This time I shall find the path.

It was nearly morning when he finished his weird tale; the waning moon had risen, and threw a faint light over the limitless void of the desert.

The fire was dying down, and I turned to replenish it; for lions were numerous in the vicinity. And as I turned back, I saw this strange acquaintance of mine for the last time. He stood about twenty yards away, his arms outstretched towards the desert as though in supplication; a motionless and striking figure in spite of his deformity.

"I'm going to turn in," I called; but he neither moved nor answered, and when I looked again he had gone.

"He will be back directly," I thought, and curling myself up on my blanket I fell asleep immediately.

All too soon my boys called me, and waking, I found that my guest had gone.

"Which way?" I asked Jantje.

"Nie, baas; ek wiet nie," he said, shaking his head.

"Kambala," said I, impatiently, to the other man; "has the ou baas gone?"

"Ee-wah t In-koos," he answered in the affirmative; "but where I know not. Ask thou, master, these Bushmen, they know!"

There were two Bushmen in the camp, who had turned up but the day before and I made Kambala bring the small, pot-bellied men to where I sat. I knew their "talk."

"The baas with the scarred face," I said; "whither went he?"

"No! no!" they answered in their clicking tongue, "we know not! Who knows? Not we 'Khoi Khoian.'"

"Ye are no 'Khoi Khoian' (Hottentots, as Bushmen often like to style themselves), but San (Bushmen), and of these parts. Therefore, answer me where is he, that scarred one?"

They squatted on their haunches before me, looking at me furtively from their little slits of eyes, muttering to each other afraid.

"Master, we fear," they said reluctantly. "He is a great witch, that 'old one' we know him well. Often does he cross the dunes where even we dare not go where no man goes!"

"Seek him," I ordered.

"No! no!" they said again, "he leaves no spoor and we fear. It is not well to follow that 'old one'!"

And search as I could, no spoor did I find.

But what I did find, there on my blanket beside my pillow, was a big, blue, uncut diamond, together with a scrap of paper bearing the one word "Farewell."

THE SALTING OF THE GREAT NORTH-EASTERN FIELDS

THE SALTING OF THE GREAT NORTH-EASTERN FIELDS