Chapter 23

THE TRANSFORMATION BEGINS

When Ridgeway opened his eyes, the sunlight was pouring in upon him through the doorway. He looked at his watch, and was surprised to find that it was nearly eleven o'clock. Lady Tennys still slept on her couch of skins; the torches had burned to the ground; the grim idol leered malignantly upon the intruders, and the dream that he had experienced during the night was rudely dispelled. His eyes strayed again to the black, glossy, confused hair of the sleeper in the far corner, and a feeling of ineffable pity for her became companion to the sad wrenches that had grown from the misery of his own unhappiness.

She was sleeping on her side, her face from him, her right arm beneath her head, the dainty jewelled hand lying limply upon the spotted leopard skin. The beautifully moulded figure, slight yet perfect, swelling to the well-turned hip, tapering to the tip of the trim shoe which protruded from beneath the rumpled skirt, affording a tiny glimpse of a tempting ankle, was to him a most pathetic picture. As he was about to turn to the door, she awakened with a start and a faint cry. Sitting half erect, she gave a terrified, bewildered glance about her, her eyes at last falling upon him.

"Are you really here?" she cried, joy rushing to her eyes. "I dreamed that you had fled and left me to be cut to pieces by the savages."

"Dreams go by contraries, and I am, therefore, a very brave man. But come, it is eleven o'clock. Let us see what this place looks like in the sunlight."

Together they went to the wide entrance. A surprise awaited them in their first view of the village by day. Along the base of the circular range of hills stretched the email homes of the inhabitants, but, search as they would, they could discover no signs of life. There was not a human form in sight.

"What the dev--dickens does this mean?" exclaimed he.

"It seemed as if there were thousands of them here last night," she cried.

"Maybe we have lost our worshippers. I wonder if we are to be the sole possessors of this jungle metropolis?"

A mile away they could distinguish the banks of the river, running toward the great stone gateway of this perfect Eden. The plain between the hills and the river was like a green, annular piece of velvet, not over a mile in diameter, skirted on all sides by tree-covered highlands. The river ran directly through the centre of the basin, coming from the forest land to their right.

In some trepidation they walked to the corner of the temple and surveyed the hillside. Rising steeply from the low ground ran the green slope, at the top of which grew huge trees. The village lay at the base of the hills and was over a mile long, a perfect semi-circle of strange little huts, stretched out in a single line, with the temple as its central point.

"There is the beginning of our underground stream," exclaimed he, pointing up the elevation. A fierce little stream came plunging from the very heart of the mound, half way to the summit, tearing eagerly to the bottom, where it disappeared in the ground.

Suddenly the sound of distant shouting--or chanting, to be explicit--and the beating of drums came to their ears. They searched the hills and valley with alarm and dread in their eyes, but there was no sign of humanity. For many minutes the chanting continued, growing louder in volume as it drew nearer. At last Lady Tennys uttered an exclamation and pointed toward an opening in the ridge far to the left of the village. A string of natives came winding slowly, solemnly from this cleft--men, women and children apparently without end.

The white people stood like statues in the doorway, watching the approach of the brown figures. There were fully two thousand in that singular procession, at the head of which strode the big chief, with perhaps fifty native women at his heels.

"His multiplied wife," observed Hugh sententiously.

"Do you think all of them are his wives?" said she, doubtingly.

"It seems to be a heathen's choice to punish himself on earth and avoid it in the hereafter."

Behind the women came five men wearing long white robes and carrying unusually long spears. They were followed by the rabble. At length the weird cavalcade, marching straight across the plain, came to a halt not more than a hundred feet from the entrance to the temple. The chief advanced a few steps, pausing at the edge of a bare, white spot of ground some ten feet square. Then, after a most reverential bow, he tossed a small reddish chunk of wood into the white square. No sooner had the leader deposited his piece of wood than forward came the women, the white-robed men, and then the rag-tag of the population, each person tossing a piece upon the rapidly growing heap. In silent amusement, Ridgeway and Lady Tennys watched this strange ceremony.

"They've been visiting somebody's woodpile," speculated Hugh.

"Perhaps they intend to roast us alive," ventured she.

The small army fell back from the pile of wood, the chief maintaining a position several feet to the fore, a lad behind him bearing a lighted torch. After many signs and presumably devout antics, one of the spearmen took the torch and lighted this contribution from a combined populace. As the thin column of smoke arose on the still, hot air, the vast crowd fell to the ground as one person, arising almost instantly to begin the wildest, most uncanny dance that mortal ever saw. The smoke and flames grew, the dry wood crackled, the spearmen poked it with their long weapons, and the vast brown audience went into a perfect frenzy of fervor.

Not until the pile was reduced to ashes did the smoke dance cease. The spearmen retired, and the big chief came forward with a tread so ludicrously grand that they could scarce refrain from laughter. He carried two short staffs in his hands, the heads of which were nothing less than the skulls of infants. To the disgust of the white people the chief presented to each of them a shudder-inspiring wand. Afterward they learned that the skull-tipped staffs signified death to all who opposed their way. They also learned that the red bits of wood that had gone up in the flame were stained by the blood of a half dozen prisoners of war, executed the night before as a sacrifice to the new gods.

The new monarchs accepted the sceptres gingerly and the wildest glee broke loose in the waiting throng. While they danced and shouted, Hugh inwardly cursed the ostentation that was delaying breakfast.

Impatiently he made the chief understand what was wanted, and that worthy proved an excellent substitute for the genii. He rushed over and bawled a few commands, and a dozen women and men sped away like the wind. A few moments later the chief entered the temple and found Ridgeway calmly measuring off the ground for the partitions that were to transform one room into three.

So apt was the white man at sign making and so apt was the brown man at understanding that before an hour had passed a dozen strong fellows were at work, carrying out the designs of the new idol, the morning meal having been disposed of in the meantime. Using the same kind of material that comprised the outer walls, a partition was constructed lengthwise through the centre of the temple. The front half was left as a reception hall and living room and the rear half was divided into two apartments, each fifteen feet square. They were to serve as sleeping rooms. These ruthless improvements made it necessary to remove the great stone idol from his pedestal.

"Chuck him out into the backyard," said Hugh. That evening the poor old image, as disgusted as a piece of rock could possibly be, was carried to the river and tossed into the rapids, his successors standing with the multitude on the high bank to witness his disappearance and to hear his unhappy kerplunk! The waters closed over his unhallowed head and the new dispensation began. Back across the little plain to the torch-lit village swarmed the fickle, joyous savages.

"Good Lord," observed Hugh, "what a ferocious crowd it is! They tear their enemies to pieces and yet we have them under our thumbs--for the present at least."

"I believe they are naturally intelligent, and I'm sure we can help them. Do you know what those white robes are made from?"

"Certainly. Cotton."

"It is woven grass. They bleach it. The women do the work down by the river, and the robes worn by their spearmen are really beautiful pieces of fabric."

"I am going to leave my measure for a pair of white grass trousers," said Hugh lightly, "and an umbrella," he added, looking up at the broiling sky.

Together the white usurpers planned many important improvements against the probability of a long stay among the savages. A wonderful system of sewerage was designed--and afterward carried out faithfully. A huge bath pool was to be sunk for Lady Tennys in the rear of her apartment; a kitchen and cold-storage cellar were to grow off the west end of the temple and a splendid awning was to be ordered for the front porch! Time and patience were to give them all of these changes. Time was of less consequence than patience, it may be well to add. The slaving retinue was willing but ignorant.

The adoring chief gave Tennys a group of ten handmaidens before the day was over, and Hugh had a constant body guard of twenty stalwarts--which he prosaically turned into carpenters, stone-masons, errand boys and hunters.

"You must not try to civilize them in a day," she smilingly protested when he became particularly enthusiastic.

"Well, just see what we have done to-day," he cried. "How can you account for the enforced abdication of old Uncle Rocksy, the transformation of his palace into a commodious, three-room lodging-house, and all such things, unless you admit that we are here to do as we please? We'll make a metropolitan place out of this hamlet in a year if we--"

"A year! Oh, don't suggest such a possibility," she cried. "I'd die if I thought we were to be here for a year."

"I hope we won't, but we may as well look the situation straight in the face. There has been no white man here before us. It is by the rarest chance in the world that we are here. Therefore, it may be years before we are found and taken away from this undiscovered paradise."

The flickering, fitful light of the torches stuck in the ground behind them played upon two white faces from which had fled the zeal and fervor of the moment before, leaving then drawn and dispirited.

"All our lives, perhaps," she murmured.

"With these savages as our only companions, worse than death a thousand times," he groaned, starting to his feet with the vehemence of new despair. "Could anything be worse than the existence that lies before us?"

"Yes," she cried, arising, throwing back her shoulders and arms, lifting her face and breathing long draughts of the cool, pure air. "Yes! The existence that lies behind is worse than the one ahead. No life can be worse than the one from which I have escaped. Welcome, eternal solitude! Farewell, ambition, heart-pangs and the vain mockery of womanhood! To be free is heaven, no matter what the cost, Hugh."

"Do you mean that you would rather live here forever than go back to the old life?"

"If I must stay here to be free, I am willing to live in this miserable village to the very end, rejoicing and not complaining."

"I never associated you with real unhappiness until you uttered that last sentence."

"I should not be selfish, though," she said quickly. "You are so unhappy, you have lost so much. We are to be alone here in this land, Hugh, you and I, forever. I will prove to you that I am more than the frail, helpless woman that circumstances may seem to have shaped me, and you shall have from me all the aid and encouragement that a good, true woman can give. Sometimes I shall be despondent and regretful,--I can't help it, I suppose--but I shall try with you to make the wilderness cheerful. Who knows but that we may be found by explorers within a month. Let us talk about our new subjects out there on the plain. How many of them are there in this village?"

She won him from the despondency into which he was sinking, and, be it said to her credit, she did not allow him to feel from that time forth that she was aught but brave, confident and sustaining. She was a weak woman, and she knew that if once the strong man succumbed to despair she was utterly helpless.