Across the Zodiac (35 page)

I could not, however, conceal from Eveena that I was about to leave
her for an adventure which could not but seem to her foolhardy and
motiveless. She was more than terrified when she understood that I
really intended to join the professional hunters in an enterprise
which, even on their part, is regarded by their countrymen with a
mixture of admiration and contempt, as one wherein only the hope of
large remuneration would induce any sensible man to share; and which,
from my utter ignorance of its conditions, must be obviously still
more dangerous to me. The confidence she was slowly learning from what
seemed to her extravagant indulgence, to me simply the consideration
due to a rational being, wife or comrade, slave or free, first found
expression in the freedom of her loving though provoking
expostulations.

"You must be tired of me," she said at last, "if you are so ready to
run the risk of parting out of mere curiosity."

"Sheer petulance!" I answered. "You know well that you are dearer to
me every day as I learn to understand you better; but a man cannot
afford to play the coward because marriage has given new value to
life. And you might remember that I have threefold the strength which
emboldens your hunters to incur all the dangers that seem to your
fancy so terrible."

That no shade of mere cowardice or feminine affectation influenced her
remonstrance was evident from her next words.

"Well, then, if you will go, however improper and outrageous the thing
may be, let me go with you. I cannot bear to wait alone, fancying at
every moment what may be happening to you, and fearing to see them
carry you back wounded or killed."

Touched by the unselfishness of her terror, and feeling that there was
some truth in her representation of the state of mind in which she
would spend the hours of my absence, I tried to quiet her by caresses
and soft words. But these she received as symptoms of yielding on my
part; and her persistence brought upon her at last the resolute and
somewhat sharp rebuke with which men think it natural and right to
repress the excesses of feminine fear.

"This is nonsense, Eveena. You cannot accompany me; and, if you could,
your presence would multiply tenfold the danger to me, and utterly
unnerve me if any real difficulty should call for presence of mind.
You must be content to leave me in the hands of Providence, and allow
me to judge what becomes a man, and what results are worth the risks
they may involve. I hear Ergimo's step on deck, and I must go and
learn from him what arrangements he has been able to make for
to-morrow."

My escort had found no difficulty in providing for the fulfilment of
both my wishes. We were to beat the forests which covered the southern
seabord in the neighbourhood, driving our game out upon the open
ground, where alone we should have a chance of securing it. By noon we
might hope to have seen enough of this sport, and to find ourselves at
no great distance from that part of the inland sea where a yet more
exciting chase was to employ the rest of the day. Failing to bring
both adventures within the sixteen hours of light which at this season
and in this latitude we should enjoy, we were to bivouac for the night
on the northern sea-coast and pursue our aquatic game in the morning
of the morrow, returning before dark to our vessel.

Ergimo, however, was more of Eveena's mind than of mine. "I have
complied," he said, "with your wishes, as the Camptâ ordered me to do.
But I am equally bound, by his orders and by my duty, to tell you that
in my opinion you are running risks altogether out of proportion to
any object our adventure can serve. Scarcely any of the creatures we
shall hunt are other than very formidable. Eyen the therne, with the
spikes on its fore-limbs, can inflict painful if not dangerous wounds,
and its bite is said to be not unfrequently venomous. You are not used
to our methods of hunting, to the management of the
caldecta
, or to
the use of our weapons. I can conceive no reason why you should incur
what is at any rate a considerable chance, not merely of death, but of
defeating the whole purpose of your extraordinary journey, simply to
do or to see the work on which we peril only the least valuable lives
among us."

I was about to answer him even more decidedly than I had replied to
Eveena, when a pressure on my arm drew my eyes in the other direction;
and, to my extreme mortification, I perceived that Eveena herself, in
all-absorbing eagerness to learn the opinion of an intelligent and
experienced hunter, had stolen on deck and had heard all that had
passed. I was too much vexed to make any other reply to Ergimo's
argument than the single word, "I shall go." Really angry with her for
the first and last time, but not choosing to express my displeasure in
the presence of a third person, I hurried Eveena down the ladder into
our cabin.

"Tell me," I said, "what, according to your own rules of feminine
reserve and obedience, you deserve? What would one of your people say
to a wife who followed him without leave into the company of a
stranger, to listen to that which she knew she was not meant to hear?"

She answered by throwing off her veil and head-dress, and standing up
silent before me.

"Answer me, child," I repeated, more than half appeased by the mute
appeal of her half-raised eyes and submissive attitude. "I know you
will not tell me that you have not broken all the restraints of your
own laws and customs. What would your father, for instance, say to
such an escapade?"

She was silent, till the touch of my hand, contradicting perhaps the
harshness of my words, encouraged her to lift her eyes, full of tears,
to mine.

"Nothing," was her very unexpected reply.

"Nothing?" I rejoined. "If you can tell me that you have not done
wrong, I shall be sorry to have reproved you so sharply."

"I shall tell you no such lie!" she answered almost indignantly. "You
asked what would be
said
."

I was fairly at a loss. The figure which Martial grammarians call "the
suppressed alternative" is a great favourite, and derives peculiar
force from the varied emphasis their syntax allows. But, resolved not
to understand a meaning much more distinctly conveyed in her words
than in my translation, I replied, "
I
shall say nothing then,
except—don't do it again;" and I extricated myself promptly if
ignominiously from the dilemma, by leaving the cabin and closing the
door, so sharply and decidedly as to convey a distinct intimation that
it was not again to be opened.

We breakfasted earlier than usual. My gentle bride had been subdued
into a silence, not sullen, but so sad that when her wistful eyes
followed my every movement as I prepared to start, I could willingly,
to bring back their brightness, have renounced the promise of the day.
But this must not be; and turning to take leave on the threshold, I
said—

"Be sure I shall come to no harm; and if I did, the worst pang of
death would be the memory of the first sharp words I have spoken to
you, and which, I confess, were an ill return for the inconvenient
expression of your affectionate anxiety."

"Do not speak so," she half whispered. "I deserved any mark of your
displeasure; I only wish I could persuade you that the sharpest sting
lies in the lips we love. Do remember, since you would not let me run
the slightest risk of harm, that if you come to hurt you will have
killed me."

"Rest assured I shall come to no serious ill. I hope this evening to
laugh with you at your alarms; and so long as you do not see me either
in the flesh or in the spirit, you may know that I am safe. I
could
not
leave you for ever without meeting you again."

This speech, which I should have ventured in no other presence, would
hardly have established my lunacy more decisively in Martial eyes than
in those of Terrestrial common sense. It conveyed, however, a real if
not sufficient consolation to Eveena; the idea it implied being not
wholly unfamiliar to a daughter of the Star. I was surprised that,
almost shrinking from my last embrace, Eveena suddenly dropped her
veil around her; till, turning, I saw that Ergimo was standing at the
top of the ladder leading to the deck, and just in sight.

"I will send word," he said, addressing himself to me, but speaking
for her ears, "of your safety at noon and at night. So far as my
utmost efforts can ensure it you will be safe; an obligation higher,
and enforced by sanctions graver, than even the Camptâ's command
forbids me to lead a
brother
into peril, and fail to bring him out
of it."

The significant word was spoken in so low a tone that it could not
possibly reach the ears of our companions of the chase, who had
mustered on shore within a few feet of the vessel. But Eveena
evidently caught both the sound and the meaning, and I was glad that
they should convey to her a confidence which seemed to myself no
better founded than her alarms. To me its only value lay in the
friendly relation it established with one I had begun greatly to like.
I relied on my own strength and nerve for all that human exertion
could do in such peril as we might encounter; and, in a case in which
these might fail me, I doubted whether even the one tie that has
binding force on Mars would avail me much.

Immediately outside the town were waiting, saddled but not bridled,
some score of the extraordinary riding-birds Eveena had described. The
seat of the rider is on the back, between the wings; but the saddle
consists only of a sort of girth immediately in front, to which a pair
of stirrups, resembling that of a lady's side-saddle, were attached.
The creature that was to carry my unusual weight was the most powerful
of all, but I felt some doubt whether even his strength might not
break down. One of the hunters had charge of a carriage on which was
fixed a cage containing two dozen birds of a dark greenish grey, about
the size of a crow, and with the slender form, piercing eyes, and
powerful beak of the falcon. They were not intended, however, to
strike the prey, but simply to do the part of dogs in tracing out the
game, and driving it from the woods into the open ground. Our birds,
rising at once into the air, carried us some fifty feet above the tops
of the trees. Here the chief huntsman took the guidance of the party,
keeping in front of the line in which we were ranged, and watching
through a pair of what might be called spectacles, save that a very
short tube with double lenses was substituted for the single glass,
the movement of the hawks, which had been released in the wood below
us. These at first dispersed in every direction, extending at
intervals from end to end of a line some three miles in length, and
moving slowly forwards, followed by the hunters. A sharp call from one
bird on the left gathered the rest around him, and in a few moments
the rustling and rushing of an invisible flock through the glades of
the forest apprised us that we had started, though we could not see,
the prey. Ergimo, who kept close beside me, and who had often
witnessed the sport before, kept me informed of what was proceeding
underneath us, of which I could see but little. Glimpses here and
there showed that we were pursuing a numerous flock of large
white-plumed or white-haired creatures, standing at most some four
feet in height; but what they were, even whether birds or quadrupeds,
their movements left me in absolute uncertainty. Worried and
frightened by the falcons, which, however, never ventured to close
upon them, they were gradually driven in the direction intended by the
huntsman towards the open plain, which bordered the forest at a
distance of about six miles to the northward. In half-an-hour after
the "find," the leader of the flock broke out of the wood two or three
hundred yards ahead of us, and was closely followed by his companions.
I then recognised in the objects of the chase the strange
thernee
described by Eveena, whose long soft down furnished the cloak she wore
on our visit to the Astronaut. Their general form, and especially the
length and graceful curve of the neck, led one instinctively to regard
them as birds; but the fore-limbs, drawn up as they ran, but now and
then outstretched with a sweep to strike at a falcon that ventured
imprudently near, had, in the distance, much more resemblance to the
arm of a baboon than to the limb of any other creature, and bore no
likeness whatever to the wing even of the bat. The object of the
hunters was not to strike these creatures from a distance, but to run
them down and capture them by sheer exhaustion. This the great
wing-power of the
caldectaa
enabled us to do, though by the time we
had driven the thernee to bay my own Pegasus was fairly tired. The
hunters, separating and spreading out in the form of a semicircle,
assisted the movements of the hawks, driving the prey gradually into a
narrow defile among the hills bordering the plain to the
north-eastward, whose steep upward slope greatly hindered and fatigued
creatures whose natural habitat consists of level plains or seabord
forests. At last, under a steep half-precipitous rock which defended
them in rear, and between clumps of trees which guarded either
flank—protected by both overhead—the flock, at the call of their
leader, took up a position which displayed an instinctive strategy,
whereof an Indian or African chief might have been proud. The
caldectaa
, however, well knew the vast superiority of their own
strength and of their formidable beaks, and did not hesitate to carry
us close to but somewhat above the thernee, as these stood ranged in
line with extended fore-limbs and snouts; the latter armed with teeth
about an inch and a half in length tapering singly to a sharp point,
the former with spikes stronger, longer, and sharper than those of the
porcupine; but, as I satisfied myself by a subsequent inspection,
formed by rudimentary, or, more properly speaking, transformed or
degenerated quills. The bite was easily avoided. It was not so easy to
keep out of reach of the powerful fore-limb while endeavouring to
strike a fatal blow at the neck with the long rapier-like cutting
weapons carried by the hunters. My own shorter and sharp sword, to
which I had trusted, preferring a familiar weapon to one, however
suitable, to which I was not accustomed, left me no choice but to
abandon the hope of active participation in the slaughter, or to
venture dangerously near. Choosing the latter alternative, I received
from the arm of the thernee I had singled out a blow which, caught
upon my sword, very nearly smote it from my hand, and certainly would
have disarmed at once any of my weaker companions. As it was, the
stroke maimed the limb that delivered it; but with its remaining arm
the creature maintained a fight so stubborn that, had both been
available, the issue could not have been in my favour. This conflict
reminded me singularly of an encounter with the mounted swordsmen of
Scindiah and the Peishwah; all my experience of sword-play being
called into use, and my brute opponent using its natural weapon with
an instinctive skill not unworthy of comparison with that of a trained
horse-soldier; at the same time that it constantly endeavoured to
seize with its formidable snout either my own arm or the wing or body
of the caldecta, which, however, was very well able to take care of
itself. In fact, the prey was secured at last not by my sword but by a
blow from the caldecta's beak, which pierced and paralysed the slender
neck of our antagonist. Some twenty thernee formed the booty of a
chase certainly novel, and possessing perhaps as many elements of
peril and excitement as that finest of Earthly sports which the
affected cynicism of Anglo-Indian speech degrades by the name of
"pig-sticking."