Allan and the Ice Gods (40 page)

“That we may learn presently,” answered Pag.

Then he threw himself down on the ice and shut his eyes like one who

wishes to sleep.

Thus the vision ended.

I, Allan Quatermain, woke up, to notice that, as on the previous

occasion when Lady Ragnall and I took the
Taduki
together, my trance

must have been brief. Although I had forgotten to look at the time, as

it chanced, I could measure its duration by another method. The

Taduki
herb, as I knew, soon burned itself away, yet, when I awoke,

the last little vapour, so thin and faint that it could scarcely be

discerned, was rising from its embers.

Good gracious! I thought to myself, how could all those things have

happened in that unknown land and age in much less time than it takes

the stump of a cigarette to die.

Then I remembered Good, for, although my head seemed rather heavy at

first, my brain was clear enough, and looked at him, not without

alarm, or rather anxiety, for if anything had happened to Good what

would my position be?

There he was in his armchair, his head lying back, staring at me with

his eyes half-opened, much as a cat does sometimes when it is

pretending to be asleep, but is really very wide awake indeed. Also he

resembled something else, a man who was drunk, an effect that was

heightened presently by his trying to speak and producing only

prolonged stutterings and a word that sounded like “whisky.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “It is far too soon to drink. Alcohol and

Taduki
might not agree.”

Then Good said a word that he should have left unsaid, sat up, shook

himself, and remarked:

“I say, Wi—for you are Wi, aren’t you?—how in the name of the Holy

Roman Empire—or of the Ice-gods and the Sleeper—did I get out of

that canoe, and where’s Laleela?”

“Before I answer your questions, which seem absurd, might I ask you,

Good, what you considered your name to be when you were in the canoe

of which you speak?”

“Name? Why, Moananga, of course. Dash it all! Wi, you haven’t

forgotten your own brother, have you, who stuck to you through thick

and thin—well, like a brother in a book.”

“Then if you were Moananga, why do you not ask after Tana instead of

Laleela?”

“I wonder,” said Good reflectively. “I suppose it was because she was

out of the picture just then, lying at the bottom of the canoe

overcome with the horrors, or seasickness, or something, you know,

with that dear boy, Foh, sitting on her. Also, you needn’t be jealous,

old chap, for, although I did try to cut in when you were doing the

pious over that tomfool oath of yours and the rest of it, it wasn’t

the slightest use. She just smiled me out of court, so to speak, and

like you, made remarks about Tana. But where’s Laleela? You haven’t

hidden her away anywhere, have you?” and he stared round the room in a

foolish fashion.

“That’s just what I want to know,” I answered. “Indeed, to tell you

the truth, I never remember wanting to know anything quite so much in

all my life.”

“Then I can’t tell you. The last I saw of her, she was in the canoe,

trying to get the head of the crazy thing round with a paddle—which I

didn’t know how to do.”

“Look here, Good,” I said. “This is a serious matter, so pull yourself

together and tell me exactly what you remember just before you woke.”

“Only this. The canoe was bobbing about, being carried shoreward down

that infernal tide race or current between the two banks of ice, at, I

should say, not less than eight or nine knots. Moreover, it was

rocking because that fiddle-headed dwarf, Pag, nearly overset it when

he jumped out like a seal from a rock and began to swim toward the ice

bank we had left, because he thought we were all going to be drowned,

I suppose. So there remained only Aaka, Laleela, Tana, Foh, and

myself. Laleela, as I have told you, was trying to get the craft

round, Tana was wailing and sobbing, that plucky lad Foh was quite

still—I can see his white face and big eyes now, and Aaka, sitting in

the bottom of the canoe, gripping the thwarts with both her

outstretched hands but still looking very dignified, was making

unpleasant remarks to Laleela as to her having murdered you, Wi,

Aaka’s husband and her lover, or something of the sort, to which

Laleela returned no answer. Then, just as I was shoving away a cake of

floating ice which cut my hand, everything went out like a candle, and

here I am. For heaven’s sake, tell me, where is Laleela?”

“I am afraid, old fellow, we shall ask ourselves that question for the

rest of our days yet never learn the answer,” I replied solemnly.

“Listen, I saw a little more than you did. Pag reached the ice bank

and I pulled him to my side. He said that he had jumped out of the

canoe because it was too full and there were too many women in it for

his liking. But what the dear chap really meant was that he preferred

to return to die with me.”

“Good old Pag!” ejaculated Moananga—I mean, Good.

“After that,” I went on, “the canoe ran into the spindrift which the

wind lashed up, and the sea fog–-”

“Always get it with thawing ice,” interrupted Good. “Once nearly lost

in it myself off the coast of Newfoundland.”

“—and for a moment Pag and I lost sight of it. It reappeared between

two billows of fog a hundred yards or more away, and then—well, then

we saw a tall woman spring suddenly from the canoe into the sea. But,

as you will remember, both Aaka and Laleela were tall, exactly of a

height indeed, and neither of us could tell which of them it was that

the sea took. Next instant the mist closed in again.”

“Did you see the woman rise up in the canoe? Aaka was sitting down,

you remember.”

“No, we only saw the spring.”

“That sounds like Laleela,” said Good, “for she was standing. And yet

I do not think it can have been, for she was doing all she knew to try

to bring the craft round, thinking to creep back to fetch you by the

edge of the ice where the current did not run so fiercely. The last

thing she said was to call to me to get out the other paddle and help.

Indeed, I had it in my hand but, being a landlubber, hardly knew how

to use it.”

“I don’t think Laleela could have done such a thing, Good. Suicide was

against her principles. Indeed, she reproached me upon that very

matter. Also, her own country was just ahead of her, and she would

wish to reach it, if only to make sure that Foh and Aaka—yes, Aaka—

met with a good reception. Yet who knows?”

“Aaka had a very bitter tongue,” remarked Good. “Also, by then,

Laleela saw that we could never get back against that race, and she

was mad with grief; so, as you say—who knows?” and he groaned, while

I—well, never mind what I did.

For a time there was silence between us, a very depressing silence,

because both of us were overcome. It was broken by Good asking humbly

enough if I thought he might have some whisky now.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care, but for my part I mean to risk it,” I

said, and going to the side table I helped myself freely, as did Good,

only more so.

Teetotallers may say what they like, but alcohol in moderation often

is a friend in trouble. So, at least, we found, for, as we put that

whisky down, our spirits rose considerably.

“Look here!” said Good presently while he lit his pipe and I occupied

myself in hiding away that confounded
Taduki
outfit, which I both

hated and blessed. I hated it because it seemed to be possessed by an

imp which, like a will-‘o-the-wisp, led one on and on to the edge of

some great denouement, and then, in the very moment of crisis,

vanished away, leaving one floundering in a bog of doubt and wonder. I

blessed it because these dreams it gave were, to me at any rate, so

very suggestive and interesting.

“Look here!” repeated Good. “You are a clever old boy in your way, and

one who thinks a lot. So be kind enough to tell me what all this

business means. Do you suggest that you and I have been reading some

chapters out of a former existence of our own?”

“I suggest nothing,” I answered sharply; “the thing is beyond me. But

if you want to know, I don’t much believe in the former existence

solution. Does it not occur to you that we must all of us, perhaps

fifty thousand, perhaps five hundred thousand years ago, have had just

such ancestors as Wi and the rest of them? And is it not possible that

this drug may have the power of awakening the ancestral memory which

has come down to us with our spark of life through scores of

intervening forefathers?”

“Yes, that’s right enough. And yet, Allan, in a way, the thing is too

perfect. Remember that we understood and used the language of those

prehistoric beachcombers, although we have forgotten every word of it

now—or at least I have. Remember that we saw, not only our own

careers, but those of other people with whose ancestral memories we

have nothing to do; moreover, that some of those people reminded us,

or at any rate me, of folk whom I have known in this life; just as

though the whole lot of us had reappeared together.”

“That’s the very point, Good. Men are queer bundles of mystery. For

the most part, they seem quite commonplace, what might be called

matter-of-fact, yet I believe that inside there are few who are not

stuffed with imagination, as our dreams show us. Supposing that we are

dealing with our own ancestral pasts; if that be so, we could quite

well invent the rest, using the staff that lies to our hands, namely

our knowledge of others with whom we have been intimate in life. These

would be the foundation upon which the dreams were built up, the bits

of glass that make the pattern in the kaleidoscope.”

“If so, all I have to say is that your kaleidoscope is an uncommonly

clever machine, because anything more natural than those dirty people

upon the beach I never knew, Allan. Still, one thing seems to support

your argument. Wi, the great hunter of the tribe, who by birth and

surroundings was a most elementary savage, showed himself much in

advance of his age. He made laws; he thought about the good of others;

he resisted his perfectly natural inclinations; he adopted a higher

religion when it was brought to his knowledge; he was patient under

provocation; he offered himself up as a sacrifice to the gods in whom

he no longer believed, because his people believed in them and he

thought that his voluntary death would act as a kind of faith cure

among them, which is one of the noblest deeds I have ever heard of

among men. Lastly, when he saw that a confounded hollowed-out log,

which by courtesy may be called a canoe or a boat, was overcrowded and

likely to sink in a kind of ice-packed mill race, he thrust it out

into the stream and himself remained behind to die, although it

contained all that he cared about—his wife, another woman who loved

him, his son, and perhaps, I may add, his brother. I say that the man

who did these things, not to mention others, was a hero and a

Christian martyr rolled into one, with something of the saint and

Solon, who I believe was the first recorded lawgiver, thrown in. Now,

I ask you, Allan, could such a person by any possibility have existed

in paleolithic or pre-paleolithic times at that period of the world’s

history when one of the ice ages was beginning? Also the same question

may be asked of Laleela.”

“You must remember,” I answered, “that Wi was not such a hero as you

suppose. He offered to sacrifice himself chiefly in order to save his

family, or one of them, just as most men would do in like

circumstances. As regards Laleela, she and everything about her were

mysterious—her origin, her noble patience, and especially her self-control. But it is quite obvious that she belonged to another stratum

of civilization, I presume that which we call neolithic, since she

told me—I mean Wi—that her people grew crops; kept cows, with other

domestic animals; had some advanced form of religion with a divinity

that was symbolized by the moon; and so forth. Well, there is nothing

strange about all this, since now we know that in prehistoric days

races in very different stages of advancement existed in the world at

the same time. It is quite possible that Wi and his company lived in

their paleolithic simplicity, let us say somewhere in Scotland (those

red-headed wanderers who descended upon them suggest Scotland), while

Laleela and her people existed perhaps in the south of Ireland or in

France, where the climate was much warmer and the ice did not come.”

“Probably; Wi and Co. might have lived anywhere in a cold district and

gone to any warmer shore—perhaps one washed by the Gulf Stream,”

answered Good. “At any rate, one thing is obvious. If there is

anything in this dream of ours, it tells of a tragedy that must often

have happened in the world. I mean, the coming of an ice age.”

“Yes,” I said. “All about the northern shores there must have been