Appleby on Ararat (8 page)

Appleby shivered – not because of the sinister possibilities on the fringe of his mind, but simply because at sundown it grew suddenly cold. Commonly they lit a great fire. He stepped into the glade and persuaded himself that he was concentrating his mind on whether one should be lit tonight. He was conscious of moving as in a shallow well of faint and diffused light around which were dark walls of jungle. He passed the little palisade of brush and palm-leaves that was Diana’s sleeping-quarters, passed a similar structure of Miss Curricle’s – and stopped. Before him now was a contrivance of Glover’s in course of construction, a sort of wash-place composed of stones and clay. It was not entirely a success, for in places the clay remained obstinately damp. And at one of these places he was looking now, his eye held by something just evident in the failing light. What he saw was a single footprint in the damp clay – the single print of five toes and the ball of a foot. He stared at it, patently astounded and obscurely disturbed. Man Friday had appeared, and in a great hurry at that. He knelt down with sudden minute interest in the thing; rose with an air of something like conviction. He stood still, trying to weigh chances as they might be interpreted on the evidence of half-forgotten books. Then he went over to the fireplace and knelt down once more, vulnerable as in a dream, and blew on the embers. There was kindling-wood to hand and within a few minutes the fire flared as usual. He fell to preparing what Glover called dinner and Diana tea. It occurred to him to whistle and he whistled an approximation to the overture of
Figaro
, stuff strictly musical but related nevertheless to the common emotion of joy. And now night had really fallen.

There was Diana’s pigeon of the morning – Diana’s and the black man’s pigeon – to bake in a shell of clay. The black man had been black; perhaps there was something in that. Moreover he had possessed certain specific curiosities; perhaps there was something in that too. Appleby stiffened at a sound from the darkness. He relaxed; it was a clumsy sound. He smiled into the fire as there became audible the tired and pettishly apologising voice of Hoppo.

“Really, Glover, I had no idea you were in front. Appleby has the fire going, I am glad to see. It is useless to deny that one result of our anxieties is something uncommonly like an appetite. I believe there is a pigeon baking. How terrible it all is. Like a dream of dreams. I wish we possessed some tea. Nothing is more refreshing. Mrs Kittery, I thought you were a tree. Dreadful. Dreadful, indeed.” And Hoppo, mildly distracted, came uncertainly into the firelight.

“You have bad news?” Appleby poked briskly at the embers.

“We have not found Miss Curricle. But we have found – it is most disturbing – we have found” – Hoppo, now close to the fire, glanced from Glover to Diana as if for aid – “we have found her garments.”

“What?”

“Means her clothes.” Glover spoke huskily and abruptly. “Half way up the east range we found her clothes in a heap. Disagreeable – whichever way one looks at it, you know.
All
her clothes.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Or at least so Mrs Kittery thinks probable.”

“It is to be hoped,” said Hoppo, “that it is an aberration merely.” He sat down and looked about him for food. “Speaking confidentially – or rather speaking
openly
, for that is the better phrase – I have some ground for supposing – that is to say I am inclined to think – that Miss Curricle’s mind has – um – been running increasingly in certain channels,
regrettable
channels–”

“Gone off her head, in fact.” Glover interrupted abruptly. “No need to make a mouthful of it. Poor lady gone through great hardships. And these things happen. Mrs Kittery here – woman of the world – face facts–” And Glover became inarticulate in his turn.

Diana was unfolding a small bundle. “Here’s her slip. And here–”

Hastily Appleby gave her a long drink. “I understand what you mean. Miss Curricle has her own ideas on how one must come to live if thrown on a desert island. And a certain measure of nudism might be one of the particulars.” He paused. “Has any of you thought of another explanation?”

“Of course we have. And seen something like evidence, too.” Glover picked up a yam and held it suspended while he finished what he had to say. “We went on and got to the top of the range. And down in a farther valley we saw a column of smoke. It looked as if it might come from a fairly big fire.”

“The sort of fire,” said Diana, “on which one could – could imagine an
enormous
pot.” She took up a stone and neatly uncased the pigeon. “A pot – to face facts, as the colonel says – with Miss Curricle inside.” For a moment Diana looked quite sad. “And, John – has anything happened to you?”

For answer he drew a brand from the fire and led them over to the wash-place. For a moment they stared at the footprint in silence. “Mrs Kittery,” Glover asked doubtfully, “might it be yours?”

Diana shook her head. Appleby spoke. “The relation of the big toe to the others is not that of a foot that has been habitually confined to a shoe. Look how naturally it has come down with a gap between – much as a European
hand
might come down. And I have another piece of news. Unumunu was killed by a person or persons with a remarkable knowledge of the island and the currents about it.” He recounted his experiments. “You see, the body was so disposed of that the chances were about forty to one in favour of its drifting straight out to the ocean. Unumunu would just have disappeared and we should never have known how.”

“Savages!” said Hoppo. “Oh dear, oh dear!”

“Much better than the suspicion that the devilry was our own affair,” said Glover.

“And,” said Diana, “it gives Mr Hoppo scope. I can think of another book.
Mr Hoppo’s Heathen
. John, they will be heathen, won’t they?”

“Assuredly.” Appleby led the way back to the fire. “Did anything further happen on the range?”

Glover shook his head. “It was too late to go on, even if we had not had Mrs Kittery to consider. We should have been caught by darkness on impossible ground. But tomorrow–”

“
A
common
fate
.” Diana, staring wide-eyed into the fire, pronounced the words with great emphasis. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But it’s just occurred to me. A common fate. That’s what you say when the same thing happens to people – isn’t it?”

They assured her that it was.

“Well, what I mean is that the same thing
hasn’t
happened to Ponto and Miss Curricle. And it’s odd, I think. I mean, if Miss Curricle is for the pot why go to ever such a sweat to float poor Ponto out to the sharks? There’s a – a–”

“Discrepancy,” offered Appleby. He too was staring at the fire, but with narrowed lids. And his voice was that of an abstracted man as he went on. “But there is very little reason to suppose that Miss Curricle has been put in a pot. Even if she has fallen into the hands of savages they need not be cannibals. Perhaps they have floated her out to sea too. Or, again, it is possible that they might not harm her. Unumunu was a black man and perhaps more likely to be taken as an enemy and less likely to be received as a wonder. He was also an anthropologist and, having discovered natives, may have poked indiscreetly into some particularly private rite. Perhaps he was disposed of so summarily because of something like that. As for Miss Curricle, for all we know they may now be worshipping her as a goddess. It is to be hoped that a robe or two has been supplied.” He continued, unsmiling, to stare into the fire. “I believe I should have done better,” he added enigmatically, “if my education had consisted in taking out classes too.” He paced up and down, and the movement was not in harmony with the fluent string of possibilities he had been propounding. “And now there is the question of immediate policy. We can’t very confidently reckon on all being taken for divinities–”

“Not even Mrs Kittery.” Hoppo beamed at his own sudden and outlandish gallantry; then his glance went to the jungle and the beam faded. “It may have been imagination,” he said, “but I thought I discerned–” He stopped. From somewhere startlingly close at hand there came the dull slow pulse of a drum.

Glover reached for his cudgel; the others stayed very still. The sound was an abrupt declaration of danger, short-circuiting speculation, removing doubt. But it was also something inside. Each beat was like a potent capsule of fear dissolving in the blood, and if the poisoned stream reached the heart perhaps the heart would stop… And now, from across the glade, there came the pulse of an answering drum, faster, like some rapid beast of prey coming down a long tunnel and edging past a lumbering mate. There was a moment of confusion in the tunnel – the tunnel that was deep inside the listening self – and then the rhythms joined and the creatures became one; there was one rushing monster intent to drive them far down the tunnel, to drive them down a tunnel which would sink them aeons deep in a primitive past. One had to grab at the sides – and Appleby grabbed. It was true, then, what was said about the power of drums…in
The Plumed Serpent
, for instance. And based on such overpowering experiences as this were the attenuated thrills of poetry and the dance. Appleby, grabbing thus at the civilised consciousness, was enabled to speak in the most briskly unemotional way.

“Colonel, I don’t think we’ll prepare for a fight. It’s almost certain that the odds would be hopeless. We must beat our own drums.”

Glover put down the cudgel. “What d’you mean?”

“The drums are magic being brought against us. Remember how strange we may be. Nothing but the bare report of white men may ever have reached these people before. We must keep our own magic going and not let it be disturbed by theirs. Diana, would you please pass the salt?” Appleby sat down again at the table they had improvised for meals. “Hoppo, may I help you to half a pigeon?”

Hoppo, who had been peering apprehensively into the darkness, turned round. To be let in on the pigeon was more than he had hoped. “Please. And I believe you are right. A display of
le sang froid.
” He giggled uncertainly. “To keep us from joining Miss Curricle in
l’eau chaud
.”

As ceremoniously as the gleanings of a sun-deck café would permit, they continued to dine. The drums, though again nearer, were not so terrifying after all; sophisticate the rhythm ever so slightly and there would result something very like the music to which thousands of civilised persons willingly dined every night. Even the howls – for it was undeniable that now the savages were intermittently howling as well – were not unlike those which the members of a well-trained band will sporadically emit. The experiment of carrying on undisturbed, tentatively and dubiously begun, was well under way.

“Perhaps,” said Diana, “it hasn’t really anything to do with us. Perhaps they’re just making corroborree on their own. Perhaps, even, later” – she turned serious eyes from one to another of her companions – “we might be able to stroll across and have a look.”

Glover shook his head decisively. “Certainly not. That sort of thing…most unsuitable. Thoroughly indecent, as often as not. Why, even in India–”

He stopped – stopped because the drums had suddenly fallen silent. The jungle was very still; on its nearer walls their campfire stirred uncertain shadows; in the undergrowth it was possible to imagine one saw the gleam of eyes. And then something like a shooting star flashed across the vault above. As they looked another passed, and then another and another. Just above their heads was a crisscross of fire. This vanished and there was a moment of darkness; then a single dart of light shot high in air and fell. In the centre of the table before them stood a flaming spear.

They stared as if their vision had been transfixed by the barbaric, still-quivering thing. Glover reached for his cudgel once more. And as he did so there came a crash from the darkness and into the firelight leapt a naked and coppery body, brandishing a fellow to the weapon in front of them. Another leap and he was in silhouette and gigantic against the fire; beside him a second figure had risen as if from earth; from the darkness beyond rose a single concerted howl.

It was a moment, thought Appleby, to push a counter-magic to an extreme. He rose and held up his gourd. “Mrs Kittery and gentlemen,” he said, “the King!”

They stood up as if drilled. The toast was honoured. And now it was the monstrous creatures before them who appeared transfixed, staring at the incomprehensible ritual. For seconds the thing held like a tableau. Then the naked figures yelled, turned, fled. And in the darkness beyond their cowardice precipitated a rout. A yelling and crashing in sharp diminuendo filled the air. Silence followed, in which the diners could hear each other gasp. Only the spear which still smouldered on the table was evidence that the incident had not been dreamed.

Appleby leant forward and grabbed the weapon, as if only its substantial reality in his hand would suffice. The shaft was of bamboo, the head appeared to be of bone, near it was a charred remnant of some stuff like tow. It was hard to believe in the possibility of meeting such a thing outside a museum. Appleby fingered it, poised it, even sniffed at it like a dog. Then he handed it to Glover. “Booty,” he said; “the foundations of our armoury. Your department, sir.”

Glover took his eyes from the jungle to examine the spear. He grunted, his professional interest caught. “Dashed ugly thing. Easy to in with and nasty to get out. I remember on the North-West Frontier–”

Appleby was not attending. But neither did his senses appear to be directed to the still dangerous world without; he was looking at Diana as absently as an overworked tourist confronted with yet another goddess in the Louvre. Glover’s reminiscence remained unuttered, and it was Hoppo who next spoke. “A tree,” he suggested. “I wonder if we could get up a tree?”

Dubiously balancing the spear, Glover snorted. “Tree? To be reduced to the condition of savages ourselves is about enough, without descending to the damned monkeys. We must stick by the fire until morning and then march out on these fellows and show we’re not afraid of them. You’ve just seen that line work. No shame in being treed by a tiger, sir – but by savages not.”