Tales of Three Hemispheres by Lord Dunsany
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6 TALES OF THREE HEMISPHERES
Lord Dunsany
CONTENTS
The Last Dream Of Bwona Khubla
How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant In Otford-under-the-Wold
The Prayer Of Boob Aheera
East And West
A Pretty Quarrel
How The Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning
The Gift Of The Gods
The Sack Of Emeralds
The Old Brown Coat
An Archive Of The Older Mysteries
A City Of Wonder
Beyond the Fields We Know
Publisher's Note
First Tale: Idle Days on the Yann
Second Tale: A Shop In Go-By Street
Third Tale: The Avenger Of Perdondaris
[Note that the tale "Idle Days on the Yann" also appears in the
collection "A Dreamer's Tales".]
THE LAST DREAM OF BWONA KHUBLA
From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids
blow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies
glide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers went
three days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plains
where the oryx are.
And glad they were when they came to the water-hole, where only one
white man had gone before, which the natives know as the camp of Bwona
Khubla, and found the water there.
It lies three days from the nearest other water, and when Bwona Khubla
had gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he was
shaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry,
he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world such
decisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, but
hitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength of
character that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and moved
his safari on.
He had had a name no doubt, some common name such as hangs as likely
as not over scores of shops in London; but that had gone long ago, and
nothing identified his memory now to distinguish it from the memories
of all the other dead but "Bwona Khubla," the name the Kikuyus gave
him.
There is not doubt that he was a fearful man, a man that was dreaded
still for his personal force when his arm was no longer able to lift
the kiboko, when all his men knew he was dying, and to this day though
he is dead.
Though his temper was embittered by malaria and the equatorial sun,
nothing impaired his will, which remained a compulsive force to the
very last, impressing itself upon all, and after the last, from what
the Kikuyus say. The country must have had powerful laws that drove
Bwona Khubla out, whatever country it was.
On the morning of the day that they were to come to the camp of Bwona
Khubla all the porters came to the travelers' tents asking for dow.
Dow is the white man's medicine, that cures all evils; the nastier it
tastes, the better it is. They wanted down this morning to keep away
devils, for they were near the place where Bwona Khubla died.
The travelers gave them quinine.
By sunset the came to Campini Bwona Khubla and found water there. Had
they not found water many of them must have died, yet none felt any
gratitude to the place, it seemed too ominous, too full of doom, too
much harassed almost by unseen, irresistible things.
And all the natives came again for dow as soon as the tents were
pitched, to protect them from the last dreams of Bwona Khubla, which
they say had stayed behind when the last safari left taking Bwona
Khubla's body back to the edge of civilization to show to the white
men there that they had not killed him, for the white men might not
know that they durst not kill Bwona Khubla.
And the travelers gave them more quinine, so much being bad for the
nerves, and that night by the camp-fires there was no pleasant talk;
all talking at once of meat they had eaten and cattle that each one
owned, but a gloomy silence hung by every fire and the little canvas
shelters. They told the white men that Bwona Khubla's city, of which
he had thought at the last (and where the natives believed he was once
a king), of which he had raved till the loneliness rang with his
raving, had settled down all about them; and they were afraid, for it
was so strange a city, and wanted more dow. And the two travelers
gave them more quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces, and
knew they might run away and leave them alone in that place, that
they, too, had come to fear with an almost equal dread, though they
knew not why. And as the night wore on their feeling of boding
deepened, although they had shared three bottles or so of champagne
that they meant to keep for days when they killed a lion.
This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which their
porters corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever he
thinks is expected of him.
The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to do
so because of an ominous feeling. That mournfullest of all the cries
of the wild, the hyaena like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enough
had ceased. The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had died
three or four years ago, dreaming and raving of "his city"; and in the
hush a sound softly arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar of
beasts, then unmistakably the sound of motors--motors and motor
busses.
And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonely
desolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and climbs
over jagged hills,--they say they saw London.
There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was a
multitude of stars. Mists had come rolling up at evening about the
pinnacles of unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp. But
they say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear
they could see London, see it and hear the roar of it. Both say they
saw it not as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds of
thousands of lying advertisements, but transfigured, all its houses
magnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vast
squares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured and yet London.
Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in their
long rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places;
yet it was London.
They could smell the smells of London, hear London songs, and yet it
was never the London that they knew; it was as though they had looked
on some strange woman's face with the eyes of her lover. For of all
the towns of the earth or cities of song; of all the spots there be,
unhallowed or hallowed, it seemed to those two men then that the city
they saw was of all places the most to be desired by far. They say a
barrel organ played quite near them, they say a coster was singing,
they admit that he was singing out of tune, they admit a cockney
accent, and yet they say that that song had in it something that no
earthly song had ever had before, and both men say that they would
have wept but that there was a feeling about their heartstrings that
was far too deep for tears. They believe that the longing of this
masterful man, that was able to rule a safari by raising a hand, had
been so strong at the last that it had impressed itself deeply upon
nature and had caused a mirage that may not fade wholly away, perhaps
for several years.
I tried to establish by questions the truth or reverse of this story,
but the two men's tempers had been so spoiled by Africa that they were
not up to cross-examination. They would not even say if their
camp-fires were still burning. They say that they saw the London
lights all round them from eleven o'clock till midnight, they could
hear London voices and the sound of the traffic clearly, and over
all, a little misty perhaps, but unmistakably London, arose the great
metropolis.
After midnight London quivered a little and grew more indistinct, the
sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off,
ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage
shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the
stillness snorted, and watered at the Carlton Club.
HOW THE OFFICE OF POSTMAN FELL VACANT IN OTFORD-UNDER-THE-WOLD
The duties of postman at Otford-under-the-Wold carried Amuel Sleggins
farther afield than the village, farther afield than the last house in
the lane, right up to the big bare wold and the house where no one
went, no one that is but the three grim men that dwelt there and the
secretive wife of one, and, once a year when the queer green letter
came, Amuel Sleggins the postman.
The green letter always came just as the leaves were turning,
addressed to the eldest of the three grim men, with a wonderful
Chinese stamp and the Otford post-mark, and Amuel Sleggins carried it
up to the house.
He was not afraid to go, for he always took the letter, had done so
for seven years, yet whenever summer began to draw to a close, Amuel
Sleggins was ill at ease, and if there was a touch of autumn about
shivered unduly so that all folk wondered.
And then one day a wind would blow from the East, and the wild geese
would appear, having left the sea, flying high and crying strangely,
and pass till they were no more than a thin black line in the sky like
a magical stick flung up by a doer of magic, twisting and twirling
away; and the leaves would turn on the trees and the mists be white on
the marshes and the sun set large and red and autumn would step down
quietly that night from the wold; and the next day the strange green
letter would come from China.
His fear of the three grim men and that secretive woman and their
lonely, secluded house, or else the cadaverous cold of the dying
season, rather braced Amuel when the time was come and he would step
out bolder upon the day that he feared than he had perhaps for weeks.
He longed on that day for a letter for the last house in the lane,
there he would dally and talk awhile and look on church-going faces
before his last tramp over the lonely wold to end at the dreaded door
of the queer grey house called wold-hut.
When he came to the door of wold-hut he would give the postman's knock
as though he came on ordinary rounds to a house of every day, although
no path led up to it, although the skins of weasels hung thickly from
upper windows.
And scarcely had his postman's knock rung through the dark of the
house when the eldest of the three grim men would always run to the
door. O, what a face had he. There was more slyness in it than ever
his beard could hide. He would put out a gristly hand; and into it
Amuel Sleggins would put the letter from China, and rejoice that his
duty was done, and would turn and stride away. And the fields lit up
before him, but, ominous, eager and low murmuring arose in the
wold-hut.
For seven years this was so and no harm had come to Sleggins, seven
times he had gone to wold-hut and as often come safely away; and then
he needs must marry. Perhaps because she was young, perhaps because
she was fair or because she had shapely ankles as she came one day
through the marshes among the milkmaid flowers shoeless in spring.
Less things than these have brought men to their ends and been the
nooses with which Fate snared them running. With marriage curiosity
entered his house, and one day as they walked with evening through the
meadows, one summer evening, she asked him of wold-hut where he only
went, and what the folks were like that no one else had seen. All this
he told her; and then she asked him of the green letter from China,
that came with autumn, and what the letter contained. He read to her
all the rules of the Inland Revenue, he told her he did not know, that
it was not right that he should know, he lectured her on the sin of
inquisitiveness, he quoted Parson, and in the end she said that she
must know. They argued concerning this for many days, days of the
ending of summer, of shortening evenings, and as they argued autumn
grew nearer and nearer and the green letter from China.
And at last he promised that when the green letter came he would take
it as usual to the lonely house and then hide somewhere near and creep
to the window at nightfall and hear what the grim folk said; perhaps
they might read aloud the letter from China. And before he had time
to repent of that promise a cold wind came one night and the woods
turned golden, the plover went in bands at evening over the marshes,
the year had turned, and there came the letter from China. Never
before had Amuel felt such misgivings as he went his postman's rounds,
never before had he so much feared the day that took him up to the
wold and the lonely house, while snug by the fire his wife looked
pleasurably forward to curiosity's gratification and hoped to have
news ere nightfall that all the gossips of the village would envy.
One consolation only had Amuel as he set out with a shiver, there was
a letter that day for the last house in the lane. Long did he tarry
there to look at their cheery faces, to hear the sound of their
laughter--you did not hear laughter in wold-hut--and when the last
topic had been utterly talked out and no excuse for lingering remained
he heaved a heavy sigh and plodded grimly away and so came late to
wold-hut.
He gave his postman's knock on the shut oak door, heard it reverberate
through the silent house, saw the grim elder man and his gristly hand,
gave up the green letter from China, and strode away. There is a clump
of trees growing all alone in the wold, desolate, mournful, by day, by
night full of ill omen, far off from all other trees as wold-hut from
other houses. Near it stands wold-hut. Not today did Amuel stride
briskly on with all the new winds of autumn blowing cheerily past him
till he saw the village before him and broke into song; but as soon as
he was out of sight of the house he turned and stooping behind a fold
of the ground ran back to the desolate wood. There he waited watching
the evil house, just too far to hear voices. The sun was low already.
He chose the window at which he meant to eavesdrop, a little barred
one at the back, close to the ground. And then the pigeons came in;
for a great distance there was no other wood, so numbers shelter
there, though the clump is small and of so evil a look (if they notice
that); the first one frightened Amuel, he felt that it might be a
spirit escaped from torture in some dim parlour of the house that he
watched, his nerves were strained and he feared foolish fears. Then
he grew used to them and the sun set then and the aspect of everything
altered and he felt strange fears again. Behind him was a hollow in
the wold, he watched it darkening; and before him he saw the house
through the trunks of the trees. He waited for them to light their
lamps so that they could not see, when he would steal up softly and
crouch by the little back window. But though every bird was home,
though the night grew chilly as tombs, though a star was out, still
there shone no yellow light from any window. Amuel waited and
shuddered. He did not dare to move till they lit their lamps, they
might be watching. The damp and the cold so strangely affected him
that autumn evening and the remnants of sunset, the stars and the wold
and the whole vault of the sky seemed like a hall that they had
prepared for Fear. He began to feel a dread of prodigious things, and
still no light shone in the evil house. It grew so dark that he
decided to move and make his way to the window in spite of the
stillness and though the house was dark. He rose and while standing
arrested by pains that cramped his limbs, he heard the door swing open
on the far side of the house. He had just time to hide behind the
trunk of a pine when the three grim men approached him and the woman
hobbled behind. Right to the ominous clump of trees they came as
though they loved their blackness, passed through within a yard or two
of the postman and squatted down on their haunches in a ring in the
hollow behind the trees. They lit a fire in the hollow and laid a kid
on the fire and by the light of it Amuel saw brought forth from an
untanned pouch the letter that came from China. The elder opened it
with his gristly hand and intoning words that Amuel did not know, drew
out from it a green powder and sprinkled it on the fire. At once a
flame arose and a wonderful savour, the flames rose higher and
flickered turning the trees all green; and Amuel saw the gods coming
to snuff the savour. While the three grim men prostrated themselves by
their fire, and the horrible woman that was the spouse of one, he saw
the gods coming gauntly over the wold, beheld the gods of Old England
hungrily snuffing the savour, Odin, Balder, and Thor, the gods of the
ancient people, beheld them eye to eye clear and close in the
twilight, and the office of postman fell vacant in
Otford-under-the-Wold.
THE PRAYER OF BOOB AHEERA
In the harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship's
passengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, Ali
Kareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust.
So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not lean
over as his enemy slid by, did not tarry then to settle that long
account; but that Boob Aheera made no attempt to reach him was a
source of wonder to Ali. He pondered it till the liner's electric
lights shone far away behind him with one blaze and the canoe was near
to his destination, and pondered it in vain, for all that the eastern
subtlety of his mind was able to tell him clearly was that it was not
like Boob Aheera to pass him like that.
That Boob Aheera could have dared to lay such a cause as his before
the Diamond Idol Ali had not conceived, yet as he drew near to the
golden shrine in the palms, that none that come by the great ships
ever found, he began to see more clearly in his mind that this was
where Boob had gone on that hot night. And when he beached his canoe
his fears departed, giving place to the resignation with which he
always viewed Destiny; for there on the white sea sand were the tracks
of another canoe, the edges all fresh and ragged. Boob Aheera had
been before him. Ali did not blame himself for being late, the thing
had been planned before the beginning of time, by gods that knew their
business; only his hate of Boob Aheera increased, his enemy against
whom he had come to pray. And the more his hate increased the more
clearly he saw him, until nothing else could be seen by the eye of his
mind but the dark lean figure, the little lean legs, the grey beard
and neat loin-cloth of Boob Aheera, his enemy.
That the Diamond Idol should have granted the prayers of such a one he
did not as yet imagine, he hated him merely for his presumptuousness
in approaching the shrine at all, for approaching it before him whose
cause was righteous, for many an old past wrong, but most of all for
the expression of his face and the general look of the man as he has
swept by in his canoe with his double paddle going in the moonlight.
Ali pushed through the steaming vegetation. The place smelt of
orchids. There is no track to the shrine though many go. If there
were a track the white man would one day find it, and parties would
row to see it whenever a liner came in; and photographs would appear
in weekly papers with accounts of it underneath by men who had never
left London, and all the mystery would be gone away and there would be
nothing novel in this story.
Ali had scarcely gone a hundred yards through cactus and creeper
underneath the palms when he came to the golden shrine that nothing
guards except the deeps of the forest, and found the Diamond Idol. The
Diamond Idol is five inches high and its base a good inch square, and
it has a greater lustre than those diamonds that Mr. Moses bought last
year for his wife, when he offered her an earldom or the diamonds, and
Jael his wife had answered, "Buy the diamonds and be just plain Mr.
Fortescue."
Purer than those was its luster and carved as they carve not in
Europe, and the men thereby are poor and held to be fearless--yet they
do not sell that idol. And I may say here that if any one of my
readers should ever come by ship to the winding harbour where the
forts of the Portuguese crumble in infinite greenery, where the baobab
stands like a corpse here and there in the palms, if he goes ashore
where no one has any business to go, and where no one so far as I know
has gone from a liner before (though it's little more than a mile or
so from the pier), and if he finds a golden shrine, which is near
enough to the shore, and a five-inch diamond in it carved in the shape
of a god, it is better to leave it alone and get back safe to the ship
than to sell that diamond idol for any price in the world.
Ali Kareeb Ahash went into the golden shrine, and when he raised his
head from the seven obeisances that are the due of the idol, behold!
it glowed with such a lustre as only it wears after answering recent
prayer. No native of those parts mistakes the tone of the idol, they
know its varying shades as a tracker knows blood; the moon was
streaming in through the open door and Ali saw it clearly.
No one had been that night but Boob Aheera.
The fury of Ali rose and surged to his heart, he clutched his knife
till the hilt of it bruised his hand, yet he did not utter the prayer
that he had made ready about Boob Aheera's liver, for he saw that Boob
Aheera's prayers were acceptable to the idol and knew that divine
protection was over his enemy.
What Boob Aheera's prayer was he did not know, but he went back to the
beach as fast as one can go through cacti and creepers that climb to
the tops of the palms; and as fast as his canoe could carry him he
went down the winding harbour, till the liner shone beside him as he
passed, and he heard the sound of its band rise up and die, and he
landed and came that night into Boob Aheera's hut. And there he
offered himself as his enemy's slave, and Boob Aheera's slave he is to
this day, and his master has protection from the idol. And Ali rows
to the liners and goes on board to sell rubies made of glass, and thin
suits for the tropics and ivory napkin rings, and Manchester kimonos,
and little lovely shells; and the passengers abuse him because of his
prices; and yet they should not, for all the money cheated by Ali
Kareeb Ahash goes to Boob Aheera, his master.
EAST AND WEST
It was dead of night and midwinter. A frightful wind was bringing
sleet from the East. The long sere grasses were wailing. Two specks
of light appeared on the desolate plain; a man in a hansom cab was
driving alone in North China.
Alone with the driver and the dejected horse. The driver wore a good
waterproof cape, and of course an oiled silk hat, but the man in the
cab wore nothing but evening dress. He did not have the glass door
down because the horse fell so frequently, the sleet had put his cigar
out and it was too cold to sleep; the two lamps flared in the wind.
By the uncertain light of a candle lamp that flickered inside the cab,
a Manchu shepherd that saw the vehicle pass, where he watched his
sheep on the plain in fear of the wolves, for the first time saw
evening dress. And though he saw if dimly, and what he saw was wet,
it was like a backward glance of a thousand years, for as his
civilization is so much older than ours they have presumably passed
through all that kind of thing.
He watched it stoically, not wondering at a new thing, if indeed it be
new to China, meditated on it awhile in a manner strange to us, and
when he had added to his philosophy what little could be derived from
the sight of this hansom cab, returned to his contemplation of that
night's chances of wolves and to such occasional thoughts as he drew
at times for his comfort out of the legends of China, that have been
preserved for such uses. And on such a night their comfort was
greatly needed. He thought of the legend of a dragon-lady, more fair
than the flowers are, without an equal amongst daughters of men,
humanly lovely to look on although her sire was a dragon, yet one who
traced his descent from gods of the elder days, and so it was that she
went in all her ways divine, like the earliest ones of her race, who
were holier than the emperor.
She had come down one day out of her little land, a grassy valley
hidden amongst the mountains; by the way of the mountain passes she
came down, and the rocks of the rugged pass rang like little bells
about her, as her bare feet went by, like silver bells to please her;
and the sound was like the sound of the dromedaries of a prince when
they come home at evening--their silver bells are ringing and the
village-folk are glad. She had come down to pick the enchanted poppy
that grew, and grows to this day--if only men might find it--in a
field at the feet of the mountains; if one should pick it happiness
would come to all yellow men, victory without fighting, good wages,
and ceaseless ease. She came down all fair from the mountains; and as
the legend pleasantly passed through his mind in the bitterest hour of
the night, which comes before dawn, two lights appeared and another
hansom went by.
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