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INTRODUCTION THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT
INTRODUCTION THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT
“DEAD, for a ducat, dead,” roared Somm, as he shouldered his gun and rushed to the beach. Nothing had come within reach of shot all afternoon till, in the thickening twilight, a flash of broad wings in the distance awakened our camp. “A wounded albatross,” shouted both my companions, as they peered through the shuttling grey of the evening, and watched the south wind, still wild with the force of storm, shepherd some baffled creature of wings up towards our nestling-place. “Some still stranger b
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CHAPTER I RESURRECTIONS
CHAPTER I RESURRECTIONS
GOD, God! how Thy past clings to us like shadows, turn we as we may forever to the sunrise! Out of the night and from beyond it come forms that seem buried below the reach of grave-desecrating memory; they plead with us and claim us as their kin, and all the nobleness we have laboured after succumbs to the witchery of their piteous appeals. It was indeed pathetic to see his face as he struggled with a past that had been dead for a generation. He thrust it from him and it would return. He reached
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CHAPTER II RIALLARO
CHAPTER II RIALLARO
SUCH was the name that one group of islands gave to this mystic region of the sea; and it meant “the ring of mist.” A sense of awe fell on me as I listened to the chorus. Whither was I dragging these young spirits with me? What would be the end of our expedition? Would we ever come forth alive from this misty sphere? It held within it, I felt, some of the most momentous secrets of existence; but whether these would be baneful or gracious no one could tell. It was only after I had felt everything
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CHAPTER III LANDING
CHAPTER III LANDING
AT last, I was sure, we were about to know a people that had not blurred the features of primeval virtue. And yet I laughed at the thought. What was there in human nature to insure material advance without contamination of the spirit? How were the ages to whip the old Adam out of us but by new vices? Never had the world known exception. But here were lands fenced off from contagion for uncounted ages. Perchance the strange conditions had evolved a simpler civilisation; perchance the strange quar
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CHAPTER IV THE LANGUAGE
CHAPTER IV THE LANGUAGE
IN order to avoid too much observation, I got housed in an obscure hostelry that often accommodated foreigners. But none of the occupants knew my language, nor did I any of theirs. Gesture and mimicry supplied the defect for a time, and a few weeks sufficed to give me command of the vocabulary and syntax needed for the common intercourse of life, so easy seemed the tongue and so clear the articulation. But the difficulty came at a later stage. I found I could not advance far without a teacher, a
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CHAPTER V ALEOFANIAN SOCIETY AND RELIGION
CHAPTER V ALEOFANIAN SOCIETY AND RELIGION
LIKE their language, their social fabric was an intricate work of art, and it took me months to understand even its elementary lessons and principles. It had the qualities of all great products of nature or human industry; its structure at the first glance was simple and clear; but it would have taken the lifetime of Methuselah to study out its meanings and principles. Those who belonged to the inner circles, of course, knew the whole code of conduct; but they kept a judicious silence on dispute
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CHAPTER VI ALEOFANIAN DEVOTION TO TRUTH
CHAPTER VI ALEOFANIAN DEVOTION TO TRUTH
MY admiration grew as I gradually discovered how everything in this wonderful country gave way before this great virtue. It was the first lesson taught the child; it was the last injunction of the dying Aleofanian to his friends as they stood round his death-bed. Every other book that was published had this as a moral, that truth would prevail; all their biography and history had this as their ultimate teaching; the schoolbooks were compiled with this in view; the copy-books had as their headlin
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CHAPTER VII SOCIAL CUSTOMS
CHAPTER VII SOCIAL CUSTOMS
THE first time that I went to a high-rank social entertainment of theirs, I broke into a hearty laugh at the spectacle as I entered; but I came to regret my imprudence. There were the select of the marble city, including the royal family, turning Catherine-wheels round the room in pairs to the sound of quick music; even fat old dowagers with bombasted breeches on kept up the frantic exercise, the perspiration pouring from their brows. It was a large room lit with hundreds of lamps, and round it
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CHAPTER VIII ABSTINENCE
CHAPTER VIII ABSTINENCE
“WHY should they refrain from the gifts that God in His goodness had bestowed on them?” Thus argued a party of gilded youth with me as they polecatted the air of a gorgeous room with their bamboos. My senses had so far resisted the paralysing fume and its nausea that they were able to fumble about amongst arguments. And I tried to break their backs with their own rod. “Why did the Aleofanians abstain so rigidly from God’s good gift, the juice of the grape?” “You have got the stick by the wrong e
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CHAPTER IX THE ORGANISATION OF REPUTE
CHAPTER IX THE ORGANISATION OF REPUTE
THESE items of information concerning the virtues of the race I learned not so much from the dwellers in the marble city themselves—they were too modest for that—as from public prints and the placards on hoardings and in public places. From the same sources I gathered innumerable details about the life of the monarch and the nobles and the wealthiest citizens, and these were always to their credit. Had I been as much in the habit of frequenting their temples or consulting the physicians as the g
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CHAPTER X THE CHURCH AND JOURNALISM
CHAPTER X THE CHURCH AND JOURNALISM
THE Bureau of Fame had come to be the real shrine of religion. For it had the power of heaven and hell beyond as well as on this side of the grave. And one of the most significant changes in the government of Aleofane in recent times had been the amalgamation of the ministry of public worship with the department of fame. The church had of course from the earliest times been a state institution; and in spite of new-fangled philosophers was likely to continue so. For how could so subtle a force in
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CHAPTER XI THE BUREAU OF FAME
CHAPTER XI THE BUREAU OF FAME
I WAS evidently as far astray on this point as I had been on the employment of convicts in the church. And when the full significance of the functions of state had been laid before me, I had to acknowledge that there was much in their prejudice in favour of the enslavement of genius and talent—the most capricious of human things. As soon as the organisation of fame became a function of government, it was an essential that national genius and talent, the arbiters of fame, should be robbed of thei
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CHAPTER XII FREEDOM AND REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XII FREEDOM AND REVOLUTION
YET they gloried in their freedom and their love of freedom. No people could be freer than they. Daily in their temples were there songs and hymns chanted in honour of liberty. It was a truism of the journals that liberty and liberty alone could be the true spiritual atmosphere of a nation. They loved to worship superiors and reverence especially the vicegerent of God upon earth—the head of the Bureau of Fame. They bowed to him and did him every obeisance because he was the head of the church an
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CHAPTER XIII IMPRISONMENT AND ESCAPE
CHAPTER XIII IMPRISONMENT AND ESCAPE
HE went on board and I returned to my guide, whom I found greatly disturbed. An official spy had come down from the marble city; and this meant that a whole army of them in covered armour were in the neighbourhood and on the alert. He had scarcely ears for an account of my interview with Garrulesi till I reached the story of his blanching at the sight of a stranger. His alarm grew, and he was concocting a scheme for getting to my fireship, though he knew it would be almost impossible to pass thr
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CHAPTER XIV THE VOYAGE TO TIRRALARIA
CHAPTER XIV THE VOYAGE TO TIRRALARIA
I ASKED him to sail round the bluff and communicate with my yacht. But he would not hear of it. He said that this would endanger the safety of all, for the Aleofanian king would see at once how elaborate had been the conspiracy and how treacherous we had been, and he would take every means to frustrate our departure, or, if we got safely off, to avenge the insult. I had to accept his reasons, for I was in his power. But I was sure that there were others; he was afraid that if I got on board my o
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CHAPTER XV TIRRALARIA
CHAPTER XV TIRRALARIA
I HAD other questions; but we had run into a basin that had once been a harbour. Every bastion and rampart had been pounded and bruised by the billows till the débris lay scattered along the beach. Every house and building stood in dilapidation. Yet to look upwards over the terraced slopes of the lower hills was still to think of paradise. Magnificent temples, pure with marbles and broken in outline with minarets and towers and niched statues, dwarfed the forest trees or the cliff over which the
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CHAPTER XVI SNEEKAPE
CHAPTER XVI SNEEKAPE
THERE was one exception to the rule of masculine indifference. I had been watching the figure for some time amongst the women before I discovered it to be that of a man. He had a small, well-proportioned head, even smaller than that of most of the women; and it was poised on his long neck like a bird’s; it had such rapidity and variety and ease of motion as if it were on a universal joint; it wiggled and bobbed, it danced and undulated to every emotion that came into his breast, while the little
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CHAPTER XVII THE MIDNIGHT ASCENT AND FLIGHT
CHAPTER XVII THE MIDNIGHT ASCENT AND FLIGHT
THE darkness at first set the whole sense of touch on the alert; it seemed black and solid as a prison wall. But the eyes soon focussed the sparse rays of starlight and massed objects into clots of night. The shadow of dreams still hung about my senses, as if sleep had not wholly fled. The trees and rocks we passed seemed rather to move past me. I was weary and languid, and every object and motion took feverish proportions. It was a world as strange and gruesome as if I had followed Dante into h
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CHAPTER XVIII MEDDLA
CHAPTER XVIII MEDDLA
IT was not far in the afternoon when my companion, taking a look ahead, gave a long, low whistle and laughed. He had recognised some feature of the land we were now approaching. “You will have some fun here,” he said. “We shall have to bridge our way over the lunatic asylum of the archipelago. It is a series of islets on which we have classified and quarantined our cranks for many ages. Anyone ridden by a fixed idea or habit is shipped off to those of his own kin. So we keep our communities clea
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CHAPTER XIX WOTNEKST
CHAPTER XIX WOTNEKST
THERE was an island near that carried the belief in the potency of law to a still more insane pitch. I had heard of people with new-born legislative functions thinking that they could accomplish anything they desired by merely passing a law. Revolutionary fervour even in the West had worked wonders with the human power of self-delusion. But the story of the isle of Wotnekst or Godlaw, as it might be translated, roused my curiosity. I could not believe that there existed outside of lunatic asylum
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CHAPTER XX FOOLGAR
CHAPTER XX FOOLGAR
THE adjacent island over which we had to pass made me almost regret our departure from Wotnekst. It was a low, marshy, rich-soiled island that did not bulk into the appearance of land till we were almost half-way across the straits. A few knolls, like a row of buttons, ran across it and gave it the appearance at first of a thread of minute islets strung rosary fashion. They were each topped with either a house or a group of houses that as we approached stood out amid groves of trees against the
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CHAPTER XXI AWDYOO
CHAPTER XXI AWDYOO
HE saw at last that I had little sympathy with the part he had assumed; and with a wily insight and versatility he snaked himself round into a confidential conversation on our next step. He told me that he was glad we had come off so well-laden with provisions; for he wished to avoid the next islet in the chain, Awdyoo, or the isle of journalism; it was the foulest place on the earth, and no one ever landed there who could avoid it. It was the quarantine station, whither all the scribo-maniacs w
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CHAPTER XXII JABBEROO
CHAPTER XXII JABBEROO
BETWEEN it and Awdyoo, but farther to the north than the current was likely to carry us, lay a group of islands that Sneekape declared would have been as good as a play to see. He entertained me with an account of them as we drew away from the odours of Awdyoo. I listened with reserve of judgment; for his story, as usual, sounded like fiction; and I had no means of testing it. It was interesting enough, and drew my mental energy from my nose to my ears. I knew afterwards that there was a good de
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CHAPTER XXIII VULPIA
CHAPTER XXIII VULPIA
THE only chance of restraining and correcting these furious scenes of debate, and preventing them from ending in complete annihilation of the Jabberoons, was to turn the inhabitants of a neighbouring island loose upon them. These were the Vulpians, exiles from the rest of the archipelago for over-astuteness in diplomacy. They were hated by the Jabberoons as the most deadly enemies they could encounter; for they exploited their loquacious neighbours in the most heartless and shameless way. For ye
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CHAPTER XXIV WITLINGEN AND ADJACENT ISLANDS
CHAPTER XXIV WITLINGEN AND ADJACENT ISLANDS
THE adjacency of Vulpia was the only thing that saved the inhabitants of Witlingen from stark madness. They organised raids upon its shores in order to let off the accumulated wit of the weeks or months in which they had had to repress it. They could all join patriotically in such an expedition against the common enemies, the human foxes and tedium. For weeks they enjoyed the elaborate preparation for the brand-new practical jokelet; whilst its successful consummation saved their reason and gave
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CHAPTER XXV KLORIOLE
CHAPTER XXV KLORIOLE
THE gauntlet of stenches that we had run stifled us into deep and long sleep. The sun was far up the sky when we awakened, and its heat seemed somehow to have subdued the traces of Awdyoo to a faint, though pungent and offensive, odour. We looked ahead and astern. The current was much slower; some undercurrent in the opposite direction must have been dragging it back. All trace of land had vanished behind us. But there was either a cloud or the top of some hill on the sky-rim to which the canoe
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CHAPTER XXVI SWOONARIE
CHAPTER XXVI SWOONARIE
MY fellow-voyager lay down to sleep as soon as the field of night above us broke into its myriad flowers. I could not sleep for the thought of that wretched miniature of the great world; I could not forget the suicide and his poem, the wild ecstasies of the neophytes, the poor little dropsical-headed poet of the people left to weep and starve in the gorgeous temple, or the murky fissure of the dead with its mortuary vultures. Wearied out at last with the sombre thoughts, and in spite of the heav
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CHAPTER XXVII FENERALIA
CHAPTER XXVII FENERALIA
WE got at last to the highest point of the island, and thence we saw on the other shore a large falla at anchor. Sneekape came as close to ecstasy as such a petty nature could; he recognised her as one from his own island; at this period of the year they were able to bargain for the best females from Swoonarie for use in his country; now was the time when they were most hypnotised by their narcotic atmosphere or their problems; and it was easy to take the most beautiful, healthy, and dreamy-natu
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CHAPTER XXVIII THE VOYAGE AND THE WRECK
CHAPTER XXVIII THE VOYAGE AND THE WRECK
WHETHER this was a mere fable I was never able to verify by personal experience. Christendom will doubtless take it as wholly the creation of Sneekape’s brain, so unlike nature does it seem. The only feature that I could vouch for as fact was the warlike attack as we weighed anchor from Swoonarie. I was awakened from my meditation over the question by a low murmur from the women’s section; I listened, and was certain that it was a sleep-song they were chanting. Sneekape gave me the drift of each
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CHAPTER XXIX NOOKOO
CHAPTER XXIX NOOKOO
WE got on shore in a sandy corner of a great cave; and we were soon asleep from our great exertions and endurance. When I awoke, I saw that the dome underneath which we slept was covered with myriads of glowworms. Before long my eyes grew accustomed to the twilight of our abode, and I could see pillars of gleaming white stretch from floor to roof, as if hewn out of marble by the workmen of some great sculptor and then abandoned before the capitals and bases could be carved into floral symmetry.
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CHAPTER XXX THE VOYAGE TO BROOLYI
CHAPTER XXX THE VOYAGE TO BROOLYI
OH, the ecstasy of that first day! To hear the accents of my native tongue around me, to see the features of the men I loved, after the long months of sojourn amongst strange peoples! It seemed years since I had used English, or spoken soul to soul with any human being. I dared not laugh or express my joy; I feared lest my utterance should be so overdone that I would seem mad. I sat and reined in my passion of reminiscence, waiting for the ebb of its inundating waters. My whole being was flooded
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CHAPTER XXXI MESKEETA
CHAPTER XXXI MESKEETA
BLASTEMO, warlike though he was, was greatly alarmed at seeing the wind fall and the Daydream drift towards one of the lowest of the group. He knew it was Meskeeta, which he translated the isle of Book-butchers; the people themselves translated it the isle of the Discerners of Good and Evil. But it was the evil, our friend explained, that they especially loved and indulged in; and it was not difficult for them, with their venomous habit of anatomising the quivering tissues, to find evil in the b
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CHAPTER XXXII COXURIA
CHAPTER XXXII COXURIA
“THE wind had risen offshore; but, not long after we weighed anchor, it fell and we began to drift. When the morning came, we saw that a current was rapidly bearing us down upon another low island that closely resembled in its outline the land we had left; but it was evidently very productive, and here we seemed certain of obtaining supplies. Blastemo thought it was Coxuria. If it were and if the pigmies that inhabited it were able to lay aside their everlasting hostilities, there was plenty to
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CHAPTER XXXIII HACIOCRAM
CHAPTER XXXIII HACIOCRAM
“ONE group of islands we were warned to avoid was that of the Rasolola, or theomaniacs. Hither had been deported from the chief countries all who allowed their peculiar religious ideas to outrun common-sense or the permissible limits of worship or theological belief. A storm, however, drove us close to the small archipelago, and we had to anchor off Haciocram, or the Isle of Prophets. We had no sooner come to rest than there was raised on a signal-board above a lofty tower on the island an inscr
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CHAPTER XXXIV SPECTRALIA
CHAPTER XXXIV SPECTRALIA
“AS we sailed off, Blastemo entertained us with stories of the groups of islands that lay near at hand, and especially of one that lay away off to the north nearer the sunset than Coxuria and the other islands of religion. It was the place of ghosts, where the supernatural can have things to itself without the intrusion of sceptical worldliness and common-sense. It lies almost within the ring of mist that encircles the archipelago, and it is dominated by twilight when it is not midnight. The inh
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CHAPTER XXXV THE VOYAGE CONTINUED
CHAPTER XXXV THE VOYAGE CONTINUED
“A NEIGHBOURING island, which Blastemo called Fanattia, he would not hear of our visiting; for there were gathered all the mad quixotists of the archipelago; any who thought that some special kind of food, or drink, or clothing, or gesture, or ceremony, or manner was ruinous to both body and soul, and sacrificed all the other interests of life to its destruction or abolition, were landed here and allowed to fight it out like scorpions in a bottle. God pity any poor shipwrecked stranger who fell
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CHAPTER XXXVI BROOLYI
CHAPTER XXXVI BROOLYI
DURING the latter part of our conferences Blastemo had fallen silent; his oaths and wild exclamations had first grown less frequent and then ceased. When I looked to find the cause of the break in the torrent, I laughed to see the rubicund face blanched, and instead of the usual militant boldness of the expression a tremulous light in the eye. Sandy Macrae at a gesture from me helped him below and we saw no more of him for days, and heard nothing either but long-intervalled groans of agony. For
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CHAPTER XXXVII NOOLA
CHAPTER XXXVII NOOLA
AFTER many difficulties and delays I reached the garrison on the western shore of Broolyi, where it faced Kayoss. I delivered my pass to the commandant, and was accommodated with shelter and food. The soldiers were not communicative; but after a few days I encountered in my wanderings on the beach one of the strangest men that I had ever seen, and he opened up vistas into the history of the islands. He was short in stature, but so light and springy was he in his gait and tread, I almost thought
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POSTSCRIPT TO RIALLARO
POSTSCRIPT TO RIALLARO
Our narrator vanished as abruptly as his story broke off here. Just when our curiosity had been whetted to its keenest we were left with the broken thread. We had noticed him hanging back from the account of his intercourse with Noola. His tissues had grown less transparent as he had proceeded with his description of the various islands. He had become accustomed to our food, and seemed to approach nearer to our common humanity. We came to take greater liberties with him, and even urged him to pr
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