CHAPTER V.
The court-martial breaks up.—I secretly follow the members of it.—I distinguish some houses between the trees, and believe myself to be at last among my fellow-men.—My hopes are crushed by discovering the devastated condition of the settlement.—I meet with Saïmira and Mococo, the latter in captivity.—I recognise in the president of the court-martial one of my two baboons of Macao.—This discovery troubles me, the more so when I find that Karabouffi’s power is supreme.—Foreseeing the peril I should be in if recognised by him, I hide myself in a grotto.—I am visited by Saïmira.—Weariness becomes at length more intolerable than danger.—The light already seen reappears.—I leave my retreat in search of it.
When the big baboon was thoroughly tired of these attentions he waved his hand by way of signal for his followers to desist, then rose majestically, and, accompanied by his entire suite, proceeded to take his departure.
I could not refrain from following the party, although by so doing I felt that I exposed myself to a certain danger. I advanced, however, cautiously, step by step, and from tree to tree, halting when necessary, so that I might not be discovered. This gave me time to examine the spot where justice had just been meted out, and I was surprised to perceive at no great distance from it, through a wide opening between the trees, a nest of little painted houses, constructed in the Indian style, and such as I had frequently seen in Java, Borneo, and generally in all the more civilised parts of Oceania. Houses! I was then about to find myself, not among a people more or less anthropophagical, but among a people far advanced in civilisation; without doubt some European colony, and what is more, an English one, since the coats worn by that legion of apes were of English cut, colour, and nationality. I now walked with restored confidence behind my apes, clad in their blue and red toggery. Now and for henceforth I need have no more fear of them. I felt almost inclined to twitch their garments and seize hold of their despised tails by way of amusement.
After this discovery I fully expected to see ere long this troop of apes re-enter their cages under the guiding influence of their master’s whip. With this view I hid myself lower down the road in a sort of thicket. “From my hiding-place,” I said to myself, “I shall be able to see this diabolical procession defile before me with the big baboon at the head of it.” After a time they pass by, and what do I see? Whom do you think I recognise under the hat adorned with such a splendid plume of feathers and in the red coat, the brilliancy of which almost scorched my eyes? Why, my terrible baboon of Macao; he whom I had so many times thrashed, whom I had sold a year previously to Vice-Admiral Campbell the day before his departure—in one word, Karabouffi! Karabouffi the First! Could it be possible? In this case the admiral must have disembarked his men on this island. Were he and his crew still here? A new surprise put an end to my speculations. I find myself at this moment gently touched on the arm, and on turning round see beside me a well-remembered figure, who is tenderly regarding me. That look, which seemed to spring from the depth of a human soul, came from the eyes of Saïmira, my charming chimpanzee, who endeavoured anew to make me comprehend that I was to follow her by again pulling me by the arm, accompanying this movement with a significant gesture. Finding that I still resisted she uttered several low groans, and commenced licking my hands. She had, one might say, spoken first, and begged afterwards. I no longer doubted that I was running some great danger from which she wished to save me. I therefore decided to follow her, and no sooner did she perceive my intention than her joy was intense. As we walked side by side through the bushes she looked at me, and lowered her head. I divined her meaning, and inclined mine. It was evidently dangerous for me to be seen. After a quarter of an hour of this silent marching through the tall brushwood we arrived at a spot which I fancied to be in the rear of the houses seen by me from afar, and the sight of which had inspired me with such joy and confidence. Saïmira stood still. What could be her object? It was to show me on her left a row of cages, of which all, except one, were open and empty. Saïmira went up to the closed cage, and then returned, and drew me towards it. I looked through the bars, and there saw my old friend Mococo, the chimpanzee, whom I had sold with Saïmira on the day of my great sale to Vice-Admiral Campbell.
My first act was to open the door of the cage that I might behold my old favourite free. No sooner is he free than poor Mococo hesitated whether to go to Saïmira or to me, whom he at once recognised. His affections are divided. At last he runs up to me, and rests his head for several seconds upon my neck just like a little child. After having passed his hands gently over my face, and rubbed his muzzle against my cheeks, he threw himself on the ground, and laid his trembling paw on Saïmira’s neck, whilst Saïmira, in her turn, placed her hand on him. The most affectionate confidences were then exchanged between these two creatures, who had evidently suffered much from their hard separation, since one was free and the other a captive.
This affecting scene lasted for well-nigh a quarter of an hour, when all at once Saïmira raised her ear with anxiety, and drew it back ruffled with fright. With a rapid movement she thrust Mococo back into his cage again, and giving me a glance, which I was at no loss to comprehend, since I had known for a long time how to interpret the signs of these animals, and by which I understood her to implore me to draw the bolt quickly on the poor prisoner. I of course did so. She had evidently heard a noise. I listened and heard it also, and recognised in it the hoarse grunting of Karabouffi.
Saïmira’s terror, which was evidently inspired by the too close proximity of the big baboon, convinced me that it was he who held Mococo captive. I also suspected from this circumstance that Karabouffi was at once the conqueror and ruler of the island on which it had been my misfortune to be cast. What part then did my own species play in relation to this mysterious society, in which, day by day, I found myself more and more entangled?
Poor Saïmira was, of course, incapable of enlightening me. All that her affection for me suggested was to draw me away, so that I might avoid encountering Karabouffi the First. When, therefore, she led the way I followed her again. The road which she took was directly opposite to that by which one might have reasonably expected the baboon would come.
We doubled one corner of the row of houses whilst he turned the other on his way to pay a visit to the cage of his rival—now his prisoner. The day began to grow dim. We walked without being observed past the front of the houses which I had believed to be those of the English station, and which looked so pleasant when seen at a distance. A nearer view, however, brought to light a scene of desolation that promised a new surprise to me. In the first place, the windows were all broken, and the frames demolished, and, more or less, wrenched away from their hinges.
Hanging out, at the end of long sticks and a crowd of flag-staffs, from the broken windows of the first story, was a most miscellaneous collection of articles—torn uniforms, leathern stocks, cravats, boots, belts, odd pairs of shoes, hats with their tops torn out, empty bottles, trousers, towels, rags of all colours, any number of shirts, and even a few flags.
In Heaven’s name, I mentally exclaimed, who has committed these acts of incredible folly? Who has produced this utter devastation, the like of which is only to be met with after the sacking of a town, or a raid on the part of a horde of savages?
It is not possible, thought I, that the apes—though the effects of their claws and their perversity were visible everywhere—could have made themselves masters, either by surprise or force, of a garrison composed of brave sailors and excellent officers; that they could have massacred every living man among them, and have then installed themselves in their dwellings and appropriated all their uniforms, furniture, and flags.
Saïmira’s pressing solicitations to me to proceed prevented me from continuing my reflections, and ere many minutes had elapsed she and I had disappeared in the dense shade of a neighbouring wood, where we walked for more than three hours under the dark leaves of the banyans.
It was only after having seen me take refuge in a natural grotto formed of rocks clothed with thick moss and those thousand vegetable productions which cover the ground of Australia, that Saïmira decided to leave me. But before she departed, she gave me a look full of fear and compassion, an eloquent farewell, which I interpreted into an express recommendation to me not to leave my retreat.
Why did I not follow this advice? Simply because, after eight days’ seclusion in the grotto, I grew tired of it, and not even Saïmira’s attentive care, although she came to see me every day, could reconcile me to it. I shall never forget the efforts she made to raise her intelligence in some degree to the level of my own. She would caress me, would now and then sleep with her two little arms twined round my neck, or while I was asleep myself, would go and gather from the topmost branches of the trees fruit which she would place at the entrance to my retreat.
It was not alone weariness which decided me to leave my place of concealment, where I lived without doubt in security; my dignity as a man also urged me to this course. I was ashamed to be held, as it were, in check by certain inferior creatures, authority over whom nature has delegated to our race. Moreover, to pass my life in this grotto seemed an intolerable idea. I thought to myself that I must leave it some day or other, and that I might just as well leave it at once; and this is how it was I left.
I had been accustomed to roam some distance from my cave after nightfall, both for exercise and to seek for wood-pigeons’ eggs, which I cooked in a hole dug in the sand, at the bottom of which I was accustomed to make up a fire.
The matches which, being a smoker, I had about me when I was shipwrecked, enabled me to kindle a fire whenever I required one. Thanks to the leaden box which contained these matches, the sea water had not injured them in the slightest degree, whilst my tobacco, on the contrary, had suffered much.
On the last evening of my stay in the forest, while standing at the entrance of my grotto, I perceived, some distance off, a fire like that which I had seen the day following my shipwreck. Who is it, I asked myself, that lights up these great fires? It cannot be the work of apes, it must be done by men, and yet I dared no longer believe in their existence on this enigmatical island, since on this point I had been so often deceived. I directed my steps in a straight line towards the fire, which I imagined to be situated somewhere between my grotto and the sacked houses of the English station. In less than an hour-and-a-half’s walking, I found myself getting nearer and nearer to it, and when I was only some hundred paces off from it the ground, till then level, rose in a steep incline. The soil crumbled and rattled under my feet, and I concluded that I had reached the side of a volcano, and that I was walking over the old lava. This, however, did not astonish me, for I knew well enough that in nearly all the islands of Oceania there are volcanoes, either extinct or in a state of eruption. But how was it that I had observed these flames only on two occasions? How was it that they had disappeared to burst forth again after an interval of eight days? This was not in accordance with the usual course of these physical convulsions.
In a few minutes all my uncertainties ceased.
