CHAPTER VI.
Finding a volcano.—New peril to which I am exposed.—The merchant is recognised by his old merchandise.—Three guttural cries.—The living garland.—It swings to and fro, and then performs a furious rotatory movement over the crater of a blazing volcano.—My thoughts at this moment.—I am flung to the ground, and swoon away.—On recovering, I am ushered into the presence of Karabouffi the First, whom I find transformed into a bird.—Monkey scribes and living telegraphic communication.
At the summit of the cone which I had just reached a most extraordinary spectacle awaited me. Myriads of apes, silent and immovable until they perceived me, hovered round the crest of the crater of a little volcano, which had evidently not been in a state of eruption for a considerable period.
The flames which it belched forth were, I found, the result of a formidable combustion fed by troops of these creatures, who were busily engaged in throwing into this yawning gulf branches after branches of maple-trees, shrubs torn up by the roots, and heaps of long dry leaves, which they passed from one to the other with incredible rapidity, just as sailors when loading a ship pass from hand to hand the multitude of packages which have to be transferred from the quay to the hold. The fuel, consisting of branches, roots, bark, and leaves, which they were flinging into the opening of the craters came, as I discovered, from a distance. The destruction of trees, and the passage from hand to hand of boughs and bark stripped from them, went on without ceasing. The inexhaustible fire, like the indefatigable arms in motion, never once appeared to slacken. It was almost enough to turn one’s brain to observe the flames lightening up from below thousands of shining eyes, twinkling like electric sparks; to see the agitated beards, the perspiring bodies, the shrivelled countenances, and the twisted legs; to see the hairy arms extend themselves, receive their burthen, and cast it into the crater; and to see, moreover, arranged in an immense circle around these panting workmen, thousands upon thousands of spectators, grave and serious-looking as dervishes adoring fire.
But whom could these horrible apes have seen practise this organised work of destruction, that, following the example set them, they should now continue it as though without the power to desist, like machines which know not how to stop after they have once been set in motion? Chance enlightened me on this point some time afterwards.[1]
[1] Polydorus Marasquin would have been less surprised to see apes act together with this unison of will and thorough unanimity of idea, which seemed to him to belong exclusively to the faculties of man, if he had read the following passage from Kolo’s Description of the Cape of Good Hope:—“This is the manner in which the apes pillage an orchard, a garden, or a vineyard. They set forth on these expeditions in troops; one detachment enters the inclosure, whilst another remains on the watch to give notice of the approach of danger. The remainder are placed outside the garden at a moderate distance from each other, so as to form a sort of line, which stretches from the place of pillage to that appointed for the rendezvous. When all have taken up their positions, the baboons commence the work of pillage, and throw to those who are in waiting just outside the garden the melons, apples, pears, &c., as they gather them; these apes, in their turn, throw the fruit to those stationed nearest to them, and so they are passed along the entire length of the line, which generally ends on the summit of some mountain. If the sentinels perceive any one approaching, they utter a particular cry, at which signal the entire troop will scamper off with astonishing rapidity.”
I have said that all these apes were silent as the grave until they caught sight of me. No sooner, however, did they perceive me than this silence was broken. Callot’s necromantic pencil, or rather his diabolical graver, which gave to us “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” is necessary to depict what happened to me at this ineffaceable moment of my existence.
At first a noise, so much like that of a hurricane that it caused me to throw myself flat on the ground, succeeded to the death-like silence with which these creatures were regarding the sight of the blazing volcano before they were disturbed by my presence.
They were welcoming me.
Their eternal enemy, man, was in their midst.
And a man, too, who had sold apes!
A man who had even sold several of those present when at Macao.
A man who had forced them to beat tambourines and leap through hoops.
A man who had sometimes flogged them to make them dance with a rose behind the ear, a shepherd’s hat on the head, and a crook in the hand.
A man who had also cruelly deprived them of food and drink, because they would not put on scarlet breeches and ruffles, and bow and scrape in the ancient French fashion.
What ought I not to expect?
Karabouffi the First, seated on the block of lava, was presiding over this gathering—as for the matter of that, he presided over everything in this island, which had become subjected, I know not how, to his sovereignty. His ministers, as we have already seen, were only his servants and executioners.
I had been, as I have already said, recognised.
After this bewildering noise of which I have just spoken all my old captives of Macao rushed upon me; their companions hastened to follow their example. I felt that I was about to be torn into as many pieces as my unfortunate cravat.
It was at this moment that I caught sight of the word Halcyon, the name of Vice-Admiral Campbell’s frigate, on the buttons of the coats worn by the leaders of this odious troop. The reader may judge of my astonishment at this discovery. Where was I? In the name of goodness, what had happened?
This I should probably never have known but for the cry uttered by Karabouffi at the very moment that I was disappearing under a mountain of baboons, apes, mandrills, magots, and ourang-outangs.
The thousand and one instantly let go their hold.
Karabouffi evidently had other intentions respecting me.
He uttered three distinct guttural cries, which were listened to with marked attention.
The order had gone forth, it was now about to be executed, and this is the way in which his behest was accomplished:—
On a signal from Karabouffi, these drolls of creation joined themselves together like bundles of snakes, and tying themselves to one another by their tails rapidly formed two chains. One of these living chains entwined itself round my neck, the other twisted itself about my legs, and I found myself, without being able to offer the least resistance, the connecting link, as it were, of these two chains, which soon formed only one, a kind of garland of apes, animated and convulsive. As soon as this operation was completed, the end of the chain which represented what one may style the head threw itself with the swiftness of an arrow to the other side of the crater; the end representing the tail did not move from where it was, and a giddy swinging movement at once commenced. Picture to yourself if you can my sad and ridiculous situation, swinging from right to left and from left to right over a fire a hundred feet broad, all smoking and blazing beneath me.
Each succeeding oscillation became quicker and quicker, owing, I presume, to the increasing recklessness of my tormentors, until I was swung from curve to curve, sixty feet on one side and sixty feet on the other; then—but how is it possible for me in the state of mind in which I then was to have calculated this frightful rate of progression? Twenty thousand spectators, or rather twenty thousand grimaces, twenty thousand contortions, fifty ranks deep, surrounded the opening of the crater, above which I was floating, looking like a forest of skins dotted with black and yellow muzzles, and bristling with teeth which gnashed and chattered without ceasing; and from one extremity to the other gigantic magots, quadrumanous constables armed with sticks, moved about to keep order during the entertainment—and what an entertainment, too, for even an ape to derive gratification from! At one moment I believed myself thrown into the clouds, at the next I felt the heat of the fire scorching my back. I say nothing of the pain which I suffered from being wrapped about and bound by those nervous cords which cut into my very skin. And, worse than all, I was not even at the end of my punishment.
The formidable swinging movement increased, the garland of apes, of which I formed part, soon overleaped its most elevated point of ascension, and then it was no longer a simple alternating movement, more or less perilous, that I had to undergo, but a rotatory motion, first rapid, then furious, and at last terrible. I had been, as it were, the balance of a pendulum; I was now a cart-wheel, the sails of a windmill, the stone in a sling; and I turned, and turned, and turned till I became first white, then red, then purple, then violet, and at last blue, and had quite lost my senses. I cried out; my cries of suffering, of despair, and fear were lost amidst the squealing huzzas and furious shriekings of these myriads of evil beings. When they had shaken and whirled me about to their hearts’ content, they brought their atrocious farce to a termination in the following manner:—Giving me a final and more furious shaking than any I had before experienced—ah! it makes my blood run cold to think of it—to the extreme curve of the chain, which, when it had attained the highest degree of gyratory violence, they all at once snapped asunder, breaking it at the centre, where I was fixed. The consequence was that I was flying like a ball across the crater, high above the enthusiastic spectators—above everything, in fact, to a distance of one or two hundred yards. Heaven only knows how I escaped being smashed to pieces on falling! Doubtless there were still further torments in store for me.
What were your thoughts, perhaps my readers will ask, while you were thus travelling through space in a manner so contrary to the usual habits of our kind? Why, I thought how very cruel we are when, to amuse ourselves, we send up cats or dogs in the car of a small balloon, and how very blamable I had been myself in one day attaching a poor kitten, who afterwards died from fright, to the tail of a large kite, for the purpose of amusing the idlers of Macao. I had been in my turn attached to the tail of a kite. What right had I to complain?
On coming to myself—and I am entirely ignorant how long the swoon which followed my horrible fall lasted—I perceived two mandrills of the most savage kind on guard, sword in hand, near me, imitating, so far as parody imitates truth, the gait and stiffness of English soldiers. Through want of experience, instead of confining themselves to placing a gaiter on each leg, every one of the mandrills had in addition placed a gaiter on each arm. I attributed this grotesque addition to simple ignorance, since there could be no such grade among apes as clothing colonels, ready at all times to decree any absurd addition to the soldier’s uniform, provided they could share the profit derived from it with the contractors. Slight as had been my opportunities of observing this automatic society, I nevertheless endeavoured to account to myself in a vague sort of way how it was that it came to offer a copy, fantastic and distorted though it might be, of the life of civilised man. Those uniform-buttons, already recognised by me in my hour of torture, furnished me with a clue. Unquestionably these half-intelligent animals and the men whose garments they were dragging about had lived together. My inference seemed so far undeniable. I had, however, still to discover how it was that the one had managed to obtain possession of the property of the other; but this was a question by no means easy to resolve all at once, particularly in the uncomfortable position in which I was placed. Just let the reader try to reflect when his head, the seat of reflection, is in perpetual fear of being broken by a blow from a bludgeon.
The two sentinels with the four gaiters, seeing me open my eyes, signalled to me to follow them. I mustered up all my strength and obeyed.
They conducted me in the direction of the devastated buildings which had excited my surprise some eight or ten days previously, when I was under the protection of the interesting Saïmira.
What had become of Saïmira?
What had become of Mococo?
What was about to become of me?
My two guardians introduced me, with some sharp blows dealt out to me with the flat side of their sabres, into one of the houses, the exterior of which was more pretentious in appearance than any of the others, and which I supposed, on this account, to have been the head-quarters of the station—the residence, in fact, of Vice-Admiral Campbell. The interior of the admiral’s house scarcely differed, so far as the desolate condition to which it was reduced was concerned, from the others. A kind of order, however, reigned in the midst of this lamentable chaos. For instance, the pictures, after having been removed from their hooks, had been placed back again, but upside down. I acknowledge that, so far as many of the pictures were concerned, this was a matter of no moment whatever, while for others it was a positive advantage. I should not be surprised if people generally became of my opinion after trying the effect of this reversing process on certain modern pictures in their collections.
Karabouffi the First, warned of my arrival by the chattering of my custodians, rushed up to me. The sight of the hated baboon made me feel timid, more timid, indeed, than usual, and what added in some degree to my fear was seeing him covered from head to foot with feathers. The sight of this ape, transformed as it were, to all appearances, into a bird, naturally enough filled me at first with great surprise. But having examined him more attentively, I perceived that the thousands of feathers under which his hairy skin seemed to have disappeared were writing-quills, which he stuck under his arms, upon his ears, in his mouth, and even up his nose, as well as fastened all over his wrinkled skin. In moving towards me some of the feathers fell out, and I noticed that most of them had been made into pens. The two ourang-outangs who accompanied him, and who appeared to be his prime ministers, were covered, like their master, from head to foot with feathers.
Karabouffi preceded me into the principal room, which it seems he had left in order to receive me; and there I saw a hundred sapajous in a state of intense nervous excitement, and apparently very busy, sprawling over desks, dipping their pens and very often their hands into inkstands without number, and scribbling upon sheets of paper laid before them—imitating, in fact, the copying-clerks in the public offices at Macao. They worked as if by steam; the pens scratched incessantly, and sheets after sheets of paper flew about in all directions.
When one of these sheets of paper was sufficiently scratched and scrawled over it was passed to some more venerable sapajou, who signed it, and in his turn passed it on to some sapajou still more grave-looking, who again signed the paper and fixed his seal to it. Being afterwards handed to one of the crowd of sapajous who waited outside, the paper was transmitted without loss of time from sapajou to sapajou placed at certain distances, precisely as I had seen them when they were occupied in throwing wood into the furnace, into which I had had a narrow escape of being thrown myself. After a lapse of something like ten minutes, the paper which had traversed the island by means of this telegraphic system of communication came into Karabouffi’s hands, who, after having applied it to the purposes of a pocket-handkerchief, handed it over to an old mangabey, whom he had invested with the dignity of Keeper of the Court Records.
It was very evident to me that these savage creatures, after the departure, flight, or perhaps extermination of the English colony, had taken possession of all the official paper and pens which they could find, and of the vice-admiral’s seal; and that, in servile imitation of what they had so frequently witnessed, they were despatching at random orders from all sides, thereby, without intending it, offering a witty comment on the ordinary practice of European bureaucracy, that pest of civilisation which devours time, money, and men, and invariably terminates by a paper with which, were we accustomed to paper pocket-handkerchiefs like the Japanese, the last receiver of it might just as well wipe his nose for any better use he could put it to.
Karabouffi, in the most imperious way, threw in my face several quires of paper and several parcels of quills. The expressive look which he afterwards gave me implied, as I imagined, that I was to occupy myself without uttering a word with these packets of pens and quires of paper, precisely like his other clerks, who were working away at such a desperate rate before my eyes.
During three times twenty-four hours I was not permitted either to leave my place or to let my pen rest. I was compelled under pain of all that is terrible to blacken ream after ream of paper, and when the virgin whiteness of these sheets had entirely disappeared under the clouds of ink with which I overlaid them, one of the strange scribes at my elbow took the papers from me and gave them, as I have already described, to a corps of apes, charged with the duty of conveying them round the island. For seventy-two hours I did not get even a wink of sleep, since my enemies, endowed for the most part with the faculty of seeing in the dark, whenever I was about to succumb to slumber, cruelly pinched my arms, pulled my hair, kicked me in the back, or scratched my face with their sharp claws, so as to keep me wide awake. What horrible torture!
Oh, how sincerely at this moment did I pity those numbers of young men condemned by the misfortune of their birth or the stupidity of their relations to spend their lives in doing nothing but ply their pens from morning to evening within the four walls of some dreary office!
