CHAPTER X.
A hundred bottles of champagne not worth a glass of water.—My clothes leave me.—I commence the combat.—Great fight of a man against an island full of apes.—The verandah about to fall.—It does not last any longer.—A skin saves me.
For the remainder of the day my haggard eyes, reflecting my troubled mind, hovered over the last lines of this journal, which I pictured to myself as terminating in a description of a fête and a general massacre. But who could have committed this massacre? Hardly the Malays, for they stay to plunder, and there had evidently been no pillage of the station. The only other supposition which flashed across my mind seemed a great deal too absurd to be seriously entertained—no, I could not believe that a conspiracy of apes, although my life depended upon them at the present moment, could have been guilty of so atrocious a crime.
Night came, and it was positively hideous to me with nightmares, hallucinations, and sudden shocks of alarm, which awoke me out of my sleep. By daylight, when I became a little less agitated, I said to myself that if all the people belonging to the station had been assassinated in some mysterious way, I should at least have come across their remains, since, according to my calculations, it was now July, and the journal finished in June, so that a month had elapsed since this outrage was committed.
This very reasonable idea having entered my head, I considered over the facts mentioned in Lord Campbell’s journal, and arrived step by step at the following conclusions:—
The Tagal spies must have let their secret escape or allowed it to be guessed on the occasion of their first voyage to Sooloo.
The Malay pirates, finding their plans discovered, would not allow the Tagals to return to Kouparou after their second voyage. They would have flayed Admiral Campbell’s unfortunate spies alive, or would perhaps have eaten them, since the Malays are somewhat inclined to cannibalism.
After having eaten the Tagals, the Malays, whose vengeance never halts by the way, would have made a first descent by night on the island of Kouparou, which would explain the distant fires seen by Mr. Dawson, Lord Campbell’s secretary.
The poignard stuck in the sand was the symbolical menace addressed by the pirates to the sailors of the station, advising them, by this figurative but most expressive warning, that they would return and either poignard them or make themselves masters of them in some way or other.
They had actually returned, and the moment of their descent must have been at the time the fête given to the officers of the Halcyon by Vice-Admiral Campbell was taking place.
The pirates had, in all probability, succeeded in capturing all the officers and sailors whom they found on the island itself; they would next have attacked the Halcyon, when resistance would have been for the most part impossible, as nearly all the crew would have been on shore. They would then have taken the ship with all their prisoners to Sooloo, or to some other port of the archipelago known by this name.
The descent, the surprise, and the carrying of the prisoners off had occurred in the midst of the banquet which was to have preceded the ball, and from this in all probability arose the disorder and confusion remarked by me in the courtyard of the verandah on the day I first entered it.
The pirates and their prisoners departed, the apes, those millions of apes, of whom Admiral Campbell complained so bitterly in his journal, would have taken possession of the officers’ apartments, and profiting by the spoils left so unaccountably by the pirates, would have proceeded to dress themselves in the uniforms which the unfortunate officers and sailors of the Halcyon had not time or opportunity to take with them.
Lastly, not allowing the logical thread which I held as it were between my fingers to break for a single instant, I proceeded from all these incontestable inferences to this certain conclusion—namely, that in the island of Kouparou apes of a certain superior species had formerly possessed the sovereignty; that these apes had been dispossessed by the Tagals; that the Tagals had been sent to the right about by the English; that the English had been expelled by the Malay pirates; that the Malay pirates in their turn had just been dispossessed of it, if not by force, at least in fact, by the apes, to whom had returned again the sovereign authority over the island of Kouparou—a lot, indeed, which has befallen most of the islands of Oceania, many of which still attest by their ruins that they were formerly inhabited by people intelligent enough to cover these islands with handsome buildings, and who had afterwards to make room for a population of apes. Frightful revolution!
Plunged in the most gloomy reflections, after having thus pictured to myself the misfortunes which had happened to the English station of Kouparou, I quitted Admiral Campbell’s study, and descended to the lower apartments, resolved henceforth not to think seriously of a deliverance which I now felt to be impossible. “I shall live on in this tomb,” said I to myself, “so long as it pleases God to preserve me.” To dream of leaving it was now one of those extravagant hopes which only spring from madness—watched, guarded, surrounded, menaced as I was by gaolers a thousand times more crafty and cruel than the Malay pirates. I re-examined all the doors; I barricaded them more efficiently, and decided not to behold the light of day any more, since I could no longer enjoy it without looking upon that sinister and menacing cordon of besiegers; I lighted some candles, and installed myself in these lower apartments as though it were for eternity.
After having examined my provisions, I believed in the possibility of spending at least three years in this vault without dying of hunger and thirst. But at the end of fifteen days of this existence, insipid and monotonous as sleep, I found myself exposed to an intolerable suffering produced by the exceptional kind of life which I was leading. But before I say anything further about this unforeseen calamity, I have to speak of another misery by which I was beset. My poor clothes, which had been in rags for a long time past through their owner’s tribulations, had one fine day the coolness to leave me entirely. As I had neither needle nor thread to draw the rags together again, I was obliged to resign myself to going about perfectly naked.
The inconvenience was great, for we had just entered on the season when the nights were damp and frequently as cold as they are in Europe, and I had nothing whatever to cover me. The apes had taken possession of every scrap of clothing and every vestige of drapery. Joined to the scantiness of my Adamite costume, this change in the temperature affected my health. I had excessive pains in the joints, accompanied by a low fever which would not leave me. The graver inconvenience of which I have to speak is this. I have already said that water was not abundant in the offices of the verandah. In the first few days the deprivation of this natural necessary affected me but little. I drank the different wines contained in the cases and hampers. These wines, as I have already mentioned, were very powerful, and the necessity of quenching one’s thirst exclusively with these ardent liquids without the moderating admixture of water parched up my throat to that extent that I was always thirsty, and the more I drank the more thirsty I became. How could I appease this thirst? Ah! with how much delight I would have given a hundred bottles of champagne for a single glass of water! For an entire fortnight I endured this suffering, which became every hour more poignant; the crisis, however, was approaching; my tongue was as dry as a piece of leather, my eyes were swollen and bloodshot, my hands were burning with fever, my brain throbbed against my skull.
In my lucid moments I demonstrated to myself how very false our tastes are in our artificial life of civilisation. People in a certain position would never condescend to drink water, despised water, and yet partaking continuously for a fortnight of the best wines and rarest liquors had almost made me mad. Since this painful passage of my existence I have always had a religious respect for rivers, and I admire the Hindoos, who rightly regard the Ganges, my beautiful Indian river, as sacred.
With my blood heated by fever, and driven to extremities by suffering, I darted one day up the staircase which led to Admiral Campbell’s study, opened the cupboard containing the arms, and loaded the thirty fowling-pieces which I found there; I then carried them with the packets of ammunition to the bell-tower, where I proceeded to break two panes of glass in the turret, so as to make loopholes of them. This done, and vowing the death of my adversaries or else my own, I place myself in a position to open fire against those who prevent my obtaining water from the lake, the beautiful blue of which I could perceive in the distance.
But what an unexpected spectacle met my sight through the loopholes of my tower, which would become a redoubt in a few seconds’ time! I had left two or three thousand apes on the watch on the day when I descended from it, with the intention of never again re-ascending. To-day they are increased to twenty thousand at the very least! But who could pretend to count them? As well try to count the insects swarming in the ocean of space on a summer’s evening under the line! A month ago the apes had gathered near them only some insignificant heaps of stones; now these heaps have increased to that enormous extent that they are perfect hills of projectiles, placed, too, so close to one another that they have raised, as it were, the field of battle and the camp of the besiegers to the highest point of the verandah. The bell-tower, which formerly overlooked everything, is now itself overlooked. Instead of being elevated above all around, it is depressed.
But no matter! I determine to open fire; and I do so, letting fly right into the midst of this mass of living creatures. I had loaded each gun with six small bullets, so that at the first fire I knock over an ourang-outang, a mandrill, and a baboon; what besides I know not. It was necessary that I should kill, and I do kill. I seize with a like frenzy another gun, and fire with the same result; I make gaps in their line twenty-four feet in extent. But at the moment when, drunk with my heroic slaughter, I am about to fire my third gun, a dense shower of stones descends on the front, sides, and indeed every part of the verandah. What a frightful row! The noise of this shower of stones mixed with handfuls of sand, and accompanied as it was by sneering grunts from foul mouths overflowing with abuse, is not possible to be rendered in words. To convey any idea of them it would be necessary to have the instruments themselves, to have rough steel files grating harshly against angles of granite. Amidst this horrible din the report of my guns even can be no longer heard. All that I am certain of, all that I can distinguish clearly, is that I keep on killing; I kill by twenties, by hundreds, in fact; but these twenties, these hundreds who utter their death-shriek and fall over, are immediately replaced. The moment at last arrives when I am obliged to pause to reload my arms. But my adversaries do not pause! They simply redouble their fire. It is then I perceive that the great art of war is not a whit less familiar to animals than to men. Both alike have recourse to the most subtle ruses. For instance, at the very moment when I was about to give way, Karabouffi, till then hidden behind some trees, made his appearance, to give, as it were, a new inspiration to his troops. The great Condé used to rush forward and throw his marshal’s baton within Senef’s lines. Karabouffi, like the great French general, threw his baton of defiance through the air.
It caused my overthrow. The baboon’s stick was so well aimed that it entered like an arrow through the turret of the bell-tower, struck me, and sent me rolling to the bottom. My rage was unbounded.
Although somewhat dizzy from my fall, I nevertheless remounted as quickly as I had descended. But from this moment such a fearful storm of projectiles rained on the turret that it soon became unroofed. The four sides seemed as though they were about to fall. It was time vigorously to retake the offensive, and I do so. I recommence firing, although my face was lacerated, several of my teeth broken, my fingers literally flayed, and my breast bleeding. The reader has not forgotten that I was naked. Twenty times before night, which never before seemed to me so slow in coming, I reloaded my thirty guns. What desperate work! The greater part of them, however, were beginning to be no longer of any use, for they required cleaning; three had burst in my hands. Fortunately, night at length came and threw its mantle over this scene of carnage, without parallel, I believe, in the world’s history. Animals, although they are said to be more wicked than men, do not fight at night. They ceased their fire and I ceased mine. Victory was for the time undecided.
To tell the truth, however, it was they who had already gained it, since an enemy who can reinforce himself without ceasing, were he twenty times, were he indeed a hundred times, less clever and brave than his adversary, must triumph in the end. Victory, then, is only number.
I descended into my vault more ill than ever. Excitement had joined itself to fever, and fever to despair. A cold shivering took possession of me, my teeth chattered. The air was far more chilly than it had been during the preceding nights. I felt that I should perish with the cold, unless I had the marvellous good luck to find some covering to throw over me. While I was feeling in one of Lord Campbell’s boxes for some ammunition for the next day, I placed my hand on the thick fur of a skin, soft as silk. Delighted at the discovery, I examined it all over, and while considering its prodigious size was struck with the idea that this fine fur must be the skin of the gigantic mandrill killed by Admiral Campbell, that same mandrill whose skeleton, hanging to a mimosa, had struck me with surprise and fear in the dim glimmering moonlight.
I wrapped myself up in this superb black fur, which was as warm as that of a bear. I did better: I placed my legs in those of the animal, my arms in his arms, or rather I applied those parts of the skin to my own arms and legs. Then I fastened the whole with the aid of a piece of string, so that I should not lose any portion of the warmth through any openings. Lastly, being able to have a cap of the same fur which had furnished me with coat and trousers, I applied the skin of the mandrill’s head to my own. When all was arranged I looked at myself in a glass—I drew back in amazement.
With my brown skin, thin cheeks, and open mouth, which allowed my teeth to be seen, my prominent cheek-bones, long dishevelled hair falling over my shoulders, and two months’ beard matted together with my hair, with my eyes rendered restless and melancholy by the fever which was pressing upon me, I took myself for the mandrill whose black dress suit I was wearing. It is not possible to imagine a more striking resemblance. I was troubled at it, troubled to such a degree that I commenced to jump and gambol over the chairs and tables to assure myself by these acts of stupidity that I was still possessed of my manly dignity. Alas! must I confess it? If I had not entirely lost it, it was seriously compromised, for in this skin I found myself to be endowed with an elasticity and flexibility altogether alarming.
The day had scarcely broke when it became necessary for me to remount to the clock-tower, and to do it very quickly. This time it was not I who opened fire, but my adversaries. I had set them the example the day before, and they followed it to-day. This commencement of hostilities turned out badly for me—in fact, very badly. At the end of five minutes the wall fronting the verandah, weak as all walls of this construction usually are, gave way and fell under the shock of stones. The bell-tower, which was partly sustained by this principal wall, trembled at its base. I was lost—my last moments were approaching; I was separated from them only by a few seconds. Everything was crumbling around me. There remained to me the choice of being crushed under the remains of the verandah or of precipitating myself into the midst of this crowd of savage and exasperated beings, maddened with the thoughts of vengeance, intoxicated with the idea of a victory which they knew very well could not escape them. I decided to die like a man. I seized hold of a Malay poignard with one hand and a revolver in the other, and leaped into the centre of the arena.
I fell to the ground, when, just as I believed myself about to disappear beneath a perfect network of claws, a wide space was cleared before me. The entire army of apes drew back with respect, with terror, with cast-down looks and stricken spirits.
I was thunderstruck. But let us pursue the story of this sudden change of fortune, which we may almost regard in the light of a resurrection.
