CHAPTER XIX.—The Strength of the White Blood.
Extraordinary Discipline by the King. His Uneasiness Concerning Our Loyalty. Lentala’s Father. We Must Help Destroy Our Friends. Earthquakes.
ALTHOUGH the king was greatly shocked when I told him what had really happened to Gato, his gratification quickly rose, and he regarded Christopher curiously.
“Why didn’t you tell me at once?” he inquired.
“That is not his way, Sire,” I explained. “He avoids talking.”
“It was a wonderful thing to do,” his Majesty mused as we slowly went to the Council Chamber.
Something had given him a fearful blow, and I guessed it was the danger to which Lentala had been exposed. His face was haggard again; his gait was unsteady; he doddered and mumbled.
As we neared the Council Chamber, he said:
“Come in and stand near me, one on either side.”
We found the soldiers in a huddle near the door, the racial dulness of their faces somewhat keyed with expectancy. The king gave them but a glance as he passed them and ascended the throne,—to be more impressive, no doubt. Christopher and I stood as flanks.
“Form a line facing me,” the king sternly commanded.
The soldiers glanced at one another in wonder as they obeyed, and furtively had anxious eyes and ears for Gato. They were a fine crowd, selected for courage and dash.
“You understand,” the king said, “that I am always in supreme command of the army, including Gato and every other officer. Any person who may be in immediate charge of you is serving as my agent, and is appointed and removed by me at my pleasure. All your fealty and loyalty are for me. You will now acknowledge that with an obeisance to your king.”
The rascals were dazed. They might send shifting glances down the line if they liked, and wonder and waver if they pleased, but obey they must: every man felt it in his bones. The line went down.
Etiquette required the maintenance of the posture until the king gave the word to rise. The obeisance consisted in coming to the knees, resting the elbows, well advanced, on the floor, pressing the palms down, and rooting the floor with the forehead,—an easy performance if quickly finished, but a torturing one if sustained. On this occasion the king neglected the releasing command; and that was unheard of. In such a position the men could see nothing.
“A soldier’s first duty,” he resumed, “is to his king. In becoming a soldier he dedicates his manhood, his strength, his life, to his sovereign; that is to say, to his country. A true soldier is glad to die for the happiness and safety of his king. His duties are as sacred as those of a son to his father. A worthy son will remember the protection that his father has given him. If he hears him defamed, he will uphold his name; if blind, will lead him; if threatened, will defend him though death be the reward. So it is with a soldier and his king.”
His voice weighted his words with a deep emotion, and he spoke slowly, with pauses. It was like listening to a passage from the Bible,—but much better read than commonly.
“A king may be kind to his soldiers; that will bring him their love with their fealty, and give their duty a double force. A king may grow old and stand in need of the strong, willing arms of young men whom he loves and who love him. A king may totter under the burden of long service to his people; his soldiers will then be his stay and comfort, and with joy in their hearts will do his high will. Serpents may crawl in the weeds about a king’s throne: his soldiers will beat the weeds clear of them.”
The king could not have failed to see a painful writhing that wormed through the line. His pause was long.
“A son who hears even his brother speak ill of their father, will reprove the brother and shame him. If that fails, he will chastise his brother if he can; but if the brother is stronger, the dutiful one will take the matter to their father, since the safeguard of the family is endangered by the disaffection of a single member. If a father discovers one of his sons jeopardizing the unity, prosperity, and safety of the family, he will give the faithless son such treatment as the security of the family demands.”
The pause this time was still longer. Meanwhile, the endurance of the men had nearly reached an end. Whatever may have been their mental state, their physical was one of excruciating pain.
“Some men are induced to do wrong through heedlessness or blindness, not knowing the gravity of their deeds, and not foreseeing a dire result. Others are weak and easily led; they are untrustworthy tools of their leaders, and shame is their greatest punishment. Others are cruel and wicked at heart; they will therefore be ready to betray the men who led them to betray others. All of those are poisonous serpents in the weeds about a king’s throne. And it is far worse in a soldier than in any one else.”
After another pause, he said:
“A king who is kind and wise will be slow to believe evil of his people. It will be natural for him to think that all will be as wise and kind as he. Yet he must be watchful; he cannot protect the people unless he protects himself. If he finds a scandal, he may hide it, lest it weaken the common faith in the strength and purity of his government. If he discovers that any are unfaithful, he will not make their treason public by hanging them before the people, unless he knows that a warning will stop other traitors. No; he will be merciful and keep them privately for a time, till they may walk forth erect in their recovered manhood.”
Here and there a gasp or a strangled groan broke the silence of the line. The king was heeding.
“The man at the right of the line will rise.”
The fellow came painfully to his feet, and stretched the agony out of his muscles.
“Advance and lay your sword on the dais,” ordered the king.
The man obeyed.
“Return to your obeisance.”
A start thrilled the soldier. He gave the king a desperate, pleading look, but found eyes with a cold sternness that sent him to obedience.
“The next, rise.”
The performance was repeated with him, and with the rest in turn.
“All rise,” said the king. They stood up. “I will now take you to a room in the palace, where you may consider in quiet what the soldiers of a king should be. You,” he ordered Christopher, “walk beside me at the head, and you,” to me, “follow the soldiers.”
The dignity of a mighty sorrow sat like a grace upon him as he slowly led the procession. Never were prisoners more securely manacled with steel than these men, though their members were free; and though there was a certain pomp in the march, it was that of a funeral, and the silence was louder than the blare of much brass.
The king turned into the corridor that led to the vaults, and descended the stair. This brought him and the others to the dungeon door. He halted, and Christopher unlocked it. It swung wide. The king and Christopher stood aside, and the men marched in. Christopher closed and locked the door.
“Your Majesty!” I exclaimed; “you surely have not forgotten that Gato——”
“My son,” he calmly answered, “what they have already endured has made the way easier to what they will find in there.”
Without haste the king conducted us back to the chamber in which he had received us, and seated himself ered: on the divan. He was studying us.
He inflated his cheeks and pursed his lips while his goggling eyes roamed, and queer wrinkles came and went in his face.
“The white blood,” he grunted, staring at me. “It accounts for your keenness. The white blood never sleeps. If it is with you, good; if against you,———”
He rose and glared. “Which love you the more, son,” he growled, “the white blood or the brown?”
“Your Majesty sees our color. We came freely and offered our hearts, our arms, and our lives to your Majesty. And it is not forgotten, Sire, that Lentala sent us.”
“I remember.” The growl died in him, and he brightened. With both hands he clutched the edge of the couch. “It takes white blood to fight white blood,” he said. “Did your father tell you that?”
“Not that I recall, Sire.”
“Black blood and red blood and yellow blood and brown blood always fall before it, soon or late. He said nothing about that?”
“I think not, Sire.”
“You know it is true?”
“My father told me much of the great world.”
“Then he told you that. And I know. I saw it when I went abroad in my youth. I learned it from Lentala’s father. Does it mean anything to you that your mother was a Senatra?”
“It is sufficient that your Majesty and Lentala are Senatras.”
The king fixed a keen stare on me.
“You mention Lentala very often,” he said.
“She indorsed us to your Majesty.”
“Something more is here. That is the white blood in her. In you and in her the white blood knows its own.”
His sudden confirmation of my surmise concerning Lentala choked the words in my throat.
“Why don’t you speak?” he roughly demanded. “Is it not true?”
I could only gaze at him.
“The white blood finds and knows its own,” he went on. “Two hundred and fifty of those with white blood are held on this island by a great horde of those with brown blood. I need a man of the white-blood shrewdness and boldness and courage to manage those two hundred and fifty to the safety of my people and my island. But if I take a man with white blood in his veins, it will side with the white blood that threatens me.”
“Would Lentala hand over to treason and destruction your Majesty and the queen and all the other Senatras whom she loves, and the people to whom she belongs and the country that has nourished her?”
“Not wittingly, for she is a daughter of the gods; but the blood, my son, the blood!”
“Sire, a love early planted endures forever.”
He rose to fight his despair, and walked up and down the room.
“Yes, it is true,” he said at last. “Lentala has proved it. I spared her father, a castaway, because he stopped a great plague that was destroying my people. I myself was stricken, and he saved my life I feared him because he was of the white blood, and because of his wisdom and power. He held the secrets of the gods, and had no fear. I had planted deep in my people a hatred of the white blood; and I required that he not only disguise himself as a native, but remain within the palace grounds. He taught me many things, but I refused to follow his advice to instruct my subjects. He educated Lentala.”
“Is he still alive?” I asked.
“He died two years ago. If he were only here now! We became strong friends. Lentala’s devotion to the islanders is returned by them almost as idolatry. I know how the white blood can love, but I know also how it can hate; and it knows its own.”
He suddenly halted, and wheeled upon me.
“You say,” he moaned, “that some of the white men are at large on the island. What mischief are they doing? What mines digging under me? My people are children,—I have kept them so, God help them! I need not alone a wit and a daring to match the white people’s, but Senatra devotion as well.”
“Your Majesty knows Lentala.”
He blazed on me. “Do you love Lentala?”
A fierce tingling raced through me, and dumbness held me.
“She is beautiful and sweet,” he went on. “She is steadfast; she is brave and able. There never was a woman to match her. You are big and strong and brave. She found you. Like finds like. Do you love her as a man loves a woman?”
I fought blindly for wit and words.
“Yes, Sire,” came the thin, even voice of Christopher.
We both turned in surprise. He beamed on us blandly.
“Does she love him as a woman loves a man?” the king asked him.
“Yes, Sire.”
His audacity held me speechless.
“I can trust her—and you,” the king said to me,—“so far as blood tempered by love and loyalty may be trusted, which is farther than it may trust itself. I am old and broken. Come, you two, and stand before me.”
We obeyed, I wondering.
“I have no other men to equal you, and I need you. You must serve me. Take time now, and remember your white blood. Remember that it is stronger than your brown, for I have seen its dominance in you today. Remember that when your allegiance is tested in a choice between white blood and brown, the white will be the stronger. Only one thing can save you and me and all my people.”
“And that, Sire,——-?”
“——-is your manly pride to see and know and overcome your white blood, and serve and obey your king to the end.”
He paused, and looked from one to the other, as though expecting us to speak, but we were silent.
“The white blood,” he passionately resumed, “is the most terrible thing in the world. It is strong and shrewd; it never gives up; it pursues and fights relentlessly to the ends of the earth; without mercy or pity it hunts down, plunders, overwhelms, exterminates. Only one thing can hold it in check, and that is opposing white blood. Brown blood cannot cope with the white people in the valley, but white blood can; and for the task, the gods have sent me white blood mingled with brown seeded in my soil and grown to it with deep roots. That is my hope and trust.”
His gaze of affectionate yearning was on us.
“The duty of your Senatra blood is loyalty to your king; the task of your white blood is to outwit and outdo the people in the valley. I will place Lentala in command of the army. You must not take a step without her full concurrence, and you will obey her without question. Do you agree?”
“Gladly, Sire.”
“A hundred soldiers guard the passes from the val ley, and are relieved every day. When not on duty they attend to their private affairs. I will at once send out messengers summoning these to assemble outside the palace wall, in the king’s highway passing the main gate. There I will address them and turn over the command to Lentala.”
He was profoundly studying me. His words, “to outwit and outdo the people in the valley,” were grinding within me, and I longed to demand an explanation. A savage ferocity was manifest through his benignity. To outwit and outdo the people in the valley,—my people, my friends! I would be his tool to betray and destroy them. The bottomless pit should have him first, and the hand that he would turn to treachery and murder would send him thither.
My face must have shown something of what I tried to conceal; for the king, his look growing desperate and malignant, stepped back a pace. There came from somewhere a sharp rap, which made me start, and sent my glance to the curtained window, to which the king had his back. I had supposed that Beela was with Lentala; but there she was at the window, her hand upraised in warning. It brought me instant control.
The king also had heard, and looked round sharply, but the curtain was down.
“What was that?” he inquired.
“My big toe, Sire,” answered Christopher.
“What did you do with it?”
“I cracked the joint.”
“Why?”
“It feels good, Sire.”
His Majesty curiously regarded Christopher’s feet. “It must be a large joint,” he said.
Christopher stood in gentle silence. The king turned to me, and found me docile.
“That look of rebellion was the white blood in you,” he said.
“Only for a moment. Your Majesty may trust me.”
Nevertheless, he was troubled, and shook his head.
“He won’t no more, Sire,” said Christopher.
“How do you know?”
“I know him.”
“Explain.”
“He does little things short and big things long.”
My amused smile was fortunate, because it put an end to the king’s tragic gravity.
“I am satisfied,” he remarked. “Now, the first thing for you two to do, while the army is assembling, is to go out, find, and bring to the palace all the white men that have escaped. The next,———”
The sentence was never concluded, for there came a rumble and a sharp, pervading jolt. The king stiffened, looked about in fear, and groped for the table. Following was a gentle quiver, which rapidly increased till it became an oscillation, and with it a deep rumbling. It ended in a mighty wrench and a violent swaying, accompanied with a hoarse explosive sound. The stones of the palace were grinding and groaning. The table slid a yard, stopped, and shot back as the king tried to seize it.
I found myself plunging and lurching for a footing as the oscillation continued, and so were the king and Christopher. They sat down on the floor. Surely the violence would ease in a moment. Instead, the convulsion rose to a fearful crash, which sent my feet away and my body smashing on Christopher. He caught me with one hand and with the other diverted the flying table from the king.
The spasm ended abruptly, but the menacing tremble was again in play.
“Be careful!” rasped the king; “the third is the worst.”
As before, the quiver rose through oscillation to a heavy swaying, more violent than ever, and ended in a tumult of jerks, which sent us sliding and scrambling as we fought the portable things that were hurled about the room.
It was suddenly gone. We rose, much dazed. There was no sign of Beela at the window.
“It is over,” weakly said the king. “The worst in many years. And what has it done? It has terrified my people into madness. I see them.” He was losing self-control, and was staring as at a vision. “They are beginning to rise from the ground. Many are digging out of their ruined huts.... Their teeth are chattering. They look at one another in horror. No one has a sister, a brother, a father, a mother, a friend. All are blind and mad.... They run hither and thither. They——”
A confused screech and roar, as of wild animals driven to a focus by a surrounding forest fire, rang through the closed door of the room. The king listened.
“The palace servants,” he mumbled through quivering lips. “They are seeking me—their father and protestor. Imagine from this how the island is swarming and groaning, and with a terror that is half vengeance.”
The man was beside himself.
“Peace, Sire!” I begged, but he did not hear.
“The terror does not abate: it increases with the freer flow of their blood after the shock.... They are beginning to think. They look at one another and see their kind; then kindred and friends.... ‘The Black Face!’ says one, softly. ‘Ay, the Black Face!’ is the louder reply.”
The king stood with clasped hands and closed eyes.
“‘This is only the beginning,’ they say. ‘The Black Face has been denied while it looked down on abundance.’ Who has denied it? The heavens ring with the answer, ‘Our father whom we loved, our protector whom we trusted, our king whom we have thought a brother of the gods. Why has he flouted the Face and challenged its wrath? What terrors or witcheries have been wrought by the gods of the people in the valley, that our king has gone driveling behind his walls? ‘”
“Your Majesty!” I called, shaking him by the arm.
He opened glazed eyes, and listened to the howling din at his door.
“The guard are leaving the passes. The white people are wise; they understand, and are joyful. They send scouts.... My soldiers mingle with my roaring, mobbing people. They all push and roll through the pools of rain-water in the highways, churning them to mud. They grind their teeth; they laugh horribly, like imbeciles. The palace is their aim, and their king sits grinning and mumbling there. All the trouble has come from the people in the valley. The white blood breeds all there is of that in the world. May ten thousand curses fall on it!”
He was flinging his arms and lunging about. I woke to the urgency of action, for undoubtedly in his madness he had correctly seen the turbulence in the island, and the sweating hordes plunging over all roads converging to the palace. A glance passed between Christopher and me, and I nodded toward the door, which a packed, howling mass was already straining.
“Come,” I said, seizing the tottering king about the waist and dragging him to the anteroom. I thrust him within, and secured the door back of the curtain.
When I turned, Christopher, his hand on the key of the door into the corridor, was listening. There was no sign of Beela at the window.
“What’s going on?” I inquired.
“Her, sir.”
“She’s out there?” I asked in alarm.
“Yes, sir.”
“Open the door,” I ordered, stepping back to guard the anteroom.
He opened it, swinging behind it against the wall.
It was done so suddenly that those pressed against it fell into the room. The next came tumbling on them, and more on these, squeezing horrible sounds from the mouths of the lowermost, and bringing unpleasant grimaces to their faces. In a second the opening was jammed half way to the top, and still the pile grew. Behind it were frenzied men and women, vociferating prodigiously, and fighting for the diminishing passage to the king.
The pressure outside being somewhat relieved, one of the more agile men leaped on the pile and sprang with a howl to the floor; but Christopher had emerged, and a blow from him dropped the adventurer. The next, less active than the first, was scrambling over the heap, and paused as he found himself grazed by the flying body of the first, for Christopher had picked him up and tossed him over the heap into the pandemonium beyond. The following man drew back, and slid down to the corridor floor.
I had been looking for Beela without, but she was not in range.
Before another maniac could mount the pile, Christopher had dragged a body off the squirming mass and flung it out. Another followed, and another, and others, the succession of them so close that none dared breast the fusillade. Christopher streamed with sweat, and the mildness in his eyes had become a glare.
All this had a cooling effect in the corridor. Christopher, not waiting to look for cracked ribs at the bottom of the heap, cleared the last away, and walked forth. None can say how much his unearthly pale eyes, minatory expression, and extraordinary figure had to do with what followed. I went to the door. A hush fell as he advanced on the mob, which fell back in silent terror. With each hand he seized a man, jammed their heads together with a murderous thwack, shook them, stood them up, left them stunned, and immediately snatched two others and treated them similarly. A third pair and a fourth nursed aching skulls. Christopher swept through the groups with two long, strong arms for scythes, mowing a wide swath as he brushed women along, sent a man spinning from a blow, dashed another against the wall, and brought them into subjugation with a counter-panic of his own manufacture. He came upon two men with some appearance of character, and ordered them to finish the work and send the people to their quarters. They obeyed him promptly. At last he sauntered back to me, calm but puffing.
Beela approached from the opposite direction. I stepped forward in gladness to meet her.