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 the wind had freshened ahead, and, as something or other had disturbed the compasses, we could not tell whether we were keeping our course or not. We steered by the sun; and, as we had not our pilot to correct us, we had gradually shot far past our destination, and a current had carried us away to the east.
Before daybreak on the third day our lookout called our attention to a strange object on the horizon all gleaming white. At first the captain thought it was an iceberg wandered into these tropical regions, but as the sun forged up towards the rim of sky the ever-shifting tints that it threw over the vault revealed to him that it was a snow-peak on whose top lay a wreath of white filmy wool like a cloud. As the sunlight strengthened, they saw the wool-festoon float out like a pennon, tinged with the scarlet and gold of the dawn. The stars grew dim and winked out. The day broadened into a glare, and still the peak stood firm with its pennant of steam.
I was called, and I knew what it was they had been watching. It was the mystery of mysteries, the Isle of Devils, that was thrusting up its snow-peak into the sky. I bade Burns steer straight for it, and the wind that still blew fresh from the north-west was with us. The gleaming cone grew loftier and more beautiful in its outline, and past noon we could see the cloud-turbaned peaks that flanked it begin to show beneath its radiance. Still we pushed on, and, as the sun shot his western shuttle through his great web of rays, and we could see the land darken at the roots of the peak of snow, a strange circumstance occurred. There came over the heavens a glossy look as if we were moving under a dome of crystal closer to us than the azure of the sky. It was an occurrence I had noticed once or twice before, but I could get no satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. It was like the glitter of the sky on a morning of keen frost, that is just about to be followed by a tempest of rain; and what made it stranger was that the crystalline dome vanished as suddenly as it had come. The stars came out with a precipitance that alarmed us. We had not time to recover from our terror when a shout rose from the bow, “Breakers ahead.” We had but a few moments to bring her round and lower the sails, and together the sea and the wind struck us with a thud and made the ship stagger. I thought she would go to the bottom, she heeled with such suddenness and shipped such a mass of water. The masts broke like reeds, and the yards thundered down upon the deck.
In the midst of the commotion I saw Blastemo rush towards me over the wreckage, the pallor gone from his face. It was now livid with terror. He looked for a moment to the horizon, and then to the smooth sea that lay on either side of the tornado. He seized me by the arm and in a hoarse whisper begged me to hurry away from the accursed peak that still shone clear over our stern. Within half an hour we were in as peaceful an atmosphere and sea as we had had; not a trace of the storm or of the troubled water was to be seen. Even the long roll of billows with which we had run so long had vanished. As we cleared away the wreckage, our guest lay down exhausted on the deck. In a whisper of terror he told me the same story as I had heard from other islanders. None of them had ever been able to approach the Isle of Devils; every ship that had made the attempt had been disabled and blown off. This had been the case for long centuries, although there was a dim tradition that their ancestors had come from it in vessels. The shock seemed to have driven out his sea-sickness to some extent, and he kept by the man at the wheel till we were out of sight of the snow-peak. Before he left the deck he gave such instructions as to the route that no mistake could be made again.
Even this would not satisfy him, and in spite of his recurrent pallidity he returned to his post in the morning and watched every point on the horizon to see that we should not deviate as we did before. In three more days of light winds and calms we came in sight of a land that filled him with almost uncontrollable delight. He recognised its first dim outline upon the horizon as his own. As we approached it, its sierra rose boldly into the heavens, though rarely to the line of perpetual snow. Great ranges of mountains seemed to divide it into isolated corners, and jutted into the ocean in beetling precipices that forbade too close approach to the angry snarl of their surf. It was in every feature of it the home of warlike tribes bastioned against mutual peace and intercourse. I was much amused, therefore, to hear Blastemo break into an invocation to his fatherland as the home of all that was noble and peace-loving. He repeated its name again and again with eulogistic epithets, “noble, pacific Broolyi”; and, seeing us stand by unenthusiastic, he tried to rouse us by explaining that the name meant Isle of Peace, for the inhabitants were engaged in converting the whole archipelago to its doctrine of peace; they were the great missionaries of the gospel of peace to a world given over to war and mutual hatred. The confused swell near the iron-bound coast relieved us of the need of reply; for he quietly collapsed and sought a recumbent posture below.
We ran north along the wild scene of sheer cliffs. Solitary bird haunts waist-deep in the sullen billows, monstrous toothed jaws angrily churning the waters that ebbed and flowed across them, hollow-sounding caves that echoed to the splash and boom of the sea and to the screams of disturbed flashes of winged life, varied the monotony of the adamant bulwark of nature. A note of everlasting war between land and sea sounded hoarse along the shore, and ever as we approached there rang out the wild challenge of the torn and recoiling waves. The marks of the unending warfare of centuries lay in the reefs and outlying fragments of rock that chafed the waters as they flowed. It was indeed a conflict of Titans, whose chief ally and source of power was Time. Round great headlands we swept that mocked and baffled the high-flashing onslaught of the immortal enemy. How many generations of men had wailed into life, grown, fought tooth and nail, and lapsed into the grave, since these browbeaten cliffs had begun to outface the passions of their restless foe!
We rounded one foreland more colossal and overhanging than any; but its fantastic shapes held us only a moment, for beyond, the land rapidly fell into a broad valley, and there two embattled bodies of men were busy hacking and hewing each other. Their armour clashed under the strokes, fierce shouts issued from those that were hurrying from the rear, and a minor undercurrent of sound was a medley of wails and groans. The crew were soon all on deck absorbed in the new spectacle. Even Blastemo had recovered and ascended. He looked on from a modest hiding-place in the rear; but, as soon as we saw him, we burst into a roar of laughter, remembering his recent eulogies of peace and of the pacific nature of his countrymen. He knew what we meant, and slunk below again.