ODTAA: A novel

by John Masefield

A searching of the distance showed him, far off, some specks, some white, some dark. “Those are the herds,” he thought. “And the peones are with them. How those white cattle shine in the sun. But they are all miles away from here. There is none near me.

“But what was it that they said I was to look for? I was to go ‘north-west across it to a hole, snap, so,’ ten miles away. Well, let’s have a look. That will be north-west, roughly. And there, by George, is a sort of snap in the hills, as though they were cut or broken. That is the pass he means; that is my way. So let us forward for there. But what a place, what a land, what a life.”

It was a good enough life for a man, to ride that expanse on a horse worthy of such going. The horse felt the stir of that freedom. Hi felt him kindle beneath him into the tireless stride of the horse of the savannah. As he went, his hoofs drummed up myriads of glittering green beetles which whirled about them and flew with them, sometimes settling on horse or man, then whirling on again, now with shrillness, now with droning, till the noise they made was the ride itself set to music. “I shall save her,” he sang to the music, “I shall save Carlotta. And she will marry her man, of course, but all the same I shall have done that; and we shall be friends of a special sort all our lives. It will be something that nobody else will have.”

He kept headed for the pass, but his eyes roved the land for a peon. Soon he was startled by the light on the distance to his left; he had seen nothing like it. All the things in that southern distance became so distinct that he felt that he was looking at them through a telescope. At the same time, the calls of the peones, the beating of their horses’ hoofs, and the movings of the cattle came to him from across the miles of the savannah. “It is odd that things should be so clear,” he thought. “I should say it means rain.” The tops of the southern hills brightened till they seemed to spout flames into the sky. These flames soon changed into streamers of cirrus, less fiery than copper-coloured, with rose half-way up the heavens. “It is just as though the sky were feeling bilious,” he thought. With this change in the heavens, a change came into the air and into the horse; all the delight of the going went; the beetles gave up their play. Presently the copper-colour darkened along the hilltops to something like the smoke of a burning.

“It’s going to be a storm,” Hi thought. “I’d be just as well in the cover of the pass before it breaks. Come up, horse.”

The horse made it clear that he was uneasy about something, or was in some way feeling Hi’s uneasiness. He had become nervy and on edge in a way which Hi could not explain. He himself felt nervy, but the restlessness of his horse frightened him. “I believe he smells some wild beast or snakes,” Hi thought; but he could see neither; there seemed to be no creatures on that llano save some beasts like tailless rats and a few birds which piped and fled. The edge of the clouds tattered out into rags which soon laid hold of the sun so that all the joy died from the scene.

“We’re in for a storm and a half,” Hi thought, “one of those electrical storms my father was always gassing about.” He took a look to his left, where now the darkness had blotted out the line of the hills, then he took a look to his right, where the hills stood in a glow which made them look like hills in hell. Straight ahead was the gash or pass by which he was to descend. He could see no cattle nor peones there. “Perhaps they are in the pass,” he thought, “in some ranch or corral there. But I hope they are, for then I may find some shelter.”

The air had long since lost its zest. It was flat yet heavy, though both Hi and the horse were sweating, there was a feeling of death being present, which suggested cold; all kinds of evil seemed about to happen. Waifs and strays of thought came into Hi’s mind and went out of it; he felt that he could not concentrate upon any one of them. A few drops of rain splashed down, like florins and half-crowns, with a rattle on the tough grass.

He had made an effort to be in the pass before the storm broke. He reached it in time but, being there, he found it grim enough. It was a gash, between two cliffs of rotten rock, which curved round into a grimmer gash, all black with a grove of vast trees. “Better under the trees than in the open,” he thought, so he turned towards the cover. The noise of the hoofs upon the stones made echoes like the smacking of nails into a coffin. “That’s got you, that’s got you,” the smacking seemed to say, “that’s got you.” He stopped the horse, so that the echoes might stop. Looking back at the crater over which he had ridden, he found that he could see little save a greyness out of which came a sighing. All the place seemed to moan at him with a moan of despair, that sounded like, “Oh, it’s got us at last.” Out of the greyness a coldness came suddenly from the icefields on the mountain. Then the great grassy expanse disappeared from view. The storm, sweeping up, shut out the world. “Very little more,” he thought, “and I should have been caught in the open.” Suddenly streaks of greyness ran like men along the ground and struck flashes with their feet. “By George, it’s rain,” he said; “it’s all rain. This is rain indeed.”

On the instant, the greyness sighed into a hissing, hissed into a rushing, and rushed into a roaring. It sucked up all the last of the savannah, surged over the mouth of the pass, beat Hi breathless and engulfed him, in a roaring of pouring, as though a river were falling. Hi felt that he was freezing and that everything else had turned to water: he was in water and under water, the air he breathed was water: the earth his horse stood on was running water. Thunder sounded not far off: he could not see the lightning, but remembered his father’s stories of iron outcrops in the rocks near the Meruel border, which seemed to “attract” any lightning there might be. He did not know whether iron outcrops could “attract” lightning; probably it was one of his father’s insane theories, but it might be the fact, in which case he was near the Meruel border, and might be standing on the magazine waiting for the spark. The thought of trying to push on, through the rain, did not enter his head: he could not see twenty yards in any direction.