White Fire

by John Oxenham

They rambled about the valley, charmed with its wealth of fruit and flower, gathered quantities of each as evidences of their visit, and pulled back home.

Every one was on fire at once to go and view the wonders of the valley.

"To-morrow we will carry over a pair of goats and half a dozen piglets and some geese. They will have rare times there. If they don't burst themselves, they will multiply rapidly. By the time we have educated our friends here to better taste in the matter of eating, the larder will be stocked. It is better for them to hunt pigs and goats than men. And the wilder the pigs and goats the better. They will carry their own sauce with them," said Blair.

"It's the very place I've dreamed of since I was six years old," said Aunt Jannet, shedding her years. "Girls! we'll go over to-morrow, with the geese and the goats and the piglets, and have a scramble and a rummage."

Which they did, and found even more than the men. For Jean, at cost of a wetting, discovered a narrow entrance behind one of the figures, and inside it a winding stone staircase which led up into its head, and found that through the eyes of the god she could see all that went on below.

And one of the things she saw was Aunt Jannet Harvey wandering amazedly in front of the great stone figures; and then in a moment the earth opened and swallowed her up. For the good lady had stepped on a carpet of beautiful green moss, and the carpet gave way beneath her and precipitated her into a chamber of horrors full of skulls and dead men's bones, whence she was extricated with difficulty and in a state of extreme nervous tension by the men from the boat. Aunt Jannet's taste for exploration was dulled somewhat by the incident, and they went back home promising to return another day.

The goats, pigs, and geese entered into their new possession with delighted gabblings, bleatings, squeakings, and proved forthwith that they could look after themselves without any outside assistance.

Meanwhile, the two nearer-home communities had been taking their first timid steps towards the light, in the very practical shape of elementary lessons in carpentry. The white men's tools, in the skilled hands of the ship's carpenter, appealed strongly to them. Their various uses were speedily grasped—the tools also, unless he kept his eyes about him, as John MacNeil very soon found out. He was inclined to wrath and the bestowal of hard names, but it was simply human nature in its most natural form, and he learned to circumvent them by using only one tool at a time and never letting it out of his hand till he put it back into safety with the others. The driving of nails, especially when they were allowed to do it themselves, marked epochs in their lives and on their thumbs. Screws and hinges were revelations to them, the saw and the plane perpetual wonders, the grindstone an endless delight.

Blair watched them quietly, showed them the uses of the various things, let them experiment for themselves, and was satisfied that his sawdust and shavings would blossom into fruit. Their interest was excited, they were taking in new ideas, more in a day than hitherto in a generation; the rest would follow.