V
UP UNTIL this moment we had been engaged in an essentially personal enterprise, even though its object was to secure information vital to the United Nations. From this time on, however, the personal element was to become almost completely subordinate to the vast problems of humanity itself, for, as we were to soon find, we had tied ourselves to a symbol that was determined to live up to all that was claimed or expected of him, and further, who depended upon our advice. The situation for us was made much worse because at first we doubted both his sincerity and good sense—in fact, it was not until after the Wagnerian climax of the whole thing that we at last realized, along with the rest of the world, exactly what Kazu Takahashi believed in.
Kazu crossed the flat eastern half of Yat in less than a minute, evidently wishing to get out of range of Rau's artillery as quickly as possible. His feet tore through the groves as a normal man's might through a field of clover; indeed, he experienced more trouble from the softness of the ground than from any vegetation. As we were soon to learn, one of the disadvantages of Kazu's size lay in the mechanical properties of the world as experienced by him. Kazu stood almost 600 feet high, or roughly 100 times the linear dimensions of a normal man. From the simple laws of geometry, this increased his weight by 100³ or 1 million times. But the area of his body, including the soles of his feet which had to support this gigantic load, had increased by but 100², or ten thousand times. The ground pressure under his feet was thus 100 times greater, for each square inch, than for a normal man. The result was that Kazu sank into the ground at each step until he reached bedrock, or soil strong enough to carry the load.
At the beach he hesitated briefly, as though getting his bearings, and then waded into the ocean. The surf which had used us so violently was to him only a half inch ripple. He strode through the shallows and past the reef in a matter of seconds, and then plunged into deeper water. From our dizzy perch, now carried at hip height, we watched the great feet drive down into the sea, leaving green walls of solid water about them.
Although we did not realize it at the time, we later learned that Kazu's wading forays were attended by tidal waves which inundated islands up to a hundred miles away. This trip across a twenty mile strait swamped a dozen native fishing craft, flooded out four villages and killed some hundreds of people.
We fared better than some of these innocent bystanders, for Kazu carefully held our steel box above the sea, and presently lurched through shallow water to the dry land.
The new island was larger than Yat, and entirely given over to rice growing for Kazu's food supply. He threaded his way easily among the paddies, up through some low hills, and then down a narrow gorge into the sea again.
Ahead lay a much more extensive body of water. The sun was now hardly fifteen degrees above the horizon, and its glare plus a bank of clouds made it difficult to see the distant land. Kazu raised our room to the level of his face.
"Is that Island of Celebes?"