CHAPTER V
THE PRIEST OF THE MEGATHERIUM
As far as the eye can reach, the shore is covered with a forest, such as only the most extravagant fancy can picture to itself. Broad shadowy trees, which take root again in the soil with their branches, seem to be building huge temples, with living rows of columns, whose roof is the thick dark foliage, whose ornaments are the flowers of the ivy-like creepers which climb up the branches, and look down from their heights with a thousand wide-open blue and scarlet shining eyes. The hedges consist of tiny silvery bushes, with rosy red pointed branches, and the lofty grasses with their woolly spear-heads shoot up so high, that a tall man walking amongst them would not overtop them. Here and there above the arcades of the dark bananas, tower groups of cocoanut palms, those gigantic flowers, with their huge calices of fruit, most noble of the Creator's works, for they only raise their heads the higher for their heavy burdens, and bear with modesty the crown which He has given them.
On the top of one of these palms squats a human shape, engaged in pitching down from thence the nuts, each as big as a child's head; but below, at the foot of the trees, amongst the luxuriant grasses, lies a gigantic megatherium, which in its recumbent position is scarcely distinguishable from a shapeless mass of rock. Its length is fully four and twenty feet; in shape it resembles a sloth, and its unshapely back rises like a small hillock out of the lofty grasses whilst it thrusts its huge head with the tiny eyes and the little round ears into the thicket. The whole of the huge body is cased in a brown warty skin, traversed by deep furrows, and covered round the loins by hundreds of small sea-mussels, the fruits of its evening wallowings in the sea-slime; only the beast's nostrils, ears, and the point of its short tail are sprinkled with sharp, tough bristles.
The sea-farer from Tyre had no sooner brought his beloved and the Ark of the Covenant ashore, than he fell with his face to the ground, thanked the Lord for his wondrous deliverance, and reverentially sang a song of praise.
At the sound of this song, the monster, prone in the grass, raised its unwieldy head, and opening its frightful jaws, uttered a protracted, screeching roar, which was more like a wail of distress than a note of defiance.
In his first alarm Bar Noemi grasped his sword, and his heart beat quickly as he saw this huge head, with its neck twelve feet long, stretched out towards him; but immediately afterwards he let his sword glide back into its sheath, and stroking Byssenia's light locks as she clung trembling to him, calmly soothed and encouraged her. "Fear not! The teeth of this monster are blunt and black. He is a plant eater, and does not attack men. Such like monsters live also in Migraim, in the great ocean, where they are called 'Behemoth,' though they are not so monstrously big."
The man in the tree had, in the mean time, perceived the strangers, and after throwing a few more cocoanuts into the jaws of the monster below, he clambered down from the tree.
The megatherium grew calmer; its jaws sank to the ground again, and it crunched the hard nuts with its teeth as if they had been grains of corn.
The man threw a few more nuts into its jaws, which attention the monster accepted with the same stupid helplessness with which fledglings, a day or two old, allow their dam to feed them, uttering at the same time a grunt of lazy satisfaction.
And now the man approached Bar Noemi.