Little God Ben Read online

  The necessity for keeping up appearances came flooding back. Ardentino was never alone. There was always an unseen audience watching him, admiring him, and eagerly observing all his actions, and he now had to explain to this unseen audience why he had left his companions in the lurch and effected a strategic retreat. As, later, he might also have to explain to the companions.

  He found his reason easily. He was a skilled logician in the art of self-exoneration. He had retreated so that one at least of the party would still be free to manœuvre, and to contrive the rescue of the rest.

  ‘Suppose I had stayed?’ said his thoughts to his film fans, although they had never seriously doubted him, or he their allegiance. ‘What good would that have been? I should just have been caught with the others, and I should now be equally useless! Our chances of ultimate escape would have been jeopardised. No! I will go further! They would have been utterly ruined! It was my duty to avoid capture, even at the risk of a charge of cowardice. Observe, I face the world! Greatly as I disliked it, I had—so to speak—to run away!’

  He felt considerably better. He duped himself as well as his unseen audience. He was a part in many of his films—a hero temporarily misunderstood. He was on home ground.

  The whitewashing eased him mentally but not physically. Indeed, his physical plight was desperate. He was breathless and fatigued and although for the moment he was in a little sheltered, rocky bay, at any instant a native might appear, or a spear or arrow might flash into his torn shirt from an unknown source. He liked open shirts, but he felt his shirt just now was a little too open.

  Hunger added its unpleasant pangs. The one advantage of freedom was that it deprived him of a prisoner’s diet. Richard Ardentino was in a mood to eat anything, without inquiries.

  He waited for a minute or two, under an overhanging rock. There was no sign of his pursuers. He did not know, and lost much comfort by his ignorance, that the spearmen who had defaulted by permitting him to escape had decided to assume, for their own honour, that he had never existed, and that they had had one less to guard. The startling incident of Oomoo had certainly confused the count.

  Presently he left the overhanging rock, and continued on his uncertain way. In due course he would save his companions, but he was in no immediate hurry to do so. The farther away he got, the better he would be able to think how best to return.

  He stuck to the coastline till the sea licked a projecting cliff and forced him inland. Trees, strange and unfriendly, rose about him. They grew thicker, and almost shut out the light. The branches were having all-in wrestling with clinging, winding, drooping vegetation. He seemed to be wandering through a dim green mist.

  Through the mist, illuminated by a patch of unnatural sunlight that had somehow found and pierced an opening, some little points of red came into his vision. Berries? Yes, berries! He hastened forward, and nearly toppled into the bush. Regaining himself, he stared at the berries.

  To eat or not to eat—that was the question! Hunger beat discretion, and he ate. They looked rather like raspberries, and he pretended with all his force that they were.

  He wandered on a little less happily. The necessity for some plan increased with his inability to create one. Something else increased also. An unpleasant sensation in his stomach. He discovered, with a sudden terror he made no attempt this time to explain to his invisible audience, that they had not been raspberries. He sat down to think about it. Then he lay down, to try and not think about it. We will not describe the next few minutes of Richard Ardentino.

  When he rose, his impotence sat upon him like a weight. He was easily the most miserable man on the island. The forest stifled him, and he groped his way down a track that, he hoped, led out of it. He longed for the sea again; felt it would refresh him. The sea had tossed him into this predicament, yet it also offered the only route to peace and familiar things. As he glimpsed a little space of blue he searched it eagerly for a ship. It turned out that he was searching the sky. But the sea came into view a few minutes later, and the track became more open and sandy. He was about to burst on to the shore—he was running without realising it—when he pulled up sharply, and his heart nearly stopped beating.

  He was approaching another sheltered bay, but this time a larger one, and even more securely screened. Great, stark cliffs jutted far into the water on either side, and the only land entrance to the spot seemed to be the track he was descending. But it was not the bay itself that interested him. It was the population in it. A population he reckoned at about a hundred.

  Their colour was similar to the colour of the natives he had already seen, yet there was something different about them. Even in that agonising moment of discovery, he sensed the difference. They were grouped near the sea’s edge, with their backs to him, staring at a large canoe that was creeping round the right-hand cliff. It was this preoccupation that saved Ardentino’s life.

  Behind them lay stacks of spears and bows. Also, drawn up high on the beach, half a dozen other canoes. One appeared to be smashed. The approaching boat glided silently round the jut. The men themselves were equally silent. They made gestures. If they spoke, Ardentino could not hear them. It was the nearest approach to nightmare yet.

  The boat slid towards the soft sand, accelerating suddenly and carving the water with the quick precision of a surgeon’s knife. It touched the sand. Hands stretched out and seized it. Backs began to turn.

  Ardentino turned likewise, and began to fly back into the forest. His legs were like lead. He hit a tree, and clambered up it. The tree was the second thing that saved his life. He never knew how he managed that climb; only that he managed it, and found a leafy sanctuary. He sat down in a cup-shaped seat, formed by kindly branches, and closed his eyes. He gave up trying to be a hero, and therefore came a little nearer to being one.

  ‘What is to be, is to be,’ thought Ardentino, sinking into gloomy philosophy. ‘Anyhow, there’s nothing I can do now but wait.’

  There was a tiny gap in his green screen, and at first he covered this with a large leaf; but presently, when the strain of hearing nothing and seeing nothing became too great, he carefully removed the leaf and substituted his eye. The canoe had now been beached, and was being carried to a sheltered spot among the rocks. The other boats were also being carried to the same spot, and soon not one remained in sight. During this manœuvre, two men crouched at the foot of the track, looking into the forest, and perfectly motionless.

  Now they were joined by ten others. All had bows and arrows. After a short, whispered consultation, the ten men entered the forest, the two original sentries staying at their post. The forest track passed within a few feet of Ardentino’s tree, and he hastily replaced the leaf and stopped breathing. After a while he discovered that you have to breathe to live, so he resumed the process. His breaths sounded, amid the forest silence, like those of a grampus. He shut his eyes, but it produced little consolation, for he visualised the stealthy march almost as clearly as though he were actually seeing it.

  Something stirred near his head. He heard a sudden pinging sound. It was followed by a violent squawk, and the something fell with a flutter.

  Then silence again.

  Had the men reached the tree? Were they standing under it? Had they gone beyond it, and vanished? So securely was he embowered that he could not answer these questions; but when he risked another glance through his peep-hole towards the beach he saw that the two sentries were still at their crouching posts, combing the track with ruthless eyes, and he knew that to attempt to change his quarters was impossible.

  He wondered whether he was destined to remain in the tree for the remainder of his life—and how long the remainder would be.

  And now a new terror added itself to those already existing. He began to get drowsy. Once his head nodded, and he came to with a violent start. ‘My God!’ he thought. ‘I mustn’t go to sleep!’ If he slept, he would be sure to fall off his perch. But he nodded again, came to again, and nodded again. And the las
t time he had a dream which, later on, he rechristened a prevision.

  He dreamt he was in the Temple of Gold, and that the men on the beach were attacking it.

  He came out of the dream in a sweat. For a moment he did not know where he was. Then, as knowledge dawned, he struggled against it, trying to convert the forest into a bedroom.

  Having failed to remodel reality to suit his own convenience, he took a look at reality. The beach was deserted. The sentries had gone. Not a living thing was in sight.

  14

  The High Priest Calls

  Meanwhile, Robert Oakley was reaching the Temple of Gold in response to the High Priest’s summons.

  The High Priest’s appearance was quite as unpleasant as Oakley had depicted it to Ben. Although a white robe clothed most of his skin, and his skin clothed all of his skeleton, it was the skeleton that impressed itself upon the beholder of the outer casings. But as life is mainly what you make it, so people—and even skeletons—are largely what you make them, and it was many moons since the High Priest had struck terror into Oakley’s breast. He was to Oakley merely a flat picture on a canvas. Not a picture one would have chosen, perhaps, if one had been the artist, but still a picture. Two dimensional. Like everything else.

  We shall presently see the High Priest through many eyes. Through Smith’s and Elsie Noyes’s as a nightmare to be fled from: through Ruth’s and Haines’s as a nightmare to be faced; through Medworth’s as a damned impossibility; through Cooling’s as an inconvenient reality that might be vastly entertaining in a cage; through Ben’s—well, let that reveal itself. Through Oakley’s he was a conception of the past. Already finished with. Poof!

  It was not quite so easy to poof the High Priest on this particular morning, however, as he stood outside the Temple. His white robe glared like an evil wraith in the ruthless sunlight. His long, scraggy neck, looking somehow twisted, and partially concealed by wisps of beard (the beard’s one good office), rose out of the whiteness to form a channel that was surely choked between mind and heart. Above the neck was a head that should never have existed. A mother he must have had, but she had long departed this life in shame. His eyes burned with an inherent hatred of everything saving the tortured spark that was himself. They said, ‘I rule what I despise. When I am dead, my skull will be the skull of skulls.’ They spoke the truth.

  All these things Oakley had learned and digested. They were the familiar accompaniment to his day. Yet now as he returned the High Priest’s gaze, with eyes as dull as the priest’s were live, he sensed a difference. Was it in the priest, or was it in himself? He did not know, and he tried hard not to care. His thoughts crystallised themselves into three words: ‘Poor old Ben!’

  The High Priest made a sign of indignant impatience. Oakley pointed to the sun, not yet at its greatest elevation. The High Priest made a sign that his own height sufficed; that he, indeed, was higher than the sun, and had a greater power to burn and blast miserable mortals who kept him waiting. Oakley made a sign that, dash it all, he was a Low Priest, and that ought to count for something. The High Priest made a sign that it counted for nothing; less than nothing; that a Low Priest was as low as a High Priest was high. Oakley made a sign that he had been busy and that he could not possibly know that the High Priest was waiting if the High Priest did not stick to his arrangements. The High Priest made a sign that it was the duty of a Low Priest to interpret a High Priest, just as it was the duty of a High Priest to interpret Oomoo, Washa, Mung, and all the other inhabitants of the sky; further that Oakley was an earthy toad, a crawling slug, and a decaying worm. Oakley made a sign implying, ‘O.K., darling,’ lay on his stomach, touched the priest’s toes with his forehead, resisted an almost uncontrollable impulse to seize the toes and tip their owner over, and rose.

  Then Oakley took a hand-gong from a niche in a rock by the entrance, turned, and began descending the steep hill towards the village, chanting:

  ‘Kooala—Kooala—Kooala.’

  The kooala waited until Oakley was some fifty yards ahead, before slowly following, keeping the same distance between them.

  The villagers heard them coming. So did the prisoners in the compound. So did Ben, on his throne in the Chief’s hut. Oakley had developed his chanting to a fine art, and was rather proud of the manner in which he could make the greatest noise with the least effort. His voice penetrated to the village long before he himself reached it. When he entered the village he sounded his gong, but this was mere form, for the villagers were already in their hovels and the roads were empty.

  The single file, composed of two separated men and a voice, passed the Chief’s hut, but did not pause there. The Chief’s hut with its distinguished occupant was the pièce de resistance, reserved for end. There was no pause until the village had been left behind, the twisting road beyond had been covered, and the compound had been reached. Then, as he entered, Oakley stopped, and waited for the High Priest to draw up.

  The native guards were on their faces. The six prisoners, however, were erect. Oakley smiled faintly.

  ‘Kooala coming, sweethearts,’ he said. ‘He won’t like seeing you in the perpendicular.’

  ‘I’m not going to lie on my face for anybody!’ chattered Elsie Noyes.

  ‘No, no, it wouldn’t be British,’ agreed Smith in a voice that was scarcely British.

  ‘But it might be wise?’ inquired Cooling cynically.

  ‘Wise be damned!’ muttered Medworth, and then suddenly changed his tone. ‘Yes, but after all, what about it? We want to put him off his guard, you know? Throw dust in his eyes?’

  Ruth whispered to Haines, ‘I think Miss Noyes came out of that best!’

  They remained standing, their eyes glued on the entrance. Only one more remark was made before the High Priest appeared. It was a characteristic one from Oakley.

  ‘Any good shows on in London?’ he asked.

  Then the High Priest arrived.

  Reaching the entrance he stopped, and regarded the prisoners; at first collectively, then separately, each in turn. It was the most unpleasant scrutiny they had ever endured. It beat Miss Noyes.

  ‘Don’t you look at me!’ she gasped ridiculously, with a little shriek.

  The High Priest turned to Oakley. Oakley translated the remark. The High Priest advanced to Miss Noyes, who backed into Smith. Smith grasped her, and held her firmly in front of him.

  The High Priest stopped again, then made a sign.

  ‘What does that mean?’ inquired Cooling.

  ‘It means, “Prostrate yourselves before the Chosen of the Gods, white spawn,”’ translated Oakley. ‘What do I tell him?’

  ‘I should say that what you tell him is obvious,’ answered Cooling. ‘A little sentence of three words, the last beginning with H.’

  ‘Weema nya stooka,’ said Oakley, gesticulating to the High Priest. ‘Stooka swarli.’

  The High Priest’s eyes blazed.

  ‘Excuse me, but did you really tell him that?’ asked Cooling a little anxiously.

  ‘I softened the blow,’ replied Oakley. ‘I told him that white people never lie down unless it is to sleep.’

  The High Chief was gesticulating again. He gesticulated for some while. Oakley translated:

  ‘The High Priest warns you that if you are disobedient you will soon lie down for your longest sleep, but, for the moment, he defers to your heathenish habits. He is now about to touch you, to make sure you are real, for he finds you as hard to believe as you doubtless find him. While he touches you, you will remain motionless, and you will not touch back.’

  ‘What would happen,’ asked Medworth as the High Priest advanced again, ‘if I boxed his ears?’

  ‘It would happen very quickly,’ answered Oakley.

  No one boxed his ears. They submitted to the ordeal. Happily it did not take long. The High Priest only paused at Smith, whose fat flabby arm seemed to interest him, and at Ruth. That time he did nearly get his ears boxed.

  ‘Find me interesting?’
asked Ruth as he peered at her closely.

  ‘I’d hold on to that fist of yours, if I were you,’ Oakley murmured to Haines. ‘It won’t do any good.’

  ‘Yes, steady, Tom,’ said Ruth. ‘I can stand it.’

  ‘So can I, so long as he keeps his dirty hands off you!’ muttered Haines. ‘But if he starts pawing you again—’

  ‘Shut up, shut up!’ growled Medworth. ‘He’s getting ratty!’

  Perhaps the High Priest gathered, without interpretation, the sultry undercurrent, and decided that it might be wiser to satisfy his curiosity more completely in the Temple, where he was on home ground. The natives obeyed him implicitly, but these white monstrosities were less trained. Whatever his reasoning, he suddenly withdrew, and beckoning Oakley to the entrance discoursed with him volubly by his peculiar method. The silent conversationalists were watched by the prisoners, who gathered that some little trouble was on. Oakley, for once, appeared to be objecting. At last, however, the High Priest made a gesture of finality, and Oakley shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Well, what was all that about?’ asked Lord Cooling, admirably concealing a nasty flutter around his heart.

  ‘Oh—just that we’re going,’ answered Oakley.

  ‘Try again,’ suggested Cooling.

  Oakley stared at the ground for a moment, then suddenly looked at Haines.

  ‘I still think Ben is your best chance,’ he said. ‘I’ll know whether the chance is scotched or not in a few minutes. But meanwhile I’m taking no responsibility, and if any of you want to try a spot of sauve qui peut, don’t say I’m stopping you.’

  He swung round on his heel and vanished.

  The High Priest did not follow him immediately. He stood in the entrance, with his back to them. Tom took a soft step forward. He felt Ruth’s detaining hand on his arm, and at the same moment the priest’s white sleeve fluttered slightly, and something long and thin it concealed slid down a little way. From below the folds protruded for an instant a sharp gleaming point.