The Red Gods
Date: 2026-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

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Title: The Red Gods

Author: Jean d'Esme

Translator: Moreby Acklom

Release date: July 8, 2026 [eBook #79053]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79053

Credits: Tim Lindell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED GODS ***

THE RED GODS

(LES DIEUX ROUGES)

By JEAN D'ESME

A ROMANCE

Translated from the French by
MOREBY ACKLOM

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1924
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

This extraordinary story undoubtedly had its inception in a peculiar passage in the Report of a French official mission in Indo-China in 1912, entitled Les Jungles Moïs (The Moï Jungles). The translation of the passage runs as follows:

"This is not the first time that I have met this strange story of savage men, dwellers in the forests of the mountains. They have been reported from the wild region of the Annamite range. According to the local descriptions these 'savages' must be covered with a thick mat of red hair. They have been very seldom met with and are now never seen; but everywhere one still comes upon the traces which they left behind them."

Romances of the discovery of prehistoric or vanished races are not uncommon; but I cannot recall any in which the discovery was made the subject of as splendid a piece of descriptive work, and at the same time of as poignantly tragic a drama as in this instance. I think even the most hardened reader of adventure-stories will admit that in The Red Gods he has got something distinctly out of the common.

M. A.

CONTENTS

| PROLOGUE: In Tsen-Tac's Opium Den
I. | Saigon
II. | Up the River
III. | A Fellow Traveler
IV. | Post 32
V. | At the Mission
VI. | An Enthusiast Discourses on Pre-Historic Remains
VII. | The Silent Village
VIII. | Love in the Forest
IX. | An Interview with a Sorceress
X. | The Fugitive
XI. | A Desperate Adventure
XII. | Those Left Behind
XIII. | The Fugitive's Story
XIV. | Into the Unknown
XV. | Deepening Mystery
XVI. | Near the End of the Journey
XVII. | A Freak of Nature
XVIII. | Back in the Stone Age
XIX. | Outside the Temple
XX. | Inside the Temple
XXI. | The Law of Gondwana
XXII. | Wanda Tells Her Story
XXIII. | A Terrible Bargain
XXIV. | The Rescue
XXV. | Escape
XXVI. | A Message from Jieng

THE RED GODS

LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Europeans

Pierre de Lursac A young administrative official of French Indo-China.

Father Ravennes Priest of the Apostolic Mission to the Banhars.

Michael Redeski Of the French army: Lieutenant in service in Indo-China.

Wanda His sister.

Rabaud Captain of an up-country river steamer.

Jules Bressond The narrator of the story: a boyhood friend of de Lursac's.

Natives

Jieng Chief sorceress and high priestess of the Moï tribes.

Maa-Wang "The-Man-who-goes-in-Front."

Ngur }

Pâa } Native guides.

Hmon A woman of the Stieng tribe.

Scene: The city of Saigon (capital of French Indo-China) and the unexplored, inaccessible forests surrounding the Pou-Kas, the principal peak of the Annamite range.

PROLOGUE

IN TSEN-TAC'S OPIUM DEN

This is the door, here, in front of me! A heavy door of teak, black and shiny. However, with my hand on the iron latch, I hesitate, fighting the subtle uneasiness and irritation which I feel rising in me. At the back of my mind a question forms: why do I come here, to the bottom of this hidden alley at night, I, who seldom or never touch the opium pipe? Hardly at all: perhaps five or six pipes now and again on Sundays at the hour of siesta! Six little pipes, that's nothing! Any regular opium-smoker will tell you so. Then, why have I come here tonight? Why? As a matter of fact I feel that my presence here, behind this back-shop in the heart of the Chinese town of Cho-lon is silly and without excuse.... So silly and aimless that already I have withdrawn my hand, with my mind made up to retrace my steps along the sombre corridor and back through the sumptuous mart of the worthy Tsen-Tac, who sells to knowing connoisseurs precious silks and out-of-the-way curiosities brought by the big-bellied junks from China ... and who in addition dispenses, with discretion, to a few genuine and carefully chosen smokers, the priceless calm of opium.

Yes, I shall not stay.... It will be better. The darkling spirit of the Drug shall not glide through my blood tonight. I am off.... But fate at this very moment decides otherwise. At my back, in the thick shadows a raucous voice cries:

"In the name of Confucius, get on there!"

And instinctively, pushing the swing-door, I enter. A puff of acrid odor, the smell of the wonderful perfume of Shandoo, at once rough and voluptuous, assails my senses and makes my heart leap!

Behind me the closed door swings open roughly, and the man who addressed me stumbles into the room. Pushing by me, he advances to the "boy" who has run up to meet him. For a second I follow him with my eyes. His form is broken and bent, very tall, and so thin that it accentuates the fullness of the white linen clothes which flap about his limbs and at moments soften the jagged outline of his bones. A curious figure, like that of an old man, skeletonized and moribund; and the more surprising, in that certain signs reveal the strange contrast of an undeniable youthfulness in him. Sure signs: his step, rapid and full of strength; his movements, quick and jerky, peculiar to those who are under the domination of the Drug, when the brown hour of the smoke has arrived. But what do I care about this unknown man? He hurries on toward the bottom of the room and disappears. Without knowing why, I sigh with relief, and in my turn step forward. The "boy," as I come, smiles, showing his black enamelled teeth, and points out to me the bed which lies along the wall, the great plank platform on which the smokers lie and dream their strange dreams, while about them watches and drifts the spirit of the opium.

With a nod, I assent and give my order.

"Bamboo: small pipe."

And, heavily, my body weary, I fling myself down on the bare wood polished with use, the coolness of which, through the cloth of my coat, penetrates deliciously to my flesh....

The time drifts away.... How many hours? I do not know, I do not care to know. Stretched out on my side, with my eyes fixed on the little crystal lamp topped with its conical globe in which the flame, like a living tongue, points upward, steady and reddish, I watch the movements of the "boy" plunging the steel needle into the sticky Shandoo, turning it over the lamp and rolling it on the brown bowl of the pipe.

With my lips glued to the bamboo tube, blackened by opium and soaked with its deadly taste, I breathe in slowly, taking the long inhalations of the practiced smoker. Then, with my head thrown back on the pillow of smooth hollowed-out wood, I fix my eyes on the acrid smoke which trickles from my expanded nostrils, and of which the clouds, circling in spirals, rise slowly to the beams of the ceiling. All is silence. The only sound besides the bubbling of the cooked pills of opium is the scratching of the needles on the pipe bowls. Across the room a divine happiness floats, filling with dreams the warm dusk which the light of the great silken Chinese lanterns does not disturb,—just as it should be!

Indescribable smell of opium smoke! I no longer think of anything else! It is the whole universe for me now; and my whole life flows in the great sweetness which drifts through my veins, lulling my senses and making the very marrow of my bones and the fibres of my muscles weak with pleasure!...

Eighth or tenth pipe? What does it matter! The curtains are drawn, the air is still and pleasant, the light is faint, as it ought to be, too faint for any eyes but those of the smokers. Here and there along the platform the little lamps burn, like will-o-the-wisps dancing on the dark and sleeping surface of the wood, and the stretched-out bodies lie along the wall, the bamboo tubes in their mouths, while the "boy" bends over and puts fresh opium in the empty pipes.

Slowly, very slowly,—for what is the good of hurrying—are not dreams everlasting?—I raise my hand. My lips, stiff, clumsy, manage to form the single word:

"Tea."

Silently the Annamese goes off, and I smile with satisfaction that he has been able to understand me without having made me go through the effort of explaining myself. Decidedly Tsen-Tac is a worthy proprietor, whose servants have been trained by practiced opium-smokers. I let my eyes close. Under my neck I feel the wood of the pillow like a cool and comforting hand, and in my brain, which has become clear and subtle, all sorts of strange things appear and move about,—apparitions which may be souvenirs of another life or visions of another world,—things reserved for the initiates of opium,—at any rate things which are strangely alive in the recesses of my brain and which one day without doubt will come into my human thoughts ... unless, when the effects of the opium have passed away I forget them—which is quite possible. For everything is possible! Everything! Except the one thing: that anyone should touch or interfere with a smoker who is dreaming over his pipe.

I lift my lids and turn my head slightly towards the hand which has just dropped on my shoulder and committed this most inexcusable offence. My glance steals upwards, full of disgust, along the wrist and the arm, up to the face of the man who does not even know that one must pay absolute respect to the intoxication of the opium-smoker. At first with disgust, then in astonishment. It seems to me, indeed, that I know the face bent towards me. Where have I seen that expression before ... and when? It was a long time ago, certainly, a very long time. The eyes are deep and black and despairing, eyes which one does not quickly forget.

Now the man speaks in a hoarse, muffled voice. Calling me by my name, he says:

"Good evening, Jacques. I see that you are always sensible, as usual. You have had only ten pipes and here you are waiting for the green tea of Yun-nan which the boy is making for you. Only ten pipes, and already you are disgusted at me!"

He has sat himself down in the attitude of one of those Lao-ese idols, with his legs crossed, his hands flat on his thighs, and he smiles upon me with a faint baffling smile.

"Yes, I see this surprises you. But I understood your look at once when you raised your head towards me. Yes, I saw your scorn at the bottom of your eyes; exactly as I recognized you at once, when you came to stretch yourself out beside me, without noticing, and I said to myself: Here is he with whom I spent my childhood, and who does not know me,—because I have aged so much,—I have aged too soon, much too soon for other men to know me, even when they have been my childhood friends."

He bends over me and looks at me strangely. He has something ironical and yet almost tender in his expression that I observe with curiosity. Then he lifts his head and speaks out loud the very thought which has just crossed my mind.

"No. I am neither drunk nor mad! Scarcely twenty-five pipes. At this moment I have had my exact dose. Just enough to make me extraordinarily subtle and clairvoyant; and it is because of that I am speaking to you. I admit I hesitated a long time ... or a short one, I do not know which. What do you think of it? Is it worth the trouble?

"Who am I? Bah!... I already told you: your best friend, he with whom you lived for years side by side, who shared your games, your pleasures and your sorrows of childhood. Don't you remember? Well, I am not surprised. I always thought that you had a mediocre brain. Unlucky that the Drug itself has not succeeded in improving it."

He interrupts himself for a second to shrug his shoulders with a yawn of pity. His silence seems to expect an answer, yet nothing in me protests against the impertinence, at once brutal and kindly, of this unknown. The opium has permeated my soul with wisdom, kindliness and peace. Indifferent to his questions, I let my eyes wander over the panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the red hangings, embroidered with yellow characters, which cover the walls of the smoke-room; the faint white-clad forms, which move fitfully from time to time on the long vista of the platform, sighing heavily. But already the harsh voice of the stranger is beginning again:

"Really, don't you remember Dinard? The beach at Port Blanc, blazing in the sunshine; the green water of the little bay in which we bathed every day in July? Don't you remember the house where we spent our vacations, covered all over with wild vine, its two little doorways of green wood, the spindle trees in line along the railings, and the clumps of hydrangeas on which the sun, striking through the trees, flung splashes of gold in which the blackbirds used to come and scold?...

"And then later, don't you remember our school, the dear old Colonial School of the Avenue d'Observation, and the Luxembourg,—the old Luco where we used to leave our 'box' on autumn evenings and go to gaze at the falling dusk and the first yellow leaves which the breeze drove fluttering down from the trees and rolled gaily round the white statues on their gray pedestals?...

"What! You don't? You remember nothing?... Doesn't that recall anything to you? Poor brute!..."

Again he has bent over me, and he smiles with his face close to mine. But in vain I seek in my past and dig among the recollections of dead days in the corners of my memory. I cannot manage to recognize this man who pretends to have been the play-fellow of my youth. However, Yes!... I feel that everything that he has just reminded me of is right, and that these scenes that he has revived were formerly the background of my life! But what about him? I fling down my eyes with weariness and even with irritation.

Nevertheless, his voice goes on, sadder and more confidential than ever.

"No! I won't insist on it, but nevertheless open your eyes and look. Yes, that's right. Look at me long and carefully. Well? Is my poor face ugly enough, with its white hair, its wan gray skin withered by fever, washed by the rain, torn by the thorns? Is it terrible enough, with its bones that stick out all over it, with all these wrinkles which make it look like an old tragic mask from some Chinese theatre?

"Disgusting face, isn't it? Well! I have just come out of hospital after four months in bed—four months in bed—and before that, four months more of suffering, weariness, and ghastly terror, of daily fear and deadly companionship! That changes a man, I tell you; and I forgive you for not knowing me, since even I myself at times have recoiled with fright before the unknown image that the looking-glass shows me!"

He lifts his head. A twitch, a sort of intermittent cramp of his lip drags his mouth to one side violently, changing and deforming the face, which becomes livid, while in his staring eyes a sudden terrible light shines for an instant and passes away. He lifts his arms in a gesture of despair and weariness; then in a low voice, as if it were to himself, with a little dry laugh which comes and goes in jerks:

"Just a rag! This is what one year in this country has made of me. Yes, this healthy and vigorous body and this willing brain which I brought here a few months ago are nothing now but rags and tatters, used up and withered, in which my soul and youth, though still alive, flutter and are slowly dying. And soon I shall be nothing but a vague memory which will gradually fade out day by day in the hearts of those who love me. Then soon,—so quickly—yes, so quickly—I shall have gone altogether. Then, who in this vile life will think of Pierre de Lursac?"

"—Pierre!"

I must have spoken too loud. Upon the sleeping-platform two or three smokers, like white spectres, begin to move and grumble at the intruder who is disturbing the serenity of the place.... What does that matter to me! With my arms stretched out, I repeat, my voice trembling:—

"—Pierre! Pierre!"

He bends towards me and with his two hands gripping my shoulders he holds me down.

"Quiet ... yes ... it is I.... But quiet. I am satisfied.... Don't move. There is nothing important enough to allow of your disturbing your opium trance, and nothing is worse than getting excited when you have just finished smoking your dose.... Don't trouble to talk."

He falls silent, his expression grave and thoughtful. On my part, while anxiously watching him, I dream of my childhood days and my youth. Lursac!... Is it really he whom I have before me? Once more I see him in my mind coming ashore at Saigon some few months after his graduation from college, scarcely a year ago.... I recall his enthusiasm, his ardor, his thirst for adventure, and the air of strength and manliness, of youth and good looks, which glowed in him. And now I look at him feverishly again. He is right ... a rag ... a miserable rag....

"But why? Why?... What can have happened?"

With a sombre eye he stares at me in silence. Slowly he changes his attitude of a Buddhist statue and stretches himself on his side, his hollowed face turned towards my lamp. Without words and without a wasted movement, he takes up the pipe that I have laid down. His long hands, fleshless and transparent, busy themselves in the prescribed motions, always the same. With eyes closed he smokes.

Pipe follows pipe. A great silence weighs upon the human beings who stagnate in this hall filled with the oppressive perfume of the Drug. A silence only broken now and again for a moment by the distant striking of a gong, which marks the swallowing up of one hour after another in eternity ... and, from time to time, unreal and without echo in this house of nothingness, a woman's nervous laugh sends a spasm of discomfort through the calm.

Then, in my turn I take up the pipe again....

Then, suddenly, Lursac is talking. I watch him with vague curiosity. He is stretched out on his back. The pupils of his wide-open eyes, dilated and black, stare out, immobile and sightless, like two dead beasts. He speaks. My brain, soaked in the bitter smoke, picks its way among the aimless swarming of thoughts which rise up, melt away, and vanish without leaving any trace....

One after the other, the smokers get up and go. They have the staggering and hesitating gait of drunkards. Their linen clothes make patches of ghostly white against the red hangings of the hall.... The dull slam of the door signals the departure of each in turn....

Lursac is still talking....

Each one of his words falls into my brain and is engraved there so indelibly that I am sure that the next time I smoke opium and become entranced as I am now, I shall be able to reproduce them all, from the first to the last, without omitting a single one.... Yes.... I am absolutely certain of that.

However, tonight I do not feel able to distinguish whether all this is not a silly dream—the recollection of some life I have lived before in some other world....

Yes, I'm drunk with opium, drunk ... drunk ... drunk, to such a point that I am unable to recognize this long pale thing,—this hand that he is playing with and caressing ... this thing which looks like a hand ... a woman's.... Idiot! What is it?... Pshaw!... Let's go to sleep....

Time flows on.... Seconds and minutes, parted one by one from the present, plunge themselves inevitably into the shadowy ocean of the always growing past.... On the walls the red hangings begin to get paler. They become pink, then mauve, under the gentle fingers of the dawn which steals bluely through the window panes and between the shutters into the smoke-clouded opium hall. The last words of Lursac penetrate to my ears in a vague murmur.

"There you are, I'm finished.... Now, you know ... and nobody but you will know.... Nobody!... But I am glad to have told all this to you whom chance has placed at the last mile-stone of my journey. It would have worried me that you might have thought me mad, judging me by the gossip of some commonplace incident, or have supposed me crazed by the Drug and fever; as there will be those who will not fail to cry it aloud in their miserable papers!!! One lunatic the less! ... a quick and easy epitaph, but one which fits me well...."

There is a long untroubled silence. Then a violent explosion seems to tear my brain apart. What is the fool playing at—?... Warm, heavy drops are falling on my hand ... and as I half open my eyes I spring up, staring and haggard. Pierre is lying beside me ... bent double, like a useless, broken toy. From his face, disfigured by a gaping hole, blood rolls, covering my cheek, my forehead, my clothes. And I sit there stupefied, without understanding. Only after the first minutes of disturbance and agitation, and while they are carrying away his great bony body, do I see at the end of the arm, hanging down and swaying as the carriers stagger along with their terrible burden, the shining steel of a revolver, round which his fingers are still clenched.

Eight days ... that was eight days ago!...

And every evening since—because my nerves were torn to pieces and because the Shandoo, as I had foreseen, allowed all the details of my friend's story to rise from the bottom of my memory,—every evening since then, I have written, bit by bit, faithfully, the strange story that he told me before killing himself. I have not written it for myself, who know, but for others—for the people here, for the people in France; in a word, for all those unbelievers who in the darkness of their blindness think they know everything, although they are beset with ignorance, and believe that they have dislodged the Unknown from the last shadowy haunt in which it is hiding. Although they have no suspicion, even, of the mystery which is here, there, everywhere, close to them, and which I am the only one to hold under my hands.... The only one!...

... There, I have finished.... I have left out nothing:—not a single particular, not a word. Everything has been reproduced exactly. In any case I could not forget anything, because of this woman's hand,—this long pale hand so perfectly embalmed that one would swear it was alive and ready to move any minute. There it is: the signet on its ring-finger bears the following charge: Dexter, argent, a lion sable—Sinister, azure, a chevron or ... and now, out through the window, open to the sweet and placid night of Annam, I am going to fling it, so that I may be no longer haunted by it, may no longer have to see it there....

There it goes, splash!

It must have fallen in the canal. And there the black mud will soon cover it for ever....

... And I shall never smoke opium again, never!... But that has nothing to do with this....

And here is the story that he told me[1]....

CHAPTER I

SAIGON

On the threshold of the office Pierre de Lursac stopped.

Behind him the beaded hanging rustled as it fell into place. Carefully he folded up the paper of instructions that had been handed to him a few minutes earlier by the Director of Personnel, and as he thought over the orders which he had just received he crossed the veranda.

Below the balustrade of the porch lay stretched the tropical vegetation of the gardens of Government House. Walks, shining and carefully tended, wound about the clumps of rhododendrons and the green lawns over which the flame-trees and tamarinds flung round patches of shade.

When he came to the foot of the main staircase of gray stone which led to the park, Pierre ordered the linh who was on guard a few steps away:

"My rickshaw."

The rifleman immediately barked a short order, and a light vehicle appeared from one of the side avenues. Following the lively and cadenced jog-trot of its coolie, it described a semicircle and drew up, shafts on the ground, in front of the young man.

Jumping nimbly into it, Pierre lay back on the cushions cased in white coverings, and then, as the runner, ready to start, looked up at him with a questioning face expecting directions, Lursac signed to the linh to come closer.

"I don't speak Annamese well enough to make myself understood. Tell him I want to go back to the hotel."

The rifleman gave an elaborate salute, and this military gesture, usually sharp and formal, seemed astonishing when performed by this little puny soldier who looked like a mixture of a toy and a warrior out of a comic operetta.

He acknowledged the order:

"Gia bam qua lon."[2]

And he immediately launched forth into verbose explanations to the coolie, the nasal syllables echoing strangely in the sonorous silences of the park. The coolie nodded and started off with a supple and rhythmic gait; while Pierre, lying spread out against the back of the little car, watched the naked back of the runner, down which great drops of sweat were already beginning to roll. As soon as they left the shady alleys of the park, and while they were crossing the square which stretches in front of the Government offices, a wave of heat enveloped them. It was nearly four o'clock. From the burning ground the hot air rose in waves, while above the trees, flooded with dazzling light, the lifeless and quivering atmosphere vibrated in the heat. Although he wore a cork helmet and was clothed in the lightest of white linen, Pierre experienced a feeling of prostration at the touch of this fiery breath. When the rickshaw at last entered the shade of the avenue of lofty tamarinds, he sighed with relief. A little coolness caused by the rapidity of their progress caressed his face, relaxed the feeling of depression in his temples, spread along his body and refreshed him with a sensation of well-being. He flung himself back, stretched out his legs, and shut his eyes, giving himself up to the swaying of the light vehicle whose rubber-tired wheels rode softly on the dust of the roadway.

As the running coolie slowed down a little in consequence of a block in the traffic, Lursac heard a voice calling to him.

"Hullo! Pierre!"

Surprised, he turned his head and shot a quick glance along the edge of the street. On the sidewalk, smiling and waving to attract his attention, a lieutenant of colonial infantry was standing and calling to him:

"Come here!"

Lursac recognized him immediately.

"Jacques!"

Touching the shoulder of the coolie with his walking stick, he cried:

"Toi.... Toi...."

It was the one word which he had so far succeeded in remembering of the Annamese language since his arrival in Saigon.

Prodded from behind, the runner had immediately stopped, and Pierre, jumping out of the rickshaw, hurried toward the officer who came to meet him. They greeted each other with the light of pleasure in their eyes: then Jacques Bressond, drawing back a couple of steps, looked his friend up and down. Lursac, upright in the middle of the sidewalk, drew himself up to his full height so that his white tunic clung tightly to his figure and threw into relief his splendid chest, the free swing of his shoulders and the harmonious strength which showed itself in his erect carriage and the spring of his legs. In fact, a fine figure of a man, whose strong, talented face was set off by two brilliant dark eyes deeply set. Jacques took him by the arm.

"I found your message when I got back from my trip this morning; I immediately ran off to your hotel, where I shouted till the whole place rang!... The service boy, after bowing and scraping, gibbered at me: 'M. Lursac been gone, two o'clock.' It was enough for me to understand what he meant.... What luck to meet you like this!... What are you doing?"

"Nothing," said Pierre, "I am just going back to the hotel."

"All right, then I will take charge of you. We will go and take an aperitif together and then we will make the 'Tour of Inspection' in a carriage."

"Tour of Inspection?"

"Yes, the swagger thing to do, the Avenue des Acacias of Saigon high-life, the fashionable six-to-eight-o'clock affair.... It is curious and instructive, as you will see! You'll come, won't you?"

Lursac agreed.

"With pleasure. I have been here for three days now, and already I am beginning to feel my loneliness weighing on me. They told me that you were going to be absent for another fortnight."

He threw some change to the rickshaw coolie, who made himself scarce.

"Yes, but I had to turn in here to get new instructions before continuing my journey of official inspection."

They had resumed their walk side by side down the Rue Catinat. Under the sun which beat down from a sky of hard, cloudless blue that glowed like a metal dome, the life of the town stagnated, prostrated by the heat.

In the shops, which the lowered shades protected with a zone of shadow, the customers seated at their ease bargained casually over the precious knick-knacks in lacquer, ivory, and mother-of-pearl which every now and then gave off a vivid sparkle of light. On their haunches at their benches behind the glass of the shop front the native jewelers, clad only in the soft cai-ao of fine linen, hammered out complicated and original designs on the gold or silver of an umbrella handle which would eventually be the prized possession of some coarse western barbarian!

The interior of the shops, guessed at rather than seen through the opening of the drawn curtains, seemed like oases of shade and coolness, and attracted with some subtle charm.

As they went along Jacques explained:

"Since I found on my table this morning all your letters from France announcing your arrival here I have been thinking of nothing but Paris. I have been living in the midst of the recollections which you have brought to life again.... Do you remember when we used to start off for the Valley de Chevreuse on Saturdays?"

They crossed the square, at the bottom of which the municipal theatre reared its ornate façade in imitation of a Greek temple, opposite the wide semicircle from which the Boulevard Charner could be seen blazing with light and baking in the sun.

When they had arrived on the pavement opposite, Jacques Bressond, pointing out the café which occupied the angle between the Square and the Rue Catinat, said:

"Let us stop here. We will take a seat on the terrace. For you who are new to Saigon the sight will be worth while. This is exactly the right moment, the exquisite moment, for now, at the slight pretence of coolness that the evening breeze brings with it, the fashionable people of the town gather to suck iced drinks through straws—milky absinthe shot with iridescent colors, emerald crème de menthe and the entire gamut of cocktails, dark and light and rainbow-hued."

Pierre smiled, and seating himself he asked:

"Do you like the country?"

"Well, like every other place, it has its good side and its bad side. However, it seems to me that the pleasures are more numerous than the troubles. And then, why shouldn't I like Saigon? Of the last six months I have spent four or five exploring the bush, in climbing sandy hills, wandering through the impenetrable confusion of the forests of Annam and upper Tonkin, and in floundering about in the green mud of the canals and the creeks of Laos...."

"Do you know Laos, then?"

"Pretty well. I have made two trips there on geodetic surveys."

"Splendid. You can give me some information then. Here, see where the chief is sending me."

He pulled out of his pocket the paper of instructions that he had been given earlier in the day and extended it to Bressond.

The boy, clothed in a long tunic of white linen and with his head wound in a turban of linen set down before them on the bamboo table a tray heaped with bottles of many colors. While he measured and mixed with the precision of habit the liquids and ingredients of an oyster cocktail in the glasses filled with cracked ice, Jacques Bressond ran over the paper which Lursac had handed him.

The boy, having completed the mixture, placed the glasses before the young men and disappeared.

Bressond passed back the paper of instructions to Lursac.

"Post 32? Don't know it. Haven't they given you any other details?"

"No.... Oh, yes, wait a minute, ... yes. The Chief of Personnel told me that the post was at the foot of the Pou-Kas."

Jacques Bressond raised his head.

"Ah, wait.... Pou-Kas? Isn't the post on the bank of the canal?"

"Yes, I have to go there part of the way in an ox-cart and part in a boat.... Do you know it?"

The officer sucked a few drops of his cocktail from the end of his straw and reflected.

Beside him with stretched out legs Pierre watched with curiosity the Rue Catinat, along which people were beginning to appear. Five o'clock struck in the distance with clear metallic strokes. The terrace of the café at once began to fill with patrons in white waistcoats and light dresses. Like a swollen river, the fashionable artery of Saigonese life brimmed with a noisy wave of carriages, of street hawkers and promenaders. From café to café the newsboys ran, slipping from one table to another, yelping the name of a local newspaper; while, opposite, two Chinese with crumpled features got out of a malabar and disappeared into a tailor shop.

The café orchestra suddenly dashed into a waltz. Sharp bursts of music dominated the confused noise which mounted from the pavement, and a languorous tune just imported from Europe was borne aloft on two squeaky violins accompanied by a husky-voiced piano and a shaky mandoline.

Vaguely soothed, Pierre abandoned himself to the pleasure of being there, peacefully situated under the punkahs, with an iced drink in front of him, in the midst of this tumult and heat which surrounded him.

Bressond's voice stirred his placidity:

"The Pou-Kas.... I seem to remember that.... I must have passed it on my last trip but one. I have trekked about the country more than a little. That was certainly one of my roughest trips. Yes ... wait, now I remember.... It is the region which stretches at the foot of the great Annamite mountain-chain, in the middle of the forest, almost on the Burmese frontier ... a ghastly country, my poor old chap! You will never find anything to amuse yourself with there."

Pierre smiled absent-mindedly. His eyes ran along the side of the wall and followed the jerky progress of a congai whose black silk tunic and large white cai-quan appeared and disappeared amongst the throng.

"Bah!" said he, "I didn't come here for amusement. In any case they didn't pretend at the office that the post possessed anything to recommend it."

Bressond sipped his cocktail and shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing to recommend it? I should say not! To begin with, you will arrive there in the middle of the rainy season. Secondly, you will have to live in the middle of this clump of mountains hardly explored as yet, alone with a dozen native soldiers of the military station, and ... it's a very advanced point, isn't it?"

"Yes, Post 32. Moï territory, it appears."

Bressond started.

"In Moï territory.... Number 32.... By Buddha!... Now I know. It's even worse than I thought. Well, well! You are certainly going strong for a beginner.... But ... what on earth do they want to send a military administrator out there for?"

Pierre, nettled by the tone in which he made this exclamation, looked at him fixedly.

"They are sending me to join a lieutenant who has just been nominated to the post. It is a special appointment. My business will be to inaugurate the civil organization. But what is there unusual about this Post 32?"

Bressond shook his head.

"What is there unusual? I do not know exactly ... and nobody here knows anything more than I do. At any rate it is the worst hole in the whole of Upper Laos! But, of course you know how they speak of it ... 'recently established' ... all humbug, my boy!"

And as Pierre shot a look of interrogation at him he continued:

"Yes, all humbug! As a matter of fact, the post was instituted for the first time at least six or seven years ago. It was Longères who had it. At the end of six months, no Longères, no Post 32. A flood had swept away the settlement and its inhabitants. At least that is the version that the surviving members of the garrison gave of the accident.... One had to be satisfied with that.... However, for three years no one mentioned Post 32. Then one fine day some official or other digging through his papers discovered that for the security of our dominion in Indo-China it was indispensable that the post should be re-established."

A driver, curled up on the seat of his victoria, passed on his way up the street. Bressond broke off to make him a sign. At the same time he threw a coin on the table and as the boy ran up he pushed Pierre de Lursac before him into the carriage, giving a brief order to the coachman.

"The tour of inspection through the Botanical Gardens. You understand?"

"I understand, O Mandarin of two stripes."

At a lively trot the two native ponies, tossing their ruffled manes as they went, drew the carriage down the Rue Catinat, turned to the left and followed the line of the quays, along which in a brown and black medley the sampans showed their masts and the lines of their decks.

Something resembling coolness floated down the bed of the river; the light began to soften, melting its violent golds into shades of mauve. The dying day threw over the white town some of its purple splendor. And under the hoofs of the horses a slight dust rose like a delicate honey-colored cloud.

Pierre had put his hand on his friend's arm.

"And then?" he asked.

Bressond turned to look at him.

"Then what?... Ah! yes.... Post 32! Well! they re-established it, as I told you. And this time it was Dorcel who took charge. For a year everything went all right. And then suddenly the news burst like a bomb in the newspapers: all over with Post 32 again! But, as it had been rebuilt on a spur of the mountain, this time it wasn't a flood, but a fire, that had destroyed it. As for Dorcel, he just managed to arrive at the hospital and died without being able to throw the slightest light on this second accident to the celebrated Post 32...."

The victoria, now having caught up with the procession of carriages which was defiling along the promenade, slackened speed and took its turn.... In the opposite direction another line of vehicles was passing at a foot pace—buggies with thin wheels, high-seated tilburys, gigs drawn by horses driven tandem, shining victorias whose cushions were rich with bright dresses and brilliant umbrellas.

Bressond's hand was ever at his military cap in the salute, while here and there he shot a smile or a nod to acquaintances or ladies whom he knew.

Leaning against the backboard of the carriage, Pierre de Lursac amused himself by contemplating this long row of colonial fashion. Before his unaccustomed eyes, Saigon society lay spread, offering its celebrities and its peculiarities for his inspection.

Bressond meanwhile, a guide as willing as thoroughly informed, explained and made comments. In a few quick picturesque words, he drew a portrait, sketched a caricature, made an imputation and gave the whole story of the person at the bar.

When they had arrived at the end of the promenade, they turned and went back by the way they had come, still followed and preceded by the other carriages. The daylight faded softly. From each side of the long dusty reddish road the flooded rice-fields stretched away like swampy checker-boards, on which the docile black buffaloes driven by ragged youngsters slowly plodded along with their enormous curved horns silhouetted against the pale sky in the shape of widely rounded lyres. With shrill cries a flock of herons floated down over a clump of palms, in the shade of which was a huddle of huts.

The countryside, which was gradually dropping to rest in the peace of the dying day, was archaic, oriental and primitive beyond belief.

Pierre remarked upon it, and Bressond, with a shrug, assented:

"It is a beautiful country—beautiful but strange, and not the least like the conventional Far East that is so popular in France!"

He thought a minute and went on:

"After all, that is not so astonishing, for very few people, even here, know Indo-China ... very few...."

"But...."

"No, believe me, it is a country that no one among us really knows, nor will know for a long time yet. It isn't enough, in order to understand it, to have traveled through it, not even to have spent two years, three years or more in it.... No; neither you nor I, who come here with our European souls and with the mentality of conquerors, neither you nor I, nor the others of our kind, will ever be able to understand this race!... For instance, look at the stupidity, the ignorance, of this official who for the third time has re-established a military post in an unknown region in the middle of a country not yet conquered, and which no one has been able to explore and not even to penetrate ... no one! and on the top of that they send out an administrator!... To administrate what? ... and above all to administrate whom? Well, anyway, you will have the chance of meeting Redeski there.... And that's that."

Pierre turned to him.

"Redeski?"

"Yes, he is the man who commands the fort there.... Jacques-Boleslas-Michael Redeski, of an old Polish family; a real count, but as poor as Job of biblical memory. A naturalized Frenchman, educated in Paris, graduated from St. Cyr: Morocco, the Soudan, Indo-China, everywhere, in fact, where war and adventure can still be had. A balanced mind but an emotional nature, at once sympathetic and sceptical. To sum up, most amusing and original, and the best of friends. For nearly two years we patrolled the forests together on the frontier of China.

"There now, you know him. And anyway you couldn't have started out with a better comrade, especially in a hole like that...."

He interrupted himself to look at his watch.

"Oh, damn! Half past seven!... We have just time to get back."

They had reached the alleys of the Botanical Garden. Getting up, he touched the back of the driver.

"Mao ... Mao![3]... Stop at the Continental." Turning back to Lursac, he explained:

"You will excuse me: I am on duty tonight. I have to dine at the club with the chief engineer of Hong-Hai. An official dinner...."

The victoria, extricating itself from the long row of carriages, turned off into an avenue and the ponies were put to a trot.

Night had fallen. The alleys, over which the branches of the trees met, looked like long tunnels. Under the arches a warm scent wandered. To the perfume of opening hibiscus and the purple flame-trees was added the heavy scent of the sap-filled flowers and the thick rich soil of Indo-China.

Through the evening peace which had so suddenly fallen about them the shrill voices of the crickets mingled their chirping with the echoes of the ponies' hoofs. Then, suddenly breaking from the shadow and silence, the carriage swung into the full tide of Saigon's restless noise.

Above the streets the electric globes poured down their violent illumination. A tossing crowd surged through the avenues and jammed the windows of the brilliantly lighted shops. Autos, with blasts of their horns, forced themselves a passage through the crowds of rickshaws and malabars descending the Boulevard Charner. In the cafés the orchestras played feverishly. The carriage, following the Boulevard, turned to the right and after having traversed part of the Rue Catinat stopped opposite the Continental. Pierre jumped out on the sidewalk. Leaning from the carriage, Bressond took leave of him.

"Good bye, Pierre, and good luck, old man! I would like to have done more for you, but tomorrow I start out on a mission to Upper Tonkin and it is very unlikely that I shall be able to see you again here."

Lursac gave him a strong friendly hand clasp.

"Good bye, Jacques! and good luck to you also. I will write you from Post 32."

"So do, and remember me to Redeski. Now, quick to the club!"

Drawing the whip sharply over the team, the driver started off.

When the victoria had disappeared, lost in the crowd of other vehicles, Pierre crossed the street towards his hotel, but, just as he got to the sidewalk he started violently: a guttural voice close to him had flung out the words:

"The Pou-Kas is not for white people."

He turned round suddenly and with a quick glance searched the surroundings. In front of him the passers-by were hurrying on their way. Three congais walked arm in arm, chattering and laughing. Two rickshaws, side by side, were having a race and were already far past him. A soup-peddler, his two jars suspended at the ends of a bar balanced on his shoulders, advertised his wares with a clapper and cried their merits aloud, while, interfering with his trade, a street-boy with a basket of earth-nuts on his arm, called out in a sing-song voice for customers....

Was it he? ... or perhaps this Chinaman, wrapped in a tunic of lavender silk, who uttered the strange warning?... Or was it not rather this blind beggar who passed, slow and doubtful, tapping the road with his staff?

How was he to know?

Already the cry of the nut-vendor was losing itself in the general hubbub; the variegated crowd continued to roll by, carrying away with it the three congais, the Chinaman, the beggar and the soup-vendor, whose little stove left a red glow in the darkness. More coolies, more natives came and passed, all nameless, all alike, with their faces equally yellow and their expressions equally grinning and ape-like.

In doubt, Pierre stood motionless on the edge of the pavement. Before him, Saigon, the cosmopolitan meeting place of all races of Europe and Asia, where the Annamese, the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Malay, the French, the English, the Japanese, the Russian elbowed each other and mixed with the confusion—Saigon the Magnificent, the whirlpool of all religions and all civilizations, the most modern side-by-side with the most ancient—and lastly, Saigon the French city, in the midst of tzigane orchestras imported from Europe, awoke and stretched herself languorously under the warm voluptuous caresses of the Annamese night.

Regardless of this whirlpool of life which flung itself violently at him, Pierre, overcome by a strange presentiment of ill fortune and a wave of loneliness, crossed the threshold of his hotel.

Inside the door, two "boys," clad in the conventional white tunic, received him with the customary three salaams, ... three deep salaams, of which the outward respectfulness could not hide altogether the servile insolence.

CHAPTER II

UP THE RIVER

The captain pulled the cord of the ship's whistle. The shrill sudden call tore its way through the air, floated along the yellow surface of the water, lingered along the banks of the river and finally lost itself in the depths of the forest.

The Vien-Thian turned through a quarter of a circle, nosing out her way slowly between the banks of mud which showed almost level with the current, like brown backs of great sleeping saurians. There was a second call from the whistle, longer this time and more lingering, which died away softly in the moist, still air.

Suddenly awakened, Lursac drew himself up and looked about him. Through the round porthole, beneath which the water slid and gurgled, the yellow light trickled, showing the gray walls of the cabin. The narrow little den stowed away in the 'tween decks of the boat vibrated heavily with every throb from the engine-room next door. Jumping out of his bunk, Pierre hastily flung on his clothes and went out. In two strides he reached the ladder screwed to the wall of the passage and climbed it. The spectacle which the waist of the ship offered him made him stop for a moment. On the wooden deck, littered with all kinds of parcels, the natives still lay sleeping,—a picturesque mixture of Annamese, Chinese, Cambodians and Lao-ese. Amidst the scattered medley of chests, mats and baskets of all shapes and sizes, their bodies entwined and pressed close against each other gave the effect of a many-colored carpet. From the all too narrow deck they had spread into the gunwales and were even stretched upon the bulwarks in a dangerous sleep, balanced above the slimy waters of the river.

Hesitatingly the day broke, dimly showing the left bank of the Me-Kong, which stretched away into the distance straight and low. Thin and persistent, the rain fell like gray ashes, streaking the countryside, while over the earth, still drowned in fog, the light seemed powerless to spread.

Pierre had now got as far as the bridge. Upright before the binnacle, his eyes fixed on the course of the ship, the captain snapped his orders through the engine-room speaking tube. He was an old man, tall and thin, but erect, and clothed in khaki-colored linen. His lined face, baked by the sun and tanned by the weather, had a reddish tinge which gave him the peculiar appearance of having been kneaded from a block of the Cambodian earth which showed brick-colored along the sides of the river. A sailor of the old school, he sported whiskers, whose whiteness framed and emphasised the softness of his deep blue eyes.

Approaching him, Pierre gave him a friendly greeting and asked:

"Are we getting there?"

Without letting his glance stray from the current against which the screws were pushing the vessel, the old man replied briefly:

"Not yet; we are just entering the 'drowned forest.' Look!"

As a matter of fact, the boat, turning about, was pointed directly towards the bank.

Leaning on the bulwarks, Pierre watched the land as it loomed nearer and larger. The bank, slowly becoming plainer, stretched to the horizon, cutting the yellow waters with its narrow flat marshy outline. Gradually the eye could discern the details of the scene: hanging over the muddy earth and bathing their innumerable roots in the current the mangroves, with their twisted branches, and the palms with their slender stems, stood in ranks upon the fen which stretched far to the west, leprous with moss and spotted with clumps of cane and brush. Far away, their tops girdled with fog, the rounded masses of the hills sloped gradually upward. Little by little everything came nearer and grew larger. In the middle of the current floating masses of leafage torn from the palms by the rising waters turned slowly round and round as they drifted by. In spots the trees which the flood had overtaken stretched their dark tops above the flat water; for the river, breaking loose, had conquered the giant wood and submerged it. Against the bow of the boat from time to time branches crashed and were pushed aside with a dull scraping sound.

And then, suddenly, clear and mysterious like an avenue in some nightmare park, the channel appeared. Slowly the Vien-Thian forced itself into the deep and mysterious heart of the great Cambodian forest, through which in the dry season the native hunters were wont to go with their ears pricked and their eyes on the watch questing for their daily prey. Hidden under the great masses of tamarinds, teak trees and sandalwoods, of which only the tops were still visible above the water, the banks of the river had suddenly vanished. Against the enormous trunks the current frothed and grumbled. Above the submerged forest-land the fog was gradually lifting: it wound itself between the rounded summits of the trees and floated gradually towards the sky. Half seen now through the mist, islets showed, fringed by branches mixed with giant grasses which draggled in the muddy waters.

On the deck the crowd of native passengers began to move confusedly. A deep silence still brooded over them: crushed one against another, the men smoked without speaking, while crouched on their mats, the women, silent and shivering, watched the gloomy scene slide by the bow of the vessel.

Leaning on the rail, Pierre de Lursac felt all the magic of this strange voyage in the heart of the "drowned forest," on an invisible river peopled by ghosts of trees and shadows of islands. Denser and denser the fog again closed round the boat: and the mob of natives could only be seen as a vague dark mass.

On the bridge, hidden in fog, even the captain was no longer visible. All that remained of him was the sound of his sharp orders shot from time to time into the mouthpiece of the engine-room speaking tube, with which amidst the brooding silence he ruled the rhythmic throb of the engine.

Suddenly a clear and vigorous feminine voice sounded:

"What a mad-looking country!"

In his isolation and amid the monotonous sadness of this voyage, which had now lasted for a week, the sound of this voice seemed to Pierre the most unexpected and the most extraordinary of adventures.

He turned round swiftly and tried to penetrate with his eyes the cold wall of fog which hung over everything; but he could see nothing. Then, however, a conversation began between the mysterious unknown and the captain.

"Good morning, Père Rabaud. Aren't you surprised, after my hiding myself for eight days, to meet me on the bridge? Yes, I decided to clamber up here, you see.... I should have been sorry to miss all this. What a peculiar sight!"

"Good morning, Mademoiselle. I don't wonder you think so! But this part of the world has got a lot of strange things to show! As you said just now, it's a queer country! You'll see lots of other strange things, no fear of that."

The woman's voice with its peculiar metallic timbre sounded again.

"So much the better."

The captain groaned.

"Phew! You say that ... but if you lived as I have for twenty years in this cursed country ... it isn't quite the same thing as Paris, I can tell you!..."

A long ripple of laughter broke the silence.

"Yes ... but as for me, I have lived in Europe; and there existence is so monotonous and so exactly the same day after day that I am tired of it."

Then there was a short silence and the captain said in a lowered voice:

"Then you are still determined to go on with your plan?"

"More than ever, as I feel that he needs me.... Oh! he does not complain, but in between the lines of the letters that he has written me I have felt that his loneliness has weighed on him terribly.... Yes, I know, ... you are going to tell me that my place is not here and that I shall be a nuisance to him. But he is alone, you understand, and for him as for me, there can be nothing worse than this isolation which we have never been able to get used to and against which we have never ceased to struggle with all our love for each other."

The tone of her voice had become grave with an undertone of deep earnestness. Then suddenly it changed and rose again.

"Are we far from Khône-Sud?"

"No, ... even now we are getting out of the great 'drowned forest,' and see, ... the fog is lifting."

Pierre had to imagine a gesture which he could not see but which a short silence emphasised; then the captain went on in a low voice and in a bantering, confidential tone:

"I have a fellow-traveler for you...."

Vibrant and authoritative her response leapt out:

"I don't want one.... I prefer to be independent...."

The captain gave a jovial laugh.

"Yes, yes ... of course ... but I have my responsibility to consider; I have promised to do what I can for you to help you to get there, and...."

He called out sharply:

"Monsieur de Lursac!"

Pierre jumped. He took two steps forward quickly and then stopped dead. A sentence which the unknown had spoken had arrested him in mid career.

"No!" she cried, with irritation, "No ... I shall not thank you for that!"

"But heavens and earth!" swore the captain, "how can I leave a woman to play the adventurer here all alone, without escort in a country in which the men themselves daren't go about without all kinds of precautions! That would be foolishness!..."

"Foolishness or not, I have made up my mind. Do not let us speak of it again."

Pierre had turned away. The fog was now thinning; the sun, yellow and rayless, appeared between two clouds. The river had broadened into a great loop and the last scattered trees of the "drowned forest" could be seen dotted about the immense waste of waters. Picking its way between islands of mud, the Vien-Thian, coming out into the open, pointed straight towards the bank of the Me-Kong, which appeared in the distance as a vague brown line marked in the middle with a white splash, the memorial erected to Commandant Diacre, who had been drowned there some years before. With hoarse cries a flock of herons rose and wheeled; while, in the rigid attitude of sleepers, three cormorants, perched on a tree trunk, each with one claw drawn up under his gray breast, snapped their beaks with loud clacking noises and watched the boat suspiciously as it passed them.

Forcing himself to seem unaware of the conversation he had overheard, Pierre pretended to be absorbed once more in the contemplation of the bank which was rapidly growing plainer. Behind him, however, he was conscious of the Unknown whose unexpected presence on board excited his curiosity. With this feeling was mingled one of hurt pride. Who was she? Who was this man of whom she had spoken in terms which were certainly open to misconstruction? And what was he to her? Pierre would have given anything to know. But the roughness of the young woman's response when Captain Rabaud had offered her a traveling-companion had hurt his feelings.

He lit a cigarette and pulled his sketch-book out of his pocket.

Now over the bow of the boat appeared the river bank, every detail clear and distinct. A long rank of palm trees stood on the edge of the stream, revealing under their thin straight shadows a shed with a thatched roof. A kind of primitive landing stage made of planks roughly thrown together on some cross beams projected into the water of the river. Beyond, over the tops of the palms, stretched toward the horizon a brown land dotted with scanty bushes, while in the distance the rapids of Hou-Sadan frothed and snarled.

Pointing out the yellow thatched roof with his finger, the captain announced:

"Khône-Sud!"

A confused noise rose from the waist of the ship filled with native passengers. They had all risen to their feet, and pressed tight against the bulwarks they disputed among themselves, exchanged remarks and busied themselves over their meagre baggage. Tanned, brown and powerful, the Cambodians folded up their square flat mattresses and hoisted their bundles to their shoulders to be ready for landing. Small and noisy, the Annamese pushed here and there, cursing aloud, shoving their women, boxing the ears of the children who screamed with ear-splitting yells. In a corner, collected together in a separate group, the Chinese methodically and without hurry counted over their bags of merchandise, lined up their boxes and got their papers ready. Nonchalant and frail, the Lao-ese, with their pale faces, smiled and hummed the chants of their native country, remaining stretched out on the gunwales.

Thinning into long slanting wisps, the fog cleared away. Almost as suddenly as it had fallen, it was gone, and the sun shone in the sky, warm, sparkling and golden.

The Vien-Thian came about, slackened her speed and cautiously laid herself alongside the landing stage, which gave to her weight with creakings and groanings. Across the gangway, which was immediately lowered, the natives rushed, fighting among themselves for room to pass.

Pierre made hurriedly for his cabin. Forcing a way through the crowd on the lower deck, he reached his little stateroom and strapped up his valise. Then two Cambodians took charge of his baggage, and having carried it up to the deck piled it up at the head of the gangway. Beside his own things, heavy and massive, each one of which carried in large black letters his name and destination, Pierre observed some copper-covered trunks and leather suitcases carefully shrouded in blue cloth coverings. He guessed that they must belong to her whom he, with some irritation, had named "The Unknown." Mechanically, he drew near to the baggage. Bending over the aristocratic-looking things, he attempted uselessly to discover the name of their proprietor. On the trunks and the leather of the bags the same initials were repeated in slender strokes: a W and an R, intertwined, in a lozenge-shaped monogram.

He expressed his disappointment by an impatient gesture. Once again his curiosity remained ungratified. He put out his hand and stopped the porters who were beginning to take his trunks down, and told them to wait for him.

The crowd of yellow passengers was now thinning out: beyond the wall and the primitive shed which, with three or four straw-thatched huts, constituted the entire town of Khône-Sud, they could be seen trailing off in groups, becoming smaller and disappearing. Only a few Lao-ese still waited in the shade of the palms, where their variegated attire broke the shade with little moving spots of color. Before the landing stage some ox-carts were standing, while on the bank, up to their knees in the river, six elephants, undisturbed, were squirting jets of water over their backs. Upon their brown wrinkled flanks the water splashed and ran down, while the mahouts, crouched on the enormous necks of the brutes, mingled their guttural cries with the noise of the pouring water.

Pierre guessed that this extraordinary outfit, elephants and ox-carts, was the caravan that had been got together for his journey to Post 32. He smiled with amusement. At the same time a feeling of depression shot through him. The monotony of this voyage up the unending river, through scenery everlastingly the same, with only the continued tramping backward and forward on the narrow deck for amusement or the reading of a few volumes picked out of Captain Rabaud's library, had left him with a feeling of lassitude and nervousness. He wanted to get on shore to continue his journey, to get to the end of this pilgrimage where the mysterious Post 32 and the strange land of which Bressond had spoken were awaiting him.

With a few bounds he reached the top of the ladder leading to the bridge. Still standing in the corner which he used as a look-out, Captain Rabaud was saying good bye to the unknown woman. Just as she parted from him, after a final au revoir, Pierre came forward. Their paths crossed. The young man raised his hat. She acknowledged the salute with a slight nod and passed him quickly.

Struck by the unusual and peculiar beauty of the face and eyes, half-seen under the shadow of her large white felt hat, Pierre stopped. Behind him the light decided footsteps of the young woman were growing fainter. Already she must be descending the ladder to the lower deck. Almost carried away by his sudden desire to look at her again and fix her features in his memory, Pierre had hard work not to run back and follow her. But there came to him the remembrance of that haughty and reserved look which she had just flashed upon him as she passed, and he stood motionless, not even daring to turn his head.

CHAPTER III

A FELLOW TRAVELER

Somewhere in the night, a gong sounded the hour of the second watch.

In the silence the ringing notes swelled out and vibrated. From other spots nearby, fading away into the distance, the sound of three other gongs rose into the still air, taking up the signal and prolonging it.

The night was vast, motionless and cold. Leaning on the rail in front of the hut which served him as a hotel, Pierre watched a wan moon rise slowly above the river. In front of his hut, built on piles in the Moï fashion, the footpath which represented the main street of Khône-Sud stretched away to the north, cutting through the neighboring forest whose solid mass stretched like a vast gulf of blackness under the moonlit sky dappled with moving clouds.

Towards the south, the handful of five or six huts which composed the village lay silent and dark. On board the Vien-Thian, made fast to the landing stage opposite, a single light kept watch.

Pierre, unable to sleep, thought of his departure. He called to mind the visit that he had made late in the afternoon to the civil service clerk who occupied the position of Chief of the Post at Khône. His caravan prepared in advance for him was waiting: it was that which he had seen from the deck of the boat on his arrival some hours before: four ox-carts with their bamboo-thatched tops and enormous wooden wheels, and six elephants whose pack saddles were ready to receive their loads: as escort a dozen Lao-ese riflemen and a guide.

His baggage had been parcelled out as soon as it came off the boat. The large packages—two great chests of clothes and three cases of books and instruments solidly packed—were destined for the elephants. One of the ox-carts was to serve him by turns as carriage by day and sleeping apartment at night, and on its rough planking protected by the rounded top they had stretched a Cambodian mattress. The smaller parcels—suitcases, arms, munitions and provisions for the journey—had been distributed between two more of the ox-carts. The fourth remained empty, and Pierre had remarked concerning it to the clerk who accompanied him:

"No good taking this one, too. I'll leave you that ... it might...."

But the other, laughing, had interrupted him.

"No nonsense, old man!... They ordered me to provide you with four vehicles. The requisitions have been made and the accounts passed; your escort have been paid in advance. If you leave one of your carts on my hands I shall have official letters and all sorts of troubles for the next three months. They told me 'four carts.' You will then start with four carts! As for the empty one, do what you like with it: make a smoking room of it, a dining-room, library—but for the love of the government, take it away from here."

Remembrance of the incident made Lursac smile.

Now, the moon was fully risen. It could be seen, reddish and dull, floating between two strips of cloud.

Across the sky a flight of birds passed in a triangular line, and the breeze, blowing from nowhere, scattered the cloudlets banked in the northern sky. Over the river a sheet of fog began to rise, climbing the bank, overtopped it and then suddenly pouring down flooded the countryside. Pierre shuddered, and re-entering his cabin pulled-to the shutter which served as a door.

Stretched out on his camp bed he still remained for a few minutes unable to sleep. On the chest which served as a table the flame of the lamp was on the point of dying. Out in the night a buffalo bellowed. The hoarse cry, carried by the wind, floated through the cabin; and as his lamp with a final flicker of light died out, Pierre fell asleep.

The vague impression that there was a light in the room woke him. He opened his eyes and turned his head instinctively to the door. Immediately he was on his feet. In the doorway, now wide open, outlined against the milky sky illuminated by the moonlight, a shadow was standing.

Without giving him time to speak it made some steps towards him. The shutter which it no longer held back slammed heavily and the room was again in black darkness. At the same time a feminine voice spoke:

"Do please light your lamp, Monsieur de Lursac."

Pierre trembled: he recognized the sound of this voice, its precision, its metallic timbre and even its slight foreign accent. He immediately knew it was his "Unknown," she of the Vien-Thian.

The lamp relighted, he saw her actually standing there, motionless, in the middle of the cabin. She had put off the large felt hat that she had been wearing on the boat. Now a fur toque imprisoned her pale blonde hair, allowing only a few stray wisps of it to show on the forehead and temples, and at the sides two little curls that shone like gold. She was dressed in a gray tailored suit of which the coat was clasped to her figure by a wide belt of red leather. Heavy brown boots, very high cut, protected her legs: in her slim gray-gloved hands she nervously twisted a riding-whip. Her cold glance, and even her attitude, showed a curious desire to provoke him, a sort of cavalier haughtiness at once brusque and determined.

Pierre, saying nothing, watched her. With easy grace she flung the whip on the bed, seated herself and said:

"I imagine, sir, that you know who I am."

The ambiguity of the phrase made Lursac hesitate. Was he to see in it a deliberate rudeness or simply an allusion to their meeting on board the boat? Although it struck him as lacking in tact, Pierre chose the second hypothesis. Forcing himself to remain passive, he replied:

"I think, as a matter of fact, I saw you on board the Vien-Thian."

He bowed politely: "And what can I do for you?"

He had set the lamp on the bench by her and, standing in front of the young woman, he awaited her answer.

With methodical quick movements she undid her gloves, took them off and rolled them up. Her hands were visible, long and pale, without a jewel. There was silence for a minute, then she said:

"M. de Lursac, would you kindly allow me a few minutes' talk with you?"

In spite of himself, Pierre smiled ironically.

"The question seems to me...."

She interrupted him brusquely.

"I know, sir. My sudden intrusion into your room has hardly left you any choice."

And with her eyes suddenly grown hard, she added:

"I beg you to believe that I have not acted with this lack of courtesy without having the most important reasons."

Pierre, in all sincerity, agreed:

"I have no doubt of it."

She let her cold glance fall on him. Her voice softened.

"The exceptional situation in which I find myself must excuse anything in my behavior which seems extraordinary. For the rest you must think of me as you will: that doesn't matter."

The young man bit his lips. Once more her words seemed to him to possess a tinge of combined haughtiness and aggressiveness which irritated him. But immediately she continued:

"M. de Lursac, you start tomorrow morning at dawn, do you not?"

Pierre assented:

"Four o'clock in the morning exactly, for Post 32."

"I know," said she, "I found out about it."

Pierre's annoyance increased: sarcastically, he thanked her.

"I am indeed overcome with the interest which you show in my movements."

She seemed not to hear him, but an involuntary tightening of her lips showed that his answer had not escaped her. And this slight motion had in it something so sad that Pierre could not help regretting his having given way to irony.

"It is on the very subject of this journey that I have a request to make to you," she continued.

Then looking him full in the face she said slowly:

"I wish to join Lieutenant Redeski at Post 32; you would lay me under a great obligation if you would take me there with you."

As he made a sudden gesture of refusal, she hastened to explain:

"You are going to tell me that I ought to have addressed myself to the chief of the government service at Khône. I have not failed to do so. But he, not content with refusing me the aid on which I had counted, told me that he would, on the contrary, put as many difficulties in my way as possible. He had received formal instructions on this point: no women are to go into the region which you are about to enter, or at least no women with the consent of the government. You see, sir, that I am putting the case before you with as much clearness and frankness as possible; and nevertheless, having told you all that, I renew my request: will you take me with you?"

Pierre looked at her reflectively. With her figure leaning lightly forward, her pale hands lying listless on the bench, and her glance focussed in the far distance, she sat waiting for an answer. He made a few steps back and forth, thinking, then he sat himself down next to her.

"No," he declared coldly. "No, I will not take you."

She remained motionless, her glance still lost in the distance. Only a slight wrinkling of her forehead betrayed her disappointment. A long silence fell, filled only by the low rumble of the rapids of Hou-Sadan.

Getting up, she said quietly:

"I shall have to arrange in some way to go by myself."

He too had risen: he looked at her. All her pride seemed gone; she lowered her head. Instead of the expression she had worn up to that moment, a different face—the true one, perhaps—appeared: a young and tender face; and it seemed suddenly to Pierre that it was another woman that stood before him. She looked up, and he could see tears in the depths of her brown eyes.

She shrugged her shoulders wearily.

"Oh!" she said, "that would have made things so much easier. I should have seen him again sooner.... This journey has been so long ... so long and so horrible! And I have no one else in the world but him, no one at all since we lost our mother."

Astonished, Lursac ejaculated:

"Your mother?"

She gave a little half-smile.

"Yea, I have only forgotten one thing; to introduce myself! I am Wanda Redeski, and it is my brother who commands Post 32."

"Ah!" said he.

And without being able to explain why, he felt a strange happiness spread throughout his being.

In a low voice she continued:

"Yes, he is my brother, and I have come all this way from the furthest part of Poland to rejoin him and to say to him: Our mother is dead, and I have no one left but you; let me live beside you!..."

Suddenly raising her suppliant face to him, she renewed her request:

"Take me! ... take me!..."

Two tears glittered down her cheeks and she caught him by the arm. Pierre for a moment looked down at the slim, beautiful hand whose long thin pale fingers trembled on his wrist, and suddenly walking towards the door, he said:

"Come, then, since you wish it!"

The dawn was breaking. Along the horizon across the flooded river an amber light began to spread, rising almost imperceptibly towards the heavens where the stars were still twinkling. The rain had stopped. On the threshold of the forest, among the trees whose branches were still dripping with the damp of the night, the great black forms of six elephants, laden with cases and trunks, showed. Half seen in the growing light, heavy and formidable, they moved their trunks aloft, plucking young twigs from the trees on either side of them. Behind them the four ox-carts, each furnished with its span of draft oxen, showed the brown of their thatched tops in line.

Pierre threw a final look over his caravan. Crouched on the poles of their wagons the drivers, whip in hand, awaited his orders, while in their places on the necks of the elephants, the mahouts, waiting, spoke endearments to their beasts. In front, the guide, his machete in hand, was listening attentively to the sounds of the forest.

Coming up to the last but one of the ox-carts, Lursac drew aside the canvas that closed the rounded ends of the top and asked:

"Are you absolutely decided?"

The voice of Wanda Redeski came to him concise and clear, with a strange sweetness in it, as she said:

"Absolutely, M. de Lursac."

Pierre, turning to the escort, raised his hand.

"Paï, vaï, vaï!"[4] he cried.

And going to the head of the procession, he swiftly entered the bluish penumbra of the heavy Lao-ese forest, while gradually the shadows of the night faded from the sky.

CHAPTER IV

POST 32

The man gave a couple of heavy strokes with his paddle. His canoe turned, met the current at an angle and slid towards the bank of the canal, head-on. Mud squirted up and the canes on the bank crashed backwards; and the light skiff lay motionless in its bed. Jumping up on to the limb of a mangrove, the savage tied his canoe; then, picking up his bow and quiver, he slid from branch to branch on to dry land.

Standing at the edge of the level ground, he looked about him. To his right the double palisade of the military post could be seen, topped by the roofs of its newly finished buildings. He turned in that direction. At the postern gate he knocked loudly, and then, sitting down with his back to the heavy door, he waited patiently, his chin on his knees.

The Moï who ran up at the noise opened the door cautiously, then asked angrily:

"Was it you who knocked? What do you want?"

"It was I," said the man calmly. "I want to speak to the chief."

The other looked at him carefully, up and down.

"The lieutenant is away ... it is the priest who, while awaiting his return...."

"Go then: it is Father Ravennes that I will see...."

The convert grumbled:

"Come in. I will go and tell him."

And already he was hurrying off when the other called to him:

"Tell him what? You fool!"

And as the Moï, abashed, stared at him, he ordered:

"You will say to him that I have arrived from the west and that I bring news...."

And disdainfully shrugging his shoulders, he began to roll a cigarette.

"Hurry, now!" he added.

Suppressing his anger, the convert went off. He found the missionary in front of the look-out post. Standing in the gateway, Father Ravennes was directing the final efforts of those who were putting the finishing touches to the building. Around the various erections, of which the freshly plastered walls shone white in the sunshine, a few linhs and some twenty women were busied.

The arrival of the convert drew his attention.

"What is it? A courier from Khône-Sud?" said he. "Bring him here."

The man appeared at the entrance of the court, and while he was salaaming before him the missionary looked him over. It was one of the wild Stiengs, small-built but strong. His body was bare except for a brown cloth about his loins; his face, of pronounced features, emphasized by the square, projecting chin, was almost brutal, but lighted by gray metallic-looking eyes. He spoke in a loud voice, slightly hoarse and rather guttural, in sonorous syllables which now and then fell into a rhythmic chant. He made no gestures; merely from time to time lifting his heavy crossbow of shining redwood from one broad shoulder to the other.

"Lieutenant Darty of Post 30 sends you greeting. He wishes to inform you that the Sedangs of his region have deserted the village. Things are happening around him which he does not understand and which make him feel anxious. If you go towards the west, do not fail to go and see him. He would like to speak to you about these things. Meanwhile he warns you to be on your guard."

The missionary smiled carelessly.

"Ah!" said he, "for the three years that I have been here I have done nothing else! Never mind, the advice is always good. On your way back to Khône-Sud you will give my thanks to Lieutenant Darty. You will also tell him that I will come to see him and as soon as I can. Is that all?"

"No. There is a new chief at Post 28. The former one has gone back to Saigon on a vacation. In the low country through which I have come the flood has carried away two villages...."

"And the mail carrier? The letters, the papers?"

"Nothing left! The sampan that carried the mail was wrecked near Post 28, the mail sacks were lost."

"Very good," said Father Ravennes, "you can go and rest yourself."

The man remained motionless.

"I have still this to tell you," said he, "Inspector Keratel, of Khône-Sud, greets you. He has ordered me to tell you that the administrator who was to join the lieutenant here has started on his way and will be here soon."

Father Ravennes lit his pipe.

"How soon? They announced his arrival for the end of the month, and this is the 6th.... When will he be here, according to you?"

The man considered for a minute and looked at the sky.

"Before the sun has set," said he. "We left Khône-Sud together one moon[5] and four nights ago, but after three days of the journey I left him to take a short cut, and came up the canal in my canoe. Unfortunately, the flood had made the rapids impassable. I nearly got drowned in making an attempt to cross at Ong-Sep and I had to wait until the water went down. That kept me back for at least two days. The others cannot be far behind me."

He fell silent, yawned and stretched himself. Down his slender chest and along his thighs the muscles rippled and stood out.

Father Ravennes dropped a hand on his shoulder.

"When do you go back?" he asked.

"In about two hours or so. I shall only stay long enough to repair the hole in my canoe."

"Good! I will give you some letters to take back before you go. Is there anything you need?"

Shaking his head proudly, the man pointed to the bow which he held in his hand and the quiver full of arrows hanging at his side.

"No," said he, "with that I have everything I need."

He saluted and made ready to go, but the missionary still held him back.

"Do you know the name of the administrator who is coming here?"

"The cai who was in command of the escort told me his name; it is the Sahib Lursac."

The missionary considered.

"Lursac? I do not know that name."

He turned towards the courier.

"Very good," said he, "you can go now."

But the man had already started. He crossed the court. The blazing sun made his naked body shine, and caught with a sparkle of light the steel point of the crossbow laid across his shoulder.

Father Ravennes watched him pass through the postern and disappear. He repeated thoughtfully to himself:

"Lursac? Lursac? A new arrival probably. A strange idea to pick him out to send here!"...

He remained thoughtful a minute, and then murmured:

"But that's what they always do at Saigon!..."

Shrugging his shoulders, he strode off towards the office.

"There is the Post," said Pierre.

And he stood motionless while the convoy, debouching from the forest, reached the edge of the valley. Standing beside the young man, Wanda looked around the scene with curiosity.

On her right the river flowed between its low banks edged with canes and mangroves. On the brink of the water the station stood, defended by its double horseshoe-shaped palisade only broken by a heavy gateway with a double door. Wrapping it round on all sides and separated from the fortifications only by a narrow clearing, the great Lao-ese forest stood about it in a dark and rustling circle which extended even to the very banks of the canal. Facing the fort towards the north rose hilly slopes, and behind them, blocking out the sky, the chaotic mass of the great Moï range stretched its sombre crests and its threatening bulk, striped with alternate zones of shadow and sunlight. On the other side, all the back country across the river was nothing but a great plain of monotonous red soil which stretched towards the south as far as one could see.

"Look," said Pierre, "they must have seen us!"

Up the mast standing by the entry gate a flag was crawling, and as the great double doors opened a trumpet call resounded.

Pierre turned to the girl.

"Come," said he.

They walked forward. Behind them the elephants and then the ox-carts lumbered in their turn, escorted by the native riflemen.

The trumpet ceased. The shadow of night crept upward into the day. A flight of wild geese crossed the gathering dusk and their cries floated over the plain.

Standing before the doorway, Father Ravennes awaited them. When Pierre de Lursac had come within a few paces of him he came quickly to meet them. His look fell on Wanda and his forehead wrinkled. Suppressing his surprise, he introduced himself:

"Father Ravennes, of the Apostolic Mission to the Banhars."

"Administrator Pierre de Lursac."

The missionary looked the young man over with a swift glance. His face relaxed and he stretched out his hand.

"I am glad to welcome you to Post 32, in the absence of Lieutenant Redeski," said he.

"Ah!" said Wanda, "Michael is not here?... Nothing has happened to him, has it?"

The priest turned towards her. Pierre caught the questioning glance which he threw first on the young girl and then on him. He blushed.

"Mademoiselle Redeski," said he, "sister of the lieutenant."

And at the same time he in his turn looked the priest over.

He saw a man of some 45 years of age, clothed, Annamese style, in a black tunic and white trousers. Above his long bony body and planted on broad shoulders his small head with its thin face and pronounced features gave a singular impression of sweetness and energy combined. The forehead, high and smooth, and the chin prominent, with a short grayish beard, gave to his face an expression of strength of will, almost of severity; but his eyes, large and pale, lit with dreams and such as the apostles of the early ages of the Faith must have had, illuminated the ascetic face, at once virile and tender, with intelligence and kindness. The missionary bowed.

"Do not be disturbed, Mademoiselle, your brother started three days ago on a tour of inspection round the district. We did not expect M. de Lursac for another three weeks, and Redeski expected to be back here before that. I believe further that he did not know ... at least he never told me...."

The young girl laughed aloud.

"No, he doesn't even know of my arrival in Indo-China. That will be a surprise for him."

They had meanwhile been walking on and had entered the courtyard of the fort. Behind them the convoy had crossed the fortifications and the gate had been closed. The priest climbed the wooden outside stair leading to the officers' quarters. Crossing the veranda which ran round the whole façade of the building, he conducted the young people through the rooms.

"A domiciliary visit," said he, laughingly. "It will not be a very long one. Five rooms: an office, a dining room, three bedrooms. Because of the damp ground, everything is built upon piles."

"Oh!" said Wanda, "how strange!"

She had lifted a large screen of plaited bamboo, and the river and the plain lay before her. The yellow waters of the canal flowed at the very base of the building and gurgled against the pillars that supported it. Above the land floated a fine dust which the setting sun gilded and turned to clouds of rosy jade. A sky of shining mauve stretched away to the vague horizon, which was cut in two by a dark patch.

The missionary pointed out this last to the young people. "That is the clump of trees which surrounds my Mission," said he. "I am your nearest neighbor, ten miles away. The other posts, 30 and 28, are, the one, ten days' journey to the east, and the other, eight days to the west...."

He had let the screen fall into its place again and continued his explanations.

"The arrangement of the rooms is very simple. They are all in a row and have communicating doors. To the south they look over the plain; on the north, that is to say the side of the veranda, they open towards the mountains. As for the furnishing, it is very primitive—as you see: beds, a few tables, a dozen chairs, and chests everywhere. On the other hand you have four oil lamps and two candle lamps; a luxury which you will soon come to appreciate at its right value."

They went out on the veranda again.

In the middle of the court the riflemen were finishing the unloading of the ox-carts. The elephants, already free of their burdens, were tied in their sheds beside the oxen.

The missionary pointed out the subsidiary buildings, one by one.

"On the right, against the palisade, the barracks for the men, the store-rooms, the cook-houses, the cabins for the servants and the drivers; on the left, facing them, the sheds for the draft animals and the stables; this little thatched hut raised above the ground by the entry-gate houses the guard who keeps watch every night from the first night-watch to the first morning-watch. And that's all."

He drew himself up; his expression became grave, and while with a wave of his arm he included the whole countryside, he said:

"Your whole life from now on will be passed within this double stockade. Redeski, when he gets back, will explain to you all the details of the service. But for the present, I shall be bold enough to give you some advice: Do not go too far from the fort in the course of your walks or rides, at least at first...."

Wanda, turning towards him, demanded:

"Why?"

"Because you are here in the middle of an unsubdued region and on the very threshold of the Moï country into which no European has yet been able to penetrate."

The young girl looked at him. Her voice took on a troubled note.

"But what about Michael?..."

The priest realized her anxiety and the question which she hardly dared to ask.

"Oh," said he, "Redeski has taken his precautions. He is accompanied by eight armed native soldiers, and, besides, he is not travelling in the direction of the Pou-Kas...."

The sky darkened rapidly, the distant flank of the mountains behind which the sun had disappeared had deepened to a blackish blue. The shadows stretching down from their crests reached almost to the Post, and already the plain lay blotted out. Above the river the hoarse night-cry of a water fowl grated through the silence. The last packages of the convoy had been carried into the store sheds, and around the empty court a few fowls were straying and pecking in the dust.

"It is time for me to go," said Father Ravennes, "I will come back in two or three days to see if I can be of any service to you. In any case if you need me you know where the Mission is. You only have to cross the canal and go straight forward towards that clump of trees in the middle of which it is hidden. It is only a matter of three-quarters of an hour or so on horseback, and everything there is yours as much as mine.... Au revoir!"

"Thank you," said Pierre, "we will come very soon."

The priest descended the narrow stairway. His form grew vague and smaller and then mingled with the shadows with which the court was flooded.

Leaning over the rail of the balcony, Wanda called after him in her turn:

"We will come as soon as we have got our things put straight. Au revoir!"

His voice, already distant, floated up to them.

"Au revoir!"

Leaning on their elbows side by side, Wanda and Pierre listened a minute longer to the footsteps of the priest as they became fainter and fainter and at last died away in the night. Then, turning and looking at each other, they smiled softly....

CHAPTER V

AT THE MISSION

Father Ravennes crossed the courtyard of his Mission with great strides. In front of the chapel he stopped. It was a rectangular building with a mud roof surmounted by a simple black cross; from each side of the building, like windows, three bays stood out covered with great screens of woven rattan. A single door gave access to it, massive and reënforced by crossbeams roughly squared, closed by two staples through which passed the hasp of a heavy padlock.

Before the chapel, suspended to a wooden bracket, a gong hung with its wooden striker. Seizing the hammer the priest with swift violent blows made the bronze resound. The sonorous vibrations swelled out through the air and filled the whole court, penetrating to the interior of the narrow huts perched on their bases of piles against the stockade of pointed bamboo.

Disturbed in their morning hour of quiet a dozen or so of blackbirds flew out and scattered with sharp cries. The fowls that were pecking about ran off in fright, flapping their wings. From the house of the priest next the chapel a native dog, lean and surly, charged out and began running round and round in front of the gong, barking madly.

"Quiet, Jang!" cried the priest.

He had restored the striker to the bracket, and was watching his flock who, hurriedly emerging from their huts, had come to group themselves in front of him.

There were some thirty, all told; a miserable crowd composed principally of women and children. And according to the order of their arrival, after a respectful salaam, they sat back on their heels holding their children by the hand. Behind them, standing up, a few men showed their hollowed faces turned towards the priest, and their naked bodies in which the bones seemed almost ready to come through the brown and dirty skin.

Father Ravennes looked at them steadily. But they turned away their eyes, submitting to his inspection with an appearance of annoyance and constraint which he noted.

When he saw them all ranged before him, he stretched his hand toward the mountain of which the blue slopes showed faintly far away towards the north.

"What did you go to do over there last night?" he demanded.

There was a deep silence. Motionless, their faces as expressionless as masks, the men hung their heads.

Father Ravennes leaned forward.

"Why did you go there?" he questioned again.

He seemed this time to address himself to the women and his voice became imperious. But they remained silent, simply clasping their children tighter to them.

The missionary, drawing back, made a few steps to the rear.

"Very well," he said roughly, "since you have nothing to say...."

A voice interrupted him:

"We went for a walk in the forest, Father, it was a hot night...."

The priest advanced towards the one who had just spoken and stared him out of countenance.

"It was a hot night ..." he repeated.

The other, small and puny, with an air of insincerity, turned his eyes away.

"Yes, very hot and we couldn't sleep, and...."

Father Ravennes drew himself up to his full height. He loomed large, bony and strong, dominating them all with his powerful carriage. He caught the man by the arm and forced him to turn his face to him.

"Why are you lying?" he demanded.

The other stammered:

"But I am not lying, Father, I...."

The missionary passionately cut him short:

"Be silent. I tell you that you are lying. You are all lying."

Two of his flock at his side made a gesture of protest which he saw.

"Yes, true," said he, "I am unjust: you were not in it, you two, and I am very glad.... But these others?..."

He flung away violently the man he had been holding.

"Away with you!" said he.

Then turning towards the still silent group of his converts he flung at them:

"What you refuse to tell me I am going to tell you. You went to the Bo-Jaou.[6] How many times have I told you and told you, that a Christian cannot believe in sorcery. When I think that you have been here for more than a year, and that in spite of all, all that I have told you, you continue to take part in the mummeries of this ... it's enough to drive me mad! A saint himself would lose patience with you, and I am not a saint."

A clear voice interrupted him:

"Oh! Father Ravennes, I am afraid that we have arrived at the wrong time. We have come to ask you for lunch. Can we come in?"

The missionary swiftly turned his head. On the other side of the palisade behind the entrance gate he saw Wanda and Pierre.

"Certainly," said he, "come in, and welcome! It is true that I am sinning terribly at this moment, but God will not call me to account for it; it is for the good of the Faith! Just look at them!"

With a circular gesture he pointed out the group of converts. The sleeve of his tunic swept the air around him. On his great chest the silver cross suspended by its rosary jumped. He repeated passionately:

"Look at them! They came to me pitiful, wretched and suffering: I took them in. For more than a year every day I have preached the Gospel to them, and all of them—men and women—have begged me to teach them the truths of our holy religion. One by one, I have cared for them, cured them, and little by little came to love them as my children, and then I baptized them. Look at that one, Ngui...."

With his forefinger he pointed at one of the men.

"Scarcely a fortnight ago, when the time came for him to receive baptism, and I put to him the questions set down in the ritual: 'Do you believe in God? Do you renounce Satan?' instead of answering me as I had taught him: 'I renounce him,' this fellow, forgetting his instructions in an enthusiasm which filled my priest's heart with joy, cried out, 'Yes, yes, I renounce him with all my heart and for ever!' And yet in spite of that, last night it was he who was at their head and guided them when they were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of Bo-Jaou!"

He walked towards the frightened group, and catching at random a woman with a child hanging on to the edge of her tunic, he shook her roughly:

"For I followed you, do you hear? And when you ran away, seeing a shadow which you did not wait to recognise, I saw you, and I know enough of it all to be able to describe to you all your underhand doings. Indeed I will describe them to you."

Letting go of the woman he thumped the shoulder of a man who stood near him.

"It was you," he said, "who opened the gate for them. It was eleven o'clock, and while they slid out you stayed on watch to see if I noticed anything. You were quite satisfied, weren't you? At that time I am always asleep. But the good God arranged it so that on that very afternoon I overheard one of you saying, 'The sign is cut upon the sacred banyan tree. It will be tonight!' I became suspicious. Aroused to full watchfulness I watched you from behind my blinds, and when you had gone out, with Ngui at the head and you at the end of the line, I set out on your track.

"You ran across the plain. The night was dark, only lighted up a little here and there by a ray of moonlight from between the clouds. You went towards the mountain. I saw you take the canoes on the bank of the river and cross it, go round the fort and disappear in the forest. As you had taken away all the canoes, I followed you by swimming. That took time. When I reached the other side of the river you had disappeared. Before me rose the first outpost of the Pou-Kas. I was unarmed! But nevertheless, after a short prayer, I set out towards a vague light which appeared and disappeared in the distance between the trees. After a walk of half an hour, on reaching a clearing I saw you, you, Nmur, you, Dok, all of you ... all of you, ranged around the jar of the libations and watching Jieng who was dancing before a brazier and howling while she gashed her face, her arms and her breast with sword-cuts!"

Pierre de Lursac came forward excitedly.

"Jieng, the famous sorceress of whom you spoke to us. Have you seen her?..."

Father Ravennes, turning round to him, broke into his speech.

"Chut!" said he. "Let me finish with these people."

And with a sudden turn he faced the converts and continued:

"Yes, you were all there and when you saw a shadow—mine—in front of you, you all ran away, Jieng at your head, scattering among the shadows of the forest. But by the abandoned fire I found this, which I brought back with me."

As he spoke, going to one of the windows of the chapel, he raised the screen and picked up a Moï sword. The thick blade, short and tapering to a point, shone spotted here and there with reddish stains. He held it a moment above his head high in the air, then flinging it with all his force into the middle of the court he cried:

"There is the sword which was used in the ceremonies. Now, will you still deny it?"

And he stood silent, trembling with emotion, drawn to his full height and facing the group of his converts who turned towards him faces full of woe and distress.

Standing at his side even Wanda and Pierre shuddered. The same emotion moved them both. They looked wonderingly at this man who lived there, lost in the depths of the Lao-ese forest, sustained only by his ideal of a priest's duty, and they gave him the tribute of their admiration, thinking of all that he had abandoned, of all that he had not hesitated to leave behind him—fatherland, parents, friends—to try and gain for his faith a few strays of this primitive and uncivilized race.

But already gaining control of himself the priest turned again to his converts.

"And now," said he in a deep voice, "listen to me: I came here from Pho-Rang,[7] my country, to live among you. You were slaves and I have made you free men and women. Your souls were wandering in the darkness, and I have tried to save those ignorant souls, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ; but you have remained blind; you have not wanted to believe; you have had for me double hearts and double minds. To my love you have answered only with hypocrisy, lies and daily deceits...."

He made a gesture which seemed to sweep them all away from him.

"I am tired," said he, "of struggling for you against yourselves... Go away from here. Return to your villages. I send you off.... Go.... Go...."

A silence of surprised horror weighed upon them. Then a woman's cry rang out, taken up and echoed by the voices of the others:

"Father, O Father! ... keep us here!..."

The women had risen to their feet; they ran up, trying to fling themselves at the feet of the priest.

"Not that.... O Father.... Not that. We can't go back to the mountain! Spare us!"

Fear shook them all, an incomprehensible and unexpected fear.

In his turn a man broke out into supplication:

"Pardon us, Father.... It is true ... we did go there, but we didn't know, we didn't think that that would make you angry ... forgive us!"

The missionary gazed at them thoughtfully. Kneeling at his feet, their hands stretched out toward him, a mask of very terror distorting their features, they groaned and trembled; and although this sudden terror seemed to him as yet another mystery, the priest felt a great pity sweep over him. His glance strayed about him.

From a pale metallic sky the sun was beating fiercely down. It filled the entire court, like a huge cup, with dazzling heat and light: above it the air throbbed and palpitated. The blackbirds, who had been frightened for a minute, had now returned to their familiar roosting-places and were hopping about among the bamboo stakes of the palisade, squawking and whistling, intoxicated with the glare.

In the centre of the court the great black cross which dominated the chapel threw its shadow, and its wide-spread arms traced on the yellow soil the Christian symbol of pardon and redemption.

Father Ravennes raised his hand.

"Very well," said he slowly, "but this is the second time that I have pardoned you, and by the holy Cross, whose servant I am, I swear to you that if I catch you a third time I shall be inexorable."

A voice promised:

"We will obey...."

And a confusion of cries immediately arose:

"We will never go to the forest any more! We swear it, Father! We all swear it! Believe us! Oh, believe us!"

The missionary nodded. His strong face, drawn with fatigue, grew soft.

"It is well," said he, "go now and resume your regular life."

CHAPTER VI

AN ENTHUSIAST DISCOURSES ON PRE-HISTORIC REMAINS

"Then really," said Wanda, "you are not worried?"

The priest turned his glance upon her. He observed her anxiety. Although she forced herself to hide it, her pale face was shadowed and her eyelids fluttered lightly. He tried to reassure her.

"No," said he, "certainly I would prefer to know that Redeski had reached Post 28. He ought to have got there last week, but when you come to think of it, what of it? He is only six days late on his schedule, and in the forest that's nothing—especially at this season...."

Pierre nodded agreement.

The three of them were finishing their lunch on the balcony of the priest's house. Once more clouds had invaded the sky, and across the courtyard of the Mission their shadows lay and sped swiftly between two shafts of sunlight.

The young girl lifted her relaxed face to the priest with a brave attempt at smiling.

"I suppose I am absurd, but Michael means so much in my life.... I have no one but him...."

"I understand," said the missionary with tenderness, "but do not torture yourself unnecessarily. He will be here in a fortnight at most, telling us why he was late.... Besides...."

He broke off, for the serving boy who had placed a basket of fruit on the table asked:

"Will the Father take his coffee here?"

Father Ravennes consulted his guests with a look.

"No," said he, "we will take it in 'the Cave!'"

Wanda, who was picking out a fruit, made a sudden movement. The purple and yellow pyramid of mangoes and lichis rolled scattered about the table. Absent-mindedly she queried:

"The Cave?"

The boy had silently disappeared.

"The room reserved for my prehistoric collection," explained the priest, stretching out his legs, and with a laugh he continued:

"It is true ... though of course you could not know it! I am absorbed in everything prehistoric, and I realize that this prepossession has become a regular passion with me!"

And with a sort of ingenuous doubt he enquired: "You don't see anything sinful in that, do you?"

Lursac smiled.

"No," said he, "and I absolve you in advance! Although this scientific pre-occupation seems to me neither very Christian nor warranted by the doctrines of the Church, and that...."

The missionary protested strongly:

"You are wrong," said he, "there is nothing to prevent priests from making a study of this sort.... I was already taken up with it while I was at the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris, and my masters never told me...."

"However," said Wanda in her turn, "doesn't the Old Testament tell us that man was created by God not more than six thousand years ago?"

Pierre remarked:

"Well, well, Mademoiselle, I would not have believed you so versed in theological matters."

Then turning towards the missionary:

"Well, what have you to say to that?"

Father Ravennes shrugged his shoulders.

"Simply this," said he, "that Mademoiselle is making a very common mistake. You can open the Sacred Book and you will find in Genesis no precise date at which primitive man must have been born. It is the chronologists who, since the fifteenth century, have endeavored to force biblical facts into their system of chronology. The best proof of that is that the Church has never consented to making it an article of faith that the creation of man took place six thousand years ago."

Lursac, who had just finished peeling a mango, went on teasing him:

"But I don't think, however, that many priests occupy themselves with such problems as this."

The missionary disputed the statement:

"Yes indeed!... Abbés Bourgeois and Delaunay, Monseigneur Meignan himself—just to quote those who are in some sort my predecessors—have all written important works on this very question. Of the present day I can cite you Abbés Breuil and Bremond...."

He got up, and walking in front of them he guided them towards "the Cave." It was a long room, of which the entire furnishings consisted of a narrow bench which ran round the walls and was divided by partitions, and a long table on trestles littered with stones, arms and other strange and primitive instruments. A large bay with the usual screen of plaited bamboo lighted the room, cutting a great rectangle in the mud wall through which the sun poured in. On the other walls, from the bench up to the ceiling, hung all sorts of prehistoric remains, forming an extraordinary mixture. Crowded against each other, each one provided with its label or its inscription, they enriched the gray background with outlandish patterns. Rough, heavy knives, axes and scrapers of flint hung close together beside bone daggers and bodkins worn smooth by the lapse of centuries. Further along, gruesome fragments of human skeletons colored like old ivory were mixed with pieces of animal bones on a large panel, flanked by rags of clothing and strips of hide. In an angle near the bay two yellow and angular skulls lay on a shelf. Their empty jaws with the mouths hanging open and their hollow eye-sockets formed great holes filled with shadows.

The room thus decorated gave the strange and complex effect of a museum of bric-a-brac and a tomb combined.

Wanda and Pierre had sat themselves down on the bench.

Standing before the table Father Revennes gazed affectionately at his collection.

"My harvest, gathered in the three years that I have been here," he said with naïve pride.

Lursac showed his surprise.

"Three years? I didn't know that Laos was so rich in prehistoric remains!"

The missionary had taken one of the skulls between his sunburnt hands and while he spoke he handled it gently with motions that were almost caressing. He did not seem to have heard Lursac's remark. With his eyes full of admiration he repeated:

"My most beautiful specimen.... A quarternary human skull! A real wonder, for it is unique.... Do you realize it?... Unique! And I defy anyone in Europe to show me one as truly characteristic and in such perfect condition. Their 'Cro-Magnon'? Pooh! Trash compared to this one...."

He gave a smile of triumph at once naïve and solemn.

"And when I think," said he with enthusiasm, "that in this bony cup, over forty thousand years ago, there used to be a brain that created thoughts, desires, and feelings, which were doubtless exactly the same as our thoughts, desires and feelings...."

He stopped, regarding with a sort of affection the skull which he had put on the table before him. Then touching his own forehead with his fingers he murmured:

"The same forehead, and—who knows—perhaps the same soul, which time has simply kept apart from this one without separating them."

The voice of Wanda broke in.

"O Father! can we have the same soul as a superior ape?"

Father Ravennes jumped round.

"Primitive man, an ape!" said he, "where have you read that heresy? In Lamarck, in Carl Vogt, or in Huxley? But it is an outrageous theory, long ago given up."

He went on, his voice trembling with excitement:

"It is enough to have eyes and to look at them; a child couldn't be deceived. How could such a gross error have originated? Everything proves that the human type is independent of the animal.... Look!" he said, as he took from the shelf the second skull and placed it on the table beside the first, and emphasising his words with his finger, he continued:

"They pretend to base their opinion on anatomical comparison. The ignoramuses! Look! Here is a man's skull from the earliest of primitive ages, and here is a baboon's, the simian species which is nearest to the human type. See here and here: the chin, the teeth, the general appearance, the structural lines of these two skulls proclaim their distinct origin and prove that the ape belongs to a totally different species from man."

Relieved by his own violence he shrugged his shoulders with scorn. Lursac and Wanda had risen and were standing one on each side of the missionary. In silence they regarded the hollow bony forms standing on the table before them, which, dull and dirty, grinned back at them with toothless mouths and missing noses and their whole surfaces spotted as with leprosy.

"What does it matter?" said Wanda. "What surprises me as it does Lursac is this extraordinary abundance of fossils in the neighborhood."

Father Ravennes turned to them.

"You are right; and my astonishment was even greater than yours. I didn't expect such rich discoveries! Just remember that usually it needs ten, a dozen, perhaps fifteen years of exploration and of digging to discover and bring to light a few anthropological specimens, less rare and, above all, in a much worse state of preservation than most of these you see here. But what is really extraordinary about it is the way in which I found them. It would be natural enough to find here in the depths of the Lao-ese forest some remains of quaternary man. General opinion agrees, as a matter of fact, that our first ancestors were born and lived in central and southern Asia before spreading themselves over different parts of the globe.... Yes, here! somewhere around us, must have been the cradle of the human race...."

"You said," interrupted Pierre, "that you found these things in some extraordinary way.... How was that?"

The missionary smiled mysteriously.

"Listen," said he. "When I first arrived here I built myself a hut, and every morning, after I had said mass, I started out on horseback. I just followed my nose, attempting to spread the Word of God. One day I lost myself in the forest on the border of the Moï country, opposite your fort."

Lursac cried:

"Ah! in the Dead Zone?..."

"Yes," said the missionary. "Yes, that is where I have made all my finds; and on each occasion the axes, the tools, the arms, the skeletons or the clothes were in a heap, piled round a black stone curiously shaped, erected like a fetich before a nihuer.[8] Therefore it is absolutely certain that it was the natives who must have brought them there. But where did they find them and why do they attach to them this sacred character which seems to be denoted by their presence before the altar of incantations?"

Lursac thoughtfully listened to him. With his thoughts dwelling on these savage hosts in the midst of which the fort and the Mission stood up like two lost islands he called to mind the counsels of prudence which the missionary had given them the evening of their arrival. And suddenly there flashed across him the mysterious fate of Longères and Dorcel. With some abruptness he asked:

"Don't you think that this may be one of the elements of this unknown religion whose presence we feel all about us?"

Father Ravennes lighted his pipe. Through the open window, beyond the bamboos and the trees which surrounded the Mission, the russet-colored plain was visible, with the widening line of the canal marked by its border of mangroves, and further away the bulk of the Pou-Kas, holding up against the luminous sky the dark wildness of its vast flanks.

The missionary, after a long silence, looked at the young man.

"It is a question," said he, "about which I have often thought. It seems probable, as a matter of fact, that these prehistoric remains do serve some function in the mysterious religion which holds in its grip this entire region from the mountain to the plain! Perhaps, indeed, it is even the very essence of it."

"Perhaps?" enquired Wanda. "Have you never then tried to find out? That surprises me! It seems that I...."

"Find out! ..." said the missionary with a gesture of weariness, "find out! Everything that surrounds us here, as I have already told you, is vague and incomprehensible. We are struggling in a mass of tricks, of lies and hypocrisies from a race that hates us and of which we know practically nothing. Find out! I have tried, certainly!... I began by questioning those who came to me. But directly one touches the subject one finds oneself at a stone wall. Then if one goes on to speak of this sorceress, this Jieng, whose power, although it is hidden, is none the less actual and far-reaching, they tremble and become terrified. Then if one presses them yet further, they say it is a legend and that there is no such person as Jieng and never was."

He turned towards the young people.

"However," said he, "you know that I came on them last night with her in the forest. But she holds them by some sort of magical charm and religious fear.... Never having been able to get anything out of my converts, I made up my mind to look for myself. I paid them back trick for trick, patience for patience. I became desperate, driven by a curiosity which has gradually turned into a strange mixture of fear and obsession...."

He broke off to replace the two skulls on the shelf.

"And this is what I finally discovered," he went on. "It's little enough and it's so vague in meaning that I have almost hesitated to speak to you about it. It was about three years ago—I had just arrived, and Post 32 had just been destroyed for the second time—I was returning from a circuit that I had made towards the mountain and night had overtaken me on my journey—a summer night, warm, milky and starlit. I was riding slowly, letting my horse take his own time. When I got to the bank of the canal I stopped, looking for the ford by which to cross it. Before me, stretching to the horizon, the plain lay lit by the moon with that light at once intense and subdued which one sees only in the night of the far east. Suddenly my attention was drawn to something unusual: across the sandy hills streamed processions of black spots, tiny and almost invisible. From the distance it looked like an army of ants on the march. I made out four, then six, then eight—eight columns, which, crossing the plain, were advancing directly towards me. They seemed to come from the extreme edge of the landscape, beyond the deserted plain in the middle of which the Mission stands. Intrigued, I turned back into the shade of the forest, hid myself and continued watching. The eight columns kept on moving. They joined into one the other side of the canal, crossed it by the ford, mounted the bank on this side and, passing in front of me, commenced to ascend the mountain. I followed them carefully, and I noticed with astonishment that this strange procession was composed exclusively of women. Walking on the edges of it, a couple of dozen men at most, with lances in their hands and crossbows on their shoulders, accompanied them. At the head of the line went a group of sorceresses, dancing and gesticulating, yelling incomprehensible and strident invocations, and lifting towards the pallid moon animal-like faces, seamed with scars. When they reached the threshold of the Sacred Forest they came to a stop. The women lined up in a vast semicircle and I recognized among them girls of every age, of every sort and of every race: Reungaos, Halong, Jelung, Benoun of the great tribe of Banhars; Keumrang, Duan, Hêre, of the powerful clan of the Sedangs; Djiru, Heun, Oy, Sapuan, who all belong to the Bolovens.... Every tribe and every dialect of the Moï country was represented there. A gathering extraordinary and incredible to anyone who knows the love for their own village and the jealous passion of separatism with which each of these clans is animated!... And seeing all these various and dissimilar faces turned towards the sorceresses with the same expression of submission and anxiety upon them, I first realized the danger, yes the danger, of an unsuspected religion, and it was there in that clearing on the border of the Sacred Forest that suddenly I got some idea of the terrible power wielded by Jieng.

"She had at that moment risen up, lame, her face scarred with wounds, and with a single gesture she made them all bend, men and women, in one simultaneous terrified movement of obeisance. Then with a sharp command she sent the men off. 'No males can enter the Dead Country. Your women will be returned to you on the seventh night of the fourth moon from now. Go!' And they went, their heads hanging, without a word; while on their side the great column of women, re-formed under the directions of the sorceresses, resumed its march and continued the ascent toward the Pou-Kas, slowly entering the great forest and disappearing among its shadows...."

He ceased, took several strides about the room, then still holding in his eye the vision of the scene which he had just recalled he said:

"That is what I saw.... I know no more!"

Wanda gave a short sigh and asked:

"But where did they go? And what was the meeting for?"

The missionary made a vague gesture.

"I do not know," he said.

Then hesitating and picking his words:

"I imagine,—please notice that I assert nothing because I know nothing exactly,—I imagine that in the depths of the Pou-Kas there must be a sanctuary,—a temple perhaps—or it may be only a place of pilgrimage, to which only women have the right of approach.... Remember that sentence of Jieng's, 'Males may not enter the Dead Country.'" He repeated thoughtfully:

"A religion of mystery, peculiar to the women and the secret of which no man can penetrate, no man, not even those of their own blood!..."

Still seated on the bench, her chin in her hand, Wanda watched him. With a light burning in her eyes she asked:

"And this temple ... where is it?"

The missionary shrugged his shoulders. He swept his hand across the window and his gesture seeming to include the whole confused mass of mountains which stood along the horizon:

"Without any doubt, there!" he said.

Wanda rose. Her lingering glance for a long time searched the blue slopes of the Pou-Kas, the sharp crest of which, barred with forest and clothed with jungle, dominated the entire range.

She stood, thoughtful, for a moment, then repeated:

"There!..." And smiled strangely.

CHAPTER VII

THE SILENT VILLAGE

"Believe me when I say it, Lursac, that it would be simply foolishness for you to venture through the forest at this time of year."

Pierre remained quiet. An answer came to his lips which he suppressed. An answer which in another place and some weeks earlier he had heard given by a young girl.

He contented himself with nodding doubtfully.

Father Ravennes, getting out of his chair, strode up and down the veranda, his steps sounding loudly on the bare planking. He went on:

"At least wait until we have an answer from Post 28. The messenger that I sent there cannot be very much longer before returning; and, again, you must think of Mademoiselle Redeski whom you could not leave alone. I only hope that you will never have to repent having brought her up here."

Pierre shook his head.

"She would have come just the same without help.... As for leaving her alone, I have thought of that; she will come and stay with you here at the Mission."

Rising in his turn he took the missionary by the arm and strode with him for several paces.

"I suppose," he said, "that you understand the situation as well as I do. It is now ten days since Redeski ought to have returned. The last news we have had of him dates from three weeks back. He was then on the Moï plateau marching north. Since that, nothing!... Something serious must have happened evidently; it would be childish for us to ignore the fact."

"I don't wish to do so," said the priest. "The best proof of that is that I have sent out three of my converts to beat the countryside in search of information."

"Well?" asked Pierre anxiously.

"Two of them got back yesterday. No results!... No trace of Redeski or of his escort."

Pierre shot him a glance. "You see!" said he.

The priest grumbled.

"Yes, I see! I see!... But then again we have no accurate information: we don't even know in which direction to search. And on the other hand, nothing goes to prove that Redeski is in any danger, and very likely we are disturbing ourselves quite unnecessarily. The wisest thing, I repeat, is to await our answer from Post 28."

"When shall we have it?" asked Pierre.

"In eight days, ten, at the most. Then it will be time enough to organize our expedition."

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"Our expedition! ... that's a rather large word."

The missionary, taking out his pipe, filled it carefully, and having loaded it he looked thoughtfully at the young man.

"Listen to me," he said hesitatingly, "I ... I do not know if you understand why I speak to you in this way, but...."

Pierre looked at him.

"I imagine that you consider yourself responsible...."

The face of the missionary lighted up with a friendly smile.

"The fact is," he said, "that you are just like a child in this country."

And as Pierre made a motion of protest he added quickly:

"You misunderstand me.... Bravery has nothing to do with this matter. Others who certainly were just as brave as you have lost their lives here. The fact is that there are definite rules for the conduct of the struggle which we are waging.... And they had no idea of them—while I, who have lived fifteen years in the forest, I know the game from the bottom up. I say it without any kind of pride and with all sincerity; although since my arrival here nothing has yet appeared to confirm my suspicions, I have the feeling that of all the parts of Indo-China in which I have lived this one is the most unsafe...."

Lursac, attentive to his words, watched the face of the priest.

"What do you mean? I suppose you are thinking of the stories of Longères and Dorcel? You know about them of course?"

The missionary made an affirmative motion.

"Yes," said he simply.

A silence fell between them. From the court the voice of the corporal calling the men for the night watch came up to them.

"Bao, first watch. Tran, second watch. Vinh and Pâa, the watch over the sheds of the elephants and oxen...."

Pierre, facing the priest, asked:

"You know something about their affair?"

Fingering his beard the missionary replied:

"I know nothing ... nothing ... except that we live in the middle of a people unknown, who hate us and flee us, and whose invisible spies watch around us—around your Post as around my Mission—spying on our gestures, watching our comings in and our goings out and our slightest actions."

With a movement of his head Pierre signified his doubt.

"Are you certain of all that?" he queried.

The priest thought for a minute, then stretching his hand towards the sombre mass of the Pou-Kas standing aloft in front of the fort, he said:

"Look before you."

Pierre raised his head. His look traveled over the scene stretched out in front of him. Above the dull-colored gullies of the mountain a livid rayless sun was setting slowly. In the middle of the mass of foliage carpeting the first slope of the mountain showed a Moï village, with its conical thatched huts dotted along a pathway edged with banana trees and defended by a triple zareba of brush.

In the declining daylight this lifeless silent village seemed to lie asleep.

The priest began to speak again in a louder voice as he pointed to the huts:

"How many inhabitants are there there? Fifty?... Three hundred?... What do they do? How do they live? We shall never know!..."

Pierre continued to watch the two fortresses, hostile towns, small and difficult of attack, which stood, as it were, opposite to each other and appeared to watch each other: here, down on the plain and on the very bank of the canal the military station; up there, shadowed by the trees of the forest the strange native village, the inhabitants of which no European had ever seen.

He murmured:

"They are there, nevertheless. Look!"

On the mountain side, every instant becoming less distant, among the huts of the Moï village a mysterious liveliness seemed indeed to have arisen. Here and there hearth-fires were lit, and among their flickering lights human forms could be seen passing. The breeze, beginning to blow at the approach of dusk, came lightly over the flanks of the mountain and flowed towards the narrow valley, bringing to the Post the lingering sound of a litany chanted by women's voices.

"Yes!" said Father Ravennes, "they are there.... But no more than Redeski and no more than me, no more than Longères and Dorcel, doubtless, will you succeed in seeing them or taking them unawares, as their watchword is definite: as soon as white men are seen approaching, create a wilderness around them, disappear...."

And as Pierre made a vague gesture he said sharply:

"The best thing would be for you to have experience of it yourself: a simple experiment will make you understand the country better. Perhaps then you will attach to my advice the importance that it merits.... Come with me."

The priest strode along swiftly. Before the guardhouse the sentinel saluted him without his taking the slightest notice. He cleared the gateway with a vigorous stride. In his hurry he had forgotten to take his hat and his hair, gray, and standing out in tangled masses, hung round his face. He threw it back with a characteristic shake of his head. His hand held in a strong clasp the heavy walking stick from which he was never separated.

Pierre caught up to him. Side by side they mingled with the shadows of the valley through which a narrow footpath wound. Before them, shouldering upwards into the red sky was the formidable mass of the distant Pou-Kas. From the village the monotonous chant of the women continued to flow downward to the plain. They reached the first spurs of the mountain. The path disappeared: to the tall grass there had succeeded a denser, heavier vegetation of trees and bushes.

Suddenly Pierre stood still.

"Listen!" whispered the priest.

Arrested in their progress they leaned forward and listened with all their ears. The unknown singers had suddenly stopped their mournful song. There was a short interval, and then the heavy sound of a gong spread itself abroad in the forest carried far and near by the echoes of the mountain. Then everything became inexplicably silent, and the forest appeared more vast, more threatening. From the sky of mauve and pink, night was about to fall; and under the final caresses of the sun the forest prepared to receive it with a vast immobility of silence and stillness. The missionary drew himself up again.

"Let us go on," said he.

They set themselves to continue their climb. With eyes alert they slid from tree to tree up towards the mysterious forest, the threshold of which like a dark and living wall was stretched out above them. From time to time the bark of a wolfhound mixed with the clucking of a fowl, without it being possible to say whether it came upwards from the fort or downwards from the village.

Finally they penetrated the real forest. Its bluish-green heavy damp shadow fell about them, the shadow peculiar to the virgin undergrowth which the rays of the sun never reach and which seems all the denser and all the colder from its dark stagnation unbroken by anything or anybody. Under their feet the soft spongy soil gave and slid.

And suddenly, after their having climbed a last ledge walled about with century-old dau trees with enormous trunks, they found themselves before the exterior of the village. A narrow path ran forward between two massive walls of thorny brush and was blocked by a heavy gate. Without the least hesitation Father Ravennes dashed into the outlandish enclosure with Pierre close behind him. They no longer took any precautions against being seen. They went swiftly, silently, and with their attention fixed ahead, following the open runway before them. They found two other gates similar to the first one, but lower, and they had to bend to get through them. Finally they came out in the middle of the village. In the centre of an open space, bordered on either side by a row of banana trees, four long dark huts showed pointed roofs. In front of each of them a sort of primitive tripod made of twisted bamboos supported curiously shaped stones.

As quickly as possible Lursac and the missionary made their way forward. Between the shining trunks of the bananas a few fowls ran off cackling. From the first hut a hoarse barking arose, and a mangy wolfhound with its ribs sticking through its skin dashed out. He made for the two men, ran round them growling, from time to time throwing up his pointed muzzle towards the sky and howling.

They went through the huts rapidly one after the other, looking carefully at the rough walls and searching the shadows which clung about the rice-bins and gathered under the straw roofs blackened by soot and the smoke of household fires. In one of these dwellings, consisting of a single room like all the rest, in the middle of a rectangle of stamped down earth surrounded by a great family sleeping-bench a few live coals were just dying, showing here and there a red spark which was answered by the light of two other smaller hearth-fires in the corners of the room set beside the bench on small sheets of clay. A warm smell of cooked rice hung heavy in the air. Here and there rags were scattered about, and under a beam a crossbow still swung suspended from a peg.

The priest turned to Pierre.

"Well! what do you say to that? Is it perfectly plain? Do you understand now that to make your way through such a country as this, an ... expedition is necessary?"

His voice hesitated and then emphasised the word "expedition."

Lursac spoke his thought aloud.

"How the devil could they have been warned?"

The priest smiled.

"Well, what do you make of the gong that sounded while we were coming up here?... The system is perfectly simple: they saw us come out from the Post and begin to mount towards the village. One of the native braves, while we were struggling in the middle of the forest, ran here, got ahead of us, gave three or four bangs on the gong and every one cleared out!..."

A feeling of depression came over Pierre.

"They cleared out, certainly, but how? We arrived at the entrance to the village a few minutes after the gong sounded, we should have seen them if they had come out that way, for at any rate they are not invisible!..."

The missionary nodded assent.

"Perfectly right," said he, "follow me!"

He led the way to the last cai-nha, and going in, went to the furthest angle of the room; then, kneeling down, he slid under the bench and disappeared. Pierre imitated him. He immediately discovered in the surface of the wall an opening, carefully cut, over which a slab of board could be lowered like a shutter.

Going forward on his hands and knees he found himself outside. He then saw running through the midst of a mass of tangled underbrush a little footpath blocked by a doorway like those at the entrance of the village.

Beside him, Father Ravennes explained.

"The service entrance! ... but I myself have my spies too...."

And as Pierre made a step towards the path he interrupted himself to shout violently:

"Don't stir!" at the same time taking him by the arm and pulling him backwards. Pierre flinging a rapid look around asked:

"What's the matter? Is there danger?"

The missionary shook his head.

"No good looking at the forest, it isn't what you think. These animals are too cunning to attack us from the front. No, it is not around us that the danger lies, but at our feet!"...

Flinging down his eyes Pierre examined the soil carefully. About a yard before him on the other side of the open gate the path, muddy and covered with a carpet of dead leaves and crushed grass, ran with sharp turns between its two walls of brush. It seemed to him peaceful and familiar, calling up in his mind the memory of those narrow, trough-like lanes of Brittany along which he used to go in his boyhood, picking the blackberries and the yellow honeysuckle clinging among the brambles and wild vines.

He said:

"I see nothing."

"Evidently," said the priest. "I also, in my first experience of them, found nothing suspicious, and I paid dearly for it!"

He drew back the edge of his white cai-quan, showing his right leg which stood out strongly, grooved with veins and studded with muscles. With his finger he outlined a sort of long furrow of dark red which ran down the flesh of the calf. He explained:

"An extraordinary piece of good luck got me out of it with just this slight wound. A few inches lower and I should have had my tendon cut and have been permanently lamed ... and then again, I have never been able to understand why they did not poison their devilish device, since it is their habit to do so! Our lives here, more than anywhere else, are in the hands of Providence...."

While speaking he made a few steps forward with great care. Bending over in the opening of the gate he grubbed with the point of his walking stick in the mud path and the scattered leaves, showing solidly bedded in the earth and pointing obliquely upwards a series of arrows with sharpened points cut to a fine edge and tipped with a reddish stain made by successive dippings in vegetable poison.

He started back.

"Look there!" said he, "no boot sole could stand against that, and no flesh and blood either. A slight or a deep cut, and the result would be exactly the same: a few minutes after the accident a burning in the wounded limb, followed almost immediately by a general stupor, by faintings and fever; then after an hour or two of atrocious suffering, the end,—unavoidable and without any possible remedy!..."

He stopped speaking. Bending over towards the soil he scraped carefully back over the ground which he had uncovered the scattered leaves and grass. Pierre said nothing.

Drawing himself up again the missionary pointed out a sort of terrace which the forest left uncovered above them.

"And there," said he, "in that exact spot begins what they call 'the Dead Country,' that is to say, the zone into which no man is allowed to penetrate, even if he is of the Moï race.... Then again, in order to reach as quickly as possible the last stage of Redeski's journey which we know of, it is across the forbidden country that we must cut. Let us wait then. If it is necessary we will organise your troop...."

Pierre still said nothing. Re-covered with their carpet of leaves, the arrow heads were no longer visible. Nevertheless, with his features drawn, his fists clenched, the young man continued watching the path with a fixed and savage stare. He was thinking; and his thoughts, whirling and broken, took on a bitter and terrible tinge, a feeling of rage and death.

There they stood, the two of them, motionless and wrapped in thought, Pierre with his back against the dingy wall of the cai-nha and the priest before him watching him. Around them the dusk flowed through the forest. The trembling dark sea of trees became every moment more huge and more menacing. The clear line of the Pou-Kas when they raised their eyes to it became lost in a purple sky already invaded by darkness. And, through the silence of the world over which the dark kept watch, there rose only from time to time the hoarse voice of the wolfhound left alone in the village and baying at the night.

CHAPTER VIII

LOVE IN THE FOREST

The winter season drew along and came near to its end. From the piled-up accumulation of clouds which lay on the great group of mountains the rain pelted with more violence but at longer intervals each day. Between storms the clouds rolled away and opened, blown by sudden winds, leaving in the sky great sparkling blue deeps through which the rays of the sun flamed and fell upon the Post. The atmosphere, one moment dark and thick, and the next suddenly full of light, was heavy, moist, and charged with deadly heat.

Wanda and Pierre since their arrival at the Post had introduced a certain regularity into their daily life. The same monotony brought them together in their difficulties as well as in their pleasures. Every morning they went over to the Mission where Father Ravennes gave them a lesson in Banhar, the rough and primitive dialect of the natives of the region. In the afternoon they wandered on horseback all about the station, some days by themselves and others accompanied by the missionary. Now and then they climbed up towards the mountain, making a circuit about the mysterious village, but always being careful not to get too deep into the forest. Then, in the evening, after dinner, on the seats under the veranda at the Post they talked together, while through the night rose the thin sound of the flutes with which the linhs accompanied their homesick chants which they had brought with them from their country of Laos.

And this was the peaceful hour—the hour they liked best—during which unconsciously both of them put aside restraint at the call of this mysterious destiny which had brought them together in the depths of the forest alone, each with a heart so ardent and so young.

Lursac, particularly, fell under the charm of this camaraderie and enjoyed it to the full, light-heartedly. But soon with this plain and simple feeling something more complex, less peaceful also, had become mingled. Pierre had very soon indeed found awakening in himself for this strange, wilful and beautiful girl a tenderness in which admiration, fear, and weakness were mingled. Then, spending his days side by side with her, he had felt an eager love take possession of him little by little with its hitherto unguessed-at sweetness, and, finally, flood his whole being with its irresistible power. Wanda, however, continually bewildered him. Generally distant or reserved, she sometimes became childlike and tender. At such moments she flung constraint to the winds without any warning: then as suddenly froze again, disconcerting him by these sudden changes in humor, by the caprices of a heart whose secret he could never fathom. So in her presence he remained hesitant and timid, irritated by his own weakness and impatience, feeling her difficult to understand, impossible to follow, with every fibre of his being in revolt against her instability of temperament which day by day forced him to put off the avowal which he had sworn to himself to make.

On this particular afternoon they were taking their usual ride.

Through thick foliage shining with the damp the path led away, obstructed here and there with swamps and blocked in places by trunks of uprooted trees. At their regular, undeviating pace, the sure-footed ponies followed it, the bridles hanging on their necks. Around them the great Lao-ese forest pressed in upon them, vast and deep, cradling between its enormous upspringing shafts, which gave it the aspect of a giant cathedral, the heavy perfume of rotting earth, voluptuous and unhealthy. Among the bushes and the undergrowth a bluish-green daylight drifted, uncertain and deceptive—a sunless daylight, transparent, the color of green leaves, such as sifts sometimes through the dusty windows of an old sanctuary long abandoned and given up to shadows and forgetfulness....

Plucking as she went an orchid which hung from a thorny creeper, Wanda announced:

"We will stop at the first clearing: I feel tired...."

Absorbed in contemplation of her, Pierre gave no answer. Clothed in her gray tailored suit—the same that she had worn that night, already so long past, on which she had paid him that strange visit at Khône-Sud—she rode before him, and he with his mind lost in a vague thoughtfulness watched her. His glance slowly dwelt on the dainty outline which not even the jolting trot of the ponies could dishevel, and every detail came to him with a new joy:—a bit of her neck shining white in the shadow of the felt hat; the curve of her shoulders, as the strong and flexible figure gave gracefully to the motion of the horse; the supple waist, and the long delicate line of her leg outlined in red leather, and the fine arch of the foot strongly planted in the stirrup....

With her hand lying on the croup of her animal she turned back towards him. Catching the long look charged with emotion and admiration with which he seemed to embrace her, she blushed.

"Do you hear me, Pierre, I am tired."

Her voice a little sharp, she spoke louder than usual.

He started, and pushed his mount alongside that of the girl.

"Certainly," said he, "we will stop as soon as you wish."

And he fell again into his dream. At last, watching him out of the corners of her eyes, she said:

"You are not very pleasant this morning. I suppose you slept badly?"

He nodded his head.

"True," said he, "I hardly closed my eyes."

And as he spoke there came before him the sleepless night that he had just passed. A troubled and feverish night, through which he had done nothing but think long thoughts of Wanda; and the visions which had obsessed him and kept him wide awake at his window came back into his mind. With the sudden beating of his heart there flowed upon him once more the violent emotion which had tormented him through the night; and the same question which had then haunted him faced him again for solution: Did Wanda love him?

The uncertainty was no longer to be borne.

The path, now widening, opened into a clearing. Wanda jumped down from her horse and Pierre imitated her. With the bridles over their arms they made a few steps side by side.

"Now," thought Pierre, "I will speak to her, I will tell her...."

But the girl's voice breaking the silence interrupted him.

"A poor harvest!" said she.

And sitting on a stump overgrown with moss she spread out before him a few curiously shaped stones. She repeated:

"A poor harvest! Father Ravennes will not be able to congratulate us on that!"

He stood facing her.

"You are right," he said sharply. "Since Father Ravennes showed you his collection of prehistoric remains there doesn't seem to be anything else that interests you!"

"Yes, he made a good convert of me," she said, smiling. "Here am I, who two months ago didn't even know there was such a thing as anthropology or palæontology, now mad about carved flints and dreaming of nothing but axes and scrapers and skeletons. But how learned he is on the subject, and what words he finds to describe his dear prehistoric man!... I shall never forget his face, at once horrified and amazed, when I told him that our ancestors must have been horribly ugly. 'Quaternary man ugly!' cried he, 'Who put that into your head? Uncivilized, savage, wild, without doubt!—but ugly? Good Heavens! No! Unless you find horrible anything that resembles nature, anything that is strong, powerful and active! Primitive man? He was certainly a rough, strong being, with rude health, formidable muscles, and a splendid lithe body; a primitive athlete, superb in strength, browned by the sun and burned by the weather, hardened by privations and as dangerous to the wild beasts as to his fellows....'" She remained a moment thoughtful and then:

"After all, suppose he was right?"

Pierre had sat down beside her. With hanging head he absently handled the stones laid on the earth before her.

"Yes," said he, "and for a whole week I have beaten the forest with you looking for fossils...."

She turned to him and looked at him:

"Are you complaining of it?"

He protested:

"No.... No...."

And, suddenly making up his mind, in an uncertain voice he continued:

"No ... but today, if you will let me, we will not talk of prehistoric things, I have something to tell you...."

She drew herself lightly away, but still turned towards him she watched him attentively with her frank glance.

He felt his heart beat furiously in little short feverish throbs.

"Something to say to you ...," said he, "a confession ... I...."

Quickly she stretched out her arm and laid her hand across his lips:

"I know," she said steadily, "you love me...."

Pierre, seizing her hand, kissed it passionately.

"No," said he, "you do not know.... It was back there on the Vien-Thian, when I saw you for the first time!... You were talking to Captain Rabaud. Do you remember?... I do not know why the sound of your voice attracted me, and when you had refused to take me for a fellow traveler I felt disappointment and a strange pain ... and then you came to see me at Khône...."

She did not withdraw her fingers. With her head lowered and her eyes half-shut she seemed to be thinking deeply.

"I hardly saw you that morning going on shore, and yet, nevertheless, somehow I knew that you would not refuse my request," she said.

"Yes ... and your victory was so easy and so complete that you must have been surprised at it yourself!"

She raised her eyes to his. He noticed the softened look in them, one which he had never seen there before. Profoundly moved, he stammered:

"Wanda ... Wanda ... I love you,—so, so much. Tell me, you believe me?"

Her look flowed into his and seemed to search into the most hidden corners of his heart.

There was a little silence which she suddenly broke:

"Yes," she said simply, "I believe you...."

He breathed heavily as though freed from some agony. A wave of joy spread over his face.

"When your brother comes back I will speak to him ... you wish me to, do you?"

She got up and walked towards her horse.

He followed her.

"Answer me, Wanda!" he implored, his voice hoarse with emotion.

Her foot in the stirrup, she sprang up lightly and settled herself in the saddle.

His hand on the neck of her horse and his head raised in anxiety he repeated:

"I may?... Tell me!..."

She bent towards him. Their faces were so close that the details of her features seemed to escape him and before his eyes Pierre could only see two brown eyes wonderfully liquid, the color of dead leaves, and palpitating with the beating of the dark lashes.

His look fell lower and caught sight of the moist crimson lips like a marvellous fruit.

A violent spasm of emotion overwhelmed him, he shut his eyes and shivered at the thought of those lips laid on his in a kiss.

At the same time, with his hands moist and his throat dry, he searched vainly for words, for some tender phrase to serve as a plea for his love. But in his feverish brain one single question, the same, came to the surface like an obsession and for the third time he asked:

"Will you let me?"

She bent a little over him and suddenly taking his face between her hands she kissed him on the lips almost savagely while her breath mingled with his.

"Yes," she cried, "for I, I love you also."

And she repeated passionately:

"I love you!... I love you!..."

Then flinging herself quickly back from him, she whipped up her pony, which started off at a gallop.

He caught up with her in a few seconds, and then they descended together the flank of the mountain, letting their animals go as they liked. Between the springing shafts of the dau trees, the igieurs, the trueuls, the path zigzagged, here turning to go round a bush and there avoiding a mass of creepers. Side by side they jogged along, as they went building castles in Spain for the future, and sketching their lives together according to their most secret longings.

Suddenly pulling his signet ring from his ring-finger, Pierre held it out to the girl.

"I have no other ring to offer you just now," he said, "no jewel, no diamond! ... will you wear this for me meanwhile?"

She took the ring, slipped it on to her finger and with her long pale hand raised before her eyes she asked:

"Is it very old?"

"Yes, my great-great-grandfather had it when he was killed at the battle of Fontenoy. Since then it has passed from father to eldest son."

She examined the coat of arms:

"A lion.... A chevron...."

"Dexter, argent, a lion sable—Sinister, azure, a chevron or," he quoted, smiling.

She repeated the heraldic description slowly.

"Very well," she said, "I shall know now how to blazon our arms, and I will keep them faithfully—as faithfully as my love...."

And in her turn she smiled, with a look at once solemn and tender.

CHAPTER IX

AN INTERVIEW WITH A SORCERESS

That afternoon, for a change, the weather was soft and clement. Side by side, abreast, they descended towards the plain at the easy-going pace of their mounts. Between the trees below them they saw the Moï village, its straw roofs, long and pointed, piercing the forest like gold arrows, while, rising from one of the cabins, a thin column of smoke, straight and blue, stood in the motionless air.

Suddenly breaking the silence, the girl asked him:

"Don't you think that that village must be one of the haunts of Jieng?"

"It is possible, Father Ravennes thinks so, but he is no more sure of it than we are."

Wanda flung him a sharp glance.

"You speak of it as if it did not matter! Doesn't that interest you in any way? For my part, I should like to discover the mysterious power that this woman represents and of which Father Ravennes obtained proof that night in the forest. And then perhaps she could tell us something about what has happened to Michael. Ah! if only I could catch her."

Lursac with a shrug of his shoulders signified lack of interest.

"What good would that do you? You don't imagine that she would tell you her secrets?"

Wanda remained thoughtful.

"Who knows?" said she, after a moment's thought. "And, anyway, what should I risk? She might say nothing or she might tell me things that weren't true."

"Yes," said Pierre, "certainly, and also perhaps you might get an unexpected spear-thrust or a dagger in your back!"

The young girl made a motion of scorn.

"She would not dare," said she, "and, besides, this is a very excellent chance! Let us try it together!"

"Wanda!" cried Pierre, "Wanda!" He stretched out his hand to try to hold her back, but on the word she had pushed forward her horse and was galloping down the slope.

He immediately realized that it was too late to stop her; and he then had only one thought, to protect her. He whipped up his horse mercilessly.

They arrived abreast at the entrance to the village. Pierre recognized the path of brush by which he and Father Ravennes had a week earlier penetrated into the settlement.

Flat down on the neck of his pony he took the lead of Wanda and passed the three gates one after the other. At his side he heard the heavy breathing and the hoof-beats of Wanda's horse galloping close behind, and when, on coming out on the village square, he stopped, he found the girl beside him. He took her by the arm and brought her to a standstill.

"For the love of Heaven!" he cried, "let me do it!"

Jumping to the ground he ran towards a cabin, whose wide-open door showed a black rectangle in the midst of which flickered the flame of a hearth-fire.

On the threshold of the single room reeking with bitter smoke he stood still, searching the shadows before him. Squatted before a fire of branches some twenty savages, with long Moï pipes in their mouths, were silently smoking. A stupor seemed to hold them all motionless in their places. Seated on the bench before the semicircle of warriors a woman had just that instant stopped speaking.

Pierre, taking no notice of the men, strode towards her and, by chance remembering the description which Father Ravennes had given him, he said, in Banhar:

"I greet you, O Jieng!"

Wanda, biting back an exclamation, examined the sorceress eagerly. Her bent, crouching body appeared that of a child. Ragged and filthy cotton drawers, rolled round her waist and descending below the knee, left in plain sight thin, bony shoulders, a withered skin creased with wrinkles and hacked with scars. On the hearth a little log was burning. In the dancing light the hideous face of Jieng could be plainly seen; under her gray hair and narrow forehead showed the bloody marks of an outlandish tattooed design gashed into the skin. A single eye was alive, half-closed, dull and blinking: the other with its bleared, corroded lids gave the effect of a running abscess. A cut, still unhealed, disfigured the chin, stretching up towards the cheek, and, circling the lips, gave to the toothless mouth, stained with betel-nut, the aspect of a raw wound slashed across the face.

Alone in the middle of her dumbfounded people she remained unmoved. She turned her mutilated face towards the young folk and regarded them with her single eye without showing any emotion whatever.

"I greet you," she replied.

She raised her hand, showing on her arm rings of copper which glistened in the dusk. Pointing to the door, she said to the men:

"Go!"

They got up doubtfully. The fire on the hearth lit up their thick, bony forms, brought out their strong arms and thighs and revealed their red bodies in which the supple, powerful muscles rippled under the skin. Pierre noted that they were equipped for war, their faces painted white, hatchets on their shoulders, curved daggers stuck into the belts of their loin-cloths and their long hair plaited up into knots, while collars of animals' teeth rattled round their necks, and their ankles and knees were ornamented with copper rings. Already they were in the act of taking down their bows and quivers that hung on the wall.

But the young man, with a brusque gesture, signed to them to stop.

"No!" he ordered, "no one is to move."

In her flat level voice Jieng asked:

"Why do you want them?"

And as he hesitated she looked straight into his face.

"Those who sit by our hearth, however they came there," said she in the same calm indifferent tone, "have nothing to fear. Were you not aware of that?"

And once more pointing to the door, she repeated:

"Go!"

One by one they filed out without Pierre attempting to prevent them. On the threshold each stood still for a moment and bowed towards the Bo Jaou. The salute revealed a wild and haughty servility, a sort of fanaticism mixed with fear and suppressed rage. Their supple, gliding walk, as of animals in captivity, at once crafty, obedient and ready for revolt, suggested the idea of wild animals which give way before the tamer, crouching, bent double, kept down by fear, but nevertheless, always waiting and ready to give a deadly blow of the paw.

The last of them, a great big fellow with massive shoulders and thick hands, cast on the young man a look of hate so heavy, so threatening, that the latter felt it cover him almost like something tangible. They looked each other up and down for a second, and then, when the warrior disappeared, Lursac turned back to the sorceress. Her legs folded under her, her body rigid and her hands flat upon her withered thighs, she continued to preserve her attitude of a Buddhist idol and her expressionless face of a statue. She pretended to ignore the presence of the young man, just as she did Wanda sitting beside her on the bench, and this indifference, at once haughty and careless, worried Pierre.

"This lady," he explained, pointing to Wanda, "wanted to see you."

The sorceress turned her head slightly and, with a glance, she examined Wanda:

"She is beautiful," she said simply.

The girl smiled.

"I wanted to know you," said she. "They have talked to me about you so much."

Jieng remained unmoved. A short cough shook her and made her hunch her shoulders.

"Who, then, talks of an old woman like me?"

"Everyone," said Wanda.

And abruptly she challenged her:

"Do you not reign over this country?"

A light, immediately veiled, flashed in the dull eye of the sorceress.

"How could I?" she asked. "Look at me. Death is waiting for me. For a long time I have seen him beckoning to me. The gate is open for me...."

A second attack of coughing tore her skinny chest; choking and suffocating, she spat, gasping and twisted with pain.

Already Wanda, full of compassion, was beginning to sympathize with her.

An exclamation from Pierre, however, turned the current of her thoughts and reawakened her curiosity.

"Look, Wanda, more prehistoric remains."

She cast a glance at the corner of the cabin at which he was pointing. Against a partition of split bamboo, on a large wooden stand, round a tiny hearth where a few live coals were gradually dying, flint hammers and axes and some bones were set out in a semicircle. A skull dominated them, set upon a block of wood; and the red glow from the little hearth flecking the ivory of the bones with red, created two pools of shadows in the empty eye-sockets.

Wanda examined the peculiar altar with passionate interest. Then her attention, up to that time concentrated on the sorceress, passed to the entire cabin. On the walls blackened with smoke she noticed the heads of animals and the skins of wild beasts; yellow skeletons and tawny furs; elephants' ears; monkeys' hands, twisted and brown, showing red palms stretched towards the bundles of bows and lances.

Triumphantly, she jerked out:

"And what is that? This skull and these flint weapons?"

The sorceress made an evasive gesture.

"Yes!" said she, "trifles ... that we find in ... in the mountain...."

Wanda imperiously demanded particulars:

"Why do you put them on an altar, as if they were sacred things?"

"These ... these are fetiches, ... the fathers of our fathers did this ... and in our turn we...."

The girl recognised the hopelessness of her question. She took the sorceress by the arm.

"Don't you know? Who, then, is the high-priestess of this religion? Aren't you?"

Jieng parried the question adroitly.

"We worship everything that seems strange to us—strange ... yes ... and above us,—a fire, thunder.... Is that what you mean?"

She had pulled away her arm, but not quickly enough to prevent Wanda feeling the shiver which had shaken it: at the same time, with her single eye persistently upon him, she watched Pierre standing in front of her.

"No," said Wanda, "I am talking of the religion which everywhere brings together all the Moï women in mysterious pilgrimages. Where do they go? And why only the women?"

The sorceress started. She twisted herself slightly. Once more her eye was riveted on the young man. With a sort of tired obstinacy, she repeated:

"I don't understand. Really, I don't understand...."

As if crushed, trembling, she began to cough again.

A cruel bronchial rattling seemed to choke her: she groaned, pressing her emaciated sides with her two hands.

Pierre shrugged his shoulders angrily.

"I told you," said he, "that you would not get anything out of her."

Wanda rose. A thought had just come into her mind, while a sentence of Father Ravennes' sounded in her ears: "A mysterious religion reserved for women, and of which no man must penetrate the secret."

Her look fell in turn on Jieng and Pierre de Lursac.

And to herself she murmured:

"No man ... no man...."

Aloud she said:

"You are right. Let us go. Look and see if the horses are there!"

Standing in the middle of the hut, she followed him with her eyes. On the threshold, he turned back and looked at Jieng for an instant.

"Poor old woman!" he said, "she can't last very much longer; in any case, she is nothing to be afraid of."

With a doubtful smile on her lips, Wanda remained silent, but directly he had gone out she walked resolutely up to the sorceress.

"Jieng," said she, "have you really nothing to tell me?"

The old woman raised her head. Her glance met that of the young girl—a new glance, intelligent, acute and deep, which seemed to want to penetrate the most secret thoughts of the stranger.

She made no answer.

"Nothing?" ... insisted Wanda. "Not even to me who am a woman. To me alone?"

A flash shone from the eye of the sorceress and made it glitter strangely. Her entire face seemed to reflect doubt and hesitation.

"To you alone?" she said, uncertainly, "to ... to you, alone?"

Suddenly her visage became stone and took on its mask of passive indifference.

"Your companion is calling for you," she said.

Through the open door could be heard the sounds of the approaching horses, and the voice of Pierre:

"Wanda, are you coming?..."

The young woman bent over and whispered, quickly:

"If I come back alone, two days from now, at sunset, will you be here?"

Jieng hung her head, her single eye closed.

"Perhaps," she said simply.

But a meaning grin flickered over her mouth and twisted her lips almost imperceptibly.

CHAPTER X

THE FUGITIVE

Father Ravennes turned to face the congregation. His joined hands separated:

"Ite, missa est...."

In the cool, dark chapel his gesture of benediction seemed to spread, bowing the heads of the worshipers.

And while the missionary once more facing the tabernacle recited the closing gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God ..." the converts one by one left the chapel.

Wanda and Lursac came out last. Above them, the sonorous voice of the bell shed abroad its solemn rhythmic cadences. Torn, as it were, by long tremblings, the transparent atmosphere vibrated, throbbing slowly across the little Christian settlement, as the warm earth reflected the dazzling light of the sun and the shadow of the trees and the clear outline of the buildings stood rigid and heavy against the glare.

Father Ravennes, coming out in his turn, joined the young folk who were waiting for him before the door of the chapel.

Wanda immediately took his arm.

"Your courier has got back from Post 28, I hear. Now what?"

They were walking across the court towards the priest's house. The bell had ceased to sound. A vast silence, soft and peaceful, once more covered everything.

The missionary, saying nothing, made a slight movement with his head. Wanda noticed his air of constraint.

"There is no news, I suppose?"

Her trembling voice, slightly hoarse and heavy with anxiety, moved the priest. He made no direct answer, avoiding her question with strategy:

"They believe, back there, that Redeski must have turned off towards the west in order to strike for the Post by the southern route. The idea is not unlikely; it even seems to fit in very well with the information which I got from the last of the messengers I sent to enquire in that neighborhood...."

Pierre watched him carefully, trying to read in his expression the whole truth of which his words suggested only a small portion. He caught the swift, imperceptible sign that the priest flung him. His uneasiness grew. He understood that the missionary considered the situation grave, and that under his apparent calm was concealed real anxiety.

"Think of it, Father Ravennes, it is now nearly three weeks since Michael ought to have been back among us," said Wanda. "We must decide something, do something, we cannot go on like this in uncertainty...."

The missionary flung a glance sideways towards the mountain.

"I know someone," said he, "who could clear up our doubt, if only we could get at her and hold her!"

Pierre, who had followed his glance, immediately guessed.

"Jieng!" he exclaimed.

"Jieng? But we saw her the day before yesterday," said Wanda.

The missionary stopped abruptly:

"You caught sight of Jieng?" he asked curtly. "Where, and when?"

"No," said she, "not caught sight of her, but actually saw her. I even talked to her, the day before yesterday, in her village in the midst of her warriors."

Astounded, the priest murmured:

"It was madness to dare to do that all by yourself."

The girl, between her half-closed lids, shot a curious look at him.

"Pierre was with me," she said simply.

Then, relating her arrival at the village, she described the assembly of men, sketched the portrait of the old woman in agony upon her bench, pictured the hut with its walls hung with skins of wild beasts and furs, and finally portrayed the strange altar in its corner dedicated to prehistoric arms and surmounted with its human skull.

The missionary became excited:

"A skull!" said he, "a skull? Did you examine it?"

"We didn't think of that," said Lursac, "we were too much interested in trying to make Jieng talk. You see, we had more or less the same idea as you."

Father Ravennes started forward:

"Ah!" said he, excitedly, "did you manage it?"

Wanda answered him:

"No. And in any case she is by no means the imperious and tyrannizing priestess we have imagined her, but a very old woman, exhausted, dying."

"Just that," agreed Lursac, "an old beggar whom they no doubt show respect to because of her age." And he gave a short laugh. "When I think that we took her for this mysterious and maleficent power which holds the countryside in terror! Ah! What an idea!..."

The missionary remained silent.

They had resumed their walk. Before the house where the converts lived in common they stopped for an instant. Sheltered under the floor of the hut, to which the piles which supported it gave the air of a huge pigeon-cote, women were grinding rice in a mortar and the heavy sound of the pestle kept time with the chant with which they lightened their labor. About them a group of youngsters, crouched in a circle, were playing at knuckle-bones. As the missionary came up, they stopped their game and ran to meet him. Hanging on to his tunic with their heads raised towards him, they surrounded him. Their thin faces, unused to smiling, were spread with joyous grins.

Father Ravennes tapped them softly on the head.

"Good morning, children!" said he.

His voice, usually piercing and imperious, became caressing. He took one of the youngsters and held him up.

"It's nicer here than in the forest, eh! little scamp?" said he, tenderly.

The child laughed as he swung his legs happily, stretching out his hands and plunging them into the missionary's gray beard. His eyes lighted up with kindness, the priest smiled on him; then putting him on the ground he cried:

"Attention! Who wants to win a piece of sugar?"

Immediately the court resounded with the children's cries.

Father Ravennes bent his long back.

"Now, listen," he explained, "do you see this key?"

And at the same time taking from his girdle the key of the chapel, he flung it in front of him. It flew up sideways, fell, bounced, and came to rest finally close to the gate, some thirty yards away.

"The one that brings me that will have the reward."

Already, the children were starting to dash after it....

The priest stopped them.

"Gently! ... gently!... Little ones in front, now ... the big ones here.... Good. Everybody ready? Now.... Go!..."

Shouting and pushing, the tiny troop rushed off. Wanda followed them with her eyes.

"How pretty they are!" she cried.

Across the court, blazing with light, the little naked bodies, clad only with loin-cloths, shone agile and supple in the sun.

"Yes," said Father Ravennes, "true, they are beautiful! With all the grace and all the bubbling joy of childhood. And it is of them that I am thinking when I pardon their parents all their deceits and all their weaknesses. Poor little mites!... Who would have the courage to throw them back into the moral misery and the physical degeneracy of the forest? Yes, ... my real work is there, and this strength and health that I have brought into being around me for the little ones, for...."

Sharp cries interrupted him. Their dash suddenly cut short, the children had come to a full stop several yards from their goal. In a group before the gate, they gesticulated. One of them made a few steps, bent over, and then quickly ran back and immediately with a single impulse the whole band rushed back to the priest.

They encircled him, out of breath, crying:

"Ah! ... a woman ... a dead woman!"

Lursac caught one of them by the arm.

"What? What are you telling us? A woman!... Where?"

"There before the gate ... dead, dead...."

Wanda and the missionary hurried off. Pierre came up with them before the heavy entrance gate, now blocked by a doubled-up body with the legs bent under it and the arms stretched wide.

Father Ravennes, on his knees, lifted the head gently. Between the tangled locks of hair a woman's face was visible, covered with dust, as with a red mask, her eyes closed and lips bloodless. From a wound on the forehead, near the temple, a narrow streak of blood trickled round the corner of the eye, down the cheek and chin, towards the throat. She was almost naked, only the loins and the upper part of the thighs being covered with a wide kilt of brilliant-colored cloth.

The missionary, seeing it, remarked:

"A wild Stieng.[9] It is the only tribe whose women do not wear a tunic. But how the devil did she get here?"

"Dead?" asked Wanda.

"No. In a faint. We'll try and bring her to."

He signed to Lursac and to one of his converts:

"Please bring her to my house: I'll go and get what's necessary."

The faithful who had run up were crowding round in order to see better. The missionary waved them away with a gesture. Lursac and the man took the body and lifted it; they crossed the court again and climbed up to the priest's house and took their burden into "the Cave." Stretched out on the bench, the woman was seen to be tall and thin, very young, her chest furrowed with scratches and her legs stained with black mud.

Wanda had dropped to her knees at her side. With her handkerchief she stanched the blood, which was trickling from the temple down to the lips. The woman gave a slight shiver, her chin trembled, her fingers contracted and a gentle moan came from her throat.

Father Ravennes bent over her and bathed her forehead. The moaning ceased; a long groan, broken and gasping, followed which fretted the silence of the room with hoarse sound.

"Ah!" said Wanda, "listen, she is trying to talk."

They gathered round her, bending over, the better to catch her fragmentary and uncertain words.

"No ... no ... not to the temple.... Thanks! Drink ... drink!..."

Wanda moistened her lips and dropped between the clenched teeth a few drops of alcohol.

The voice begged:

"More! ... more!..."

A short silence followed, during which, with her face relaxed she eagerly swallowed a little water flavored with rum.

Then she opened her eyes. Her glance wandered around her, vague and anxious, then meeting the face of Father Ravennes it fixed itself. In the depths of her dark eyes a light came and went, grew, and slowly took on the appearance of intelligence and life.

Suddenly, she pulled herself up:

"Father! ... Father! ... save me! They want to take me away to the mountain ... they want to take me ... they are coming...."

And, her face distorted by fear, she went off into delirium.

"The Bo-Jaous.... There they are, waiting for me.... Look.... Look.... their hands are making signs to me and their faces are grinning at me...."

Then, with her arms stretched out towards the bay, opening to the plains, she shrieked:

"There ... there ... see Jieng, coming to fetch me for tonight ... tonight ... the pilgrimage of the sixth month!"

With her clenched fingers she had seized the tunic of the missionary, who was trying to calm her; panting, mad with terror, her bloodshot eyes fixed on the sunlit square, she clutched the black cloth.

"No ... no ... I will not go! You can try and take me, I won't go!... Off with you! Off with you! or I will kill you with my nails ... with my teeth.... Not me ... not me.... You already have the white officer—the sahib with the two stripes."

Wanda, flinging herself on the woman, shook her wildly:

"The white officer? What white officer? Speak ... speak...."

Father Ravennes and Lursac looked at each other, their faces suddenly pale. The missionary, pulling the young woman away, leant over the Stieng. He took her hands and looked into her eyes. The gaze of the savage meeting that of the priest became fixed; her lids fluttered. The priest bent still closer to her, bringing his face down till it almost touched that of the girl. They remained thus for a moment.

In a calm decided tone the missionary asked:

"Do you mean the sahib with two stripes? Is it the one who was here, and who set out towards the north three months ago?"

The woman started and shivered. Her lips moved, but she remained silent. The look of the priest became more insistent. With all his will power concentrated, he dominated her.

"Speak!" he said. "Is it he?"

She attempted to answer. The effort she made convulsed her face: deep vertical wrinkles came in her forehead; but she was unable to speak. She simply made an affirmative sign.

Wanda cried:

"Michael!"

"Be quiet!" said the priest. "Let me manage this!"

He had not let his eyes wander for an instant from those of the woman.

"And it was the sorceresses who took him prisoner? Yes, very well. A long time ago? Two weeks—less? Yes! You know where they have taken him to? No? You are sure you don't know?"

The woman twisted herself in agony and shook her head several times. And as the missionary drew back and let go her hand, she started up from her couch with a bound, dashing into the middle of the room, where, erect, with a red foam on her lips, she seemed to be struggling with some invisible presence. She gasped:

"There! ... there! ... Jieng! She has come back again ... she ... she's taking me! ... she's taking me away! No! ... no! ... I won't go!"

She made several steps as if fighting against the vision which had once more got her in its power, and her voice rose to a shriek as she called:

"Father ... Father...."

Then, suddenly crumpling up, she rolled over on the mat and lay motionless, her face crushed into the ground and the right arm stretched out, while she continued to mutter in a hoarse whisper:

"Jieng! ... Jieng!..."

The missionary and Lursac, who had run to her immediately, picked her up and laid her back on the bench.

Standing motionless at her side, Wanda watched her.

"Jieng!... Always Jieng!..." she murmured meaningly.

Father Ravennes twisted his beard and flung a glance at Lursac.

"Do you remember," said he, sarcastically, "what you said to me hardly an hour ago: 'When I think that we took her for this mysterious and maleficent power which holds the countryside in terror. Ah! what an idea!'"

Lursac and Wanda turned aside their heads.

"However," said Lursac, "we saw her just the same, bent with age and in agony...."

"In agony?" quoted the missionary, "are you so certain of that? But that is not the question; we must get to work preparing the expedition at once."

Turning to the young man, Wanda begged:

"Yes. Start at once ... immediately, Pierre. Tomorrow go to help him! Set him free!"

The missionary did not let her continue.

"Tomorrow? No chance of that!... It will take at least from eight to ten days to get together the necessary provisions, supplies, prepare the baggage and organize the escort...."

The girl cried out:

"But between this time and that they will have killed him, tortured him!"

Father Ravennes shook his head.

"I think not," said he. "This is war beginning. For the third time the people of the forest, led by their sorceresses, have made up their minds to arrest the advance of the white man, to push back the conquerors whose presence annoys them and whose knowledge perhaps renders them uncomfortable. Redeski has been taken as a hostage...."

Wanda, lifting towards him a face tortured with fear, repeated:

"They will kill him ... kill him.... You must start at once!"

The priest looked at her almost coldly.

"Above everything," he said, "we must succeed in our attempt and for that it will be necessary to make plans and act with prudence...."

Pierre interrupted with a violent gesture:

"Come! come!" he complained, "plans and prudence! That is doing too much honor to this mob of thieves and bandits! I intend simply to follow Redeski by his tracks, and every time that I meet this rabble I shall fall upon them suddenly and sweep them aside with our rifles and revolvers."

Father Ravennes shook his head thoughtfully:

"That would be simply inviting failure! What is the good of deceiving ourselves? We are face to face with a religious organization whose full power, I am afraid, we thoroughly underestimate and whose aims we are entirely ignorant of; but there is no doubt that its innumerable ramifications cover the whole of Laos in a formidable network. Think the matter over. To deliver Redeski would be a matter of force and boldness, but simple enough, if it were not for that. But as it is, you will be obliged to penetrate to the heart of this forbidden region against the will of this unknown organization, and in doing so it stands to reason that you will discover its secrets. Think of it well, Lursac; this is that great mystery which for centuries has dominated this entire country, and you are going to challenge it; and its people of the forest and their sorceresses will rise and fight against you to defend their beliefs and this power which they have decided we must at any cost know nothing of. Now do you understand what you have undertaken?"

Silence fell, and lasted some moments. Then the young girl going towards the bay leant against the side of it and stayed there motionless. Her glance, passing by the plain and the canal, fixed itself on the mountain-chain, towering above which the crest of the Pou-Kas traced a clear line against the sky.

"So," said she without turning round, "Pierre will not be able to start before eight or ten days? I...."

She broke off.

"Not earlier than that," said the priest, "you...?"

"Nothing, ..." said she.

But her eyes continued to search the distant flank of the mountain and to look for the village where she had met Jieng two evenings ago. Thinking of the rendezvous which she had arranged for this very evening, she brusquely asked:

"What time is it?"

"Six o'clock," said Pierre.

The girl turned towards the two men.

"Au revoir," said she, "I feel very tired!" And she made as if to go.

"I'll go with you," said Pierre.

She stopped in the doorway.

"No," said she, "you must discuss the details of your expedition with Father Ravennes ... your line of march."

He agreed:

"You are right. I'll rejoin you in about two hours."

She repeated slowly, as if making a calculation:

"Two hours. Very well...."

She looked at him with a troubled expression, but her voice was perfectly firm.

"In two hours," said she. "All right, I shall expect you."

And she went out quickly.

CHAPTER XI

A DESPERATE ADVENTURE

In the village square, along which the banana trees threw their shadows in a regular pattern, Wanda stopped. Looking round her, she examined the village. Behind their mud walls the cabins appeared silent and lifeless ... the quiet wrapped them round and seemed to stifle them with its great weight. Wanda stood in doubt. From these huts carefully closed and shuttered and about which the dusk was already creeping, from this deserted square, from all this silence and this stillness of people and things she drew a peculiar impression of doubt and hostility.

In spite of herself, the feeling possessed Wanda. She stood motionless, unable to make up her mind. For a moment she hesitated between the temptation of keeping the appointment which Jieng, with her reticent half-finished sentence, had practically promised her, and the sensation, every moment more strong, that danger was about her.

The day slowly faded. Driven by the breeze, the last of the clouds were moving overhead in piled up fleecy rolls which the sun here and there fringed with scarlet.

From the forest round about the discordant cries of a peacock shrilled like a trumpet, and the sounds of the night began to make themselves heard: the sweet and tremulous calling of a pair of wood pigeons, the ringing call of a wild cock, and the sharp whistlings of the mandarin birds....

The image of Michael, imprisoned by the sorceress, came imploringly to the mind of the young girl.

Immediately making a decision, she walked straight to the hut of the priestess. As she came near it, the door opened and Jieng appeared. The crimson light of the flame from the hearth at the back of the cabin showed her in clear silhouette. Watchfully, she stood regarding the young girl. Wanda greeted her.

"You see, Jieng, I am punctual."

She spoke in Banhar, slowly, and picking her words.

The sorceress bent her head slightly.

"I expected you," she said, simply; and she drew aside to let the stranger enter.

Keeping their eyes on each other, they sat down on the bench side by side....

There was silence for several seconds. Then, resolutely, Wanda began the contest.

"I have come alone," said she, "alone, as I said I would."

Jieng looked up.

"So I see," said she.

And putting aside all the ambiguity and roundabout phrases of the native tongue, she asked:

"What do you want to know?"

The directness of the question surprised Wanda, bewildered her. She remained silent; and it was the sorceress who continued:

"Was it that that astonished you?"

And stretching out her hand she pointed to the altar with its prehistoric arms, its bones and its shining skull.

"Yes, that," said Wanda quickly, "and also the pilgrimage of the women every season...."

She stopped speaking, feeling that the moment had not yet come to reveal the principal object of her visit.

With a sidelong glance, Jieng watched her.

"That only?" she asked.

"Yes," said Wanda. "Where do they go, and why do they have these meetings?"

Jieng broke into a fit of coughing.

"They go to pray," said she finally, "to the gods who protect husbands and mothers."

She spoke quickly, without hesitation, in a clear voice.

"Ah!" said Wanda, "and these prayers, where do they take place? In a temple?"

Her voice, although she was still in command of it, trembled slightly as the thought came to her that it was towards this unknown place of pilgrimage that they must have taken Michael.

The sorceress shrugged her shoulders.

"What does that matter to you?" she asked. "Here, there or everywhere are the altars of our gods, of the guardian spirits of those in whose veins runs the blue blood of the Moïs, the free savages who live in the mountains among the inhabitants of the forest, and whom nobody has ever been able to enslave.... Nobody ... neither the Annamese nor the Lao-ese nor the Siamese ... and not even you others, you white folks, in spite of all your efforts!"

While speaking, she had risen. With her figure supple, her chest thrown out, her gestures full of life, she seemed a new and different being from the suffering old woman whom Wanda remembered and of whom nothing seemed to remain except the face wasted with wounds and the shoulders seamed with scars.

"Indeed," cried she, "what has it got to do with you? Our gods belong to us as yours belong to you. Who among us tries to find out the mysteries of your religion?"

"Oh!" said Wanda, "some of them do! And Father Ravennes...."

Spitting on the ground with disgust, Jieng broke in:

"Traitors," said she, "renegades! They shall die!..."

She stared the young girl in the face and grinned fiendishly.

"Do you see? I am speaking frankly. I am telling you everything, even at the risk...."

It was Wanda's turn to interrupt.

"Then," said she without any change of expression, "since you are telling me everything, tell me what they have done with the lieutenant who was in command of the Post."

Jieng remained unmoved. She neither answered the question nor took the trouble to make any denials.

"He is in the hands of the gods," she said simply.

The young girl had a feeling of foreboding.

"By what right ..." she began.

The sorceress, resuming her seat, stopped her.

"By what right did he penetrate into the Dead Country, into the forest where no man, not even if he is of our own blood, dare enter?"

Without taking any notice of the interruption, the young girl went on:

"He is alive, is he not?... You ... you have not...."

Jieng smiled ironically.

"How does this stranger interest you?" she asked.

Wanda, seizing the priestess by the wrists, clutched convulsively.

"He is my brother," she groaned. "Where have you taken him? Is he alive? I must know. Do you hear? Either willing or unwilling, you shall tell me...."

With a sudden shake, the sorceress got free. She took a few steps about the hut, and came up to the young girl again. With her face twisted by an evil grin, she said:

"Do you want to know? Do you?"

"Yes!" cried Wanda.

And she plunged her fingers into the pockets of her jacket. Coins jingled, and she withdrew her hands full of money which she threw on the bench. The money rolled in all directions on the dark wood, scattering sparks of light.

"I will give you all that.... But answer me...."

Jieng took not the slightest notice. With her head drooped in thought, she was considering. Finally, she looked the young girl straight in the eyes.

"I cannot tell you anything, as I have no authority ... but...."

She held back the young girl, who had flung herself upon her.

"But, ... this evening the pilgrimage of the sixth month takes place."

"I know.... I know.... What then?"

The sorceress hesitated. A flash lit her eye, which she quickly veiled with lowered lids.

"I suppose," said she, slowly, "that in order to learn everything that you want, you would be willing to mingle with the women who are going to enter the Dead Country ... and that you would follow them wherever I lead them...."

She made a pause; between her half-open lids a direct glance flashed sideways on the brown eyes of the young girl.

"That is only a supposition, you understand!"

"Then," said Wanda, who had become very pale, "then suppose that I do follow you...."

A triumphant smile came and went on the priestess' face.

"If you were to do that, I am certain that no one would prevent you ... no one...."

The young girl, gripping the sorceress by the shoulder, laughed:

"No one, of course not, only there would be just one more victim on your altar, wouldn't there?"

Jieng did not flinch.

"No harm would come to you," she said calmly.

And as the young girl continued to smile ironically, she went on:

"No one would dare to touch you ... I tell you that for a fact."

Then repeated sarcastically:

"A victim!"

And she shrugged her shoulders.

"You came, you and that white man, into my village. My warriors were there. You were alone; there were a dozen of them. If I had wanted victims, why should I have waited? Were you not caught there in my hut just as surely as a wild beast in a trap?"

Again she shrugged her shoulders scornfully and stopped speaking.

The silence lasted some moments. Wanda thought of Michael. Her tortured heart was stronger than her reason; she reflected rapidly:

"I don't risk much.... I shall tell Pierre about it, he will follow my track and will catch up with me. Meanwhile I shall get the better of Jieng, and when he arrives...."

She stopped thinking. She saw just the one thing: here was a chance of reaching Michael, of seeing him, helping him, perhaps of aiding in his escape.... She cried:

"So be it! I will follow the women on their pilgrimage. What must I do?"

The priestess remained deep in thought for a second, then picking up in a businesslike way the coins scattered under the bench, she hid them in her belt.

"You must dress like one of our women."

And as the young girl began to protest, she stopped her with a gesture.

"It must be so, or you cannot come with us," she said with an air of final authority: "Decide!"

"Very well," said Wanda. "When do we start?"

Jieng bent down, rummaged under the bench and drew out a tunic, a pair of loose trousers and a turban which she handed to the young girl.

"Here are your clothes," she said, "in ten minutes I will come for you."

And she went off.

Wanda called after her:

"Can I leave a message for my friends?"

The face of the priestess took on a peculiar expression. Wanda thought she heard her laugh, but she had not the time to be uneasy about it.

Jieng assented.

"Yes," said she, "that will be better."

And she went out, shutting the door behind her.

When Wanda emerged from the hut a few minutes later, the dusk was falling on the mountain. A torch in her hand, Jieng was waiting for her. The girl gave her the leaf that she had torn out of her notebook.

"Here is a letter for Father Ravennes."

"He shall have it tonight," promised the sorceress.

And without another word she started off, Wanda following her. It was warm; into the stormy looking sky swollen clouds were climbing heavily. The dark bluish outlines of the mountain stood out solidly among the shadows that were beginning to creep over them. On the very tip of the crest of the Pou-Kas a last ray of sunlight spread in purplish gold, and the shining wave-like line of light stretched further and further until the mountain looked like the body of a great sleeping monster.

They went on and on together, both of them silent. Above them, dull and confusedly in a sort of scattered murmuring, the noise of human voices gradually became audible—the subdued hubbub of a multitude.

Still they climbed. Little by little the noise became more definite, and finally developed into a wild recitative sung by many voices and marked by the rhythmic bang of gongs and resounding blows on copper tom-toms.

It was the procession of the pilgrims, who, before entering the Dead Country, were invoking their mysterious gods.

Suddenly, at a curve in the path, the body of women could be seen in a large opening. Crouched in a thin, wide semicircle, and guarded by sorceresses, there were perhaps a hundred of them. Around them torches stuck into the ground waved smoky flames, throwing streaks of red light on the white-clad backs which were now all bowed in a simultaneous obeisance: patches of heavy smoke whirled upward into the dark: the bitter smell of burning resinous wood drifted slowly into the air: around them stood the dark wall of the inviolate forest.

At an order from Jieng, the women got up and took their places. They were now silent. Above, on the mountain which the darkness now hid, a vast silence seemed to weigh.

A short incantation, sung in unison by all, a sharp order, and then the procession got under way and entered the forest, where it was rapidly swallowed up in the damp shadows of the trees.

Left behind by herself, Wanda looked about her. The abandoned clearing seemed suddenly increased in size by the darkness which had fallen on it, now that the torches had been carried away. Before her, she could feel, vast and threatening, the Pou-Kas hidden in the blackness. Impulsively, she turned to look behind her, and far below her, in the valley, she could pick out the lights of the Post which twinkled feebly across the darkness. Her heart shook: thinking of Pierre, she could imagine his anxiety on account of her absence, and for a moment her resolution was shaken.

A wave of tenderness compounded of weakness and sweetness flowed through her. He was there in the hollow of the plain, watching for her return!... These lights which beckoned to her were those of the lamps that she lighted every evening while she waited for him! Before her eyes she saw the little round table in the dining room where the two of them met every night at dinner-time. She could actually see the circle of light thrown by the pink-shaded lamp which broadened and illuminated the interested face of the young man as he talked to her. She could even distinguish his expression and his familiar gestures. She noticed once again the nervous knack he had of pulling his light moustache in little jerks. Above all, there came to her his laugh,—a clear bantering laugh which drew his lips to one side and showed a corner of his white teeth. Then, feeling the gray eyes of the young man full upon her, she smiled across the night to him. Her head thrown lightly back, her face forward, she seemed gently to offer him her lips, instinctively repeating the gesture which had become habitual, a gesture in which mingled the lure of a caress and the flicker of a smile and which always had a strangely intoxicating effect upon Pierre.

But quickly shaking off her weakness, she recalled the image of Michael, whom she was going to find and whom she would save at whatever cost. Remembrances of her childhood, in which he was inextricably mingled, brought to life again different moments of her past. Her heart, captured again by the days gone by, was full of him, and sisterly love once more dominated her.

Her head erect, with a noble gesture of sweetness and passion, she opened her arms and closed them again slowly as if to embrace once more the love she was leaving down there in the hollow of the shadow-drowned valley.

Then with her teeth clenched she turned back, and hurried to catch up with the troop of women who were mounting towards the mysterious sanctuary in the heart of the Dead Country.

CHAPTER XII

THOSE LEFT BEHIND

Night had taken possession of the Post. Over-flowed by the shadows, the palisades were invisible, and the buildings ranged on the edge of the canal formed a single confused mass along the base of which the gliding water lapped monotonously. The dreary slopes of the Pou-Kas were lost in night and the whole world, smothered under a sky heavy with rain, seemed nothing but a limitless gulf.

Leaning on the balustrade of the veranda, Pierre, who had been back for over an hour, watched the darkness. In the court, a body of riflemen and mahouts were working feverishly in getting ready for the coming expedition. Somewhere or other the sound of the flute rose gently, lulling the night.

Turning back to the dining room, where the boy was at his work, he asked:

"What o'clock is it?"

"The second watch has just struck, sahib."[10]

Pierre strode nervously up and down the veranda. The silence deepened. Finally, not being able to stand it, he asked:

"About how long ago did Mademoiselle go out?"

The boy, a rough Méo with thick hands and a bony face, whom the priest had engaged for the young people, stopped in the doorway.

"She came just before they sounded the first night-watch, and she started out again immediately."

Pierre stepped up to him quickly.

"What! She said something, and you didn't tell me?..."

The Méo fixed his expressionless eyes on Lursac.

"The sahib did not...."

"Idiot!" cried Pierre. "What did she say? Tell me quickly!"

Flurried, and his broad forehead wrinkled in a frown, the other murmured:

"Mademoiselle said, 'If the gentleman asks for news, you will tell him that I have returned to the house of the Cross.'"

Lursac drew himself up abruptly.

"To the Mission?" said he, in surprise. "How strange that we didn't cross each other on the way!"

He reflected for a moment.

"What horse did she take?"

The boy bent his head and looked up at him.

"She went on foot."

Pierre remarked his hesitating and uncomfortable expression.

"On foot? To go seven miles? What sort of nonsense are you telling me?"

He grasped the man by the shoulder and shook him.

"You know something! Where has she gone?"

The Méo opened his large hands and spread out his arms:

"I don't know anything, sahib ... I swear. Only what Mademoiselle told me to tell you and that she started on foot.... That's all. Yes, really and truthfully."

"Ah!" said Pierre.

And in spite of himself his voice trembled. Understanding that he would get nothing more out of him, he flung the boy from him. A vague distress had taken possession of him. He went to the balustrade of the veranda again.

The flute was now silent. A slant of wind went whirling into the darkness, a hoarse call sounded from somewhere.... The minutes crawled by....

Anxiously, with his face stretched towards the forest, Pierre searched the night with his glance. The noises of the mountain reached him, distinct, and apparently nearer. The same hoarse cry rose again on the slope of the mountain and, echoing back from the river, died away slowly. Then other cries arose, multiplied and mixed in the depths of the underwoods. And almost immediately from one slope to the other of the mountain the people of the forest awoke and took up the rough discordant song, the wild song of the free forest. The coughing of hunting tigers mingled with the snarling of panthers; the sudden trumpeting of a herd of elephants crashing through the silence filled with its sonorous flourishes of sound the shadows already heavy with the distressed bellowing of a stag at bay and the screeching cry of a pair of nocturnal birds of prey wheeling over the plain.

Thick, heavy clouds had accumulated overhead, rolling up in billows like a stormy sea. A few warm, heavy drops fell and drummed on the dry rustling straw of the hut roofs. Then suddenly, like a waterfall, the rain beat down in a roar. Lursac shuddered.

"No," he murmured to himself, "she is not at the Mission. However," he at once thought, "she told the boy that she was going there and I have never yet known her to say anything that was not true. Perhaps, as I was late in coming back, she wanted to know the arrangements we had made...."

Buoyed up by this hope, he thought:

"Yes.... It must be that. But why on foot? Why?"

His anxiety suddenly greater, he burst out:

"I cannot wait any longer, I must know. Whatever it is, I am going over there."

Turning round, he cried to the boy:

"Sao! I am going to the priest's house. If Mademoiselle comes in while I am gone, send someone at once to tell me."

And in a few strides he was down the steps.

Before the quarters of the riflemen he stopped for a moment to give orders to the corporal:

"Have the gate opened and the sampan ready to cross the canal; I am going to the Mission."

And he made rapidly towards the stables.

Through the rain which fell continuously the pony galloped, with his hoofs splashing into the spongy soil of the plain and the mud squirting up at every step.

Regardless of the water which whipped his face in the squalls, with his eyes intent on piercing the darkness, Pierre pushed his mount brutally, and the poor animal was gasping, his breath coming heavily and his legs laboring, while a bitter smell of sweat mounted from his skin.

Then suddenly a blackness still blacker than the surrounding dark showed where the stockades of the Mission stood. They took shape, framing the narrow entrance-gate defended by its heavy door of solid wood reënforced with beams.

Down off his horse in an instant, Pierre called out. Minutes, which seemed appallingly long, went by. Then the door grated halfway open, and the young man, violently pushing to one side the convert who had come to admit him, dashed forward and ran. He crossed the court, which was now wrapped in sleep, and strode up the steps leading to the missionary's cabin. Suddenly, as he reached the veranda a hope relaxed the tension. His heart beat more naturally and more calmly. Through the chinks of the door rays of light filtered out.

"She is there: they are still talking," he sighed.

He grasped the latch, but instantly his agony returned, for the door opened, and in the doorway, with a lamp in his hand, stood Father Ravennes. He was completely dressed, and wrapped in a waterproof cloak.

"Who is there?"

He raised his lamp so that the light fell upon Pierre and quickly came towards him.

"Lursac! Great Heavens! What a state you are in! I was this very minute coming to the Post.... You know, then?"

In a hoarse voice, Pierre cried:

"Wanda? Where is Wanda?"

The priest looked at him. He saw the tortured face of the young man, his eyes shining with distress, his soaked and muddy clothes. His voice softened:

"Come in," said he, "come in.... I want to speak to you."

He took Pierre by the arm and drew him into the room. Flinging himself on the only stool, Lursac drooped his head and closed his eyes.

The priest had put the lamp on the table. He came up to Pierre and thoughtfully looked the young man over.

A long silence fell while each followed his own thoughts. Then Pierre, raising his eyes to the missionary, asked:

"You ... you have not seen her, have you?"

His voice trembled and seemed ready to break at any minute. He stopped.

The priest looked down on him slowly. Finally, he shook his head.

"No, but she has written to me."

He rummaged in his pocket and stretched out a leaf of paper to the young man.

"Here!" he said. "Read it!"

Pierre sat up suddenly; a spasm passed over his face. In a voice suddenly changed, he asked:

"She has written to you?... To you?... Why?"

"Read it!" repeated the priest, gently.

Snatching the letter from the hand of the missionary, Pierre read:

"Dear Father: I dare not write to Pierre. I have seen Jieng.... The pilgrimage of the sixth month starts this evening for its mysterious meeting place, the location of which I do not know. I only know that Michael is alive. I have managed to join the women who are going and I have not courage enough to wait for Pierre's expedition. Anyway, he would have refused to take me! Tell him; and both of you pardon me the anxiety which I am going to cause you.... WANDA."

Pierre blanched. He cried out:

"They have enticed her into an ambush ... she is lost! ... lost!..."

His heart seemed to break. He raised his drawn face to the priest.

"Ah! you don't know; I love her.... I love her.... We've been engaged for two days ... a secret engagement ... and I have held her in my arms, and still upon my lips is the very imprint of...."

The missionary took his hands:

"My poor boy," said he, "I understand your agony, but nothing is lost. I have sent one of my men, the one I can trust best, to Jieng's village. He has orders to pick up Mademoiselle Redeski's track and to note carefully any signs which may serve to make our search easy. Wait for him...."

"Ah!" said he, "we are losing time! And Wanda...."

The priest leant from the window to listen to the multiple voices which the silence of the night carried.

"No," replied he, "we can do nothing before dawn."

And he repeated:

"Let us wait."

Slowly the minutes drifted away, one by one, long and mournful. Minutes, hours, a portion of the night.... Pierre kept no count. He strode up and down the narrow room. On the mats his feverish footsteps rustled dryly. From time to time, tired, with his mind empty, he stood still and listened. Through the open window the continuous noise of the rain penetrated into the room and filled it with an all-pervading whisper in the midst of which the splashing of a stream of water from the roof mingled its own special sad and haunting note. Again he set himself to pacing up and down between the lowly folding bed and the bare wall, in the middle of which shone the only ornament of the chamber, a great ivory crucifix, pale and suggestive.

The third night-watch struck, and then the fourth, and still the time drifted away.

Rigid, in the same position, his breast supported by the window ledge, Father Ravennes stood silent and thoughtful. Finally drawing himself up, he said:

"Here he is...."

Pierre rushed to the door and flung it open.

"Well?" cried he.

Muddy, drenched with rain, his features drawn with fatigue, the man entered, speechless.

Under his arm he held a parcel which he spread out on the ground. Clothing unrolled from it and a woman's boot fell against the foot of the bed.

Pierre gave a cry.

"Wanda's clothes!"

"Yes," said the man, "which I found in Jieng's hut, hidden under the sleeping bench; that's all I found!"

He leaned, panting, against the wall.

"And she? She? ..." asked Pierre.

"No trace, sahib. After searching all the huts in the village, nothing.... Then I ran into the forest, I called, I shouted, I looked...."

He lifted up his bleeding hands and showed his body torn with scratches, and repeated:

"Nothing.... They must have taken her into the Dead Country."

The priest looked at him steadily.

"Listen," said he, slowly, "we are going to start tomorrow. You and Pâa, you are the only ones in whom I put my trust, the only ones also who know the country. You will come with us as guides."

The man shivered: his face went gray.

"Men," he whispered, "do not go into the Dead Country."

The missionary, taking him sternly by the arm, fixed his eyes upon the man's.

"You will come with me," said he, yet more sternly.

The savage bowed his head.

"With you ... very well, Father!"

Father Ravennes patted his shoulder in a friendly way:

"That's right," said he, "I knew it ... good!... Go and get ready."

He went back to Pierre.

"We will save her, Lursac; her and Redeski."

The young man bent his head despairingly.

"Remember Odend'hal, Robert, Paris and the others: Longères ... Dorcel...."

Heavily he lapsed into silence. Before his eyes the tragic victims of Indo-China's history rose, one by one: Odend'hal, enticed into the hut of the Fire King, the mysterious and all-powerful chief of the sorcerers, and treacherously beaten to death with bludgeons and then burnt; Robert, attacked at his post in broad daylight and assassinated, with twenty-four wounds in his body; Longères, who had disappeared in this very place, disappeared without anyone ever having succeeded in finding out what had become of him; and, finally, Dorcel, brought back to Saigon in agony, and who died of an unknown disease without even having regained consciousness.

He shuddered. It seemed to him at that moment that the universal terror which lay upon this whole region was beating on the Mission, that it found its way into the room in which the two of them stood—the only ones of their race—alone in the middle of the immense Lao-ese forest in which prowled invisible powers and unknown rulers.

"We will find her," repeated the missionary insistently.

Pierre raised his head.

"Yes," said he, "but how? We are two—two against a whole people. And then, where have they taken her? We have no idea whatever! What shall we do? Search the whole mountain range? Beat the entire forest?"

He gave a gesture of despair.

Motionless, Father Ravennes considered. Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind. He stepped up to the young man and with his two hands on Pierre's shoulders, he spoke:

"Come, Lursac, pull yourself together. You must keep your self-control above everything. We will find your fiancée! Listen: what we have got to do is to reach this sanctuary to which the pilgrimages are made."

His voice sounded calm and solemn. The atmosphere of anguish which had filled the chamber seemed put to flight. A feeling of certainty and tranquil force took its place, relaxing Lursac's nerves and restoring his balance. Almost calm, he answered:

"Yes, but where are we to look for the sanctuary? Do you know?"

"No," admitted the missionary, "but that is what we are going to find out. Come."

He went out. Almost persuaded, Lursac followed him. Together they crossed the court towards the huts of the converts, the pointed roofs of which could be seen over the dark mass of the chapel.

It was no longer raining. From the thatched roofs, still wet, and from the bending trees the moisture continued to drip. And under the vast silence of the heavens, across which the clouds were still driving in wandering squadrons, there was no sound heard now but the sharp, distant noise of the dripping on the earth.

Before the door of a hut marked with a white cross the priest stopped and banged on it with his fist. The wood of the door rattled, and while a voice from inside began asking questions, he entered, Lursac following him. He pushed back the door and lighted a torch. On the sleeping bench set against the wall a woman was sitting up, bending forward, half-dressed.

Pierre seized the arm of the missionary, gripping it strongly.

"The wild Stieng woman whom you saved," said he; "I understand now."

And he looked at the young woman with anxiety. Would she know anything, and could she be made to speak?

Father Ravennes sat down. With a gentle movement he took the hands of the woman. She raised her head. Her face, which the flickering torch brought into relief with purple shadows, appeared young and almost pretty, in spite of the short and flattened nose, and of the small suspicious eyes deeply sunk under a rounded forehead. The thin, clearly cut lips trembled, giving to the whole face an air of knowing intelligence, an appearance strangely mobile and alive, almost feline.

The missionary riveted on her his grave, compelling eyes.

"Listen," said he. "When I found you this morning by the gate, dying, tortured with hunger and thirst, half mad with terror, I didn't ask whence you came or who you were; I didn't question you at all. I took you in and took care of you and protected you without thinking of the hatred and the vengeance that my action might bring on me."

He stopped a moment and looked at her still harder. He spoke slowly in the Banhar dialect, while Lursac standing beside him watched the woman's face for the effect of his words. She listened to the priest attentively, trying to understand all his meaning.

After a moment, looking down, she said simply:

"I know your goodness, Father!"

Then with a note of supplication in her voice she asked:

"You will keep me with you?"

The missionary promised:

"Whatever happens you shall stay here as long as you wish. But in my turn, today I have need of your help. Will you give it?"

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Answer the questions I am going to put to you. Answer them without evasion and without trickery, freely and loyally."

And he repeated sternly the question which she had avoided a few seconds earlier.

"Will you?"

She shut her eyes and bent her head.

"Yes," said she. "What I know I will tell you truly."

Father Ravennes sighed heavily: his face relaxed. He threw a glance sideways at Lursac. For several moments he did not speak, concentrating his thoughts; then forcing the young woman to look at him he asked:

"It was this evening that the pilgrimage of the sixth month began, was it not?"

She shivered, turning away her eyes and slowly made a sign in the affirmative with her head.

"Good!" said the priest. "Where was it to start from?"

In a very low voice she said:

"From the third clearing above the village. From there...."

"From there?"

She got up suddenly, a look of distress on her face and an air of listening.

"From there?" insisted Father Revenues.

She stood rigid in the middle of the room.

"I cannot ... I cannot," she murmured. "If they knew that I had told you this they would kill me."

"Come now," growled the priest, "no pretences, please. No one will know what you are saying. We are alone with you.... Speak."

She broke out wildly.

"I don't want to die, and they are all round us. Listen! You can hear them walking, quite close to us! No, I am not lying. Come, look for yourself."

As she spoke, she had taken the priest by the hand and was pulling him towards the door. Violently she pushed the heavy slab, which slammed back against the wall. A fresh smell of wet earth and damp herbage blew into the room. Standing on the threshold of the hut the missionary shot a quick glance around him. The dawn was already on its way. In the clean-washed sky the innumerable stars were beginning to pale and disappear. The rising light was slowly putting the dark to flight; and before the advance of the morning which trembled on the horizon, the night was thinning out and melting into a river of shadows in the middle of which the Mission buildings stood up with vague, uncertain outlines. Round the angle of the chapel, close by, a human shadow glided, fled away and disappeared.

With her finger the young woman pointed it out to the priest.

"You see!" she cried.

And shutting the door again, she re-seated herself on the sleeping bench and remained motionless.

"Ask me anything," she said, "except what I cannot tell you, the thing that they have forbidden me to speak."

Angrily, Lursac demanded:

"They? What they? Of whom do you speak?"

She listened to him with eyes full of fear. A shudder ran through her body.

"They.... The Red Gods! ..." she whispered.

The two men looked at each other. The flickering flame of the torch lit up their pale faces twisted anew with anguish. For the first time the names of the unknown gods whom the mysterious sorcerers served had been pronounced, and before their eyes swam blood-stained visions.

The torch, burned down to its socket, began to splutter and a heavy smoke filled the room with an acrid fog, and suddenly with a last leap of flame it expired. Cold and livid, the dawn filtered into the hut.

Pierre thought of Wanda. Beside him the missionary repeated feverishly:

"The Red Gods!... The Red...."

Shaken with a frightful shudder the young man looked at him, and once again despair seized him in its grip.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FUGITIVE'S STORY

Shrugging his shoulders, Father Ravennes took some strides about the hut. Suddenly stopping before the young woman he took her by the arm and forced her to stand up.

"Follow me," said he.

And he pushed her outside, led her to the chapel and opened the door.

"Come in!"

He pushed her before him, stood aside to let Pierre pass, and then entering in his turn into the sanctuary he carefully bolted the heavy door.

Through the blinds a vague light stole in. The Stieng woman looked round her with curiosity. She saw the pale walls with their cheap copies of the Way of the Cross, each of the colored chromos framed with a simple casing of black wood. Then she saw the painted roof of thatch with its confusion of unsquared beams, and below it, in front of her, slightly raised on a few shallow steps, the altar—modest and simple, and on which all the light of the glowing dawn seemed to concentrate itself between the groups of candles. In the centre, dominating the tabernacle, a large Christ on the Cross twisted his body in agony.

Father Ravennes made the young woman sit down on the altar steps.

"You are afraid," said he, "that somebody will overhear your words, but here no one can hear us. See for yourself. The chapel is too large for your voice to be heard outside."

He raised his hand, pointing to the crucifix above them. His voice, at once grave and ardent, continued:

"And there is our God—the omnipotent and merciful God of the white people, whose sovereign power directs the world. We are all in His keeping, and if I have brought you here into His very shadow it is that He may protect you and preserve you. Now if He wills it, you will speak. May His will be done!..."

He stopped speaking and closed his eyes. The heavy silence of expectation bent their heads. The lips of Father Ravennes moved slowly in words that were inaudible: he was praying.

The woman with a sudden shrug of the shoulders seemed to fling off a burden.

"I believe you," said she. "I will tell you everything that I know, everything that happened to myself. Is that what you wish?"

The missionary opened his eyes, now animated by a strange expression of thankfulness and joy.

"Yes," said he.

And in a low voice he murmured:

"Thy goodness be praised, O God!"

Already the woman was talking.

"My name is Hmon, of the village of Khon-Ko-Xan, of the country of the Stiengs, where I am a free woman among the free people of the forest. Four years ago my parents married me to the chief of the village. Our first two years were happy ones. Then little by little hatred came to us and took up its abode in our hut. It was because, in spite of all my prayers and all my sacrifices to the gods, I had given no child to my husband. Then one afternoon at the men's council I was named with a group of other childless wives to take part in the great pilgrimage which twice a year goes up into the Dead Country to pray to the Red Gods.

"There were eight of us women, and three men fully accoutred for war were to accompany us. And the very same evening we started on our journey. The seventh night after our departure, at the hour of the second watch, we arrived at the threshold of the Sacred Forest.... At its very threshold indeed, sahib!..."

She fell silent as a shudder ran through her. Father Ravennes took hold of her hand.

"Continue," said he softly.

She gave one look at the missionary and then in little, short, disconnected sentences she continued:

"The priestesses took charge of the group which had come up from the entire country. They arranged us in ranks, and counted us one by one. Then, having sent off the men, they showed us the way towards the mountain.

"After five hours of marching we reached the clearing, the meeting place. Jieng, the chief sorceress, was waiting for us there. After a short stop we took to the track again. Four times the sun, towards which we were advancing, rose and set, and at the beginning of the fifth night as the moon was rising and getting larger and larger, we at last caught sight of the temple hanging on the very edge of the crest of the Pou-Kas."

The missionary grasped Lursac's wrist.

"The temple ... on the very edge of the crest of the Pou-Kas," he whispered.

The woman did not hear him. She continued:

"When it was perfectly dark they made us enter. Between the two high centre towers there was a long gallery two stories high; then a huge interior court, square, and paved with ancient stones. Around the whole ran a platform reached by four wide staircases. Between these stairs against the wall below the platform were ranged statues of warriors and priests, of horses and elephants in war-harness, keeping guard. Between the stones of the courtyard banyan trees were growing. The air sang among their branches, but our hearts were bowed in agony. It was warm. Above our heads, in the small area of sky that we could see, flowed the night, the same night which we knew at home. We had seated ourselves. I heard the creaking of an insect close by me. In this way an hour passed, and then from the building opposite to the entrance gallery of which the walls seemed built right into the cliff of the Pou-Kas, a chant arose, sahib.

"At the same moment Jieng appeared and cried:

"'Those from the village of Dong-Track, in the land of the Reungaos....'

"Five women arose and she made them enter the temple.

"More time passed, and again Jieng returned and called out:

"'Those from the village of the Xieng-Khon in the land of the Sedangs....'

"And only three women came forward, who in their turn penetrated into the sanctuary.

"From time to time she came and called thus. And all the women of the Moï, all the wives from the free clans of the mountain and forest were taken into the palace of the gods, to whom they were going to pray that their sterile bodies might bear fruit.

"'Those from the village of Khon-Ko-Xan in the land of the Stiengs.'

"Our moment had come. I took the lead. When I reached Jieng, I bowed to the ground humbly, like the others, and entered. We crossed a long narrow room with thick walls entirely covered with carvings. Before us a curving subterranean passageway led down. Its sweating walls were lighted by braziers on heavy copper tripods. While we went forward the chant came nearer. We walked on for some time. Finally after a sharp turn we came out into a round room, the floor of which was hollowed out into a large basin. Eight sorceresses with torches in their hands were waiting for us ranged round the sides of the room. After we had been dipped in the waters of the basin they took charge of us. First of all they put on us black tunics and then covered our faces with sacred masks, the soft moist skin of which was cut with four openings for the eyes, the mouth, and the nose. Then escorting us they opened a door and drew us through. The chant which had been still going on all this time suddenly burst louder on our ears, and we understood that we were in the sanctuary in which was enthroned the image of the gods we had come to implore.

"With my throat grown dry, and trembling to the tips of my fingers I looked round me. On my right, an enormous serpent with nine heads supported a heavy column. A little further, an animal with the body of a dragon and the head of a bird appeared to be flapping its wings; and as far as I could see on both sides other pillars spread upward towards the roof, invisible in the shadows.... But I had not time to look about me any longer; a push forced me forward.

"We were going on. Under every monster a sorceress stood with a torch to light our way. There were some sixty sorceresses on the right and on the left, while we marched between them. Their faces slashed with wounds, their eyes fixed in front of them, they stared at us as we passed. They made no movement, but sang without stopping. Now we had come to the foot of the altar. We had come to the end of the columns, the sanctuary grew nearer. Before us were three wide semi-circular recesses, each led up to by three steps; each recess was hidden by a transparent veil embroidered with silver under which we had to creep after we had made obeisance on our faces. When the last curtain was passed I saw at last the statue of the god. He was sitting with his legs folded under him. His swelling chest was covered with a brown fur, his red body sparkled and his beautiful face smiled strangely. From his shoulders hung twelve arms with great open hands, the palms turned flat towards the earth in a sweeping gesture of blessing.

"Then behind us the voice of Jieng ordered:

"'Go, and each one of you place her head under one of the hands of the God of wives'

"We drew near with our heads bowed. I was on the right, under the fourth hand. Slowly I drew myself up until my forehead felt the weight of the cold hard palm. I stammered the words of the ritual:

"'O God of barren women, give life to my body!'

"Beside me seven other voices repeated continuously:

"'O God of barren women, give life to my body!'

"On my throbbing temples I felt the metal fingers which seemed to get heavier and heavier. A sweet perfume, floating about me, took me by the throat and rendered me dizzy.

"I fell, and night flowed into me."

Again she stopped. Father Ravennes asked:

"Is that all?..."

The woman shook her head.

"No," said she, "or I should not be here. When I woke up I found myself in the same place lying on the stone floor. I looked up. Above me the red hands were still outstretched. Nothing had changed; except that the sorceresses still standing at their posts were no longer singing. There was a great silence, peaceful and satisfying. The voice of Jieng once more rose:

"'Go,' said she. 'The Red Gods will lend a favorable ear to your prayers.'

"I got up. My head was heavy and a great feeling of tiredness possessed my whole being. In the chamber of ablutions I took off my mask and put on my usual clothes. Outside I found a surprise. The sun was setting on the horizon. I had been more than four watches at the feet of the gods.

"Ten days afterwards I was back in my village, and once again the god of happiness took up his abode in our house. I waited with confidence, knowing that the gods had worked innumerable miracles. But a year went by without my hope being realized. For the second time I returned to the Dead Country and bent under the image of the god. Again, eleven months during which anger and hatred were my portion continually.

"Three weeks ago, considering me incapable of giving him a child, my husband called the council of chiefs together. My case, unique in our clan, was discussed and I learned that the men's meeting had decided to make a gift of me to the Red Gods. The morning after, a sorceress came to talk with my husband. The same evening she took me away, after having announced to the clan the capture of the sahib of the two stripes, who was in command of the Post here.

"Fear took possession of me. I became nothing more than a trembling body without will. Continually I recalled the laws of the Dead Country, the laws of the sorceresses. I remembered that only ugliness is pleasing to the Red Gods, and that all those who are set aside to serve them must be tortured and disfigured. I thought of Reung, whose arms are now only stumps; of Saond, whose leg, broken and destroyed, drags along behind her like a hanging rag; and finally of Jieng, with her dead eye, her cut-about lips and her flayed nose.

"All the tortures that I would have to undergo came before me, surrounded me, and seemed to squeeze my brain. I was almost insane, sahibs, and one morning at dawn I fled. For ten days I wandered into the forest, tracked by the priestesses and pursued by all the clans of the forest; and I arrived here the very morning of the pilgrimage of the sixth month, this pilgrimage on which I was to have been taken to the Dead Country in order to have been consecrated as a sorceress."

She turned towards the priest a face in which there was reflected a shadow of the fear which she had just recalled, and with a long look at him she said:

"They told me you were kind, O Father, and I came to you. You received me and took care of me, and my heart—the heart of a free woman of the forest—will not forget. I have told you everything that I know. Truly, I have told you everything. Have I told you what you wanted?"

And as with a gentle motion of his head the missionary answered in the affirmative, she added with a strange cry, pointing to the crucifix:

"May He guard me, as I know that death is round about me! But what does it matter? You have saved me; in my turn I have done you a service. As for the rest we are in the hands of the gods."

The two men had risen.

"Yes," said Father Ravennes, "I know that you have told me everything, without concealing anything and without lying, as I asked you. I thank you. Now go!"

And as she went Lursac said:

"We now know what we wanted to. It is towards the Pou-Kas that we must bend our steps. The pilgrimage has only about twelve hours' start of us, and it is composed of women. If we travel night and day we shall perhaps be able to catch up with them...."

The missionary looked at him.

"Catch up with them? ... but we shall not be able to make one hour's march towards the Pou-Kas without their being warned of it. And when we arrive before the sanctuary either we shall find it abandoned or we shall have to fling ourselves against defences thoroughly prepared and against which all our efforts will be useless. We shall be lucky indeed if they do not have us massacred on the way there. No! Will you put your trust in me?"

Together they left the chapel. Around them, under a sky like a blue crystal basin, everything still slept.

In the air, growing every moment more beautifully transparent, the whistling of the blackbirds quarrelling on the stockades broke the silence.

"When do we start?" demanded Lursac sharply.

Father Ravennes calculated:

"Allow one hour for you to get back to the fort and two hours to make our preparations. Take only what is indispensable. Twenty days' provisions per man. We must march swiftly. As few cases and packages as possible, and no more men than we really need: the six elephants with their mahouts to carry our outfit, and fifteen riflemen with the corporal. Above all, on no account tell them where we are going."

He stretched his hands to Pierre. A short grasp brought them together for an instant, mingled their emotions and made their hearts beat in harmony.

The missionary released his fingers almost roughly.

"Start, start," said he, "I will join you there in three hours."

And while the young man hurried towards the gate, he made off with great strides in the direction of his cabin.

In the middle of the court he stopped suddenly, wrinkling his brow thoughtfully. From the other side of the palisade came the sound of the galloping of Lursac's pony, rapidly fading into the distance.

Mechanically the priest listened until he could no longer hear it, while with raised head he watched the Pou-Kas of which the distant summit barred the heavens with a clear horizontal line.

"There must be some roundabout way, some path where they do not set a watch!" thought he. "Why did not I remember to ask about it, for that is the one we shall have to follow if we do not wish to be stopped."

He hesitated a minute, then turning back on his steps he walked to the hut set aside for Hmon, the Stieng woman. Through the wide-open door he saw her lying at the foot of the sleeping bench, her forehead on the black wood and her arms stretched out.

He entered and placed one of his hands on the uncovered shoulder of the young woman.

"Hmon," said he, "I have yet this...."

The words died on his lips. He jerked away his fingers, disagreeably surprised by the touch of her cold, rough flesh. He bent over her. Along her amber-colored neck a thin trickle of blood, almost coagulated already, came from under the hair, and making a bend over the left shoulder, lost itself inside the tunic below.

"Hmon! Hmon!" he called.

At the same time, taking the woman's head, he raised it. The face was gray, marbled with pale spots; the eyes, half-shut, showing the eyeballs, sightless and strangely fluid. The thin, discolored lips, however, seemed to smile at him strangely from the other side of the Unknown.

Father Ravennes gently let the forehead fall back, and the body in its black tunic once more resumed its attitude of supplication and prayer. Against the dark wood of the sleeping-bench the long livid hands showed up clearly. The paleness of the bent neck was emphasized, and suddenly among the lowest strands of hair at the base of the skull he saw the head of a large pin, curiously ornamented with a grinning mask, sticking out, glittering and ominous.

The missionary looked at it for a second; then, taking from his neck the beads, from the end of which hung his crucifix, he passed it about the shoulders of Hmon the Stieng, and going down on his knees, he clasped his hands and prayed.

Outside, the brisk crow of a cock vibrated, saluting the warm and golden resurrection of the day.

CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE UNKNOWN

Over the crest of the mountains the sun showed its edge, and slowly rose. An elephant, lifting his brown trunk towards it, trumpeted long and loud. The pink and gray of the daylight filtered into the sky and drove away the shadows lying deep in the ravines of the mountain. The pachyderms chained to their pickets before the gate of the fort rocked slowly from side to side.

Seated on a packing-case Pierre was overseeing the loading of the baggage. By blows of their ankuses and with cries and insults the mahouts made their beasts bend their necks and forced them to kneel. On the square pack-saddles, strengthened by thick belts of split bamboo, the sacks of rice and the packages of provisions were heaped. Each elephant, after its loading was finished, with a slow pitching movement raised itself and took up its place ready for the start. The mahouts, crouched on their great necks, exchanged jokes with the Cambodian riflemen camped around them and to whom the headman, standing before the emptied packing-cases distributed munitions and arms: a Gras musket, model of 1874, and one hundred and fifty cartridges to each man.

A flock of egrets rising from the bank of the canal flew across the shining sky. Their sharp cries made Father Ravennes lift his head. He watched for a moment their glittering flight in the direction of the mountain, then he turned to his two guides:

"You understand, do you not? We are to cross the canal and strike towards the east. No one except you two, Sahib Lursac and myself is to know the exact object of the expedition."

The two men made a sign of agreement. Their long Moï lances in their clenched hands, their loins swathed in narrow cloth bands, they stretched their naked bodies, over which the muscles stood out clearly, and smiled with an animal pleasure in the growing warmth of the day.

One of them said:

"That's understood, Father. For three nights we are to march across the plain, then on the morning of the fourth day we are to turn and go straight towards the Pou-Kas."

"Yes," agreed Lursac, "that is right. But shall we have, by that time, got far enough round the mountain to take it in the rear? Understand me well: it is absolutely necessary for us to come out on the other face of the plateau and not before the temple itself. What we have to do is to surprise them. To do that there is only one way: to arrive there by a path which no one has thought of, and to catch them in the rear. It is above all necessary that before attacking the Pou-Kas itself we must have got well round it."

The man who had already spoken again assured him:

"We understand: the three days' march towards the east will be plenty. But then those people will see where we are going, and..."

With his finger he pointed at the riflemen and the mahouts grouped before the fort.

Lursac stopped him.

"Don't worry about them," said he, "I will undertake to make them march."

The man looked at him thoughtfully.

"Perhaps it would have been better to tell them, but you are the master...."

A ray of sunshine slanting towards the valley shed an oblique light upon it and illuminated the fort. The bespattered straw roofs showed their steep slopes of blazing yellow against the morning sky.

Pierre watched contemplatively the familiar scene now so vividly illuminated by the sunlight. He thought of his arrival three months earlier. The missionary dropped his hand upon his shoulder.

"The time is come," said he.

Pierre shivered and signalled to the guides.

"Start!"

The two men set out towards the canal and behind them the caravan stirred into motion.

They were struggling through the desert. Around them the sun beat heavily upon the naked sandy plain which reflected its rays mercilessly. Here and there dried-up swamps showed their clay bottoms covered all over with heat cracks, while the herbage, which during the rainy season had made a girdle of green about them, hung yellow, withered and sapless.

Far away, in the west, along the blue horizon, the banks of the canal with their string of reddish mangroves made a thin edging which grew smaller and smaller with every hour of their march. Distant and threatening, the Moï mountains now made under the burning sky but a single confused crowd of peaks above which the Pou-Kas alone soared clear and dominating.

Towards evening the first hillocks made their appearance. Like small waves stricken into stillness the plain broke into undulations which ran east and west so that the setting sun shining over their tops barred them alternately with light and shade.

Between two hillocks where the course of a dried-up stream had still left a patch of stagnant water the guides called a halt. Then, in the limpid night, the fires of their first camp shot up in twisted flame and threw against the shoulders of the hills the magnified shadows of the elephants sporting in the slimy water.

On the summit of one of the hillocks one of Father Ravennes' guides had taken his stand as sentinel. He stood erect, immobile, leaning on his lance. Against the milky sky his body stood out in its barbaric profile, and through the night, until the dawn, his guttural voice cried out the hour of the watch at the measured time.

For two days more, the march resumed at dawn continued all day till night across the Waterless Country, a gloomy land made desolate by drought. Under the sky, shining like a polished steel mirror, the desert flamed monotonous and endless. The wind tearing down from the high plateau to the north swept it with long strokes. The sand rose up in clouds and rolled round the caravan, whipping the faces of the men, scorching their throats and leaving between their cracked lips voices which had sunk to a hoarse whisper and their breath dry and laboring. The heat of the ground burnt their feet through their sandals, and upon their backs bent by marching the implacable sun fell like flame.

The third night found them seventy miles from the station, on the edge of a water-course cut between two hillocks. The muddy banks, burnt hard by the terrible heat, had broken away under the enormous weight of the elephants. Between the sandy slopes under the meagre shade cast by a prickly gum-tree was a large pool of stagnant water, now transformed into red mud by the trampling of the elephants. In their tent, pitched on the point of the dune, Father Ravennes and Lursac were listening while the headman made his daily report.

He was an old Cambodian with dreamy eyes and leisurely movements. In his sing-songy voice sounded caressing inflections which suggested the sweetness and tenderness of the love-songs of the Lao-ese country which he was in the habit of singing to his men on the march to keep them in step.

"Then, to sum up," said Lursac, "we now have four men sick?"

"Yes, three have fever and the fourth was wounded in the right foot this morning. His comrades have had to carry him here."

Lursac looked at the headman and his eyebrows drew together making a bar across his forehead.

"That man," said he, "cannot go on. He would be a nuisance to us and would keep us back. And the others? Is it just a slight fever or a serious attack?"

The headman flung his arms wide with an air of disgust.

"Who knows?" said he, "they complain. Their feet and legs are swollen, and when we camp they don't eat and don't sleep. They spend the whole night crouched before the fires, close enough to roast themselves."

Lursac turned towards Father Ravennes.

"What do you think of it?"

The missionary nodded his head thoughtfully.

"I am afraid that they are seriously ill. These feeble constitutions of theirs, ready to contract any disease, always take the fever badly and with distressing violence. I would rather they had got something else. Quinine does not act on them, and in any case, they need, in order to fight the disease, an energy and a moral force which they do not possess."

Pierre asked:

"Then you think that the best thing we can do is to leave them behind?"

"I am sure that it would be dangerous to encumber ourselves with sick men. From the minute we enter the forest our approach will be signalled. It's no good deceiving ourselves. A body of men like this cannot march unseen. From that moment our principal chance of success will lie in the swiftness of our march. We must get up there as quickly as possible."

Pierre assented with a nod. He signed to the headman.

"You will pick out two men from the less serviceable ones and at sunrise they are to start back and return to the Post with the four invalids."

He rapidly scratched a few words in his notebook, tore out the page and handed it to the headman.

"Here are their marching orders. We will give them six days' rations of rice and dried fish. The sick men are to keep their muskets and thirty cartridges each. The two men of the escort will take fifty each. The ammunition which they leave behind is to be distributed among the remaining riflemen. That's one thing settled. Have you anything else to tell me?"

"Nothing, sahib."

"Good. Start at the same hour tomorrow. That's all. You can return to the camp."

The man bowed.

"I salute you, sahib."

"I salute you, Ket-Noi."

With a bitter smile on his lips Pierre turned to Father Ravennes.

"Six men less," said he, "and we have not yet even entered the forest!"

The missionary made a soothing movement.

"What matter? Six men more or less! The important thing is that our troop, however much it may be reduced, should continue a solid, homogeneous force, well in hand. These days of march across the Waterless Country have naturally provided a sort of preliminary trial,—the first selective process, of distinct value. The mountain is probably keeping for us a second and more difficult one. I am afraid of it, because it is a moral one. From tomorrow it will not be only fatigue, fever, bad weather and privation that the men must face; there will be something else."

He was silent. Motionless in the middle of the opening of the tent he turned his eyes towards the confused huddle of the Moï mountains of which the vague cloudy masses under the tender sky made one think of some slowly passing troop of animals monotonously heading towards the north.

Lursac, standing beside him, followed his look. The priest finished his thought:

"There will be also, and above all, fear," he murmured.

Pierre remained silent.

The warm dark came; and the quiet brought to their ears the sound of talking among the native soldiers camping by the bed of the dried-up torrent and the stamping of elephants in the swamp, the guttural calls of the mahouts and even the crackling of the fires.

Above the hillocks the rushing flight of a night-bird passed, faded into the distance, and came back with beating wings, and at the sound of its flight which seemed to fill the night with invisible rustlings, the image of Wanda arose and filled all the dark spaces about him.

"Lursac, come and look at this...."

Pierre, who was prone before the fire, towards which he was stretching his hands, got up and went over to Father Ravennes. Kneeling down, with his body bent over the black, leaf-covered earth, the missionary looked thoughtfully at an object which it was difficult to distinguish clearly.

"What is it?" asked Lursac.

The priest raised his head: there was a strange ring in his voice.

"Here, look what I have just found under this thin coating of leaves."

He stretched out to him over his shoulder a sort of hammer made of stone set in the end of a forked branch. The young man threw a rapid glance over the weapon. It seemed to him clumsy, commonplace and of no particular interest.

"A skull-smasher left by some Moï?" said he.

The missionary continued to look thoughtful.

"Have you ever before seen any instrument of theirs like this?" he asked. "I am well acquainted with most of the savage tribes of this region. They are all armed with the lance, the crossbow, the curved sword, and sometimes with a little iron hatchet with two cutting edges, but never yet have I found among them a weapon in any way resembling this...."

He returned to his place before the fire. He continued to examine the primitive instrument, turning it about between his hands.

"No," said he, "this is certainly an axe belonging to prehistoric times. Observe the oval shape of the flint, flattened on the two sides and shaped by hand over its entire circumference. But there is something even more strange about this simple stone. Look at it carefully. Don't you notice anything?"

"No," said Pierre absent-mindedly, "and I fail to understand your surprise. Have you not already picked up more than thirty of the same kind? As for me, I see no difference whatever between this hatchet and all those I have already examined in your cabin."

The priest said slowly:

"The fact is that you do not know how to see."

He held the flint close to the fire. On the regularity of its facets the flame was reflected in small, sharp patches of light.

"Look at these flakings still fresh from the cutting! That is what is the peculiar thing about it. It's that that bewilders me and astounds me. If I could trust to appearances I would swear that this weapon, which all my anthropological knowledge tells me must be not less than 30,000 years old, has been cut by the maker within a few months. If I were in Europe I should not hesitate to assert positively that the thing was a fake, and that it came from one of these factories of 'prehistoric' arms that exist wherever the scientists dig for real ones."

Pierre smiled in amusement.

"Ah!" said he, "and sometimes they do manage to humbug the palæontologists."

The missionary quickly protested:

"Not now, but when the science was in its infancy, it was a trade that often proved lucrative; but to imagine that here in the depths of the Moï country there could be an industry of that sort would be too preposterous!... However ..."

He stopped and looked the weapon over once more with the greatest care.

"However, I am not dreaming. This dull look is too characteristic for me to be deceived about it. These are fresh fractures. The perfect state of preservation of the stone itself signifies nothing, I know; but the absence of patina,[11] of dentrites,[12] and of coloration on this flint—how will you explain that? This is indeed one of the most extraordinary problems that I have ever encountered since I have been interested in prehistoric remains."

"Bah!" said Pierre, "a Moï may have found the weapon in a hollow in some ravine and used it himself and made these new fractures that seem so strange to you."

Father Ravennes made a sign of incredulity.

"Yes," said he, "I thought of that. That explanation would be likely enough if this find were my only one; but in the two days that we have been in the forest this is the eleventh discovery that I have made. Yesterday four scratching pins and two other hatchets; today, two knives, two scrapers, and now this hatchet.... And every one of these instruments without exception offers the same appearance of newness and the same recent fractures. No, believe me, Lursac, this is one more mystery added to the other, to the great secret towards the discovery of which we are marching."

He remained thoughtful. The flame of the camp-fire flickered in his pale pupils. He had a peculiar expression in his eyes.

"At least," said he, "there may be one single mystery, and this, perhaps, is just one of its elements, one of its unforeseen aspects."

Pierre looked him up and down sharply.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "You seem to have thought of something!"

The missionary avoided the pointed enquiry of his eyes.

"Nothing," said he evasively, "I am groping my way. Amid the darkness which surrounds me I seem sometimes to find a ray of light. It appears suddenly, flickers, flees and disappears. A light ... I am searching...."

He thought for a minute and then continued:

"I say to myself that in the heart of this Moï country, whose people still live a life which is animal and primitive, an existence very similar to that which the men of the first days of life on the earth must have lived, there lies a great temple without doubt several centuries old. How and by whom was this temple built? That is the first question. In this sanctuary mysterious divinities reign—the Red Gods—of whom an image in purple metal, probably copper, is enthroned in the centre of the main hall. But these gods themselves, what are they? That is the second question. Sometimes the people call them the Living Gods. Do you remember Hmon's story? What then? Are they Lamas, living Buddhas, similar to those who reign on the lofty plateaus of Thibet? There would be nothing impossible in the thing, nothing unlikely. And the sect that worships them? To what faith do they belong? Buddhism, Taoism, Brahmanism, or just fetichism? Finally, why is the matter wrapped about with secrecy so impenetrable and so fiercely protected? The natives must know that their religion, whatever it is, has nothing to fear from French rule. The pagodas and bonzes of Annam, Tonkin, of Cochin-China and Cambodia are there to bear witness to that! What then?... No! there is evidently behind all that, behind and beyond it, something or somebody: a secret association, or a mysterious personage, of which this temple is the dwelling place. The religious question is only the camouflage that the sorceresses keep up carefully, and which they use to hide this reality of which I have long suspected the existence without ever having been able to discover in what it consists. Hmon only told us the least important part of it ... and I am searching...."

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"What is the good of imagining all these worries? In three days we shall be up there and we shall know with what we have to deal. As for these weapons, the reason for their presence here is probably much simpler and much less romantic than you think. Prehistoric man probably had one of his first dwelling places on these plateaus. Didn't you tell me so yourself? The Moïs must have found some of the caves which these prehistoric men used to occupy, and in the caves these remains which they left lying about throughout the region. What worries me much more than that is the behaviour of our men and of our beasts."

The missionary made no answer. He seemed to accept Pierre's explanation but his eyes retained their expression at once thoughtful and anxious. In any case, the last remark of the young man had brought up other matters for concern.

The night before, they had plunged into the maze of the mountain masses. The sudden change of direction, which had been ordered at dawn of the fourth day, had obviously provoked among the men of the escort an anxious disquiet, a sort of vague uneasiness. Nevertheless, the roughness with which Pierre had imposed his will upon them seemed to have dominated them. The mahouts on their heavily swaying beasts had followed the guides, but their eyes remained glued to the forest of which the details slowly came nearer and grew clearer. The native soldiers behind them walked without speaking to each other, and the caravan went forward in the midst of a troubled silence in which nothing was heard but the dull trampling of the elephants. Little by little the scenery changed. To the sandy desert had succeeded the dazzling monotony of a grassy plain which in turn gave way to the first slopes of the mountain range carpeted by the bamboo-grass of the forest clearings, with slender shrubs and the Irui, whose long, pointed purple buds stretched themselves skyward like solid flames. Here and there stagnant creeks lay across their path, green and slimy, attracting the elephants so that the mahouts had to stab their ears with heavy ankus blows to prevent them rolling in the sticky blackish hollows encircled by thorny, twisted and misshapen trees. Then the mountain, heaving up its giant flanks, had barred the way of the expedition with its steep declivities. Immediately difficulties had arisen. Among the tangled confusion of twisted trunks, of creepers, of cane-palms, of pandanus trees and of interlacing undergrowth, the riflemen, axe in hand, had had to cut a way for the beasts. The ground, covered with a heavy carpet of sodden leaves, sweated a perpetual moisture; and wherever they trod the decay from the rotting masses of vegetation underneath burst upwards in black bubbles.

From the piled débris covering the path hungry leeches, the innumerable red leeches of the Moï forests, swarmed in their turn, crawling to attack the men. They tore them off as they walked, but the first evening, just before camp had been made, three of the men, with their legs streaked with long trickles of blood and covered with wounds, the muscles swollen and stiff, had rolled over groaning. Dull and resigned, their faces drawn with pain, they had seated themselves on the trunk of an uprooted tree where they shook their naked feet mottled with bloody spots to which clung new leeches, avid and persistent. It had been necessary to dress their wounds and to help them to walk to the camp. And next morning, before continuing the march, Pierre found himself obliged to send them back. Worse than that, the elephants, worn with exertion, weary from having hauled their great weight up slopes of hills and ravines and furiously shaking their great ears all bloody from the recent stabs of the ankuses, had shown throughout the day signs of growing terror.

And now, before the camp-fires the mahouts were on guard. They had doubled the chains that secured their beasts, as at night, even more than during the day, the thick brains of the pachyderms seemed to swarm with obscure thoughts of rebellion and angry confusion.

Around his picket Bookobomo-of-the-Forest, the leader of the elephant file, could be heard stamping heavily. He was an enormous male recently captured on the high Boloven plateaus. He had retained a lively remembrance of the noises of the forest and the mountain passes; and when, during the afternoon, he had crossed the track of a herd of wild elephants and stopped long to sniff at it, for a long time after he had trumpeted deafeningly and savagely towards the depths of the woods,—a trumpeting in which vibrated unaccustomed tones and through which seemed to sweep the rude breath of the wind bending the great grasses in which, a few months before, he had lived his wild free life. The other beasts of the convoy—the females—were under the influence of his force and ascendancy. Slow and docile they had followed him on the march.

Hearing the hammer blows of his stamping, Pierre became anxious.

He repeated with seriousness:

"Yes, what worries me is the behavior of the men, and even more so that of the beasts...."

He looked around him. Grouped before a large camp-fire which the two guides in turn attended to, the riflemen lay wrapped in a heavy sleep broken by nervous movements.

The voices of the mahouts, camped with their elephants near a swamp at some little distance, came to him through the curtain of the trees.

The atmosphere, cold and heavy, shed its damp in a thin steam, and an inexpressible weight seemed to bear down upon the forest. Giving way to the universal torpor which the night distilled around him, Pierre stretched himself and yawned, then remembering Wanda he rose to his feet. With his eyes set in an expression of stern determination, and shaking off his premonition of failure, he stiffened his will and stilled his doubts with an energetic affirmation:

"I will get there, with or without them—alone, if necessary."

Roughly, almost violently, he repeated it looking at the missionary:

"I will get there ... I will get there...."

But the forest, drowned in darkness, seemed to stifle his voice; and the priest, deeply absorbed in his own thoughts, said nothing.

CHAPTER XV

DEEPENING MYSTERY

"Bay chon?"

"Breil koil toxo!"[13]

The cries of the two guides rose followed by a string of oaths.

Awakened with a start, Pierre looked around him. Lying on his back, with his hands crossed over his chest, Father Ravennes still slept. His face even in his sleep wore an air of serenity and kindness which struck the young man afresh. Around them was beginning to float a grayish clearness.

The voices of the Moïs came nearer and louder, and the flap of the tent, pulled violently aside, gave entrance to the men. With their lances in their hands they burst in, shouting and gesticulating. Instinctively Pierre stretched out his hand and seized the revolver which lay beside him in its holster.

Jumping to his feet with a single spring, the missionary broke in:

"What's happening?"

The guides both together cried out:

"They've gone, all of them ... all of them ... while we were asleep!"

They stammered: their eyes were dazed and their movements jerky.

Lursac looked at them without understanding. He imagined they were drunk.

"Gone, where? Of whom are you speaking?"

Ngur swore:

"The linhs, those sons of dogs.... Gone, run off! I told you, sahib! It would have been better to tell them. We should have known at once what to expect...."

Pierre no longer listened. He had gone suddenly pale and then a wave of red surged into his face. He elbowed the two men aside and rushed out. Father Ravennes hurried at his back. In the middle of the glade they stopped. The camp-fires were going out. Among the warm ashes a few live coals still glowed. Here and there lying on the ground abandoned haversacks still showed the marks of the heads which had lain on them during the night. Around lay packets of cartridges.

His teeth clenched in fury, Pierre mechanically counted some twenty of them.

"The brutes! ..." he groaned. "The brutes!..."

He turned toward the guides.

"But what on earth came over them? Last night when the headman made his report we guessed nothing, suspected nothing. There was not a sign that could lead us to think of a desertion. When did you become aware that they had disappeared?"

Ngur answered:

"Just a few minutes ago. We were sleeping in the middle of them. Pâa was lying by the headman's side. Waking up, we were surprised not to see any of them ... and then finding this close by our faces we understood!"

And with the point of his lance he pushed two bunches of half-burnt roots.

Father Ravennes bent over quickly to look at them.

"Ah!" said he, rising again, "koh-heun-kauang, the smoke of which intoxicates and stupefies. They made sure of the silence of our guides by burning this stuff under their noses during the night. They must be a long way off by now!"

He turned to question the guides.

"How long ago did they start, do you think?"

The two men looked carefully at the half-dead fires and the abandoned haversacks.

"See for yourself, Father. The sacks are damp, but rain has not fallen since the second watch, the mahouts tell us, therefore, they must have started before it stopped."

Pierre gave a start. He turned abruptly on his heel.

"The elephants? The elephants?"

And running, he reached the swamp ringed about with trees and thick undergrowth, on the edge of which the mahouts had made their camp.

Sunk to their knees in the blackish water of the creek, the beasts were squirting their muddy sides with great jets from their bent trunks. Seated beside the saddles on the ground the mahouts were talking among themselves.

Pierre experienced a profound relief, and he slackened his pace and entered the group of La-oese who had risen respectfully at his approach. Standing among them he examined their faces. He scrutinized their eyes with a quick look. He found them emotionless and passive, awaiting his instructions, and the sight of their indifference brought back to him his own self-control.

He said nothing to them about the desertion of the riflemen. Quietly lighting a cigarette he gave the order to load the elephants. Then he went back towards the clearing. His mind upset for an instant had recovered its equilibrium. His decision was made: the march must continue.

He found the missionary at the place where he had left him several minutes before, still arguing with the guides. He avoided the glance with which the priest acknowledged his return and addressed himself to Ngur and Pâa:

"Go and help the mahouts. We will start as soon as they are ready."

The two men showed no signs of surprise or of wishing to dispute the order. They assented:

"Very well, sahib"; and without a word set off at their habitual easy gait.

Roughly, with the object of impressing his will and cutting short all arguments, Lursac said:

"It is too late to go back. If we tried to catch up with the riflemen, what would be the good? First of all we should probably be unable to catch them; and then, secondly, supposing we did get them and bring them back, we should only have lagging behind us a body of men prostrated with terror, a mob of cowards, who at the first occasion would desert us afresh."

He stopped, awaiting a reply. The missionary remained silent: with a rather sad smile upon his lips he contented himself with listening attentively to the young man.

"And anyway," continued Pierre, "the elephants with their mahouts remain to us; the guides also. They are the ones that are really necessary. Once we have arrived at the top I shall consider, I shall make a plan which afterwards I can modify according to circumstances."

He intentionally left the missionary out in explaining his project. The words that he had spoken the evening before came back to his lips instinctively and once more he spoke them to alleviate his distress:

"I will get there ... alone if necessary.... I will get there!... I will get there!"

Abruptly he fell silent. His eyes met those of the priest, and before the latter's meaning glance, his long look charged with reproach, he hung his head. He was ashamed of having doubted him, of having tried to impose his own authority upon him. The missionary, however, did not seem to notice: he said simply:

"I shall go on with you, if you will let me."

But the smile with which he accompanied the words was sadder and graver than ever.

Towards night they came to the bank of a river, before which Bookobomo stopped distrustfully. Behind him the other elephants stood motionless in file. The rain had begun to fall again. Under the flood which drenched them and made them shiver, the men, chilled and covered with sticky mud, looked down at the gray waters of the river which the downpour seemed to riddle with innumerable perforations.

Above the rift, which the course of the waters had notched in the forest, hung a lane of gray sky marbled with heavy, round clouds that lay dark and motionless. The five mahouts who had swarmed down from the necks of their beasts were grouped round the great male whose driver was the only one remaining at his post. Crouched over the bony head of his beast, the man talked to his mount while he stroked its wrinkled neck and encouraged it. Slowly swinging his trunk, Bookobomo began to go forward, descending the bank and stepping cautiously into the water. The current slid between his great pillar-like legs, rose to his knees, then to his stomach, washed his wrinkled sides, rose yet further and continued to rise....

Then with a sudden turn, Bookobomo flung himself backwards, stumbled out of the water and with his feet driven into the mud of the bank he defied all attempts to move him. Around him the cries of the mahouts and the guide broke out, mixed with insults and entreaties. Armed with sticks they tried to make him turn round and face the water again. Persisting in his resistance, Bookobomo trumpeted but refused to stir. The men on all sides began beating him. A fit of rage seized the pachyderm. He tried to get rid of the man crouching on his back. He scraped himself against the trunk of a mangrove and then lay suddenly down on his side, but the Lao-ese, who had drawn back to the rear end of the beast, outside the range of his trunk, continued to beat him on the head with his ankus.... Supported by one hand caught in the ropes of bamboo which secured the pack-saddle he tirelessly raised and let fall on the head of the beast the heavy pole of wood shod with an iron point, until the blood squirted from the neck and forehead and ran down in rivulets along the brown skin. Getting up and shaking his massive body violently, with his trunk rolled backwards in its fighting position and his head held high, Bookobomo trumpeted afresh. Then with a dash he flung himself into the current and swam furiously. Reaching the other bank he climbed it and turned his great head towards his companions who remained on the other side, and again the call of his trumpeting broke out savagely, sounding rebellion and defiance. On the edge he had just left, the trumpeting of the females rang out in response.

The guides standing beside Pierre and the missionary exchanged an anxious glance which Father Ravennes caught.

"What is worrying you?" he asked.

Ngur pointed at the five females who were getting ready to cross the creek.

"They are calling too loud," said he, "and he," pointing at Bookobomo, "since he got into the forest is thinking too much of the mountains of the Bolovens where he used to live in freedom. We shall have to watch them tonight."

"Yes," Pâa said in his turn, "the elephant which cries in the forest is on his way to becoming wild again."

"The advice is good," said Pierre. "We will watch them."

When the four men in their turn reached the other bank, the night was already falling. A flurrying wind blowing the rain before it in slanting torrents invaded the forest, making the trees groan beneath it.

Camping on the threshold of the wood, a quarter of a mile beyond the creek, the men made their meagre meal. The elephants, attached by their hind feet to the trunks of trees, pulled down the branches above them and ate the leaves slowly. From time to time they stopped, and with waving trunks and pricked-up ears seemed to be listening to the voice of the wind as it sang through the aisles of the forest. Gathered together round a single fire the two guides and the mahouts warmed themselves. One of them recited aloud an adventure at once puerile and complicated, a story of love and terror in which the embraces of a Pou-Sao[14] rewarded the fabulous exploits of a buffalo-hunter. And the others, like children, listened intently.

In the middle, rolled up in their cloaks and lying side by side, Lursac and Father Ravennes talked in low voices.

"Tomorrow?" asked Pierre. "Shall we get there tomorrow?"

His voice trembled.

"I think so," said the missionary, "we are not more than five hours' march from the Pou-Kas. Five hours ... four, perhaps! And we will allow as much more for the finding of the mysterious entrance to the temple which we none of us know...."

He hesitated for a moment, and then in his turn asked the question:

"What do you think?"

Pierre signified doubt by a vague movement.

"I know nothing about it," said he. "The desertion of the riflemen has upset all my plans. We can no longer hope to rescue Wanda from them by force."

He turned suddenly to the priest.

"Do you know how much we have got left in the way of arms and ammunition? My service revolver and a dozen cartridges which I had on me! All the rest was carried off by the riflemen! Ah! the brutes! If they only had left us even two rifles, one each...."

The priest looked at him with his kind eyes.

"Only one of them would have been used," said he gently. "God alone, who gives life to men, has the right to take it away from them. I have no right to kill. My only hope...."

He interrupted himself and smiled.

"I beg your pardon," said he. "It seems as if I were preaching a sermon and this is not the time, and still less is it the place. I will come back to my question: What will you do when you reach there?"

Pierre looked vaguely in front of him. His thoughts had gone back in search of a memory and were already in the past. He swiftly lived over again his declaration to Wanda in the forest; the feel of the kiss that she had given him—of the only kiss that he had ever had from her,—came again to his lips. With a slight tightening at the corners of his mouth and his eyelids beating rapidly he closed his eyes.

"We will hide somewhere near the temple and wait for an opportunity to get inside," said he. "We shall have to make use of patience and subtlety. We must remain invisible and watch the goings-in and comings-out. The whole thing will be to see the most favorable moment and be quick to use it."

The missionary approved.

"That is the wisest plan, and the one which I had myself thought best from the beginning; but is also the one which will demand calm heads and the power of waiting passively. The least imprudence, the first too-hasty movement, will deprive us of any chance of success. We must succeed at the first attempt...."

"Have no fear," said Pierre, "I will wait as long as necessary, and I will not act except on a certainty. For the rest...."

The trumpeting of the elephants interrupted him. Straining hard at their bonds they had all together flung a sudden loud call into the night. The mahouts and the guides, suddenly ceasing their talk, nervously watched the brutes who were snorting and restlessly moving about. They had stopped eating. With their heads turned towards the depths of the forest they seemed to be listening to mysterious voices which were inaudible to the ears of man.

Ngur murmured:

"They are calling...."

But one of the mahouts, shaking his head, corrected him:

"No ... worse than that.... They are answering! Listen!"

They all remained intensely on the alert. Having thrown aside their cloaks, Lursac and Father Ravennes sat up. With their eyes, like the others', instinctively fixed on the sombre masses of the woods, they listened absorbedly.

Confused noises far in the distance came to them, so vague that they could not define them. Then they grew louder and more definite. It sounded like the trampling of a great herd of animals on the march through the underbrush. It came nearer and nearer, until it was apparently opposite them: they could hear the heavy thuds of feet mixed with the crashing of the torn-up bushes and the breaking of trees and smashing of branches. It stopped. There was a short silence: then the noise began again, diminished, turned to the right, went behind them, then to the left and finally was heard once more opposite, having made a great circle about the camp, with the caravan as its centre.

Wrapping his trunk round the klong-tree to which he was tied, and leaning his whole weight against it, Bookobomo shook it in a desperate effort to uproot it. The top of the tree waved violently, scraping the trees around it with its branches. However, it stood firm. The elephant became enraged and pulled still harder. The slim, straight tree-trunk trembled: around the roots cracks came in the soil and Bookobomo roared in a voice vibrating with triumph, while, following him, the females in their turn trumpeted into the shadows. Again there fell a silence. Then suddenly in the distance a great call rose up to the sky and tore through the night, a strange call which resembled the trumpeting of the elephants but which was somehow different, more sonorous, and with sharper inflections, wilder and stronger.

Father Ravennes shivered. He had that strange look on his face which Pierre had noticed two days earlier.

"Extraordinary," he murmured. "I must clear this up!"

He had already risen to his feet, but Ngur stepped in front of him.

"No, Father, it will be better for you to stay here because of those people." Indicating the mahouts with a movement of his chin, he added:

"I will go myself."

The missionary was on the point of protesting, but at this moment the mahouts, jumping up in excitement, shouted:

"Torches! Quick ... quick!..."

And at the same time with flaming firebrands in their hands they flung themselves at their beasts, making a circle of flame about them. Lursac and the priest took part in it. They all ran round and round the elephants, shouting and waving their torches and striking the elephants with heavy blows from their ankuses.

For over an hour the pachyderms turned and circled round the trees to which they were attached, rocked from foot to foot, reared up on their hind legs and made desperate efforts to get loose. Finally, however, blinded by the torches, in agony from the ankus blows, their excitement diminished and they stood sulkily by their trees, stilled and conquered.

Meanwhile, about them the disturbance of the mysterious herd that had been prowling there, became more distant and gradually quieted down, seeming to make its way towards the north from which it had come.

"A herd of wild elephants who were coming down to drink at the river," said Pierre, "our presence must have...."

But the return of Ngur cut short his explanation. At the sight of the face of the usually impassive Moï, now transfigured with emotion and completely changed in this short time, he lapsed into silence.

The man stood apart and called to Father Ravennes with a gesture.

The missionary took Pierre's arm.

"Come," said he.

Throwing down their torches, they went to speak to Ngur.

"Well," asked the priest, "what is the matter?"

Wiping his face, down which the rain was streaming, with the back of his hand, the guide said:

"I saw them. They were elephants, but of a kind I do not know and which I have never met before."

Eagerly the missionary questioned him:

"What were they like?"

The man spread his arms wide.

"The one which passed in front of me," said he, "was, perhaps, twice as big and twice as heavy as Bookobomo, with its body covered with hair and a long head."

"And its tusks? Its tusks?" demanded the missionary.

The hoarseness and jerkiness of his voice astounded Lursac.

"I did not have the time to see properly. He charged through the undergrowth and passed ahead of me, going very fast. Perhaps the tusks were broken. Further away I saw other great male elephants running in file."

The missionary remained a moment without speaking, listening to the sound of the rain falling through the forest.

"They are a long way off now," he murmured.

His words seemed to carry a feeling of regret which he immediately admitted:

"Ah! if I had been there myself! You are sure that they had their bodies covered with hair?"

"Sure, Father! Long hair, which came down to the bottom of their legs and made a sort of mane round their necks."

The missionary's face lit up and became eager. He seemed to have forgotten the guide and Lursac.

With his head hung forward, he stared a moment absorbedly in thought. Then slowly in a changed voice he murmured:

"Long hair, which comes to the bottom of their legs and lies in a mane along their backs. Can it possibly be that what I saw three days ago is true? After all, why not? All the same it would be terrible if—.... No, it is impossible and beyond all reason. It is no good my looking ... there isn't a link missing in the chain that I have followed, in the chain that has led me to this conclusion. Nothing!... But what then?..."

Pierre, astounded, heard him give a loud laugh, bitter and strange, which the scene about them made yet stranger....

CHAPTER XVI

NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY

The dawn found them once more on the march. The rain still fell, fine and persistent. Its pattering had now become familiar music to them. It formed the setting of their words and of their movements, and they had become so thoroughly accustomed to the vast sound of splashing by which they were surrounded that they no longer noticed it. The rest of the night had been spent in watching the elephants and keeping guard over their still dangerous excitement. Only the missionary, quite careless of the general anxiety, had remained apart from the others with his back against a tree, taking no notice of the rain which poured over him, turning over in his mind thoughts for which he had no words and the hidden current of which left his face drawn and his eyes filled with shadows.

Now, lost in his meditations, he walked at the tail of the procession. Pierre, tired of his silence, had gone on to join the two guides. The elephants advanced rapidly. The soil, now spotted with patches of moss, gave better footing for their heavy steps. The last slope of the towering mountain whose successive heights they had climbed during the last few days offered itself to their advance in a gentle declivity, which they were ascending with comparative ease. Towards the middle of the day they reached the last height. Before them, surrounded by the forest which reached halfway up its sides, the very crest of the mountain stood naked, rising out of a billowing sea of giant grasses. Pierre gave a deep sigh. Here, this very ground on which he was treading, was the extreme summit of the "Moï Country": this hill, of which the caravan was already beginning to descend the reverse, was the roof of the whole of Indo-China. He forgot his fatigue, his suffering, his disappointments. Around him lay unrolled on every side the country which no one had yet reached, the immense territory into which no European, up to that moment, had succeeded in penetrating. The spirit of the great explorers inspired him for a moment—their soul and their keen pride of achievement.... Towards the south and the east, violet, blue and gray, crests of all shapes and sizes—rounded, domed and pointed—one behind the other spread away in ranks like the steps of a great staircase marking the stages of the route which they had followed.

The glance of the young man then turned towards the west. The mountain on which he was standing culminated in a short, steep slope, from the foot of which, level and boundless and clad in its thick mantle of trees, the plateau of the Pou-Kas stretched to the horizon, the plateau on the other edge of which, facing the south, stood the temple of the "Red Gods." At the same time his mood of exaltation suddenly fell away from him. The totally unexpected contour of the ground near at hand became clear to him. A sort of natural fault in the rock, about a mile and a half wide, crossed it, encircling it, as it were, with a deep gulf which stretched to the very edge of the forest. He calculated that in order to reach the western side of the plateau on which the sanctuary was built it would be necessary to follow the edge of this crevasse for a distance of at least thirty miles.

"Two more days' march at least," he thought aloud.

The voice of the missionary, answering him unexpectedly, made him start.

"Perhaps!" he said; "but on the other hand, perhaps we have already arrived."

Pierre turned quickly and saw the priest standing behind him. His arms crossed on his breast, his head bare, regardless of the rain which was whipping his face and moulding his tunic to his body, he was looking at the strange valley that lay before him.

"I don't understand you," said Lursac. "It will be absolutely necessary to go round this crevasse."

The missionary looked as if he didn't hear him. He followed out his own thoughts.

"Notice," said he, continuing to gaze before him, "the direction of this gulf. It runs parallel to the edge of the plateau. Notice also how the cliff on the further side which faces us comes in places quite close to this edge."

"Yes," said Pierre, "there only seems to be a space of about half a mile between them just here."

"Good! Well, now remember what Hmon told us—'before us a subterranean passage descended and turned downwards. Walls trickling with moisture were lighted up from time to time....' Among many others, these phrases struck me. They came to my mind immediately when I saw this great canyon in the rocks. Have they no meaning for you? Doesn't that suggest an idea to you—the same one which has just crossed my own mind?"

"Ah!" cried Pierre, "the other entrance to the sanctuary, which no one knows, but which, however, must exist?"

The priest nodded his head.

"Go on," said he, "finish your thought; this entrance?..."

"You believe that it is to be found at the bottom of this crevasse?"

"The more I think of it the more the thing seems likely. Anyway, it is quite easy to make sure of it. We can wait till evening on the edge of this canyon; spend the night in it and tomorrow...."

"Tomorrow," murmured Pierre, "always tomorrow!"

And he began to descend the slope of the mountain. A cry from Father Ravennes stopped him halfway. He turned round so quickly and with such anxiety that he was astonished at himself.

At the same time he called:

"Ravennes! Ravennes!"

The sound of his own voice, changed by emotion, seemed strange to him, and he suddenly understood the quality and force of the affection which bound him to his companion.

The priest at this moment appeared running towards him.

"Ah!" said Pierre, "how you frightened me. What's the matter?"

The missionary, taking him by the arm, pulled him in the direction of the plain.

"Come," said he, "come!"

And as they went together he explained:

"It seemed to me from up there that I could see ... but I thought I must be mistaken. Here ... look ... yes ... at the angle of the glade down there, on the left, just where the level ground begins."

Pierre bent over and examined the glade which a single unexpected ray of watery sunshine clothed in a veil of gold; it seemed to him to be empty and dominated by the top of an enormous mango-tree which stood in its centre.

They continued their descent. The top of the giant tree, making a motionless patch of darkness in the midst of the packed undergrowth served them as a goal. When they got to the level they did not even need its aid. Through the high grass a sort of track was visible. They followed it. Before them, describing great circles in the transparent sky three tawny eagles sailed with long metallic cries, encircling the leafy summit of the mango-tree in their flight.

The missionary began to hurry, almost running. When he arrived in front of the glade he had to stop, gasping for breath. He was trembling with exhaustion and emotion. The beating of his heart shook his entire body and hammered in his temples. Supporting himself against a tree he looked over the clearing. It was long and narrow, and surrounded with thorny undergrowth. In the centre the gigantic mango-tree soared aloft, casting all around a heavy shadow from its leafy branches about which the three eagles still turned slowly in wide circles. Everything was silent and still. The ray of sunshine having passed on, the whole place was clothed in shadow except that just behind the tree a single luminous spot remained.

Walking towards it, the missionary murmured:

"It is there."

Then he was silent.

In the middle of a splash of gold which the sunlight made on the earth and which was getting smaller minute by minute a large hole in the ground had just become visible to him, with a thin covering of branches and grass which lay gaping open, as though torn by some shock.

Pierre, who had caught him up, thought he understood what it meant.

"An elephant trap!"

At the same time seeing a ragged tunic lying on the ground close to the hole, he cried:

"Ravennes ... there.... Look!"

The missionary made no answer.

Kneeling on the edge of the pit he was separating the branches and pulling the covering of grass away, bending over to see better. Suddenly he flung himself back, his face as white as a sheet.

Pierre, bending down, in his turn, looked also.

He saw an excavation which seemed several yards deep, with sharpened stakes sticking upwards from the bottom. Caught on one of them lay a white man. Below him on the ground lay spread the bones of a skeleton still decorated with rags of clothes.

The priest gave a hoarse sigh:

"Redeski!"

Clinging to the wall of the trap he climbed down into it. The officer's body was hanging from a stake; the sharpened point of the picket had pierced his side and was sticking out through the abdomen. On the other side the head dangled down, the hair falling loose. In the waxen face the mouth hung open with a red froth around it, while on the shirt above the heart there spread a large purple patch which looked like the blood-colored flower of the flame-tree.

Down the haft of the spike the blood had flowed slowly and dried in a black stream.

Father Ravennes lifted the pallid head and looked at the blue eyes half open in death. A vast sadness oppressed him.

"The poor boy!" he said, "the poor boy! They got rid of him by flinging him there...."

He gently wiped the red slime from the lips, and slowly and tenderly, shaken by heavy shudders, he lifted the body with its horrible ragged wound off the spike.

Stretched out on the ground on his back with his arms wide open the young officer seemed thin and very tall. His face, although drawn with terrible suffering, still seemed to bear a strange expression of calm and strength.

Father Ravennes bowed himself in prayer.

"O God," said he, "receive him in thy divine mercy. We lived three months together and I found him upright, ardent and young: his soul was that of a man. O God, accept him!"

Then taking the body in his arms he lifted it out of the pit to Pierre, who took it. Between them, without speaking and as quickly as possible, they managed to dig a grave in the shadow of the mango-tree. When the simple burial was over, they stood up and looked at each other. Pierre, pale and with his fists clenched, murmured:

"It is only a few days since they killed him, isn't it? Ah! the savages!..."

The missionary, however, had not heard him. Having gone back to the edge of the pit and bending over, he was looking down into it at the skeleton which lay there. One of the rags of cloth hanging to it still bore a metal button. Seeing it, he murmured:

"A strip from a tunic. The remains of another white man for certain."

He stayed there for a long time wrapped in thought; and when he got up and looked for Pierre, he found that the young man had started back towards the caravan. The priest sighed, and then heavily, with bent shoulders, he in his turn followed towards the plain and rejoined his companion, while above the mango-tree the three eagles resumed their circling flight, with their stretched-out wings flashing red in the light of the setting sun.

They had been back in the shelter of the forest for some time now. The rain, so fine that it seemed to float softly like a watery dust rather than fall, mingled under the trees with the mist which rose from the soil to create an atmosphere of damp stagnation. One seemed to breathe water; and night, which was coming on, darkened the landscape, sucking the color from everything and turning the surroundings into a dull uniform sombreness—the end of another gray and sullen day.

And, suddenly, as the darkness fell over the plateau, Pierre ordered a halt. They had come, without warning, to the edge of the forest: a narrow belt of ground, about fifty yards across and covered with short turf, alone separated it from the sunken canyon. In the open the wind was whipping the plateau and buffeting it with billowing gusts.

While the mahouts and guides were busied about their beasts, Lursac and the missionary walked forward cautiously. On the lip of the crevasse they bent over, eagerly plunging their eyes into its depths. But they saw nothing; for the night had taken possession of the precipice and had made of it a formless and endless gulf, a gigantic pit brimming with matted shadows.

They flung themselves down on the ground side by side with their heads over the edge and listened. No sound came up to them. The missionary stretched down his arm and fingered the rocky wall below him, feeling over it carefully: it was hard and cold, cut sheer down through the rock in a vertical cliff.

For a long time they remained thus, silent and motionless. The rain whipped their faces and drenched them to the skin; now and again a short shiver would shake one of them, while the quick beatings of their hearts resounded dully against the soil and beat like hammers in their brains.

"Nothing! ..." said Pierre. "Nothing! ... emptiness! ... silence!..."

They were getting ready to rise when the missionary, gripping him violently by the shoulder, whispered:

"Opposite ... a little to the left ... lights!"

Striking through the darkness two luminous points had just become visible. They seemed far away, against the opposite side of the crevasse, and diminished by distance they winked feebly in the middle of a little yellow halo. Then around them other lights sprang up one by one. Lursac counted seven altogether.

"The gulf is inhabited," said he. "Without doubt those are the guards of the entrance."

The missionary gave a silent laugh. His hand on Pierre's shoulder trembled and tightened.

"It is inhabited," said he; "these lights prove it; but one would think that they were on the wall itself."

He repeated several times in an absent-minded tone:

"On the wall itself...."

Then he added:

"Caves, doubtless ... perhaps the underground entrances to the temple ... or perhaps something else!..."

The extraordinary tone of his voice made Pierre shudder, and he was just about to question him when a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

"Our own fires!" he murmured.

And flinging himself backwards he ran as hard as he could towards the encampment, reaching it just in time to see the first flame spring up from a pile of leaves and branches around which the mahouts were crouched. One man bending over the fire was blowing to hasten its igniting. Pierre with a push shoved him away, and then with great kicks scattered the brands and beat them out.

"No fires," said he, "do you hear me? None!"

The darkness which had thickened around him prevented him seeing the men, but the noise of torn branches revealed the neighborhood of the elephants. He called the guides:

"Ngur and Pâa! Where are you?"

The two Moïs approached.

"Here, sahib!"

Pierre turned to them.

"You know where the bundle of rope is that we brought with us," he said; "get it, and meet me at the edge of the crevasse. I will wait for you there with Father Ravennes."

Before starting, he flung another order.

"The mahouts will remain to watch the beasts. I definitely forbid you to stir from here. Understand that?"

And without waiting for any answer he set off.

He found the missionary at the same spot, where he continued to lie motionless, taking no notice of the return of his companion. Pierre seized his arm.

"Come," said he, "we must make up our minds."

The missionary suddenly came out of his trance. He looked about him and sighed deeply.

"Oh!" said he, "you! I was thinking over some means of getting down there."

"I only see one," said Pierre. "The cliff goes sheer down. We shall have to use ropes, so I have ordered the guides to bring them here."

"Will they be long enough? We know nothing of the height of this wall of rock."

"Well," said Pierre, "I shall go on trying. We have at least two hundred and fifty yards of rope. If there is any need of it we could tie the lashings of the elephants' pack-saddles to that. That would give us another fifty yards. Say a total of three hundred...."

"Yes," said the priest, "that is the best plan; but should we take the risk of doing it at night?"

"I say yes," said Pierre. "In daylight we should be discovered immediately. Once we get down there we can wait for daylight in order to creep near the caves. In any case I will go first, alone."

Father Ravennes gave a start.

"Alone," said he, "what are you talking about? We will go together. Ngur and Pâa can watch over our descent and draw us up again in case of need."

Pierre felt for the missionary's hand and grasped it in silence.

"Don't thank me," said the priest, disengaging his fingers; and in a low voice he confessed with a sort of humility mixed with discomfort:

"You do not know. My attitude during the last days must have seemed strange to you, very strange. Perhaps there is a good deal of selfishness in my devotion. I hope, however, that you will pardon me when ... but that will wait! For the moment understand this: nothing could make me give up exploring, with you or without you, the bottom of this fissure."

He repeated in a louder voice:

"Nothing ... nothing...."

"Very well," said Pierre; "we will go down as soon as the guides get here."

All that was necessary having been said, they were both silent.

In the crevasse the seven lights continued to flicker, and, as the fog thickened about them it enveloped them with halos which minute by minute became larger and more livid....

CHAPTER XVII

A FREAK OF NATURE

Letting down his legs cautiously, Pierre tried the ground. The level bare soil reassured him: he stood upright. Searching the night with his glance, he made a few steps before him at random, trying to explore his surroundings. He realized that he was on a narrow platform of rock; some thirty yards below he thought he could see the bottom of the fissure revealed by a dark patch made by a clump of trees. A gentle slope led down to it. Crouching down, the young man felt the ground in front of him and found it covered with grass, and here and there spotted with patches of lichen. He made a gesture of satisfaction: it would be possible to walk without making a noise.

Undoing the rope which was round his body under the armpits, he returned to the foot of the rocky wall. He gave three quick jerks at equal intervals, the signal agreed upon, and an answer came to him in a few seconds: three answering jerks, which set the rope swinging, and while it was being slowly pulled up he leant his back against the wall of rock and waited.

The minutes passed. Around him silence reigned; opposite him the fires continued to burn, but now in order to see them he had to raise his head, and he estimated at a guess that he must be sixty yards above the level of the bottom of the crevasse. He also tried to calculate the height of the rock walls by recalling approximately the time he had taken in reaching the bottom; but he had no exact idea of the rate of his descent so that he gave that up. Moreover, violent emotion was keeping his ideas in a whirl, and although he compelled himself to remain calm his heart, haunted continually by the image of Wanda, beat wildly with an irregular feverish rhythm. She was there in the heart of this rocky mass which contained the temple, and of which these winking lights certainly indicated the entrance. His hands clenched, a shivering fit ran through him. How was he going to find her? For he was now certain of seeing her again. Concerning that he had no doubt whatever. This certainty had come to him suddenly, and took possession of him as an article of faith or an instinct which dominated him and concerning which there could be no argument. He was going to see her again! soon ... tomorrow ... in a few days perhaps, what would it matter! He would have again before him her subtle face, her luminous and tender eyes, her long pale hands and her warm lips, all of those lineaments, the exact image of which he treasured in the recesses of his memory.

A scraping above his head made him raise his eyes. He drove away the thought-phantom and called softly:

"Ravennes!"

The missionary's voice, discreetly muffled, came down to him:

"Here I am.... But what an oven! I can't see a yard in front of me...."

Pierre raised his arms and found the legs of the missionary.

"Let yourself go ... there ... that's right ... you're there."

Getting rid of the ropes which surrounded him, the priest whispered:

"Ouf! I thought I should never get here. Do you know how much rope is left unused up there? Less than thirty yards including the binding ropes of the elephants' pack-saddles. Two hundred and sixty yards of perpendicular depth. You were not very far out in your calculations."

A kind of deep joy seemed to animate him. His voice was full of restrained vibration. He drew himself up to his full height. Pierre heard his joints crack; he asked:

"You have left instructions with Ngur and Pâa?"

"Yes," said the missionary, "they are to pull up the rope as soon as I have given them the signal. There, that's done! Their orders are to remain continually on the edge of the cliff and wait for us. At a single revolver shot they are to send down the rope: at the second shot they are to haul it up. The mahouts will help them. That is for the day-time, but all night, and every night, the rope is to be left down. Three pulls is a signal that they are to haul up, two pulls, they are to send down provisions. This is to go on for fifteen days. If between now and then they have no news of us they are to return to the Post. They understood thoroughly, and on this point we can remain perfectly at ease. Anything new on your side?"

"Nothing," said Pierre. "The bottom of the crevasse lies at the foot of this short descent. Do you see that clump of trees, there, opposite? I think that the best thing we could do would be to make for it and wait for the day there."

The missionary peered into the darkness.

"Yes, I am beginning to see a little better ... your advice seems excellent, let us follow it at once: the dawn will not be long in breaking."

With his hand he brushed the rocky wall.

"Good," said he, "the rope is no longer here. They have begun to pull it up. Let us start."

Slowly trying out the ground with every step they made their way down towards the bottom of the ravine. The wet grass wound round their legs and made them stumble. The ground sloped gently, regularly, without obstacles. The thick silence was broken by no creaking of insects, no rustling of leaves, the air was motionless, heavy and stagnant.

They reached the threshold of the wood and made their way in. The darkness became even thicker around them: between the black trunks was a mass of tangled bushes, making a double layer of vegetation: on the top the trees with their bushy crowns forming a dome, and below, the compact undergrowth—a tangle of bushes, interlacing creepers and giant tree-ferns.

They advanced with the greatest difficulty, climbing between the bushes until their faces and their hands were scarred with scratches and the sweat rolled down them, often mingled with their blood. They took turns in carrying the bag which contained the three days' provisions which they had brought down with them from the plateau. From time to time, Pierre stopped and raised his head looking for the lights in the caves. And suddenly, as for perhaps the tenth time he searched, he saw them before him on the right. They had reached the west angle of the wood.

They stopped there for a considerable time, panting, unable to think, simply exhausted with the efforts that they had made.

In front of the thicket, and extending from the wood proper, some scattered shrubs pushed out. Their shadows made dark patches on the surface of a swamp, the fog arising from which prevented Lursac and Father Ravennes from seeing how far it stretched. They could see nothing whatever of the rest of their surroundings. The fog buried everything and stretched around the two men a pallid veil only pierced by the seven fires on the cliff. A faint sweet scent floated in the air.

Father Ravennes, seated by Pierre, fingered the trunk of a tree. He pulled off strips of bark and murmuring to himself turned them about and about. Pierre caught fragments of phrases.

"Strange!... I should have said it was the smell of the prickly Brazil tree ... hard, compact tissue ... sugary taste...."

Pierre saw him searching the ground around him.

"Flat seed pods, oblong, spongy, four seeds.... It certainly is ... the Brazil tree ... in the middle of the Moï country! But then? But then?..."

He had got up, a prey to violent agitation.

"What is it?" said Pierre. "What is the matter?"

The question of the young man seemed to pacify him suddenly. He sat down again.

"Ah!" said he, "I have just made a most astounding discovery: a tree essentially characteristic of the Brazilian flora, here, in Indo-China! Admit that there is something to be surprised about in that...."

Pierre, with his eyes passionately fixed on the lights of the cliff, remained indifferent to this botanical problem. His thoughts, circling about the caves, awoke in him contradictory and confused ideas, and he answered absent-mindedly:

"Truly remarkable!"

But the vague and careless voice showed no curiosity. Falling back into their silence they resumed their watch. The damp enwrapped them and made them shiver from time to time. The fatigue, stillness and silence weighed heavily upon them. A torpor stole upon them and overcame them. They slept heavily.

A shrill cry brought them to their feet at a bound facing each other. Some time had passed.... Some time ... minutes or hours? They did not know.

"Did you hear?" asked Pierre.

"Yes," said the priest, "it seemed to me...."

They took a few steps and listened. The silence was unbroken.... Looking about them they began to distinguish the details of the valley, above which now floated the dawn.

The light, clearer each minute, sucked up the fog and dissolved it, and the surroundings little by little stood revealed. Immediately in front of them the swamp stretched with its dead waters, its muddy banks marked out with giant grasses. It appeared large and triangular in shape, with its sharpest, angle pointing towards the wood. Beyond, rising from the mist the whole depth of the ravine lay visible. Lursac and the missionary looked at it eagerly. It was very long, longer than they had believed. The wood in which they were, extended on their right and joined itself to the edge of a forest of which the dark solidly-packed frondage, filling the entire width of the valley, ran up against the cliffs on both sides and lost itself in the distance. On the left of the marsh spread a great grassy plain, seven or eight miles in length, dotted with thick copses and bristling with rocky masses: beyond it, a second forest stretched towards the south, strangled between the walls of the ravine, which there drew closer together until its further end was lost to sight beyond a turn in the rock.

The fog, drawn up by the sun, grew thinner and thinner, and the cliffs, revealed in their full height, were gradually clothed in the glory of the warm and luminous morning. Straight and sheer they fell perpendicularly into the valley, shutting it round with enormous unscalable walls. A little to the right of the marsh, about two hundred and fifty yards from the threshold of the first forest, the caves cut dark mouths in the rock. Pierre counted seven of them, grouped on the same level, close together. They were all dug in the face of the rock about fifty yards above the ground, with a gentle grass-covered slope leading up to them.

With his face stretched forward, and his eyes fixed eagerly on the cliff, the priest began to talk to himself.

"Yes, it's certainly that: Gneiss! ... a solid fragment of a prehistoric mountain-chain ... a whole block of the land of Gondwana.... Hairy elephants ... my tree of last night.... Elephas primigenius.... Brazilian tree...."

He followed Pierre, who had begun to go forward. While advancing, the young man explained:

"We will reach the forest and work along the edge of it. Taking advantage of the cover of the trees, we shall be able, without showing ourselves, to get near the caves and establish ourselves in their neighborhood to keep watch over them."

The missionary mechanically acquiesced.

"Yes, yes, excellent!"

But he was not listening. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he pulled feverishly at his beard.

"I know that I am not mistaken.... I know it.... Intuition stronger than reason tells me so. The truth is there, however extraordinary it may be."

They had reached the forest. The undergrowth being too scattered to hide them made it necessary for them to make their way well into it in order to seek the obscurity of its recesses. And as they pushed forward, the trees, at first slender, became larger and taller, and finally enormous, with an entirely changed appearance. The usual vegetation of the Moï country became rarer, altered in appearance and soon an entirely new flora, unknown to Pierre, took its place—an unfamiliar, astounding flora.

Stammering like a drunken man, Father Revenues named the different species as he recognized them, and with each one his agitation increased. He seemed to be struggling against some sort of internal excitement, and his face reflected a mixture of feelings—joy, terror and doubt.

"There ... yes: this enormous bulk of which the rust-covered trunk is perhaps fifty yards round and whose roots spread out over the soil.—Do you know what that is? No? A baobab!... Do you hear, Lursac! A baobab! The Adamsonia digitata of the Soudan, of Darfour and of the Congo; the tree of such long life that it requires from six to ten thousand years to attain its full growth! And there ... there, on the right, that other giant, a mammoth among trees, a Wellingtonia gigantea, an extinct species which is preserved only in California on the Sierra Nevada where Lobb discovered them quite recently. This one is at least from four to five thousand years old ... and then look again further along. Yes, that one that looks like a palm tree with all its branches terminating in bunches of fleshy leaves stretched up towards the sky: a Dracæna draco of the Canary Islands, a dragon tree, a more beautiful one and huger even than the specimen at Orotava, celebrated as that is for its size and its age: seven to eight thousand years!... Here again this shrub, an Australian Banksia!..."

He had caught Pierre by the arm, and was shaking him as he dragged him from one tree to another. He trembled, patting the wrinkled trunks and caressing them: the excitement which was stirring his whole being broke out in jumbled words, in short confused and unfinished phrases. He jumped from one idea to another in a whirl of excitement.

"Well, what have you got to say about it? Astounding, isn't it? Here in the middle of Indo-China, in the Moï country, at the bottom of this ravine, gathered side by side, not as fossils but alive, thoroughly alive ... specimens of Brazilian flora, trees of Africa, of America, of Australia and even of the Canary Islands! ... growing together as they did formerly ... as they did forty or fifty thousand years ago and perhaps very much earlier[15] when the remains of the great equatorial continent of Gondwana were still in being and the Brazilian-African plateau united in a single mass Central America, Africa, India, Arabia, Indo-China and Australia ... there is the only explanation!... The explanation which several days ago I foresaw and had to face."

Violently he dug his heel into the ground.

"And now it forces itself upon us, bewilderingly, blindingly! However fantastic that may seem, this ground that we are standing on is the same—yes, the very same—as that which in the great geographical periods of the globe cradled the germs of life. We are mounting to the first ages of the world ... we are living backwards ... a great fragment of the past has risen before us, uncovering for us the first hours of Genesis!"

Pierre listened to him with bewilderment.

"The ancient strata of the secondary era," continued the missionary, "pushed aside by the Hercynian movement, and then later by the Alp-Himalayan upheaval, broke up and disappeared; but a vertical crack must have been produced here which the upheavals of succeeding times have left untouched, while around it the great secular changes have worn down mountain summits, parted continents, and dug the seas. This cleft in the rocks, preserved by I know not what mysterious destiny, has remained intact and been preserved unchanged!..."

He remained where he stood, turning round and round and stamping on the ground. Pierre took him by the arm and drew him aside.

"Come on," said he. "We have no time to lose if we want to reach the neighborhood of the caves before night."

The missionary followed him with docility. They continued their advance. The heat increased and became overwhelming. About midday they halted and hurriedly ate a few biscuits, resuming their journey immediately. They walked side by side without a word and finally it was Pierre who, after a long while, first broke the silence:

"Are you quite sure of that?" he asked.

The priest showed no surprise. He understood that the same thoughts were working in Pierre as in himself.

"Well," he confined himself to saying, "you have seen as much as I have!"

But as the young man made a vague gesture he immediately said:

"I know, I know.... Someone may have planted them, or at least have brought the seeds here. That is your idea!... You see that has already suggested itself to me. I thought of that at once when I found the Brazil tree ... as for that ... it was possible ... but for these others, the age of which varies from six to ten thousand years? The others! The baobabs ... the dragon-trees ... what does that lead to?... Who could have worked to make a sort of botanical garden in this out-of-the-way corner, a kind of forcing-bed for the flora of five continents? No, we are actually on the very land of Gondwana, on the ancient secondary soil."

A shudder shook him: his eyes flashed.

"And I am thinking," said he eagerly, "about the beings who have certainly lived here, of the monstrous reptiles and the prodigious birds that came from it, of the huge mammals and of all the crowd of gigantic beasts which today have disappeared!"

He gave a peculiar smile and continued immediately:

"Disappeared?... Not all of them! ... the invisible herd on the banks of the creek which prowled round our camp on the evening of our first arrival, that herd, one of the members of which Ngur described to me as an elephant with long hair and a mane, was nothing else than a herd of mammoths!"

A cry of stupefaction escaped from the young man:

"Living mammoths? You are crazy!"

The priest did not flinch. Quite calmly he assented.

"That's exactly what I said to myself when the thought came to me the first time with a shock.... I did not want to believe it.... I took it for granted that there must be a race of elephants as yet unknown. Then other ideas came to me which had already been rising obscurely at the back of my brain, other ideas which my successive discoveries have clarified and confirmed...."

"Other ideas?" said Pierre. "What ones?"

The missionary gave him a long look. He hesitated; then shook his head in token of refusal.

"No, don't ask me! In two cases already you have questioned me and each time I have asked you to wait: this will be the last time. Have patience yet for a few hours. I do not want to speak before being certain of what I say. I don't mind your believing me crazy! To change the subject, here we are at the end of the forest, and the further cliffs are before us. We have therefore crossed the entire width of the ravine. Now the question is to get near the caves."

Pierre turned about. Before them, running along almost at the foot of the cliff a hollow way under the trees stretched in a southerly direction. They turned and followed it. It wandered about, making sharp curves, going round swampy spots and avoiding rocky masses overgrown and buried in vegetation. Little by little the trees began to get smaller and shorter and thinned out. The path broadened and finally came to an end in an open circle surrounded by trees. Between the slim trunks they could see that the day was beginning to fade.

The two men hurried on. The tree-trunks became fewer and more scattered; masses of bushes succeeded to them. Gliding between these, Lursac and Father Ravennes came out opposite the left bank of the swamp. The failing light threw a mantle of softness over the valley, above which the clouds and mists stretched to the level plateau forming, as it were, a fleecy and delicate tent. The scene which they had observed at dawn they now saw from another angle. The marsh was not as big as they had thought it. Between it and the cliff in which the caves were a grassy way stretched as far as the plain: beyond that the second forest stood in a compact mass. Looking back, Pierre saw on his left the edge of the wood which they had quit some hours earlier. At the same time he made out the cliff down which they had come.

A hoarse cry suddenly forced itself from his throat.

"The scream ... the scream this morning!" He pointed out the wall of rock against which, halfway up, two corpses attached to a rope, their rope doubtless, were hanging.

The missionary looked back swiftly and his face seemed to shrivel, it went white and his lips trembled.

"Ngur and Pâa," he murmured almost in a whisper.

The breeze, forerunner of the evening dusk, began to blow, making the trees rustle; while against the gray rock wall the naked bodies of the two guides swung gently. Above them on the edge of the plateau three elephants of gigantic proportions were walking in file; and against the mauve background of the sky their hairy bulk and their curved tusks showed up with extraordinary distinctness.

The missionary stretched his hand towards them.

"Mammoths!" said he, in a voice strangely calm.

But Pierre saw his hand tremble.

CHAPTER XVIII

BACK IN THE STONE AGE

Lursac, the first to turn away his head, touched Father Ravennes' arm.

"We no longer have any choice," he said. "If we wish to get out of here we shall have to find our way up to the temple, or at any rate climb one of the cliffs."

The missionary reluctantly turning from his contemplation of the mammoths shook his head.

"No," said he, "they are all smooth and absolutely unscalable."

"Then it remains to discover this entrance."

"I have thought of that," said the priest, "but...."

"But?" questioned Pierre.

"What can we hope from that?... Think of it, Lursac, we are two and they, up there in the temple...."

The young man shrugged his shoulders with restrained impatience:

"Have you another plan to propose to me?" he broke in.

And as the missionary shook his head, he went on bitterly:

"And in any case that's the only chance that we have of finding Wanda, perhaps of saving her...."

He looked at the priest and repeated still more forcibly:

"We must find the entrance to the temple and manage to get in somehow. After that, it is in the hands of God!"

The missionary saw him make a gesture which spoke of both resolution and despair.

"So be it!" said he. "According to the directions of Hmon, the sanctuary faced towards the Post, and consequently to the south. As we have come on it from behind, it is there, towards the south, that we shall find it."

He stretched his hand in front of him towards the extremity of the ravine which an angle in one of the cliffs prevented them from seeing.

"And what about the caves?" asked Pierre, surprised, "I thought—as you did for the matter of that...."

"No," said the priest, "no, I have come to a different conclusion since then...."

He hesitated, and his voice took on a peculiar intonation while he added:

"The caverns are used for ... something else ... at least I think so.... Look!"

Together they raised their heads in the direction of the dark openings. They were not now more than a hundred yards from them and they could distinguish details clearly.

The darkness which was gathering prevented their seeing into the interiors, but each of the caves had in front of it a platform with a gentle grassy slope leading down to the valley. The mouths of the caves, cut roughly and irregularly into the rock, remained empty and no sound or sign of life gave token that they were inhabited.

Slowly the dusk fell. Little by little the surroundings lost their distinctness: the ceiling of fog began to flow downward between the cliffs, while above the two forests at each end of the great depression and over the surface of the swamp a fine mist floated and spread. From the opposite end of the valley a confused murmuring arose. Astonished, the missionary looked across the marsh and searched the plain. By turns, visible and disappearing among the clumps of trees, he could see a brown spot. At the same time the noise which had surprised him became more distinct. It was a heavy beating of the ground like a hurried stamping of a herd in flight. He touched Pierre's arm. Both of them gazed eagerly. The spot grew larger, came nearer, and disappeared into a streak of fog and reappeared suddenly at the corner of a copse.

"Buffaloes!" whispered Pierre.

The missionary made no answer.

The herd was hurrying across the plain. Following the bank of the marsh opposite which it had debouched from the wood, it gained the grassy runway, spread along the bottom of the cliff and passed in front of the caves. The hammering hoofs mingled in a frenzied rush. The troop of over two hundred beasts tore along with their heads lowered, and the tall grasses mowed down by their weight were torn apart and trodden into the ground. The herd was rushing straight for the forest in which the two men were hiding. Now the animals could be seen with clearness and the priest shot a glance at Pierre as he corrected him:

"Buffaloes? No,—aurochs!"

The beasts galloping side by side in thick ranks formed a single brown mass. Leading the herd, a great male bounded along, holding his horns high and bellowing furiously. He passed in front of Lursac and the missionary, bearing away slightly to the right. His left haunch was bleeding; three arrows were sticking up to the heads in his tawny hide; in his withers, swinging at every bound, they could see the handle of a great axe sticking out. In a second he was buried in the shadows of the forest, and behind him with the rush of an avalanche the entire herd swept under the trees breaking down the bushes, tearing the thickets apart and smashing everything in their way. In another minute the thunder of their flight, mixed with bellowings, was separated from the observers by a screen of leaves and gradually faded away into the distance leaving silence behind it.

Father Ravennes recalled to his mind the great male who had charged galloping at the head of the herd, his vast size, his long legs, the crinkled hair of his head and neck, his great wicked-looking muzzle, his low-lying horns.

"Yes, ..." said he, "aurochs! The giant bulls of the quaternary epoch, of which the entire species is now extinct...."

"Ah!" said Pierre, "the hunters! What of the hunters! You saw the arrows, the axe?..."

The missionary gave him a quick look and turned round towards the plains.

"The hunters?" said he. "Well, look, there they are!"

Sudden emotion seemed to overcome him, his features were strained into an expression of intense expectation.

In his turn, Pierre turned to look.

At first he only saw a number of small dark specks, scarcely visible, which moved at the end of the valley and gradually came closer until they formed a single group which moved towards the marsh. Following the passage torn by the herd of aurochs a few moments before, they came along slowly and still without any regular formation. They reached the swamp and followed along the bank. The mist which floated on the waters prevented the watchers from seeing them clearly. They finally arrived at the entrance of the grassy runway and Pierre began to be able to see them better. There were about forty of them, divided in three groups following close after one another. First of all, alone, walking with great steps, was a Man. It was upon him that Lursac and the missionary's attention became concentrated.

Night was falling; a dusk of luminous mauve enwrapped the scene, flinging over everything a veil of indefiniteness and beauty. The entire plain, with its forests sunk in the shadows of the distance, with its gray walls and it green grasses and the silvery surface of its swampy lake, gave the impression of a picture harmoniously and cunningly put together by some classic artist.

On the background of this sylvan scene the Man advanced. Soon he was within three hundred yards of them, ... two hundred. His outline, an outline of strength, tall and vigorous, became larger and more distinct. Certain details standing out little by little from the vagueness caught the attention. First of all his raiment; a simple animal skin with long brown fur, shaped like a chasuble, which fell down to the middle of his thighs and was bound to him by a cord; then his weapons—a heavy club which he balanced on his bare arm, a lance on which he leant now and again with his left hand.

The hunter was by this time at the foot of the caves scarcely one hundred yards away from the missionary and Lursac. They saw him in profile. He had stopped, apparently waiting for the rest of the troop to come up. He lifted his arm and made a sign, and his call mounted in the silence:

"O ... ô ... iê ... êp ... iê ... ê ... êp."

He turned slowly, and his face became visible; red-skinned, crude, large and low-browed, with high cheek bones and eyes deeply set—a face simple and uncivilized with something savage and yet sweet in it at the same time, a fierce and powerful face, framed in long reddish hair falling to the shoulders....

The missionary seized the young man by the arm, gripping him with almost painful violence:

"The quaternary man ... the ancestor of the human race. The man of Cro-Magnon and of Mentone ... alive! ... alive!..."

He trembled; his voice, hardly understandable, seemed to scrape his throat painfully. He gave the young man no time to give vent to his astonishment; he went on:

"Yes ... you heard correctly.... I am not drunk! ... this is not a nightmare.... The Red Gods: a clan of prehistoric men who continue to lead here in this deep recess which walls them in from the rest of the world the same life that they have lived for thirty thousand years, and everything is explained. The mystery with which the sorceresses envelop this region, the death with which they strike those who wish to penetrate it, the flint arms which bestrew the entire district, the legend of the Living Gods, everything! ... everything!..."

"But," said Pierre.

"I am sure of it ... sure of it ... I suspected it long ago. The whole thing, tangled and obscure, has been turning over and over in my mind for some time. When I heard Hmon pronounce those words: the Red Gods ... the Red Ones,[16] that is to say the earliest ... yes ... at that moment I began to.... However, I was doubtful. It appeared to me so fantastic that I did not, could not believe it. I looked for some other explanation. But now the truth is standing there before me. However incredible it is, I cannot disbelieve it. You have seen the face of the Man. He belongs to no existing race. His appearance is neither that of a Moï, a Chinese, a Lao-ese nor yet of a European. These features are those of the primitive Mongoloids, of the primeval ancestors of the human race."

An immense joy had taken possession of the soul of the scientist. He raised his head proudly, his voice filled out with sonorous resonance.

"This extraordinary thing we have been the first to see. It is we, Lursac, we who have made this astounding discovery. All the old disputes of the schools, all the theories about which the seeker and scientist argue, the great problem of the origin of humanity—we have found their solution! We!... We!..."

Meanwhile the tribe had begun the ascent of the slope leading to the caves. The hunter with the club walked at their head. Behind him came eight men carrying on their shoulders a litter made of leaves and branches. On it lay the body of an animal. Of its monstrous bulk nothing could be seen but one of its enormous black hairy paws which hung over the side of the improvised stretcher and swayed gently with the motion of its carriers.

Then in a compact group the other hunters followed slowly. The sound of their voices could be heard, now and again dominated by a high guttural note. They were all armed with lance and pointed axe, and all alike clad in dark reddish furs. Their faces all showed the same characteristic features, and were framed by the same long red hair which fell round their shoulders in bright tawny locks.

Although they were of a stature well above the normal, they seemed less finely built and less harmoniously developed in every way than the Man who walked at their head and was evidently their chief. At a sign from him they stopped.

With his face turned towards the cave's opening, about fifty yards ahead of him, the hunter once again emitted his hoarse cry:

"O ... ô ... iê ... êp...."

And after him the men took up the call and sent it ringing across the valley. For a moment they all stood motionless, faces turned towards the platforms of the caves. Already the night was stealing along the cliffs. The dark mouth of the caverns became indistinct and only the narrow platforms which stood in front of them still caught a little light from the bluish dusk.

There was silence. Then other voices thinner and less strong, worn voices of old men, clear high voices of women and children sounded through the valley:

"O ... ô ... iê ... êp...."

Dark forms swarming out of the caves ran on to the platforms and leaned over. A few of them separated from the mass and began to descend to meet the men. A last ray of light shone slanting on the little hill. The troop of men had resumed their march. The darkness thickened, their silhouettes became indistinct. On the shoulder of the hill the ray of light narrowed and retreated. The chief of the clan first, and after him the body of the hunters, reached it and passed through it, and their slow procession crossing through the pencil of pale gold again went into the darkness; while before the caverns the fires, lighting up one by one, pierced the obscurity with their seven-fold spears of red light.

CHAPTER XIX

OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE

The two white men were overcome with a feeling of stupefaction.

The night, bitter cold, descended upon them and chilled their bodies, but they did not feel the bite of the cold: they could think of nothing but watching. Settled on the platforms the tribe was taking its evening meal. Before the fire silhouettes were ranged like phantoms, and their shadows, grotesquely exaggerated, were flung against the rock, where they jerked about and disappeared suddenly with enormous gestures and fantastic distortions. A smell of roasting flesh floated down the valley in thick waves. Now and again a body, elongated by the flickering light of the fires, appeared momentarily, and the brown fur with which he was clothed shone out for a second with a bizarre effect. The hunters were grouped round the fires in bands of six; some women, a dozen or so of children and some old men joined them. Behind them yawned the caverns. From time to time could be heard the crackling of a stick in the fires or the snapping of a bone under the blows of a hatchet.

When the meal was over the feasters gave themselves up to a period of relaxation. The tribe, gorged with food and stupefied by the heat of the fires, lay lounging about the platforms. Men's voices, rough and monotonous, rose and fell. They spoke little, accompanying their short phrases with gestures and signs. Here and there a laugh rang out and echoed in crude and guttural tones against the cliff. In a corner of the nearest platform near the opening of the cave the skin of the beast, the flesh of which had provided the feast, was drying, stretched out on four stakes with its head hanging down. In the clear light of the fires it stood out distinctly. The missionary examined with profound interest the enormous black hairy pelt. The massive skull surmounted by a rounded forehead accentuated by two great lumps, the gaping muzzle with its formidable teeth left no doubt in his mind.

"Ursus spelæus—the cave bear," he whispered, "the usual prey of primitive man, and the one of which most bones have been found in the caves of Aurignac, of Sainte-Reine, of Fontaine, of Moutier and of Lhern.

The old men, the women and children, now rising, went back into their caverns. A youngster, before disappearing, stopped for a moment in front of the skin and amused himself by banging the heavy muzzle with slaps of his open hand. The enormous snout thus put into motion began to swing backwards and forwards, while at each stroke a drop of blood fell, which the child caught in mid-air in the palm of his hand and licked up.

A sharp command sounded from the group of men, and the youngster stopped his game, hastened into the cave and was lost to sight.

Left alone, the hunters spread round the fires prolonged their session. From time to time one of them would rise, draw his powerful body erect and give a long stretch, then sitting down once more would stretch his hands towards the flame. Others worked: a round stone in their heavy hands, and another piece of stone between their knees, they shaped the flint by little precise, minute blows, at which, sparking, the chips flew up and scattered around the workman. Now and again, neglecting their task for a minute, they lifted their heads and looked down into the bottom of the ravine. At such moments their faces, lit up with the red gleams of the fires, revealed themselves as primitive and violent.

Two hours passed thus; then as the fog became denser they shook themselves one by one and disappeared into their caves.

The empty platforms suddenly seemed larger: the fires, piled up for the night, shot their lights higher and further before the caverns: their circles of purple light were the only things left to watch throughout the night.

They waited another hour, then Lursac, turning towards the priest, said:

"They must be asleep now ... let us go on."

They began to move forward cautiously, and stole along the foot of the cliff. Keeping under cover of the shadows at its base they passed quickly in front of the caves and gained the shelter of the grassy passage. They worked in the direction of the plain and the further forest: the grasses among which they slowly forced their way came up to their waists and their clothes were soon nothing but wet, cold sheaths bound tight against their bodies.

At last they reached the plain, and the going became easier and faster. When they turned their heads from time to time they could see behind them like a long silvered plaque, each time a little smaller and less distinct, the motionless surface of the marsh, and on the left, high up, the seven fires marking the entrance to the caverns. In front of them the threshold of the wood towards which they were moving became clearer every moment, and between the cliffs which were beginning to close in towards each other the darkness seemed denser and denser.

Pierre walked ahead. With an instinctive motion, thinking of the skin of the cave-bear killed by the clan, he loosened his revolver in its holster and pulled it out when they found themselves among the first trees of the forest. However, this second forest proved to be less dense than the one which they had crossed in the morning, and it was seamed with long tracks, narrow paths it is true, but quite possible to follow. One of them bearing somewhat to the right followed close to the base of the cliff. This one they took. As near as they were able to make it out, it ran in a southerly direction following closely the very juts and hollows of the cliff. They followed it for a long time. Occasionally the flight of some invisible animal, an unknown roaring, or a cry which they did not recognize made them stop. At other times the bushes thrust apart by the passage of some animal that they could not see crashed together loudly, the noise being magnified by the stillness of the night, and they stood rooted to the spot until the noises ceased. The alarm past, they pursued their way. Fatigue, however, began to weigh on their limbs and to cloud their minds. As they walked their motions became no more than a succession of automatic movements. The dark, however, now became less opaque and a diffused light began to flow between the leaves. Raising their heads in the middle of a clearing, they saw above them, bound in a watery halo, a dull reddish moon swimming in the sky. A few minutes afterwards they stopped. The forest had come to an end. Between it and the extremity of the ravine a belt of ground studded with low bushes sloped gradually upward and terminated in a dark line which seemed to be that of a foundation wall, above which, rising to about half the height of the cliffs against which their irregular mass was silhouetted, buildings arose. Against the grayish sky, roofs could be seen in profile, and springing above them, still higher and more clearly visible, the pointed shadows of four towers in a circle.

"The temple!" whispered Pierre.

Without making any answer the priest continued his advance. Gliding from bush to bush they made their way up towards the buildings and reached a sort of long, narrow platform. Before them in the solid shadow stretched a heaped-up mass of rocks.

Father Ravennes looked up; the roofs seemed far above him.

"Let us rest till daylight," he advised, sitting down.

Pierre assented. An immense fatigue gnawed at his powers of endurance. His arms and legs were stiff with strain and his heavy lids weighed upon his eyes. He flung himself down on the ground and stretched out alongside of the missionary.

For a moment his mind remained sentient and he began to make plans and to consider chances for the rescue of Wanda.

The temple, swathed in darkness, seemed deserted. There was no noise, no light. The moon, covered with a blanket of clouds, disappeared, and suddenly the darkness became thicker yet.

The cry of an owl somewhere in the direction of the forest rang through the night, and from the sallow down-bearing sky a cold mist floated.

Overpowered by exhaustion, Pierre fell asleep. The priest bent over him. Twisted in an uncomfortable position, his face creased with nervous lines, the young man began talking out loud in his sleep, and his incoherent words as well as his panting breath revealed the nightmare from which he was suffering. In his fevered brain recollections, images drawn from the depths of his memory—his arrival at the Post, the course of the expedition—were mixed with visions called up by Father Ravennes: the continent of Gondwana and its vanished fauna; its prehistoric inhabitants; giant trees of Africa, Australia, America; the aurochs; the death of Ngur and Pâa, fantastic silhouettes of the temple; the sorceresses; Jieng, the mammoths—were all tangled together to form a grotesque and disordered circle turning about one clear central figure that dominated them, that of Wanda.

The missionary, perceiving how he suffered, thought of waking him; but he shook his head:

"What is the good?" he murmured. "There is nothing to do now but to have patience; and however tormented his sleep is, it will at any rate enable him to gather a little strength!"

Thoughtfully he watched the sombre mass of the buildings stretching upwards in the darkness. The cold made him shiver, so he got up and walked a while along the platform. Then he came back to his place by Lursac, and sitting with his back against a rock he took his rosary and slowly began to recite the prayers.

CHAPTER XX

INSIDE THE TEMPLE

The dawn awoke Pierre with a start. He shivered and looked round him with an empty stare. Then, memory coming back to him suddenly, he got up and his eyes sought Father Ravennes but did not find him.

Beginning to be uneasy he called out:

"Ravennes!"

"Here.... Come to me."

Turning his head in the direction of the voice he saw the priest who, hidden between two lumps of rock some twenty yards to the left, was beckoning to him. Rapidly the young man crawled to his side and crouched down next to him.

The missionary explained:

"We are at the very base of the temple. Turn slightly to the right ... yes, there it is.... As an observation post we could not have thought of anything better than this. Now be silent and let us watch...."

Pierre asked:

"Nothing has stirred?"

"Nothing," said the missionary.

Carefully lifting his head Pierre looked round the scene. Day was coming—a dull, unpleasant day, shrouded in a thick fog through which the light could only penetrate very slowly. As the mist rose, the end of the ravine revealed itself. First of all, the rocky mass on which the temple was built became visible. Enormous blocks of stone heaped together rose towards the sky and at each side reached the very walls of the fissure which they here filled entirely. The ravine at this point was no more than a gorge, three hundred yards across, deeply overshadowed by its vertical walls. Out of this chaotic pile of rock the foundations of the temple rose. They gripped and mixed themselves with the stone, completing its rugged outline, and carrying it upwards with the very same rough gray exterior, so that in places Lursac could not even distinguish where the rock ended and the building began.

Gradually, as the mist lifted higher, the two men were able to perceive a dozen doors let into the stone at regular intervals in the foundation wall. The ensemble of the buildings, however, remained still invisible. For some little while longer they continued to be hidden; then a shaft of sunlight drove its way through the mist and splashed the cliff on the right with light. The mist drew away and the entire temple stood revealed before them little by little. First of all the four towers of unequal height, built up in tiers, and together resembling one of those slender tiaras worn by Cambodian and Siamese idols; then the long, irregular, clear line of the roofs, and finally the gigantic and wonderful façade, ornamented with porticoes, broken with chapels and pierced by innumerable windows all barred with rows of small columns.

The voice of the priest trembled with emotion.

"A Kmer temple," said he. "The Temple ... purer in style and more magnificent than Angkor-Wat itself, and certainly more ancient!"

He had stood up and was staring at the enormous building framed between the cliffs of the ravine:

"One hundred and fifty yards high.... Prodigious!"

Forgetful of the place and of the circumstances, remembering no longer their danger or the sorceresses or Wanda, he gave himself up to the pride of his discovery, to the admiration which overcame him. He almost laughed.

"Yes.... The Temple! The model, the jewel, the original which those that came after copied ... and that in the depths of the Lao-ese forest, among peoples as uncivilized and as primitive as the beasts! Well, then? Who undertook this gigantic and surpassing work.... Who ... and why here? I...."

He was suddenly silent. Pierre, pushing him back, whispered in his ear:

"Quiet! Be silent!..."

The priest saw him point with his finger towards the forest, on the edge of which a human being had just become visible. He was strangely clothed in a brown fur which covered his shoulders and waved about his figure. On his head was set the muzzle of an ox surmounted with horns curved in the form of a lyre. The man, walking along the edge of the wood, reached the foot of the wall, then he crossed the narrow belt of ground and came to the rocks. Standing upright on one of them he raised his head towards the façade of the sanctuary.

He was scarcely thirty yards from Lursac and Ravennes, and against the gray front of the temple his figure was silhouetted with precision. He was very tall, with astonishingly long legs, a narrow waist and large, strong shoulders. Turning towards the plain, he first of all watched the forest; then his glance slid along the cliff and came back to the buildings, ran over them rapidly and then fixed itself on one of the windows. He cried with a ringing, and surprisingly sweet, voice:

"O ... ô ... iê ... iêp...."

Pierre and the missionary recognized him at the same moment: the hunter with the club, the chief who had marched at the head of the clan on their return from the hunt on the evening before.

Suddenly he dashed forward and began to climb the stony blocks. He mounted towards the temple by supple and accurate leaps, bounding from one stone to the other and walking with long strides when the ground permitted it. Each one of his movements and of his attitudes gave a curious impression of strength and grace. He suggested one of those great animals of the cat tribe, fierce and full of vital strength at the same time: his powerful muscular body had the same sinuous movement combined with suddenness of action, the same sure and silent footfall.

He was now at the very foot of the temple. In front of him stood the foundation, with its rugged wall broken by the line of doorways; further up, on a jutting balcony, was another row of doors, of which each one was flanked by a window barred with small columns.

The Man looked at them carefully. He seemed to hesitate. Then deciding, he climbed the whole height of the foundation-wall. The irregularities of the stone which he gripped with his feet, his hands and his knees, were worn in places and gave way under him; but with a twist of his body he balanced himself afresh and continued to mount. At last he reached the cornice and drew himself up on it, and then ran along the narrow balcony, coming to a stop towards the middle of the façade under one of the windows.

Standing on tiptoes he raised his arms, seized the auroch's skin by the horns with which his head was ornamented, and with a sweeping gesture of one who makes an offering, he hung it up on a jutting piece of stone. Then he remained motionless, his face pressed against the columns of the window.

Lursac and Ravennes had breathlessly watched his ascent. With their eyes fixed on the opening under which the brown auroch's pelt was now hanging, they noticed with astonishment its extraordinary appearance. It was surrounded with peculiar offerings, great aurochs' muzzles, heads of stags, skins of enormous bears, bunches of half-faded flowers, bundles of fruit, barbaric collars of wild beasts' claws, and in an angle, set on the same support, a comb of honey from which bright yellow tears of juice were dropping. Pierre and the missionary looked at one another, the same question came to their minds: what was this strange worship? To whom was it addressed? These Red Gods, these prehistoric men miraculously preserved and perpetuated, these Gods which were worshipped, did they in their turn worship Something or Somebody?

With a shake of his head the priest signified the impossibility of solving the problem.

In any case they had not the time to think of it very much longer. The Man up there abandoned his position of contemplation, and their attention was once again concentrated on him. Without giving himself the trouble to climb down the whole height of the foundations, he calculated for a moment, leaped, and covering the ten feet or so which the wall measured, he recovered himself by a simple bending of the knees. Then, once again turned towards the buildings, he looked at the strange window. After which he set out towards the valley, disappeared between the rocky blocks and reappeared further off at the top of a rounded granite mass, ran down towards the plain, crossed it hurriedly and re-entered the forest.

The sun, by this time already hot, had dissipated the fog. Lursac pointed out to the priest the dozen doors set in the wall.

"There is the way we must enter the temple," said he.

With a nod the priest assented.

"Yes, we must try and force one of them at random, it doesn't matter which! Look, this one, which is opposite to us."

They had now risen and, in their turn hiding themselves as much as possible in their ascent, they climbed towards the temple.

A mass of granite formed a sort of narrow parapet in front of the door and on it they stopped bewildered: in the stupendous wall they could see the door in its doorway and it was half open. Pierre pushed it gently, and with his revolver drawn ready to fire entered it. Behind him, the missionary followed.

Thick gloom and clammy cold struck them in the face and clung to them as they entered. They shivered. Motionless, with every faculty on the stretch, they waited and listened. The heavy damp silence reassured them. The missionary struck a match. With a dry scratch the tiny flame ignited, lighting up dimly the rocky walls and discovering to them, close by the door by which they had entered, a tripod with its bundle of resinous branches and dry leaves prepared for lighting.

"Wait," said Pierre, "I will shut the door, then we will set fire to this."

A few minutes later, by the light of the fire they were able to examine the cell in which they found themselves. It turned out to be square and disproportionately high, practically forming a cube. The walls were gray, on the floor of beaten earth a lance and some hatchets with heavy flint heads were lying about. On one side was the door by which they had made their entrance: on the opposite side, a gallery was visible, separated from the cell by a row of columns set close together and reaching from the ground to the vaulted ceiling: on the left a stone wall: on the right a second wall, but pierced by another door, heavy and re-inforced with metal work, and furnished with a heavy iron lock. Pierre, going up to it looked at it closely, felt it and tried with the help of his pocketknife to make it work. The bolt of the lock rattled and moved. He tried harder, but the blade of his knife broke with a snap and he gave a growl of fury.

"Curse it!... One must use violence. So much the worse, but we have no choice."

He flung a look round and noticed the axes. But already the missionary, bending down, had picked one up. He swung it about for a moment and fitted the haft of it well into his hand.

Advancing, he pushed Pierre on one side.

"As soon as the door gives way," he said, "we will rush through. The main hall must be far enough away for us not to be heard. Anyhow we have no other way of doing it. Are you ready?"

He drew up his great body, raised his arms to their full height and then heavily brought the club down with his full strength. The lock rang and sparks flew, while fragments of the flint were scattered around. Without waiting, he repeated the action several times in succession with his full strength. Under the echoing vault the noise of the blows was magnified and made a shattering noise. The lock, injured and finally broken, gave way revealing its mechanism. With a last blow, which shattered the wood around it, he made it leap from the door. Flinging the axe behind him, the missionary, with a violent blow of his shoulder, pushed back the heavy door and flung himself forward followed by Pierre. The flickering light of the fire lighted up the entrance of a subterranean passage. They could distinguish the first steps of a narrow stairway of which the rest was lost in the darkness. They commenced to climb it cautiously and soon the shadows closed around them. The priest mounted slowly, trying the ground at each step. His hands stretched out before him, Pierre, his revolver ready to fire, counted the steps one by one.

"Eight ... nine ... ten ... eleven...."

"Lursac!"

The sharp call brought the young man to a sudden standstill; he cried excitedly:

"Ravennes!"

The cry of the priest, now indistinct, came twice more.

"Lursac!... Lursac!..."

Pierre ran forward and crashed into and thrust aside invisible forms. He heard the labored breathing of Father Ravennes, and a warning voice:

"Look out!... We are attacked!... Try to...."

At the same time, pushing on him from all directions, a mass of bodies suddenly materializing out of the night flung itself upon him, carried him off his feet and overthrew him. His head wrapped in a thick cloth, his legs encircled, he fell. About him other bodies, clinging to his, fell with him and rolled over him. There was the sound of stifled oaths, groans and curses. Then once more all was silent, and he felt that he was being carried away.

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAW OF GONDWANA

"... It is written: that those who wish to know—may know. This is the Law of the Red Gods—the Law of the barren wives, the Law of Gondwana. But those of our blood only—and among those only women and the servants of the Gods—may hear it and know it without dying."

The voice which was chanting stopped and an order sounded:

"Untie their legs and take off their veils that they may see. The law is the law."

Pierre, freed from the cloth which had been wrapped round his head, looked about him with curiosity. He found himself in the middle of an interior open court, square in shape, of which the four sides were lined with galleries one above the other, narrowing as they ascended, and forming a tangle of recesses and stalls and compartments, over which innumerable canopies and roofs twisted into spiral pinnacles jutted out, tumbling in all directions, straddling over each other, crowding one upon the other in an intricate mass.... The centre of the court was hollowed out, forming a sort of basin paved with large, gray, flat stones, the spaces between which were green with moss. It was in this basin that they lay, he and the missionary. Very far up in the centre of the grotesque and involved crowding of the roofs a section of blue sky shone. Under the galleries the crowd of sorceresses was massed. Among the twisted pillars and the square columns could be seen groups of faces, scarred and twisted with every form of unimaginable deformity, but all bending eagerly towards the two men. How many of them were there? One hundred?... Two hundred?... Perhaps more!

Pierre and the missionary examined them eagerly. They looked from one gallery to another, inspecting the compartments, roving up and down the long façades; and first one, and then the other, suddenly cried out:

"Wanda!"

"Mademoiselle Redeski!"

There she was, standing in one of the galleries, bending forward with her eyes fixed on them. The roof of the gallery in which she stood flung its shadow over her so that the upper part of her figure, clad in a black tunic, was in full blaze of light while the rest of her remained in the shade. She was surrounded with sorceresses. She hung over a little further. The sun lit up the masses of her hair so that she seemed haloed with pale gold. With her arms stretched wide she called:

"Pierre!"

The young man made a motion of rage. She saw that he was ready to rush blindly towards her, and called out hurriedly:

"No ... no ... don't stir.... Presently ... after the...."

Then she fell suddenly silent. Around her the sorceresses were jostling one another, drowning her voice with their ironical laughter and sneers.

Motionless, his face turned towards the young woman, Pierre looked at her long and searchingly. Their glances met and mingled, and their love, stronger than the sense of danger, flamed up and flowed through them, overwhelming them both with the same emotion and the same hopes. It seemed to them that they were close to one another, so that their lips at the same moment gave and received an imaginary kiss, and they smiled, taking no thought of their sorry plight.

Once more an order tore through the silence:

"Hear ye all.... This is the true word."

Their ecstasy was shattered.

Pierre, turning towards the voice which had just sounded, recognized Jieng: Jieng who, now clad in a tunic of white silk and seated in a stall of carved stone decorated with blazing gold, was presiding over the strange assembly. She bent a triumphant grin on the young man and her lids flickered when their eyes met.

Then Lursac looked at the missionary beside him.

"A kind of trial I suppose," said he.

"Yes," said the priest, "but listen!"

The chant continued:

"... At the time when the Gods descended on the world the temple was built—built with their hands. And hundreds and thousands of moons have since then rolled into darkness. Afterwards the Gods created peoples and animals and last of all they created the Law—their Law...."

Once more Pierre turned to face Jieng. She sat motionless in a hieratic pose copied from Siamese idols: at her feet crouched the woman who was chanting; and, as she read, the yellow parchment inscribed in unknown characters unrolling, stretched itself along the floor and seemed to glide towards the two men.

Jieng made a sign.

"... And in order that their will should be obeyed they called together the women who live beyond the mountains in the cold white country and said to them: This is our Law of which you shall be the servants, and your power shall be great, for you shall be the makers and the mothers of the Moï people—the free people of the forest."

A murmur arose, and a great wave of pride tingled in the scarred faces of the priestesses and shone in their eyes.

Father Ravennes interrupted a moment the rosary which he was saying in a whisper and caught Pierre by the elbow:

"What do you intend to do?" said he calmly.

Jerking himself free, the young man walked towards the high priestess. When he was only separated from her by the edge of the basin in which he stood he turned his eyes upon her. For a minute their hates flashed out and Pierre cried roughly:

"Your religious laws don't interest us! What we want is that white woman whom you carried away here and whom you are holding against her will. Do you understand?"

Jieng did not deign to answer. She contented herself with laying her finger on the shoulder of the reader crouched at her feet....

"... As the servants did not understand, the Gods told them more: This is the Temple in which you are to live. Here is the holy valley, the valley in which time shall stand motionless. And here are the males of the Race-which-shall-not-change. They shall be the Living Gods. These shall be Life and they shall be called 'the Red Gods,' that is to say the First, the Sons of the Queen-race, the Rmoahal[17]-race.

Pierre stretched his hand towards Jieng:

"Listen," he cried; "if you don't give us back this woman our brothers will come and destroy your temple and raze it to the ground. You shall all be dispersed and slain. Our revenge is terrible!"

Jieng, implacable, slowly raised her withered hand:

"... And henceforth the first Rule of the Law shall be concerning your fate: you shall be conquered throughout the centuries but you shall never be subdued. Everything which is taken from you you shall some day recover, as the free people of the forest, the Moï people, shall not die. They shall remain a strong people, for the women of the race whose bodies are sterile shall come here and shall be the brides for one night of the Living Gods, and they shall carry back to the people of the forest the life and the strength of the Race-which-shall-not-change."

Pierre bent his head; he felt himself fighting against a stupendous power, in the face of which all resistance would be useless. The versicles chanted in Banhar by the reader seemed to him a fantastic story without interest. He thought of nothing but Wanda. Would he ever be able to set her free? He looked at her. Her face seemed to him paler, yet more wonderfully sweet and tender, in the midst of these ravaged faces of the sorceresses! But at the same time he realized his weakness against their numbers. The disproportion of their forces came home to him with brutal certainty, and he knew in advance that he would go down to defeat. He would not save Wanda ... he would not be able to save her!

To his rage succeeded a dull despair. He turned to the missionary, and the priest, aware of his sufferings, said gravely:

"Wait, the goodness of the Lord is without bounds: we have no right to despair...."

The voice of the chantress continuing her litany interrupted him:

"... They shall be brides of a night—but they shall not know it, for they shall remain wrapped in slumber, as no woman except their servants may see the Living Gods. No one—unless her life henceforth is to be that of one of their servants and that she remain among them until her death. And this is the second Rule of the Law."

Jieng bent forward: she looked the young man up and down.

"Do you hear?" she asked in her expressionless voice. "She wanted to see the Red Gods. She has seen them, and she must remain among us until her death. It is the second Rule of the Law...."

She leaned back.

"... But the women of the free people who have been three times brides of the Gods and who shall still remain sterile shall become their servants. Then their portion shall be ugliness and obedience. Those who are not ugly shall be made so; so that all the women who are thus offered to the Gods shall alike have faces without thought and without mind,—as beauty and thought will bring to blossom in the holy valley as they have in the rest of the world the trees of love, of hatred and of revolt.—And this is the third Rule of the Law."

The parchment, now almost all unrolled, stretched out towards the hollow in the centre of the court, brushing the feet of the two men and jerking with every movement of the reader, whose voice, up to that moment level and expressionless, suddenly became vibrant and sonorous.

"... Men even of Moï blood shall never see the Temple, and the Dead Zone shall be their boundary. Nevertheless fifty warriors shall live in the Temple, but without knowing the Gods; and before entering there they shall have been made no longer fit to be called men. This is the penultimate Rule of the Law."

A long pause, then the voice rose and became strident and flung out like a defiance or a verdict of death the last section of the Law.

"... And if a man who is neither of the Moï blood nor of the Moï country comes to the Temple, drawn by the lust of knowledge or even by chance, the Slow Death shall be his portion. And this is the last Rule of the Law."

Lursac saw the missionary blench.

"Is it this verdict of death which causes you anxiety?" he asked.

The priest shrugged his shoulders:

"Didn't you hear? We are condemned to the Slow Death. I suppose you know what that means?"

"Yes," said Pierre, "starvation and thirst!"

"No," interjected the priest, "it is something much more horrible, a punishment which is celebrated in the annals of the Kingdom of Annam."[18]

The voice of Jieng interrupted him. She had risen. With her two hands sweeping the air in a wide threatening gesture, she cried out:

"The Law is the Law. You have come here to find out, and you have found out; but now the Law of Gondwana has become your Law. Hear this also which is the first word, at once the first and the last, as the chain which binds you is complete.

... It is written: that those who wish to know—may know. This is the Law of the Red Gods—the Law of the barren wives, the Law of Gondwana. But those of our blood only—and among those only women and the servants of the Gods—may hear it and know it without dying...."

A great clamor filled the hall: all the priestesses standing upon their steps with their eyes turned towards the two men repeated in unison:

"And the Law of Gondwana is become your Law."

Clear and sudden, silence fell and lasted for a moment; then Jieng gave the order:

"Set them in the eighth gallery of the end hall until sunset. Then they shall be carried to the statue of the God; and when the dawn comes the last rule of the Law shall be carried out...."

She looked the missionary in the face.

"And now I shall find out how those who serve your God can die," said she.

Straining towards him she seemed to await his answer. But the priest, with his eyes in front of him, gave no evidence of having heard her except by a faint smile.

CHAPTER XXII

WANDA TELLS HER STORY

The eighth gallery in which they were now confined was a peculiar prison. It was a room about five or six yards long and not more than a yard and one-half broad—a sort of corridor, with a very lofty ceiling, its floor tiled with black and white mosaic ornamented with purple gold. Its strangeness consisted in a feature which gave it a disquieting and peculiar appearance of a combined cage and chapel. The one and the only wall was hollowed out into an apse, at the back of which an enormous idol in red metal smiled a beatific smile, seated in the hollow of a huge flower formed by the spreading of seven flattened heads of a gigantic Brahminic cobra. At the other end, opposite, was the door by which they had been forced to enter the room, and on both sides, arranged clusterwise, there rose a double row of columns almost touching each other and leaving between them space hardly large enough to slip one's arm through.

There was no furniture in the gallery; but on the floor, at the foot of the Buddhist statue, against the wall, there was stretched a bed of beasts' skins, with rough thick hair.

Pierre had set himself upon this, while the missionary, his face pressed between the pillars, watched everything within reach of his eyes.

The gallery in which they lay formed the short end of an enormous room. To right and left other halls, one leading into another, stretched away, separated by lofty arches. Here and there opened dark entries to semi-visible passages. A bluish-green daylight flowed between the gray walls from some source which they could not determine. A smell of stale incense and of mould was over everything. Striking down from some invisible opening in the roof a dazzling ray of sunlight fell obliquely on the tiling of the floor, making a broad splash of pale light. The priestesses came and went. They glided noiselessly from one hall to another, going about their customary duties, taking no notice of the two men, not even glancing at them. They simply appeared from some passage, crossed a hall and were swallowed up in the shadows of another passage; and sometimes they were accompanied by native warriors with bare breasts and legs and cloth kilts about their middles.

Somewhere a woman's voice chanted a canticle, a sort of hymn to death; and amid the vast silence this was the only sound that could be heard.

The minutes passed. Pierre, with his head between his hands, was lost in vague thought: an immense exhaustion had fallen upon him and bitter despair. He thought of Wanda: the image of the young woman haunted him and he was obsessed by the words which she had spoken out there in the middle of the strange tribunal which had condemned them to Slow Death. They went round and round in his brain which burned as with fever.

"Presently.... After the...."

His own fate did not disturb him. His nerves prostrated by fatigue and his will in abeyance, he was a prey to his physical weakness, and, in the dull stupefaction in his brain there floated only a single craving—to give up, to lie down on these warm furs and never move again, never think, and just forget everything.

"Lursac ... come! come quickly!..."

Pierre looked at the missionary with dull eyes, and getting up slowly and awkwardly he went to join him.

The priest, pointing out the series of rooms in front of him, said simply:

"Wanda!"

Pressing his face between two pillars, Pierre looked. She had just appeared at the bottom of the furthest hall. She was running. Under an arch she had to stop to let a procession of priestesses followed by a dozen warriors go by. Then she came on again. The long black tunic which she wore made the pale gold of her unbound hair all the more luminous by its contrast.

Pierre stretched his arms toward her:

"Wanda!... Wanda!..."

In a moment she was before them. A priestess accompanied her and opened the door for her, shutting it behind her, and then went off without a word. Standing in the middle of the gallery, the young woman now gave way and cried with convulsive spasms of silent weeping. Pierre had caught her hands and kissed them passionately one after the other. Words came to him, tumbling out confusedly:

"My dear one!... Wanda!... My love! ... you are here.... Lift up your head so that I may see your eyes ... yes, that's right.... Don't cry! I love you!..."

He pressed her to him passionately, stroking her hair, her shoulders. Then raising her face gently he drew her towards him and bent over her: their lips came together and clung.

Releasing herself, she saw the missionary who had sat himself down upon the heap of furs: she called to him:

"My Father!"

Then, running up to him, she knelt and stretched her hands, which he caught and held.

"My poor child!" said he, "how did you manage to get to us?"

He felt the long, cold fingers tremble in his.

"I am free," she said, "free to come and go throughout the temple. No one takes any notice of me since ... since I must live here henceforth until I die."

They were both silent, full of thoughts and conflicting feelings. It was the young woman who first broke the silence:

"And Michael?" she questioned anxiously, seizing the priest by the arm, "have you found him?"

The missionary confessed the truth, telling briefly the story of their descent into the ravine, the death of their guides, and how they made their way into the temple and had been captured.

She interrupted him, crying aloud again and yet again:

"All that has come about through my fault! Forgive me!... Forgive me!..."

Then in her turn she spoke:

"I wanted to save Michael! His disappearance, the terror which weighed on the whole region, the sorceresses, the pilgrimage for women, all that seemed to be part of a single whole.... I knew that Jieng must know all about this terrible occult system of which my brother was the prisoner, and that she must be a part of it...."

She turned to the missionary.

"You said: 'I cannot depend on starting in less than eight days? I was appalled.... I was afraid that we should arrive too late. When I left the Mission I went to find Jieng by myself in order to force information from her, but I got nothing ... nothing, except that if I accompanied the pilgrimage of the sixth month which was starting that evening, I should at any rate be able to see Michael.... I thought I should be able to join him and give you the time to arrive and rescue him, and perhaps that I could help him to escape. And then, you see, Jieng allowed me to send you a message. So I set out, one of the troop of Moï women. I walked with them all the way and arrived in front of the temple where they made us enter a court...."

"Yes," said Pierre, "we know all about that."

And he recounted the tale which Hmon had told them. She assented to it with nods of her head as he went along, and without speaking.

When he had finished, she looked at him.

"And then?" she asked.

"That's all," said Pierre. "She waked up at the feet of the idol. What had happened while she was asleep she knew nothing of...."

The young woman bent her head. Hiding her face between her hands, she whispered:

"I know.... I know.... When we arrived at the pagoda, Jieng said to me: 'Do you want to see your brother? Perhaps he is here ... mix with the priestesses and look....' So with the priestesses I made one of those who lined the passages through which the Moï women walked, and I saw everything. As soon as they were asleep, four priestesses picked them up. Behind the statue of the God there was a door through which they took them. And Jieng again said to me, 'Follow them.' Then immediately, seeing my movement of instinctive recoil, she said, 'Then stay behind;' but her scornful smile decided me to go on. I found myself in a subterranean passage: before me four priestesses were carrying a woman: behind me two others were walking, with torches in their hands. The passage came out on a high narrow gallery lighted with braziers set on tripods. On one side there was a clammy wall dripping with moisture, and on the other a row of columns close to each other, just like these of this gallery. Spaced among these pillars were doors,—I counted twelve of them. One of the priestesses opened one of them, the first. Leaning against the columns, I looked into a sort of rectangular cave."

The missionary watched Pierre with a sidelong glance:

"Yes, ..." he whispered, "it was through one of those that we got here...."

The young woman seemed not to hear him: she continued:

"Two doors opened out of it: one through which the sorceresses were already pushing the body of the woman, the other opposite. Behind this latter I thought I heard movements and hoarse whispering. I went a little further down the gallery, and I discovered that behind each of these twelve doors there was a similar cell, and that in each of those a sleeping woman was lying on the ground. When I returned to the first one, the woman that I had seen carried there was lying stretched out on the ground chained by the wrist. She was still asleep; and only a single sorceress was by her, who, approaching a tripod on which live coals were glowing, threw upon it a pinch of powder. A flame shot up, blinding and livid. Twice more she repeated her action, and then came back to me. Behind the second door the footsteps approached and became louder. At the same moment a sharp click made me jump. Behind me the door by which we had come in was shut. I was alone in the gallery. Lying along on the ground, the woman who was there moaned softly in her sleep. At the same time the second door was violently flung open ... and...."

She gasped. Through her fingers tears began to drip.

Pierre repeated:

"The door opened, and?"

In spite of himself the words sounded rough.

She sobbed more terribly.

"A man came in," said she, "a red man. He was very tall and clothed in a reddish fur; he looked round with a hard shining look and ran towards the woman. I cried out.... He stopped, and flung an enquiring glance around him; he saw me. He was some steps from me but quite near. I saw his eyes open wide with astonishment. He looked down at the woman lying at his feet and then quickly looked up again at me. Fear overcame me.... I ran along the gallery. From all the cells that I passed I heard cries and noises: I thought I understood, and an immense horror overcame me. Staggering, I came back and reached the first cell in which the man.... He was still there motionless in front of me. His mahogany-colored face took on an extraordinary expression of curiosity and respect, then suddenly it moved spasmodically and he ran at me. I felt his hand on my hair. Ghastly fear made my knees give way. Falling, I flung myself back with all my might and called out...."

She hesitated. Pierre saw her hands tremble and clench.

"And then? then?" he asked.

"I ... it is all confused in my brain. I had shrunk away ... yes ... as far as possible! I was afraid! afraid! But I continued to stare at him. I could neither turn my eyes away nor close them. I saw him standing against the columns, his closed fist held a lock of my hair and he was looking at it. He stayed like that for a long time, looking now at the woman sleeping on the earth and then at me. Finally he drew back slowly and went out."

She stopped speaking.

The missionary stretched his hand to her in a gentle gesture of pity and compassion, but Pierre, his face drawn and his teeth clenched, cried out:

"And then?"

She drew back her hands from her face and cast a gentle look upon him.

"After ... I do not know.... With my face in my arms I cried and cried. Time went by: silence was everywhere around me. I dragged myself to the door. I cried aloud and banged on it. Then suddenly, when I had given up hope, it opened, and Jieng appeared accompanied by two guards. She turned towards me and grinned. The warriors under her order held me up and helped me along: they took me back into the temple and conducted me into a long room with sculptured walls. After having laid me on a sleeping bench covered with furs they went out. Jieng remained alone with me. She looked me up and down.

"'This,' she said, 'will be your room. You are free to leave it if you wish. Do whatever you want. But I said to you one day, 'no harm will happen to you,' and I don't want a pig of a barbarian to be able to accuse me of having lied. The priestesses of the Red Gods do not lie. Go out of the temple if you wish, but do not forget this: Out there'—she pointed in one direction—'at the principal entrance by which you came in is the forest, and death for those who are not of our race. On this side'—and she pointed to the façade of the sanctuary on which the door and window of my room gave—'on this side dwells the clan of the Red Gods which you have just seen.' She paused, gave a short, strident laugh, and went on: 'Do, then, as you will. Whatever happens to you now it will be only your own wish which has brought you to it.'

"She went off before I could make even a movement. I remained on the sleeping-bench, overcome, and my mind empty. I felt incapable of moving. Affairs presented themselves to me in their true light. Making use of the disappearance of Michael, Jieng had inveigled me into an ambush, and from now on I was her prisoner. The words which she had just said to me echoed in my hollow brain. On one side the unknown mountain range, a desert which no man left to himself could manage to cross, on the other the ... the...."

Wanda was silent. Her look was full of a sort of horror. She raised dull eyes towards the two men and went on:

"When I recovered from my prostration I dragged myself to the window of my room, which was barred with small columns. The growing light of dawn showed me a wild landscape: a chaos of rocky blocks massed perpendicularly on the edge of a gentle slope, and beyond that the dark sea of the forest buried in a gorge of which the abrupt walls flung themselves up towards a livid sky and surrounded with their implacable ranks the entire temple."

"The ravine," murmured Pierre.

"Hush!" said the priest, "let her continue!"

The young woman, without looking at them, went on:

"I stayed there a long time. The sun rose and its light shone into my room. I was able to see every detail of it. The walls, from top to bottom, were graven with designs, lotus flowers, impossible animals, warriors and bonzes in attitudes of struggle or prayer. The sleeping-platform, two chests and two or three stools, crudely carved, made up the entire furnishings. The gate to the right of the window which opened on the façade of the temple fronting the ravine, was heavy and made of rough wood: a bar almost as big as a squared beam crossed it. I made sure that it was firmly shut, and then I left the room. I wandered through the halls of the temple. The priestesses and the warriors whom I met took no notice of me.... But I heard behind my back ironical laughs and sneers. I made my way back to my cell, and throwing myself on my bed I sobbed desperately until fatigue, stronger than suffering, brought me unconsciousness.

"A ringing cry awoke me suddenly. I got up and looked about me. Between the columns of my window I made out the face of a man. The face that I had seen the night before in the cell back there.... I cried out, and stood ready to run away....

"But he gave an uneasy smile, and lifting up his hands seemed to show me something which I could not make out properly: then he disappeared. I waited a few seconds, and carefully approaching the window I dared to look out. The sun was setting. On my window-sill I found a stag's head with its antlers. In the distance among the rocks the man was running away."

The young woman bent her head down and stopped speaking.

Pierre, tortured with doubt, did not dare to ask her any questions; while the missionary, remembering what he had seen that same morning at dawn, reflected deeply. Before his mind there came again the picture of the barbarian and his attitude of silent adoration; and suddenly he understood what they had taken for the ritual of an unknown worship was nothing but an expression of adoration—an outbreak of this eternal instinct of love which down through the ages from the earliest days of humanity to the present time has taught the males of the species the same thoughts and the same actions, of which accumulated centuries of civilization and of progress have only succeeded in reducing the primordial brutality ... nothing more than this! The silence grew longer and it was Wanda who of her own accord continued:

"How did he manage to discover which was my window? I do not know. But from that time on, every morning at dawn, and every evening at night-fall, he came up to my room and prowled about it. When he left, a new trophy was added to the others. When I wake in the morning I see his great face and his gray eyes, and in the evening I perceive his shadow flung across the window of my cell. For I do not sleep any more.... I do not sleep any more.... I am afraid.... Although I know I have nothing to fear; but from dread of feeling there, behind my door, this invisible presence, of being aware that I have been ceaselessly watched by this human beast for all of the eight days that I have been here.... Ah, the horror of it!..."

Her glance became fixed. In the depths of her eyes, grown large with fear and reddened by sleeplessness, a vision arose, the vision of a scene which had been enacted the evening before, and of which the memory, overshadowing her, still made her tremble. She lived again through those frightful minutes during which, pressed against the wall, her heart beating wildly, she had listened to the man scratching at her door, feeling it all over, trying his strength against it, endeavoring to enter into this room in which lay the female with the gold hair, the prey which he desired above all else. She recalled again his appearance at the window, his efforts to break through the columns, and his cry—this strange cry which had terrified her by the desire, the wrath, and the sadness which it expressed. Then, mad with terror, she had rushed at him armed with a torch. She saw again his face which the purple light of the firebrand had sharply lighted up—the face of a conquered wild beast, savage, humble, and grief-stricken all at the same time.

She shuddered.

"Ah! the horror of it! ... the horror of it! ..." she repeated in a low voice.

Pierre, who had been wildly striding up and down his narrow prison, came back to her. He seized the hand of the young woman on which still sparkled the signet ring which he had given her. He stroked it gently, and passionately kissed the fingers one by one. A great pity had taken possession of him: he tried to find soothing words:

"My loved one ... my darling ... you must not think of all that, you must not torture yourself like this ... I love you!..."

She raised her head suddenly. Her face, wet with tears, became illumined with an expression of longing and passionate love. She drew him to her.

"I love you!... I love you ..." she whispered, offering him her lips.

And once again their love made them regardless of everything but themselves.

The missionary, standing beside them, looked into the distance. Gradually the darkness stole in. The ray of sunlight had long gone from the furthest arch. Bluish shadows little by little invaded the temple. The night filtered softly into the halls; the further ones gradually melted into the obscurity and became invisible.

The priestesses, scarcely seen, continued to go back and forth through the sanctuary. In the distance the unknown voice continued to chant its song of death; and the darkness mingling with the sadness of the chant sung upon two minor tones gave it a peculiar sweetness.

Minutes passed, and then from the dark of a passage a procession of eight priestesses carrying torches appeared, accompanied by a dozen warriors, their lances in their hands. The troop, crossing the various rooms, advanced towards the prisoners.

Jieng was at their head.

The missionary followed their march with his eyes for a minute, then he murmured:

"Let them be put in the eighth gallery until the setting of the sun.... And the sun is set!"

He called to Lursac:

"They are coming to fetch us," he said; and he walked towards the door.

The voice stopped him:

"No ... you will not be taken there for an hour."

Pierre, raising his head, perceived Jieng. Standing before the pillars she watched the three Europeans: a grin wreathed her face, twisting it into wrinkles. With a gesture she dismissed her escort; then she spoke in Banhar, addressing herself to Pierre and the girl.

"You came to see me down there in my village. I have not forgotten it."

And she bowed in an ironical salute:

"In my turn I come to see you.... Is not that the custom among you?"

The young people made no answer: they clung to each other. Jieng gave a little dry laugh.

"Aïa ... Aïa ..." said she. "Is your curiosity then dead? Has fear killed it?"

The missionary, as she looked at him, shrugged his shoulders.

"Hé!" he growled, "I wonder what there can be left for us to know now?"

Although he had spoken in a very low voice, the sorceress heard him.

She gave a short laugh.

"What there remains for you to know? Very nearly everything!..."

The three Europeans started violently. The answer had been spoken in French, slowly but almost without accent. The smile of the high-priestess became more marked and full of irony.

"Yes," she said, "first of all that: I speak your language."

She enjoyed their astonishment for the space of several seconds, then she continued:

"You could not imagine that!... And who could have supposed it?... Here, in the depths of the forest, an old woman shut up in her hut, leading the existence which animals lead in their lairs—a savage, brutalized by this primitive and bestial life, just a Moï beggar-woman—speaking French!... Incredible, isn't it? Yes ... I am beginning to interest you."

The missionary, taken unawares, had instinctively moved towards the columns.

Her glance settled on him.

"I was certain," said she, "that my visit would not displease you. The explanation?... How and where I learned your language? It is much simpler than you imagine. I suppose you know the orphanage of the Little Sisters of Saigon? I was there eight years, from the age of six to fourteen. Then suddenly I disappeared. They looked for me. I was taken away by a street-beggar and brought back among my own people to be made ready for my present rôle. Ten years of work and initiation, twenty more years during which I learned all the secrets of the Law of Gondwana; then at the death of my mother came my nomination as Bia-Bo-Jaou.[19] I have been that for eighteen years. I was forty-four at the time. And ever since then, every two years at least, I have been to Saigon. I was there when this man"—and she pointed to Lursac—"landed. I shall be there again four months from now. I go there to follow the course of your conquest, to watch the progress of your forward movements."

She made a pause: her voice became stronger, and an extraordinary expression of hardness contracted her deformed face.

"Ah!" said she, "you are powerful: your spirit of order, your system of violence and persuasion by turns, this mixture of force and subtlety, of terrorization and of free infiltration, has given you unexpected results, as, little by little advancing, and settling yourselves as you penetrate, you have arrived at the very foot of our mountains...."

She made a movement of restrained rage.

"Yes ... you have arrived so far, but at the same time you have attained the limit which I had set to your encroachments...."

She noticed the somewhat disdainful smile with which Pierre received her declaration. All the hate in her showed in her face. She growled out:

"You may smile. I told you just now: you know nothing! Listen ... you are going to die in a few hours. She—"and her stretched-out finger pointed to Wanda—"she will never leave the temple again.... You wanted to find out, like the others—like Lieutenant Redeski and Lieutenant Longères whose corpses you found in the ravine—like Captain Dorcel, whom we allowed to return to Saigon because I knew he could never speak again, and because I thought thus to turn aside the suspicions which the disappearance of Lieutenant Longères had aroused. Like them you wanted to know; but also, like them, you will never be able to tell anybody what you do know."

She stopped to sneer. Father Ravennes mechanically enquired:

"Then ... it is you?..."

She did not allow him to go on; she swelled with pride.

"It is I! But there is more and better to come ... for this is only a minor issue, an unimportant detail of the contest which I am waging against you. Remember the rebellion of the Bolovens, a revolt at once religious and patriotic, the taking of the post of Psi, the putting to death of Robert, condemned by me because his curiosity began to be inconvenient! At the same time do not forget the death of Odend'hal who was too anxious to find out about it."

She stamped her foot and cried out:

"All that ... all that, is my work ... it is my will which has caused it ... it is my power which has commanded it and brought it about."

The missionary, standing upright before her, looked at her.

"Why?" he asked quietly. "Why? We have never sought to do you any harm!... We come to you...."

She spat on the ground and interrupted him:

"Done me harm?..." she repeated violently. "By what right do you set yourselves up as masters? This land is ours! However far you may search back into the Chinese historians you find that this soil was inhabited from the beginning by our race. Invasions occurred: the Kmers, the Chams, the Lao-ese, the Cambodians, the Annamese, all, all invaded us and fell upon our plateaus like swarms of hungry insects. We gave way as much as possible. We fled into the most inaccessible forests and on to the most precipitous mountains. We, formerly the masters of this country, we fled. The rich, fertile soil of the plains we abandoned to the greed of our invaders: we were condemned to a miserable life, the life of the beasts, hunted in the depths of their forests and pursued even to their lairs. But we remained free, we were always the Free People of the Mountain."

"Then, in your turn, you came. These fragments of our possessions, these last vestiges of our territory—even these—you wanted to take from us. And above all, above all, you wanted to rule us, to make us subservient to your laws ... to your customs ... to your religion; ... like those other peoples worn out with debauchery and weakened with opium, like the Lao-ese, the Cambodians, the Annamese, we were to have become your servants and the instruments of your greatness!... Ah! but we would not. And I, on the other hand, I, Jieng, less than anyone, because, while those others simply dislike you, I hate you.... I hate you because of your power and your civilization which make you so formidable. I hate you because, great and strong as you are, you are for ever thinking how to stretch out your hands over the miserable territories of a people that you think cannot resist you. I hate you because your domination would mean the annihilation of all that our race has done, the work of my people; our customs, our laws, our habits, our religion: because ten years of European influence is enough to wipe out the centuries of our history; this history that the members of my family have built up one after the other, down to me.... I hate you!... I hate you!..."

Little by little her voice had risen in tone, and she flung out her last words with a sort of furious violence. Then, suddenly, she was taken with a fit of coughing which bent her double.

Pierre and Wanda, motionless, watched her with immense surprise. The priest alone remained unimpressed. He listened with grave attention, and when once more the high priestess was silent he slowly stretched out his arm towards her:

"What does it matter?" said he. "As for me, I do not hate you: you serve your religion...."

Jieng lifted her head again.

"I serve my religion?" said she, "Ah! Ah! They think that! ... and after all that I have just said to them ... they have not even understood!... Dorcel even was more intelligent than you.... My religion? You are as simple as all my people.... For them there must be gods, divine beings whom they never see and whom terror makes them obey better than they do us plain mortals.... The Red Gods! ... yes, for them, for all of them, these are gods.... But for me ... for me ... they are the pure race, the strong race, which makes it possible for me to preserve in the people of the forest its hardiness, to infuse into it a new unfettered blood to fight against its bastardization, against its degradation. It is the giant tree from which I drain into the veins of the Moï people a new sap ... it is the life which I preserve for my people in order that the word of the law of Gondwana shall some day become the truth: You shall be conquered throughout the centuries but you shall never be overcome, and everything which has been taken away from you, some day you shall retake."

"But," said the priest, "what about them, the men of the tribe?"

The eyes of the priestess looked at him:

"They," said she, "they do not know. Life for them has always been there, and never anywhere else. The fathers of their fathers have lived there, and for them the world has no other features but those of this valley and the rear façade of the temple. Ten male children and ten girls are enough to assure their perpetuation. Is that what you wanted to know?"

The resonant note of a gong at the end of one of the halls filled the vaults with its call and vibrated long under the vaulted ceilings. Jieng, turning towards her escort, made a sign: the warriors got ready to march away. The high priestess cried in a loud voice:

"This is the hour!..."

Wanda had fallen on her knees. She sobbed.

Lursac, bending over her, said quickly:

"Follow us, and stay as near as you can to the hall into which they take us. Perhaps we can manage...."

She gave a cry of despair:

"No! No! They are too strong and there are too many of them!"

The priest in his turn said decidedly:

"Lursac is right. Anything may happen when God wills it."

And as they opened the door of the gallery he crossed the threshold and of his own accord placed himself between two of the warriors. Pierre did likewise. Wanda had pulled herself together and went out of the gallery, and when the priestesses started off she tried to follow them. Two men stopped her. She struggled and tried to pass in spite of them. They held her by force, and one of them explained to her with a high, almost feminine voice:

"Only those who are going to die are allowed to watch under the statue of the God."

She called out:

"Pierre! Pierre!..."

But the escort had disappeared, swallowed up in the dark mouth of one of the passages. The warriors had loosed her. They watched her. The one who had already spoken said baldly:

"Women and female beasts are just alike, they cry after the male...."

Then she fled, and the laughter of the two guards followed her.

CHAPTER XXIII

A TERRIBLE BARGAIN

She had fled into her room. Flung upon her sleeping-bench she was thinking rapidly. Her tears flowed no longer. With her will concentrated to a point, she forced herself to subdue the tumult of her thoughts and to bring order out of the chaos of ideas and emotions which surged up in her.

The night had flowed into and drowned her cell,—this night which was to be the last one for Pierre and Father Ravennes. Tomorrow, at dawn, their torture would begin,—this fearful torture, the Slow Death, which Jieng one evening had complaisantly described to her: the flesh torn off bit by bit, the bones broken one by one, the entrails.... With a bound of horror the young woman flung herself from the couch and stood upright in the middle of the room. The darkness became unbearable to her. She lighted the torch fixed in the wall above the window. But the vision which she had thought to banish in driving away the dark, came back to her, haunted her.... Pierre cut to pieces, dismembered, a mere bleeding stump!... Pierre! and all this through her own fault... Yes, ... through her fault alone....

The details of her last visit to the sorceress flashed through her mind, and among them the strange look of Jieng when she had given permission for Lursac and Ravennes to be notified. A bait! That was it.... She had been a bait used to entice the two men, to bring them into the trap, to call them to it certainly and irresistibly.

And now, now.... Gripping her arms in her hands she twisted them in agony; all her love, all her suffering, broke from her in a strangled sob.... Ah! if it were possible to save them!... To snatch Pierre from this nameless and horrible death.... To save him.... She thought of the last words of the young man: "Perhaps we can manage...." She shook her head wildly: No. Nothing! He could do nothing!... For she knew, she had seen the warriors and the sorceresses. There were too many of them! What then? What then? She thought in a flash: "If I went there, I ... if instead of them Jieng would...." But she stood frozen into immobility at the thought that it was not she whom they wanted to get rid of, but they, the men who knew too much, who had discovered too many secrets,—they who represented the conquerors, the witnesses,—as they had already got rid of Dorcel, Longères, Redeski.... No, it must be something else ... she must find some other way.... But what?... The question obsessed her and would not let her go, beating round and round the walls of her brain.... What? She could not think of anything ... and the horrible scene which she visioned in advance dwelt obstinately before her eyes: the scene of the torture, tomorrow, in a few hours....

Once more, seized by despair, she flung herself across the foot of the sleeping-bench and with her head buried in her arms she sobbed convulsively. Suddenly she heard a call, that hoarse, lingering, drawn-out cry which she had so often heard and knew so well. She turned her head towards the window and saw the Man. With his face pressed against the little columns, he was watching her. She remained motionless: what did he matter? She was now in the grip of a different fear, a more terrible one, which made her forget the one which had so long pursued her.

They looked at each other, face to face: he with his eyes shining with the fever of passion; she with a mechanical stare which hardly saw him. He drew himself still closer to the window and called once again:

"O ... ô ... iê ... êp...."

But his voice now had in it something timid and imploring which made the girl tremble. His eyelids flickered. She got up and stood facing him. Leaning against the wall she considered the face of the savage. It seemed to her now that she saw him for the first time. A line of shade from one of the columns hid his right ear, a part of his neck and the middle of his chest; but his heavy square forehead, high, and rising from bushy eyebrows; his deep-sunk eye-sockets, in the depths of which under quick flickering eyelids shone the thin, sharp, clinging look of a bird of prey; his strong red mouth and his hard, prominent chin; the entire face copper-colored, and softly touched into uncertain, purplish lights and shadows by the flame of the torch. And this face now appeared to Wanda strangely beautiful and savage at the same time.

The Man, with a slow, gentle movement, as though afraid of frightening her, held up an enormous branch, covered with fruit, which he laid on the sill of the window, and on his face spread a shy boyish smile.

Panting, Wanda suddenly made a couple of steps toward him. She staggered. With a violent effort which contorted her features, she conquered her weakness and let her look rest on the Man. A swift flame flashed in her eyes giving them a desperate expression. Then, dropping her glance, she stretched her hand and pointed to her door.

When she looked again the window was empty. She trembled with dread lest he had not seen her sign and had gone away, not to return until the hour of dawn, according to his usual custom—At dawn, that is to say, too late! But she suddenly heard his step behind the heavy door which she had pointed out to him, and this time she was again shaken by a terrible shudder because he had understood....

Instinctively she recoiled; but again the vision of Pierre being tortured appeared to her and she groaned. She walked stiffly to the door, while upon her lips, which she bit in order not to cry out, little drops of blood sprang out. She stretched out her hand and began to loosen the enormous wooden bar and let it fall on the ground. Then she drew back.

The door, pushed violently open, slammed against the wall, and the Man appeared framed in the doorway of the cell.

He was a magnificent figure. His fur garment girded about his waist left part of the chest bare and fell to his knees. The free shoulder was big and rounded, it had the metallic gleam of virgin copper. Along his bare arms the muscles stood out. From his whole body, at once massive and beautifully proportioned, radiated a singular sense of power. As he slowly twisted the upper part of his body, his whole figure turned with a supple flexion, and the fur which clothed him moulded still more clearly his athletic torso, showing the rounded flanks and bringing out the curve of his haunches.

Wanda remained as though petrified in the middle of the room, unable to turn her eyes from the giant form. With a leap and a growl he was close to her, so near that she felt on her face the warmth of his breath. For a second he remained motionless, and then his neck, corded with muscles and veins, swelled as he stretched his hands to her.

The danger awoke the young woman from the paralysis which held her. With a sudden movement she flung herself against the wall by the window under the torch. The Man looked astonished. He hesitated, his eyes looked suspiciously round the room and came back to the young woman. Shaking his rough, tawny mane of hair he came towards her. This time she did not stir: she felt instinctively that the time had come to face him—to face him and conquer him. This love which he had for her and which she was going to use must be set free and tamed at the same time,—and for that it was necessary that he should not suspect the blind terror which possessed her.

When once again he was close in front of her, he spread wide his arms and opened his hands. She saw the grip ready to fall on her and seize her. The face of the Man and his warm breath came close, bending towards her golden hair which drew him like a charm. And as she felt on her shoulders the touch of his fingers, at once hard and light, she flung forward her little white and trembling fist and struck him full in the face with all her force. The Man, with a deep growl, manifested his astonishment, but he still held her. With a violent shake she got free but stood her ground. For a second they looked each other in the eyes. She saw clearly his fawn-colored pupils in which the reflections of the torch made red dancing spots; and there she saw suddenly come to a head all the instincts of violence and all the brutality of his primitive soul.

She forced herself to stare at him, unwinking, and she spoke in a low, rather hoarse voice:

"You have come every morning and every night.... You have brought me offerings. I know.... I have seen you.... I have heard you.... And tonight, I ... I ... have opened my door...."

She spoke in Banhar, slowly picking her words. She did not consider what she was saying; the main point was that he should hear the sound of her voice and listen to it. It was essential that this light in the depths of his eyes should disappear.

He, for his part, seemed entirely taken up with the contemplation of her hair, the inexplicable golden-ness of which obsessed him like a marvellous and unexpected vision.

She went on speaking to him, but louder:

"I have opened my door to you ... because I want to ask something of you ... something...."

Suddenly he seemed to awake from his daydream: his eyelids beat rapidly: his lips, half-opened, showed the ivory sparkle of his teeth, and he savagely brought down his hands and clutched her arms. His features tightened with a terrific expression of cruelty, and all that had been awakened in him of softness and hesitation was crowded out and carried away by the sudden outbreak of primitive instinct: he was no longer anything but a male facing his desired love-prey. She knew this, she read it on his contorted face, and her fear sweeping back upon her she cried out. He lifted her up and sought to carry her off. She struggled and fought desperately with her nails, her feet, and her knees. The sleeve of her tunic which he had caught in his grip gave way: she managed to wriggle out of his grasp, leaving the strip of black silk between his fingers. Freed, she stumbled, fell against the columns of the window and remained clinging to them, trembling with fear and shame.

Recoiling for an instant the Man watched her, while mechanically he wiped away with the back of his hand the blood from his neck covered with Wanda's scratches. She raised her arms above her head without letting her eyes wander from his. With her finger-tips she explored the wall above her until she felt the handle of the torch. At the same moment, a hoarse growl coming from the depths of his throat and his hands stretched out like claws, he flung himself at her. Seizing the torch she thrust it at him suddenly. The flame twisted in front of his eyes and a drop of burning resin fell upon his hand. Checked in his attack he jumped backward several steps. At that she followed him up, continuing to threaten him with the firebrand. Before the fire, this mysterious and living thing, this strange red flower, at the same time kindly and cruel, he slowly broke away. Perhaps there lingered in his brain the remembrance of another similar scene, of another evening when she had in the same way obliged him to leave her window and to give way before her. Or perhaps it was her face and her tragic beauty which impressed him.

All his violence fell away from him. He still growled low in his throat but it was no longer savage or cruel: rather, on the contrary, complaining and imploring.

When she had driven him close to the door by which he had entered, Wanda stood still and looked him in the eyes. Standing before her, with his head hanging, he turned away his face. She knew that she had conquered him, that he had submitted. Then, without taking any notice of him, she went and replaced the torch in its bracket above the window. Turning round she saw him standing in the same place, his eyes moving alternately from her to the door and back. She knew at once that he was hesitating whether to flee or not; and an agony of suspense came upon her lest he should disappear. Thinking of Pierre, whose image had remained with her throughout, she murmured:

"I will save him, ... I will save him at any price!"

Resolutely she went close to the Man. Without making any movement he watched her approach him; and when she laid her finger on his wrist a shiver went through him, but he still stood motionless. Again she spoke to him:

"I said to you that I had something to ask you. You must listen to me, for then, if you do this thing, then...."

He raised his head and looked at her attentively. She saw him watching anxiously, trying to understand her; and his desire to comprehend her words was so acute as to bring a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows. Then a wave of red flowed into the pallid cheeks of Wanda, and she finished her sentence:

"Then," she said, "I will go with you—I will go with you always ... everywhere...."

He breathed deeply and repeated:

"Always ... everywhere, with me...."

She acquiesced with a simple nod and closed her eyes.

While speaking she had made a step in his direction. Now she felt his arms carefully take hold of her round the back and draw her to him. He pressed her against him for a second without her attempting to free herself; then she pushed him gently away and he let go of her.

"Yes," she said, "I will do it if you free my brothers...."

Her voice trembled. She did not even dare to to look at him, but stood waiting.

"Your brothers?" said he, in his turn.

"Two men of my race, of my blood," she explained. "The servants of the temple captured them yesterday; they have taken them into the great hall before the red figure of the god, and they are going to kill them when day comes, and that—" she almost screamed—"that I will not have...."

The Man did not answer. In his thick skull obscure thoughts were beginning to stir. Again she stood in front of him.

"With your companions you could rescue them, carry them away from here into the forest," said she. "They will go away, and I ... I will stay, down there...."

And she pointed with her hand in the direction of the ravine.

He trembled and put his arm round the waist of the young woman.

"Good!" said he, "tomorrow, before the rising of the god who lights the world they shall be free...."

She gave a long, deep sigh.

"But are there enough of you, and will the others consent?"

He drew himself up and threw out his chest, he clenched his fists roughly.

"There are forty of them," he said with fierce pride, "forty, and for four seasons the clan has marched behind Maa-Wang.... Where I go the others will go, for I am Maa-Wang, the Man-who-goes-in-Front, He-who-carries-the-Club, he whom they follow...."

He stopped and his rough voice softened.

"Your brothers shall be free ... but then it is you whom the servants of the temple come to look for and will put to death...."

"What does that matter?" said Wanda carelessly.

He gave no heed to her. Like her, some moments earlier, he cried out:

"I will not have that: Follow me!"

And as she instinctively moved back from him, he said more softly:

"You shall wait for Maa-Wang; and when those of your blood are free in the forest, then only will I come to fetch you."

He had taken her arm as he spoke and drawn her out of the room. On the threshold she felt herself giving way. All her courage, all her exaltation vanished. She saw no longer anything but the horror of this sacrifice of herself: she was on the point of calling to him....

But the savage, seeing her totter, had picked her up. He held her carefully against his great chest and advanced to the edge of the outside balcony. She could feel his heart beating in heavy, rhythmic throbs.

She resigned herself to the sacrifice.

Now the Man was carrying her in one arm. He descended the furthest wall and when he had reached the granite base on which the building was planted he stopped a moment searching the shadows. The night was light and filled with milky mist: above their heads the lighted window cut a luminous rectangle in the sombre façade of the temple, while the columns in front of the window flung across the narrow gallery in front of it alternate bars of shadows and bands of light.

Once more Maa-Wang set forward. He slowly and carefully picked his way down the massed heap of rocky blocks, trying the ground before him at every step, and finally came to a sort of deep grotto hollowed between two enormous stones leaning one against the other. The opening was low and he had to bend himself to enter. He put the young woman on the ground: darkness wrapped them in its impenetrable mantle.

"Here," said he, "no one will be able to find you except me."

He was silent. Wanda understood that he was awaiting her reply. She gathered up all her remaining energy and was finally able to stammer:

"I will wait for you."

She could no longer see him, but she heard the noise of his breathing which receded and grew fainter, and she knew that he was going. She then saw his bent silhouette as he glided out of the cavern. Finally she saw him roll a mass of rock in front of the opening. Then a second one, and, after it, others, which he heaped on each other. The fragment of pale night which she could see through the cavern-mouth got narrower with each stone and finally disappeared altogether. The cave was filled with black shadows....

The young woman then heard the footsteps of the savage become fainter and vanish into silence.

Suddenly the veil of unconsciousness fell upon her.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RESCUE

Drawing up his great muscular form to its full height Maa-Wang stopped: behind him the whole clan followed his example. The Man-who-goes-in-Front carefully looked over the façade of the temple. It was dark. Wanda's window, only, still lighted-up, pierced the gloom with a thin rectangle of red.

The night was beginning to thin. The roaring of wild beasts sounded from the valley. The depths of the gorge were still a sea of darkness, but the foundation wall of the temple, in front of which stood the tribe, gradually became distinct, and the nearest door showed darker in the midst of the dark mass.

Maa-Wang turned towards his clan, raised his club aloft and started off again, a low growl rumbling from his lips. At his back moved the hunters, all on fire for the battle towards which their chief was guiding them. They spoke no word: their great hands clutched the handles of their axes: the flatness of their faces was accentuated: their clenched jaws and their chins vibrating with impatience stood out starkly: in their eyes, narrow and flickering, shone strange lights.

They passed through Wanda's cell. The door giving on the gallery was shattered with a blow from the club and they streamed into the corridor behind the columns, pushing the wreckage out of their way. The narrow subway then forced them to form into a procession of two abreast. Maa-Wang went at the head, silent, his fingers on the wall of the passage, feeling his way. His fellows followed through the blank darkness. Several minutes they marched thus, here and there stopping to listen; but they found nothing but silence, a living silence heavy with invisible vibrations. Again they started onwards.... An axe now and again knocked against the wall, and the meeting of the two stones made a short, clear, clink, greeted by a surly growl. The passage curved and turned on itself. Then, at the top of the second staircase, guarded by a narrow rail, the opening suddenly appeared before them, showing a pointed archway against the lighted depths of the great hall.

Maa-Wang, bending forward with his great body, shouted the call of the clan:

"O ... ô ... iê ... iêp...."

And he rushed forward, club aloft, while behind him the troop streamed into the sanctuary.

In front of them, with its back to them, rose an enormous statue which they passed round. Close on their left, the altar revealed its three steps and the transparent hangings behind which flamed the divinity. Above the twelve arms which stood out from the body the metal face reproduced with extraordinary exactness the face of Maa-Wang: the great swelling forehead, deep eye-sockets, prominent jaw bones and chin sticking out strongly, hair of a burning red. It was the Man of the early days, the ancestor of the human race deified. A deep red fur covered the upper part of the body: in truth it was the Red God,—the graven image of the "Living Gods"!

At its feet Lursac and the missionary were stretched, gagged, their legs and arms bound and their clothes torn to ribbons.

Discovering them, the hunters broke out into confused clamor, and while Maa-Wang ran to the two men, the others stood around them watching them with stupefied glances. Beyond them the hall unrolled its immensity, surrounded with enormous square pillars based on fantastic animals who stretched up towards the dim vaulted room their preposterous muzzles. In front of each one of these monsters taken from the old Brahmin legends flamed a brazier, flinging patches of blood-colored light on the gray scaly stomachs of these granite beasts; and on the white tiling of the floor the reflections of the quivering light mingled with the flickering shadows in a grotesque dance.

Pierre, whom the Man had now freed from his bonds, stood up, staggering and swaying. He could not understand.... He was still stupefied from the hours of suspense which he had passed at the foot of the statue. It seemed to be the continuation of the evil dream which throughout the night had harried him without ceasing: the nightmare of the prehistoric tribe and then of the priestesses.

But now from all the shadowy recesses and from all the corners unreached by the lights of the braziers there seemed to arise sorceresses and Moï warriors. There must have been a hundred of them, and their cries and calls echoed and re-echoed through the sanctuary.

At their appearance the clan irresolute, turned back and fluctuated aimlessly. In doubt, Maa-Wang looked at the two Europeans one after the other.

"Her brothers?" he murmured. "That is what she said...."

The missionary heard him; he nodded, beginning to understand, and thinking of Wanda.

"Her devotion has been useless," he thought. "We shall never get by them."

At the same moment pointing out to the Man the army of priestesses and guards, he said, simply:

"There are too many of them."

The Man said nothing. He gave a hoarse sigh and once again his cry rang out:

"O ... ô ... iê ... êp...."

Shaken out of their surprise, the hunters at once recovered their natural instincts of violence. The joy of coming battle swelled their breasts and broke out in guttural exclamations. Maa-Wang, with Lursac and the missionary on his left hand, took his place at their head. His lips drawn back in a grin of fury, his eyes flaming, he dashed upon the hostile forces. Behind him the clan flung itself forward like a whirlwind, and suddenly the temple filled with screams and yells. Raising their axes like great wood-choppers the men of Gondwana brought them down in every direction around them. Skulls split with the crash of their blows: crushed breasts gave way with a softer sound. The flint weapons, splashed with blood up to the handles, became bright red. Over the tumult rang groans and the death-rattle of those who fell. Two braziers were over-turned, flinging their flaming coals right and left, and the smell of burning and a cloud of smoke mingled with the hot and bitter tang of blood. The war-cry of the clan, the long and sonorous o ... ô ... iê ... êp ..., dominated the strident screams of the sorceresses. A staggering body, falling, brought down with it other bodies and the tiled floor became clouded with blood.

Driven back on itself and ripped to pieces, the troop of sorceresses slowly gave way. A bo-jaou, her smashed face spurting blood, jumped at Lursac, trying to grasp him with clutching hands. Maa-Wang with a single blow of his fist knocked her headlong backwards, and plunged forward, his arms plastered with red patches, his face splashed with blood, a short low growl coming ceaselessly from his throat, the true frenzy of fight possessing him utterly. About a dozen hunters who were all wounded were cornered in an angle of the building and fighting a losing fight against an encompassing mass of Moï warriors; but he gave no thought to them. His aim was the door of the sanctuary. In front of him and around him the cluster of battling human beings swarmed and circled, gave way, fell and rolled in agony; wounded men, trampled upon, screamed. A Moï warrior, with an axe sunk deep in his naked back ran before him, stumbled, and collapsed.

The missionary, his rosary in his hand, walked steadily forward, and the Man, for a second, threw an astonished glance at this strange being who walked at his side in the middle of this butchery, calmly, with a sad face, unarmed and silent. When they had reached the door, he looked at him a second time, still without understanding, and saw him at that very moment fling up his arms, stumble and fall, his side laid open by a sword blow. As Lursac with a cry ran to the priest, he stopped him, leant over quickly, lifted up the body in his left arm and ran through the doorway. Behind him, Pierre and some twenty hunters rushed down the passageway, shouting. Between the walls, lighted up by the tripods, a confused mass of Moï warriors and sorceresses was running away. The hunters in their turn ran. The noise of the battle grew less and died away behind them and once more they found themselves in a silence only broken by the panting of their own breath....

Outside, in the great court they came to a stop.

In a corner under a tree the six elephants of the expedition, recently captured by the Moïs, were standing tied to the columns; the mahouts with their arms and legs bound shivered with fright as they saw these strange beings approaching them.

Against the lightening sky, still sown with stars, stood out the piled-up roofs of the buildings. The moon, pale and narrow, was pierced by the spike of one of the turrets. The air was soft and warm. A gentle breeze which could hardly be felt brought with it the vast murmur of the surrounding forest.

Grouped about their chief the hunters stood waiting.

Maa-Wang had laid the body of the missionary on the ground; he looked around, and seeing the elephants he walked towards them. Dazed, and with a great gash on his forehead, Pierre had sat himself down on the root of a banyan tree. From time to time he mechanically wiped away the blood which flowed down into his eyes and along his nose. Exhaustion had left his muscles relaxed and his nerves in a pitiable state; and he remained there motionless, shaken by the throbs of his exhausted heart. Dizziness, against which he vainly tried to fight, was overcoming him. Every minute he was coming nearer to complete collapse. He wanted to get up and walk about, but his drained energy could not bring itself to the point, and he stayed there, corpse-like and inert.

Near by, under the tree, Maa-Wang unbound a mahout and helped him to hoist himself on to the neck of one of the animals. Together they came up to the remnants of the clan and the chief ejaculated a few words, short and forcible.

Two men picked up Pierre and carried him to the kneeling elephant. Maa-Wang himself had taken charge of the missionary; he had picked him up in his arms and carried the long thin body against his breast as one carries a child. Pierre realized vaguely that he was being bound on to the back of the beast. Then he felt a sudden pitching movement, and realized that the animal was getting up. But although he tried desperately, he was not strong enough to open his eyes; and he gave up, and, his will in abeyance, lay supine.

Maa-Wang then raised his hand. The elephant, followed by the hunters, moved forward and passing through the long vaulted entrance came to a stop again in front of the temple. The tribe, grouped about their chief, seemed to be waiting. He stretched out his arm and with a circular gesture pointed to the great territory which lay unrolled before him,—the vast scene, which appeared to have no limits and which the strengthening light of the day made clearer, showing a confusion of the great jumbled mass of mountain crests, plateaus and hills.

"I promised to lead you to the great hunting ground, to the country without walls, and it is before you.... Go!... As for me ... I stay here.... Someone else whom you will pick for yourselves will become the Man-who-goes-in-Front."

He was silent.

Around him the hunters stood wordless; they gazed at the new world which was being opened to them and their faces reflected the contradictory feelings which swept through their minds: amazed wonder, the intoxication of endless spaces across which they were about to travel, and the fear of the Unknown. One of them suddenly made up his mind and set off; and the others in small groups ran after him in their turn.

Maa-Wang watched them go; and when they had faded into almost invisible shadows he turned to the mahout:

"You are free.... Go. Take these two back where they came from."

Without awaiting an answer from the Lao-ese he lifted the heavy club and brought it down on the back of the elephant who promptly started forward. For an instant longer he stared, following with his eyes the elephant who had already begun to swing up the slope of the Pou-Kas carrying, hanging at its sides, the two human bodies.

Then, turning round, he ran back to the temple.

He made his way back to the hall of the God, where the battle had taken place a few minutes earlier. The signs of it were still visible. Bodies of dead warriors were strewn pell-mell about the sanctuary; the white tiling was here and there stained with large dark patches which grew black as they coagulated; the dying coals of the over-turned braziers sent up a bitter-smelling smoke, the smell of which mingled with the unmistakable smell of stale blood. In a corner the hunters who had been overwhelmed by a superior number of Moï warriors lay in a group of corpses, and the red furs which they had worn were huddled together with the broken bodies of the Moï guards, with whom, tangled together even in death, they had fought to the bitter end. Axes, lances and swords lay about on the ground. Groans and the moaning of a woman lying on her back with a lance through her chest rose in the cloudy air. At the foot of a winged dragon a Moï warrior with his side laid open by a great wound was still twisting about in his last agony.

All this he saw as he went, just as he saw vaguely behind the three silver embroidered veils the enormous dark red statue in its eternal attitude of blessing and peace. But he had left it all behind him, for he had found again the subterranean passage, the gallery and the cell. And at last he emerged from the temple at the foot of the giant foundation-wall.

The blaze of the sunshine, after the shadows and darkness of the rooms and corridors which he had just crossed, dazzled him. He blinked his eyes, and stopped to make sure of his direction. Then he ran towards the grotto in which he had enclosed his prey, the living trophy of his victory. On his breast, on his left thigh, and on his shoulder, savage wounds ran blood, but he felt them not. He thought only of the golden-haired woman. His desire for her, and the pride of having conquered as she had told him to, swept from his mind all other feeling and all consideration of everything else. He came near the cave in which she was waiting for him. A last bound brought him to the entrance—and he saw it yawning open, all the rocks which he had piled up against it flung to one side.

After a short pause of stupefaction, he jumped into the cave. It was empty. He remained a second without understanding, looking at the ground stamped with footmarks, the mouth of the cavern, and the huge stones flung about the entrance. Then, bending down, he picked up a strip of white silk tunic, and this rag, which he recognized as the same material which Jieng wore as her sacred uniform and which he found now in the very place where he had shut up his vanished prey, filled him with insane rage....

A cry like that of a wild beast sprang from his throat. All his animal fury came back in full force: he rushed towards the temple. A single thought, a single instinct drove him: to find his woman, to take her and carry her away.... Once more he came out into the sanctuary. His face contorted in frenzy, he looked about him, seeking and running from one shadowed corner to another, looking behind the pillars, upsetting the braziers, savagely mutilating with his axe the granite idols that he found in his way. His lust for murder became a paroxysm! He growled without ceasing; and before his haggard eyes the light of the brazier fires seemed to grow larger and to mix one with the other. The hall of the temple looked red to him ... red ... for he was now nothing but a brute beast in delirium.... He ran straight ahead, turning neither to the right nor to the left; and suddenly he found himself opposite the three silver veils facing the statue of the God. He flung himself madly upon them. The curtains, torn apart, fell upon him. He fought with them, rending them to shreds and stamping on them. Then he attacked the image of the God. The arms, the face, and the metal body of the Divinity splintered by his club were defaced, broken and wrecked. It rocked on its base; a final blow flung it crashing to the ground. Hanging over it he tore from the image the barbaric collar that it wore about its neck, then he set himself again to pounding it into fragments....

Through the silence the sound of his blows rang and rang until the idol was nothing but a broken heap of formless wreckage. Leaving it then, he resumed his furious course and burst howling into a corridor. He crossed other halls and other passages, swinging his club about him at random. From his open wounds the blood trickled and ran in streams spattering the tiles and the walls. Fragments of stone and the splinters from the flint of his club had struck him in the face; the cuts they had made had bloodied his forehead and his cheeks. He was red from his hair to his heels. Everything that was human in him was in abeyance. He was now only a male animal, a brute, mad with the frenzy of battle and disappointed desire.

He continued his aimless rush through the temple, crossing room after room; but now on his way phantoms slid from his path and hid themselves behind pillars, reappearing behind him, following his course and accompanying him, invisible, but every moment more numerous. At last he arrived in a narrow room without any other exit than a lofty door, above which, on a cornice formed by a heavy marble slab the granite image of a giant dragon stood on guard. He ran straight for the door but just as he was crossing the threshold with a sudden crash the dragon fell, pinning him to the ground....

He fell without a cry.

And while the priestesses swarmed out from all the dark corners and ran towards him, two sorceresses, crouched on the edge of the cornice from which they had pushed the fallen dragon, leant over and watched the trickles of blood which began to flow and spread from under the massive stone monster....

CHAPTER XXV

ESCAPE

The elephant, with a heavy swinging gait, made its way through the green shade of the forest. Hanging from its side Lursac, with wide open eyes, shivered all over. Around him floated the stagnant, decaying smell of the undergrowth, like the sickening and enervating atmosphere of a hot greenhouse. The vegetation became thicker. A dull greenish half-light, like an illumination at the bottom of the sea, seemed to suck the color from the bushes and spread over the massed verdure a uniform light as of the interior of a tomb.

Hours passed thus, and finally the light grew dimmer. An acrid mist rising from the soil spread itself in long streamers and floated upward like a pallid veil. Under the frondage the dusk became more sombre and violent in tint; a shaft of reddish light struck through the branches, lingered for a moment; then suddenly darkness spread over the mountain and invaded the depths of the forest. The mahout continued to urge on his beast. The voices of the night arose, and unknown cries came out of the darkness. But now Pierre was delirious. Great phantoms, grotesque and nameless, danced and fled before his eyes. Imaginary scenes rose up before him, and with all his strength he tried to pursue them. He could not sleep; he hung there motionless watching the peopled night before him with fixed eyes....

In his waxen and rigid face only his eyes seemed to be still alive. They stared straight in front with a burning gaze focussed in the far distance. Now and again the strange shapes which inhabited the darkness caused him to break into a terrified laugh. The suspension of his reasoning powers had left him just a wounded animal clinging to life in spite of everything, with nothing but a persistent instinct to guide him.

Suddenly Father Ravennes, his head hanging loose and jerking with the steps of the elephant, began to groan. His moans broke the heavy silence of the night steadily, persistently, with a sound that was gently monotonous. And this was the last noise which Pierre remembered before falling into the depths of an unconsciousness as deep as death.

It was still this moaning that he heard when he came out of his insensibility and had begun reaching towards life again. He opened his eyes. It was day. Above his head he saw the leafy summit of a tree—the only thing within his circle of vision—with branches of a green that was almost black and leaves of a more vivid hue. He tried to move, to sit up, but an intense weakness held him full length on the earth, his backbone pressed to the cold damp soil and his face staring at the sky and watching through the leaves the trailing streaks of gray cloud.

He did not understand it yet. What was he doing there? Why were these trees all round him?

The groaning continued. Now and then it stopped, but went on again more heavily. He turned his head in the direction of the sound and he found, a few paces away from him, the missionary, his back supported against the trunk of a tamarind, his eyes closed, his face livid, and his half-open mouth emitting this endless moaning.

Suddenly his brain was flooded by a wave of remembrance which swept away his passive acceptance of things as they were. He struggled to his knees and cried out:

"Wanda!... Wanda!..."

Clutching the tree under which he had been lying, he managed to stand up, but he had to cling to the trunk to prevent himself falling. Leaning against it he cast a hesitating glance about him. He was on the outside of the forest, opposite a narrow clearing which ended in a definite opening, looking out upon a valley of which he was able to see the further end stretching southward to the horizon. Close by him, at his very feet, a ray of light struck down between two branches and broke in fragments of gold on the patches of moss. The dense shadows of the trees fell on the ground in parallel bars of black shade. A lizard, pressed into the warm hollows of the rock, shrilled its short musical cry. Dazed, and with flickering eyes, Lursac remained motionless. The sun flamed overhead, flooding the scene beyond the forest with merciless light. The radiant air seemed to vibrate.

The young man drew in one deep breath after another; the blood came back to his face and he cried again:

"Wanda!... Wanda!..."

At the sound of his voice the priest opened his eyes and his groaning became louder and more heart-rending. Pierre shook his head, trying with every ounce of strength that was in him to conquer his weakness. He managed to walk heavily and slowly in the direction of the missionary. When he got close up to him he felt like fainting at the terrible sight which he saw.

The whole side of the priest's tunic was stiff with coagulated blood. In the middle of this, through the rents made by the Moï sword, two ghastly wounds could be seen covered with ants,—the terrible red ants of the Lao-ese forest—which swarmed to the attack in a column along the leg of the helpless man.

Before the horror of the martyrdom which the missionary was undergoing and must have suffered for hours, Lursac shuddered and had to clench his teeth to prevent himself from crying out. He ran at the insects and dispersed them with stamps and blows, sweeping them away with his hands and tramping them into the ground. Then he pushed the priest a little further off to protect him from their attacks and laid him gently down. Tenderly raising the edges of the tears in the clothes he exposed the two wounds: a great deep slash in the side through which at every respiration the blood pumped afresh, and down the leg a long jagged tear. With a strip from the lining of his military tunic, Pierre cleaned the wounds, sweeping out the voracious insects which still clung there, and did his pitiful best to make the dying man comfortable. It was when he saw his own hands bathed in the blood of his friend like those of a butcher that once again a mortal sickness came over him and he was on the point of fainting.

The priest closed his eyes; he was no longer groaning. He murmured:

"Thank you.... I am not in pain now...."

Trying to raise his hand, he whispered:

"My cross."

Pierre, taking off the rosary of black wood which hung from the missionary's neck, put it between his fingers. The pale hand fumbled with the beads until it reached the silver cross, which it gripped caressingly. His features suddenly relaxed and took on an appearance of peaceful sweetness.

"And you ... you? ..." he muttered.

Pierre understood his thought; tears rose to his eyes.

He shrugged his shoulders wearily.

"Don't worry about me," he said, "I will take you home.... Afterwards ... afterwards ... I do not know...."

The priest moved his head; his voice became stronger, almost clear:

"No.... I am done for.... I am dying ... here in the heart of this country which I have loved so much and where I have suffered so much...."

His gray beard suddenly seemed to become darker against the livid pallor of his face.

"And then, I have seen," he said, "that wonderful thing, the Red Gods: a prehistoric tribe such as used to be thirty thousand years ago...."

A scarcely visible smile fluttered on his colorless lips.

"My God," he whispered, "pardon me!... This is my last attack of pride...."

He gave a groan; the movement having sent a spasm of torture through his side, he shut his eyes. His wax-like lids became gradually mauve, then white with a whiteness that seemed unreal and almost transparent.

Pierre bent over him, heard him murmuring softly, peacefully:

"Since it is here that you have willed that I should die.... Thy holy will be done, O God!..."

Then in a voice now vague and indistinct he said once more:

"Sweet Jesus, give me rest!..."

His words became still more indistinct and confused, and he repeated several times:

"Rest ... rest...."

And then he was silent. The pale and shrunken hand which pressed the crucifix against his lips stiffened, slipped, and fell back on his breast.

For a long time Pierre remained on his knees in contemplation before this ascetic, sad, waxen face now smiling with a curious smile—peaceful, tender and serene—a last gleam from this great sweet and kindly soul....

Then in a sort of unconscious torpor, against which vague images floated, flickered and vanished, he thought of the conventional rites; but the earth in which he would have dug a bed for this poor martyred body was cold and hard, full of tangled roots and crossed by veins of rock, and he had to content himself with drawing the corpse to the foot of a tree and covering it with a thick mass of leaves, branches and moss. From the branch of the tree above he hung the rosary of the priest, and over the rough and ready tomb the silver crucifix swung softly in the breeze.

When Pierre had finished this last office for his dead friend, he sat down and wiped the sweat from his face. He stayed motionless, delving among the remembrances of his childhood for the words of a prayer, but nothing came—only a single phrase kept recurring to his mind, and he repeated it mechanically over and over again:

"Our Father which art in Heaven.... Our Father which art in Heaven...."

The rest of the invocation had lost itself in the troubled night of forgetfulness, in a mingling and changing wave of images, thoughts and feelings which rushed into his mind, passed through it and fled....

Wanda.... The Post.... Redeski.... The temple.... The ravine of Gondwana.... The aurochs.... The mammoths.... Jieng.... The battle in the sanctuary.... The caverns.... And then Wanda again.... Wanda.... Wanda.... Wanda...!

He stood up: an immense despair fell upon him. He looked again at the simple tomb in which the missionary was sleeping; then he went. His legs bent under him with weakness, his brain reeled, as he walked towards the edge of the clearing. At the same moment a bell in the distance began to sound slowly. Stupefaction struck Pierre motionless, then a shock drove him forwards. A bell: houses, ... white men, ... help, ... life.... He ran forward stumbling, and, suddenly opening his arms wide, he fell on his knees.

At the bottom of the green, level valley, which he saw before him and recognized immediately, there was no longer any Post 32.... Its wrecked palisades showed great breaches. Against the background of the canal, which flowed peaceably on its way as usual, the burned piling showed its blackened stumps: of the huts which had sheltered Wanda and himself so recently, of the sheds which served as lodgings for the riflemen, of the stables and the guardhouse, nothing was left but five gray patches out of which stuck blackened beams.

But on the horizon, in the midst of its green peaceful oasis the bell of the Mission still sounded, and across the military post, which the people of the forest had just destroyed for the third time, its frail metallic voice was wafted on the wind, ringing the evening Angelus.

CHAPTER XXVI

A MESSAGE FROM JIENG

Buttoning up his waistcoat, Pierre went to the window and pushed open the blinds. A wave of sunlight flooded his little room, lighting up the whitewashed walls and making the copper-mounted bed sparkle. Under its influence, the odor of drugs which had filled the room seemed to evaporate from the two arm-chairs and the bamboo table loaded with pots and bottles. Outside, the clock that ornamented the façade of the hospital struck the hour, five clear leisurely strokes, which fell slowly, one by one, in the vast sluggishness of the afternoon. Other blinds were thrown back noisily, and little by little life pursued its daily resurrection after the torrid hours of the siesta.

Leaning on his elbows at his window, Pierre let his glance wander over the familiar scene. Beyond the great veranda which ran the whole length of the building, and upon which the rooms of the patients opened, he could see the hospital park spreading out with its green turf and leafy trees, and between them the sanded walks, stretching like yellow ribbons striped alternately with shadow and sunlight. Far off, half seen through the gaps in the foliage, shone the whiteness of the hospital wall which kept at a distance the noise and the traffic of Saigon.

Pierre stretched himself and tried his muscles. He felt himself very weak, his nerves flabby and his body heavy; the slowness and uncertainty of each of his movements showing him how complete had been his physical breakdown, how deep and lasting the disarrangement of his vital mechanism to which five months of hospital treatment had only succeeded in bringing back a weak illusion of energy, a pretense of strength.... He smiled bitterly. Nothing would ever bring back to him the vigor of his body, the richness and the freshness of his blood—in a word, his youth!... And his mind itself, disrupted by suffering, suddenly appeared to him old, worn out and pitiful.

The noise of the door opening behind him interrupted his gloomy thoughts.

He turned about, raising his sallow face to the Sister of Charity who had just entered. She smiled softly, with that self-effacing smile which was habitual with her:

"Well, my child, I hope you are pleased. Today for the first time you are to be allowed to go out into the park."

He made no answer, keeping his expression of indifference and depression.

She shook her head, making the white wings of her head-dress flap to and fro:

"How do you feel?"

She looked into his eyes.

"Come," said she, "that's enough of those black thoughts. Come for a walk outside—the sun will do you good."

He bowed his head and remained motionless and lifeless.

"Listen, Sister Thérèse," he said, "I want...."

He hesitated, his eyes sought the eyes of the sister:

"What?" she asked, "still full of questions, eh? How did you get here? This is the twentieth time you have asked me that, but I know nothing about it, my child. If I knew, I would tell you, you know that! Why should I want to hide it from you? But no, I promise you.... They brought you here one evening; I was on duty, and I took you in and looked after you. You were delirious, and I thought,—I can tell you this now that you are practically cured—that you were going to slip away from me. And then you had an attack of gastritis complicated with brain-fever and you talked ... you talked...."

Pierre raised his head quickly.

"What did I say?"

"How do I know? If you think I take notice of all the nonsense my patients talk! I have lots of other things to think about. First of all I had to prevent you getting out of bed, and your one idea was to dress yourself and start off."

She spoke lightly, accompanying her phrases with gestures. Underneath her words could be felt the joy which she experienced in seeing this patient of hers, for whose life she had fought hour by hour, up and about again. She took his arm and shook it affectionately.

"Now, go, you stupid!" she said. "Underneath the wall over there you will find your friends. Talk with them: it will ease your mind. They will tell you the latest scandal of Saigon. You will see, they have lots of jokes—at least I suppose so from hearing their shouts of laughter—for they take very good care never to tell them to me, the scamps!"

And she pushed him out of the door and shut it behind his back with a little laugh.

Pierre found himself under the veranda. The sweetish smell of the bougainvilleas in flower, the stems of which crept in masses over the wooden balustrade, floated heavily in the air and mingled with the stale odor of drugs, whiffs of which escaped from the open door. Rolled up in rugs, their skeleton-like bodies loose in the hospital pyjamas of gray wool, the convalescents lay, trying to accustom their eyes to the blazing light which fell from a cloudless sky the color of deep turquoise. A gentle breeze drifted among the deck-chairs, enveloping the patients with its kindly warmth.

Pierre went down a staircase and came out into an avenue. He walked slowly with short steps as groping and uncertain as his thoughts. In the middle of a circle of turf a watering-pipe sent up a mist of spray which the setting sun edged with a miniature rainbow. A vast peace lay over the whole park,—a satisfying and contemplative silence broken only here and there by the sudden whistlings of birds. Pierre, following his course, came into an avenue of flame-trees: on the bare earth large purple blossoms fallen from the branches made spots of vivid red across the patches of shade which were riddled with little circles of sunlight ceaselessly trembling and dancing among them.

At the end of the avenue a chorus of cries greeted him:

"Aha, Lursac! Out for the first time?"

"This is better than the native huts!"

Pierre acknowledged the greetings with a weary movement of his hand.

There were four of them—four young men escaped like himself from the privations of the forest and re-united here by the chances of sickness. One down from Cambodia, two from the Chinese frontier and the fourth just brought in from Cochin-China.

This last said to him:

"Yes ... it is a good deal better. As for me, when they let me out after three months in bed...."

And he went off into a long account of his own convalescence.

Pierre lay back in an arm-chair by the table on which playing-cards were lying about in disorder by open newspapers.

The man who had spoken first—a big fellow with laughing eyes and sarcastic mouth—took one of the papers, unfolded it, looking for something.

"Here you are, old chap. There's something about you in this ... half a column at least. 'The famous Post 32 again!' Good heading, eh? As for the article, it is a regular wonder, nothing better was ever invented in any editorial office!"

Pierre stretched out his hand for it.

"No, listen.... I'll read it to you out loud. It is worth the trouble!..."

And in his mocking voice he declaimed:

"'THE FAMOUS POST 32 AGAIN

"'Without doubt our readers will remember the tragedy which took place here some five months ago at the foot of the Pou-Kas, the scene of which was Post 32, long celebrated in the annals of our Indo-Chinese history. For those of our readers who have forgotten this sad affair we will give a brief resumé of it. M. de Lursac, a young administrator with splendid prospects ... (I salute you, my boy; the Press admires you! It is the only original passage in the article. I continue:) ... a young administrator with splendid prospects was despatched at his own request to Post 32, the responsibility for which he was to share with Lieutenant Redeski. Administrator Lursac had been ordered to proceed, on taking up his duties, with a police operation against the independent Moï tribes of the district. Everybody still remembers the result of this expedition. Starting out in company with the Rev. Father Ravennes, of the Apostolic Mission to the Banhars, M. de Lursac was found a month later wandering in the forest in a condition of collapse and sickness which left the possibility of his recovery doubtful for a long time. His escort of native riflemen scattered in continual attacks, his elephants killed by poisoned arrows, his reverend companion dead by the way of a wound received in an ambush, he was alone in the midst of the vast Lao-ese forest. M. de Lursac was attempting to find his way back to the Post when he fell, conquered by weakness and exhaustion; but he had succeeded, thanks to an extraordinary will power ... (I greet you once more!) ... in reaching the outskirts of it, and it was at a distance of only a few miles from the station which had been destroyed during his absence that the converts of Father Ravennes discovered the young administrator, dying, and in a state of destitution impossible to describe. We understand that a successor to him has just been appointed. Would it not be better before uselessly sacrificing the lives and energies of our young men ... (All salute him, gentlemen!) ... to first of all set to work seriously to clean out the district and to put down with an iron hand this rebellious horde that makes our rule over this part of the hinterland simply illusory? It appears to us indeed, impossible that the authorities who pretend to be so anxious about it, etc., etc.'

"Then follows a whole list of suggestions—all illusory, as the editor of this estimable journal would say—in which the Colonial Government gets a few of these truths which it is customary to hand it on occasion.... What have you got to say about it, young administrator of most splendid prospects?"

He stopped speaking. All eyes turned to Lursac. He considered. What could he tell them? The truth!... Ah! the truth!... He shrugged his shoulders, deciding to leave uncontradicted the fantastic version given by the Saigon papers.

But the other obstinately asked a definite question:

"How much truth is there in all this nonsense?"

Pierre felt that it was necessary to give some answer.

"Sentences here and there!" he said, evasively. "It was very simple.... The linhs deserted almost at once; the mahouts in their turn got away with their animals and all the provisions, so that I found myself one fine day alone with Father Ravennes, who had been wounded the night before during an attack on a village. We wandered through the forest aimlessly, straying here and there and going in a circle and then ... and then...."

He shut his eyes. An unconquerable lassitude fell upon him, he lay back heavily in his chair.

"And then," continued the voice of one of the young men, "you woke up in hospital. Here or elsewhere it is always the same story. Some leave their skins behind and others bring them out with them. That's life, that is!... They give us an order, we carry it out. As for the rest, it all depends on the will of Buddha. As my girl says to me, 'We are in the hands of the Perfect One!'"

He crumpled up the paper, rolled it into a ball and flung it over the wall.

There was a long silence. In the street which ran just the other side of the wall, the rhythmic trot of a rickshaw coolie came up, passed by, and died into the distance, and then a song rose; it was the song of a beggar imploring charity in a tremulous tearful voice. The sun, slowly descending, shot slanting rays of light across the avenues of the park. The sky, changing slowly through gold and purple, became mauve: the piping birds sounded more softly and less often: an invisible bell behind the wall of trees and buildings sounded out in short repeated strokes.

The young men got up.

"Are you coming, Lursac?"

Pierre was recalling the past. Once more he saw Ravennes and the humble tomb of greenery above it; and in the depths of the vast Lao-ese forest the rosary that would swing its crucifix of tarnished silver whenever the wind blew from the north down the slope of the Pou-Kas. He thought of Wanda. Where was she, and what had become of her? Was she still a prisoner of the tribe? Prisoner?...

He saw again the wild rush of the men of Gondwana. He thought of the love of their chief for Wanda. Prisoner? Ah!... Ah!...

A hand shook him:

"Lursac! Here, Lursac! When are you going to finish dreaming with your eyes open? The first dinner bell has just rung. Are you coming?"

Suddenly the song of the beggar on the other side of the wall died away.

Pierre shook his head.

"I have plenty of time," he said, "it is still quarter of an hour to the second bell."

The young men, careless, left him. One of them began telling a scandalous story which was going the round in Saigon. Gradually his voice and the laughter of his fellows became indistinct as they moved away.

Once more fallen into a revery, Pierre felt a bitter pleasure in again going over his sufferings in detail. Suddenly his former despair fell upon him. Again he was tortured,—perhaps more terribly than he had ever been. His grief which had remained in abeyance during his illness came alive again. His heart contracted; he called out, hoarsely:

"Wanda!... Wanda!..."

Behind the tall white wall the dragging footstep of the beggar and her song came again—then something pale, flung from the street, fell on an arm-chair, rebounded and rolled on the ground. Pierre, surprised, remained motionless for a second. The song had again ceased and hurried steps could be heard making away. Bending down he picked up the object and examined it. It was a packet, carefully done up in a dirty rag. Opening it with an instinctive fear he looked at the contents and seized with a convulsive fit of trembling remained nailed to his seat, incapable of moving.... Then, he rushed to the entrance gate. The rifleman on guard, scared at his violence, watched him go out without making any effort to stop him. There was not a soul in the street. Pierre made the complete circuit of the hospital, running as hard as he could, coming back to the entrance gate. Then dashing into the next street he followed it exhausted, his heart beating so as to suffocate him, until he could run no longer. His clenched hand clung to the packet.

About him people hurried to and fro, elbowing him and pushing him aside without his noticing it. At the corner of the boulevard he was almost run over. The coachman, flinging himself back on his seat with the reins pulled up tight, dragged his ponies to one side and missed him by an inch, cursing him volubly. He heard him not and noticed nothing. His eyes looking straight before him saw a phantom which fled him ceaselessly and which he as ceaselessly pursued.

At last, opposite a shop window he pulled up. The glass of the window reflected his own image and he looked at it for a moment with stupefaction. Was that he?... This fleshless skeleton of a body ... with gestures feverish, ugly and grotesque? Was that the body of him, Pierre de Lursac?... That livid face, all flat hollows and projecting bones; this withered flesh; these wrinkles; these eyes shining with fever and yet dull; these loose burned up lips—all these things ... were they his eyes, his face, his mouth?... He gave a terrible grin and clenched his fists; the packet which he was still carrying crackled.... And once more he resumed his aimless way.

Under the arched trees along the avenues the shade was deeper. Rickshaws and carriages went about hurriedly to unknown destinations. The usual life cast up its flood of passers-by, its under-current of natives, its noises, its smells;—and he, among it all, was like a scrap of flotsam drifting at random.... Then night fell, and lights shone through the dark. They became fewer and disappeared altogether for a while, for he was following a road which led out of the city and ran across the open country.

He still kept going.... He came to a canal and followed it. The voices of sampan men came to him and the smell of Annamese cooking. At long distances between, a victoria, a malabar and a few rickshaws passed him or met him. The light of their lanterns striking out in the darkness threw a brief illumination upon him and shed a narrow, yellow light on the opposite side of the road which quickly fled away from him and disappeared....

Then, again, he found himself in the neighborhood of a crowd of human beings, the lights and the human scurryings of a native village. And suddenly he came to himself. With a flash the cloud of hallucination which had encompassed him fell away and vanished. He looked about him with haggard eyes. He was on the outskirts of Cho-lon. On his left he could see the dark furrow of the canal crowded with a mass of junks and sampans and spotted with enormous native lamps; on his right the houses of the Chinese town rose with their colored lanterns and flamboyant signs and gildings and their stalls.

He hesitated. Casting a heavy glance over the canal with its black and oily water, stagnant between its muddy banks, he then turned towards the town and saw in front of him a shop above which a panel of black lacquer bore in gold letters the name of the proprietor. He read mechanically between two columns of Chinese characters:

TSEN-TAC

CHINESE CURIOS AND SILKS

CANTON. SAIGON. SHANGHAI.

He said to himself:

"Tsen-Tac?... Tsen-Tac?..."

This name brought to life in some obscure corner of his mind a sleeping memory. Suddenly he remembered: at the bottom of the passageway in the inner shop: Opium,—the drug that gives forgetfulness and peace.

Making up his mind he walked to the door and pushed it open violently. The pot-bellied owner, with his little narrow eyes lost among the billowings of his vast face, greeted him with an obsequious smile. He was already framing a phrase of welcome when Pierre cut him short with a rough shrug of the shoulders.

"Shandoo," he said heavily.

And he rattled several piastres in the bottom of his pocket.

The "compere"[20] made his smile still broader. His fat face took on an air of secrecy. He flung a cautious look around the empty shop and then with his hand, sparkling with rings of pink and green jade, he pointed to a hanging in the furthest corner.

Pierre, raising it, slid into the passage. In front of him at the further end stood a door, lighted by a dim lantern of figured silk. He stopped for a second, pushing his hands into his pockets. With a hoarse sigh, he felt the packet which had come to him in such a strange manner a few hours earlier and he began to withdraw his hand slowly, bringing out with it towards the light the.... A shudder shook him from head to foot. He could not complete the movement; more haggard than before, if possible, he bent his head....

"I cannot ... not yet.... Later ... presently.... When I have smoked ten pipes ... twelve pipes.... When the opium has.... Then, yes.... I will see if it is really her ... her hand ... with the ring ... my signet ring...."

An uncontrollable sob shook him.

Once more he repeated:

"Her hand ... her hand...."

And he pushed open the door and entered the opium den.

[1] Captain Jacques Bressond fell on the French front, July 28, 1917, in the attack on the Chemin des Dames. At the bottom of his dispatch case among the personal souvenirs which he had asked me to send to his family if he was killed, there lay a large yellow, commercial-looking envelope with the inscription "For Jean." In the envelope there were the pages that follow, accompanied by a roll of parchment covered with unknown characters, probably in the Banhar language. My sole care has been to see to the publication of Bressond's text with a mixed feeling of respect and tenderness for his heroic death and friendship for the man himself. Although the names given by Bressond are real ones I have not changed a single word of his story, for the correctness of which I take full responsibility.

J. d'E.

[2] Very well, sir.

[3] Quick, quick!

[4] Start forward, quickly.

[5] "Moon" is used by the Indo-Chinese natives to signify a single phase of the moon, not a month, which would be four "moons."

[6] Sorceress; Bia-bo-Jaou: Queen of the sorceresses, the high priestess.

[7] France.

[8] Altar for performing incantations.

[9] An independent tribe of Upper Laos.

[10] The night-watches are four in number, of three hours each, beginning at six o'clock in the evening.

[11] A greenish gray discoloration which occurs on ancient bronzes and other worked articles.

[12] Faint branching marks, which occur on flints which have been worked by men of prehistoric times. These designs are due to the long-continued oxidisation of the iron and manganese in the stone.

[13] What is it?

They have gone, they have fled!

[14] A Cambodian girl.

[15] Father Ravennes was considerably out in his estimate. The continent of Gondwana of which he spoke dates from the first part of the secondary era in which the great Hercynian upheaval took place. The discovery of radium has given us a method of establishing the distance of that era from our time as about four million years. If we admit then that the Gondwana ravine discovered by Lursac and Ravennes only dated from the end of the secondary era it would be separated from the present day by the entire tertiary era and the beginning of the quaternary era in which we now are. According to the calculations of Dana, of Lord Kelvin and of Edmond Perrier, the tertiary era and what has elapsed of the quaternary make a total of at least one million five hundred thousand years.

[16] Father Ravennes was here making allusion to the traditions of antiquity which are all agreed on the existence of a prehistoric race called the Red Race which must have been the first human race. This Red Race was that of the masters, the Gods. The Egyptian bas-reliefs show (writes M. Michel Manzi in a remarkable scientific work) that there were then four races, the red, the yellow, the black and the white. In India the famous Rutas who are traditionally supposed to have brought civilization to the world are represented as red men. All the most ancient peoples, the Iberians, Basques, Chaldeans, etc., claimed to have been of this color and to be descended from the sons of Ad the first man, the Red. The word Adam indeed means Red Man.... The Arabs also claim descent from the sons of Ad, the great antediluvian race, the race of giants who erected vast buildings of hewn stone.

[17] This confirms very precisely the hypothesis made earlier by Father Ravennes. The Red Gods of the Pou-Kas would, according to this, be a preserved branch of the great antediluvian race of the sons of Ad. From these, according to the sacred writings of India, the different races that peopled the earth had their origin: first the red race and then the yellow race. The first included, the Rmoahal, the Zlavakis, the Zoltecs. The Rmoahal, who are evidently the red gods of Lursac's history are described as follows: "This was the most ancient race—four or five million years old. The men were walnut brown and very tall—ten to twelve feet. At the time of the great earth cataclysm they emigrated towards Upper Asia."

[18] The "Slow Death" was, to be precise, invented by the emperor Gia-Long, founder of the dynasty of Nguyen. He practiced it on the daughters of Huë, chief of the Tay-Son rebels, and on thirty members of his family. Here is the description of the torture given by the Annamese historian, Truong-Vin-Ky: "First the flesh of the limbs is cut off strip by strip and the bones are broken. After which the abdomen of the victim is cut open and his viscera removed. Finally after his left hand has been cut off at the wrist the limbs are chopped off at the trunk. This left hand is then embalmed and sent to the family of the criminal in order that they may remember his fate and meditate upon it."

[19] Chief of the sorceresses.

[20] Name given to the Chinese.

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]

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Table of Contents

- THE RED GODS
- CONTENTS
- THE RED GODS
- LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

- PROLOGUE

- IN TSEN-TAC'S OPIUM DEN

- CHAPTER I

- SAIGON

- CHAPTER II

- UP THE RIVER

- CHAPTER III

- A FELLOW TRAVELER

- CHAPTER IV

- POST 32

- CHAPTER V

- AT THE MISSION

- CHAPTER VI

- AN ENTHUSIAST DISCOURSES ON PRE-HISTORIC REMAINS

- CHAPTER VII

- THE SILENT VILLAGE

- CHAPTER VIII

- LOVE IN THE FOREST

- CHAPTER IX

- AN INTERVIEW WITH A SORCERESS

- CHAPTER X

- THE FUGITIVE

- CHAPTER XI

- A DESPERATE ADVENTURE

- CHAPTER XII

- THOSE LEFT BEHIND

- CHAPTER XIII

- THE FUGITIVE'S STORY

- CHAPTER XIV

- INTO THE UNKNOWN

- CHAPTER XV

- DEEPENING MYSTERY

- CHAPTER XVI

- NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY

- CHAPTER XVII

- A FREAK OF NATURE

- CHAPTER XVIII

- BACK IN THE STONE AGE

- CHAPTER XIX

- OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE

- CHAPTER XX

- INSIDE THE TEMPLE

- CHAPTER XXI

- THE LAW OF GONDWANA

- CHAPTER XXII

- WANDA TELLS HER STORY

- CHAPTER XXIII

- A TERRIBLE BARGAIN

- CHAPTER XXIV

- THE RESCUE

- CHAPTER XXV

- ESCAPE

- CHAPTER XXVI

- A MESSAGE FROM JIENG

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE