The Pools of Silence Part 22

But the sentence of the desert on the blind is death, trap vultures as cunningly as you will, and devour them as ferociously. The eye is everything in the battle of the strong against the weak. And so it came about that two days later a pair of leopards from the woods to the northeast fought with the figure, which fought with teeth and hands and feet, whilst the yellow-eyed kites looked on at a battle that would have turned with horror the heart of Flamininus.

CHAPTER XXV

TOWARD THE SUNSET

When Berselius, standing on the ridge, had looked long enough at the country before him, taking in its every detail with delight, they started again on their march, Berselius leading.

They had no guide. The only plan in Adams's head was to march straight west toward the sunset for a distance roughly equivalent to the forced march they had made in pursuit of the herd, and then to strike at right angles due north and try to strike the wood isthmus of the two great forests making up the forest of M'Bonga.

But the sunset is a wide mark and only appears at sunset. They had no compa.s.s; the elephant folk had made away with all the instruments of the expedition. They must inevitably stray from the true direction, striking into that infernal circle which imprisons all things blind and all things compa.s.sless. Even should they, by a miracle, strike the isthmus of woods, the forest would take them, confuse them, hand them from tree to tree and glade to glade, and lose them at last and for ever in one of the million pockets which a forest holds open for the lost.

The stout heart of the big man had not quailed before this prospect. He had a fighting chance; that was enough for him. But now at the re-start, as Berselius stepped forward and took the lead, a hope sprang up in his breast. A tremendous and joyful idea occurred to him. Was it possible that Berselius would guide them back?

The memory that the man possessed was so keen, his anxiety to pierce the veil before him was so overpowering, was it possible that like a hound hunting by sight instead of smell, he would lead them straight?

Only by following the exact track they had come by, could Berselius pierce back into that past he craved to see. Only by putting tree to tree and ridge to ridge, memory to memory, could he collect what he had lost.

Could he do this?

The life of the whole party depended upon the answer to that question.

The track they ought to follow was the track by which the herd had led them. Adams could not tell whether they were following that track--even Felix could scarcely have told--for the dew and the wind had made the faint traces of the elephants quite indiscernible now to civilized eyes; and Berselius never once looked at the ground under his feet, he was led entirely by the configuration of the land. That to the eyes of Adams was hopeless. For the great elephant country is all alike, and one ridge is the counterpart of another ridge, and one gra.s.sy plain of another gra.s.sy plain, and the scattered trees tell you nothing when you are lost, except that you are lost.

The heat of the day was now strong on the land; the porters sweated under their loads, and Adams, loaded like them, knew for once in his life what it was to be a slave and a beast of burden.

Berselius, who carried nothing, did not seem to feel the heat; weak though he must have been from his injury and the blood-letting. He marched on, ever on, apparently satisfied and well pleased as horizon lifted, giving place to new horizon, and plain of waving gra.s.s succeeded ridge of broken ground.

But Adams, as hour followed hour, felt the hope dying out in his breast, and the remorseless certainty stole upon him that they were out of their track. This land seemed somehow different from any he had seen before; he could have sworn that this country around them was not the country through which they had pursued the herd. His hope had been built on a false foundation. How could a man whose memory was almost entirely obscured lead them right? This was not the case of the blind leading the blind, but the case of the blind leading men with sight.

Berselius was deceiving himself. Hope was leading him, not memory.

And still Berselius led on, a.s.sured and triumphant, calling out, "See! do you remember that tree? We pa.s.sed it at just this distance when we were coming." Or, now, "Look at that patch of blue gra.s.s. We halted for a minute here."

Adams, after a while, made no reply. The a.s.surance and delight of Berselius as these fancied memories came to him shocked the heart. There was a horrible and sardonic humour in the whole business, a bathos that insulted the soul.

The dead leading the living, the blind leading the man with sight, lunacy leading sanity to death.

Yet there was nothing to be done but follow. As well take Berselius's road as any other. Sunset would tell them whether they were facing the sunset; but he wished that Berselius would cease.

The situation was bad enough to bear without those triumphant calls.

It was past noon now; the light wind that had been blowing in their faces had died away; there was the faintest stirring of the air, and on this, suddenly, to Adams's nostrils came stealing a smell of corruption, such as he had never experienced before.

It grew stronger as they went.

There was a slight rise in the ground before them just here, and as they took it the stench became almost insupportable, and Adams was turning aside to spit when a cry from Berselius, who was a few yards in advance, brought him forward to his side.

The rise in the ground had hidden from them a dried-up river-bed, and there before them in the sandy trough, huge amidst the boulders, lay the body of an elephant.

A crowd of birds busy about the carca.s.s rose clamouring in the air and flew away.

"Do you remember?" cried Berselius.

"Good G.o.d!" said Adams. "Do I remember!"

It was the body of the great beast they had pa.s.sed when in pursuit of the herd.

Yes, there was no doubt now that Berselius was guiding them aright. He had followed the track they had come by without deviating a hundred yards.

The great animal was lying just as they had left it, but the work of the birds was evident; horribly so, and it was not a sight to linger over.

They descended into the river bed, pa.s.sed up the other bank, and went on, Berselius leading and Adams walking by his side.

"Do you know," said Adams, "I was beginning to think you were out of the track."

Berselius smiled.

Adams, who was glancing at his face, thought that he had never seen an expression like that on the man's face before. The smile of the lips that had marked and marred his countenance through life, the smile that was half a sneer, was not there; this came about the eyes.

"He was in exactly the same position, too," said Adams. "But the birds will have him down before long. Well, he has served one purpose in his life; he has shown us we are on the right road, and he has given you back another bit of memory."

"Poor brute," said Berselius.

These words, coming from the once iron-hearted Berselius, struck Adams strangely; there was a trace of pity in their tone.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FADING MIST

They camped two hours before sundown. One of the few mercies of this country is the number of dead trees and the bushes from which one can always sc.r.a.pe the materials for a fire.

Adams, with his hunting knife and a small hatchet which was all steel and so had been uninjured in the catastrophe, cut wood enough for the fire.

They had nothing to cook with, but fortunately the food they had with them did not require cooking.

The tent was practicable, for the pole, so well had it been spliced, was as good as new. They set it up, and having eaten their supper, crept under it, leaving the porters to keep watch or not as they chose.

Berselius, who had marched so well all day, had broken down at the finish.

He seemed half dead with weariness, and scarcely spoke a word, eating mechanically and falling to sleep immediately on lying down.

But he was happy. Happy as the man who suddenly finds that he can outwalk the paralysis threatening him, or the man who finds the fog of blindness lifting before him, showing him again bit by bit the world he had deemed forever lost. Whilst this man sleeps in the tent beside his companion and the waning moon breaks up over the horizon and mixes her light with the red flicker of the fire, a word about that past of which he was in search may not be out of place.