GEORGE SAMWAYS awoke one night with a vague distressful feeling that all was not well with his island. The moon was shining, but it was casting the shadow of the palm tree in which he slept over the hollow wherein he cooked his meals, and that had never happened before.
He was alarmed and climbed down his palm tree and ran to the tall hill from which he was accustomed to observe the sea and the land that floated blue on the edge of the sea. The ascent seemed longer than usual, and when he reached the summit he was horrified to find a still higher peak before him. At this sight he was overcome with emotion and lay upon the earth and sobbed. When he could sob no more he rose to his feet and dragged himself to the top of the furthest peak and gazed out upon an empty sea. The moon was very bright. There was no land upon the edge of the sea. He raised his eyes heavenwards. The stars were moving. He looked round upon his island. It was shrunk, and the forests were uprooted and the little lake at the foot of the hill had disappeared. Before and behind his island the sea was churned and tumbled, as it was when he pressed his hands against the little waves when he went into the water to cleanse himself.
And now a wind came and a storm arose; rain came beating, and he hastened back to the hole in the ground he had dug for himself against foul weather. Then, knowing that he would not sleep, he lit his lamp of turtle oil and pith and read Tittiker.
Tittiker was the book left to him by his father whom he had put into the ground many years before, even as he had seen his father do with his mother when he was a little child. He had been born on the island, and could just remember his mother, and his father had lived long enough to teach him how to fish and hunt and make his clothes of leaves, feathers, and skins, and to read in Tittiker, but not long enough to give him any clue to the meaning of the book. But whenever he was sad it was a great solace to him, and he had read it from cover to cover forty times, for it was like talking to somebody else, and it was full of names and titles, to which he had attached personages, so that the island was very thickly populated. Through Tittiker he knew that the earth moved round the sun, that the moon moved round the earth and made the tides, that there were three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, seven days in the week, and that printing is the art of producing impressions from characters or figures.
WHEN, the next morning, he crawled out of his lair he saw a man strangely clad in black, with a shiny corded hat on his head and an apron hanging from his middle to his knees, gazing up into his palm tree and down into his kitchen. The man in black saw him and, in the language of Tittiker, said:
“Alas, my poor brother!”
“Are you my brother?” asked George.
The man in black stepped back in amazement.
“You speak Fattish?” he cried.
“I have had no one to speak to for many years,” replied George; “but my father spoke as you do.”
“Let us pray,” said the man in black, kneeling down on the sands.
“Pray? What is that?”
“To God. Surely you are acquainted with the nature of God?”
The word occurred in Tittiker.
“I often wondered what it was,” said George.
“Ssh!” said the man in black soothingly. “See! I will tell you. God made the world in six days and rested the seventh day....”
“It took me nearly six days to dig my father’s grave, and then I was very tired.”
“Ssh! Ssh! Listen.... God made the world in six days, and last of all he made man and set him to live in his nakedness and innocence by the sweat of his brow. But man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and became acquainted with original sin in the form of a serpent, and his descendants were born, lived and died in wickedness and were reduced to so terrible a plight that God in His mercy sent His son to point the way to salvation. God’s son was crucified by the Jews, was wedded to the Church, and, leaving His bride to carry His name all over the world and bring lost sheep home to the fold, ascended into Heaven. But first He descended into Hell to show that the soul might be saved even after damnation, and He rose again the third day. His Church, after many vicissitudes, reached the faithful people of Fatland, which for all it is a little island off the continent of Europe, has created the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. The Fattish people have been favoured with the only true Church, whose officers and appointed ministers are deacons, priests, rural deans, prebendaries, canons, archdeacons, deans, bishops, archbishops. I am a Bishop.”
“All that,” said George, “is in Tittiker.”
And he recited the names and salaries of six dioceses, but when he came to the seventh the Bishop blushed and bade him forbear.
“That,” he said, “is my diocese.” And he swelled out and looked down his nose and made George feel very uncomfortable, so that to bridge the difficulty he went back to the Bishop’s story.
“I like that,” he said. “And Hell is such a good word. I never heard it before.”
“Hell,” replied the Bishop, “is the place of damnation.”
“Ah! my father used to say ‘damnation.’”
“Ssh!”
“There is something about Jews in Tittiker, but what is original sin?”
The Bishop looked anxiously from left to right and from right to left and in a very low, earnest voice he said:
“Are there no women on your island?”
EVEN as the Bishop spoke there came round the point a creature than whom George had not even dreamed of any more fair. But her garments seemed to him absurd, because they clung about her nether limbs so as to impede their action. She came with little steps toward them, crying:
“My child! Not dead!”
“No, dear father. I have been drying myself over there. I have been weeping for you. I thought I was the only one saved.”
“So I thought of myself. What a wonderful young woman you are! You look as if you were going district visiting, so neat you are.”
George was staring at her with all his eyes. Never had he heard more lovely sounds than those that came from her lips.
“My daughter, Arabella,” said the Bishop.
She held out her hand. George touched it fearfully as though he dreaded lest she should melt away.
“I like you,” he said.
“I’m so hungry,” cried Arabella.
“I could eat an ox,” declared the Bishop.
George produced a kind of bread that he made from seeds, and the leg of a goat, and went off to the creek near by to fetch some clams. He also caught a crab and they had a very hearty breakfast, washed down with the milk of cocoanuts. The Bishop had explained the situation to Arabella, and she said:
“And am I really the first woman you have ever seen!”
“I had a mother,” replied George simply, “But she was not beautiful like you. She dressed differently and her legs were fat and strong.”
“There, there!” said the Bishop. But Arabella laughed merrily.
The Bishop told how they had been with nineteen other Bishops and their families upon a cruise in the steam-yacht Oyster, each Bishop engaging to preach on Sundays to the lay passengers, and how the propeller had been broken and they had been carried out of their course and tossed this way and that, and finally wrecked (he thought) with the loss of all hands, though the wireless operator had stuck to his post to the last and managed to get off the tidings of the calamity with latitude and longitude into the air.
It all conveyed very little to George, but it was an acute pleasure to him to hear their voices, and as they talked he looked from one to the other with a happy, friendly smile.
He was very proud to show his island to his visitors, but distressed at the havoc wrought by the storm, and he apologised for its unusual behaviour in moving.
“It has never done it before,” he explained, and was rather hurt because Arabella laughed.
He showed them where, as far as he could remember, his father and mother lay buried, and he took them to the top of the hill, and to amuse them caught a goat and a little kind of kangaroo there was in the forest, and a turtle. He displayed his hammock in the palm tree and showed how he curled up in it and wedged himself in so as not to fall out, and promised to prepare two other trees for them. They demurred. The Bishop asked if he might have the lair, and Arabella asked George to build her a house. He did not know what a house was, but looked it up in Tittiker and could find mention only of the House of Swells and the House of Talk. Arabella made a little house of sand; he caught the idea and spent the day weaving her a cabin of palm branches and mud and pebbles. He sang whole passages from Tittiker as he worked, and when it was finished he led Arabella to the cabin and she smiled so dazzlingly that he reeled, but quickly recovered himself, remembered as in a vision how it had been with his mother, flung his arms round her neck and kissed her, saying:
“I love you.”
“I think we had better look for my father,” said Arabella.
FOR three nights did the Bishop sleep in the lair and Arabella in her cabin. A grey scrub grew on the Bishop’s chin, and during the daytime he instructed George solemnly and heavily as he delivered himself of his invariable confirmation address,—(on the second day he baptised George in the creek, and Arabella was delighted to be his god-mother)—with an eager pride as he told him of the Skitish Isles where his diocese and the seat of the Empire lay. The United Kingdom, he said, consisted of four countries, Fatland, Smugland, Bareland, and Snales, but only Fatland mattered, because the Fattish absorbed the best of the Smugs and the Barish and the Snelsh and found jobs for the cleverest of them in Bondon or Buntown, which was the greatest city in the world. He assured George that he might go down on his knees and thank God—now that he was baptised—for having been born a Fattishman, and that if they ever returned to Bondon he would receive a reward for having added to the Skitish Empire.
George knew all about the Emperor-King and his family, and liked the idea of giving his island as a present. He asked the Bishop if he thought the Emperor-King would give him Arabella.
“That,” said the Bishop, “does not rest with the Emperor-King.”
“But I want her,” answered George.
Thereafter the Bishop was careful never to leave his daughter alone, so that at last she protested and said she found Mr. Samways very interesting and was perfectly able to take care of herself.
So she was, and next time George kissed her she gave him a motherly caress in return and he was more than satisfied; he was in an ecstasy of happiness and danced to please her and showed her all the little tricks he had invented to while away the tedium of his solitude, as lying on his back with a great stone on his feet and kicking it into the air, and walking on his knees with his feet in his hands, and thrusting his toe into his mouth. He was downcast when she asked him not to repeat some of his tricks.
On the fourth day, for want of any other employment, the Bishop decided to confirm George, who consented willingly when he learned that Arabella had been confirmed. The ceremony impressed him greatly, and he had just resolved never to have anything to do with Original Sin when a terrifying boom broke in upon their solemnity. Some such noise had preceded the detachment of the island, and George ran like a goat to the top of the hill, whence, bearing down, he saw a dark grey vessel belching smoke and casting up a great wave before and leaving a white spume aft. Also on the side of the island away from his dwelling he saw two sticks above water, and knew, from the Bishop’s description, that it must be the steam-yacht Oyster. He hastened back with the news, and presently the vessel hove in sight of the beach, and it conceived and bare a little vessel which put out and came over the waves to the shore. A handsome man all gold and blue stepped out of the little vessel and planted a stick with a piece of cloth on it on the sands and said:
“I claim this island for the Skitish Empire.”
“This island,” said the Bishop, “is the property of Mr. George Samways.”
“Damme,” roared the man in gold and blue, “it isn’t on the chart.”
“Mr. Samways was born here,” said Arabella with the most charming smile.
“Yes.” George saw the man glance approvingly at Arabella and was anxious to assert himself. “Yes, I was born on the island, but it broke loose in a storm.”
The officer roared again, the Bishop protested, the men in the boat grinned, and at last Arabella took the affair in hand and explained that her father was the Bishop of Bygn and that they had been in the ill-fated Oyster.
The officer removed his hat and begged pardon. They had received messages from the Oyster, but the bearings were wrongly reported. Sighting land not marked on the chart, they had decided to turn in to annex it, but, of course, if Mr. Samways were a Skitish subject that would be unnecessary, and—hum, ha!—All’s well that ends well and it was extremely fortunate.
Arabella said that Mr. Samways was not only a Skitish subject but a member of the Church of Fatland, and would be only too pleased to hand over his island to the Colonial or whatever office might desire to govern it. Mr. Samways was, so far, the island’s whole permanent population and would gladly give all particulars. For herself she was only anxious to return to Fatland, and was excited at the prospect of travelling on board one of the Emperor-King’s ships of war. Meanwhile would Mr. ——
“Bich.”
—would Mr. Bich stay to luncheon?
Mr. Bich stayed to luncheon. In the afternoon he made a rough survey of the island, sounded the surrounding waters, declared that movement had ceased, and that so far as he could make out the island was fast on a submarine reef, with which it had collided so violently that a promontory had cracked and was even now sinking, and with it the Oyster.
Careful examination of the shore on that side of the island revealed no more than the bodies of two Lascars, two nailbrushes, a corded silk hat, a Bible, a keg of rum and five tins of condensed milk. In that awful shipwreck had perished nineteen Bishops and their families, a hundred and ten members of the professional and trading classes, the crew, the captain, mates, and a cat.
They stood there on that wild shore amid the solitude of sea and sky, the Skitish officer, the Bishop, Arabella, and George Samways, and their emotions were too deep for words.
THE ship lay-to, and, while the Captain and Mr. Bich discussed the island in the language of their trade, the Bishop, whenever possible, preached a sermon, or discoursed on the beauties of nature; but Arabella took George under her protection, had his hair cut and his beard shaved, and with a smile bought of the youngest sub-lieutenant a suit of his shore-going clothes, a set of shirts, collars, and all necessary under-garments. George found them most uncomfortable, but bore with them for her sake.
As the result of the eloquence of Mr. Bich the Captain went ashore and returned to report that, the promontory now having sunk to the depths of the ocean, a very decent harbour had been made and the island would be valuable to the Empire as a coaling-station. His pockets were bulging when he came aboard, and Arabella elicited from Mr. Bich that the island was rich in precious stones and metals, and that the pebbles of which her cabin had been built were emeralds and aquamarines such as had never before been seen. Arabella told her father, and he bade her say nothing, adding impressively:
“We must protect Mr. Samways’ interests.”
But George was thinking of nothing but the best means of obliterating Mr. Bich, upon whom it seemed to him that Arabella was casting a too favourable eye.
AS the ship steamed away from the island the smoke of another vessel was sighted. It was signalled, but no reply was hoisted. There was great excitement on board and the chief gunner said:
“Let me have a go at them.”
The Captain stood upon the bridge, a figure of calm dignity with a telescope to his eye. Mr. Bich explained to Arabella and George that the ship was a Fatter ship, and that the Fatters had lately been taking islands on the sly without saying anything to anybody, because they were jealous of the Skitish Empire and wanted to have one too.
“Do islands make an Empire?” asked George.
“Anything you can get,” replied Mr. Bich.
The Fatter ship was making for the island. After her went the grey vessel, and it was a nose-to-nose race who should first reach the harbour. The Fatter ship won. The grey vessel fired a gun. The gig was lowered and the Captain, looking very grim and determined, put off in her.... Arabella dropped a pin and it was heard all over the vessel. It was a relief to all on board when the Bishop knelt and offered up a prayer for the Captain’s safety. The Amen that came at the end of it brought the tears to George’s eyes, and his blood ran cold when it swelled into a cheer as the Captain’s gig broke loose from the Fatter ship and came tearing over the smooth waters.
The Captain’s face was very white as he stepped on deck and called Mr. Bich and the other officers to his state-room, and whiter still were the faces of Mr. Bich and the officers when they left it. The vessel shook with the vibration of the engines: there was a strange and stormy muttering among the men: the vessel headed for the open sea. George was taken to his cabin and locked in. He lay down on the floor and tried to go to sleep. A roaring and a rumbling and a banging and a thudding made that impossible. The shaking made him feel so sick that he wished to die. Near by he could hear Arabella weeping, and that was more than he could bear. He thrust and bumped against his door and worked himself into a sweat over it, but it seemed that it would not give. As he reached the very pit of despair, the door gave, the floor gave, the walls heaved in upon him; in one roaring convulsion he was flung up and up and up, and presently came down and down and down into the sea. It tasted salt and was cool to his sweating body and he was glad of it.
HE was not glad of it for long, because he soon became very cold and was nipped to numbness. He assumed that it was the end, and felt a remote regret for Arabella. Other thought he had none.
When he came to himself he was, or seemed to be, once more in the room from which he had been so violently propelled, but there were two men standing near him and talking in a strange tongue. Presently there came a third man who spoke to him in Fattish.
“Hullo! Thought you were done in,” said the man.
George stared.
“Done in. Dead.”
“Yes, I was.”
The man laughed.
“Funny fellow you are. Eyes just like a baby.”
“Where is Arabella?” asked George. “Where am I?”
“Give you three guesses,” said the man.
“On a ship?”
“Right.”
“The Emperor-King’s ship?”
“No. The King-Emperor’s. You have the honour to be the first prisoner in the great Fattero-Fattish war.”
“War? What is that?”
“War? You don’t know what war is? Have you never read a newspaper?”
“I have only read Tittiker. It tells about a War Office, but I never knew what it was for.”
“My name’s Siebenhaar, engineer and philosophical student, and I fancy you are the man I have been looking for all my life. You should be capable of a pure idea....”
“What,” asked George, “is an idea?”
Siebenhaar flung his arms around him and embraced him and recited a long poem in his own language.
“You shall be presented at the Universities!” he said. “You shall be a living reproach to all writers, thinkers, artists, and I, Siebenhaar, will be your humble attendant.”
“Did I say anything unusual?”
“Unusual? Unique! Colossal! The ultimate question! ‘What is war? What is an idea?’ Ach?”
George insisted on an explanation of the meaning of war, and then he asked why the Fattish and the Fatters should be intent upon mutual destruction, and also what the difference between them might be.
“Difference?” said Siebenhaar. “The Fattish drink beer that you can hold; the Fatters drink beer that runs through you. That is all there is to it.”
With that he sent for some Fatter beer and drank a large quantity himself and made George taste it. He spat it out.
“Is that why they are making war?”
Siebenhaar smacked his lips.
“Man,” he said, “is the creature of his internal organs, almost, I might say, their slave. The lungs, the heart, the kidneys, the stomach, the bladder, these control a man, and every day refashion him. If they do their work well, so does he. If they do it ill, then so does he. Each of the organs has secretions which periodically choke their interaction, and bring about a state of ill-humour and discomfort in which the difference between man and man is accentuated, and their good relations degenerate into hatred and envy and distrust. At such times murders are committed and horrible assaults, but frequently discretion prevails over those desires, suppresses them but does not destroy them. They accumulate and find expression in war, which has been led up to by a series of actions on the part of men suffering from some internal congestion. Modern war, they say, is made by money, and the lust for it. That is no explanation. No man becomes a victim of the lust for money except something interferes with his more natural lusts: no man, I go so far as to say, could so desire money as to become a millionaire except he were const——”
“But what has this to do with beer?” interrupted George.
“I’m coming to that,” continued Siebenhaar.
“Beer taken in excess is a great getter of secretions, and man is so vain an animal as to despise those whose secretions differ from his own. What is more obvious than that the implacable enemies of the Eastern hemisphere should be those whose drink is so much the same but so profoundly different in its effects? Internal congestion may bring about war, but in this war the material is undoubtedly supplied by beer. And I may add, in support of my theory, that once war is embarked upon, those engaged in it suffer so terribly from internal disorganisation as to become unanswerable for their actions, and so mad as to rejoice in the near prospect of a violent death. Moltke was notoriously decayed inside and the state of Napoleon’s internal organs will not bear thinking on.”
George protested that he had never heard of Napoleon or Moltke, and Siebenhaar was on the point of embracing him, when, muttering something about Fatter beer, he rose abruptly and left the room.
“THERE is a woman aboard,” said Siebenhaar when he returned. “I suppose you have never seen a woman?”
“Two,” said George simply.
Siebenhaar slapped his leg.
“Have you any theory about them?” he asked.
“Theory? I don’t know what theory is. I loved them. I put my arms round their necks and rubbed my face against their soft faces. It was very nice. I should like to do it every night before I go to sleep. I should like to do it now.”
“You shall,” said Siebenhaar, and he went out and came back with Arabella.
George leaped from his berth and flung his arms round her neck and embraced her, and she was so surprised and delighted that she kissed him, and Siebenhaar wept to see it.
“I don’t know who you are, madam,” he said, “but if I were you I should stick to that young man like a barnacle to a ship’s bottom. I would creep into his heart and curl up in it like a grub in a ripe raspberry, and I would go down on my knees and thank Heaven for having sent me the one man in the modern world who may be capable of a genuine and constant affection. You have him, madam, straight from his mother’s arms, with a soul, a heart, as virgin as I hope your own are.”
Arabella disengaged herself from George’s now ardent embrace, drew herself up, and with the haughtiness of her race, said:
“My father was a bishop of the Church of Fatland.”
“That,” said Siebenhaar, “does not exempt you from the normal internal economy of your sex or its need of the (perfectly honest) love of the opposite sex. My point is that you have here an unrivalled opportunity of meeting an honest love, and I implore you to take it.”
“I would have you know,” retorted Arabella, “that I am engaged to my late father’s chaplain.”
“War,” said Siebenhaar, “is war, and I should advise you to seek protection where it is offered.”
“If you would hold my hand in yours,” said George to Arabella, “I think I should sleep now. I am so tired.”
Arabella held George’s hand and in two minutes he was asleep.
“THERE are some,” said Siebenhaar, “who regard women as a disease, a kind of fungoid distortion of the human form. But only the very lowest species are hermaphrodite, and the higher seem to be split up into male and female for the purpose of reproduction without temporary loss of efficiency in the task of procuring food. The share of the male in the act of reproduction is soon over, and among the wisest inhabitants of the globe the male is destroyed as soon as his share is performed. Human beings are not very wise: they have an exaggerated idea of their importance; and they are reluctant to destroy the life of their kind except in occasional outbursts of organised homicide such as that on which we are now engaged. The share of the female entails the devotion of many months, during which she needs the protection of the male, whom, for that reason, and also because she hopes to repeat the performance, she retains by every art at her disposal. Hence has arisen the institution of marriage, which pledges the male to the protection of the female and their offspring. Whether a moral principle is engaged in this institution is a question upon which philosophers cannot agree. It is therefore left out of most systems of philosophy. Mine is based on my answer to it, which is that there is no moral principle engaged. Morality is for the few who are capable of it. Few men have the capacity for ideas, but all men love women, except a few miserable degenerates, who prefer a substitute. There is no idea in marriage. It is an expedient. Sensible communities admit of open relief from it; in duller communities relief has to be sought in the byways. And still no moral principle is engaged. It is a matter only of supplying the necessities of human nature. Now, love is a different affair altogether. Love is an idea, a direct inspiration. It alone can transcend the tyranny of the internal organs and lead a man not only to perceive his limitations but within them to create beauty, and creative a man must be directly he becomes aware of the heat of love in the heart of a woman. There is no other such purging fire, none that can so illuminate the dark places of the world or so concentrate and distil such lightness as there is. All evil, I have said, comes from congestion; to release the good a purge is necessary, and there is no purge like woman. Therefore, madam, I do most solemnly charge you to tend the fire of love in your heart. Never again will you find a man so sensible to its warmth—(most men can see no difference between love and indigestion)—Oh, madam, discard all thoughts of marriage, which is an expedient of prudence, which is cowardice, of modesty, which is a lure, of innocence, which in an adult female is a lie, to the winds, do exactly as you feel inclined to do, and love. Madam ——”
But by this Arabella was asleep. She had sunk back against George, her lovely tresses lay upon his shoulder, and her hand clasped his.
Siebenhaar wiped away a tear, heaved a great sigh, took his beer-mug in his hand and crept away on tip-toe.
XI: MUSIC
ON deck was a band playing dirge-like dragging hymns, for the Admiral of that ship was a very pious man and believed that the Almighty was personally directing the war against the enemies of Fatterland, and would be encouraged to hear that ship’s company taking him seriously.
No sooner did Siebenhaar set foot on deck than he was arrested.
The Chaplain had listened to every word of his discourse and reported it to the Admiral, who detested Siebenhaar because he was always laughing and was very popular with the crew. Word for word the Chaplain had quoted Siebenhaar’s sayings, so that he could deny nothing but only protest that it was purely a private matter, a series of opinions and advice given gratuitously to an interesting couple.
“Nothing,” roared the Admiral, “is given to the enemies of our country.”
“We are all human,” said Siebenhaar. “I was carried away by the discovery of human feeling amid the callousness of this pompous war.”
The Admiral went pale. The Chaplain shuddered. The officers hid their faces.
“He has spoken against God’s holy war,” said the Chaplain.
“That’s all my eye,” said Siebenhaar. “Why drag God into it? You are making war simply because you have so many ships that you are ashamed not to use them. The armament companies want to build more ships and can invent no other way of getting rid of them.”
“God has given us ships of war,” said the Chaplain, “even as He has given us the good grain and the fish of the sea. Who are we that we should not use them?”
The sub-Chaplain had been sent to discover the effect of Siebenhaar’s advice upon the enemies of Fatterland. The accused had just opened his mouth to resume his defence when the sub-Chaplain returned and whispered into the ear of his chief.
“God help us all!” cried the Chaplain. “They are desecrating His ship!”
There was a whispered consultation. George and Arabella were brought before the court, and if George was the object of general execration, Arabella won the admiration of all eyes, especially the Admiral’s, who regarded his affections as his own particular, private and peculiar devil and was now tempted by him. The Chaplain held forth at great length; the Admiral grunted in apostrophe. Only Siebenhaar could interpret. He said:
“They say we have blasphemed their God of War. I by giving advice, you by acting on it. It is not good to be fortunate and favoured among hundreds of mateless males. It will go hard with us.”
“And Arabella?” asked George.
“They will keep Arabella,” replied Siebenhaar.
They were silenced.
A boat was stocked with corned beef, biscuits, and water. George and Siebenhaar were placed in it and it was lowered. The band resumed its playing of dirge-like dragging hymns, and through the wailing of the oboes and the cornet-à-piston George could hear the sobs of Arabella.
“NOW,” said Siebenhaar, “you have an opportunity to exercise your national prerogative and rule the waves.”
George made no reply. His internal organs were supplying him with an illustration of Siebenhaar’s theory. The waves did just as they liked with the boat, sent it spinning in one direction, wrenched it back in another, slipped from under it, picked it up again and every now and then playfully sent a drenching spray over its occupants.
Siebenhaar talked, sang and slept, and, when he was doing none of these things, ate voraciously.
“I insist on dying with a full stomach,” he said when George protested.
George ate and slept and thought of Arabella, when he could think at all.
“Death,” said Siebenhaar, “must be very surprising: but then, so is life when you penetrate its disguises and discover its immutability. We hate death only because it is impossible to pretend that it is something else, so that it comes at the end of the comedy to give us the lie. After this experience I think I shall change my philosophy and seek the truth of life with the light of death. You never know: it might become fashionable. Women like their thoughts ready-made, and they like them bizarre. Women are undoubtedly superior to men....”
But by this time George was in such a state of discomfort that he lay flat on his face in the bottom of the boat and groaned:
“I am going to die.”
“Eat,” said Siebenhaar, “eat and drink.” And he offered corned beef and water.
“I want to die,” moaned George, and he wept because death would not come at once. He hid his face in his hands and howled and roared. Siebenhaar himself ate the corned beef and drank the water, and went on eating and drinking until he had exhausted all their supply. Then he curled up in the bows and went to sleep and snored.
And the waves changed their mood and gave the boat only a gentle rocking.
George opened his eyes and gazed up into the sky. It was night and the stars were shining brilliantly. Red and yellow and white they were and they danced above him. He was astonished to find that he did not wish to die. He was very hungry. He crawled over to Siebenhaar and shook him and woke him up.
There was neither food nor water in the locker.
“In the great cities of the civilised world,” said Siebenhaar, “there are occasional performers who go without food for forty days. We shall see.”
“I am thirsty,” whimpered George.
“Those occasional performers,” returned Siebenhaar, “drink water and smoke cigarettes, and they are sheltered from the elements by walls of glass. We shall see.”
With that he turned over and went to sleep again.
GEORGE’S face was sunk and his eyes glared. Siebenhaar tried to spit into the sea, but it was impossible. He was daunted into silence.
Another day began to dawn.
“If this goes on,” said George in a dry whistling croak of a voice, “I shall eat you.”
And he glared so at Siebenhaar’s throat that the philosopher turned up his coat collar to cover it.
AT dawn a shower of rain came. They collected water in George’s boots. They had already eaten Siebenhaar’s.
Thus revived, George stood up, and on the edge of the sea saw blue land and little white sails. They came nearer and nearer, and presently they were delivered by a little vessel that contained one white man and ten negroes. Neither George nor Siebenhaar could speak, but they pointed to their bellies and were given to eat.
“I recant,” said Siebenhaar. “There is nothing to be learnt from death, for death is nothing. The stomach is lord of life and master of the world.”
With that he recounted their adventures and the reason for their being in such a woeful plight. The master of the ship, on learning that Siebenhaar was a Fatter, said that he must deliver him up as a prisoner when they reached Cecilia, the capital of the Fattish colony which they would see as soon as the fleet—for it was a fishing fleet—turned into the bay.
“As a Philosopher,” said Siebenhaar, “I have no nationality. As an engineer—but I am no longer an engineer. The Admiral and the Chaplain will have seen to that. My life is now devoted to Mr. Samways, as in a certain narrower sense it has nearly been.” And he told the master of the ship how George was by birth the proprietor of the island in dispute between the two nations, and how the island shone with precious stones and glittered with a mountain of gold. The master’s cupidity was aroused, and he agreed to grant Siebenhaar his liberty on the promise of a rich reward at the conclusion of the war. He was a Fattishman, and could not believe that there would be any other end than a Fattish triumph.
A pact was signed and they sailed into Cecilia, the governor of which colony was Siebenhaar’s cousin and delighted to see him and to have a chance of talking the Fatter language and indulging in philosophical speculations for which his Fattish colleagues had no taste. He welcomed George warmly on his first entry in a civilised land, and was delighted to instruct him in the refinements of Fattish manners: how you did not eat peas or gravy with your knife, and how (roughly speaking) no portion of the body between the knees and shoulders might be mentioned in polite society, and how sneezing and coughing and the like sudden affections were to be checked or disguised. George talked of Arabella and the wonderful stir of the emotions she had caused in him. Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch (for that was his name) was greatly shocked, and told how in the best Fattish society all talk of love was forbidden, left by the men to the women, and how among men the emotions were never discussed, and how, since it was impossible to avoid all mention of that side of life, men in civilisation had invented a system of droll stories which both provided amusement and put a stop to the embarrassment of intimate revelations.
However, as George’s vigour was restored by the good food he ate in enormous quantities, he could not forbear to think of Arabella or to talk of her. He spoke quite simply of her to a company of officers, and they roared with laughter and found it was the best story they had ever heard.
When the officers were not telling droll stories, they were playing cards or ball games or boasting one against the other or talking about money.
George asked what money was, and they showed him some. He was disappointed. He had expected something much more remarkable because they had been so excited about it. They told him he must have money, and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch gave him a sovereign. A man in the street asked George to lend him a sovereign and George gave it to him. The officers were highly amused.
The adventurers had not been in Cecilia above a week when the town was besieged and presently bombarded. Except that there was a shortage of food and that every day at least thirty persons were killed, there was no change in the life of the place. The officers told droll stories and played cards or ball games or boasted one against the other or talked about money. They ate, drank, slept, and quarrelled, and George found them not so very much unlike himself except that he was serious about his love for Arabella, while they laughed. He asked Siebenhaar what civilisation was. Said the philosopher with a wave of his hand:
“They have built a lot of houses.”
“But the ships out there are knocking them down.”
“They have made railways from one town to another.”
“But the black men have torn the railways up.” (For the native tribes had risen.)
Said Siebenhaar:
“No one can define civilisation. It means doing things.”
“Why?”
“Thou art the greatest of men,” replied Siebenhaar, and his face beamed approbation and love upon his friend. But to put an unanswerable question to Siebenhaar was to set him off on his theories.
“First,” he said, “the stomach must be fed. Two men working together can procure more food than two men working separately. That is as far as we have got. Until the two men trust each other we are not likely to get any further. Until then they will steal each other’s tools, goods, women, and squabble over the proceeds of their work and make the world a hell for the young. When one man steals or murders it is a crime: when forty million men steal, murder, rape, burn, destroy, pillage, sack, oppress, they are making glorious history, a lot of money, and, if they like to call it so, an Empire. But Empire and petty thefts are both occasioned by the lamentable distrust of the two men of our postulate.”
“But for Arabella,” said George, “I could wish I had never left my island.”
News of the war came dribbling in. The island had been twice captured by the Fatter fleet, and twice it had been evacuated. The Fatters had suffered defeat in their home waters but had gained a victory in the Indian seas. Came news that the island had again been captured, then the tidings that the whole of the Fatter fleet and army was to be concentrated upon Cecilia and the colony of which it was the capital.
“Why?” asked George.
“Because a new reef of gold has been discovered up-country.”
The bombardment grew very fierce. From the mountain above the town ships of war could be seen coming from all directions, and some of them were Fattish ships, but not enough as yet to come to grips with the Fatter fleet.
The inland frontiers were attacked but held, though with frightful loss of life. Then one night from the Fatter fleet came a landing party, and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch called a council of war, and the officers sat from ten o’clock until three in the morning debating what had best be done.
At half-past one the landing party were only a mile away. A shell burst in the street as George was walking to his lodging and three men were killed in front of him. It was the first time he had seen such a thing. It froze his blood. He gave a yell that roused the whole town, ran, was followed by a crowd of riff-raff seizing weapons as they went, and rushed down upon the enemy, who had stopped for a moment to see two dogs fighting in the road. They were taken by surprise and utterly routed.
There is no more rousing episode in the whole military history of Fatland. George was for three days the hero of the Empire. He received by wireless telegraphy countless offers of marriage, ten proposals from music-hall engagements, and by cable a demand for the story of the fight from the noble proprietor of a Sunday newspaper. It was impossible to persuade that noble proprietor that there was no extant photograph of Mr. Samways, and a fortune was spent in cablegrams in the fruitless attempts to do so.
AS it turned out the concentration on Cecilia was a fatal tactical error, directly traceable to the King-Emperor, who had never left the capital of Fatterland and had been misled by certain telegrams which had been wrongly deciphered. The entire Fattish navy was collected upon the bombarding fleet and utterly destroyed it.
George and Siebenhaar watched the engagement from the mountain above Cecilia. It was almost humorous to see the huge vessels curtsey to the water and so disappear. It was astonishing to see the Fattish admiral surround nine of his own vessels and cause them also to curtsey and disappear.
“What in hell,” said George, who had by now learned the nature of an oath, “what in hell is he doing that for?”
“That,” said Siebenhaar, “is for the benefit of the armament contractors. A war without loss of ships is no use to them.”
And suddenly George burst into tears, because he had thought of all the men on board, and was overcome with the futility of it all and the feeling that he was partially to blame for having been born on his island.
THE Fattish are an emotional race. They had overcome the Fatters, and the only outstanding hero of that war was George. They insisted on seeing George. They clamoured for him. They sent a cruiser to fetch him from Cecilia, and the commander of that cruiser was none other than Mr. Bich, who had won promotion.
His astonishment was no less great than George’s, but his adventures were less interesting. After the destruction of the ship he had been saved by a turtle which had been attracted by his brass buttons and had allowed him to ride on his back so long as they lasted. He had had to give it one every twenty minutes, and had just come to his last when he was seen and rescued. He had thought himself the only survivor, and when he heard that Arabella also had been delivered from the waves there came into his eye a gleam which George did not like.
The voyage was quite monotonously uneventful and George was glad when they reached Fatland. The Mayor, Corporation, and Citizens, also dogs and children, of the port at which he landed, turned out to meet him; he was given the freedom of the borough, and a banquet, and at both ceremony and meal he was photographed.
In Bondon he was given five public meals in two days. He was so bewildered by the number of people who thronged round him that he left all arrangements in Siebenhaar’s hands, and Siebenhaar liked the banquets.
He was received by the Emperor-King and decorated, and the Empress-Queen said: “How do you do, Mr. Samways?”
He was followed everywhere by enormous crowds, and outside his lodgings there were always ten policemen to clear a way for the traffic. His romantic history had put a polish on his fame: the motherless and fatherless orphan, all those years alone upon an island; no woman in Fatland old or young, rich or poor, but yearned to be a mother to him and make up to him for all those years. And then the wonderful story of his acceptance of the Fattish religion, his reception on those golden sands into the church at the hands of the good Bishop of Bygn, after the appalling disaster to the Oyster. All was known, and the emotional Fattish found it irresistibly moving. George in all innocence created a religious revival such as had never been known. The theatres, music-halls, picture palaces were deserted: no crowds attended the football matches or the race-meetings, and when the newspapers had exhausted the Story of George Samways their circulation dropped to next to nothing. The situation for certain trades looked black indeed.
But of all of this George recked nothing. His one thought was for Arabella.
SIEBENHAAR took a malicious delight in the ruin of the newspaper trade, and pledged George to attend a mammoth church meeting in Bondon’s greatest hall of assembly. There were forty bishops on the platform, and a Duke presided. George entered. There were tears, cheers, sobs, sighs, groans, conversions; and hundreds suddenly became conscious of salvation, swooned away and were carried out.
The Duke spoke for fifty minutes. Mr. Samways (he said) would now tell the story of his—er—er—“Have I got to say something?” said George to Siebenhaar.
“Tell them,” said Siebenhaar, “to look after the stomach and the rest will look out for itself.”
George advanced toward the front of the platform and beamed out upon the eager audience.
Arabella let a pin drop and it could be heard all over the hall.
It was Arabella! For a moment George could not believe his eyes. It was she! He leaped down from the platform, took her in his arms and covered her with kisses.
So strong was the hypnotic power of his fame that there was no male in that huge audience but followed his example, no female, old or young, rich or poor, but yielded to it. In vain did the bishops protest and quote from the marriage service of the Fattish Church; in vain did they go among the audience and earnestly implore the individual members of it to desist. They replied that George Samways had revealed a new religion and that they liked it.
And above the tumult rose the voice of Siebenhaar saying: —— But what he said is unprintable.
HOW he escaped from the pandemonium George never knew, but his first clear recollection after it was of being borne swiftly through the streets of Bondon with Arabella in his arms, she weeping and telling him of the hard and vile usage she had been put to on the Fatter ship, for the Admiral was a horrid man. She told him how she had at last been taken to the Fatterland and there, by her father’s influence—(for her father also had been marvelously delivered from an untimely end)—released and sent, first-class at the expense of the Fatter Government, home to Fatland, and how she had there resumed her old life of district visiting and tea parties and diocesan conferences and rescuing white slaves and had been content in it until she had seen him, when all her old love had sprung once more into flame and she would never, never desert him more. George wept also and protested that he would never leave her side.
She took him to her home, and her father, who had been prevented by indisposition from attending the meeting, blessed him and made him welcome.
It was very late and George drew Arabella to his side and said he would send for his things.
“Things!” said the Bishop.
“We love each other,” replied George.
“Do you propose to marry this man?” asked the Bishop.
Arabella blushed and explained to George that he must go away until they were married, and the Bishop revealed the meaning of the word.
“But why?” asked George.
“It is so ordained,” said the Bishop, and George was exasperated.
“I love Arabella,” he cried. “What more do you want? And what on earth has it got to do with you or anybody else? I love Arabella, and my love has survived shipwreck, starvation, explosion, battle, murder, and the public festivities of Fatland....”
With extraordinary cynicism the Bishop replied:
“That may be. But it is doubtful if it will survive marriage; therefore marriage is necessary.”
This illogical argument silenced George. The Bishop finally gave his consent and the marriage was arranged to take place in a month’s time, and the announcement of the betrothal was sent to the only remaining morning newspaper.
THERE were great rejoicings when peace between Fatland and Fatterland was signed and ratified, and the day was set apart for an imposing ceremony at the Colonial Office, when George’s island was to be solemnly incorporated in the Empire.
In a little room high up in the huge offices Field-Marshals, Admirals, and Cabinet Ministers foregathered. The State Map of the World was produced and the island was marked on it, and George with his own hand was to have the privilege of underlining its name in red ink. It was an awful moment. George dipped his pen in the ink—(it was the first time he had ever held a pen in his hand and he had to be instructed in its use); he dipped his pen in the ink, held it poised above the map, when the door opened and a white-faced clerk rushed in with a sheet of paper as white as his face. This he gave to the Colonial Secretary, who collapsed. The Lord High Flunkey took the paper and said:
“Good God!”
George dropped the pen and made a red blot on the State Map of the World.
The Lord High Flunkey pulled himself together and said:
“My Lords and Gentlemen, the South Seas Squadron commissioned to annex the new island reports that it has moved on and cannot be found.”
“This is a serious matter, Mr. Samways,” said the senior Admiral.
“I’m awfully sorry,” answered George, and he walked out of the room.
It had been arranged that when George underlined the name of his island on the map, the national flag should be run up on the offices so that the expectant crowd should know that the Empire had been enlarged and the war justified. There was an appalling silence as George left the building. He slipped into the crowd before he was recognized and before the awful news had spread.
There was a groan, a hoot, a yell, and the crowd stormed and raved. Stones flew, and soon there was not a window in that office left unbroken.
The Government resigned, and with its fall fell George Samways. He was not the object of any active hostility. He was simply ignored. It was as though he had never been. When he called at the Bishop’s house to see Arabella, the footman stared through him and said the Bishop would be obliged if he would write. George took the fellow by the scruff of the neck and laid him on the floor. Then he ran upstairs to Arabella’s room.
“You!” she said.
“Yes. I love you.”
“We can’t be married now.”
“No. We needn’t wait now. You’re coming with me.”
He assisted her to pack a small handbag, and with that they set forth.
At George’s lodgings they found Siebenhaar in argument with the master of the ship, who had delivered them and had now come to Bondon to claim his reward. He had sailed from Cecilia in his own ship, which was even now at the docks.
“We will sail in her,” said George, “and we will find my island.”
“Find the island? The whole navy’s looking for it!”
“It will come to me,” said George.
And Siebenhaar embraced Arabella and congratulated her on having taken his advice.
THEY had a pleasant voyage, saw the sea-serpent twice, and when they came to the South Seas every night George sang those strange melodious chants that he had made out of Tittiker. One night when they had been at sea nigh eight months up and down the Southern Seas and almost into the Antarctic, George fell into a kind of swoon and said:
“She is coming, she is coming, my mother, my land.”
And Arabella, fearing for his reason, implored Siebenhaar to distract him with talk, and the master of the ship to make for the nearest port. But George silenced Siebenhaar, and in an unearthly voice he crooned:
“Cathoire Mor, or the Great—had thirty sons.
Conn Ceadchadhach, called the Hero of the Hundred Battles—slain.
Conaire—killed.
Art-Aonfhir, the Melancholy—slain in battle.
Lughaidh, surnamed MacConn—thrust through the eye with a spear in a conspiracy.
Feargus, surnamed Black-teeth—murdered at the instigation of his successor.
Cormac-Ulfhada—‘A Prince of the most excellent wisdom, and kept the most splendid court that ever was in Bareland’; choked by the bone of a fish at supper....”
Near dawn he rose to his feet and stood with outstretched arms, yelling at the top of his voice:
“Connor, or Conchabhar—‘died of grief, being unable to redress the misfortunes of his country.’
Niall-Caillie—drowned in the river Caillie.
Turgesius—‘expelled the Barish historians, and burnt their books’; thrown into a lough and drowned....”
And Siebenhaar lifted up his eyes in wonder, for there was such a note of triumph in George’s voice.
The sun was casting up his first rosy glow upon the sky, and against it, dark blue, almost purple, stood a tall hill that grew. There was little wind, but the ship sped forward.
“My beloved! My island!” cried George, and Arabella fell upon his neck.
As the sun rose above the horizon they slipped ashore upon the yellow sands, and George’s palm tree bowed to them and they four, George, Arabella, Siebenhaar and the master of the ship, joined hands and danced together.
Then George took Arabella to the little cabin and he said:
“The house I built for you.”
But Siebenhaar said:
“I am devilish hungry.”