THE Colonel went through the virgin forest, spending his fury in motion, swinging forward from branch to branch, running, leaping, till the fury was lost in the recovered delight of liberty. Childhood continued, after an irrelevance.
Here was the old smell of forest earth, the inexhaustible plenty of bare elastic boughs, the cool feeling of fungus, the absence of articulate speech, the impossibility of anger. Night came, the grand and terrible night, with its old familiar fear, long lost in the neighbourhood of a confident human mind. He rejoiced in his fear as in a fine quality recovered, rousing it to an ecstasy after long silences, by murmuring his own name in the darkness in terrified tones: ‘Colonel! Colonel!’
Then there came a rustling of leaves, a low chuck-chuck of prey warning prey, the sound of a vast retreat, and the slow padding of panther feet on the forest floor. The Colonel lay still on his bough, tingling with an unnatural calm, and the Panther breathed deep below him and looked up. And the Panther said:
‘I am the Panther, all Panthers in one—a symbol, irresistible.’
Waves of strong life undulated down his spotted tail, as though life passed through him to and from all his tribe; and the Colonel lay in a pleasant fear and numbness on his bough. And the Panther said:
‘I will climb slowly to you.’
‘And leap suddenly!’
‘The glory of my eye shall increase upon you.’
‘We will fall and play together on the earth.’
‘I shall die!’
‘A noble death.’
‘I shall be torn and eaten!’
‘And your strength shall go into the strength of All the Panthers.’
But as the Panther reached the fork of the boughs his paw slipped, and the numbness left the Colonel, and he leaped upon the neck of the panther with fingers and teeth, crying:
‘You are not All the Panthers, but a single creature like myself; and I will tear you as I tear a young tree when my limbs desire it.’
They fell together, a long distance, to the earth, and the Colonel grasped one mauling hind-paw of the panther with one foot and gripped him by the belly with the other, and rolled over and over with him, and strangled him, and tore his two jaws apart to the shoulder as an angry man might tear a glove. Then he licked his wounds and slung his boots over his shoulder again, and forgot all about the battle but the joy of unlimited ferocity.
So he went forward from day to day, forgetful of the past, and thoughtless for the future, till he came to the top of the mountain, and, looking back, beheld the sea. He gazed at it for some time, then murmured ‘Civalisation!’ and fell into a deep gloom of thought.
He followed the tops of the mountains to the north, with an obscure dissatisfaction growing in the dark back places of his mind; the pleasure of motion was poisoned in each extreme tension by a recurrent languor. He lacked something, and he did not know what he lacked. He went idly forward for many days, till he heard the chopping of an axe. He drew stealthily nearer to the sound, and followed the man back in the evening to his village—a village of naked men with dark skins, very orderly and quiet. And the Colonel lurked about by the village and watched the people, and was happy again.
For he had tasted the supreme happiness of the animal, the nearness of Man. The animal that has once had Man for his companion or for his prey is never afterwards contented with other company or fare. Curiosity had taken its place among his appetites; the necessity of watching Man’s inscrutable ways, the pleasure of using his implements and reproducing his effects.