CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
YERMAH BECOMES ONE OF THE WHITE STAR BROTHERHOOD
Yermah did not hear him. He had caught a glimpse of the comet hanging low over the Golden Gate—a double crescent of fire joined together. Its tail bent out over Tlamco, and curved downward like a great broad-sword. It throbbed and panted like a living thing, sinister and awful, as Venus twinkled between its two horns, an evening star of horrible aspect.
A tremor, ominous and indefinable, seized the populace, hushed and awed by the dreadful apparition. It was a premonition, followed instantly by a low, rumbling sound, an angry roar of waters, and then the earth shook under them like a leaf in the wind. A mad rush for the streets, an instinctive huddling together, a breathless wait for a second impact!
A heavy, long boom, like a roll of distant artillery, and a wave mountain high, but crested in the center like a spine, rose up between them and the Golden Gate, and, for a moment, shut out from view the grinning, mocking comet.
The ground surged up and down under their feet in simultaneous waves. Trees bent over and touched their tops together, houses rocked and swayed, and all that was breakable in them went down with a crash.
Living close to the heart of Nature, her moods were not mysterious to these people; so, they waited for the third, and what they supposed would be the final shock. It came with such terrible force that the Observatory tower fell in a cloud of blinding dust, and all the other buildings were rent or cracked grievously, but were not overthrown simultaneously.
A thievish wave stole in silently, and embraced the whole city.
The stricken people looked into each other’s faces with dismay, as they stood waist-deep in water, a nameless fear chilling their hearts. The water retreated precipitously, while lurid streaks and tongues of flame lit up the whole eastern heavens. Shock after shock succeeded each other, while the clouds lowered heavy and sullen close overhead. Brokenly, but in unison, thousands of throats lent voice to prayerful entreaty:
“Wilt thou blot us out forever, O Lord? Is this punishment intended not for our reformation, but for our total destruction?”
One impulse seemed to move the entire concourse; and as if Nature heard, she answered by a gust of wind and a downpour of rain.
Ben Hu Barabe, Alcyesta and their attendants had a mad gallop for life. They were within an hour’s ride of Sacramento River when they saw thin, blue flames suddenly shoot up from the earth, followed by heavy cannonading of the internal elements.
In the cosmic mêlée they were tossed forth and back like a shuttle in a loom—so violently at first that the horses fell to their knees and were whirled in opposite directions. In terror the animals tried to lie down and roll over with their burdens; but their riders whipped and spurred vigorously, and the maddened creatures ran until they dropped exhausted on the river bank. A thick shower of ashes fell over them, and the air was like a blast from a furnace. Behind them came smoking streaks of lava, poured into the plain by a row of flame-mantled hills.
Flocks were scampering wildly in every direction, and the scattered herdsmen were taking to the boats and skiffs tied along the river bank.
Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta climbed into the balsa awaiting them, and their attendants hastened with them. They had scarcely pushed out into midstream, when the very bed of the river seemed to rise and hurl its waters forward. Waves rose in an undulating wall of water, breaking the banks of both sides, sending death and destruction broadcast over the valley. The boats were carried along by an irresistible impulse and with incredible swiftness, straight across sinuous windings of the stream onward toward the sea.
Lightning played over their heads; but the crash of thunder, the explosions of the volcanoes, the mighty heaves and groans tearing the breast of the trembling earth were lost in an angry roar of waters.
A canon-shot would not have sent them forward with greater impetus; and this prevented their boats from swamping, despite their shipping water frightfully.
The shock which leveled the Observatory tower shattered all the windows and cracked every building in Tlamco, letting the accumulated waters through what is now Carquinez Straits, and widened an arm of the sea into an open inlet.
The impounded water inundated the surrounding country, swept over the intervening islands, and spent itself in a series of waves mountain high, whose impact disturbed the ocean’s surface for thousands of miles, after severing Lime Point from the peninsula and plowing out the famous Golden Gate entrance to the bay.[9]
One of the most violent tremors caught the little colony of boats, which by a miraculous coincidence, were thrown together in the trough of the sea, and tossed them ashore, high and dry, on the Berkeley hills.
The water receded so rapidly that the boats stuck fast in the débris and mud. All except the strongest one, containing Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta, were crushed like egg-shells.
With broken arms and legs, bruised and battered bodies, scarred almost beyond recognition, the little band huddled together, reviving each other when pain brought unconsciousness, while the elements overhead and below them rioted with unabated fury.
The morrow brought no surcease, except that the waters subsided and took on something of their normal aspect. The earth still trembled and groaned, and the sun was so completely obscured for days after, that it seemed always twilight.
So soon does the mind become accustomed to danger—so familiar does it grow with death, that Ben Hu Barabe was able to direct his men how to reach the back waters of the bay, where the motion was less violent and marked.
They helped each other, with tears and gratitude, to some of the fruit and nuts which had been spared to them. Alcyesta’s left arm was broken, and she could scarcely move without intolerable pain; but she made no complaint to the half-crazed men about her. None of them could ever tell afterward how they contrived to reach Tlamco.
Heart-rending scenes greeted them everywhere, and many of the frenzied inhabitants rolled convulsively upon the ground. Others accused themselves with frantic insistence of all kinds of crime. Others could not speak. Some were helpless paralytics, and numbers could not retain food, so terrible was the reflex action on the nervous system.
The mind that has passed through such a calamity has lost its tone. Instead of being braced up, as by war, the earth’s epilepsy makes the mental fabric flabby, and paralyzes by a hopeless fear from which there is no known refuge. The fluttering soul, tying itself to matter as something solid and enduring, finds that the globe itself is but a poor shivering thing, liable to be taken in some monster demon’s clutch and shaken back into its component parts. No language can adequately express the stupendous feeling of instability conveyed by the idea of the earth’s possible dissolution and dispersion.
Yermah sat in a stupor, and it was with difficulty that he could be aroused when Ben Hu Barabe came to speak to him. He was completely worn out with anxiety and exertion on behalf of his people. At first the Dorado did not recognize his visitor in the semi-darkness. When he finally caught sight of the ravaged and altered face before him, he went almost insane with grief. He had hoped against hope to the very last. Now he knew without a word that his worst fears were realized.
Six weeks later, when brain-fever loosed its grip upon him, Akaza found Yermah lying face downward at the door of the Temple of Neptune. He was moaning and sobbing piteously. In a half-crazed condition, he had eluded observation, and started out to find his foster-father, but had fallen by the wayside, overcome by sheer bodily weakness. Akaza lifted him up, and hushed him as he would a child.
“Thou art wrong to grieve like this,” he said gently and soothingly. “The Father in the Trinity is the Universal Creator; the Son is man himself. Therefore, thou art in essence—God, since thou art in possession of this higher principle and must live.”
Yermah was like a maimed lion—a pathetic and pitiable object—as he lay with his head on Akaza’s shoulder, while his pent-up feelings found vent in choking sobs.
“Thou art weakening thy sacred manhood in yielding thus to despair. Thou art intrusted with a mission for all peoples, for all tongues, and for all time. Think, my son, of being the world’s ideal lover through all the eons to follow! It is a blessed privilege! Thou hast witnessed a demonstration of the destructive majesty of cosmic force. Now thou art called upon to obey thine individual destiny. THOU HAST PERFORMED THE EIGHTH LABOR!”
“And the gold for the temple?” questioned Yermah, in a stricken voice.
“It was alchemical gold thou wert sent to find. Thy body is the temple, and the Perfect Way of Life is the magic which produces alchemical gold. Dost thou comprehend the occult significance of Osiris, with a crook in one hand and a flail in the other?”
“No,” answered the Dorado, more calmly. “Come into the temple and I shall tell thee.”
When Yermah followed him, he continued:
“The crook is the attraction to the earth, and the flail is the repulsion from it. Man oscillates continually between the masculine and the feminine qualities of his nature. When Osiris says, ‘Let the heart be given back to the deceased’[10] after it has been put into an urn and weighed in the balance against the image of Truth, we are to understand that the candidate is no longer swayed by his emotions and appetites. He is self-centered. Sorrow will lift her pall, and thou wilt stand face to face with Truth.”
Akaza drew from his bosom a heavy serpent ring of silver with a rare green jade setting. It had a turquoise with diamond eyes cut intaglio.
“This means Silence,” said the old man, as he took Yermah’s right hand, and slipped the ring on the little finger. “It is the signet of the Brotherhood, and thou must sacredly guard the divine wisdom imparted to thee.
“Thou wilt be sorely tried in the future; but I, who am responsible for thy soul’s welfare, give thee this sign manual of the King Initiate.”
Yermah knelt before him, and was anointed on crown, forehead and breast with perfumed oil.
“Rise and receive the Sacred Word. It is ‘Aision,’ which is Truth. Seen in the distance, this quality is personated as stern, harsh, forbidding; but, when we approach near enough to distinguish the lineaments of its countenance, it contains all that is gracious, benignant and inspiring. The Spirit of Truth dwells within the sanctuary of the heart.”
Akaza then put his hands together, with the fingers closed and bent so as to form an acute angle. With the tip of his fingers pointed, he touched Yermah’s forehead, and said:
“Let there be no complaint.”
The joining of the right and left hand signified the union of the masculine and the feminine principles, and of spirit and matter.
It represented the pyramid, the cone, the center, the heart, the ten Sephiroth proceeding from the One; the naught of the ten numerals in the tenfold ratio.
“And I am commanded to get rid of the my-ness, as a giant weed whose roots lie deep in the human heart?” said Yermah, slowly.
“Remember always,” responded Akaza, glad to see that Yermah’s mind was for the moment normal, “that the true self of man is God. Look for it in thy fellows; find it and hold fast to it in thyself. Thou must ponder these things well. I can tell thee what I have experienced and known; but thou wouldst only have my word for it.
“A river cannot rise higher than its source; so, therefore no man ever sees beyond the reflection of himself. First, sense the truth intuitively; then mayst thou examine it at leisure with thine intellect.
“To break the law is identical with breaking the God within thee. Now that thou art one of us, bear in mind that our Brotherhood can only instruct. We cannot give real knowledge. Experience must do that for thee.”
“Experience! thou art a cruel monster! Because of thee am I deprived of my sweet love,” said Yermah, giving way to an outburst of grief.
“What sayest thou? Look!”
Yermah raised his head and gazed with streaming eyes at an apparition of Kerœcia, as he had last seen her in life, standing in the eastern entrance.
“She smiles and beckons me!” he said, in an awe-struck whisper. “Oh! my soul, why hast thou forsaken me? Why should death touch thee, if I must live?”
“Death claimed nothing but the physical body,” said Akaza, softly. “She feels not its loss. Look at her serene countenance. Wouldst thou spare her pain?”
Yermah cast a reproachful glance at Akaza.
“Canst thou ask the question?”
“Then master and control thy feeling. She can only manifest by absorbing thy magnetism. If thou wouldst see her at will, thou must give of thy strength freely.”
“And she does not know that she is out of the body?” asked Yermah, eagerly.
“No. She never will, unless thy indulgence in grief plunges her into the vortex of pain, which is now thy portion.”
“By all that I hold sacred—by all I love, hope and fear, she never shall!” exclaimed Yermah, rising.
On his face was the uplifting and exaltation of a saint.
“O Kerœcia! Core of my heart! I am ready for thy spirit to flutter over me! Never can I be sad with the knowledge of thy sweet presence.”
He stood in rapt attention, communing long and silently with the beatific vision. There was not a trace of care in her benign expression. She had solved the mystery and knew the truth.
For such love there is neither time nor death nor space.
Akaza stole away in the dim light, murmuring softly:
“Although a separate entity, she personates the feminine principle dormant in himself. This is what the ideal always does. Through this he will learn to harmonize desire and knowledge, and in time he will see that the grinding out of animal propensities, represented by the ringed planet, has come to him in a form more beautiful than a poet’s dream. Kerœcia is the disillusionizer, the dweller on the threshold, the chastening rod. But the hand that smites will also bless him.”[11]