The last hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult.
He had made himself responsible for success on his own head.
He had induced the war party to work hard all night.
Big fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, “but up here,” he explained, “the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark.”
From the top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work.
He himself on that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel, directing, encouraging, watching all along the line.
Old Doramin had himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair.
They put him down on the level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big fires—“amazing old chap—real old chieftain,” said Jim, “with his little fierce eyes—a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss.
A present from Stein, it seems—in exchange for that ring, you know.
Used to belong to good old McNeil.
God only knows how he came by them.
There he sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round him—the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imagine.
He wouldn’t have had much chance if Sherif Ali had let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot.
Eh?
Anyhow, he had come up there to die if anything went wrong.
No mistake!
Jove! It thrilled me to see him there—like a rock.
But the Sherif must have thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on.
Nobody believed it could be done.
Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done!
Upon my word I don’t think they did. . . .”
‘He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes.
I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous tree-tops.
A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss.
The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel.
‘And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that historic hill of his.
He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the old mankind.
He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom.
I don’t know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. I don’t know whether it was exactly fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly.
It was like a shadow in the light.’
CHAPTER 27
‘Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers.
Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads.
There was something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of ropes and of men’s arms?
There is a rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful charms and incantations.
Thus old Sura—a very respectable householder of Patusan—with whom I had a quiet chat one evening.
However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing the stubborn souls of things.
This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men.
As to the simple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back—two at a time.
‘This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an exasperated little laugh,
“What can you do with such silly beggars?
They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie the more they seem to like it.”
You could trace the subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation.
It was part of his captivity.
The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said,
“My dear fellow, you don’t suppose I believe this.”
He looked at me quite startled.
“Well, no! I suppose not,” he said, and burst into a Homeric peal of laughter. “Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all together at sunrise.
Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly,” he cried.