The City Of The Beast

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Title:     The City Of The Beast
Author: Maurus Jokai [More Titles by Jokai]

A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF A VANISHED CONTINENT

CHAPTER I

THE TABLES OF HANNO

Plato, the Sage of classical Greece, speaks in his writings of a strange continent which, if historians and geologists are to be believed, must have lain somewhere between the island of St. Helena and the coast of Africa. The poets and philosophers of antiquity called it Atlantis, Oceania, or the Fortunate Islands.

In those days the earth was still a divinity to whom man raised altars. In those days men had not arrived at the overpowering conviction that the whole globe was nothing more than a wretched mite of a ball, which the sun, out of regard for the equilibrium of the universe, or, perhaps for the mere fun of the thing, twirls round and round. They had no idea that you could sail completely round it; measure it; weigh it and calculate exactly how long it has lasted and how much longer it is likely to last. No! The Earth still retained the nimbus of divinity; was still regarded as immeasurable, infinite, incomprehensible; and the sun, moon, and stars were popularly supposed to be his vassals.

Above the earth was heaven; below the earth was the Styx, and the dwellers on the earth lived in intimate relations with them both. No one had an inkling that the blue expanse above was only the reflection of the sun's rays refracted through the vapours of the earth, and that neither the gods, nor the blessed, could endure to live up there for the intense cold. No one knew that only the upper rind of the earth was solid, and that in the depths below the heat was so intense that the devil himself could only exist there in a molten condition.

In those days the earth was still an unappropriated domain. The poet could picture to himself bright fairy worlds beyond the continents already known, and the popular imagination was free to people the uninhabited wilds with all manner of marvels and monsters.

The wondrous thoughts of a poetic spirit betray themselves in these ideas and guesses. The spirit of invention three thousand years ago spoke of two gates which the then known world was said to have. One of these gates lay in the far north-east, between the snow and ice-clad Altai mountains, which set bounds to the wanderings of the nations. Beyond this mountain chain it was said you could hear the din of Gog and Magog, whom the mighty conqueror Alexander had thrust out of the world behind gates of bronze, and who ever since have been baring and blasting rock and mountain, and digging subterraneous ways in order to escape from their prison. Woe betide the world and all that dwells therein if ever they succeed in forcing their way through the woody Imaus and appear, with their hairy faces, angular heads, unknown tongues, arms, and clothing, and deluge the world from end to end like the stroke of a great spirit paint-brush, which, after filling its canvas with mighty nations, splendid cities, and world-renowned conquerors, should suddenly wipe them off again at a single sweep in order to paint fresh subjects.

At the opposite end of the world, in the warm south-west, where the gaze of the dreamer loses itself in the endless blue mirror of ocean, the poet pictured to himself that happier world which sprang from the rapturous embrace of heaven and earth; a world where the air is balmier, where love is sweeter, where man is more valiant and woman more faithful; where the light knows no shadow, joy no grief, and the flower no fading; where everything--herbs, trees, and the hearts of men--rejoices in an eternal youth.

It is an odd phenomenon in the psychology of nations, that popular fancy should always have painted the North with the pale and sombre hues of fear and terror, whilst she looked for the fulfilment of her unattainable hopes to the equally dim and impenetrable South, and constantly sent her dreams and her sighs in that direction.

* * * * *

In the days when Rome, still in her first bloom, had begun to be the mistress of those regions which the geographers of antiquity called the known world, there arose another young city on the opposite seashore, almost over against that great boot which we call Italy, and which, when once it had a good strong foot inside it, was to conquer the world with such rapid strides.

The new metropolis sprang from the ground as rapidly as Rome herself. The legend still lives of its imperious foundress, who purchased from the strange king as much land for her fugitive people as could be covered with an oxhide, and now that plot of land, once meted out by a buffalo-skin cut into strips, was already the seat of a great empire, and of all the coast land round about, and might perhaps have won the dominion of the whole world besides--if Rome had not chanced to be in that very world at that very time. Two centres the world cannot have; round two axles the earth cannot revolve.

This young city was called Carthage.

Men counted 330 years from the foundation of Carthage, which time Christians call 550 B.C., when the following event took place in the city of Carthage.

The captain of a merchant vessel, who very often touched the African coasts in the way of business, had been absent from his native land so long that his funeral feast had been held; his wife had wedded a second time, and another had succeeded to his office. Suddenly, when no one ever expected to see him again, he reappeared at the entrance of the great double harbour, which shut out the sea by means of huge chains, and had not its equal in the whole world, not even in Tyre itself, the oldest of all trading cities.

The mariner's name was Hanno. The whole city knew all about him, and every one now said how wonderful it was that Hanno should have come back again, after remaining away so long.

And he brought back with him treasures and curiosities such as no man had ever seen before, not even in dreams.

It was the custom at Carthage for the merchants who traversed distant lands to record the sum and substance of their experiences on marble tables, which tables were then preserved in the Temple of Kronos, which was in the heart of the city, near to the circumvallated Byrza. That the God of Time also possessed a temple there proves that, even in those early days, the fact that time is the greatest of all treasures, that time is money, was generally recognized at Carthage.

So Hanno's tables were placed on the altar of Kronos. These tables the people were not allowed to see. The inspection thereof was solely reserved for the Council of Elders, the grey Senators whose business it was to calculate how the information thus acquired could be turned to the profit of the fatherland.

The very next day after Hanno's tables had been placed on the altar, he was summoned to the dwelling of the Governor, which stood on a little island, midway between the two havens, exactly opposite the Gate of Elephants. At that time Carthage had already 260 gates and 650,000 inhabitants. A wall 180 feet high encircled the city on the land side; the cupolas of her palaces sparkled with gold; and, high above all her palaces, towered a temple whose walls were of black marble, whose columns were of alabaster with silver capitals, and from the top of whose domed roof rose a huge golden cupola, surmounted by four silver wings.

The Archon led Hanno over the scarlet, asphalted bridge, and, stopping short midway in front of the huge statue of Baalti, bade him survey the streets and public places of the huge city, along which a motley tide of human beings was ebbing and flowing, while whole armies of elephants, with heavy loads and gaily painted towers on their backs, were striding along the thoroughfares.

"Look, Hanno! Dost thou not see how great the city hath grown during thy absence, and how the number of the people hath increased in like measure?"

"It hath indeed become as great again," replied the mariner.

"Wouldst thou not be sad at heart if these palaces were one day to fall to the ground, if nothing but bats and serpents were to dwell in the place of these busy crowds, so that the stranger who heard tell of Carthage must needs ask: 'But where, then, is this great city? Who is there that can tell me anything about it?'"

"God forbid."

"And if one were then to make answer to the stranger, and say: 'That city once ruled half the world, and her fall dates from the day when a certain seafarer, called Hanno, returned from a long voyage,' wouldst thou have that come to pass?"

"Astarte and all the good gods preserve me from such a thought."

"Then guard thy lips, and take heed to what thou sayest before the Council."

Soon afterwards Hanno stood in the council chamber. The elders of the city sat round about the walls, and Hierkas, the eldest of the Senators, with a white beard reaching down to his girdle, held in his lap the large stone tables on which Hanno's experiences were recorded.

"Hanno," said the eldest of the elders to the seafarer, "thou hast been absent for years from thy native land; we waited for thee and thou camest not. In thy native land palaces, treasures, beautiful gardens, fruitful fields were thine; at home thou hadst a lovely wife and beloved slaves, and yet thou couldst find it in thy heart to remain away so long. Are the things true which thou hast recorded on these marble tables?"

"True every whit, and nought added thereto."

"Is it true that thou wast tossed by tempests on to a great continent in the far west, a continent larger than all the rest of the known world put together?"

"It is even so as I have said."

"Is it true that the winter there is as warm as the summer here, the grass as high as trees are with us, and the beasts as wise as men?"

"So it is in very truth."

"Is it true that there the women are fairer and fonder, and the men braver and mightier than with us; that there the very air is a healing balm, which heals the sick and makes the coward valiant, and the ill-favoured comely?"

"I have said it."

"Is it true that gold abounds there like sand, that precious stones are to be found on the mountain-tops, and pearls and purple on the seashore?"

"So have I found it."

"Thou hast said that thou didst see a plant, the roots whereof yield fruit sweeter than bread; that thou didst find a reed which yields honey, bushes which furnish wool white as fallen snow, and a tree from the pierced bark whereof flows streams of wine, while vessels full of milk grow beneath its crown?"

"All this have I seen, and to prove it I have brought of them all back with me."

"Hast thou not also brought back with thee a wonder-working bird with human speech and man's understanding?"

"I have it on my ship."

"Hast thou spoken with others of these things?"

"Only on the marble tables are my secrets recorded."

"Thy sailors have not yet been in the town, then?"

"None of them have left the harbour."

"Then, Hanno, return to thy ship."

They led the mariner back to his ship. Late the same evening the vessel was escorted by four men-of-war into the open sea, where, after stripping her of boats, sails, and helm, they deluged her on all four sides with what was known long afterwards as Greek fire. In an instant the inextinguishable flames had ignited the planks, and there, on the open sea, Hanno's ship, with its owner, its crew, and the gold-dust, the bread-fruit, the sugar-canes, the cocoa-nuts, and the talking-bird which they had brought back with them, were utterly consumed. The fire burned everything down to the very water's edge.

And a proclamation went forth in the streets of Carthage, that whoever presumed to say a word about Hanno's happy land should be instantly offered up to the goddess Astarte, and if a Senator should dare to betray a word of what was written on Hanno's marble tables, he should be stoned at the entrance of the harbour, and his bones strewn in the sea.

For if the men of Carthage had but learned that such a happy land existed anywhere under the sun, they would have quitted their native land in troops, the palaces would have fallen to pieces from decay, bats and serpents would have dwelt within the gates, and thus the day would have come when the stranger, on hearing the name of Carthage mentioned, would have asked: "But where, then, is the site of that great city?"

 

CHAPTER II

BAR NOEMI, THE BENJAMINITE

In the days when great Tyre still stood in all her glory, and her merchant vessels left not even the East Indies unexplored, there dwelt in that city a rich seaman, Bar Noemi by name.

His name tells us at once that he was a native of Palestine. He was, indeed, one of the few survivors of those Benjaminites who had been extirpated, together with their city, by the men of the other eleven tribes, to avenge the dishonour done to a single woman. And the punishment was certainly deserved--the men of Benjamin had dishonoured a woman who came to their city as a guest. It was a righteous deed to root out such men. Bar Noemi was still a mere child when he escaped from destruction; he had had no share, therefore, in the sins of his fathers, and he knew besides that they had been put to the edge of the sword by the Lord's command, the strong God, Jehova the avenger, who, midst the thunders of Sinai, had written on the tables of stone with His own hand: "The face of the strange woman shall be sacred to the strange man, and whosoever trespasses against her shall die the death!"

Bar Noemi knew very well that this sentence had been rigorously executed upon the inhabitants of a whole city, yet he never renounced the faith of his fathers on that account; but clave strictly to the traditions of Holy Zion even in the midst of the city of delights, and sacrificed continually to the strong avenging God who visits indeed the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the fourth generation, but also rewards their virtues down to the thousandth generation.

Yet the gods of Tyre and Sidon were ever so much more agreeable. They suffered the altar of Love to stand in their temples. Anybody was free to offer thereon doves or goats, according as his love was chaste or unchaste. No one was taken to task for the sins of love; on the contrary, mortals were initiated into mysteries which taught them how to approach, through insensible gradations of delight, the heaven of bliss--or hopeless damnation.

Bar Noemi neither visited Astarte's temple, nor allowed himself to be initiated into her magical mysteries. He was satisfied with observing his own religious feasts and fasts with prayer and thanksgiving, and every year scoured all the boards of his house at the Passover, and raised the green booths in his garden at the Feast of Tabernacles. And the inhabitants of Tyre let him do as he chose. A trading nation is wont to be tolerant in matters of religion. Besides, the religion of Israel was nothing new to the Tyrians. The two nations had often come into contact, sometimes with iron in their hands, but much more often with gold and silver. As Bar Noemi reached man's estate, he was reckoned among the richest merchants in Tyre. His fifty galleys conveyed purple stuffs, real pearls, and oriental spices from continent to continent.

He himself was the hardiest of mariners. He was frequently absent with his ship twelve months at a time. His sailors were all of them picked men of the tribe of Levi.

Bar Noemi was the first to discover how to sail from the Red Sea to Carthage without being obliged to transport one's wares on camels from one coast to the other, thus avoiding the grievous, exorbitant tolls imposed by the Egyptians upon the Phœnician merchants. None of the older mariners had found out the secret. The Cape of Good Hope was still an unknown point to the trading world, and men shrank back in terror from the hostile winds and tempests which environed it.

At Carthage, Bar Noemi had learnt to know the daughter of a merchant, one of those Punic beauties whom the Roman ladies loved so much to imitate. The fairest of complexions was made still more fair by wonderful saffron locks; the large blue eyes had long black lashes; the jet eyebrows were arched and bushy; the lips a deep purple, and the skin as soft as velvet, and as white as alabaster.

After the first Punic war, the Roman ladies, in order to win back their husbands and lovers from these fascinating foreign belles, did all in their power to make their own charms correspond with the charms of the Carthaginian beauties. They coloured their locks with saffron, tied raw flesh to their skins at night, and heightened the colour of their lips with red salve. But Nature had given all these things gratis to the Carthaginian beauties. Art could not supply those long golden locks from which they manufactured bow-strings in the hour of their country's mortal agony; or those voluptuous supple limbs which bled beneath the weapons of Rome in the last evil hour of Carthage.

Byssenia, Bar Noemi's bride, was one of these beauties. Her father was satisfied with the marriage gift which Bar Noemi brought his daughter; merchants always regard it as a great point to have the question of dower settled before the conclusion of the match.

And Bar Noemi was much more than a mere rich man. He was a handsome man, and valiant and haughty to boot, a man who never humbly bowed his head, and thought it a shame to cast down his eyes before any one. He was wont to say that no one had a keener glance than the lightning, or a more terrible manner of speech than the raging sea, and these he had long ago learnt to defy.

His acquaintances and all the great men of the city assembled on his wedding-day at the house of the bride's father, while the Carthaginian damsels led the bride into the grove of Astarte, that she might bathe for the first time in the sacred spring whence she was to be led to the altar of the goddess, there to be united to the bridegroom. When, however, it came to the bridegroom's turn, according to Phœnician custom, to offer to the gods of wood and stone the sacrifices which they demand from all men, Bar Noemi, to every one's astonishment, answered: "Our God is Jehovah," and refused to bring any offering to the idol.

The elders and high priests were much offended by these bold words, and conferred together in whispers as to what they should do with the audacious stranger.

First they led him into the halls of Astarte, whom the people adored in the shape of a beautiful woman in white marble. They showed him the mysteries of the ritual devoted to the Goddess of Love, the sweet, seductive secrets which confound the human soul, the sense-bereaving, voluptuous shapes which, under various names, have found worshippers in all ages down to the latest times.

Bar Noemi hastily turned away his eyes from the captivating sight, and stammered: "Jehovah is our God."

Shaking their heads, the elders and high priests proceeded further, and led Bar Noemi into the temple of the great and glistening god Dagon, resplendent with gold and silver, where the molten image of the God of Riches sits in a ship of mother-o'-pearl, laden with pearls and precious stones, and swimming in a basin of quicksilver instead of water. Then they represented to Bar Noemi that even if he would not bow before the magic of Love, he might well bend the knee before the terrible symbol of Riches, for the mighty Dagon grants wealth and dominion to them who honour him.

Bar Noemi looked contemptuously at the treasures lying at his feet, and answered boldly: "Our God is Jehovah."

The elders and high priests exchanged angry glances, and led him next to the temple of the war god Remphan, which rested on copper columns. The idol itself was of dark, molten bronze; at its feet lay heaps and heaps of broken weapons and armour, the trophies of battles won by the Carthaginians, as well as the prows of those ships which had been captured in naval victories.

"Since thou wilt bow down to neither Love nor Riches, at least do obeisance to the god in whose gift is Fame, the highest gift known to a true man."

But Bar Noemi gazed boldly into the hollow eyes of the molten idol, and cried defiantly: "There is but one God--Jehovah, the Almighty."

Last of all they brought him into the subterranean temple of Baal, the god of the strong hell, who has dominion over eternal fire, and distributes pains and torments both here and in the nether world. There they showed the stranger the red-hot body of the huge, shapeless idol which demanded a human victim every day, and they forced him to stay to see the sacrifice. Then they hurled a great, strong man into the idol's jaws, and the same instant a thick smoke gushed forth from Baal's eyes and nostrils, whilst the yells of the dying victim roared forth from the cavernous stomach like the laugh of a demon of hell, gradually growing fainter and fainter, as when a wild beast has satisfied his hunger, and settles quietly down to digest his food.

"Bar Noemi," cried the elders, "the gates of death are open before thee. Speak!"

Full of unshakable faith, the young man raised his eyes towards the invisible bright blue sky, the one thing pure enough to be imagined the dwelling-place of the eternal God, and spake unmoved: "Jehovah alone is God, the Ruler of earth and of the starry heavens, the Lord of life and death. All else is but dust and ashes."

The idol roared forth the death-agonies of a second victim, while the officiating priests sought to drown the sickening shrieks with the din of kettledrums and cymbals. In the midst of this hellish spectacle, Bar Noemi folded his hands across his breast and prayed in silence. He had quite made up his mind to breathe his last in the belly of the idol.

Again the elders and high priests whispered together, then, with smiling countenances, they spoke thus to Bar Noemi--

"Thou hast remained steadfast in thy faith. Cleave thereto henceforward also, and never forswear thyself. Wed thee with thy betrothed after the manner of thy nation, and take her with thee to thy distant dwelling; live as long as thy God wills it."

Bar Noemi obeyed their words, and secretly blessed Jehovah, who helps His true servants to victory, and strengthens the hearts of those who praise His Name. So he was married in the sight of all the people to the beautiful Byssenia, gave to the father of the bride the marriage gift he had brought with him in exchange for her, himself taking charge of his wife's paraphernalia, settled various outstanding matters of business, and embarking in his ship with his gallant crew, sailed out of the bay amid the cheers of the people assembled in the harbour, and the blare of the trumpets and clarions. An escort of four warships accompanied him into the open sea. The decks of the splendid Carthaginian vessels were hung with painted carpets, their prows were adorned with far-projecting golden monsters, behind were the movable bridges used in battle to grapple the enemy, amidships the high tower, whence stones and other missiles were wont to be hurled.

When the ocean was reached and land was no longer visible anywhere, the Carthaginians suddenly let down their bridges upon the bridal ship and held it fast.

The elders spake yet again to Bar Noemi.

"Bar Noemi, son of a strange land, below thee is the waste of waters, above thee is the waste of sky, answer now, who is the God that can help thee in this wilderness?"

"Jehovah!" answered Bar Noemi.

"Then Jehovah stand thee by," said the elders; whereupon they stripped Bar Noemi's ship of sails, helm, and every instrument which enables the mariner to find or make his way on the ocean. Then they bade the bride return to her father at Carthage. But, clinging to her husband's breast, Byssenia said she would liefer remain in the stormy sea, and would not forsake in the hour of danger him to whom she had plighted her troth.

"Then may Jehovah help thee," answered the elders; and with that they quitted Bar Noemi's vessel, and, drawing back the bridges, left the bridal ship there in the open sea, without sails or helm, devoted to the tempest, abandoned to the waves.

 

CHAPTER III

DERELICT

On the becalmed ocean lies the forsaken ship, without sails, without helm, drawn to one side by its own weight, not a single black point of land, not a single white sail anywhere visible along the vast horizon. And in the midst of this desolation stands Bar Noemi and his doomed crew. But Bar Noemi has said that even in this desolation dwells the Lord God, who rules over the heavens and the waters.

And behold! as he prays there with outstretched arms, a dove comes flying from the west on rapid wing, and alights upon the topmast. Never had man seen such a dove before. Her feathers were of green, merging here and there into pearly grey, the wide-extended tail was gold-coloured, and sewn with stars like the tail of a peacock, and her neck was striped with glowing purple.

Bar Noemi took some rice in the palm of his hand and held it in the air, and behold! to every one's astonishment, the wonderful bird flew from the masthead on to the mariner's hand, and began to peck up the grains of rice one by one, uttering each time the soft cooing note of the wild dove, whereupon she flew back to the masthead, and remained there till evening.

"A miracle!" cried the ship's company; but Bar Noemi said: "Ye now see that Jehovah has heard me, for He has sent His messenger from heaven as a sign that He will deliver us from this present distress. Let us, then, take our mantles, and whatever else can be spared from the ship, the garments of the women, the precious gold stuffs, the Phrygian velvets, and let us sew them together and make us a sail. A west wind is arising which will drive us upon some coast; there will we refit our ship and return to Tyre."

The ship's company obeyed and set to work. They made them a large sail of bright shreds and patches; they hoisted it up, not without sore labour; and scarcely had the sun sunk down and melted away in his own reflection at the extreme margin of the sky, when a light breeze arose in the east which at first but lightly curled the waves, but gradually made the whole sea heave and toss. The patched sail bulged out, the ship righted herself, stood firm amidst the waves, and began to glide along the watery mirror, and the ship's company, sinking on their knees, stammered: "Jehovah is our God."

All night long the wind blew in the same direction, and all night long Bar Noemi scrutinized the stars. The constellations with which he was so familiar, for he had diligently studied them during his long voyages, remained constant at the same height, in an unaltered arch, right above his head, a sign, he knew, that the ship was following a northerly course.

Three days and three nights the rudderless ship flew with a single sail over the surface of the ocean. On the fourth day there appeared very faintly on the distant horizon, like the forehead of some brown marine monster, the ridge of the world-supporting Atlas mountains, the rock of the unconquerable Gebel-al-Tarik, which we degenerate moderns call Gibraltar. This point was familiar to the mariners. They knew that the fortunate inhabitants of the golden apple-gardens of the Hesperides would certainly welcome them with joy, though it would have been more dangerous for the seafarers to have gazed into the eyes of the maidens of the Atlas mountains than to have listened to the songs of the Sirens or to have sailed between the coral-reefs of Scylla the accursed. The joys of this outermost African haven had torn more sailors from the rowing-benches than even famine or pestilence, the twin destroying angels of antiquity.

Shouting for joy, Bar Noemi's crew clambered up to the masthead, so as to better survey from thence the promised land, which drew nearer to them every moment. Already they began to make out the shadowy coastline; already they could distinguish the fresh green of the woods against the dark-blue mountain-side, the narrow strips of cornland, and the scarlet bloom of the almond woods on the shore below. Already they perceived the sky-blue enamel of the luxuriant sesame flowers in the meadows, and the inviting smoke-wreaths arising from the hospitable huts on the shore--when, suddenly, a small black cloud arose in the south-east, which, in a moment, darkened the sun and changed the complexion of the ocean. The waves took a murky, dark-green tinge, Atlas veiled himself in dusky grey, the shores became dark blue, and seemed to draw further and further away; and, all at once, as if fallen from the skies, the whole surface of the water was covered by those white birds with black wings whose vital element is the tempest, who live by the storm, and only come forth from their nooks and crannies as harbingers of evil to the mariner, circling round the ship with terrifying screams, as if only sent forth to bewail the crew.

Bar Noemi ordered the single sail to be furled, kissed first his lovely wife, and then his faithful comrades, one after the other, for whom there was no longer any hope of salvation save only in the mighty hand of the Lord, and, falling upon his knees, he began to sing the psalm: "In Thee, O Lord, do we put our trust," they all following his example.

The raging of the waves, the howling of the wind, grew ever louder, the song of the suppliants ever fainter; the awful crash of the thunder mingled with the concert of Death; the black clouds veiled the sun with an impenetrable veil, and only the lightning flashed out at intervals like a spectral torch. At every flash the black outlines of Atlas were visible like the terrible shape of a ghostly nightmare, and on the foaming crests of the lurid wave-mountains swept a tiny nutshell, a frail wooden pellet, the plaything of the storm, wherein some two hundred or so of that species of worm which calls itself Lord of the Universe were huddled together into a trembling, whining mass.

The fury of the storm kept steadily increasing, the sullen day became a yet more sullen night. Bar Noemi's crew saw the rocks of the Atlas range drawing nearer every moment, and they cursed Bar Noemi and the God to whom he prayed, without ceasing. Another instant and they will all be dashed to pieces.

Then the lightning flashes ceased, and long hours of gloom succeeded. The storm tossed the ship about in its mad frolic; the minutes passed in mortal anguish, and when, after many hours, a fresh lightning flash lights up the whole horizon, the astonished mariners no longer see the Atlas mountains. They have been driven far out into the Atlantic ocean.

"Jehovah is our God alone."

The Lord has saved His faithful ones from a terrible death, yet He has cast them upon the immeasurable deep, and abandoned them to fresh dangers.

The night passed away, but the sky was still covered with wild, hurrying clouds which seemed to be fighting among themselves so that their blood flowed down in streams. And nowhere was the sun to be seen, and the horizon had vanished in drifting clouds and floating vapours--and so they fared for four days. The tempest is never weary.

The ship was already a wreck, the masts were broken to pieces, the glistening dragons on the prow, which had made such a brave show a few days before, had been swept away by the waves; everything superfluous had already been cast overboard, and yet it was as much as they could do to keep the ship from sinking.

As now the fourth day was already closing in storm and stress, the eldest of the mariners stepped up to Bar Noemi, took him aside, and said--

"Dost thou not pray to Jehovah every day, Bar Noemi?"

"Every hour and with all my might!"

"In the stern of thy ship stands the Ark of thy Covenant before which thou dost kneel constantly. What does it contain? Jehovah dwells therein, does He not?"

"It contains the Commandments of the Lord engraved on stone, after the pattern of the tables of Jerusalem."

"Then thou prayest to Jehovah? It is well! But dost thou not know that at the self-same time thy crew in the hold of the ship bewail Thammus, kneeling beside the golden serpent which they have concealed there. Thus, either two Divinities, one of whom would save, the other destroy us, are striving above our heads for the mastery while we perish; or, there is but one God, even Jehovah, as thou sayest, who prolongs our days indeed out of compassion for thee--but who, in His wrath at the wickedness of these men, will not deliver us from the storm. Look now, this do! When, at night, the sound of wailing reaches thee through the deck, know that they are worshipping their idol, and either throw the Ark of the Covenant or the golden serpent into the sea, that at least one God may befriend us."

At these words Bar Noemi was very wrath, and did as the old mariner had counselled. For when at night time he heard the mysterious wailing below the deck, he went quickly down into the hold and there found his sailors on their knees, smiting their breasts and cutting their naked limbs with sharp knives, and in the midst stood a golden serpent, wound round a column, whose large eyes, made of carbuncle stones, gleamed brightly through the gloom.

Bar Noemi approached the idol and dashed his sword against its head, whereupon it broke into a thousand splinters which scattered in all directions.

"Behold now!" cried Bar Noemi, "how that magian lied who told you that this was a god, and how that goldsmith lied who said it was of gold! It was only so much gilded glass. He who wrought the thing was right in supposing that if you could take it for a god, it might also pass for gold!"

The astonished mariners felt deeply ashamed at these words. The material fraud was the strongest proof in their eyes of their spiritual aberration also. They kissed the hem of Bar Noemi's mantle, and collecting the splinters of the shattered idol, flung them into the sea.

 

CHAPTER IV

THE RAFT AND THE GREEN DOVE

No sooner had the idol collapsed, than like a whimpering child lulled to sleep, the tempest suddenly abated. The howling of the wind died away; the lightning flashed no longer; the black masses of cloud dispersed in all directions; the agitated waves, after rocking the ship to and fro for a time, grew smoother and smoother, till at last a perfect calm reigned upon the waters.

"A miracle! a miracle!" cried the astonished crew; but as in the still night watches they raised their eyes to the cloudless sky, a fresh astonishment fell upon them. This starry heaven was not the heaven they were accustomed to. Those were other constellations. The seven stars of the Great Bear were no longer to be seen; the bright and constant polar star was no longer in its place; the mariner's guide, that double eye of heaven and all the other constellations of the Northern firmament, which the sailor regards in so poetic a light, whose going and coming he knows so well and whose position tells him in what part of the world he is--all these had vanished from the sky, and in their place were other stars, still more brilliant than they, which no man was able to call to mind. One of these stars shone with so intense a radiance that it cast shadows on the deck.

Amazed and anxious, the bewildered crew looked up into the unknown heaven which thus disturbed all their calculations, and turning to Bar Noemi, inquired timidly--

"Sir! where are we?"

Bar Noemi himself, not without secret horror, examined these stars of another world, and answered with a sigh--

"We are in God's hand!"

"We are beyond the limits of the world!" cried a despairing voice; "we are gliding into Nothingness!" Another maintained that they were approaching the land of the great Rok-rok, the home of serpents and amphibians, where beasts hunt men as men hunt beasts elsewhere. A third told of the Magnet-mountain of the Indians, which drew ships to destruction from afar, and all were terrified at finding themselves in a position so queer that not even a single legend had anticipated it.

For a while the crew whispered among themselves, then the boldest of them stepped defiantly up to Bar Noemi, and said--

"Listen to our words, Bar Noemi! All thy continuous praying to Jehovah has only brought trouble upon thyself and those who are with thee. Thou makest us to be tossed of tempests and suffer grievous perils; thou hast shattered the God Thammus; thou dost nought but praise and glorify Jehovah, and now we are in the midst of a strange sea. How we got hither we know not nor how we shall escape from thence; and what is the cause of all this but thou and the Ark of thy Covenant and the name of Jehovah that thou prayest to? So long as Thammus was with us, the storm howled, but since thou didst break him to pieces a calm more terrible than a storm has come upon us. Till then we at least moved along, but now we are fast bound to one spot as if with double anchors. The crew, therefore, will now abandon thee and the Ark of the Covenant to the ocean. Depart from us whithersoever thou camest. We are not angry with thee, but we fear thee. We will make thee a raft of planks; we will give it a rudder and steering gear; we will share our sail with thee, and give thee bread and water for six days. Be content, therefore, and in Jehovah's name depart, and we too will go whithersoever the good or evil humour of our devils may lead us."

Bar Noemi answered nothing. This people was hurrying to its doom. For the third time it denied its faith. The sea will surely swallow them up as the earth did Dathan and Abiram. When the sins of Sodom exhausted the patience of the Lord, He withdrew the one righteous man from the abandoned city. Even now the angels of the Lord are many.

When Byssenia, who had hitherto shared all the sufferings of the crew without a murmur, saw how they were making ready a raft for Bar Noemi, she embraced her sorrowing husband, and said, in an encouraging whisper--

"Be at ease, Bar Noemi. Here is not the limit of the world. The men of Carthage possess a secret which may not be named there, and yet is handed down from father to son and thus never forgotten. Tossed by storms, the courageous Hanno wandered once upon a time into these regions. His whole course is recorded on huge stone tables which are jealously preserved in the temple of the God of Death. For whoever betrays this secret is a dead man. I learnt it from my father, who is one of the guardians of this temple, and sits in the great council of merchants. In the quarter where that dazzling star goes to rest, there is a new continent much larger and more beautiful than ours. We shall find it if we follow the course of the star. Two mighty geniuses are with us and will help us: Jehovah is with thee and Love with me!"

Bar Noemi kissed and embraced her whom God had sent as His angel to save him in his extremity, and with that he himself helped his crew to make ready the frail bark on which, with God's covenant of peace and the love of his wife, he was to be committed to the ocean.

The raft was now ready. A single upright plank formed its mast, a piece of brocaded cloth, once the mantle of the bride, was fastened thereto by way of sail. A leather skin of water, a basket of coarse wheat cakes which the Carthaginians used for bread (and these much damaged by sea-water), were all the victuals which Bar Noemi received from his crew, and of all his countless treasures, he took with him but three: the Ark of the Covenant of his God; his beloved, the faithful Byssenia; and his good and trusty sword.

As Bar Noemi went on board the raft, the crew shouted after him: "Jehovah be with thee!" He gazed back sadly upon the forsaken ship from which the one righteous man had thus been driven, and as he withdrew further and further from it, and as the wilderness of water between them became greater and greater, and he still stood and gazed sorrowfully back upon his ship, lo! she suddenly began to settle down sideways, then, slowly turning round and round for some minutes, finally sank before his eyes. The breeze carried the last screams of the dying sailors to Bar Noemi's ears.

Thus he found himself quite alone in the midst of the unknown waters.

But he did not remain alone long. The flapping of wings resounded on high, and from the midst of the serene blue sky, descended that same wondrous dove which had visited his ship on Africa's coasts, and now lighted fearlessly on the top of his little mast.

She, too, had fled from the storm. Her gold glittering plumage was all rumpled and soiled, and she smoothed and composed it with her scarlet bill; then fluttering on to Bar Noemi's arm, as if he were an old acquaintance, she flew down from thence upon Byssenia's snowy shoulder with a loud cooing, and when they offered her of the wheaten cakes, she pecked at it but did not eat, and then flew away again with the gentle coo of the wild dove.

"I'll follow thee, thou heavenly messenger!" cried Bar Noemi, trustfully; and unfurling his little sail to the wind, he steered the raft in the direction taken by the dove.

The heavenly guide never disappeared from view. When the raft was becalmed, she flew down upon it and rested. At night she always roosted on the summit of the mast, and in the early morning departed again, flying constantly in one and the same direction.

Three days and three nights the dove and the mariner travelled together. On the morning of the fourth day, the dove flew joyously on to Byssenia's knee, ate heartily of the wheaten cakes, and thereupon flew so rapidly away that the eye could scarcely follow her: at last she quite disappeared from the horizon.

In the fourth night the ship sailed along alone, and the beloved, the loving wife, laid her head on her husband's bosom, as if she were resting on her bridal bed at home, so calmly did she sleep amidst the waste of waters.

But Bar Noemi could not sleep. There is a feeling in the sailor's breast, the vibration of some hidden chord, one of those myriad secret forebodings which the learned may perhaps deny, but can never explain, which expresses itself in a feverish unrest whenever he is approaching the green headland of his dreams, which he cannot yet see, and yet could point out with his finger and say, "There it is!" when all around him is nought but commingling sea and sky.--"There it is! There it must be!"

The morning twilight suffuses heaven and ocean with gold and purple, and, lo! where the gilded sky touches the water, a lofty rock stands out against the horizon, its bepurpled summits shimmering through the azure morning mists.

"The Lord He is God alone!" exclaims Bar Noemi, and raised thankful hands to heaven, while Byssenia sank down before the Ark of the Covenant, and covered its silver-studded corners and angles with her kisses.

A new world? No! It is an old world already hastening to the end of its history, just as the history of the known world has begun to take notice of it. Ye who have fixed the duration of the Ages, how know ye how many previous millenniums with a whole world of men, beasts, and plants have already vanished hopelessly from your ken? Those skeletons which are found in the beds of rivers, at the bottom of deep clefts; those remains of unknown animals never seen by European eyes; those relics of a primeval vegetation which amaze us in the coal layers, and the chalk strata,--speak of an older, perhaps of a better, in any case of a mightier, world than ours. And do not those gigantic ruined palaces, with their wondrous architecture which adventurous travellers have discovered in the land of the Incas, do not they point to a vanished people, the masters of power and glory who, once upon a time, filled half a world with their struggles and their joys; ruled the land and waxed great, seeming to the inhabitants of that trans-oceanic continent a race of very demigods, till their sins made them ripe for death, and the luxuriant vegetation of a savage Nature disputed the possession of the soil with the children of men? The calculations of the wise Plato about the "Fortunate Islands" may indeed have only been a poetic dream, perhaps the mere striving of an inspired philosophical soul to realize its own ideals; but so much is certain: the relics which have survived the ravages of centuries, relics which no sea can wear down, which no forest can overgrow, no tempest can wash away, testify to the fact that in the far distant ages before us, beings have existed who aimed at perfection, and only perished when their pride reached its summit, and they fancied in their insane presumption that there was no longer any God above them.

 

CHAPTER V

THE PRIEST OF THE MEGATHERIUM

As far as the eye can reach, the shore is covered with a forest, such as only the most extravagant fancy can picture to itself. Broad shadowy trees, which take root again in the soil with their branches, seem to be building huge temples, with living rows of columns, whose roof is the thick dark foliage, whose ornaments are the flowers of the ivy-like creepers which climb up the branches, and look down from their heights with a thousand wide-open blue and scarlet shining eyes. The hedges consist of tiny silvery bushes, with rosy red pointed branches, and the lofty grasses with their woolly spear-heads shoot up so high, that a tall man walking amongst them would not overtop them. Here and there above the arcades of the dark bananas, tower groups of cocoanut palms, those gigantic flowers, with their huge calices of fruit, most noble of the Creator's works, for they only raise their heads the higher for their heavy burdens, and bear with modesty the crown which He has given them.

On the top of one of these palms squats a human shape, engaged in pitching down from thence the nuts, each as big as a child's head; but below, at the foot of the trees, amongst the luxuriant grasses, lies a gigantic megatherium, which in its recumbent position is scarcely distinguishable from a shapeless mass of rock. Its length is fully four and twenty feet; in shape it resembles a sloth, and its unshapely back rises like a small hillock out of the lofty grasses whilst it thrusts its huge head with the tiny eyes and the little round ears into the thicket. The whole of the huge body is cased in a brown warty skin, traversed by deep furrows, and covered round the loins by hundreds of small sea-mussels, the fruits of its evening wallowings in the sea-slime; only the beast's nostrils, ears, and the point of its short tail are sprinkled with sharp, tough bristles.

The sea-farer from Tyre had no sooner brought his beloved and the Ark of the Covenant ashore, than he fell with his face to the ground, thanked the Lord for his wondrous deliverance, and reverentially sang a song of praise.

At the sound of this song, the monster, prone in the grass, raised its unwieldy head, and opening its frightful jaws, uttered a protracted, screeching roar, which was more like a wail of distress than a note of defiance.

In his first alarm Bar Noemi grasped his sword, and his heart beat quickly as he saw this huge head, with its neck twelve feet long, stretched out towards him; but immediately afterwards he let his sword glide back into its sheath, and stroking Byssenia's light locks as she clung trembling to him, calmly soothed and encouraged her. "Fear not! The teeth of this monster are blunt and black. He is a plant eater, and does not attack men. Such like monsters live also in Migraim, in the great ocean, where they are called 'Behemoth,' though they are not so monstrously big."

The man in the tree had, in the mean time, perceived the strangers, and after throwing a few more cocoanuts into the jaws of the monster below, he clambered down from the tree.

The megatherium grew calmer; its jaws sank to the ground again, and it crunched the hard nuts with its teeth as if they had been grains of corn.

The man threw a few more nuts into its jaws, which attention the monster accepted with the same stupid helplessness with which fledglings, a day or two old, allow their dam to feed them, uttering at the same time a grunt of lazy satisfaction.

And now the man approached Bar Noemi.

He was a wretched-looking object. His head and cheeks were quite hairless; his wrinkled face was of a sickly grey tinge; his limbs seemed to be wasting away; his back was crooked; his knee was bent outwards, his chest inwards. Although it was a hot summer day, he seemed to be freezing, despite the thick fur mantle in which he was closely wrapped.

Bar Noemi's astonishment increased when he was addressed by this strange shape, in that out-of-the-way corner of the world, in a corrupt but perfectly intelligible Carthaginian dialect.

"Thou hast come from Carthage, eh?"

"Yes, we come from Carthage," repeated Bar Noemi, "and have suffered shipwreck. But who art thou, and how is it that thou dost address us in our own language?"

The man shivered in the warmth of the equinoctial summer, and wrapping himself closer in his woollen mantle, which was interwoven with gold and silver flowers, he came still closer. It was evidently a labour for him to speak to them from a distance, for his voice was not strong enough to do so without very great exertion.

"If you come from Carthage, you must have heard of Hanno's tables, for though it is forbidden to as much as mention them there under pain of death, they must be known to every Carthaginian, for thousands have already come from Africa's coasts to the Fortunate Islands as Hanno called this continent."

"Then we are on the Fortunate Islands?" cried Bar Noemi, who had often heard the legend from the lips of his sailors.

"This is no island, but a continent ten times as large as the continent beyond the seas. Those who dwell on one side of it do not even know the names of those who dwell on the other. The boldest travellers do not yet know the boundaries of this continent, and whatsoever direction they take they always come upon new lands, new mountains, and new peoples, a hundred-fold more numerous than those of Rome and Greece put together, as described by them who come from thence. The Fortunate Islands have no limit, they are infinity itself."

"And does the land really deserve to be called fortunate?"

"Throw thyself to the ground and kiss it. This land is the Paradise where everything for which men toil and labour elsewhere, grows of its own accord. One tree bears wool whiter than the wool of sheep; in the flowers of another tree you will find sweet honey; a third gives milk and butter which is fatter than the milk of cows; and yon branches which nod their heads towards thee supply in abundance wine and bread and luscious fruits. And then, too, each one of our natural juices has its own peculiar intoxicating joy. The sleep-compelling juice of the Areka transports thee into very Paradise; drink thyself drunken with the sweet juice of the Batata, and the love of a thousand women at once will burn in thy breast; drink deeply of the burnt beans of the coffee plant, and thou wilt feel two souls within thee instead of one; whilst all the other joys of life are as nothing compared with the ecstatic vibrations which thrill through every nerve when thou dost taste of the fermented juice of the sugar-cane. Ah! stranger, here are a thousand different kinds of bliss which other lands wot not of. Shame it is that one cannot live longer. Shame that life vanishes like a dream. I myself am not far from my dotage, for thirty summers have already passed over my head!"

Bar Noemi felt very dejected. Thirty years in this place actually mean old age! And certainly this man resembled a dotard of seventy; he was a bent and broken-down old man with nothing of the dignity of age about him. His own words seemed to have deeply afflicted him, and despite the great heat, he was shivering. By his side hung a round ivory vessel the gold stopper of which he unscrewed, and taking a good pull at it, handed the bottle to Bar Noemi.

But the young man would none of it. "I drink of the running stream," said he.

The native of the Fortunate Islands laughed. The liquor he had just taken instantly flew to his cheeks and forehead, bringing out large red patches which grew redder every moment. His eyes sparkled with that offensive glare which betokens madness. With an embarrassed leer he turned towards Byssenia, and regardless of her husband's presence, thus addressed her: "Pretty lady! do not stay with that moody water-drinker! Come with me, and I'll steep thee in delights. I am a beauteous, ardent youth; my lips are honey, my heart a flaming fire. Forsake this beggar, and come to me, for I am a rich man. I'll give thee a gold ring for every one of thy golden hairs, and for thy glistening eyes thou shalt have two gleaming carbuncle stones. I'll bring thee into my palace whose top is lost in the clouds, whose lofty golden cupola compels the very sun to change his course. Have no fear of this husband of thine. I am a strong, invincible hero! With a single wave of my hand I can dash him to the ground"--and for all these brave words, the wretched creature could scarce keep his feet, and his hands trembled like aspens.

Bar Noemi stepped back with a shudder, at the same time throwing his arms round his beloved, who, full of disgust, concealed her face from the repulsive figure before her.

Again the megatherium raised his head and uttered a roar. He was hungry.

This roar brought the islander back to his senses. He quickly shut up his drinking-flask and tottered back to the monster, which opened wide its jaws while he was still a long way off, showed its large black fangs, and patiently awaited the great cocoanuts which the man, collecting from the earth, hurled into its jaws.

Byssenia would have fled from the uncanny sight, but Bar Noemi encouraged her to await the end of the scene. "The fellow is disgusting when drunk," said he, "but there is no cause for alarm; perhaps he will listen to reason when he is sober."

The exertion of feeding the monster gradually drove the fumes of the liquor out of the man's head. After a while, the megatherium stretched itself in the grass and went to sleep, whereupon the man, now sober, came back, showing the same pale and trembling countenance as before--in fact, his labour had so exhausted him that he was almost in a state of collapse, and in a faint voice he begged Bar Noemi to lend him his arm and help him on his way to the city where he would entertain them as his guests. Only with great repugnance did Bar Noemi take the arm of the young old man, but, at the same time, he could not forbear from asking the question: "What hideous beast is that which thou art at so much pains to feed?"

The old young man looked at him with consternation.

"Oh, stranger, guard thy lips, and speak not so, for that which thou callest a beast is a god!"

"What!" cried Bar Noemi, wrathfully, "that bellowing monster, with divided hoofs, blotched and cracked hide and loathsome body, a god!"

"Yea, in very truth," answered the man, in a tone of awe and reverence. "Every city here has a living god whom all the people serve in turn--I to-day, another to-morrow. Each one of them has as many priests as there are days in the year. When our fathers came hither, centuries ago, these superhuman beings ruled the whole land and their favour could only be won by sacrifice, submission, and prayer. Since then, all the first-fruits of the land have belonged to them, the best of the bread, of the fruit, nay, even the first-born of man and beast are offered to them, for they are the Lords over this land who never die."

Bar Noemi sighed.

"Would that I were in a rudderless ship on a stormy sea rather than on this accursed rock."

Thereupon he reverentially raised the Ark of the Covenant on to his head, seized Byssenia's arm with his right hand and the hilt of his sword with his left, and when the old young man asked him what was inside the case which he carried on his shoulders with so much care, he answered--

"It contains a treasure, the like of which is not to be found in the whole empire of the Fortunate Islands. This is the only treasure in the whole land."

And as he went, his thoughts ran on. "And she whom my right hand holds is the only true woman, and the sword in my left hand is the only true weapon in the whole of the Fortunate Islands, for my heart tells me that there is not a single man beneath this sun."

And the old young man led them towards the city.

 

CHAPTER VI

THE CITY OF DELIGHT

Behold the huge city which stretches out before you.

Neither ancient Rome nor modern London, nor yet the capital of the Celestial Empire, not even Babylon, far famed of old, not one of the congeries of houses of the known world, is to be compared with this city.

View it even from the top of this high hill, and you cannot take in half of it. Formerly it was bounded by two great rivers, but now these also are covered with houses, and have their course assigned to them out of sight, beneath the town.

A fantastic, extravagant architecture, all glitter and luxuriance, the creation of a wild fancy, forms a striking contrast to the simplicity of the classic and the sublimity of the Gothic style.

The gates of the city consist of strange pyramidal structures formed of gigantic layers of cubes, one above the other, the spaces between each cube being wide enough to admit the passage of two heavily laden waggons abreast. The lowermost layer consists of eleven cubes, the next layer of ten, and so on, regularly diminishing by one up to the eleventh, topmost, solitary cube towering high into the air, and surmounted by the image of the unshapely Megatherium, the tutelary deity of the city. Each of these dazzling cubic stones shows a bas relief representing a human figure with a crown on its head, and a sceptre in its hand, whilst wondrous hieroglyphics below record the six-and-sixty names of the ancient rulers of the city.

The first thing which strikes the stranger as he enters the city is the intoxicating, voluptuous perfume which seems to form part of the atmosphere, the exhalation whereof, like a golden mist, extends all over the place, enveloping the towers and roofs of the loftiest palaces in a romantic chiarooscuro. 'Tis the odour of ambergris and musk, and other perfumes, now unknown, which the owners of these palaces have mingled with the mortar of their walls so that the whole town may be bathed in an eternal sea of fragrance. Every street spreads abroad its own peculiar, pleasant odour.

Viewed from afar, all these palaces seem like so many houses of cards. One row of columns rises above another, and each row is encircled by wondrous gossamer trellis-work, so that they look for all the world like aerial, unsubstantial balconies. The lowest row of columns consists of glittering, polished metal (mostly copper), the next rows of jasper or alabaster, and the uppermost of transparent, prismatically fashioned glass, the facets of which catch the morning and evening rays of the tropical sun, and scatter fantastic rainbows on every side of them.

None of the houses have external windows, as with us, so that it is impossible to peep inside them. The whole façade is covered with wonderful statuary--on whose extraordinary groups the eye would willingly linger, if fresh wonders did not every moment divert its attention at every step.

The streets are spanned by arched bridges, which unite the roofs of the opposite houses, so that the city can not only be traversed lengthways by the streets, but crossways also by the roofs and bridges above--the latter, in fact, being the night, as the former is the day route. No sooner has the sinking of the star of day wrapped the streets in darkness than the bridges become animated and populous. Laughing and singing, the noisy groups crowd the bronze bridges and the gardened house-tops. Every house is now open to all, and reveals its sweet mysteries; every roof is bright with the glare of torches, and the half-naked bands, flitting to and fro, revel tumultuously on high.

If any one were to stand in the street below at such times he would hear nothing but an indescribable, terrifying hubbub, occasioned by the mysterious orgies above his head.

In many places huge cupolas spring up amongst and above the palaces, like gigantic eggs rising out of the ground. Wondrous, indeed, the imagination which could devise such structures. The whole building seems to be of a piece, yet it consists of millions of stones deftly joined together with a single large lateral opening.

In the midst of the city rises a temple of colossal proportions, the eight sides of which are covered with silver plates polished to a blinding brightness. In this gigantic mirror one sees reflected the wondrous image of the far-extending city, and the repercussion of the sunbeams therefrom fills the remotest corners of the city with a dazzling refulgence. On the summit of the temple is a huge idol of massive silver. The head is round, like a man's, and its hands and feet have each five digits; but the long, squirrel-like tail behind seems to deny its human origin. Diamonds as large as eggs supply the place of eyes. This is the giant Triton, the supremest idol of that ancient continent, exalted above all the other monsters whom men adore--a millennial monster whose living original sits within the walls of that temple, and utters a roar when it is hungry, and then the whole city--the whole land--trembles before its wrath. It asks but one meal a year, but then it must have a man and a woman to bury in its maw. After that it is dumb again for another year, and sits in the midst of its temple on a golden throne with its five-fingered hand resting on its knees, and its immovable eyes blankly staring before it, just like its silver effigy on the roof up yonder.

 

CHAPTER VII

THE TETZKATLEPOKA

In the broad streets a mass of men and women are surging to and fro. What festival is being held to-day in Triton's city?

The windows of the palaces are adorned with living flowers, wonderful zoophytes, which belong partly to the rapacious, locomotive world, and partly to the world that is rooted to the soil; huge green snakes, winding up the slender columns and terminating in marvellously beautiful tulip-like calices; but in the midst of each calix lurks a poisonous sting, and the leaves, as they shrink together, greedily devour the bird of paradise that has ventured into the calix while the tail of the floral beast is rooted in the living earth. The balconies are adorned with deep-sea vegetation, which the perverse ingenuity of man has acclimatized to the tropical air. Between the bright ridges of the coral the interlacing suckers of the tumid polypus grope their way, presenting an eternally shifting maze of shapes and colours, whilst through the thick, branching arms of the transparent mollusc the pulsation of its vital juices is distinctly visible. The flowers of the field no longer charm the senses of men; the blunted, unreceptive soul can only be excited by the wondrous, the extraordinary, in Nature.

The main street, from the gate to the Temple of Triton, is covered by a carpet--a carpet woven entirely out of the locks of young damsels. Ebony-coloured hair forms the groundwork of the pattern, and the figures of wreaths, palaces, sacrifices, and all manner of groups are worked into it with tresses of every shade of colour from the blondest blonde to the deepest chestnut. No reigning prince of this world has ever possessed a more costly carpet. Every year the girls cut off their locks; every year the carpet grows longer and longer, and, although the city itself increases every year, the carpet keeps pace with it, and reaches from gate to gate.

Over this gossamer net-work, more precious than gold, the festal host sweeps like a flowing stream.

More than 20,000 children--boys and girls--lead the way to the gorgeous temple, singing merry songs, and as they sing they dance with quivering limbs--a dance which flushes their cheeks with a feverish glow, and fires their eyes with an ardour which has nothing childish in it. On the morn of the feast of Triton an intoxicating potion was given to these children, which has robbed them of all modesty, and, writhing hideously, they dance and sing in honour of the god.

After them come 20,000 women, their bodies covered with dazzling stuffs and gorgeous plumage; women with painted cheeks, gilded eyelids and eyebrows, and with dishevelled tresses rolling down their shoulders in hundreds of ringlets entwined with gold wire. There is not a spot on their bodies which reveals God's creating hand. Human madness has covered, painted, and gilded everything. Only their sparkling eyes show that they are human; only their languishing glances tell that they are women.

The women are followed by three hundred and sixty-five old men, the priests of the god, with lofty, gold-embroidered, peaked caps, and long trailing mantles, each holding in his hand a staff covered with silver bells. These grave old men with the high caps and the long robes dance with insane gestures round a golden car resting on six wheels. Each wheel bears the image of the sun, and six pillars, surmounted by a golden drapery, form a sort of baldachin over the car.

In the midst of this lofty State chariot lies a human form, a pale ghost, a living corpse, whose eyes are as dull and turbid as slimy sea-water; the skin of whose face is earth-coloured and cleaves to the bones, whilst his whole bearing speaks of utter weariness, semi-idiocy, and disgust of life. His limbs are quite motionless; but, if you look closely, you will see that now and then his lips slightly quiver.

This shape is the Tetzkatlepoka.

The chronicles of the Incas, whom the wise Spaniards, in league with the redskins, destroyed root and branch, had also something to say about the festivities of Tetzkatlepoka. Tetzkatlepoka was the name they gave to a subordinate, annually elected deity, who presided over their ghastly mysteries. The proudest and comeliest man that could be found was annually selected and brought into Triton's city. In the midst of the great market-place, the loveliest maidens of the city surrounded him with unpainted cheeks, freely flowing tresses, and elfin garments spun out of glass-thread, and thus they spoke to the elect of the people--

"This year thou art the god Tetzkatlepoka, the lord of all beauty, the demi-god of bliss, the prince of women. Every flower blooms for thee, every lip kisses thee. Wilt thou be the god Tetzkatlepoka? Wilt thou consume away, expire, and vanish in the midst of joy?"

And if the eyes of the elect god kindled at the sight of these sense-bewitching beauties; if the blood flew seething up into his temples; if he answered "Yes!" then he was anointed with balsamic spices, swathed in robes of pearly silk, and carried to the Temple of Tetzkatlepoka, and there he lived night and day in the sweet delirium of bliss and intoxication. The maidens of the city with their long flowing hair visit him one after the other, and when they quit him their locks are cut off, and from these locks the carpet, which reaches from one end of the town to the other, is made. This intoxication, this delirium of joy, lasts a whole year. And on the last day of the year he, together with the last maiden, whom he himself selects, is offered to the giant Triton. The living idol consumes them both, and then a new Tetzkatlepoka is chosen.

Once in ten times, perhaps, the selected man resists the enchanting spectacle, the most irresistible of all enchantments (or is there anything more bewitching than a woman's charms?), and answers the invitation with a "No!"

Then they tear the golden garments from his body, and say to him: "Naked thou camest into this blissful world, naked shalt thou depart into a world of woe. Behold yonder those snow-covered mountains. There dwell those twin voiceless beings: Wilderness and Nothingness. Go thither, thither where neither man nor beast can thrive for horror and distress. Live there in cold, wretchedness, and solitude, and if any love thee let them follow thee." And with that, amidst the scorn and derision of the daughters of Triton's city, they cast the perverse wretch out of that gate which leads to the snowy mountains, and curse him that he may never return again. Generally, however, some one human being is found to accompany the exile; some one girl, more gentle and modest than the rest, who would fain hide with her luxuriant tresses the charms which her gossamer garments so ill-conceal, who, laying her hands on the shoulders of the vagabond, follows him out of the city of bliss into the cold and mysterious world beyond. But love alone, love pure and true, is capable of such acts of renunciation, and such examples of true love happen here only once in ten years. The derided, mud-bespattered lovers immediately vanish into the misty, cloud-wrapped regions of the icy mountains, and no human eye ever gloats over their misery, for no human eye ever sees them more.

Thus the festival of Triton is celebrated every year, when the roar of the hungering monster is heard miles away, and the idiot victim of his own lusts is placed on the golden triumphal car, and led to his doom amidst music and dancing.

Such is the history of the man who sits there on the golden car.

The procession moves on. After the priests come the maidens of the city, with chapleted brows and fluttering garments, and in their midst, on a silver car, the girl devoted to the idol.

After this half-elfin, half-infernal pageant, come the men of the city.

And what men! Bent and crippled shapes with tottering knees, crooked necks, nerveless arms, quenched eyes, and soulless faces, tottering along like drunkards; a host of miserable, withered skeletons. If a manlier, statelier shape appear here and there among the decrepit mob, it is quite the exception; and the features of all, without exception, handsome or hideous, bear the brand of a curse upon them, a spasmodic twitching of the lips, that unmistakable, unconcealable trait which marks the beast, the demon, and the maniac.

The most incontrovertible token of the degeneracy of a race is when its women are very fair and its men very hideous. There ruin already lurks in the background.

And the rear is brought up by an infernal, sense-bewildering throng of monsters, for which human language has no names. Beasts with human heads, and human shapes with repulsive bestial heads; a fearful blasphemy of the sacred order of divine nature; terrifying, mongrel monsters, half man, half beast; accursed witnesses of the insane degeneracy of human nature; creatures of whom all antiquity records but one example--the Minotaur.

In the Fortunate Islands these abortions form a whole tribe, and those who behold them are no longer shocked or terrified at the sight.

 

CHAPTER VIII

TRITON

A single large round window in the cupola above admits the light into Triton's temple.

Amidst the statues of grim, phantasmal figures which serve as the pillars of the roof sits the wonder of the primæval world, the creature most resembling man, who existed before man was yet created, the homo diluvii.

Even as he sits he measures four-and-twenty feet in height. His feet are disproportionately small, while his enormously long elbows rest upon his knees. His whole body is covered with a bluish-green scaly skin, like that of a sea-serpent wrinkled with age. The face resembles a man's. Its skin is of a lighter colour than the rest of the body, and is drawn quite tight and smooth round the flat, scarcely projecting nose. His forehead is round and flat. Two eyeballs, seemingly perched upon fleshy stalks, stare out of the vast eye-sockets. They are of a painfully vivid scarlet, but cold as stone and surrounded by glittering gold rims such as we meet with round the eyes of fishes. The mouth is lipless, and only visible when it is open, but then it stretches on both sides as far as the little round ears, which are covered with a thin film. A splendid gold crown, with an upright pointed horn at each corner, adorns his head. Round his loins winds a gold-embroidered cloth, fastened by a girdle set with diamonds, and beneath the cloth extends a long, comb-like backbone, terminating in a squirrel's tail.

Thus, year after year, the monster sits motionless on his golden chair. The only sign of life he gives is a sluggish twitching of his eyelids, and the hunger fit which comes upon him once a year, when he opens his mouth and roars till he is satisfied; immediately afterwards becoming dumb again, and remaining so for another year, with his hands resting on his knees, and his immovable, goggle eyes blankly staring at the stony marvels of his own temple, impervious to every outward influence.

The speech of men, the lowing of beasts, the loud-sounding music are just as inaudible to him as the amatory whispers of snails, or the philosophic discourses of the tiny ants are, perhaps, to us. He only understands the voices of the primæval beasts which stand on the same level of creation as himself.

The torpid monster owes all his power to his voice and his terrific shape. He would be incapable of killing even a child that dared to tell him it had no fear of him, and, nevertheless, the whole city trembles before him; feeds his vassals, the plant-eating mammoths, megatheriums, and iguanodons, with the first-fruits of its fields and the monster himself with the blood of its best men and its loveliest damsels; lays at his feet the gold of its mines, the pearls of its seas and the spices of its heaths, and invokes as lord and god what is nothing but a belated, primæval monster, which has survived the centuries allotted to it by Nature and abdicated its impotent, vegetating existence in favour of another and a later world, whose generations are renewed every half century, the world of short-lived, swiftly changing, greedily enjoying man.

* * * * *

The ghastly feast is at an end. Tetzkatlepoka and his elect are led into Triton's temple. The heavy copper doors close behind the three hundred and sixty-five priests.

What happened within the temple no one ever knew. The roar of the monster lasted for a few minutes, and then all was still again; the doors were re-opened, and the high priest, stepping forth, informed the assembled multitude that, at the potent command of Triton, a gold-edged cloud had descended from heaven, taken up the god Tetzkatlepoka and his chosen bride, and transported them to an eternity as full of deliciousness as the last year of their earthly life had been. Let him who doubted count those who quitted the temple, and he would find there were only three hundred and sixty-five persons, or two less than the number which had entered in.

In the temple itself there was no one but the tranquil stony-eyed monster which had now closed its huge mouth and goblin eyes, like one who has eaten his fill and would fain repose.

 

CHAPTER IX

THE CHOICE OF A GOD

And now for the election of a new god.

A vast amphitheatre-like space accommodates all the inhabitants of the city. There are four tiers of seats, supported by silvered copper columns, the capital of each column ending in a bird's head, from which an intoxicating liquid flows through a silver pipe into a circumambient basin below. The myriad of glistening jets, which descend in spray from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, give the whole interior space an enchanting appearance. The people, as they make their way into the galleries, hold up their heads and imbibe this intoxicating rain with abandoned good humour, while the hideous half-human, half-bestial monsters wallow in the basin below and take in the heady draught that way. Whoever cannot drink any more holds his head under the downward trickling juice till it soaks him through and through. Not unfrequently, the injurious liquid sets some of these creatures on fire by spontaneous combustion, and, roaring and bellowing, they plunge madly through the mob vomiting forth flames of fire.

A daïs in the centre is occupied by children, who have been brought hither to be taught to follow a good example and to participate in a festival which cannot even be described without a shudder.

On the top of a still higher platform, reached by twelve golden steps, stand the three hundred and sixty-five priests, whilst on the lowest steps sit the musicians with long silver trumpets and glass flutes, whose sweetly tender notes go to one's very heart and intoxicate the soul. At each of the four corners of the platform burns a fragrant censer--huge basins of chased gold--which envelop the whole concourse in a stupefying cloud of fragrant vapour.

At a signal from the high priest the trellis doors of the amphitheatre fly open, and just as formerly at ancient Rome the condemned gladiators were led forth to die in the circus, so now two men are introduced, one of whom the people must choose as a god, in order that they may sacrifice to him for a whole year the most precious of their treasures, the honour of their daughters.

Two pre-eminently worthy candidates had been found. One had been discovered by the priest of the megatherium, the other by the priest of the ichthyosaurus, and the people have now to choose betwixt the twain.

Both men were carried up to the top of the platform wrapped round with thick veils. The inferior priests then withdrew; only the two high priests remained behind with their protégés.

The uproar of the people sinks into a low murmur. With rapt attention every one regards the two veiled figures who stand in the midst of the blue clouds of the four censers.

And now the priest of the ichthyosaurus advances and draws away the veil from the figure of the first man.

"Behold and admire!"

A terrible shape, seven feet high at the very least, the face rather that of a wild beast than of a man; the strong, stubbly beard, the connected eyebrows, the flat nose, the broad projecting lips and the huge shapeless muscles, which run along the broad shoulders and the thick arms, indicate enormous brute strength. The whole shape is terrifying. Nevertheless, gorgeous garments make this sinister apparition a splendid one. His mantle is lined with orient pearls and embroidered with gold; the thick bristly hair is held together by a golden helmet, the crest of which sparkles with diamonds and topazes. His left hand holds a broad shield, hanging down from the rims whereof are the scalps of the enemies whom he has vanquished in battle, while his right hand rests upon a sword five feet long, the broad blade of which is covered with symbols of magic potency. This weapon weighs half a hundredweight.

No sooner was the man unveiled than a shout of joy burst from the people, a shout which died away in the bestial bellowing of the human caricatures below.

Then the priest of the megatherium approaches the second shape, and slowly removing the veil from it exclaims to the people: "Behold and adore!"

The shape of the second man is bright with neither gold nor precious stones. The stranger wears a simple white robe, which displays his stately figure as it really is, without attempting to improve it by exotic finery. The only decoration of his bare head are his luxuriant, down-flowing locks, and the sole armament of his loins consists of a short sword, which requires the foe who has anything to say for himself to come to very close quarters.

And now the priest spoke to the people.

"Lo! here is a strange man from a distant land beyond the sea, who has been drawn to our shores by Triton's mighty arm. In his eyes burns a fiercer fire, in his veins flows a warmer blood than ours. Before the expression of his visage the face of every man born on our shores quails and blanches. I say no more. You have eyes to see. Make your choice."

Then the other priest cried: "Who will have this hero?"

At this invitation only a poor couple or so of wreaths fluttered down from the crowd, wreaths which certain women of vicious taste had taken from their heads and cast at the feet of the half-savage Hercules below.

But when the priest of the megatherium cried: "Who will have this stranger for a god?" there was a veritable tempest of falling wreaths. The women tore the flowers from their hair and bosoms and threw them with shouts of joy towards the stranger, so that the floor of the amphitheatre resembled a garden in a rain of flowers. "Him only!" they cried, "him only, and none other!"

The diamond-garnished, gold-embroidered hero of many fights rose in disdainful wrath with his priest, and throwing his glittering sword over his shoulder, descended the steps of the platform and sat down moodily on its lowest step.

The stranger remained alone upon the platform with his priest, who twined a fragrant wreath of roses among his locks and cried joyfully--

"Hail thou god Tetzkatlepoka! hail in the name of the fair dispensers of bliss, thou elect of the people! Take thine own, thou king of all beauty, thou prince of women! Take the flowers which bloom for thee, the lips which smile at thee! Hail, thou god Tetzkatlepoka!"

The people responded with a loud shout; but, in a dark corner of the amphitheatre, sat a trembling woman, with a sorrowful countenance, holding in her hands the Ark of the Covenant of the one true God, and groaning and sighing, she cried in the bitterness of her heart--

"Oh, Bar Noemi! Bar Noemi!"

Bar Noemi did not hear the feeble sound. The music of the glass flutes, the soft harmony of the silver trumpets, mingled in his bosom with the choruses of the children into an enchanting, intoxicating harmony, which Byssenia's voice failed to penetrate. Seductive, sylph-like forms danced before him in fluttering garments. Their dishevelled tresses waved wildly in the air. Their flashing eyes shone brighter than the sun. Who would not have lost his reason at the sight of so much beauty, so much bliss?

And again the plaintive, sobbing sound was heard--

"Oh, Bar Noemi! Bar Noemi!"

And the young man seemed to feel a light shudder run through all his limbs. What was that?

Hast thou eyes? Hast thou a heart? Where are thy senses that thou shouldst hesitate a moment? If a hundred years were thine allotted span wouldst thou not give them all away for such glances, and forfeit thy very soul's salvation in the next world for the possession of such an earthly paradise? Thousands and thousands of fairy forms dance round him in a bewitching, ensnaring circle, ever nearer, ever more lovely and more numerous; their breath fans his cheeks; their eyes burn into his very soul, their melodies take possession of his heart. It needs but one word from his lips, and he will sink into this sea of sweetness, die the most delicious of deaths, a death which is nought but a long, long kiss.

The music, the singing, grows more and more enchanting; the odours of the censers fill the air with a sweet intoxication; the snow-white arms already touch the shoulders of the deified man, when again, for the third time, and still more mournfully, still more appealingly resound the words--

"Oh, Bar Noemi! Bar Noemi!"

Suddenly he starts like one just awakened from sleep, a wondrously deep sleep which has benumbed all his limbs. He makes a snatch at his head, tears off the chaplet of roses, and, rending it in twain, throws it to the ground, exclaiming, with a threatening voice--

"I am no god! Jehovah is God alone!"

Instantly the music, the singing is dumb as when the strings of a lyre are cut asunder by the stroke of a sword. The enchantment is broken; the features of the seductive sylphs are distorted into the faces of Furies; the sweet harmony vanishes in a deafening uproar; curses, gibes, mocking laughter and the howling and bellowing of the men-beasts fill the vast arena.

But though the earth tremble beneath the hideous hubbub, Bar Noemi's heart trembles not. He has found the name which gave him strength in the midst of the raging elements, and drawing his sword, he stands in the midst of the furious mob, like a god, or rather like a true man amongst men who have lost every spark of manhood.

And as they rush upon him, he speaks fearlessly to the people, speaks in a voice which rises above their screams and curses--

"Ye inhabitants of the City of Triton! Ye coward worshippers of idols! Ye living, painted coffins abandoned by your own souls even while still in the flesh, listen to my words! My name is Bar Noemi. My strength is the one true God, whose countenance no human eye has ever gazed upon. I'll show my courage by my good sword, which no one has ever yet despised. And I tell you, ye who make a mock of God and His noble image, man, that I despise you all, and that there is not a youth nor an old man within your walls before whom I tremble!"

Shame and wrath made white the features of all who heard him. Everywhere else, red is the colour of shame and wrath, but here, in Triton's City, it was white. For Bar Noemi had spoken the truth, in the whole of that great city, in the city of delight, not a man was to be found who dared to raise his hand against the stranger! And there he stood on the daïs, with a terrible countenance, and his naked sword in his hand, like an avenging angel who had come not to fight with men, but to chastise them.

The warrior with the long broadsword, the herculean frame, and the helmet set with diamonds, was sitting all this while on the lowermost step of the daïs, and did not once turn his head towards his rival.

The priests and elders, filled with despair, rushed towards him and urged him to arise and wipe away the insult thus offered to a whole people. But the man moved not. The paralyzing, voluptuous draught he had just partaken of still held captive both soul and body. The wise pleasure-mongers of Triton's city had introduced this overpowering potion into their mysteries to their own confusion, for it unnerves a man, enfeebles his heart, divests him of his manhood, and pours into his heart a sickly craving after pleasure so that Hercules himself becomes the willing slave of the bright petticoat and the whirring spindle.

At last they brought him another drink which they were wont to give to those who went forth to battle. It was a strong, stimulating cordial, prepared from the froth of wild beasts and the fruits of poisonous trees, filling the heart with an inextinguishable thirst for blood. The fiery drops of this battle potion stung the warrior's nerves. He arose and stared around him with frenzied, bloodshot, rolling eyes. His protruding lips were covered with a yellow foam and his dusky cheeks seemed to be wrapped in burning flames.

"Who calls?" he cried, in a voice of thunder, like the roar of a ravening beast; and, expanding his bulky chest, he swung his ponderous sword, like a reed, above his head whilst his eyes flashed green fire and his trampling feet crushed the heavy stones into the hard earth.

"Kill him! the accursed, hideous stranger, the despiser of the people!" resounded from the galleries, and every hand pointed at Bar Noemi as he stood on the topmost step of the platform which only a few moments before they had covered with wreaths.

With a frenzied howl, the giant swung his sword aloft and shaking his shapeless head, rushed, like a bloodthirsty lion up the steps of the daïs.

"Help, Triton!" roared the mob. Only one soft, almost expiring voice behind one of the columns of the amphitheatre sighed: "Help, Jehovah!"

Bar Noemi fell back not a single step. Motionless as a molten statue, he awaited his antagonist on the top of the platform and avoiding his furious blow, raised his own arm to strike.

The two weapons clashed together in the air. The huge broadsword of the giant split in two at the hilt, and after describing a wide circle fell into the arena, while the sword in Bar Noemi's right hand did not even take a scratch.

The whole multitude was instantly dumb with astonishment. In that land iron was unknown, every weapon was made of copper only, and the thin, bluish-shimmering unknown metal had split in two the shining red sword at the very first blow.

"Woe to Triton, woe!"

The terrified giant tried to protect himself with the broad silver shield, from which the scalps of so many conquered enemies hung down. The descending sword hissed, the uplifted shield groaned, and at the second stroke the people saw the silver buckler split into two pieces for all its potent magic symbols.

"Woe to Triton, woe!"

The stroke brought the giant to his knees. He could now only shield himself with his huge strong arm; but Bar Noemi, with his left hand, grasped his wrist so that the joints cracked, and dealt him, with his right, a last tremendous blow.

The diamonds and topazes scattered sparks beneath the swift glancing steel which fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and as if struck by lightning the corpse of the savage giant rolled down the steps of the golden daïs, his glazed eyes stupidly staring at the horror-stricken multitude. The terrified mob fell with their faces to the ground while the priests rent their clothes and flung themselves at Bar Noemi's feet.

With meekly bowed head, the priest of the megatherium crawled towards him, and asked with a trembling voice--

"Thou God from a strange land who dost carry thunderbolts in thy hand, what dost thou require of us?"

"My wife, whom you have taken from me, my Ark of the Covenant wherein are the laws of Jehovah, and then I will leave the city."

At these words Byssenia, with tears of joy in her eyes, stepped forth from behind the pillar which had concealed her, and covered the hands of Bar Noemi, the strong, the irresistible Bar Noemi, with hot kisses.

"Oh, how blessed is this woman!" cried the women of Triton's city, for it had never been their blissful lot to be able to say: "I am the wife of one husband."

None dared to molest Bar Noemi with gibes and taunts as he left the city. The escort they gave him did not even venture to raise their eyes to his face.

"He is not a man," said the priests, "but the god of a strange people, on whom no human hand has any power. A sinister, wrathful, and austere divinity who has no place in Triton's city. Rejoice that he has quitted you for ever!"

 

CHAPTER X

THE PROPHETIC MIRAGE

Triton's city had one hundred gates from which paved roads led to every corner of that vast continent; but through one of these gates passed a road which led no whither. This gate looked upon the snowy mountains, where dwelt the invisible God of Nothingness and Desolation. Thither those only were wont to withdraw who became sick and weary of the earthly felicity of the City of Delight. The very threshold of this gate was overgrown with grass, for it was very seldom opened.

Bar Noemi cast not a single glance behind him till he had reached the mountains. There, where the vegetation of the south came to an end, and the pine succeeded the palm; there, on the top of the nearest pine tree, sat the beautiful bird, the dove with golden plumage, which flitted on before Bar Noemi as he reached the mountains, just as she had done before on the ocean, guiding the fugitive through the barren wilderness of mountain and forest.

The region of spontaneously growing trees and grasses soon came to an end, and now began that inhospitable zone where the earth does not willingly open her bosom, where she is a step-mother to lazy sons, hiding her benefits from all but those who labour for them. This is surely the spot whither God brought Adam out of Paradise, blessed him, and said: "Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy countenance!" The wise men of old were in error when they called this a curse, for labour is a blessing, and the sweat-drops on the brow are the noblest jewels of him who was created after God's own image.

Rock succeeded rock. Bar Noemi and Byssenia mounted higher and higher, and the exhilaration with which they breathed the invigorating air made them feel as if they were nearer heaven already.

On the top of an elevated rocky plateau, the dove alighted on the ground in front of them, as if it would say: "Halt here." The white and blue bells, mingling with the fragrant grass, seemed to be nodding a welcome to the new arrivals; the love-song of a little yellow bird resounded from the green bushes opposite; everything around them seemed so strangely fair and new.

And now, for the first time, Bar Noemi threw a glance behind him. The abandoned city lay beneath him in a thick, yellow mist, which gave to the whole region a corpse-like hue, a mist not to be driven away by any breeze that blows. On the high roofs of the cities lying in the plain, burned sacrificial fires on gigantic altars; fires whose heavy, dark-blue smoke could not rise up to Heaven; something seemed to press it earthwards where, like a curse-laden cloud, it lodged immovably above the houses, enshrouding the cupolas of the towers and the rigid likenesses of the idols.

Far away on the distant horizon, a delusive mirage performed its juggling tricks, by sketching in the sky the outlines of an inverted city. Towers and palaces stand in the dizzy height with their roofs turned upside down, and the palms stretched down their crowns from above. The next moment everything had melted away--the plain, right up to the very gates of Triton's city, swam in a vast sea, over which the overhanging palms and the inverted battlements seemed to throw down far-stretching shadows, whilst the white sails of ships flitted across the space where the city had been. In a few moments the sea also vanished; the Fata Morgana withdrew her delusive spells. The land again appeared with its woods, meadows, and cities.

Bar Noemi and Byssenia gazed with astonishment at this marvel, whose wondrous significance only they who could penetrate the secrets of the divine counsels might interpret. Involuntarily they folded their hands and prayed together from the very depths of their hearts that the Almighty would turn away His strong, avenging arm from a people who had forsaken Him, and not visit them with the furiousness of His heavy displeasure.

 

CHAPTER XI

THE DWELLERS AMONG THE GLACIERS

Beyond the mountains quite another world began.

At the foot of a group of eleven glaciers are populous villages, with cultivated fields, and happy, peaceful dwellings. Here dwell those happy ones who have from time to time withdrawn from the world of bliss below, and sought the unfrequented mountains where solitude abides. Here they have built their houses, and in the lapse of years have grown into a people which passes its days in innocence and industry. The only radiance and brightness visible there is in their bright and radiant faces; they carry their treasures in their hearts, not on their garments, and to listen to the prattling of their children is their highest felicity.

These stalwart men and tender women receive the new-comers with joy, and employ their united strength in building them a hut by the side of the other huts; give them a little garden; provide them, in the meantime, with the necessaries of life, and lend them a helping hand in their first labours, and when at last their house is finished, and everything set in order; when their heart diffuses its genial warmth, and the oxen low and stamp in their stalls, Bar Noemi and Byssenia are summoned to the elders, who dwell in the midst of the highest mountain and there judge and rule the people.

The grey-headed chief of the little community dwelt in a hut like the rest of the people; his wisdom alone distinguished him from his subjects, and although he did not go about in purple, every little child knew who he was. To him Bar Noemi related all his wonderful adventures, his marvellous deliverance from the ocean on a sailless, rudderless raft, the loathsome spectacles in Triton's corrupted city, and his fight with the godless giant. He also told him of that mysterious sign in the heavens which showed him the city turned upside down.

Whilst Bar Noemi was speaking, the head of the aged man sank lower and lower, and when he heard of these last scenes, he threw himself with his face to the ground and began to weep bitterly. Much disturbed, Bar Noemi inquired the cause of his grief. With tearful eyes, the old man replied: "What thou, O youth, hast just told me, convinces me that the time is at hand when the Lord will separate the righteous from the wicked, and judge this evil world; when millions will vanish from the face of the earth, and the earth herself will open her mouth and swallow them up because she can endure no longer the sins of mankind."

And the old man bitterly bewailed the doomed continent.

Bar Noemi dried the old man's tears and raised him from the ground.

"Weep not!" said he, "the Lord is not a man that His wrath should not be appeased. In the history of my people have I read that the Lord had once pronounced His judgment over a great city which He had doomed to perish. And He sent His prophet to warn the people to repent them of their sins if they would not be utterly destroyed, both they and their city. And the city repented and so turned away the chastisement of the Lord, and it was preserved. And again it came to pass that the Lord condemned eight cities to be consumed by a fiery rain from heaven, and a fiery torrent from out of the earth, which should change them into a lake of sulphur. And near to one of these cities dwelt a single righteous man, who carried God in his heart, and the Lord revealed His fearful judgment to this man. Then this righteous man threw himself down before God and prayed: 'O Lord! wilt thou destroy the righteous with the wicked?'--And God answered and said: 'If I find five righteous men in Sodom, I will spare the city.'--Dost thou hear, my father, what God has spoken? He doth ever keep His promise, for His word standeth faster than the stars in heaven. And therefore I say to thee, choose me four men out of the people who are righteous in all their ways, men of clean lips, who have neither defrauded their neighbour nor lusted after the wife of the stranger, nor denied their God in word or deed. Them will I take with me to Triton's city, and God, for the sake of five righteous men, will not let a whole city perish."

The old man kissed Bar Noemi, and said: "Of a truth thou art that prophet of the Lord of whom our traditions speak, for it is the Lord who hath put these thoughts into thy heart. My own four sons shall go with thee. Their souls are as pure as crystal and their hearts know no fear. Five men shall save a people."

With that the old man sent for his sons, who, after bathing together with Bar Noemi in pure rain water, knelt down before the old man to receive his blessing.

Now as they were setting off, Byssenia threw her arms round the neck of her husband and asked him--

"Whither goest thou?"

Bar Noemi never lied, yet he did not wish to grieve his wife, so he answered--

"To Paradise!"

And he spoke the truth, for Triton's city was the Paradise of Bliss.

Byssenia walked beside her husband, kissed him once more, and asked again--

"If thou goest into Paradise, wherefore dost thou not take me with thee? Speak the truth? Whither goest thou?"

And now, too, Bar Noemi did not lie, as he answered his wife the second time--

"I go to hell!"

Triton's city was indeed a hell.

But the woman threw herself weeping on his bosom, and asked a third time--

"Oh, my husband! Oh, Bar Noemi, whither wouldst thou go?"

And stretching out his hands towards heaven, Bar Noemi answered the third time--

"I go into the presence of God!"

And, indeed, the road that lay before him led even to God's judgment-seat.

When they came to that rocky plateau from whence they could survey the whole plain, the wondrous phantom of the Fata Morgana again appeared before them--the aerial palaces, the hanging gardens, and the toppling towers which, as they dissolved away, left behind them a sea that covered mountain and valley, so that only the distant pinnacles and the heads of the idols emerged above the billowy flood.

"'Tis the finger of God!" said the old man, with reverential awe, and he blessed the five men and bade them be strong that they might wrestle with God for a continent and the people of a continent. And pressing Bar Noemi's hand to his lips, he breathed in his palm, and said: "Blessed be he whom thou blessest and cursed whom thou cursedst!"

The five men descended the mountain.

But the old man led Byssenia back to his hut among his daughters, who welcomed her as a sister, and when he saw that the woman secretly bewailed her husband who had exposed himself to such dangers, he comforted her, and said--

"Fear nothing, for I know that Bar Noemi will return."

 

CHAPTER XII

THE DESTRUCTION OF A CONTINENT

The city shimmered from afar in the evening twilight as the five men arrived at the gates. All the houses were lit up with bright torches and coloured lamps. The feast of flowers had begun and here it lasted three days. During that time all the streets and housetops were strewn with fragrant flowers, the columns were intertwined with garlands gay and festoons of wreaths hung across the market-place from one statue to the other.

But the feast of flowers is also the feast of Love. 'Tis the merry springtime, the blushing rose, the flowery mead that charm the senses most. This was well-known and recognized in Triton's city, and men rejoiced when this festival began, the festival of flowers, of roses and of the spring.

Five doleful men, with their swords slung over their shoulders and long lances in their hands, stride through the flower-strewn streets. The passers-by eye them with amazement. On this day the men of Triton's city do not walk the streets alone, every one of them has a gay companion by his side. On this day, too, no weapon is borne within the walls; these be certainly strangers who do not know the custom of the land.

In the midst of the flowery market-place stands an old, hollow, olive-tree, whose branches touch the earth, and whose glistening green leaves distribute their shade over a wide circle.

The five morose strangers are greeted with friendly words by enticing voices from every doorway. Smiling lips, seductive eyes, look down upon them from the roofs, and flowers are scattered upon them from the bridges which span the streets.

Silently, with downcast eyes, the strangers make their way to the old olive-tree, where they thrust their lances into the ground; spread their mantles over the points and there make a primitive tent in which they lay them down to rest.

The more curious of the mob surround this strange tent, whispering at first among themselves, then, presuming further, they cry aloud; boldly pull aside the downward hanging curtains and provoke the strangers with rude and shameful words.

Bar Noemi rose from his couch and stepped among the crowd.

"Ye men of Triton's city," he cried, "gather together unto me in your thousands!"

The men recognized him by his tremendous voice, and, in their terror, gave place to the youth.

Bar Noemi saw the multitude swaying to and fro in the flowery market-place; there were as many heads as wreaths.

"Go and fetch hither all your friends and kinsmen, that they may hear my words!"

Gradually the space around him was full to overflowing, and when all the roofs were also thronged with people, Bar Noemi raised his voice and spoke.

"Ye men of Triton's city, listen to my words! The Lord, the only true God, the Lord of heaven and earth and sea speaks thus to you. Five righteous men came to-day into your city in order to stay the judgment of the Lord which He has pronounced against you. Your years have come to an end, only a few more days remain to you, for the measure of your iniquities is full to overflowing, and no one will see another moon. Cast your sins from you, therefore, that the number of your days may be increased! Strew ashes on your locks and sand before your thresholds instead of flowers and green boughs, for I say to you that the Lord has but to beckon with His hand and not a flower, not a green leaf will thenceforward grow upon the earth!"

At these words the people burst into a roar of laughter.

"The stranger knows not what he says! Such a beauteous youth and yet so senseless; so strong and yet so cold! Oh the pity of it!"

The blithesome groups danced and sang and did homage to the flowers which grow on the green branches and--on the red lips of the women.

And lo! that same night, as Bar Noemi raised his hands to curse, there came from the west with a fearful roaring noise a large, dark cloud, a multitude of locusts, not to be expressed in numbers, condensed into a cloud, a pitch-black, evil host, hiding sun and stars and annihilating grasses and flowers wherever it alighted. And then there came with rapid writhings, like an army of infantry, long, hairy, brown caterpillars, which covered the trees, crept up the houses and marched over the bridges and through the streets, in infinite numbers, fell upon every tree and shrub and devoured them all to the very roots. In one day the whole region resembled a calcined stubble-field; palms robbed of their crowns, woods with bare trees, every blade of grass consumed, annihilated. Only the old olive-tree under which Bar Noemi and his comrades had encamped, kept its strong, dark, glittering leaves.

On the third day the terrified people hastened to the tent of the strangers, and on their knees besought the youth, who had pronounced the curse, to turn away this plague from them, and not let the land be any more destroyed.

Bar Noemi felt compassion for the desolated land, and turning the palm of his hand heavenwards, he softly breathed thereon, and at the same instant a strong west wind arose, which swept the countless millions of the locusts into the sea, where they perished miserably, while a mighty frost slew the caterpillars so that not one remained alive. Trees and shrubs sprouted forth anew, and, after the first plague had been turned away, the first terror disappeared from the hearts of men.

And rankly as ever trees and flowers did the wild human passions spring up again in their breasts. The rich man sat him down again at his sumptuous table, and, puffed up with pride, the inhabitants of Triton's city refused the five men the least nourishment, and commanded them to quit the city. If no one dared to drive them therefrom, they should at least be constrained to leave it by hunger.

In his rage, Bar Noemi stretched out his hand for the second time, and the words of the curse had scarce quitted his lips when, with a thunderous sound, the sluices of heaven were opened; the great blue tent of the firmament was wrapped in black; the dazzling lightning descended upon the earth, and ravaging hail, with devastating fury, shot down from the wrathful heaven and annihilated in a moment the insolent pride of the people.

This second plague made the inhabitants of the Fortunate Islands tremble, and they hastened to bring the most tender of their sacrificial offerings to the five righteous men, who would take nothing of their bounty save unground grains of wheat, for they were forbidden to taste anything prepared in the vessels, seethed in the pots, or baked in the ovens of the sinful people.

The prayers of the five men appeased the wrath of heaven, and no sooner had the Lord withdrawn His chastening hand, than the impious pride of the people returned to their hearts. The women painted their cheeks anew, gilded their eyelids, put on again their glass-spun mantles, walked defiantly through the streets, and mocked the youth who, despite their ensnaring cajoleries, would not come forth from their tent.

In the midst of the square in which their tent was pitched, stood a huge spring with a broad marble basin; there, every morning and evening, these seductive fairy shapes used to gambol and lave their snow-white bodies in the sun-warmed waters.

Bar Noemi hid his face in his mantle, and stretched out his right hand towards them with a gesture of loathing, and this gesture was a curse.

In one night the order of the seasons was changed. In the midst of the most sultry summer, there arose an ice-cold wind, which raged through the land and disturbed the equilibrium of Nature. In a land where ice had never been seen before, the streams were covered with an icy coat of mail, and the terrified people saw unknown white flakes fall from heaven, which covered woods, fields, streets, and pinnacles with a white winding-sheet.

Ha! how the sounds of revelry suddenly died away. On the first day of this wonderful visitation men did not know what to think; they marvelled at the ice, the snow, the wonderful frost. But the very next day they had recovered themselves, and were scouring through the hard, frozen streets on sledges, hung with bells, to the sound of music and singing. They protected themselves against the cold with fur pelisses; they built them transparent palaces of ice, made monuments of the snow, and laughed at the wrath of heaven.

At a sign from Bar Noemi the third plague also came to an end. The sun again appeared in his strength; ice and snow melted away; the earth grew green once more.

And even this third plague did not make the people amend. They laughed already at the five youths, and Bar Noemi was challenged to do fresh wonders in order to break the dull monotony, the sluggish slowness of existence.

Woe to the people whose children complain that life is dull and slow.

Bar Noemi addressed them once more, and for the last time--

"Ye dwellers in Triton's city, and ye who inhabit the plains of the Fortunate Islands, hear and spread abroad among you what I say. The Lord will send terrible plagues upon you, through my hand, that ye may repent and be converted. In the first week from now I will poison the waters; in the second, the earth; in the third, the air, so that what has hitherto been the source of life shall become the source of death; what hitherto has been the bosom of a loving mother, shall become, from to-day, a deep and open grave. Turn you back to God within three weeks from now, to Him who is merciful towards the righteous, but a terrible avenger of the wicked."

The frenzied people laughed at his words, and mockingly bade him do his worst.

The heavy curse smote first the flowing waters. The surface of the streams became coated with a thick film of small green beetles, whose disgusting odour completely poisoned them. Every beast which drank therefrom died in horrible torments; the fish floated, belly uppermost, on the surface of the water, and were cast upon the shores by the green foam. Next the water in the wells became infected. It grew salt, bitter, and nauseating; the jets of the fountains were muddied by a subtle slime, which they sucked up from the earth below, and all the springs lost their fresh coldness, a disgusting, sickly lukewarmness made them unfit for use, so that the thirsty beasts turned away from them with loathing, and, looking up to heaven, moaned piteously. They had more sense than men. For the men of Triton's city laughed at the wonder. If the water was spoilt, was not the wine so much the sweeter? So every one drank wine, nothing but wine--men, women, and children. Stubborn, indeed, is the heart of man!

And now the living, nourishing earth was smitten by the curse. The earth felt the hand of the Lord, and quaked and sickened with a deadly fear. Hard, dry chinks and flaws rent the soil asunder, and as the earth's pangs increased, the hills, the rocks, and the bark of every tree were coated with livid moulds and hideous, sallow excrescences. The fruitful earth became a wretched cripple, whose horrible sufferings were visible in the trees and grasses. Instead of the sweet fruit, there grew polypi never seen before, poisonous funguses, loathsome gall-bladders. The ears of corn were burnt black, the grapes dried and withered on their stems, the honey-yielding reed was covered with wood-lice, the tubers of the bread-dispensing roots rotted underground, and gave a curse instead of a blessing. Every green thing sickened beneath the curse of God; only man felt no sorrow. Oh! hard indeed was the heart of man!

And now the curse infected the vivifying air. Thick, impenetrable vapours, black, brown, and dun, descended. The sun became invisible, the day became night. The stench of the vile, infecting mist oppressed the lungs and provoked convulsive coughing fits; it was a burden to draw the breath of life. There was no longer any staying in the streets. A fetid dampness trickled down from the walls, and the thick brooding clouds, which at other times traverse the air above men's heads, now moved along the surface of the earth; crawling about the streets, and huddling together over the fields and houses in a manner horrible to behold.

"What ho, there! Bring hither the flutes, bring hither the trumpets. Let every one sing who can. If the sun will not shine, the torches shall burn all the brighter. If clouds float along the streets, the wine bowl within will be all the more comforting. If life is to be short, let us make the most of it; if death be at hand, may he find every cup of joy and pleasure already drained to the dregs."

These thoughts were rampant in every breast, and no one came to the five men beneath the olive tree to beg for God's mercy.

Sadly Bar Noemi watched the frenzy of the devoted people, till, in the bitterness of his heart, he uttered another and still more grievous curse.

"Let everything which is dear to man become his abhorrence. Let the sweet become bitter, and the bitter sweet. Let meat and drink turn to poison. May your dreams haunt you with images of terror. May you find sorrow where you seek for joy. May the plague lurk in every kiss. May ulcers deform the flushing cheek and the smiling countenance, and may loathing take the place of lust."

And when, after seven days, the clouds passed away and the dwellers in Triton's city came forth, they shrank back from one another with horror and loathing. Ulcers and scabs disfigured every face. Noses and lips had vanished; the hair of the damsels had fallen out; their bodies had grown crooked. God had obliterated His own image in those whose creation He had repented of. And the sky above their heads had lost its bright blueness, and henceforth remained dull and livid, and men could gaze without winking into the pale disc of the midday sun, and count the spots thereon.

Yet even all this was not enough.

People had no longer any reason to find fault with their neighbours. As they were all equally hideous, it became a point of honour to deny the fact, so scorn grew all the more outrageous, and defiance all the more determined.

The domestic animals no longer recognized their masters. The tame beasts with their mates escaped from the city, and fled with anxious, plaintive cries to the mountains. The dogs and the little yellow birds forsook the city in swarms, and fled to the mountains, where they agreed among themselves never to utter another sound. The dogs will bark no more, the yellow birds will sing no more, lest their loathsome owners discover where they are. In their stead ravens and wolves came into the city. There these natural scavengers held a great council, at which they partitioned among themselves the inheritance of man.

Bar Noemi raised his avenging hand for the eighth time, and cried with a deeply sorrowful voice--

"Let there be death."

And he came, that cruel angel, that terrible angel, Malach Hamovez, with his two-edged sword of flame, the slayer of hosts, before whom nothing in the height or in the depth can remain hidden, and began his awful work of desolation.

The small and the insignificant perished first.

In one day, every little worm and beetle vanished from off the face of the earth, just as if autumn had come and taken them away.

On the second day the serpents and other reptiles came forth from their holes to breathe their last in the plague-stricken sunshine. They lay in thousands at the gates of the city.

On the third day the fowls of the air fell down upon the earth. Stiff and stark they whizzed down from the roofs and covered the streets with their carcases. The wolves saw their companions, the ravens, stiffen out before their eyes, and they had not the courage to fall upon the carrion, but assembled in troops before the gates of the city and began to howl for fear, as if they would say: "Is there then none to help?"

On the fourth day the mammals perished; there they died at the very feet of their masters. No other thing was now to be found in the city, but man and the primeval monster.

And even this last plague did not startle them; they did not shrink back horror-stricken from the appalling solitude; every beast had already fallen a prey to death, only they and their idol still lived on.

There was still time for enjoyment; still they had days to look forward to. Still God had not pronounced His most terrible judgment upon them. "Let us wait!" said they.

And at length the angel of death began his fearful work on this race, which thus disowned their very consciences. A terrible epidemic went from city to city; men died off helplessly, irremediably; a brief moment put an end to their lives; the young and healthy to-day were corpses on the morrow. Already there were more graves than houses; the living no longer sufficed to bury their dead. A wail of anguish resounded through the whole land. Lamentations went from province to province. Men writhed convulsively in the dust.

But wherefore in the dust? Must not God be sought for in heaven? Does He dwell in the dust? Oh! they could not look up. They had prayers only for their idols. They said: "These are our gods. We ourselves made them so." And none of them had the courage to say: "Descend from your altars, ye abortions of the earth, ye who are lower than the dust itself, and give place to God, who is the only Lord."

Instead of this, they rushed in their frenzied despair to the youths encamped beneath the olive-tree, and, hoarsely bellowing, threatened Bar Noemi, the author of all these evils, with poisoned arrows and instant death.

"Ye who have not bowed beneath the eighth plague, recognize the Almighty's hand in the ninth miracle!" cried the ambassador of God, stamping with his foot on the ground.

And oh, wonder! the hard earth began to tremble beneath the feet of the raging multitude. At first there was only a sound like a distant wailing wind in the depths below, but soon it seemed as if a gigantic car were thundering along underground, and shaking the palaces which rose above the surface.

Merciful Heaven! Surely some angry spirit of the depths, striving to escape from his dungeon, is shaking the very foundations of the earth, grinding the mountains to pieces, and hurling the rocks into the plains. The surface of the earth resembles a billowy sea; the crowns of the loftiest palms sweep the reeling earth, and towers and bastions sink down in ruins.

Who can now sustain those golden palaces? Thousands of columns collapse on every side. The proud golden cupola topples, and crushes multitudes beneath its falling fragments; the débris of the gigantic pyramidal gates cover the ground; the remains of the arched bridges strew the ruined streets. Dust and rubbish where once was pomp and splendour.

The terrified people, hastening to the temples of their idols, were crushed by the falling rubbish; the houses of the besotted Bacchanalians bury their own secrets; the sinner perishes in the secret haunts of forbidden joys.

The people fly in terror to Triton, the chief of all their idols.

All around lay the rubbish of the eight walls of the temple; the silver effigy of the god had been cast down and lay with its face to the earth. But the living idol sat on its throne as immovable as ever, only the large, cruel eyes seemed to roll in their sockets as if wondering why the light of day had been withheld from them so long.

The people threw themselves at the feet of the monster, and, folding their hands over their heads, cried and howled: "Help us, O Triton!"

The monster himself began to feel the earth trembling beneath his feet, and there, on his left side, where a sluggish pulsation was visible beneath the scaly skin, a fear, unfelt before, made his heart throb quicker and quicker, and, arising from his throne and raising aloft his frightful head, the monster stood like a tower among the people.

The idolaters shrieked with joy: "Ha! God Triton has arisen! Triton has heard our words. Triton will fight against the strange God. Now, show thy countenance, thou strange God, and tremble before Triton, whose height measures twenty cubits, and whose hand is stronger than the lightning."

The blasphemy penetrated to the tent of the five men. Then Bar Noemi arose; the youths threw their swords over their shoulders, and boldly advanced in the name of the one Almighty God to answer Triton's challenge.

The priests brought them face to face with the monster, and said--

"God Triton has arisen to protect us. He has stretched out his strong arm, and opened his mouth, whose voice puts to silence the thunder. Ye strangers, who have brought destruction upon us, cast yourselves in the dust before him, and await the pouring out of his fury, which shall destroy both you and your God!"

In Bar Noemi's breast the flames of a superhuman enthusiasm began to glow. Round about him swarmed the raging multitude; before him the uncouth and unearthly monster towered up to heaven. With a far-resounding voice he spoke to the crowd--

"Ye dwellers in the dust! Ye dust-worshippers, whom neither blessing, nor cursing, neither good nor evil days, can turn from your sins. Ye loathsome worms, let the tenth plague smite you that ye may have none to pray to. Impotent monster, vile brood of hell, bow thee before the Name of Him who created thee once, and now annihilates thee, and return to thy forefathers--to the worms of the earth."

Thus speaking, he swung his sharp spear around his head with all his might, and hurled it at the monster. The spear flew hissing over the heads of the priests, and there, where the beating of the heart was visible on the left side of the monster, beneath its hard, scaly skin, the spear penetrated, and remained quivering in its heart.

Triton fell down upon his face with a frightful roar, vomiting forth streams of black blood from his gaping jaws, shaking the earth beneath the lashing of his tail, and tearing up the stones all around with his claws.

Bar Noemi and his comrades fled before the crowd had time to recover from its consternation; and when the men of Triton's city at last bethought themselves of pursuing the deicides, the ground burst asunder, so that a broad gulf lay between the pursuers and the pursued, and a stifling, infernal smoke rose up from the abyss.

The five men reached their home among the glaciers in safety. A great joy awaited Bar Noemi on the day of his return. His wife bare him a son, who equally resembled its father and its mother. And this befell to the great consolation of the dwellers among the glaciers; for it was as if Heaven had told them that the spot where an innocent babe was born, on this awful day, had nothing to fear from God's wrath.

The eldest of the elders received from Bar Noemi's lips an account of the events, and of the marvels which had taken place in the plains below. Amongst the eleven glaciers, absolutely nothing of all this could be discerned. Here warm summer, bright days, pure air prevailed; the meadows were green, the brooks murmured merrily; here, from the gnat buzzing in the air to the ox lowing in the stall, everything lived and rejoiced to live, and a blessing rested on the trees and grasses.

When the eldest of the elders had heard from Bar Noemi all these evil things, he commanded that every one who dwelt near the valleys should gather together all that he had, and, taking with him his animals, migrate to the uplands and settle there. Heaven would certainly provide for them, and make the dismal snow to melt, and give place to trees and grasses for the nourishment of man and beast.

* * * * *

Three days and three nights did the mortally wounded Triton suffer before he could breathe forth his millennial life in the dust. For three days his fearful roaring could be heard from one mountain-top to the other like incessant thunder, and these ghastly sounds brought forth from their secret lurking-places the Earth's remaining monsters, the hole-inhabiting, subterraneous beasts whose skeletons still excite the wonder of a late posterity. The shuddering earth awoke from her slumber of centuries, and forth they all came, with their misshapen bodies, their gigantic heads, their enormous horns, and their dusky, mail-clad bodies, to terrify the world once more.

"Triton is dead! The earth has no longer a god!" was the furious wail which ran through the whole land. "Only the God of the Glaciers still lives. Let us go out against him! Let us kill him also! He, too, shall live no more!"

And the rabid millions seized their weapons and marched forth to fight against God. The monsters that formed a separate people among them whetted their teeth and horns, and rushed madly in their thousands towards the glaciers; and the mammoths stormed their way through the primæval woods in order to stamp to pieces the people of the glaciers.

The roar of battle re-echoed through the wide continent. The natural order of things seemed to be suspended or abolished. Even the trees and grasses began to fight against Heaven. The leaves of the palm-trees stood out stiffly against the sky, like so many swords, and every blade of grass, every leaf of every tree turned its point upwards. The rocks, hurled one upon another, split asunder, discovering bottomless abysses, and the mountains, hitherto so still and peaceful, hurled flames and burning stones into the sky in impious anarchy. The earth burst asunder in a hundred places, and vomited forth foul, stinking morasses and loathsome, black slime into her own bosom, and the woods burst into flame, colouring the heavens blood-red.

Only the rocks of the glaciers still remained white and calm.

As now the host of the rebel millions and the ghastly shapes of the mongrel monsters stormed over the land of the God they blasphemed, vast thunderclouds enveloped them on every side. The loud, rattling peals rose above the battle din of the wild host, and the vivid lightnings scattered death among them with their glowing darts, and scourged them incessantly for three days and three nights with fiery scourges.

 

CHAPTER XIII

CONCLUSION

The people dwelling in the mountains prayed and praised God in the midst of their peaceful habitations; only a faint echo of the terrible battle below reached their ears.

On the fourth day everything was silent. The clouds that had obscured the sky dispersed, and as the dwellers among the glaciers looked down from their mountains, lo! a great ocean extended before and around them--a serene and silent watery mirror, whose wide horizon was conterminous with the vast firmament--mountain, valley, continent, what had become of them? whither had they vanished?

The eleven glaciers were also separated by the waters, and had become eleven islands. The whole mass had sank insensibly some thousands of feet. The warmer atmosphere of the lower regions had begun to melt the layers of eternal snow, and a new life--a new vegetation--was developing. On the first spot left clear by the snow Bar Noemi planted a linden--under the shadow of which he erected his hut, and the larger the leafy tabernacle grew the greater grew Bar Noemi's family, and God's blessing grew with it.

The group of these eleven mountains form the Canary Islands. Of all that vast continent, these mountains alone remain. Their fauna and flora, the conformation of their coasts, prove that this group of islands is merely the remnant of a submerged world.

Their later discoverers perceived with astonishment that a peculiar race of people inhabited these remotely situated islands--a race hardier and comelier than the men of other nations; a race intelligent and virtuous, which adored an invisible God, was chaste in its love, simple in its life, and content with its lot. It believed in the resurrection of the body, for it embalmed its dead, and laid them in funeral vaults. Moreover, it possessed the arts, and had an alphabet of its own, unlike that of any other people in the world.

This group of islands, moreover, possessed two other most wondrous kinds of inhabitants--a race of dogs and of yellow sparrows. Singular enough, both these species of animals remain dumb in the place of their birth, as if some vow prevented them from uttering a word; but they recover their voices if removed to other climes. The tiny canary birds--those gentle, amiable, sprightly songsters come from here. This is their proper home. With us they sing as sweetly, as meltingly as once they sang in Triton's luxurious city, and many a heart has been saddened by their songs without exactly knowing why.

The linden-tree planted by Bar Noemi still stands on the island of Ferro, whence the geographers draw the first meridian. The tree, which measures 160 feet in circumference, is already two thousand years old, and whole communities repose beneath its branches. Travellers tell us that the leaves of this tree imbibe the atmospheric vapours, and then distil them upon the earth below, thus watering the waterless island night and day. Even to this day the inhabitants hold the tree holy.

Between Europe and the New World there now extends the infinity of a vast ocean, and whoever thinks about it at all must needs say to himself that a whole continent is missing there. Plato has described it; Solon has sung of it; the Arabs speak of it in their fables, and the Carthaginians forbade it to be mentioned under pain of death--what more do we want? It must have existed!

Now, however, white sails fly over it.

But often, when a calm prevails on the ocean, and the dreamy mariner is brooding over the past, wondrous phenomena reveal themselves in the heated air before his eyes. On the dun-coloured horizon appear the dim outlines of cities with towers turned upside down, whole palm-forests with their crowns reversed. Wondrous, magnificent shapes are these, of which the existing world knows nothing, and these inimitable edifices, these boldly aspiring cupolas and domes undergo the strangest metamorphoses before the eyes of the astonished seafarer, till a light breeze in an instant dissolves the whole panorama, and nothing is visible around the rocking ship but the endless, the interminable sea.

[The end]
Maurus Jokai's short story: City Of The Beast

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