Appleby on Ararat Read online

  And time was a factor now, for the tide was coming up. He rose and walked the moist sand from end to end, confirming an impression he had already received; the sand took a clear print which held for minutes only, being rapidly obliterated from below. He tried again higher on the beach, and here he came presently upon traces of movement not accountable by anything known to have happened that day. They told him little except that they had been deliberately confused; he followed them laboriously up the soft sand to the jungle. Just here Unumunu’s body had been lugged out on the beach…he moved into the shadows and sat down to let his eyes accommodate themselves to the shade.

  For a moment the air about him was alive with the whirr of tiny wings; then it fell stagnant again – hot, moist and of the earth. The cricket outvoiced the distant fall of breakers beyond the farther reef; the clumsy stealth of lizards was about his feet; before his nose the fleshy mouth of a monstrous scarlet flower closed suddenly on a fly. Never, he thought, could mortal have essayed criminal investigation in an atmosphere more blatantly assertive of the irrelevance of human justice, of the fictitiousness of the conception that nature moves because before it there beckon desirable goals. Here evidently things moved only because there was always a shove from behind; things happened exclusively because other things had happened before. And Unumunu’s murder interested him – as all his other murders and allied horrors had done – simply because it was a species of occurrence in which the identity of the shoves from behind was particularly teasing. Particularly teasing and therefore, in the solution, particularly capable of gratifying that appetite for power, for assertive shoving on from behind, which seems to be the only dynamic principle nature will reveal…

  Appleby, who was not a philosopher, straightened his back in sudden reproach and dismay. It was probably over a hundred in the shade, and these speculative inclinations must be put down to that. He turned his inner eye to the contemplation of his companions and found them papery and thin, as if they obstinately preserved the phantasmic nature of their final days on the waters. Hoppo, indeed, had been more real when implicated with the Seven Sacred Cataracts; Glover more considerable when much was to be suffered and little to be done. As for Diana, although it would be extremely irrational in him to deny her the most emphatic physical existence, she had the character of evaporating from the mind when any picture of the dead man and his fate rose in it. Miss Curricle alone remained for anything resembling agreeable professional speculation. And Appleby suspected that Miss Curricle, in theory so deviously determined to lie with men, was in fact of those who incurably walk with the gods – with Proteus or the great Poseidon in the Tonga Trench, with Lilith the mother of all living in a fable that has long grown dim. She was not a woman with more than a veneer of the practical mind. She would murder an antipathetic notion, supposing notions to be susceptible of summary elimination in that way. She might murder a man if he stood for or embodied a notion. But it was difficult to see how Unumunu could have done that.

  Appleby shook his head – and found a little crowd of flies rise in air. This was not the way to solve a mystery. It was not thus that he had plumbed the matter of Dr Umpleby and the bones, of the stylish homicides at Scamnum Court, of the daft laird of Erchany; it was not thus that he had exposed the Friends of the Venerable Bede or preserved ten persons from the blackest suspicion by recollecting a line in The Ancient Mariner. It was not thus – He stood up with a groan. A cursed climate. He should not so be floored, even by the devious exertions of an odd day. He was a prematurely aged young man, aimlessly reminiscing.

  Unumunu had been hauled on and across the beach here. The disturbance in the fringe of jungle was visible; there was a distinguishable trail in the undergrowth, as one might expect when a heavy body had recently been dragged through. He followed the trail for perhaps twenty yards, only to find himself cheated. With the tropical unaccountability which marked it in more ways than one, the jungle changed character; everywhere was a rubbery and resilient growth that had taken no impression from whatever had passed. He cast about for some time and in vain; he could find no further trail. So he reflected on what he had found – reflected until its unreason stared out at him. For the trail as he had traced it ran parallel to the beach, and so continued, likely enough, where it was invisible. Very laboriously the black man’s body had been lugged through the shelter of the jungle’s fringe to the point at which cover had been broken in a scramble to the beach. But throughout that twenty yards or more of stumbling progress the beach and the bay had lain equally accessible and near… Appleby foraged an armful of sticks and went down once more to the water.

  Sticks, thrown far into the bay, came sluggishly but invariably back. As the tide was coming in this was scarcely surprising. But Appleby, seeming to ignore the labour-saving principle of induction, walked slowly along the beach throwing in more sticks. As he came near the point at which the body had been dragged down their behaviour became uncertain; when he was abreast of the point it changed. The sticks now floated away and disappeared.

  Impelled by some inner excitement, he turned and doubled up the beach; he found a hollow log and into each end jammed a stone; he collected more sticks. He returned to the water’s edge and pitched in the log. Almost awash, it floated away; he doubled back once more to higher ground from which it could be observed. The nearer reef, all above water still, appeared to stretch continuously across the bay. But on reaching the barrier the log momentarily disappeared from sight, to become visible again in the farther bay. Somewhere there was a channel and, ebb or flow, a current ran out through it to ocean.

  And now Appleby threw stick after stick from the same point, and stick after stick disappeared. It was a strong and certain current, stronger even than those which he and Diana had tackled that morning… He continued to throw sticks. And the fortieth stick defied prediction, glided on an aberrant course, ended by eddying round the now wholly submerged rock where Unumunu’s body had been found.

  Appleby threw away his remaining sticks and turned a sober face towards what, conventionally, might be called home. The island’s short twilight was drawing on.

  8

  The glade – cautiously approached – proved untenanted; the search-party had not yet returned. That it ever would return was now a purely speculative proposition, and Appleby was inclined to regret that he had encouraged it to set out. But probably you were as safe on one corner of the island as another – perhaps safer on the move than waiting amid a gathering darkness at a base.

  The crickets had fallen silent. From the reef the breakers murmured their message of isolation and of the world forgot and, inland, an unknown creature screamed in short, decisive agony. There was now a star, terribly remote, in the irregular patch of darkening sky above; underfoot, the jacaranda carpet glowed momentarily vivid before being taken by the night… Appleby paused on the edge of the glade and summarised the position as best he could.

  He was on an island. For this he had the evidence of his eyes, laboriously transported to a central eminence the day before. From this point, perhaps two thousand feet up and inevitably named Mount Ararat, there could be seen a girdle of unbroken ocean. That the island formed part of a group there was no sign, nor was there any sign of an objective correlative to the mirage which, at sea-level, sometimes appeared at sunset. The island stood alone, and a fair amount of wandering had disposed them to believe that they stood alone on the island. Its total extent was not great, and only one area – screened both from sight and from ready access by a spur running east from Mount Ararat – was unknown to them; it could be little more, this, than a strip of coast.

  Appleby shivered – not because of the sinister possibilities on the fringe of his mind, but simply because at sundown it grew suddenly cold. Commonly they lit a great fire. He stepped into the glade and persuaded himself that he was concentrating his mind on whether one should be lit tonight. He was conscious of moving as in a shallow well of fai
nt and diffused light around which were dark walls of jungle. He passed the little palisade of brush and palm-leaves that was Diana’s sleeping-quarters, passed a similar structure of Miss Curricle’s – and stopped. Before him now was a contrivance of Glover’s in course of construction, a sort of wash-place composed of stones and clay. It was not entirely a success, for in places the clay remained obstinately damp. And at one of these places he was looking now, his eye held by something just evident in the failing light. What he saw was a single footprint in the damp clay – the single print of five toes and the ball of a foot. He stared at it, patently astounded and obscurely disturbed. Man Friday had appeared, and in a great hurry at that. He knelt down with sudden minute interest in the thing; rose with an air of something like conviction. He stood still, trying to weigh chances as they might be interpreted on the evidence of half-forgotten books. Then he went over to the fireplace and knelt down once more, vulnerable as in a dream, and blew on the embers. There was kindling-wood to hand and within a few minutes the fire flared as usual. He fell to preparing what Glover called dinner and Diana tea. It occurred to him to whistle and he whistled an approximation to the overture of Figaro, stuff strictly musical but related nevertheless to the common emotion of joy. And now night had really fallen.

  There was Diana’s pigeon of the morning – Diana’s and the black man’s pigeon – to bake in a shell of clay. The black man had been black; perhaps there was something in that. Moreover he had possessed certain specific curiosities; perhaps there was something in that too. Appleby stiffened at a sound from the darkness. He relaxed; it was a clumsy sound. He smiled into the fire as there became audible the tired and pettishly apologising voice of Hoppo.

  “Really, Glover, I had no idea you were in front. Appleby has the fire going, I am glad to see. It is useless to deny that one result of our anxieties is something uncommonly like an appetite. I believe there is a pigeon baking. How terrible it all is. Like a dream of dreams. I wish we possessed some tea. Nothing is more refreshing. Mrs Kittery, I thought you were a tree. Dreadful. Dreadful, indeed.” And Hoppo, mildly distracted, came uncertainly into the firelight.

  “You have bad news?” Appleby poked briskly at the embers.

  “We have not found Miss Curricle. But we have found – it is most disturbing – we have found” – Hoppo, now close to the fire, glanced from Glover to Diana as if for aid – “we have found her garments.”

  “What?”

  “Means her clothes.” Glover spoke huskily and abruptly. “Half way up the east range we found her clothes in a heap. Disagreeable – whichever way one looks at it, you know. All her clothes.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Or at least so Mrs Kittery thinks probable.”

  “It is to be hoped,” said Hoppo, “that it is an aberration merely.” He sat down and looked about him for food. “Speaking confidentially – or rather speaking openly, for that is the better phrase – I have some ground for supposing – that is to say I am inclined to think – that Miss Curricle’s mind has – um – been running increasingly in certain channels, regrettable channels–”

  “Gone off her head, in fact.” Glover interrupted abruptly. “No need to make a mouthful of it. Poor lady gone through great hardships. And these things happen. Mrs Kittery here – woman of the world – face facts–” And Glover became inarticulate in his turn.

  Diana was unfolding a small bundle. “Here’s her slip. And here–”

  Hastily Appleby gave her a long drink. “I understand what you mean. Miss Curricle has her own ideas on how one must come to live if thrown on a desert island. And a certain measure of nudism might be one of the particulars.” He paused. “Has any of you thought of another explanation?”

  “Of course we have. And seen something like evidence, too.” Glover picked up a yam and held it suspended while he finished what he had to say. “We went on and got to the top of the range. And down in a farther valley we saw a column of smoke. It looked as if it might come from a fairly big fire.”

  “The sort of fire,” said Diana, “on which one could – could imagine an enormous pot.” She took up a stone and neatly uncased the pigeon. “A pot – to face facts, as the colonel says – with Miss Curricle inside.” For a moment Diana looked quite sad. “And, John – has anything happened to you?”

  For answer he drew a brand from the fire and led them over to the wash-place. For a moment they stared at the footprint in silence. “Mrs Kittery,” Glover asked doubtfully, “might it be yours?”

  Diana shook her head. Appleby spoke. “The relation of the big toe to the others is not that of a foot that has been habitually confined to a shoe. Look how naturally it has come down with a gap between – much as a European hand might come down. And I have another piece of news. Unumunu was killed by a person or persons with a remarkable knowledge of the island and the currents about it.” He recounted his experiments. “You see, the body was so disposed of that the chances were about forty to one in favour of its drifting straight out to the ocean. Unumunu would just have disappeared and we should never have known how.”

  “Savages!” said Hoppo. “Oh dear, oh dear!”

  “Much better than the suspicion that the devilry was our own affair,” said Glover.

  “And,” said Diana, “it gives Mr Hoppo scope. I can think of another book. Mr Hoppo’s Heathen. John, they will be heathen, won’t they?”

  “Assuredly.” Appleby led the way back to the fire. “Did anything further happen on the range?”

  Glover shook his head. “It was too late to go on, even if we had not had Mrs Kittery to consider. We should have been caught by darkness on impossible ground. But tomorrow–”

  “A common fate.” Diana, staring wide-eyed into the fire, pronounced the words with great emphasis. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But it’s just occurred to me. A common fate. That’s what you say when the same thing happens to people – isn’t it?”

  They assured her that it was.

  “Well, what I mean is that the same thing hasn’t happened to Ponto and Miss Curricle. And it’s odd, I think. I mean, if Miss Curricle is for the pot why go to ever such a sweat to float poor Ponto out to the sharks? There’s a – a–”

  “Discrepancy,” offered Appleby. He too was staring at the fire, but with narrowed lids. And his voice was that of an abstracted man as he went on. “But there is very little reason to suppose that Miss Curricle has been put in a pot. Even if she has fallen into the hands of savages they need not be cannibals. Perhaps they have floated her out to sea too. Or, again, it is possible that they might not harm her. Unumunu was a black man and perhaps more likely to be taken as an enemy and less likely to be received as a wonder. He was also an anthropologist and, having discovered natives, may have poked indiscreetly into some particularly private rite. Perhaps he was disposed of so summarily because of something like that. As for Miss Curricle, for all we know they may now be worshipping her as a goddess. It is to be hoped that a robe or two has been supplied.” He continued, unsmiling, to stare into the fire. “I believe I should have done better,” he added enigmatically, “if my education had consisted in taking out classes too.” He paced up and down, and the movement was not in harmony with the fluent string of possibilities he had been propounding. “And now there is the question of immediate policy. We can’t very confidently reckon on all being taken for divinities–”

  “Not even Mrs Kittery.” Hoppo beamed at his own sudden and outlandish gallantry; then his glance went to the jungle and the beam faded. “It may have been imagination,” he said, “but I thought I discerned–” He stopped. From somewhere startlingly close at hand there came the dull slow pulse of a drum.

  Glover reached for his cudgel; the others stayed very still. The sound was an abrupt declaration of danger, short-circuiting speculation, removing doubt. But it was also something inside. Each beat was like a potent capsule of fear dissolving in the blood, a
nd if the poisoned stream reached the heart perhaps the heart would stop… And now, from across the glade, there came the pulse of an answering drum, faster, like some rapid beast of prey coming down a long tunnel and edging past a lumbering mate. There was a moment of confusion in the tunnel – the tunnel that was deep inside the listening self – and then the rhythms joined and the creatures became one; there was one rushing monster intent to drive them far down the tunnel, to drive them down a tunnel which would sink them aeons deep in a primitive past. One had to grab at the sides – and Appleby grabbed. It was true, then, what was said about the power of drums…in The Plumed Serpent, for instance. And based on such overpowering experiences as this were the attenuated thrills of poetry and the dance. Appleby, grabbing thus at the civilised consciousness, was enabled to speak in the most briskly unemotional way.

  “Colonel, I don’t think we’ll prepare for a fight. It’s almost certain that the odds would be hopeless. We must beat our own drums.”

  Glover put down the cudgel. “What d’you mean?”

  “The drums are magic being brought against us. Remember how strange we may be. Nothing but the bare report of white men may ever have reached these people before. We must keep our own magic going and not let it be disturbed by theirs. Diana, would you please pass the salt?” Appleby sat down again at the table they had improvised for meals. “Hoppo, may I help you to half a pigeon?”