Chapter XV: Deepening Mystery

"_Bay chon?_"

"_Breil koil toxo!_"[13]

[Footnote 13: What is it?

They have gone, they have fled!]

The cries of the two guides rose followed by a string of oaths.

Awakened with a start, Pierre looked around him. Lying on his back, with his hands crossed over his chest, Father Ravennes still slept. His face even in his sleep wore an air of serenity and kindness which struck the young man afresh. Around them was beginning to float a grayish clearness.

The voices of the Moïs came nearer and louder, and the flap of the tent, pulled violently aside, gave entrance to the men. With their lances in their hands they burst in, shouting and gesticulating. Instinctively Pierre stretched out his hand and seized the revolver which lay beside him in its holster.

Jumping to his feet with a single spring, the missionary broke in:

"What's happening?"

The guides both together cried out:

"They've gone, all of them ... all of them ... while we were asleep!"

They stammered: their eyes were dazed and their movements jerky.

Lursac looked at them without understanding. He imagined they were drunk.

"Gone, where? Of whom are you speaking?"

Ngur swore:

"The _linhs_, those sons of dogs.... Gone, run off! I told you, sahib! It would have been better to tell them. We should have known at once what to expect...."

Pierre no longer listened. He had gone suddenly pale and then a wave of red surged into his face. He elbowed the two men aside and rushed out. Father Ravennes hurried at his back. In the middle of the glade they stopped. The camp-fires were going out. Among the warm ashes a few live coals still glowed. Here and there lying on the ground abandoned haversacks still showed the marks of the heads which had lain on them during the night. Around lay packets of cartridges.

His teeth clenched in fury, Pierre mechanically counted some twenty of them.

"The brutes! ..." he groaned. "The brutes!..."

He turned toward the guides.

"But what on earth came over them? Last night when the headman made his report we guessed nothing, suspected nothing. There was not a sign that could lead us to think of a desertion. When did you become aware that they had disappeared?"

Ngur answered:

"Just a few minutes ago. We were sleeping in the middle of them. Pâa was lying by the headman's side. Waking up, we were surprised not to see any of them ... and then finding _this_ close by our faces we understood!"

And with the point of his lance he pushed two bunches of half-burnt roots.

Father Ravennes bent over quickly to look at them.

"Ah!" said he, rising again, "_koh-heun-kauang_, the smoke of which intoxicates and stupefies. They made sure of the silence of our guides by burning this stuff under their noses during the night. They must be a long way off by now!"

He turned to question the guides.

"How long ago did they start, do you think?"

The two men looked carefully at the half-dead fires and the abandoned haversacks.

"See for yourself, Father. The sacks are damp, but rain has not fallen since the second watch, the mahouts tell us, therefore, they must have started before it stopped."

Pierre gave a start. He turned abruptly on his heel.

"The elephants? The elephants?"

And running, he reached the swamp ringed about with trees and thick undergrowth, on the edge of which the mahouts had made their camp.

Sunk to their knees in the blackish water of the creek, the beasts were squirting their muddy sides with great jets from their bent trunks. Seated beside the saddles on the ground the mahouts were talking among themselves.

Pierre experienced a profound relief, and he slackened his pace and entered the group of La-oese who had risen respectfully at his approach. Standing among them he examined their faces. He scrutinized their eyes with a quick look. He found them emotionless and passive, awaiting his instructions, and the sight of their indifference brought back to him his own self-control.

He said nothing to them about the desertion of the riflemen. Quietly lighting a cigarette he gave the order to load the elephants. Then he went back towards the clearing. His mind upset for an instant had recovered its equilibrium. His decision was made: the march must continue.

He found the missionary at the place where he had left him several minutes before, still arguing with the guides. He avoided the glance with which the priest acknowledged his return and addressed himself to Ngur and Pâa:

"Go and help the mahouts. We will start as soon as they are ready."

The two men showed no signs of surprise or of wishing to dispute the order. They assented:

"Very well, sahib"; and without a word set off at their habitual easy gait.

Roughly, with the object of impressing his will and cutting short all arguments, Lursac said:

"It is too late to go back. If we tried to catch up with the riflemen, what would be the good? First of all we should probably be unable to catch them; and then, secondly, supposing we did get them and bring them back, we should only have lagging behind us a body of men prostrated with terror, a mob of cowards, who at the first occasion would desert us afresh."

He stopped, awaiting a reply. The missionary remained silent: with a rather sad smile upon his lips he contented himself with listening attentively to the young man.

"And anyway," continued Pierre, "the elephants with their mahouts remain to us; the guides also. They are the ones that are really necessary. Once we have arrived at the top I shall consider, I shall make a plan which afterwards I can modify according to circumstances."

He intentionally left the missionary out in explaining his project. The words that he had spoken the evening before came back to his lips instinctively and once more he spoke them to alleviate his distress:

"I will get there ... alone if necessary.... I will get there!... I will get there!"

Abruptly he fell silent. His eyes met those of the priest, and before the latter's meaning glance, his long look charged with reproach, he hung his head. He was ashamed of having doubted him, of having tried to impose his own authority upon him. The missionary, however, did not seem to notice: he said simply:

"I shall go on with you, if you will let me."

But the smile with which he accompanied the words was sadder and graver than ever.

* * * * *

Towards night they came to the bank of a river, before which Bookobomo stopped distrustfully. Behind him the other elephants stood motionless in file. The rain had begun to fall again. Under the flood which drenched them and made them shiver, the men, chilled and covered with sticky mud, looked down at the gray waters of the river which the downpour seemed to riddle with innumerable perforations.

Above the rift, which the course of the waters had notched in the forest, hung a lane of gray sky marbled with heavy, round clouds that lay dark and motionless. The five mahouts who had swarmed down from the necks of their beasts were grouped round the great male whose driver was the only one remaining at his post. Crouched over the bony head of his beast, the man talked to his mount while he stroked its wrinkled neck and encouraged it. Slowly swinging his trunk, Bookobomo began to go forward, descending the bank and stepping cautiously into the water. The current slid between his great pillar-like legs, rose to his knees, then to his stomach, washed his wrinkled sides, rose yet further and continued to rise....

Then with a sudden turn, Bookobomo flung himself backwards, stumbled out of the water and with his feet driven into the mud of the bank he defied all attempts to move him. Around him the cries of the mahouts and the guide broke out, mixed with insults and entreaties. Armed with sticks they tried to make him turn round and face the water again. Persisting in his resistance, Bookobomo trumpeted but refused to stir. The men on all sides began beating him. A fit of rage seized the pachyderm. He tried to get rid of the man crouching on his back. He scraped himself against the trunk of a mangrove and then lay suddenly down on his side, but the Lao-ese, who had drawn back to the rear end of the beast, outside the range of his trunk, continued to beat him on the head with his ankus.... Supported by one hand caught in the ropes of bamboo which secured the pack-saddle he tirelessly raised and let fall on the head of the beast the heavy pole of wood shod with an iron point, until the blood squirted from the neck and forehead and ran down in rivulets along the brown skin. Getting up and shaking his massive body violently, with his trunk rolled backwards in its fighting position and his head held high, Bookobomo trumpeted afresh. Then with a dash he flung himself into the current and swam furiously. Reaching the other bank he climbed it and turned his great head towards his companions who remained on the other side, and again the call of his trumpeting broke out savagely, sounding rebellion and defiance. On the edge he had just left, the trumpeting of the females rang out in response.

The guides standing beside Pierre and the missionary exchanged an anxious glance which Father Ravennes caught.

"What is worrying you?" he asked.

Ngur pointed at the five females who were getting ready to cross the creek.

"They are calling too loud," said he, "and he," pointing at Bookobomo, "since he got into the forest is thinking too much of the mountains of the Bolovens where he used to live in freedom. We shall have to watch them tonight."

"Yes," Pâa said in his turn, "the elephant which cries in the forest is on his way to becoming wild again."

"The advice is good," said Pierre. "We will watch them."

* * * * *

When the four men in their turn reached the other bank, the night was already falling. A flurrying wind blowing the rain before it in slanting torrents invaded the forest, making the trees groan beneath it.

Camping on the threshold of the wood, a quarter of a mile beyond the creek, the men made their meagre meal. The elephants, attached by their hind feet to the trunks of trees, pulled down the branches above them and ate the leaves slowly. From time to time they stopped, and with waving trunks and pricked-up ears seemed to be listening to the voice of the wind as it sang through the aisles of the forest. Gathered together round a single fire the two guides and the mahouts warmed themselves. One of them recited aloud an adventure at once puerile and complicated, a story of love and terror in which the embraces of a Pou-Sao[14] rewarded the fabulous exploits of a buffalo-hunter. And the others, like children, listened intently.

[Footnote 14: A Cambodian girl.]

In the middle, rolled up in their cloaks and lying side by side, Lursac and Father Ravennes talked in low voices.

"Tomorrow?" asked Pierre. "Shall we get there tomorrow?"

His voice trembled.

"I think so," said the missionary, "we are not more than five hours' march from the Pou-Kas. Five hours ... four, perhaps! And we will allow as much more for the finding of the mysterious entrance to the temple which we none of us know...."

He hesitated for a moment, and then in his turn asked the question:

"What do you think?"

Pierre signified doubt by a vague movement.

"I know nothing about it," said he. "The desertion of the riflemen has upset all my plans. We can no longer hope to rescue Wanda from them by force."

He turned suddenly to the priest.

"Do you know how much we have got left in the way of arms and ammunition? My service revolver and a dozen cartridges which I had on me! All the rest was carried off by the riflemen! Ah! the brutes! If they only had left us even two rifles, one each...."

The priest looked at him with his kind eyes.

"Only one of them would have been used," said he gently. "God alone, who gives life to men, has the right to take it away from them. I have no right to kill. My only hope...."

He interrupted himself and smiled.

"I beg your pardon," said he. "It seems as if I were preaching a sermon and this is not the time, and still less is it the place. I will come back to my question: What will you do when you reach there?"

Pierre looked vaguely in front of him. His thoughts had gone back in search of a memory and were already in the past. He swiftly lived over again his declaration to Wanda in the forest; the feel of the kiss that she had given him--of the only kiss that he had ever had from her,--came again to his lips. With a slight tightening at the corners of his mouth and his eyelids beating rapidly he closed his eyes.

"We will hide somewhere near the temple and wait for an opportunity to get inside," said he. "We shall have to make use of patience and subtlety. We must remain invisible and watch the goings-in and comings-out. The whole thing will be to see the most favorable moment and be quick to use it."

The missionary approved.

"That is the wisest plan, and the one which I had myself thought best from the beginning; but is also the one which will demand calm heads and the power of waiting passively. The least imprudence, the first too-hasty movement, will deprive us of any chance of success. We must succeed at the first attempt...."

"Have no fear," said Pierre, "I will wait as long as necessary, and I will not act except on a certainty. For the rest...."

The trumpeting of the elephants interrupted him. Straining hard at their bonds they had all together flung a sudden loud call into the night. The mahouts and the guides, suddenly ceasing their talk, nervously watched the brutes who were snorting and restlessly moving about. They had stopped eating. With their heads turned towards the depths of the forest they seemed to be listening to mysterious voices which were inaudible to the ears of man.

Ngur murmured:

"They are calling...."

But one of the mahouts, shaking his head, corrected him:

"No ... worse than that.... They are answering! Listen!"

They all remained intensely on the alert. Having thrown aside their cloaks, Lursac and Father Ravennes sat up. With their eyes, like the others', instinctively fixed on the sombre masses of the woods, they listened absorbedly.

Confused noises far in the distance came to them, so vague that they could not define them. Then they grew louder and more definite. It sounded like the trampling of a great herd of animals on the march through the underbrush. It came nearer and nearer, until it was apparently opposite them: they could hear the heavy thuds of feet mixed with the crashing of the torn-up bushes and the breaking of trees and smashing of branches. It stopped. There was a short silence: then the noise began again, diminished, turned to the right, went behind them, then to the left and finally was heard once more opposite, having made a great circle about the camp, with the caravan as its centre.

Wrapping his trunk round the _klong_-tree to which he was tied, and leaning his whole weight against it, Bookobomo shook it in a desperate effort to uproot it. The top of the tree waved violently, scraping the trees around it with its branches. However, it stood firm. The elephant became enraged and pulled still harder. The slim, straight tree-trunk trembled: around the roots cracks came in the soil and Bookobomo roared in a voice vibrating with triumph, while, following him, the females in their turn trumpeted into the shadows. Again there fell a silence. Then suddenly in the distance a great call rose up to the sky and tore through the night, a strange call which resembled the trumpeting of the elephants but which was somehow different, more sonorous, and with sharper inflections, wilder and stronger.

Father Ravennes shivered. He had that strange look on his face which Pierre had noticed two days earlier.

"Extraordinary," he murmured. "I must clear this up!"

He had already risen to his feet, but Ngur stepped in front of him.

"No, Father, it will be better for you to stay here because of those people." Indicating the mahouts with a movement of his chin, he added:

"I will go myself."

The missionary was on the point of protesting, but at this moment the mahouts, jumping up in excitement, shouted:

"Torches! Quick ... quick!..."

And at the same time with flaming firebrands in their hands they flung themselves at their beasts, making a circle of flame about them. Lursac and the priest took part in it. They all ran round and round the elephants, shouting and waving their torches and striking the elephants with heavy blows from their ankuses.

For over an hour the pachyderms turned and circled round the trees to which they were attached, rocked from foot to foot, reared up on their hind legs and made desperate efforts to get loose. Finally, however, blinded by the torches, in agony from the ankus blows, their excitement diminished and they stood sulkily by their trees, stilled and conquered.

Meanwhile, about them the disturbance of the mysterious herd that had been prowling there, became more distant and gradually quieted down, seeming to make its way towards the north from which it had come.

"A herd of wild elephants who were coming down to drink at the river," said Pierre, "our presence must have...."

But the return of Ngur cut short his explanation. At the sight of the face of the usually impassive Moï, now transfigured with emotion and completely changed in this short time, he lapsed into silence.

The man stood apart and called to Father Ravennes with a gesture.

The missionary took Pierre's arm.

"Come," said he.

Throwing down their torches, they went to speak to Ngur.

"Well," asked the priest, "what is the matter?"

Wiping his face, down which the rain was streaming, with the back of his hand, the guide said:

"I saw them. They were elephants, but of a kind I do not know and which I have never met before."

Eagerly the missionary questioned him:

"What were they like?"

The man spread his arms wide.

"The one which passed in front of me," said he, "was, perhaps, twice as big and twice as heavy as Bookobomo, with its body covered with hair and a long head."

"And its tusks? Its tusks?" demanded the missionary.

The hoarseness and jerkiness of his voice astounded Lursac.

"I did not have the time to see properly. He charged through the undergrowth and passed ahead of me, going very fast. Perhaps the tusks were broken. Further away I saw other great male elephants running in file."

The missionary remained a moment without speaking, listening to the sound of the rain falling through the forest.

"They are a long way off now," he murmured.

His words seemed to carry a feeling of regret which he immediately admitted:

"Ah! if I had been there myself! You are sure that they had their bodies covered with hair?"

"Sure, Father! Long hair, which came down to the bottom of their legs and made a sort of mane round their necks."

The missionary's face lit up and became eager. He seemed to have forgotten the guide and Lursac.

With his head hung forward, he stared a moment absorbedly in thought. Then slowly in a changed voice he murmured:

"Long hair, which comes to the bottom of their legs and lies in a mane along their backs. Can it possibly be that what I saw three days ago is true? After all, why not? All the same it would be terrible if--.... No, it is impossible and beyond all reason. It is no good my looking ... there isn't a link missing in the chain that I have followed, in the chain that has led me to this conclusion. Nothing!... But what then?..."

Pierre, astounded, heard him give a loud laugh, bitter and strange, which the scene about them made yet stranger....