Tales From Jokai Part 22

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

"Every hour and with all my might!"

"In the stern of thy s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, even Jehovah, as thou sayest, who prolongs our days indeed out of compa.s.sion 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 wors.h.i.+pping their idol, and either throw the Ark of the Covenant or the golden serpent into the sea, that at least one G.o.d 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 G.o.d, and how that goldsmith lied who said it was of gold! It was only so much gilded gla.s.s. He who wrought the thing was right in supposing that if you could take it for a G.o.d, it might also pa.s.s 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 ma.s.ses of cloud dispersed in all directions; the agitated waves, after rocking the s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d'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 s.h.i.+ps to destruction from afar, and all were terrified at finding themselves in a position so queer that not even a single legend had antic.i.p.ated 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 coa.r.s.e 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 G.o.d; 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+mmering through the azure morning mists.

"The Lord He is G.o.d 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 demiG.o.ds, 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 G.o.d above them.

CHAPTER V

THE PRIEST OF THE MEGATHERIUM

As far as the eye can reach, the sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+ning eyes. The hedges consist of tiny silvery bushes, with rosy red pointed branches, and the lofty gra.s.ses 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 n.o.ble 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 gra.s.ses, lies a gigantic megatherium, which in its rec.u.mbent position is scarcely distinguishable from a shapeless ma.s.s 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 gra.s.ses 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 ash.o.r.e, 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, p.r.o.ne in the gra.s.s, 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.