number of girls! They are yours for the asking. Or if you have seen any maid among our enemies, name her, if it costs the lives of a hundred men.”
Jakara shook his head vigorously. “There is only one that I want, C’Zarcke; just Eyes of the Sea. I have a notion that she will keep me busy, too.”
C’Zarcke was disappointed. Gravely he spoke: “You have given me a wondrous thing, Jakara. You do not understand how I have dreamed of such a thing. I had thought that such knowledge was only the property of the spirit world. And I was partly right, for you are a Lamar, though I know you are no spirit. Your wish is granted. Take Eyes of the Sea whenever you wish, and no man dare say you nay. Can you not ask for something more worthy of this great gift?”
Jakara’s brain worked quickly. He hesitated, then whispered breathlessly: “Give me my freedom, C’Zarcke. When I have won the girl, give me a loaded canoe and let me sail to the first passing Lamar ship.” C’Zarcke’s lips opened to say “Yes.” He thought soberly for a moment, and then said with growing emphasis: “It is granted, Jakara, on one condition, and you can easily grant me that, for you have the knowledge. Tell me, Jakara,” he leaned forward and whispered with a terrible earnestness, “tell me of the Maker of the world! Does He live beyond the stars? Who is He? What are we for? Why does He let us live? What is He going to make of us? To what does the spirit-life lead us? And shall we ever know all? What power made us? Why?”
Jakara stared in incredulous astonishment. C’Zarcke watched him with blazing eyes. Striving for time, Jakara’s wits whispered that he must be very careful. “C’Zarcke,’ he said slowly, “you have asked me questions that the wisest men of the Lamars have striven for thousands of years to answer. I am not a learned man, and I can only repeat what our wise men tell us. To explain would take many nights of talk. Let me go now, and I will think over all these things.”
C’Zarcke stood erect, disappointed. “But, Jakara,” he pleaded, “you know who made the world. Tell me!”
“God,” said Jakara, as if unaware of himself.
Instantly C’Zarcke’s eyes blazed. “God! Who is God? What is He? Where is he?” And Jakara gazed into a face quivering in its lust for knowledge.
“C’Zarcke, you ask me questions that are as vast as the limit of time. I am only a worm. We are all insects, and God made every one of us. How, then, can I tell you of God! When you make a bow, can that bow sing to other bows of you who made it? Heavens alive! Let me go, and I will try to explain in the nights to come.”
C’Zarcke rose and half turned his face. His lip quivered sulkily, and Jakara thought that this curious giant was about to cry like a disappointed child. But he turned and asked quietly, “What are ‘heavens?’ ”
Jakara waved helplessly towards the Zogo-house roof. “You saw the heavens to-night, C'Zarcke; you peeped into them through the present I gave you.”
C’Zarcke’s face brightened instantly. He lifted Jakara to his feet and patted his shoulders, smiling as a happy boy might smile. He took him to the door and stretched out his hand towards the Wongai glade. “C’Zarcke is now Jakara’s friend for all time,” he said warmly. “Whatever you wish for, whatever you desire, take it, or do it without fear of any man. Tell your wish to the Mamoose, and see me at all times, if you should want something that the Mamoose cannot give. Go now, and in your own time explain to me the knowledge of the Lamars. And I will seek within the ‘heavens!’ ”
Jakara went, a very subdued Jakara, painfully aware that in this queer world there are matters of greater importance than Love.
CHAPTER VI
WAR DRUMS OF MER
Mer slept – with Silence for her blanket and Death for her bedmate. Suddenly Death ripped the blanket aside and sprang erect to the rolling drums of Mer.
Those shark-jaw drums! Unhappy, sobbing drums that swelled to pulsing waves of sound which drowned the quiet of valleys and villages and boomed across the bays far out to sea, drums that throbbed the knell of death from the heart of great Gelam.
Jakara sprang from his sleeping-mat and listened in breathless alarm: with alert body and tingling ears he drank in the warning of the drums. Every glade in the island echoed their changeful sound, grown now to a rolling throb, dreadful in its intense effect upon the passions of men. The echoing sea, and the air, and every tree and rock and leaf were sobbing into the ears of men a physical hysteria.
Jakara laughed, for the thrill of a maddened energy was racing through his blood. He snatched out Lightning, and the steel trilled to the drums. Drums of war! A thousand men sprang to club and bow and arrow, to spear and shark-tooth sword. A rumble of feet came from the houses as men hastened into the night; women lay a second longer, then, like tigresses, snatched their babes and leaped out beside their men; tousled-haired maids, all frightened-eyed, sat up, crouching, from sleeping-mats; children clung to their parents’ legs, and stared out into the night.
Then came an eerie whisper – of relief – in many villages for the boo shells brayed of an embarkation for war, not of a night attack upon Mer. So, joining the song of the drum and the boo, roared up a note of exultation: with those steely rays of dawn Mer was an awakened ant-bed.
Stridently called the boo shells, bold, insistent, compelling. The misty valleys echoed while the damp cliffs blared their challenge across the now lightening sea. From every village poured terribly excited men: scolding, advising, questioning, laughing, and crying, wives rushed after them to twine across their hurrying backs dilly-bags of sling-stones. Maids with thumping hearts tripped along, scanning the lads who pushed roughly by. Naked children came running and screaming war-songs, and dogs with bristling back and tails erect snarled at scampering strangers. Along every village path the bushes swayed and hissed at being brushed aside as things of no account. From jungle tracks across the shadowed beaches welled out lines of scurrying people, all disappearing into jungle again, all hurrying to the increasing sound of the boo shell, all bustling in the one direction, while the island and its sea-washed sides and hilly slopes between soon became deserted. All the paths gradually converged under the palms of Maiad.
The sun crimsoned Gelam, and a black cloud streaked the crimson with flame. As village clan after clan poured upon Maiad beach, their shouts were drowned in the roar of welcome from the gathering throng. A roar of the Beizam-le, of the Zagareb-le, of the crocodile men, and the dog men, and the pigeon men – a roar that rose with the clashing weapons and shrill of fighting rattles and with the booming boos, to merge with the methodical sobbing drums of Mer. And high above the Zogo-house rose a steady prism of light, a weird blue light that shone only at war or at the death of a Zogo or at some great Island calamity or victory. It was from the booya, a round stone which was a miracle to Jakara, in that it emitted this piercing light from some property held within itself. Set in a large bamboo socket heavily decorated in designs of the Bomai-Malu with teeth, shells, hair, and colours, only three of these light-belching stones are known to have been in existence, one the property of Mer, one of Eroob, and one of Ugar. A secret, as yet not rediscovered by white men, was lost with these stones when the Zogo-le of the Eastern Islands nation, foreseeing the inevitable conquest by the whites, buried their secrets.
Unexpectedly, Jakara felt quick warm fingers on his arm. He liked the Pretty Lamar as she deftly fastened a palm-leaf armlet above his elbow. Though she smiled so gaily, he felt her fingers trembling. “A good luck armlet for Jakara the Unkillable,” she whispered. “The leaf has slept against my heart. It will guard Jakara from any weapon, though it may not save his heart for me.” With a gay wave of farewell she stepped back among the people.
Distinct from the excited crowd, each village chief, in perfect discipline, took his orders from Bogo. And now arose a peculiar note, a wailing of anguished men who were detailed to stand by Mer. With the quick orderliness of perfected plans, each village quota marched to the sands, where ten huge war-canoes were drawn up in alignment. Within them, packed to a nicety, and loaded to suit the rising wind, were foodstuffs and massed bundles of arrows and bamboos of water. The canoes comfortably averaged forty men each. Several of the grizzly