The Early Adventures of El Borak, page 11
So we entered, warily, and found the place a kind of eight-sided room, floored with stone and surrounded by a stone wall, some twelve feet high and no roof. It was, as I said, octagon shaped, and perhaps forty-five feet across, each way.
“Look!” exclaimed Abdul Khan, shrinking back, pointing. It was lighter than in the outer place, and we saw a vast, shadowy form near the wall opposite from the opening through which we came. We hesitated and then, having reloaded our pistols, we went forward, warily. The thing did not move and we saw that it was a great stone image.
“An elephant,” said Mahommed Ali, and so it was. It was skillfully done. The trunk was uplifted and drawn back, the great tusks jutted straight out and curved slightly upward. The tusks were almost out of proportion to the form of the image, for the elephant was hardly ten feet high and eleven feet long, and the tusks were a good ten feet in length, and large. Abdul Khan looked closely at the tusks.
“Look,” said he. The tusks were sharp at the points and there were dark stains upon them.
“Those are very ancient bloodstains,” said Abdul Khan.
“How could that be?” asked Mahommed Ali.
“In an old temple in the jungle close to Delhi,” said Abdul Khan, “there was the image of a tiger. And it was said that at certain times the tiger would leave the temple and range the jungle like a real tiger, slaying all whom he met.”
“A lie of the Hindus,” said Mahommed Ali, but not with overmuch certainty.
“It might be,” answered Abdul Khan. “Yet, if a stone tiger can slay, why not a stone elephant? Imagery is the doing of ifreets of evil. Did not the Prophet Mohammed, on whom peace, forbid the making of images, either of men or of beasts?”
We looked askance at the image, half-expecting for it to charge us. I glanced about the walls. There were no snakes there, for if any had ever been there they had come out to attack us. I saw many carvings of elephants along the walls and suddenly I thought of something.
“A temple with many carvings of the elephant in it,” Gordon had said.
“Mohammed hu Akbar!” I exclaimed. “This is the temple of which Gordon spoke!”
“How can that be?” asked Abdul Khan. “That temple stood on the shores of a lake.”
“However,” said I, “this is the temple. Did not El Borak say it was a temple of the elephant? He spoke of no other temple.”
“Then if this is the temple,” said Mahommed Ali, “by the beard of the Prophet, this is the work of ifreets or magicians, for then it stood on the shores of a lake and now it stands at the edge of a swamp. Let us hence.”
Then a kind of fright took hold of us, so we rushed from the place, and if we had found the snakes grown together again and waiting to attack us we would not have been surprized, and we looked back over our shoulders as we fled, expecting to see the stone elephant pursuing us. We came out of the temple into the jungle and it seemed very good after the serpent-haunted den where we had been. Kubo was awaiting us, though he said he had hardly expected us to come out. We asked him if he had known there was a temple there and he said no one had known anything about the place, for whoever went near it was devoured by the serpents.
So we went back to camp, desiring to wash the scent and feel of serpent off us.
Gordon was seated in his camp chair, talking to some of the dwarfs who dwelt close to the swamp.
“And no one knows anything of the great swamp?” he asked as we came up.
The Wambuttos answered that none of them had ever crossed the swamp, but a few had gone some miles into it and said there seemed a kind of flat mountain in the midst of it.
Gordon seemed puzzled and he sat meditating a moment. Then suddenly he threw back his head and laughed. Laughed long and loud, while the dwarfs and all of us stared at him, and at each other, not understanding.
He sprang up. “A flat mountain!” said he. “Scatter, ye wolves, and search for the temple of the elephant, for unless I have lost my wits, it is not far from here.”
“Aye,” said Abdul Khan, “for we have found it.”
Then we told El Borak of finding the temple and slaying the snakes.
“Ye have done well,” said El Borak, “both in discovering the temple and in slaying the serpents. Had it not been for the pythons, the Wambuttos would have known of the temple.”
“But if the temple was by the lake,” said Ormuzd Shah, “how could it now be by a swamp?”
“Manu and Ganesha!” exclaimed Lal Singh. “The lake has become a swamp!”
Gordon laughed. “I wondered how long it would be before ye saw,” said he. “The land has changed since the Carthaginians came and went. Nearly three thousand years have passed since they saw the lake and the island in the lake. There was an earthquake, a river changed its course, and the lake became a swamp.”
“And the island?” asked Yar Ali.
“The island is in the midst of the swamp as it was in the midst of the lake,” answered Gordon. “The Island is evidently what the Wambuttos saw and which they tell of as a great, flat mountain.”
“But how can we cross the swamp and get to the island?” asked Ghur Shan.
“We shall see,” said El Borak. “Anyway, we will cross it.”
He asked the Wambuttos how they went into the swamp, and they said that for many miles the trees grew very large and tall and the branches were so close to each other that they traveled by swinging and leaping from branch to branch and from tree to tree, after the fashion of monkeys. That was easy for the dwarfs, for they spend much of their time in trees, where the lions and other beasts cannot get at them.
But they said that many miles from the edge of the swamp that no large trees grew, and there were only quagmires and small, stagnant lakes, with small islands of firm land. They said there were many crocodiles and some pythons, but that there were waterbirds of some kind in the swamp that ate reptiles, so there were not many snakes. They said the dwarfs who had ventured into the swamp had gone only as far as the great trees grew in the swamp and then had returned. They had never gone close enough to the mountain that was in the swamp to see it plainly, but it seemed to be high and flat, with very steep cliffs. There seemed to be trees on top of it.
“Did there seem to be buildings on the mountain?” Gordon asked them.
They said they did not know. That they were a great distance from the mountain and they could not see if there were buildings or not. They were not sure if there were trees.
Gordon asked them if they explored any of the small islands they saw. The dwarfs said the islands were all beyond where the swamp-jungle ran and they did not go on any of them. They said they were most of them covered with trees and jungle undergrowth.
“The Carthaginians mentioned the fact that there were several small islands on the lake as well as the main island, mostly not inhabited,” said Gordon. Yar Ali said it seemed that if there were any men on the island that they would find their way through the swamp to the mainland.
“Perhaps there are no people on the island,” answered Gordon. “And if there are, perhaps they either have no way of crossing the swamp, or do not even know that there is a world outside the swamp. The human mind is narrow. But we shall see.”
We made our luggage into bulks as small as possible. Most of it consisted of ammunition and provisions. We arranged it so each porter could carry a minimum amount, tied with rope to his shoulders. So that each porter would not be too heavily loaded, some of the Manyeumas carried some of the luggage.
We released the king of the pygmies there, and he ordered five Wambuttos to accompany us for guides.
Then we set out across the swamp, traveling, as the dwarfs traveled, through the trees.
The trees were mostly mangroves and were fairly easy to travel through. We had many long ropes, some of native manufacture of long grass and some places we stretched them from tree to tree, making swinging bridges such as may be found in Afghanistan.
The marsh under the trees was dank and little but quagmire. There were snakes, though not in great numbers, and many crocodiles. Gordon distributed a kind of stuff among us. The Wambutto pygmies made it and it was a liquid which we put upon our clothes and it kept away the mosquitoes and tsetse flies, if there were any. They would not come near us.
The mangroves were hundreds of years old and were giants of trees. Many tall, slim bamboos grew in the swamp also, but scarcely any other kind of tree.
We traveled through the trees until we came to an expanse of swamp where no trees grew. It was a wide plain of quagmires and stagnant lakes, bare of vegetation except for the dingy swamp grass that grew scantily. Small clumps of trees and bamboos grew upon what seemed to be the islands the dwarfs had told us of. Gordon had us cut down the bamboos that grew in abundance.
Gordon gave the Wambuttos gifts of beads and muskets and they returned to their tribe.
The bamboos that grew in the swamp were tall, some of them growing a hundred feet and more in height. They were strong and light and we cut them and made rafts, making them fast together. The rafts were fifteen and twenty feet long, and four or five feet wide, each carrying five men and an amount of luggage.
Gordon wished each raft to be as light as possible. They were propelled by long poles, the men on the rafts shoving them along, over the marsh. That was sometimes rather difficult, for the swampland gave when the poles were shoved against it, but the rafts, being fairly broad and flat and light, would not sink into the marsh.
For many miles before we emerged from among the trees into the marshy plain, we could see the flat mountain the Wambuttos had told us of, and the view urged us on, for we lusted for the gold that Gordon said was there.
And it did not much resemble a mountain, but more an upland that had once been an island, as Gordon said it had.
It seemed to be flat on top, as the Wambuttos had said, rising straight up out of the marsh about. It seemed some hundreds of feet high and, if it were a mountain, it was a gigantic one, that is by wideness.
Gordon gazed at it through his field glasses and said that there were trees upon it, though there did not seem to be a jungle.
There were many crocodiles in the swamp but not many snakes, for there was a kind of waterfowl that destroyed the snakes. We had noticed many of them among the trees of the swamp-jungle and they were in great quantities on the marsh. There were hundreds of them. They were built something like herons, with long legs and long, snake-like necks. They were of a brown color, flecked with white and they made a very rasping, screeching cry. Their feet were webbed and they could run across the quagmires or swim in the lake with equal swiftness. They could fly, also, and their beaks were very long and pointed. They would even attack a large python. They destroyed the young of the crocodiles. Gordon and Kubo captured several of the birds. They were tied to the rafts by one leg and they destroyed any snake that came near.
Gordon and Kubo always went ahead of the other rafts on a small raft which was light and easily propelled. The other rafts followed their trail.
We had constructed the rafts so they would float in water, and when we came to one of the small lakes we floated across, using the propelling-poles for oars.
We laid our course so as to have the advantage of as many lakes as possible, for it was much easier to float across them than to pole across the marsh.
There were many crocodiles in the lakes and sometimes they would swim near us and occasionally they would attack us and seek to overturn the rafts. We slew many with spears and battle-axes.
The crocodiles fought and devoured each other and the marsh fowls destroyed the crocodile eggs and devoured the young crocodiles, but even so there were hundreds of crocodiles; thousands of them.
We landed upon some of the small islands. They were merely marshy uplands, like large hummocks. Mangroves and bamboos grew so thickly upon them that anyone could hardly get through them. The marsh-fowls nested upon them by the thousands, and on some crocodiles sunned.
Gordon said the islands were probably those spoken of by the ancient Carthaginian explorers. He said the Carthaginians found most of the islands uninhabited. They were probably used as a sort of naval bases, for El Borak said that the people of the island empire had a fair-sized fleet of boats and canoes, for war and for commerce. He said they traded with the pygmies of that age and with the tribes that dwelt on the shores of the lake and with other tribes further back in the jungle.
He said that the Carthaginians had remarked upon the fact that the island people greatly desired great stores of ivory. They hunted the elephant themselves and ivory was the main commodity for which they traded with other tribes. Gay furs and feathers came next in trade value. The Carthaginians, said Gordon, had not said from where the white race had come. Perhaps they had not learned. The empire might have been so ancient that they themselves did not know.
He said the race must have been as old, or even older, than the Sumerians, a race that settled in Mesopotamia so many centuries ago that no man knew whence they came.
“And where got they the gold?” Yar Ali wondered.
“I do not know, unless they mined it on the island,” Gordon answered. “But gold there was, great quantities of gold.”
“So I can get my hands among it,” said Yar Ali. “I care little from whence it came.”
We came upon an island in the midst of one of the small, marshy lakes. It was a rather large island, and higher above the marsh than most of the islands. We landed there and Kubo wandered inshore; presently, he returned and told El Borak that there was some sort of a building in the jungle on the island.
The bamboos grew so thick and dense that we hewed our way with axes, some places. At about the center of the island we came upon the ruins of an old temple. The jungle had grown about it and it was almost hidden.
It consisted merely of a stone wall, round in shape, with an opening at one place. It had no roof. In the center there was a great, carved serpent of stone, coiled on a stone pedestal which was decorated by carvings of other, smaller serpents. The stone wall was also decorated by snake carvings.
Gordon went over the ruins carefully. He seemed very much interested and slightly puzzled.
“The Carthaginians did not mention another race,” said he. “Yet the race that erected this snake temple did not erect the elephant temple we found at the edge of the swamp. They represent two distinct forms of architecture, so distinct that it is scarcely possible that the same race erected both temples. In the elephant temple, the art itself was crude. The elephant carvings were out of proportion. The lines of architecture were strong, but crude. The whole plan of the temple of the elephant shows crude, primitive strength and freedom of expression. The carvings of the snake temple are much superior in art, but they lack the strength of expression of the other.
“The styles of the two temples are altogether different. The wearing of the centuries seemed to have done little to the walls of the elephant temple. But the temple of the snake is almost in ruins.”
“Could not the snake temple have been built later by the same race?” asked Lal Singh.
“It might be,” answered El Borak. “Yet it seems scarcely probable that a race, while gaining the higher knowledge of art, should entirely forget the earlier virtues of strong, natural expression and lasting architecture. And I believe that the temple of the snake was built before the temple of the elephant.”
“Before?” said Lal Singh.
“Yes, before,” answered El Borak. “There were unmistakable signs of the use of metal implements upon the walls and the elephant image in the other temple. But the snake temple was evidently constructed, even the carvings, by the use of stone implements alone.”
“But could such carvings as are here on the walls have been done by implements made of obsidian or some such stone?” asked Lal Singh.
“Yes,” replied El Borak. “The men of the Neolithic Age attained a perfection of the art of making stone weapons and implements, to the highest degree, although their art held about the same relation to the art of the Paleolithic men that the art of the snake temple holds to that of the elephant temple.”
“Why were there bloodstains upon the tusks of the elephant image, do you suppose?” asked Abdul Khan.
“I do not know,” answered El Borak. “I would have thought there would have been some sort of an altar in each temple, for most primitive peoples offered up human victims, especially the snake. Perhaps the victims were slain on the tusks of the elephant image.”
“If there were two tribes, perhaps one tribe was black men,” said Yar Ali.
“Not probable,” said El Borak. “The black men never made any advances in art.”
After we started back to the rafts, I approached El Borak.
“Sahib,” said I, “not for me to say to those base-born that you do not posses all knowledge of the ancients. But I found this in the ruins of the temple of the snake.”
And I handed him the copper ax which I had found. It was a light, long weapon, with the “eye” at the end instead of the middle, and turned at right angles to the blade. A handle, to fit the “eye” would have had to be bent. The blade had a narrow, very much curved cutting edge.
“A very ancient form of weapon,” said Gordon. “I still believe that the carvings in the snake temple were done with stone implements. Perhaps the builders learned the use of metal later, or perhaps tribes using metal implements came into the islands. It must be that there was a race of white men of an earlier age here before the white men came whom the Carthaginians saw. Keep the ax, Khoda Khan. When we reach civilization again you can sell it to some British museum.”
After we set out from the island, we were crossing a very marshy place when a crocodile made an attempt to overturn one of the rafts. A swarm of them attacked some of the rafts. One had indeed climbed onto the rafts, when Unalanga pinned the scaly reptile to the raft with his assegai. The other warriors took battle-axes and knob-sticks and beat the other crocodiles off.
