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 weapons which these men carried are worth mentioning.
The kamoose was an arrow with a barbed but detachable head which stayed in the body when struck. The arrow-head fitted into a hollow socket in the haft, and the haft fell away with the shock of contact. The doad showed remarkable mechanical ingenuity. It was a short bolt rather than an arrow-head. It also fitted into a bamboo haft, with a screwing motion. The point was broad and fashioned with a view to penetrative power. Running down from the point for a length of five inches were two flanges of broad tempered bamboo. These had each three sides, razor-keen. Underneath them, pressed against the hard-wood of the arrow-head proper, were compressed springs of bamboo. Immediately the arrow-head pierced the body, the springs were loosened, and the flanges flew out with a twisting motion, thus making a whirling disk ten inches in diameter, which cut up the opponent’s body inside. The weapon was also designed with a view to terrible shock. No man ever arose when once the doad entered the body. It was fitted into a bamboo haft, and fired like a bolt from a very strong bow. Crossing the centre of the bow was a bamboo tube: the haft was thrust through this, then the doad was fitted on. At the butt-end of the haft were two knobs, which would not allow the haft to pass completely through the tube. The bow was drawn to its full limit and the string loosened. The haft shot out, but the knobs caught against the bamboo with frightful force, adding to the doad a spinning motion as it thrummed heavily with terrific speed on its way. Some men carried slings of plaited fibre, and expert marksmen could bring down a bird on the wing.
The men did not all carry the same weapons. Every man carried his gaba-gaba, and each wore, hanging from his neck, the upi, the bamboo head-knife, and the singai loop. Each man was an expert with one weapon and different villagers were adepts at different arms. Thus there were the sword men, the club men, the arrow men, the doad men, the sukari men, and so on. The gaba-gaba and bow and arrow were the favourite weapons. The bone dagger was a deadly thing at close quarters. It was carved from
