Do you see any of the brutes in a trance? By Jove—I’ve spotted him.’
Due credit must be given to Weston for his powers of observation: he had picked out the only creature in the assembly which was not standing in an attitude of reverence and attention. This was an elderly hross close beside him. It was squatting; and its eyes were shut. Taking a step towards it, he struck a defiant attitude and exclaimed in a loud voice (his knowledge of the language was elementary):
‘Why you take our puff-bangs away? We very angry with you. We not afraid.’
On Weston’s hypothesis his action ought to have been impressive. Unfortunately for him, no one else shared his theory of the elderly hross’s behaviour. The hross—who was well known to all of them, including Ransom—had not come with the funeral procession. It had been in its place since dawn. Doubtless it intended no disrespect to Oyarsa; but it must be confessed that it had yielded, at a much earlier stage in the proceedings, to an infirmity which attacks elderly hnau of all species, and was by this time enjoying a profound and refreshing slumber. One of its whiskers twitched a little as Weston shouted in its face, but its eyes remained shut.
The voice of Oyarsa spoke again. ‘Why do you speak to him?’ it said. ‘It is I who ask you, Why have you killed my hnau?’
‘You let us go, then we talkee-talkee,’ bellowed Weston at the sleeping hross. ‘You think we no power, think you do all you like. You no can. Great big head-man in sky he send us. You no do what I say, he come, blow you all up—Pouff! Bang!’
‘I do not know what bang means,’ said the voice. ‘But why have you killed my hnau?’
‘Say it was an accident,’ muttered Devine to Weston in English.
‘I’ve told you before,’ replied Weston in the same language. ‘You don’t understand how to deal with natives. One sign of yielding and they’ll be at our throats. The only thing is to intimidate them.’
‘All right! Do your stuff, then,’ growled Devine. He was obviously losing faith in his partner.
Weston cleared his throat and again rounded on the elderly hross.
‘We kill him,’ he shouted. ‘Show what we can do. Every one who no do all we say—pouff! bang!—kill him same as that one. You do all we say and we give you much pretty things. See! See!’ To Ransom’s intense discomfort, Weston at this point whipped out of his pocket a brightly coloured necklace of beads, the undoubted work of Mr. Woolworth, and began dangling it in front of the faces of his guards, turning slowly round and round and repeating, ‘Pretty, pretty! See! See!’
The result of this manœuvre was more striking than Weston himself had anticipated. Such a roar of sounds as human ears had never heard before—baying of hrossa, piping of pfifltriggi, booming of sorns—burst out and rent the silence of that august place, waking echoes from the distant mountain walls. Even in the air above them there was a faint ringing of the eldil voices. It is greatly to Weston’s credit that though he paled at this he did not lose his nerve.
‘You no roar at me,’ he thundered. ‘No try make me afraid. Me no afraid of you.’
‘You must forgive my people,’ said the voice of Oyarsa—and even it was subtly changed—‘but they are not roaring at you. They are only laughing.’
But Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language. He looked about him with a puzzled expression. Ransom, biting his lips with mortification, almost prayed that one experiment with the beads would satisfy the scientist; but that was because he did not know Weston. The latter saw that the clamour had subsided. He knew that he was following the most orthodox rules for frightening and then conciliating primitive races; and he was not the man to be deterred by one or two failures. The roar that went up from the throats of all spectators as he again began revolving like a slow-motion picture of a humming-top, occasionally mopping his brow with his left hand and conscientiously jerking the necklace up and down with his right, completely drowned anything he might be attempting to say; but Ransom saw his lips moving and had little doubt that he was working away at ‘Pretty, pretty!’ Then suddenly the sound of laughter almost redoubled its volume. The stars in their courses were fighting against Weston. Some hazy memory of efforts made long since to entertain an infant niece had begun to penetrate his highly trained mind. He was bobbing up and down from the knees and holding his head on one side; he was almost dancing; and he was by now very hot indeed. For all Ransom knew he was saying ‘Diddle, diddle, diddle.’
It was sheer exhaustion which ended the great physicist’s performance—the most successful of its kind ever given on Malacandra—and with it the sonorous raptures of his audience. As silence returned Ransom heard Devine’s voice in English:
‘For God’s sake stop making a buffoon of yourself, Weston,’ it said. ‘Can’t you see it won’t work?’
‘It doesn’t seem to be working,’ admitted Weston, ‘and I’m inclined to think they have even less intelligence than we supposed. Do you think, perhaps, if I tried it just once again—or would you like to try this time?’
‘Oh, Hell!’ said Devine, and, turning his back on his partner, sat down abruptly on the ground, produced his cigarette-case and began to smoke.
‘I’ll give it to the witch-doctor,’ said Weston during the moment of silence which Devine’s action had produced among the mystified spectators; and before anyone could stop him he took a step forward and attempted to drop the string of beads round the elderly hross’s neck. The hross’s head was, however, too large for this operation and the necklace merely settled on its forehead like a crown, slightly over one eye. It shifted its head a little, like a dog worried with flies, snorted gently, and resumed its sleep.
Oyarsa’s voice now addressed Ransom. ‘Are your fellow-creatures hurt in their brains, Ransom of Thulcandra?’ it said. ‘Or are they too much afraid to answer my questions?’
‘I think, Oyarsa,’ said Ransom, ‘that they do not believe you are there. And they believe that all these hnau are—are like very young cubs. The thicker hmān is trying to frighten them and then to please them with gifts.’
At the sound of Ransom’s voice the two prisoners turned sharply around. Weston was about to speak when Ransom interrupted him hastily in English:
‘Listen, Weston. It is not a trick. There really is a creature there in the middle—there where you can see a kind of light, or a kind of something, if you look hard. And it is at least as intelligent as a man—they seem to live an enormous time. Stop treating it like a child and answer its questions. And if you take my advice, you’ll speak the truth and not bluster.’
‘The brutes seem to have intelligence enough to take you in, anyway,’ growled Weston; but it was in a somewhat modified voice that he turned once more to the sleeping hross—the desire to wake up the supposed witch-doctor was becoming an obsession—and addressed it.
‘We sorry we kill him,’ he said, pointing to Hyoi. ‘No go to kill him. Sorns tell us bring man, give him your big head. We go away back into sky. He come (here he indicated Ransom) with us. He very bent man, run away, no do what sorns say like us. We run after him, get him back for sorns, want to do what we say and sorns tell us, see? He not let us. Run away, run, run. We run after. See big black one, think he kill us, we kill him—pouff! bang! All for bent man. He no run away, he be good, we no run after, no
