CHAPTER XXXIMESKEETA
BLASTEMO, warlike though he was, was greatly alarmed at seeing the wind fall and theDaydreamdrift towards one of the lowest of the group. He knew it was Meskeeta, which he translated the isle of Book-butchers; the people themselves translated it the isle of the Discerners of Good and Evil. But it was the evil, our friend explained, that they especially loved and indulged in; and it was not difficult for them, with their venomous habit of anatomising the quivering tissues, to find evil in the best of good. The ship was drifting so fast on the low shore that he got Captain Burns to anchor; and soon after the great chains clanked and whizzed she had stopped in her course. The crew began to feel their faces and hands smart as if stung with nettles; and before long they discovered that minute darts were sticking in their skin, feathered and pointed and adhesive with some poisonous acid. As a rule a good vigorous rub brushed off the microscopic barbs and prevented the venom searching the blood. But those who had sensitive skins suffered keenly from the volleys that came sweeping down the light puffs of wind now beginning to set out from the shore. The captain would have heaved anchor and sailed, had he not found that their provisions were running short. So he ordered the thinner-skinned below, and with the others he watched the beach to see if he could find the dart-throwers. Only by aid of the ship’s telescope could he discover them, so diminutive were they and so masked were their batteries. Blastemo had not much hope; but they might try whether the islanders had any stores. Meanwhile, to reduce the virulence of the pigmies, on his advice they lit all the lamps they had and crowded them together on the point that would produce most effect on the shore. At once the volleys ceased, and through the glass could be seen the little beings falling in the dust. The effect was still more pronounced when blank cartridges of gunpowder were fired and showers of rockets and squibs. The creatures grovelled towards the ship, then bit the dust, and scattered it with their hands upon their hair and bodies. Blastemo told them that these pigmies were worshippers of anything that flashed or dazzled, but whenever even the sun got obscured or clouded they began to shoot at it. Into this island had been exiled all who were bitten with the mania of criticism, and, however stalwart their proportions when cast on its shores, their microscopic fault-finding within a few generations reduced their descendants to the size of this puny race of dart-throwers. For lack of books and authors to dissect and torture, they resorted to this petty internecine warfare. They never did much harm, it is true, except to one another and to oversensitive targets, their missiles had grown so minute and their vision so oblique and so marred by the habit of wearing varieties of spectacles. These spectacles were all spotted and cracked and twisted, in order to produce blemishes to be criticised and attacked in every object gazed at; they had been originally assumed, it was said, to permit them to stare at the sun and other luminaries without blenching, but, as they were never cleaned or mended or renewed, they became invaluable in their daily business of fault-finding; they discovered stains on the purest white, and defects in the most perfect thing ever created; and that was a great comfort. It was also a comfort to their victims; for they could not distinguish the vulnerable parts from the invulnerable or even see to shoot straight; they were as good as purblind. The worst the venomous little creatures could do was to send their poisoned barbs down the wind in volleys and thus obscure the vision of their foes or of those who looked on; they even thought that they thus obscured the sun at times, and they were sorry for this, for they adored everything that flashed with brilliancy.
“When we saw them lie on their stomachs in the dust,” continued Burns, “we struck out in our boats for the shore, expecting peace at least. But, as we got out of range of our lamps, the dwarfs leaped up and began pouring their paltry missiles into the air. We landed with some inconvenience but no real harm; for we were all thick-skinned. They crowded round us in groups, busy with their petty bows and slings. Their missiles flew like dust. But they did more harm to one another than to us, they missed us so often, and we spread our handkerchiefs over our faces and hands. This last resort was necessary, for we noticed that one group made the face their target, another the neck, and a third the hands; their functions were, we could see, carefully specialised. One feature that perplexed us was that they had their upper parts concealed in such enormous masks as, if we had not seen their legs, would have made them seem giants; each man’s mask was large enough to cover a whole group; and the masks in each group were all exactly alike; but, as they shifted from group to group, they interchanged masks. The only thing that seemed to distinguish one from another was that a few of the masks had names on them.
“We were much puzzled about all this till Blastemo, here, showed us that it was a ruse to hide their identity in their internecine warfare; no one could tell which of his enemies had dealt him any blow or poisonous wound; and the size of the masks was to deceive as to the numbers and force, when the foe could not see the legs. The gigantic heads had huge brows, and beneath these protruded eyes that added a more truculent expression to the already truculent face. These eyes were the spectacles which were intended to give especial protection to the living eyes behind and to distort and mar the objects looked at; they were an especial mark for the missiles of enemies; and so they were cracked and scratched in all directions. Blastemo also explained to us the sudden change of attitude towards us after we had left the ship; it was the dazzle that they adored and not the sources of it. We would not have minded the artillery of the pigmies, but that, after seeing how futile it was, they began to squirt water as well, and we were soon covered with fetid mud from head to foot; the minute missiles mingled with the water, and the poison on them gave the disgusting smell.
“We sent off to the ship for lamps, and we bore them, each of us one, gleaming on our heads. We were at once safe, except for guerilla warriors, who might be for the moment behind any one of us. They did not now grovel in the dust; the light was not strong enough to produce this effect. They approached and patted us with most patronising familiarity, minute though they were. They seemed to draw infinite courage from their numbers and the masking of their faces; for if we caught any one of them alone and lifted him in our hands and took off his head-gear, he shivered with fear and lay down flat on the palm of our hands with imploring gestures; and when we let him down on the ground he scampered off to the shelter of some group as if for dear life. We were glad to be rid of the wretched little creatures; for when held close to us they stank abominably, reminding us of certain bed-lurking insects of Christendom. Without their masks they seemed to lose their self-confidence and braggart airs, and yet there were a few who wore none, and stood off from us in haughty isolation that almost made us laugh, so incongruous was it with their stature. Blastemo tells us that these were the great men amongst them, who thought they had the power of conferring godhead and everlasting fame; they called themselves, in fact, Todes, or the godmakers of mankind. Sandy Macrae thought of bringing off one or two of them in his pocket, so useful would they be to people without a religion, and to title-beggars and popularity-hunters in the old country. Sandy’s waistcoat would have held enough to serve all Europe. But the thought of the proximity of the dirty little imps to his nose made him rob Christendom of such a reinforcement of its courts and centres.
“We watched them for a time, and observed that all of them had a squint in their eyes, so that we could never tell which way they were looking. And their noses extended right across their lips into a sharp point. They were, in fact, a most treacherous looking crew; and treacherous they were, too, as any one of us soon found when his lamp went out or when he turned his back on a group of them. We soon discovered, too, how innumerable were the dissensions and divisions amongst them. When they were all in front of us and all our lamps were shining brightly, group would turn against group; but if that was not possible the members of a group would turn and embrace, or adore, or brush the clothes of one another. Blastemo explained to us that mutual flattery was the only alternative they knew for malicious hatred or envy or jealousy. They build their temples over the graves of those whom they call great men and whom they have persecuted to death, and each worshipper expects a temple to be erected over his grave when he dies. So you can imagine the number of sacred buildings in the island. No stranger is admitted to any of them; but it is said that each of them is a vast mirror within; only one worshipper enters at a time; and he sees on all sides of him nothing but glorified editions of himself. Without, they are of a jaundiced colour, broken only by the light of green lamps that are ever kept alight, in order, they say, to ward off the evil eye. There are no priests, for every devotee is his own priest; but each has a doorkeeper who is dressed up to represent Envy. His chief duty is to see that only one enters at a time and that he adds his quota to the fire on the altar. This consists of some book that he has criticised and shown to be full of faults. They keep a feeble folk in slavery, dwarfs like themselves, to produce books on which to exercise their critical powers. These poor creatures have highly sensitive skins and feelings, and they writhe under the attacks of their critics; it is their agony that gives the keenest pleasure to their masters and makes the sweetest incense in their offerings to the gods. The Meskeetans, indeed, would have lost the end of their existence and died out but for this diversion. Occasionally they get mad over a book of real power; they dance with rage and afterwards with delight, for it piques their best faculties to energy; and the joy they afterwards get out of its petty faults is tenfold because their rage did not lead them to burn it at once or tear it into fragments. Every comma or letter or word misplaced makes them inordinately proud of their acumen; they strut and crow as if they had found the source of original sin. The overseers of the slaves make them insert mistakes in the books in order that their discovery may gratify the venomous little masters. The lot of no people in the whole archipelago arouses so much pity as that of these book-makers, so utterly hopeless is it. They are kept alive that their anguish may be enjoyed; they are carefully watched lest they commit suicide, all to gratify the inhuman desire of the little monsters, their owners.
“This we knew afterwards from our friend here,” continued our captain. “But we went up into their town to see if we could get food or fuel. We saw their yellow, green-lanterned temples, and came upon some of the poor scholars in chains bent over their books. The houses were made of glass like their temples, and it was somewhat painful for our eyes to look at them in the sun; but inside they were all mirror; every little man could contemplate his own self, whatever he did within his own household; outside he could see nothing to adore but the sun and its reflection; inside he took the place of that luminary and god. Every house bore evidence of having stood siege: it was cracked and splashed with mud in almost every part; there were some spaces that were left intact, and on these I saw something engraved; it was, Blastemo interpreted, the chief maxim of their adored book: ‘God has given us to know all things, and to say all things without error; let the world worship us, His prophets and vicegerents upon earth.’ Where this was written, the glass was thin and transparent, so that it could be read both without and within; all the rest was fortified to stand a siege by any one group.
“We could find no supplies. They had no food but a flour obtained by pounding up the bones of those whom they considered the great dead, or a kind of chalky paste obtained from reducing statues of themselves and of the gods whom they worshipped. Their only drink was a black fluid that tasted like vinegar, and no fuel could we get but a few of the books produced by the enslaved people.
“The oil in our lamps began to give out, and we had to beat a hasty retreat, for they had found that we did not bow before them as omniscient or divine, or treat their sayings and life with any great adoration. They began to concentrate their sharpest and most poisonous darts upon us, as we turned to make off, and yet when we arrived on board and massed our newly lighted lamps, we could see the little creatures down on their faces again in the dust.”