The Red One

lips, the situation was different. What hehad to do was to recover from the abominable fevers that weakened him,and gain to civilization. Then would he lead an expedition back, and,although the entire population of Guadalcanal he destroyed, extract fromthe heart of the Red One the message of the world from other worlds.

  But Bassett’s relapses grew more frequent, his brief convalescences lessand less vigorous, his periods of coma longer, until he came to know,beyond the last promptings of the optimism inherent in so tremendous aconstitution as his own, that he would never live to cross the grasslands, perforate the perilous coast jungle, and reach the sea. He fadedas the Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta knew thathe would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his taboo. Ngurnmade pilgrimage personally and gathered the smoke materials for thecuring of Bassett’s head, and to him made proud announcement andexhibition of the artistic perfectness of his intention when Bassettshould be dead. As for himself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long andtoo deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of itsimpending extinction. He continued to persist, alternating periods ofunconsciousness with periods of semi-consciousness, dreamy and unreal, inwhich he idly wondered whether he had ever truly beheld the Red One orwhether it was a nightmare fancy of delirium.

  Came the day when all mists and cob-webs dissolved, when he found hisbrain clear as a bell, and took just appraisement of his body’s weakness.Neither hand nor foot could he lift. So little control of his body didhe have, that he was scarcely aware of possessing one. Lightly indeedhis flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul, in its briefness of clarity,knew by its very clarity that the black of cessation was near. He knewthe end was close; knew that in all truth he had with his eyes beheld theRed One, the messenger between the worlds; knew that he would never liveto carry that message to the world—that message, for aught to thecontrary, which might already have waited man’s hearing in the heart ofGuadalcanal for ten thousand years. And Bassett stirred with resolve,calling Ngurn to him, out under the shade of the breadfruit tree, andwith the old devil-devil doctor discussing the terms and arrangements ofhis last life effort, his final adventure in the quick of the flesh.

  “I know the law, O Ngurn,” he concluded the matter. “Whoso is not of thefolk may not look upon the Red One and live. I shall not live anyway.Your young men shall carry me before the face of the Red One, and I shalllook upon him, and hear his voice, and thereupon die, under your hand, ONgurn. Thus will the three things be satisfied: the law, my desire, andyour quicker possession of my head for which all your preparations wait.”

  To which Ngurn consented, adding:

  “It is better so. A sick man who cannot get well is foolish to live onfor so little a while. Also is it better for the living that he shouldgo. You have been much in the way of late. Not but what it was good forme to talk to such a wise one. But for moons of days we have held littletalk. Instead, you have taken up room in the house of heads, makingnoises like a dying pig, or talking much and loudly in your own languagewhich I do not understand. This has been a confusion to me, for I liketo think on the great things of the light and dark as I turn the heads inthe smoke. Your much noise has thus been a disturbance to thelong-learning and hatching of the final wisdom that will be mine before Idie. As for you, upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well thatyou die now. And I promise you, in the long days to come when I turnyour head in the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in to disturb us.And I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old man and very wise, andI shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn your head in the smoke.”

  So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a dozen of themen, Bassett departed on the last little adventure that was to cap thetotal adventure, for him, of living. With a body of which he wasscarcely aware, for even the pain had been exhausted out of it, and witha bright clear brain that accommodated him to a quiet ecstasy of sheerlucidness of thought, he lay back on the lurching litter and watched thefading of the passing world, beholding for the last time the breadfruittree before the devil-devil house, the dim day beneath the matted jungleroof, the gloomy gorge between the shouldering mountains, the saddle ofraw limestone, and the mesa of black volcanic sand.

  Down the spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling the sheening,glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridesce from colour andlight into sweet singing and thunder. And over bones and logs ofimmolated men and gods they bore him, past the horrors of other immolatedones that yet lived, to the three-king-post tripod and the huge king-poststriker.

  Here Bassett, helped by Ngurn and Balatta, weakly sat up, swaying weaklyfrom the hips, and with clear, unfaltering, all-seeing eyes gazed uponthe Red One.

  “Once, O Ngurn,” he said, not taking his eyes from the sheening,vibrating surface whereon and wherein all the shades of cherry-red playedunceasingly, ever a-quiver to change into sound, to become silkenrustlings, silvery whisperings, golden thrummings of cords, velvetpipings of elfland, mellow distances of thunderings.

  “I wait,” Ngurn prompted after a long pause, the long-handled tomahawkunassumingly ready in his hand.

  “Once, O Ngurn,” Bassett repeated, “let the Red One speak so that I maysee it speak as well as hear it. Then strike, thus, when I raise myhand; for, when I raise my hand, I shall drop my head forward and makeplace for the stroke at the base of my neck. But, O Ngurn, I, who amabout to pass out of the light of day for ever, would like to pass withthe wonder-voice of the Red One singing greatly in my ears.”

  “And I promise you that never will a head be so well cured as yours,”Ngurn assured him, at the same time signalling the tribesmen to man thepropelling ropes suspended from the king-post striker. “Your head shallbe my greatest piece of work in the curing of heads.”

  Bassett smiled quietly to the old one’s conceit, as the great carved log,drawn back through two-score feet of space, was released. The nextmoment he was lost in ecstasy at the abrupt and thunderous liberation ofsound. But such thunder! Mellow it was with preciousness of allsounding metals. Archangels spoke in it; it was magnificently beautifulbefore all other sounds; it was invested with the intelligence ofsupermen of planets of other suns; it was the voice of God, seducing andcommanding to be heard. And—the everlasting miracle of that interstellarmetal! Bassett, with his own eyes, saw colour and colours transform intosound till the whole visible surface of the vast sphere was a-crawl andtitillant and vaporous with what he could not tell was colour or wassound. In that moment the interstices of matter were his, and theinterfusings and intermating transfusings of matter and force.

  Time passed. At the last Bassett was brought back from his ecstasy by animpatient movement of Ngurn. He had quite forgotten the old devil-devilone. A quick flash of fancy brought a husky chuckle into Bassett’sthroat. His shot-gun lay beside him in the litter. All he had to do,muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and blow his head intonothingness.

  But why cheat him? was Bassett’s next thought. Head-hunting, cannibalbeast of a human that was as much ape as human, nevertheless Old Ngurnhad, according to his lights, played squarer than square. Ngurn was inhimself a forerunner of ethics and contract, of consideration, andgentleness in man. No, Bassett decided; it would be a ghastly pity andan act of dishonour to cheat the old fellow at the last. His head wasNgurn’s, and Ngurn’s head to cure it would be.

  And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his head asagreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his taut spinal cord,forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merely and only andundesired. He knew, without seeing, when the razor-edged hatchet rose inthe air behind him. And for that instant, ere the end, there fell uponBassett the shadows of the Unknown, a sense of impending marvel of therending of walls before the imaginable. Almost, when he knew the blowhad started and just ere the edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves itseemed that he gazed upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth—And,simultaneous with the bite of the steel on the onrush of
the dark, in aflashing instant of fancy, he saw the vision of his head turning slowly,always turning, in the devil-devil house beside the breadfruit tree.

  THE END

  Waikiki, Honolulu, _May_ 22, 1916.