XXIII.
JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD.
"It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "But it'shappened to me--among other things."
I intimated my sense of his condescension.
"It don't leave much for ambition, does it?" said the sunburnt man.
"I was one of those men who were saved from the _Ocean Pioneer_.Gummy! how time flies! It's twenty years ago. I doubt if you'll rememberanything of the _Ocean Pioneer_?"
The name was familiar, and I tried to recall when and where I had read it.The _Ocean Pioneer_? "Something about gold dust," I said vaguely,"but the precise--"
"That's it," he said. "In a beastly little channel she hadn't no businessin--dodging pirates. It was before they'd put the kybosh on that business.And there'd been volcanoes or something and all the rocks was wrong.There's places about by Soona where you fair have to follow the rocksabout to see where they're going next. Down she went in twenty fathomsbefore you could have dealt for whist, with fifty thousand pounds worth ofgold aboard, it was said, in one form or another."
"Survivors?"
"Three."
"I remember the case now," I said. "There was something about salvage----"
But at the word salvage the sunburnt man exploded into language soextraordinarily horrible that I stopped aghast. He came down to moreordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "Excuse me," he said,"but--salvage!"
He leant over towards me. "I was in that job," he said. "Tried to makemyself a rich man, and got made a god instead. I've got my feelings----
"It ain't all jam being a god," said the sunburnt man, and for some timeconversed by means of such pithy but unprogressive axioms. At last he tookup his tale again.
"There was me," said the sunburnt man, "and a seaman named Jacobs, andAlways, the mate of the _Ocean Pioneer_. And him it was that set thewhole thing going. I remember him now, when we was in the jolly-boat,suggesting it all to our minds just by one sentence. He was a wonderfulhand at suggesting things. 'There was forty thousand pounds,' he said, 'onthat ship, and it's for me to say just where she went down.' It didn'tneed much brains to tumble to that. And he was the leader from the firstto the last. He got hold of the Sanderses and their brig; they werebrothers, and the brig was the _Pride of Banya_, and he it was boughtthe diving dress--a second-hand one with a compressed air apparatusinstead of pumping. He'd have done the diving too, if it hadn't made himsick going down. And the salvage people were mucking about with a charthe'd cooked up, as solemn as could be, at Starr Race, a hundred and twentymiles away.
"I can tell you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drink andbright hopes all the time. It all seemed so neat and clean andstraightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert.' And we used tospeculate how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers, who'd startedtwo days before us, were getting on, until our sides fairly ached. We allmessed together in the Sanderses' cabin--it was a curious crew, allofficers and no men--and there stood the diving-dress waiting its turn.Young Sanders was a humorous sort of chap, and there certainly wassomething funny in the confounded thing's great fat head and its stare,and he made us see it too. 'Jimmy Goggles,' he used to call it, and talkto it like a Christian. Asked if he was married, and how Mrs. Goggles was,and all the little Goggleses. Fit to make you split. And every blessed dayall of us used to drink the health of Jimmy Goggles in rum, and unscrewhis eye and pour a glass of rum in him, until, instead of that nastymackintosheriness, he smelt as nice in his inside as a cask of rum. It wasjolly times we had in those days, I can tell you--little suspecting, poorchaps! what was a-coming.
"We weren't going to throw away our chances by any blessed hurry, youknow, and we spent a whole day sounding our way towards where the_Ocean Pioneer_ had gone down, right between two chunks of ropy greyrock--lava rocks that rose nearly out of the water. We had to lay offabout half a mile to get a safe anchorage, and there was a thundering rowwho should stop on board. And there she lay just as she had gone down, sothat you could see the top of the masts that was still standing perfectlydistinctly. The row ended in all coming in the boat. I went down in thediving-dress on Friday morning directly it was light.
"What a surprise it was! I can see it all now quite distinctly. It was aqueer-looking place, and the light was just coming. People over here thinkevery blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm-trees andsurf, bless 'em! This place, for instance, wasn't a bit that way. Notcommon rocks they were, undermined by waves; but great curved banks likeironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubs andthings just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassy calm andclear, and showing you a kind of dirty gray-black shine, with huge flaringred-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and darting thingsgoing through it. And far away beyond the ditches and pools and the heapswas a forest on the mountain flank, growing again after the fires andcinder showers of the last eruption. And the other way forest, too, and akind of broken--what is it?--amby-theatre of black and rusty cindersrising out of it all, and the sea in a kind of bay in the middle.
"The dawn, I say, was just coming, and there wasn't much colour aboutthings, and not a human being but ourselves anywhere in sight up or downthe channel. Except the _Pride of Banya_, lying out beyond a lump ofrocks towards the line of the sea.
"Not a human being in sight," he repeated, and paused.
"_I_ don't know where they came from, not a bit. And we were feelingso safe that we were all alone that poor young Sanders was a-singing. Iwas in Jimmy Goggles, all except the helmet. 'Easy,' says Always, 'there'sher mast.' And after I'd had just one squint over the gunwale, I caught upthe bogey, and almost tipped out as old Sanders brought the boat round.When the windows were screwed and everything was all right, I shut thevalve from the air-belt in order to help my sinking, and jumped overboard,feet foremost--for we hadn't a ladder. I left the boat pitching, and allof them staring down into water after me, as my head sank down into theweeds and blackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not themost cautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a look-out atsuch a desolate place. It stunk of solitude.
"Of course you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving. None ofus were divers. We'd had to muck about with the thing to get the way ofit, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feels damnable. Yourears hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurt yourself yawning orsneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten times worse. And a painover the eyebrows here--splitting--and a feeling like influenza in thehead. And it isn't all heaven in your lungs and things. And going downfeels like the beginning of a lift, only it keeps on. And you can't turnyour head to see what's above you, and you can't get a fair squint atwhat's happening to your feet without bending down something painful. Andbeing deep it was dark, let alone the blackness of the ashes and mud thatformed the bottom. It was like going down out of the dawn back into thenight, so to speak.
"The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of fishes,and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I came with a kindof dull bang on the deck of the _Ocean Pioneer_, and the fishes thathad been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of flies from roadstuff in summer-time. I turned on the compressed air again--for the suitwas a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in spite of the rum--andstood recovering myself. It struck coolish down there, and that helpedtake off the stuffiness a bit."
"When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It was anextraordinary sight. Even the light was extraordinary, a kind ofreddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed thatfloated up on either side of the ship. And far overhead just a moony,deep green blue. The deck of the ship, except for a slight list tostarboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between the weeds, clearexcept where the masts had snapped when she rolled, and vanishing intoblack night towards the forecastle. There wasn't any dead on the decks,most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose; but afterwards I found twoskeletons lying in
the passengers' cabins, where death had come to them.It was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all, bit by bit; aplace against the rail where I'd been fond of smoking by starlight, andthe corner where an old chap from Sydney used to flirt with a widow wehad aboard. A comfortable couple they'd been, only a month ago, and nowyou couldn't have got a meal for a baby crab off either of them.
"I've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I daresay I spent thebest part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below to findwhere the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting, feeling itwas for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down thecompanion. And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, andonce a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose stuffthat puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes.What do you think? Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling forbones. We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and Always knewjust where the stuff was stowed. I found it that trip. I lifted a box oneend an inch or more."
He broke off in his story. "I've lifted it," he said, "as near as that!Forty thousand pounds' worth of pure gold! Gold! I shouted inside myhelmet as a kind of cheer, and hurt my ears. I was getting confoundedstuffy and tired by this time--I must have been down twenty-five minutesor more--and I thought this was good enough. I went up the companionagain, and as my eyes came up flush with the deck, a thundering great crabgave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways. Quite astart it gave me. I stood up clear on deck and shut the valve behind thehelmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up again--I noticed a kind ofwhacking from above, as though they were hitting the water with an oar,but I didn't look up. I fancied they were signalling me to come up.
"And then something shot down by me--something heavy, and stood a-quiverin the planks. I looked, and there was a long knife I'd seen young Sandershandling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I was still calling him this kindof fool and that---for it might have hurt me serious--when I began to liftand drive up towards the daylight. Just about the level of the top sparsof the _Ocean Pioneer_, whack! I came against something sinking down,and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. Then something else, strugglingfrightful. It was a big weight atop of me, whatever it was, and moving andtwisting about. I'd have thought it a big octopus, or some such thing, ifit hadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don't wear boots. It was all ina moment, of course.
"I felt myself sinking down again, and I threw my arms about to keepsteady, and the whole lot rolled free of me and shot down as I went up--"
He paused.
"I saw young Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a speardriven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck what lookedlike spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they went clutching oneanother, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. And inanother second my helmet came a whack, fit to split, against the niggers'canoe. It was niggers! Two canoes full.
"It was lively times I tell you? Overboard came Always with three spearsin him. There was the legs of three or four black chaps kicking about mein the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw the game was up at a glance,gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down again after poorAlways, in as awful a state of scare and astonishment as you can wellimagine. I passed young Sanders and the nigger going up again andstruggling still a bit, and in another moment I was standing in the dimagain on the deck of the _Ocean Pioneer_.
"Gummy, thinks I, here's a fix! Niggers? At first I couldn't see anythingfor it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properly understand howmuch air there was to last me out, but I didn't feel like standing verymuch more of it down below. I was hot and frightfully heady, quite apartfrom the blue funk I was in. We'd never reckoned with these beastlynatives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good coming up where I was,but I had to do something. On the spur of the moment, I clambered over theside of the brig and landed among the weeds, and set off through thedarkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once and knelt, and twistedback my head in the helmet and had a look up. It was a most extraordinarybright green-blue above, and the two canoes and the boat floating therevery small and distant like a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sickto squint up at it, and think what the pitching and swaying of the threemeant.
"It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blunderingabout in that darkness--pressure something awful, like being buried insand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing as itseemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit, I foundmyself going up a steepish sort of slope. I had another squint to see ifanything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. I stoppedwith my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where I was going,but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection of the bottom.Then out I dashed, like knocking my head through a mirror. Directly I gotmy eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near theforest. I had a look round, but the natives and the brig were both hiddenby a big hummucky heap of twisted lava. The born fool in me suggested arun for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but I eased open one ofthe windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out of the water. You'dhardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.
"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head ina copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes underwater, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy goingto work. And half-way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more, comingout in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.
"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London. Ihad about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned turtle.I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and waited forthem. There wasn't anything else for me to do.
"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'JimmyGoggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be alittle lightheaded, I think, with all these dangers about and the changein the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' I said, as ifthe savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm hanged if I don'tgive you something to stare at,' I said, and with that I screwed up theescape valve and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until I wasswelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing it must have been. I'mblessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one and then another wentdown on their hands and knees. They didn't know what to make of me, andthey was doing the extra polite, which was very wise and reasonable ofthem. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but itseemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd have been after me. And out ofsheer desperation I began to march towards them up the beach, with slow,heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner.And inside of me I was singing as small as a tomtit.
"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over adifficulty,--I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,who're up to diving dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely imaginethe effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or two of these niggerscut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock theirbrains out on the ground. And on I went as slow and solemn andsilly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber. It was evident they tookme for something immense.
"Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures tome as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention betweenme and something out at; sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said. I turnedslowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming round a point,the poor old _Pride of Banya_ towed by a couple of canoes. The sightfairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition, so Iwaved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. And then Iturned and stalked on towards the trees again. At that time I was prayinglike mad, I remember, over and over again: 'Lord help me through with it!Lord help me through with it!' It's only fools who know nothing of dangercan afford to laugh at praying."
> "But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away likethat. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed meto take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me theydidn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me,and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old country.
"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages,but these poor, misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to theirkind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. Bythis time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance,and directly I set eyes on this deity I took my cue. I started a baritonehowl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and began waving my arms about alot, and then very slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on itsside and sat down on it. I wanted to sit down badly, for diving dressesain't much wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they're asight too much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sitting ontheir joss, but in less time than a minute they made up their minds andwere hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell you I felt a bit relievedto see things turning out so well, in spite of the weight on my shouldersand feet.
"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might thinkwhen they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before I went down, andwithout the helmet on--for they might have been spying and hiding sinceover night--they would very likely take a different view from the others.I was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed, until theshindy of the arrival began.
"But they took it down--the whole blessed village took it down. At thecost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sitting Egyptianimages one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, Ishould guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what itmeant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the maninside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up withluck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness!the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fireon a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gorymuck--the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts--and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but Iunderstand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smellof burnt-offerings about them. And they brought in a lot of the stuffthey'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what I was a bit relievedto see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed airaffair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced about mesomething disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different ways differentpeople have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handy I'd have gonefor the lot of them--they made me feel that wild. All this time I sat asstiff as company, not knowing anything better to do. And at last, whennightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place got a bit too shadowy fortheir taste--all these here savages are afraid of the dark, you know--andI started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they built big bonfires outside and leftme alone in peace in the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows abit and think things over, and feel just as bad as I liked. And Lord! Iwas sick.
"I was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on apin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. Come roundjust where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps, beastlydrunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young Sanders withthe spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind. There was thetreasure down there in the _Ocean Pioneer_, and how one might get itand hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back for it. And therewas the puzzle where to get anything to eat. I tell you I was fairrambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of behaving toohuman, and so there I sat and hungered until very near the dawn. Then thevillage got a bit quiet, and I couldn't stand it any longer, and I wentout and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk. Whatwas left of these I put away among the other offerings, just to give thema hint of my tastes. And in the morning they came to worship, and found mesitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as they'dleft me overnight. I'd got my back against the central pillar of the hut,and, practically, I was asleep. And that's how I became a god among theheathen--false god, no doubt, and blasphemous, but one can't always pickand choose.
"Now, I don't want to crack myself up as a god beyond my merits, but Imust confess that while I was god to these people they was extraordinarysuccessful. I don't say there's anything in it, mind you. They won abattle with another tribe--I got a lot of offerings I didn't want throughit--they had wonderful fishing, and their crop of pourra was exceptionalfine. And they counted the capture of the brig among the benefits Ibrought 'em. I must say I don't think that was a poor record for aperfectly new hand. And, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it, I wasthe tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months...
"What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that diving-dress all thetime. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a timeI had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do. Thatindeed was the great difficulty--making them understand my wishes. Icouldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly, even if I'd beenable to speak at all, and I couldn't go flapping a lot of gestures atthem. So I drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hooted likeone o'clock. Sometimes they did the things I wanted all right, andsometimes they did them all wrong. They was always very willing,certainly. All the while I was puzzling how I was to get the confoundedbusiness settled. Every night before the dawn I used to march out in fullrig and go off to a place where I could see the channel in which the_Ocean Pioneer_ lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I triedto walk out to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. Ididn't get back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggersout on the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexedand tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down again,I could have punched their silly heads all round when they startedrejoicing. Hanged if I like so much ceremony.
"And then came the missionary. That missionary! _What_ a Guy! Gummy!It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my outer templeplace, sitting on that old black stone of theirs, when he came. I heard arow outside and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter.'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up, in aflash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out straightaway on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You comeinside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming Exeter Hall of a head.'
"There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, Bible inhand, after the manner of them--a little sandy chap in specks and a pithhelmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with mycopper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first.'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in scissors?' for I don't hold withmissionaries.
"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quiteoutclassed by a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I told him toread the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. There wasn't noinscription; why should there be? but down he goes to read, and hisinterpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, more so byreason of his seeing missionary close to, took it for an act of worshipand plumped down like a shot. All my people gave a howl of triumph, andthere wasn't any more business to be done in my village after thatjourney, not by the likes of him.
"But, of course, I was a fool to choke him off like that. If I'd had anysense I should have told him straight away of the treasure and taken himinto Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child, with a few hoursto think it over, could have seen the connection between my diving dressand the loss of the _Ocean Pioneer_. A week after he left I went outone morning and saw the _Motherhood_, the salver's ship from StarrRace, towing up the channel and sounding. The whole blessed game was up,and all my trouble thrown away. Gummy! How wild I felt! And guying
it inthat stinking silly dress! Four months!"
The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said, whenhe emerged to linguistic purity once more. "Forty thousand pounds' worthof gold."
"Did the little missionary come back?" I asked.
"Oh yes! bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a man insidethe god, and started out to see as much with tremendous ceremony. Butwasn't--he got sold again. I always did hate scenes and explanations, andlong before he came I was out of it all--going home to Banya along thecoast, hiding in bushes by day, and thieving food from the villages bynight. Only weapon, a spear. No clothes, no money. Nothing. My face, myfortune, as the saying is. And just a squeak of eight thousand pounds ofgold--fifth share. But the natives cut up rusty, thank goodness, becausethey thought it was him had driven their luck away."