Bevis Part 74

"Then the thing is, how did the savages get here? n.o.body has ever been here before us; now where did they come from? There are sure to be grand ruins in the jungle somewhere," said Bevis, "all carved, and covered with inscriptions."

"Huge trees growing on the top."

"Magic signs chipped out on stones, and books made of string with knots instead of writing."

Kaak! kaak! A heron was descending. The unearthly noise made them look up.

"Are there any tidal waves?" said Mark.

"Sometimes--a hundred feet high. But the thing is how did they get here? How did anybody ever get anywhere?"

"It's very crooked," said Mark, "very crooked: you can't quite see it, can you? Suppose you go and do the sun-dial: I'm sleepy."

"Well, go to bed; I can do it."

"Good-night!" said Mark. "Lots of chopping to do to-morrow. We ought to have brought a grindstone for the axes. You have got the plan ready for the raft?"

"Quite ready."

Mark went into the hut, placed the lantern in the niche, and threw himself on the bed. In half a minute he was firm asleep. Bevis went out of the courtyard, round outside the fence, and up on the cliff to the sun-dial. The stars shone brighter than it is usually thought they do when there is no moon; but in fact it is not so much the moon as the state of the atmosphere. There was no haze in the dry air, and he could see the Pole Star distinctly.

He sat down--as the post on which the dial was supported was low--on the southern side, with it between him and the north. He still had to stoop till he had got the tip of the gnomon to cover the North Star. Closing one eye, as if aiming, he then put his pencil on the dial in the circle or groove scratched by the compa.s.s. The long pencil was held upright in the groove, and moved round till it intercepted his view of the star.

The tip of the gnomon, the pencil, and the Pole Star were in a direct line, in a row one behind the other.

To make sure, he raised his head and looked over the gnomon and pencil to the star, when he found that he had not been holding the pencil upright; it leaned to the east, and made an error to the west in his meridian. "It ought to be a plumb-line," he thought. "But I think it's straight now."

He stooped again, and found the gnomon and pencil correct, and pressing on the pencil hard, drew it towards him out of the groove a little way.

By the moonlight when he got up he could see the mark he had left, and which showed the exact north. To-morrow he would have to draw a line from that mark straight to the gnomon, and when the shadow fell on that line it would be noon. With the fixed point of noon and the fixed point of four o'clock, he thought he could make the divisions for the rest of the hours.

The moonlight cast a shadow to the east of the noon-line, as she had crossed the meridian. Looking up, he saw the irregular circle of the moon high in the sky, so brilliant that the scored relievo work enchased upon her surface was obscured by the bright light reflected from it.

Behind him numerous lights glittered in the still water, near at hand they were sharp clean points, far away they were short bands of light drawn towards him. Bevis went to the young oak and sat down under it.

Ca.s.siopeia fronted him, and Capella; the Northern Crown, was faint and low; but westward great Arcturus shone, though the moon had taken the redness from him. The cross of Cygnus was lying on its side as it was carried through the eastern sky; beneath it the Eagle's central star hung over the Nile. Low in the south, over the unknown river Antares, too, had lost his redness.

Up through the branches of the oak he saw Lyra, the purest star in the heavens, white as whitest and clearest light may be, gleaming at the zenith of the pale blue dome. But just above the horizon northwards there was a faint white light, the faintest aurora, as if another moon was rising there. By these he knew his position, and that he was looking the same way as if he had been gazing from the large northern window of the parlour at home, or if he had been lying on the green path by the strawberries, as he sometimes did in the summer evenings.

Then the North Star, minute but clear--so small, and yet chosen for the axle and focus of the sky, instead of sun-like Sirius--the North Star always shone just over the group of elms by the orchard. Summer and winter, spring and autumn, it was always there, always over the elms-- whether they were reddening with the buds and flowers of February, whether they were dull green now in the heats of August, whether they were yellow in October.

d.i.c.k and his Team, whose waggon goes backwards, swung round it like a stone in a sling whirled about the shoulders. Sometimes the tail of the Bear, where d.i.c.k bestrides his second horse, hung down behind the elms into the vapour of the horizon. Sometimes the Pointers were nearly overhead. If they were hidden by a cloud, the Lesser Bear gave a point; or you could draw a line through Ca.s.siopeia, and tell the North by her chair of stars.

The comets seemed to come within the circle of Bootes--Arcturus you always know is some way beyond the tail of the Bear. The comets come inside the circle of the stars that never set. The governor had seen three or four appear there in his time, just over the elms under the Pole. Donati's, which perhaps you can remember, came there--a tiny thing twelve inches long from nucleus to tail to look at, afterwards the weird sign the world stood amazed at. Then there was another not long after, which seemed to appear at once as a broad streak across the sky.

Like the sketches in old star-maps, it did indeed cross the whole sky for a night or two, but went too quickly for the world to awake at midnight and wonder at. Lately two more have come in the enchanted circle of the stars that never set.

All the stars from Arcturus to Capella came about the elms by the orchard; as Arcturus went down over the place of sunset in autumn, Capella began to shine over another group of elms--in the meadow to the north-east. Capella is sure to be seen, because it begins to become conspicuous just as people say the sky is star-lit as winter sends the first frost or two. But Capella is the brightest star in the northern sky in summer, and it always came up by the second or north-east group of elms.

Between these two groups of tall trees--so tall and thick that they were generally visible even on dark nights--the streamers of the Aurora Borealis shot up in winter, and between them in summer the faint reflection of the midnight sun, like the lunar dawn which precedes the rising of the moon always appeared. The real day-dawn--the white foot of Aurora--came through the sky-curtain a little to the right of the second group, and about over a young oak in the hedge across the road, opposite the garden wall.

When the few leaves left on this young oak were brown, and rustled in the frosty night, the ma.s.sy shoulder of Orion came heaving up through it--first one bright star, then another; then the gleaming girdle, and the less definite scabbard; then the great constellation stretched across the east. At the first sight of Orion's shoulder Bevis always felt suddenly stronger, as if a breath of the mighty hunter's had come down and entered into him.

He stood upright; his frame enlarged; his instep lifted him as he walked, as if he too could swing the vast club and chase the lion from his lair. The sparkle of Orion's stars brought to him a remnant of the immense vigour of the young world, the frosty air braced his sinews, and power came into his arms.

As the constellation rose, so presently new vigour too entered into the trees, the sap moved, the buds thrust forth, the new leaf came, and the nightingale travelling up from the south sang in the musical April nights. But this was when Orion was south, and Sirius flared like a night-sun over the great oak at the top of the Home Field.

Sirius rose through the young oak opposite the garden wall, pa.s.sed through a third group of elms, by the rick-yard, gleaming through the branches--hung in the spring above the great oak at the top of the Home Field, and lowered by degrees westwards behind the ashes growing at that end of the New Sea by the harbour. After it Arcturus came, and lorded the Midsummer zenith, where now lucent Lyra looked down upon him.

Up, too, through the little oak came Aldebaran the red Bull's-Eye, the bent rod of Aries, and the cl.u.s.ter of the Pleiades. The Pleiades he loved most, for they were the first constellation he learned to know.

The flickering Pleiades, the star-dusted spot in Cancer, and Leo, came in succession. Antares, the harvest-star, scarcely cleared the great oak southwards in summer. He got them all from a movable planisphere, the very best star-maps ever made, proceeding step by step, drawing imaginary lines from one to the other, as through the Pointers to the Pole, and so knew the designs on our northern dome.

He transferred them from the map to the trees. The north group of elms, the north-east group, the east oak, the south-east elms, the southern great oak, the westward ashes, the orchard itself north-west,--through these like a zodiac the stars moved, all east to west, except the enchanted circle about the Pole. For the Bear and the Lesser Bear sometimes seemed to move from west to east when they were returning, swinging under to what would have been their place of rising.

Fixing them thus by night, he knew where many were by day; the Pole Star was always over the north elms--when the starlings stayed and whistled there before they flew to the housetop, when the rooks called there before the sun set on their way home to the jungle, when the fieldfares in the gloomy winter noon perched up there. The Pole Star was always over the elms.

In the summer mornings the sun rose north of east, between the second group of elms and the little oak--so far to the north that he came up over the vale instead of the downs. The morning beams then lit up the northern or outer side of the garden wall, and fell aslant through the narrow kitchen window, under the beam of the ceiling. In the evening the sun set again northwards of the orchard, between it and the north elms, having come round towards the place of rising, and shining again on the outside of the garden wall, so that there seemed but a few miles between. He did not sink, but only dipped, and the dawn that travelled above him indicated his place, moving between the north and north-east elms, and overcoming the night by the little oak. The sun did not rise and sink; he travelled round an immense circle.

In the winter mornings the sun rose between the young oak and the third group of elms, red and vapour hung, and his beams presently shot through the window to the logs on the kitchen hearth. He sank then between the south-westerly ashes and the orchard, rising from the wall of the Downs, and sinking again behind it. At noon he was just over, only a little higher than the great southern oak. All day long the outer side of the garden wall was in shadow, and at night the northern sky was black to the horizon. The travelling dawn was not visible: the sun rose and sank, and was only visible through half of the great circle. The c.o.c.ks crowed at four in the afternoon, and the rooks hastened to the jungle.

But by-and-by, when the giant Orion shone with his full width grasping all the sky, then in the mornings the sun's rising began to shift backwards--first to the edge of the third group of elms, then straight up the road, then to the little oak. In the afternoon, the place of setting likewise shifted backwards to the north, and came behind the orchard. At noon he was twice as high as the southern oak, and every day at noontide the shadows gradually shortened. The nightingale sang in the musical April night, the cowslips opened, and the bees hummed over the meadows.

Last of all, the sweet turtle-doves cooed and wooed; beauteous June wearing her roses came, and the sun shone at the highest point of his great circle. Then you could not look at him unless up through the boughs of a tree. Round the zodiac of the elms, and the little oak, the great oak, the ashes, and the orchard, the sun revolved; and the house, and the garden path by the strawberries--the best place to see--were in the centre of his golden ring.

The sward on the path on which Bevis used to lie and gaze up in the summer evening, was real, and tangible; the earth under was real; and so too the elms, the oak, the ash-trees, were real and tangible--things to be touched, and known to be. Now like these, the mind, stepping from the one to the other, knew and almost felt the stars to be real and not mere specks of light, but things that were there by day over the elms as well as by night, and not apparitions of the evening departing at the twittering of the swallows. They were real, and the touch of his mind felt to them.

He could not, as he reclined on the garden path by the strawberries, physically reach to and feel the oak; but he could feel the oak in his mind, and so from the oak, stepping beyond it, he felt the stars. They were always there by day as well as by night. The Bear did not sink, the sun in summer only dipped, and his reflection--the travelling dawn-- shone above him, and so from these unravelling out the enlarging sky, he felt as well as knew that neither the stars nor the sun ever rose or set. The heavens were always around and with him. The strawberries and the sward of the garden path, he himself reclining there, were moving through, among, and between the stars; they were as much by him as the strawberry leaves.

By day the sun, as he sat down under the oak, was as much by him as the boughs of the great tree. It was by him like the swallows.

The heavens were as much a part of life as the elms, the oak, the house, the garden and orchard, the meadow and the brook. They were no more separated than the furniture of the parlour, than the old oak chair where he sat, and saw the new moon shine over the mulberry-tree. They were neither above nor beneath, they were in the same place with him; just as when you walk in a wood the trees are all about you, on a plane with you, so he felt the constellations and the sun on a plane with him, and that he was moving among them as the earth rolled on, like them, with them, in the stream of s.p.a.ce.

The day did not shut off the stars, the night did not shut off the sun; they were always there. Not that he always thought of them, but they were never dismissed. When he listened to the greenfinches sweetly calling in the hawthorn, or when he read his books, poring over the Odyssey, with the sunshine on the wall, they were always there; there was no severance. Bevis lived not only out to the finches and the swallows, to the far-away hills, but he lived out and felt out to the sky.

It was living, not thinking. He lived it, never thinking, as the finches live their sunny life in the happy days of June. There was magic in everything, blades of gra.s.s and stars, the sun and the stones upon the ground.

The green path by the strawberries was the centre of the world, and round about it by day _and_ night the sun circled in a magical golden ring.

Under the oak on New Formosa that warm summer night, Bevis looked up as he reclined at the white pure light of Lyra, and forgot everything but the consciousness of living, feeling up to and beyond it. The earth and the water, the oak, went away; he himself went away: his mind joined itself and was linked up through ethereal s.p.a.ce to its beauty.

Bevis, as you know did not think: we have done the thinking, the a.n.a.lysis for him. He felt and was lost in the larger consciousness of the heavens.

The moon moved, and with it the shadow of the cliff on the water beneath, a planet rose eastwards over their new Nile, water-fowl clucked as they flew over.

Kaak! Kaak! Another heron called and his discordant piercing yell sounded over the water, seeming to penetrate to the distant and shadowy sh.o.r.es. The noise awoke him, and he went down to the hut. Mark was firm asleep, the lantern burned in the niche; Pan had been curled up by the bedside, but lifted his head and wagged his tail, thumping the floor as he entered. Bevis let down the curtain closing the doorway, put out the lantern, and in three minutes was as firm as Mark. After some time, Pan rose quietly and went out, slipping under the curtain, which fell back into its place when he had pa.s.sed.

Volume Three, Chapter II.

NEW FORMOSA--THE RAFT.

They did not get up till the sun was high, and when Mark lifted the curtain a robin flew from the table just outside, where he had been picking up the crumbs, across to the gate-post in the stockade. The gate had not been shut--Pan was lying by it under the fence, which cast a shadow in the morning and evening.