“I will bring you more of the Life-water,” she said, “and then you will grow to hate these dead things, as I do. And now farewell. My father calls me. I hear him though you do not. Tomorrow I cannot come, but the day after I will come and bring you the Life-water. Nay, accompany me not, but as I see he wishes it, let Tommy go with me. I will care for him, and he is a friend in all that lonely place.”
So she went, and with her Tommy, rejoicing.
“Ungrateful little devil!” said Bickley. “Here we’ve fed and petted him from puppyhood, or at least you have, and yet he skips off with the first stranger. I never saw him behave like that to any woman, except your poor wife.”
“I know,” I answered. “I cannot understand it. Hullo! here comes Bastin.”
Bastin it was, dishevelled and looking much the worse for wear, also minus his Bible in the native tongue.
“Well, how have you been getting on?” said Bickley.
“I should like some tea, also anything there is to eat.”
We supplied him with these necessaries, and after a while he said slowly and solemnly:
“I cannot help thinking of a childish story which Bickley told or invented one night at your house at home. I remember he had an argument with my wife, which he said put him in mind of it, I am sure I don’t know why. It was about a monkey and a parrot that were left together under a sofa for a long while, where they were so quiet that everybody forgot them. Then the parrot came out with only one feather left in its tail and none at all on its body, saying, ‘I’ve had no end of a time!’ after which it dropped down and died. Do you know, I feel just like that parrot, only I don’t mean to die, and I think I gave the monkey quite as good as he gave me!”
“What happened?” I asked, intensely interested.
“Oh! the Glittering Lady took me into that palace hall where Oro was sitting like a spider in a web, and left me there. I got to work at once. He was much interested in the Old Testament stories and said there were points of truth about them, although they had evidently come down to the modern writer—he called him a modern writer—in a legendary form. I thought his remarks impertinent and with difficulty refrained from saying so. Leaving the story of the Deluge and all that, I spoke of other matters, telling him of eternal life and Heaven and Hell, of which the poor benighted man had never heard. I pointed out especially that unless he repented, his life, by all accounts, had been so wicked, that he was certainly destined to the latter place.”
“What did he say to that?” I asked.
“Do you know, I think it frightened him, if one could imagine Oro being frightened. At any rate he remarked that the truth or falsity of what I said was an urgent matter for him, as he could not expect to live more than a few hundred years longer, though perhaps he might prolong the period by another spell of sleep. Then he asked me why I thought him so wicked. I replied because he himself said that he had drowned millions of people, which showed an evil heart and intention even if it were not a fact. He thought a long while and asked what could be done in the circumstances. I replied that repentance and reparation were the only courses open to him.”
“Reparation!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, reparation was what I said, though I think I made a mistake there, as you will see. As nearly as I can remember, he answered that he was beginning to repent, as from all he had learned from us, he gathered that the races which had arisen as a consequence of his action, were worse than those which he had destroyed. As regards reparation, what he had done once he could do again. He would think the matter over seriously, and see if it were possible and advisable to raise those parts of the world which had been sunk, and sink those which had been raised. If so, he thought that would make very handsome amends to the departed nations and set him quite right with any superior Power, if such a thing existed. What are you laughing at, Bickley? I don’t think it a laughing matter, since such remarks do not seem to me to indicate any real change in Oro’s heart, which is what I was trying to effect.”
Bickley, who was convulsed with merriment, wiped his eyes and said:
“You dear old donkey, don’t you see what you have done, or rather would have done if there were a word of truth in all this ridiculous story about a deluge? You would be in the way of making your precious pupil, who certainly is the most masterly old liar in the world, repeat his offence and send Europe to the bottom of the sea.”
“That did occur to me, but it doesn’t much matter as I am quite certain that such a thing would never be allowed. Of course there was a real deluge once, but Oro had no more to do with it than I had. Don’t you agree, Arbuthnot?”
“I think so,” I answered cautiously, “but really in this place I am beginning to lose count of what is or is not
