Colet climbed the prone column, thrusting creepers and a tough raffle from his face, grunted, and was on the top of it. What was beyond? Only more of the eternal rocks and wreckage on the dim slope, in a light which told him of the end of time. The day after the last day would be the same as this. The light dying and the world a wet litter.
The tree collapsed suddenly as he was gazing ahead, and he was dropped kicking into the hollow heart of the trunk, in choking dust. Something struggled with him, and slithered out past him. He shouted when he caught hold of its hard and slippery body. And he was trapped—he couldn’t escape. The desperate stuff broke away in his hands.
Hold hard. It’s only a rotten tree. And oh, by God! The ants in it were like fire all over him.
They helped him out of it. He was soon out then. Now, if he continued in that trembling and mucky sweat, he’d be added to Parsell. By Jove, those little devils could bite. Like the points of red-hot wires. His job was not to get lost, but to find the old man. You are only lost if you think you are.
Parsell must have had insane strength to have struggled up through that lumber of a dead and forgotten time. What possessed him to go alone? Not to have been turned back by the very silence of it? And in the dark, too. If the old man had a faith which could turn the apparition of hell into a forecourt to be walked through with a visiting card, it would be worth knowing. He could do with a pennyworth of it now, to be going on with. Hard luck to have to do it without any.
It must be getting near night. It was dark enough for it. Perhaps the evening storm was near. That was what it was; for heaven never peeped into that valley. He was in for it, if a storm burst over such a pit. The trees were unusually still. Waiting for something? Surely he was not purblind; his eyes were all right? The trees were filmy in the dusk. They were shades standing about.
This was the head of the valley, perhaps. That was a sheer wall of rock, so he could go no further. That could not be climbed. Useless to look for a little old man when you could hardly see a precipice, and the day was only a trifle paler than the black trees. What were all those shapes waiting for? Standing about? For him to go? No good. He wasn’t going. There was nowhere to go but back, and he could not go back. Not without Parsell. No point in it. To hell with the darkness and the shapes.
Perhaps the old man had been translated, gone up in a fiery chariot while they were not watching. Anything might happen there. And what had happened to Mat? That was queer. Mat had been behind him—had shown him which was the way to take a second or two before. Turned round, and nothing was there but the leaves watching him. There was more in what the Malays said about this mountain than he knew. Mat hadn’t liked the job. He had been reluctant about it. He said the mountain was guarded. Well, enchantment or not, there he was and there was no way out of it now.
It sounded as if the place was talking to itself, now it had got him; got him all round. Was it safe to wait under the precipice? There was a noise, up above, like the sea breaking. The storm was coming. What about repeating the Paternoster? Colet considered it. Couldn’t remember it. The aisles filled with quivering blue fire; the trees danced. He had laughed at the men chanting the mantras for a safe journey. But he didn’t know any mantras. Too late now to learn prayers and exemptions. Here it came. Poor old Parsell.
A rolling of drums, the steady booming of the coming of calamity; the hooting of bony things following the drums. Men? No, no men there. The hantus; they had a night out. The mountain was hollow and booming. They were marching out of it up their valley, an army of them. It was their place. He was caught, back against a wall. He strained his eyes on the cellar blackness towards the shouts. They were muttering near him now. If he could only see …
His prison opened suddenly, and skeletons of fire were capering round him, arms about the trees, taking the trees with them. The trees had no weight. They leaped. They had no roots. They were on quick feet. The roots were flinging out of the earth, they were lashing near him, serpents of fire.
No. That was the rain. The floods were pouring down. Torrents of romping fire. The valley was going. The mountain was collapsing and running down. He was going with it.
If you asked him, then he’d been out all night. Was this today or yesterday? There was no saying whether this was early morning or afternoon. The place had been deep under water. The earth and the trees were still talking about it. His watch had stopped. He would like to know what had happened. His clothes looked as though he’d slept in the bed of a river. He must have been wakened only just in time. He had better go slow. His knees were loose.
This was very like a corner he had seen before. That rock, a kneeling elephant, might be the one where Mat had vanished. When was that? Somehow there seemed to have been an awful loss of time, or else everything was washed out of his mind. Colet emerged through a thicket to a track, and looked up
