I was the Flail of the Lord
Lord John Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery. At the end of a long drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door and turned on an electric switch. A number of lamps shining through tinted shades bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance. Standing in the doorway and glancing round me, I had a general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculine virility. Everywhere there were mingled the luxury of the wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor. Rich furs and strange iridescent mats from some Oriental bazaar were scattered upon the floor. Pictures and prints which even my unpractised eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity hung thick upon the walls. Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of racehorses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial Girardet, and a dreamy Turner. But amid these varied ornaments there were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my recollection the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great all-round sportsmen and athletes of his day. A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man, while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each. Like a dado round the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads, the best of their sort from every quarter of the world, with the rare white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all.
In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps. On it stood a silver tray of smokables and a burnished spirit-stand; from it and an adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses. Having indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it, he handed me a long, smooth Havana. Then, seating himself opposite to me, he looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, twinkling, reckless eyes—eyes of a cold light blue, the color of a glacier lake.
Through the thin haze of my cigar-smoke I noted the details of a face which was already familiar to me from many photographs—the strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair, thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin. Something there was of Napoleon III., something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air lover of dogs and of horses. His skin was of a rich flower-pot red from sun and wind. His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which gave those naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect, an impression which was increased by his strong and furrowed brow. In figure he was spare, but very strongly built—indeed, he had often proved that there were few men in England capable of such sustained exertions. His height was a little over six feet, but he seemed shorter on account of a peculiar rounding of the shoulders. Such was the famous Lord John Roxton as he sat opposite to me, biting hard upon his cigar and watching me steadily in a long and embarrassing silence.
“Well,” said he, at last, “we’ve gone and done it, young fellah my lad.” (This curious phrase he pronounced as if it were all one word—”young-fellah-me-lad.”) “Yes, we’ve taken a jump, you an’ me. I suppose, now, when you went into that room there was no such notion in your head—what?”
“No thought of it.”
“The same here. No thought of it. And here we are, up to our necks in the tureen. Why, I’ve only been back three weeks from Uganda, and taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all. Pretty goin’s on—what? How does it hit you?”
“Well, it is all in the main line of my business. I am a journalist on the Gazette.”
“Of course—you said so when you took it on. By the way, I’ve got a small job for you, if you’ll help me.”
“With pleasure.”
“Don’t mind takin’ a risk, do you?”
“What is the risk?”
“Well, it’s Ballinger—he’s the risk. You’ve heard of him?”
“No.”
“Why, young fellah, where have you lived? Sir John Ballinger is the best gentleman jock in the north country. I could hold him on the flat at my best, but over jumps he’s my master. Well, it’s an open secret that when he’s out of trainin’ he drinks hard—strikin’ an average, he calls it. He got delirium on Toosday, and has been ragin’ like a devil ever since. His room is above this. The doctors say that it is all up with the old dear unless some food is got into him, but as he lies in bed with a revolver on his coverlet, and swears he will put six of the best through anyone that comes near him, there’s been a bit of a strike among the serving-men. He’s a hard nail, is Jack, and a dead shot, too, but you can’t leave a Grand National winner to die like that—what?”
“What do you mean to do, then?” I asked.
“Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him. He may be dozin’, and at the worst he can only wing one of us, and the other should have him. If we can get his bolster-cover round his arms and then ‘phone up a stomach-pump, we’ll give the old dear the supper of his life.”
It was a rather desperate business to come suddenly into one’s day’s work. I don’t think that I am a particularly brave man. I have an Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are. On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with a terror of such a stigma. I dare say that I could throw myself over a precipice, like the Hun in the history books, if my courage to do it were questioned, and yet it would surely be pride and fear, rather than courage, which would be my inspiration. Therefore, although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, that I was ready to go. Some further remark of Lord Roxton’s about the danger only made me irritable.
“Talking won’t make it any better,” said I. “Come on.”
I rose from my chair and he from his. Then with a little confidential chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on the chest, finally pushing me back into my chair.
“All right, sonny my lad—you’ll do,” said he. I looked up in surprise.
“I saw after Jack Ballinger myself this mornin’. He blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a jacket on him, and he’s to be all right in a week. I say, young fellah, I hope you don’t mind—what? You see, between you an’ me close-tiled, I look on this South American business as a mighty serious thing, and if I have a pal with me I want a man I can bank on. So I sized you down, and I’m bound to say that you came well out of it. You see, it’s all up to you and me, for this old Summerlee man will want dry-nursin’ from the first. By the way, are you by any chance the Malone who is expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?”
“A reserve, perhaps.”
“I thought I remembered your face. Why, I was there when you got that try against Richmond—as fine a swervin’ run as I saw the whole season. I never miss a Rugby match if I can help it, for it is the manliest game we have left. Well, I didn’t ask you in here just to talk sport. We’ve got to fix our business. Here are the sailin’s, on the first page of the Times. There’s a Booth boat for Para next Wednesday week, and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we should take it—what? Very good, I’ll fix it with him. What about your outfit?”
“My paper will see to that.”
“Can you shoot?”
“About average Territorial standard.”
“Good Lord! as bad as that? It’s the last thing you young fellahs think of learnin’. You’re all bees without stings, so far as lookin’ after the hive goes. You’ll look silly, some o’ these days, when someone comes along an’ sneaks the honey. But you’ll need to hold your gun straight in South America, for, unless our friend the Professor is a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get back. What gun have you?”
He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an organ.
“I’ll see what I can spare you out of my own battery,” said he.
One by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her children.
“This is a Bland’s .577 axite express,” said he. “I got that big fellow with it.” He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. “Ten more yards, and he’d would have added me to his collection.
‘On that conical bullet his one chance hangs,
‘Tis the weak one’s advantage fair.’
Hope you know your Gordon, for he’s the poet of the horse and the gun and the man that handles both. Now, here’s a useful tool—.470, telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty. That’s the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you, though you won’t find it in any Blue-book. There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again. That’s why I made a little war on my own. Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself. Each of those nicks is for a slave murderer—a good row of them—what? That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a backwater of the Putomayo River. Now, here’s something that would do for you.” He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle. “Well rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip. You can trust your life to that.” He handed it to me and closed the door of his oak cabinet.
“By the way,” he continued, coming back to his chair, “what do you know of this Professor Challenger?”
“I never saw him till to-day.”
“Well, neither did I. It’s funny we should both sail under sealed orders from a man we don’t know. He seemed an uppish old bird. His brothers of science don’t seem too fond of him, either. How came you to take an interest in the affair?”
I told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened intently. Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.
“I believe every single word he said to you was the truth,” said he, earnestly, “and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it right through from Darien to Fuego, it’s the grandest, richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don’t know it yet, and don’t realize what it may become. I’ve been up an’ down it from end to end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up there I heard some yarns of the same kind—traditions of Indians and the like, but with somethin’ behind them, no doubt. The more you knew of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that anythin’ was possible—anythin’. There are just some narrow water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grande”—he swept his cigar over a part of the map—”or up in this corner where three countries meet, nothin’ would surprise me. As that chap said to-night, there are fifty-thousand miles of water-way runnin’ through a forest that is very near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the same great Brazilian forest. Man has just made a track here and a scrape there in the maze. Why, the river rises and falls the best part of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you can’t pass over. Why shouldn’t somethin’ new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldn’t we be the men to find it out? Besides,” he added, his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, “there’s a sportin’ risk in every mile of it. I’m like an old golf-ball— I’ve had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it can’t leave a mark. But a sportin’ risk, young fellah, that’s the salt of existence. Then it’s worth livin’ again. We’re all gettin’ a deal too soft and dull and comfy. Give me the great waste lands and the wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethin’ to look for that’s worth findin’. I’ve tried war and steeplechasin’ and aeroplanes, but this huntin’ of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a brand-new sensation.” He chuckled with glee at the prospect.
Perhaps I have dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance, but he is to be my comrade for many a day, and so I have tried to set him down as I first saw him, with his quaint personality and his queer little tricks of speech and of thought. It was only the need of getting in the account of my meeting which drew me at last from his company. I left him seated amid his pink radiance, oiling the lock of his favorite rifle, while he still chuckled to himself at the thought of the adventures which awaited us. It was very clear to me that if dangers lay before us I could not in all England have found a cooler head or a braver spirit with which to share them.
That night, wearied as I was after the wonderful happenings of the day, I sat late with McArdle, the news editor, explaining to him the whole situation, which he thought important enough to bring next morning before the notice of Sir George Beaumont, the chief. It was agreed that I should write home full accounts of my adventures in the shape of successive letters to McArdle, and that these should either be edited for the Gazette as they arrived, or held back to be published later, according to the wishes of Professor Challenger, since we could not yet know what conditions he might attach to those directions which should guide us to the unknown land. In response to a telephone inquiry, we received nothing more definite than a fulmination against the Press, ending up with the remark that if we would notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central Exchange that Professor Challenger’s receiver had been shattered. After that we abandoned all attempt at communication.
And now, my patient readers, I can address you directly no longer. From now onwards (if, indeed, any continuation of this narrative should ever reach you) it can only be through the paper which I represent. In the hands of the editor I leave this account of the events which have led up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time, so that if I never return to England there shall be some record as to how the affair came about. I am writing these last lines in the saloon of the Booth liner Francisca, and they will go back by the pilot to the keeping of Mr. McArdle. Let me draw one last picture before I close the notebook—a picture which is the last memory of the old country which I bear away with me. It is a wet, foggy morning in the late spring; a thin, cold rain is falling. Three shining mackintoshed figures are walking down the quay, making for the gang-plank of the great liner from which the blue-peter is flying. In front of them a porter pushes a trolley piled high with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases. Professor Summerlee, a long, melancholy figure, walks with dragging steps and drooping head, as one who is already profoundly sorry for himself. Lord John Roxton steps briskly, and his thin, eager face beams forth between his hunting-cap and his muffler. As for myself, I am glad to have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leave-taking behind me, and I have no doubt that I show it in my bearing. Suddenly, just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure.
“No thank you,” says he; “I should much prefer not to go aboard. I have only a few words to say to you, and they can very well be said where we are. I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted to you for making this journey. I would have you to understand that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I refuse to entertain the most remote sense of personal obligation. Truth is truth, and nothing which you can report can affect it in any way, though it may excite the emotions and allay the curiosity of a number of very ineffectual people. My directions for your instruction and guidance are in this sealed envelope. You will open it when you reach a town upon the Amazon which is called Manaos, but not until the date and hour which is marked upon the outside. Have I made myself clear? I leave the strict observance of my conditions entirely to your honor. No, Mr. Malone, I will place no restriction upon your correspondence, since the ventilation of the facts is the object of your journey; but I demand that you shall give no particulars as to your exact destination, and that nothing be actually published until your return. Good-bye, sir. You have done something to mitigate my feelings for the loathsome profession to which you unhappily belong. Good-bye, Lord John. Science is, as I understand, a sealed book to you; but you may congratulate yourself upon the hunting-field which awaits you. You will, no doubt, have the opportunity of describing in the Field how you brought down the rocketing dimorphodon. And good-bye to you also, Professor Summerlee. If you are still capable of self-improvement, of which I am frankly unconvinced, you will surely return to London a wiser man.”
So he turned upon his heel, and a minute later from the deck I could see his short, squat figure bobbing about in the distance as he made his way back to his train. Well, we are well down Channel now. There’s the last bell for letters, and it’s good-bye to the pilot. We’ll be “down, hull-down, on the old trail” from now on. God bless all we leave behind us, and send us safely back.