Read Twelve Stories and a Dream Page 7


  7. 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 readit. The Ocean Pioneer? "Something about gold dust," I said vaguely, "butthe precise--"

  "That's it," he said. "In a beastly little channel she hadn't nobusiness in--dodging pirates. It was before they'd put the kybosh onthat business. And there'd been volcanoes or something and all the rockswas wrong. There's places about by Soona where you fair have to followthe rocks about to see where they're going next. Down she went in twentyfathoms before you could have dealt for whist, with fifty thousandpounds worth of gold 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 hetook up 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,'on that ship, and it's for me to say just where she went down.' Itdidn't need much brains to tumble to that. And he was the leader fromthe first to the last. He got hold of the Sanderses and their brig; theywere brothers, 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 andtwenty miles away.

  "I can tell you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drinkand bright 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. Weall messed 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. 'Jimmie Goggles,' he used to call it, andtalk to it like a Christian. Asked if he was married, and how Mrs.Goggles was, and all the little Goggleses. Fit to make you split. Andevery blessed day all of us used to drink the health of Jimmy Goggles inrum, and unscrew his eye and pour a glass of rum in him, until, insteadof that nasty mackintosheriness, he smelt as nice in his inside asa cask of rum. It was jolly times we had in those days, I can tellyou--little suspecting, poor chaps! 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 OceanPioneer had gone down, right between two chunks of ropy grey rock--lavarocks that rose nearly out of the water. We had to lay off about half amile to get a safe anchorage, and there was a thundering row who shouldstop on board. And there she lay just as she had gone down, so thatyou could see the top of the masts that was still standing perfectlydistinctly. The row ending 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 wasa queer-looking place, and the light was just coming. People over herethink every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm treesand surf, bless 'em! This place, for instance, wasn't a bit that way.Not common rocks they were, undermined by waves; but great curved bankslike ironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubsand things just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassycalm and clear, and showing you a kind of dirty grey-black shine, withhuge flaring red-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling anddarting things going through it. And far away beyond the ditches andpools and the heaps was a forest on the mountain flank, growing againafter the fires and cinder showers of the last eruption. And the otherway forest, too, and a kind of broken--what is it?--ambytheatre of blackand rusty cinders rising out of it all, and the sea in a kind of bay inthe 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 of rockstowards 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 feeling sosafe that we were all alone that poor young Sanders was a-singing. I wasin Jimmy Goggles, all except the helmet. 'Easy,' says Always, 'there'sher mast.' And after I'd had just one squint over the gunwale, I caughtup the bogey and almost tipped out as old Sanders brought the boatround. When the windows were screwed and everything was all right, Ishut the valve from the air belt in order to help my sinking, andjumped overboard, feet foremost--for we hadn't a ladder. I left the boatpitching, and all of them staring down into the water after me, as myhead sank down into the weeds and blackness that lay about the mast.I suppose nobody, not the most cautious chap in the world, would havebothered about a lookout at such 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.And being deep it was dark, let alone the blackness of the ashes and mudthat formed the bottom. It was like going down out of the dawn back intothe night, so to speak.

  "The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot offishes, and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I camewith a kind of dull bang on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer, and thefishes that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm offlies from road stuff in summer time. I turned on the compressed airagain--for the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, inspite of the rum--and stood recovering myself. It struck coolish downthere, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit.

  "When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It wasan extraordinary 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 t
hem.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 dare say I spentthe best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went belowto find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting,feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing bluegleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab atmy glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked alot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up somethingall knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never hadany particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over prettythoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found itthat trip. I lifted a box one end 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 greatcrab gave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways.Quite a start it gave me. I stood up clear on deck and shut the valvebehind the helmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up again--Inoticed a kind of whacking from above, as though they were hitting thewater with an oar, but I didn't look up. I fancied they were signallingme 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 youngSanders handling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I was still calling himthis kind of fool and that--for it might have hurt me serious--when Ibegan to lift and drive up towards the daylight. Just about the levelof the top spars of the Ocean Pioneer, whack! I came against somethingsinking down, and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. Then somethingelse, struggling frightful. It was a big weight atop of me, whatever itwas, and moving and twisting about. I'd have thought it a big octopus,or some such thing, if it hadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don'twear boots. It was all in a moment, of course. I felt myself sinkingdown again, and I threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lotrolled 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 clutchingone another, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. Andin another second my helmet came a whack, fit to split, against theniggers' canoe. It was niggers! Two canoes full.

  "It was lively times, I tell you! Overboard came Always with threespears in him. There was the legs of three or four black chaps kickingabout me in the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw the game was up ata glance, gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down againafter poor Always, in as awful a state of scare and astonishment as youcan well imagine. I passed young Sanders and the nigger going up againand struggling still a bit, and in another moment I was standing in thedim again on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer.

  "'Gummy,' thinks I, 'here's a fix!' Niggers? At first I couldn't seeanything for it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properlyunderstand how much air there was to last me, but I didn't feel likestanding very much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfullyheady--quite apart from the blue funk I was in. We'd never repined withthese beastly natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good, comingup where I was, but I had to do something. On the spur of the moment, Iclambered over the side of the brig and landed among the weeds, and setoff through the darkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once andknelt, and twisted back my head in the helmet and had a look up. It wasa most extraordinary bright green-blue above, and the two canoes and theboat floating there very small and distant like a kind of twisted H. Andit made me feel sick to squint up at it, and think what the pitching andswaying of the three meant.

  "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 seeif anything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. Istopped with my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where Iwas going, but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection ofthe bottom. Then out I dashed like knocking my head through a mirror.Directly I got my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind ofbeach near the forest. I had a look round, but the natives and the brigwere both hidden by a big, hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born foolin me suggested a run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, buteased open one of the windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on outof the water. You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.

  "Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your headin a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutesunder water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboygoing to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more,coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.

  "I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London.I had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turnedturtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, andwaited for them. 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 bea little light-headed, I think, with all these dangers about and thechange in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?'I said, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'mhanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and with thatI screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air from thebelt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing itmust have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently oneand then another went down on their hands and knees. They didn't knowwhat to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was verywise and reasonable of them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward andcut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd havebeen after me. And out of sheer desperation I began to march towardsthem up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blown-out armsabout, in a dignified manner. And inside of me I was singing as small asa 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 scarcelyimagine the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or two of theseniggers cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knocktheir brains 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 gesturesto me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attentionbetween me and something out at sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said. Iturned slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming rounda point, the poor old Pride of Banya towed by a couple of canoes. Thesight fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition,so I waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. And thenI turned and stalked on towards the trees again. At that time I waspraying like mad, I remember, over and over again: 'Lord help me throughwith it! Lord help me through with it!' It's only fools who know nothingof dangers can afford to laugh at praying.

  "But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away liketha
t. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressedme to 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 ofme, and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the oldcountry.

  "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.By this time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of theirignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deity I took my cue. Istarted a baritone howl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and beganwaving my arms about a lot, and then very slowly and ceremoniouslyturned their image over on its side and sat down on it. I wanted to sitdown badly, for diving-dresses ain't much wear in the tropics. Or, toput it different like, they're a sight too much. It took away theirbreath, I could see, my sitting on their joss, but in less time than aminute they made up their minds and were hard at work worshipping me.And I can tell you I felt a bit relieved to see things turning out sowell, in spite of the weight on my shoulders and 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,and without the helmet on--for they might have been spying and hidingsince over night--they would very likely take a different view from theothers. I was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed,until the shindy 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 whatit meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of theman inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had comeup with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastlycloseness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit astinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and broughtin a lot of gory muck--the worst parts of what they were feasting onoutside, the Beasts--and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bithungry, but I understand now how gods manage to do without eating, whatwith the smell of burnt offerings about them. And they brought in a lotof the stuff they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what I wasa bit relieved to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for thecompressed air affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in anddanced about me something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the differentways different people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchethandy I'd have gone for the lot of them--they made me feel that wild.All this time I sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything better todo. And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house placegot a bit too shadowy for their taste--all these here savages are afraidof the dark, you know--and I started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they builtbig bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the darkness of myhut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and think things over, and feeljust as bad as I liked. And, Lord! I was 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,beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and youngSanders with the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind.There was the treasure down there in the Ocean Pioneer, and how onemight get it and hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back forit. And there was the puzzle where to get anything to eat. I tell youI was fair rambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear ofbehaving too human, and so there I sat and hungered until very nearthe dawn. Then the village got a bit quiet, and I couldn't stand it anylonger, and I went out and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowland some sour milk. What was left of these I put away among the otherofferings, just to give them a hint of my tastes. And in the morningthey came to worship, and found me sitting up stiff and respectable ontheir previous god, just as they'd left me overnight. I'd got my backagainst the central pillar of the hut, and, practically, I was asleep.And that's how I became a god among the heathen--a false god no doubt,and blasphemous, but one can't always pick and 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 wona battle with another tribe--I got a lot of offerings I didn't wantthrough it--they had wonderful fishing, and their crop of pourra wasexceptional fine. And they counted the capture of the brig among thebenefits I brought 'em. I must say I don't think that was a poor recordfor a perfectly new hand. And, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it,I was the tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly fourmonths....

  "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 atime I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do.That indeed was the great difficulty--making them understand my wishes.I couldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly--even if I'dbeen able to speak at all--and I couldn't go flapping a lot of gesturesat them. So I drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hootedlike one o'clock. Sometimes they did the things I wanted all right,and sometimes 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 infull rig and go off to a place where I could see the channel in whichthe 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 thatvexed and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and goingdown again, I could have punched their silly heads all round when theystarted rejoicing. I'm hanged if I like so much ceremony.

  "And then came the missionary. That missionary! It was in the afternoon,and I was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting on that oldblack stone of theirs when he came. I heard a row outside and jabbering,and then his voice speaking to an interpreter. 'They worship stocks andstones,' he said, and I knew what was up, in a flash. I had one of mywindows out for comfort, and I sang out straight away on the spur ofthe moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come inside,' I says, 'andI'll punch your blooming head.' There was a kind of silence and morejabbering, and in he came, Bible in hand, after the manner of them--alittle sandy chap in specks and a pith helmet. I flatter myself that mesitting there in the shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles,struck him a bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade incalico?' for I don't hold with missionaries.

  "I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quiteoutclassed with a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I told himto read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. Down he goesto read, and his interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any ofthem, took it as an act of worship and plumped down like a shot. All mypeople gave a howl of triumph, and there wasn't any more business to bedone in my village after that journey, 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 Starr Race,towing up the channel and sounding. The whole blessed game was up, andall 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 litt
le missionary come back?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes! Bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a maninside the god, and started out to see as much with tremendous ceremony.But there wasn't--he got sold again. I always did hate scenes andexplanations, and long before he came I was out of it all--going home toBanya along the coast, hiding in bushes by day, and thieving food fromthe villages by night. Only weapon, a spear. No clothes, no money.Nothing. My face was my fortune, as the saying is. And just a squeakof eight thousand pounds of gold--fifth share. But the natives cut uprusty, thank goodness, because they thought it was him had driven theirluck away."