Bastin

“ When it reached the lip of the shaft, it hung a little while, then moved across and began to descend with such incredible swiftness that in a few seconds it had vanished from view.
“Oh!” said Bastin, with his eyes almost starting out of his head, “that’s the lift, is it? Well, I tell you at once I don’t like the look of the thing. It gives me the creeps. Suppose it tilted.”
“It does not tilt,” answered Yva, still smiling. “I tell you, Bastin, that there is naught to fear. Only yesterday, I rode this rock and returned unharmed.” ”

“ Bickley and I looked at each other and were silent. Mentally we had collapsed. Who could begin to discuss statements built upon such a foundation of gigantic and paralysing falsehoods?
Well, Bastin could for one. With no more surprise in his voice than if he were talking about last night’s dinner, he said:
“There must be a mistake somewhere, or perhaps I misunderstand you. It is obvious that you, being a man, could not have destroyed the world. That could only be done by the Power which made it and you.”
I trembled for the results of Bastin’s methods of setting out the truth. ”

“ When he heard this saying I saw Oro start as though struck by a new thought and look at Bastin with a curious intentness.
“Who are the heathen?” Yva asked again after a pause, for she also seemed to be impressed.
“All who do not agree with Bastin’s spiritual views,” answered Bickley.
“Those who, whether from lack of instruction or from hardness of heart, do not follow the true faith. For instance, I suppose that your father and you are heathen,” replied Bastin stoutly. ”

“ I answered boldly.
“I know that you have lost many things—last night, for instance, you lost Tommy, and when he slept with me he told me much about you and—others.”
“This is ridiculous,” broke in Bastin. “Can a dog talk?”
“Everything can talk, if you understand its language, Bastin. But keep a good heart, Humphrey, for the bold seeker finds in the end. Oh! foolish man, do you not understand that all is yours if you have but the soul to conceive and the will to grasp? All, all, below, between, above! Even I know that, I who have so much to learn.” ”

“ As it chanced we did, for these stone ovens take a long time to heat. There by the edge of his fiery grave with his hands and legs bound in palm-fibre shackles, stood Bastin, quite unmoved, smiling indeed, in a sort of seraphic way which irritated us both extremely. Round him danced the infuriated priests of Oro, and round them, shrieking and howling with rage, was most of the population of Orofena. We rushed up so suddenly that none tried to stop us, and took our stand on either side of him, producing our pistols as we did so. ”

“ Better to face the future, even if it means oblivion, than to remain thus a relic of a glorious past, still living and yet dead, like that statue of the great god Fate which you saw in the temple of my worship.”
“Bastin does not think that the future means oblivion,” I remarked.
“I know it. I have studied his faith and find it too humble for my taste, also too new. Shall I, Oro, creep a suppliant before any Power, and confess what Bastin is pleased to call my sins? Nay, I who am great will be the equal of all greatness, or nothing.” ”

“ So farewell for a while, and, Preacher, be advised by me and do not aim too high again.”
“It doesn’t matter where I aim,” answered Bastin sturdily, “or whether I hit or miss, since there is something much bigger than me waiting to deal with you. The countries that you think you are going to destroy will sleep quite as well tomorrow as they do tonight, Oro.” ”

“ If I could read the future I should be a god instead of only an earth-lord.”
“Your daughter called you a god and you said that you knew we were coming to wake you up, which is reading the future,” answered Bastin.
“Every father is a god to his daughter, or should be; also in my day millions named me a god because I saw further and struck harder than they could. As for the rest, it came to me in a vision. Oh! Bickley, if you were wiser than you think you are, you would know that all things to come are born elsewhere and travel hither like the light from stars. ”

“ So Oro was an astronomer as well as a king and a god. I had guessed as much from those plates in the coffin which seemed to have stars engraved on them.
At this point our conversation came to an end, for the Ancient himself approached, leaning on the arm of Bickley who was engaged in an animated argument with Bastin.
“For Heaven’s sake!” said Bickley, “keep your theology to yourself at present. If you upset the old fellow and put him in a temper he may die.”
“If a man tells me that he is a god it is my duty to tell him that he is a liar,” replied Bastin obstinately. ”

“ It is true that Bastin held services on Sundays, for such as would attend, and Bickley had doctored a few of them for minor ailments, but there, except for a little casual conversation, our intercourse began and ended.
Now the sad fact is that it is hard to be overwhelmed with grief for those with whom we are not intimate. We were very sorry and that is all that can be said, except that Bastin, being High Church, announced in a matter-of-fact way that he meant to put up some petitions for the welfare of their souls. ”

“ Oro cut him short with a wave of the hand.
“Not now in the presence of Bickley who doubtless disbelieves your faith, as he does all else, holding it with justice or without, to be but another illusion. Yet you shall teach me and on it I will form my own judgment.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Bastin. Then a doubt struck him, and he added: “But why do you wish to learn? Not that you may make a mock of my religion, is it?”
“I mock at no man’s belief, because I think that what men believe is true—for them. I will tell you why I wish to hear of yours, since I never hide the truth. ”

“ The only explanation is that I am suffering from delusions.”
“Then is Bastin suffering from delusions, too?”
“Certainly, but that is nothing new in his case.”
“I don’t agree with you, Bickley—about Bastin, I mean. I am by no means certain that he is not the wisest of the three of us. He has a faith and he sticks to it, as millions have done before him, and that is better than making spiritual experiments, as I am sorry to say I do, or rejecting things because one cannot understand them, as you do, which is only a form of intellectual vanity.” ”

“ Bastin coloured through his tan and replied awkwardly:
“Paraffin is very good to keep away mosquitoes if one can stand the smell of it upon one’s skin. Not that I have brought it here with that sole object. The truth is that I am anxious to experiment with a lamp of my own design made—um—of native wood,” and he departed in a hurry.
“When next old Bastin wants to tell a lie,” commented Bickley, “he should make up his mind as to what it is to be, and stick to it. I wonder what he is after with that paraffin? ”

“ Nor was Bastin alarmed, if for other reasons.
“I think it right to tell you, Oro,” he said, “that the only future you need trouble about is your own. God Almighty will look after the western civilisations in whatever way He may think best, as you may remember He did just now. ”

“ At this moment the cyclone began to blow again worse than ever, but it seemed to us, from another direction, and before it sped our poor derelict barque. It blew all day till for my part I grew utterly weary and even longed for the inevitable end. If my views were not quite those of Bastin, certainly they were not those of Bickley. I had believed from my youth up that the individuality of man, the ego, so to speak, does not die when life goes out of his poor body, and this faith did not desert me then. ”

“ Above all this was a golden throne, and in a deep purple-plush-covered chair sat a florid, coarsely-beautiful woman, with long hair of golden hue hanging down upon her shoulders and blowing in the breeze. She was literally naked, save for a ruffle of pink muslin about her waist. Upon her head was a crown, in her right hand she held a gilded crozier.
The most wanton, hideous licentiousness was the order of the hour among the mob of fancy-costumed people.
Ralph Bastin and his companion followed in the wake of the foaming, raging sea of semi-mad people. ”

“ If wisdom flows from babes and sucklings, why should it not do so from the well of agnostics and mockers?”
“There is no reason which I can see,” scoffed Bickley, “except that as a rule wells do not flow.”
“Your jest is ill-timed and I may add foolish,” continued Bastin. “What I was about to add was that you have given me an idea, as it was no doubt intended that you should do. I will, metaphorically speaking, gird up my loins and try to bear the light into all this heathen blackness.” ”

“ Do not spring, or run, lest you should go too far. Step gently on to the rock and to its centre, and there lie down. Trust in me, all of you.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” groaned Bastin.
The great stone appeared and, as before, hung at the edge of the pit. Yva stepped on to it quietly, as she did so, catching hold of my wrist with her disengaged hand. I followed her feeling very sick, and promptly sat down. Then came Bickley with the air of the virtuous hero of a romance walking a pirate’s plank, and also sat down. Only Bastin hesitated until the stone began to move away. ”

“ Certainly Bastin was as far from Bickley as those points of the earth are apart, while I, as it were, sat equally distant between the two. However, we were all very happy together, since in certain characters, there are few things that bind men more closely than profound differences of opinion. ”

“ He is dead for his crime and may he be accursed for ever,” she added in the only outbreak of rage and vindictiveness in which I ever saw her indulge.
“One must make excuses for him; his father had been killed,” I said.
“Yes, that is what Bastin tells me, and it is true. Still, for that young man I can make no excuse; it was cowardly and wicked. Well, Bickley performed what he calls operation, and the Lord Oro, he came up from his house and helped him, because Bastin is no good in such things. Then he can only turn away his head and pray. ”

“ After the usual formula of consulting me Bickley answered:
“We come to take that mountain (he meant lump) off your neck and make you beautiful; also to cure all the sickness among your people.”
“And I come,” broke in Bastin, “to give you new hearts.”
These announcements evidently caused great excitement. After consultation Marama answered:
“We do not want new hearts as the old ones are good, but we wish to be rid of lumps and sicknesses. If you can do this we will make you gods and worship you and give you many wives.” (Here Bastin held up his hands in horror.) ”

“ If any one of you should attempt to come between me and my ends, know that I will destroy you all. Obey or die.”
“Well, he has had his chance and he won’t take it,” said Bastin in the silence that followed. “The man must go to the devil his own way and there is nothing more to be said.”
I say the silence, but it was no more silent. The distant humming grew to a roar, the roar to a hellish hurricane of sound which presently drowned all attempts at ordinary speech.
Then bellowing like ten millions of bulls, at length far away there appeared something terrible. ”

“ Ask my father Oro who has lived a thousand years and slept for tens of thousands, as I have, and he will say the same. It is against Time that he fights; he who, believing in nothing beyond, will inherit nothing, as Bastin says; he to whom Time has brought nothing save a passing, blood-stained greatness, and triumph ending in darkness and disaster, and hope that will surely suffer hope’s eclipse, and power that must lay down its coronet in dust.”
“And what has it brought to you, Yva, beyond a fair body and a soul of strength?” ”

“ By the time that we got back to camp it was drawing towards evening, so we cooked our food and ate, and then, thoroughly exhausted, made ourselves as comfortable as we could and went to sleep. Even our marvelous experiences could not keep Bickley and myself from sleeping, and on Bastin such things had no effect. He accepted them and that was all, much more readily than we did, indeed. Triple-armed as he was in the mail of a child-like faith, he snapped his fingers at evil spirits which he supposed the Sleepers to be, and at everything else that other men might dread. ”

“ Now I guess why he wanted that paraffin. Listen to the row. What are they after?”
“Sacrificing Bastin, perhaps,” I replied, half in jest. “Have you your revolver?”
He nodded. We always wore our pistols if we went out during the dark hours.
“Then perhaps we had better go to see.”
We started, and had not covered a hundred yards before a girl, whom I recognised as one of Bastin’s converts, came flying towards us and screaming out, “Help! Help! They kill the Bellower with fire! They cook him like a pig!”
“Just what I expected,” said Bickley. ”

“ For in the world there is only a certain store of life which in many forms travels on and on, till the lot of each I is fulfilled. Then comes the real death, and after that—what, oh!—what?”
“You must ask Bastin,” I said humbly. “I cannot dare to teach of such matters.”
“No, but you can and do believe, and that helps me, Humphrey, who am in tune with you. Yes, it helps me much more than do Bastin and his new religion, because such is woman’s way. Now, I think Bickley will soon return, so let us talk of other matters. ”

“ I said.
“Where to?” remarked Bastin. “We don’t know where we are or if there is any other land within a thousand miles. I think we had better stop here as Providence seems to have intended, especially when there is so much work to my hand.”
“Be careful,” answered Bickley, “that the work to your hand does not end in the cutting of all our throats. It is an awkward thing interfering with the religion of savages, and I believe that these untutored children of Nature sometimes eat missionaries.”
“Yes, I have heard that,” said Bastin; “they bake them first as they do pigs. ”