The Proposals of Bastin and Bickley So far as my body was concerned I grew well with great rapidity, though it was long before I got back my strength.Thus I could not walk far or endure any sustained exertion.With my mind it was otherwise.I can not explain what had happened to it;indeed I do not know, but in a sense it seemed to have become detached and to have assumed a kind of personality of its own.At times it felt as though it were no longer an inhabitant of the body, but rather its more or less independent partner.I was perfectly clear-headed and of insanity I experienced no symptoms.
Yet my mind, I use that term from lack of a better, was not entirely under my control.For one thing, at night it appeared to wander far away, though whither it went and what it saw there Icould never remember.
I record this because possibly it explains certain mysterious events, if they were events and not dreams, which shortly I must set out.I spoke to Bickley about the matter.He put it by lightly, saying that it was only a result of my long and most severe illness and that I should steady down in time, especially if we could escape from that island and its unnatural atmosphere.
Yet as he spoke he glanced at me shrewdly with his quick eyes, and when he turned to go away I heard him mutter something to himself about "unholy influences" and "that confounded old Oro."The words were spoken to himself and quite beneath his breath, and of course not meant to reach me.But one of the curious concomitants of my state was that all my senses, and especially my hearing, had become most abnormally acute.A whisper far away was now to me like a loud remark made in a room.
Bickley's reflection, for I can scarcely call it more, set me thinking.Yva had said that Oro sent me medicine which was administered to me without Bickley's knowledge, and as she believed, saved my life, or certainly my reason.What was in it?
I wondered.Then there was that Life-water which Yva brought and insisted upon my drinking every day.Undoubtedly it was a marvelous tonic and did me good.But it had other effects also.
Thus, as she said would be the case, after a course of it Iconceived the greatest dislike, which I may add has never entirely left me, of any form of meat, also of alcohol.All Iseemed to want was this water with fruit, or such native vegetables as there were.Bickley disapproved and made me eat fish occasionally, but even this revolted me, and since I gained steadily in weight, as we found out by a simple contrivance, and remained healthy in every other way, soon he allowed me to choose my own diet.
About this time Oro began to pay me frequent visits.He always came at night, and what is more I knew when he was coming, although he never gave me warning.Here I should explain that during my illness Bastin, who was so ingenious in such matters, had built another hut in which he and Bickley slept, of course when they were not watching me, leaving our old bed-chamber to myself.
Well, I would wake up and be aware that Oro was coming.Then he appeared in a silent and mysterious way, as though he had materialised in the room, for I never saw him pass the doorway.
In the moonlight, or the starlight, which flowed through the entrance and the side of the hut that was only enclosed with latticework, I perceived him seat himself upon a certain stool, looking like a most majestic ghost with his flowing robes, long white beard, hooked nose and hawk eyes.In the day-time he much resembled the late General Booth whom I had often seen, except for certain added qualities of height and classic beauty of countenance.At night, however, he resembled no one but himself, indeed there was something mighty and godlike in his appearance, something that made one feel that he was not as are other men.
For a while he would sit and look at me.Then he began to speak in a low, vibrant voice.What did he speak of? Well, many matters.It was as though he were unburdening that hoary soul of his because it could no longer endure the grandeur of its own loneliness.Amongst sundry secret things, he told me of the past history of this world of ours, and of the mighty civilisations which for uncounted ages he and his forefathers had ruled by the strength of their will and knowledge, of the dwindling of their race and of the final destruction of its enemies, although Inoticed that now he no longer said that this was his work alone.
One night I asked him if he did not miss all such pomp and power.
Then suddenly he broke out, and for the first time I really learned what ambition can be when it utterly possesses the soul of man.
"Are you mad," he asked, "that you suppose that I, Oro, the King of kings, can be content to dwell solitary in a great cave with none but the shadows of the dead to serve me? Nay, I must rule again and be even greater than before, or else I too will die.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," Iremarked.
"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."He paused a while, then went on:
