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[Chapters] [Sociology] |
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Chapter Eighteen
THE DOOR was ajar; they entered. "John!"
From the bathroom
came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.
"Is there anything
the matter?" Helmholtz called.
There was no answer.
The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice; there was silence. Then, with
a click the bathroom door opened and, very pale, the Savage emerged.
"I say,"
Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill, John!"
"Did you eat
something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded.
"I ate civilization."
"What?"
"It poisoned
me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in a lower tone, "I
ate my own wickedness."
"Yes, but what
exactly? . . . I mean, just now you were . . ."
"Now I am purified,"
said the Savage. "I drank some mustard and warm water."
The others stared
at him in astonishment. "Do you mean to say that you were doing it
on purpose?" asked Bernard.
"That's how
the Indians always purify themselves." He sat down and, sighing,
passed his hand across his forehead. "I shall rest for a few minutes,"
he said. "I'm rather tired."
"Well, I'm not
surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence, "We've come to
say good-bye," he went on in another tone. "We're off to-morrow
morning."
"Yes, we're
off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savage remarked a
new expression of determined resignation. "And by the way, John,"
he continued, leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on the Savage's
knee, "I want to say how sorry I am about everything that happened
yesterday." He blushed. "How ashamed," he went on, in spite
of the unsteadiness of his voice, "how really . . ."
The Savage cut him
short and, taking his hand, affectionately pressed it.
"Helmholtz was
wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after a little pause. "If
it hadn't been for him, I should . . ."
"Now, now,"
Helmholtz protested.
There was a silence.
In spite of their sadness--because of it, even; for their sadness was
the symptom of their love for one another--the three young men were happy.
"I went to see
the Controller this morning," said the Savage at last.
"What for?"
"To ask if I
mightn't go to the islands with you."
"And what did
he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.
The Savage shook
his head. "He wouldn't let me."
"Why not?"
"He said he
wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned," the Savage
added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go on being experimented
with. Not for all the Controllers in the world. l shall go away to-morrow
too."
"But where?"
the others asked in unison.
The Savage shrugged
his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care. So long as I can be alone."
From Guildford the
down-line followed the Wey valley to Godalming, then, over Milford and
Witley, proceeded to Haslemere and on through Petersfield towards Portsmouth.
Roughly parallel to it, the upline passed over Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham,
Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead there were
points where the two lines were not more than six or seven kilometres
apart. The distance was too small for careless flyers--particularly at
night and when they had taken half a gramme too much. There had been accidents.
Serious ones. It had been decided to deflect the upline a few kilometres
to the west. Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses
marked the course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above
them were silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Bordon and Farnham
that the helicopters now ceaselessly hummed and roared.
The Savage had chosen
as his hermitage the old light-house which stood on the crest of the hill
between Puttenham and Elstead. The building was of ferro-concrete and
in excellent condition--almost too comfortable the Savage had thought
when he first explored the place, almost too civilizedly luxurious. He
pacified his conscience by promising himself a compensatingly harder self-discipline,
purifications the more complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitage
was, deliberately, a sleepless one. He spent the hours on his knees praying,
now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness,
now in Zuńi to Awonawilona, now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian
animal, the eagle. From time to time he stretched out his arms as though
he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache
that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciating agony;
held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched
teeth (the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), "Oh, forgive
me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again and again, till
he was on the point of fainting from the pain.
When morning came,
he felt he had earned the right to inhabit the lighthouse; yet, even though
there still was glass in most of the windows, even though the
view from the platform was so fine. For the very reason why he
had chosen the lighthouse had become almost instantly a reason for going
somewhere else. He had decided to live there because the view was so beautiful,
because, from his vantage point, he seemed to be looking out on to the
incarnation of a divine being. But who was he to be pampered with the
daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be living in the visible
presence of God? All he deserved to live in was some filthy sty, some
blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still aching after his long night
of pain, but for that very reason inwardly reassured, he climbed up to
the platform of his tower, he looked out over the bright sunrise world
which he had regained the right to inhabit. On the north the view was
bounded by the long chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, from behind whose eastern
extremity rose the towers of the seven skyscrapers which constituted Guildford.
Seeing them, the Savage made a grimace; but he was to become reconciled
to them in course of time; for at night they twinued gaily with geometrical
constellations, or else, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers
(with a gesture whose significance nobody in England but the Savage now
understood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.
In the valley which
separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hill on which the lighthouse stood,
Puttenham was a modest little village nine stories high, with silos, a
poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory. On the other side of the
lighthouse, towards the South, the ground fell away in long slopes of
heather to a chain of ponds.
Beyond them, above
the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-story tower of Elstead. Dim in
the hazy English air, Hindhead and Selborne invited the eye into a blue
romantic distance. But it was not alone the distance that had attracted
the Savage to his lighthouse; the near was as seductive as the far. The
woods, the open stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch
firs, the shining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, their water
lilies, their beds of rushes--these were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed
to the aridities of the American desert, astonishing. And then the solitude!
Whole days passed during which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse
was only a quarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the
hills of Malpais were hardly more deserted than this Surrey heath. The
crowds that daily left London, left it only to play Electro-magnetic Golf
or Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearest Riemann-surfaces
were at Guildford. Flowers and a landscape were the only attractions here.
And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came. During the
first days the Savage lived alone and undisturbed.
Of the money which,
on his first arrival, John had received for his personal expenses, most
had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he had bought four
viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools, matches
(though he intended in due course to make a fire drill), some pots and
pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour.
"No, not synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute,"
he had insisted. "Even though it is more nourishing." But when
it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized beef-surrogate, he had
not been able to resist the shopman's persuasion. Looking at the tins
now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness. Loathesome civilized
stuff! He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he
were starving. "That'll teach them," he thought vindictively.
It would also teach him.
He counted his money.
The little that remained would be enough, he hoped, to tide him over the
winter. By next spring, his garden would be producing enough to make him
independent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there would always be game.
He had seen plenty of rabbits, and there were waterfowl on the ponds.
He set to work at once to make a bow and arrows.
There were ash trees
near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, a whole copse full of beautifully
straight hazel saplings. He began by felling a young ash, cut out six
feet of unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring by paring,
shaved away the white wood, as old Mitsima had taught him, until he had
a stave of his own height, stiff at the thickened centre, lively and quick
at the slender tips. The work gave him an intense pleasure. After those
weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything,
but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing
something that demanded skill and patience.
He had almost finished
whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start that he
was singing-singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself
from the outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly
at fault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy
himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination
by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it
was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed
in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself
he would constantly remember--poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness
to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery
of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief
and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember,
he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily
over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing. . . .
He went indoors,
opened the box of mustard, and put some water to boil on the fire.
Half an hour later,
three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups
happened to be driving to Elstead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished
to see a young man standing 0utside the abandoned lighthouse stripped
to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back
was horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin
trickles of blood. The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the
road and, with his two companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary
spectacle. One, two three--they counted the strokes. After the eighth,
the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge
and there be violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip
and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .
"Ford!"
whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.
"Fordey!"
they said.
Three days later,
like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the reporters came.
Dried and hardened
over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage was busy
on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped
with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the
Puttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury.
It was at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the
reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up
behind him.
"Good-morning,
Mr. Savage," he said. "I am the representative of The Hourly
Radio."
Startled as though
by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering arrows,
feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.
"I beg your
pardon," said the reporter, with genuine compunction. "I had
no intention . . ." He touched his hat--the aluminum stove-pipe hat
in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. "Excuse
my not taking it off," he said. "It's a bit heavy. Well, as
I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly . . ."
"What do you
want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most
ingratiating smile.
"Well, of course,
our readers would be profoundly interested . . ." He put his head
on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. "Just a few words
from you, Mr. Savage." And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures,
he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled round
his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminum
hat; touched a spring on the crown--and antennae shot up into the air;
touched another spring on the peak of the brim--and, like a jack-in-the-box,
out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six inches in front
of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed a
switch on the left side of the hat-and from within came a faint waspy
buzzing; turned a knob on the right--and the buzzing was interrupted by
a stethoscopic wheeze and cackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. "Hullo,"
he said to the microphone, "hullo, hullo . . ." A bell suddenly
rang inside his hat. "Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking.
Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and
say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at the Savage
with another of those winning smiles of his. "Just tell our readers
why you came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!) so very
suddenly. And, of course, that whip." (The Savage started. How did
they know about the whip?) "We're all crazy to know about the whip.
And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. 'What
I think of the Civilized Girl.' Just a few words, a very few . . ."
The Savage obeyed
with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more-five
words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the Arch-Community-Songster
of Canterbury. "Hani! Sons eso tse-na!" And seizing
the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young man revealed
himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy
of a champion foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.
Eight minutes later,
a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets
of London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED BY MYSTERY SAVAGE,"
ran the headlines on the front page. "SENSATION IN SURREY."
"Sensation even
in London," thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the
words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly
to his luncheon.
Undeterred by that
cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx, four other reporters, representing
the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum,
The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon
at the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing
violence.
From a safe distance
and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benighted fool!" shouted the
man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why don't you take soma?"
"Get away!"
The Savage shook his fist.
The other retreated
a few steps then turned round again. "Evil's an unreality if you
take a couple of grammes."
"Kohakwa
iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.
"Pain's a delusion."
"Oh, is it?"
said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.
The man from The
Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.
After that the Savage
was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and hovered inquisitively
round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them.
It pierced the aluminum floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and
the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that
its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance
respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his
imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of M·tsaki, unmoved
and persistent among the winged vermin), the Savage dug at what was to
be his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew
away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but
for the larks, silent.
The weather was breathlessly
hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the morning and was
resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina
was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying "Sweet!" and
"Put your arms round me!"--in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent
strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts,
her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina . . . No, no, no,
no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house.
At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung
himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires,
but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked
him. He tried to think of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching
hands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had sworn
to remember. But it was still the presence of Lenina that haunted him.
Lenina whom he had promised to forget. Even through the stab and sting
of the juniper needles, his wincing fiesh was aware of her, unescapably
real. "Sweet, sweet . . . And if you wanted me too, why didn't you
. . ."
The whip was hanging
on a nail by the door, ready to hand against the arrival of reporters.
In a frenzy the Savage ran back to the house, seized it, whirled it. The
knotted cords bit into his flesh.
"Strumpet! Strumpet!"
he shouted at every blow as though it were Lenina (and how frantically,
without knowing it, he wished it were), white, warm, scented, infamous
Lenina that he was dogging thus. "Strumpet!" And then, in a
voice of despair, "Oh, Linda, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad.
I'm wicked. I'm . . . No, no, you strumpet, you strumpet!"
From his carefully
constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte,
the Feely Corporation's most expert big game photographer had watched
the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent
three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights
crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse
bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound
discomfort. But now me great moment had come--the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte
had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since
his taking of the famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas'
wedding. "Splendid," he said to himself, as the Savage started
his astonishing performance. "Splendid!" He kept his telescopic
cameras carefully aimed--glued to their moving objective; clapped on a
higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!);
switched over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical
effect, he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the
groans, the wild and raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track
at the edge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification (yes,
that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentary lull,
the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savage would turn round so that
he could get a good close-up of the blood on his back--and almost instantly
(what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did turn round, and
he was able to take a perfect close-up.
"Well, that
was grand!" he said to himself when it was all over. "Really
grand!" He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects
at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin
Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale's Love-Life--and that, by Ford,
was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later
The Savage of Surrey had been released and could be seen, heard
and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe.
The effect of Darwin
Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed
the evening of its release John's rustic solitude was suddenly broken
by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.
He was digging in
his garden--digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the
substance of his thought. Death--and he drove in his spade once, and again,
and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty
death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another
spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become
gradually less than human and at last . . . He shuddered. A good kissing
carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into
the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill
us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true--truer
somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them
ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft
provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than
sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he
stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? . . .
A humming overhead
had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something
between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from
his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering
in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities
of death and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering
machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him
on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers
stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot)
in acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered
singlets--one couple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of
them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring, laughing,
clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) peanuts, packets of sex-hormone
chewing-gum, pan-glanduar petite beurres. And every moment--for
across the Hog's Back the stream of traffic now flowed unceasingly--their
numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores
hundreds.
The Savage had retreated
towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with
his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless
horror, like a man out of his senses.
From this stupor
he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact on his
cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain--and
he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.
"Go away!"
he shouted.
The ape had spoken;
there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. "Good old Savage!
Hurrah, hurrah!" And through the babel he heard cries of: "Whip,
whip, the whip!"
Acting on the word's
suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind
the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell
of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced
towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most
immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness
of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which
the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked
round.
"Why don't you
leave me alone?" There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.
"Have a few
magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, if the Savage were to
advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. "They're
really very good, you know," he added, with a rather nervous smile
of propitation. "And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young."
The Savage ignored
his offer. "What do you want with me?" he asked, turning from
one grinning face to another. "What do you want with me?"
"The whip,"
answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do the whipping stunt. Let's
see the whipping stunt."
Then, in unison and
on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip," shouted a group
at the end of the line. "We--want--the whip."
Others at once took
up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again,
with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth
reiteration, no other word was being spoken. "We--want--the whip."
They were all crying
together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical
atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely.
But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly
interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog's
Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of
where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers
and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the
shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were
turned off: "We--want--the whip; we--want--the whip," broke
out again in the same loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter
opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced young man, then,
in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.
At the sight of the
young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale.
The young woman stood,
smiling at him--an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds
passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her
voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
"We--want--the
whip! We--want--the whip!"
The young woman pressed
both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful
face of hers appeared a strangely incongrous expression of yearning distress.
Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears
rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick,
impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped
forward.
"We--want--the
whip! We--want . . ."
And all of a sudden
they had what they wanted.
"Strumpet!"
The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. "Fitchew!" Like
a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.
Terrified, she had
turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. "Henry, Henry!"
she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm's way
behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted
excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that
magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.
"Fry, lechery,
fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.
Hungrily they gathered
round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.
"Oh, the flesh!"
The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the
whip descended. "Kill it, kill it!"
Drawn by the fascination
of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation,
that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had
so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his
gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious
flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather
at his feet.
"Kill it, kill
it, kill it . . ." The Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody
started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in a moment, they had all
caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round
and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy
. . .
It was after midnight
when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma,
and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping
in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment,
blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered--everything.
"Oh, my God,
my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.
That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing
across the Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description
of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers. "Savage!"
called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. "Mr.
Savage!"
There was no answer.
The door of the lighthouse
was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through
an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of
the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of
the arch dangled a pair of feet.
"Mr. Savage!"
Slowly, very slowly,
like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right;
north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused,
and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left.
South-south-west, south, south-east, east. . . . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
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