"The soul!" echoed the Master contemptuously; "the most execrable imposture with which the world has ever been befooled! For the body's torment a tyrant was invented to chastise it by means of fasting and renunciation, thus to reduce it to desperation. The soul, sir, is simply a tyrant that forces its monstrous feelings on the body. And we are to suffer thus merely because that tyrannous fiction comes from above--from Heaven, and the body from beneath--from Hell! But how if it were to occur to the body that it is really the master and the other the slave, and the soul were to be trodden under foot?"
"Sir, your dogma seems to me perfectly frightful!" said Herr Waimner aghast.
"I prosper well enough under it, however. My whole confession of faith, indeed, is contained in these words: 'That which is agreeable to me is right; that which is hurtful to another is not wrong.'"
"Sir, do your companions all practise this religion also?"
"I preach them no other, and they appear quite content with it."
"Have you a family also?" asked the clergyman anxiously; "I sincerely trust not."
"Oh yes," answered the Master lightly. "There dwell with me both a female anthropopithecus and an undeveloped specimen of the _simia anthropos_, _masculini generis_."
"And what religion, pray, do you teach your son?"
"The same that I have just enunciated."
The reverend gentleman raised his hands in righteous horror. Then, after fervently murmuring the first lines of Luther's hymn, "A safe stronghold our God is still!" he rose to go.
"Farewell, sir," said he. "Never again can I come here. When I reach home I shall at once make a representation to our authorities to compel you to build up your exit on the island side, so that you and yours may never come forth to trouble and contaminate our people."
"Fear not, friend," said the Master, calmly and emphatically. "We never shall go out to trouble you; but it will not be long ere you come here to us. Listen! In this very year a famine will visit your island. I have learnt as much already from those demons of mine. Ay, and your people will come crawling on their knees to me who possess the power to turn the rocks into bread, and they will sing 'Hallelujah Satanas!' in chorus."
The clergyman pulled his gown over his ears in order to shut out such blasphemy, and rushed precipitately down stairs and out at the lower door. Never again had he the least inclination to pay a further pastoral visit to the Satanic Apostle of Dago.
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CHAPTER IV
The Sorcerer
The Master of the Tower of Dago spoke the truth. It was really the powers of Darkness that helped him to make the rocks and water into bread and wine. He also stated a simple fact when he declared that the agent in the transformation was the furnace in the observatory at the summit of the tower. It was in the following manner that this work of sorcery was accomplished.
On a day when the position of the barometer and the cries of the sea-gulls announced the approach of a storm, the Apostle of Dago assembled his companions in a subterranean chamber of his tower. This vault was called the "chapel." It contained a pulpit, from which the Master himself was in the habit of exhorting his flock. It was, indeed, a strange chapel!
And what frightful exhortations were these! Exhortations to the perpetration of all manner of misdeeds and cruelty; the ten commandments of God reversed; perpetual enmity towards all mankind, and especially towards their own land, their dearest friends, their fathers and brothers; sin in its deepest depths of depravity raised aloft as a virtue; faithlessness and treachery the highest duty; and the malediction of the world the most perfect bliss! Such was the gospel of Dago.
While the Master uttered these doctrines his little son sat on the pulpit steps at his feet, so that he might early imbibe the frightful precepts in all childish simplicity, and continue their propagation when his father should have gone to his own place. The song of praise was never raised in that chapel; only the sound of scornful, scoffing laughter was ever heard.
"Overthrow the ten commandments! Be false; covet what is thy neighbour's; kill, steal, dishonour thy father, thy father's father, and the greatest father of all--the Tsar! Seek out for thyself a lovely flower whose name is woman; pluck it--then crush it, and cast it away when all its fragrance is fled!"
Doubtless the child understood but little as yet of such doctrines as those to which he was compelled to listen.
"To-night or to-morrow we hold high festival!"
Upon this announcement being made the inmates hastened to bring their small boats out of their concealment in the vault. These vessels were constructed to hold three men each, and were made of light wood covered with stout leather. They were then placed in readiness in a narrow creek leading from the vault out into the open sea.
As the storm at length began to break, the men were certain to be sitting ready in their boats, awaiting the expected "sacrifice."
And as certainly it came.
As night began to fall the Master ascended alone to the observatory.
He at once lighted the furnace, and heightened its brilliancy by means of lime and oxygen. He then removed the wainscot from the three walls opposite the large windows facing the sea. Behind the wainscot were immense concave mirrors of burnished steel. These now reflected back the dazzling light from the furnace in three directions away to the distant horizon.
Before the exercises of the night it was customary to ring the "chapel" bell. This was an enormous bell, which had once been taken as booty. It was suspended in a secret chamber beneath the observatory, and on being rung, its rumbling notes sounded through a semicircular window of the tower far out into the night. The tower had no opening on the land side, and the inhabitants of the island could neither see the light of the furnace nor hear the tolling of the bell. Every ship which appeared on the horizon in a stormy night must inevitably fall a prey to this diabolical stratagem.
In the channel connecting the Baltic with the Gulf of Finland there were two lighthouses--one on the Swedish coast at Gustavsvarn, and another on the Finnish coast near Revel. Even on a stormy night seamen might easily have steered their course by these two lights. But the Devil's apostle in the Tower of Dago confused them with his light and the sound of his bell. The mariners imagined that one of the two lighthouses known to them lay before them. They felt sure that the light beckoned them on to safety. So, with heartfelt thanks to God for His mercy, they steered directly towards it, and about an hour later were dashed against the rocks of Dago.
Then, as signals for help and cries of terror rose above the roar of wind and sea, the small boats swarmed forth from their concealment and boarded the stranded vessel. The crews killed all who were still alive on board, and plundered everything of value to be found--money, bales of goods, and provisions. They then carried everything ashore and stored it in the lower vaults of the tower. Such an expedition would often have to be repeated twice or thrice in a single night, for the deceptive light enticed vessels from three different quarters, and all went into the trap. The Master was careful to extinguish the light about two hours before daybreak, in order that no vessel should make towards his stronghold in broad daylight. Of his victims not one man was ever left alive.
They had, indeed, leagued themselves with all the fiends of Darkness and the Storm, in defiance of both Heaven and Earth.
This, then, was the sorcery by which they drew bread, meat, wine and fruit from the rocks and the sea. It was the stranded vessels that filled the chambers and vaults of the Tower of Dago with everything dear to the heart of man, and covered the rocky shore beneath the tower with that which was now dearest of all to its inmates'
hearts--the fleshless bones of their brother men.
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CHAPTER V
The Famine
It came to pass as the Master of the Tower of Dago had foretold. A year of famine visited the island.
There in his loneliness he had taken continual counsel of that great vital principle which he chose to associate with the Prince of Evil, but to which the learned give the name of "Gaea"--Earth.
And the Earth-demon has, in truth, diabolical humours. Between Earth and her minions, and the favourites of Heaven, there is eternal strife. It pleases Earth to let the ill weeds grow. The poppy and the corn-flower are her darlings. And yet, that child of Heaven, man's finer nature, forces her to bring forth white wheat for him! The Earth-spirit favours the savage and grosser instincts, while man does her violence by pressing upon her his nobler fruits and virtues. Man, doubtless, has a right to ask, "Why has the Creator brought forth these myriads of caterpillars and cockchafers that devastate my fruit-trees?" But surely the caterpillar and the cockchafer have an equal right to demand, "To what purpose has Earth given birth to that misshapen, two-legged creature that delights to sweep me down from my tree, and trample me under foot?" But, after all, the Earth-spirit is not the gardener's friend, but rather the caterpillar's.
The hermit in the Tower of Dago included in his studies that centre of the other infernos, the sun. He had observed that the spots and eruptions on the sun's disc exercise an influence upon the weather of our planet. He had, moreover, imbibed the wisdom of the wind and waves. He had carefully noted the migrations of whales and kingfishers, as well as the displays of the aurora borealis and the shooting stars. All these had told him that the hot days of May, which so quicken the growth of the crops, would be succeeded by a frost that would blight utterly the whole field produce of the island of Dago in a single night.
And so it happened. Not on that island alone but throughout the whole of northern Russia, the hopes of the agriculturists were shattered by that terrible frost. The capricious weather brought in its train that pestilence which attacks only the poor--Starvation.
In such circumstances larger and more powerful States may easily procure money, and tide over the evil day by purchasing grain in lands more blessed than theirs, and distributing it among their people. But a small and poverty-stricken republic like the island of Dago could not so easily get gold and silver to give in exchange for bread. The poor people had to fall back upon such nutriment as fish and cheese.
"This year," they said, "we must eat no bread." That was the solution.
The old women of the island now came much more frequently to the tower to sell their flowers. But instead of gold they now begged for a little corn.
"Listen to me!" said the Master of the tower to them one day. "You want bread. Well, I know a secret which enables me to transform earth at once into corn and barley. Bring me earth, then--but rich and fertile it must be--and I will give you corn in exchange for it.
However large the sack may be in which you bring the clods, just so large will be the sack of corn I will give you in return."