At first it was only the women that made the trial. They brought the magician good, dark loam in small sacks. For this they received a like quantity of wheat. The grain was such as they had never before seen.
At once the strong young men were seized with the desire to participate in such profitable barter, and soon they too were carrying to the tower as heavy sacks of mother earth as their brawny arms and broad shoulders could support.
The Very Reverend Pastor Waimner did, indeed, pronounce his anathema against all who dared to make such pilgrimages to the Satanic shrine in order to barter their own blessed earth for a stranger's accursed corn. He warned them that grain grown in such a mysterious and suspicious soil could not but give them the itch and elflock, and that one day their souls must inevitably sink for ever in the pool of fire.
His threats and warnings, however, were of no avail. The people's skins did not turn black with eating the mysterious corn, neither did their hair become entangled. Their souls' welfare, they therefore reasoned, might well be equally secure.
The grain was, in fact, the best ever reaped in Brandenburg. The Russian Government had had it shipped for their northern ports. That year so many grain-laden vessels had gone on the rocks beneath the Tower of Dago, that its inmates had soon no more room to store the booty. Thus it was that they came to exchange it with the islanders for earth.
Earth! But for what purpose could the Destroying Spirit require earth?
To create!
[Illustration]
There was a little hollow on the south side of the tower which was sheltered from the wind on every side. This hollow the Master filled with the earth, and planted the little plot all over with flowers. In this way he soon had a perfect flower-garden laid out.
There was, then, one human being in the tower who took pleasure in flowers.
But did the terrible doctrines professed by the Master permit him to act thus kindly towards any living creature?
Alas! Nothing in creation is flawless--not even the Satanic confession of faith. Even Satan is sometimes tricked by his disciples, and unbelief itself has its hypocrisy.
To his own thinking, this man had succeeded in banishing every human feeling from his heart--but this one still remained. He had, he thought, been able to renounce every virtue in favour of its opposite vice--but this one he could not renounce. He could not fight down the kindliness that filled his heart for the poor girl, Mashinka, who had saved his child, who had accompanied him into exile, and who had become a loving mother to his boy and a devoted companion to him. So he felt grateful to her.
But that was surely a heresy against the religion he professed and preached--a positive breach of the all-denying dogma! For Gratitude is itself a virtue and closely related to Love. Gratitude being merely a tyranny of the soul over the body, how could the body, which had now become master, admit it? And if the body be indeed the ruling lord, the right of thought also belongs to it. Its philosophy must, then, determine the course of both action and feeling. Was it not plain that this one contradiction in the Master's principles might--nay, must, overturn the whole edifice of Babel?
Nevertheless, the Master found it impossible to shut his heart against this one feeling. With the most painstaking art he had laid out this garden--bought at a higher price even than the gardens of Semiramis; and that, too, for a poor peasant girl who alone in that Babel of hate had retained in her heart the priceless feeling of Love.
When the garden was finished and planted with all the flowers the island could afford, the Master led Mashinka to the door, which had hitherto been closed to her, opened it, and said simply:
"The garden is yours!"
[Illustration: "The garden is yours!"]
And as the girl, weeping with joy, threw herself at his feet, pressed his hand to her lips and covered it with her tears--did not the captive spirit throb rebelliously within its weak bodily prison, and ask: "Is not a single tear like these--a single cry of joy--sweeter far than a sea of blood, and a chorus of death-shrieks from the throats of thousands of vanquished enemies?"
At the thought, he pushed the girl away from him and rushed up to his laboratory, there to continue the work of destruction.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI
Compensation
One day, while the inmates of the tower were preparing for one of their fiendish festivals, the Master's little son came into Mashinka's room. He had just come up from the underground "chapel." The boy's face looked sorely troubled. When Mashinka asked what ailed him, he whispered softly to her:
"Something makes me so sad--what it is I cannot tell. But this at least I know--I hate my father!"
Then Mashinka took the boy's cold hand in hers and tried to soothe away the pain that filled his heart. She taught him how he ought to love both his Heavenly and his earthly father, even though both should chastise their child so severely that love was moved to give place to fear.
Thus the evil seeds which the Master was perpetually striving to sow in his son's heart by night, were ever rooted up again in the daytime by the poor Volhynian peasant girl.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII
The Meeting
This terrible life had now gone on for twelve long years. Most of the actors in the drama had become grey. Several had died, and the total number in the tower had now fallen to forty. Even the master-spirit of Dago had snow-white hair, and seemed some twenty years older than he really was.
During that time some six hundred vessels had been shattered on the rocks of Dago. Some eighteen thousand men had perished, and a fortune of a hundred millions of thalers had been destroyed.
But still the demon of revenge and destruction was unsatisfied. Twelve years of blood had not sufficed to quench the fire of hate that consumed his heart.
All those whose bodies lay scattered among the rocks beneath him were men quite unknown to him. He never even learnt their names, nor was he present when they were struck down.
But one thing he still yearned for--of one thing he was ever dreaming.
His sole remaining wish was to hold in his destroying power those who had made him so miserable; to meet them for a moment face to face; then to drink in the curses of their despair as they were thrust down into their graves. That, indeed, would be the very crown of his life-work!
During summer the work was discontinued. In northern regions lighthouses are of little service in the short and light summer nights. During these months of inactivity the Master, as became a dutiful father, instructed his son in all those arts whereby the mighty powers of Nature are made serviceable to man. He exercised him also in the use of arms--not in true knightly fashion, but with all the tricks approved of bandits and corsairs. He took the boy with him in his boat among the reefs along the shore, so that he should learn early to be reckless and defiant of all danger. Many a time he would throw the lad from the boat right out into the eddy. At first he was unable to get out without help, and then the father would leap in after him and bring him back by the hair of the head. In a little time, however, the lad was expert enough to dispense with all help, and would swim in and out of the most dangerous positions alone.
About the end of autumn in the twelfth year an imperial Russian gunboat was wrecked upon the rocks of Dago. Among the papers found in the cabin by the plunderers was an Admiralty order addressed to all the commanders of war vessels. This document stated that during the past twelve years a vast number of maritime disasters had occurred in the Baltic, and particularly (so, at least, it was believed) in the passage between Faro and Gustavsvarn. As not a single soul was known to have survived, the general voice of terror and exasperation had at length decided the ruling powers to move in the matter. The order went on to express the opinion that these seas must be the haunt of some piratical vessel which captured ships in stormy nights, and sent them to the bottom after slaughtering their crews. For, strangely enough, no one had ever found a single fragment of any of the missing vessels.
Seamen (it was stated) were in the habit, when a disaster was imminent, of committing a short account of the catastrophe to the waves in a sealed bottle which, in all likelihood, would one day be picked up by fishermen. But out of some six hundred missing vessels no such memorial had ever made its appearance. Human hands, it was therefore concluded, must be at work, and search for them must be diligently made. The document, therefore, required the commander of every man-of-war and gunboat to take every possible step to track out the mysterious destroyer.
How the Apostle of Dago laughed sardonically as he read the order.
"So they are coming at last!" he cried; "those for whom I have waited so long! Right well shall they be received!"
At that season of the year dense fogs begin to be prevalent in the Baltic. These are of the utmost danger to seamen, for the rays from the lighthouses cannot penetrate the atmosphere, and the attention of vessels can only be attracted by the sound of bells.
On one such hazy and sultry night the Master of the Tower of Dago rang the bell for evening "service." That night, surely, they should hold high festival. Vessels of war were certainly scouring the seas all around. One such vessel was still wanting on the rocks of Dago.
Smaller ships, such as gunboats, brigs and corvettes, were lying there in plenty, forming excellent places of retreat for the hydra and nautilus. To them the company of a full three-decker could not but be welcome.
Presently, in response to the sounds which had so often proved a mariner's death-knell, an answering signal was borne in from the open sea. It was the familiar, long-drawn tones of a great sea-horn, which can be heard many miles off in foggy weather.
They were coming, then, at last!
Only a little while ago, no doubt, they had thought that they had lost their way. But now, thank God! they were sailing towards a safe harbour. By daybreak they should be beyond all danger!
"Not God in Heaven can save them now!" muttered the Master, as with such thoughts he gazed intently into the gloom.